Abstracts Nr 4, 2022

 

Iuliu Crăcană, About the „ministries of enforcement” and the interpretation of the law. The case of the „classified information” from the National Archives

Abstract: Law nr. 182 of 12 April 2002 on the protection of classified information adopted with in view of the imminent integration into NATO and accession to the European Union, due to the necessity and obligation to harmonize the national legislation with their standards, provided from the very first articles (art. 3) that „No provision of this Law may be interpreted as meaning to limit access to information of public interest or to ignore the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenants and other treaties Romania is a party to, regarding the right to receive and spread information”.

The law was followed by H.G. no. 585 of 13 June 2002 for the approval of the National Standards for the Protection of Classified Information in Romania which ignores that article, and allowed, on the one hand, the reclassification of some documents prior to the events of 1989 that were in the public domain, and, on the other hand, the destruction of other documents that should have entered the scientific domain. The bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave preference to the inferior normative act, abusively extending NATO norms to all historical documents deposited with the National Archives. The study analyzes the violation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the principle codified by Law 24/2000, in relation to all the normative acts invoked above.

Key words: hierarchy of normative acts, documents of historical character, Cătălin Botoșineanu, National Archives of Romania, Ministry of Internal Affairs

 

Csaba Zoltán Novák, Introduction. Nicolae Ceaușescu face to face with Hungarian scientists and cultural figures (June 27, 1968)

Abstract: One action to regain the trust of the Hungarians was the organization of a meeting between the party leadership, at the highest level, and Hungarian intellectuals. At the initiative of the leaders of the Communist Party, on June 28, 1968, the most influential Hungarian cultural leaders (over 50 writers, poets, editors, artists, teachers) were invited to Bucharest to participate in an event organized according to the already established pattern of the previous meetings. Although the organization of such a meeting was a theoretical possibility quite likely at the time, the invited intellectuals were nevertheless taken by surprise, especially since they had received the announcement only a few days before. This situation did not leave much room for the elaborate tactics or common platforms (maybe only short discussions between certain people), but the participants knew all too well the most stringent problems of the Hungarians in Romania, as their interventions at the meeting in question would prove. The meeting organized at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party included some important figures in the party (Nicolae Ceaușescu, Paul Niculescu Mizil, Leonte Răutu, Mihály Gere, János Fazekas) and representatives of the Hungarian intellectual elite from Bucharest (Géza Domokos, János Szász, Pál Bodor) and from the more important cultural centers in Transylvania: Cluj-Napoca (Ernő Gáll, János Demeter, Lajos Jordáky, Lajos Kántor, István Nagy, Gyula Csehi, Sándor Fodor, Sándor Kányádi, Elemér Jancsó), Târgu Mureș (Győző Hajdu, Zsolt Gálfalvi, András Sütő), Timișoara (Ernő Sisak) etc. Twenty-six people spoke. 81 Theoretically, all the guests had the right to speak, and the time allocated to an intervention was not defined. There was only a call for summarizing and shortening the intervention, as much as possible, as the time passed. There were no prior agreements, but the discussions clearly show the problems that needed to be solved urgently, in the Hungarians’ view.

Key words: 1968 conference, Hungarian intellectuals, Hungarian cultural centers, CC al PCR, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Transylvania