The Appearance of Saints: Photographic Evidence and Religious Minorities in the Secret Police Archives in Eastern Europe

Abstract

I present here examples of the photographic presence of a religious minority community in the secret police archives in ex-communist Eastern Europe. The use of secret police archives by researchers to trace the history of repression and collaboration and to understand the methods employed by totalitarian regimes to control their populations is well established. The significance of these archives for the study of material religion, however, has been largely overlooked by scholars. The secret police archives in Romania and the Republic of Moldova constitute a hidden repository of confiscated religious materials and photographs which often sit alongside photographic images created by the secret police in the course of their investigations into “criminal” religious activities. These archives, therefore, represent an important resource for understanding both how religious groups chose to represent themselves, and how the totalitarian system created images of religious “others” in order to incriminate them and to produce anti-religious propaganda. In this paper, through the presentation of example cases from state security files, I discuss the dual character of the photographic traces of communities in the archives as both religious justification and incrimination, and suggest ways of approaching these images through their materiality in the context of contemporary post-communist society.

Keywords:

• secret police
• photography
• religion
• religious minorities
• archives
• Romania
• Moldova

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to the Royal Irish Academy for funding the preliminary stages of this research which is part of the project Creative Agency and Religious Minorities: Hidden Galleries in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme No. 677355. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the project team and to my colleagues at UCC, Kinga Povedák, Ágnes Hesz, Anca Șincan, Iuliana Cindrea, Dumitru Lisnic and Helena Buffery for their shared insights during the preparation of this article and especially to Igor Cașu for helping to navigate the archival institutions in the Republic of Moldova and for some important archival references and materials.

Archival sources

ANIC-IGJ: Archiva Naționale Istorice Centrale —fond. Inspectoratul General al Jandarmeriei (Romania) [Central National Historical Archive—General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie], dosar. 22/1941, 154/1941 and 120/1942.

ANIC-MJDJ: Archiva Naționale Istorice Centrale—fond. ­Ministerul Justiției Judicare [Central National Historical Archive —Ministry of Judicial Justice], dosar. 69/1932.

ANRM-TMC3A: Archiva Națională a Republicii Moldova—fond. Tribunalul militar al Corpului III armată, Chişinău [National Archive of the Republic of Moldova—Military Tribunal of the Third Army Corps, Chişinău], dosar. 738-2-164, 738-1-6846.

ASISRM-KGB: Archiva Serviciului de Informații și Securitate a Republicii Moldova, fostul KGB [Archive of the Information and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova, the ex-KGB], personal file 020193, personal file 023262.

CNSAS: Consilul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității [National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archive] dosar I 237454 vol. 1, I 237 454 vol. 3.

Additional information

Funding

My thanks go to the Royal Irish Academy for funding the preliminary stages of this research which is part of the project Creative Agency and Religious Minorities: Hidden Galleries in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme No. 677355. I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the project team and to my colleagues at UCC, Kinga Povedák, Ágnes Hesz, Anca Șincan, Iuliana Cindrea, Dumitru Lisnic and Helena Buffery for their shared insights during the preparation of this article and especially to Igor Cașu for helping to navigate the archival institutions in the Republic of Moldova and for some important archival references and materials

Notes on contributors

james a. kapaló

James Kapaló is a Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (Brill 2011) and Co-Director of the Marginalized and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre (MEWSC). He is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project Creative Agency and Religious Minorities: Hidden Galleries in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe (project no. 677355).[email protected]