Abstract
This chapter investigates the ways that secret police agencies intervened in all stages of the creative process in the production of literature and the visual arts in two former Eastern bloc countries: the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Socialist Republic of Romania. From 1968 onwards, the brief for citizen informants in the GDR began to expand, as the last two guidelines, Guideline No. 1/68 and Guideline No. 1/79, issued by the Ministry for State Security reveal. Study of the files from the GDR’s Ministry for State Security and Romania’s Securitate reveals that ordinary citizens who were enlisted as covert informants were pivotal actors in state security surveillance in the communist Eastern bloc during the Cold War. The active and often enthusiastic engagement of publishing house informants enabled a type of censorship that often went undetected until writers were granted access to their files following the opening of the archives.
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