The Discourse of Repression. Narrativity and Semantics Inside the Securitate Files of the Burning Bush from Antim Monastery

Abstract

The archives of the political police during the Communist regime are documents whose circumstances of production make them different to interpret from other types of documents. They were generated by an instance of enunciation that was a repressive institution, directly interested in the repression of those perceived as political enemies. The present study starts from the story of a group of clergy and intellectuals known as the Burning Bush, who were part of a religious association (a cultural circle) in the second half of the 1940s. A decade later, several people connected to the initial group, their acquaintances as well as other younger students who gravitated around the older monks for spiritual formation were arrested during the 1958 repressive wave. An extensive surveillance had been developing prior to their arrest and their reunions and meetings in which they discussed religious and literary topics were interpreted in the archives as “hostile” and threatening towards the state. The paper inquires into how the documents create a coherent narrative of a group enemy that conspires against the Communist state, and also how semantics plays into the construction of the surveillance and the criminal files of the Burning Bush group.