Habits

Old habits die hard. In the current flood of WikiLeaks, which more confirm our suspicions rather than susprise or shock, it is quite easy to see how regimes of yesteryear still have their tentacles in the current day reality of post-communist countries.

It is hardly surprising that Romania was called a ‘wild’ place. But interestingly, whilst Russia is said to be run by Putin-connected Mafia, the former Soviet Union’s and Romania’s old tactics are still shown as very much alive.

Recent data, coming from outside the streams of WikiLeaks information, shows how surveillance techniques are used in Romania as an ordinary routine to monitor people’s interactions.
In a country where mass media was labelled as a key danger to national security (does this sound familiar to anyone?...), just in the last year a total of 3000 orders were given for phone tapping alone.
This is double compared to 2005, and the ‘peak’ is attributed to the election campaign- whilst Romanian media mentioned this casually, it is a remarkable fact that this can be even casually thought to be a ‘normal’ state of affairs simply because politicians’ and media personalities ‘had’ to be kept under observation due to elections…

The stalinist ghosts of Securitate are truly walking casually on the streets of Romania in 2010.

Parallels with the former Soviet Union (and current Russia) are easy to make, considering that despite the vast shrinking in size & population (consider Russia now vs. former Soviet Union), Russia employs more secret intelligence officers than ever before in the FSB’s old incarnation, the KGB. Current official count is 600 000 intelligence officers…

Russia, in all its post-stalinist might, deals with its politicians via such methods, ranging from extensive surveillance to assasination attempts. Romania is certainly showing that not only still copies attitudes from Ceausescu’s era, but also cranks up efforts in at least monitoring, if not suppressing, its own political and media figures.

Old habits do die hard, especially when there are key models in the close neighbourhood to imitate…