The government approved the declassification of more than 5,000 diplomatic files covering Romania’s early post-communist transition, including documents related to the first free elections, the 1990 miners’ riots, the historic visit of King Michael I, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The move was announced following a proposal by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The decision concerns documents produced by the ministry between January 1990 and December 1992. According to officials, the archive includes “5,376 files stored in 768 folders, covering approximately 100 meters of shelving.”

The Foreign Ministry described the measure as the largest release of diplomatic archives since the declassification of pre-1989 documents. The files cover major historical developments, including Germany’s reunification, the dissolution of the USSR, the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Romania’s foreign policy repositioning after the fall of communism.

Among the archived file titles are “Reactions in the USSR to the December 22, 1989 Revolution,” “German Reunification (1990),” “Bilateral relations concerning former King Michael,” and “Treaty of cooperation, good neighborliness and friendship with the USSR.”

“Romanians have the right to know the history of the transition through documents. Too many things have remained locked away in drawers for too long, and where information is missing, conspiracies and distrust grow. The way Romania’s foreign policy was reshaped after 1989 - how we left the alliances tied to the USSR and how we positioned ourselves during the first major crisis after the Cold War - belongs to historians, researchers, and society, not to institutional basements,” said foreign minister Oana Țoiu.

“The documents we are opening today have not been classified as state secrets for more than a decade, yet they continued to be kept away from the public as service secrets. We are changing that and moving forward, step by step, with their digitization and publication. A mature democracy studies its recent history and makes it available to its citizens,” she added.

According to the ministry, some documents remain exempt from declassification, including materials related to state encryption systems and security arrangements for diplomatic missions and consular offices.

The archives will now go through cataloguing, archival processing, and digitization before becoming accessible to researchers and the public.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Oana Țoiu)