The Igor Cașu Collection features two main categories of documents. The first category comprises oral history interviews that the founder of the collection has conducted with a number of people who expressed their opposition to the communist regime in various forms. The interviewed subjects include both prominent dissidents who contributed to active resistance against the regime and less well-known figures, whose main merits were linked to certain isolated, but symbolically charged, acts of defiance. To exemplify the first type of interviews, one could cite the interview with the famous dissident and anti-Soviet activist Mihai Moroșanu. The interview was taken in March 2011 and focused on Moroșanu’s trajectory as a nationally minded student. He was accused of nationalist tendencies for taking part in a public ceremony of laying flower wreaths at a monument dedicated to the medieval ruler Stephen the Great, who successfully reigned over historical Moldavia for forty-seven years and thus represents one of the most prominent personalities in Romanian history. The event took place on 11 October 1964, as Chişinău was celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which had been established on 12 October 1924. It was rumored that the monument to Stephen the Great would be moved to another, less central, location. Moroșanu collected signatures from students opposing the plan, as well as money to buy a flower wreath with the inscription “from the youth of Moldavia,” which he laid at the statue. As punishment, he was suspended from the institute and forced to work at a Chişinău-based reinforced-concrete plant for two years. Only after that could he resume his studies. However, he was soon arrested for his involvement in another incident, during which he insisted on speaking Romanian to a Russian shopkeeper in a central Chișinău shop. As a result, Moroșanu was sentenced to a three-year prison term. The interview focuses on the motivations and dynamics of Moroșanu’s criticism of the communist regime. His oppositional activity resulted from a combination of his nationalist convictions and his forceful personality, which displayed itself even after his release from prison. He remained openly defiant throughout the 1970s and 1980s, acquiring a certain public notoriety for his courage.
The second type of interviews concern less visible instances of public opposition to the regime. An interesting example concerns the case of two young women, Asea Andruh and Lilia Neagu, who were accused of writing over forty “anti-Soviet” slogans on a number of public buildings in central Chișinău in the autumn of 1970. In this period, this act was not as isolated as it might seem, given the persistence and resurgence of nationally oriented beliefs in intellectual circles, which provoked the dissatisfaction of the authorities. However, this public display was unusual in the generally quiet atmosphere of the MSSR. According to Neagu’s and Andruh’s testimony, the pro-Romanian nature of the slogans and the identification of many members from the new generation of educated Moldavians with the Romanians disturbed the regime more than the anti-Russian and nationalist nature of the inscriptions. Thus, the interviews offer interesting and valuable samples of oppositional actions and discourses from a variety of personal and social contexts, showing both their relative impact and their limits.
The bulk of archival documents in the collection was collected after 2010. This was possible due to the activity of the Presidential Commission for the Study and Evaluation of the Communist Totalitarian Regime in the Republic of Moldova, in which Igor Cașu served as vice-president. Most of the documents in Igor Cașu’s collection were originally preserved in several public archives, to which access is severely restricted at present. The materials in Igor Cașu’s collection were gathered from the following archives: the former Archive of the Central Committee of the Moldavian Communist Party, currently the Archive of Social-Political Organisations of the Republic of Moldova (AOSPRM); the former KGB Archive (currently the Archive of the Intelligence and Security Service, SIS), the archive of the Moldavian Writers’ Union (MWU), located in the Mihail Kogălniceanu Museum of Romanian Literature, and, finally, a collection of documents in the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova (ANRM) related to censorship (Glavlit). Most of the documents from the AOSPRM that are relevant for the topic of cultural opposition come from the so-called “Fond 51,” which covers the proceedings of the Central Committee of the Moldavian Communist Party after 1940. The materials from the SIS Archive originate from the judicial records of the persons repressed by the communist regime, providing valuable information on cases of individuals persecuted for political reasons. The most significant such cases are from the 1960s and early 1970s, when the local first secretary was Ivan Bodiul, who used the theme of local nationalism in order to enhance his credentials in Moscow and to tighten his grip at the local level. Under Bodiul’s leadership, which coincided with Ceaușescu’s coming to power in Romania and his anti-Soviet attitudes, there were constant campaigns against pro-Romanian individuals, which were driven by the fear of “contamination” by Romanian nationalism. The MWU archive is significant specifically for the situation of Moldovan writers under communism. The materials from the National Archive focus on issues related to censorship and official propaganda, but also shed some light on the inner workings of the Soviet institutions responsible for these areas. Finally, the collection features a number of photos and audio recordings that provide important insights into the phenomenon of cultural opposition in the late Soviet period. These materials allow one to assess what was considered “dangerous” from the official point of view at any given moment.
