This fascinating book is an excellent example of what its author calls a “file story,” which she defines as “a form of ‘remedial’ life writing, one that unravels skewed life segments coded and recorded in secret police files and recovers them through a multilayered biographical act” (17). To write such a story is not unlike the work of a detective. The sleuth needs to follow the “loquacious narrative” of the Securitate [communist Romanian secret police], “the officers’ surgical scrutiny in creating their hostile targets, the brushes they used to paint the target's portrait, all the while attempting to un-code what has been coded” (17). Glajar's book does just that.
In the case at hand, Romania's Securitate brought under surveillance the German-language writer Herta Müller and her husband, Richard Wagner, both from an area of German minority settlement in western Romania. The book follows their relationship with the Securitate from her first encounters with it in 1983 to their departure for Germany in 1985. The file shows four stages of Müller's surveillance. 1) Officers create her as “Cristina” (their name for her), who manifests a hostile image of life in Romanian villages that justifies their surveillance of her. 2) They woo her and maintain regular contact, seeking to make her more malleable. 3) They monitor her increasing reputation, modifying her surveillance as a result, and finally 4) they arrange for the couple's emigration, showing that the balance of power has shifted decisively in Müller's favor. Once she is gone, they denigrate her, seeking to isolate her from her old friends and spreading rumors that she was herself a collaborator, so as to minimize her further influence in Romania.
The narrative provides a fascinating picture of the situation of minority writers in Romania during the 1970s and 80s. For example, Glajar notes that writers often used metaphorical language so as to bypass censorship and that censorship for minority writers like Müller tended to be lighter than for Romanians. In particular, the censorship apparatus allowed more daring books in German, in hopes of convincing West Germany of the relative freedom of Romania's German writers (51).
The book is particularly valuable for its treatment of the relations between Müller and her Securitate officer, Nicolae Padurariu. Over time, their rapport grew. Padurariu presented himself as humane, friendly, and sympathetic to the difficult situation of a minority writer, whom he encouraged. Müller appeared obedient and did not create embarrassment for the regime when she traveled to Germany. But as she and her husband pestered him so as to be allowed to travel together (enabling them to leave Romania at the same time), they were unaware that listening devices in their apartment had already informed the officer of their plans. Padurariu, for his part, is walking a tightrope: building trust but knowing they will leave, which he will have to mediate with his organization. Meanwhile, he plies his trade: recruiting their friends as informers, trying to break apart their circle by playing people off against each other, continuing to woo her and render her more malleable if he can, and eventually enabling their departure for Germany while trying to recruit them to inform about people there. When the Securitate finally agreed to the couple's emigration, they had no reason to imagine that in 2009, Müller would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Also illuminating is material about some of the couple's informers, as well as indications that the Securitate was good at finding people to inform and training them well. Not only that: officers might create such a strong relation with some informers that those who later emigrated to Germany themselves would visit the officers on return visits, sometimes bringing them gifts! One can only wonder at the psychology of such relationships.
The material in a Securitate file, sensitively interpreted as it is here, thus gives us a unique understanding of surveillance, that basic instrument of oppression in communist societies.
