‘Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police’ by historian Stejarel Olaru which details how the Securitate communist secret police kept tabs on Romania’s global gymnastics star has won the silver medal in the world history category at the 2024 Independent Publisher Book Awards.
First published in Romanian as ‘Nadia si Securitatea’ in 2021, it was later translated by Alistair Ian Blyth and published in 2023 by Bloomsbury Publishing under the title: Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police: A Cold War Escape.
The win was announced by the Independent Publishers’ Awards.
The prize picks works that are innovative and creative and have made a contribution to universal literature.
” I’m pleased to see that..”Nadia and the Securitate” was noticed by the jury,” Mr. Olaru told Universul.net. He said it was good that his book was available to an English-speaking audience in North America where Nadia Comaneciis well-known.
“They are familiar with Nadia’s fame, but don’t know what it meant to be a professional athlete in a European communist country. I am also happy because this award means recognition and reward” for my efforts.
Mr. Olaru’s 312-page book is based on his research of declassified Securitate files. The shadowy network spied on Romanians using a network of informants which infiltrated every corner of Romanians’ lives.
The book exposes some of the dark secrets and mind-numbing surveillance that communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu used to keep tabs on the young gymnast,
Her defection in November 1989 was a political and personal disaster for the Romanian leader who treated Nadia as propaganda gold for him and his destitute country.
A month later he was ousted and executed along with his wife Elena after a summary trial.
The book, which is based on declassified files of the infamous Securitate communist secret police, opens with Comaneci’s risky escape in late November 1989.
On a pitch-black night with a full moon, local guide and shepherd Ghita Talpos led six people on a six-hour journey past Romanian border guards into Hungary.
Talpos only found out that night that Comaneci was part of the group.
Comaneci’s escape was planned in mid-November after a chance meeting with Romanian émigré Constantin Panait at a party in Bucharest.
“He exploited her unstable nature,” Olaru told RFE/RL.”Nadia considered [her] meeting him was like a window suddenly opening and a fresh breeze entering” in promising a different future for her.
Years later, she claimed Panait held her captive after she had immigrated to the United States and took money from her.
The Securitate began spying on Nadia when she was 13, shortly after she won medals at the 1975 European gymnastics championships in Skien, Norway. The surveillance continued until she fled Romania.
