Romania’s foreign minister has announced the declassification of the ministry’s files which refer to the turbulent and unexamined years after the country’s anti-communist revolution where more than 1,100 died.
Oana Toiu made the announcement on Friday calling it “a significant coincidence,” as it was on the same day at the funeral of Romanian diplomat Mircea Raceanu “whose difficult decisions marked Romania’s exit from an era of controlled sovereignty and totalitarian ideology.“
Romania’s revolution which saw the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife in December 1989 was the bloodiest in Eastern Europe. The country’s post-communist transition was marred by violent crackdowns of pro-democracy protests as many second-rank communists and former Securitate secret agents assumed key positions in business, media and politics in the new democratic era.
Alluding to that, Mrs. Toiu noted that Romanian diplomacy of the last 100 years was “marked by tragic moments, occupations and dictatorships, as well as it was marked by great successes, such as the Union (with Transylvania in 1918) or the Romanian Revolution,” she said in a post on X.
She said that 5,000 foreign ministry files from the early transition years would be declassified.
„The (first post-communist) elections of May 1990, the miners’ rampages, the visit of King Michael, correspondence with the Soviet Union_ all these will be taken out of the where they’ve stayed for more than 30 years and will be made public,” she said.
She said the move coincided with the death of Mircea Răceanu who “was, first of all, a diplomat of principles.“
Raceanu, who died in the States on April 25 aged 90, was a Romanian diplomat and expert on U.S. relations, who was arrested in Bucharest by the Romanian authorities early in 1989, having provided information to the CIA for many years.
“In other words, in an attempt to bring democracy to Romania, he was spying against his own government, led by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu,” she wrote.
Raceanu was charged with treason, interrogated, tried by a military tribunal, found guilty, and sentenced to death, according to the Foreign Service Journal.
He wrote about his experience in Infern ’89: Povestea unui condemnat la moarte (Inferno ’89: The Story of One Condemned to Death), originally published in 2000.
His death sentence was commuted to 20 years’ imprisonment after a personal intervention in the form of a letter from President George Bush to Communist leader, Ceausescu. Raceanu was freed after the 1989 uprising and forced by the new Romanian authorities to leave the country where he settled in the United States with his family, according to Jonathan Rickert of the American Foreign Service Association.
“In 2000 the Romanian Supreme Court annulled his conviction and sentence, given by the Ceausescu regime. Though friends of Mircea’s had lobbied on his behalf in Bucharest to remove the conviction, he never asked for such interventions, and he himself refused to seek any sort of pardon or clemency, since doing so would be, or could be, construed as an admission of guilt,” Rickert wrote.
In 2001, the Romanian government awarded Mircea the National Order for Merit, with the rank of commander, for his efforts to bring democracy to the country, wrote Rickert, a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer who spent the majority of his 35-year career in or dealing with Central and Eastern Europe.
Mrs. Toiu said that Răceanu wanted “what today is the foundation of national security. (He) saw in the USA and in the West the hope for the freedom and dignity of Romanians and the path for the return to real sovereignty and democracy for Romania.”
“Mircea Răceanu did not only resist against the communist regime. He is part of the series of Romanian diplomats who sacrificed themselves for a cause and for values”.
“Today, Romanian diplomacy serves a democratic Constitution and is accountable to the citizens, not to a regime. The courage of these people contributed decisively,” she said on X.
Ieri am anunțat declasificarea unor importante dosare ale arhivei recente a MAE. Ca o coincidență semnificantă, tot ieri a fost înmormântarea unui diplomat român ale cărui decizii dificile au marcat ieșirea României dintr-o eră a suveranității controlate și a ideologiei…
— Toiu Oana (@oana_toiu) May 1, 2026
