A Dissident Path: Paul Goma between Personal Memory and Archival Collections (2024)

1 The memory of Romanian opposition to totalitarianism, especially in the last two decades of its existence, is linked to a few individuals who, in a more hostile political and social environment, chose the path of challenging political power; this situation was specific in varying degrees across all countries in the Soviet camp. In Poland, the Solidarność movement merged not only unions but critical intellectuals and clergy members, while in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, intellectual circles, samizdat, unofficial universities, and publishing houses made up the vast complex of dissenters. Romanian dissidence was in turn characterized by individual commitment rather than organized group action. In particular, in the winterof 1977, it emerged as one answer to Charter77 in Czechoslovakia, as well as being linked to the personality of the writer Paul Goma.

2 Goma’s endorsem*nt of Charter77 was indeed the first step toward the rise of a human rights movement in Romania. In just a few months his individual stance became a collective one asking for the observance of human rights. During spring1977, a few hundred people, according to the Securitate files, signed what became known as the “Goma documents”– his letter to Charter77 and the joint open letter addressed to the CSCE Conference to be held in Belgrade. In parallel, and challenged for the first time in such a manner, the communist regime, using the Securitate’s extended arm, dismantled the movement. Arrests were operated, starting with Paul Goma, and most of the signatories were harassed to recant. This only escalated Paul Goma’s case, however, as groups in France, Romanian exiles, and French intellectuals came together and forced the Romanian authorities to release the writer and reduce the pressure on the other signatories. Only a few months after the movement for human rights started, Goma was allowed to travel abroad to France, where he continued to write and fight communism.

3 The complexity of Paul Goma’s case has been the subject of several biographical studies; however, this study aims to highlight, inventory, and valorize the variety of historical sources necessary for a rigorous investigation of the Goma case. Furthermore, it considers Paul Goma as a subject of interest for different institutions in Romania and abroad ‒all of whom created, gathered, and compiled important sources for the study of his biography‒ during and after the breakdown of communism. The paper will also discuss Paul Goma’s role as an archive creator and the challenges of turning his private archive into a public one, both to preserve its memory and to enrich historical research on the subject.

4 As Paul Goma was already the subject of biographical research both in Romania and France [1], the first part of our study aims only to shed light on the significant events in Paul Goma’s personal and professional life that led him to open dissent and then to exile and anticommunist militancy. The second part will consider the archives in France, Romania, and Hungary that contain relevant information on Paul Goma, and question their contents and availability for researchers. The paper will also discuss the ways in which part of Paul Goma’s public archive in Romania moved to France and became private. The Manuscript Fund at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) was returned to Paul Goma in2005. However, the CNSAS did not conserve any copies of these files, which are no longer available to researchers. We will also question the status of his published works online and the possibility of making his private archive public.

5 A great part of Paul Goma’s life coincides with the struggles of the Cold War. Born in 1935 in Romanian Bessarabia, a region long disputed between Romania and Imperial Russia and then the Soviet Union, the young Goma enjoyed only a few years of peaceful childhood in his home village, Mana (Orhei county), with his teacher parents, before he was propelled into the tumultuous years of the Second World War and witnessed the making of a new world order. In his memory Mana was the Calidor [2], a made-up word that evokes carefree childhood, security, shelter ‒a micro-universe where human cruelty is banished.

6 In the aftermath of the Soviet ultimatum to Romania, in June26, 1940, Bessarabia was occupied by the Red Army before Goma and his family had a chance to cross the Prut River into Romania. As he would later recall, at the time of his arrest by the Securitate, “the Russians closed the border on the Prut River much earlier than promised”. [3] The Goma family then experienced years of uncertainty. The father, having been arrested by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, in Russian People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and sent to Siberia, was considered dead until a letter from a Soviet prisoner camp in Romania proved otherwise. Shortly after his release, in1944, the Goma family finally found refuge in Romania.

7 However, Romania was not a safe shelter for those born in Bessarabia. Like other Romanians born on the opposite side of the Prut River, the Goma family was hunted down for two years (1945‒1946) and was at risk of deportation to Soviet Bessarabia. They only escaped by forging their documents [4], but still had to endure frequent harassments, short periods of arrest, and interrogation by the Securitate.

8 Refuge, rebellion, and public condemnation of the totalitarian rule became key features of Goma’s life.

9 Paul Goma’s rebellion against the communist regime began in his teenage years, when he kept a secret diary, and continued in college when, using words as weapons, he asked forbidden questions about domestic and foreign policy and showed solidarity with the Hungarian revolution of1956. [5]

10

“Two full beautiful years. I was writing prose and movie scripts, and I could not get along at all with unanswered questions[…] on November22 1956, I got an answer, and my youth finished, and I entered into the ageless age of the convicts.” [6]

11 Paul Goma was sentenced to twoyears in a correctional prison for public agitation, which he served in Jilava, mostly in Gherla prison. At the end of his sentence in1958, Paul Goma was not released but placed under forced domicile [7], a sentence that was extended several times until February23, 1962, when he was fully released. [8]

12 In1965, the political context in Romania changed with the rise to the top of the communist power of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Building on the limited openness of society initiated by Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, Ceaușescu went even further by strengthening internal liberalization, including in the cultural sphere, and changing the pattern of repression. Moreover, he developed increased relations with the West while assuming a more autonomous foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. [9] These developments in domestic policy gradually changed the population’s perception of communist power ‒ though they lived in hope that it would not happen again, the people could not forget the violence and the repression of the Stalinist period. Ceaușescu tried to establish a new social contract with Romanian society, reintegrating socially and professionally the former “people’s enemies”. Paul Goma, like other former political convicts, saw in Nicolae Ceaușescu the hope of a new and fairer beginning. Indeed, Goma even returned to university and began to publish articles and short stories in literary journals. In1968, he published Camera de alături (The Adjoining Room) which was his first and last volume to be printed in Romanian before 1989. He wrote in a diary he was keeping at the time: “In general, it is good, more than good. God willing to keep it that way.” [10]

13 The year 1968 was a great year for Paul Goma. He started working for a prestigious literary journal, România literară, started publishing his works, and married Ana-Maria Năvodaru. Politically, Goma joined the Communist Party in August 1968 during the Czechoslovakian crisis. This decision was highly motivated by Nicolae Ceaușescu’s domestic liberalization, his support for the Prague Spring, and his denouncing of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Treaty Organization on August20/21, 1968.

14 A partisan of different ways of building communism, Nicolae Ceaușescu positioned himself as a supporter of the Czechoslovak leadership before and after the invasion. On August21, Nicolae Ceaușescu spoke in front of 100,000people and called the invasion “a huge mistake and a terrible peril for the peace in Europe and the fate of socialism in the world.” [11] Fearing that Romania could be the next victim, he emphasized in his speech that “no reason can justify that socialist states would break the freedom and independence of other state”. [12] On this occasion, Ceaușescu also evoked the possibility of an invasion in Romania and announced the reestablishing of armed patriotic guards.

15 This was the moment when Goma joined the Communist Party, animated by the will to defend his country against the Soviets.

16 In the late 1960s, Ceaușescu benefited from the genuine support of the people, a situation that was not repeated during his 25years in power. Back then, ordinary people and intellectuals were attracted by this new leader who seemed ready to make socialism more human and concerned himself with their interests. Many Romanian intellectuals, some of whom became dissidents of the 1980s, have written about these years of disillusionment. [13] Goma himself wrote about Ceaușescu’s celebrity in the late 1960s during his arrest in April1977. Notwithstanding the context in which this text was written –Goma was given white sheets of paper by the investigators of the Securitate to write whatever he wanted about himself, under the title “Who amI?”– we do believe that Goma was writing from a position of truth.

17

“It was ok. It was ok, especially because it was 1968 and it was Ceaușescu. I stick to him (to stick describes better than to adhere) because it was related to my inner structure: Ceaușescu dared to say what he thought, to tell no to the evil, to whiter it, and say yes to the truth, justice, freedom. […] the year 1965 was a year of liberation. I was indebted to Ceaușescu because I was no longer just a former convict. He gave back my trust in myself, people, and in a justice that even if it comes late, it comes in the end. I was indebted to him because he scattered my fear (my despair) that once the Securitate has his hands on you, even free one cannot be free anymore.” [14]

18 The late 1960s also marked a turn in how the Communist Party dealt with its recent past. The abusive conduct of the secret police was denounced officially, and writers were invited to criticize, within certain limits, unlawful conduct prior to1965. It was an opportunity for Goma too: “I was out in the light, I had myself some things to say about ‘that things that should not ever repeat’.” [15]

19 For many writers imprisoned during the Stalinist period, the prison became a central theme in their writings. Goma was no exception and chose the path of prison literature for several reasons. For him, writing had transformed him into a witness of the deepest and most difficult human experience: the deprivation of freedom, the inability to meet one’s basic needs, humiliation, and injustice. Writing was also a form of revenge ‒ Goma wrote so that nothing would be forgotten. Literature was no longer just fiction but testimony, and it became the tangible evidence of an inhuman regime that he would one day like to judge.

20 In1966, Goma sought a publisher for Ostinato, his first novel on prison life and the injustices of the Stalinist era in Romania. For approximately five years, the novel underwent several revisions, changes, cuts, and text additions, only to be finally rejected by Romanian publishers. Disappointed, Goma sought to publish abroad, where he already had established contacts. In the meantime, he presented a new book, Uşa (LaPorte), which met the same fate as Ostinato, rejected by the censors who considered that “a whole period of our country’s life is presented exclusively through the misdeeds and illegal actions that were done.” [16] Goma’s novels were finally printed abroad and highly mediatized, despite the efforts of Romanian officials to block publishing. Ostinato was simultaneously published in the Federal Republic of Germany (Suhrkamp) and in France (Gallimard) under the title La cellule des libérables (1971). The German translation of Ostinato was launched at the Frankfurt bookfair in October 1971 and was met with protests by the Romanian official delegation, which eventually withdrew from the bookfair. This event led to even higher publicity for Ostinato, which sold 4000copies in only two weeks. [17] The book and the author benefited from an unprecedented press campaign from such prestigious newspapers as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde, Le Figaro Littéraire, and Der Spiegel, who presented the writer as a Romanian Soljenitsyne. [18] Moreover, Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Romanian magazines in France, such as Limite, broadcast and published excerpts from the novel, marking an end to the silencing of Romanian writers.

21

“We have been waiting [him] for 20years and more. We have been waiting for the writer to take the risk of publishing abroad while living in Romania, a real book. […] Paul Goma is the first to show the world that also in Romania there are writers who live up to the times we live. Like Boris Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn […].” [19]

22 As in the case of Daniel Siniavski and Iouli Daniel in the mid-1960s Soviet Union, publishing abroad without official permission led to a series of dramatic events. Goma was no exception: he was sacked from the literary journal where he worked, denied any paid activity as a writer, and cut off from financial loaning from literary funds. Not only was he unable to support his family but he then became the subject of constant surveillance by the Securitate who followed his every move, intercepted his phone calls, or spied on his ambient discussions. [20] Furthermore, in1971‒1972 Goma wrote two open letters to Nicolae Ceaușescu asking for fair treatment of his case. The second letter was also published in LeMonde: “I have thought, behaved and written in a communist manner [...] The party asked its members to tell the truth, and I have told the truth, I am telling the truth and I will always tell the truth, even if this truth is upsetting for some people. [...] This is how I understand being a communist.” [21]

23 To get rid of Goma, the Romanian officials approved his traveling to the West in1972‒1973. Despite all odds, though, he returned to Romania and continued writing novels, sending them to be published abroad. By this time, the sympathy for his case was growing in the West, predominantly due to the support of the Paris group of Romanian exiles gathered around Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca.

24

“Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps, and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.” [22]

25 Just like the dissident Václav Havel, from the beginning of the 1970s Paul Goma took one step at a time towards living in truth. At the end of the decade, his literary radicalism had become political and was embodied in a solidarity letter towards Charter77 in Czechoslovakia. Goma’s political dissent developed so rapidly that within a few months what began as an individual protest had turned into a collective movement for human rights. At the beginning of1977, Paul Goma sent a letter to Pavel Kohut, a member of Charter77. As he could not convince other writers to join him in this action, Goma sent the letter only in his name [23], in it he denounced Romania’s lack of elementary rights and spoke about poverty, economic chaos, and terror. Several days later, he sent a similar letter to Nicolae Ceaușescu, asking him to sign in support of Charter77. [24]

26 As early as February1977, a collective letter regarding human rights in Romania was drafted. Called the open letter to the CSCE Belgrade Conference, the document was written by Sergiu Manoliu, a painter who wished to emigrate, and was signed by seven others, including Paul Goma and his wife, Ana Maria. This open letter was a protest against all forms of oppression, physical, moral, and intellectual in the totalitarian states, as well as a protest against the violation of domestic and foreign human rights laws and treaties. As in the USSR, and other countries in the Soviet bloc by that time, Helsinki Committees had been established; the Romanian open letter to the CSCE, therefore, was a sign that a human rights movement was also developing in Romania. [25] Broadcast by RFE, the letter was signed by hundreds of individuals, most often by those wanting the right to emigrate.

27 The letter provoked a series of repressive operations by the Securitate that culminated in the arrest of Paul Goma and the other signatories, as well as the harassment of their supporters, in order to make them recant and withdraw their signatures. Among the other signatories were the literary critic Ion Negoițescu and the psychiatrist Ion Vianu. Paul Goma was arrested on April1, 1977, and accused of treason for passing on secret information. He was also excluded in absentia from the Literary Union. This prompted those Romanians exiled in France, with the help of French intellectuals, to mobilize and organize support campaigns, and street manifestations for Goma’s liberation. [26]

28 After his release, on May6, 1977, Goma was subjected to an even higher level of surveillance and harassment. Finally, on November19, 1977, Paul Goma, his wife, and their son returned to Paris and embarked on a new, but no less tumultuous, life.

29 As a political refugee, a legal statute that he kept until his death in2020, Goma became part of the larger group of Romanian and East European anticommunist exiles who collaborated with RFE, mainly through its Paris newsroom. In1978 he participated in the creation of the Intellectuals’ Committee for an Europe of Freedom/Comité des intellectuels pour l’Europe des libertés (CIEL) and many human rights meetings organized by Amnesty International or other similar groups. He constantly denounced the true nature of communism and the political repression in Romania during his tours in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, where he was received at the US Helsinki Commission and drew attention to the nonobservance of human rights in Romania. [27] Together with other Romanian exiles he worked to reshape the League for Human Rights in Romania in1979 and participated in meetings in favor of Romanian dissidents. Goma was also collaborating with the organization Resistance International, created in1983 by a Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, where he was responsible for the European Department. [28]

30 Although under French protection, Goma was not safe from the Securitate’s long arm: in1981, he received an explosive package. One year later, in summer 1982, Goma and writer Virgil Tănase became part of a complicated French-Romanian espionage affair, after a Romanian defector, Matei Haiducu, declared he had been assigned to assassinate the two exiles. According to the defector’s scenario, Paul Goma was to be poisoned with an untraceable substance. Following a plan by the French Domestic Directorate of Territorial Securiy/Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) the Goma-Virgil Tănase affair developed from May to August 1981, when it ended with the plans of the Romanian communist regime being exposed during a press conference in the presence of the three actors: Paul Goma, Virgil Tănase, and Matei Haiducu. [29]

31 After his arrival in France, Paul Goma embarked on a series of collaborations with RFE, both in Paris and Munich. However, though his relationship with the Paris newsroom went smoothly, due to his strong friendship with Monica Lovinescu, things were different with the RFE Munich newsroom. Goma had a difficult relationship with Noel Bernard, the director of the RFE Romanian Desk. In1979, Goma accused the Munich newsroom of censorship because of the way excerpts of his novel Gherla were presented. He eventually renounced all collaboration with RFE. In the 1980s, at the personal intervention of Monica Lovinescu, the Munich newsroom, headed by Vlad Georgescu, offered Goma a paid position writing chronicles. Unfortunately, as Goma’s virulent discourse often broke RFE’s rules of moderation and neutrality, the collaboration soon ended. [30]

32 As his relationship with RFE continued its ups and downs, Goma took refuge in writing, leading him to publish several novels inspired by his youth or personal experiences. After 1989, Goma evolved rapidly towards a reconfiguration of his personal relationships that had begun in the 1980s, when he broke with fellow writers and close collaborators, such as Dumitru Țepeneag, Virgil Tănase, Alain Paruit, and even Monica Lovinescu. [31]

33 From 2003 onward, Goma published several versions of the essay ‒in fact, a collection of documents, book and articles excerpts‒ The Red Week, 28June-3July 1940, or Bessarabia and the Jews. The central idea of Goma’s essay refers to the collaboration of the Bessarabia Jews with the Soviets in the aftermath of the Soviet Ultimatum of June26, 1940, that led to massacre of the withdrawing Romanian army and civil population. The successive publication of the essay was met with accusations of antisemitism and negationism against Paul Goma, which he tried to dismiss by appealing to his wife and son’s ethnicity, as Jews. As a result, Goma became more and more isolated until his final days.

34 Paul Goma’s personality, writing, and struggle for human rights can be documented by numerous edited and unedited sources, from archival holdings and press clippings, to daily journals in printed or electronic form. [32] However, many documents drafted by official institutions in his home country are written in Romanian and therefore require researchers who know the language. In addition, archives relating to Paul Goma are mainly concentrated in Romania, France, and Hungary. Unfortunately, for the moment, some of these archives are not available due to institutional barriers or the reluctance of private individuals to provide access to researchers. In Romania [33], the most consistent documentary files about Paul Goma are preserved at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), which administrates the archives of the former Securitate. Other documents that trace the tumultuous evolution of Paul Goma in Romania and during his exile are available, but these number only a few dozen files and are spread across various archives.

35 The Surveillance Informative file on Paul Goma, code name Bearded Man, was officially opened in March1971. File number2217 consists of 21volumes that provide explicit information about his activities during the 1970s and his early years of exile in France. It also provides a clear picture of how the secret police and the Securitate used all their resources to deal with the Goma case, minimizing its echo in the West and any potential damage to the communist regime’s image. On the one hand, the file preserves copies of Paul Goma’s letters addressed to Nicolae Ceaușescu, as well as information about his supporters in Romania and abroad. Part of the information resulted from direct surveillance (physical or technical) and, above all, from informants recruited among Goma’s friends and peers who kept the Securitate informed of his writings, contacts, and planned actions. On the other hand, official reports from the officers in different departments of the Securitate shed light on the high range of measures, including disinformation, that have been directed at Goma. The so-called working plans regarding the Goma case were updated constantly, in order to improve direct surveillance, control correspondence, and the interception and blocking of telephone conversations. Also, the‘D’ (disinformation department) was responsible for launching various scenarios aimed at compromising Goma in the eyes of his Western supporters and diplomats in Bucharest, Romania, and abroad after 1977. Hence, Goma was portrayed as a KGB agent, informant of the Securitate, or a false dissident created by the Securitate. The file also contains official documents about his criminal prosecution in1977, transcripts of daily interrogatories and the decision to release him based on his clemency application addressed to Nicolae Ceaușescu. The informative surveillance file also holds documents regarding the people who signed Goma’s letter in1977 and the repressive measures directed toward them.

36 The Criminal File, number313, consists of 15volumes and covers the arrest and incarceration of Paul Goma during 1956‒1958. A subsequent file, the Fund of Former Political Convicts, number1109, refers to the years 1958‒1962, when Goma was placed under forced residence at Lătești.

37 The CNSAS’s archives relating to Paul Goma also includes a section called the Collection of Confiscated Manuscripts. This consists of 39notebooks confiscated from Goma on the day of his arrest on April1,1977. The notebooks were kept at the CNSAS from 2002 until 2005, when they were returned. The CNSAS did not preserve any copies. However, the author of this study had the chance to go through the documents and take handwritten notes just before they were returned to Goma. By far, the most interesting document is the previously mentioned text “Who amI?” written by Goma while he was in Rahova prison. The secret police wanted to obtain a confession of his unlawful acts, or at least an explanation for them, but most of all they wanted a recant. The same method was used by the regime for the dissident Vlad Georgescu, future chief of Romanian Desk at RFE, who was arrested and detained simultaneously with Goma.

38 Papers regarding Paul Goma are also to be found in other people’s files, especially among members of the movement launched by Goma or the people related to the surveillance of the RFE, the so-called Eterul File.

39 In Romania, documents relating to Paul Goma have also been identified at the Romanian National Archive in different collections. The Fond Chancellery, Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, holds transcripts of the Political Executive Committee meeting, held in the presence of Nicolae Ceaușescu, in which the Goma movement for human rights in1977 was discussed. The Committee for Press and Publishing Fund also preserves review notes on Goma’s books and details as to why they were not published. Furthermore, information about Goma and his literary life in Romania is available in the Collection Gabanyi Anneli Ute 1900‒1997, donated by its owner to the National Archives.

40 Several papers relating to Paul Goma have been identified in the Romanian Diplomatic Archives, in files concerning bilateral relations, especially from countries where Goma traveled and delivered speeches and lectures after November1977.

41 A shelter for Eastern European exiles, France preserves numerous archives relating to dissidents and human rights activists. La contemporaine preserves documents from the League for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania (Ligue des droits de l’homme Roumanie -LDHR). [34] Resurrected in the context of the Goma case, in1977, the LDHR was highly active during the 1970s and 1980s in denouncing the abuses of Communist rule in Romania. The archival fond also contains information on the organization of the LDHR, its members, press releases, and actions undertaken on behalf of Romanian dissidents, such as Paul Goma, Vasile Paraschiv, and Doina Cornea.

42 Among the archives on Romania covering the 1970s and 1990s, the French Diplomatic Archives host essential files relating to domestic problems, including human rights issues and bilateral political relations. Certain cases, such as Paul Goma’s or Doina Cornea’s, benefited from extensive coverage that includes diplomatic reports from the Bucharest Embassy, queries from French members of Parliament to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding issues of human rights in Romania, and press clippings. The documents also reveal the impact of the Romanian communist rule’s repressive practices on high-level bilateral relations, with President Francois Mitterrand postponing and eventually refusing any visit to Romania in the context of aggression against Paul Goma.

43 Papers relating to Paul Goma are kept in private archives, institution archives, such as OFPRA (Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides), and the archives of the Préfecture de Police, Paris. Important information is also held in the archives of organizations of which Goma was a member, such as L’internationale de la Résistance, or in the publishing houses where his books were printed. However, access to sensitive archives, such as those of OFPRA and the Préfecture de Police, requires extra time for the archivists to process the files and a physical presence, which is difficult for a non-resident researcher. In the case of organizations such as L’Internationale de la Résistance, its archives were divided among the members, making it even more difficult to find documents relating to a specific person or activity. Archives of publishing houses, such as Gallimard, Hachette, and Albin Michel, all of whom had a long-time collaboration with Paul Goma, should also be investigated in order to better understand the relationship between him and his editors; unfortunately, the French publishing houses currently remain reluctant to facilitate this.

44 The archives of the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (Memories of Contemporary Publishing Institutes –IMEC), however, which hold files concerning the collaboration between Paul Goma and the Seuil publishing house, are available for research.

45 Finally, one of the most consistent collections of material on Paul Goma is held by the archive of RFE, deposited at the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary. Information about Goma’s books, his human rights movement, his presence at the RFE broadcasts and recordings of his interviews are available for study in the Romanian Unit Fond, Records Relating to Romanian Opposition, and Protest Movement. Analyses of his case and of the broader situation in Romania are preserved in the Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Publications Department: Background Reports. The variety of available documents about Paul Goma give testimony to the impact his actions had on the people, the communist regime, and its foreign relations. Furthermore, the research of unavailable archives would fill in important gaps in the biography of Goma and could provide ground for new interpretations of his actions.

46 Paul Goma remains one of the most complex personalities of the Romanian dissidence. He wrote many books and articles criticizing the communist regime and fought for human rights in Romania. He also defied his greatest fear, the loss of freedom, to write and tell the truth as he experienced it, as he believed it. Nevertheless, this obsession with his own truth sometimes blinded him from seeing and accepting the truth of others. A lot has been written on Paul Goma, yet there is still so much that remains to be discovered and studied sine ira et studio.