Creative in Struggle, Watchful in Liberty

How do persecuted communities survive under regimes determined to erase them? This study uncovers the creative resistance of two homegrown Romanian religious communities as seen through the archives of the secret police that directly targeted them. Spanning 1918 to 1989, the book traces the Old Calendarists and the Tudorists across a succession of political regimes, from interwar democracy and royal dictatorship to fascism, Antonescu’s military rule, and communism, each with its own way of regulating and repressing religious life. Facing surveillance and persecution, these communities produced icons, photographs, handwritten songbooks, letters, and postcards that expressed both faith and defiance. Confiscated as incriminating evidence, these objects now testify to the wrongdoings of the regimes that targeted them. Reading the archive through its material and visual traces rather than its text alone, Iuliana Cindrea-Nagy reveals how constraints can become an engine of boundless creativity.