The Underground Communist Fighters during the Communist Regime. The Case of Imre Toth

by Dumitru Lăcătuşu

> accepted for publication in the journal Arhivele Totalitarismului
Keywords: Imre Toth, biography, underground communist fighter, Securitate, communist repression.

Abstract

The study rebuilds and examines the biography of Imre Toth, former underground communist fighter, and also a target of Securitate at the end of the 50’s and the beginning of the 60’s. His case is an important one, because it indicates the possibility of the existence of some different destinies within the communist world, even within the initial adepts and adherents of the movement, determined by the personal choices of the communists, and also it shows how far the arm of the secret police could reach. The study is structured in three parts. The first part analyzes the interwar biography of Imre Toth, examining also the motives which determined him to join the communist party. The main hypostasis is that joining the party represented both a strategy to oppose the racial persecutions, and a revolt against the society, and even against his parents. The second section of the article presents the main data of his biography as a party activist, and the last one describes at large how Imre Toth became a target for the Securitate and the methods used to outline the portrait of an internal enemy of the regime.