"The 1989 Retrospective" exhibition, which presents, month by month, the key moments and the atmosphere of a period of profound transformation, was opened on Monday at the Romanian Academy Library.

The exhibition is organized by the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archive (CNSAS), in partnership with AGERPRES National News Agency.

Images, news articles and documents that chronologically capture the essential moments of 1989 are presented on 12 panels.

"In the dynamics of the concept of the exhibition, one level of the panels reflects the state of internal politics related to a certain propaganda truth, the part related to the June Plenary Session of the Central Committee, the 14th Congress, the foreign interventions of the party and state leadership," specified the CNSAS president, Constantin Buchet.

A panel illustrates the Romanian Revolution of 1989 - the movements that took place in Cluj, in Timisoara, the famous Gavroche de la Roumanie from Paris Match, the idea of a free press and a Romanian television to ensure pluralism of opinions.

The exhibition also showcases a series of documents and propaganda apparatus.

"We have the elements of the operational techniques of everyday repression. They seem archaic, but they were very present in the life of all Romanians at that time," Buchet said.

Also on display are the uniform of an officer from the secret police forces, recording devices, as well as party cards, press cards, volumes dedicated to various personalities and events of the time, "The CNSAS notebooks".

The inauguration also marked the opening of the 13th edition of the annual conference "Romanian Communism", organized by CNSAS for two days, with the participation of representatives of the academic environment, historians, researchers and people interested in exploring the communist period in Romania.

"I think it is a very good thing that the CNSAS is reaching out to society (.... ) I think that the conference 'Romanian Communism' is integrated into this scientific unitary whole through which I believe that specialists from all over the country, gathered in a beautiful academic geography, will present contributions related to 1989 - economy, society, propaganda, dissidence, resistance, elements of foreign policy, the landmarks of Romania's international isolation, the movements in the other communist states, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, last but not least, the terms of the Romanian Revolution of December, in fact, the revolutions before the revolution. I think it is a beautiful and honorable duty, which the Council is fulfilling with conscientiousness and major civic responsibility," said Constantin Buchet.

The presiding oldest member of the CNSAS College, Dinu Zamfirescu, also spoke about the meetings he had during his exile with King Mihai I, Monica Lovinescu, and about the period when he worked for the France 3 television station.

The opening of "The 1989 Retrospective" exhibition takes place between two symbolic dates, November 15 and the days of the Revolution of December 1989, pointed out the president of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), Daniel Sandru.

"A few days ago, on November 15, it's been 37 years since the workers' uprising in Brasov and we are talking in anticipation of the days in December, about 35 years since the Romanian Revolution. (...) Perhaps it is also a good opportunity to make a brief assessment of what has happened in the process of Romania's democratization when we refer to the recent past, in relation to those responsible for the crimes and abuses of the totalitarian regime and I would say, in this context, that from the perspective of transitional justice we are not doing quite satisfactorily. We have, of course, a formal but not less praiseworthy condemnation of the communist regime, we have two torturers brought before the courts and convicted and that's about it. We have a failed lustration, which we have to assume as a state, and we have a burdened public consciousness. Burdened because we have not assumed, as we should have, what happened during totalitarianism," said Daniel Sandru.

In the opinion of journalist Ion M. Ionita, editor-in-chief of Historia, what is happening in Romania today regarding the perception of communism "is frightening".

"The younger generation in particular considers it (...) a glorious, extraordinary period and a third of young people in Romania say they agree that the country should be ruled by a dictatorial regime. This is after 35 years of freedom in Romania. I think we can be very worried. (...) In Romania we had a bloody revolution, with hundreds, thousands of people who directly suffered brutal and criminal repression and, lo and behold, today, those who are the same age think completely differently. I believe that it is a failure of Romanian society that we have succeeded in telling people, showing them what is happening. (...) If things go like this, we obviously think that freedom, democracy are not heaven-given and we can lose them at any time if society no longer has confidence in these values," said Ion M. Ionita.

He went on to add that now, after 35 years, people need to know the truth, "a truth that has been hidden and has been completely overturned in public perception".

AGERPRES National News Agency was a partner in the mounting the exhibition.

"Photography is the most faithful element of history, it contains neither subjectivity, nor, somehow, the metaphor of a story, which a piece of news can contain, at a given moment," said the AGERPRES Director General Claudia Nicolae, at the opening.

She recalled that AGERPRES holds the largest and oldest historical archive.

"Let us not believe that, as happened in other institutions, there wasn't any attempt to take over the archive, especially the AGERPRES photographic archive, but my colleagues managed to preserve it. This is why, today, we find the largest and oldest historical archive in the institution. We're talking about four and a half million photographs - that's until 2005, which is the physical archive. Since 2005, the digital archive came in and there is another archiving process. The physical archive contains four and a half million photos, and the communist period is very extensive, because the regime of that time wanted to have an AGERPRES photojournalist every minute. Every moment of that period is in the AGERPRES archive and I am glad that under such projects we manage to show it to the public. After all, that is the agency's mission, to show and illustrate those moments through images. They are the clearest and the most expressive and they are not few," Claudia Nicolae further explained. AGERPRES (RO - author: Petronius Craiu, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - editor: Simona Iacob)