Talking to the System: Imre Mikó, 1911-1977: A Lifelong Story of Collaboration and Service

Taking a cue from an intelligence file produced by the Romanian political police on Transylvanian Hungarian intellectual Imre Mikó (Cluj, 1911–1977), the article analyzes the various patterns of accomodation with the political system, which represents a key to the understanding of how social legitimacy was built and maintained by the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The framework in which this story takes place is especially interesting due to the Romanian context. On the one hand, the analysis of an unconventional collaboration established during the 1970s between the security organs of a national communist system and a prominent conservative intellectual stimulates us to rethink the state-society relationship in Ceaușescu’s Romania in more dynamic terms. Among the multiple reasons that led Mikó to accept the role of informer, one finds the communitarian ideology of “serving the people”, but also his belief that cooperation with the state security on relevant issues to the Transylvanian Hungarian community did not represent a betrayal of national ideals but the only way to achieve certain political goals, such as informing the Western public opinion on the worsening condition of the Hungarian minority. The case of Mikó can be compared with other files unveiled in Romania during the last years, and shows that often uncritically accepted definition of “collaboration” require serious conceptual reshaping. During the last decades of the communist regimes, significant parts of the formerly persecuted elite came to work together with the state security organs. They did not “talk to the system” with the purpose of spying on fellow citizens, but seeked to push forward their own cause with the infrastructural support of the state security, in a context where non-party members had been denied any access to the political sphere, and they regarded personal contact with a high-raking state security officer as a counterbalance of their marginality.