¹ Danion Vasile, ed., Din temnițe spre sinaxare: despre mucenicii prigoanei comuniste (Galați: Egumenița, 2008); Ciprian Voicilă, ed., Mărturisitorii: Minuni, Mărturii, Repere (Bucharest: Lucman, 2010). Although in interwar Romania there were a plethora of right-wing movements, the article refers only to the fascist Legion of Archangel Michael, also known in scholarly literature as the Iron Guard, the All for the Fatherland Party or the Legionary Movement.

² Muriel Blaive, ‘The Memory of the Holocaust and of Communist Repression in Comparative Perspective: The Cases of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic’, in Muriel Blaive, Christian Gerbel and Thomas Lindenberger, eds., Clashes in European Memory: The Case of Communist Repression and the Holocaust (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2011), 158–9; Mark, James, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 93–126Google Scholar. The quote is from Anna Müller, If the Walls Could Speak: Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 14.

³ Fr. Alexandru Atanase Barna, ed., Chipuri de lumină: Vol. II. Renumiți preoți de mir din trecutul Arhiepiscopiei Bucureștiului (Bucharest: Cuvântul Vieții, 2015); Fr. Florin Dobrei, ed., Pătimitori și pătimire în închisorile comuniste (Alba-Iulia/Deva: Editura Reîntregirea/Editura Episcopiei Devei și Hunedoarei, 2015); Adrian Nicolae Petcu, Dicționarul clericilor și mirenilor ortodocși români mărturisitori în detenția comunistă (Bucharest: Basilica, 2018).

⁴ Hieromonk Grigorie Benea, Andreea Ineoan, Emanuil Ineoan, Andreea Opriș, Adrian Nicolae Petcu, Fr. Dorin Sas and Dragoș Ursu, eds., Preoți din Arhiepiscopia Vadului, Feleacului și Clujului în temnițele comuniste (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Renașterea/Memorialul Gherla, 2017); Adrian Nicolae Petcu and Fr. Nicolae Cătălin Lucian, Clerici și mireni mărturisitori din Arhiepiscopia Iașilor în închisorile comuniste (Iași: Doxologia, 2017); Dragoș Boicu, ed., La limita rezistenței: Un martirologiu alternativ (Sibiu: Agnos, 2017); Fr. Mihail-Simion Săsăujan, ed., Mărturisitori ai Ortodoxiei în timpul regimului comunist: Studii și evocări (Bucharest: Cuvântul Vieții, 2018); +Varlam Ploieșteanul, Fr. Florin Marica and Fr. Gheorghe Holbea, eds., Congresul internațional de teologie ‘Viața Bisericii Ortodoxe în timpul comunismului: persecuție, rezistență și mărturisire’ (Bucharest: Basilica, 2018). For the display of their relics in public and their miracles, see ‘Când oasele vorbesc: Minuni ale sfinților martiri din Aiud’, Atitudini, 1, 3 (2008), 20–3; Augustin, Hieromonk [Vărvăruc], ‘Noi minuni ale sfinților martiri de la Aiud’, Atitudini, 1, 6 (2009), 32–5Google Scholar.

⁵ ‘Programul campaniei “Din temnițe spre sinaxare”’, in Danion Vasile, ed., Din temnițe spre sinaxare, 168; Claudiu Târziu, ‘“Și morți vom izbândi!”’, Rost. Revistă de cultură creștină și politică [onwards Rost], 6, 70 (Dec. 2008), 3, 7. There were other appeals addressed to the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Bucharest requesting publicly the individual canonisation of legionary priests who died in prison. See Mihai Rădulescu, Rugul Aprins: Duhovnicii Ortodoxiei sub lespezi, în temnițele comuniste (Bucharest: Ramida, 1993), 60–2 for Fr. Gheorghe Șerban, shot to death in the labour camp at Baia Sprie mine in 1952. In 2011 the Rost Association assimilated the initiative of canonising legionary martyrs as saints in its political strategy of initiating a ‘conservative revolution’ that would sweep the ‘corrupt’ political parties from the public life and restore Romania to the pre-1940 borders. See Claudiu Târziu, ‘Rostul nostru la o sută de ani’, Rost, 9, 100 (June 2011), 4. In the general elections held on 6 December 2020 with Claudiu Târziu as co-president, the fascist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians won 9 per cent of the votes.

⁶ In the post-communist literature the number of legionary martyrs that should be canonised varies. See Cezarina Condurache, Chipuri ale demnității româneșt: Eroi ai neamului și sfinți ai închisorilor (Bucharest: Evdokimos, 2015), who presents 22 large biographies and another 15 brief biographies of legionary martyrs; Cezarina Condurache, Sfinții închisorilor: 28 de biografii exemplare (Bucharest: Evdokimos, 2015), 28 biographies of legionary martyrs; Sfinții închisorilor (Petru Vodă: Petru Vodă, 2019), 35 legionary hagiographies.

⁷ ‘Programul campaniei’, 169.

⁸ Filotheu, Monk [Bălan], ‘Înapoi la Hristos și la sfinții săi’, Atitudini, 1, 3 (2008), 1–4Google Scholar.

⁹ The term comes from Nicolae Steinhardt, Jurnalul Fericirii (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1991), 112, footnote: Steinhardt states that he has started to use the term ‘saint of prisons’ for Valeriu Gafencu inspired by no other than Ioan Ianolide, Gafencu's closest friend and, at that time, his future brother-in-law.

¹⁰ Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 240–43; Shafir, Michael, ‘Ideology, Memory and Religion in Post-Communist East Central Europe: A Comparative Study Focused on Post-Holocaust’, Journal for the Study of Religion and Ideologies, 15, 44 (2016), 52–110Google Scholar; Rodica Ciobanu, ‘Remembering the Gulag: Religious Representations and Practices’, in Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, eds., Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania: New Insights (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar, 2017), 214–35; Grigore, Monica, ‘The Aiud “Prison Saints”: History, Religion, and Lived Religion’, Eurostudia, 10, 1 (2015), 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; William Totok and Elena-Irina Macovei, Între mit și bagatelizare: Despre reconsiderarea critică a trecutului. Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu și rezistența armată anticomunistă din România (Iași: Polirom, 2016), 152–7; Michael Shafir, ‘Romania: Neither “Fleishig” nor “Milchig”’, in Alexandru Florian, ed., Holocaust Public Memory in Postcommunist Romania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 106–10.

¹¹ Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin and Michael D. Peterson, Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church (London: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 149: ‘hagiography means “the writings of the holy ones”, i.e. saints, and includes writings on the lives and legends of the saints, generally without any modern critical claim to veracity of verification. The lives of the saints have constituted the popular reading of Byzantine, Russian and other Orthodox believers down to the modern era. As all popular literature hagiography was, and is, highly stylised and employs a number of standard types and tropes’.

¹² Jacob Climo, ‘Memory of American Jewish Aliyahs: Connecting Individual and Collective Experiences’, in Jacob Climo and Maria G. Catell, eds., Social Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives (Oxford: Altamira Press, 2002), 118–19.

¹³ I. Ishino, ‘Memories and Their Unintended Consequences’, in Marea C. Teski and Jacob Climo, eds., The Labyrinth of Memory: Ethnographic Journeys (Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 1995), 185–202.

¹⁴ A lawyer with deep-rooted connections in the post-1918 nationalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-communist milieus in Romania, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the ‘Captain’ as he would be known later on by his legionaries, founded the Legion of Archangel Michael on 24 Jun. 1927, in Iași. In 1931, following partial elections in Neamț County, he was elected to the Romanian Parliament. Due to the stern anti-Semitism of his movement, his pro-German and pro-Italian views and his clashes with the authoritarian King Carol II, he would be imprisoned on 16 Apr. 1938, condemned for treason and assassinated on the early morning of 30 Nov. 1938. In late November 1940, his remains were exhumed by the legionaries and a state-funeral was organised on his behalf.

¹⁵ Emilio Gentile, Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 11; Lamber, Peter, ‘Heroisation and Demonisation in the Third Reich: The Consensus-building Value of Nazi Pantheon of Heroes’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions [henceforth TMPR], 8, 3–4 (2007), 523–646CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Casquete, Jesús, ‘Martyr Construction and the Politics of Death in National Socialism’, TMPR, 10, 3–4 (2009), 265–83Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta, ‘On Storytellers and Master Narratives: Modernity, Memory, and History in Fascist Italy’, Social Science History, 22, 4 (1998), 432Google Scholar. For the equivalence between biography and hagiography in the Nazi martyrology, see Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole (Vierow: SH-Verlag, 1996), 241–5; Daniel Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), xiv.

¹⁷ According to George L. Mosse, Nazism: A Historical and Comparative Analysis of National Socialism. An Interview with Michael A. Leeden (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 90, the Christian identity of the Romanian fascist movement and, therefore, of its views on martyrdom differentiates the Romanian case from the German and Italian cases.

¹⁸ ANR, Ministerul de Interne, Fond Diverse, file no. 9/1933, 341; Ion I. Moța, ‘Esenţialul’, Cuvîntul studenţesc, Apr. 1935, 1.

¹⁹ Grupul Orientări, ‘+Ion Moța și Vasile Marin’, Orientări, Jan. 1937, 1; Șerban Milcoveanu, ‘Mormânt de sfânt. Neam mesianic’, Cuvântul studențesc, Jan.-Febr. 1937, 1: ‘Ion Moța is the saint of the Romanian Nation.’ N. Crudu, ‘Doi sfinți noui în calendar’, Porunca Vremii, 28 Jan. 1937, 1; Fr. Ion Dumitrescu-Borșa, Cea mai mare jertfă legionară (Sibiu: Editura ‘Totul pentru Țară’, 1937), 274. For the late 1940s legionary perspective among the FDC regarding the Moța-Marin sacrifice, see Fr. Liviu Brânzaș, Raza din catacombă: Jurnal de închisoare (Bucharest: Scara, 2001), 86–7; ‘Petre Georgescu’, in Cosmin Budeancă, ed., Experiențe carcerale în România comunistă, vol. 2, (Iași: Polirom, 2008), 83. See Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 203–10.

²⁰ ANR, Ministerul de Interne, fond Diverse, file no. 4/1937, 4.

²¹ Horia Sima, ‘Jertfa lui Moța din Spania’, Frăția de Cruce, Jan. 1941, 1. Petre Neagu, Marșul F.D.C.-1937: 8 zile de educație legionară (Constanța: Biblioteca Petre Țuțea, 1999), 18; Spiru Zechiu, Memorii octogenare: Însemnări de pe front, din închisori și lagăre (Bucharest: Sânziana, 2019), 70–1.

²² An essential source of the representation of Moța-Marin as canonical legionary ‘saints’ was the letter addressed to Codreanu that Moța left behind before leaving for the Spanish front in late 1936, which is imbued with the religious rhetoric of Christian martyrdom. See Testamentul lui Ion Moța (Munich: Colecția ‘Europa’, 2003), 13–21.

²³ ‘Osemintele Căpitanului au fost scoase la lumină’, Cuvântul, 30 Nov. 1940, 10; Vasile Posteucă, ‘Nevoia ispăşirii’, Cuvântul, 2 Dec. 1940, 1; Ion Diaconescu, ‘Începutul fără sfârşit’, Buna Vestire, 8 Nov. 1940, 1–2. See Oliver Jens Schmitt, Capitan Codreanu: Aufstieg und Fall des rumänischen Faschistenführers (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 2016), 279–87.

²⁴ R. G. Waldeck, Athénée Palace (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 262; Vasile Posteucă, Dezgroparea Căpitanului (Madrid: Editura Mișcării Legionare, 1977); Ana-Maria Marin, Poveste de dincolo: Amintiri din țara cotropită (Constanța: Ex Ponto, 2002), 45–6.

²⁵ Gala Galaction, Jurnal, vol. 4, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Albatros, 2000), 69.

²⁶ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 013206, vol. 2, 233.

²⁷ Galaction, Jurnal, 65.

²⁸ Fr. Grigore Cristescu, ‘Dumineca’, Calendarul, 10 Oct. 1932, 1; Nicolae Roșca, Cronica unor violențe politice, 3rd edn (Bucharest: Evanghelismos, 2018), 33; Sofia Cristescu Dinescu, Pe firul amintirilor (Bucharest: Gutenberg, 2012), 13–15.

²⁹ Ion I. Moța, ‘Cranii de lemn’, Axa, 7 Dec. 1933, 1, 5; ‘Primul mort’, Garda Bucovinei, 8 Dec. 1933, 1; Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Circulări și manifeste, 5th edn (Munich: colecția ‘Europa’, 1951), 23.

³⁰ ANR, fond Ministerul de Interne, Diverse, file no. 9/1933, 341.

³¹ Mihail Polihroniade, ‘Construim,’ Axa, 6 Sept. 1933, 3; Vasile Marin, ‘Răboj’, Axa, 19 Sept. 1933, 5.

³² Gh. I. Furdui, ‘Orientarea politică a studențimii’, in Congresul general studențesc ținut în zilele de 17, 18, 19 aprilie la Craiova (Bucharest: Copuzeanu, 1935), 49. The same statement appears in Tudor V. Cucu, Totul pentru țară, nimic pentru noi, vol. 1 (Brașov: Transilvania Express, 1999), 84–5.

³³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 236666, vol. 2, 23; Dumitru Tache Funda, După 60 de ani mistificarea continuă: Cui folosește? (Bucharest: Editura Fundației Buna Vestire, 1998), 83; Virgil Maxim, Imn pentru Crucea purtată: Abecedar duhovnicesc pentru un frate de cruce, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Antim, 2002), 39–41. According to Jean Suciu Buchiu, Iertare, da uitare, nu (Bucharest: Lucman, 2005), 68–9, the anti-violent Christian turn was already present in the thinking of the FDC. For the impact of their sacrifice after 1948 on the FDC elite, see Brânzaș, Raza din catacombă, 37. According to Constantin Pascu, ‘Traian Trifan’, in Virgil Maxim, ed., Mărturisesc… Robul 1036 (Bucharest: Scara, 1998), 69, it was Traian Trifan who propagated the non-violent, Christian fascism among his fellow-inmates.

³⁴ Fr. Ilie Imbrescu, Apostrofa unui teolog: Biserica și Mișcarea Legionară (Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1940), 115, 116. The same account can be found in Ernest Bernea, Stil legionar (Bucharest: Serviciul Propagandei Legionare, 1940), 8, 27–9; Ernest Bernea, Îndemn la simplitate (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1941), 16.

³⁵ Budișteanu, În secolul luminilor stinse (Madrid: Carpații, 1986), 33; Ilie Tudor, Un an lângă Căpitan: Amintiri sfinte din lumea legionară, 3rd edn (Bucharest: Sânziana, 2009), 86; Viața Părintelui Gheorghe Calciu după mărturiile sale sau ale altora (Bucharest: Bonifaciu, 2007), 33 considers Codreanu as ascetic martyr of the Orthodox Church.

³⁶ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000160, vol. 3, 186–190. The reference can be found in Roland Clark, ‘Die Damen der Legion: Frauen in rumänischen faschistischen Gruppierungen’, in Armin Heinen, Oliver Jens Schmitt, eds., Inszenierte Gegenmacht von rechts: Die ‘Legion Erzengel Michael’ im Rumänien 1918–1938 (München: R. Oldernbourg Verlag, 2013), 208. For other legionaries who abstrained from violence after these murders, see Zechiu, Memorii, 98

³⁷ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 4, 81.

³⁸ ACNSAS, fond Rețea, file no. 469781, 10; Dumitru Lungu, Luptă și temnițe (Bucharest: Ramida, 1998), 74; Ana Maria Marin, Prin poarta cea strâmtă, 3rd edn (Bucharest: Evdokimos, 2018), 67; Banea, Acuzat, martor și apărător în procesul vieții mele (Sibiu: Puncte Cardinale, 1995), 89; Baciu, Răstigniri ascunse: Mărturii 2 (Bucharest: Fundaţia Culturală Buna Vestire, 2009), 153: ‘From many martyrs in prisons someone could detach the luminous and saintly figure of Mother Mihaela. She is the homonym in the sainthood of Valeriu Gafencu’. For the experience of detention of [legionary] women during the communist regime, see Claudia Florentina Dobre, Ni victime ni heroine: Les anciennes détenues politiques et les mémoires du comunisme en Roumanie (Bucharest: Electra, 2019).

³⁹ Viața Părintelui, 27. According to Ilie Tudor, Un an lângă Căpitan, 67, since 1937 the FDC members guarded information about the tomb of the legionary martyrs.

⁴⁰ Fr. Ilie Imbrescu, Biserica și Mișcarea Legionară (Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1940), 116. For the spiritual experience of the ‘white martyrdom’ in Vladimirești monastery considered as the ‘new Maglavit’, see ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 50, 70–1. The fascination with the mid-1935 theophany experienced by the young shepherd Petrache Lupu had a powerful echo in the legionary milieu. During the last years of the interwar and immediately after the end of the Second World War, the Maglavit theophany played a foundational role for Orthodox monasteries such as Vladimirești, Sâmbăta de Sus, Sihastru and Antim. Their leaders attempted to embed among their followers the idea that these communities were also places of divine apparitions where God talked to people and was ever-present, delivering his blessings. See Ionuț Florin Biliuță, ‘Fascism, Race, and Religion in Interwar Transylvania: The Case of Father Liviu Stan (1910–1973)’, Church History, 89, 1 (2020), 109–10.

⁴¹ Codreanu, Circulări și manifeste, 105.

⁴² ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 236666, vol. 2, 23; ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 4, 71. For the militarism and violent activism of the legionary generation, see Banea, Acuzator, 101.

⁴³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 138: the Securitate identified four centres of the legionary monastic revolution, the monasteries of Sâmbăta, Vladimirești, Sihastru and Slatina. See also Vasile Scutăreanu, Prin Gulagul valah (Bucharest: Majadahonda, 1995), 63.

⁴⁴ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Cărticica șefului de cuib, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Serviciul Propagandei Legionare, 1941), 6–7. For their appropriation as monastic guidelines, see ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 236666, vol. 1, 316.

⁴⁵ Marin, Poveste de dincolo, 93–4; Dan Lucincescu, Jertfa (Bucharest: Siaj, 2008), 23, 33. For the legionary implication of Fr. Ioan Silviu Iovan, see Aspazia Oțel-Petrescu, Doamne strigat-am! (Bucharest: Platytera, 2008), 56. For the relation between those from the groups of mystics imprisoned at Tg. Ocna sanatorium, see Mihail Rădulescu, Chemarea lui Dumnezeu în temnițele comuniste (Bucharest: Ramida, 1998), 69.

⁴⁶ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 142. The resurrection of the Nation was one of the cornerstone ideas of legionary ideology. See Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Pentru legionari (Timișoara: Gordian, 1994), 425; Emilio Gentile, ‘Fascism as Political Religion’, Journal of Contemporary History, 25, 2–3 (1990), 39; Mark Noucleous, ‘Long Live Death! Fascism, Resurrection, Immortality’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 10, 1 (2005), 31–49.

⁴⁷ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 143.

⁴⁸ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 49. ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 002214, Vol. 1, 133. ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 002214, Vol. 3, 157.

⁴⁹ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000202, Vol. 2, 80–81; Ioana Iancovescu, ed., Părintele Voicescu, un duhovnic al cetății (Bucharest: Bizantină, 2002), 124. For Fr. Ioan Iovan, see ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 2, 70. For Mihaela Iordache, see ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 4, 63; Gheorghiță, Et Ego, 141.

⁵⁰ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 2, 97; ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 68.

⁵¹ Robert A. Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 21, 73.

⁵² For Mother Veronica's Marian visions, see ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 36; Marin, Prin poarta, 61. Orsi, History, 66: ‘What is really real about the Marian event at Lourdes and the experiences of visitors at its many replicas is the real presence of the supernatural with humans’. For ‘abundant events’, see Orsi, History, 73.

⁵³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 234104, 249–325; Hieromonk Benedict Stancu, Iată duhovnicul: Părintele Arsenie Papacioc (Bucharest: Sophia, 2010), 228–302.

⁵⁴ Marin, Prin poarta, 62; Remus Radina, Testamentul din morgă, 2nd ed. (Bucharest: Jurnalul literar, 2008), 64; Nicu Păun, Muntele suferinței (Iași: Institutul European, 1997), 6.

⁵⁵ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 236666, vol. 2, 32.

⁵⁶ Părintele Voicescu, 124. For the meetings of Arsenie Boca with some of the mystics, see Georghe Popescu, Sub sabia Cavalerilor Apocalipsului (Bucharest: Majadahonda, 1997), 114. For the importance played by Arsenie Boca for the imprisoned legionaries, see Petre Baicu, Povestiri din închisori și lagăre (Oradea: Biblioteca Revistei ‘Familia’, 1995), 22. According to Mihail Lungeanu's testimonies at Securitate, he found out about the Vladimiresti monastery and the visions of Nun Veronica from Valeriu Gafencu in the prison of Tg. Ocna. See ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 2, 70.

⁵⁷ Rădulescu, Chemarea lui Dumnezeu, 70.

⁵⁸ Müller, If the Walls, 3.

⁵⁹ Victor Puiu Gârcineanu, Din lumea legionară, 5th edn (Bucharest: Sânziana, 2011), 13. First edition 1937.

⁶⁰ Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 27; Padraic Kenney, Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 73. For the prison experience and the FDC as ‘communities of feeling’, see Corneliu Andrei, ‘Dragostea și camaraderia Legionară’, Frăția de Cruce, Dec. 1940, 1; Budișteanu, În secolul, 128; Nicu Iancu, Sub steagul lui Codreanu (Madrid: Carpații, 1973), 118; Maxim, Imn, 113.

⁶¹ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 013206, vol. 3, 4, 9. ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 258626, 10, 13; Nicu Păun, Un soldat pe baridaca idealului legionar (Brașov: n.a. 1997), 106.

⁶² Puiu Gărcineanu, ‘Omul nou’, Cuvîntul Argeşului, March 1935, 2; Natalia Manoilescu-Dinu, Memorii (Cluj-Napoca: Renașterea, 2016), 104.

⁶³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 160128, vol. 4, 71; Gheorghiță, Et Ego, 224; Mărturisesc, 75; Maxim, Imn, 117; Brânzaș, Raza din catacombă, 36; ‘Traian Popescu’, in Cosmin Budeancă, ed., Experiențe carcerale în România comunistă, vol. 6 (Iași: Polirom, 2012), 292. According to Nanci Adler, Keeping Faith with the Party: Communist Believers Return from the Gulag (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 29, the Gulag internees depicted the Soviet camps in the same monastic metaphor.

⁶⁴ Müller, If the Walls, 108.

⁶⁵ Lungu, Luptă, 39.

⁶⁶ Dragoș Protopopescu, Fortul 13, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Elisavaros, 1998), initially published in 1936; Dragos Protopopescu, Tigrii, 2 volumes (Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1937); Gheorghe Stănescu, Jurnal de prigoană (Bucharest/Chișinău: Venus/Cărții de Știință, 1996), 194.

⁶⁷ Gh. C. Croitoru, ‘Crăciunul lui 1939 în lagărul de la Miercurea-Ciuc’, Frăția de Cruce, Dec. 1940, 4.

⁶⁸ Monk Filotheu Bălan, Mărturisirea unui creștin. Părintele Marcu de la Sihăstria (Petru Vodă: n. a.), 28. For the sessions of spiritism and hetero-Orthodox religious rituals performed in prison by legionaries, see Nichifor Crainic, Zile albe, zile negre (Bucharest: Gândirea, 1991), 255. For miraculous or peremptory dreams behind bars in the 1930s, see Ion Fleșeriu, Amintiri (Madrid: Artes Grafical Benzal, 1977), 106, 112; Nicolae Ciolacu, Haiducii Dobrogei: Rezistența armată anticomunistă din Dobrogea, 3rd edn (Bucharest: Sânziana, 2018), 65.

⁶⁹ Banea, Acuzat, 37, 49; Păun, Un soldat, 103; Ion Constantin, Istorie trăită, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Blassco, 2010), 75; Iancu, Sub steagul, 83; Protopopescu, Fortul 13, 84–5.

⁷⁰ For the concept, see Reinhardt Koselleck, Future's Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated by Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 218.

⁷¹ Lungu, Luptă, 71–2.

⁷² Lungu, Luptă, 41.

⁷³ Fleșeriu, Amintiri, 99; Fr. Zosim Oancea, Datoria de a mărturisi: Închisorile unui preot ortodox (Bucharest: Harisma, 1995), 50.

⁷⁴ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 1086645, 80; Fr. Nicolae Grebenea, Amintiri din întuneric, vol. 1, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Blassco, 2017), 58; Banea, Acuzat, 105. According to Fleșeriu, Amintiri, 101; Marin, Poveste, 100.

⁷⁵ Budișteanu, În secolul, 177; Monk Atanasie Ștefănescu, Oameni și fapte din vatra Aiudului (Petru-Vodă: Fundația Iustin Pârvu, 2012), 122.

⁷⁶ Nicu Iancu, Sub steagul, 131–3.

⁷⁷ Grebenea, Amintiri, 62.

⁷⁸ Scutăreanu, Prin Gulagul valah, 62.

⁷⁹ Marin, Prin poarta, 68.

⁸⁰ Ilarion Țiu, Istoria Mișcării Legionare, 1944–1964 (Târgoviște: Cetatea de Scaun, 2012); Dennis Deletant, Ceaușescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1989 (London: Routledge, 1995); Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 85–107; Marius Oprea, Bastionul cruzimii: O istorie a Securității, 1948–1964 (Iași: Polirom, 2008), 213–31.

⁸¹ Ana Antic, ‘Therapeutic Violence: Psychoanalysis and the “Re-education” of Political Prisoners in Cold War Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe’, in Matt ffytche and Daniel Pick, eds., Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism (London: Routledge, 2016), 167–9.

⁸² Luca Călvărăsan, Istoria în lacrimi: episodul Târgușor și altele, vol. 1 (Sibiu: Bucura, 1998), 5, 8; Traian Popescu, Experimentul Pitești: Mucenicie și satanizare, 3rd edn (Bucharest: Scara, 2007), 65, 69; Dumitru Bacu, Piteşti: La Buchenwald se murea mai uşor (Bucharest: Atlantida, 1991), 94; Filoteu Bălan, Viața Cuviosului Părinte Justin Pârvu: 1. Nașterea unui sfânt (1919–1964) (Petru-Vodă: Petru Vodă monastery, 2016), 78; Nicu Ioniță, Experimentul Pitești: Spălarea creierului și re-educarea prin tortură în România comunistă (Bucharest: Eikon, 2016), 20; ‘Aurora Dumitrescu’, in Anca Ștef, ed., Supraviețuitorii: Mărturii din temnițele comuniste ale României (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2014), 106. For Pitești as a ‘mystical’ phenomenon and an apocalyptical confrontation between God and Satan, see Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 6; Ioan Ianolide, Deținutul profet (Bucharest: Bonifaciu, 2009), 147–8.

⁸³ ‘Sfinții din Aiud – Glasul care strigă în pustia lumii de azi: Interviu cu Părintele Iustin Pârvu’, Atitudini, 1, 7 (2009), 9: ‘The [legionary] young generation imprisoned in 1948 was the elite of our Nation’. Nicolae Purcărea, Urlă haita… Pitești, Canal, Gherla, Jilava, Aiud (Bucharest: Fundația Sfinții Închisorilor, 2012), 12, 33.

⁸⁴ Aurel State, Drumul Crucii, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Litera, 1993), 248; Petrișor, Cumplite încercări, 138. For Țurcanu as the Devil or as its embodiment, see Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 133; Viața Părintelui, 53; Costin Merișca, Tragedia Pitești: O cronică a ‘reeducării’ din închisorile comuniste (Iași: Institutul European, 1997), 58; Dumitru-Cătălin Rogojanu, Imaginea torționarului comunist reflectată în memorialistica universului concentraționar românesc (1947–1989) (Târgoviște: Cetatea de Scaun, 2014).

⁸⁵ See Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Însemnări de la Jilava (Bucharest: Sânziana, 2008), 9.

⁸⁶ Brânzaș, Raza din catacombă, 15; Pușcașu, Mărturii, 68. The same argument of the 1948 generation appropriating the 1930s carceral experience can be found in Roland Clark, ‘Re-Membering Codreanu: Undermining Fascist Masculinities in Aiud Prison, 1964,’ Caietele CNSAS, 8, 2 (2017), 181–215.

⁸⁷ Viața Părintelui, 41 depicts a behavioural similarity between the 1938 Ciuc and the post-1948 generation although most of the 1948ers converted to legionary ideology during or after 1940. See ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 1, 6; Mărturisesc, 111; Traian Trifan, Testament (Petru Vodă: Petru Vodă monastery, 2019), 310–1.

⁸⁸ Alexandru Popșor, Trecutul, sămânță rodnică de viitor (Bucharest: Bonifaciu, 1999), 8, 276; Baicu, Povestiri, 138; Ioan Boacă, Prahova și idealul legionar: amintiri din prigoane și pribegii (Munich: ‘Omul Nou’, 1981), 68. Păun, Muntele suferinței, 292, compares the exemplary death of Valeriu Gafencu with that of the lapsed Nicolae Petrașcu, who committed suicide by hanging, just like Judas.

⁸⁹ Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 57; Purcărea, Urlă haita, 72; Călvărăsan, Istoria, 163; Aiudule, 22; Popa, Coborârea, 19–20. For the FDC unity behind bars, see Brânzaș, Raza, 84. For the persistence of legionary rituals in the communist prisons up to 1962, see ACNSAS, fond Documentar, file no. 012613, 2. For the legionary communitarian life as experienced inside or outside the prison's walls, see Lucinescu, Jertfa, 29; Purcărea, Urlă haita, 70.

⁹⁰ Maxim, Imn, 25, 133. Cultivated by Valeriu Gafencu, Ion Ianolide, and Gheorghe Jimboiu in Târgu Ocna sanatorium, the ritual of confessing their sins to one another among the FDC members (‘the spiritual bath’) was preceded by a ‘chain of prayers’ involving multiple young legionaries, to convert the moribund student Traian Maniu to Christian penance before embracing death. Părintele Voicescu, 127. See Octavian Voinea, Masacrarea studențimii române în închisorile de la Pitești, Gherla și Aiud (Bucharest: Majadahonda, 1994), 34.

⁹¹ In the first stage, when a student intended to join the FDC the first thing tested by the legionary leader considering the application of the candidate was ‘To prove his sincerity we will ask him to write down all his sins which he thinks he has (cursing, lies, skipping classes, dishonesty, intrigues, lack of faith in God, etc.). This “list of sins” would be later confronted with the observations gathered on the aspirant by his FDC supervisor’. Gheorghe Istrate, Frăția de cruce, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Editura Fundației Culturale ‘Buna-Vestire’, 2005), 38; Îndreptarul Frățiilor de Cruce (Bucharest: n.a., 1935), 37–8.

⁹² Aristide Lefa, Fericiți cei ce plâng, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Evdokimos, 2016), 75; Păun, Muntele suferinței, 158–9.

⁹³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 233727, vol. 1, 163v.

⁹⁴ Părintele Voicescu, 29, footnote 6, 123.

⁹⁵ Eugen Dimitriu, ‘De aici a pornit renașterea spirituală’, in Nicolae Trifoiu, ed., Studentul Valeriu Gafencu, “Sfîntul închisorilor din România”: Studiu, mărturii ale camarazilor de suferinţă şi corespondenţă (Cluj-Napoca: Napoca Star, 1998), 113.

⁹⁶ Aurelian Guță, ‘Prietenul Valeriu’, in Studentul, 117; Hieromonk Teognost, Părintele Iustin Pârvu și bogăția unei vieți dăruite lui Hristos, vol. 1 (Petru-Vodă: Credința strămoșească, 2009), 174.

⁹⁷ Guță, ‘Prietenul Valeriu’, in Studentul, 117–18.

⁹⁸ Tudor, Un an, 134; Marin, Prin poarta, 45; Brânzaș, Raza, 116–17; Petrișor, Cumplite încercări, 120; Păun, Muntele suferinței, 72–3; Mihai Pușcașu, Mărturii din iadul închisorilor comuniste (Făgăraș: Agaton, 2010), 68–70.

⁹⁹ Maxim, Imn, 136, 144; Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 61.

¹⁰⁰ Bălan, Mărturisirea unui creștin, 43.

¹⁰¹ Maxim, Imn, 118–19, 142, 148.

¹⁰² ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 375778, vol. 2, 10.

¹⁰³ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, 263411, vol. 3, 187; ACNSAS, Fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 1, 6; Stănescu, Jurnal, 110. For a moderate account about the mystics, see Ioniță, Experimentul Pitești, 75–6.

¹⁰⁴ ACNSAS, fond Documentar, file no. 012613, 17; Mihai Rădulescu, Rugul Aprins de la Mănăstirea Antim la Aiud (Bucharest: Proxima, 2009), 111–12; Bălan, Mărturisirea unui creștin, 38; Mărturisesc, 57; Maxim, Imn, 107; Buchiu, Iertare, da, 113; ‘Nota informativă a sursei Andrei Teodorescu’, in Archimandrite Andrei Tudor, Mariana Conovici, Iuliana Conovici, eds., Am înțeles rostul meu: Părintele Arsenie Papacioc în dosarele Securității (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2014), 145; Pandrea, Garda de Fier, 516. According to Grebenea, Amintiri, 140, during the time of their imprisonment, the two former legionary leaders had nothing to do with politics but rather with theology. For the conflict between the mystics and other legionaries led by Victor Biriș and how this relationship evolved during the late 1950s and the early 1960s, see Mihai Demetriade, ‘Victor Biriș, cel mai important agent de influență din penitenciarul Aiud,’ Caietele CNSAS, 5, 1–2 (2012), 11–148; Dragoș Ursu, ‘Misticism și reeducare: Avataruri ale confruntării dintre deținuți și regim în cadrul reeducării de la Aiud,’ Caietele CNSAS, 8, 2 (2017), 217–40.

¹⁰⁵ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 1, 13.

¹⁰⁶ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 3, 36–8.

¹⁰⁷ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 3, 36.

¹⁰⁸ Lungu, Luptă, 166.

¹⁰⁹ ACNSAS, fond Informativ, file no. 235977, vol. 2, 45. According to another archival source, the mystics’ opposition to the militant legionary activism of Nicolae Petrașcu and Ilie Niculescu left room for compromise. In 1946, when Nistor Chioreanu brought into prison a letter of Petrașcu urging all legionaries to work outside prisons in labour camps, the mystics complied with the request and went to work in Unirea labour camp. See ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 3, 36.

¹¹⁰ ACNSAS, fond Penal, file no. 000327, vol. 3, 36.

¹¹¹ Brânzaș, Raza, 147; Mihai Rădulescu, Chemarea lui Dumnezeu în temnițele comuniste (Bucharest: Ramida, 1998), 70.

¹¹² Aristide Lefa, Fericiți, 90.

¹¹³ Rădulescu, Chemarea, 75–9; Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 330–3, speaks about the conversion to Christianity and the subsequent death of Ion Flueraș, one of the former leaders of the Romanian Social Democratic Party. For Costache Oprișan's ability to convert, see Viața Părintelui, 61.

¹¹⁴ Octavian Anastasescu, Lângă Valeriu Gafencu, Sfântul Închisorilor (Bucharest: Areopag, 2014), 60; Popescu, Sub sabia, 112; Maxim, Imn, 76–7. Even Richard Wurmbrand, Cu Dumnezeu în subterană (Bucharest: Casa Școalelor, 1993), 81 acknowledges that because of the legionary process of religious conversion among their fellow-inmates from Târgu Ocna sanatorium no inmate there died as an atheist.

¹¹⁵ Mircea Stănescu, Reeducarea în România comunistă (1949–1955), Vol. 3 (Iași: Polirom, 2012), 11–107.

¹¹⁶ Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 191–3; ‘Alexandru Virgil Ioanid’, Studentul, 125; Mihai Lungeanu, 2002, 137; Maxim, Imn, 375; ‘Nicolae Itul’, in Dragoș Ursu, Ioana Ursu, eds., Aiudule, Aiudule: Crâmpeie de memorie întemnițată (Cluj-Napoca: Renașterea, 2011), 162–3. Although Wurmbrand in his depiction of Gafencu confirms the lack of his anti-Semitism, his self-sacrifice for other sick inmates and his religious fervour, he fails to acknowledge his conversion to the Orthodox faith under Gafencu's spiritual guide. See Wurmbrand, Cu Dumnezeu, 90–1.

¹¹⁷ Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 163.

¹¹⁸ Lefa, Fericiți, 92. For legionaries' pro-Jewish attitudes behind communist bars, see Paul Miron, Măsura faptelor (Timișoara: Marineasa, 2000), 18; Popa, Coborârea in iad, 155–6; Pușcașu, Mărturii, 98. According to Stănescu, Reeducarea, 74, 98, the medicines received from a Protestant pastor before those received from Valeriu Gafencu and his wife in the spring of 1952 saved the life of Richard Wurmbrand.

¹¹⁹ Wurmbrand, Cu Dumnezeu, 77; ‘Neculai Popa’, in Experiențe, vol. 2, 316–17.

¹²⁰ For legionary anti-Semitism from the interwar up to 1944, see Radu Ioanid, The Sword of the Archangel: Fascist Ideology in Romania, translated by Peter Heinegg (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1990), 116–32; Elie Wiesel, Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihai E. Ionescu and Lya Benjamin, eds., International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania: Final Report (Iași: Polirom, 2004), 19–57, 89–109; Henry Eaton, The Origins and the Onset of the Romanian Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 43–69; Clark, Holy Legionary Youth, 28–63. For Codreanu's aleged sympathy towards the Jews, see Neagu, Marșul, 19; Zechiu, Memorii, 62.

¹²¹ ‘Octavian Anastasescu’, in Cosmin Budeancă, ed., Experiențe carcerale în România comunistă, vol. 5 (Iași: Polirom, 2011), 266.

¹²² Paul Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2018), 166.

¹²³ ANR, Ministerul de Interne, Diverse, file no. 3/1933, 96–7; ANR, Ministerul de Interne, Direcția Generală a Poliției, file no. 155/1940, vol. 2, 7, 24; ACNSAS fond Informativ, file no. 236666, vol. 2, 24.

¹²⁴ Hanebrink, A Specter, 201.

¹²⁵ Demostene Andronescu, Reeducarea de la Aiud: Memorii și versuri din închisoare (Bucharest: Christiana, 2009), 179; Roșca, Cronica, 5. For the 1964 decrees that released from the communist prisons all political prisoners, see Dennis Deletant, Romania under Communist Rule (Iași: Center for Romanian Studies, 1999), 103.

¹²⁶ Brânzaș, Raza, 71; Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 117. For religion as antithetic to everything Soviet, see Sonja Luehrmann, Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in the Volga Region (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 16; Miriam Dobson, ‘The Social Scientist Meets the “Believer”: Discussions of God, the Afterlife, and Communism in Mid-1960s’, Slavic Review, 74, 1 (2015), 83. For ‘Communism as a belief system akin to a (secular) religion,’ see Adler, Keeping Faith, xiii.

¹²⁷ Catherine Wanner, ‘Introduction’, in Catherine Wanner, ed., State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–2; Adler, Keeping Faith, 44; Dominic Erdozain, ‘Introduction. The Rhythm of the Saints’, in Dominic Erdozain, ed., The Dangerous God: Christianity and the Soviet Experiment (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2017), 7.

¹²⁸ Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 5.

¹²⁹ Brânzaș, Raza, 71.

¹³⁰ Ștefănescu, Oameni și fapte, 18; Adelina Busuiocescu-Călin, Vai, celui întemnițat (Sibiu: Constant, 1999), 76; Petrișor, Cumplite încercări, 108; Fr. Gheorghe Calciu, Cuvinte vii: A sluji lui Hristos înseamnă suferință (Bucharest: Bonifaciu, 2009), 130.

¹³¹ Teognost, Părintele Iustin Pârvu, 131.

¹³² Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev's Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform after Stalin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 77.

¹³³ Peter Fritzsche, Jochen Hellbeck, ‘The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany’, in Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 302–45; Yuliya Minkova, Making Martyrs: The Language of Sacrifice in Russian Culture from Stalin to Putin (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018), 11. For the legionary anthropology, see Roland Clark, ‘The Salience of the “New Man” Rhetoric in Romanian Fascist Movements, 1922–1944’, in Matthew Feldman, Jorge Dagnino, and Paul Stocker, eds., The New Man in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919–1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 275–88.

¹³⁴ Bacu, Pitești, 79, 124; Baicu, Povestiri, 27. For the Bolshevik stylisation of martyrdom language, see Minkova, Making Martyrs, 36.

¹³⁵ Igal Halfin, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 112–74; Adler, Keeping Faith, 56.

¹³⁶ Gabriel Bălănescu, Din împărăția morții: Pagini din istoria Gărzii de Fier, 2nd edn (Timișoara: Gordian, 1994), 111; Popescu, Experimentul, 901.

¹³⁷ Maxim, Imn, 134; Brânzaș, Raza, 33 defines the prison as a ‘school’ of education legionary cadre and Fr. Iustin Pârvu as the ‘real university’. See Teognost, Părintele Iustin Pârvu, 117.

¹³⁸ Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 43; Valeriu Gafencu, ‘Letter from 29 Jan. 1946’, in Studentul, 196–9. For the same spiritual crisis of rejecting the ‘old man’ and becoming a ‘new man’ through prayer, see Hieromonk Teognost, Părintele Iustin Pârvu 91; Brânzaș, Raza, 22–3, 44 who speaks about the prison experience as ‘spiritual resurrection’. Aurel Vișovan, Dumnezeul meu, Dumnezeul meu pentru ce m-ai părăsit? Reeducarea de la închisoarea Pitești, 2nd edn (Bucharest: Evdokimos, 2017), 82.

¹³⁹ Tudor, Un an, 138; Oancea, Datoria de a mărturisi, 30; Marin, Prin poarta, 48; Scutăreanu, Prin Gulagul valah, 100–101; Stănescu, Jurnal, 108.

¹⁴⁰ Bălan, Viața, 167; Ciprian Voicilă, ed., Fr. Adrian Făgețeanu: Viața mea, mărturia mea (Bucharest: Areopag, 2012), 63.

¹⁴¹ Valeriu Gafencu, ‘Letter from 29 Oct. 1945’, in Studentul, 192: ‘I will always attempt to become a new, Christian man. I am happy and satisfied spiritually’. The same preoccupation appears also in the testimonies of Vasile Turtureanu, who met Gafencu in Aiud prison. See Aiudule, Aiudule, 20.

¹⁴² Dobson, Khrushchev's Cold Summer, 54–5; Konrad H. Jarausch, Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 5–14; Jeffrey S. Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushcev's Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016), 106.

¹⁴³ For ‘speaking Bolshevik’, see Steven Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilisation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 199–237. For ‘ritual laments’, see Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin's Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 102, 140. For the emphasis on generating biographies in the communist prisons, see Baicu, Povestiri, 219.

¹⁴⁴ For the autobiography as a form of Christian confession, see Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 61–75; Igal Halfin, Red Autobiographies: Initiating the Bolshevik Self (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 4; Minkova, Making Martyrs, 30–31. For the ‘process of transcodation’, see Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse in Contemporary Historical Theory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 47–8.

¹⁴⁵ Halfin, Red Autobiographies, 16; Halfin, Terror in my Soul, 52; Dobson, Khrushchev's Cold Summer, 57; Halfin, Igal, ‘Looking into Oppositionists’ Souls: Inquisition Communist Style’, Russian Review, 60, 3 (2001), 316–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jochen Hellbeck, Autobiographical Practices in Russia/Autobiographische Praktiken in Russland (Berlin: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2004); Irina Paperno, Stories of the Soviet Experience: Memoirs, Diaries, Dreams (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 56; Cristina Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film and the Secret Police in Soviet Times (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 27–55.

¹⁴⁶ Minkova, Making Martyrs, 30.

¹⁴⁷ This section is built heavily on arguments taken from Hellbeck, Revolution, 3. See Alexis Peri, The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 37–67.

¹⁴⁸ Hellbeck, Revolution, 6, 8.

¹⁴⁹ According to Ștefănescu, Oameni și fapte, 128, these experiments had the sole purpose of blemishing the religious faith of imprisoned legionaries.

¹⁵⁰ Baciu, Răstigniri ascunse, 264–9; Fabian Seiche, ‘Creştinismul Mişcării Legionare: Cadru de formare a viitorilor Sfinţi ai închisorilor comuniste’, in Fabian Seiche, ed., Martiri şi mărturisitori români din secolul XX: Închisorile comuniste din România, (Făgăraș: Agaton, 2010), 28–50; Constantin I. Stan, Crucea reeducării: O istorie a “reeducărilor” în temniţele comuniste din România (1948–1964) (Bucharest: Christiana, 2010).

¹⁵¹ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Cărticica șefului de cuib 10th edn (Bucharest: Fundaţia Culturală Buna Vestire), 73, points 56, 57, 58. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Cărticica, 74, point 60: ‘only someone who has passed the three exams, climbing the mountain of suffering, walking through the forest with wild beasts and the swamp of despair has succeeded to become a true legionnaire’. For the legionary ascetic behaviour while in prison, Lucinescu, Jertfa, 95.

¹⁵² Virgil Maxim, ‘Iubitul frate Valeriu’, in Studentul, 91; Dumitru Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 97: ‘He [Gafencu] will remain in the memory of all political prisoners from Romania and especially of those suffering of tuberculosis from prison-sanatorium from Tg. Ocna as a saint. When confronting Gafencu even the evilest ones forgot who they were’.

¹⁵³ Maxim, Imn, 182. See also, Popa, Coborârea in iad, 87, 114; Lucinescu, Jertfa, 215; Ianolide, Întoarcerea, 60; Munteanu, La pas, 53; Viaţa Părintelui Gheorghe Calciu, 43.

¹⁵⁴ Viața Părintelui, 45, 47; Hieromonk Teognost, Părintele Iustin Pârvu, 141; Bordeianu, Mărturisiri, 5.

¹⁵⁵ Funda, După 60 de ani, 11, footnote 5.

¹⁵⁶ Bălănescu, Din împărăția morții, 29; Ștefănescu, Oameni și fapte, 149.