Tizennégy év és két lila betű
Fourteen years and two purple letters

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the phenomenon of D. O. (domiciliu obligatoriu, or forced residence) in communist Romania as one of the most revealing manifestations of the regime’s repressive logic and mechanisms of social exclusion. Drawing on the methodological conditions that characterized historical research immediately after the fall of communism, the study reflects on the difficulties scholars faced when attempting to reconstruct the history of postwar political persecution. In the absence of accessible archives, researchers were compelled to rely primarily on oral history testimonies and contemporary press sources, which often provided fragmentary or contradictory information. Through successive interviews, however, previously silenced aspects of the communist system gradually emerged, and the author published a volume about the topic in 1996. The study emphasizes that the regime’s policies, despite their ideological claims of constructing a morally superior and socially just order, relied systematically on terror, coercion, and the destruction of basic human rights. In this context, the measures directed against the aristocracy, nobility, and other categories labeled as “class enemies” represented an especially radical form of political persecution. The author reflects also on the slowness of commemorative, healing processes.

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