Ethnography in the Securitate Archive.

Throughout the former Soviet bloc, numerous countries have made available the archives of their communist-era secret police, often in connection with the practice of "lustration" aimed at cleansing the body politic of former secret police collaborators. Because the "truth" value of what is in these archives is often problematic, they are best viewed as sources of data about the organization that created them. This article provides some ideas toward illustrating what an ethnographic approach to the archives might consist of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]