SIBIU, Romania, July 22 (UPI) -- Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu recruited thousands of schoolchildren to spy on friends, parents and teachers, it was reported Saturday.
Ceausescu's secret police, the Securitate, blackmailed children across Romania into becoming informers in the late 1980s, The Guardian said, citing communist-era archives.
The children were expected to tell the Securitate about their friends' and families' opinions about the Communist Party, and whether they listened to Western radio stations, had contact with foreigners or made jokes about Ceausescu, The Guardian said.
Historians believe the Securitate had recruited hundreds of thousands of collaborators by 1989, as Soviet power faded across eastern Europe.
"Perhaps 15 percent of the whole country's informers were children," said Romanian historian Marius Oprea, who unearthed the files in the Transylvanian town of Sibiu.
The files have prompted calls within Romania for an investigation into why many Securitate agents who allegedly recruited the child spies continued working for the security services after Ceausescu was toppled and executed in 1989.
