Wikipedia
The Securitate (, Romanian for Security) was the popular term for the Departamentul Securității Statului (Department of State Security), the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranța Statului. It was founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD. Following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989, the DSS lived on until 1991, when Parliament approved a law reorganizing the DSS into various subdivisions.
The Securitate was, in proportion to Romania's population, one of the largest secret police forces in the Eastern bloc. The first budget of the Securitate in 1948 stipulated a number of 4,641 positions, of which 3,549 were filled by February 1949: 64% were workers, 4% peasants, 28% clerks, 2% persons of unspecified origin, and 2% intellectuals. By 1951, the Securitate's staff had increased fivefold, while in January 1956, the Securitate had 25,468 employees. At its height, the Securitate employed some 11,000 agents and had a half-million informers for a country with a population of 22 million by 1985. Under Ceaușescu, the Securitate was one of the most brutal secret police forces in the world, responsible for the arrests, torture and deaths of thousands of people.