State Secrets
It's estimated that up to one million people were killed during communism in Eastern Europe, but there's no clear figure for those imprisoned, persecuted or spied on.
While few have been put on trial for those crimes, most countries have started to open their secret police archives and some have limited the participation of former communists and informers to public office.
The whole issue of what to do about the past - forget, forgive, confront - is a live and contentious in Eastern Europe.
All the countries have taken different approaches. So how successful are these different approaches?
In this two part series our European affairs correspondent Oana Lungescu, one of many Romanians who looked for their own secret police files, investigates.
First broadcast 18 December 2009