They were recruited by local militia and party structures from among retired army troops and workers up to age 25 who had completed military service.
It employed violent repression: arrests, investigations, torture, imprisonment; psychological terror: maintaining a massive network of informers, coordinating a system of diversion and disinformation, threats, blackmail; pressure on the economic and administrative state apparatus.
[1] The permit bureaucracy facilitated Miliția ’s task of supervising people’s movement, monitoring those hostile to the regime and preparing internal deportations.
A 1969 law charged it with “defending the revolutionary gains of the people and its peaceful work in building socialism”; the powers conferred were open to multiple abuses.
[1] A 1970 decree, toughened in 1976, empowered Miliția to combat “social parasitism”, allowing its officers to jail or fine people found on the street during work hours.
A 1983 decree required registration of typewriters, while a 1985 measure enhanced anti-abortion policy, so that the societal role of Miliția was ever greater in the years leading up to the Romanian Revolution.