The Commission for the Study and Evaluation of the Totalitarian Communist Regime in the Republic of Moldova was established by Decree 165-V of the interim President Mihai Ghimpu on 14 January 2010. Its mandate expired on 1 July 2010. The institution was conceived as a truth commission, but its relationship to state authorities was loosely defined. The presidential decree which established the Commission stated only that “the ministries and the other central and local administrative authorities will provide the commission will all necessary assistance.” Given the short mandate and scarce resources of the Commission, its main achievement was the access it gained to previously unavailable archives (including those of the secret police). Its members benefited from some government assistance (through the governmental Special Committee on the De-Classification of Official Documents) and received access to the previously restricted Archive of the Ministry for Internal Affairs and the former NKVD/KGB Archive hosted by the Intelligence and Security Service, the successor institution of the KGB. This favourable context allowed the collection's founder, Igor Cașu, who served as deputy chairman of the Commission, to systematically research the holdings of these archives and to extract valuable materials relating to dissent and cultural opposition under communist rule. Restrictions on access to these archives were reinstated after the Commission ceased its activity in July 2010. However, the materials collected by Cașu remained available to the wider academic community due to his willingness to share them with his colleagues.