Vladimir Tismaneanu, Marius Stan - Romania Confronts Its Communist Past - Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice-Cambridge University Press (2018)

Romania Confronts Its Communist Past
Reckoning with mass crimes perpetrated by an ideologically driven regime

entails engaging in a thorough exploration of its utopian foundations. In
the case of Romania, such an analysis requires an interpretation of the role
of personality in the construction of a uniquely grotesque and unrepentant
form of neo-Stalinist despotism. Of all the revolutions of 1989, the only
violent one took place in Romania. Confronting its Communist past there-
fore involves addressing the abuses committed by the Communist regime
up until its very last day, its failure to engage in Round Table-type agree-
ments with democratic representatives, and the repression during the first
post-Communist years – a direct legacy of the old regime. This book shows
how moral justice can contribute to a restoration of truth and a climate
of trust in politics, in the absence of which any democratic polity remains
exposed to authoritarian attacks.
vladimir tismaneanu is Professor of Politics at the University of Mary-

land (College Park) and the author of numerous books and articles on the
revolutions of 1989, the history of world Communism, and political ide-
ologies. In 2006, he chaired the Presidential Commission for the Analysis
of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. From 1998 to 2004, he edited
the journal, East European Politics and Societies.
marius stan holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of
Bucharest, served as the editor of the journal, History of Communism in
Europe, and headed a department at the Institute for the Investigation of
Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. He is the
author of books published in Romania and Poland and of numerous arti-
cles in international scholarly journals. His research and teaching interests
include twentieth-century European Communism and fascism, revolution-
ary political ideologies and movements, nationalism, transitional justice,
and the main intellectual debates during the Cold War.
Romania Confronts Its
Communist Past
Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice
vladimir tismaneanu
University of Maryland, College Park
marius stan
University of Bucharest, ICUB
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107025929
DOI: 10.1017/9781139198929

C Vladimir Tismaneanu and Marius Stan 2018
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First published 2018
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accurate or appropriate.
To the five members who passed away since the Final
Report was presented by then-president of Romania,
Traian Băsescu, to the country’s Parliament on December
18, 2006: Mihnea Berindei, Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu,
Virgil Ierunca, Monica Lovinescu, and Romulus Rusan,
co-founder with his wife, poetess and civic activist Ana
Blandiana, of the Sighet Memorial of the Victims of
Communism and of the Resistance.
Contents
Acknowledgments page viii

Introduction 1
1 Judging the Past in Post-Traumatic Societies: Romania in
Comparative Perspective 17
2 Romania before 2006 51
3 Coming to Terms with the Past in Romania: The
Presidential Commission 77
4 Reactions to the Condemnation and Political
Rearrangements after 2007 112
5 The Report’s Aftermath: Interpretations, Polemics,
and Policies 130
6 Romania and the European Framework of Dealing with
the Communist Past 160
Index 194
vii
Acknowledgments
This book is both an insider’s memoir and a joint analysis of the Roma-
nian condemnation of the Communist dictatorship that lasted between
1945 and 1989. Many people helped us with valuable suggestions and
comments. The members and experts of the Presidential Commission
for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania deserve
our special gratitude. Great thanks also to our friend, historian Bogdan
C. Iacob, for his consistent and truly substantive support in helping us
finish this project. Last, but not least, we wish to express our gratitude
to Lew Bateman, an exemplary social science editor, who embraced the
project and strongly encouraged us to complete it. John Haslam wel-
comed the revised version and our team effort. Vladimir Tismaneanu
wishes to thank the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Schol-
ars and the Department of Government and Politics at the University
of Maryland (College Park) for their generous support throughout the
years. Marius Stan thanks the Research Institute of the University of
Bucharest (ICUB) where he was a postdoctoral fellow (2017–2018)
during the completion of the book. We also want to thank the two
anonymous reviewers who gave us valuable suggestions that inspired
us immensely in our work.
viii
Introduction
This book is both a testimony and an analytical exercise. As testimony,

it examines the challenges of putting together a truth commission in a
post-dictatorial regime: how one conceives of its mandate and selects
its members, the relationship between truth and memory, and how a
final report can contribute to the moral therapy of societies plagued
with still-open wounds. As such, the book addresses crucial political,
historical, legal, and moral topics. The analysis focuses on the activities
of Romania’s Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Com-
munist Dictatorship in Romania, the role of civil society in putting
forward an agenda for such an entity, and the reactions of different
political actors, varying from intense support to defamation and vili-
fication. We do not claim absolute objectivity: one of us was directly
involved in the story reconstructed here. Yet, we have tried to stick to
a balanced and rigorous perspective; it is not our purpose to engage in
useless polemics. Rather it is our conviction that, more than ten years
after the official condemnation of the Communist regime in Romania
as illegitimate and criminal, one can write what may be called a report
on the Commission’s Final Report, and do so dispassionately.
As chairman and coordinator of the Commission, I [VT] witnessed
history being made on December 18, 2006, when the Romanian presi-
dent, Traian Băsescu, presented to Parliament the conclusions and pro-
posals of the Commission’s Final Report. In his speech, he condemned
the local Communist regime as “illegitimate and criminal.” The mem-
bers of his audience could be divided into two categories: those who
acted like imbeciles, vehemently denying the importance and legiti-
macy of official reckoning with the Communist past, and those who,
imbued with the solemnity of the event, reacted in a dignified manner.
The scene in Parliament during the speech was equally grotesque and
sublime. On the one hand, ultranationalist MPs from Corneliu Vadim
Tudor’s Greater Romania Party were screaming, whistling, and boo-
ing. MPs from other parties acted similarly, especially those from the
1
2 Introduction
Social Democrats, who endorsed passively or actively the actions of

their more radical and vocal colleagues. In contrast, also among those
present were some of the most important Romanian and Eastern Euro-
pean dissidents (such as Lech Wałesa ˛ and Zheliu Zhelev), the former
Romanian king, Michael I, and prominent Romanian public intellectu-
als. The next day, in an interview with the BBC, the president insisted
that the hysteria of the crypto-Communists and the nationalists was no
reason to be deterred from continuing the process of working through
and healing from Romania’s traumatic dictatorial past. On the con-
trary, their rancor reaffirmed that the path chosen was the right one,
from both a political and moral point of view. A functional and healthy
democratic society cannot indulge in the politics of oblivion and denial.
Though some had argued for those politics, the president stated his
belief that engaging in a collective communicative silence (kommunika-
tives Beschweigen)1 about the past would not enable post-Communist
countries to evolve into functioning democracies.
On the evening of December 18, after a reception at the Cotroceni
presidential palace and a dinner with a few close friends, among them
philosopher Horia-Roman Patapievici and literary historian Mircea
Mihăieş, I [VT] tried to gather my thoughts. My most important task
was to explain to my son Adam (at the time twelve years old) what had
actually happened – that the violent reactions to the president’s speech
expressed by many MPs, as well as the majority’s toleration of this
horrendous behavior, amounted to a sort of final spasm of an abnor-
mal political beast called Communism. Adam and my wife Mary had
been at Parliament that day; they saw those scenes of shame, but also
of heroism. As I write this, I am looking at Adam’s drawing of Traian
Băsescu holding the text of his speech while chauvinist Corneliu Vadim
Tudor is defiantly waving a sign in the air. After that evening in 2006,
I was satisfied that we, the members and experts of the Presidential
Commission, had accomplished what we set out to do with our Final
Report. Mr. Băsescu had condemned the Communist regime as illegiti-
mate and criminal. I consider my work with the Commission to be the
most important intellectual and moral achievement of my life.
Like democratic antifascism, the anti-Communist civic-liberal orien-
tation has finally gained the right to the city in present-day Romania.
Since 2006, our public discourse has been characterized not just by
1
Herman Lübbe first used this term in 1983 in reference to Federal Germany’s
transition to democracy after 1945.
Introduction 3
an emotional and moral revolt but also by a scientifically grounded

position based on thousands of pages of archived documents from the
totalitarian party-state’s various institutions. The position adopted by
the members of the Commission in the Final Report does not have the
force of a legal indictment, but rather was derived from a process of
exorcising the demons of our Communist past through public knowl-
edge and political acknowledgment.
A few weeks before the president’s address to Parliament, I had
corresponded by e-mail with Mircea Geoană, at the time one of the
leaders of the Social Democratic Party (PSD). He invited me to attend
the Aspen Institute conference, which was scheduled to take place in
Bucharest between December 17 and 19. I thanked him and told him
that I would be in the country anyway, and therefore there was no
need to arrange my plane ticket or my hotel. I sent a paper and I was
included in the conference program. The event was to be opened by
Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu. Mircea Geoană assured me
that he would cancel the afternoon conference seminar scheduled on
December 18 so that we could participate, along with other Western
guests, at the solemn moment to take place in Parliament.
The decision to cancel that session, however, was rescinded dur-
ing the PSD Congress held on December 10, if my memory serves.
A few weeks before the presidential speech, Ion Iliescu had learned
that his name appeared in the Final Report. The Commission decided
to formally acknowledge his culpability for two reasons. First, since
the second half of the 1950s, Iliescu had been the leader of the Uni-
unea Tineretului Comunist (UTC; Union of Communist Youth), was
a member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers’ Party
(RWP; the Communist Party’s deliberate misnomer for itself) and then
became its head of agitprop activities, and later served as the Min-
ister of Youth.2 He then served as president of Romania from 1989
until 1996. Second, the Commission found undeniable evidence of his
involvement in the repression of student protests. In 1958, he sup-
ported the government’s second wave of terror (which took place
2
Despite being marginalized from prominent political offices after 1971, he still
held various party leadership positions at the county level, and he was also an
alternate member of the Political Executive Committee of the Central
Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. For a brief biography of Ion
Iliescu, see Vladimir Tismăneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, and Cristian Vasile, eds.,
Raport Final – Comisia Prezidenţială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste în
Romania (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007), p. 795.
4 Introduction
between 1958 and 1960 in response to the student demonstrations

of 1956) by lambasting the “crass conciliatorism” and the absence
of Marxist-Leninist attitudes among the youth.3 Ten years later, he
was personally involved in the arrest of students who had participated
in a spontaneous protest against the regime.4 Additionally, the Final
Report did not mince words about the nature of the immediate after-
math of Ceauşescu’s dictatorship: “the Iliescu regime that functioned
between 1990 and 1996 was a mixture of oligarchic, social, and eco-
nomic collectivism and authoritarianism founded on the cult of the
State’s supremacy over any social reality.”5 The Final Report associ-
ated Iliescu with de-Stalinization and ideological reform akin to the
policies of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, but it specified
that the system over which Iliescu presided “was not an attempt to
restore communism.”6
Reflecting his ever-growing obsession with his legacy in Romania’s
post-Communist history, Iliescu flew into a tantrum and embarked
on a ferocious campaign – as only an old Bolshevik propagandist
would know how to weave – against the Presidential Commission and
me [VT] personally. He simply ignored the subtleties of the Report’s
account about him, as well as the facts about his activities in enforc-
ing a certifiable tyranny against the students he was proudly tasked
with managing. He called me “a worthless hack writer without a con-
science” and a “history forger,” among other epithets. Coming from
him, these charges were perfectly Orwellian. On December 10, the piti-
ful bargain between Iliescu and Geoană was as simple as it was cynical:
Geoană agreed to support a PSD resolution that would unanimously
condemn, a priori, the Final Report (which no one had read), while
Iliescu gave his support to Geoană as PSD’s candidate for the presi-
dential elections. These facts are now in the public domain and have
been acknowledged by a historian who was part of the leadership of
the “Ovidiu Şincai” PSD Institute.7
3
Raport Final, p. 191. For additional information on Iliescu’s personal
involvement in repression see Cristian Vasile, “Ion Iliescu şi (re)scrierea istoriei,”
Revista, 22, no. 7 (February 13–19, 2007), pp. 14–15, and “Iliescu, rotiţă în
mecanismul totalitar,” Evenimentul zilei, no. 4721 (February 14, 2007), p. 18.
4 5 6
Raport Final, p. 194. Raport Final, p. 28. Raport Final, p. 456.
7
See Florin Abraham, “Raportul Comisiei Tismăneanu: analiză istoriografică,” in
Vasile Ernu, Costi Rogozanu, Ciprian Şiulea, and Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu, eds.,
Iluzia anticomunismului (Chişinău, Cartier, 2008), pp. 7–42. Abraham is also
Introduction 5
A cable drafted by the US Embassy in Bucharest in December 2006

provides interesting insights into the behavior of the MPs during Pres-
ident Băsescu’s condemnation speech. US diplomatic officials stated
that Geoană was no longer able to distance himself from Ion Ili-
escu. The cable also noted that, according to Titus Corlăţean (then
an MP from the PSD who later served as the minister of justice from
May–August 2012 and as the minister of foreign affairs from August–
November 2014, during PSD member Victor Ponta’s premiership),
Nicolae Văcăroiu (then president of the Senate and, previously, the
prime minister between 1992 and 1996) did not quiet the room because
he allegedly feared for his safety. In our opinion, Văcăroiu’s close rela-
tionship with Iliescu might be a much more plausible explanation for
his lack of action. One can hardly imagine him being lynched in Par-
liament. The cable also described a private meeting between Cristian
Tudor Popescu (a journalist) and Mircea Geoană in which the latter
bluntly said that “one of Romania’s top media figures told us privately
a few days after the Parliamentary session: ‘I have been friends with
Mircea [Geoană] for twenty years, but he hurt himself. It is the same
problem as always. He is indecisive.’” That is, my [VT] friend in the
PSD failed to stand up to his party’s culture of ultimate compliance
with Iliescu’s vendetta against truth.
Additionally, the US Embassy’s cable foreshadowed the upward spi-
ral of political-symbolic conflict in Romania in the aftermath of the
condemnation speech. The American diplomats presciently summa-
rized the challenges of dealing with the past and of introducing demo-
cratic reform, which continue to rage in Romania:
President Băsescu’s formal condemnation of communist misrule was wel-

come, if long overdue; previous attempts by leading Romanian political
reformers had quickly foundered in the post-Communist shoals. Such a
frank assessment of Romania’s past was never in the cards under Iliescu’s
multiple presidencies and the PSD’s rule. While this was, in fact, a water-
shed event for Romania, the backlash from the PSD, the Greater Romania
Party (PRM), the Conservative Party, and other players including the Ortho-
dox Church underscores the continuing sensitivity of the issue and suggests
that the de-communization effort has a long way to go. Many of Romania’s
mainstream political parties, intelligence services, judiciary, local and central
PSD’s representative in the Collegium of the National Council for the Study of
the Securitate Archives.
6 Introduction
administrations, and other sectors including the media and clergy continue
to be dominated by former party apparatchiki, Securitate officers, and other
representatives of the pre-1989 elite.8
Post-Watershed: Did Romania Follow Through?

December 18, 2006, was the moment when the paths of Romanian
post-totalitarian political culture diverged. One could see with the
utmost clarity who was against and who was in favor of an open
society: the reactions to the president’s speech were both sublime and
outrageous, brave and depressing. Sublime and courageous because,
despite Vadim Tudor’s hysteria that was fully condoned by the PSD,
tolerated by the National Liberal Party (PNL), and greeted by the satis-
fied smile of Dan Voiculescu (then the leader of the Conservative Party,
a media oligarch, and a former Communist secret police officer), Presi-
dent Traian Băsescu delivered his speech calmly, condemning the Com-
munist regime as illegitimate and criminal. Shortly thereafter, journalist
Dan Tăpălagă wrote an extraordinary article about the howling of a
stabbed beast. The beast had been hit hard, but it did not stop poison-
ing the public space, its squirming fueled by anger and perfidy. Unfortu-
nately, the democratic forces did not respond with the necessary tenac-
ity and firmness. Many legislative recommendations proposed by the
Final Report were delayed, hindered, or simply ignored. However, the
law on the commemoration of the victims of Communism and fas-
cism was adopted, and a textbook on the history of Communism in
Romania was published.
However, the Parliament has yet to adopt a legislative initiative
to recognize the brave actions of the Jiu Valley miners who revolted
against the Communist dictatorship in August 1977 and were subse-
quently persecuted by the totalitarian regime. Neither has it established
a National Museum of the Communist Dictatorship, although between
2010 and 2012 important steps were made in this direction. The Râm-
nicu Sărat prison where leading figures of the anti-Communist demo-
cratic opposition died is now the property of the Institute for the Inves-
tigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile,
8
For the full content of the document, which was made available via WikiLeaks,
see my [VT] article “Condamnarea comunismului în viziunea Ambasadei SUA,”
contributors.ro, March 30, 2011.
Post-Watershed: Did Romania Follow Through? 7
a governmental institution that focuses on research (for an in-depth

discussion, see Chapter 5). All these frustrating delays notwithstand-
ing, Romania is a different state than it was before December 18, 2006.
The break was brought about by the president, the most authoritative
spokesman of the Romanian democratic state, resulting in a final and
irrevocable separation from the Communist state and its legacy.
This volume is a personal effort to analyze how the activity of the
Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictator-
ship in Romania and the reactions to its Final Report can offer new
insights regarding the interplay between memory, history, and justice.
We integrate our analysis into national, regional, and international
contexts to situate this case study in contemporary debates and litera-
ture on the relationship between democracy and dealing with the past.
Our premise is that the only way to live in truth, to free ourselves from
the magic circle of complicity and opportunism, is to speak with the
utmost clarity, in a factual and direct manner. The key essential fact
is this: Communism was a despotism with disastrous consequences.
The political culture of post-Communist democracy can only bene-
fit from the open condemnation by the highest state authorities of a
system that collapsed in 1989, but survived through personal, insti-
tutional, and behavioral legacies. Despite often being politicized by
various political actors, the culture of memory in Romania, as well
as across the entire former Soviet bloc, is vitally necessary within these
post-dictatorial societies. As Lavinia Stan observes, it is crucial for indi-
viduals to “know the truth about the communist regime, to confront
their own personal history, and to obtain justice and absolution.”9 In
a post-totalitarian context such as Romania’s, moral clarity is the key
to democratic sustainability.
Reconciliation remains spurious in the absence of repentance. In the
short term, the politics of forgetfulness (what former Polish prime min-
ister Tadeusz Mazowiecki once called “the policy of the thick line”
separating the sins of the past from the government of the present) can
facilitate the maintenance of a newly born and fragile social consen-
sus. In the long term, however, such policies foster grievous wrongs
in relation to collective values and memory, with potentially disas-
trous institutional and psychoemotional consequences. Pastor Joachim
9
Lavinia Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of
Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 4.
8 Introduction
Gauck, former chair of the authority dealing with the secret files of the
Stasi (the uniquely Spartan East German secret police, whose motto
was “know everything”) and former president of the Federal Repub-
lic of Germany, argued once that “reconciliation with the traumatic
past can be achieved not simply through grief, but also through dis-
cussion and dialogue.”10 Similarly, Charles Villa-Vicencio, one of the
leading members of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commis-
sion (TRC), defined reconciliation as “the operation whereby individu-
als and the community create for themselves a space in which they can
communicate with one another, in which they can begin the arduous
labor of understanding” painful history. Hence, justice becomes a pro-
cess of strengthening the nation, aided by a culture of responsibility.11
Communism aimed to strictly and ubiquitously control individual and
collective remembrance. Its proponents detested the idea of emanci-
pated anamnesis, so they systematically falsified the past. Until 2006,
Romanian democracy had been consistently deprived of opportunities
to engage in truth-telling in relation to its troubled twentieth-century
past, largely due to the work of the post-Communists, particularly the
powerful PSD.
In this volume, we employ decommunization as an umbrella con-
cept that encompasses two sets of ideas. First, we understand it as a
means of dealing with the past both historiographically and publicly.
It reflects our profound belief in the communicative power of telling
truths about dictatorship as a way of overcoming its legacies. Practi-
cally, this means understanding the ideology of totalitarians and the
sociology of those they rule. A democratic society must understand the
temptation of utopian illusions and their inevitably barbaric pursuits.
Second, the concept presupposes specific policies that may be contro-
versial or debatable, but have the following aims: allowing access to the
archives of the former regime and to the files of the secret police (called
the Securitate in Romania); commemorating past traumas and victims;
formulating reparation policies for victims and their families; creating
museums and memorials about state socialism; and, last but far from
least, exercising political justice against perpetrators of the Communist
10
Joachim Gauck, “Dealing with the STASI Past,” Special Issue: “Germany in
Transition,” Daedalus (Winter 1994), pp. 282–283.
11
Charles Villa-Vicencio and Erik Doxtader, eds., Pieces of the Puzzle: Keywords
on Reconciliation and Transitional Justice (Cape Town: Institute for Justice
and Reconciliation, 2005), pp. 34–38.
The Need for Truth 9
period – those individuals guilty of homicide or crimes against human-

ity. These two levels of decommunization reflect two fundamental com-
ponents of working through the burden of the past: (1) specific legal,
financial, and institutional measures and (2) the civic and political
acknowledgment of responsibilities, complexities, and ultimate truths
about dictatorship.
The Need for Truth

Decommunization addresses some of the most difficult challenges of
the transition from democracy to dictatorship and of the much less
straightforward process of consolidating a democratic, tolerant soci-
ety. It is a phenomenon pertinent to the nature of revolutions, the role
of dissidents, the levels of mass compliance with the old regime, and
the possibilities of overcoming the legacies of recent history. In all the
countries of the former socialist bloc, the public has expressed a strong
need to identify the sources of their anxieties: those responsible for eco-
nomic ruin and the engineers of the huge mechanisms of mental and
political regimentation.
Within a horizon of expectations centered on the imperative of clar-
ity, the failure to reveal the truth about the past is conducive to pub-
lic discontent, frustration, and a general feeling that the old guard
is still running the show. This sentiment has been palpably present
across most of Eastern Europe, particularly in places where the sec-
ond echelon of the former ruling class exploited nationalist and anti-
Communist passions, only to strengthen its power and eventually pre-
empt any serious coming to terms with the past. Romania is almost
a textbook case for such a situation, although this trend is threaten-
ing all of post-Communist Europe. For example, the rise of Poland’s
proto-authoritarian Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (translated as Law and
Justice or PiS) is a direct result of the national failure to remember
the past while simultaneously building a new future, and Putin holds
power in Russia by inflaming the collectivist fantasies of the Commu-
nist experiment. In Poland, anti-Communist hysteria produced the new
authoritarianism, whereas in Russia, proto-Leninist illusions were used
for the same ends. And, of course, the PSD post-Communists in Roma-
nia, along with a coalition of ethno-nationalists, refuse to even morally
indict Ceauşescu’s reign, making it virtually impossible to achieve
a transparent government or tolerant society. Whichever approach
10 Introduction
neo-authoritarians have chosen, the failure to fully discuss the truth

about the Communist era leads to disaster. Democracy clearly requires
transparent historical explanations about past traumas.
Decommunization has been a complex and manifold process. It has
attempted to bring about a moral regeneration of societies long per-
meated by duplicity, hypocrisy, and systematic lies; sought historical
truth and the understanding of the political and human instruments
that made Communist autocracy possible; and, finally, served as a legal
endeavor to identify individual guilt and respond to it in accordance to
the laws as they functioned at the time of the incriminated actions or
on the basis of the suspension of the statute of limitations on particular
crimes (e.g., homicide in Romania).
Some voices have labeled the process of dealing with the past as an
obstacle to the progress of democratization. Their argument is that
bringing to the fore and then confronting painful, guilty, problem-
atic memories and histories will fuel resentment, revanchist attitudes,
elites’ unwillingness to adopt democratic norms, and the like. But what
kind of societies will these become if their memory has been artificially
amputated? Ignoring the files and archives of Communist polities, in
our view, is a form of pretending that the horror never existed. The fun-
damental issue we must confront is the nature of the Leninist regimes
and our view of them from a liberal perspective: if we agree that they
were systematic forms of controlling and coercing human will, then
there is no moral imperative that compels us to treat their history dif-
ferently from how we confront fascism’s horrendous legacy. Although
it would be absurd to deny the evolution – and even, in some cases,
liberalization – of these regimes (especially in Hungary and Poland),
their ideologically driven intentions are very much similar. Communist
regimes cannot be excused or judged differently than fascist ones sim-
ply because the former asserted that their project was rooted in human-
ism and rationalism – after all, as the editor of Poland’s most influen-
tial daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam Michnik, wisely said, “There was
no socialism with a human face, but only totalitarianism with broken
teeth.”12 True, the age of unmitigated terror passed after Stalin died
(except in Albania and, to some extent, in Romania). But the criminal
foundations of these regimes remained unaltered: none were based on
12
Adam Michnik, Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and
Perspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 104.
The Need for Truth 11
popular consent, and none accepted minimal accountability for their

actions. All continued to function as secret police empires based on uni-
versal suspicion, infringements of basic human rights, and contempt
for individual dignity. The totalitarian pursuit of utopia was always
the reality of life for every citizen trapped under Communism, no mat-
ter which regime or which comparatively “liberalized” period was in
question.
The new identity of a post-authoritarian community can be based on
negative contrasts: on the one hand, “with the past that is being repudi-
ated; on the other, with anti-democratic political actors in the present
(and/or potentially in the future).”13 A new “anamnestic solidarity”
would be based on an ethical framework circumscribed by both the
knowledge of the truth and the official acknowledgment of its history.
The destructive power of silence and of unassumed guilt would thus
be preempted. This way, according to German political scientist Gesine
Schwan, the fundamental abilities and values of individuals would be
nourished so as to sustain their well-being, social behavior, and trust
in communal life. The moral consensus based on a shared experience
of reality is preserved by making possible the democratic existence of
the specific society.14 In this context, the priority of transitional justice
becomes the “deep healing” of society or “the quest for a new quality
of life and the creation of a milieu within which the atrocities of the
past are less likely to recur in the future.”15
To demand a serious coming-to-grips with the past is not simply a
moral imperative: none of these societies can become truly liberal if the
old mythologies of self-pity and self-idealization continue to monop-
olize the public discourse. In this respect, decommunization is also a
vital search for identity, for the assertion of a genuine rupture with the
past. The return to normalcy, or the building of liberal polities, requires
the courage to face the abdications, betrayals, and self-delusions that
turned so many individuals into accomplices of an evil system. The
past must be known, confronted, and grasped. As in other countries
13
Jan-Werner Müller, Constitutional Patriotism (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2007), pp. 97–119.
14
Gesine Schwan, Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Power of Silence, trans.
Thomas Dunlap (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), pp. 54–134.
15
Charles Villa-Vicencio, “The Reek of Cruelty and the Quest for Healing:
Where Retributive and Restorative Justice Meet,” Journal of Law and Religion,
14, no. 1 (1999–2000), pp. 172–175.
12 Introduction
exiting dictatorial regimes – such as South Africa, Greece, Spain, Por-

tugal, and various Latin American states – the boundaries between
victims, bystanders, and perpetrators have often been blurred, and
efforts to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice
have resulted in frustrating settlings of accounts and hollow rhetorical
battles.
Indeed, if properly pursued, the confrontation with Communist
pasts, either by the public use of history or via transitional justice,
allows for the rebuilding of democratic communities established on
trust, individual rights, rule of law, and the respect for truth. After
decades of organized forgetfulness or the state-sponsored, ideologi-
cally defined falsification of history, it is now finally possible to right
the wrongs of the past. When these wrongs are left unaddressed, the
community descends into a new tyranny, which is perfectly unaccept-
able to those in favor of the open society. Yet, the effort to address
those wrongs should not turn into an unjust vendetta. In Brazil and
Chile, for example, neo-populists have engaged in witch hunts against
the perpetrators of former regimes in order to inoculate their political
tribes with incontestable loyalty (oddly enough, both of these regimes
and their allies are “Social-Democratic” neo-Communists16 ). In
Romania, the old nomenklatura is, in fact, in power, with little mean-
ingful threats against it. The intricacies and risks of memory and justice
cannot be ignored; democracy cannot survive without efforts to prop-
erly understand the past.
Reconciliation in the absence of repentance is a mockery of the
national dialogue. Forgiveness in the absence of recantation is just a
hollow offer. Memory of the victims in the absence of a genuine effort
to comprehend the totalitarian perpetrators’ minds is useless. In many
cases, the former Communists even take pride in their past and look
at their ex-dissident opponents with undisguised arrogance. This, of
course, has fueled further resentment among the former victims (or
simply passive non-Communists) who complain that the revolution has
been abducted.
In examining decommunization, one should adopt a comparative
perspective: its meanings have differed in the former GDR and in
16
“Not a day without a trial” is the current slogan of the Chilean Communist
Party. It insists on trials of criminals from the Pinochet era; however, its goal is
not to achieve democratic reconciliation and justice, but to increase ideological
fervor and score political points.
The Bizarrely Elusive Truth of Communism 13
Poland, in Hungary as opposed to Czechoslovakia, in Russia against

Lithuania, or in Romania versus the former GDR. The charismatic
intensity, institutional solidity, and ideological consistency of the Com-
munist regimes also differed from country to country, but the moral
imperative of retribution for past crimes cannot be dismissed in the
name of a philanthropic ethos of universal forgiveness. Whatever one
may think of the differing post-1956 dynamics of Leninist regimes,
it remains true that the first stages of all these regimes were marked
by unspeakable cruelty and fanaticism. How can one ask the Albani-
ans, the Romanians, the Poles, the Czechs, or the citizens of the Baltic
States to forget the mass deportations, the destruction of their coun-
tries’ elites, and the methodical persecution of any source of indepen-
dent action or thought?
The Bizarrely Elusive Truth of Communism

Often, pan-European debates about the complexities of the Commu-
nist past and its legacies reveal an unwillingness to engage in a gen-
uine exercise of moral imagination. There is also a severe deficit of
empathy in the West regarding the victims of Communism. The 2009
Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, ini-
tiated by Václav Havel, Vytautas Landsbergis, and Joachim Gauck,
called for a convergence of the two European memories of totalitar-
ianism – Nazism and Communism – but it was basically ignored in
Western Europe. Its emphasis on the role of ideology in the justifica-
tion of Communism’s atrocities was perceived as strident. Stalinism
could be condemned, but not its progenitor, Marxism. This failure to
comprehend Leninist ideologies is an insult to the victims and a grave
danger to the East European citizens of today.
In December 2010, I [VT] was invited to be part of a BBC radio
program about the European Commission’s rejection of an initiative
proposed by several ministers of foreign affairs from Eastern and Cen-
tral Europe (among them the Romanian one), which sought a ban on
the negation of Communism’s crimes, similar to one concerning Nazi
offenses. There were two other guests on the show: historian Anthony
Beevor and Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s
office in Jerusalem. The former insisted that political genocide, such
as that committed by Stalin and his epigones (in Europe and else-
where), is morally repugnant to the same degree as the ethnic genocide
14 Introduction
perpetrated by Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, Beevor argued that

the mass murder, by state-manufactured famine, of the Ukrainian peas-
antry during the collectivization campaigns of 1930–1933 strikingly
resembled genocide (in the legal sense), if one takes into account the
motivations of the Soviet leadership and the disastrous ethnic effects on
the local population. Beevor also discussed Stalin’s anti-Semitic policies
during the early 1950s. He referred to Vasily Grossman, the author of
monumental works such as Life and Fate (1959) and The Complete
Black Book of Russian Jewry (a volume banned by Stalin, co-authored
with Ilya Ehrenburg during World War II), who described genocide
by gas and genocide by bullets. In the case of the Holocaust, that for-
mulation was made famous by Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands (2010).
Beevor concluded that all forms of negationism of twentieth-century
crimes against humanity are simply obscene.
In my remarks, I emphasized that both Communism and fascism
regimes were founded on ideologies geared to dehumanize the enemy
(of race or class), to reduce human groups to the condition of ver-
min to be exterminated. I talked about the similarities, but not iden-
tity, between the two systems. In contrast, Efraim Zuroff criticized the
Prague Declaration, although he expressed his profound sympathy for
the victims of crimes perpetrated under Communist regimes. However,
he opposed the transformation of anti-Communism into a vehicle for
exonerating war criminals from states allied with Nazi Germany (Hun-
gary, Croatia, Romania, the Baltic countries, etc.). I did point out that
the Prague Declaration unambiguously condemns both Stalinist and
Nazi crimes and that it was supported by key Eastern European dissi-
dents; I also noted that I was among the declaration’s signatories along
with some of the most important democratic, public intellectuals in
Romania. Last but not least, I stated that I could hardly be accused of
supporting the whitewashing of Romania’s involvement in the Holo-
caust: I had conducted extensive research on the extreme right wing,
my own family had been deeply affected by fascist crimes – my father’s
brother, his wife, and their two children were burnt alive in Odessa in
1941.
I added that the European Commission preferred to ignore a histor-
ical reality. The absence of political genocide from the International
Convention on this issue was the result of Soviet opposition at the
time of its drafting: Raphael Lemkin, the document’s author, initially
The Bizarrely Elusive Truth of Communism 15
included this form of mass murder in it.17 Indeed, in the “bloodlands”

of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet space, the empires of Stalin
and Hitler killed more than fourteen million people – and in the pur-
suit not of land, but of the “correct” civilization.18 Such murderous
entanglement ought to keep one wary of overgeneralizations and hasty,
facile comparisons and victimologies. Nevertheless, I consider empa-
thy and unrelenting commitment to scholarship-based truths to be the
prerequisites for achieving moral and historiographical clarity in rela-
tion to such a traumatic and guilty past. One should always oppose
revisionist efforts aimed at excusing the Communist vision, if not the
practices. The Black Book of Communism showed that, as Michael
Scammell excellently pointed out, “what matters is that we understand
the entirety of this century’s terrible history . . . As a civilization we are
obliged to come to terms with that truth [Communism’s criminality],
and admit our share of culpability, and draw correct conclusions.”19 I
continue to believe that the European Commission’s decision should
be revisited so that double standards would disappear from politi-
cal, public, and epistemic discourses on the continent. The European
memory must not exclude any group that suffered the exterminisms
of the grand ideological experiments that were Communism and
fascism.
Certainly, the reluctance to condemn Communism in as unequivo-
cal terms as fascism is linked to the humanist inheritance of Marx-
ism. Many people still find it hard to admit that the roots of Stalinism
should be sought in the Leninist hubris. Lenin’s hubris, in turn, can-
not be separated from the utopian ambition to make humanity happy,
at any cost. Both Communism and fascism were redemptive political
fantasies. In both cases, exterminism was first and foremost the expres-
sion of an ideological certainty that, by getting rid of the dehumanized
groups (treated as vermin, “cockroaches,” despicable insects, a super-
fluous and dispensable populace, and so on), humanity could achieve
17
Steven Leonard Jacobs, ed., Lemkin on Genocide (Lanham, MD.: Lexington
Books, 2014); and Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
18
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York,
NY: Basic Books, 2010).
19
Michael Scammell, “The Price of an Idea,” New Republic, December 20, 1999,
p. 41.
16 Introduction
a higher level of unity and happiness. Or, as historian Dan Stone excel-
lently formulated this concept in reference to the Holocaust,
One does not need to think of ideology in terms of a monolithic propaganda
machine bearing down on the subjects and soldiers of the Third Reich, as in a
typical 1950s’ understanding of totalitarianism. Rather, the workings of fan-
tasy, of the desire to murder the Jews or even the belief that the world would
be a better place without them, with no accompanying feeling of enjoyment,
purification or ecstatic participation in the community’s destiny, are all essen-
tial for understanding the background to the decision to murder the Jews
(and not some other dispossessed group) and these precede any problem of
military supplies and occupation economics.20
Adopting an empathetic approach would make it less difficult to

understand what Vasily Grossman understood so well: Communism
(not only Stalinism, we hasten to add) and fascism (especially Nazism)
embody the experience of radical evil. A liberal (i.e., a moral, a human)
perspective on these thorny issues requires the refusal to establish a
hierarchy of absolute horrors. Evil was evil, no matter what its graphic
symbol was – the hammer and sickle, the fasces, or the swastika. The
root of these demonic experiments with millions of human lives was the
frantic cult of ideology, the ecstasy of the absolute transformation of
nature, society, and mind. It was not only the transvaluation of all val-
ues, in Nietzsche’s terms, but an overall restructuring of morality. Good
and evil were not abolished, but falsified, as French historian Alain
Besançon showed (it was the Russian Christian philosopher, Vladimir
Solovyov, who was probably the first to diagnose this revolutionizing
of morality). A system of dignity requires a politics of truth.
20
Dan Stone, The Holocaust, Fascism, and Memory: Essays in the History of
Ideas (London: Palgrave, 2013), p. 53.
1 Judging the Past in Post-Traumatic
Societies
Romania in Comparative Perspective
Twenty-nine years have passed since the demise of what historian

Martin Malia called “ideocratic partocracies” during that extraordi-
nary year of 1989, which Pope John Paul II identified as an “annus
mirabilis.” That annus mirabilis actually ended in December 1991, with
the breakdown of the state created by Lenin in 1917. Euphoria initially
ran supreme, and many acclaimed the advent of a novus ordo seclo-
rum. Then, people began to ask questions. Did the Communist past
simply vanish, or does it continue to influence, directly and indirectly,
the new political constructs? Is the current corruption that character-
izes Russia and Central and Eastern European states a new occurrence,
or do its roots extend back to the rampant cronyism of the terminal
stage of Communist regimes?
Ken Jowitt, author of the path-breaking book New World Disorder:
The Leninist Extinction (1992), was one of the first political scien-
tists to emphasize the immense importance of legacies in the shaping
of the post-totalitarian order. Mark R. Beissinger and Stephen Kotkin,
editors of an illuminating volume titled Historical Legacies of Com-
munism in Russia and Eastern Europe (2014), pay him due tribute.1
As opposed to those who thought that the past did not matter, Jowitt
and his students – including Rudra Sil, Marc Howard, Arista Cirtautas,
Veljko Vujacic, Grigore Pop-Elecheş (who contributed to Beissinger’s
and Kotkin’s edited volume) – insist on the historical dimension of
the transitions: they highlight not only the burden of the Communist
past but also the resurgence of pre-Communist memories, symbols, and
values.
To be sure, the denizens of the post-Communist world are not
hostages to the past. Beissinger and Kotkin are right in warning
1
Mark R. Beissinger and Stephen Kotkin, eds., Historical Legacies of
Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe (New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2014).
17
18 Judging the Past in Post-Traumatic Societies
against any form of fatalistic determinism. Yet, the past continues to

haunt both individual and collective memories. It stirs controversies,
polemics, intellectual battles, and cultural wars. It affects the way peo-
ple treat issues such as property rights, legal procedures, and even
human rights. Coming to terms with the past is a leitmotif that one
hears in all these countries, from Estonia to Croatia, from Romania to
Ukraine. The ongoing neo-authoritarian slide in Hungary under Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán is itself justified by its architect as an attempt
to purify the public sphere of Communist residual traces.
Two variables, geography and time, are very powerful in determin-
ing the Communist legacies’ impact, which is different in the coun-
tries in the former USSR from that in Central and Eastern Europe.
Furthermore, that impact remains the distinguishing factor between
the Balkans and Central Europe, confirming the often invisible, yet
persistent, presence of the Habsburg traditions, such as the rule of
law, constitutionalism, civil society, and urban-bourgeois values. One
needs to take into account that the Soviet experience (with the excep-
tion of the Baltic States and Moldova) lasted for more than seven
decades. Furthermore, assessing those legacies requires a temporal dis-
tance that allows the researcher to determine whether he or she is deal-
ing with transitory phenomena or enduring social facts. For exam-
ple, Alexis de Tocqueville’s classical analysis, The Old Regime and
the French Revolution (1855), addressed a macro-historical cleavage
that took place fifty years earlier, thereby offering the advantage of
“a time gap between the past and the present in question, so that
the purported relationship cannot be considered a temporary state of
affairs.”2
The twentieth century has left behind a painful and complicated
legacy of piercing trauma, monstrous crimes, radical social engineering,
and collective/individual guilt syndromes, whose underlying premises
now haunt the process of democratization in the various societies that
emerged out of these profoundly destructuring contexts. More often
than not, the past appears as a devastated landscape full of corpses,
dashed illusions, failed myths, betrayed promises, and unprocessed
memories. More than a decade and a half into the twenty-first cen-
tury, the historical experience of the previous one hundred years is still
2
Beissinger and Kotkin, eds., Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and
Eastern Europe, p. 9.
Judging the Past in Post-Traumatic Societies 19
fundamentally shaping how we envisage our contemporary world at

personal, local, national, continental, and global levels. The burden of
authoritarian pasts brought whole societies into international conver-
sations about their history. Their current identities are essentially being
defined by dual processes of remembrance and historicization of large-
scale, state-sponsored violence.
Policies of transitional justice have increasingly acquired a transna-
tional character. Since the late 1980s, there has been a proliferation of
truth commissions across very diverse geographical areas. In the for-
mer socialist bloc, there appeared a plethora of “Gauck”-type agen-
cies for housing secret police files, as well as of institutes of national
memory dealing with the traumatic legacies of either the Commu-
nist period or the entire totalitarian experience (i.e., fascism or Nazi
occupation). What a “Gauck”-type agency did was make information
accessible “to large but specified categories of actors who are entitled
by law to receive such information, parts of which can (and are in fact
likely to) be used as reasons for sanctioning by public or private sec-
tor recipients.”3 Often, these institutions were created in dialogue with
similar organizations in other countries. Truth commissions can even
be seen as a nascent form of cosmopolitanism. In addition to champi-
oning the task of remembrance, they serve another function: reviving
human values from the previous ideological century. They support the
underlying premise of this culture of remembrance, historicization, and
justice, which has progressively developed over two and a half decades:
that long-term, state-endorsed amnesia and forgetting inevitably
and ultimately subvert – and even delegitimize – post-dictatorial
democracies.
Large parts of the population in Eastern European societies were
born under Communism and lived at least half of their lives (or their
formative years) under Leonid Brezhnev’s infamous “really existing
socialism.” Thus, the majority of people living in Eastern Europe have
distinct personal histories before 1989, histories that have been essen-
tially altered by the (post-)totalitarian experience. One constant of
that totalitarian experience was “the millions of Lilliputian threads of
3
Claus Offe and Ulrike Poppe, “Transitional Justice in the German Democratic
Republic and in Unified Germany,” in Lukas H. Meyer, ed., Justice in Time:
Responding to Historical Injustice (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft,
1994), p. 264.
everyday mendacity, conformity and compromise”.4 As Václav Klaus,

the former Czech prime minister and president, once put it in a presi-
dential address, “Neither a former communist nor a former dissident;
neither a henchman nor a moralist, whose very presence on the scene
is a reminder of the courage you did not have: your bad conscience.”5
Under the circumstances, one issue that stands out in most of the
region’s countries is the problem of their unmastered dictatorial past.
It has proven to be a formidable obstacle to establishing a lasting con-
nection between democracy, memory, and civic activism.
In post-authoritarian societies, responsibility, empathy, tolerance,
trust, and ultimately reconciliation are essentially dependent on con-
fronting the penumbra of one’s recent past. Facing the past also implies
acknowledging the historical episodes that marked a particular society.
Many concepts are of tremendous relevance to this acknowledgment
process, including understanding, assuming, confronting, and taking
responsibility. In struggling to explain and to understand the conse-
quences of radical evil and of the pathologies of political extremism,
both history and memory find themselves pushed to the limit. From
the Holocaust to the Gulag, from genocide to sociocide, from ethnic
cleansing to apartheid, from mass murder to crimes against human-
ity, the twentieth century forces us to find new ways to confront and
remember shattered pasts. Far from having this experience behind us,
it stays with us. We have yet to learn all its lessons.
This volume is centered on several crucial questions that must be
addressed by any society-wide initiative to confront and work through
a traumatic, guilty past. Can the abuses and crimes of a Communist
regime be condemned by way of a commission of analysis or a truth
commission? What impact might such an initiative have on the former
ruling elites and on the interest groups they created during their pro-
cess of conversion in the post-Communist era? Is it possible to rectify
the aberrations of the past through truth-telling? Would a truth com-
mission be a step forward along the path of bringing to justice those
4
Timothy Garton Ash, “Trials, Purges and History Lessons: Treating a Difficult
Past in Post-Communist Europe,” in Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and
Power in Post-War Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
p. 271.
5
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Penguin Books,
2005), pp. 695–696.
Facing the Hard Truth and the Urge to Forget 21
who were responsible for the creation and perpetuation of the totali-
tarian order? How does one avoid the risks of engaging in collective
punishment? In sum, how can post-Communist political communities
reconcile legitimacy, legality, and the coming to terms with the trau-
matic Communist past? These disturbing questions indicate the moral,
political, and legal challenges connected with the imperative of a rev-
olutionary break with the ancien régime.
Facing the Hard Truth and the Urge to Forget

Condemning Communism requires a genuine travail de deuil, a rec-
onciliation with our past – an explanation, an identification of past
complicities, and, above all, a systematic dismantling of the relation-
ship between ideology and terror. The source of resistance to moral
condemnation at both the national and European levels is the pres-
ence of too many skeletons in the closet: too many top politicians in
Romania and the West were co-opted by the regime or became Marx-
ists, Maoists, Trotskyists, Guevaraists, or Marcuseanists in the 1960s
to make it possible for such a debate to be welcomed with open arms.
Yet their presence only further demonstrates the need for truth and
reconciliation: if many of our leaders are embarrassed to admit their
crimes, then our societies need open dialogue, rather than silence.
As Leszek Kołakowski explains in the preface of a new edition of his
masterly work, Main Currents of Marxism (2005), the ghost of Com-
munism will continue to haunt us.6 Bolshevism seems forever compro-
mised. Instead of those lendemains qui chantent celebrated by Vladimir
Mayakovsky, Luis Aragon, Paul Éluard, Yannis Ritsos, Nâzım Hikmet,
Pablo Neruda, and other “progressive” intellectuals, tens of millions of
people were forced to live in prison colonies. The state apparatus was
used, with a monstrously cold detachment, for mass killings – eradi-
cating those considered “enemies of the people.” Moreover, economic
planning for a command system in general proved to be an absolute
failure. What was initially thought of as “utopia in power” proved to
be an empire of lies, fear, denouncements, and (un)ethics of shameless-
ness. In the future, we will surely encounter new utopias – for exam-
ple, “Bolivarian socialism,” the “illiberal democracy” of Vladimir Putin
6
Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age,
the Breakdown, trans. P. S. Falla (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2005).
or Viktor Orbán, or other follies yet to come – but Leninist-Stalinist

ideocracy received a fatal blow in 1989–1991. Any real source of self-
confidence among Communist true believers has disappeared. Faith
evaporated among those who, for more than half of the last century,
were convinced that they had die Weltgeschichte (Universal History)
on their side. Truth is still necessary, however, to prevent a new and
improved ideology from sweeping up another set of generations in the
violent pursuit of utopia.
Historian Marci Shore rightly wondered, “Was it possible to restore
human dignity through truth, if arriving at truth involved gazing anew
through old peepholes?”7 Indeed, historical reckoning greatly depends
on altering and adjusting the means, vocabulary, and references we
employ to create novel representations of suffering and responsibil-
ity that overcome silence, cynicism, amnesia, or recoil. Moreover, the
radical turn toward unapologetic authoritarian imperialism taken by
Russia or Viktor Orbán’s fascination with “illiberal democracy” in
Hungary, to mention only two notorious cases, forces us to approach
with lucidity and restraint teleological readings of the transition from
dictatorship to democracy and the triumphalist claims that the past can
be made acceptable, if not glorified. Trauma must be worked through.
Authoritarian legacies should be confronted. Guilt and responsibil-
ity ought to be processed in frameworks of accountability. Liberal
democracy remains a contested and fragile construct that is stabi-
lized and perpetuated only through persistent and pervasive cultures of
remembrance and contrition, which counterbalance possible relapses
into problematic pasts or contemporary forms of left- and right-wing
extremisms – or Peronist temptations, as in America or Argentina.
Many of the post-Communist societies are countries that, in spite of
inherent problems and crises, have managed to pass important thresh-
olds in coming to terms with their own histories and in synchronizing
with larger democratization trends.8 Nevertheless, in most of them,
landscapes still remain haunted by collective neuroses and populist,
atavistic anxieties. In the context of the economic crisis and with the
pressure of shifting geopolitical trends in Europe and across the globe,
7
Marci Shore, The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern
Europe (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 2013), p. xii.
8
See, for example, Tomas Kavaliauskas, Transformations in Central Europe
between 1989 and 2012: Geopolitical, Cultural, and Socioeconomic Shifts
(Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012).
Facing the Hard Truth and the Urge to Forget 23
we witness the second life of fantasies of salvation,9 of exclusionary,

vindictive, and potentially disastrous myths of political redemption. In-
depth knowledge about the wreckage of the twentieth century, of its
dreams of total power, exterminism, and discrimination, and about the
mechanisms that allow for the rational examination of such a legacy
are essential correctives to the radical appetites of contemporary and
future times.
At a time when radicalism is seeming to raise its head again and
when liberalism’s values are coming under attack from the proponents
of the “Communist hypothesis” (e.g., the French Marxist philosopher
Alain Badiou or the Slovene Slavoj Žižek), we believe that it is neces-
sary to return to the writings and political thought of those who wit-
nessed and experienced the ideological storms of the twentieth century.
Leszek Kołakowski’s writings, for instance, are a sobering reminder
that ideas matter and that utopian ideas are conducive to cataclysmic
effects. To the question that is the title of his volume Is God Happy?
(2012), Kołakowski responded in his wry manner, asserting,
Happiness is something we can imagine but not experience. If we imagine
that hell and purgatory are no longer in operation and that all human beings,
every single one without exception, have been saved by God and are now
enjoying celestial bliss, lacking nothing, perfectly satisfied, without pain or
death, then we can imagine that their happiness is real and that the sorrows
and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imag-
ined, but it has never been seen. It has never been seen.10
At the foundation of any initiative to confront a horrifying past, or to

learn from the lessons of the struggle against collectivist appetites, lays
the weariness to resume the Promethean utopian project. Again, we can
turn to Kolakowski, who expressed so well the spirit of such prudence
in his reply to historian E. P. Thompson’s attempt to dissociate Western
radical thought and practices from the atrocious experiences in the
Soviet bloc:
Absolute equality can be established only within a despotic system of rule
which implies privileges, i.e. destroys equality; total freedom means anarchy
9
Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and
Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1998).
10
Leszek Kolakowski, Is God Happy? Selected Essays (London: Penguin, 2012),
pp. 214–215.
and anarchy results in the domination of the physically strongest, i.e. total
freedom turns into its opposite; efficiency as a supreme value calls again for
despotism and despotism is economically inefficient above a certain level of
technology. If we repeat these old truisms, it is because they still seem to go
unnoticed in utopian thinking; this is why nothing in the world is easier than
writing utopias.11
The Manichean image of an uncompromising battle between radical,

monomaniacal anti-Communists and (presumably persecuted) former
Communists is a gross caricature of the real moral and political ten-
sions of post-Communist political cultures. The process of working
through the Communist past in Romania, Poland, Hungary, or the for-
mer GDR is not a witch hunt, because those definitively proven to have
been perpetrators of crimes against humanity under the Communist
dictatorships are indeed criminals. Post-Communist democratization
is not a teleological myth, but the genuine transition from the mockery
and the trampling of law to the rule of law. Moreover, owning up to
the past via both transitional justice and critical historicization is also
a path to reclaiming the dignity of the millions of Eastern Europeans
who suffered the relentless party-state utopia of social engineering. It
has the potential to offer narratives that reinforce the salience of such
non-negotiable values as freedom, civility, and responsibility in soci-
eties with little consistent experience in their institutionalization.
Confronting the Past through Decommunization

Decommunization is a complex process that comprises political, juridi-
cal, and moral elements. The process of therapy through knowledge,
what we would call exorcising the specters of the past by accessing
non-mythicized truths, is the royal path to achieving such a goal. Fur-
thermore, we contend that decommunization and defascization must
be inextricably linked if Romania is to participate in building what
German political scientist Claus Leggewie defines as a shared Euro-
pean memory.12 William Faulkner’s famous line from Requiem for a
Nun certainly applies to the haunted lands where Communism once
held sway: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” A major source
11
Kolakowski, Is God Happy? p. 134.
12
Claus Leggewie, “Seven Circles of European Memory,” Eurozine, December 20,
2012; www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-12-20-leggewie-en.html.
Confronting the Past through Decommunization 25
of frustration and discontent in the region, especially in Romania, is

the widespread belief that ex-Communists have been too successful in
blunting genuine efforts to reckon with the past, especially in regard
to their personal economic fiefdoms.
Decommunization, like post-1945 de-Nazification in Germany, is
both a destructive and a constructive endeavor. On the one hand,
it abolishes authoritarian institutions; on the other, it brings about
the establishment and the consolidation of a political order that is
respectful of civic rights. Despite all their differences – and there were
many – Communism and fascism shared the same hostility to liber-
alism, middle-class values, individual autonomy, and the rule of law.
Decommunization, like de-Nazification, is a mental (and cultural and
psychological) process as much as it is a political, economic, and legal
one. However, moving away from the legacies and the difficulties of
the past’s burden should not invite or rely on moralistic authoritarian-
ism. The historical experience of Communism was not simply black
and white, victim versus perpetrator. Almost everyone – except the
most dignified dissidents – played at least some part in perpetuating
the regime. This shame is one of the main reasons why truth is so nec-
essary to ensuring a stable open society. The complexity of Communist
regimes is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges to designing an inter-
pretive and discursive idiom of an endeavor such as the Commission
in Romania. The logic of decommunization should not oppose a vir-
tuous, heroic camp of former victims and dissidents to a vicious one
made up of hypocritical post-Communist operators.
It is important to point out that Romania’s decision to confront its
Communist totalitarian past came so late primarily because of obsti-
nate opposition to such an undertaking from parties and personalities
directly or indirectly linked to the ancien régime through ideological
faith or simply authoritarian impulses. At the heart of the dilemma
in Romania was the question of how to treat the former Communists
and secret police, while simultaneously providing an environment in
which victims could be symbolically and legally recognized. In some
countries, as secret police files became accessible, dissidents discov-
ered that their own spouses had long spied on them. More than one
acclaimed civic rights activist turned out to have cooperated with the
secret police. Notions like forgiveness, forgetfulness, guilt, and respon-
sibility acquired explosive power. Memories of the dead, of the count-
less victims of the times of terror, as well as remembrance of long
decades of torpor, cowardice, and submission to the omnipotent party-

state apparatus, were used by different political actors to pursue their
own agendas.
Sinister Amnesia
In Romania and across Eastern Europe, in the aftermath of the fall
of Communism, willful obliviousness became particularly unsettling
as former Communists rose to new positions of power and influence.
As one astute American observer of the transition wrote, “The bal-
ance between forgiveness and justice is difficult to establish, especially
when those who are to be forgiven behave as if they deserve to be
thanked rather than chastised, when they suddenly speak of toler-
ance and virtue, when they abruptly wrap themselves in the cloak of
democratic values and an honest work ethic that they claim always
to have upheld.”13 One of the most blatant cases in the region was
that of Romania’s former president Ion Iliescu, who is still the hon-
orary president of the Social Democratic Party. During his two and a
half post-Communist presidential terms – which themselves generated
fierce local debates – Iliescu grasped democratic rhetoric, but his anti-
totalitarian commitment remained superficial. In the immediate after-
math of the December 1989 revolution, during those vital weeks for
the fate of the young Romanian democracy, Iliescu, as Romania’s first
democratically elected president, encouraged the revanchist reshuffle
of the old nomenklatura and the attacks against several democratic
blocs. This book will elaborate on his and his proxies’ toxic role in
the transition. Iliescu’s mindset remains imbued with somber visions
of “hostile enemies,” he still enjoys stigmatizing his opponents, and he
continues to oppose real decommunization.
In addition, formerly high-ranking officials of the Ceauşescu period,
especially those who wished to whitewash the regime’s history after
1964 (when the Romanian party took on a more autonomous line in
relation to the Soviet Union), entrenched in historiography and public
discourse the myth of well-intended, honest, hard-working Commu-
nists who simply did their best within the existing order. This political
myth fundamentally falsifies the meaning of what really happened and
13
Andrew Nagorski, The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the
New Eastern Europe (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 59.
Sinister Amnesia 27
blurs the distinction between those who defended the system and those
who fought for change. Ironically, its advocates share with the radi-
cal anti-Communists a homogeneous view of the Communist parties.
This vision (endorsed by both the extreme Right and the extreme Left)
refuses to admit that, in some countries, the elite were deeply divided
between reformers and hard-liners. Selective memory shies away from
acknowledging the fact that many dissidents were disillusioned ex-
Communists.14 This process of voluntary forgetfulness does not elim-
inate the need to come to terms with reality, but rather postpones it.
Denying a society’s fundamental need for truth and reconciliation is a
moral insult and over time can have devastating effects.
A formerly Communist society denied the right to think and
debate after such trauma will inevitably empower either radical anti-
Communists, like Viktor Orbán and the PiS, or still-radical former
Communists, like Iliescu and Putin. This was the curse of Romania
until 2006. Although the unrepentant radicals continue to ferociously
impede every minor move toward truthfulness, Romania has shown
signs since 2006 that it is on a long and painful, yet ultimately success-
ful, path to an open society and transparent government.
The elections of November and December 2004 resulted in the vic-
tory of an anti-Communist coalition and Traian Băsescu as Romania’s
president. In spite of political rivalries and the disintegration of the
initial government coalition, both the National Liberal and the Demo-
cratic parties understood the importance of reconciling with the past.
Especially after January 2006, both the liberal prime minister, Călin
Popescu-Tăriceanu (then head of the Liberal Party), and President Tra-
ian Băsescu (linked to the Democratic Party, which later became the
Democratic Liberal Party after its merger with a wing of the liber-
als) championed decommunization. At the other end of the political
spectrum, in an effort to derail these initiatives, former president Ion
14
Polish historian, Solidarity advisor, and prominent dissident Bronislaw
Geremek (who died in a tragic car accident in 2008) was a party member
between 1950 and 1968. He gave up his party membership to protest the
invasion of Czechoslovakia and the increasingly xenophobic turn of the Polish
Communist party, stating, “I considered that I had a special obligation to
oppose totalitarianism, communism, and the Party precisely because I had
previously been a member. I felt I was duty bound to reimburse the debt I
contracted for having carried the party card for twenty years.” See Bronislaw
Geremek, La Rupture: La Pologne du communisme à la democratie. Entretiens
avec Jacek Zakowski (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991).
Iliescu and other leaders of the Social Democratic Party (still domi-
nated by former nomenklatura figures) allied themselves with the ultra-
populist, jingoistic, and anti-Semitic “Greater Romania Party,” which
was headed until 2015 by the notorious Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a for-
mer Ceauşescu sycophant. The condemnation of the Communist dic-
tatorship would become one of the most hotly debated political, ideo-
logical, and moral issues in contemporary Romania. It was one of the
topics that proved most polarizing within the various political align-
ments of the country and became increasingly associated with Presi-
dent Băsescu’s political agenda from 2006 to 2014.
In January 2007, Romania acceded to the European Union, a few
years after having entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). This was a watershed in Romania’s history, a significant
moment in the history of Eastern Europe, and a test for the EU’s com-
mitment to accepting problematic candidates as long as they complied
with the major accession requirements; in effect, it showed that the EU
would drop twentieth-century Western aspirations regarding nations
with less-fortunate recent histories. The EU’s decision, in a way, finally
redeemed, at least for Romania, the West’s treason against all East-
ern Europeans at Yalta. Ken Jowitt accurately characterized successful
bids for integration with the European Union as the best news that
these Eastern European countries had received in the past five hundred
years.15
In 2001, in a controversial article published in the New York Review
of Books, the late Tony Judt argued that the real test for the Euro-
pean Union of its ability to incorporate countries with unstable gov-
ernment was Romania’s accession, considering its pending structural
problems. The piece generated anger among Romanian intellectuals
and produced reactions both positive and negative.16 Nevertheless, one
15
He made this statement in his keynote address titled “Revolutionary
Breakthroughs and the Fate of Leninism in East Central Europe” at the
conference, “Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in
East Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc” (November 29–30,
2007, Washington, DC).
16
Tony Judt’s article “Romania: Bottom of the Heap,” New York Review of
Books, November 1, 2001, came out in Romanian in a volume edited by
Mircea Mihăieş, which also included various polemical responses by influential
Romanian intellectuals; see Tony Judt, România: la fundul grămezii. Polemici,
controverse, pamflete (Iaşi: Polirom, 2002); see also Tony Judt’s discussion of
Eastern Europe in his masterful Post-War: A History of Europe since 1945; I
Lucky Germany, Cursed Eastern Europe 29
cannot deny the nature of the difficulties facing Romania, stemming

particularly from its catastrophic, largely self-imposed past. This chap-
ter documents and critically examines, in a comparative perspective,
Romania’s efforts to confront and judge its Communist past. The start-
ing point for its analysis is the country’s decision to work through its
Communist past, a late choice that came about in a convoluted fashion.
Still, once the process started in late 2005 and early 2006, it gathered
momentum and resulted in the state’s categorical condemnation of the
Communist dictatorship as illegitimate and criminal.
This chapter goes beyond various subjective stands based on per-
sonal resentment or vanity (expressed by people such as Iliescu, who
was a Leninist apparatchik for most of his life), emphasizing the
sociopolitical volatility of reassessing Romania’s dark past. For many,
the process was politically and symbolically offensive, defying their
ways of thinking that were deeply rooted in Communist times and had
survived within Romania’s transitional political culture. This mindset
preserves the elements of an ideological syncretism that we previously
labeled as the Communist-fascist baroque. The public sphere is still
haunted by unprocessed memories, by the refusal by some intellectuals
to acknowledge the magnitude of the anti-Semitic massacres that took
place, and even by efforts to remember fascist dictator Ion Antonescu
as a hero. Negationism is present also in attempts to portray the Com-
munist regime, especially the Ceauşescu period, as an expression of
national affirmation, as if the refusal to de-Stalinize was a public good.
Lucky Germany, Cursed Eastern Europe

In the 1990s, Germany set the most significant precedent for the Pres-
idential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship
in Romania (PCACDR). Between 1992 and 1998, the Bundestag cre-
ated two successive Enquete Commissions that investigated the his-
tory of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) dictatorship and its effects on
German unity.17 The first commission (1992–1995) generated eigh-
teen volumes (15,187 pages) of testimony, documentation, analysis,
and political evaluation; the proceedings of two plenary debates of the
[VT] discuss the moral and political dilemmas of decommunization in

Fantasies of Salvation.
17
A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Bundestag on its work were also published.18 At the conclusion of the

second Enquete Commission in 1998, the state established the Stiftung
zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, a foundation to continue its work.
This open acknowledgment by German politicians of the crimes of the
past was a watershed, a point of no return for decommunization. Trials
took place, crimes against humanity were examined, victims publicly
voiced their opinions, and the state implemented targeted recommen-
dations, all in an effort to create genuinely transparent, effective poli-
cies and legislation that would facilitate their coming to terms with the
past.
There were similarities between the Enquete Commissions and the
PCACDR in their methodology and mandates: to analyze the Com-
munist past through the study of (1) power structures and decision-
making mechanisms utilized by the regime; (2) the functions and mean-
ing of ideology, inclusionary patterns, and disciplinary practices within
the state and society; (3) the legal system and policing methods; (4) the
role of various churches during the different phases of state socialism;
and (5) the role of dissidence, of civil disobedience, and, in Romania’s
case, of the 1989 revolution. In both countries, the commissions were
set up to evaluate problems of responsibility, guilt, and the continu-
ation of the Communist era’s political, cultural, social, and economic
structures into the post-Communist period.19 Thus the overall purpose
of both bodies was to establish the basis for what Avishai Margalit
called an ethics of memory.20
The PCACDR’s activity was generally guided by Hannah Arendt’s
vision of responsibility and culpability, summed up in her statement,
“What is unprecedented about totalitarianism is not only its ideo-
logical content, but the event itself of totalitarian domination.”21 As
with the Enquete Commissions, its findings also reflected the work of
18
Offe and Poppe, “Transitional Justice in the German Democratic Republic and
in Unified Germany,” p. 266.
19
For details on the mandate of the German Commissions, see Hermann Weber,
“Rewriting the History of the German Democratic Republic: The Work of the
Commission of Inquiry,” in Reinhard Alter and Peter Monteath, eds.,
Rewriting the German Past (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997),
pp. 157–173.
20
Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2002).
21
Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954 (New York, NY:
Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 405; emphasis added.
experts and academics, but we should bear in mind that “a reflexive

academic history in the twenty-first century can no longer afford to
be only academic, [while] a reflexive kind of history writing does not
only need to problematize its (epistemological) choices of representa-
tion, but also its political and ethical investments.”22 In Romania, the
condemnation of the Communist regime was an act that fundamen-
tally admitted the catastrophic nature of the presentism that defines
the post-dictatorial nation’s history. This was the first step. The aim of
subsequent steps was to acknowledge the presuppositions, methods,
and approaches that are required to historicize a past suffused with
normalized trauma. Along these lines, Andrew Schaap adds a much-
needed nuance by noting that the kind of reconciliation brought about
by such a commission is, more often than not, a way to “condition
the possibility of politics by framing a potentially agonistic clash of
world views within the context of a community that is ‘not yet.’”23 In
other words, the goal would therefore be to turn hostility into “civic
friendship.”
Yet the German process fundamentally differed from that in
Romania, because only half of the country went through the process
of dealing with the past; in this sense, one cannot speak of it as a
truly national process. In Germany, half of the country was clean, hav-
ing been untainted by a Communist past, whereas in Romania almost
every politician, judge, journalist, civil servant, lawyer, and even cit-
izen was guilty of lying for decades, of propping up the Communist
regime in exchange for avoiding violence. Romania did not have the
democratic experience that Germany had, and so decommunization
has been admittedly more complex there – though no less justified.
The Enquete Commissions’ investigations (and those of the later
foundation) of the SED dictatorship were carried out in a unified
Germany with the overwhelming support of the Bundestag, under cir-
cumstances of a thorough delegitimation of the Communist party and
state, and in the context of a national consensus regarding the crimi-
nal nature of the Stasi. Only the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS),
which merged with the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Jus-
tice to form Die Linke, “the Left,” in 2007, tried to obstruct the work
22
Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, and Jay Winter, eds., Performing the Past:
Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2010), pp. 70–71.
23
Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 4.
of the Enquete Commissions; as the SED’s successor party, the PDS

was not eager to address the wrongs of East Germany’s political past
or the allegations that some current members had previously collab-
orated with the Stasi. Except for the PDS, however, the work of the
Enquete Commissions was largely welcomed by German society.
The 1992 commission, formally called the Commission of Inquiry for
the Assessment of History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship
in Germany, was made up of sixteen members of Parliament (each with
a respective alternate member), eleven experts, and several research and
documentation groups. It held a total of 40 hearings and created 148
scholarly reports based on a survey with 95 questions. Yet, even a body
of this scope and institutionalized level was not able to complete its set
of investigative objectives, according to Hermann Weber.24
In Romania, in contrast, Iliescu and Tudor fought against allowing
a proper debate about Communism in Parliament in December 2006
because they know the impact that an open discussion in the national
legislature could have. In terms of funding, scope, and support, the
German commissions were much more expansive than the Romanian
one.
In contrast to the situation in Germany, there was a flagrant absence
of expiation, penance, or regret in Romania. Without such actions,
any act of reconciliation draws dangerously close to whitewashing the
past. We agree with political scientist Lavinia Stan, who stressed that
“the country’s bloody exit from communism and the revolutionary
leaders’ decision to summarily try, condemn, and kill Ceauşescu took
the forgive-and-forget option off the table.”25 The situation was made
worse as Ion Iliescu and the Communist Party’s successors entrenched
amnesia within state institutions, policies, public opinion, and the gen-
eral political culture. They avoided imposing genuine legal account-
ability for those involved in crimes and abuses that took place between
1945 and 1989, as well as any discussion of the ideological fanaticism
that led to these crimes.26 It would have been unrealistic to expect the
24
Weber, “Rewriting the History,” p. 172.
25
Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania, p. 30.
26
For example, see the pertinent analysis in Grosescu and Ursachi’s article about
the trials of the Romania revolution, in Raluca Grosescu and Raluca Ursachi,
eds., Justiţia penală de tranziţie. De la Nürnberg la postcomunismul românesc
(Iaşi: Polirom, 2009).
politicians who had legitimized themselves via obscurant truth-telling

about a traumatic, guilty past to express a conciliatory position toward
the Commission’s activities and Final Report. Contrary to historian
James Mark’s statement, and to our knowledge, there is no record of
an official call from the political Left in Romania “for a Reconciliation
Commission to bring together both sides in a shared re-evaluation of
the past.”27
Redemption is impossible without atonement, and atonement is not
possible without what Ágnes Heller called those “pangs of conscience”
that can be converted into shame following their confession. Democ-
racy and memory are inseparable. Individuals without any moral direc-
tion would be unable to find a road to the temple, to the church. They
would be, as Polish poet Aleksander Wat once put it, “children in the
fog.” Reconciliation is not, and must not be, bound to the premise of
moral absolution. For example, two historians who made their careers
during the Communist era, Dinu C. Giurescu and Florin Constantiniu,
were invited to be members of the Commission. They refused. Later,
the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS)
uncovered documents showing their extensive involvement with the
activities of the Securitate in domestic academia and the regime’s cul-
tural diplomacy. After the president’s 2006 condemnation speech, both
were very vocal critics of the Report, promoting normalizing nar-
ratives toward the Ceauşescu regime. Especially between 2005 and
2007, often the most vehement protesters of the Commission and of
its Report were complicit in the former regime’s activities. These indi-
viduals had not yet accepted personal responsibility for their actions
during the Communist period: their opposition was rooted in their
refusal to come to terms with their own personal pasts. While they
did not admit it, their opposition originated from their shame. Yet
the personal feelings of shame that formerly collaborative individu-
als might feel is an unacceptable justification to hinder a society’s
detoxification.
The transition from an illegitimate and criminal regime to a human-
rights-respecting democracy is, to paraphrase Charles Villa-Vicencio,
27
James Mark, The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past
in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010),
p. 37.
a process in situ. It implies a series of compromises and negotiations.

However, the act of healing a community does not always indicate the
presence of any moral consensus around a shared traumatic past. Yet
the historical justice and the collective memory provided by an Enquete
Commission can open the path to post-transitional political realign-
ment. The conclusions of President Băsescu’s 2006 speech condemn-
ing Romania’s Communist regime describe this path of overcoming
the past:
We thought that we could forget communism, but it did not want to forget
us. Thus, the condemnation of this past arises as a priority of the present,
without which we shall go on bearing something like the burden of an
uncured disease. The memory of the crimes committed by the communist
regime in Romania helps us to move forward with more decisive steps, to
achieve the changes that are so necessary, but it also helps us to appreciate
the democratic framework in which we live . . . We have escaped the terror
once and for all, we have escaped the fear, and so no one has the right to
question our fundamental rights any longer. The lesson of the past proves
to us that any regime that humiliates its citizens cannot last and does not
deserve to exist. Now, every citizen can freely demand that his inalienable
rights shall be respected, and the institutions of state must work in such a
way that people will no longer feel humiliated . . . I am sure that we shall leave
behind us the state of social mistrust and pessimism in which the years of
transition submerged us, if, together, we make a genuine examination of the
national conscience. All that I want is for us to build the future of democ-
racy in Romania and our national identity on clean ground [emphases in
original].28
The replacement of a criminal regime with a democracy founded

on justice, tolerance, trust, and truth can reach a positive outcome
only through the acceptance and disclosure of individual and politi-
cal responsibilities; the process requires a social rebirth founded on
real, systematic reform.
The German Parliament’s mandate for the Enquete Commissions
was the tangible sign of a political consensus on the need to master
28
Message of the President of Romania, Mr Traian Băsescu, addressed to
Parliament on the occasion of the presentation of the Report of the Presidential
Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (the
Parliament of Romania, December 18, 2006), in Tismaneanu et al., Raport
Final, p. 18.
and overcome the totalitarian past. It was a serious commitment by

the state to investigate and research the complexities of the Communist
phenomenon in the country. In contrast, Romania’s Presidential Com-
mission lacked legislative backing and had minimum financial support,
with its members working pro bono. It was funded out of the presi-
dential administration’s budget, and its total expenses did not exceed
40,000 USD. Its members received no stipends, only reimbursement
for travel, lodging, and telephone expenses. The experts were paid
the symbolic amount of approximately 100 USD per month. Need-
less to say, this did not prevent the nationalist and neo-Communist
mouthpieces from claiming that the Commission had been a mate-
rial godsend for its members [VT]. Romania’s Parliament proved to
be a site of both visible and tacit opposition to and subversion of
the president’s initiative. Moreover, various political factions contin-
uously promoted opposing, nostalgic, and even negationist interpreta-
tions advanced by government-funded bodies such as the Institute of
the Romanian Revolution (chaired by Iliescu) or the Institute for the
Investigation of Totalitarianism (created in the early 1990s and dom-
inated by nationalist politicians and historians). Therefore, the Com-
mission did not have the infrastructure, the resources, or the consen-
sus to launch a countrywide, state-supported campaign to implement
the Report’s conclusions and policy recommendations. The permanent
squabbles between parties and their representatives, accompanied by
the strong negationist trend characterizing Romania’s political realm,
prevented the Report and the Commission from having a structural
or social impact similar to that of the Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der
SED-Diktatur.
Political scientist Lavinia Stan, citing data from opinion polls
released in the aftermath of the condemnation speech (especially
between 2010 and 2012), noted that the Commission “informed the
society about communist crimes, but at the same time the number
of Romanians knowledgeable about the past did not significantly
increase.”29 However, the absence of institutional and financial sup-
port for the promotion of the Report’s findings and of its recommenda-
tions may not be solely responsible for this lack of awareness. In 1998,
a MarkData survey “found that a majority of whites, coloureds, and
29
Indians, and a third of Africans, believed the TRC [Truth and Reconcili-
ation Commission in South Africa, n.a.] to be biased and unfair.”30 The
sample consisted of 2,500 persons, making it much larger and more
representative than the samples employed in either the opinion polls
or in the student focus groups cited by Lavinia Stan. Did this finding
diminish the impact and consequences of the TRC? No, it merely indi-
cated that the interplay between the country’s specific conditions and
the general public’s expectations about working through the past is not
dependent on official discourses on recent history. In the literature on
transitional justice and the international human rights community, the
TRC was generally perceived as a successful model to be analyzed and
even replicated by others; there is thus little wonder why, following its
deliberations and recommendations, the international community fell
in love with truth commissions per se. Sometimes, such a commission
“can be viewed as a success simply by virtue of completing its work,”
while at other times these bodies can prematurely collapse “due to
a lack of funds and the commissioners’ frustration with the lack of
government and military cooperation,” as they did in Bolivia and the
Philippines.31
But there are also instances in which such a “trauma laboratory”
was altered so that it failed to assign responsibility for the crimes of
old. The last president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Vojislav
Koštunica, established the Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Com-
mission on February 22, 2002, and although it had a three-year inves-
tigative warrant, it ceased to exist after only twelve months. Despite
its mandate to research “the social, inter-communal and political con-
flicts in the period from 1980 to 2000,” document “its own work,” and
establish “cooperation with related commissions in neighboring coun-
tries,” Koštunica’s commission did not issue any report during its short
life. For Koštunica (who, incidentally, also opposed the extradition of
Slobodan Milošević to The Hague), the whole point was to rewrite
history – or, at least, the version written by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – “with a fair attribution
30
Robert I. Rotberg, “Truth Commissions and the Provision of Truth, Justice,
and Reconciliation,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth v.
Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2000), p. 18.
31
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies: The
Impact on Human Rights and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 8.
of blame to others, whether Croats, Bosnians, Americans or British, for

their part in the tragedy.”32
As British historian Timothy Garton Ash has argued, Koštunica
was not interested in the kind of “public theatre of a South African-
style truth commission” because – in his own words – he did not
want a “soap opera.”33 Most states of the former Yugoslavia were
in need of a double transition, one from Communism to democracy
and another from war to peace; unfortunately, the Western Balkans
failed in both arenas. While the ICTY produced relevant evidence
for the barbaric crimes of the 1990s and tried many of the promi-
nent culprits, it failed to convict Milošević (he passed away from
a heart attack during his trial), and its other verdicts evoked deep
anti-American and anti-Western feelings. It seems that, in the Western
Balkans, transitional justice mechanisms (whether a tribunal or truth
commission) had to cater to more intricate victimization features than
in any other post-totalitarian or postconflict society. The Serbian com-
mission would have been much more successful had it stuck to the text-
book definition of a truth commission: to “uncover the details about
past human rights abuses” and to “identify the faults that produced
enabling conditions.”34 But past utopian ideologies and future politi-
cal ambitions of individuals such as Koštunica or Iliescu can effectively
destroy the process, counteracting a society’s effort to become tolerant
and diverse.
In assessing the effectiveness of the Romanian Commission, the first
obstacle is the difficulty in quantifying the amount of work it dissemi-
nated. One way to address this issue is to analyze the number of refer-
ences to the condemnation speech and the Report’s content in the mass
media and in public debates, as well as in scholarship on the Commu-
nist period. The second obstacle is that the opinion polls used by Stan
may have produced skewed results because the questions used some
of the key terminology of the condemnation speech. For example, in
September 2010, respondents were asked, “In your opinion, was the
communist regime in Romania illegitimate, in the sense that it reached
power and maintained it through falsifying the will of the majority
of its citizens?” To this question, 42 percent of those polled answered
32
Timothy Garton Ash, “A Nation in Denial,” The Guardian, March 7, 2002;
www.theguardian.com/media/2002/mar/07/comment.yugoslavia.
33
Ash, “A Nation in Denial.”
34
Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions, pp. 10–11.
“yes,” 31 percent, “no,” and 27 percent, “I do not know/I do not wish

to answer.” This same poll also asked the question, “Was the com-
munist regime in Romania a criminal one?” to which 41 percent of
respondents chose “no,” 37 percent, “yes,” and 22 percent, “I do not
know/I do not wish to answer.”35 These figures, along with those of
other opinion polls from the past years, reveal a sharp division within
the Romanian population in their views of the Communist historical
experience. We doubt that knowledgeability is the crux of the matter,
but this division may be caused by conflicting memories about overlap-
ping pasts that comprise not only crimes and abuses but also survival,
self-fulfillment, and individual involvement in the regime’s more than
four decades of existence.
In a sense, the Romanian Commission was more similar to the com-
missions for truth and reconciliation that were created in South Africa,
Chile, Argentina, and Rwanda than to Germany’s Enquete Commis-
sions. It had the features of a truth commission as identified by Priscilla
Hayner: it focused on the past; it investigated patterns of abuse over
a period of time, rather than a specific event; it was a temporary body
that completed its work with the submission of a report; and it was
officially sanctioned, authorized, and empowered by the state.36 How-
ever, there are two main elements that distinguish it from cases such
as South Africa or Germany. First, it lacked a parliamentary mandate,
which meant that the Romanian Commission had no decision-making
power and no subpoena prerogative. Furthermore, it did not have the
legal power to indict individuals, nor did it have the power to rec-
ommend charges – unlike, for example, the Argentine commission.
Its aim of truth-telling was an intangible goal meant to help society,
not achieve justice. Second, it did not rely on the collection of tes-
timonies from victims of the Communist regime; rather, it took on
the mission to provide scholarly evidence for its conclusions and rec-
ommendations. This did not, however, entail that the voices of those
who suffered would be blocked behind a pseudo-Rankean analysis of
wie es eigentlich gewesen (a reference to understanding “what actu-
ally happened”). The Commission’s main objective was to impose
35
For the results of the opinion poll in September 2010, see www.iiccr.ro/ro/
sondaje_iiccmer_csop. The same link provides information on similar opinion
polls from December 2011, May 2011, and November 2010.
36
Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth
Commissions (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), p. 14.
the primacy of an ethical framework, one that went beyond the trau-
matic experience that could be recorded by means of a dry historical
narrative. In other words, the Commission’s work was both analytical
and therapeutical. Its mission was not reduced to factual recording, but
it included a normative component, as well.
The introduction to the Final Report clearly states its purpose:
The condemnation of the communist regime is today first of all a moral,
intellectual, social and political obligation. The Romanian democratic and
pluralist state can and must do it. The acknowledgement of these dark and
tragic pages of our national recent history is vital for the young generations
to be conscious of the world their parents were forced to live in. Romania’s
future rests on mastering its past, henceforth on condemning the commu-
nist regime as an enemy to human society. If we are not to do it today, here
and now, we shall burden ourselves with the further complicity, by practice
of silence, with the totalitarian Evil. In no way do we mean by this collec-
tive guilt. We emphasize the importance of learning from a painful past, of
learning how was this possible, and of departing from it with compassion
and sorrow for its victims.37
The project and activities of the Commission benefited from the ear-
lier work of the International Commission on the Holocaust (ICHR)
in Romania, which was established in October 2003 and submitted
its Final Report in November 2004. The main difference between the
two endeavors is that the proceedings of the ICHR could not be per-
ceived as a direct threat to the Romanian citizenry or as involving a
personal stake in contemporary society and politics; this is because
many members of the three groups involved in the Holocaust (the vic-
tims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders) were no longer living. In
contrast, many of the perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of the Com-
munist regime’s crimes were still alive and involved in politics and
society – with some of them even holding seats in the Romanian Par-
liament. The moment of December 18, 2006, when exponents of the
radical Left and Right booed President Băsescu’s presentation of the
findings of the Commission, demonstrated that a genuine democracy
cannot function properly in the absence of historical consciousness.
An authentic democratic community cannot be built on the denial of
past crimes, abuses, and atrocities. The past is not another country.
It cannot be wished away – the more that is attempted, the more we
37
Raport Final, pp. 35–36.
witness the return of repressed memories. (For example, consider the

recurring efforts to prosecute former Mexican president Luis Echever-
ría for his involvement in the 1968 student killings.38 ) For the first time
in post-1989 Romania, the Commission rejected outright the practices
of institutionalized forgetfulness and generated a national conversa-
tion about long-denied and occulted moments of the past, including
instances of collaboration and complicity.39 Representing both state
authorities and important sections of civil society, it admitted truths
to the public that broke a hegemonic dominance of partial, mediated,
and mystified knowledge about the Communist past.
Memory for Memory’s Sake, at Least

Did this project of the condemnation of the Communist dictatorship
fall in the category of what Adam Michnik called the “mantra of anti-
Communism”? Michnik noted quite a few similarities between some
forms of anti-Communism, especially those in Poland, and the former
antifascism of the Comintern and post-1945 periods. He saw both as
mere forms that hid a deeper structure focused on political bickering
and neo-authoritarian tendencies:
Anti-Communism, like anti-Fascism, does not itself attest to anyone’s

righteousness. The old lie – the lie of communists settling scores with
fascism – has been replaced by a new lie: the lie of anticommunists settling
scores with communism . . . Communism froze collective memory; the fall of
communism, therefore, brought with it, along with a return to democracy,
paratotalitarian formations, ghosts from another era . . . The debate about
38
James C. McKinley Jr., “Federal Judge Overturns Ruling against Mexico’s
Former President in 1968 Student Killings,” New York Times, July 13, 2007;
www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/americas/13mexico.html?_r=0.
39
See Bogdan Cristian Iacob, “O clarificare necesara: Condamnarea regimului
comunist din Romania între text si context” (A Necessary Clarification: The
Condemnation of the Communist Regime in Romania between Text and
Context), Idei in Dialog, no. 8 (35), August 2007, pp. 12–15; no. 9 (36),
September 2007, pp. 37–39; no. 10 (37), October 2007, pp. 33–34; no. 11 (38)
November 2007, pp. 21–22. By the same author also see “Comunismul
românesc între tipologie şi concept I–II” (Romanian Communism between
Typology and Concept), Idei in Dialog, no. 4 (43), April 2008 and no. 5 (44),
May 2008; see Cosmina Tanasoiu, “The Tismaneanu Report: Romania Revists
Its Past,” Problems of Post Communism (July–August 2007), pp. 60–69.
Memory for Memory’s Sake, at Least 41
communism has thus become, through blackmail and discrimination against

political enemies, a tool in the struggle for political power.40
Both Adam Michnik and Václav Havel were active in Central Europe’s
dissident counterculture; they shared the philosophical perspective of
civic liberalism, and both noticed, as soon as the old system collapsed,
the ominous rise of new fundamentalisms, radicalisms, and illiberal
demagogues. The challenges facing the new post-Communist states,
they argued, were, first and foremost, moral and then largely political
and legal. For Michnik, decommunization was justified morally only
to the extent that it would not result in what he feared (and still fears to
this day) to be the temptation to engage in witch hunts. For many years,
as editor of Poland’s most influential daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, Adam
Michnik has opposed radical decommunization. This stand, founded
on moral grounds, antagonized many of his former friends from the
independent, self-governed union Solidarność. And the more he was
under critical attack, the more Michnik protested what he denounced
as the logic of vindictiveness. In other words, he feared the pitfalls of
an obsessive fixation on righting the wrongs of the past. The problem
with his position is that it tends to extend this conciliatory perspective
beyond Poland’s borders, to present it as valid for all post-Communist
countries. And even in Poland and among communities of Polish intel-
lectuals abroad, there are reservations about what many perceive as
Adam Michnik’s much too lenient attitude toward the “comrades.” I
[VT] am a close friend of Michnik’s, and I share many of his views,
but his stance clearly does not apply to the Romanian situation. One
thousand people were killed in the streets during Romania’s revolution,
while Poland’s was bloodless. This simple fact epitomizes the irrele-
vancy of the Polish solution to the Romanian experience.
As a passionate defender of memory, Michnik has very often uttered
his misgivings about lustration, the policy of limiting the participa-
tion of former Communists in government. Václav Havel was less
adamant on these issues. While sharing to a large extent Michnik’s
worries, Havel remained convinced that the origins of the totalitar-
ian evil were in Communist ideology itself. As mentioned, he was one
of the initiators, together with Joachim Gauck, Vytautas Landsbergis,
40
Adam Michnik, “Mantra rather than Discourse,” Peace and Mind Symposium,
Common Knowledge, 8, no. 3 (2002), pp. 516–525. Also see his Letters from
Freedom.
and other prominent former dissidents, of the 2009 Prague Declaration

calling for a merger of European memory based on the recognition of
the common criminality of both Communism and fascism. This was a
position Michnik could barely endorse; in fact, he did not sign the dec-
laration. On the other hand, as president, Havel publicly criticized the
1991 Lustration Law for some of its provisions, which included irrele-
vant entities such as the People’s Militias among the main Communist
organizations whose members needed to be vetted and lustrated.
Yet there is a history of collaboration between dissident groups in
the two countries, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia, and Havel’s
most influential political-philosophical essay, The Power of the Pow-
erless, was commissioned by Michnik during an encounter between
some members of Charter 77 and some members of the Committee for
Workers’ Defense (KOR) in the Tatra mountains. Before being pub-
lished by the Czechoslovak samizdat, the essay came out in Poland. It
was to become, together with Michnik’s own essay The New Evolu-
tionism, one of the most authoritatively moral and strategic documents
generated by Eastern and Central European dissidents.
Both Adam Michnik and Václav Havel invoked memory to argue
against any form of extremism, of moral absolutism. In a conversa-
tion with Havel, Michnik said, “We cannot complete the revolution,
because then we stop being people of freedom and become Jacobins
and Bolsheviks. In that case, we take freedom away, as we say: ‘This
power is good.’ We are not saying: ‘You must choose. If you choose
badly, you’ll have a bad government, but the choice is yours.’”41 In
dialogue with Havel, he continued, “Don’t you think that the call to
finish the revolution is in essence antidemocratic?”42 Havel’s response
reflected his vision of the relationship between politics and morality.
He refused to see a chasm between those who were elected and the
ones who elected them, between government and the people. The two
former dissidents agreed on the ultimate principles, yet they saw polit-
ical realities differently: one as a public intellectual, a journalist, and a
historian; the other as a public intellectual, a playwright, and a political
thinker turned statesman. Michnik and Havel were close friends, and
Elzbieta Matynia’s recent edited volume of the conversations between
41
Elzbieta Matynia, ed. and trans., An Uncanny Era: Conversations between
Vaclav Havel & Adam Michnik (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014),
pp. 82–83.
42
Matynia, An Uncanny Era.
Memory for Memory’s Sake, at Least 43
the two is also about friendship. In a way, this book was a tribute to
Havel’s Socratic ideal of living in truth as the only way to safeguard
one’s dignity. When Havel turned seventy-five, shortly before his death,
Michnik wrote a superb essay titled When Socrates Becomes Pericles.
The piece concludes with this apt description of Havel’s life in politics:
Who was he, then, in politics? He was – and we will repeat Havel’s own
metaphor – like Baudelaire’s albatross, forever hovering slightly above the
ground because “a pair of colossal wings” prevented him from walking. This
albatross of Czech politics stubbornly wrestled with a quite unpolitical ques-
tion – the question of the meaning of life. For him, it was identical to the
religious question of the ‘absolute horizon.43
As an ideology-driven tyranny, Communism demanded a continuous

and systematic onslaught against individuals in a permanent attempt
to destroy their individuality and turn them into obedient cogs in the
wheel. For Havel, the answer to this unbearable humiliation was the
search for dignity in everyday life, the rediscovery of freedom through
small gestures of civil disobedience, the affirmation via such endeavors
of the power of the powerless. This was, and still is, the meaning of
anti-politics: the refusal of utopian schemes of societal revolutionary
improvement, the rejection of any social engineering.
In Romania, the condemnation of the Communist regime occurred
with a consistent view to reconciliation, consensus, reform, and work-
ing through the past. It did not serve either as a weapon of Presi-
dent Băsescu against his enemies or as a means of rehabilitating any
xenophobic and/or antidemocratic, pro-Communist movements (as in
the case of Poland with Roman Dmowski’s ultranationalist Endecja).
Starting in late April 2006, some sections of the Romanian mass
media indulged in the misuse of Michnik’s ideas. Many individuals
who hardly had liberal-democratic pedigrees, such as former president
Ion Iliescu, former prime minister Adrian Năstase, and Social Demo-
cratic Party ideologue Adrian Severin, used the principles professed by
the former Polish dissident Michnik to justify their lack of penance,
their amnesia, and their opportunism.44 They missed (or conveniently
43
Matynia, An Uncanny Era, p. 212.
44
Adam Michnik was shocked when informed that his ideas on “Bolshevik-style
anti-Communism” (which cannot be understood apart from the context of the
Polish debates and without taking into account the post-1989 tribulations of
Solidarity) were invoked by various former nomenklatura members in
ignored) the fact that Michnik’s positions originate in his wariness of

neo-Jacobin radicalism and vindictive rigorism, especially when advo-
cated by those who never uttered a single word against Communism
before the collapse of the system – or, even worse, by those who enthu-
siastically collaborated and compromised with the regime. Michnik is
profoundly concerned about les enragés, whom he suspects of hold-
ing double moral standards, of Pharisaism, and even of irresponsi-
ble adventurism. Still, from our readings of Michnik’s writings, he
does not oppose the idea of moral justice, and he is, without a doubt,
an irreconcilable adversary of amnesia. The Romanian philosopher,
Horia-Roman Patapievici, offered a brilliant interpretation of Mich-
nik’s thought:
The unpopular ethical choices made by Michnik reveal the imprisoned com-
rade who never betrayed his friends. Those who experienced the penitentiary
colony of communism know that only one thing can save you from treason:
love. A love greater than any idea. In the name of this love did Michnik
take the liberty of provoking those who transformed into occupation the
act of confusing la revanche (maybe entitled) with justice (maybe justified).
He chose the most difficult path because, and one fells it in his every line,
because he loved too much.45
We claim that Michnik endorses an anti-utopian, anti-absolutist, anti-

monopolist position toward the past, a humanist perspective that is
rational and empathetic with victims. He has no doubt that, at the end
of the day, we must distinguish between truth and lie, good and evil,
freedom and barbarism. He once wrote in 2009,
We believe that communism was a falsehood from the beginning. We try,

though, to understand the people who were engaged in communism, their
heterogeneous motivations and their biographies, sometimes heroic and
tragic, always naive and brought to naught. We do this, driven perhaps by
a conviction hidden somewhere in our subconscious that it’s necessary to
distinguish the sin from the sinner: the sin we condemn – the sinner we try
to listen to, to understand.46
Romania, with the purpose of blocking the clarification of the past (VT,
personal conversation with Adam Michnik, Bucharest, Romania, June 9, 2007).
45
Horia-Roman Patapievici, “Adam Michnik şi etica iubirii,” Evenimentul Zilei,
June 25, 2009. A longer version of the text was published in Idei în Dialog,
July 1, 2009, as “Confruntarea cu trecutul: soluţia Michnik.”
46
Shore, The Taste of Ashes, p. 343.
Debates on New Values 45
The reverberations of the past are part of contemporary polemics and

define competing visions of the future. Indeed, it is quite often in rela-
tion to the past, especially a traumatic one, that political actors identify
themselves and engage in competitions with their opponents. Review-
ing Jan T. Gross’s book Fear, David Engel wrote,
Unless Polishness, whatever its constituent characteristics, is transmitted
from generation to generation through mother’s milk, as it were, nothing
that Gross or anyone else might say about any part of the Polish community
in 1946, 1941, or any other year more than six decades in the past neces-
sarily reflects upon any part of the community today. It can do so only to
the extent that the present community continues to affirm the values impli-
cated in past events. Thus Fear or any other work of history can legitimately
be neither offered nor read as a vehicle for contemporary self-examination
except insofar as it prompts contemporaries to question strongly whether
they remain committed to those values.47
The post-Communist debates on the past should be seen as indica-

tors of contemporary ideological cleavages and tensions, confirming
Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the public use of history as an anti-
dote to oblivion, denial, and partisan distortions: “It is especially these
dead who have a claim to the weak anamnestic power of a solidarity
that later generations can continue to practice only in the medium of a
remembrance that is repeatedly renewed, often desperate, and contin-
ually on one’s mind.”48 The dead can reflect a duty to do justice as a
form of remembrance, and memory plays a critical role in the process.
Debates on New Values

At the same time, it seems to us a tertium non datur that any authen-
tic liberal is an unequivocal anti-totalitarian. Building on the title of
one of Lionel Trilling’s books, The Moral Obligation to Be Intel-
ligent, we focus here on the imperative of being intelligent from a
political and philosophical standpoint – that is, being antifascist and
47
See David Engel, “On Continuity and Discontinuity in Polish-Jewish Relations:
Observations on Fear,” East European Politics and Societies, 21, no. 3
(Summer 2007), pp. 538–539; emphasis added. See also Jan T. Gross, Fear:
Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation
(New York, NY: Random House, 2006).
48
See Jürgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the
Historians’ Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 233.
anti-Communist with no remorse or hesitation. This spirit was embod-

ied, among others, by the liberal socialist Rosselli brothers in interwar
Italy and the New York intellectuals grouped under the umbrella of
the Partisan Review (from Edmund Wilson, Philip Rahv, and Dwight
Macdonald to Trilling, Hannah Arendt, and Susan Sontag). We are
also thinking about the French school of Socialisme ou barbarie of Cor-
nelius Castoriadis and Jacques Lefort and about Raymond Aron, Pierre
Manent, Jules Ferry, Boris Souvarine, Alain Finkielkraut, Edgar Morin,
André Glucksmann, Jacques François Revel, Alain Besançon, Tzvetan
Todorov, François Furet, and Tony Judt. Obviously, we include the
Eastern European dissidents, such as Andrei Sakharov, Adam Mich-
nik, Václav Havel, János Kis, Zhelyu Zhelev, and Leszek Kołakowski.
We also have in mind literary figures such as Arthur Koestler, Eugene
Ionesco, Czesław Miłosz, or François Fejtő. Among Romanian criti-
cal intellectuals, we include in this category Monica Lovinescu, Vir-
gil Ierunca, Gabriel Liiceanu, Andrei Pleşu, and Horia-Roman Pat-
apievici. The bottom line is that, as long as Communism remains a
residual structure that poisons and pollutes Romanian society, anti-
Communism remains salient. We are still trying to overcome Leninist
legacies, which are most visible in the public culture, in which rep-
resentatives of the velvet counter-revolution and their heirs continue
to stigmatize, isolate, and deprecate those who refuse the reproduc-
tion of the former’s “original democracy,” ethno-populism, or hybrid
neo-authoritarianism based on the synthesis of left-wing and/or right-
wing extremisms. In this respect, it is also important to remind readers
that the “use of the term legacy to describe the relationship between
communist-era influences and postcommunist outcomes took off fol-
lowing Ken Jowitt’s discussion of ‘the Leninist legacy’ in his 1992 vol-
ume New World Disorder . . . Jowitt’s phrase ‘Leninist legacy’ describes
a systematic, negative condition, or syndrome, that pervaded multiple
aspects of political, social, and cultural life.”49
A caveat to this discussion is that, just as in the case of anti-
Communism, antifascism should not be taken as monolithic. We agree
with Dan Stone’s critique of post–Cold War attempts to homoge-
nize antifascism as simply a Stalinist ruse. The Stalinists exploited
antifascism, no doubt, but there was much more to it than mere
49
Jody LaPorte and Danielle N. Lussier, “What Is the Leninist Legacy? Asse-
ssing Twenty Years of Scholarship,” Slavic Review, 70, no. 3 (Fall 2011),
pp. 639–640.
Communist propaganda. Agreeing with Tony Judt, among others,

Stone insists that “although textual, intellectual, cultural, or economic
contexts are important, the political context in which texts are writ-
ten is the most compelling way to situate them.”50 This is a sobering
methodological principle for anyone attempting to historicize any nar-
ratives of emancipation from the burden or specter of dictatorship.
The intellectual genealogy we mentioned earlier represents for us the
legacy of civic anti-Communism, the “ideological” foundation for my
[VT’s] involvement in the Commission and its Final Report. It means
becoming aware of the horrors that have arisen from the decision of
a self-designated minority to carry out a historic mission by imposing
their creed on the people seen as their subject matter for the exper-
iment. The masses were condemned to happiness. Anti-Communism
presupposes the obligation to uncover the secret springs of such an
ideological mirage, the ways by which so many scintillating minds suc-
cumbed to those deadly chimeras. Hence the importance of the testi-
monies of those who knew the system from within and could testify
about its duplicity, its “new class” hypocrisy, and the misery of this
“new faith.” They could also attest to the fact that this was, in reality,
a regime born of nihilism and epistemic arrogance, which represented
the secularized religion of social hatred.
In 2009, journalist Piotr Smolar wrote a well-informed article for
the French daily Le Monde on the situation of the Romanian archives,
remembrance, truth, mystifications, and forgetfulness. His biography
equips him to be an exceptionally astute observer of the history of
Central and Eastern Europe, his father Aleksander Smolar being one
of the student leaders at the University of Warsaw’s uprising in March
1968. When Piotr interviewed me [VT], I told him that the Romanian
totalitarian experience had been unique in so many ways (for exam-
ple, Ceauşescu conceived the former Securitate as his own Praetorian
Guard, his own political police force independent from Moscow). We
believe that Smolar was right to share with Western readerships his
disquietude regarding the Romanian Communist legacies:
It is difficult to explain the magnitude of evil twenty years later. To faithfully

re-enact the use of surveillance, of fear, intimidation and repression by Roma-
nian political police against a background laid before Nicolae Ceauşescu’s
50
Dan Stone, The Holocaust, Fascism, and Memory: Essays in the History of
Ideas (London: Palgrave, 2013), p. 6.
rise to power in 1965. “Conducătorul” [The Leader] polished the methods

of his predecessor as the secretary general of the Party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-
Dej, who mostly relied on assassinations and a penitentiary system to inflict
total, open terror. Along with the self-proclaimed Genius of the Carpathians,
this terror became deaf, preemptive, invisible; it nourished the paranoia and
anxieties.51
Society needs to participate in national conversations about the past.

To prevent the birth of new mythologies (redemptive, self-aggrandizing
narratives), these conversations need to take into account the insti-
tutional and human elements involved in the totalitarian and post-
totalitarian stages of Leninist dictatorships. At the same time, polit-
ical justice cannot be separated from moral justice as a continuous
exercise in working through the past (to use Theodor W. Adorno’s for-
mulation). There is thus an urgent need to pierce the long-held official
stories and to identify the main institutional and human instruments of
dictatorships. Those regimes were not run by extraterrestrials. Crimes
took place, they can be documented, and the guilty individuals can be
brought to trial. Decades after the guerra sucia in Argentina or the
student massacre in Mexico City, the cases against the fomenters and
perpetrators remain valid.
The key issue in this context is the very trustworthiness or, better
said, the quality of the new democratic arrangements. If former tor-
mentors continue to benefit from their wrongdoing or if political justice
is postponed sine die in the name of a politically manipulated and self-
serving understanding of reconciliation (e.g., Romania under former
president Ion Iliescu), then the population at large increasingly feels
that all the revolutionary changes were nothing but a smokescreen,
a well-manufactured façade meant to protect and preserve the vested
interests of the converted nomenklatura. The many case studies that
have already been published provide excellent opportunities to engage
in historical comparative discussions about the determinants of the
speed, scope, magnitude, depth, and effectiveness of various decom-
munization strategies. Some countries have been more successful than
others in addressing issues related to what Germans call Geschichtsbe-
wältigung (coping with history), although it should also be noted that
51
Piotr Smolar, “Le poison dans les veines” [“The Poison in the veins”] in Le
Monde, 31.10.2009: http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2009/10/31/
roumanie-le-poison-dans-les-veines_1261107_3214.html.
the term “success” has a relative meaning when it comes to political

justice. Cynicism “at the bottom” is a symptom of manipulation at the
top, with the end result being the absence of democracy among both
the people’s desires and the government’s actions.
My own experience [VT] as chair of the PCACDR has convinced
me of just how explosive issues related to the recent past can be. What
Jürgen Habermas calls the public use of history is poignantly evident
in the post-Communist cultural and moral battles over the Commu-
nist and fascist pasts. As Lavinia Stan emphasizes,52 in many of these
countries it is hard to disentangle Communist from pre-Communist
authoritarian, and often fascist, experiences. Especially in the coun-
tries that belonged to the Axis during World War II, decommunization
and defascization are often intertwined and mutually conditioned. This
is particularly striking in Romania, where the Ceauşescu dictatorship
combined in its ideology motifs and obsessions of both the Far Left
and the Far Right (the Communist-fascist baroque). Add to this situa-
tion acute sensibilities derived from institutional memories of guilt, col-
laboration, and complicity. Quite often, former collaborators indulge
in fantasies of victimhood and clamor for solidarity, empathy, and
compassion. Think of the reactions of various religious hierarchies in
Germany and Romania to references made by historical commissions
to past collusions between highly placed members of the clergy and
the Communist party’s ideological apparatus or various branches of
the secret police.
When dealing with such sensitive issues, we should try to avoid mak-
ing one-dimensional, monocausal explanations for the tribulations of
decommunization, because they vary according to the experiences of
different countries. Decommunization has been decisively influenced
by the willingness of the new (or not so new) political elites to initi-
ate and assume judicial and political steps toward historical and legal
accountability regarding a traumatic, violent, and brutal past.
For many former Communists, the very idea of political justice –
even in the form of a scholarly report on the main institutions and
methods that made past crimes possible – is anathema. Their reproach
to those who call for decommunization is that seeking political justice
52
Lavinia Stan, “Introduction: Post-communist Transition, Justice, and
Transitional Justice,” in Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Reckoning with the Communist Past
(New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), pp. 1–14.
would result in witch hunts. As a matter of fact, one of the most strik-
ing developments of post-Communist times is precisely the absence of
Jacobin-like mob campaigns for retaliation and revenge. Adam Mich-
nik’s legitimate fears that former prisoners could turn into prison
guards have not been confirmed, and this is, in fact, good news about
the moral and political self-control of post-Communist politicians and
intellectuals. On the other hand, as the situation in Poland has demon-
strated, especially between the years of 2005 and 2007, there is ram-
pant discontent with the absence of a thorough lustration process.
Many people consider the delays in implementing political justice to be
outrageous. They resent the fact that the new elites are often recruited
from the second echelon of the old ones. In Romania, Poland, Hungary,
or Bulgaria, this trend seems to indicate moral promiscuity and deliber-
ate forgetfulness. In this respect, consider Michnik oft-repeated state-
ment: “Amnesty yes, amnesia no.” Reconciliation cannot be attained
through the reproduction of lies. The marvelous Romanian film 12:08
East of Bucharest (directed by Corneliu Porumboiu) captures these per-
plexing ambiguities. One of the characters (whose voice we hear but
whose face remains unseen) is a former secret police agent who has
become a most successful businessman. When hints about his dirty past
are aired during a TV talk show, the new “pillar of the community”
threatens with a libel suit.
Cynicism, cronyism, and corruption are among the most dangerous
pathologies of post-Communism. Their antidotes are trust, truth, and
tolerance. Only through abiding by this newly retrieved social axiology
may we hope to overcome the post-Communist ethical morass and
foster an honest democratic community.
2 Romania before 2006
In December 1989, Romanians revolted against Nicolae Ceauşescu’s

decrepit national Stalinist dictatorship. Many thought the upheaval
and the bloodshed that cost around 1,400 lives would result in a com-
plete divorce from the past. Instead, the new regime, headed by for-
mer propaganda apparatchik Ion Iliescu, tried to maintain authori-
tarianism under a façade of relentless democratic rhetoric. In 1996,
a new president, Emil Constantinescu of the umbrella coalition called
the Democratic Convention, was elected. Under him, political, social,
and economic reforms were initiated, and Romania pursued a deci-
sively pro-Western foreign policy. Many dared to hope that those
changes would result in an unequivocal democratic breakthrough. But
often Eastern European transitions became ideological and cultural
battlefields, where rival views of the public good collided. In spite
of the fluid nature of allegiances, there were important distinctions
between those committed to pluralist values and those who cherished
the ethnocratic or autocratic vision of the nation-state. The duality
of Left/Right or conservative/liberal was not always an apt descrip-
tion of such cleavages. Post-ideological syncretisms were the hallmark
of this period, when premodern anxieties clashed with postmodern
aspirations.1 In Romania, the Communist/anti-Communist cleavage
has been a more consistent ideological determinant in the almost three
decades since Ceauşescu’s fall. Another way to describe this cleavage is
totalitarian/anti-totalitarian, referring to those who cannot tolerate
diverse political and cultural thought versus those who can.
In 2000, Iliescu made a comeback, and his party, the Social
Democrats (SD), governed the country for the next four years. The
1
See Anca Mihaela Pusca, Revolution, Democratic Transition, and
Disillusionment: The Case of Romania (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2008); Tomas Kavaliauskas, Transformations in Central Europe between
1989 and 2012 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012).
51
SD is nothing more than a corporation, with mafia-like business ten-

tacles, along with a shameless approach to chauvinism, a kleptocratic
view of the apparatchik’s right to corruption, and a genuine belief in
a closed society. It is an alliance of kleptocratic oligarchs and neo-
authoritarians. In 2004, in a reaction to the SD’s corrupt rule, Traian
Băsescu won the presidential elections, with a platform that promised
eradication of corruption, modernization of political institutions, eco-
nomic growth, and strengthening of the rule of law. A former sea
captain (during the Ceauşescu era), Băsescu had previously served as
minister of transportation and mayor of Bucharest. Responding to
demands from civil society, he adopted decommunization as a major
political goal. In April 2006, he formed the Presidential Commission
for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship to examine the four
decades of Communist rule. In December of that year, in spite of rabid
opposition from Communist nostalgics and extremist nationalists, he
delivered the historical speech condemning the Communist regime as
illegitimate and criminal, described in Chapter 1.
Political factionalism and resistance from oligarchic groups, opposed
to Băsescu’s innovative initiatives, created a continuous state of tension
between the president and his vociferous critics. He, however, managed
to win the presidential elections of November 2009, albeit by a very
slim margin. Belonging to the EU and NATO has helped Romania eco-
nomically, politically, and in terms of security. The country is still chal-
lenged by the need to reform the judiciary, rejuvenate the political elite,
overcome a widespread climate of cynicism, to fight corruption, and
continue its confrontation with the traumatic totalitarian past. Unfor-
tunately, the political system and the democratic stability of the country
continue to be gravely undermined by the clientelism among the elites
and the endless bickering within political parties.
The Persistence of Communists in Power and

Amnesia in Society
The first decade of Romania’s post-1989 experience presented a strik-
ing paradox: the Eastern European country with the most abrupt break
from the old order achieved the most useless transformation. Some
authors have gone so far as to state that the public sphere’s inability to
recognize a collective memory of the Romanian Revolution and the
The Persistence of Communists in Power and Amnesia in Society 53
contradictions between the post-Communist order’s words and actions

indicated “a failed break between ‘old’ and ‘new.’”2
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 functioned as “a mode
of legitimation.”3 Its various interpretations, readings, and myths
reflected the self-image of the new power centers and societal divisions
in the country, rather than a coherent understanding of the recently
defunct Communist regime. Under these circumstances, dealing with
the totalitarian past, the legacies of Leninism, and the conversion of
systemic elements from Communism into the developing democratic
order has been continuously postponed. Until 2006, Romania suffered
from state-sponsored amnesia.
Iliescu’s presidency included many elements of the political style of
the Communist bureaucracy, including these components of the sym-
bolic structure of the old regime’s legitimacy: (1) a quasi-charismatic
party or movement with a leader suspicious of (and often hostile to)
impersonal democratic procedures and regulations; (2) an exaltation
of the ethnically homogeneous community (patrie, neam, naţiune –
motherland, kin, nation) and an exploitation of the hegemonic forces
of völkisch themes and mythologies; (3) an aversion to (or distrust
of) market relations, in favor of making continuous appeals to “Third
Way” formulas; (4) an intense cultivation of collective identities, loy-
alties, and attachments, combined with a suspicious attitude toward
minority rights, aspirations, and grievances; and (5) a regime anxiety
demonstrated by a strong rhetoric of solidarity insisting on the need
for Romanians to close ranks against all alleged foreign conspiracies
meant to dismantle their unitary nation-state. Above all, the legacy of
the Communist regime in Romania was an outlook of post-Communist
patrimonialism – manifested as state corruption and popular cyni-
cism – that, even in the 2010s, lies at the core of the local political
and social environment.4
2
John F. Ely and Cătălin Augustin Stoica, “Re-Membering Romania,” in Henry F.
Carey, ed., Romania since 1989, with a foreword by Norman Manea (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2004), p. 106.
3
Peter Siani-Davis, “The Revolution after the Revolution,” in Duncan Light and
David Phinnemore, eds., Post-Communist Romania: Coming to Terms with
Transition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 17.
4
Ely and Stoica identified six features of Romanian post-Communist
patrimonialism that are directly connected to the features of what we call the
symbolic structure of the old regime’s legitimacy: “(a) a leader unequivocally
The ethos of state-sponsored amnesia is exemplified by a statement

made in 1995 by Adrian Năstase, who later served as president of
Romania’s Chamber of Deputies and prime minister from 2000–2004.
A close associate of Iliescu, Năstase stated that focusing on the past
(be it the fascist or the Stalinist one) would derail people from con-
structing their future. Why so much insistence, he asked, on what hap-
pened under pro-fascist dictator Ion Antonescu or the Stalinist tyrant
Nicolae Ceauşescu? Evidently he did not consider Ceauşescu to be a
tyrant at all. As for Antonescu, he saw plenty to admire in the collec-
tivist emotions he instilled in the population. Such a neo-totalitarian
mindset, shamelessly camouflaged as reconciliation and a focus on
the future, remains rampant in highly influential circles. For example,
nearly two decades after Năstase made that statement, when a New
York Times reporter asked former prime minister Victor Ponta (a pro-
tégé of Năstase) about the significance of confronting the Communist
past, he responded, “It is important to know the past, but I think now
most of the political leadership is much more focused on the future.”5
The Social Democratic Party, in particular, tends to use the present to
obscure the relevance of the past in contemporary Romania. All across
the political spectrum there are too many skeletons in politicians’ clos-
ets, and the post-1989 establishment – made up of holdovers from the
ancien regime – prefers simply to assign the guilt for past aberrations
to the defunct dictator and his immediate subordinates. As the old say-
ing goes, ex nihilo nihil. It is Khrushchevism at best. That is nothing to
celebrate, because we should remember that Khrushchev was followed
by almost two decades of Brezhnevism.
acknowledged as the top political authority; (b) a leader who retains and funds
a staff beholden to him alone as well as a coercive apparatus beholden to him
personally; (c) creating a regime where the line between public and private
property, and between private and state action, is blurred in favor of the ruler
and his clients, such that (d) much of society responds by organizing itself, in
large part, along similar patron-client lines in the competition for state
resources, power, and prestige; (e) the need to administer a huge state
bureaucracy, often collectively inefficient and divided among competing
patron-client chains, and (f) the promotion of charismatic elements from
Communist days.” See Ely and Stoica, “Re-Membering Romania,” pp. 118–119.
5
Rick Lyman and Kit Gillet, “Romania Hunger Strike Prompts Inquiry into
Dissident’s Death,” New York Times, November 6, 2014; www.nytimes.com/
2014/11/07/world/europe/hunger-striker-ends-his-fast-as-romania-agrees-to-
investigate-dissidents-death.html?_r=1 (emphasis added).
The Persistence of Communists in Power and Amnesia in Society 55
National Stalinism in Romania seems to have left at least three

legacies: (1) a patrimonialism exacerbated by the legacy of dynastic
socialism; (2) a collective imaginarium imprinted by the Romanian
Communist Party’s nationalization of the masses or the reimagination
of the national community; and (3) the social utopia of civilization
incumbent in Communism’s illiberal modernity. More than twenty-five
years after 1989, many of the malaises, frustrations, and insecurities
presupposed by such a legacy have yet to be fully tackled by Roma-
nian society.
The condemnation of the Communist regime in Romania occurred
in the space circumscribed by the two presidents who served from
1990 to 2004. Ion Iliescu, during his three terms of office (1990–
1992, 1992–1996, and 2000–2004), practiced “double zombification,”
a term coined by Peter Schneider to describe East Germany’s transi-
tion: after 1989, the two totalitarian experiences that plagued Roma-
nia’s twentieth century were officially considered to be the past of
“another country.” The Democratic Convention coalition during the
Emil Constantinescu administration from 1996–2000 continued this
practice. It was only after Ion Iliescu’s own scandalous comments on
the Holocaust in Romania provoked a strong reaction in international
diplomatic and academic circles that the government created, in 2004,
the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (ICHR),
chaired by celebrated writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.
The objective of Iliescu’s “mis-memory” of the totalitarian experience
was to fuel the legitimizing discourses of the post-Communist political
establishment, of the “original democracy” designed by Iliescu and his
acolytes in the first post-1989 years.
Romanian political parties in general have no special interest in his-
torical matters. But, the parties least interested in revisiting the open
wounds are those directly linked to the Communist era – first and fore-
most the Social Democrats, whose honorary chairman remains the life-
long, and unrepentant, Stalinist Ion Iliescu. It was not pressure from
political parties that convinced Traian Băsescu to appoint the Presi-
dential Commission in April 2006, but rather the mobilization of civil
society.
Democracy in Romania has proven elusive and hard to achieve
because so many Communists continue to believe both in their own
power and in the illusion of utopia through social conformity. The
economic empowerment of the former nomenklatura and delays in

decommunization have had grievous consequences for the moral and
psychological sanity of the new democracy. To make matters worse,
this country’s government insists on the consistent merger between
nationalist populism (and all its abhorrence of liberal values) and post-
Communist social demagoguery. As mentioned earlier, the Commu-
nist legacy in Romania, faithfully mirroring the ancien régime, is an
odd mélange of rightist conservative, neopopulist, and nationalist sen-
timents, along with those of the ex-Communists, all of whom were in
extensive control of the country’s administration, of entire economic
sections, and of the juridical sector. Collectivism of all stripes remains
popular and powerful: the alliance of all those ideologies makes the
need for memory urgent. In such a context, decommunization is not
simply a matter of punishing certain individuals, clarifying historical
issues, or acknowledging victims; it also must be a long-term process
aimed at establishing accountability and law-abiding behavior among
both elites and ordinary citizens. It is a process that, through coherent
governmental retributive and restorative policies, has the potential to
crystallize “a credible hierarchy of guilt.”6
In spite of this sobering reality, the post-1989 years did bring about
several far-reaching changes that we now tend to take for granted.
The Leninist ideocratic tyranny did suffer an irreversible collapse of its
monopoly in December 1989. The new course toward pluralism and
tolerance has been a meandering and difficult one, but to quote the title
of a book by literary critic Mircea Mihăieş, Romania has progressed
“slowly to Europe.” Of particular importance have been the moves to
consolidate a set of democratic institutions and to establish the rule of
law as a palpable (rather than fictional) concept, though it has not yet
become what Hegel called “a true reality.” However, truth remains an
orphan, to paraphrase Romanian intellectual Monica Lovinescu, as it
survives under duress from amnesia and official procrastination. After
fifteen years of amnesiac policies set forth by presidents Ion Iliescu
and Emil Constantinescu, the condemnation of the Communist regime
by President Băsescu in 2006 was a watershed event that generated
nearly irreversible transformations in public, individual, and scholarly
attitudes toward the totalitarian past.
6
Failed Civic Revolts and Unrepentant Power 57
In the first phase of Romania’s post-Communist transition, from

1989 until the general elections of 1996, Romania experienced the
discursive impostor of the National Salvation Front (NSF), the suc-
cessor organization to the Romanian Communist Party. Like the RCP,
the NSF attempted to monopolize politics, to institutionalize pluralism
within one party, and to transpose democratic practices into an odd
form of statist hegemony: Ion Iliescu’s “original democracy.” Thus, in
the immediate aftermath of the Romanian Revolution, Leninism’s heirs
hijacked the anti-Communist discourse. In January 1990, Iliescu and
then prime minister Petre Roman claimed long-standing democratic
credentials in spite of notorious involvements with the former regime.
In May 1990, I [VT] wrote an article about this phenomenon in the
Christian Science Monitor, claiming that the old Communist regime
of Romania was still in force, in contrast to those of other Eastern
European countries that had vanished completely.
Failed Civic Revolts and Unrepentant Power

The Ceauşescu clan and its cronies were overthrown in December
1989, but their successors were not long-harassed dissidents or rep-
resentatives of the anti-Communist parties: instead, President Ion Ili-
escu and Prime Minister Petre Roman belonged to the same political
family as the defunct dictator. They were simply minor cronies who
overthrew their superiors, thereby manipulating a popular revolution
into an inter-palace coup. The ruling party, the NSF, was linked to the
entrenched bureaucracy, and it sabotaged radical reforms. Its main
opposition parties, which fashioned themselves as reincarnations of
pre-World War II political actors, consequently offered little appeal to
younger Romanians. After June 1990, when the NSF encouraged vig-
ilantes to physically injure its critics, the political scene seemed polar-
ized to the point of paralysis. For many, it became clear that only a large
civic movement would be able to challenge the NSF’s hegemony. A
few months later, in November 1990, such a movement, Civic Alliance
(Alianţa Civică) was founded. Among its leaders were outspoken oppo-
nents of the Ceauşescu regime, trade union militants, and intellectuals
critical of the regime. The NSF-controlled media’s reaction was shrill.
A slanderous campaign was waged claiming that the Civic Alliance
was an attempt by a bunch of frustrated, anti-patriotic intellectuals
to “destabilize” Romania. Still, the alliance gathered momentum and

managed to establish a nationwide grassroots network. Civic Alliance
branches emerged in every county. Demonstrations were organized
in November and December, during which hundreds of thousands
of supporters demanded the government’s resignation. In response to
this growing pressure from below, the strategy of the Civic Alliance
changed. In May 1991, a committee was set up to prepare for the
creation of a party. The mounting popularity of the movement as
reflected in polls – one suggested that the Civic Alliance might get up to
30 percent of the national vote – indicated that there was a con-
stituency among Romanians for such a party. In July 1991, the Party
of the Civic Alliance (PCA) was formed. The Civic Alliance continued
to exist as a large umbrella organization, while the party represented
its militant wing, and its creation was an important watershed for the
future of Romania’s politics.
First, through its leaders, structure, and political style, the PCA rep-
resented the party of modernity. Rectors of universities, doctors, trade
union leaders, student activists, lawyers, and artists like the piano vir-
tuoso Dan Grigore were among its leaders. One of its three initial
vice-chairmen was Stelian Tănase, former civic activist and editor of
the weekly Acum (Now), with a print run in those days of more than
100,000 copies. Members of the party’s board included respected fig-
ures from all the important cities. The average age of board members
reflected the PCA’s intent to represent younger Romanians. Second,
in a time of rabid nationalism (consider the ethnic clashes in Târgu-
Mureş in March 1990), the PCA advocated for the country to open up
to the West and to offer protection for minorities. Its chairman at the
time, a fifty-two-year-old literary critic and political columnist Nico-
lae Manolescu (b. 1939), opposed the autarchic policies of the front
and was a favorite target of the chauvinistic, government-manipulated
media for quite some time. Because of his intellectual clout – he was
editor of the Writers’ Union main weekly România Literară (Literary
Romania) and one of the most popular professors at the University
of Bucharest – he enjoyed wide esteem. During the Ceauşescu era,
Manolescu refused to join the Communist Party and pursued his own
form of resistance: for decades, he wrote weekly book reviews in which
he defended moral values and denounced the regime’s lackeys. Even
members of the NSF recognized that Manolescu’s charismatic presence
at the helm of the PCA had changed the political landscape. Untainted
by collaboration with the old regime, Manolescu was a genuine sym-

bol of cultural resistance; many thought that he, with his great sense of
humor and remarkable oratorical skills, could become the Romanian
counterpart of Václav Havel.
What did the PCA propose? Unlike the NSF, it never made unrealistic
promises of quick recovery. It was adamant in its conviction that only a
sweeping transformation of the economic system could resolve Roma-
nia’s problems: it envisioned solutions such as massive investments in
tourism and the service industries, as well as the gradual dissolution of
the Stalinist industrial white elephants. In addition, the PCA favored
an independent television network and public control of the police –
that is, an end to the secret police. Simply put, the PCA aimed to create
a state of law (Rechtsstaat) and a market economy in Romania. But
while the PCA was championing the values of liberal democracy, for
many people, Romanian nationalism had long been the only legitimate
discourse.
Things continued in the old NSF’s way during the following years.
People closed their eyes to that “cancer of souls”7 (a phrase coined by
a French historian to refer to the practice of denouncing fellow citizens
during period of Nazi occupation) that was the Securitate. The Insti-
tute for the Study of Totalitarianism was established in 1993 under the
umbrella of the Romanian Academy, but it never managed to become a
center for debunking myths about the Communist period, for amalga-
mating multiple memories about terror and repression, or for breaking
with the past. Communism was not explicitly condemned because too
much complicity surfaced in personal biographies or the family ties of
some PSD leaders. When you had been secretary of the Central Com-
mittee of the Romanian Communist Party, the incentives for telling the
truth about the criminal system were weak.
Emil Constantinescu’s presidency occurred during a different his-
torical moment. On the one hand, it seemed that the time of decom-
munization had passed (even I [VT] thought at the time that it was a
political discourse increasingly devoid of popular appeal). On the other
hand, Constantinescu’s group of advisors included public intellectuals
7
The phrase was used by Henri Amouroux to describe the phenomenon of
denouncing individuals either to the Milice, a French paramilitary organization,
or directly to the Nazi occupiers in Vichy France. See his Les Passions et les
haines: avril-decembre 1942 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1981), the fifth volume of
Le Grande histoire des Français sous l’occupation.
such as Zoe Petre, Cristian Preda, Sorin Alexandrescu, Daniel Barbu,

and (for a short period) Marius Oprea. For these people, breaking with
the past was, without a doubt, an urgent priority. However, Constanti-
nescu adopted a consensual position and avoided confronting the heirs
of the nomenklatura. As events in 2006 and the following years have
shown, the crimes of an unmastered past can only be acknowledged
when those in power have the political will and are responsive to civil
society’s demands.
Constantinescu did recognize and distance himself from the horrors
and crimes of the former regime. Yet, he neither pursued any offi-
cial condemnation nor threw the great weight of his office behind a
public acknowledgment on behalf of the Romanian state. His inac-
tion is even more glaring considering his staunchly pro-Western for-
eign policy. After all, he lost popularity because of his pro-West policy
when, at a crucial juncture, he supported NATO’s military action in
1999 against imperialist and genocidal Serbia. That decision proba-
bly caused his popularity to plummet by about 10 or even 15 percent.
At the time, Iliescu was the leader of the opposition, and he opposed
NATO’s intervention because, as he said, “Romania historically has
only two friendly neighbors: The Black Sea and Serbia.” Constanti-
nescu and his foreign minister, Andrei Pleşu, took the risk: they did the
morally right thing. If Romania had not played that role in 1999, we
think that its chances to join NATO in 2004 would have decreased con-
siderably. Constantinescu’s foreign policy had an enormous impact in
creating the perception of Romania as being a reliable ally of the West.
Given that Constantinescu was a staunch anti-Communist and anti-
totalitarian intellectual, why did he not create a Presidential Commis-
sion? There were several reasons why there was no condemnation of
the Communist regime during his regime. First, societal pressure to
come to terms with the past was not very strong in the mid-1990s in
Romania or in Eastern or Central Europe as a whole. Second, Con-
stantinescu made an unfortunate statement soon after the Commis-
sion’s formation was announced that his very election as president of
Romania was the realization of the eighth point of the Timişoara
Proclamation – but this was quite incorrect. The proclamation con-
cerned the lustration of a whole class of people, not Emil Constanti-
nescu becoming president (or King Michael or whomever). His misun-
derstanding of its purpose was, in our view, due to his psychological
makeup. His hubris conditioned his vision of available political
choices. He thought himself as a regional and global leader; he was,

and still is, very enamored with himself. Neither Iliescu nor Băsescu
shared this problem: they are very realistic about their strengths and
weaknesses.
Under Constantinescu, the hour of decommunization had not yet
come. Timing matters – that is one of the things we have learned from
the long process of confronting the past. Leaving aside explanations
tied to his personal hubris, sometimes distance in time can help. In
May 2012, in Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff created a truth com-
mission to investigate human rights abuses, including those committed
during military rule.8 In 2011, a museum about the regime of Trujillo
times opened in the Dominican Republic.9 But in these cases, there
was an additional element of significant importance: the presence of
authoritative historians and political scientists. Many people, both crit-
ics and researchers of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of
the Communist Dictatorship in Romania and of its Final Report, often
forget that in 1996 there were very few, if any, young Romanian his-
torians or political scientists with a Western background who could
do what the members and experts of the Commission were able to
achieve in 2006. The average age of the experts on the 2006 commis-
sion was thirty. Ten years earlier, under Constantinescu, they would
have been only twenty years old. In 1996, most were still deciding
on their scholarly trajectories, but by 2006, they had either earned or
were on their way to receiving a Ph.D. in an academic institution either
in Romania or the West. By then, they had been equally socialized in
international debates on Communism and exposed to the slowly evolv-
ing nature of Romanian academia, which had been seriously tarnished
by its involvement in the regime’s politics and policies. In the decade
between Constantinescu’s election and Băsescu’s condemnation of the
Communist regime, events strengthened epistemic reform in Romanian
historiography.10 By 2006, there was a consensus among most of the
8
See “Brazil Truth Commission Begins Abuse Inquires,” BBC News, May 16,
2012; www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18087390; and Paulo Cabral,
“Brazil’s Truth Commission Faces Delicate Task,” BBC Brasil, May 16, 2012;
www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18073300.
9
Randal C. Archibold, “A Museum of Repression Aims to Shock the
Conscience,” New York Times, September 12, 2011; www.nytimes.com/2011/
09/13/world/americas/13trujillo.html?_r=0.
10
For a review of the state of Romanian historical studies at the end of the 1990s,
see Bogdan Murgescu, A fi istoric în anul 2000 (Bucharest: Editura All, 2000).
experts and members of the Commission that self-serving narratives of

perpetual victimization needed to be demystified.
The rise of a new generation of social scientists – we include histori-
ans in this category – has resulted in a new perspective on the nation.
These younger historians, political scientists, philosophers, and anthro-
pologists contributed to formulating the Final Report as a modern, rig-
orous, and scholarly document. Between 1945 and 1989, authoritar-
ian myth-making obfuscated the necessary Vergangenheitsbewältigung
(the process of coming to terms with the past). Weaker but similarly
pervasive practices remained in place after 1989. Most troubling in
post-Communist societies is precisely the excruciating need to prolong
an indulgence in self-pity, myth-making, and a failure to address the
wrongs of the past in a demystifying way. The new democratic nar-
ratives amount to a repudiation of the belief systems rooted in a self-
serving, mendacious rendering of the main events and meanings of the
continuum of dictatorship from the late 1930s until 1989.11
Since 1989, there have been attempts to speed up the process of
decommunization, most significantly the Timişoara Proclamation in
March 1990, which advocated for lustration, and the June 1990 stu-
dent protests spearheaded by the Civic Alliance. At the same time, there
were various bids to rehabilitate certain periods of Romanian Com-
munism, along with campaigns aimed at recycling aspects of the coun-
try’s authoritarian past; for example, there were numerous initiatives
to “restore the name” of the pro-Nazi marshal Ion Antonescu or to
sanitize the murderous history of the fascist Iron Guard.12 With the
11
For example, historian Maria Bucur judiciously pointed out the ambivalence of
the ongoing search for historical truth about World War II: “The world of
post-Communist democracy is proving, however, far more complicated and
non-democratic when it comes to remembering the war dead than political
elites would want. How these commemorative discourses change in the next
few years will attest to what extent remembering Europe’s world wars can
become a non-antagonistic local and continental effort. For now, the tension
between these two levels of framing the tragedy of World War II leaves little
room for imagining a space for reconciliation.” See Maria Bucur, Heroes and
Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2009), p. 17.
12
See my [VT] Romanian-language volume Spectrele Europei Centrale
(Bucharest: Polirom, 2001). I extensively discuss there this interesting process
of recycling (neo/proto/crypto) fascism by integrating it into the identitarian
discourse legitimizing the Communist regime. In the chapter titled “Lessons of
the Twentieth Century,” I write, “The Ceauşescu regime was, at its most basic
exception of those unfortunate grassroots endeavors, however, most

civil society movements pursued a “memory regime” – that is, an effort
to recuperate “a shattered past” (as Konrad Jarausch put it). They also
sought other changes, especially legal ones governing the gradual open-
ing of the Securitate archives to the public and of other institutions
that had played a crucial role in the functioning and reproduction of
the regime, as well as providing moral and material compensation for
suffering inflicted by the twentieth-century totalitarian experience in
Romania. The essential obstacle to any democratic endeavor of work-
ing through the Communist past is that, even though the truth has
gradually been uncovered, it does not necessarily translate into an offi-
cially sanctioned acknowledgment of history.13 In other words, institu-
tionalized amnesia can be fully overcome only by an institutionalized
memory of the Communist dictatorship.
The pace and intensity of decommunization have varied from coun-
try to country in Eastern and Central Europe, reflecting prevailing atti-
tudes toward the legacies of the deposed regimes. Initially, during the
first stage of the revolutions, the figure of the Communist believer sym-
bolized much of what Poles, Bulgarians, or Hungarians abhorred: ide-
ological uniformity, doublespeak, secret police surveillance, scarcity of
consumer goods, eternal lines for food, and contempt for human rights.
Hence the uncompromising decommunizers had a large and vibrant
constituency. But most people got tired of their rhetoric and found
their personal everyday plight more important than the punishment
of former leaders.
In Romania, the persistence (though at varying levels of intensity) of
calls for decommunization was significant on three levels. It reaffirmed
the fact that the consolidation of democracy is highly questionable
without a thoroughgoing break with the previous legacies of authori-
tarianism. Second, the persistent calls periodically highlighted the new
order’s deficit of legitimacy, which stemmed from its lack of credibil-
ity in the absence of any identification or reprimand of those directly
involved in the previous regime’s repressive actions. And third, as real
level, a very interesting mix that brought together both the legacy of militarist
authoritarianism from the 1941–1944 period, which was celebrated in a
myriad way, and the degraded mystic inspired by the extreme-right, which was
grafted upon the institutional body of Romanian Stalinism” (pp. 246–247).
13
Andrew Rigby, Justice and Reconciliation: After the Violence (Boulder, CO:
Lynn Rienner, 2001), p. 82.
crimes took place since 1989, calls for decommunization underlined

the importance of meting justice for crimes of the past in strength-
ening the rule of law and developing social capital in the post-1989
democracy – along with achieving the most basic purpose of justice,
to punish crimes, totally apart from the thorny and crucial issues of
memory and totalitarian impulses in society going forward.14
The Problems Posed by Widespread Culpability

No liberal order, however, can be instituted on a vindictive principle.
Not vengeance but truth ought to inspire the search for historical repa-
rations – and such reparations are fully legitimate. Unfortunately, the
process of decommunization has tended to acquire aggressive, often
violent tones. A case in point is that of Jarosław Kaczyński, once a close
associate of Lech Wałesa, ˛ who has been called a latter-day saint because
of his adamant demand for the execution of those who ordered mar-
tial law. “The authors of the martial law,” Kaczyński wrote in Mich-
nik’s Gazeta Wyborcza (of all places), “should probably be hanged.
If this is true . . . that there was no threat and that Polish authorities
knew it, they should be convicted and executed.”15 In contrast, the
calls for the condemnation of the Communist regime in Romania have
predominantly focused on the importance of truth-telling rather than
on retributive aspects. Therefore, the Commission’s activity was funda-
mentally a process of making sense of the Communist period, mainly
for the sake of democracy going forward, not for achieving justice
about the past.
In 1997, an adult male left orphaned in his childhood when his par-
ents were deported during Stalin’s Great Terror asked his interviewer
this question: “How can someone be a victim of a regime that has not
14
Hannah Arendt ends her study of the trial and execution of Eichmann with this
quote from the judges’ verdict: “We find that no one, that is, no member of the
human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the
reason, and the only reason, you must hang.” Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem:
A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), p. 279.
She is thereby highlighting that justice, at its base, is about making things right,
about punishing a criminal for a crime committed in the past. Unfortunately,
because of the persistence of lying elites and tempting ideologies,
decommunization has many more pressing concerns than achieving justice.
15
Quoted in Tina Rosenberg, Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after
Communism (New York, NY: Random House, 1995), p. 240.
The Problems Posed by Widespread Culpability 65
been officially declared criminal?”16 Regardless of the civic initiatives

and the scholarly reports that documented, and detailed the Commu-
nist government’s criminality (Regierungskriminalität), there had been
no state admission of misdeeds nor any recognition of wrongdoing.
The Iliescu paradigm held that the Communist regime already had been
delegitimized and condemned by the 1989 revolution and the NSF-
managed transition; no further public inquiry and statements were nec-
essary. To paraphrase Tony Judt, the mis-memory of Communism nur-
tured a mis-memory of anti-Communism. And indeed, as the process of
society’s normalization progressed, decommunization gradually faded
into the background. Other issues appeared more pressing – the social
safety net, unemployment, hyperinflation, corruption, crime, and so
on – and the same citizens who resented Communism proved ready
to cast their votes with the ex-Communists across Eastern Europe.
The major reason for this turn in post-Communist electoral behavior
was the combination of nostalgia, rage, malaise, and fear that char-
acteristically occurs following a sudden breakdown of the old order
and during the painful constitution of a new one. In some countries,
such as Poland, Latvia, or Lithuania, the ex-Communists appeared less
vehement and viciously nationalist than some of their anti-Communist
rivals. Moreover, some of these former party bureaucrats had broken
with their past and tried to push for reform. As a general trend, how-
ever, this “communostalgia” (a term coined by William Safire) was and
still is based on two psychological mechanisms: denial of the harshness
and squalor of the Communist days and frustration about the costs of
the transition to a free market.17 It is, in fact, the Communist-induced
ways of thinking that lead anti-Communist citizens to vote for neo-
Communists. The widespread willingness to completely forget what
these Communists did is thus only a further testament that decommu-
nization is necessary for democracy. Without truth, Leninist ways of
thinking will continue, and so the popular rule of neo-Communists,
16
In Algemeen Dagblad, November 1, 1997, pp. 1–2; Nanci Adler, “In Search of
Identity: The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Recreation of Russia,” in
Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González-Enríquez, and Paloma
Aguilar, eds., The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing
Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 289.
17
William Safire, “Communostalgia,” New York Times, March 11, 1993. Safire
defines communostalgia as “the habit of forgetting the painful tyranny of the
past in the uncomfortable freedom of the present.”
who will never respect an open society, will continue. Quite simply,
democracy cannot happen without truth.
Furthermore, in Romania, as well as in other countries of the for-
mer Soviet bloc, the resurrection of the old faces and habits under new
or not-so-new masks has created a widespread feeling of powerless-
ness and despondency among the opposition. People fatalistically wit-
ness the restoration of nomenklatura-style privileges for the elites in
power. This is what I [VT] call the phase of velvet counter-revolutions.
In Romania, the constant oscillation between confronting and forget-
ting its traumatic and guilty past stems from a legacy of pathological
corruption, heated nationalism, and embedded violence enhanced and
exacerbated by Ceauşescu’s dynastic Communism. Popular discontent
with Iliescu’s efforts to preserve the old order did result in his defeat in
the November 1996 presidential elections. However, as an odd proof
of the inconsistency of the new trend of disenchantment, despite his
successor Emil Constantinescu’s insistence on the importance of restor-
ing the truth about the country’s recent history, his term would only
prepare for the return of Iliescu in 2000. Cynicism toward new ideas,
along with conformity to the thinking of rhetorically clever Commu-
nists, has proven to be a haunting cycle that will not end on its own,
even with the passage of decades. Something more – such as a reckon-
ing with and understanding of the past – is required to break the trap
of amnesia, misery, and apathy. The election of neo-Communists, with
their seductive neo-Communist illusions, only brings society right back
to the start of the amnesia-enforcing cycle.
At the end of the day, the main dilemma one needs to tackle when
assessing the positives and negatives of decommunization concerns the
construction of new polities. How can they be created on the princi-
ples of law and truth, when, at the same time, former tormentors con-
tinue to enjoy their privileges and the victims are denied any legal sat-
isfaction? What is to be done with Ceauşescu’s Securitate thugs, Enver
Hoxha’s sigurimi, or Gustáv Husák’s secret police officers who, for two
decades, persecuted all initiatives from below and sent Havel, along
with other Charter 77 activists, to prison more than once? Michnik
himself offered a poignant synthesis of this moral conundrum:
When I was still in prison, I promised myself two things: first, that I will never
belong to any violent organization that would give me orders for struggling
against Communism; and second, that I would never take revenge on anyone.
On the other hand, I kept repeating to myself a certain stanza from a poem by
Zbigniew Herbert, who wrote: “And do not forgive, because it is not within
your power to forgive in the name of those who were betrayed at dawn.”
I think that we are condemned to such dialectic . . . We can try to convince
people to forgive, but if they want justice, they have the right to demand
it.18
The Romanian case is paradigmatic of the dominant trend in the for-

mer Soviet bloc. Instead of experiencing recurrent, putatively savage
campaigns to punish the old potentates, Romania has allowed for their
retrenchment (and even return), the vilification of dissidents, and the
emergence of new coalitions based on guilt, shame, and contempt for
those who had opposed Communism.
Traian Băsescu, during his 2004 electoral campaign, neither gave
decommunization a prominent place in his platform nor pretended to
have been a victim of Communism.19 However, the specific dynam-
ics of Romanian politics and the mobilization of civil society acted
as catalysts for the prominent reappearance in public debate of topics
related to the Communist dictatorship. In March 2006, the Group for
Social Dialogue (a major civil society organization made up of some of
the country’s most famous intellectuals) and leaders of the main trade
unions endorsed an Appeal for the Condemnation of the Commu-
nist Regime, launched by prominent Civic Alliance leader Sorin Ilieşiu,
which accelerated the process by which the Romanian state finally took
official action to recognize its traumatic past.
The year 2006 was pivotal not only because of the condemnation
of the Communist regime but also because it was then that more than
1,300,000 files of the Securitate were transferred into the archive of
the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS).
The inevitable question is, why 2006? We suggest that these events
occurred that year because of political will and the mobilization of civil
society on this issue. Decommunization in Romania had been delayed
18
Adam Michnik and Václav Havel, “Justice or Revenge?” Journal of
Democracy, 4, no. 1 (January 1993), pp. 25–26.
19
Born in 1951, Traian Băsescu graduated from the Naval Institute in Constanţa
and spent most of his life under Communism as a sea captain for the
Romanian commercial fleet. After 1990, he became a member of the Petre
Roman government, minister of transportation, and then mayor of Bucharest
and head of the Democratic Party. In 2004, he won the presidential elections
against former prime minister and Social Democratic leader Adrian Năstase.
because the former Securitate and nomenklatura members had been

prospering for the first fifteen years following the 1989 revolution. But,
by 2006, there emerged a critical mass of support for the creation of an
investigative commission, which exerted considerable pressure on the
president. This public pressure was most obvious in the courageous,
haranguing questions posed to Băsescu by Rodica Palade in the mag-
azine 2220 ; in Sorin Ilieşiu’s success in publicizing an appeal for the
condemnation of the Communist dictatorship in Romania; in a series
of public interventions from notable intellectual personalities; in the
establishment at the beginning of 2006 of the Institute for the Inves-
tigation of the Communist Crimes led by Marius Oprea and Stejărel
Olaru; and in the increasingly strong public reactions to the decisions
of the CNSAS to make its files public.21 Băsescu’s decision to estab-
lish the commission ultimately appeared as a natural outcome to a
preexisting public outcry. We fully agree with Lavinia Stan, who, in
describing the various processes of transitional justice in the country,
concluded that these happenings were “the result of the personal ini-
tiative of individual politicians . . . more than the expression of a coher-
ent governmental strategy . . . Most transitional justice initiatives have
been initiated by the civil society, and some benefited from the partic-
ipation of non-state actors (the history commission) or were financed
and completed by the civil society with little or no support from the
state (forensic investigations and the citizens’ tribunal).”22 Romania’s
commission was a fortunate merger of the two factors: the initiative of
individual politicians and a mobilized civil society.
Romania’s commission, the purpose of which was not to legalize
vindictive punishment but to rescue collective memory, built on the
experience in Hungary. In 1992, Arpad Göncz, then the president
of Hungary and a former political prisoner and dissident, proposed
an alternative approach to the calls then being made for corrective
20
See Rodica Palade, “Alianţa nu se va rupe. Intreviu cu Traian Basescu,” 22, July
12–18, 2005; www.revista22.ro/alianta-nu-se-va-rupe-1875.html (accessed
July 2, 2014).
21
Cynthia M. Horne, “Late Lustration Programmes in Romania and Poland:
Supporting or Undermining Democratic Transitions?” Democratization, 16,
no. 2 (April 2009), pp. 344–376; Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and “Truth Commissions in Post-
Communism: The Overlooked Solution?” Open Political Science Journal, 2
(2009), pp. 1–13.
22
Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union,
p. 234.
justice. He endorsed Hungary’s Constitutional Court’s decision not to

extend the statute of limitations in order to punish those responsible for
the mass repression that followed the crushing of the 1956 revolution.
Instead, he urged Hungary’s parliament to establish a Commission for
Historical Investigation to examine the processes, events, and details
of the period between 1944 and 1989. In his message to the Hungar-
ian parliament, Göncz stressed that “a complete disclosure of events
and naming of persons responsible for the violation of law might help
familiarize us with the nation’s tragic recent past, and might help, with-
out infringing the constitution and existing legal principles, to ease the
tensions prevailing in our society because of lack of clarity about the
past.”23 Indeed, Göncz’s proposal seemed to be a logical way to avoid
the pitfalls of retroactive criminal justice.
For the people living under post-Communism, decommunization has
not been an abstract philosophical notion. They know who terrorized
them, who opened their correspondences, who tapped their phone con-
versations, who forced many of them to become informers, and who
established a labyrinth of suspicion, betrayal, and fear in the name of
the “radiant future.” An institution such as the Presidential Commis-
sion in Romania was able to take on the vital role of naming names, of
clarifying information about the abuses from the past, and of bringing
to light as much as could possibly be known about the crimes and the
dynamics of the former regime.
This volume’s accounting of Romania’s commission is thus a story
about the interplay between history, politics, memory, and culture in
post-authoritarian regimes. Ethnocratic regimes aim to control only
the present but also the past. Authoritarians of all sorts manipu-
late patriotic symbols and use them demagogically to create an apoc-
ryphal sense of homogeneity. The ethnocratic political community, as
it emerged in post-Communist Eastern and Central Europe, was there-
fore inherently hostile to the values of civility and individual rights.
Secret services have continued to play an inordinately influential role.24
International factors have played a key role in facilitating Romania’s
post-Communist transition: its membership in NATO (2004), and
23
Arpad Göncz, “Breaking the Vicious Circle,” Common Knowledge, 2, no. 1
(Spring 1993), p. 5.
24
See Dennis Deletant, “The Securitate Legacy in Romania: Who Is in Control?”
Problems of Post-Communism, 42, no. 6 (November–December 1995),
pp. 23–28.
accession to the EU (2007) have shaped its political institutions and

party behavior to a considerable degree.25 As Václav Havel once pre-
sciently put it, it felt like “the expansion [of NATO and the EU] to
the East would guarantee the irreversibility of the new conditions in
these countries, and of peace in Europe. I could well imagine crowds of
populists, demagogues, nationalists, and post-communists who would
exploit every delay to argue, with increasing urgency, that the arrogant,
consumerist, and selfish West neither recognized us nor wanted us, and
therefore we must go our own way.”26
Yet, Western pressure has played more of a role in bringing about
the Romanian government’s official admission of the fact that the
Holocaust took place in the country than its decommunization efforts.
Therefore, it is also useful to admit a simple fact that is more often
than not ignored: the Western world intellectually relies, in many ways,
on the memory of the antifascist coalition. During World War II, the
USSR was an ally of the Anglo-Saxon democracies. The Holocaust
occurred in Eastern and Central Europe, not in more eastern areas
such as Siberia and Central Asia. The Western view of the Holocaust
holds that it was a genocide in the heart of a liberal bourgeois civiliza-
tion; hence, elements of culpability are emphasized so strongly not just
in the Frankfurt School discourse but also in the writings of thinkers
like Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, or Paul Ricœur. Alain Besançon high-
lights the contrast between the hypermnesia related to Hitler’s genocide
and the amnesia concerning Communist atrocities. There is something
about the Holocaust that exceeds our power to understand, something
that passes the abysmal point that abolishes all that we presumed to
be human in us. In contrast, the crimes of Communism are seen as the
result or effect of a pathology of universalism, as suggested by François
Furet. It is much more difficult for the Western liberal spirit to criticize
what Pierre Hassner once called “a derailed product of the Enlight-
enment.” Certainly, decades of the pro-Soviet Left’s cultural hegemony
have greatly reduced exposure of the crimes of Bolshevik-type regimes,
lessening their denunciation.
Yet the West as a whole has not been completely blind to the ills
of the populations subjected to Sovietism. The Congress for Cultural
25
See Milada Anna Vachudova, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and
Integration after Communism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005).
26
Václav Havel, To the Castle and Back, p. 296.
The Left’s Global Dishonesty 71
Freedom was a Western initiative; consider also the voices of Raymond

Aron, Koestler, Orwell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Pipes, Leonard
Shapiro, Ghiţă Ionescu, and anti-Stalinist New York intellectuals (like
Sidney Hook, Philip Rahv, Dwight Macdonald, and Edmund Wilson).
Radio Free Europe’s existence embodies the belief that Communism
can, and should, be opposed.
The Left’s Global Dishonesty

The Left in the West is much more heterogeneous than is generally
believed – that is, one can be a good socialist and yet still condemn
criminal movements that ravaged societies in the name of progres-
sivism. In fact, it has been argued for decades that one is a socialist
only if one makes clear the abomination of Bolshevik fantasies. The
anti-authoritarian Left, represented by people like Cornelius Casto-
riadis and Claude Lefort, has never found condemning Communism
to be a problem (it was actually quite the contrary). Just reread the
journal Socialisme ou barbarie to realize that this libertarian, anti-
totalitarian drive was in place despite the marginalization and con-
demnation it received from the bureaucrats of the French Communist
Party and their cronies. Let us not forget that Lenin wrote the most
poisonous pamphlet of his life under the title, “The Proletarian Revo-
lution and the Renegade Kautsky.” In effect, Kautsky was among the
first to condemn the Bolshevik delirious intention to destroy any trace
of traditional lawfulness and to impose a single-party dictatorship. And
it was the same Kautsky, who was challenged by Trotsky in Terrorism
and Communism, an absolutely immoral manifesto in favor of reckless
violence and triumphant Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks crushed any left-
wing critics, from anarchists, to socialist-revolutionaries (one member
of the Socialist Revolutionaries [SR], Dora Kaplan, tried to assassinate
Lenin), and to Mensheviks.
We cannot deny that highly influential elements of the Left still
feed on anticapitalist myths, hate globalization, and trumpet “anti-
imperialism.”27 We have seen the sympathy they offered to a hyster-
ically burlesque character and Castro’s successor as the tribune of
27
The Maduro regime in Venezuela and the Kirchner regime in Argentina thrive
on anti-imperialism. One of the crucial factors in putting down the attempted
revolution against Maduro in 2017 was his popularly heeded call for an
“Anti-Imperialism March.” A main source of legitimacy for Kirchner was
“world revolution,” the deceased Venezuelan populist leader Hugo

Chávez. But to counter what an obsolete and revengeful Left might do,
there are the Yale University Press collections of published documents
(The Annals of Communism), the memoirs of so many victims, and rig-
orous analyses of what Communism represented. There are the books
of Martin Malia, Anne Applebaum, and Robert Conquest, not to men-
tion much great work by historians and political scientists from the for-
mer Soviet bloc. The God that Failed remains the dominant truth. Any-
one interested in finding the truth about the recent past can draw sharp
conclusions regarding this unfortunate experiment. There is still space
for fine intellectual analyses that could elucidate further the connec-
tions between “the coasts” and “the costs” of Utopia (“Coasts” alludes
to Tom Stoppard’s famous trilogy of plays, The Coast of Utopia). This
is exactly what Leszek Kołakowski managed to achieve with his mas-
terful trilogy on the history of Marxism. In brief, the condemnation of
Communism might be halted, but never stopped. While slandered, the
literature is extensive and conclusive; the only question is how popular
it will be in the twenty-first century. Will we use the available resources,
from witnesses to scholars, to be warned, or will Europe once again fall
for the greatest lie?
To understand whether some influential Western circles may have
facilitated the “amnesia” of some leaders in Bucharest in relation to
their own recent past, we can turn to some historical examples in other
areas of Eastern and Central Europe. At the end of the 1970s, the
Social-Democratic Party in the Federal Republic of Germany signed
a pact of ideological cooperation with the Socialist Unity Party in
Germany, one of the most hardened “brigades” of world Commu-
nism. In 1968, General Charles de Gaulle characterized the invasion
of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact tanks in terms of a family feud
(une querelle de famille). These are examples of a blackout of moral
consciousness (or was it the perfect manifestation of their true moral
character?), and to admit this fact means to engage in a devastat-
ing examination of some tragic illusions. The KGB disinformation (or
that of the former Securitate) has played an important role in this
nationalism. These leaders blamed America for all their countries’ economic
disasters, and Kirchner uses tribal rhetoric to evoke in her supporters blind
fury – and thus blind faith.
The Left’s Global Dishonesty 73
sad game of ethical resignation. Famous dissidents such as Sakharov,

Solzhenitsyn, Maximov, Bukovsky, Goma, Havel, Michnik, Kis, or
even Djilas have been slandered in all manners of ways so as to
treacherously delegitimize their actions. Many Western leaders have
walked in the company of the devil; they are not willing to encourage
this desperately needed historical exorcism, in the absence of which
these societies are doomed to remain without an authentic historical
consciousness.
The Romanian Left also seems reluctant to clarify its relationship
with the past, due to its theoretical and moral frailty. We are not refer-
ring here to the social democrats who lived under constant surveil-
lance and persecution by Communists. Instead, the Leninist Left in
Romania was not capable of producing or generating a revisionist
project, similar to what happened in Hungary and Poland. There
were no Kołakowskis in Romania. The work of Ion Ianoşi, Pavel
Câmpeanu, Niculae Bellu, and Henri Wald was nothing close to that
of Ágnes Heller, Ferenc Fehér, Karel Kosík, or Kołakowski himself.
They did not have the courage to oppose the regime in a direct, out-
spoken manner. We do not judge them, but we do chronicle their
efforts. Ion Iliescu had all the means to gather around him, espe-
cially in the early 1970s, a nucleus of revisionists. I [VT] tried to
find out in my book Marele şoc (The Great Shock) why this did not
happen. Valter Roman, Petre Roman’s father and former combatant
in the International Brigades, published the “Contemporary Ideas”
collection, but he refrained from openly critiquing “really existing
socialism.”
The precariousness of Romanian Marxism, the embrace of chau-
vinism as the quasi-official doctrine after 1964, and the baroque syn-
thesis of Stalinism and fascism in the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s
reign are all vital topics that the current Left should address. What was
particularly shocking in Romania was that no one came to say, “I’m
sorry” (one notable exception was Cornel Burtică, former member of
the Political Executive Council of the Romanian Communist Party;
Communist ambassador to Italy, Morocco, and Malta until 1969; and
later the minister of trade). They made numerous justifications and
rationalizations, but genuine atonement was rare. Power and ideol-
ogy remain much more important to them than to the Romanians of
the next generation. Without remorse, they seem to conceive of the
whole idea of amnesty (which was once supported by Adam Michnik)

as an illusion, as a form of therapy. Decommunization, on the other
hand, cannot and should not be just one person’s action, but a national
project.
Many of these leaders of the Left denied the significance of Commu-
nism. In 2005, Vasile Dîncu, one of the PSD luminaries and a sociolo-
gist from Cluj, declared that Communism was just a thin and eventu-
ally insignificant layer under which a social organism could follow its
own development. He asserted that there had never been true Commu-
nism in Romania and that the Romanian Communist Party was almost
a fiction. These views could not be further from the truth: Romanian
Communism had become part and parcel of everyday life for its cit-
izens, because it created institutions that dramatically changed mil-
lions of lives. It distorted Romanian culture and generated mentalities
and behaviors that we are still trying to get rid of decades afterward.
Romania was indeed the unfortunate beneficiary of a Communist
political culture, and the process of its obliteration still looks, in so
many ways, like going on a wild-goose chase. In the early 1990s, Swiss
historian Pierre du Bois interviewed Leonte Răutu, the former ideologi-
cal tsar of the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej period, who admitted without
any trace of regret that the Communist regime killed or caused the
deaths of, tens of thousands of people. In reality, this number is much
higher.
We cannot overlook what happened to the human spirit under Com-
munism’s systematic actions against free and unhindered thinking.
We cannot remain quiet because silence has never been a remedy for
trauma. It is hard not to agree with the subtitle of the book by German
political scientist Gesine Schwan, The Destructive Power of Silence.28
Only by uncovering the past may we illuminate and explain Roma-
nia’s convoluted, tortuous, and immensely frustrating, yet not hopeless,
transition to democracy.
Tolerance and Intolerance

The Romanian Communist regime, even in its periods of relative
“thaw,” was anti-patriotic and dominated by hostility to the idea of
28
See Schwan, Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Power of Silence.
Tolerance and Intolerance 75
difference and otherness. Its resentment as a form of catharsis could

only be fulfilled through axiophobia. Communism abolished meritoc-
racy, or rather the Communist regime filled posts through a selection
process that was generally characterized by cronyism. The Communist
Party was the main pillar of the ideocratic dictatorship.
If Romanian democracy under President Băsescu was different from
its previous incarnations – and we believe it was – then it should not
be a surprise that he condemned forty-five years of national humilia-
tion, persecution of minorities, ruin of the peasantry, exploitation of the
proletariat, destruction of autonomous thinking, and the harassment
of intellectuals. At the end of the day, Băsescu’s verbal reprimand was
an ethically, historically, and politically charged imperative. To achieve
moral clarity, it was necessary to name those institutions that allowed
the system to function: the secret police, the party apparatus, commis-
sions for party control, propagandistic committees, and so on.
Decommunization may have started earlier and proceeded quicker
in other countries than in Romania. Yet, ex-Communists, especially in
Poland, managed to slow down the pace of those processes, and only
recently did the Poles succeed in gaining freer access to the archives
of the former secret police. In the Czech Republic, decommuniza-
tion hoped to achieve a climate of trust, a clearer perspective on the
break with a system based on lies (Leszek Kołakowski used to say
that “the lie is the immortal soul of communism”). If we really want
to live in truth, if we want to escape the vicious circle of complicity
and opportunism, then the solution is to state, as clearly, concisely,
and comprehensively as possible, this essential fact: Communism was
a despotism with devastating consequences. The political culture of
post-Communist democracies has only to gain from an open condem-
nation, by the highest political body, of the collapsed – though yet
not dead – system. Under certain circumstances, especially in the post-
authoritarian societies, moral clarity is the key to a successful democ-
racy. Consider some Latin American countries, where nobody hesitates
to state that military dictatorships had been historically tragic regimes
that victimized thousands and thousands of people. For Jacques Chirac
to condemn the Vichy regime, all he needed to do was to establish a
special commission.
When the head of state declares that the Communist system was
abominable and founded on terror, manipulations, and duplicity, its
people start breathing a cleaner air. Such a declaration is the least one
can do for those who perished in the labor camps and prisons; were
killed during the revolutionary upheaval of December 1989; or suf-
fered humiliation, fear, and boredom – the culture that affected every
Romanian citizen, save for the apparatchiks, for four decades.
3 Coming to Terms with the Past in
Romania
The Presidential Commission
Almost three decades ago, on December 18, 1989, people in Timişoara,

a city in western Romania, took to the streets and chanted for the first
time, “Down with Ceauşescu!” On the same day, the dictator traveled
out of the country for a diplomatic visit to Iran, leaving the matter
of handling the revolt in his wife Elena Ceauşescu’s hands, as well as
in those of his loyal followers, Manea Mănescu and Emil Bobu. In
front of the Timişoara Orthodox Cathedral, located in the city center,
hundreds of young people were shouting against the regime, while in
other Romanian cities, they were anxiously waiting for news, tuning
into Western radio (at risk of a visit from the Securitate).
In political theory terms, a so-called unconventional answer to cer-
tain governmental outputs becomes relevant from a political point of
view only if it benefits from a large dissemination. What began in
Timişoara in mid-December 1989 confirms this paradigm. The revolu-
tionary wave was based on optimism and hopes for reinstating the rule
of law. Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime had been violating human rights for
a long time. In brief, the values of this state were fundamentally flawed,
and so the state was destined to be impermanent.
Exactly seventeen years after, on December 18, 2006, President Tra-
ian Băsescu condemned the Communist regime as illegitimate and
criminal in the Romanian Parliament. This condemnation has often
been characterized as an official symbolic act. To better understand
its significance, let us briefly consider other historic examples of sym-
bolic condemnation. The first French president who condemned the
Vichy regime as part and parcel of the history of the French state was
Jacques Chirac, in 1995, with regard to the deportation of French cit-
izens of Jewish origin. This condemnation was indeed a political and
moral duty, previously ignored by Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompi-
dou, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and François Mitterrand. One of the
main obligations of any state should be to protect the lives of its cit-
izens, but the Vichy regime, Ion Antonescu’s dictatorship (the leader
77
78 Coming to Terms with the Past in Romania
of Romania who led the country while it was an active, willing par-
ticipant in the Holocaust of Jewish and Roma populations), and the
Communist dictatorships of Dej and Ceauşescu failed to fulfil this
imperative. To quote Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitari-
anism, entire ethnic and social categories were dubbed superfluous.
Traian Băsescu was the first Romanian president to apologize to all
victims of the Communist dictatorship on behalf of the Romanian
state.
What does this symbolic gesture mean? How difficult is this act of
moral justice? When we ask such questions, we should remember the
viscerally negative reactions, the threadbare counter-arguments, and
the stultifying objections to such a condemnation: all haunted this sym-
bolic gesture. After December 1989, we witnessed a profound continu-
ity of political, economic, and cultural elites. Unsurprisingly, the 1991
constitution failed to break with the past. A few years after that, Emil
Constantinescu also failed to condemn the two Romanian totalitarian
regimes. When Ion Iliescu came to power, he inherited not only a polit-
ical system in crisis but also a structure of symbols deeply embedded
within it. Consequently, any change brought to that system would have
also implied a symbolic radical change in attitudes toward Romania’s
past (and, for that matter, its future). But Iliescu was not willing to alter
the status quo.
Thus, condemning the Communist regime on December 18, 2006,
represented the first radical intervention on the symbolic matrix under-
pinning the new democratic political system. Yet condemnation must
be followed by an explanation. For example, the Prague Declaration of
Václav Havel, Joachim Gauck, and Vytautas Landsbergis would have
only been an ineffectual political gesture if it had not been followed by
a serious effort to understand the incomprehensible crimes of the twen-
tieth century. What many scholars have labeled as “shadow democ-
racy” can also be interpreted as the perpetuation of mental frameworks
belonging to the old regime. The December condemnation produced a
fundamental break with the logic and the functioning of the pre-1989
political system.
The traumatic historical experience of the twentieth century has
shown us that formal institutions and norms are necessary but not suf-
ficient. “Informal” behaviors, such as the condemnation of the Com-
munist dictatorship, are just as important. Such a grand political ges-
ture cleared the way for major legislative improvements (i.e., the laws
Personalities on the Road to Change 79
that made possible the trial and indictment of former prison director
Alexandru Vişinescu), educational policies and programs (publication
of a textbook on Romanian Communist history), and public debates
dealing with the best ways to memorialize the experience of the past.
Even so, none of these would have been possible in the absence of polit-
ical will or without a fundamental shift in the state’s symbolic structure
of power.
If Romania still is a country that is searching for some of its pre-
1989 historical narratives, surely it is not a country incapable of dis-
cerning between good and evil, between the totalitarian axiology and
the democratic one. Symbolism in politics is not a rhetorical artifice,
but the strongest guarantee that the world we live in recognizes its most
embarrassing episodes and avoids repeating them in a slightly modi-
fied version. For the more than one thousand victims of the bloody
Romanian Revolution from Timişoara to Bucharest, and from Braşov
to Cluj, the condemnation of the Communist regime should be seen as
an act of moral reparation and justice. For all Romanians who dislike
sterile totalitarian society, the denunciation should be seen as a step
in the right direction toward the ultimate goal of finally achieving a
tolerant political culture and open society.
Personalities on the Road to Change

The first time I [VT] talked to Traian Băsescu he was already president
and was on a state visit to Washington, DC, in February 2005. I was
very close friends with Andrei Pleşu, who was at that time a presiden-
tial advisor on foreign policy and cultural affairs. He set up a meet-
ing with Băsescu, who had defeated Adrian Năstase in the elections
of 2004, with intellectuals either of Romanian origin or with an inter-
est in Romania. Charles King from Georgetown University came, as
did Maria Bucur, Dragoş Paul Aligică, Christina Zarifopol-Illias, Peter
Gross, Gail Kligman, Dorin Tudoran, and Mircea Munteanu. In all,
about sixteen people, including me, participated.
At this meeting, some participants asked about the fate of the
archives, which was obviously not very high on Băsescu’s agenda.
He responded, in a very friendly manner, “What do you want us to
do with the archives? Probably they have long since been falsified
or destroyed.” He took a polite but distant and not very committed
approach. At the end of the meeting, I gave him a copy of my history of
Romanian Communism, Stalinism for All Seasons. Other people gave

him other gifts. We said goodbye. That was more or less it, and he
returned to Bucharest.
In the summer of 2005, a key moment occurred during an interview
with Băsescu conducted by the editor of 22, Rodica Palade, an emi-
nent journalist. She asked Băsescu, as the new head of the Romanian
state after defeating the former Communist (or better said, the klepto-
Communist) Năstase, how seriously he was considering condemning
what had happened during the Communist period. Băsescu responded,
again very politely,
Ms. Palade, when I ran for president of Romania in 2004, I did not have
decommunization as a major point in my program. Second, in terms of my
own feelings, my memory of Communism was not one of starvation. I was a
sea captain, at the rank of general, captain of the most important ship in the
Romanian fleet. I have to be very frank. If there was no milk in Romania, I
would stop in Rotterdam and buy powdered milk. If there was no chocolate,
we always had big bags of Toblerone. If there were no jeans in Romania, I
would buy jeans in New York. Basically, I was spending between eight and
nine months of the year on the sea. My father was also in the army. I didn’t
know [much about] the penitentiaries.
“There are books, Mr. President,” she replied. “The Black Book
of Communism. And there’s Vladimir Tismăneanu’s Stalinism for all
Seasons.”
“I know both books. But these are the opinions of the authors. If we
are going to do such a thing, we will need a scholarly commission. We
have to produce a document that scholars consider valid.”
“Who are you going to ask?”
“I don’t know. Probably the Romanian Academy.”
Then he realized that going to the Romanian Academy was like
going to Ceauşescu personally. It was – and remains – the most unre-
constructed institution in Romania. Many of its members were already
publicly exposed as Securitate informers. Keep in mind that Elena
Ceauşescu had been an “academician” (a member of the Academy).
Producing a scholarly document about the past absolutely would have
been a conflict of interest for the Romanian Academy because its mem-
bers could not condemn something that they continued to love and
serve. The Academy was the last place to seek truth.
Personalities on the Road to Change 81
That was the end of the interview – but it was thankfully not
the end of the topic itself, which became an issue for civil society.
Filmmaker Sorin Ilieşiu drafted a manifesto titled the “Unofficial
Report toward the Condemnation of the Communist Regime in Roma-
nia,” which within a matter of weeks was signed by thousands of
Romanians, including some of the most prominent figures in Roma-
nian society and myself. The appeal was based on documentation
from the Sighet Memorial in the northern part of Romania. Clearly, it
was not something that could be dismissed by the democracy-claiming
leadership. By the end of February 2006, the major trade unions of
Romania endorsed the appeal for a public condemnation of the Com-
munist regime. It was the equivalent of the Workers’ Defense Commit-
tee (KOR) in Poland. Despite the fact that the Communists essentially
retained political and cultural power in Romania, they could not ignore
a broad alliance of workers and activists.
The next event came out of the blue, in early March 2006, as I
was giving a lecture titled the “Life, Death, and Afterlife of Romanian
Communism” in Redmond, Washington, to Microsoft employees. You
might wonder about the connection between Microsoft and Romania.
After Americans, Romanians happen to be the largest ethnic group
working for Microsoft. The company invited me to give a talk, and
it was organizing some events in Romania as well. During my talk,
I received a call from my wife. Afterward I listened to her message:
“Listen, you have a call on the answering machine – one message in
Romanian, one in English.”
“They can wait,” I said.
“I don’t know if you want to wait. It’s from the office of Traian
Băsescu.”
I used the hotel phone. I never look into the agreements you sign
with the hotel, as I suspect most others do not either. When I got my
hotel bill, I realized that I was charged per minute – $48 per minute,
to be more exact – for my international call. Thus, my honorarium
basically went to cover the telephone bill. When I saw the bill, I said,
“What are you talking about, it was only ten minutes!” Never will that
happen again. In the end, I am glad I took the call, but it was an odd
experience – I could almost hear Ceauşescu telling me I was being
exploited by a system based on profit. Yet throughout my experi-
ence with the Presidential Commission, the greatest challenges came
not from outrageous prices in America, but from paranoid post-

Communist bureaucrats in Romania.
I had no idea why Băsescu was calling. I, too, had been interviewed
by the same Rodica Palade; she had asked me what I thought about
the idea of a commission, and I was very direct in expressing my skep-
ticism. I answered, “When Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag
Archipelago, they did not need a special commission to condemn Com-
munism. We know what Communism was in Romania.” I did not want
the commission to be a global condemnation of Communism. At that
time Romania had good relations with China and I was worried that a
commission might jeopardize them. It was no surprise, therefore, that I
worded my comments very carefully, and I insisted that the condemna-
tion should be reflective of a given case. It was the commission for the
analysis of the Communist dictatorship in Romania specifically. Our
endeavor bore on a still unprocessed Romanian past, and the commis-
sion had to have both a therapeutic and prophylactic objective.
And so I called Băsescu back, who said, “Listen, are you following
what’s going on here?”
“Yes,” I said, “a little bit.”
“I decided to put together a commission.” I thought he might want
to ask me for some suggestions about the structure and purpose of
the commission and was quite surprised by what he said next: “After
serious reflection, I have the following proposition for you. I want you
to chair this commission.”
As a social scientist who believes in the values of truth (and was
even born in Romania), of course I accepted. It was a great honor.
However, for the good of this endeavor and to ensure that it would
reach its fullest potential, I first had to make clear to President Băsescu
exactly what such a commission would logistically entail. I needed the
following to be guaranteed: as the chair, I requested total freedom in
selecting its members, complete autonomy in writing the report, and
full access to the archives. I asked Băsescu to confirm the approval of
these conditions with the minister of internal affairs and other relevant
government officials, fearing that the still-strong Communist debris in
the bureaucratic machine would doom the commission before it even
started. President Băsescu immediately assured me that he would grant
me “all the authority of the Chief Executive of Romania.”
Despite this promise, I was not so confident in Băsescu’s declara-
tion. Recall that former president Emil Constantinescu tried to initiate
Truth Is Not Easy 83
this sort of work, yet even his efforts bore no fruit. The archives had
remained closed.
“We’re talking about the Central Committee of the Communist
Party and the Securitate,” I reminded Băsescu. I would not participate
in a commission that would be forced to lie (and not necessarily on
behalf of Băsescu, but, as I feared would be more likely, on behalf of
various Communists still in power who did not wish to open up the
past) or give an incomplete report. “Mr. President, you haven’t worked
on this issue. I have. I don’t want to be the lightning rod for the discon-
tent of the researchers when they discover that they can’t do anything
and the whole thing is just a symbolic manipulation.”
Three days later, we had another conversation. My fears were calmed
as far as they possibly could be, so I accepted the job. It became the
most important assignment – in the intellectual, moral, and scholarly
senses – of my life.
Soon after I agreed to be chair, I talked with Rodica Palade, the editor
of 22, who told me, “Listen, we’ve set a precedent with the commission
on the Holocaust chaired by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel went to Bucharest,
appeared publicly with Iliescu at a press conference, and explained
what the commission was about. You have to come to Romania and
appear publicly with Traian Băsescu.”
Truth Is Not Easy

That was the beginning of a travel nightmare. In April 2006, com-
pletely convinced by then of the urgent necessity for such an initiative,
President Băsescu decided to create the Presidential Commission for
the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, known as
the PCACDR. From then until the end of 2006, I went to Romania
seven times – basically one flight every month – to assemble and lead
the commission. I had a semester away from my university to com-
plete a different project, and they graciously allowed me to work on
the commission. I realized that, without my presence, the research team
would not work effectively. Perhaps if it were some other country the
work might go smoothly, but in Romania, forget about it: there would
be internal squabbles based on personal idiosyncrasies or long-held
grudges, slacking, and procrastination (the work on behalf of the com-
mission was, after all, high risk and low reward in terms of status and
material compensation), and, most importantly, routine bureaucratic
delays were all liable to sabotage our initiatives and research. Govern-
ment officials leftover from Communist times are never too keen to
unlock doors (metaphorically and physically), especially for investiga-
tive work like ours.
In general, I had positive responses to my requests to serve on the
Presidential Commission. There were only two major cases of “con-
vulsion.” Historian Sorin Antohi was one of the founding members
of the Group for Social Dialogue (GSD) and at the time chaired the
Department of History at Central European University (CEU). I knew
that he had been an intellectual critical of the regime before 1989.
Since 1989, he had served as a secretary of state at the Ministry of
Education and was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan.
He accepted the invitation, which remains the mystery of my life. He
would still have retained his professional status if he had not accepted,
because most probably, the information on his relationship with the
secret police would never have surfaced. Once he was a member of the
commission, he became the subject of requests for vetting. In a matter
of days, another commission member, the head of the Association of
Former Political Prisoners in Romania, told me “We have a very seri-
ous problem with the Commission,” he told me. “It’s your friend from
Budapest.”
“What’s the problem? He has a lot of enemies. He’s a brilliant guy.”
“It has nothing to do with that.” This commission member then told
me everything about the Antohi’s controversial past, including his code
names – meaning he had been an informer for the secret police, unbe-
knownst to me (and to many others).
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
But the story was, indeed, confirmed by corroborative evidence. Even
a journalist from the newspaper where I published a column answered
my query by saying, “Check tomorrow if he is still there.”
Antohi resigned the next day. I called friends of mine and asked why.
Nobody knew, but they had been told that “documents had come out.”
Everyone knew what this meant: incriminating documents from the
secret police archives had been found and circulated, demonstrating
that he had been an informer.
So I sent a note to him, saying, “Listen, we have to talk, you know
what we’re talking about.” He subsequently withdrew from the com-
mission for “personal reasons.” But things did not stop there. He
decided to act preemptively, publishing a confession in June 2006. In
the fallout, his career went spiraling downward, which is a pity since
he is truly an exceptional intellectual. I had no role in his professional

demise; on the contrary, I publicly defended him and said he remains
my friend, for which I received lots of criticism. People said, “You say
that you are very critical, but if it’s your friend, you change your posi-
tion. In other cases of informers, you are very tough.” Looking back, I
admit they probably had a point about this double standard. Of course,
it is very hard to be as tough with a personal friend as with someone
you do not know. Antohi had played with my son when he was young,
we had put together workshops and conferences, and we had coedited
a volume. But I agree that this information should not be used as a
justification or shield. It is the principle of the matter: Antohi defended
himself by declaring that he only reported good things about people to
the Securitate. Excuse me? Such a statement is always very debatable
and often untrue. Was he so arrogant as to think he knew that the infor-
mation he delivered to the Securitate was never used to harm someone
and that he, accordingly, had committed no wrongs or caused any dev-
astation of an individual life? His “dignified” approach to informing
cannot be proven, and it is low and dishonest nonetheless. The best
solution is simply not to sign any agreement with thugs. The other
member of the commission to resign because of his previous collabora-
tion with the Securitate was Metropolitan of Banat Nicolae Corneanu,
who resigned in December 2006.
Perhaps the most daunting obstacle to the commission’s work was
obtaining access to archives from Communist times (of the Central
Committee, of ministries, of various institutions directly involved in
the functioning of the regime, and so on). While the president was
very optimistic at the start of the project, he soon discovered its chal-
lenges. We worked under very difficult circumstances; the archives
were locked, large sectors of society were apathetic, and the intellectu-
als remained divided. But we eventually succeeded, which would not
have happened without Traian Băsescu. Without him, this commission
would not have been been able to do its investigatory work and pro-
duce its Final Report.
I greatly appreciate the role played by Traian Băsescu. At a cer-
tain moment, he really understood that this particular issue – con-
demning the past – could become a defining feature of his presi-
dency. His moral commitment is illustrated by the following vignette,
which occurred when Băsescu visited Washington, DC, in 2005.
Accompanied by Andrei Pleşu, he toured the United States Holo-
caust Memorial Museum, where they watched a film about Romanian
soldiers killing Jewish children. Băsescu started to cry, even though he

came from a military family. Pleşu told me, “If you manage to convince
Băsescu to deal with this issue the way he internalized the Holocaust,
then you win. Maybe not with the Romanian nation, but with him –
and that’s the important thing.”
Soon after the commission began its work, I asked the president what
degree of involvement and oversight he wanted. I asked Băsescu, “Mr.
President, I know that you are a very busy person. But as we advance
through the chapters dealing with different issues, do you want to look
at any of the materials?”
He said, “If you give me ten pages, that’s already a lot for me. Look
at all that I have on my desk. And this is your job, not mine. But if it
is only ten or fifteen pages, I’ll read it.”
Instead I gave him eighty pages, including a sociological profile of the
informers and the chapter on the Piteşti experiment, about which he
obviously knew nothing.1 He was not listening to Radio Free Europe
in the 1970s. When I was visiting a friend of mine in Timişoara in July
2006, my phone rang late at night. It was Băsescu, calling to say, “I
read what you gave me and I have a question.” This was the moment
when Băsescu decided he would see this thing to the end – a decision
that led to his first impeachment in May 2007. “Was there any moment
when this ‘diabolical’ institution called the Securitate acted on its own
in pursuing its crazy ideas?”
“You are familiar with the case of the Piteşti experiment? There are
only two cases – in Romania and in China – of the government trying
to create a New Man via the most infernal methods,” I replied.
“Are you sure,” Băsescu asked, “that this is true?”
“Yes, Mr. President, I am sure. This is a commission of experts, and
this was written by experts.”
“Do you think that party leaders would give such an order to the
Securitate?” Băsescu asked.
1
Between 1949 and 1952, an appalling experiment in the destruction of human
dignity took place at the penitentiary of Piteşti primarily and then at other
Communist prisons. In Piteşti, imprisoned students were forced to engage in
diabolical forms of “mutual reeducation,” serving simultaneously as victims and
tormentors, and those who refused to engage in the monstrous sadistic rituals
supposed to create the “New Man” lost their minds and were eventually killed.
See, e.g., Virgil Ierunca, Fenomenul Piteşti (The Piteşti Phenomenon) (Bucharest:
Humanitas, 1990).
I was not sure how to respond to this question. First of all, it would
be better served if it were the topic of a dissertation. I could not give
him a comprehensive answer on the relations between the party and
Securitate in a Communist dictatorship. The devil was in the details.
If I had been asked whether or not the Politburo decided to transform
students into monsters in Piteşti, then my answer would be, “Probably
not.” But if you asked me whether or not the Politburo member in
charge of the Securitate know about this experiment, then the answer
is a resounding “yes.” Was it part of a policy of the party to get rid of
any form of opposition among the youth? Yes. Did the policy accord
with the idea of the New Man? Yes. This was the party’s goal, not
the Securitate’s. From day one, Dzerzhinsky put it clearly: “We are the
sword and shield of the Party.”
“No general secretary of the Party was executed by the secret police,
but many heads of the secret police were executed by the general secre-
tary,” I said in reply to Băsescu. “Have you heard of Beria? Khrushchev
liquidated Beria, not the other way around. Everywhere, the party is
the key institution.” Băsescu then made it clear that he was committed
to understanding the devil in history and to convincing all Romanians
that they should be committed to this endeavor as well, so that this
devil would not be welcomed back.
To return to the problem of access to documents from the Com-
munist period, initially both the National Archives and other regional
branches gave us only very limited access to any materials. Members of
the Presidential Commission were very angry. Twenty-five researchers
were conducting the commission’s work while staying at Ceauşescu’s
villa because it belongs to the presidency. Even though the archives
were also government controlled, being a part of the Ministry of Inter-
nal Affairs, the commission members were not welcome there; there
were no designated places in the facility for them to read archived doc-
uments. One commission member told me it had taken six hours to
retrieve half of a single file. The building closed everyday at 3 PM, and
neither Xerox copies nor photographs of the documents were permit-
ted; thus, the researchers had to copy everything themselves. They were
treated with general hostility as the leadership of the archives basically
sabotaged the commission’s activities.
I went to Băsescu with their frustrations in June 2006, saying, “Mr.
President I want to be very frank with you. Many of my friends – people
that I admire, that you admire – believe that I have been caught in
a trap. For you, it’s a great achievement. You are the president who
created the commission to condemn Communism. The issue has been
completely defused. For me, I put all my prestige, name, and authority
on the line. The first thing I asked was for access to the archives. What’s
going on?”
Băsescu immediately yelled to his secretary, “Call in Blaga.” Vasile
Blaga was then the minister of internal affairs. Later, he became the
leader of the very Democratic Liberal Party that broke with Băsescu
(or perhaps it was Băsescu who broke with them?). Blaga hustled over
from the ministry, which occupied the former building of the Central
Committee, to the Cotroceni Palace. He probably had a special car,
just as his boss did in the 1980s, when there was no heat in apart-
ments in the winter. In ten minutes, he was standing before us, in a
sweat.
“Yes, Mr. President?” Blaga said.
“Vasile, dear, you know Professor Tismăneanu.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You know that I appointed him.”
“Of course.”
“You know that I really take this very seriously. Professor, what do
you need?”
“First of all,” I said, “the researchers should have a special room
where they can read the archives. Because this is a presidential com-
mission, permits should be given to them to enter so they need not
wait forever in line in the morning. There should be at least two Xerox
machines, with a technician, from 8 AM to 8 PM. And we want com-
plete access. There should be no document that they are denied access
to.”
“Will you still be here tomorrow?” Blaga asked. “Can you come to
my office at 10 AM?”
“Of course, Mr. Minister. I’d like to come with three members and
three experts of the commission. Because this is not just my job.”
“Okay, just call my secretary and give her the names.”
It was odd that Blaga could only say “yes” to his superiors. At least
now his superior was a democrat, not a Leninist.
The next morning, I was there at the “Central Committee,” and it
was the only time I saw Ceauşescu’s former office, which was now
occupied by the minister of the interior. The entire leadership of the
ministry, including the general director of the archives, was present.
They were angry. But I and the six members of the commission were
smiling.
Blaga told me, “This is an emergency meeting. The president of the
country asked us to give full access and the complete cooperation of
the ministry. I give this as an order as a minister. How long will it take
to get them the Xerox machines?”
“Half an hour.”
And from that moment on, we got full cooperation at the National
Archives. Romania had democratized its archives. So, if nothing else,
this was quite an achievement. With the interior minister, cooperation
went up to about 80 percent, which is high for a country plagued by
former Communists. With the Romanian Intelligence Service, cooper-
ation with our requests was ultimately about 30 percent. Still, its staff
were polite, even when forced to give us materials.
The first meeting of the commission took place on July 18, 2006,
although frequent communications via email and phone had taken
place between the chair, the members, and experts since its forma-
tion. We extensively discussed the policies adopted by various archive-
holding institutions from the Communist period and their reluctance,
except for the National Archives, to allow us access to materials essen-
tial for the completion of the Final Report. The commission members
and experts felt that the archivists should not have the power to decide
for the researchers which documents were relevant for their inquiries.
However, as with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there was zero
cooperation initially from the Foreign Intelligence Service. I met with
the director at the time, who was trained as a sociologist, was active in
the Social Democratic Party, and was friendly to Iliescu. I went to his
office with an expert from the commission, but my colleague was not
allowed into the office. He had to wait outside. The director then gave
me some huge envelopes.
“Please look into these,” he said, “but for your eyes only.” I looked
at the materials, and they did not look like anything useful. They had a
source, a code name, and something about Helmut Kohl. “You under-
stand,” he said.
“No, I don’t understand.”
“They are important state-to-state issues, and this goes beyond us.”
It is true that our experts asked for information about the negotia-
tions with Israel and Germany over the sale of Romanian Jews and Ger-
mans, and these negotiations had involved important people. I could
understand the sensitivity in that case because it involved foreign state

officials, and there are certain confidentiality agreements that cannot
be broken. But we had not asked for the files regarding those negoti-
ations with Israel and Germany, but instead for the files of dissidents
and those of Radio Free Europe (RFE), which the Foreign Intelligence
Service insisted were also matters of national security. Why? RFE no
longer existed in the way it had during the Communist era, and most of
those people mentioned in the files were dead. We suspected that their
files were still off-limits because they were bursting with information
on government infiltrations. In any case, there was only selective coop-
eration offered by the Foreign Intelligence Service.
We also received miserable treatment at the Ministry of Health, from
which we needed information in order to tackle the abortion issue.
Recall the linkage of the abortion issue to the militia. All those offi-
cers who arrested people for illegally interrupting pregnancies were
probably lieutenants and captains at the time, and decades later, they
had probably become colonels and generals. It was impossible, how-
ever, to squeeze out any information about the military’s involvement.
Our mandate did not extend to subpoena powers, as it did for the
South African national commission. We did not have the authority to
force cooperation; Parliament would not have approved this permis-
sion in any event. Our best hope for success involved working with the
president, not the Parliament. Yet despite direct intervention from the
president, we never received the needed documents from the Ministry
of Health’s archive concerning the issue of abortion during Commu-
nism. When Professor Gail Kligman requested 150 pages (very specific
ones that she had identified in her earlier research for her superb book,
Politics of Duplicity2 ), she received only 7, along with a note from
the archivist specifying that he did not consider the rest relevant for
the Final Report. Unfortunately, such uncooperative behavior was not
penalized in any way, and it is still present in some ministerial archives.
Speaking of issues yet to be resolved, it is important to note that
the Final Report offers twenty-three recommendations. Băsescu men-
tioned in his speech only those he thought he could carry out. He did
not mention lustration. “It’s not me,” he later told me. “This is the
parliament of the country. I can propose it, but I don’t have the right
2
Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in
Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
The Meaning of a Commission 91
to issue laws.” After he created a presidential advisory commission in

April 2007 to implement the proposals, it became simply an issue of
money, and with the economic crisis, money became unavailable. Even
today, no Museum of Communism stands in Bucharest. We proposed
it, but no funding was allocated to it. There is only the Memorial of
the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance in Sighet, which is a
private memorial. I am not necessarily against a private museum, but
I think history should be an official story. I have mixed feelings about
such a “museumification” that creates accepted narratives, particularly
when the state itself shies away from truth.
Traian Băsescu’s position from the moment he created the commis-
sion until the end of his presidential mandate in November 2014 proves
the importance of political will – and real power – in initiating and
sustaining a potentially centrifugal endeavor. The president asked us
to write a document that was conceptually rigorous and morally hon-
est. Once the document was endorsed and assumed by the head of the
state, it entered the political history of this country. Traian Băsescu
did not formulate his speech during a political campaign: instead it
was a statement reflecting the entire responsibility that his office entails
before the united chambers of the Romanian Parliament. It was based
on a painstakingly drafted document, the Final Report, prepared by a
state-assigned commission comprising esteemed public and academic
personalities. The goal was to build a persuasive body of material for
future generations who had not lived under Communism.
The Meaning of a Commission

Clearly, the scholar and the politician face different demands and act
in separate responsibility registers. For me [VT], things were clear. As
a researcher, I thought we had enough documentary material to be
able to say bluntly: Communism was an inhumane, brutal, and crimi-
nal political system. However, to provide the needed level of credibil-
ity, the statesman, in this case the president, needed a document that
originated from a scientific, objective forum – not just the work of
a single author (either myself or other established researchers), but a
work based on collective expertise and the consensus of experts. Pres-
ident Băsescu entrusted me [VT] with selecting the members of the
Presidential Commission. In so doing, I took into account the schol-
arly competence and moral credibility of the people invited to join
this body. Among the commission members were well-known histo-

rians, social scientists, civil society personalities, former political pris-
oners, former dissidents, and major figures of democratic exile. Pres-
ident Băsescu charged the commission with the task of producing a
rigorous and coherent document that would examine the main insti-
tutions, methods, and personalities that made possible the crimes and
abuses of the Communist regime. In addition to its academic tasks, the
Presidential Commission was established to pass moral judgment on
the defunct dictatorship and invite a reckoning with the past through
an uncomfortable acknowledgment of its crimes against humanity
and other forms of repression. The commission aimed to understand
the country’s traumatic history through an academic approach that
presupposed both distance from the surveyed topic and empathy for
the victims. This necessitated continuous efforts to balance norma-
tive and analytical approaches. The premise underlying the commis-
sion’s activity was that, although historians are not judges, they can-
not refrain from engaging in moral judgment when exploring crimes
against humanity. To avoid such conclusions would be to deny one’s
own humanity.
The Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Romanian
Communist Regime was often called the Tismăneanu Commission.
Such shorthand overlooked or eclipsed the diversity of the background
and experiences of its members. The Final Report was a collective
work. In Romania, the label “Tismăneanu Commission/Report” was
a deliberate personalization of our activity in order to justify individ-
ual attacks against me and the misconstruing of my role and involve-
ment in the whole endeavor. It was also a way to focus on calumny,
rather than on analyses of the contents of the Report and of the public
statements made by commission members or experts. These practices
intensified in inverse proportion to serious examination of the Final
Report.
As mentioned, I had selected twenty members of the commission,
including scholars (historians like Sorin Antohi, Dragoş Petrescu,
Andrei Pippidi, Marius Oprea, and Alexandru Zub; political scien-
tist Levente Salat; and UCLA professor and sociologist Gail Klig-
man), civil society representatives (Sorin Ilieşiu, Nicolae Corneanu,
and Romulus Rusan), opinion leaders (Nicolae Manolescu, Horia-
Roman Patapievici, and Stelian Tănase), former political prisoners and
dissidents (the academician Alexandru Zub, president of the History
The Meaning of a Commission 93
Department of the Romanian Academy; Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu,

then president of the Association of Former Political Prisoners [AFPP]
and member of the CNSAS Council; and Radu Filipescu, president of
the administrative council of the Group for Social Dialogue [GSD]);
and reputable Romanians living in the diaspora (Virgil Ierunca, Mon-
ica Lovinescu, Sorin Alexandrescu, and Mihnea Berindei).
In addition to selecting the members and experts, my role was to
offer support and encourage dialogue within the commission. The
working atmosphere was calm and friendly. And when some small
arguments inevitably occurred, I did my utmost to find common
ground and overcome difficulties. Much of the commission’s work
involved developing a personal relationship with government and
party officials, as well as victims, so they would share their documents
and testimonies. The Final Report reflected the views of the entire com-
mission, not just my own perspective, based on evidence from count-
less state documents from institutions all over the country. We all took
credit and responsibility for it.
The Final Report was the “brain child” of about thirty-six people:
young historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists.
They focused on different areas of interest. One person wrote about the
phenomenon of queuing for food. Professor Gail Kligman from UCLA
wrote a chapter about the politics of abortion. Dragoş Petrescu and I
worked on the chapter about the Communist Party. H.-R. Patapievici,
a commission member, and I co-wrote the introduction, which laid
out the commission’s basic discoveries: namely that the Communist
regime was verifiably criminal. My closest collaborator during those
days was philosopher and public intellectual Horia-Roman Patapievici.
As a member of the commission and a dear friend, he, too, became a
major target for those who resented our work. There was truly an orgy
of invectives and calumnies meant to shatter our will and delegitimize
the whole endeavor.
There were three categories of those who served on the commis-
sion. The non-scholar members assured moral dimension and symbolic
endorsement for the Final Report. The other two types were made up
primarily of scholars. The first group consisted of established figures
in Romanian studies who would both work on the Report and pro-
vide epistemic prestige and validation to the final product, while the
second group comprised “junior” scholars – the experts – who were
asked to write on a particular topic that we considered essential for
fulfilling the commission’s mandate. Very importantly, the Presidential

Commission brought together Romanians, Germans, and Hungarians.
It was a fundamentally multicultural project that focused on the history
of Communism in the country from the vantage points and experiences
of all Romanian citizens, regardless of nationality, religion, or gender.
It was truly an unprecedented initiative in a society still struggling with
consistently displaying tolerance toward minorities or integrating them
into mainstream historiographical discourses.
Except for the scientific secretary of the commission, the histo-
rian Cristian Vasile, its members worked without compensation. The
commission functioned on a dialogical basis and, even more impor-
tantly, independently of any political intervention. Romanian histo-
rian Ruxandra Cesereanu, herself a commission expert, showed in
her comparison of the Presidential Commission and the ICHR (which
examined Romania’s involvement in the Holocaust that was released
under Iliescu) that the former “did not include any presidential advi-
sor, so that there was no interference by the authorities in the activ-
ity of the commission,” which gave it a “democratic and heteroge-
neous character.”3 The Presidential Commission was not a research
institute, and it did not have an organizational chart with permanent
researchers. Yet it was envisaged as a trend-setter within the various
fields of the study of Communism in Romania in the long term. To me,
chairing such a commission meant promoting values I deeply cherish:
truth, dignity, tolerance, and compassion for the victims. I believe in
the unity of thought and action. The commission’s moral viewpoint
was not vindictive: the issue was to capture the truth, not to indict
people. We embraced an anti-totalitarian ethos, both antifascist and
anti-Communist.
Content of the Report

The Final Report contained both original research and previously
published material that had been revised and updated based on the
Presidential Commission’s unprecedented access to archives, which
had been mainly closed until 2006. The new research focused on the
3
Ruxandra Cesereanu, “The Final Report on the Holocaust and the Final Report
on the Communist Dictatorship in Romania,” East European Politics and
Societies, 22, no. 2 (2008), pp. 271–272.
Content of the Report 95
following topics, among others: mass organizations, the system of con-

trol for confessional institutions, the profile of secret police informers,
aspects of the collectivization process, economic planning, policies of
social control, and the fate of national minorities during the Commu-
nist dictatorship. The scholarship, both new and revised, was interdis-
ciplinary and comparative. Its vast array of study topics, methods, and
perspectives greatly strengthened its value and usefulness. Yet, we did
not have the resources or time to cover every topic or include every
expert: as it is well known, every inclusion is an implicit exclusion.
The Final Report analyzed the institution of the Communist system
after 1945 and its destruction of the pluralist system and civil soci-
ety. Based on the input of several experts, the Final Report also had a
subchapter about the Communist genocide in Romania. It specifically
dealt with the organization and functioning of the party-state; the ties
between intellectuals and the party; purges; the role of ideology; the
failed de-Stalinization of the period (1955–1958 and 1965–1971); the
emergence of national Stalinism in the last years of Gheorghiu-Dej’s
rule and the early stage of Ceauşescu’s regime; Ceauşescu’s dynastic
Communism; the role of the judiciary; the Communist transforma-
tion of the economy (nationalization, forced industrialization and col-
lectivization drives, and the economic crisis of the 1980s); the rela-
tionship between the Communist regime and religious denominations;
the negative consequences of the 1948 education reform; cultural life
and censorship; the situation of national minorities; Communist social
control; repression; estimates concerning the Romanian Gulag; the
political police apparatus and actions; repressive legislation; inform-
ers; the statistics concerning the number of political prisoners; deporta-
tions; armed anti-Communist resistance; the 1956 student movements;
workers’ protests; and dissidence. The repression in Bessarabia was
carefully examined in an excellent subchapter, despite limited access to
the archives of the Republic of Moldova.
The Final Report was also based on literature published both at
home and abroad; its members and experts sought truth wherever it
could be found. One member was the late Romulus Rusan, editor of so
many volumes published under the aegis of the Romanian Academia
Civică who, with the poetess Ana Blandiana, contributed decisively to
the establishment and development of the Sighet Memorial. I tried to
acknowledge all contributions but could not specifically cite the indi-
vidual work of every member or expert.
The mandate of the commission was to provide a scientific, rigor-

ous, brief, and coherent document examining the main institutions,
methods, and personalities who made possible the crimes and abuses
committed by the Romanian Communist dictatorship. When we began
our work, we thought that document would amount to 100 or at most
100 pages. But as the investigation went on, it became clear that we
could not stick to this length if we wanted to go beyond the level of
(dangerous) generalizations. The first edition was more than 800 pages
long.
A paperback series of documents was envisaged as an add-on to the
Final Report, and a couple of volumes have since been published. This
process was similar to that taken by the International Commission on
the Holocaust. The plan was to use these supplementary documents to
evoke even more fruitful public debates.
We also envisioned the writing of a complete Encyclopedia of Com-
munism, with contributions from younger historians, political scien-
tists, and sociologists. President Băsescu himself stressed the impor-
tance of studying this topic in high schools. Being an intellectual
tool, this project was supposed to touch on topics only tangentially
addressed by the Final Report, including the fate of theater and cine-
matography under Communism, the health care system, architecture
and urban planning before 1989, sports, and other elements of every-
day life under dictatorship. Moreover, the Encyclopedia was to go into
further detail regarding the role of the former Securitate and the repres-
sive scale of the totalitarian/communist state. In 2012, the Romanian
Academy’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarianism produced such an
encyclopedia.4
Documenting these issues was a revolutionary step in Romanian
post-Communist politics: neither ex-Communist president Ion Iliescu
nor anti-Communist president Emil Constantinescu had engaged in
such a potentially explosive undertaking. The Romanian case seems to
validate Michael Ignatieff’s assertion that “leaders can have an enor-
mous impact on the mysterious process by which individuals come to
terms with the painfulness of their societies’ past. Leaders give their
societies permission to say the unsayable, to think the unthinkable,
to rise to gestures of reconciliation that people, individually, cannot
4
Dan Cătănuş, ed., România 1945–1989. Enciclopedia regimului comunist.
Instituţii de partid, de stat, obşteşti şi cooperatiste (Bucharest: Institute for the
Study of Totalitarianism, 2012).
imagine.”5 By creating the PCACDR, the Romanian president institu-

tionalized a fundamental tool of transitional justice, despite its nonju-
dicial truth-seeking nature.
Those domestic and international commentaries that claimed the
Final Report was just a collage of previously published texts ignored its
novel scholarship. These critics did not remark on the sometimes signif-
icant differences between those older texts and their updated versions
in the report.6 Perhaps this was because many of those who commented
were not historians or social scientists who specialized in Communism
studies, but literary historians, writers, or essayists. A proper assess-
ment of what is new and what is old in the Final Report requires an
extensive knowledge of the scholarly literature published before 2006,
both locally and internationally. Furthermore, we agree with the obser-
vation of one Romanian historian, who stated that even
if there are subchapters, not many, where the poverty of argumentation and
the scarcity of references is in contrast with the accumulation of rhetoric
effects, in its essential parts, the Report brings together and systematizes,
making it visible for the first time, a large quantity of information that is
novel or, until recently, was scattered across various publications, many times
unknown to the general public. After seeing the number and the origin of the
archival funds used, one cannot say that nothing changed.7
The Presidential Commission constructed an explanation based on

interdisciplinary political, social, economic, cultural, and philosoph-
ical analysis that proves beyond any doubt the absurd, inhumane,
and repressive character of a system constantly inspired by Bolshe-
vik dogma, which in itself was a materialization of the utopian-
revolutionary tradition symbolized by Marxist ideology. All the mem-
bers of the commission took responsibility for the spirit and the method
of the report. The remarkable solidarity of this research team (and
I [VT] will not stop expressing my admiration and gratitude for the
5
Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern
Conscience (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998).
6
For example, see James Mark, Unfinished Revolution, p. 38 or Sorin Adam
Matei, “Condamnarea comunismului 2.0,” Observator Cultural, no. 193
(November 27–December 3, 2008); www.observatorcultural.ro/Condamnarea-
comunismului-2.0????articleID_20854-articles_details.html (last accessed
December 19, 2010).
7
Florin Țurcanu, “Istoria comunismului şi Raportul Final”; www.revista22.ro/
raportul-final-al-comisiei-tismaneanu-4278.html (last accessed October 20,
2016).
commission members and experts) is a model to emulate. It is also a

microcosm of the society of solidarity that, admittedly decades late,
Romania is trying to build.
Regrettably, there has been confusion about the purpose, functions,
goals, and mandate of the commission. Its establishment and the pub-
lication of the report raised expectations of change, but given the com-
mission’s mandate and the political situation in Romania, it would be
unrealistic to expect the Final Report to have a transformative impact
on the local legal system. The responsibility for the lack of subse-
quent reforms stems mostly from legislative incapacity and the politi-
cal classes’ lack of will to take responsibility for the past. Yet, even an
insightful analyst such as Lavinia Stan argued that “the Commission
led to no reforms meant to strengthen the legal system, although the
evidence it amassed did not represent ‘inconsequential truth.’”8 In his
book Pieces of the Puzzle, Charles Villa-Vicencio enumerates bluntly
what a truth-telling commission can and cannot hope to achieve. On
the one hand, such a commission can
break the silence on past gross violations of human rights; counter the denial
of such violations and thus provide official acknowledgement of the nature
and extent of human suffering; provide a basis for the emergence of a com-
mon memory that takes into account a multitude of diverse experiences; help
create a culture of accountability; provide a safe space within which vic-
tims can engage their feelings and emotions through the telling of personal
stories without the evidentiary and procedural restraints of the courtroom;
bring communists, institutions and systems under moral scrutiny; contribute
to uncovering the causes, motives, and perspectives of past atrocities; pro-
vide important symbolic forms of memorialisation and reparation; initiate
and support a process of reconciliation, recognizing that it will take time
and political will to realize; provide a public space within which to address
the issues that thrust the country into conflict, while promoting restorative
justice and social reconstruction.
However, a truth-telling commission usually does not have the capac-

ities of
imposing punishment(s) commensurate to the crime(s) committed; ensuring

remorse from perpetrators and their rehabilitation; ensuring that victims will
be reconciled with or forgive their perpetrators; addressing comprehensively
8
all aspects of past oppression; uncovering of the whole truth about an atroc-
ity or answering all outstanding questions in an investigation; allowing all
victims to tell their stories; ensuring that all victims experience closure as a
result of the process; providing adequate forms of reconstruction and com-
prehensive reparations; correcting the imbalances between benefactors and
those exploited by the former regime; ensuring that those dissatisfied with
amnesties or the nature or extent of the amount of the truth revealed will
make no further demand for punishment or revenge.9
James Mark and Lavinia Stan, as well as other scholars, do not

consider the PCACDR to be a truth commission.10 Indeed, it is not
a textbook truth commission. However, the body did fulfill most of
the functions of a truth commission cited earlier by Villa-Vicencio:
we therefore contend that the Presidential Commission was a truth
commission in the specific political, institutional, and public context
of post-Communist Romania. It included the point of view of the
Association of Former Political Prisoners (AFPP); however, its use of
the AFPP’s phrase, “the communist genocide in Romania,” generated
criticism. In this sense, the commission did provide an opportunity
for victims to “own” the truths that they told about the crimes and
abuses of the ancien régime. However, it did not have the time or
the institutional foundation on which to rely to grant victims the full
possibility of testifying about their sufferings and traumas. Nor did
local state agencies develop outreach programs that would further
alleviate the victims’ suffering. Yet, under the umbrella of the Institute
for the Investigation of the Communist Crimes and the Memory of
the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), which I [VT] chaired as president of
the Scientific Council from March 2010 to May 2012, such assistance
was, and still is, being provided through the investigation of individual
cases of imprisonment, executions, homicide, and repression brought
forward by victims and/or their families.
After the Final Report was issued, political polarization increased
within Romanian society caused by systemic crises occurring between
2007 (for more on Traian Băsescu’s first impeachment, see Chapter
4) and 2014. This polarization generated a break within the ranks of
the commission members. Most blatantly, filmmaker Sorin Ilieşiu, the
9
Villa-Vicencio, Pieces of the Puzzle, pp. 92–93.
10
See Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania, pp. 112–115, and
Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, pp. 32–33.
initiator of the appeal which, along with other factors, generated this
body, loudly proclaimed in 2013 and 2014 the need for a “true moral
condemnation of communism.”11 In 2012, Ilieşiu had become a mem-
ber of the Parliament on the side of the National Liberal Party, which
until early 2014 belonged within the governing Social-Liberal Union
(USL), Băsescu’s bitter rival. Subsequently, Ilieşiu altered his own nar-
rative about the importance and function of the commission and the
Final Report; he began attacking its members and publicly called for
the establishment of another commission. There were other such exam-
ples of criticism of the Final Report, motivated by similar political
interests: political scientist Stelian Tănase, who afterward become head
of National Romanian Television for some time, or historian Marius
Oprea, the former president of the Institute for the Investigation of
Communism’s Crimes in Romania (IICCR) and, at the time of this
writing, a director of a department within the IICCMER (created in
November 2009 by the merger of the IICCR with the National Insti-
tute for the Memory of the Romanian Exile).
The reactions to the Final Report then and now reflect the moral
and political mood of Romanian society. Many former dissidents and
important figures of democratic organizations and parties have pro-
vided tremendous, constant support. Most of the magazines and influ-
ential newspapers, including Evenimentul Zilei, Cotidianul, România
Liberă, Adevărul, 22, Observator Cultural, have continued to endorse
it. Clearly, the free press has been in full solidarity with the spirit and
the meaning of the Final Report.
Yet the attacks started immediately after my declaration of the plans
for the commission and report in April 2006 during a conference at
the “Horia Rusu” Foundation. Criticism of the Final Report grew at
an exponential rate soon after it was issued. There were complaints
that we wanted to find an alibi for the crimes of the Dej period and
emphasized them too much, that we sought collective culpability, that
we had hidden self-interests, and that we wanted to get rich (complete
lunacy since our work was carried out pro bono). Many of the attacks
were (and in some cases still are) ideologically driven (consider those
from PRM, Ion Cristoiu, Antena1/Antena3, Cronica Română with its
11
Dorin Dobrincu, “Scrisoare către Sorin Ilieşiu,” Lapunkt.ro, February 13,
2014; www.lapunkt.ro/2014/02/13/scrisoare-catre-sorin-iliesiu (last accessed
March 6, 2014).
contributors Iosif Boda, Mihai Pelin, and George Cuşnarencu, and

Roncea’s crew from Ziua), while the criticism of others focused on
personal details.
Ever since then, I have adopted a stance of non-intervention with
barren polemics that could only waste my time and sap my endurance.
Given that the Final Report was written from the vantage point of
civic liberalism, in an analytical way and with full compassion for the
victims and their drama, those who despise such an effort by mocking it
are not friends of an open society. The rhetorical gestures in Parliament
and from ferocious critics of the Final Report prove this.
Special mention should be made of Corneliu Vadim Tudor (1949–
2015), who was the champion of fake and unscrupulous resentment in
Romanian politics. He was the practitioner of a raw, ill-mannered, and
suburban populism. What he did in Parliament on December 18, 2006,
will always remain the epitome of impudence. He panicked when he
saw his name in the document, overreacted, and lamentably compro-
mised himself. Ion Iliescu, in turn, blasted the Final Report before he
even read it. He made use of gamesmanship and some of PSD’s high-
ranking officials’ opportunism to attack the very idea of condemning
Communism. He proved that he did not learn much in all these years,
that he regretted nothing from his Bolshevik past, and that he remained
a politruk (a political commissar) at heart. When I wrote the book of
dialogues with Ion Iliescu (Marele Şoc/The Great Shock) in 2003, I
was utterly convinced that he had turned a friendly eye toward plural-
ist democracy. It turned out I was very wrong.
The reaction of Mircea Geoană was different. He does not believe in
ideology (neither Left nor Right), though he served Iliescu’s interests. In
February 2006, in an interview for 22, he expressed support for a com-
mission that would condemn the Communist dictatorship in Romania
under my executive capacities. For me, the most troubling thing was
that PSD decided to boycott (and sabotage) such a long-awaited under-
taking fated to enhance the memory of all those social democrats mar-
tyred by the Communists. On the other hand, the Greater Romanian
Party (PRM) had no serious connection to the democratic Left (con-
sider its fraternization with Jean-Marie Le Pen). PSD was sadly in the
same position on December 18, when it refused to endorse President
Băsescu’s actions. Romania is still in need of an open, pluralist Left;
yet we do not see it taking root within the current party, with its deep
nostalgia and nomenklatura-like habits.
The very fact that the head of state declared the Communist regime
criminal and illegitimate in December 2006 opened up a myriad of
legal paths, hardly imaginable before that moment. The official con-
demnation was meant to bring about serious changes in the admin-
istration of the Communist archives and lead to a law on lustration,
among other reforms. Once internalized by as many people as possi-
ble, the conclusions of the Final Report and the main ideas in Pres-
ident Băsescu’s speech were supposed to become a collective men-
tal fact. This was a lot to expect, given the ever-present negationist
and revisionist tendencies. For instance, I [VT] heard with my own
ears a former Communist foreign minister, Ştefan Andrei, preaching
on the cleavage between “the repressive dictatorship” of Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej and the regime “based on development” of Nicolae
Ceauşescu. The Final Report irrefutably documents the falsehood of
such theses. Anyone who is still preaching these ideas despite the over-
whelming evidence against them is not misguided, but is unashamedly
lying for the sake of political power and utopian convictions.
Verdict
Communism was not just any type of dictatorship, but one based on
a system of ideological precepts, the most crucial being the doctrine of
class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as a kind of state
extension beyond the rule of law; hence its criminal nature, from begin-
ning to end. It was about a tyranny seeking to legitimize itself through
ideology; therefore, its political and economic elements were insepa-
rable. It was the same Marxist ideology, later revisited by Lenin and
Stalin, that determined the economic action of Communism (forced
industrialization, destruction of a market-based economy, collectiviza-
tion, etc.). The Final Report basically called for the condemnation of
the Communist regime throughout its entire existence.
I [VT] never understood what was the much-demanded “moderate”
approach toward condemning the Communist regime. I believed and
continue to believe that the Final Report offers a sufficient basis for
simply condemning the Communist dictatorship, without any ambi-
guity. It is objective and based on what actually happened to human
beings in the twentieth century. I wrote several books in the field,
including one about the role of Marxist ideology, and I think Presi-
dent Băsescu was very much aware of these facts when he appointed
Verdict 103
me. The members and experts of the Presidential Commission were

all well-known figures in their fields with a well-established moral and
intellectual bias in favor of condemning a totally illegitimate, antipop-
ular, and antinational system. The commission gathered together great
minds to figure out what happened in Romania, and the resulting
report expresses only the truth, not political or even academic opinion.
Its conclusions were no more a matter of opinion than a mathemati-
cal calculation. Unequivocally, the Final Report is as accurate as the
Pythagorean Theorem.
In addition to the importance of knowing the truth about the regime,
it is also important to consider the varying degrees of responsibility
and culpability of the perpetrators for the sake of the victims, dead
and alive. Since publication of the Final Report, there have been discus-
sions of charging the heads of the former Securitate with direct criminal
action. But the Securitate had always been under the command of the
Romanian Communist Party. As secretary of the Central Committee
of the RCP, as head of the Central Committee’s Department of Pro-
paganda, as a minister of youth, and as a county prime secretary, Ion
Iliescu had been an active supporter of that system. There is enough evi-
dence to prove his role in the Young Workers Union’s actions during the
1950s and the 1960s, as well as his hand in violently suppressing peace-
ful student movements of that time. Additionally, he spent decades dic-
tating intellectual dogma to everyone whom the regime entrusted with
his ideological care. Thus, Iliescu should be charged with crimes. His
involvement (not just in the events of the 1950s and 1960s) in criminal
activities has been a constant bone of contention in Romania. He will
probably face charges (perhaps as early as 2018), but for his involve-
ment in the Revolution and the Mineriads – though even his pre-1989
activity would be more than enough to warrant charges.
Yet, the report names so many individuals that I find it hard to
remember them all. “Protocronists”12 and chief ideologists, including
those in the cultural realm, played roles in supporting the ideology
of Ceauşescu’s era. Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Adrian Păunescu are
named in the Final Report, but we could not document the criminal
acts of every agent of the regime, much less even discover their names
12
Protochronism (anglicized from the Romanian: from the Ancient Greek terms
for “first in time”) is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe,
largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised
past to the country as a whole (Wikipedia).
and general responsibilities, despite the fact that commission members

and experts read an immense volume of documents. We had difficulty
accessing files from the archives of the former militia and Health and
Education Ministries, not to mention the former secret services; these
files continue to be shrouded in a cloud of denial under the denial of
their very existence.
Similar to Nazi crimes or those perpetrated by the Argentine junta,
crimes against humanity are imprescriptible; that is, there is no statute
of limitations for such deeds. The decrees and laws that allowed for
Communist crimes must be declared illegal because they were never
morally legal in the first place. Communist law was never anything
other than an autocratic decree. Referring to it as “law” was a lie,
because law only comes from the preservation of humans’ value. The
Final Report offered straightforward recommendations on how to deal
with former activists and Securitate officers. Our hope was that our
investigation would provide good source material for various research
hubs, including the Institute for the Investigation of the Communist
Crimes and Academia Civică. To this day, we believe that the Procla-
mation of Timişoara outlines the main tasks that ought to be fulfilled
before Romania can thrive in a climate of trust and transparency. We
believe that a complete exorcism of Communist demons starts with the
knowledge and acknowledgment of the past. If the Final Report leads
eventually to a broad study of the Communist dictatorship in schools,
or to institutions that are capable of maintaining a live memory of
what happened, or to enlivened public debate, then our goals would
have been attained.
Moral clarity is the essence of a functional and credible democracy.
But to achieve that, we need to detect nuances so as to distinguish
between degrees of culpability. I have always been in favor of speaking
the truth without worrying that doing so would somehow politically
normalize such crimes. A normality based on silence, amnesia, and lies
is a fake one, and it lacks a future outside of a closed society.
Knowledge has a therapeutically purifying and restorative value.
Exorcism can indeed take place through knowledge. The Communist
regime was a schizoid organism: it resented memory at the same time
as it cultivated secrecy, conspirators, and surveillance – in brief, it was
a political structure obsessed with transcripts, documents, and reports.
All of the documents that it left behind must be read carefully, with
historical acumen and through the lens that only the social sciences
Verdict 105
(e.g., political science, history, sociology, and anthropology) know how

to use in the effort to grasp the visible and the invisible in the actions
of the old regime. In 2012, when the second volume of documents13
pertaining to the works of the Presidential Commission for the Anal-
ysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania came out, President
Traian Băsescu declared,
We have the tremendous chance that we know these things in our life time,
how decisions were made, what were the goals, and I beg you to believe me
that every new step in documental support of the Report that gave me the
opportunity to condemn the communist regime as illegitimate and criminal
on December 18, 2006 fills me with great confidence that the Presidency
took one of the most inspired and just decisions during my two mandates.
I don’t exaggerate, I just put the Report which condemned communism on
top of all modernization processes involving the state because of the many
current phenomena: from our insatisfaction with the gap between Romania
and the states which did not experience communism, to our daily attitudes
reminiscent of a mentality not yet adapted to Romania’s new course.14
Ever since the Final Report was issued, I [VT] have asked myself
whether it was an autopsy or a vivisection. The crux of the matter was
the biological-like continuity of mentalities and practices, not to men-
tion the still-firm grip of networks of influence over the entire country.
A few years after the Final Report was published and the Romanian
state was coming to terms with the past, I talked quite a bit with Virgil
Nemoianu, a Romanian American essayist, literary critic, and philoso-
pher of culture, who made several excellent points. First, Nemoianu
suggested that the term “elitocide” would be semantically more appro-
priate than genocide, arguing that the Communists “systematically,
and most successfully, pursued the decimation of political, cultural,
military, and economic elite, or of the magistracy.” The Communist
program had indeed opposed any form of meritocracy. In conversa-
tions with me, Iliescu openly admitted that he saw what, in reality, is
civil society as elitism that threatens the mythical “people.” A parasitic
13
Mihnea Berindei, Dorin Dobrincu, and Armand Goşu, eds., Istoria
comunismului din România. Documente Nicolae Ceauşescu (1965–1971),
vol. II (Iaşi: Polirom, 2012).
14
See www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-13424109-traian-basescu-lansarea-unui-
nou-volum-documente-ale-comunismului-din-romania-avut-multe-ori-
convingerea-facem-trebuie-cei-care-trait-atunci.htm (last accessed October 16,
2012).
nomenklatura imposed its rigid monopoly by cutting off all spaces of

autonomy. Trotsky touched on this issue when he wrote, “Lenin cre-
ated the party apparatus, and the apparatus created Stalin.” Romanian
Communism, from 1945–1989, was a copycat of the model inaugu-
rated with the Russian Revolution in 1917. The history of the RCP
reveals a total commitment to this sectarian and exclusivist model. As
to the adequacy of labeling the Communist experiments in their rad-
ical stages as genocide, the debate is still ongoing (see the works of
Norman Naimark and Timothy Snyder, among others).
Obviously, if we only consider the last three years of Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej’s reign of terror and the first six of Ceauşescu’s, we
could characterize the system as sometimes experiencing moments of
“thaw,” of relative taming of the repressive beast. We therefore com-
pletely agree with Virgil Nemoianu’s second suggestion that those
nine years bear the imprint of Ion Gheorghe Maurer’s influence (who
became prime minister in 1961 and was directly involved in the selec-
tion of Ceauşescu as Dej’s successor). In a book called Memoriile man-
darinului valah, Petre Pandrea, not at all a Maurer sympathizer, went
so far as to name Maurer as “the true Lenin of Romanian commu-
nism.” Along with Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Leonte Răutu, and Paul
Niculescu-Mizil, Maurer supervised the formulation of the April 1964
RCP Declaration.15 He was also the first Eastern European Communist
prime minister to make a state visit to Paris in 1964. More educated
and intelligent than most members of the Politburo, Maurer loathed
emphatic xenophobia and Stalinism’s hard-line intolerance, but that
did not make him a democrat. He lived his entire life and died as a
Marxist intellectual loyal to its Stalinist manifestations.
The fact remains that, even in its moments of maximum “liberal-
ization” (which supposedly include the year 1968, when Ceauşescu
reached his peak of popularity when he publicly condemned the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops), the Communist
15
The April 1964 RCP declaration on the main problems of the world
Communist movement summed up the RCP’s new philosophy of intrabloc,
world Communist, and international relations in general. In this fundamental
document, the Romanian Communists broke with the Soviet concept of
socialist internationalism and emphasized their commitment to the principles
of national independence and sovereignty, full equality, noninterference in the
domestic affairs of other states and parties, and cooperation based on mutual
advantage.
Verdict 107
regime in Romania did not give up on its main instruments of dom-

ination and control. It is true that at those times the Securitate con-
trolled fewer informers, but the practice remained ubiquitous. Cen-
sorship remained in force in full “revolutionary vigilance.” Lucreţiu
Pătrăşcanu was rehabilitated, but not the leaders of historical parties.
The decree against abortion was a clear sign that the regime wanted
total control over human bodies.
The last three years of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s and the first six
of Ceauşescu’s regimes, from 1963 to 1971, are often viewed posi-
tively, especially in contrast with the economic decline, social crisis,
and moral pauperization of the 1980s. These years seem more human-
ized, less brutal, and less cowardly than the original Stalinist model.
But memory (or, better said, memories) may not be the same thing
as history. This is proven by Russia, where nostalgia for the alleged
benefits of the Communist life, even admittedly weighed against the
negatives, is a pillar of Putin’s popularity. In fact, the whole discourse
takes on what is called “post-memory.” Even from a historical point of
view, and even during those years of great disillusionment (or betrayed
promises), the illegitimacy and criminality of a regime characterized by
fraud, violence, terror, and lies were more than obvious. The legacies
of Communism are still very present – including within mental forma-
tions, such as the attraction to paternalism and the nanny state – for
those irresponsible demagogues who stir up the public and promise the
moon just as their Communist predecessors preached perfect equality,
terrestrial paradise, and a classless society. The intensity of the pan-
icked, aggressive, and sometimes condescending reactions to the Final
Report can be explained and linked to such legacies – and such utopian
intentions of the present.
The effort of condemning the Communist dictatorship is (at least)
tridimensional, existing in the realms of epistemology, legality (with
regard to both juridical and legislative initiatives), and memorializa-
tion. From an epistemic point of view, numerous volumes, memoirs,
documents, diaries, and historical, sociological, economic, philosoph-
ical, literary, and political science surveys have been published in the
years since the condemnation. Most of these editorial projects were
the collective works of government institutions such as CNSAS, the
National Archives, the Romanian Diplomatic Institute, or the IIC-
CMER. From a legal perspective, some property restitution cases
(in connection to the confiscations perpetrated by the Communist
regime) have been resolved. Likewise, there have been juridical ver-
dicts annulling prison, concentration camp, and death sentences from
the 1950s. It is obvious that it takes much more effort and initiatives
to complete such a total righting of the past, endeavors made all the
more difficult because the heirs of the former nomenklatura have no
interest in such an enterprise.
From my own experience as a professor [VT], I have come to under-
stand how and why we study totalitarian utopias. On September 11,
2001, I was preparing to teach a class on the rise and fall of Com-
munism. I heard about the terrorist attacks, but decided to hold my
class. My students were very dismayed and confused, so instead of
the announced topic, I give an improvised lecture on the problem of
nihilism, terrorism, and Dostoyevsky’s Demons. How does his book
relate to those concepts? The twentieth century was Lenin’s century,
meaning it was of the same totalitarian brand concocted by the Jacobin
Marxist born in Simbirsk in 1870. Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and
Castro drew inspiration from the Leninist model of a single party (and
their followers in Cuba, Russia, China, and Romania continue to do
so). Islamic radicalism is also a form of totalitarianism; it is nothing
more than a utopian passion. To understand any form of totalitarian-
ism, we need to understand the whole of totalitarianism as a move-
ment, as a psychological universe, and as a millenarian project. Under-
standing totalitarianism is as much about this century’s children as it
is about last century’s victims.
The totalitarian regime instituted in Romania between March 6,
1945, and December 22, 1989, was of the Soviet type. If we do not
grasp this basic idea, then we will lose ourselves in a labyrinth of ali-
bis, myths, and mystifications. It is true that between March 6, 1945,
and December 30, 1947, Romanian Communists did not generate the
large-scale terror that was to come, but they prepared for it system-
atically and diabolically. After the April 1964 Declaration, the RCP
obtained some autonomy from the Kremlin, but it remained, until its
very end, faithful to a national-Stalinist credo. National-Stalinism was
not Stalinism lite, but instead was a symbiosis of the most diaboli-
cal and genocidal parts of Nazism and Stalinism. In fact, the RCP
has advocated de-Sovietization so as to avoid de-Stalinization. What
I stress here is that the outcome was not a reforming one at all. It
could have been, but it was not. Yugoslavization never took place in
Romania, where the Leninist dogmas stayed intact. Romanian
Verdict 109
Communists remained devoted to a sectarian, ultra-bureaucratic,

totalitarian-militaristic model of Bolshevik inspiration. In the same
vein as Stalin, Ceauşescu firmly believed that there was no fortress that
could not be swept away by the Communist élan.
One of the most profound, subtle, and informed historians of Lenin-
ism is Alain Besançon. To him, Leninism is not just a theory of the
avant-garde party, of a messianic sect that pretends to redeem human-
ity, of a “community of the chosen”: rather, it is mainly about how
to best hold onto power. In this sense, Vladimir Putin is a Lenin-
ist. Besançon’s contributions belong to one of the most prolific tradi-
tions of Sovietology, along with the works of the following writers:
Seweryn Bialer, Franz Borkenau (and his fascinating volume World
Communism), Karl Dietrich Bracher, Archie Brown, Zbigniew Brzezin-
ski, Abraham Brumberg (for years the editor and spirit of Prob-
lems of Communism), Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Robert Conquest,
Robert V. Daniels, Herbert G. Ellison, Merle Fainsod (one of the
founders of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University), Iring
Fetscher, Charles Gati, Abbott Gleason, Mikhail Heller, Paul Hollan-
der, Ghiţă Ionescu, Ken Jowitt, George Kennan, Leo Labedz (for years
the editor of the exceptional magazine Survey), Wolfgang Leonhard,
Moshe Lewin, Martin Malia, Alfred Mayer, Jules Monnerot, Nor-
man Naimark, Alexander Nekrich, Boris Nicolaevsky (the Menshe-
vik who published the famous “Letter to an old Bolshevik,” an essen-
tial text for the field of Sovietology in its first stages in the 1930s),
Richard Pipes, Peter Reddaway, Alfred Rieber, Henry Roberts (the
founder of the Institute for Communist Studies at Columbia Uni-
versity and author of several classic books on Romania), Alvin Z.
Rubinstein (my [VT’s] mentor from the University of Pennsylvania),
Leonard Schapiro, Robert Service, Boris Souvarine, Robert C. Tucker,
Adam Ulam, and Bertram Wolfe. Then there is the middle genera-
tion of thinkers to consider, particularly George Breslauer, Caterina
Clark, Timothy Colton, Karen Dawisha, Amy Knight, Bruce Parrott,
Ilya Prizel, Karl Schlögel (author of that total history of the fatal year
of 1937), Stephen Sestanovich, Angela Stent, and Viktor Zaslavsky.
Some of them changed their opinions in the 1970s and the 1980s
(for instance, J. Arch Getty), but most did not. From the younger
generation, these scholars stand out: Anne Applebaum, Leon Aron,
Jörg Baberowski, David Brandenberger, Michael David-Fox, Orlando
Figes, M. Stephen Fish, Igal Halfin, Stephen Hanson, Jochen Hellbeck,
Catriona Kelly, Stephen Kotkin, Michael McFaul, Catherine Merri-

dale, Jan Plamper, James Ryan, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Yuri Slezkine,
Timothy Snyder, Françoise Thom, Vladislav Zubok, Amir Weiner, and
Nicolas Werth. Stephen Kotkin’s monumental biography of Stalin (the
first volume was already published at the time of this writing) should
be placed right next to the most impressive biographies on Hitler from
Allan Bullock to Joachim Fest or Ian Kershaw.
I [VT] have met and engaged in long conversations with many of
these scholars and written about their work. Beginning in September
1982, I read in Sovietology incessantly, every night; I devoured jour-
nals such as Encounter, Commentary, Survey, Problems of Commu-
nism, Dissent, and The New Leader. I became a contributing editor to
ORBIS and wrote for Problems of Communism and Survey. Then, I
had the chance to work at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FRPI;
together with Nils Wessel, Michael S. Radu, Alan Luxenberg, and John
Maurer) and to teach at the University of Pennsylvania, to read in
two formidable libraries, and to attend debates of leading personalities
such as Moshe Lewin, Mihailo Marković (a dissident Marxist from
the former Yugoslavia and later an unfortunate supporter of Slobo-
dan Milošević), Elliott Mossman (an expert in Boris Pasternak), Alvin
Z. Rubinstein, and Robert Strausz-Hupé (one of the most influential
American conservatives). I became close with Richard Pipes through
his son, Daniel, director of the FPRI in Philadelphia. I also talked exten-
sively with Adam Ulam when he came to give a lecture in Philadelphia;
in 1988, together with Alvin Rubinstein, I listened to Boris Yeltsin at
the World Affairs Council in that city.
I mention all these things just to stress that my expertise is the result
of decades of reading, meetings, and dialogues – in brief, it is the result
of a genuine passion. Nothing makes me happier than the chance to
publicly express my admiration for those intellectuals who knew how
to resist, both spiritually and morally, the contagious and pernicious
totalitarian temptation.
The twentieth century is a story of intellectuals following politicians.
That is largely why Communism became so powerful: the intellectuals
in the East and West obediently and enthusiastically followed fanati-
cally active politicians. If we are to avoid totalitarianism – or rather,
limit it – in the twenty-first century, it has to be the other way around:
politicians, to a healthy but limited extent, should follow critical intel-
lectuals. Our theoretical grandparents obeyed Number One. Now, as
Verdict 111
Băsescu demonstrated, a democratic president should follow the advice

of a diverse group of democratic intellectuals. While last century’s intel-
lectuals followed the Leader, it is this century’s democratic leaders who
should pay heed to the joint conclusions of critically thinking scholars.
In this manner, truth – as opposed to ideological comfort – can be
preached, opening up our societies, rather than closing them. Revolu-
tions can be beautiful, but whether or not the selfless courage demon-
strated by those in the streets will actually change anything for the next
generation is determined by the actions of politicians in the subsequent
decades.
The Presidential Commission in fact was an epistemic and moral
community, and it was able to figure out the truth about what actually
happened: to use historian Robert Gellately’s concept, the Communist
regime was “a social catastrophe.”16 The promulgation of truth, the
commission’s new approach to scholarly research and analyses, and the
relationship between men of power and men of thought are working
to make sure that the dead young people in Timişoara did not die in
vain. In our view, truth, memory, reconciliations, and repentance are
mutually linked and guarantee the future of a robust liberal democracy:
together, they are unconditionally necessary for democracy and form
a foolproof antidote to a society’s dictatorial temptations.
16
Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe
(New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2008).
4 Reactions to the Condemnation and
Political Rearrangements after 2007
I [VT] read with great interest what the US Embassy in Romania had
to say about the condemnation of Communism in December 2006 and
about my own opinions that I shared during my meeting with then-
ambassador Nicholas Taubman soon after the event (see Chapter 1).
Both my wife Mary and my son Adam attended that solemn session
of the Parliament. They sat on the balcony, along with Horia Pat-
apievici, Mircea Mihăieş, Gabriel Liiceanu, Andrei Pleşu, Dragoş şi
Cristina Petrescu, Cristian Vasile, Smaranda Vultur, Sorin Ilieşiu, Dorin
Dobrincu, Adrian Cioflâncă, Gabriel Andreescu, and Stejărel Olaru.
Corneliu Coposu’s sisters, the dissidents Doina Cornea and Radu Fil-
ipescu; Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan from the Sighet Memo-
rial; Vasile Paraschiv and Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu; and historian
Alexandru Zub also witnessed the infamous assault commiteed by
Vadim Tudor’s followers during the ceremony marking Băsescu’s con-
demnation. The same group that had so vehemently opposed Traian
Băsescu’s condemnation in December 2006 also spearheaded his first
impeachment referendum in 2007. When my wife, my son, and I met
with Ambassador Taubman later that month, all of us were still in
shock.
December 18, 2006, was a watershed in the political culture of
post-totalitarian Romania. It identified, as clearly as possible, who
were the enemies and who were the friends of open society. President
Traian Băsescu’s composure in condemning the regime as illegitimate
and criminal stood out against Vadim Tudor’s hysteria, endorsed by
PSD members and Dan Voiculescu’s vicious smile. The beast had been
strongly punched, but this did not stop it from poisoning the pub-
lic space. In spite of all these frustrations, the Romania we see after
December 18, 2006, looks different from the Romania we saw before.
It was that day when, through the voice of the most authoritative per-
son in the democratic state, the definitive break with the Communist
past took shape and meaning.
112
Reactions to the Condemnation and Political Rearrangements 113
The US Embassy in Bucharest described the session of the Parlia-

ment in a minutely detailed cable sent in December 2006. The foreign
service officers in Bucharest noted that Mircea Geoană had lost the
opportunity to distance himself from Ion Iliescu, an ex-Communist,
and that Titus Corlăţean had told them that Nicolae Văcăroiu did not
bring the audience to order because he was scared for his own safety.
This cable provides proof of the sulfurous atmosphere surrounding the
condemnation procession and is reprinted in full.
DECL: 12/19/2006
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, SOCI, RO
SUBJECT: BREAKING WITH THE PAST: PRESIDENT BĂSESCU ISSUES
FORMAL CONDEMNATION OF COMMUNIST RULE IN ROMANIA
Classified by: PolCouns Ted Tanoue for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).
1. (C) Summary. At a special parliamentary session, President Traian
Băsescu publicly condemned the communist regime that ruled the coun-
try between 1945 and 1989 as “illegitimate and criminal” and tendered
a formal apology to its victims. The event marked the release of a report
drafted by a presidential commission headed by U.S. political scientist
Vladimir Tismaneanu on the crimes committed under communist rule.
The event was marred by disruptive tactics on the part of Corneliu Vadim
Tudor’s extremist nationalist PRM with the tacit support of the Social
Democrat PSD. Analysts and the public generally agree that this was a
long-overdue break with the past in a country that for years after the
1989 Revolution remained in the grip of former communists. Băsescu’s
embrace of the anti-communist agenda has discomfited opposition PSD
head Mircea Geoană since it forced him to close ranks behind former
leader Iliescu rather than adopt a more forward-looking reformist stance.
End Summary.
2. (SBU) In a week when Romanians commemorated the 17th anniversary
of the December 1989 overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu, President Traian
Băsescu presided over a special parliamentary session on December 18
that categorically condemned the communist period in Romania. Char-
acterizing the communist epoch as “illegitimate and criminal,” Băsescu
said communism had robbed Romania of five decades of modern his-
tory. He added that the communist system was based on repression,
intimidation, humiliation and corruption, and he tendered a formal apol-
ogy on behalf of the Romanian state to the victims of the communist
dictatorship.
3. (SBU) The session marked the release of a 663-page report of the
Presidential Commission for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in
114 Reactions to the Condemnation and Political Rearrangements
Romania. Established in April 2006 and led by Romanian-born U.S.

political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu, the commission included promi-
nent writers, historians, and sociologists including many leading dissi-
dents from the communist period. Following the major themes of the
report, Băsescu described a litany of crimes of the communist regime
including, inter alia: abandoning national interests in ceding control of
Romania to the Soviet Union in 1945; destruction of competing political
parties; liquidation of pre-communist elites; persecution of ethnic, reli-
gious, cultural and sexual minorities and peasants who opposed collec-
tivization; forced deportations; harsh reprisals following anti-communist
protests in 1956, 1977, and 1987; Ceauşescu’s demographic policies; and
the massacre of citizens during the December 1989 revolution.
4. (SBU) Băsescu also endorsed several follow-up steps recommended by the
commission, including establishing a Memorial Day and national mon-
ument for the victims of communist repression and construction of a
National Museum of the Communist Dictatorship. He also agreed on the
need to nullify politically based criminal sentences and to restore citizen-
ship to individuals expelled by the communist regime. Băsescu endorsed
access to communist-period archives and the creation of a textbook on the
communist period, based on the commission report. However, Băsescu
refused to urge parliament to adopt a lustration law as recommended by
the report’s authors.
5. (SBU) The commission report also named prominent perpetrators, includ-
ing former communist party leaders Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nico-
lae Ceauşescu, and listed Ion Iliescu, former secretary of the Central Com-
mittee of the Communist party and a Minister of Youth in the early 1970s,
as a leading “communist ideologist.” Iliescu was a central figure of post-
1989 transition, serving as President from 1989–96 and 2000–04 and
was a founder (and now honorary president) of the opposition Social
Democratic Party (PSD). The report also noted that the “golden age” of
Ceauşescu’s leadership was supported by a vast propaganda apparatus
including “court poets” Adrian Păunescu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor–
both prominent figures in post-1989 Romanian politics. Păunescu is now
a senior PSD senator, and Tudor heads the extreme nationalist Greater
Romania Party (PRM).
6. (C) Several political parties with lineages linked to the communist regime–
including the PRM, PSD, and Conservative Party (led by ex-Securitate
agent Dan Voiculescu), denounced the report as a “political” document
expressing the point of view of the President and not the views of the
Romanian parliament. During the hour-long presidential address, PRM
members orchestrated from the Parliament’s floor by Tudor booed, blew
whistles, and shouted catcalls in an attempt to drown out the President’s
Reactions to the Condemnation and Political Rearrangements 115
speech. The PRM’s disruptive tactics appeared to have the tacit support
of Senate Speaker Nicolae Văcăroiu (PSD), who declined to call parlia-
ment to order or eject the troublemakers. (Note: in a conversation with
PolCouns, PSD Secretary General Corlăţean reiterated his party’s oppo-
sition to the report, arguing that Băsescu had attempted to split the PSD
by trying to force its new leadership to side against Iliescu. Corlăţean
insisted–somewhat disingenuously–that Văcăroiu did not restore order
in the Senate chambers because “he feared for his own personal safety.”)
7. (C) In a subsequent meeting with Ambassador and PolCouns, commission
head Tismaneanu agreed with the Ambassador’s characterization of the
parliamentary fracas as “Soviet style”, adding that it was evidence that
Romania still had far to go to remove all residue of communist patterns of
behavior from politics, business, and the media. Tismaneanu said the inci-
dent had all the earmarks of a “well-planned” event, as the conspicuous
absences of PSD President Mircea Geoană and PNL Lower House Presi-
dent Bogdan Olteanu suggested that they had known about the disruption
in advance. Tismaneanu argued that the attempted disruption of Băsescu’s
address was a miscalculation on the part of the PRM and the PSD, since
Băsescu gained credibility by standing his ground. Incoming PSD leader
Geoană had also failed to seize an opportunity to distance himself from
Iliescu and instead found himself in the role of Iliescu’s “trumpet.” Not-
ing that it was Iliescu who previously awarded PRM founder Tudor with
Romania’s highest civilian honors–the “Star of Romania”–Tismaneanu
said the episode underscored that it was sometimes difficult to differenti-
ate the extreme right from the extreme left in Romanian politics.
8. (C) Tismaneanu said the Romanian Orthodox church had also strongly
attacked the report. The security services had been loathe to allow Com-
mission members to see files on Orthodox church activities, but even-
tually revealed incontrovertible evidence of “100 percent collaboration”
between the church and the communist regime. Describing Băsescu as
a late–even reluctant–convert to the decommunization agenda, Tisman-
eanu said that a visit to the Holocaust Museum had been a turning point
for the President. Once Băsescu was personally convinced of the neces-
sity of the effort, he enthusiastically backed the Commission. Tismaneanu
concluded that the Presidential condemnation of the communist period
was a watershed event that underscored Băsescu’s desire to “normalize”
Romania by coming to terms with the communist past.
9. (C) Comment: President Băsescu’s formal condemnation of commu-
nist misrule was welcome, if long overdue; previous attempts by lead-
ing Romanian political reformers had quickly foundered in the post-
Communist shoals. And such a frank assessment of Romania’s past was
never in the cards under Iliescu’s multiple presidencies and PSD rule.
While this was in fact a watershed event for Romania, the backlash from
the PRM, PSD, Conservative Party and other players including the Ortho-
dox church underscores the continuing sensitivity of the issue and sug-
gests that the de-communization effort has a long way to go. Many of
Romania’s mainstream political parties, intelligence services, judiciary,
local and central administration, and other sectors including the media
and clergy continue to be dominated by former party apparatchiki, Secu-
ritate officers, and other representatives of the pre-1989 elite. On top of
its obvious merits, Băsescu’s embrace of the anti-communist agenda also
made good political sense, as he has again put the rival opposition PSD on
the defensive. For the past two years, the PSD under “reformists” such as
Mircea Geoană has tried to rebrand itself as a post-modern euro-socialist
party. Băsescu’s unveiling of the commission report put Geoană into the
complicated calculation of either publicly distancing himself from the
PSD’s communist heritage or closing ranks behind “honorary” PSD pres-
ident Iliescu. He apparently opted for the latter, disappointing many who
had held out hope for a bolder political approach. As Christian Tudor
Popescu, one of Romania’s top media figures, told us privately a few
days after the Parliamentary session: “I have been friends with Mircea
(Geoană) for twenty years, but he hurt himself. It is the same problem as
always – he is indecisive.1
The Controversy Continues

In January 2007, President Băsescu visited the Sighet Memorial (a
museum dedicated to the victims of Communism) in northern Roma-
nia. Thanks to the efforts of poet Ana Blandiana and writer Romu-
lus Rusan, as well as the dedication and diligence of historians from
the research center affiliated with the memorial, it is the most impor-
tant lieu de mémoire dealing with Romania’s tragic Communist past.
Diverse reactions emerged immediately after the president’s website
posted the Final Report in January 2007; however, we found that a
majority of the negative opinions were based on overreactions and fal-
sities. For example it was argued that the document exonerated cer-
tain political figures who had been murdered by Communists, but
who themselves could hardly be considered democrats. We would
1
For further comments, see Vladimir Tismăneanu, “Condamnarea comunismului
în viziunea Ambasadei SUA (plus câteva amintiri personale),” Contributors;
www.contributors.ro/politica-doctrine/condamnarea-comunismului-in-
viziunea-ambasadei-sua.
The Controversy Continues 117
argue that such a complaint holds a small grain of validity, but is ulti-
mately misleading because it does not consider the big picture. The
commission’s work was both objective and human: it aimed at a syn-
thesis between understanding Romania’s traumatic history through an
academic praxis that presupposed distance from the surveyed subject
and empathized with the people who suffered under the dictatorship’s
abuses. The Presidential Commission pursued a reconstruction of the
past that focused on both general and individual aspects while also
walking a fine line between distance and empathy. The Final Report’s
transgressive intentionality lies in the facts,2 in the more or less familiar
places of Romania’s Communist history. The commission first identi-
fied victims, regardless of their political colors, for one cannot argue
that one is against torture for the Left while ignoring such practices
when it comes to the Right. The militants of the Far Right should
have been punished on a legal basis, but this did not occur in the trials
staged by the Romanian Communist Party (RCP). The Communists
simply shattered any notion of the rule of law. The Final Report iden-
tifies the nature of abuses and its victims, though it does not ignore
the ideological context of the times. For the Presidential Commis-
sion, the Communist regime represented the opposite of the rule of
law, an Unrechtsstaat. However, any attempt to “discover” a Bitburg
syndrome3 in the Final Report stems more from a malevolent, biased,
and shallow motivation than a pointed academic argument.
Why was the Final Report so controversial, despite the values of the
commission having been clarified from its inception? We clearly stated
2
See A. D. Moses, “Structure and Agency în the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen
and His Critics,” History and Theory, 37, no. 2 (May 1998), pp. 194–219;
quote on p. 218. Dominick LaCapra similarly points to the distance-empathy
synthesis as a valid method of approaching recent history in his argument for
reconstruction and selectivity on the basis of fact within a democratic value
system, in which he states, “A reckoning with the past in keeping with
democratic values requires the ability – or at least the attempt – to read scars
and to affirm only what deserves affirmation as one turn the lamp of critical
reflection on oneself and one’s own.” Dominick LaCapra, “Representing the
Holocaust: Reflections on the Historians’ Debate,” in Friedländer, Limits of
Representation, p. 127. See also Dominick LaCapra, “Revisiting the Historians’
Debate – Mourning and Genocide,” History and Memory, 9, nos. 1–2 (1998),
pp. 80–112.
3
Geoffrey Hartman, Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986); Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past:
History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988).
that our anti-Communism, which was unambiguous, was not an anti-

Communism rooted in another extremism. Our position was that of
a civic-liberal anti-Communism, which was equivalent to civic-liberal
antifascism. We were explicitly anti-Communist and antifascist. In a
country that experienced both horrors, it is important to emphasize
this equal distaste. You can imagine the reactions to our position. To
his credit, in spite of all the criticisms, Băsescu stood by the commission
and its findings. He rightfully trusted it and, accordingly, would have
liked his speech in December 2006 to have been a moment of closure.
The Presidential Commission was “a state, public history lesson”
during which the “truth” about the Communist totalitarian experience
was “officially proclaimed and publicly exposed” – that is, acknowl-
edged. It was an exercise of “sovereignty over memory,”4 an attempt
to set the stage for resolving what Tony Judt called the “double cri-
sis of memory.” On the one hand, cynicism and mistrust pervaded all
social, cultural, and even personal exchanges, so that the construction
of civil society, much less civil memory, becomes very difficult. On the
other hand, there are multiple memories and historical myths, each of
which considers itself as legitimate simply by virtue of being private
and unofficial. Where these private or tribal versions come together,
they form powerful counterhistories of a mutually antagonistic and
divisive nature.5
The most virulent reactions were from those people highlighted in
the Report: Ion Iliescu and his cronies (the so-called Institute of Revolu-
tion, which published an entire issue just to slam the report and its find-
ings as a “monstrous sham”); former lackeys of the cult of personality
and promoters of Protochronism; official historians of the “Golden
Age,” many with direct links to Nicolae’s brother, Ilie Ceauşescu; and
ultranationalists and neofascists with little interest in consolidating –
through such a condemnation of the Communist dictatorship – lib-
eral democracy. In addition, former Securitate agents were outraged
by the fact that the Final Report contained devastating evidence of
4
We are employing here the concepts developed by Timothy Gordon Ash and
Tim Snyder in Timothy Garton Ash, “Trials, Purges and History Lessons:
Treating a Difficult Past in Post-Communist Europe” (pp. 265–282) and
Timothy Snyder, “Memory of Sovereignty and Sovereignty over Memory:
Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, 1939–1999” (pp. 39–58) in Jan-Werner Müller,
ed., Memory and Power.
5
Tony Judy, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Post-War
Europe,” in Jan-Werner Müller, Memory and Power, p. 173.
the poisonous role played by the old repressive institution that they
served and that it unequivocally rejected the myth of the two Securitate
apparatuses – the Cominternist versus the patriotic one. There were
also three publications at the forefront of the slanderous campaigns:
Ziua, Jurnalul Naţional, and România Mare. Add to this all the profes-
sional envy, the desire to wreak revenge against this and that member
of the commission, or even sheer frustration from those not selected
to serve on the commission. Remember that the Final Report came
out during a time of intense political battles; hence the massive attacks
from various enemies of the president. The December 18 speech, in
our view, was the trigger for the impeachment campaign against Traian
Băsescu.
There were many unsavory attacks against me [VT] in the local press,
but none through snail mail. Instead, my e-mail inbox was filled with
anti-Semitic messages. One of them, received on May 29, 2007, dealt
with the color of my eyes and hair, as well as my family name: the
sender seemed to feel the need to slander and malign all these fea-
tures. Writer G. Cuşnarencu went so far as to compare my father to
Goebbels, tongue-lashing him for failing to kill his son as the Nazi
ideologue did. Former Securitate’s intimate historian and writer Mihai
Pelin wrote very obnoxious things against Gabriel Liiceanu, H.-R. Pat-
apievici, Andrei Pleşu, Monica Lovinescu, myself, and many others. I
was appalled then and still am to this day by the fact that several insti-
tutions created to fight against ethnic, religious, or racial discrimina-
tion (such as Clubul Român de Presă [Romanian Press Club]) did not
have anything to say against such slanderous articles in România Mare,
Tricolorul, Cronica Română, or even Jurnalul Naţional.
Some have argued that the reactions to the Final Report were
rooted in its discussion of Iliescu, Vadim Tudor, Adrian Păunescu, and
other politicians who were still actively involved with the Communist
regime. This is an odd complaint because to leave these individuals out
from the story of the regime would have meant simply nullifying the
commission’s activity, mandate, and rationale. These individuals were
prominent in various periods of the regime’s development, leaving sig-
nificant imprints on the nation’s history. We tried to remain balanced
and fair in our assessments while also respecting the truth, which often
held that these individuals committed wrongs. These are factual state-
ments that had consequences for the history and society of Romania,
the very topic we were entrusted with exploring. This was a story about
Communism, not contemporary or self-interested politics. For exam-

ple, during Adrian Păunescu’s glory days – around 1967–1968 when
he was editor-in-chief of România literară, a period of relative open-
ness and partial liberalization in Romania – many of us thought him to
be a Romanian Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a man of the “thaw.” His beau-
tiful anti-Stalinist poem, which was published in the volume Istoria
unei secunde (The History of a Second), is titled “Rugăciunea lui Alfa
şi Omega” (The Prayer of Alpha and Omega). He was a prominent
member of the Writers Union in Romania and at one point was close
to the liberal faction. After 1969, however, he redefined himself as a
pillar of Ceauşescu’s cult of personality and became one of the great
supporters of this cult when put in charge of Flacăra magazine and
the Flacăra Circle (“of the revolutionary youth”). He later contended
that the circle itself had been marginalized and put under surveillance
by the former Securitate. But this cultural institution was a vehicle for
indoctrination and brainwashing: it promoted an extremely powerful
form of symbolic manipulation.
We also tried to provide a nuanced account of Vadim Tudor, who
later complained about being depicted in the Final Report as one of the
most important agents of repression. This could not be further than the
truth. Iliescu, Vadim, Păunescu, and their ilk appear in the Final Report
in their various roles at different levels of engagement and action in
the process of regime reproduction, based on the positions they had
and directly linked to their ascent within Nicolae Ceauşescu’s dynastic
socialism. We recognized that they had different degrees of responsibil-
ity, and we tried to describe them as such. For instance, it was necessary
to dwell on Vadim Tudor’s essential role in order to understand how
the RCP had tried to compromise and counteract the influence of the
Romanian literary exile, especially the Romanian section of Radio Free
Europe. He and his mentor, writer Eugen Barbu, were key actors in the
advancement of Protochronism, isolationism, and xenophobia as state-
sponsored cultural practices in Communist Romania in the late 1970s
and 1980s.
I [VT] never expected any positive responses from such people. What
shocked me the most was not only the intensity and vehemence of their
reactions but also the gradual adoption of some of their negative argu-
ments by more mainstream and dignified areas of public space and cul-
tural debates in Romania (especially after 2009). Former apparatchiks
or official historians, whose high positions in the Communist regime
involved them in the nationalization process of Romanian Stalinism,

dominated the first period of such adverse reactions to the report (from
December 2006 until 2008) – and how they saw the national inter-
est determined the level of their involvement. The Final Report col-
lided not only with their experiences but also with their perceptions
of Romania’s so-called independence from the USSR during Commu-
nism. Had it come out in 2030 instead of 2006, this debate would
have been less fiery and the Final Report strictly a historical docu-
ment. Another researcher who happened to be a Holocaust negationist
accused us of breaking the rule of writing history sine ira et studio. We
believe that writing the history of such a tragedy – the fate of Roma-
nia under Communism – cannot ignore the idea of compassion for
victims.
Those who analysed the Final Report without preconceptions or
prejudices could not fail to observe the dishonesty of its detractors.
When a journalist obsessed with discrediting the report and the com-
mission wrote for the daily Ziua that the document did not say any-
thing about Communist repression in Bessarabia and Northern Bukov-
ina, the only counterargument and proof of this egregious lie would
simply be to read the text. When a footnote to the Final Report signed
with the full name of one of the commission members and experts
became via such detractors the sum of “the Commission’s official
stance,” any reasonable person would understand that this was just
a vicious misconstruction of reality and that things are the other way
around. When a central daily newspaper called me [VT] “întâiul utecist
al ţării” (the country’s foremost member of the Union of Communist
Youth), anyone dealing with the period and its documents would know
this was a most scandalous claim.
Let me make myself very clear: the vilification of me as an individual
and of my name is linked to the hostility of Communist-nostalgic and
of neo/paleo-Securitate circles toward the process of dealing with the
past and condemning the Communist dictatorship in Romania. The
Final Report was the joint product of many authors; I was merely the
coordinator of this document and coauthor of some chapters. Fur-
thermore, all members and experts of the Presidential Commission
endorsed it. Yet, it is not at all irrelevant that when N. Văcăroiu became
interim president, the report and documents pertaining to the com-
mission’s work were “pushed out” of the main webpage of the presi-
dency. They were put back in place immediately after Traian Băsescu
returned to his office at the Cotroceni Palace in the aftermath of his

failed impeachment.
Petulance
Just a little more than one hundred days after joining the EU in 2007,
the Romanian Parliament voted to impeach and remove President Tra-
ian Băsescu, forcing him to resign. Even though the impeachment was
invalidated after Băsescu won the subsequent national referendum and
was restored to the presidency, it was an unprecedented move that
plunged Romania into a major political crisis, haunting the country for
several years. Băsescu ran again for the presidence in 2009 and defeated
opponent Mircea Geoană with a majority vote of 50.3 percent. His
second term was no less troubled than his first, and Băsescu was sus-
pended again by the same alliance of political forces in 2012. This time,
his popularity was at an all-time low: he had suffered increasingly vitri-
olic mass-media attacks for more than a half-decade while also having
to navigate the troubled waters of a national economic crisis. Con-
sequently, the referendum validating his second impeachment passed
handily. Three months later, after the new government (an alliance of
Social Democrats and the National Liberal Party, known as the USL)
attempted to alter the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court so that
its decisions would not be binding on either the Parliament or on the
popular vote’s results, the Court, however, invalidated the referendum’s
results because they reflected less than 50 percent of the electorate,
which, according to the country’s constitution, nullified the outcome
of impeachment.
In 2007, the first impeachment was the work of an opposing political
coalition that disapproved of Băsescu’s two main polices: his unremit-
ting onslaught on corruption and his condemnation of the Communist
regime in Romania as “illegitimate and criminal.” Though both issues
remained high in Băsescu’s agenda for the entirety of his time in office,
the 2012 referendum’s results were driven by different issues: a popular
rejection of the leading Liberal Democracy Party’s austerity measures
and a questioning of Băsescu’s accountability. To understand these two
very important moments in the aftermath of the Presidential Commis-
sion requires a few comments on the outlook and discursive practices
adopted by Băsescu’s opponents from 2007 until the end of his term
in 2014.
Petulance 123
It is no secret that political and economic power structures rooted

in the old Communist regime managed to survive the post-Communist
transition, still existing today as a new avatar that is fully anchored
in the economy and polity of the newly enlarged European Union.
The Romanian political predicament suggests that the EU may have
gotten more out of Romania’s accession than it bargained for. The
terms “oligarchy” and “oligarchic regimes” were revamped by jour-
nalists and political scientists, particularly in Europe and the United
States, to explain the transition of many formerly Communist coun-
tries, where the old regime’s refurbished networks of power merged
with new economic ones to create an informal parallel governance
system. In present-day Romania, the terms may be used to highlight
a disturbing dynamic located not in the distant ex-Soviet space, but
within the boundaries of the EU.
Who are those who closed ranks against President Băsescu? They
included the xenophobic Greater Romania Party, led by one of Nicolae
Ceauşescu’s sycophants; the ex-Communist Social Democrats driven
by their perennial mentor, former Communist ideologue Ion Iliescu;
the Conservative Party whose leader, media tycoon Dan Voiculescu
(known for building one of the largest fortunes in Romania seemingly
overnight), was exposed as a secret police informant by the Council for
the Study of the Securitate Archives; and the National Liberal Party,
whose current leadership, after a purge of the reformists led by former
minister of justice Valeriu Stoica and former prime minister Theodor
Stolojan, is dominated by an assortment of scions of nomenklatura and
lackluster politicians. Until 2010, this latter group notoriously main-
tained close links with Dinu Patriciu, a prominent financier, industri-
alist, owner of a media empire, and main target of the anticorruption
campaign in Romania (he died in August 2014). Another very influ-
ential actor deeply involved in the attacks against Traian Băsescu and
the commission was Relu Fenechiu. He became minister of transporta-
tion in 2012 as a representative of the National Liberal Party, but was
forced to resign because of accusations of embezzlement; at the time
of this writing, he remains in jail.
These diverse groups shared a major commonality: they all desired to
preserve the status quo based on the merger of the old power networks,
rooted in the structures of the defunct Communist regime, with the
new wealth they have created. Slowly, the system consolidated under a
small group of robber barons and their political agents. And, although
the key anticorruption condition imposed by the EU for Romania’s

accession appeared to be steadily dismantling this system, it continues
to thrive in modified and disguised forms. After all, some of Romania’s
representatives at the EU negotiation table were/are participants in this
system. In contrast, Băsescu’s policy priorities (anticorruption, juridical
reform, dealing with the past) signaled his intention to speed up the
reform process and the dismantling of the oligarchy. Even if purely
electoral concerns ranked highly among his motivations to implement
these priorities, the bottom line is that his determination to confront
the oligarchy head-on at the very moment when everybody expected
consensus on a “sweeping the dirt under the rug” strategy produced a
deep internal crisis.
Romanian society was severely hit by the austerity measures adopted
by the Emil Boc government in 2010. Considering the deep economic
troubles afflicting Europe in general, and Greece in particular, those
very challenging austerity policies appear almost inevitable in ret-
rospect. The Social Democrats and the Liberals, supported by Dan
Voiculescu’s Intact media trust and its TV stations, especially Antena
3, presented the austerity plan as a ferocious exploitation of the Roma-
nian people by soulless Western neoliberal institutions and their Roma-
nian agents. The genuine discontent in Romania led to the riots of Jan-
uary 2012. Nonviolent protest is legitimate in any democratic society.
The problem develops when populist demagogues exploit and manip-
ulate such popular discontent, leading to violent manifestations and
neopopulist demands.
In the summer of 2012, when the EU and the US State Department
put pressure on the Ponta government to stop its assault on the rule
of law, Crin Antonescu, the National Liberal Party leader and interim
president during Traian Băsescu’s second suspension, escalated the vir-
ulence of his anti-American and anti-European rhetoric, to the point
that even some of his colleagues voiced disapproval of his irresponsible
political fireworks. Yet the socialist-liberal coalition again mobilized
against the country’s pro-Western, pro-NATO, staunchly pro-US pres-
ident, Traian Băsescu. Putin’s loudspeaker, the radio station “Russia’s
Voice,” acclaimed the pseudo-constitutional putsch. What was really
at stake was not just the president’s personal fate but also the inter-
ruption and radical reversal of his reforms. Among those were the new
Penal Code, which was very strong on corruption, and the creation of
dynamic anticorruption agencies. Officials in the EU and United States
Petulance 125
winced and unequivocally called on the SDP-dominated government

run by Victor Ponta to abide by its commitments.
The crisis of 2007 foreshadowed the one of 2012. In the first crisis,
the EU and the United States did not play a crucial role in Romania’s
domestic power struggles. They seemed to simply close their eyes, give
mixed signals, and adopt a “muddling through” strategy, knowing full
well that Romania might increasingly become a story of a botched
accession process and an uncertain ally. Indeed, just three months
after joining the EU, with its first impeachment of Băsescu, Romania
announced itself as a problem and a test, both for the enlarged EU and
for US foreign policy. In 2012, the USL government headed by Prime
Minister Victor Ponta launched a neo-authoritarian offensive (which
was later to be steered by the Social Democrats), making it clear that
the EU and the United States needed to play an active role in keeping
the crumbling democracy afloat (an observation that can be applied to
most other struggling democracies in Europe).
The country’s summer of discontent in 2012 actually began in
January, when street riots challenged the country’s leadership. Partly
spontaneous, partly organized by the left-leaning, populist, anti-
International Monetary Fund (IMF) opposition (which included the
Romanian equivalent of Occupy Wall Street), the winter demonstra-
tions failed to produce a robust social movement with coherent goals
and a credible strategy. Still, they were important in that they previewed
the serious political tensions that would explode a few months later.
A reformist government headed by a former foreign minister and
head of foreign intelligence, the Oxford-educated historian Mihai
Răzvan Ungureanu, was voted down in April; the Social Liberal
Union, a left-center coalition, formed a new government in May.
The new prime minister, forty-year-old socialist Victor Ponta, was a
self-proclaimed admirer of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. Writer and
Nobel laureate Herta Müller, who was born in Romania, called Ponta’s
party “fake Social Democrats” and referred to the new governing style
as “a play of crooks.” After Ponta’s ascension as prime minister in June
2012, Nature magazine published a devastating article showing that
his Ph.D. thesis contained more than one hundred plagiarized pages.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde, and many other European
newspapers picked up that story. The Romanian Ministry of Educa-
tion’s Council on Ethics was about to condemn Ponta when its mem-
bership was suddenly expanded to include a majority of his supporters.
The reconfigured body exonerated the prime minister, although the

ethical commission of the University of Bucharest, Ponta’s alma mater,
unambiguously condemned him for plagiarism. To counteract the
effects of the scandal, Ponta and his closest ally, Liberal Party leader
Crin Antonescu, touched off an outburst of xenophobic and anti-
Western attacks about the motivations of the foreign media reporting
on the story, while also announcing a populist program of wage and
pension increases. The political situation in the country became further
inflamed in June when former prime minister Adrian Năstase (a Social
Democrat luminary, law professor, and also Ponta’s Ph.D. advisor)
was sentenced to two years in jail on charges of corruption after
reportedly attempting suicide at the time of his arrest. Once perceived
as an all-powerful figure, Năstase, who amassed a large fortune during
and after his years in office, became the first post-Communist premier
(not only in Romania but in any EU country) to serve time in prison.
Whether or not he actually tried to kill himself – he denied it from
prison, where he continued to blog about his self-allegedly unjust
imprisonment and political ambitions – he whipped up a national
soap opera that continued to monopolize Romanian television.
Following Năstase’s conviction, attacks on the rule of law in Roma-
nia escalated. The independent judiciary encouraged by the EU was
still embryonic. All the same, it was getting to be too bold (judicial
rather than kleptocratic, democratic rather than authoritarian) for the
oligarchs who had gotten rich in the post-Communist period (many of
them were former Communists and members of the secret police). This
newly consolidated kleptocracy launched a campaign to undermine
the concept and practice of judicial independence and transparency.
Attacking several institutions whose mission involved documenting the
Communist past and buoying pro-Western cultural policies, the neo-
authoritarians – kleptocrats and their elected allies, mostly from the
PSD – went on the offensive. The director of the National Archives,
a young historian who had opened to the public these long inacces-
sible resources, was fired. Incidentally, he had been a member of the
Presidential Commission and a coeditor of the Final Report and of
the two volumes of documents based on its research activity. Another
target was the prestigious Romanian Cultural Institute, involved in
promoting the new wave in Romanian cinema and modernist trends
in other fields, as well as academic projects involving young scholars
working to uncover the Communist past. Philosopher Horia-Roman
Petulance 127
Patapievici, a prominent member of the Presidential Commission, and

his team resigned from the Romanian Cultural Institute in protest over
drastic budget cuts and strong ideological pressures. The leadership
then radically changed the institute’s strategy and espoused a parochial
approach reminiscent of Ceauşescu’s propaganda.
By July, USL leaders felt strong enough to remove President Băsescu
and to restructure the judiciary. To achieve these goals, they used
parliamentary migrations (meaning that members switched parties
in name only, not in ideology) to obtain an overwhelming majority.
Next, the chairs of the two chambers of Parliament and the ombuds-
man were replaced. An extraordinary parliamentary session followed,
which voted to impeach Băsescu and to organize a national referen-
dum for the purpose of sustaining this action. Crin Antonescu, the
USL co-chair and chair of the Senate, became Romania’s interim presi-
dent, replacing the now twice-impeached Băsescu. Băsescu’s last hope,
as well as that of an independent judiciary in Romania, rested with the
Constitutional Court, which the USL leaders intended to immediately
reshuffle and pack. Unexpectedly, the court appealed for help to the
EU’s consultative Venice Commission on Constitutional Regulations in
Europe, an emergency initiative unprecedented in the EU’s short his-
tory. Efforts by Prime Minister Ponta, interim president Antonescu,
and their allies to dismantle the Constitutional Court, the last fortress
of legality in Romania, produced tough and sustained reactions from
then-EU president José Manuel Barroso, Justice Commissar Viviane
Reding, the US State Department, and the international media. Speak-
ing abroad, Ponta pledged to acquiesce to the EU’s requests, but at
home he spoke out of the other side of his mouth. Likewise, Antonescu,
inebriated with power, made defiant statements against foreign inter-
ference in Romanian affairs, oblivious to the bridges he was burning.
Meanwhile, Romania’s civil society and independent media mobilized
against the onslaught on democratic values.
The referendum on Băsescu’s fate took place on July 29. The refer-
endum’s organizers, however, failed to obtain a quorum of 51 percent
of all registered voters (required by law in Romania) to sustain the
stacked, unelected Parliament’s coup. Ponta, Antonescu, and the man-
ufactured parliamentary majority were not ready to give up, however.
After they failed to mobilize a voter quorum in the referendum, they
pointed out that the majority of those who had cast a ballot (roughly
46 percent of the electorate) had voted to dismiss Băsescu. Romanian
democracy, after all, is all about majorities and not systems or pro-
cedures, right? Unswayed by foreign and domestic media reporting
that Băsescu had survived impeachment, the referendum’s organizers
applied all pressure and tried every possible legal maneuver to persuade
the Constitutional Court to recognize Băsescu’s ouster.
Under these extremely tense circumstances, the US Assistant Sec-
retary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Philip Gordon, arrived in
Bucharest and spelled out his country’s unequivocal support for rule
of law in Romania. Ponta reluctantly acknowledged that he had got-
ten the message, but Antonescu, Ponta’s closest collaborator, did not
bother to play nice. Instead, he recklessly attacked US ambassador
Mark Gitenstein, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and EU presi-
dent Barroso as “enemies of Romania.” Antonescu’s erratic, embar-
rassing behavior – infused with martial gestures, pompous speeches,
and Mussolini-like megalomania – turned him into an object of media
scorn at home, making him perhaps the most ridiculed politician
in Romania today. For many Romanians, the performance of these
two boys of summer was completely disquieting: even some critics of
Băsescu began to say that Ponta and Antonescu had succeeded in ruin-
ing Romania’s international reputation and financial credibility (the
leu, the local currency, continually lost value against the euro during
the crisis).
Finally, on August 21, a majority in the Romanian Constitutional
Court declared the referendum invalid, and on August 28, Băsescu
returned to office, although with his charisma in tatters. Remnants of
the old Communist dictatorship continue to plague him and Romanian
democracy. For example, power players Ion Iliescu and Dan Voiculescu
(whom Le Monde called the Rasputin of Bucharest and was in jail for
corruption) and who stood behind the efforts of Ponta and Antonescu
despite recent legal rulings, continue to insist that Băsescu as a political
force is dead.
Considering how Băsescu’s term ended in December 2014 and how
the parliamentary elections of 2012 resulted in a landslide victory for
the USL, further political and social turbulence seem likely and one
cannot rule out the possibility of violence. So far, Romania’s political
class has shown little understanding of the challenges and importance
of working together. Ponta, Antonescu, and their supporters are con-
tinuing the onslaught against the Constitutional Court and indepen-
dent judiciary. Although it is true that many of those who attempted
Petulance 129
to stage a coup against Romanian democracy have since acknowl-

edged the validity of the Constitutional Court’s resolution, they have
done so only in an attempt to curry favor with foreign powers. There
has been no actual change in their attitudes; they continued to agi-
tate for Băsescu’s resignation as they stoked voters’ frustrations and
tried to build support for alternative regional and Romanian identi-
ties at the expense of EU membership. Throughout the period between
2012 and 2014, they had the backing of Vladimir Putin’s quasi-official
radio station, the Voice of Russia, which persistently attacked Băsescu
and endorsed his opponents. The Romanian public straddled the two
extremes, aware that another (perhaps final) chance to decide between
genuine democracy and Putin-style “managed democracy” would
come during the presidential elections of November 2014. The Lib-
erals left the USL and entered the opposition in February 2014. A few
months later, they joined their former enemies, the Liberal Democrats,
to form the Christian Liberal Alliance as they aimed to win the pres-
idential election. With a Social Democrat-dominated government in
2014, the possibility of Victor Ponta becoming Romania’s head of state
made for a very bleak future for democratic pluralism. The onslaught
of authoritarianism in the past few years has shown why it is necessary
for Romanian society to understand Communism: neo-totalitarians
still exist, and they will triumph if the people do not commit to resisting
them in the name of a benevolent political contract and free society.
5 The Report’s Aftermath
Interpretations, Polemics, and Policies
The Final Report provided Romania with a fundamental and essen-

tial characteristic of the post-authoritarian world: moral clarity. The
vast majority of the people who lived under Communism were partici-
pants in the system’s reproduction, although not everyone was equally
responsible for its actions. Some were active supporters of the status
quo, whereas others were just “cogs in the wheel,” adjusting to the
existing constraints and trying to secure for themselves and their fami-
lies minimal forms of decent survival. Perhaps worst of all, some hated
the system, but hated the politics of dissent even more. Without moral
clarity, people end up multiplying the cobweb of lies crushing them, an
impenetrable mist that seems to last forever. This state of moral per-
plexity inexorably turns into cynicism, anger, resentment, and despair.
In accordance with the Presidential Commission’s mandate, the Final
Report detailed multiple levels of the regime’s systemic reproduction,
which deepened and expanded the party-state’s roots within society. It
showed how particular individuals, in specific contexts determined by
various stages of local state socialism, agreed to work for and be paid
by the secret police (either as active cadres or “informal” collabora-
tors), became ideological activists or members of the party/government
nomenklatura, and persecuted those who dared to think differently.
Judges issued sentences that sent dissidents to jail, allowed house
searches, and provided legal cover for countless human rights abuses.
Thousands worked for the gigantic censorship machines and did their
utmost to obliterate any form of independent thought and discourse.
The Final Report provided evidence for several crucial evaluations
of the Communist regime that were radically different from those
generated by the masses of historical literature produced before the
end of 2006.1 First, it revealed novel dimensions of the Romanian
1
For an extensive analysis of the Report and of the initial reactions/criticisms to
it (2007–2008), see Iacob, “O clarificare necesara: Condamnarea regimului
130
The Report’s Aftermath: Interpretations, Polemics, and Policies 131
resistance to Communism. These new findings have since been dis-

seminated through respected, nonbiased, non-nationalist, and non-
nostalgic scholarship. The country did, in fact, have a real armed resis-
tance. Contrary to the narrative promoted both by the Far Right and
the Far Left that members of the Iron Guard represented the core resis-
tance against fascism in Romania, the actual resistance was made up
of former military officers, teachers, and people belonging to demo-
cratic parties, including some social democrats and even a few disen-
chanted Communists. These people belonged to the resistance brigades
and units in the mountains. The successors to the fascist and Commu-
nist movements were angered by these findings. The Far Right and the
Far Left were totally united in this reaction: the thought of the liberal
center asserting itself against both extremes drove them mad.
The Final Report’s second significant conclusion was that continu-
ity existed between the first and second stages of Romanian Commu-
nism: this shattered the previous historiographical consensus that the
later Ceauşescu dictatorship was fully nationalist while the earlier Dej
regime was not. This assertion enraged the “old historians,” mean-
ing the ex-Communist historians. They countered the report’s con-
clusion by claiming that Ceauşescu condemned the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia, that he was anti-Soviet, and that he had putatively
represented the country’s national interest in the most prominent cir-
cles and arenas of the Cold War order. Basically, they peddled nothing
but a recycled form of Ceauşescu’s claims about the legitimacy of his
very own rule.
To understand the reasons for these historians’ reaction, one has
to look into the impact of the Presidential Commission on their sta-
tus. Cristian Vasile, the scientific secretary of the commission, pointed
comunist din Romania între text si context,” Idei in Dialog, no. 8 (35), August
2007, pp. 12–15; no. 9 (36), September 2007, pp. 37–39; no. 10 (37), October
2007, pp. 33–34; no. 11 (38) November 2007, pp. 21–22. By the same author
also see şi, de acelaşi autor, “Comunismul românesc între tipologie şi concept
I–II,” Idei in Dialog, no. 4 (43), April 2008 and no. 5 (44), May 2008; see
Cosmina Tanasoiu, “The Tismaneanu Report: Romania Revists Its Past,”
Problems of Post Communism (July–August 2007), pp. 60–69. For an
examination of the reactions from 2009 to 2013 see Bogdan C. Iacob, “The
Romanian Communist Past and the Entrapment of Polemics,” in Vladimir
Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, eds., Remembrance, History, and Justice:
Dealing with the Past in Democratic Societies (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2014), pp. 417–474.
132 The Report’s Aftermath: Interpretations, Polemics, and Policies
out that the democratization of the local archives was “a powerful

blow against the barons of Romanian historiography.”2 These barons
were mainly members of the historiographical establishment (high-
profile members of the Romanian Academy and/or of its Institutes of
History), who had made their names during the Communist period.
After 1989, they hardly altered their nation-centric approach and often
whitewashed their involvement in the regime’s reproduction.3 Vasile
also noticed that, after the condemnation in 2006 and the report’s
publication in 2007, a “break [developed] between young historians
with the old generation of their professors, who had been shaped in
communism.”4 The commission was able to produce scholarly anal-
yses because its members engaged in multilayered archival research
and sophisticated methodological and theoretical analysis. As another
author pointed out, “Historiography itself becomes multileveled: from
institutional history to biographies, from history of particular policies
to the study of the production of knowledge/identity, from social his-
tory to history of everyday life, from high politics to regional, local,
and microhistories.”5
Conclusions on Totalitarianism
The Presidential Commission’s critiques of the holdover establishment
were the product of its members’ unwavering stance: Stalinist regimes
shared the same basic threads. That is, while Romania, even under
Dej, was actually an independent country – as opposed to the other
European colonies in the Warsaw Pact or even, to some extent, Cuba –
the regime in Bucharest was a national Stalinist one. Romania was free
from the Kremlin, but its population lived under Stalinism all the same.
The only difference was, instead of being imperialistically imposed,
2
Cristian Vasile, “Cinci ani de la Raportul final,” December 17, 2011; www
.contributors.ro/cultura/cinci-ani-de-la-raportul-final-despre-o-condamnare-
%E2%80%93-nu-doar-simbolica-%E2%80%93-a-regimului-comunist (last
accessed October 16, 2013).
3
For example, CNSAS published the details of historian Dinu C. Giurescu’s
involvement and dealings with the Romanian secret police. See “Dinu Giurescu
şi Securitatea,” 22, January 28, 2014; www.revista22.ro/dinu-giurescu-537i-
securitatea-37160.html.
4
Vasile, “Cinci ani de la Raportul final.”
5
Bogdan C. Iacob, “The Communist Regime in Romania: Interpretation or
Condemnation?” Südosteuropa-Mitteilungen, 54, no. 2 (2014), p. 52.
Conclusions on Totalitarianism 133
Romania’s Stalinism was forced on its people by the Romanians them-

selves. Ceauşescu may not have answered to Brezhnev, but all Roma-
nians still answered to Stalinism. Romania was uniquely independent
from the Soviet Union, but this independence only served to make
the regime more Stalinist until its final days. Ceauşescu maintained a
fully Stalinized system while the Soviet Empire de-Stalinized. In other
words, foreign policy could not be disassociated from the internal, dis-
astrous project of building a barracks-type socialism in the country.
Anti-Sovietism could not function as a substitute for liberalization or
reform. The promises betrayed by the late 1960s could not be per-
petuated as alibis for failing to confront the widespread co-optation
of large sections of Romanian society within state socialism. To put
it differently, even during its moments of maximum liberalization, the
Communist regime in Romania never renounced its main instruments
of domination. Ideologically, its proponents still believed in this sys-
tem; politically, they continued to wield the same unreconstructed state
power.
The Final Report discussed how, both in the early period of the
regime and in its post-Stalinist stage, the leadership “knew how to also
create mechanisms of co-option by taking advantage of the chances
for social mobility it offered to members of some of most unprivileged
groups.”6 It continued,
In Romania, as in most cases, the wide-reaching program of modernization

launched in 1960s – that presupposed rapid industrialization simultaneous
with a progressive urbanization – allowed an important section of the pop-
ulation to live better than it ever lived, or, better at least than during the
years of Stalinism. Similar processes took place across the socialist bloc, so
that, after 1960s, these regimes were able to survive on the basis of a “new
social contract”. . . In contrast with repression, which caused a dichotomous
split of society between executioners and victims, the control strategy based
on cooption generated multiple reactions. The most representative from a
quantitative point of view was the one that the regime aimed at: conformism.
There was, of course, a hierarchy of cooption levels within the system . . . We
can go as far as to state that the communist regime survived for so many
decades because of the tacit support, based on the mechanism of “the new
social contract,” of all those who accepted to live in Romania without pub-
licly expressing their discontent against the regime.7
6 7
Raport Final, p. 33. Raport Final, p. 716
This paragraph underscored the need to confront collective and indi-

vidual responsibilities and acknowledge the mechanisms of regime
reproduction across an entire society. It is a rejection of generic, decon-
textualized usages of collective guilt and of the tendency to scapegoat
aliens (e.g., Russians/Soviets). As a whole, the report emphasized the
daunting task of living truthfully while finding oneself becoming ever
more integrated into the Communist society of the party-state.
It also shed light on the prevalence and intensity of individual dissent
in Communist Romania. As mentioned earlier, it provided quite a lot
of evidence showing that there was, indeed, a significant amount of
resistance. The protests in the Jiu Valley in 1977 and in Braşov in 1987
apparently created earthquakes among the top leadership, according
to archival materials. This was shown for the first time by documents
from the Ceauşescu era proving that the dictator himself gave orders to
get rid of certain leaders. The situation was similar to that happening
in the Soviet Union, where the Politburo was obsessed with Andrei
Sakharov and sought to destroy dissidence at its roots.
Through the work of this Commission, I [VT] began to question
the “totalitarian thesis” as it pertained to Romania. Hannah Arendt
once said that the only perfect totalitarian universe is the concentra-
tion camp. Perhaps Romania could be described as a concentration
camp between 1949 and 1953, but even then, there were coffee shops
and restaurants; it definitely could not be described as a camp after
1956. I previously thought there was little resistance and opposition,
but the evidence makes clear that there was much more. Resistance,
however, should be distinguished from opposition. The commission’s
approach to resistance was inspired by the social history of Stalinism
in the Soviet Union. It viewed resistance “as a prism that refracts and
distills what otherwise might be opaque dimensions of the social, cul-
tural, and political history of the popular classes in the 1930s.”8 Take
the Final Report’s section on collectivization, in which the authors dis-
cussed the repressive methods and the policies of the party-state, in
addition to the complex array of factors that the peasants used to
thwart and defy the agents of collectivization. Of course, at the end
8
Lynne Viola, “Popular Resistance in the 1930s: Soliloquy of a Devil’s
Advocate,” in Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Marshall Poe, eds., The
Resistance Debate in Russian and Soviet History (Bloomington, IN: Slavica,
2003), pp. 69–102; quote on p. 88.
Conclusions on Totalitarianism 135
of the day, the party had the last word, because such a negotiated rela-
tionship was fundamentally unbalanced.
The Final Report approached the category of perpetrator by dividing
it into three types, although this nuanced view was consistently ignored
by those who blamed the document for a so-called blanket condemna-
tion. According to Cosmina Tănăsoiu, one can identify those “guilty
for the thousands of dead and deported” (i.e., top party officials, cabi-
net ministers, police commanders, high-level magistrates), those “guilty
for the annihilation of diaspora dissent” (i.e., the heads of the external
services of the secret police and counterintelligence), and those “guilty
for the indoctrination of the population” (the largest category, whose
members ranged from party members and cabinet ministers to writers
and poets).”9 Additionally, the report singled out those responsible for
manipulating and twisting truth after 1989 in order to preserve their
power and maintain, by means of an “original democracy,” the fateful
structures and the interest groups dominant during the last decade of
party-state rule. This part of the report is fully justified by the post-
1989 history of Romania, one marred by moments of critical “man-
aged anarchy” (from the miners’ trips to Bucharest to financial pyramid
schemes), by the quasi-bankruptcy of the market economy, and by lack
of sound infrastructure. The section that analyzes the events, the mean-
ing, and the aftermath of the 1989 Romanian Revolution concludes,
During the first years in power, Ceauşescu’s successors defended their hege-
monic positions through manipulation, corruption, and coercion. But, we
should not confuse this with an attempt to reinstate communist rule . . . The
Revolution from below was accompanied by a re-grouping of the nomen-
klatura, which succeeded in taking power by means of backroom negotia-
tions led by people and groups from the secondary ranks of the old regime
(the party, the Union of the Communist Youth, the secret police, the army,
and the attorney’s office). Based on these observations we can conclude that
the phenomenon of “continuity” was a serious obstacle on the path to estab-
lishing a genuine democratic political community. The old Leninist habits
continued to inspire the new rulers to an intolerant, paternalistic, and author-
itarian behavior.10
Consequently, it can be argued that individual and inalienable rights

were the main focus of the Final Report. The commission members
9 10
Tănăsoiu, The Tismaneanu Report, p. 65. Raport Final, pp. 620–622.
rejected the principle of collective guilt and/or punishment. The per-

verse techniques of Leninist autocracies involved as many people as
possible in the rituals of ideological indoctrination. Conformity and
acquiescence, rather than opposition and criticism, characterized mass
behavior, and only a few people dared to engage in direct oppositional
activities. Hungarian sociologist Zsuzsa Ferge argues that this created
an “undigested history,” or a mixture of guilt and outrage affecting
almost everyone in these societies: “To one degree or another, most
people had to live a double life, and after a while they came to accept
this as a natural state.”11 To be sure, most people did not collaborate
with the secret police, and not everybody has a skeleton in their closet.
But perhaps it is more important to recognize that most people did not
do anything to subvert the system. They accepted its rules in the same
way they breathed and ate and slept. The system entered their mental
metabolism.
The question that no political actor in Romania wished to bother
him- or herself with can be phrased as follows: How could Romania
undergo a phase of reconciliation as long as the authors of the crimes
perpetrated under Communism continued to unrepentantly enjoy priv-
ileges and brazenly defy their victims? We are thinking particularly
of individuals who were singled out by the report as perpetrators of
crimes against humanity, such as the members of the last Executive
Political Committee under Ceauşescu who were directly involved in the
murderous repression of protesters in Bucharest and Timişoara. More
disturbingly, how could they ever apologize if they were not actually
sorry for their actions?
The Presidential Commission’s research identified two character-
istics that seemed to define the psychological profile of the secret
police (Securitate) officer and of the perpetrator: cruelty taken to the
extreme and intense shamelessness. Both originate in what Hannah
Arendt called thoughtlessness. She described evil as almost automatic,
though one still ought not to overlook the motivating role of ideo-
logical belief (i.e., fanaticism). Evil hates its victims by dehumanizing
them. Lacking an understanding of the notion of good, the perpetra-
tor does not comprehend the principles of expiation, of ethical doubt,
or of regret. Neither atonement nor contrition is part of this person’s
11
See Serge Schmemann, “End of the Line: Leaders at Communism’s Finish,”
New York Times, November 16, 1990.
The Urgency of Conclusions 137
vocabulary or feelings. Such a profile can be exemplified by a few of

those involved in horrendous crimes during Communism in Romania,
whose crimes went unpunished. For example, secret police officer Ioan
Şoltuţiu, after years of taking part in some of the harshest interroga-
tions of the 1950s, spent his last years before retirement as adminis-
trative director of the library of the University in Cluj. The minister of
the interior during the height of the terror, Alexandru Drăghici, died
undisturbed in Budapest. Mişu Dulgheru, a Securitate colonel involved
in the deportations of thousands to labor colonies and camps, died in
Canada. Notorious perpetrators such as Alexandru Nicolschi (deputy
director of the Securitate) and Nicolae Pleşiţă (the head of the Secu-
ritate’s Foreign Intelligence Service, infamous for his bestial interro-
gation techniques) were never disturbed by any form of prosecution.
To make matters worse, Pleşiţă published a book of interviews after
1989 in which he insulted, among others, Paul Goma, the intellectual
who was the cause celebre of Romanian dissidence. The officer who
ordered two secret police agents to beat dissident Gheorghe Ursu to
death in prison in 1985 is still free at the time of this writing. Ghe-
orghe Enoiu, the most terrible torturer of the Securitate who func-
tioned as the coordinator of “special investigations,” lived until his last
days on a huge state pension. Many others retired undisturbed, taking
advantage of the overbearing amnesia characterizing the country to
relax in Bucharest’s parks and enjoy lavish seniority benefits. These
instruments of a “criminal and illegitimate” dictatorship remain(ed)
free and unrepentant. West Germany struggled with Nazi remnants,
but can we imagine what the country would have been like with-
out the military defeat of 1945 and the Nuremberg hangings soon
thereafter?
Conversely, could we imagine what Romania might have been like
had trials taken place and punishments been exacted two decades ago?
The answer is it would have been democratic; hence the Presidential
Commission, the Final Report, and the continued struggle against any-
one who was willing to sacrifice forty-five years of human dignity.
The Urgency of Conclusions

The Final Report embodies one crucial premise of the commission’s
activity: revealing the atrocities of the past can provide a therapeu-
tic effect only if decommunization is historically grounded. My [VT]
actions as chair of the Presidential Commission were grounded in the

belief that condemnation should be accompanied by rigorous efforts to
comprehend how it was possible to control so many people for such a
long time. If decommunization was to serve as a foundation for a new
beginning, it had to generate a better understanding of human moti-
vations, highlight the institutional underpinnings of the old regime,
and explain the mechanics of submission manufactured under the old
ideology.
Additionally, in direct continuation of my own studies of the polit-
ical history of Romanian Communism, I advocated the principle that
an understanding of political psychology is required just as much
as historical awareness when it comes to the difficult enterprise of
post-Communist justice. Arthur Koestler wrote in 1950 that focus-
ing on the past is not a sterile waste of time, asserting, “The answer
is simply that these things are neither ‘past’ nor ‘done with.’ Only
those who worked inside the totalitarian machine know its true char-
acter and are in a position to convey a comprehensive picture of
it.”12 Along these lines, the commission members were very careful
in cross-referencing the various archives to which they had access.
The authors of the Final Report’s various chapters always kept in
mind that the documents they relied on included only the informa-
tion the Communists wanted to be preserved. Extreme caution was
necessary indeed to avoid any tempting extrapolations. This need to
grasp the past in all its complexities, to refuse simplistic classifications
and distinctions, was a mantra I preached throughout the life of the
commission.
President Băsescu’s political legacy must be acknowledged. He was
the first post-1989 Romanian head of state to dare to begin the vital
procedure of exorcizing the Communist-Securitate demons. The shock
of the unveiled past is inevitable. The moral-symbolic action of con-
fronting the past, according to McAdams, is one of the four types
of retributive justice (the others being the criminal, the noncriminal,
and the rectifying aspects).13 We would even argue that it is the most
important; consider Jan Kubik’s book on the influence of civic counter-
symbols in opposition to the hermeneutic routine inherent within a
12
Quoted by Ethan Klingsberg, “File Fever,” New York Times, November 22,
1993.
13
McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany, pp. 19–20.
The Urgency of Conclusions 139
political establishment.14 The Final Report identified many features of

guilt that had never before been scrutinized in relation to the Commu-
nist experience. It offered a framework for shedding light on what Karl
Jaspers called “moral and metaphysical guilt” – the individual’s failure
to live up to his or her moral duties and the destruction of the solidarity
of the social fabric.15 This, in my opinion, was the angle from which
one can see the connection between initiatives for condemnation and
politics. In the words of Charles King, “The commission’s chief tasks
had to do with both morality and power: to push Romanian politicians
and Romanian society into drawing a line between past and present,
putting an end to nostalgia for an alleged period of greatness and inde-
pendence, and embracing the country’s de facto cultural pluralism and
European future.”16 The Presidential Commission was indeed a polit-
ical project through which both the acknowledgment and conceptual-
ization of the national traumatic experience from 1945 to 1989 were
accomplished, while identifying those responsible for the existence of
Communism as a regime in Romania.
The initial reactions to the condemnation speech and the Final
Report contained much feigned indifference, a sort of cheerful skepti-
cism, and the attitude that none of the evidence mattered. The placid-
ity of some was complemented by the lack of decency of others. In
the public space, we were confronted with more or less overt forms
of obscenity, to paraphrase Andrei Pleşu. These reactions outwardly
denied the cathartic value of historical knowledge. Certain quarters of
the public sphere preferred to ignore the fact that a society in which
a shameless silence reigns supreme cannot be sincere, honest, or trans-
parent. It was not until later, especially once the economic crisis hit,
that the public saw the value of truth.
The post-1989 practice of state-sponsored amnesia created two main
dangers: the externalization of guilt and the ethnicization of mem-
ory. As both Dan Diner and Gabriel Motzkin argue, the process of
working through the Communist past raises a crucial problem: “How
14
Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of
Solidarity and the fall of State Socialism in Poland (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
15
Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (New York, NY: Fordham
University Press, 2001). On Communism as vengefulness and resentment see
Gabriel Liiceanu, Despre ură (Bucharest: Ed. Humanitas, 2007).
16
Charles King, “Review: Remembering Romanian Communism,” Slavic Review,
66, no. 4 (Winter 2007), pp. 718–723; quote on p. 722.
can crimes that elude the armature of an ethnic, and thus-long term,
memory be kept alive in collective remembrance?” The domination
and exterminism of a Communist regime generally affect all strata
of the population, and terror and repression are engineered from
within against one’s people. Therefore, “the lack of specific connection
between Communism’s theoretical enemy and its current victims made
it more difficult to remember these victims later.”17 When no Aufar-
beitung (working through the past) takes place, the memory field is
left to “alternative” interpretations.
One result is that the evils of the regime are assigned to those
perceived as aliens, typically the Jews, national minorities, or other
traitors and enemies of an organically defined nation. Such a perverted
line of reasoning unfolded immediately after my [VT] nomination as
chair of the Presidential Commission. I became the preferred target of
verbal assaults, including scurrilous slanders and vicious anti-Semitic
diatribes.18 The commission itself was labeled as one made up of for-
eigners (alogeni); entire genealogies were invented for various members
of this body, all just to prove the fact that the “real perpetrators” were
forcing on the nation a falsified history of its suffering. After the con-
demnation speech, the president and some members of the commission
were showered with threats and imprecations by representatives of the
xenophobic and chauvinistic Greater Romania Party. Unfortunately,
as an indication of the deep-rooted malaise of memory in Romania,
very few MPs of the other mainstream parties publicly objected to this
behavior (Nicolae Văcăroiu, then president of the Romanian Senate,
did nothing to stop this circus). Further proof of narrow-mindedness
came a few months later, when a critic of the Final Report had no
qualms stating the following: “If it weren’t for the stupid but vio-
lent reactions of nationalists, extremists, etc., the Report would have
passed almost unnoticed by the public opinion that counts, the one
from which one can expect change.”19
17
See Dan Diner, “Remembrance and Knowledge: Nationalism and Stalinism in
Comparative Discourse,” and Gabriel Motzkin, “The Memory of Crime and
the Formation of Identity,” in Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin, eds., The
Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices (Portland, OR: Frank
Cass, 2003).
18
See VT’s books Democratie si memorie (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2006) and
Refuzul de a uita (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2007).
19
Ciprian Şiulea, “Imposibila dezbatere: Incrancenare si optimism in
condamnarea comunismului,” Observator Cultural, July 5, 2007.
Moral Truth 141
Such reactions were indicative of a very interesting (though worri-

some) post-condemnation phenomenon: the argumentative coalition
against the report that was made up of a self-proclaimed “New Left” –
the national-Stalinists, those who perpetuated the topoi (traditional
theme or motif) of the pre-1989 propaganda or those who were nos-
talgic for Ceauşescu’s “Golden Age” – and the fundamentalist ortho-
doxists. Such an alliance can be explained in two ways. First, its
members were the faces of resentment, the people who were forced to
confront their own illusions and guilt or those who stubbornly refused
to accept the demise of utopia (in Germany, this fell into the category
of anti-antiutopianism). Second, the coalition members felt, mostly out
of ignorance, that dealing with the Communist past could be reduced
to mechanical instrumentalization; for them this redemptive act was a
“strategic action.” The result of their mainly journalistic flurries should
not surprise the sober observer; the counter-trend of malentendu revi-
sionism represented, because of its promise of facile remembrance, a
latent obstacle to the continuation of the strategy of legal, political,
and historical Aufarbeitung.20
Moral Truth
After the report was issued, several scholars and analysts complained
about the wide range in the number of victims. At the time of its
writing, it was impossible to provide an accurate estimate, because
we did not have full access to the archives of the Ministry of Inter-
nal Affairs. Yet another problem was what one historian called the
“revolving doors of the Gulag”21 : there were multiple sentences for
the same individual, who could have been sent to jail many times in a
span of, say, twenty years. And of course, totalitarian regimes are infa-
mous for not keeping records. How many died without even an official
obituary (report) from their murderer in the secret police?
We therefore preferred to bring together all schools of thought
and provide a broad range for the number of victims. Minimalists
among the commission members claimed that there were 500,000 vic-
tims, whereas maximalists insisted on 2,000,000: both groups, each
20
For an extensive analysis of this phenomenon see Bogdan C. Iacob’s
contributions cited in this volume.
21
Golfo Alexopoulos, “Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin’s Gulag,”
Slavic Review, 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 274–306.
with their own ideas about the number of victims, had to be repre-
sented. That is why two members of the commission (historians Dorin
Dobrincu and Andrei Pippidi) inserted a footnote to signal their doubts
with the estimate proposed by the AFDPR.
Generally speaking, the Presidential Commission adopted an inten-
tionalist reading of Communist repression: it assumed that the Com-
munist leadership had a clear intention to destroy and terrorize large
social categories for the purpose of building socialism in the country.
These were policies that had a near-genocidal profile. This line of think-
ing resonates with this characterization by Norman Naimark: both
Hitler and Stalin were “dictators who killed vast numbers of people
on the European continent. Both chewed up the lives of human beings
in the name of a transformative vision of Utopia. Both destroyed their
countries and societies, as well as vast numbers of people inside and
outside their states. Both – in the end – were genocidal.”22 The delu-
sions of Romania’s Communist regime were just as global as Hitler’s
or Stalin’s regimes, and this fact must be understood.
The other danger of the mis-memory of Communism is the devel-
opment of “two moral vocabularies, two sorts of reasoning, two dif-
ferent pasts”: that of things done to “us” and that of things done by
“us” to “others.”23 Tony Judt characterized this practice as the overall
postwar European syndrome of “voluntary amnesia.” In Romania, its
most blatant manifestation was the denial of the role of the Romanian
state in the extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust.24 As in the
case of Poland, the myth of “Judeo-Bolshevism” frantically embraced
and disseminated by the Far Right was directly linked to widespread
propaganda-manufactured misperceptions about alleged overwhelm-
ing Jewish support for the Soviet occupiers during the period between
June 1940 and June 1941. We agree with Maria Bucur when she claims,
The most important consideration in rethinking the periodization of World

War II, however, pertains to how historians interpret the meaning of specific
22
Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2010), p. 137.
23
Judt, “The Past Is Another Country,” pp. 163–166.
24
This phenomenon is explained in the chapter “Distortion, Negationism, and
Minimalization of the Holocaust in Postwar Romania,” of the Final Report of
the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. The English
version of this document can be found at www.ushmm.org/research/center/
presentations/features/details/2005-03-10.
Moral Truth 143
actions and words. Periodizing the war strictly from June 1941 to October
1944 allows one to easily avoid discussing the important anti-Semitic policies
and pogroms experienced by Jews in Romania between the fall of 1940 and
the summer of 1941. It also excludes the violence that took place in northern
Transylvania in the fall of 1940. Not extending the war beyond 1944 places
the experience of violence between November 1944 and the 1950s into a
context that is circumscribed to Cold War politics. But the Cold War on the
ground was not a mere projection of the Soviet desire for power and control
in Romania.25
In other words, the violent confrontations and social tensions in post-

1944 Romania cannot be disassociated from the major ethnopolitical
disruptions during World War II, including the genocidal actions of
Ion Antonescu’s fascist regime against Jewish and Roma populations.
It took a long time for Romanian historians to admit the very exis-
tence of a Holocaust in Romania. Politically, the ICHR announced this
recognition in 2004, but as with the Presidential Commission, its find-
ings were not consistently and convincingly transformed into policies
aimed at bringing about a thorough reconciliation with the traumatic,
guilty past.
This syndrome of voluntary amnesia is also manifested in relation
to the Communist past. One of the master narratives after 1989 was
that, because of the Soviet imposition of power, the Communist regime
was not part of the nation’s history. Instead it was a protracted form
of foreign occupation during which the population was victimized by
foreigners and rogue, inhuman, bestial individuals. This discourse is
based on the topical dichotomy of them versus us. In recent years,
this account has been refined. The so-called haunting decade of the
“High Stalinist” period (roughly 1947–1953, with maybe the added
value of 1958–1962) is blamed on the “Muscovites” – mostly Ana
Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Iosif Chişinevschi – and sometimes also on
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (but only in a redemptive key). At the same
time, the Ceauşescu period is seen as one of patriotic emancipation
and self-determination, of moving out from under the Kremlin’s impe-
rialist domination. The distortions of such “healthy paths” are mostly
blamed on Ceauşescu’s personality cult. It is no surprise that in many
quarters, his execution was seen as the end of Communism, its evils,
25
Bucur, Heroes and Victims, p. 200.
and its legacy. The overall result of such normalizing gymnastics is vol-
untary amnesia: the criminality of the regime lays in its antinational
past, while the development of the nation can be separated from the
degeneration of its leaders.
One of the most important achievements of the Presidential Com-
mission’s Final Report, in terms of what Claus Offe calls the “politics
of knowledge,” is its denunciation of the country’s Communist totali-
tarian experience as (national) Stalinist. It shows that the regime was
Stalinist from the beginning to the end and that it also experienced a
hybridization of an organic nationalism with Marxist-Leninist tenets.
The Report’s introduction clearly states,
Tributary to Soviet interests, consistent with its original Stalinist legacy, even
after its break with Moscow, the communist regime in Romania was antina-
tional despite its incessant professions of national faith . . . Behind the ideol-
ogy of the unitary and homogeneous socialist nation lay hidden the obses-
sions of Leninist monolitism combined with those of a revitalized extreme
right endorsed by the party leaders.26
In other words, there was continuity between the first and second
stages of Romanian Communism. This conclusion shatters both the
historiographical consensus that the Ceauşescu regime was more
nationalist than Dej’s first stage and the myth that the achievements of
the Ceauşescu regime can somehow be salvaged from its economic fail-
ure and political barbarism on the grounds of national interest, pride,
and loyalty. This myth continues to curse Romania, perpetuating illu-
sions that prevent a human-rights-based approach to politics.
An overlying conceptualization of memory in the pages of the Final
Report synthesizes what Richard S. Esbenshade identifies as the two
main paradigms in Eastern Europe, shaped before and after the fall
of Communism, for the relationship between memory and communal
identity. On the one hand, there is the “Milan Kundera paradigm,”
according to which “man’s struggle is one of memory against forget-
ting” (that is, instrumentalized amnesia versus individual, civic remem-
brance). On the other hand, there is the “George Konrad paradigm,”
in which “history is the forcible illumination of darkened memories,”
presupposing a “morass of shared responsibility.” In bringing together
these approaches, the commission attempted to resolve Tony Judt’s
26
Raport Final, pp. 32, 767.
Moral Truth 145
quandary of the “double crisis of history” in former Eastern Europe.27

As the reactions to its report show, the formation and employment
of a society-wide “critically informed memory” (to use Dominick
LaCapra’s term) were challenged by widespread cynicism and distrust
at all sociopolitical levels and by multiple historical myths, anxieties,
expectations, illusions, and memories developed during the Commu-
nist period as a form of resistance to the all-encompassing ideologi-
cal discourse of the RCP dictatorship. Such ideas claimed legitimacy
because of their private and unofficial character.28 In R. J. Bosworth’s
words, “time itself was hurt” throughout a large part of Romania’s
twentieth-century history. Dealing with both the Communist and fas-
cist past (and, implicitly, Romania’s responsibility for the Holocaust)
necessarily becomes a force for communal cohesion because it imposes
the rejection of any comfortably apologetic historicization.
The Final Report’s conclusions postulate the moral equivalence of
the two extremisms that caused such trauma, stating that “the Far Left
must be rejected as much as the Far Right. The denial of communism’s
crimes is as unacceptable as the denial of those of fascism. As any jus-
tification for the crimes against humanity performed by the Antonescu
regime ought not to be tolerated, we believe that no form of commem-
oration of communist leaders/representatives should be allowed.”29 To
paraphrase Raymond Aron, one of the essential dilemmas of the twen-
tieth century was the relationship between democracy and totalitari-
anism. This issue remains crucial today; the struggle between democ-
racy and its enemies is far from over. Communism and fascism are
not regimes of an opposite nature, but are embodiments of different
versions of totalitarianism. They are novel political systems that came
about in the second decade of the twentieth century with roots in the
nationalism and socialism of the nineteenth century. They are facets
and dimensions of human existence under the attempted total control
of a political entity that had not existed before in history and that was
27
Richard S. Esbenshade, “Remembering to Forget: Memory, History, National
Identity in Postwar East-Central Europe,” Representations, 49 (Winter 1995),
pp. 72–96. I [VT] also dealt with this topic in detail in The Crisis of Marxist
Ideology in Eastern Europe: The Poverty of Utopia (New York, NY:
Routledge, 1988).
28
See Istvan Deak, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution
in Europe: World War II and its aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000).
29
Raport Final, pp. 637.
undergoing constant development.30 Thus the Presidential Commis-

sion was correct to assume a moral imperative that reflects the com-
prehension of the tragic experience of the twentieth century. In this
context, opposition to any form of totalitarianism is fundamental.
Subsequently, the main instrument the commission used to master
the past was the deconstruction of the ideological certainty established
by the Communist regime. The regime founded its legitimacy on ide-
ology, and it creatively instrumentalized this faith in its attempt to
encompass the entire society. From the appearance of antifascism to
the discourse of the “socialist nation,” the topoi of Romanian Stalin-
ism permeated public consciousness, maiming collective memory and
significant chunks of the country’s history.31 The post-1989 period in
Romania was dominated by the absence of expiation, of penance, or of
a mourning process in relation to the trauma of Communism. There-
fore, reconciliation was impossible, because it lacked any basic belief
in truth.
It can thus be argued that the condemnation of the Communist
regime was based on a civic-liberal ethos and not, as some commen-
tators stated, on a moral-absolutist discourse, as legitimization for a
new power hierarchy in the public and political space. Though he did
not make this remark approvingly, James Mark was correct when he
stated that the commission promoted an interpretation of history that
was rooted in counterpoising liberal democracy with a dictatorial crim-
inal past: “it was this vision of democracy – as the rule of law and this
as shield for the individual from the abusive state – that would pro-
vide the template for the Presidential Commission’s liberally framed
condemnation of Communism.”32 But, as Bogdan C. Iacob judiciously
emphasized, considering Romania’s continuum of authoritarianisms,
choosing liberal democracy was a positive and refreshing departure in
both the representation of the past and in local historiography.33
30
For more on the comparative analysis of Communism and fascism see Vladimir
Tismaneanu, The Devil in History. Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of
the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
31
Lavinia Stan correctly underscored that, in Romania, “the nature of the
communist past led to a preference for truth and justice – at the expense of
reconciliation.” Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania, p. 28.
32
Mark, The Unfinished Revolution, p. 39.
33
Bogdan C. Iacob, “The Romanian Communist Past and the Entrapment of
Polemics,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, eds., Remembrance,
Moral Truth 147
As described, President Băsescu delivered a speech on December

18, 2006, speech to a joint session of the Romanian Parliament, in
which he stated his acceptance of the conclusions and recommenda-
tions of the Final Report. His address became an official document of
the Romanian state, published in the Official Monitor on December
28, 2006. This excerpt from the speech clarifies the conceptual and
discursive complex that lies at the core of the Communist regime’s
condemnation:
As Head of the Romanian State, I expressly and categorically condemn the
communist system in Romania, from its foundation, on the basis of dictate,
during the years 1944 to 1947, to its collapse in December 1989. Taking cog-
nizance of the realities presented in the Report, I affirm with full responsi-
bility: the communist regime in Romania was illegitimate and criminal . . . In
the name of the Romanian State, I express my regret and compassion for the
victims of the communist dictatorship. In the name of the Romanian State,
I ask the forgiveness of those who suffered, of their families, of all those
who, in one way or another, saw their lives ruined by the abuses of dictator-
ship . . . Evoking now a period which many would wish to forget, we have
spoken both of the past and of the extent to which we, people today, wish
to go to the very end in the assumption of the values of liberty. These values,
prior even to being those of Romania or of Europe, flow from the universal,
sacred value of the human person. If we now turn to the past, we do so in
order to face a future in which contempt for the individual will no longer go
unpunished. This symbolic moment represents the balance sheet of what we
have lived through and the day in which we all ask ourselves how we want
to live henceforward. We shall break free of the past more quickly, we shall
make more solid progress, if we understand what hinders us from being more
competitive, more courageous, more confident in our own powers. On the
other hand, we must not display historical arrogance. My purpose is aimed at
authentic national reconciliation, and all the more so since numerous legacies
of the past continue to scar our lives. Our society suffers from a generalized
lack of confidence. The institutions of state do not yet seem to pursue their
real vocation, which relates to the full exercise of all civil liberties . . . Perhaps
some will ask themselves what exactly gives us the right to condemn. As Pres-
ident of Romanians, I could invoke the fact that I have been elected. But I
think that we have a more important motive: the right to condemn gives us
the obligation to make the institutions of the rule of law function within a
democratic society. We cannot be allowed to compromise these institutions.
History, and Justice: Dealing with the Past in Democratic Societies (Budapest:
Central European University Press, 2015), pp. 442–443.
They cannot be allowed to be discredited by the fact that we approach them

with the habits and mentalities of our recent past . . . The condemnation of
communism will encourage us to be more circumspect towards utopian and
extremist projects, which want to bring into question the constitutional and
democratic order. Behind the nostalgic or demagogic discourses, there lies
more often than not the temptation of authoritarianism or even totalitarian-
ism, of negation of the explosion of individual energies, of inventiveness and
creativity which has taken place since December 1989. We have definitively
escaped terror, we have escaped fear, in such a way that no one has the right
to bring into question our fundamental rights.34
This excerpt indicates several dimensions of the act of condemning the

Communist regime. First, this initiative was a fundamentally symbolic
step toward national reconciliation by means of clarifying and dealing
with the past. Only in this way could Romanian society overcome the
fragmentation typical of the “legacy of Leninism.”35 President Băsescu
advocated a reinstitutionalization freed from the burden of the party-
state continuities and noted the possibility for laying the foundation
of a “post-totalitarian legitimacy.”36 It was his belief that only in such
fashion could a national consensus be formed and developed.
Revolution, Better Late than Never

Two years after the condemnation speech, at the 2008 launch of the
first volume of the documents of the Presidential Commission, Băsescu
34
Speech given by the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu, on the occasion of
the Presentation of the Report by the Presidential Commission for the Analysis
of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (The Parliament of Romania,
December 18, 2006), www.presidency.ro.
35
Kenneth Jowitt defined Eastern Europe as a “brittle region” where “suspicion,
division, and fragmentation predominate, not coalition and interrogation”
because of lasting emotional, ethnic, territorial, demographic, political
fragmentation from the (pre-)Communist period. “The Legacy of Leninism,” in
New World Disorder: the Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992). For a discussion of this thesis also see Vladimir
Tismaneanu, Marc Howard, and Rudra Sil, eds., World Order after Leninism
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006).
36
Bogdan C. Iacob, in the first article of his series in Idei în Dialog, argued that
the nature and profile of the condemnation of Romanian Communist regime
came close to what Jan-Werner Müller coined as the Modell Deutschland. See
Jan-Werner Müller, Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification, and
National Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 258.
Revolution, Better Late than Never 149
stated that the speech broke, once and for all, Romania’s continuity
with the postwar state. That former state had been born through the
forceful creation of Petru Groza’s puppet government in March 6,
1945, and the arbitrary abrogation of the Romanian monarchy on
December 30, 1947. In Băsescu’s reading, the revolution of 1989
marked the collapse of the Communist dictatorship but not the final
and definitive end of the Communist state. The restoration that fol-
lowed, not so velvet in Romania considering the bloody repression
of the protests in June 1990, aimed to hinder such a total break with
the institutional Communist past. From student protests in 1990 to
the president’s speech in 2006, the entirety of civil efforts since 1989
have been trying to break Leninism’s grip on society, to prove to peo-
ple that all these utopian temptations are collective illusions. But the
post-Communist regime’s new physical repressions were paired with
incredible, shameless, highly effective lies, which continue to hold the
minds of many Romanians captive.
The process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung initiated by the Presiden-
tial Commission set up criteria of accountability that proved funda-
mental to the reinforcement and entrenchment of democratic values
in Romanian society. As Jan-Werner Müller argued, “Without facing
the past, there can be no civic trust, which is the outcome of a con-
tinuous public deliberation about the past.”37 In agreement with Ken
Jowitt’s analysis, we believe that the fundamental Leninist legacy in
Eastern Europe was the total fragmentation of society, the breaking
of the civic bonds and consensus necessary for a healthy, democratic
life. The tumultuous post-1989 years in Romania are the perfect proof
of this thesis: sectarian interests, widespread authoritarian tendencies
within the public and political spheres, anomie, and the like were all
rooted in forgetfulness. The Presidential Commission did not find new
“truth,” but it lifted the veil of denial over those truths that were widely
known but stubbornly unacknowledged. In a country where legal mea-
sures against the abuses perpetrated during the Communist years are
nearly nonexistent, and where the judicial system is weak and cor-
rupt, the commission created future prospects for justice. It revealed
the state’s excuses and justifications for what they were: efforts to trick
37
Jan-Werner Müller, “Introduction: The Power of Memory, the Memory of
Power and the Power over Memory,” in Müller, ed., Memory and Power,
pp. 33–34.
the population into sanctioning the redisposition of the party-state and

its terror.
In addition to its detailed accounts on the functioning of the various
mechanisms of power and repression, the Final Report also named the
most important individuals guilty for the evils of the regime. In doing
so, it did not stigmatize any group, nor was its purpose inquisitorial.
Rather, it engaged in a truth-telling process essential for understanding
the nature of responsibility for crimes and suffering: in Priscilla Hayner
words, “where justice is unlikely in the courts, a commission plays
an important role in at least publicly shaming those who orchestrated
atrocities.” It thereby revitalized the principle of accountability, which
is fundamental for democracy’s survival.38 Considering the present
political environment in Romania, we can only reiterate Chilean presi-
dent Patricio Aylwin’s mandate for the Retting Commission, which was
created to address the criminal human rights abuses committed dur-
ing the Chilean military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet:
“justice as far as possible” (justicia en la medida de lo posible). As
already mentioned, moral-symbolic action is one of the four types of
retributive justice – the others being the criminal, the noncriminal, and
the rectifying aspects.39 Widowed of memory, we become mere shad-
ows, bewildered beings, perplexed, unable to remember or heed the
burden of history. Simply put, without memory, we go mad.
On April 11, 2007, President Băsescu established the Consulta-
tive Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship
(CCACDR). It comprised twelve experts, and I [VT] chaired the body.
The CCACDR was tasked with compiling and presenting research to
support the executive branch’s legal initiatives meant to reconcile the
Communist past, focusing on topics such as memorialization, lustra-
tion laws, educational textbooks, legal action against perpetrators, and
reparation for victims. Additionally, the CCACDR aimed to publish
an Encyclopedia of Romanian Communism; however, due to the gov-
ernment’s lack of support, the CCACDR’s ability to achieve its goals
was severely limited and it was not able to publish that encyclopedia.
38
Priscilla Hayner makes a very convincing argument about the ways in which
the activity of truth commissions can supplant the fallacies and impotence of
the judicial process; she also discusses the means by which a commission’s
activity and results can become the foundation for future legal action against
abuses of the past. Unspeakable Truths, pp. 82–87.
39
McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany.
Despite all the obstacles, the group did manage to publish a collection
of the archival documents used by the Presidential Commission’s mem-
bers in writing the Final Report, as well as a high school textbook on
the history of Romania’s Communist experience.
This textbook was created with the help of the Institute for the Inves-
tigation of Communism’s Crimes (which became IICCMER in Novem-
ber 2009 after merging with the National Institute for the Memory of
the Romanian Exile). The first high school textbook in its field, it was
released by the CCACDR in September 2008 to historians and teach-
ers. After collecting feedback from them, the group revised the text-
book and published a new edition in April 2009.40 The textbook is
taught in an optional course that students can elect to take in their last
two years of high school.
To salvage their reputations some domestic critics of the commission
and of the report derided matters of extraordinary gravity through ani-
mated and reckless outbursts. Communism was an abnormal regime,
and this fact should continue to be emphasized without hesitation,
fear, or discomfort. In the aftermath of the condemnation speech, com-
mission members (and public intellectuals, generally speaking) tried to
oppose efforts to “normalize” Communism. The danger was that neo-
Communists would hide the truth and thus retain popular legitimacy
for their diabolical desires. Confusing victims with executioners, blur-
ring or even denying responsibility for crimes and abuses, and mini-
mizing the role and function of ideology in the rise of totalitarian sys-
tems are deliberate strategies to whitewash a traumatic and guilty past.
For example, one of the report’s critics minimized Ceauşescu’s sinister
demographic policies and their murderous consequences,41 while other
neo-leftists poked fun at the victims or ignored their voices altogether.
Their behavior was strikingly similar to a different category of critics,
comprising former professors of the Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy (the
higher education institution for party cadres), former dignitaries like
40
Dorin Dobrincu et al., O istorie a comunismului din România. Manual pentru
liceu (Bucharest: Polirom, 2008). In 2012, IICCMER also launched an
interactive website, www.istoriacomunismului.ro/#/home, created by political
scientists Raluca Grosescu and Marius Stan that functions as a visual aid and a
teaching platform.
41
Dan Ungureanu, “Câteva observaţii despre Raportul Final al Comisiei
prezidenţiale pentru analiza dictaturii comuniste din România,” in Vasile Ernu
et al., Iluzia anticomunismului:. Lecturi critice ale raportului Tismăneanu,
(Chisinau: Editura Cartier, 2008), pp. 259–276.
Ştefan Andrei (who served as Ceauşescu’s foreign affairs minister for

years) or Ion Stănescu (chief of the dreaded Securitate and minister of
internal affairs), protochronist apparatchiks, and other members of the
Communist elite unwilling to face up to their responsibilities.
We now turn to Nadezhda Mandelstam. In her superb book Hope
Abandoned, one of the most profound and impressive testimonies
about the ravages of social utopia, she writes, “It is memory that con-
verts irreversible time into our inner world. By bringing things back to
mind, we can relieve them, even if we are unable to make changes in
the immutable course of past events. How lucky this is so. The strength
of youth is in its blindness. How the pattern of past events would be
distorted if in middle or old age we could modify all we did in our
youth.”42 Indeed, Romanian civil society has not established the mech-
anisms capable of successfully refuting the apologists of the Commu-
nist past. We do not even mean legislative measures (although they
would not seem at all misplaced), but rather a consensus on the need
to repudiate the dictatorial past, perceived as a collective catastrophe.
Such widely held agreement once did exist and was the foundation for
the creation of the Presidential Commission. After November 2006,
the political and the economic crisis took priority over the process
of working through the Communist past, and support for a contin-
uing discussion of the Communist dictatorship as an abnormal regime
seemed to fade. This fading support was epitomized by the increased
visibility of the authors of the collective volume, The Illusion of Anti-
communism. Even though some of its contributors mocked, in a cyn-
ical and aggressive manner, the very idea of the condemnation of the
Communist regime as criminal and illegitimate, they were embraced
by national cultural weeklies, television stations, and even dailies. They
were useful pawns in the all-out war pursued between 2007 and 2014
by certain politicians against Traian Băsescu.
But one ought not to overgeneralize. Since 2007, there has continued
to be interest in and support for various initiatives centered on dealing
with the past and for continuing along the path set by the Presiden-
tial Commission. There have been concerted efforts to catalyze these
discussions and projects about the Communist experience in order to
preserve memory, examine history, and refute attempts to exonerate
42
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned, trans. Max Hayward (New York,
NY: Atheneum, 1974), p. 152.
the past regime’s ideology. There certainly were those who wished
to save the “humanist and/or national core” of the previous system,
but there also existed many more who tried to expand the scope of
condemnation.
Along these lines, historian Marius Oprea, then president of the
Institute for the Investigation of Communism’s Crimes in Romania,
proposed a law in 2007 according to which
the pensions of the secret police employees, who were found by court to have
been involved in repression, would be reduced to the level of the pensions of
unskilled labors . . . We would opt for the latter because the people affected
by this law are perpetrators, their sole occupation was not, neither under
communism nor now, in the list of jobs recognized by the state. The funds
obtained though this pension cut would be allocated to the victims and the
survivors of the Communist regime.43
The draft of the law advanced by Dr. Oprea was actually one of the rec-
ommendations of the Final Report in its section titled “Legislation and
Justice.” After several years of negotiations, this proposal was buried
in the Parliament’s archive because of an utter lack of political will to
promote it. In 2011, during my [VT] tenure as IICCMER’s president
of the Scientific Council, the institution’s leadership attempted to pro-
mote a modified version of this legislative project, but was again met
with opposition from the Ministry of Justice.44
One of the most important breakthroughs of the post-Final Report
years was the nomination of Dr. Dorin Dobrincu as director of the
Romanian National Archives. Dr. Dobrincu was a member of the Pres-
idential Commission and an author and coeditor of the report. Soon
after his confirmation, he decided to grant free access for all researchers
43
Mirela Corlăţan, “Pensiile Securiştilor, greu de tăiat,” Cotidianul, August 16,
2007. We also want to note here that the pensions of former secret police
members, generals, and party leaders are among the most generous in the
country.
44
The social-liberal government did pass a law in 2013 that forces perpetrators
to pay reparations to their victims. The law, however, is weak; reparations are
not automatically demanded and can only be imposed after the person in
question is sentenced. For more details see Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Palme
pentru victime: pensiile securiştilor şi activiştilor,” September 19, 2013,
contributors.ro; www.contributors.ro/reactie-rapida/palme-pentru-victime-
pensiile-securistilor-si-activistilor.
and individuals to the entire archive of the RCP’s Central Committee –

thereby implementing another recommendation of the Final Report.45
In retaliation for his bold move, several years later, in 2012, the newly
instated social-liberal government dismissed him from his position.
However, the opening of the Romanian archives remains in place as
a lasting legacy of the commission.
Another important recommendation of the Final Report was
implemented in November 2011. As a result of IICCMER’s efforts,
Parliament passed Law No. 198, “Declaring 23 August as the Day
for Commemorating the Victims of Fascism and Communism and
21 December as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Com-
munism in Romania.”46 Unsurprisingly, the social-liberal government
formed in May 2012 and its subsequent incarnations simply ignored
these days of commemoration.
Later, IICCMER – still led by those who served on the Presiden-
tial Commission – helped guide former Minister of Justice Monica
Macovei as she attempted to void Law 286/2009 concerning the
statutes of limitation for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war
crimes. Parliament later passed Article 125 of the Penal Code and Law
27/2012, supplanting the older law and thereby eliminating limitations
of the aforementioned crimes, as well as homicide. Such legal changes
made it possible to prosecute crimes committed during the Communist
era.47
The climate has gradually shifted in favor of pursuing justice through
the legal system against those responsible for past abuses. Researchers
working with the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes
[MS included] publicized a list of Securitate perpetrators’ names in
2007. Around the same time, that institution put forward a legal
charge against 210 wardens and deputy-wardens of jails during the
Communist period. The national office of the prosecutor received a file
of multiple infamous crimes; it would later become “the group to pass
45
For more details, see Vasile, “Cinci ani de la Raportul final.”
46
For details on this law and other legislative initiatives by IICCMER, see www
.iiccr.ro/ro/proiecte_legislative_iiccmer/proiecte_legislative.
47
See www.iiccr.ro/ro/presa/comunicate/comunicate_de_presa_2012/crimele_
comunismului_pot_fi_in_continuare_judecate. This legal act was reconfirmed
by the Romanian Constitutional Court in December 2013. See www.iiccr.ro/
ro/presa/comunicate/comunicate_de_presa_2013/iiccmer_saluta_decizia_
curtii_constitutionale_privind_imprescriptibilitatea_faptelor_de_omor.
judgment on the major crimes of communism” (lotul procesul comu-

nismului). The 210 individuals were accused of using “the correctional
program as a means of socially exterminating whole categories of
people,” actions that fell “into various categories of criminal acts,
such as first-degree murder.”48 Between 2006 and 2013, the IICCR
and IICCMER provided expert reports to Romanian prosecutors to
support indictments for crimes perpetrated during the Communist
period, but they chose not to bring such charges.
It was not until 2013 that Romanian prosecutors began investigating
the possibility of legal action against Communist jailers. Their action
was based on information provided by IICCMER. Although IICCMER
had recommended the charge of “genocide,” that charge made pros-
ecution more difficult: the Romanian penal code defines genocide as
“the destruction in its entirety or only partially of a collectivity or
of national, ethnic, racial, and religious groups.” Building a legal case
on the ambiguous formulation of “collectivity” had the potential to
undermine the initiative itself. Making the charge of genocide seemed
more like a convenient ruse intended to display the prosecutors’ sup-
posed willingness to pursue legal action while not having to actually
pursue legal accountability.49 Though charging for genocide was an
untenable approach, it was still rather surprising that the charges of
homicide or crimes against humanity50 were not employed either. After
all, the statute of limitations for homicide had been eliminated from
the Penal Code (Law 27/2013) via a legal act endorsed by the Consti-
tutional Court.51
48
See Mirela Corlăţan, “Torţionarii comunişti cercetaţi penal,” Cotidianul, May
24, 2007.
49
For more on this issue, see my article in Romanian, “Călăul Vişinescu şi
genocidul,” September 3, 2013, contributors.ro; www.contributors.ro/reactie-
rapida/visinescu-si-genocidul; and “Anticomunismul uselist: obsedantul
deceniu redux,” September 20, 2013, contributors.ro; www.contributors.ro/
politica-doctrine/anticomunismul-uselist-obsedantul-deceniu-redux.
50
For an analysis of the possibilities of invoking the accusation of “crimes of
humanity” in the Vişinescu case, see Ioan Stanomir, “Pornind de la cazul
Vişinescu – despre barbaria comunistă,” September 4, 2013; www.contributors
.ro/editorial/pornind-de-la-cazul-Vişinescu-despre-barbaria-comunista (last
accessed January 4, 2014).
51
For the decision of the Constitutional Court, see www.hotnews.ro/stiri-
esential-16190595-ultima-ora-curtea-constitutionala-respins-exceptia-
neconstitutionalitate-privind-inlaturarea-prescriptiei-pentru-infractiunile-
omor.htm (last accessed January 4, 2014). For the changes in the Penal Code
During this wave of Communist-era criminal prosecution, Andrei

Muraru, then president of IICCMER, announced that there were
thirty-five perpetrators against whom the institution would pursue
legal action. Yet only three of the names were published, the justifi-
catory material was never made public, and the initial accusation was
again that of perpetrating, or being involved in acts of genocide. Only
two of those who were named publicly – Alexandru Vişinescu and
Ion Ficioru – stood trial. To make matters worse, Muraru’s colleague,
Dinu Zamfirescu (the president of the institution’s Scientific Council),
declared that he had neither seen nor been consulted about the list;
he accused it of being a publicity stunt. Indeed, the first case that was
brought forward, that of Alexandru Vişinescu, was swept into a whirl-
wind of sensationalism that centered exclusively on the individual as an
incarnation of evil, not on his function as an instrument of the regime.
By focusing on the generalized diabolization of the individual, the trial
neglected to account for the system behind Vişinescu. Or, as historian
Adrian Cioflâncă remarked, the trial failed to realize that “the perpe-
trator is a character that needs to prove something.” In this reading,
the “perpetrator is a sadist . . . [and] a fanatic.”52 In contrast, the Final
Report sought to contextualize such crimes in order to examine the
bigger picture, founding its argument on institutional affiliations and
actions, grounds of belief, and other contingencies that affected per-
sonal motivations or occupational responsibilities. A special edition of
the cultural magazine 22, titled “The Faces of Evil,” adopted a simi-
lar approach. Further developed by CNSAS and other researchers, its
point is to historicize, publicize, and assign responsibility to individu-
als who had perpetrated (or been involved in) crimes under Commu-
nism and during the Holocaust in Romania.53 In other words, the two
totalitarian evils need to be addressed as equally reprehensible and the
see www.iiccr.ro/ro/presa/comunicate/comunicate_de_presa_2012/crimele_
comunismului_pot_fi_in_continuare_judecate/ (last accessed January 5, 2014).
52
Adrian Cioflâncă, “Torţionarul ca personaj care trebuie să demonstreze ceva,”
22, September 24, 2013; www.revista22.ro/tor539ionarul-ca-personaj-care-
trebuie-sa-demonstreze-ceva-31359.html (last accessed October 12, 2013).
53
For example, see Adrian Cioflâncă and Florian Banu, “Chipurile Răului,” 22,
October 23, 2012; www.revista22.ro/chipurile-raului-18778.html (last
accessed October 13, 2013); Oana Demetriade, “Fiul împotriva tatălui.
Securistul Nicu Rădescu vs. Primul ministru Nicolae Rădescu,” 22, October 29,
2013; www.revista22.ro/fiul-mpotriva-tatalui-securistul-nicu-radescu-vs-
primul-ministrul-nicolae-radescu-32871.html (last accessed January 7, 2014);
Pleşa Liviu, “Cum ucidea Securitatea. Cazul ofiţerului Mihail Kovacs,” 22,
perpetrators must be held responsible for their misdeeds. Crimes

against humanity do not and should not benefit from statutes of limita-
tion. Other students of Communist repression have pursued a similarly
historicized understanding of criminal agency that combines biograph-
ical investigation with institutional and comparative analysis.54
Thus, IICCR (and then IICCMER) attempted to implement some of
the Final Report’s recommendations after 2006 and to continue the
work of the commission on multiple levels, such as through additional
scholarly work, investigations, commemoration, and education. In the
absence of a museum of Communism in Romania, the institution suc-
ceeded in creating a series of websites that highlight specific policies
of the regime and some of their post-1989 consequences. One web-
site features an impressive collection of photos; one investigates Nico-
lae Ceauşescu’s politics of reproduction; another covers the infamous
“Mineriade” of June 1990; one is dedicated to publicizing biographies
of the nomenklatura; another discusses the geography of Romanian
exile; yet another explores reeducation in the Piteşti penitentiary; one
database displays the detention data of many political prisoners from
the Communist period (and has proven to be a valuable tool for those
who wish to clarify or document individual contexts of repression);
and a final website offers an educational platform on the history of
communism in Romania.55 IICCMER has also published important
December 3, 2013; www.revista22.ro/cum-ucidea-securitatea-cazul-

ofi539erului-mihail-kovcs-34669.html (last accessed January 7, 2014); and
Adrian Cioflâncă, “Povestea unui criminal de război,” 22, January 14, 2014;
www.revista22.ro/povestea-unui-criminal-de-razboi-36554.html (last accessed
January 16, 2014).
54
For example, see Dumitru Lăcătuşu, “Torţionarii mor în somn: colonelul Iosif
Bistran,” 22, August 8, 2013; www.revista22.ro/tortionarii-mor-n-somn-
colonelul-iosif-bistran-29779.html (last accesssed January 7, 2014), and
“Utimul şef al Securităţii Bucureşti: colonelul Gheorghe Goran,” August 23,
2013; www.contributors.ro/societatelife/ultimul-sef-al-securitatii-bucuresti-
colonelul-gheorghe-goran (last accessed January 7, 2014); and these articles by
Mihai Burcea: “IICCMER şi politica de partid a memoriei: Memoria noastră:
utilizare bună vs. utilizare rea,” October 23, 2013; www.contributors.ro/fara-
categorie/iiccmer-si-politica-de-partid-a-memoriei-memoria-noastra-utilizare-
buna-vs-utilizare-rea (last accessed January 7, 2014), and “De la zeghe la
uniforma de general,” January 21, 2013; www.militiaspirituala.ro/detalii.html?
tx_ttnews%5Btt_news
%5D=392&cHash=169b8e374d759ec88ff51bc2e31c788c (last accessed
January 7, 2014).
55
For more on these attempts to publicize the crimes of the Communist era, see
the following, listed in the order presented in the text: http://fototeca.iiccr.ro;
monographs and edited volumes on the history of the Communist

period, and until the summer of 2012, it promoted an extensive pro-
gram of translating some of the most important scholarship on the
comparative study of totalitarianism. In 2010, the institute launched
the first Romanian international peer-reviewed journal on Commu-
nism, titled History of Communism in Europe. It also publishes its
own Romanian-language yearly review.
Increasing politicization has certainly been an obstacle for IICCMER
(and it is hardly an issue specific to Romania), as Timothy Snyder
rightly remarked in his keynote lecture at the conference “Remem-
brance, History, and Justice,” held in Washington, DC, in November
2010. Because the institution’s executive president and the president of
the Scientific Council are nominated by the prime minister, IICCMER’s
political engagement depends on who holds these leadership positions.
For example, I [VT] resigned from the Scientific Council (along with
all of its other thirteen members) because of the decision by then-prime
minister Victor Ponta to dismiss, in an abusive manner, political scien-
tist Ioan Stanomir (former chair of the doctoral school of the Political
Science Department at the University of Bucharest) from the position of
executive president and me from the presidency of the Scientific Coun-
cil. Within a year, IICCMER’s entire leadership, structure, and activity
were reshuffled for the worse. By 2013, its research activity almost
ground to a halt, as did its publications program that, until 2012, had
promoted a synchronization of local historiography with international
debates in the field. Some of its best researchers (almost half of the
total, including Marius Stan) resigned in protest of the arbitrariness of
the new management.56 As mentioned earlier, the organization had at
least managed to collaborate with prosecutors in preparing the ground
for legal action against Communist perpetrators. But the fact that the
institution recommended prosecution on the basis of genocide greatly
subverted the potential for success of such an initiative. Unsurprisingly,
the prosecutors moved away from IICCMER’s suggestion and instead
http://politicapronatalista.iiccr.ro; http://mineriade.iiccmer.ro; http://www

.arhivaexilului.ro; http://www.fenomenulpitesti.ro; and http://www.iiccr.ro/ro/
fise_detinuti_politici.
56
For more details on the evolution of IICCMER, see Francesco Zavatti,
“‘Historiography Has Been a Minefield’: A Conversation with Vladimir
Tismaneanu,” Baltic Worlds 6 (April 2013), pp. 10–13; and Mark Kramer,
“Forward,” in Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania, p. xviii.
pursued criminals on the charges of crimes against humanity and

homicide.
All in all, the years since the condemnation of the Communist regime
can be described as a period of informational self-determination. Pres-
ident Băsescu’s condemnation of the Communist regime in Romania
was a moment of civic mobilization. Generally speaking, decommu-
nization is essentially a moral, political, and intellectual process. These
are the dimensions that raise challenges in contemporary Romanian
society. We conclude this chapter with a quote from Băsescu that sums
up the importance of the Presidential Commission’s work: in his speech
in October 2012 at the launch of the second volume of documents pub-
lished by the commission, Băsescu characterized the commission as
one of the most inspired and correct approaches and actions of the Presi-
dential Administration during both terms. I am not exaggerating, I place the
Report for the condemnation of communism above processes of state mod-
ernization . . . because this is where we find the explanation for many things
happening today. From our dissatisfaction with Romania’s backwardness in
comparison with states that did not experience communism, to our attitudes,
still visible today, which were generated by methods and mentalities surviv-
ing from the past and that inadequate for Romania’s present road, all these
can be made sense of through what researchers give us the chance to see with
our own eyes.57
57
See www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-13424109-traian-basescu-lansarea-unui-
nou-volum-documente-ale-comunismului-din-romania-avut-multe-ori-
convingerea-facem-trebuie-cei-care-trait-atunci.htm.
6 Romania and the European
Framework of Dealing with the
Communist Past
Though certain forms of resistance in the Communist era were hardly

visible and often were viewed as marginal before 1989, such workings
of what we now call “civil society” proved to be critically significant
because they paved the road to revolution in later years. Among the
groups that engaged in resistance were Solidarity in Poland, Charter 77
in Czechoslovakia, Democratic Opposition in Hungary, and the vari-
ous unofficial peace, environmental, and human rights groups in East
Germany. With this in mind, we should avoid any one-dimensional,
monistic approaches to different cases when examining the wreckage
of Leninism. No single factor explains the collapse of Communism or
its legacies: economics as much as politics, and culture as much as insol-
uble social tensions, converged in making these regimes irretrievably
obsolete.
The Leninist regimes were not just any autocracies, but derived their
sole claim to legitimacy from the Marxist-Leninist “holy writ,” and
once this ideological aura ceased to function, the whole edifice began
to falter.1 They were, to use sociologist Daniel Chirot’s apt phrase,
“tyrannies of certitude”; it was precisely the gradual loss of ideological
commitment among the ruling elites – who had taken up their “cross”
with a truly messianic ardor in earlier decades – that accelerated the
process of the inner disintegration of Leninist regimes.2 In a way, the
revolutions of 1989 were an ironic vindication of Lenin’s famous defi-
nition of a revolutionary situation: those at the top cannot rule in old
ways, and those at the bottom do not want to accept these ways any
1
See Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (New
York, NY: Allen Lane, 1994).
2
Daniel Chirot, Modern Tyrants: The Power and Prevalence of Evil in Our Age
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); see also Raymond Taras, ed.,
The Road to Disillusion: From Critical Marxism to Postcommunism in Eastern
Europe (Armonk, NY; M. E. Sharpe, 1992).
160
Romania and the European Framework 161
more. Those revolutions were more than simple revolts because they
attacked the very foundations of the existing systems and proposed a
complete societal reorganization.
Once ideology ceased to be an inspiring force, and once influen-
tial party members and their offspring in the nomenklatura system
lost their emotional commitment to the Marxist radical behest, the
Leninist castles were doomed to fall apart. What has been deemed the
“Gorbachev effect” certainly played a role in their dissolution.3 After
his election as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union in March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the policies of
glasnost and perestroika, which sent shockwaves throughout society.
The resulting unsettled climate accelerated the successes of civil society
and helped bring about the virtual suicide of the Eastern and Cen-
tral European regimes. In the early 1990s, Rita Klímová, a former
Charter 77 spokesperson and Czechoslovakia’s first ambassador to the
United States after the demise of Communism, confirmed to me [VT]
that the Chartists perceived Gorbachev’s new thinking as one of the
necessary conditions for major change in Eastern and Central Europe.
However, it is essential to note that Gorbachev’s approach was not
sufficient on its own and that civil society was responsible for top-
pling Communism; Gorbachev’s reforms merely (and unintentionally)
advanced the timetable of the people’s eventual triumph by a few years.
We also must remember that leftovers of the Gulag still existed under
Gorbachev; true, it was numerically much smaller than it was in Stalin’s
time, but it was no less systematic. Concentration camps continued to
operate through December 1991; only Yeltsin, as president of Russia
in 1992, dissolved them.
Thus, Gorbachev was an incompetent Leninist, not a heroic demo-
crat. It is only because Communism requires absolute power that a
bad Leninist and a good democrat appear the same in practice. Thus,
the “Gorbachev effect” is a misleading term, which we hope to make
evident as we proceed with our analysis. Unintended effects do not
amount to a political strategy: by no stretch of the imagination did the
last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union aim
3
See Karen Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev, and Reform: The Great
Challenge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Archie Brown,
The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
162 Romania and the European Framework
at the disbandment of Lenin’s state. He should be commended, how-

ever, for the fact that, under his regime, the use of violence against the
democratic forces was the exception, rather than the rule. That was the
essential difference between Mikhail Gorbachev and all his predeces-
sors.
For the first two years of Gorbachev’s leadership (1985–1987), his
strategy toward Eastern Europe encouraged moderate, intrasystemic
changes that would not threaten the privileged positions of Commu-
nist Party members. After 1988, things started to change consider-
ably. The rules of Soviet-Eastern European relations changed following
Gorbachev’s denunciation of the ideological perspective on interna-
tional politics (de-ideologization) and his abandonment of the “class
struggle” obsession. Much of what happened as a result of his ini-
tially modest reforms was spontaneous and unpredictable, and there
was an immense gap between the Soviet leader’s neo-Leninist illu-
sions and the practical conditions within these societies. By 1988,
Gorbachev acknowledged that, without the use of force, the Lenin-
ist system could not be preserved in the countries of the former Soviet
Pact: unlike all his predecessors, he refused to resort to tanks as the
ultimate political argument and rejected the Leninist (or Realpolitik)
position that might makes right. The difference between Gorbachev
and other Leninist leaders was not that he wanted democracy and
freedom – because he did not – but that he was unwilling to pre-
vent it using the amount of violence that would have been required
(remember, Gorbachev’s regime still used some force, as attested by the
many who were killed in the Gulag and in the streets while he was in
power).
How to Share the World with Barbarians

The controversies regarding the treatment of former party and secret
police activists and collaborators were among the most passionate and
potentially disruptive in the new democracies. Some argued, together
with the first post-Communist and anti-Communist Polish prime min-
ister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, that one needed to draw a “thick line”
separating the present from the past and fully engage in a consen-
sual effort to build an open society; in other words, forgetting the sins
of the past, with no recourse to justice to correct them or even any
How to Share the World with Barbarians 163
acknowledgment of them at all. Others, for reasons ranging from

unconditional anti-Communism to cynical manipulation of an explo-
sive issue, argued that, without some form of “purification,” the new
democracies would be fundamentally perverted.
The truth, in our view, resided somewhere in between: the past can-
not and should not be denied or covered by a blanket of shameful obliv-
ion. Confrontation with the traumatic past, primarily via remembrance
and knowledge, helps achieve moral justice.4 Real crimes did take place
in those countries, and the culprits should be identified and brought to
justice. But forms of legal retribution for past misdeeds should always
take place on an individual basis because the presumption of inno-
cence is a fundamental right for any human being, including former
Communist apparatchiks – no matter how bloody their hands or how
many victims they hurt. Democratic societies may only be built through
respect for human rights and the rule of law; to assume the wholesale
guilt of former Communists would be to flout the meaning of democ-
racy and law. In true democracies, proper trials prove beyond a doubt
that someone has perpetrated a crime and must be punished accord-
ingly; they assume that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and
that the state is committed to truth and to honoring the lives of all.
True, trials can be difficult, and verdicts may seem obvious (for exam-
ple, we did not have to attempt to prosecute Slobodan Milošević to
know that he committed atrocities), but it is precisely this great effort
to adhere to the rule of law that epitomizes a liberal democratic, free,
and humane order. It took no energy or strength to be a good Nazi in
1930s Germany, but it takes considerable effort to be a good liberal
in post-Communist Romania (or in any country, in general). Such a
democratic society is not supposed to be created simply or easily. In
this respect, with all its shortcomings, the Czech Republic’s lustration
law can be seen as a step in the right direction, for it offered a legal
framework that prevented any form of “mob justice” (which would
not have been much different from the mob injustice that characterized
Communist countries). In Romania, where a law like this has yet to be
passed, and access to personal secret police files has been systematically
denied to citizens (but freely granted to those in power, who abuse
the privilege and manipulate the public discourse in their favor), the
4
See McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany.
political climate continues to be plagued by suspicion, murky intrigues,

and dark conspiratorial visions.5
While revolutions were the structural causes of Communism’s col-
lapse, the dynamics, rhythm, and orientation of the system’s down-
fall in each country depended to a large extent on local conditions.
One may argue that the striking distinctions among countries can be
explained by the strength (or the weakness) of pre-1989 intraparty
reformist trends and oppositional traditions in each one. The debate
on the consequences of 1989 has been shaped by the role that ideas
and public intellectuals played in historical changes, on the very possi-
bility of a new politics based on trust and morality, and on the overall
meaning of the anti-totalitarian struggle of critical intellectuals in the
East. In some countries (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia) intellec-
tual and political dissent was more mature and influential than in oth-
ers (Romania, Bulgaria, GDR). This was of course greatly responsible
for the prominent status enjoyed by dissident playwright and political
thinker Václav Havel, who became his country’s president in December
1989. There was no Havel in Romania.
I [VT] maintained – and still do – that one of the most profound and
enduring meanings of 1989 was as a quest for a reinvention of politics
along the lines spelled out by dissidents. If this project fails, and Eastern
and Central Europe reverts to some version of corporatism or quasi-
fascist authoritarianism, then the consequences of such developments
would affect the West as well.
The revolutions of 1989 fundamentally changed the political, eco-
nomic, and cultural map of the world. Resulting from widespread
dissatisfaction with Leninist ideological domination, they allowed for
a rediscovery of democratic participation and civic activism. After
decades of state aggression against the public sphere, these revolu-
tions reinstituted the distinction between what belongs to the gov-
ernment and what is the territory of the individual. Emphasizing the
importance of political and civic rights, they created a space for the
exercise of liberal democratic values. In some countries, these values
have become the constitutional foundation on which the institutions
of an open society have been safely built. In others, the reference to
5
For turbulent experiences with decommunization, see Rosenberg, The Haunted
Land; and Noel Calhoun, Dilemmas of Justice in Eastern Europe’s Democratic
Transitions (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2004).
How to Share the World with Barbarians 165
pluralism remains somewhat superficial. But even in the less successful

cases of democratic transitions (e.g., the Balkans), the old order – based
on suspicion, fear, and mass hopelessness – is irrevocably defunct. In
other words, while the ultimate result of these transitions is not clear,
the revolutions have succeeded in their most important tasks: disband-
ing the Leninist regimes and permitting the citizens of these countries
to fully engage in the shaping of their own lives.
We now have the ability to contemplate the illusions and expecta-
tions that have taken root in the past twenty-five or so years of post-
Communist life, to evaluate the positives and negatives of the period,
and to make speculations about the future. Even after NATO’s east-
ward enlargement and the accession of most Eastern European coun-
tries (with the notable exception of some Western Balkan states) to the
EU, striking tensions exist between pluralist-democratic, ethnocratic,
and radical parties and groups in these societies.6 The persistence of
these tensions almost three decades after 1989 is a telling proof of
the ongoing schizophrenic nature of the democratization process. Jack
Snyder’s by now classical thesis still holds: the political elites’ open-
ness to accountability affects the degree of nationalist mobilization and
instrumentalization during the transition to democracy. By refusing
to surrender their authority, these elites hijack political discourse and
then take advantage of citizens’ resulting reduced capacity for political
participation.7
Since 1989, we also see a fluidity of political commitments, alle-
giances, and affiliations, in which have occurred the breakdown
of a political culture (identified as Sovietism, according to Leszek
Kołakowski and Martin Malia) and the painful birth and consolidation
of a new one. The moral identities of individuals have been shattered by
the dissolution of all previously cherished – or at least accepted – values
and “icons.” Given the incomplete pursuit of legal, political, and histor-
ical Aufarbeitung (“working through”) in relation to the totalitarian
experience, civic consensus and political trust can hardly mature. There
are immense problems with the continuity of both social and personal
memory. Despite the ever-growing rescue and reconciliation of frag-
mented memories (both individual and collective), transparency about
6
See Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation; and Ernest Gellner, Encounters with
Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
7
See Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist
Conflict (New York, NY: Norton, 2000).
a guilty and traumatic past via Claus Offe’s conception of a “politics

of knowledge” has yet to be achieved.
The Murky Twenty-First Century

The difficulty of identifying clear divisions between Left and Right
in the post-Communist regimes is linked to the ambiguity and
even obsolescence of traditional taxonomies. In our postmodern and
postconventional age, with its universal disenchantments and political
disillusionments, master narratives such as Marxism or Leninism have
ceased to be exhilarating ideological projects. Today, references to the
Left (in its radical version, at least) are shallow gestures, more born
out of nostalgia or a lust for the limelight than expressions of gen-
uine commitment. As Adam Michnik and other former dissidents have
often argued, the issue today is not whether one is left or right of center,
but whether one is “West of center.” Leszek Kołakowski pointed to a
paradoxical attitude toward prophetic stands in contemporary Central
and Eastern Europe: the intellectuals’ disillusionment with redemptive,
apocalyptical teleologies provoked their retreat from political matters,
which generated the counter-phenomenon of an ethical pauperization
of politics because there are “fewer intellectual teachers.”8 The door is
thus wide open for baroque ideological constructs and negative polit-
ical eclecticisms. Following Martin Krygier, we consider that almost
thirty years after the demise of Communism, the former Soviet bloc is
experiencing a new ideosphere, one that is by definition comprehensive,
inclusive, and provisional. Moreover, the postmodern political condi-
tion makes even organicist, syncretic, and redemptive radicalisms (such
as political movements) transient.9
Critical intellectuals seem to have lost much of their moral aura
and are often attacked as champions of futility, architects of disaster,
and incorrigible daydreamers. Their status is extremely precarious pre-
cisely because they symbolize the very principle of difference that neo-
authoritarian politics tends to suppress. In the context of widespread
disenchantment with politics, their moderation remains a crucial fac-
tor for the social equilibrium. It is essential to avoid mass hysteria,
to recognize the need for constitutional consensus, and to foster a
8
Leszek Kołakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1990).
9
Martin Krygier, “Conservative-Liberal-Socialism Revisited,” The Good Society,
11, no. 1 (2002), pp. 6–15.
The Murky Twenty-First Century 167
culture of predictable procedures. For if these kinds of attacks against

democracy, civil society, and the rule of law gather momentum, they
could jeopardize the still-precarious pluralist institutions. Ralf Dahren-
dorf poignantly expressed this imperative of intellectual responsibil-
ity, wisely stating that “where intellectuals are silent, societies have no
future.”10 In a deeply fragmented social and public environment, under
the constant pressures of globalization, Dahrendorf saw that, despite
its diminished appeal, the nexus of ideas and action has in no way lost
its revitalizing potential as a force of freedom.11
Actually, the weakness of the region’s political parties is primarily
determined by a general crisis of values and authority. There is an
absence of “social glue,” and the existing formations have failed to
foster the consensus needed to generate constitutional patriotism. The
still unmastered past – the twentieth-century’s totalitarian experience
in Central and Eastern Europe – prevents these countries from estab-
lishing the necessary bond between democracy, memory, and militancy.
The harmful effects of long-maintained forms of amnesia cannot be
overestimated. The lack of serious public discussions and lucid anal-
yses of the past, as well as an acknowledgment by the highest state
authorities of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the dicta-
torships, is bound to fuel discontent, outrage, and frustration. In this
situation, society is quite vulnerable to demagogues.
Writing in 1992, Polish thinker and the philosopher of Solidarity,
Leszek Kołakowski, saw the post-Communist landscape as plagued by
enduring Leninist legacies. He called such debris “moving ruins,” refer-
ring to the avatars of the old elites and the persistence of ideological
and cultural relics of the old regime. Kołakowski argued that, institu-
tionally, Communism had died, while morally, its pathologies contin-
ued to haunt the world. Wisely and presciently, Kołakowski warned
against an inordinate triumphalism and diagnosed the new risks; he
cautioned,
Euphoria is always brief, whatever causes it. The “post-communist” eupho-
ria is over and the premonitions of imminent dangers are mounting. The
monster is dying in its own monstrous way. Shall we see another monster
10
Dahrendorf, After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society (New York,
NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 149.
11
For an “update” of Dahrendorf’s early predictions and evaluation about
Europe after the Revolution, see his new introduction and postscript in the
2005 second edition of his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2005).
take its place, a series of bloody struggles between its various remnants?
How many new countries will emerge from the chaos . . . The only thing we
know for certain: nothing is certain; nothing is impossible.12
In other words, the only certainty was the end of the old order; all
the rest was fluid and unpredictable. The future was pregnant with all
kind of possibilities, including some unsavory scenarios. Some (though
not many) thinkers dared to disturb the dominant jubilant, celebratory
mood and warned about the new looming threats. Among them were
Václav Havel, Ralf Dahrendorf, Ken Jowitt, George Konrad, Jacek
Kuroń, Leszek Kołakowski, Adam Michnik, Karol Modzelewski, and
Jacques Rupnik. We know from Arthur Koestler and George Orwell
that Cassandras, or prophets of doom, are never welcome – but they
may be (and often are) correct. We might not want to believe their pre-
dictions, but if we listen to them early and seriously enough, we can
act to at least minimize the manifestations of their warnings.
The East may be the most seriously affected region of the world
in terms of the catastrophic effects of Communism. As historian
Marci Shore put it, “In twentieth-century Eastern Europe, tragedy was
endemic.” She correctly emphasized that, during the past century’s ide-
ological storms, people in this geographical area “made decisions, often
in extreme moments, most never believing that communism would
end in their lifetimes, many never imagining that they would have to
account for their choices in a world where all the rules had changed.”13
Their societies, devastated by both Bolshevism and fascism, were the
milieu that provided ideal lessons about the consequences of idea-
driven hubris. A very specific form of liberalism developed out of such
an experience: that of fear. Political thinker Judith Shklar has discussed
this liberalism of fear, which is founded on the profound conscious-
ness of the disastrous effects of the absence of liberty. It is a line of
thinking that is always watchful for the potentially disastrous effects
of utopian experiments. This form of liberalism provides an answer to
the Arendtian dilemma: how to reconcile thought and action in the
search for civic emancipation. We consider it to be the antidote to
12
See Leszek Kołakowski, “Amidst Moving Ruins,” in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed.,
The Revolutions of 1989 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 51. Kołakowski’s
essay initially appeared in the special issue of the journal Daedalus, titled “Exit
from Communism,” 121, no. 2 (Spring 1991), pp. 43–56.
13
Shore, The Taste of Ashes, p. xiii.
The Murky Twenty-First Century 169
various messianic-revolutionary visions and dreams of ethnic purifi-

cation and social engineering. Shklar, who was born to Jewish parents
in Riga in 1928 and fled to the United States when she was thirteen,
describes this trend of thinking this way:
Liberalism of fear . . . must reject only those political doctrines that do not
recognize any difference between the spheres of the personal and the public.
Because of the primacy of toleration as the irreducible limit on public agents,
liberals must always draw such a line. This is not historically a permanent
or unalterable boundary, but it does require that every public policy be con-
sidered with this separation in mind and be consciously defended as meeting
its most severe current standard.14
Coming to terms with the past has remained a thorny problem in the
whole post-Leninist world. Some countries have advanced quite a bit,
while others have lagged behind. In Poland, the existence and func-
tioning of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) have long
generated controversies between proponents of Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s
approach (drawing that “thick line” with the past) and those who,
like Antoni Macierewicz, Jarosław Kaczyński and his late twin brother
Lech, and Bronislaw Wildstein, consider the IPN’s approach to be a
cover-up for the perpetuation of old lies. It is a historical fact that the
post-Communist mainstream approach in Poland has failed to address
the need to honor heroic moments of the past, including the 1944
Warsaw insurrection.
Lustration has been a bone of contention in all countries of Eastern
Europe. In March 1990, a proclamation was delivered in Timişoara,
the city where the Romanian Revolution erupted in December 1989.
Written by young civil society activists, writers, artists, and philoso-
phers, the text acclaimed liberal democracy, called for decommuniza-
tion, and asked former Communist dignitaries to refrain from holding
public office for a period of five years. Yet, the idea of a lustration
law generated great anxiety for the nomenklatura of both yesterday
and today. Remember how much they resented the attack that Milo-
van Djilas launched against them, the “new class.” From the 1990s
onward, the response of the wounded (yet not finished) nomenklatura
took the shape of a furious reaction against the Timişoara Proclama-
tion, the true charter of the Romanian Revolution. In the absence of a
14
Judith N. Shklar, “Liberalism of Fear,” in Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism
and the Moral Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 23.
legal framework for decommunization, the nomenklatura engaged in

improvised actions, but not in a systematic effort toward moral purifi-
cation. The lust for forgetfulness slowly established itself. As long as
the nomenklatura regarded lustration as “revenge,” many poisonous
forms of popular authoritarian nostalgia blossomed. In Romania, not
even the top sycophants, creators of indecent cults of personality, or
publicly exposed informers were punished. On the contrary, with the
help of the then-FSN prime minister, they appeared in the Greater
Romania Party’s weekly România Mare, that organ of the Communist-
nationalist reaction that slandered the anti-Communist resistance, in
the same manner as the Black Cassocks. Nothing of what was truly
heroic about the anti-Communist resistance remained untarnished in
the pages of that pulp.
The country did not resume the discussion about the Commu-
nist past for more than fifteen years after issuance of the Timişoara
Proclamation. Two years after the Romanian president condemned the
Communist dictatorship in December 2006, the Constitutional Court
struck down a lustration law passed by Parliament. In fact, it was
only in 2013 that two former Securitate torturers came under judicial
investigation.15 Understandably, this was much too little and much too
late for many people. We were, and still are, truly convinced that in the
absence of a serious debate about heroes and hangmen, we can never
escape this perverse universe of a falsely generalized culpability. For-
getting the past is no way to approach what happened to us and to
our souls for more than four decades. There have been culprits, and
we need to name them. Lustration can make all this debate possible
and, moreover, preferable. And if they do not blush in the face of the
millions of shattered destinies, maybe their heirs will.
Instituting a legal framework of decommunization represents a legit-
imate request by civil society and some political forces truly willing to
break with the Leninist legacies (as Ken Jowitt discusses). A lustration
law, even a long postponed or delayed one, would offer the chance to
achieve justice for the humiliating, everyday experience under Com-
munism while avoiding the pitfalls of any revamped radical delusions.
If such a law ever passes in Parliament, then the insolence of the for-
mer apparatchiks (those vieilles crapules staliniennes, in the words of
Daniel Cohn-Bendit) would diminish. In 1990, I [VT] wrote an article
15
See Andrew Higgins, “In Trial, Romania Warily Revisits a Brutal Past,” New
York Times, September 30, 2013, pp. A1 and A6.
Leninist Debris: Too Heavy to Be Moved Lightly 171
explaining how Romanians quickly passed from a state of grace to one

of nausea (considering the Romanian words for grace and nausea are
graţie and greaţă, respectively, this statement makes for a sad pun). The
miners invited by those in power to engage in a true pogrom (violent,
bloody, state-engineered, political, and ideological) against civil society
and historical parties played a particularly damning role in this change.
I will never forget the terrifying moments of June 13–15, 1990, that I
experienced in Bucharest. At the beginning of July 1990, I published
an article in The New Republic titled “Homage to Golania,” an allu-
sion to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Golania, or the Gola-
niad, refers to that high-spirited student movement in the University
Square, which proudly took this name after Iliescu smeared them with
the label of golani, meaning hoodlums. In the name of neo-Leninism,
Iliescu had his armed clients beat kids into bloody pulps. This govern-
ment response epitomized why Romania needs truth and justice – so
no one in the population will fall for these Leninists’ lies again.
Seized by the Communists, the Romanian state acted as the insti-
tutional structure that empowered Communism to rule for more than
four decades. The militia, border patrols, customs officers, the “judi-
ciary,” and the former Securitate were all part and parcel of this king-
dom of injustice. To condemn such a reality represents a redemptive
action; without this action, we will keep on struggling through a quag-
mire of falsehood and mystifications. Decommunization through jus-
tice does not mean that the moral kind of lustration stops here and
that historical knowledge is ignored. In 2005 and 2006, it was high
time for individual guilt to be established without any further delays.
Tormentors, informers, and activists who poisoned our lives with their
maddening, loud, and suffocating propaganda had to know that they
could not be the beneficiaries of a wave of forgetfulness (especially
when they had long been the beneficiaries of a regime of corruption).
Justice and truth are necessary.
Leninist Debris: Too Heavy to Be Moved Lightly

Communist parties lost power in those tumultuous events of 1989,
but former members of the Communist ruling elites continued to play
important roles. Let us take three examples: Ion Iliescu in Romania,
Aleksander Kwaśniewski in Poland, and Boris Yeltsin in Russia. All
three had been members of the nomenklatura, and all three then pre-
tended, more or less credibly, to have become genuine democrats. Only
in Kwaśniewski’s case did this claim somewhat reflect reality. Iliescu

remained a reconstructed Communist who continued to execrate the
free market and pluralism. It took him six years (from 1990 to 1996)
to accommodate himself to the challenges of authentic pluralism. In
fact, even now, in his venerable late eighties, Iliescu remains faithful
to many illusions from the main element of his political life, when he
served as a top ideologue of the Ceauşescu dictatorship. As for Yeltsin,
a radical politician, he managed to break the institutional carcass of
the Leninist order, but failed to create a robust democratic polity. The
rise of Putinism is testimony to the failure of Yeltsin’s revolution.16
Across Eastern Europe, no issue has turned out to be more divi-
sive than that of reckoning with traumatic pasts. Two visions have
collided in all these countries. In no place was the contrast between
these two visions more evident than in Poland. Michnik’s view –
“Amnesty yes, amnesia no” – resulted in the widespread feeling that
Solidarity’s elite refused to engage in a radical purge of the former rul-
ing class. Political compromises were decried as betrayals. After the
Smolensk plane crash, in which President Lech Kaczyński and dozens
of top Polish personalities lost their lives in 2010, bitter polemics
erupted between supporters of the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza
and those who thought that lustration (in the form of purges) should
occur at an accelerated pace. Dealing with secret police files is another
issue that remains controversial in all the post-Communist countries.
Returning to the example of Poland, some, like Adam Michnik and
the late Bronisław Geremek, considered these files to be uncredible
sources that could not be blindly assumed to contain accurate infor-
mation. Others, like Antoni Macierewicz, a former Solidarity advisor
who served as the deputy defense minister under Jarosław Kaczyński,
expressed the opposite view, maintaining that full disclosures about
former secret police officers and collaborators were indispensable for
achieving moral clarity.
Nationalism, the Potential Destroyer of Nations

In this section we scrutinize some of the perils lurking beneath the
thin surface of young democracies, the most dangerous one being
nationalism. We know from Isaiah Berlin that nationalism is a
16
See Leon Aron’s masterful Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York, NY:
St Martin’s Press, 2000).
Nationalism, the Potential Destroyer of Nations 173
Protean force. It is one of the main political impulses of modernity,

complete with a vibrant set of ideas about collective memories, iden-
tities, loyalties, anxieties, hopes, and aspirations. In its early romantic
form, nationalism had a strong emancipatory, universalistic, and civic
component. But along came the Wagnerian moment, with its emphasis
on völkisch community, Blut und Boden, biological bonds, the metapo-
litical cult of mythological ancestry, and the exaltation of tribalistic
allegiances. Liberal nationalism lost ground to its main rival, illiberal
nationalism. Instead of rational discourses on civic identities, the new
prophets engaged in liturgic, salvationist rodomontades.
The twentieth century was, to a great extent, the battlefield on which
these two visions collided. Yet liberalism and nationalism need not be
mutually exclusive. In contrast to many pessimistic scenarios, liberal
nationalism is more than an abstract possibility. It is a matter of dig-
nity, as Berlin and his followers argued. The illiberal aspect appears in
the scenario when one group’s dignity infringes on another’s, inflam-
ing and inflating exclusionary senses of dignity that can easily turn into
paranoia. This is the reason why the great Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš
defined nationalism as an individual and collective paranoia. The revo-
lutions of 1989, like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, fused national
and civic yearnings. They were attempts to reclaim national and politi-
cal sovereignty, which had been confiscated by the totalitarian regimes.
We think that the legitimate national pride moment is indispensable,
that traditions cannot and ought not be erased in the name of disem-
bodied constructs.
At the same time, we should be very cautious when national sym-
bols are used in political battles. The tragic lessons of Yugoslavia’s col-
lapse need to be kept in mind as an enduring caveat. Nationalism is
not a force for good if it is used to bolster feelings of superiority or
to exclude “other” populations, or if it is a manifestation of a Lenin-
ist legacy. Communism was a soteriological doctrine, promising sal-
vation in this world. Its falsity notwithstanding, it left behind a deep
need for belonging and certainty, as well as strong feelings of histori-
cal failure, helplessness, and even hopelessness. Nationalism’s radical
manifestation often serves to fulfill such feelings. In post-Communist
Europe, resurgent nationalism operates as an umbrella ideology, one
that is all encompassing of populism, racism, xenophobia, homopho-
bia, Euroskepticism, and a self-styled version of conservatism. This is
exemplified by Hungary’s political party Fidesz (a right-wing populist
group also known as the Hungarian Civic Alliance), especially in recent
years. The once-celebrated liberal politician Viktor Orbán has turned

increasingly authoritarian in his modus operandi. His anti-leftism has
often sounded closer to interwar discourses of ethnic purity than to
Christian Democratic ideals. Distinctions between the radical, Com-
munist, and moderate Left are dismissed as irrelevant. Orbán has fol-
lowed this trajectory since 2014, becoming increasingly more obsessed
with Christian values and European blood – proving the possibility
that nationalism can transform into a proto-Nazi cult of the Volk.
Old points of reference have vanished, and new ones appear to be
fragile and tottering. Rather than fostering the abandonment of all
totalitarian delusions and the embrace of an open society, the trauma
suffered under radicalism can often, perhaps even typically, lead right
back to a slightly different version of utopian ideology and fanatical
hate. The overthrow of Communism has not given us democratic soci-
eties, but potentially protofascist ones. No one was more perceptive
in identifying these psychological ailments than Václav Havel. Being
aware of the moral legacies of Communism, Havel remained convinced
that individuals in that part of the world had acquired a historical
awareness that would prevent their countries from sliding into new
forms of despotism. He refused to endorse any form of redemptive
ideology and invited his fellow citizens to remain faithful to the values
of decency, civility, and reason. Havel was convinced that politics (if
genuine) and morality (if not apocryphal) were inseparable and that
the main lesson of Eastern Europe was the rejection of redemptive ide-
ological straitjackets. The death of the Communist project meant the
end of grandiose utopian schemes to impose collective happiness. As
Havel wrote,
Our great, specific experience of recent times is the collapse of an ideology.
We have all lived through its tortured and complicated vagaries, and we
have gone through it, as it were, to the bitter end. This experience has, to an
extraordinary degree, strengthened my ancient skepticism towards all ide-
ologies. I think that the world of ideologies and doctrines is on the way out
for good – along with the entire modern age. We are on the threshold of an
era of globality, an era of open society, an era in which ideologies will be
replaced by ideas.17
17
See Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1993),
pp. 127–128. Another former Charter 77 member, political philosopher Martin
Palouš, has argued along the same lines in his writings. See, for instance, his
The Future: On the Past’s Leash 175
The Future: On the Past’s Leash

William Faulkner’s words clearly apply to the haunted lands of Eastern
Europe, particularly his idea that “the past is never dead, it is not even
past.” One of the main frustrations and sources of public discontent
in post-Communist Europe is linked to the failure to decommunize.
Whereas post–World War II Western Europe experienced defasciza-
tion, many in Eastern Europe think that the ex-Communists succeeded
in preventing genuine efforts to reckon with the past. Their bureau-
cratic power and ideological justifications remain intact – and for some
people, this has become reason for an anti-totalitarian authoritarian-
ism. To make matters worse, the Left, including respectable, main-
stream, anti-Communist liberals and democrats, has continuously and
adamantly opposed comparisons between the totalitarian experiments.
Quite often, proponents of various socialist ideas suggest that the Com-
munist revolutionary project was rooted in rationalism and humanism,
and they consistently invoke the role of Communists in the antifascist
struggle. Others fear that this comparison could somehow diminish
the uniquely genocidal significance of the Holocaust. Either way, the
victims of Communism are marginalized. There should be no contest
between victims of Communism and victims of fascism to determine
which group was most wronged. The killing of a Jew at the hands of
a Nazi should not be sadder or more memorable than the killing of
an average Soviet citizen at the hands of a Leninist, and vice versa. In
the quest to discover and live by truth, all evils must be judged to the
fullest, by the simple criteria that all beings are human and the duty
of a state is to protect their lives, not to destroy them. The difficulty
in doing so is linked to the failure to engage in a genuine exercise of
moral imagination.
We think there also exists a deficit of empathy in the West toward
Communism’s victims. The 2009 Prague Declaration, which called
for a convergence of the two European memories of totalitarianism,
essay “Revolutions and Revolutionaries: Lessons of the Years of Crises (Three

Czech Encounters with Freedom),” in Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., Promises of
1968: Crisis, Illusion, Utopia (Budapest: Central European University Press,
2011), pp. 21–42. See also Agnes Heller, “Twenty Years after 1989,” in
Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, eds., The End and the Beginning:
The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History (Budapest: Central
European University Press, 2012), pp. 55–69.
was basically ignored in Western Europe. Its emphasis on the role of

ideology in the justification of Communism’s atrocities was perceived
as strident. Stalinism could be condemned, but not its progenitor,
Marxism.18 Absurdly, Lenin remains a good man in Western thought,
even as Leninism is cautiously critiqued. To understand this inanity,
let us ask: Would anyone ever try to separate Goering’s more moder-
ate Final Solution from the Holocaust? Perhaps a neo-Nazi. Likewise,
would anyone but a white supremacist try to distinguish Robert E. Lee
from slavery?
Adopting an empathetic approach would make it less difficult to
understand the intricate, tragic fates of modernity that novelist Vasily
Grossman understood so well: Communism (not only Stalinism) and
fascism (especially Nazism) embody the experience of radical evil. A
liberal perspective on these thorny issues entails the refusal to estab-
lish a hierarchy of absolute horrors. Evil was evil, no matter if its
graphic symbol was the swastika or the hammer and sickle. As war
hero of the Spanish Republic and Gulag escapee Valentin Gonzalez (El
Campesino) testified at the Kravchenko trial, Communism is merely
“Fascism with a red flag.” The shared root of these demonic exper-
iments with millions of human lives was the frantic cult of ideol-
ogy, the ecstasy of the absolute transformation of nature, society, and
mind. It was not only the transvaluation of all values, in Nietzsche’s
terms, but also an overall restructuring of morality. Even Nazism had a
conscience.19
Certainly, the reluctance to condemn Communism in as unequivocal
terms as fascism is linked to the humanist heredity of Marxism. Many
people still find it hard to admit that the origins of Stalinism are located
in Leninist hubris. Lenin’s hubris, in turn, cannot be separated from
the utopian ambition to make humanity happy at any cost. Both Com-
munism and fascism were redemptive political fantasies. Regardless of
18
For the full text of the Declaration, see www.praguedeclaration.eu.
19
See Claudia Koonz’s brilliant The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 2005). She explains that, to its theorists and to the tens of millions of
civilized Germans who eventually believed in it, Nazism was not the absence of
morality, but an innovative new morality. The book starts by stating how “the
Nazi conscience is an oxymoron.” If Nazism truly was a progressive idea to its
followers, the fact that Communism undeniably derives from a humanist
philosophy cannot in any way be a mitigating circumstance when evaluating its
crimes.
The Future: On the Past’s Leash 177
philosophical distinctions, the fact that both of them were genocidal in

their means and totalitarian in their ends should settle the debate.
Romanian political parties in general have no special interest in his-
torical matters. Most of them act, quite erroneously, as if the past is
another country. Obviously, the parties least interested in revisiting the
open wounds are those directly linked to the Communist era, partic-
ularly the Social Democrats. It was not pressure from political parties
that convinced Traian Băsescu to appoint the Presidential Commission
in April 2006, but rather the mobilization of civil society.20 IICCMER,
as it functions now, is the result of a merger in the fall of 2009 between
two institutes: one dealing with Communist crimes and one dealing
with Romanian exile. I [VT] became chair of its Scientific Council in
March 2010. In May 2012, Prime Minister Victor Ponta “released”
me from this non-remunerated duty and fired IICCMER’s executive
president, constitutional law professor Ioan Stanomir. These were the
first actions in a series of changes made by the Social Liberal Union
coalition government that came to power in April 2012, culminating
in the failed coup attempt of July 2012.21 It is increasingly clear that a
democracy deprived of memory is utterly vulnerable. Its citizens need
to know what can happen when liberties are trampled and how they
themselves can oppose attempts to fully control society. They also need
to know why the criminals crushed human rights, why so many people
supported the regime who instituted these policies, and why practically
no one rebelled against it. All facets of totalitarian power, including
the failure of civil society, must be understood. Like in Latin America,
the denizens of the post-Communist world are attached to the impera-
tive of “Nunca Más” (the title of Argentina’s Commission’s harrowing
report) and want to know what happened with their lives during the
decades of oppression. For the outsiders, the insistence on memory,
guilt, and retribution may sound excessive. For the insiders, it is a vital
one, both morally and politically.
We believe that, in Eastern Europe, we are still experiencing
a mnemonic interregnum, what Tony Judt defined as “a moment
between myths.” The Romanian exercise of the “public use of history”
20
See the special issue, “The Politics of History in Comparative Perspective,” ed.
Martin O. Heisler, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 617 (May 2008).
21
See my interview conducted by Zavatti, “Historiography Has Been a
Minefield,” pp. 10–13.
was an endeavor to clarify the role of memory in history in order to

specify its impact on contemporary societal life. It was the only path
left for truth-seeking in the circumstances of a two-decade-long judicial
stalemate in reference to the past. The Presidential Commission created
a document where responsibility for the past was claimed and individ-
ualized. There are few other ways to reconstruct Gemeinsamkeit, that
is, the social cohesion and communion destroyed by the atomization
brought about by the Communist regime. As we have already stated,
the Final Report was written with analytical rigor, with compassion for
the victims, and in full awareness of the trauma both incumbent in the
past and in the act of remembrance itself. The Commission had to lis-
ten to what Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor W. Adorno referred
to as “the voice of those who cannot talk anymore.”22 The Presidential
Commission and the condemnation speech can be premises for recon-
ciliation, but they could not facilitate it in the absence of repentance.
The condemnation of the Communist regime is no more than a socially
cathartic value; it is not enough to simply reveal its ideology because
“unless the trauma is understood, there is no possibility of escaping
it.”23
Reclaiming the Human Being

The Final Report fixed the memory of the totalitarian experience in
place and in time, and it overcame the burden of the denial of mem-
ory, of the institutionalization of amnesia. It laid the groundwork for
revolutionizing the normative foundations of communal history and
imposing the necessary moral criteria of a democracy that wishes to
militantly defend its values. The commission’s work and the intense
debates surrounding it highlight one of the most vexing yet vitally
important tensions of the post-Communist world: the importance of
understanding the traumatic totalitarian past while recognizing the
political, moral, and intellectual difficulties, frustrations, hopes, and
anxieties involved in trying to come to grips with it.
To put Romania’s experience within a regional context, we need to
go back to the legacy of the revolutions of 1989. The most important
22
See Theodor W. Adorno, Modèles critiques (Paris: Payot, 1984), especially
pp. 97–112 and 215–219.
23
Motzkin, The Lesser Evil, pp. 200–205.
Reclaiming the Human Being 179
new idea brought about by these memorable events was the rethinking
and the rehabilitation of citizenship. Many of the ideological strug-
gles of post-Communism have revolved around the notion of what is
civic and how to define membership in the new communities. Both
formal and informal amnesia and hypermnesia, after 1989, estranged
the lessons of the totalitarian experience from the present, despite the
fact that these lessons were essential features in contemporary identi-
ties. The discomfiture with democratic challenges and the prevailing
constitutional pluralist model is linked not only to the transition from
Leninism but also to the larger problems of legitimation and the exis-
tence of competing visions of common good and rival symbols of col-
lective identity. Nevertheless, Eastern Europe can look to the exam-
ple and model of the West, where the process of democratization, of
building sustainable postwar societies and transnational bonds, was
fundamentally based on coming to terms with the traumatic and guilty
past. Therefore, the memory of both Auschwitz and the Gulag, if fully
remembered and taught, can go a long way toward entrenching the
societal values and the political culture that twentieth-century totali-
tarianisms destroyed in the region.
In this sense, the Prague Declaration and the Organization for Secu-
rity and Co-Operation in Europe’s (OSCE) “Resolution on Divided
Europe Reunited: Promoting Human Rights and Civil Liberties in
the OSCE Region in the 21st Century” can be seen as the fulfill-
ment of the second post-1989 stage of development in the region.
If one could argue in the 1990s that the former Communist coun-
tries sought the main road back to democracy, then it follows that,
in the 2000s, they have been trying to overcome self-centeredness in a
united Europe. These two documents recognize that the new Europe is
“bound together by the signs and symbols of its terrible past.”24 For
example, the OSCE resolution states,
Noting that in the twentieth century European countries experienced two
major totalitarian regimes, Nazi and Stalinist, which brought about geno-
cide, violations of human rights and freedoms, war crimes and crimes
against humanity, acknowledging the uniqueness of the Holocaust . . . The
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly reconfirms its united stand against all total-
itarian rule from whatever ideological background . . . Urges the participat-
ing States: a. to continue research into and raise public awareness of the
24
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, p. 831.
totalitarian legacy; b. to develop and improve educational tools, programs

and activities, most notably for younger generations, on totalitarian his-
tory, human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, pluralism,
democracy and tolerance; . . . Expresses deep concern at the glorification of
the totalitarian regimes.25
A democratic polity in which the individual is treated decently, and

where human rights are taken seriously, cannot be erected on amnesia,
mystification, imposture, and blatant lies.
Communist Russia, Fascist Russia

The most apt contemporary European example of a regime founded
on a symbiosis between neo-authoritarianism (or “new authoritari-
anism” as Ivan Krastev put it26 ) and the refusal to confront a guilty
and traumatic regime is Putin’s Russia. The treatment of the Stalin-
ist legacies remains a crucial question in this country, which avoids
contemplating how and why the generalissimo’s ghost continues to
haunt collective memories and public imagination. Putin’s “managed
democracy” – a term that is, in reality, merely a euphemism for Rus-
sia’s neo-totalitarianism – is rooted precisely in a perpetuation of
denial.
His personality formed in the secretive culture of the KGB, “Tsar
Vladimir” remains deeply attached to the founder of the Bolshevik
secret police (the Cheka), Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat who
decided to abandon his early dreams to become a priest to become a
fanatic Leninist (still a priest, just of a different religion). Putin has also
25
“Vilnius Declaration of the Osce Parliamentary Assembly and Resolutions
Adopted at the Eighteenth Annual Session” (Vilnius, June 29–July 3, 2009);
www.oscepa.org/images/stories/documents/activities/1.Annual%20Session/
2009_Vilnius/Final_Vilnius_Declaration_ENG.pdf. The Prague Declaration
and the OSCE Resolution are hardly unique. Other official, pan-European, or
transatlantic steps have been taken to condemn the criminality of Communism
and Stalinism following the example of the criminalization of fascism and
Nazism; for example, the EU Parliament’s resolution on European conscience
and totalitarianism or the building of the Victims of Communism Memorial in
Washington, DC. The monument was dedicated by President George W. Bush
on June 12, 2007, the twentieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s
famous Brandenburg Gate speech. See www.globalmuseumoncommunism.org/
voc.
26
Ivan Krastev, “Paradoxes of the New Authoritarianism,” Journal of
Democracy, 22, no. 2, (April 2011), pp. 5–16.
Communist Russia, Fascist Russia 181
acted to instill a sense of admiration for Yuri Andropov, himself an

adamant Leninist, who, as chairman of the KGB in the 1970s and
1980s, supervised the persecution of Soviet dissidents and the neutral-
ization of any form of opposition. Understandably, the Putin regime
finds in such unsavory figures examples of civic dedication and politi-
cal idealism. At the same time, independent researchers and journalists
who want to rescue memory remain isolated and seem to engage in
quixotic searches for truth. They remind us of the beleaguered activists
of the “Memorial” society, a Russian civil rights organization founded
in 1989, who refuse to endorse official mythologies.
By the end of the 1970s, Bolshevism was no longer an energizing
messianic project. In fact, it had become a rather stultified, hollow
dogma.27 The original dream of world revolution had given way to
a more traditional imperial expansionism. Still, Communism contin-
ued to play the role of a secular religion, proposing the main reference
points, the moral compass, for generations. Its genuine amoralism was
shrouded in rhetorical proclamations of equality and fraternity. It was
bogus but exhilarating. At the very least, even if uninspiring, in the
1980s, the USSR remained a massive state, armed to the teeth, in the
classic nineteenth-century model.
Since the collapse of the USSR, its quasi-ethical glue is the source of
regret for many who prefer to remember the victory over Nazi Ger-
many rather than the horrors of the Gulag. Compared to the expe-
riences of political justice in Eastern and Central Europe, Russia has
basically shunned efforts to engage in moral recovery. This failure to
address the past is definitely linked to the weakness of political will.
Putin confessed admiration for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but the state-
sanctioned history textbooks published with his blessing have been
crude attempts to condone the mass terror of the 1930s, among other
events. Events such as the Holodomor – the genocidal famine that
Stalin engineered in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 as a method to preemp-
tively crush independence movements and extricate more resources for
others in the Soviet Union – are conveniently forgotten. Nor do teach-
ers spend a moment on Stalin’s selfish, fatal decisions regarding the
siege of Leningrad (1941–1944). The failure to address these topics
27
See Tismaneanu, The Crisis of Marxist Ideology in Eastern Europe; on the
erosion of faith among Communist elites, see Paul Hollander, Political Will and
Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1999).
is indicative of a popular refusal to admit that the most darling lead-

ers of the nation’s past committed atrocities under the guise of pro-
tecting the population; considering such a reality could spell a crisis
of legitimacy for Putin, as he, too, invades eastern Ukraine, illegally
annexes Crimea, goes to war with Georgia, censors the media, and
condones massive corruption (among many other crimes) – suppos-
edly all in the name of the Russian public good. To face the wrongs
of the past would also mean to face those of today, which would not
only delegitimize Putin but also assign responsibility to the millions
of Russians whom his regime allows to steal money from businesses,
beat gays, harass Central Asian and Muslim foreigners, and perform
election fraud in exchange for a few extra rubles or the blind eye of
the (usually too invasive) police. Buying into the illiberal nationalist
idea that Russia is a superior civilization makes a person liable for the
perpetuation of a rogue government – and this nationalism is rampant
throughout the population. They feel little incentive to live in truth, and
comfort is perfectly convincing motivation to ignore the past in such a
society.
Putin is not a sophisticated doctrinaire. His main ideas come from
dubious sources such as Aleksandr Dugin, with his maniacal views of
Eurasian imperialism. Putin has wholeheartedly adopted Dugin’s doc-
trine of imperial conservatism. Add to this his fascination with Alek-
sandr Solzhenitsyn’s vision of a resurrected Russian Empire that would
necessarily incorporate Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and northern Kaza-
khstan. It is ironic that Solzhenitsyn, a main voice of Soviet dissent in
the 1970s and the author of The Gulag Archipelago, chose to endorse
Vladimir Putin as a Russian patriot. He accepted honors from Putin
that he had rejected when offered by Boris Yeltsin. The former dissi-
dent was thrilled to see the former KGB officer espouse his imperialist
and protofascist ideals.
Understanding Putin’s behavior in recent years, including his repu-
diation of the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014 and the ongoing invasion
of eastern Ukraine, means that we must first grasp his authoritarian
mindset, including his conviction that might makes right. His values
are vertically authoritarian and militaristic. He is opposed to tolerance
and diversity. He despises the democratic opposition (people like Boris
Nemtsov, Gary Kasparov, and Aleksey Navalny) and deeply distrusts
initiatives from below, civil society, and Western liberalism. In an illu-
minating book, journalist Ben Judah documents impressively how the
Communist Russia, Fascist Russia 183
promise of a “dictatorship of law” evaporated into a cronyist system

with an ideological camouflage reminiscent of fascism.28
How does one explain that, more than two decades after the col-
lapse of the USSR, there has been no expression of state repentance for
the millions of innocent individuals murdered by the Soviet regime?
The refusal to engage in a genuine reckoning with the past is particu-
larly striking in Putin’s Russia. After ineffective attempts under Boris
Yeltsin to organize a trial of leaders of the Communist Party, things
have moved in a different direction: the mythologies of Soviet times
have been restored, and those who continue to insist on acknowledg-
ing the atrocities of the past have been increasingly marginalized (not to
mention slandered and insulted, in true Leninist fashion). It is therefore
no surprise that Vyacheslav Nikonov, the grandson of Stalin’s foreign
minister Vyacheslav Molotov and a political commentator with close
ties to Putin’s leadership, bluntly states, “People are not interested in
the past. Any attempt to dig into the past evokes only irritation.”29
No lawful state, no functional and credible democracy, can exist if
the lawlessness of the past remains ignored or is systematically trivial-
ized. Using all kinds of rationalizations, Russian leaders have avoided
reconciliation with their appalling past. The result of this depress-
ing situation is that Russia is beset by cynicism and widespread con-
tempt for the dissidents’ most cherished values, particularly civility,
dignity, and memory. The Russian state sees little reason to cultivate
an anti-totalitarian ethos. The Orthodox Church, with its own history
of martyrdom and complicity, tries to annex the memory of the vic-
tims to fit its own refurbished self-image of unmitigated resistance to
Communism.
Putin’s counterrevolutionary reaction to the Euromaidan only rein-
forced the contrast between the reentrenchment of the Communist
past’s values and the moral and political tradition of the movements
that took place between 1989 and 1991, which were centered on
enfranchising the power of the powerless. In this sense, the Euro-
maidan symbolized the rebirth of democratic civil society. Historian
Timothy Snyder pertinently grasped the way in which these protests
28
Ben Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and out of Love with Vladimir
Putin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
29
See David Satter, It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway:
Russia and the Communist Past (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012),
p. 2.
revitalized Ukraine’s citizenry: “The protesters represent every group

of Ukrainian citizens: Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers
(although most Ukrainians are bilingual), people from the cities and
the countryside, people from all regions of the country, members
of all political parties, the young and the old, Christians, Muslims,
and Jews.”30 Despite obvious differences mostly rooted in the specter
of Russian imperialism, some of the challenges faced in 2014 by
Ukraine are the same as those that have persistently characterized post-
Communism in the former Socialist Bloc.
Communist ideals have long since lost their galvanizing power. Yet
the collectivistic and egalitarian promises of Communism have been
resurrected in attempts to generate new fantasies of salvation, hybrid
syntheses of Far Left and Far Right radical visions. Frustrations and
malaise are rampant, and political demagogues are ready to exploit
them for their own cynical purposes. Some of these characters are fre-
quently just eccentric individuals; others were active in the old regimes.
In Hungary, the Far Right populist writer István Csurka (1934–2012)
closed ranks with other ultranationalists in the name of defending the
ethnic community against any form of “pollution.” Interwar fantasies
of racial purity have also been resurrected in most of these countries.
Ex-propagandists for the defunct dictatorships have reemerged as anti-
Western, antiliberal apostles. The most egregious incarnation of this
radical populism is Hungary’s Far Right party Jobbik (Movement for
a Better Hungary), with all of its ultranationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-
EU, and anti-Western rhetoric. Jobbik proclaims a muscular, machista,
militaristic vision of history, politics, and national morality.
The cases of two other political demagogues – Corneliu Vadim
Tudor in Romania and Jerzy Urban in Poland – are also indicative
of this process. A prolific versifier, the former was one of the main
sycophants in Ceauşescu’s court, shamelessly praising the dictator and
his wife. Immediately after the demise of the old regime, Vadim Tudor
founded a political party that combined nostalgia for both Ceauşescu
and the pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu. In 2000, he ran in the second
round of the presidential elections against former Communist appa-
ratchik and the first post-Ceauşescu president, Ion Iliescu. Vadim lost,
30
Timothy Snyder, “Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine,” New York Review of Books,
March 20, 2014; www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-
russia-and-ukraine.
“The People” Live 185
but it was only in 2009 that his party disappeared from the political
stage. Similarly, Jerzy Urban served as the spokesman for General Woj-
ciech Jaruzelski’s junta in the early 1980s. Boundlessly cynical, he sym-
bolized the degeneration of the Communist elite in Poland. After 1989
he remained active in the media, running a magazine that slandered
former dissidents, Pope John Paul II, and the tradition of Solidarity.
“The People” Live

Under these circumstances, the resurgent appeal of Communism
remains puzzling.31 Even though so many people experienced the
poverty of utopia, in some of these countries (especially in the former
Soviet space) there is a sense of desperation, despondency, and malaise
that offers ammunition to the neo-Communist zealots. The majority of
people are fed up with ritual formulas, redemptive slogans, or hollow
promises about a putative equalitarian paradise. Yet, generally speak-
ing, the post-Communist world is still one of ideologies, even if they
are less powerful – and it seems that the only ideology still in place is
nationalist populism, which has a tendency to evolve programmatically
in an anti-ideological way; that is, it is an amorphous vision rather than
a Weltanschauungsstaat. Ideological distinctions are more the result of
immediate political interests. This is how one can explain the somer-
saults performed with such ease by local politicians. In such a bewil-
dering environment, one needs a compass to have any idea about the
directions in which North and South point. Disillusionment with the
new order translates into nostalgia for the times of stability.32
Following Cas Mudde’s analysis of populism, we would argue that
in the former Communist space, there is one predominantly rigid
dichotomy, namely that between “the pure people” and “the corrupt
elite.”33 Democracy is decried as chaos; the political class is often
31
“The People as One” is an obsessively used phrase by all collectivists, from
Lenin to Hitler to Perón to Putin to Donald Trum to Assad. The fetish of the
nation is carried to its extreme as war against the enemies.
32
See Anca Mihaela Pusca, Revolution, Democratic Transition, and
Disillusionment: The Case of Romania (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2009).
33
Cas Mudde, “In the Name of the Peasantry, the Proletariat, and the People:
Populisms in Eastern Europe,” East European Politics and Societies, 14, no. 2
(Winter 2000), pp. 33–53.
seen as rapacious, soulless, and alienated from the citizens. Obvi-

ously, such laments can be heard in the West as well, but in the post-
Communist world, they tend to get the upper hand. In Hungary, for
instance, the rise of Jobbik and Viktor Orbán’s increasing authori-
tarianism express precisely this conviction that democracy is a tenu-
ous construct deprived of authentic national roots. Comparing politi-
cal developments in Hungary with those in Romania and taking into
account the nationalist-authoritarian practices and discourse of former
prime minister Victor Ponta, we find that in both countries “national
essentialism functions as the collective ‘subconscious’ of these polit-
ical cultures, a potential grey zone of unspoken but intended con-
notations and a set of references that can be activated in conflicting
situations.”34 This explains the ascent of antidemocratic movements
and parties whose hostility to liberal values is increasingly shrill. And
much of this parochialism in Eastern European cultures is inextrica-
bly connected with Communism’s legacies. I [VT] predicted this trend
in the epilogue of my book Reinventing Politics, where I claimed the
future of the region lay between ethnocracy and democracy.35 I char-
acterized ethnocracy as a political project meant to emphasize ethnic
homogeneity, roots, and community in opposition to a civic under-
standing of the nation.
We argue that “democracy’s doubles”36 – those regimes “that claim
to be democratic and may look like democracies, but which rule
like autocracies” – originate in the nostalgia for Communism’s social
utopia, combined with a protracted post-1989 transition and the shock
of the economic crisis from 2008 onward. Additionally, the humanist
excuse for Communism remains legitimate in the eyes of many. These
circumstances fueled the commitment of large sections of Eastern Euro-
pean societies to collectivist, statist, and nonpluralist political projects,
while also making them ever more reluctant to confront black spots
in the national past. We agree with Ivan Krastev, who emphasized that
34
Balázs Trencsényi, “Afterlife or Reinvention? ‘National Essentialism’ in
Romania and Hungary after 1945,” in Anders Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi,
and Balazs Trencsenyi, eds., Hungary and Romania beyond National
Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2013), p. 568.
35
See “Fears, Phobias, Frustrations: Eastern Europe Between Ethnocracy and
Democracy,” the epilogue to my book Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe
from Stalin to Havel (New York, NY: Free Press, 1992), pp. 279–288.
36
Ivan Krastev, “Democracy’s ‘Doubles,’” Journal of Democracy, 17, no. 2 (April
2006), p. 52.
“the new populist majorities do not have a clear project for transform-
ing society. They are inspired not so much by hope as by the sense of
betrayal. They are moralistic, not programmatic. They represent the
crisis of traditional political identities. In their view, social and politi-
cal change is possible only through a total change of the elite.”37 Since
the late 2000s, political developments in Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria,
Romania, and during the time of the Law and Justice government in
Poland (2005–2007) reflected the growing willingness of these coun-
tries’ decision makers and public spheres to brush aside vital matters
such as pluralism, rule of law, or democratic empowerment.
Indeed, the new wave of populism, as well as widespread protests
against demagogy and lies, have the potential to morph into move-
ments of despair. False oracles promising immediate gratification
and punishment of kleptocratic thugs can take advantage of justi-
fied grievances, especially when liberal values appear as disembodied
and even hypocritical.38 The growing gap between expectations and
achievements can result (and has resulted) in street demonstrations;
consider those in Budapest in 2006, Latvia in 2009, Warsaw in 2011,
Sofia in 2013, or Bucharest in 2012, 2013, and 2017. Twenty-five years
since Communism’s collapse, these protests, combined with the fas-
cinating moments of the Euromaidan, reveal a reality in the former
socialist bloc that is both promising and disquieting: Eastern Europe
remains socially unstable and psychologically discombobulated.
The victory of the Social Democratic Party (PSD; the successor for-
mation to the defunct Romanian Communist Party) in the elections
of December 2016 was used by its strongman Liviu Dragnea and his
proxy, then prime minister Sorin Grindeanu, to launch an onslaught
on anticorruption institutions and initiatives. The government’s cyn-
ical decision to rescind once-legally enshrined stipulations regarding
accountability for acts of corruption provoked intense public outrage.
Important PSD figures and financial tycoons who had earlier been
jailed then forcefully pushed for their early release. Romanian opposi-
tion groups, primarily NGOs, perceived these pressures as an effort to
de-democratize the country. In our view, which we articulated in a piece
commissioned and published by Politico.eu, the protests in the first
37
Krastev, “Democracy’s ‘Doubles,’” p. 61.
38
See my [VT] article “The Leninist Debris; or, Waiting for Peron,” in Arthur M.
Meltzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman, eds., Politics at the Turn
of the Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), pp. 209–235.
months of 2017 were indicative of a possible anti-authoritarian trend

not only in that country but also in the whole region. We both saw
in Romania’s civic revolt what Hannah Arendt called the “lost trea-
sure” of the revolutionary tradition. Especially striking features of the
Romanian anti-authoritarian revolt were the lack of direct involvement
of political parties and the refusal of the protesters to create their own
political vehicle. Ideologies were conspicuously absent, which makes
the Romanian revolt so interesting to study. In this case, human beings
and dignity were vague but powerful ideas that launched a revolution.
There is a growing sentiment that all politicians cheat and that the
political class has betrayed the people. Former dissidents are often
lambasted as naive and quixotic. Until his death in December 2011,
when he was suddenly lionized, the once-celebrated Václav Havel was
criticized by many in the Czech Republic (including his arch-nemesis
Václav Klaus) as an incorrigible idealist. Demoralized and disgruntled,
most former dissidents have withdrawn from politics. Critical intellec-
tuals, the most consistent advocates of liberal values, have come under
attack from the Far Left and the Far Right. Many young intellectuals
seem more interested in all sorts of postmodern anticapitalist sloga-
neering than in promoting liberal institutions and values.
Kołakowski was not alone in highlighting these dangers. In the
immediate aftermath of what John Paul II called annus mirabilis 1989,
sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf anticipated the rise of clericalist and mili-
tarist movements, writing,
The story of revolution has a certain inner logic. This is notably the case
where an old regime has been dislodged which held a monopoly in political
as well as economic and virtually all other respects. The post-revolutionary
situation is one of near-anomy in which disenchantment is almost unavoid-
able. Such disenchantment does not create a very favorable climate for the
establishment of lasting democratic institutions. It is even likely to encourage
radical minorities and individuals to seek power in the name of objectives
and with methods which are anything but democratic. But none of this is
bound to happen.39
Dahrendorf therefore insisted on the need to create a legal framework

that would prevent the slide into new forms of dictatorship. In the same
39
See Dahrendorf, After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society, p. 12. We
also strongly recommend Dahrendorf’s earlier volume, Reflections on the
Revolution in Europe.
vein, political scientist Ken Jowitt saw the Leninist debacle as the begin-
ning of an age of global turbulence with unpredictable consequences,
one in which
boundaries, loyalties, identities have all been irretrievably shattered by this

gigantic transformation. Old definitions of civic and ethnic forms of belong-
ings have lost their meanings. The new, post-Leninist situation begs for new
conceptualizations . . . If, under Leninist rule, kto-kovo? [“who did what to
whom?”] asked whether or not the Party was dominant, the question today
in the nations of the extinct Soviet bloc is whether civic or ethnic forces
dominate their political life: 1989 was the year of the civics; 1990 saw the
forceful emergence of ethnic political forces.40
These words were written at the beginning of the 1990s, when

the European Union’s prospect of eastward extension looked like a
pipedream.
Understandably, Ken Jowitt envisioned Eastern Europe as very
much on its own, isolated and derelict, beset by unprocessed mem-
ories and endless domestic bickering, deprived of Western recogni-
tion as a bona fide member of the emerging (and exclusive) club:
the EU institutionally and the Western world in general. The wars
of secession in the former Yugoslavia made West Europeans realize
that the rejection of their eastern peers was not a solution and could
exacerbate chauvinistic and atavistic temptations. Acknowledging the
watershed significance of Eastern Europe’s integration into EU, Jowitt
overhauled his pessimistic stance. His modified assessment is worth
quoting:
I was wrong. Fortunately, for my own ego’s sake, for the right reason. A
number of critics were quick and correct to point out that the “colonels, car-
dinals, and demagogues” I expected to politically predominate in the post-
communist period failed in good measure to appear. However, the question
is, why? In the concluding pages of my article, “The Leninist Legacy,” I point-
edly asked whether in the light of the cumulative Leninist legacies – Stalinist,
Khrushchevian, and Brezhnevian – there was any . . . point of leverage, criti-
cal mass of civic effort – political, cultural, and economic – that can add its
weight to civic forces in Eastern Europe and check the increasing frustration,
desperation, fragmentation and anger that will lead to country and region
wide violence? My answer was yes, Western Europe! If Western Europe were
40
Jowitt, New World Disorder, p. 320.
to “adopt” Eastern Europe, the negative outcome I foresaw could be avoided.

And that is precisely what happened. The EU “adopted” Eastern Europe.41
What appeared in the early 1990s as a pipedream seemed to become

real within the first few years of the new century with the expansion
of the EU and NATO. The revolutions of 1989 had taken place in the
name of a return to Europe. Yet a little more than fifteen years later, this
return remains in question because of post-Communist holdovers and
pre-fascist wreckers, in a perfect alliance against all forces of Atlantic
tolerance.
Dire predictions notwithstanding, the EU has played a key role
in fostering civic, democratic, liberal values. Events in Hungary and
Romania in 2012 (the rise of autocratic, crypto-dictatorial trends in
the former, and a failed parliamentary putsch meant to arrest the con-
solidation of rule of law in the latter) demonstrated the critical signif-
icance of the EU’s explicit injunctions and criticisms. One of the most
important lessons of the events in Hungary and Romania through-
out 2012 was the extraordinary significance of the Constitutional
Courts in defending democratic norms and procedures against vari-
ous forms of majoritarian tyranny. In addition, the EU played a key
role in preventing the success of more or less camouflaged attempts at
de-democratization.42
The first stage of the revolutions of 1989–1991 was dominated by
an exhilarating sense of recovered liberty and the widespread belief
that authoritarianism had been irreversibly defeated. Sociologist S. N.
Eisenstadt accurately described those revolutions as non-utopian, non-
ideological, and non-eschatological.43 As a rule, they were nonviolent
41
See Ken Jowitt, “Stalinist Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Eastern Europe,” in
Vladimir Tismaneanu, ed., Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of
Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe (Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2009), p. 23.
42
Jan-Werner Müller, “Safeguarding Democracy inside the EU Brussels and the
Future of Liberal Order,” Transatlantic Academy Paper Series, February 2013;
Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Democracy on the Brink: A Coup Attempt Fails in
Romania,” World Affairs, January/February 2013, pp. 83–88. Special thanks to
H.-R. Patapievici who shared with me [VT] his illuminating analysis of the
Romanian failed coup in a still-unpublished manuscript titled “Spiritul si
litera” (The Sprit and the Letter). It is an expanded version of an article
forthcoming in the Dutch journal Nexus.
43
See S. N. Eisenstadt, “The Breakdown of Communist Regimes,” in
Tismaneanu, ed., The Revolutions of 1989, pp. 89–107.
eruptions of civic discontent against the supremacy of lies and the ram-
pant cynicism of the communist bureaucracies. The thrust of the mass
protests favored the dissident philosophy of freedom, civility, and dig-
nity. The expectations were high, and very few were able to foresee the
advent of ugly forms of populism, exclusiveness, and intolerance that
Václav Havel diagnosed as the post-Communist nightmare.
Many of us thought that civil society was indeed the alternative to
the Leninist ideocratic regimes. Especially in the pages of New York
Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash became the most articulate
voice for the “civil society school.”44 The existence of independent
movements from below was undeniable; the problem was, however,
to what extent these grassroots groups could generate genuine popu-
lar resistance to communist despotisms.
On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the revolutions,
political scientist Stephen Kotkin published a provocative book in
which he challenged this interpretation, arguing that civil society
became a genuine sociological reality only in Poland (historian Jan T.
Gross contributed a chapter on Solidarity’s saga), whereas in coun-
tries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the GDR (as well as Romania
and Bulgaria), the rules of the game were dictated by the nomenklat-
uras, which he dubbed the “uncivil society.”45 To put it simply, Kotkin’s
argument was that it was not a revolutionary wave from below that
led to the collapse, but rather it was the suicide of the uncivil society
(the Communist ruling elite). One can object to this line of thought,
arguing that without an erosion of their sense of historical predestina-
tion, catalyzed by the civil society’s emphasis on the value of living in
truth, the motivation for this suicide of the elite would remain totally
mysterious. Civil society did not mean only the rediscovery of human
autonomy; it also entailed the search for a politics rooted in morality.
This was the meaning of George Konrad’s celebration of anti-politics
as a post-Machiavellian and post-Marxist political experience. Add to
this the formidable impact of Gorbachev’s reforms and the Soviet aban-
donment of the notorious Brezhnev Doctrine of limited sovereignty.
44
Timothy Garton Ash, “The Puzzle of Central Europe,” New York Review of
Books, March 18, 1999, pp. 18–23.
45
See Stephen Kotkin, with Jan T. Gross, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the
Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2009). See also my [VT] review-essay “They Wanted to Be
Free,” Times Literary Supplement, October 30, 2009, pp. 12–13.
No doubt, Kotkin has a point in deploring the political reveries

engaged in by scholars who championed the rise of civil society as the
crucial interpretive paradigm for the revolutions of 1989 (including
these authors). However, in spite of Kotkin’s partially justified reser-
vations, civil society cannot be simply viewed as a conceptual mirage.
Charter 77 and the Hungarian Democratic Opposition existed, and
the local bureaucracies were obsessed with stifling them. The same can
be said about the unofficial peace and ecological movements in the
former GDR. A new concept of freedom and a new vision of politics
emerged within these beleaguered dissident communities. Whether we
call them civil society or anything else is less relevant. What matters
is their legacy of the refusal of conformity and regimentation, their
vision of a political space emancipated from double-think and double-
talk, and their affirmation of both positive and negative freedoms in
these liberating experiences.46
The unmastered past of the twentieth century in Central and East-
ern Europe prevents these countries from institutionalizing the logical
connection between democracy, memory, and militancy. But the flight
from democracy will always be checked by conscientiousness about
the consequences of radical evil in history. We consider that one can
refashion both individual and collective identity on the basis of the
negative lessons and examples that national history can provide. In
addition to the trauma of the early Stalinist days, all the countries in
the region had, and still have, to deal with “the grey veil of moral ambi-
guity” (to use Tony Judt’s phrase) that was the defining feature of really
existing socialism. These societies and most of their members have a
bad conscience in relation to the past. If we agree that annus mirabilis
1989 was fundamentally about the rebirth of citizenship and the re-
empowering of the truth, then the gradual clarification of recent history
will close the vicious circle of (totalitarian) transition in Eastern and
Central Europe. Just like the West has come to terms with its trauma
and guilt, the East can ultimately find the long-lost consensus in similar
46
See Tomas Kavaliauskas, Transformations in Central Europe between 1999
and 2012: Geopolitical, Cultural, and Socioeconomic Shifts (Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2012). For interpretations of the survival of authoritarian
regimes event after the shock of 1989, see Martin Dimitrov, ed., Why
Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime
Resilience in Asia and Europe (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2013).
ways. Although difficult histories sometimes impart negative legacies,

they can also serve as a motivation to build and preserve democratic
rule. Thus, the memory of both Auschwitz and the Gulag, if acknowl-
edged and taught in the post-Communist region, can help entrench the
societal values and political culture lost under the twentieth-century
totalitarianisms. In this sense, we believe that the upheavals of 1989
could accomplish their goals of moving these countries toward the path
of Europeanization.
Index
Academia Civică, 93, 104 Arendt, Hannah, 30–31, 45–47,

Acum (Now), 58–59 64n.14, 77–79, 134–135,
Adevărul, 93 136–137, 187–188
Alexandrescu, Sorin, 59–62, 92–93 Argentina, 71–74n.27
Aligică, Dragoş Paul, 79–81 Aron, Leon, 110
amnesia Aron, Raymond, 45–47, 69–70,
Communist practice of, 142–143 144–146
persistence of Communist power Ash, Timothy Garton, 190–191
and, 52–57 Association of Former Political
sinister amnesia, 26–29 Prisoners in Romania, 83–85, 99
Western encouragement of, 72–73 atonement, redemption and, 33
Andreescu, Gabriel, 112 austerity measures in Romania,
Andrei, Ştefan, 150 123–124
Andropov, Yuri, 180–181 authoritarianism, post-totalitarian
The Annals of Communism, 72 re-emergence of, 9–13, 166–167,
Antena1/Antena3, 100–101, 123–124 172–174, 185–193
anti-Communism Aylwin, Patricio, 150
condemnation of dictatorship and,
40–45 Baberowski, Jörg, 110
growth in Romania of, 43–45, Badiou, Alain, 22–24
130–132 Barbu, Daniel, 59–62
legacy of, 47 Barbu, Eugen, 120
Romanian perspectives on, Bârlădeanu, Alexandru, 106–107
117–118 Barosso, José Manuel, 127–128
anti-corruption initiatives, Romanian Băsescu, Traian
oligarchy and, 123–124 CCACDR established by, 154
antifascism condemnation of Communist regime
diversity in, 45–47 by, 77–79, 104–106, 112–116,
in World War II, 69–70 117–118, 122–125, 147–148
anti-Semitism, 28–29, 77–79, 118–120, election of, 27–28, 51–52, 67–70
139–140, 142–143 ICCMER and, 159
Antohi, Sorin, 92–93, 94 impeachment campaign against,
Antonescu, Crin, 124–126, 127–128 118–120, 122–125, 127–128
Antonescu, Ion, 54, 77–79, 142–143, legacy of, 137–141
184–185 post-totalitarian political culture
Appeal for the Condemnation of the and, 6–9
Communist Regime, 67–70 Presidential Commission and, 1–6,
Applebaum, Anne, 72, 110 33–34, 39–40, 55–56, 67–70,
Aragon, Luis, 21–22 85–88, 89–91, 100–101
194
Index 195
re-election of, 122–125 Securitate of, 47–48

regime of, 74–76 websites on regime of, 157–158
Securitate archives and, 79–83 Cesereanu, Ruxandra, 94
Sighet Memorial visited by, 116–117 Charter 77 movement
Beissinger, Mark R., 17 (Czechoslovakia), 42, 66–67
Bellu, Niculae, 73–74 Chávez, Hugo, 71–74
Berindei, Mihnea, 92–93 Chile, neo-populism in, 12
Berlin, Isaiah, 172–174 Chirac, Jacques, 74–76, 77–79
Besançon, Alain, 15–16, 45–47, 69–70, Chirot, Daniel, 160–162
109–111 Chişinevschi, Iosif, 143–144
Bialer, Seweryn, 109–111 Cioflâncă, Adrian, 112, 156–157
Blaga, Vasile, 88–91 Cirtautas, Arista, 17
Blandiana, Ana, 93, 112, 116–117 citizenship, post-Communist
Bobu, Emil, 77–79 perspectives on, 178–180
Boc, Emil, 123–124 Civic Alliance (Alianţa Civică), 57–64,
Boda, Iosif, 100–101 67–70
Bolshevism, 71–74 civil society
rejection of, 21–22 decommunization efforts by, 62–64,
Borkenau, Franz, 109–111 160–162
Bosworth, R. J., 144–146 democratization and role of,
Bracher, Karl Dietrich, 109–111 190–191
Brandenberger, David, 110 informational self-determination in,
Brazil 159
neo-populism in, 12 mobilization of, 175–178
truth commission in, 61–62 post-Communist failure of revolts
Breslauer, George, 109–111 by, 57–64
Brezhnev, Leonid, 19–20 reconciliation with past and, 67–70
Brown, Archie, 109–111 Clark, Caterina, 109–111
Brumberg, Abraham, 109–111 Clubul Român de Presă, 118–120
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 69–70, 109–111 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 169–170
Bucur, Maria, 62n.11, 79–81, 142–143 collective identity
∗
Bukovsky, 72–73 post-revolution cultivation of, 52–57
Bullock, Allan, 110 truth commissions and
Burtică, Cornel, 73–74 communicative silence of, 1–2
collectivization campaigns, as political
Câmpeanu, Pavel, 73–74 genocide, 13–15
Camus, Albert, 69–70 Colton, Timothy, 109–111
Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, 109–111 Commission for the Analysis of the
Castoriadis, Cornelius, 45–47, 71–74 Communist Dictatorship in
Ceauşescu, Elena, 77–79 Romania, German influence on,
Ceauşescu, Ilie, 118–120 29–40
Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 1–6 Committee for Workers’ Defense
normalizing narratives of, 33, (KOR), 42
143–144 Communism in Romania
PCACDR condemnation of, amnesia concerning, 26–29,
130–132 142–143
post-Communist amnesia condemnation by PCACDR of,
concerning, 26–29, 54 102–111, 130–132
regime of, 106–107, 120 criminality under, 64–66
revolt against, 51, 77–79 demise in 1989 of, 17–21
196 Index
Communism in Romania (cont.) Czechoslovakia

elusiveness of truth concerning, anti-communism in former state of,
13–16, 64–66 42
individual dissent against, 134–137 Russian invasion of, 106–107
PCACDR data on impact of, Czech Republic, decommunization in,
141–148 74–76, 162–166
persistence in power of, 52–57
reconciliation with past and Dahrendorf, Ralf, 166–168, 188–190
condemnation of, 21–24 Daniels, Robert V., 109–111
Western liberal discourse and, David-Fox, Michael, 110
69–70 Dawisha, Karen, 109–111
Communist-Fascist baroque, 28–29 decommunization
Ceauşescu dictatorship and, 49 authoritarianism as response to,
“Communist hypothesis,” 22–24 9–13, 166–167, 172–174
comparative perspective, on in Central and Eastern Europe,
decommunization, 12–13 160–162
The Complete Black Book of Russian civil society initiatives for, 62–64
Jewry (Grossman), 13–15 confrontation with past and, 24–26
Congress for Cultural Freedom, counter-culture in Central Europe
69–70 and, 40–45
Conquest, Robert, 72, 109–111 cross-national comparisons of,
Conservative Party, 123 74–76
Constantinescu, Emil, 51, 55, 59–62 in Germany, 29–40
presidency of, 66–67, 77–79, legacy of, 137–141
96–97 nationalist populism and, 55–56
Securitate archives and, 82–83 political justice and, 49–50, 64n.14
Constantiniu, Florin, 33 widespread culpability and, 64–70
Constitutional Court of Romania, de Gaulle, Charles, 72–73, 77–79
122–125, 127–129, 169–170 dehumanization, Communist and
Consultative Commission for the fascist ideology of, 13–15
Analysis of the Communist Democratic Convention coalition, 51
Dictatorship (CCACDR), 154 Democratic Liberal Party, 88–91
“Contemporary Ideas” (Roman), Democratic Opposition (Hungary),
73–74 160–162
co-optation during Communism, Democratic Party/Democratic Liberal
resistance to condemnation and, Party, 27–28
21–24 democratization
Corlăţean, Titus, 4–6, 113 EU role in, 190–191
Cornea, Doina, 112 future issues facing, 166–171
Corneanu, Nicolae, 92–93, 94 informational self-determination
Cotidianul, 93 and, 159
Council for the Study of the Securitate memory and culture and, 67–70
Archives, 123 nationalism as threat to, 172–174
counter-culture in Central Europe, post-Communist culture distrust of,
anti-communism and, 40–45 33–34, 144–146, 148–159,
Cristoiu, Ion, 100–101 185–193
Cronica Română, 100–101, 118–120 reconciliation with Communists and,
Csurka, István, 184–185 162–166
Cuşnarencu, George, 100–101, truth about the past and, 9–13,
118–120 48–49, 55–56
Index 197
de Tocqueville, Alexis, 18–19 “The Faces of Evil” (special

Die Linke (Germany), 31–32 publication), 156–157
Dîncu, Vasile, 73–74 Fainsod, Merle, 109–111
Diner, Dan, 139–140 fascism
distance-empathy synthesis, 116–117 Communism linked to, 175–178
Djilas, Milovan, 72–73, 169–170 dehumanization ideology in, 13–16
Dobrincu, Dorin, 112, 141, 153–154 post-revolution recycling of, 62–64
Dominican Republic, museum of Faulkner, William, 24–26, 175–178
Trujillo era in, 61–62 Fear (Gross), 45
“double zombification,” in Romania, Fehér, Ferenc, 73–74
55 Fejtő, François, 45–47
Drăghici, Alexandru, 136–137 Fenechiu, Relu, 123
Dragnea, Liviu, 187–188 Ferge, Zsuzsa, 136
du Bois, Pierre, 73–74 Ferry, Jules, 45–47
Dugin, Aleksander, 182–183 Fest, Joachim, 110
Dulgheru, Mişu, 136–137 Fetscher, Iring, 109–111
Dumitrescu, Constantin Ticu, 92–93, Ficioru, Ion, 156–157
112 Fidesz (Hungarian political party),
Dzerzhinsky, Felix, 85–88, 180–181 172–174
Figes, Orlando, 110
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 13–15 Filipescu, Radu, 92–93, 112
Electoral Alternative for Labor and Finkielkraut, Alain, 45–47
Social Justice (Germany), 31–32 Fish, M. Stephen, 100–110
Ellison, Herbert G., 109–111 Flacăra Circle, 118–120
Éluard, Paul, 21–22 Foreign Intelligence Service (Romania),
empathy, reconciliation of the past and, 89
15–16 foreign policy in Romania, recent crises
Encyclopedia of Romanian in, 125–126
Communism, 154 forgiveness, recantation and, 12–13
Engel, David, 45 Frankfurt School, 69–70
Enoiu, Gheorghe, 136–137 French Communist Party, 71–74
Enquete Commissions (Germany), Furet, François, 45–47, 69–70
29–40
Esbenshade, Richard S., 144–146 Gati, Charles, 109–111
ethics of memory, 30–31 Gauck, Joachim, 7–8, 13, 41–42,
ethnic homogeneity, post-revolution 77–79, 175–178
exaltation of, 52–57 Gazeta Wyborcza, 41, 64, 171–172
European Commission, ban on Gellately, Robert, 110–111
negation of Communist crimes genocide and war crimes in Romania,
rejected by, 13–15 legal prosecution of, 154–159
European Union (EU) Geoană, Mircea, 2–6, 101, 113,
East European countries in, 162–166 122–125
expansion of, 190–191 geography, demise of Communism and,
foreign policy in Romania and, 18–19
125–126 “George Konrad paradigm,” 144–146
political pressure on Romania from, Geremek, Bronisław, 27n.14
124–125, 127–128 Germany
Romanian accession to, 28, 52, decommunization in, 160–162
69–70, 123–124 post-unification investigations in,
Evenimentul Zilei newspaper, 93 29–40
198 Index
Getty, J. Arch, 109–111 geography and time and, 18–19

Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe, 73–74, public use of, 12, 49, 177
77–79, 106–107, 143–144 History of Communism in Europe,
PCACDR condemnation of, 157–158
130–132 Hollander, Paul, 109–111
Giscard-d’Estaing, Valéry, 77–79 Holocaust
Gitenstein, Mark, 128 antifascist coalition and, 69–70
Giurescu, Dinu C., 33 Iliescu’s report on, 55, 94
Gleason, Abbott, 109–111 political genocide compared with,
Glucksmann, André, 45–47 13–15
The God that Failed, 72 Holodomor famine, 182
Goma, Paul, 72–73, 136–137 “Homage to Golania,” 169–170
Göncz, Arpad, 67–70 Hook, Sidney, 69–70
Gonzalez, Valentin, 176 Hope Abandoned (!Mandelstam),
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1–6, 160–162 150–153
Gordon, Philip, 128 Howard, Marc, 17
Greater Romania Party (PRM), 4–6, Hoxha, Enver, 66–67
27–28, 100–101, 123 Hungarian Civic Alliance, 172–174
Grigore, Dan, 58–59 Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
Grindeanu, Sorin, 187–188 172–174
Gross, Jan T., 45, 191–192 Hungary, authoritarianism in, 17–18,
Gross, Peter, 79–81 172–174
Grossman, Vasily, 13–15, 176 Husák, Gustáv, 66–67
Group for Social Dialogue (GDS),
67–70, 83–85 Iacob, Bogdan Cristian, 146
Ianoşi, Ion, 73–74
Habermas, Jürgen, 12, 49 Ierunca, Virgil, 45–47, 92–93
Habsburg traditions, influence in Iliescu, Ion
Europe of, 18–19 criticism of Michnik by, 43–45
Halfin, Igal, 110 defeat of, 66–67
Hanson, Stephen, 110 NATO intervention in Serbia
Hassner, Pierre, 69–70 opposed by, 59–62
Havel, Václav, 13, 40–47, 69–70, PCACDR condemnation of,
72–73, 167–168, 172–174 118–120
criticism of, 188–190 PCACDR Final Report attacked by,
Prague Declaration and, 77–79, 2–4, 30, 101, 118–120
175–178 Ponta and, 128
Hayner, Priscilla, 37–40, 150 post-Communist career of, 26–29,
Hegel, G. F. W., 56 32–33, 51–52, 77–79, 96–97, 113,
Hellbeck, Jochen, 110 169–170
Heller, Ágnes, 33, 73–74 revolution of 1989 and, 51
Heller, Mikhail, 109–111 Securitate and, 103
Hikmet, Nâzım, 21–22 Social Democratic Party and, 55–56,
Historical Legacies of Communism 123
in Russia and Eastern Europe, 17 statist hegemony under, 57
history unrepentant power of, 57–66,
amnesia concerning, 26–29, 52–57 171–172
democratization and role of, Ilieşiu, Sorin, 67–70, 79–81, 92–93,
175–178 99–100, 112
Index 199
The Illusion of Anticommunism, Kasparov, Gary, 182–183

150–153 Kautsky, Victor, 71–74
Institute for National Memory of the Kelly, Catriona, 110
Romanian Exile, 154 Kennan, George, 109–111
Institute for National Remembrance Kershaw, Ian, 110
(IPN), 168–169 KGB, disinformation campaigns of,
Institute for the Investigation of 72–73
Communist Crimes Khrushchev, Nikita, 1–6, 54
(ICCR/ICCMER), 6–9, 67–70, 99, King, Charles, 79–81, 137–141
104, 154–159, 177 Kiš, Danilo, 172–174
Institute for the Investigation of Kis, János, 45–47, 72–73
Totalitarianism, 34–35 Klaus, Václav, 19–20
Institute for the Study of Kligman, Gail, 79–81, 89–91, 92–93
Totalitarianism, 59 Klímová, Rita, 160–162
Institute of the Romanian Revolution, Knight, Amy, 109–111
34–35 Koestler, Arthur, 14–15, 45–47, 69–70,
intellectual responsibility, importance 137–141, 167–168
of, 166–167 Kołakowski, Leszek
International Commission on the antifascism and, 45–47
Holocaust (ICHR) (Romania), on decommunization, 23–24, 72,
39–40, 55 73–76, 162–166, 167–168
International Criminal Tribunal for the on democratization, 166, 167–168,
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 35–37 187–188
Ionesco, Eugene, 45–47 on Marxism, 21–22
Ionescu, Ghiţă, 69–70, 109–111 Konrad, George, 167–168, 191–192
Is God Happy? (Kołakowski), 23–24 Koonz, Claudia, 176n.19
Islamic radicalism, totalitarianism and, Kosík, Karel, 73–74
108 Koštunica, Vojislav, 35–37
Kotkin, Stephen, 17, 110, 191–192
Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 184–185 Krastev, Ivan, 179–180, 186–187
Jaspers, Karl, 69–70, 137–141 Kravnchenko Trial, 176
Jobbik (The Movement for a Better Krygier, Martin, 166
Hungary), 184–186 Kubik, Jan, 137–141
Jowitt, Ken, 17, 28, 109–111, Kuroń, Jacek, 167–168
167–168, 169–170, 188–190 Kwaśniewski, Aleksander, 171–172
Judah, Ben, 182–183
“Judeo-Bolshevism” mythology, Labedz, Leo, 109–111
142–143 LaCapra, Dominick, 117n.2, 144–146
judiciary in Romania Landsbergis, Vytautas, 13, 41–42,
attacks on independence of, 77–79, 175–178
122–125, 127–129 Latin America, authoritarian regimes
implementation of reforms to, 154 in, 71–74n.27, 76
Judt, Tony, 28–29, 45–47, 64–66, Lefort, Claude, 71–74
117–118, 142–143, 144–146 Lefort, Jacques, 45–47
Jurnalul Naţional, 118–120 Leggewie, Claus, 24–26
legislation for war crimes and genocide
Kaczyński, Jarosław, 64, 171–172 prosecution, passage of, 153–159
Kaczyński, Lech, 171–172 legitimation of Communism,
Kaplan, Dora, 71–74 Romanian Revolution as, 52–57
200 Index
Lemkin, Raphael, 14–15 Mayer, Alfred, 109–111

Le Monde newspaper, 47–48 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 7–8, 162–166,
Leninism, 71–74, 108 168–169
European decommunization and, McFaul, Michael, 110
160–162, 175–178 Memoriile mandarinului valah
history of, 109–111 (Pandrea), 106–107
legacy of, 171–172 memory
in Russia, 180–185 anti-absolutism and invocation of,
Stalinism and, 15–16 42–45
Leninist Left (Romania), 73–74 ethics of, 30–31
Leonhard, Wolfgang, 109–111 Final Report and role of, 141–148
Lewin, Moshe, 109–111 rescue of collective memory,
Liberal Democracy Party, 122–125 141–148
liberalism, anti-totalitarianism and, sinister amnesia and, 26–29
45–50 truth and erasure of, 21–24
Life and Fate (Grossman), 13–15 Memory of the Romanian Exile, 6–9,
Liiceanu, Gabriel, 45–47, 112, 99
118–120 “memory regime,” civil society
Lovinescu, Monica, 45–47, 56, 92–93, initiatives for, 62–64
118–120 Merkel, Angela, 128
Luca, Vasile, 143–144 Merridale, Catherine, 110
lustration laws, 41–42, 49–50, 59–62, Michael I, King of Romania, 1–2
162–166, 169–170 Michnik, Adam, 10–11
Luxenberg, Alan, 109–111 amnesty suggested by, 73–74,
171–172
Macdonald, Dwight, 45–47, 69–70 antifascism and, 45–47
Macierewicz, Antoni, 171–172 Iliescu’s criticism of, 40–45
Macovei, Monica, 154 on political justice, 49–50
Main Currents of Marxism on power of ex-Communists, 66–67
(Kołakowski), 21–22 on Western liberalism, 72–73, 166,
Malia, Martin, 17, 72, 109–111, 167–168
162–166 Microsoft Corporation, 81–83
Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 150–153 Mihăieş, Mircea, 1–6, 56, 112
Manent, Pierre, 45–47 “Milan Kundera paradigm,” 144–146
Mănescu, Manea, 77–79 Milošević, Slobodan, 35–37
Manolescu, Nicolae, 58–59, 92–93 Miłosz, Czesław, 45–47
Marele Şoc (The Great Shock) minority rights, post-revolution
(Tismăneanu), 73–74, 101 opposition to, 52–57
Margalit, Avishai, 30–31 Modzelewski, Karol, 167–168
Mark, James, 32–33, 99 Monnerot, Jules, 109–111
market relations, post-revolution Montefiore, Simon Sebag, 110
aversion to, 52–57 moral clarity, in Final Report of
Marković, Mihailo, 109–111 PCACDR, 130–132, 141–148
Marxism, humanist heredity of, 15–16 moral imagination, legacies of the past
mass media, abuse of anti-Communism and, 13–16
in, 43–45 The Moral Obligation (Trilling), 45–47
Matynia, Elzbieta, 42–45 Morin, Edgar, 45–47
Maurer, Ion Gheorghe, 106–107 Mossman, Elliott, 109–111
Maurer, John, 109–111 Motzkin, Gabriel, 139–140
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 21–22 Mudde, Cas, 185–186
Index 201
Müller, Herta, 125–126 Olaru, Stejărel, 67–70, 112

Müller, Jan-Werner, 149–150 The Old Regime and the French
Munteanu, Marian, 79–81 Revolution (Tocqueville), 18–19
Muraru, Andrei, 156–157 oligarchy in Romania
attacks on rule of law by, 126–128
Naimark, Norman, 109–111, consolidation of, 123–124
141–142 opinion polls, assessment of PCADCR,
Năstase, Adrian, 43–45, 54, 79–81, 37–40
125–126 Oprea, Marius, 59–62, 67–70, 92–93,
National Archives, PCACD access to, 99–100, 153
85–88 Orbán, Viktor, 17–18, 21–22, 27,
National Council for the Study of 172–174, 185–186
Securitate Archives (CNSAS), 33, The Origins of Totalitarianism
67–70, 156–157 (Arendt), 77–79
nationalism Orwell, George, 69–70, 167–168,
in post-Communist culture, 55–56 169–170
threat to democracy of, 172–174
National Liberal Party (PNL), 6–9, Palade, Rodica, 67–70, 79–81, 83
27–28, 99–100, 123 Pandrea, Petre, 106–107
National Museum of the Communist Paraschiv, Vasile, 112
Dictatorship, 6–9 parliamentary migration, power
National Salvation Front (FSN), 57–66 consolidation and, 126–128
Nature magazine, 125–126 Parrott, Bruce, 109–111
Navalny, Aleksey, 182–183 Partisan Review, 45–47
Nazi Germany, genocide committed by, Party of Democratic Socialism (SPD)
13–15 (Germany), 31–32
Nekrich, Alexander, 109–111 Party of the Civic Alliance (PCA),
Nemoianu, Virgil, 104–106 57–64
Nemtsov, Boris, 182–183 party politics in Romania, historical
Neruda, Pablo, 21–22 amnesia in, 55–56
New Left in Romania, 139–140 past, reconciliation with
The New Evolutionism (Michnik), Constantinescu’s reluctance
42 concerning, 59–62
New World Disorder: The Leninist decommunization and, 24–26
Extinction (Jowitt), 17 electoral politics and, 67–70
New York Review of Books, 28–29 empathy and, 15–16
Nicolaevsky, Boris, 109–111 facing truth and, 21–24
Nicolschi, Alexandru, 136–137 post-revolution opposition to,
Niculescu-Mizil, Paul, 106–107 54
Nikonov, Vyacheslav, 183–184 sinister amnesia and, 26–29
nomenklatura, power in Romania of, Patapievici, Horia-Roman, 2–4, 43–47,
12, 59–62, 67–70 92–93, 112, 118–120, 126–128
North Atlantic Treaty Organization Patriciu, Dinu, 123
(NATO) patrimonialism, post-communist
expansion of, 190–191 embrace of, 53–54n.4
Romanian accession to, 28, 52, Pauker, Ana, 143–144
69–70, 162–166 Păunescu, Adrian, 103–104, 118–120
Pelin, Mihai, 100–101, 118–120
Observator Cultural, 93 Penal Code and Law 27/2012,
Offe, Claus, 33, 143–144 154–159
202 Index
penance or regret future issues in, 166–171, 175–178

absence in Romania of, 32–33 need for truth in, 9–13, 146
forgiveness and, 12–13 pluralism and tolerance and, 56,
People’s Militias, 41–42 162–167
Petre, Zoe, 59–62 political psychology and, 137–141
Petrescu, Dragoş, 92–93, 112 reactions to condemnation and,
Pieces of the Puzzle (Villa-Vicencio), 99 112–116
Pipes, Richard, 69–70, 109–111 reformist movement and, 125–126
Pippidi, Andrei, 92–93, 141 transition to democracy and,
Piteşti experiment, 85–88 148–159
Plamper, Jan, 110 unrepentant power and, 57–64
Pleşiţă, Nicolae, 136–137 The Power of the Powerless (Havel), 42
Pleşu, Andrei, 45–47, 59–62, 79–81, Prague Declaration (2009), 13–15,
85–88, 112, 118–120 41–42, 77–79, 175–178, 179–180
Poland Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (translated as
anti-communism in, 40–45 Law and Justice, PiS) (Poland),
decommunization in, 74–76 9–13
history of past in, 171–172 Preda, Cristian, 59–62
post-totalitarian political culture in, Presidential Commission for the
27n.14 Analysis of the Communist
proto-authoritarian movement in, Dictatorship in Romania
9–13, 49–50, 64, 172–174 (PCACDR), 6–9
Solidarity movement in, 160–162 aftermath of Final Report, 130–132
political genocide, Communism and assessment of, 37–40
crime of, 13–15 commentaries on, 94–98, 99
political polarization in Romania, condemnation of Communism in,
99–100 102–111, 117–118, 130–137
future trends for, 166–171 criminal responsibility reported in,
political violence, threat in Romania 150
of, 128–129 early activities of, 83–91
Politics of Duplicity (Kligman), 89–91 facts and truth in, 141–148
Pompidou, George, 77–79 Final Report by, 1–6, 30, 47, 62,
Ponta, Victor, 54, 125–126, 127–129, 101, 118–120, 130–132, 137–141
158, 185–186 formation of, 51–52, 83–91
Pop-Elecheş Grigore, 17 German post-communist
Popescu, Cristian Tudor, 4–6 investigation influence on, 29–40
Popescu-Tăriceanu, Călin, 2–4, 27–28 implementation of recommendations
populism, post-totalitarian political in, 148–159
culture and, 185–193 individual dissent reported by,
Porumboiu, Corneliu, 49–50 134–137
post-totalitarian political culture in legacy of, 137–141, 178–180
Romania members of, 91–102
amnesia and memory in, 21–24, mission and findings of, 91–102
26–29, 47–48, 137–141 polarization among members of,
citizenship concepts in, 178–180 99–100
Communism’s persistence in, 64–66, political opposition to, 1–6, 35–37
70, 120–122, 123, 185–193 reactions to Final Report of,
democratic transition and, 21–24, 116–117, 118–120
162–166 recommendations included in,
emergence of, 6–9 89–91, 96–102
Index 203
role of perpetrators detailed in, decommunization in, 24–26

135–136, 154–159 elections of 2004 in, 27–28
Prizel, Ilya, 109–111 România Liberă, 93
progressive intellectuals, imprisonment România Literară (Literary Romania),
of, 21–22 58–59, 118–120
“The Proletarian Revolution and the România Mare, 118–120, 169–170
Renegade Kautsky,” 71–74 Romanian Academy, 59, 79–81
Putin, Vladimir, 9–13, 21–22, 27, 107, Romanian Communist Party (RCP),
124–125, 128–129, 171–172, 57, 73–74, 104–106, 120
180–185 archives of, 153–154
Romanian Cultural Institute, 126–128
Radio Free Europe Romanian Intelligence Service, 89
Romanian section of, 120 Romanian Left, relationship to the past
security archives on, 89–90 of, 73–74
Radu, Michael S., 109–111 Romanian Marxism, 73–74
Rahv, Philip, 45–47, 69–70 Romanian National Archives, 153–154
Râmnicu Sărat prison, 6–9 Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP), 2–4
Răutu, Leonte, 73–74, 106–107 Rousseff, Dilma, 61–62
reconciliation Rubinstein, Alvin Z., 109–111
absolution and, 33 rule of law
democratic transition and role of, escalation of attacks on, 126–128
162–166 post-revolution establishment of, 56
perpetrators’ role in, 135–136 Romanian Communists’ disregard
political consensus on, 34–35 of, 116–117
truth about the past and, 12–13 Rupnik, Jacques, 167–168
Reddaway Peter, 109–111 Rusan, Romulus, 92–93, 112, 116–117
redemption, atonement and, 33 Russia
Reding, Viviane, 127–128 election of 2014 in, 128–129
reparations legislation, proposals for, nostalgia for Communism in, 107
153 Putin’s dictatorship in, 180–185
Requiem for a Nun (Faulkner), 24–26 Ryan, James, 110
resistance to Communism, individual
dissent and, 134–137 Safire, William, 64–66
“Resolution on Divided Europe Sakharov, Andrei, 45–47, 72–73
Reunited: Promoting Human Salat, Levente, 92–93
Rights and Civil Liberties in the Schaap, Andrew, 30–31
OSCE Region in the 21st Schapiro, Leonard, 109–111
Century,” 179–180 Schlögel, Karl, 109–111
Revel, Jean-François, 45–47 Schneider, Peter, 55
Ricœur, Paul, 69–70 Scientific Council of ICCMER, 158
Rieber, Alfred J., 109–111 Securitate
Ritsos, Yannis, 21–22 under Ceauşescu, 47–48
Roberts, Henry, 109–111 data in PCACDR report on, 103,
Roman, Petre, 57, 73–74 118–120, 154–159
unrepentant power of, 57–64 opening of archives of, 62–64,
Roman, Valter, 73–74 67–70, 81–83
Romania in post-Communist era, 59
absence of support for reconciliation Service, Robert, 109–111
in, 34–35 Sestanovich, Stephen, 109–111
anti-Communism in, 43–45 Severin, Adrian, 43–45
204 Index
Shapiro, Leonard, 69–70 history of Leninism and, 109–111

Shklar, Judith, 168–169 occupation of Romania by, 142–143
Shore, Marci, 22, 168–169 Stalin, Joseph, political genocide by,
Sighet Memorial, 93, 116–117 13–15
Sil, Rudra, 17 Stalinism
Slezkine, Yuri, 95–110 Romanian embrace of, 55, 108–109,
Smolar, Aleksander, 47–48 120–122, 132–137, 143–144
Smolar, Piotr, 47–48 Russia and legacy of, 182
Snyder, Jack, 162–166 Stalinism for All Seasons
Snyder, Timothy, 110–158 (Tismăneanu), 79–81
Social Democratic Party (PSD) Stan, Lavinia, 32–33, 35–40, 49
(Romania), 2–4, 27–28 on Presidential Commission, 99
authoritarianism embraced by, 9–13, on transitional justice, 67–70
112 Stan, Marius, 8–9
electoral politics and, 27–28, 123 Stănescu, Ion, 150
historical amnesia in, 55–56 Stanomir, Ioan, 158
post-Communist rise of, 26–29, Stasi (East German secret police),
51–52, 187–188 German post-unification
Presidential Commission and, investigation of, 7–8, 29–40
101 Ştefan Gheorghiu Academy, 150
relevance of the past discounted by, Stent, Angela, 109–111
54 Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der
Social-Democratic Party (West SED-Diktatur (Germany), 29–40
Germany), 72–73 Stoica, Valeriu, 123
socialism, Western liberalism and, Stolojan, Theodor, 123
71–74 Stone, Dan, 15–16, 45–47
Socialisme ou barbarie (journal), Strausz-Hupé, Robert, 109–111
45–47, 71–74
Socialist Unity Party (SED) (Germany), Tănase, Stelian, 58–59, 92–93, 99–100
72–73 Tănăsoiu, Cosmina, 135–136
investigation into dictatorship of, Tăpălagă, Dan, 6–9
29–40 Taubman, Nicholas, 112
Social Liberal Union (USL), 99–100, terrorism, totalitarianism and, 108
122–126, 127–128 Terrorism and Communism (Trotsky),
social scientists, rise in post-revolution 71–74
Romania of, 62 Thom, Françoise, 110
Solidarity movement (Poland), Thompson, E. P., 23–24
160–162, 171–172 time, demise of Communism and,
solidarity rhetoric, post-revolution 18–19
regime anxiety and, 52–57 Timişoara Proclamation, 59–64,
Solovyov, Vladimir, 15–16 77–79, 104, 169–170
Şoltuţiu, Ioan, 136–137 Todorov, Tzvetan, 45–47
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 72–73, totalitarian regimes
182–183 liberal opposition to, 45–50
Sontag, Susan, 45–47 PCADCR condemnation of,
Souvarine, Boris, 45–47, 109–111 132–137
Soviet bloc countries, power of transition to democracy and, 33–34
ex-Communists in, 66–67 “totalitarian thesis,” 134–137
Soviet Union transitional justice
Gorbachev regime in, 160–162 confrontation with past and, 12
Index 205
post-totalitarian political culture Vişinescu, Alexandru, 77–79, 156–157

and, 47–48, 64n.14 “Voice of Russia” radio station,
Tricolorul, 118–120 124–125, 128–129
Trilling, Lionel, 45–47 Voiculescu, Dan, 6–9, 112–113, 123,
Trotsky, Leon, 71–74, 104–106 128
truth commissions völkisch themes and mythologies,
collective communicative silence post-revolution exploitation of,
and, 1–2 52–57
Communist elusiveness and, 13–16 Vujacic, Veljko, 17
importance of, 9–13 Vultur, Smaranda, 112
PCADCR compared to, 37–40
urge to forget and, 21–24 Wald, Henri, 73–74
Tucker, Robert, 109–111 Wałesa,
˛ Lech, 1–2, 64
Tudor, Corneliu Vadim, 27–28, 101, Wat, Aleksander, 33
103–104, 184–185 websites on Romanian communism,
opposition to PCACDR, 1–2, 30, establishment of, 157–158
112, 120 Weiner, Amir, 110
PCACR criticism of, 118–120 Werth, Nicolas, 110
post-totalitarian political culture Wessel, Nils, 109–111
and, 6–9 Western liberalism
Tudoran, Dorin, 79–81 global dishonesty of, 71–74
“12:08 East of Bucharest” (film), post-Communist culture and,
49–50 69–70
22 magazine, 67–70, 93, 101 When Socrates Becomes Pericles
(Havel), 42–45
Ukrainian Revolution, 182–183 Wiesel, Elie, 55, 83
Ulam, Adam, 109–111 Wilson, Edmund, 45–47, 69–70
Ungureanu, Mihai Răzvan, 125–126 Wolfe, Bertram, 109–111
United States World Communism (Borkenau),
relations with Romania, 124–126, 109–111
127–128 World War II
report on Romanian condemnation ambivalence in search for truth
of Communism by, 112–116 about, 62n.11
“Unofficial Report toward the antifascist coalition in, 69–70
Condemnation of the Communist
Regime in Romania” (Ilieşiu), Yeltsin, Boris, 110, 160–162, 171–172,
79–81 182–184
Urban, Jerzy, 184–185 Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation
Ursu, Gheorghe, 136–137 Commission, 35–37
Văcăroiu, Nicolae, 4–6, 113, 120–122, Zamifrescu, Dinu, 156–157

139–140 Zarifopol-Illias, Christina, 79–81
Vasile, Cristian, 112, 131–132 Zaslavsky, Viktor, 109–111
Venezuela, 71–74n.27 Zhelev, Zhelyiu, 1–2, 45–47
Venice Commission, 127–128 Ziua journal, 118–122
Vergangenheitsbewältigung process in Žižek, Slavoj, 22–24
Romania, 62, 148–159 Zub, Alexandru, 92–93, 112
Vichy regime, 77–79 Zubok, Vladislav, 100–110
Villa-Vicencio, Charles, 7–8, 99 Zuroff, Efraim, 13–15

Vladimir Tismaneanu, Marius Stan - Romania Confronts Its Communist Past - Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice-Cambridge University Press (2018)

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Romania Confronts Its Communist Past

Reckoning with mass crimes perpetrated by an ideologically driven regime

vladimir tismaneanu is Professor of Politics at the University of Mary-

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

Acknowledgments page viii

This book is both a testimony and an analytical exercise. As testimony,

Social Democrats, who endorsed passively or actively the actions of

an emotional and moral revolt but also by a scientifically grounded

between 1958 and 1960 in response to the student demonstrations

A cable drafted by the US Embassy in Bucharest in December 2006

President Băsescu’s formal condemnation of communist misrule was wel-

Post-Watershed: Did Romania Follow Through?

a governmental institution that focuses on research (for an in-depth

period – those individuals guilty of homicide or crimes against human-

The Need for Truth

neo-authoritarians have chosen, the failure to fully discuss the truth

popular consent, and none accepted minimal accountability for their

exiting dictatorial regimes – such as South Africa, Greece, Spain, Por-

Poland, in Hungary as opposed to Czechoslovakia, in Russia against

The Bizarrely Elusive Truth of Communism

perpetrated by Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, Beevor argued that

included this form of mass murder in it.17 Indeed, in the “bloodlands”

Adopting an empathetic approach would make it less difficult to

Twenty-nine years have passed since the demise of what historian

against any form of fatalistic determinism. Yet, the past continues to

fundamentally shaping how we envisage our contemporary world at

everyday mendacity, conformity and compromise”.4 As Václav Klaus,

Facing the Hard Truth and the Urge to Forget

or Viktor Orbán, or other follies yet to come – but Leninist-Stalinist

we witness the second life of fantasies of salvation,9 of exclusionary,

At the foundation of any initiative to confront a horrifying past, or to

The Manichean image of an uncompromising battle between radical,

Confronting the Past through Decommunization

of frustration and discontent in the region, especially in Romania, is

decades of torpor, cowardice, and submission to the omnipotent party-

cannot deny the nature of the difficulties facing Romania, stemming

Lucky Germany, Cursed Eastern Europe

[VT] discuss the moral and political dilemmas of decommunization in

Bundestag on its work were also published.18 At the conclusion of the

experts and academics, but we should bear in mind that “a reflexive

of the Enquete Commissions; as the SED’s successor party, the PDS

politicians who had legitimized themselves via obscurant truth-telling

a process in situ. It implies a series of compromises and negotiations.

The replacement of a criminal regime with a democracy founded

and overcome the totalitarian past. It was a serious commitment by

of blame to others, whether Croats, Bosnians, Americans or British, for

“yes,” 31 percent, “no,” and 27 percent, “I do not know/I do not wish

witness the return of repressed memories. (For example, consider the

Memory for Memory’s Sake, at Least

Anti-Communism, like anti-Fascism, does not itself attest to anyone’s

communism has thus become, through blackmail and discrimination against

and other prominent former dissidents, of the 2009 Prague Declaration

As an ideology-driven tyranny, Communism demanded a continuous

ignored) the fact that Michnik’s positions originate in his wariness of

We claim that Michnik endorses an anti-utopian, anti-absolutist, anti-

We believe that communism was a falsehood from the beginning. We try,

The reverberations of the past are part of contemporary polemics and

The post-Communist debates on the past should be seen as indica-

Debates on New Values

anti-Communist with no remorse or hesitation. This spirit was embod-

Communist propaganda. Agreeing with Tony Judt, among others,

It is difficult to explain the magnitude of evil twenty years later. To faithfully