Vladimir Tismăneanu

Vladimir Tismăneanu (; born July 4, 1951) is a Romanian American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist in political systems and comparative politics, he is director of the University of Maryland's Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, having served as chairman of the editorial committee (2004–2008) and editor (1998–2004) of the East European Politics and Societies academic review. Over the years, Tismăneanu has been a contributor to several periodicals, including Studia Politica, Journal of Democracy, Sfera Politicii, Revista 22, Evenimentul Zilei, Idei în Dialog and Cotidianul. He has also worked with the international radio stations Radio Free Europe and Deutsche Welle, and authored programs for the Romanian Television Company. As of 2009, he is Academic Council Chairman of the Institute for People's Studies, a think tank of the Romanian Democratic Liberal Party. Between February 2010 and May 2012, he was also President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania.

Acclaimed for his scholarly works on Stalinism in general and the Romanian communist regime in particular, as well as for exploring the impact of nationalism, national communism and neo-Stalinism in the Soviet Union and countries of the Eastern Bloc, Tismăneanu writes from the critical perspective of a civil society supporter. His other influential texts deal with diverse topics such as Cold War history, Kremlinology and the Holocaust. Having moved from a loose Marxist vision, shaped under the influence of neo-Marxist and Western Marxist scholarship, he became a noted proponent of classical liberalism and liberal democracy. This perspective is outlined in both his scientific contributions and volumes dealing with Romania's post-1989 history, the latter of which include collections of essays and several published interviews with literary critic . Tismăneanu completed his award-winning synthesis on Romanian communism, titled Stalinism for All Seasons, in 2003.

Tismăneanu's background and work came under scrutiny after his 2006 appointment by Romanian president Traian Băsescu as head of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, which presented its report to the Romanian Parliament on December 18, 2006. There has been much controversy about the choice of Tismăneanu as commission president, about Tismăneanu's choices for commission members, and about the conclusions of the report.

Biography Born in Brașov, Vladimir Tismăneanu is the son of Leonte Tismăneanu, an activist of the Romanian Communist Party since the early 1930s, and Hermina Marcusohn, a physician and one-time Communist Party activist, both of whom were Jewish and Spanish Civil War veterans. His father, born in Bessarabia and settled in the Soviet Union at the end of the 1930s, worked in agitprop structures, returning to Romania at the end of World War II, and becoming, under the communist regime, chair of the Marxism-Leninism department of the University of Bucharest. Progressively after Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej acted against Ana Pauker, the Tismăneanus were sidelined inside the Romanian nomenklatura; in 1960, Leonte Tismăneanu was stripped of his position as deputy head of Editura Politică.

Vladimir Tismăneanu grew up in the exclusive Primăverii quarter of Bucharest. During his years of study at the , which was then largely attended by students belonging to the nomenklatura, he was in the same year as Nicu Ceaușescu, son of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, as well as the children of Leonte Răutu, , and Silviu Brucan.

In his preface to the Romanian-language edition of his 2003 book Stalinism for All Seasons, Tismăneanu indicated that, starting in 1970, he became interested in critiques of Marxism-Leninism and the Romanian communist regime in particular, after reading banned works made available to him by various of his acquaintances (among others, writer Dumitru Țepeneag and his wife, translator Mona Țepeneag, as well as Ileana, the daughter of Communist Party dignitary Gheorghe Gaston Marin). He stated that, at the time, he was influenced by Communism in Romania, an analytic and critical work by Romanian-born British political scientist Ghiță Ionescu, as well as by Marxist, Western Marxist, Democratic and Libertarian Socialist scholarship (among others, the ideas of Georg Lukács, Leszek Kołakowski, Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School). from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Sociology in 1974, and received his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1980, presenting the thesis Teoria Critică a Școlii de la Frankfurt și radicalismul de stînga contemporan ("The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and Contemporary Left-Wing Radicalism"). During the period, he was received into the ranks of the Union of Communist Youth (UTC), authored several articles which displayed support for the regime, and, as vice-president of the UTC's Communist Student Association, allegedly took part in authoring and compiling propaganda aimed at students. He was also contributing to the UTC magazines Amfiteatru and Viața Studențească, where his essentially neo-Marxist essays were often mixed for publication with endorsements of the official ideology. Among his colleagues there were Alexandru Florian, Cătălin Mamali, Dumitru Sandu, Dorel Abraham, , Alin Teodorescu, and Mihai Milca. Around 1977, he was involved in a debate about the nature of Romanian culture, expressing a pro-European perspective in reaction to officially endorsed nationalism in general and, in particular, to the form of protochronism advocated by Edgar Papu and Luceafărul magazine. His thoughts on the matter, published by Amfiteatru alongside similar writings by Milca, Gheorghe Achiței, , and Solomon Marcus.

In September 1981, a short while after the death of his father, he accompanied his mother on a voyage to Spain, after she had been granted a request to visit the sites where she and her husband had fought as young people. Unlike Hermina Tismăneanu, he opted not to return, and soon after left for Venezuela, before ultimately settling in the United States in 1982. beginning with an analysis of the "dynastic socialism" in Romania, centered on the political career of Nicu Ceaușescu. Tismăneanu was also granted fellowship by Indiana University (Bloomington) (2003) and National Endowment for Democracy (2003–2004). He also worked as editor of Dorin Tudoran's Agora, a political journal of the Romanian diaspora. Other sojourns included 1993-1994 research visits to the Communist Party archives, at the time supervised by the Romanian Army General Staff. He contributed a weekly column in Jurnalul Național, before moving to Cotidianul, and was regularly published by other press venues: Revista 22, Idei în Dialog, and Orizont. He later began contributing to Observator Cultural and Evenimentul Zilei.

Tismăneanu received the Romanian Cultural Foundation's award for the whole activity (2001), and was awarded Doctor honoris causa degrees by the West University of Timișoara (2002) and the SNSPA university in Bucharest. The institution is presided upon by political scientist Andrei Țăranu. Tismăneanu was dismissed by the newly formed Victor Ponta government in May 2012.

Vladimir Tismăneanu is married to Mary Frances Sladek, and has fathered a son, Adam. while Romanian literary critic and civil society activist Adrian Marino wrote: "The works of the political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu, who owns a double cultural identity, American and Romanian, indicate a full-scale research agenda. His books are first rate, both in Romanian and in English .... They are representative of what has effectively shaped up nowadays into the Romanian political science .... When reading and studying Vladimir Tismăneanu, one enters a new realm, where, most importantly, one experiences a novel approach to writing. He rejects the usage of empty and inordinate formulae. He saves the characteristic Romanian creative writing, with its inconsistency and amorphousness, only for the literary trash bin. He sports a jaunty style, utterly lacking any inhibition or obsequiousness. ... His activity also fills a considerable void. It informs and it disseminates ideas. This is, undoubtedly, his fundamental virtue." According to historian Adrian Cioroianu, the insight provided to Tismăneanu by his family's oral history is "unique", amounting to "actual lessons in history, at a time when [it] was being Orwellianly processed by the [communist] system". At the end of this process, he argues, Tismăneanu "has enjoyed the greatest authority in his field in Romania", Tismăneanu also states having been influenced by psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School and Existentialism, and, from among the Marxist authors he had read at that stage, he cites as his early mentors Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, Herbert Marcuse, and Jean-Paul Sartre. American scholar Steven Fish writes:

[Tismăneanu] is animated by a passionate liberal spirit, albeit one of a particular type. [His] liberalism is less intimately akin to that of John Locke or Robert Nozick, or L. T. Hobhouse or John Rawls, than it is to that of Isaiah Berlin and, less proximately, John Stuart Mill. Tismăneanu shares with Berlin and Mill an uncompromising commitment to pluralism as the highest political value; a celebration of difference, nonconformity, and tolerance; a deep skepticism concerning ultimate solutions, political blueprints, and unequivocal policy prescriptions; and a wariness regarding the subtler danger of majoritarian authoritarianism.

Tismăneanu himself discusses the personal transition:

Originating as I was from the milieu of illegalists [that is, communists active in the pre-1944 underground]... I discovered early on the contrast between the official legends and the various fragments of subjective truths as they revealed themselves in private conversations, syncopated confessions and biting ironies. I was also discovering a theme which was to puzzle me throughout my professional career: the relation between communism, fascism, anti-communism and anti-fascism; in short, I was growing aware that, as has been demonstrated by François Furet, the relationship between the two totalitarian movements, viscerally hostile to the values and institutions of liberal democracy, was the fundamental historical issue of the 20th century. The work is Tismăneanu's study into the avatars of Marxism within the Eastern Bloc, and a contribution to both Kremlinology and Cold War studies. It proposes that the Soviet Union's policies of Perestroika and Glasnost masked an ideological crisis, and that the Bloc's regimes had reached a "post-totalitarian" stage, where repression was "more refined, less obvious, but by no means less effective". Writing in 1999, scholar Gillian Wylie noted that, with In Search of Civil Society, Tismăneanu was one of the "few academics beyond those involved in the peace activist community" to have dealt with the topic of peace movements in Warsaw Pact countries.

Arheologia terorii and Reinventing Politics With 1992's Romanian-published Arheologia terorii ("The Archeology of Terror"), which reunited the Radio Free Europe essays of the 1980s, Tismăneanu was focusing Romania's communism, in an attempt to identify what set apart from the experience of other Eastern Bloc countries. Cristian Vasile believes it to have been, at the time of its publishing, "one of the few researches on the Romanian communist elite to include prosopographic nuances."

Much of the text focuses on Romania's dissidents after the start of De-Stalinization, and the peculiarities of this process in Romania. Tismăneanu notes how communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, whose dictatorial rule of the 1950s and early 1960s preceded and survived the start of De-Stalinization, was able to exert control over the local intelligentsia even as civil society and nonviolent resistance movements were being created in other parts of the Bloc. It is also noted for its treatment of Gheorghiu-Dej's successor, Nicolae Ceaușescu, who associated himself with a message of liberalization and nationalist revival, and who made a point of opposing the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. This gesture, Arheologia terorii argues, was in actuality Ceaușescu's attempt to ideologically legitimize his grip on Romanian society. Goldfarb objects to the text being "long on historical detail and short on social theory", arguing that: "As a result, [his] attempts at generalization often miss the mark." Cercel, who sees this as proof of "well-balanced idealism", writes: "Instead of an absolute critical distance, Tismăneanu presents us with a critical engagement at the core of the problem."

In 1995, Tismăneanu was again focusing on Gheorghiu-Dej, analyzing the part he played in both the violent communization of the 1950s and the adoption of nationalism in the 1960s. This investigation produced the Romanian-language volume Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej ("Gheorghiu-Dej's Ghost"), expanding on a similarly titled chapter in Irepetabilul trecut. The question "What is left of Gheorghiu-Dej's experiment?", is answered by Tismăneanu as follows: "An inept and frightened elite, whose social mobility was linked to the nationalist-chauvinist line promoted by Ceaușescu. A sectarian and exclusive vision of socialism, a political style based on terror, manipulation and liquidating one's enemy. An unbound contempt for the spirit and a no less total conviction that humans are a mere maneuverable mass .... But most of all ... an immense scorn for principles, a trampling of all things dignified and honorable, a mental and moral corruption that continues to ravage this social universe that is still being haunted by the ghosts of national Stalinism." The text characterized the dictator himself as a figure who "had managed to unify within his style Jesuitism and lack of principles, opportunism and cruelty, fanaticism and duplicity."

Historian Lucian Boia highlights the clash between such a vision and that of a patriotic, liberal and congenial Gheorghiu-Dej, retrospectively advanced in the 1990s by some of the leader's collaborators, among them Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Silviu Brucan and Ion Gheorghe Maurer. Boia writes: "In between Bârlădeanu and Tismăneanu, may we be allowed to prefer the latter's interpretation. ... oblivion is not what we owe [Gheorghiu-Dej], but condemnation, be it moral and posthumous." Vladimir Tismăneanu's reflections on a self-legitimizing, "Byzantine", discourse in Romanian communism, Ioan Stanomir notes, were also being applied by Tismăneanu to the post-Revolution President of Romania, former Communist Party activist and PSD leader Ion Iliescu, who, both argued, did not represent an anti-communist social democracy, but a partial return to Gheorghiu-Dej's legacy. Urian writes: "Although, at the time when these volumes were published, not everyone was pleased by the precise X-rays to which Vladimir Tismăneanu and Mircea Mihăieș subjected [Romania's politics], excessively vocal counterarguments were never produced. The distance (not just in kilometers) between Washington and Bucharest, the superior analytic accuracy, Professor Tismăneanu's international scientific prestige, the almost exclusive use of readily available sources ..., the democratic values at the core of the interpretations (ones which no honorable political actor could afford to contest publicly) have given these books a considerable dose of credibility ...." argues: "As the Leninist authoritarian order collapsed, societies have tended to be atomized and deprived of a political center able to articulate coherent visions of a common good."

Tismăneanu thus sees the political elites and the authoritarian side of the intelligentsia as responsible for manipulating public opinion and "rewriting (or cleansing) of history in terms of self-serving, present-oriented interests". Swain, who called his preface "excellent", states: "It is difficult to argue with [Tismăneanu's] notion that 'these revolutions represented the triumph of civic dignity and political morality over ideological monism, bureaucratic cynicism and police dictatorship'." He also notes: "The dialogue between Vladimir Tismăneanu and Mircea Mihăieș demonstrates the role of analysis and confrontation of ideas over hasty judgment or temperamental criticism, providing in the end an image as unembellished as possible. [It] places a magnifier over high-ranking institutions such as the Presidency, the Orthodox Church, the school. The observations are always based on knowledge of the facts."

With 2002's Scrisori din Washington, Tismăneanu constructs a retrospective overview of the 20th century, which he sees as dominated by the supremacy of communism and fascism. Structured around reviewed Deutsche Welle broadcasts, it also includes short texts on diverse subjects, such as essays about Marxist resistance to established communism, an analysis of the Western far right, conclusions about the Kosovo War, a debate around the political ideas of interwar novelist Panait Istrati, and praises of the Romanian intellectuals Virgil Ierunca and Dan Pavel. Also according to Legvold, the author "shed light on the paradoxes of Romanian communism: how a pariah party that was Stalinist to the core eventually turned on its Soviet master and embraced nationalism—how 'national Stalinism' was acceptable to the West as long as it meant autonomy from [the Soviet Union]. That is, until it became grotesque in Nicolae Ceaușescu's last decade, leading to the regime's violent death." With Octavian Șerban, he has also authored a series about Communist Romania, which was showcased by the Romanian Television Company. However, Liiceanu endorsed the incrimination of communist regime and eventually the report itself.

After the presentation of the Final Report and the official condemnation of the communist regime by President Traian Băsescu in a joint session of the Romanian Parliament, Liiceanu openly expressed his support for Vladimir Tismăneanu and endorsed the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. In November 2007, Liiceanu's publishing house, Humanitas, published in volume format the Final Report. Furthermore, Liiceanu, in the homage to Tismăneanu, when the latter was granted the award of the Group for Social Dialogue (January 2008), openly retracted his initial statements about Tismăneanu's academic and moral stature: "Vladimir Tismăneanu was the perfect person for completing the task of coordinating the Commission, considering that those who spoke after being exposed to this ideology explained it best. Vladimir Tismăneanu, besides owning such insider knowledge on what is communism at multiple levels, he then had an ideal competence, acquired and validated within the American academic environment, in order to be able to study this subject with both familiarity and distance." Liiceanu concluded: "He is the most qualified intellectual in the world for analyzing Romanian communism. His book Stalinism for All Seasons is the classical study in the field."

Political party-level reactions Several commentators have argued that the negative reception of the Final Report in sections of the press and the political establishment was partly due to the investigation's implications, as the latter's overall condemnation of the communist regime has opened the road for further debates regarding the links between various contemporary politicians and the former communist structures. The examples cited include four Senate members: Ion Iliescu One televised incident saw the group making attempts to force several audience members, including intellectuals Liiceanu, Horia-Roman Patapievici and Andrei Pleșu, out of the balcony overlooking the Parliament Hall. Several commentators have described the behavior of anti-Băsesecu parliamentarians during the public reading as "a circus act" Support for the document was also voiced by academic and Social Democratic parliamentarian Vasile Pușcaș, who noted that his group's objections addressed "working methods" and the perceived notion that the Commission claimed access to an "absolute truth". According to journalist Cristian Pătrășconiu, the conflict between Iliescu and Tismăneanu explained why, in the second edition of Tismăneanu's book of interviews with Iliescu, Marele șoc din finalul unui secol scurt (tr. The Great Shock of the Twentieth Century, first edition 2004), the latter's name was removed from the cover (a decision he attributed to Iliescu himself).

Among the consequences of the scandal, Urian states, is Vladimir Tismăneanu's "descent into the arena", leading some to perceive him as "a component of the never-ending political scandal and a predilect target for the president's adversaries."

On the anti-Tismăneanu side, the controversy involved political forces most often described as extremist, in particular the Greater Romania Party. Such groups have an ideological objection to Tismăneanu's condemnation of both fascism and national communism. Cristian Vasile, who argues that this meeting of extremes had already been predicted and verified by Tismăneanu's notion of "baroque synthesis", specifically refers to a "fowl-smelling rhetorical cocktail" of neo-fascism or "(Neo-)Legionary characteristics" (in reference to the historical Iron Guard), neo-Stalinism and protochronism, to be found at the source of "media and historiographic ambuscades".

In July 2007, Tismăneanu sued the Greater Romania Party journals Tricolorul and România Mare, on grounds of calumny, in reference to the series of articles they published in the wake of the commission report. Tismăneanu, who demanded 100,000 Euro in compensation, indicated that he also contemplated suing the two papers in front of a United States court, were his case denied in Romania. According to Gallagher, Tismăneanu "was useful to Iliescu in 2004 because the then President recognised the type of figure he was beneath the western reformist image he has cultivated".

Gallagher writes that Marele șoc "was ready to depict Ion Iliescu as an enlightened leader who, despite some flaws, had been instrumental in consolidating Romanian democracy", and that the volume, which he called "one of the strangest books to emerge from the Romanian transition", did not include, to Iliescu's advantage, any mentions of the controversial aspects of his presidency ("any serious enquiries about the mineriads, the manipulation of nationalism, the denigration of the historic parties [the National Peasants' Party and the National Liberal Party], civic movements and the monarchy, the explosion of corruption, or indeed the continuing political influence and fabulous wealth of the heirs of the pre-1989 intelligence service"). In addition, he wrote that, in agreeing to interview Iliescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu had come to contradict his own assessment of the post-Revolution regime, which he had earlier defined as "of a populist, corporatist and semi-fascist type". He depicted Gallagher's attitude as "an outbreak of resentments", and indicated that "the only praise I could offer [Iliescu]" was in regard to the latter's respect for pluralism in front of authoritarianism. Elsewhere, he responded to claims made about his contacts with Becali by admitting that the visit was inappropriate. Commenting on the developments following the impeachment referendum, Vladimir Tismăneanu indicated that he and Gallagher, together with British historian Dennis Deletant, had decided to campaign against the Parliament's decision and in favor of Traian Băsescu, a measure which he equated with support for "pluralism and transparency". Tismăneanu has rejected all allegations, indicating that they contradicted data present in, among others, files kept on him by the Securitate and the official conclusion reached by the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS). Writing for Observator Cultural, Șimonca argued that it was evidence of "defamation", that the information, which he deemed "horrific" and "hard to believe", was not substantiated by evidence, and that Ziua had vested interest in spreading rumors about Vladimir Tismăneanu.

Based on data which he indicated formed part of his CNSAS file, Tismăneanu also specified that he was the object of constant Securitate surveillance after his departure, that his mother was subject to pressures, According to this, Tismăneanu was well appreciated for his professional and Romanian Communist Party work prior to 1981, and had held the position of lecturer on the Propaganda Commission of the Communist Party Municipal Committee for Bucharest.

As leaders of anti-communist opinion inside the former Eastern Bloc, invited by President Băsescu the Final Report reading, Lech Wałęsa and Vladimir Bukovsky had been requested by Ziua to comment on the Commission's activities. When asked if he knew Tismăneanu, Wałęsa replied "No, I don't know, I don't have such a good memory", while Bukovsky stated "I don't know Tismăneanu, I know nothing about him. I would like people to understand what they did in the past. He too should understand the part he played".

Writing for Evenimentul Zilei in May 2007, Tismăneanu accused Ziua of "intoxication", and argued that the journal's stated anti-communism was meant to avert attention from its association with Băsescu's critics, at a time when the president was impeached and reinstated by popular suffrage. Commenting that the anti-Băsescu group was setting itself against "popular sovereignty" and ruling through a "continuous parliamentary putsch", he also accused Ziua and other press venues, including Dan Voiculescu's Jurnalul Național and Antena 1, were engaged in a campaign to discredit Băsescu. Shafir, who nevertheless also stated the existence of "chapters in the report where I wouldn't change one comma", rated the text "a seven, no more than an eight." Shafir's perspective on the matter of genocide was supported early on by exiled writer Dumitru Țepeneag, who described the "far from perfect" Final Report as having the "not at all dismissible quality of being in existence", while calling its main author "an opportunist".

In 2008 Shafir joined Gabriel Andreescu, Daniel Barbu, Alex Cistelecan, Vasile Ernu, Adrian-Paul Iliescu, Costi Rogozanu, Ciprian Șiulea, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu and other intellectuals from various fields in writing a critique of the Final Report, named Iluzia anticomunismului ("The Illusion of Anti-communism"). The volume was written from both mainstream liberal and left-wing positions, and objected to parts of the report on various grounds—including its definitions of genocide, the absence of detail on Communist Romania's contribution to positive causes such as literacy campaigns, an alleged overemphasis on the intellectuals' role in the events described, and in particular the tone, which the authors perceived as indicative of bias. In addition to the critique of the text, Iluzia anticomunismului made reproaches on Tismăneanu himself. It stated that, although well-selected overall, the commission had included Patapievici and Nicolae Manolescu for "clientelistic" reasons (Andreescu); that Tismăneanu was favorably reviewing the works of his friend Dan Pavel, who, it concluded, had lost credibility by campaigning with the New Generation Party (Rogozanu); The group also complained that Romanian publishing houses were unwilling to endorse their critique, on account of which the work was published by Editura Cartier in neighboring Moldova. Pepine concluded that, among the authors, the "young revisionists" were the voice of a newer social class, which had emerged as a result of Ceaușescu's policies and was faced with becoming "déclassé".

In a December 2008 article, Tismăneanu stated that the allegation according to which he had not engaged his critics in a public debate was "completely false", and indicated several instances which he believed count as such. Tismăneanu also responded to critiques that the Commission was preparing "a sort of 'single textbook' " on Romanian communism, defining the Final Report as "a synthesis which would lead to further explorations." Corlățan's article cited historian Miodrag Millin, a resigned member of the Institute, who deemed the reply: "a state-sponsored 'clog' forced on the condemnation of communism, without any [of the Institute members] taking responsibility for those opinions." claims to have been excluded after a short while by "the self-styled 'eminent members of civil society'". According to Tismăneanu, this happened only after Goma engaged in and publicized personal attacks aimed at other Commission members, allegedly calling Tismăneanu "a Bolshevik offspring", based on his family history.

The Final Report and the activity of the Presidential Commission received endorsement from the American media and the academic community. Georgetown University professor Charles King stated the following in his review of the Commission's Report: "the report is the most serious, in-depth, and far-reaching attempt to understand Romania's communist experience ever produced. It ... marked the culmination of months of feverish research and writing. It is based on thousands of pages of archival documents, recent scholarship in several languages, and the comparative experience of other European countries, all refracted through the critical lenses provided by some of Romania's most talented, and most abrasively honest, thinkers. ... The Tismăneanu 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 independence, and embracing the country's de facto cultural pluralism and European future." In reply to Jim Compton's favorable review of the commission and its early activities, Romanian-American businessman Victor Gaetan wrote a letter, originally published in the op-ed section of The Washington Post and republished by Ziua, in which he referred to the Tismăneanu family's nomenklaturist history and described Tismăneanu's doctoral thesis as "a vitriolic indictment of Western values".

Further ramifications of the scandal came in summer 2009, when leadership of Cotidianul newspaper was taken over by Cornel Nistorescu, whose change in editorial line prompted a wave of resignations among the newspaper panelists, who identified the new policies as an unmitigated anti-Băsescu bias, and complained that Nistorescu was imposing censorship on independent contributors. In subsequent statements, Nistorescu alleged that his adversaries represented a pro-Băsescu "pack" led by Tismăneanu himself. Journalist Mădălina Șchiopu reacted against this perspective and other accusations aimed by Nistorescu toward his former colleagues, arguing that they amounted to "a story with little green men and flying saucers" which served to cover the "fundamental incompatibility between [Nistorescu's] decisions and the notion of decency." The events also prompted an article by Tismăneanu's friend, novelist Mircea Cărtărescu. It sarcastically included Nistorescu, alongside Vadim Tudor, Roșca-Stănescu, Voiculescu, Geoană and businessman Dinu Patriciu, all of them adverse to Băsescu, among the "champions of democracy", noting that himself, Tismăneanu and other public figures who did not abandon Băsescu's cause "despite his human flaws", were being negatively portrayed as "ass-kissers" and "blind people".

The implications of the scandal also involved several Wikipedia entries, particularly those on Romanian Wikipedia. In June 2007, Vladimir Tismăneanu stated: "I did not make efforts to respond to the wave of calumnies (which have infested the two Wikipedia articles about me in both English and Romanian) because I followed the precept 'You do not dignify them with an answer'." According to Michael Shafir, Tismăneanu responded to criticisms by the American researcher Richard Hall as follows: "On the one hand, the vicepresident of the Civic Alliance, Sorin Ilieșiu, a person close to Tismăneanu, reacted by putting the word "analyst" in quotes, so that the journalist Andrei Bădin could then "demonstrate" that Hall wasn't a CIA analyst, but had only served an insignificant "probationary" period of six months. The person who was the object of his criticism knew better: Hall had published in the very journal that he had previously led ("East European Politics and Societies"). So he picked up the telephone and yelled at Richard Hall's supervisor, in a scene that could have been included in "Stalinism for All Seasons." Michael Shafir detailed Tismăneanu's tactics more broadly in an article entitled suggestively, "About Questionable Clarifications, Plagiarism, Being an Imposter, and Careerism." In November 2013, Vasile Ernu told an interviewer how Editura Curtea Veche cancelled a book contract because among a handful of references to Tismăneanu one suggested that "Tismăneanu employs two different discourses, one inside Romania and one outside."

Works Originally published in Romanian Noua Stîngă și școala de la Frankfurt (Editura Politică, Bucharest, 1976). . Mic dicționar social-politic pentru tineret (with various; Editura Politică, Bucharest, 1981). . Condamnați la fericire. Experimentul comunist în România (Grup de edituri ale Fundației EXO, Bucharest, 1991). . Arheologia terorii (Editura Eminescu, Bucharest, 1992). . Ghilotina de scrum (Editura de Vest, Timișoara, 1992). . Irepetabilul trecut (Editura Albatros, Bucharest, 1994). . Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej (Editura Univers, Bucharest, 1995). . Noaptea totalitară: crepusculul ideologiilor radicale în Europa de Est (Editura Athena, Bucharest, 1995). . Balul mascat. Un dialog cu Mircea Mihăieș (with Mircea Mihăieș; Polirom, Iași, 1996). . Încet spre Europa. Vladimir Tismăneanu în dialog cu Mircea Mihăieș (with Mircea Mihăieș; Polirom, Iași, 2000). . Spectrele Europei Centrale (Polirom, Iași, 2001). . Scrisori din Washington (Polirom, Iași, 2002). . Marele șoc din finalul unui secol scurt. Ion Iliescu în dialog cu Vladimir Tismăneanu (dialogue with Ion Iliescu; Editura Enciclopedică, Bucharest, 2004). . Schelete în dulap (with Mircea Mihăieș; Polirom, Iași, 2004). . Scopul și mijloacele: Eseuri despre ideologie, tiranie și mit (Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2004). . Democrație și memorie (Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2006). . Refuzul de a uita. Articole și comentarii politice (2006–2007) (Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2007). . Cortina de ceață (with Mircea Mihăieș; Polirom, Iași, 2007). . Raport final - Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România (with various; Humanitas, Bucharest, 2007). . Perfectul acrobat. Leonte Răutu, măștile răului (with Cristian Vasile; Humanitas, Bucharest, 2008). .

Originally published in English The Crisis of Marxist Ideology in Eastern Europe: The Poverty of Utopia (Routledge, London, 1988). . Latin American Revolutionaries: Groups, Goals, Methods (with Michael Radu; Potomac Books, Dulles, 1990). . In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace Movements in the Soviet Bloc (with various; Routledge, London, 1990). . Debates on the Future of Communism (with Judith Shapiro; Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 1991) . Uprooting Leninism, Cultivating Liberty (with Patrick Clawson; University Press of America, Lanham, 1992). . Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (Free Press, New York, 1992). . Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1995). . Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998). . The Revolutions of 1989 (Re-Writing Histories) (with various; Routledge, London, 1999). . Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath (with Sorin Antohi; Central European University Press, New York, 2000). . Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003). . World Order After Leninism (with Marc Morjé Howard, Rudra Sil, Kenneth Jowitt; University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2006). . Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe (with various; Central European University Press, New York, 2009). . The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012). .

Bilingual Vecinii lui Franz Kafka. Romanul unei nevroze/The Neighbors of Franz Kafka. The Novel of a Neurosis (with Mircea Mihăieș; Polirom, Iași, 1998). .