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Revision as of 00:27, 4 January 2007

File:VladimirTismaneanu.jpg

Vladimir Tismăneanu, photo by Eduard Koller

Vladimir Tismăneanu (b. July 4, 1951 in Braşov), is a Romanian-born American political scientist and professor at University of Maryland, College Park. A specialist in political systems and compared politics, he is editor of the East European Politics and Societies academic review and director of the Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies.

In 2006, the Romanian President Traian Băsescu appointed Tismăneanu president of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, presenting its report to the Romanian Parliament on December 18, 2006.

Biography

Vladimir Tismăneanu is the son of Leonte Tismăneanu surnamed "The Crippled" and of Hermina Marcu Sohn, Soviet commissars, veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Tismăneanu's parents were in charge of Radio Moskow's broadcast in Romanian language during World war II and were sent to Soviet-occupied Romania in 1948, when they changed their name in Tismăneanu. His father was made chair of the Marxism-Leninism department of the University of Bucharest. His mother was made a university professor in Medical Sciences. Progressively the Tismăneanus were sidelined inside the Romanian nomenklatura; in 1960, Leonte Tismăneanu was stripped of his position as deputy head of Editura Politică.

At school, Vladimir Tismăneanu was classmate of the children of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Leonte Rautu, Cornel Onescu, Nicolae Doicaru and Silviu Brucan. According to Tismăneanu, Nicu Ceausescu remarked jokingly "They listed us according to our ranks", although Tismăneanu disputes this view. These individuals are nominated, along with Tismăneanu's own father, as being personally responsible for the crimes of Communism in Romania in the report of the Tismăneanu Commission.

Vladimir Tismăneanu graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1974, and received his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1980, with a thesis on Communist doctrine . During the period, he became a propagandist for the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth,, and wrote several articles of communist propaganda.

In September 1981 he defected while on a tourist trip to Spain. Through Venezuela, he ultimately settled in 1985 in the United States.

Controversy

Tismăneanu's activity as a communist propagandist before leaving Romania in 1981 contrasts with his Presidential Commission appointment. According to The Washington Post editorial by Victor Gaetan, a Romanian-American businessman, as a reply to the newspaper's earlier sympathetic comments, Tismăneanu's doctoral thesis Noua stîngă şi Şcoala de la Frankfurt ("The New Left and the Frankfurt School") is "a vitriolic sermon against Western values". The conclusion of Tismăneanu's doctoral thesis is that "Capitalism cannot be destroyed through vague dreams, dogmatic revolt, sudden transition and metaphysical studies. The only mean to overcome this statu-quo is through Socialist revolution, in which the working class, led by the revolutionary political Party, will play the leading role."

In 2006, Ziua newspaper repeatedly published claims that Tismăneanu had left with support from the Securitate, that he had settled abroad with assistance from the Communist Party of Venezuela, and that, after escaping censorship, he had continued to publish materials supporting official communist tenets. This source claims that the allegation are to be found in the SRI Archive, Fond "D", File nr. 10.947, vol. 9, pp. 369-370. These claims are supported by Mihai Pelin. Tismăneanu has rejected all allegations, indicating that they contradicted data present in, among others, files kept on him by the Securitate.

A bitter polemic was sparked between the Tismăneanu Commission and the anti-communist dissident writer Paul Goma. Tismăneanu extended an invitation to Goma to be part of the Commission, but fired him shortly after Goma engaged in personal attacks, calling Tismăneanu "a Bolshevik offspring". Goma confirmed that he supported such views, and explaned that he was misled by some comments allegedly made by Tismăneanu.

Tismăneanu also invited on the Committee his co-author Sorin Antohi, a self-acknowledged former collaborator of the feared Securitate, the Communist political police, who is known to have falsified his academic credentials. Antohi resigned from the Tismăneanu Commission in September 2006 but he is still an editor of the journal East European Politics and Societies, where Tismăneanu is chair of the editorial committee.

Several commentators have argued that the negative reception 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 (examples cited include the Social Democratic Party's Ion Iliescu, former President of Romania, and Adrian Păunescu, as well as Greater Romania Party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor and Conservative Party leader Dan Voiculescu, owner of both Jurnalul Naţional and Antena 1).

Among Tismăneanu's critics stand the philosophers Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Pleşu. Supporters include the writers Mircea Mihăieş and Liviu Antonesei.

Works

Originally published in Romanian

Mic dicţionar social-politic pentru tineret (co-author, under the direction of Virgil Măgureanu; Editura Politică, 1981)
Balul mascat. Un dialog cu Mircea Mihăieş (Polirom, 1996)
Mizeria utopiei. Criza ideologiei marxiste in Europa răsăriteană (Polirom, 1997)
Spectrele Europei Centrale (Polirom, 2001)
Ghilotina de scrum (Polirom, 2002)
Scrisori din Washington (Polirom, 2002)
Schelete in dulap (dialogue with Mircea Mihăieş; Polirom, 2004)

Originally published in English

In Search of Civil Society (Routledge, 1990)
Debates on the Future of Communism (with Judith Shapiro; Palgrave Macmillan, 1991)
Uprooting Leninism, Cultivating Liberty (with Patrick Clawson; University Press of America, 1992)
Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (Free Press, 1994)
Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1998)
Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath (with Sorin Antohi; Central European University Press, 2000)
Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (University of California Press, 2003)

Bilingual

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

References

Template:Ro icon Biography at Polirom.ro

External links

Template:Ro icon The final report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania

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