Dr. Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor in the Department of Government and Politics and Director of the Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies at the University of Maryland (College Park). In 2006, Romania’s President Traian Basescu appointed Vladimir Tismaneanu chair of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. In December 2006, President Basescu presented the conclusions of the Commission’s Report to a joint session of the Romanian Parliament.
Between 1998 and 2004, he was the editor of the journal East European Politics and Societies, serves now as chair of the journal’s editorial committee, and serves on the editorial boards of other publications including Journal of Democracy, Human Rights Review, Democracy at Large, and Studia Politica, (Romania). He received his PhD in 1980 from the University of Bucharest with a thesis on the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. He left Romania for political reasons in 1981. He is the author of Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (1993, Romanian and Ukrainian translations), Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (1998; award from the Romanian-American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Romanian, Polish, and Lithuanian translations), and Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (2003, the Barbara Jelavich Award, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 2004; Romanian translation, 2005). His book of dialogues with former president Iliescu of Romania (The Great Shock at the End of a Short Century) came out in Romanian in 2004, and in English in 2005. He is the editor of The Revolutions of 1989 (1999), and co-editor of Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath (2000) and The World After Leninism (2006), and author of numerous books and articles in Romanian. He is the author of over 300 articles published in major American and European newspapers and journals.
In 2001 he was a Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center, in 2002 was a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and Remarque Institute (New York University), in 2003 was a fellow at Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, in 2003-2004 he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, and in Summer 2005 he was a Jacharis Fellow at the Wilson Center. In January 2001, he received the award for the whole activity from the Romanian Cultural Foundation. At the University of Maryland, he received the award for excellence in teaching and mentorship (2001), the Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award (2003-2004), and the GRB Semester Research Award (2006). In June 2002, the University of the West (Timişoara, Romania) awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa for outstanding contributions to the study of communism and post-communism. In June 2003, he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. He has served the profession as editor of EEPS (1998-2003), member of the ACLS Committtee of Eastern Europe (1997-2003), NCEER, Wilson Center, and NEH proposal reviewer, faculty at the Wye River Junior Scholars Training Seminar (2001 and 2005), and member of the Fulbright Area Selection Committee-South-East Europe (1996-99). Currently, Professor Tismaneanu works on two books: The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and the Lessons of the 20th Century and Two Sisters: Communism, Anti-Fascism and Jewish Identity.
