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Leonte Tismăneanu

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Leonte Tismăneanu (born Leonid Tisminetski; 1913-1981) was a Soviet and Romanian communist activist, one of the main propagandists of the communist dictatorship in Romania.

Born into a Jewish family in Soroca, Bessarabia, Russian Empire (now in Moldova), Leonte Tismăneanu joined the Romanian Communist Party in the early 1930s. In 1935 he was expelled from the University of Bucharest and emprisoned for communist activities. He later fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, losing his right arm at the age of 24. In 1939, he left for the Soviet Union, where he became a student of the Moscow State Linguistic University. Leonte Tismăneanu was a member of the Soviet Communist Party. During World War II, he worked with Ana Pauker, Leonte Răutu, and Vasile Luca for the Romanian language branch of Radio Moscow, first as speaker, then as newswriter.

In 1948, Tisminetski and his family were sent to Soviet-occupied Romania, where he changed his name in 1949 to Leonte Tismăneanu. He was named deputy director of Editura PMR, later Editura Politică, the publishing house of the Communist Party and he was made Professor and Chair of Marxism-Stalinism department at the University of Bucharest.

Like many Communist leaders in Romania, Tismăneanu lacked academic diplomas. In 1954 the Agitprop Section of the CC of PMR requested the permission for a group of leading propagandists including Tismăneanu, Paul Niculescu-Mizil and Grigore Cotovschi to defend their dissertation without the customary examinations. This request was turned down and there is no indication that he later obtained his PhD.

In 1955, Tismăneanu, alongside Dean Iorgu Iordan and the academics Mihai Novicov, Alexandru Graur, Ion Coteanu, and Radu Florian, took part in a University inquiry into the anti-communist statements of Paul Goma, a University employee who later became a leading dissident and writer; led by Iordan and supervised by the Securitate, the investigation culminated in Goma's expulsion from the Faculty and subsequent arrest (Tismăneanu and Florian voted in favor of the former, but against the latter).

Between 1958 and 1960, Tismăneanu was investigated for "revisionist-type deviationism" (deviaţionism de tip revizionist), the inquiry ending with him being expelled from the Party in 1960. Allowed to rejoin in 1964, after the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, he then worked as a writer for Editura Meridiane.

He was married to Hermina Marcusohn, herself a Spanish Civil War veteran, communist activist, speaker at Radio Moskow's section in Romanian language during WWII, associate professor at Bucharest's Medical School and Chief of personnel for a short time in the Health Ministry after 1948. Their son, Vladimir Tismăneanu, is a political scientist who headed the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, which presented a report on the crimes of the communist regime in Romania. In an extended polemic with Vladimir Tismăneanu, Goma has stated his mistrust in the latter's ability to exercise impartial judgment on communism issues, calling him "a Bolshevik offspring" grown inside the nomenklatura, and indicating his belief that Leonte Tismăneanu was "one of the most important and ferocious agents of Communism and Sovietism in martyring our country". His son Vladimir Tismăneanu refuted partially this claim.

References

  1. Report of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
  2. ^ Template:Ro icon Andrei Badin, "Nu cred în legenda celor două Securităţi, una bună şi alta rea", interview with Vladimir Tismăneanu in Adevărul, April 10 2006
  3. Stalinism pentru eternitate, p.38
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Opris was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. Cite error: The named reference Gosu was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. "Timbre roşii…"
  7. Stalinism pentru eternitate p.320
  8. Stalinism pentru eternitate p.333
  9. ^ Paul Goma, Template:Ro icon Adrian Popescu, "Paul Goma îi desfiinţează pe membrii "Comisiei Tismăneanu" de cercetare a ororilor comunismului din România", in Gândul, May 9, 2006
  10. ^ Template:Ro icon Un paradox românesc by Sergiu Moroianu, Adevărul 1/8/2006
  11. Template:Ro iconPetre Opriş in "Dosarele Istoriei", year IX, nr. 12(100)/2004, pp. 11-15.
  12. Cite error: The named reference Rădulescu was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. Stalinism pentru eternitate p.333
  14. Gosu; Stalinism pentru eternitate p.320
  15. Goma


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