Romanian-American political scientist and authority on the 1989 revolutions
In Bucharest in June 1990, he witnessed miners violently crushing anti-government protesters, an experience he said gave him insight into 'barbarity in its crassest, most revolting form.'
Born into a Romanian communist elite family and defecting in 1981, he is a political scientist who has analysed Stalinism and the collapse of East European communist systems from a comparative politics perspective. His 2003 Stalinism for All Seasons provided a definitive synthesis of Romanian communism, and in 2006 he chaired the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship, steering the country's landmark reckoning with its past. His 2009 article on the causes, meanings and consequences of 1989 became a benchmark for scholarship on the revolutions, arguing that ethnic conflict and authoritarian backsliding in the aftermath do not diminish their 'generous message' and colossal impact.
Career Timeline
- 1974–1981Sociologist, Institute of Typified Buildings Design, Bucharest
- 1983–1990Researcher, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia
- 1985–1990Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania
- 1990–Professor of Politics, University of Maryland, College Park
- 1998–2004Editor, East European Politics and Societies
- 2006President, Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
- 2009Published 'The Revolutions of 1989: Causes, Meanings, Consequences' in Contemporary European History