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." Among this group of essays, historian Bogdan Cristian Iacob singles out one dedicated to chief ideologist Leonte Răutu, the so-called "Romanian Zhdanov", as purportedly the first ever analytical writing dedicated to his career.