In 1995, Tismăneanu was again focusing on Gheorghiu-Dej, analyzing the part he played in both the violent communization of the 1950s and the adoption of nationalism in the 1960s. This investigation produced the Romanian-language volume "Fantoma lui Gheorghiu-Dej" ("Gheorghiu-Dej's Ghost"), expanding on a similarly titled chapter in "Irepetabilul trecut". It notably theorizes a difference between national communism and the "national Stalinism" suiting both Gheorghiu-Dej and his successor Ceaușescu. The question "What is left of Gheorghiu-Dej's experiment?", is answered by Tismăneanu as follows: "An inept and frightened elite, whose social mobility was linked to the nationalist-chauvinist line promoted by Ceaușescu. A sectarian and exclusive vision of socialism, a political style based on terror, manipulation and liquidating one's enemy. An unbound contempt for the spirit and a no less total conviction that humans are a mere maneuverable mass ... But most of all ... an immense scorn for principles, a trampling of all things dignified and honorable, a mental and moral corruption that continues to ravage this social universe that is still being haunted by the ghosts of national Stalinism." The text characterized the dictator himself as a figure who "had managed to unify within his style Jesuitism and lack of principles, opportunism and cruelty, fanaticism and duplicity."