With "Stalinism for All Seasons", Tismăneanu provides a synthesis of his views on Communist Romanian history leading back to "Arheologia terorii", documenting the Romanian Communist Party's evolution from the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party to the establishment of a one-party state. Tismăneanu himself, reflecting on the purpose of the book, stated his vision of communism as an "eschatological" movement, adding: "Romanian communism was a subspecies of Bolshevik radicalism, itself born out of an engagement between Russian revolutionary tradition and the voluntarist version of Marxism." Adrian Cioroianu notes that "Tismăneanu was the first who could ever explain the mirage and the motivation by Romania's first communists of the '20-'30 decade." The focus on communist conspiracies and inner-Party struggles for power is constant throughout the book. In a 2004 review published by "Foreign Affairs" magazine, political scientist Robert Legvold sees it as "less a political history of communism than it is a thorough account of leadership battles in the Romanian Communist Party from its origins at the turn of the nineteenth century to its demise in 1989." Also according to Legvold, the author "shedlight on the paradoxes of Romanian communism: how a pariah party that was Stalinist to the core eventually turned on its Soviet master and embraced nationalism—how 'national Stalinism' was acceptable to the West as long as it meant autonomy from [the Soviet Union. That is, until it became grotesque in Nicolae Ceaușescu's last decade, leading to the regime's violent death."