Historian Lucian Boia highlights the clash between such a vision and that of a patriotic, liberal and congenial Gheorghiu-Dej, retrospectively advanced in the 1990s by some of the leader's collaborators, among them Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Silviu Brucan and Ion Gheorghe Maurer. Boia writes: "In between Bârlădeanu and Tismăneanu, may we be allowed to prefer the latter's interpretation. ... oblivion is not what we owe [Gheorghiu-Dej], but condemnation, be it moral and posthumous." Vladimir Tismăneanu's reflections on a self-legitimizing, "Byzantine", discourse in Romanian communism, Ioan Stanomir notes, were also being applied by Tismăneanu to the post-Revolution President of Romania, former Communist Party activist and PSD leader Ion Iliescu, who, both argued, did not represent an anti-communist social democracy, but a partial return to Gheorghiu-Dej's legacy.