Basescu perseveringly follows his political projects What do you think about all this uproar on the anticipated elections, how would you analyze them as political scientist? The uproar is not unreasoned, as it comes out from the need to re-balance the political arena after the 2004 election. President Basescu proved he was perseveringly following his political, economic and social projects. The judicial reform is a vital requirement for Romania, and the persistence of the forces linked to the former power in sabotaging the propositions in this respect made the need of an electoral answer to the question on who does truly represent the Romanians' interests more urgent than ever. This is the meaning of the anticipated election, as far as I understand. The election must assure the Alliance Justice and Truth (Rom. Alianta DA), in case of victory, the prolongation of the credit got in 2004 and, consequently, the possibility of a more radical commitment in reforming the country. I also include here the assuming of the past and the integration into Europe. Well, an "if" comes out here, and risks also ... The risk is that a draw game lasts. In politics, just like in checks, we must know who is going to win in the end. In 2000, either we liked it or not, we knew PSD (the Social Democratic Party), represented by Iliescu and Nastase, was the winner. Right now, Romania finds itself in an ambiguous situation because of the too long domination of PSD in administration, in institutions, everywhere. I perfectly understand the reasons that made and still make Traian Basescu target for the anticipated election. "Stalinism for good", the result of 25 to 30 years of passion "Stalinism for Good. A Political History of the Romanian Communism" is your most recent volume launched in Romania. It is about tens of years of research, is it not? It is the result of about 25 to 30 years of passion, almost an obsession, but in the good meaning of the word, of digging up the past. When I started working on the Romanian Communism, it was in turn working on me too, for which I left Romania, leaving a country and a family behind. I reached the West and I realized that everything that had started as a spontaneous activity of searching the truth about a situation revealing itself more and more intensely as a lie, turned into an endeavor of authentic research. I have had a long correspondence with persons involved in the drama of the Romanian communism, I have been reading all that could have been read on the topic and a little bit extra. After the communism had crashed, I have done my best to get access into the archives of the Romanian Communist Party, I might have been the most researcher specialized in the history of communism who had read the archives of the Politic Bureau. In 1994, I transferred thousands of pages on microfilms than I've made photocopies. This project, which began more or less like a side preoccupation, little by little has become a central one. Meanwhile, as you know, I have published quite a number of other books, one of them quite on the Romanian communism. My first book in English came out in 1988 and it was on political philosophy. Stalinism for Good ... is the crowning of a scientific project and at the same time of a moral one. I do believe that to know what happened in the 20th century - I mean communism in general, communism in particular, fascism, totalitarianism -, knowing all those tragedies is a moral obligation for a humanity that wishes to end the nightmare. Germans talk about what is called the mastership, the appeasing, and the domination of the past. I believe that when one does not know the past can neither appease or dominate it. (...) "Ideologies always matter" Do ideologies still matter today? Ideologies always matter. The main enemy of the ideologies is populism. Still, we cannot say ideologies do not matter, globalization is also an ideology, as well as the anti-globalization. Populism itself is in fact an ideological amalgam, an ideological syncretism. There is a famous quotation on the most beautiful case of populism, the "peronism" in Argentina, or Colonel Chavez in Venezuela, the latter being rather an immitator of Peron. Huan Domingo Peron said: "I have two hands: a left hand and a right one and I use each whenever I need. I have two ideologies: a left-wing one, a right-wing one and I use them both alike". Here you have a populist ideology, which is an extremely dangerous one. (...)