This first comprehensive history of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) traces its origins as a tiny, clandestine revolutionary organization in the 1920s, to its years in national power from 1944 to 1989, and to the post-1989 metamorphoses of all its members. Using documents that he discovered while working in the RCP archives in Bucharest in the mid-1990s, in addition to interviews with many of the party members from the Ceau¸sescu and Dej eras, Vladimir Tismaneanu tells the absorbing story of a group of leading RCP members who came to power as exponents of Moscow and succeeded in turning themselves into champions of autonomy. Tismaneanu analyzes both the main trends in Romanian communism and the role of significant personalities in the party's history. Situating the rise and fall of Romanian communism as a pivotal factor in the world revolutionary movement, Stalinism for All Seasons shows that the history of communism in one country can illuminate the development of communism in the twentieth century.