Romania's Communist Past - NYTimes.com Re "Europe Reckons With Its Legacy of Communism" (front page, Feb. 21): In a December 2006 speech to Parliament, President Traian Basescu condemned the Communist totalitarian regime in Romania (1945-1989) as illegitimate and criminal, based on a rigorous report written by the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, headed by a University of Maryland professor, Vladimir Tismaneanu, an authority on the history of Communism. The establishment in 2006 of the presidential commission and its thorough analysis represented a first-of-its-kind achievement for post-Communist Europe. It has had major consequences in Romania, primarily in the opening of long inaccessible archives, education and the societal confrontation with a traumatic past. Along with the presidential commission, several other institutions deal with the reckoning with the totalitarian past in Romania, among them the Sighet Memorial, the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. ADRIAN VIERITA Ambassador of Romania Washington, Feb. 27, 2012