Having been introduced to Georgescu during the final stage of the critic's career, Manea retold one of his confessions from the time: "I suppose what you heard about me is that I am a Stalinist. I'm not a Stalinist, Mr. Norman, know that. I was with Leiba Trotsky."Manea, p.210 Manea also wrote: "What struck about [him] was the contradiction between the extraordinary mobility of spirit and the Affixed Idea. [...] How did he pacify his disappointments and regenerate his militantism after having seen with his eyes, and his mind, and his heart the nightmarish masquerade of the totalitarian state?" He added: "The socialist tension between the 'conserved' ideal and the putrid reality maintained in those who gave up neither contempt nor complicity a sort of narcissistic and megalomaniac blindness."Manea, p.207-208
