Răutu made his way back to Romania during the communization process of the late 1940s, and, after establishing cultural and political guidelines with his articles in Scînteia and Contemporanul, became a feared potentate of the Romanian communist regime.

After his stint as Deputy Prime Minister, he became rector of the party's own Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy, and still played a part in defining the official dogmas; however, he also tolerated dissenting intellectuals, who criticized national communism from Marxist-Leninist and Neo-Marxist positions.

[22] Răutu returned to Romania in 1945 at Pauker's request and immediately rose to the top of the party's propaganda apparatus, as Iosif Chișinevschi's deputy, joining the editorial team of the revived Scînteia,[5][41] and becoming one of the most active contributors to Contemporanul monthly.

The Agitprop Section embodied the PMR's control over the Education and Culture ministries, the Romanian Academy, the Radio Broadcasting Committee and cinema studios, the AGERPRES agency, the Writers' Union and the Artists' Guild, and even sporting associations and clubs.

This work introduced Romanians to historical materialism and a partiinost' analysis of cultural or scientific matters, borrowing Soviet criticism of "bourgeois pseudoscience": against genetics, neo-Malthusianism, Indeterminism, and in large part against "cosmopolitan" social thinkers (Ernest Bevin, Léon Blum, Harold Laski).

[65] Răutu's text is regarded by Tismăneanu as an "embarrassing" contribution to the field,[66] and described by historian Leonard Ciocan as the origin of "manichean" methodology and "typically Stalinist" discourse in Romanian social science.

[80] From March 1950, Răutu and Miron Constantinescu were called upon by Pauker to organize the ideological retraining of various writers who had been excluded from the party—Eusebiu Camilar, Vladimir Cavarnali, Lucia Demetrius, Mihu Dragomir, Coca Farago, Alexandru Kirițescu, Sanda Movilă, Ioana Postelnicu, Zaharia Stancu, Cicerone Theodorescu, and Victor Tulbure.

[85] He was similarly involved in ensuring a mass circulation for Petru Dumitriu's Drum fără pulbere, made infamous with its parochial depiction of construction work on the Danube–Black Sea Canal—and for glossing over the fact that most workers were political prisoners.

[86] With the Tito–Stalin split, Răutu became involved in exposing supposed "Titoist" infiltration in Romania, ordering a tight monitoring of Tanjug propaganda, and then a Romanian Agitprop project focused on vilifying Yugoslavia.

[88] In parallel, he took over supervision of the nominally independent left-wing daily Adevărul, overseeing its liquidation in 1951,[89] and was involved in establishing the network of "people's councils", which cemented the communist grip on city and village administration during late 1950.

A communist-turned-dissident poet, Nina Cassian, recalls: "Leonte Răutu—[...] dominated these scatty, vulnerable, terrified and confused beings—the artists and the writers, producing tragedies and comedies, stagings glories and stigmatization, paralyzing one's morality, activating another's immorality".

[98] One author to escape from Răutu's campaigns was modernist left-winger Geo Dumitrescu, whom poet Eugen Jebeleanu defended, at the last moment, against claims that he had been working for far-right newspapers during the war years.

[104] Over the years, his deputies included Roller, Ofelia Manole, Paul Niculescu-Mizil, Nicolae Goldberger (a member of the politburo since the 1930s), Manea Mănescu (in charge of science), Cornel Onescu and Pavel Țugui (later expelled from the party for having concealed his youthful sympathy for the Iron Guard).

This hiatus brought an unexpected relaxation of censorship, which notably allowed ethnologists to write about the traditional Romanian dwellings (a theme that Răutu would have otherwise proscribed) and translators to focus on contemporary literature.

[134] Upon returning, the PMR ideologist heralded an all-out anti-revisionist campaign: his May 1958 speech began with attacks on the anti-Soviet Internationalist Communist Union, Hungarian revolutionaries and "liberal theories"; went on to criticize Stalinist "dogmatism" and the "personality cult"; and eventually listed Romanian philosophers and artists who had deviated into one field or the other.

Though not involved directly in the controversy, he sent one of his associates to act as Oțetea's ideological supervisor; according to historian Șerban Papacostea, this unnamed figure had little competence in the scholarly field, noted among his peers for being unable to properly date events such as the Treaty of Passarowitz.

[141] The PMR cultural activists, Răutu included, also masterminded the show trial of philosopher Constantin Noica, writer Dinu Pillat and other literary dissidents, all of them brutalized by the Securitate secret police.

These included: communist writers Alexandru Jar and Gábor Gaál, attacked for having demanded de-Stalinization; modernist sculptor Milița Petrașcu, "unmasked" as an opponent of the regime in a humiliating public session; and classical composer Mihail Andricu, castigated for having revealed his appreciation for the West.

[171] Having sidelined Sorin Toma, Răutu revised his stance on the "decadent" poets, welcoming back into the spotlight modernists like Arghezi and Ion Barbu, and even describing himself as a protector of artistic autonomy.

[183] Despite his concessions to localism, the Bessarabian communist still looked to the Soviet hardliners for inspiration, and was considered by his peers a Stalinist survivor, à la Mikhail Suslov;[184] he was also compared with Hungary's György Aczél.

[211] In February 1970, he was officially recommended for membership of the new Academy of Social and Political Sciences, formed by Constantinescu—one of the old Stalinists to be inducted, he served there alongside non-communists such as Daicoviciu, Mihai Berza, and Henri H. Stahl; both he and Constantinescu attempted "a sort of modernization of party propaganda", aimed at getting youth interested in Marxism-Leninism.

After the July Theses of 1971 put a stop to liberalization and introduced the more repressive phase of national communism, he welcomed Ceaușescu's commands as "a model in Marxist-Leninist analysis" and the subjugation of culture to political economy as "an active, revolutionary, attitude"; he also informed the party that the time had come for himself to reexamine his past and determine his own "mistakes".

"[233] In her 2010s recollections, historian Cornelia Bodea accused Răutu and Roman of making repeated attempts to prevent her from publishing evidence that some 40,000 Romanians had been massacred during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848; this incident formed part of renewed tensions between Hungary and Romania, which were carried into the field of history-writing.

[248] His last years were allegedly marked by panic and confusion: although it gave him pleasure to see Ceaușescu being tried and executed during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, that event saw the formal destruction of a political and symbolic structure to which he had dedicated his life.

[253] Răutu gave his only in-depth interview to Pierre du Bois, a Swiss political scientist, acknowledging that the communist system had produced tens of thousands of victims but expressing no remorse.

[255] According to Vladimir Tismăneanu and Cristian Vasile, who cite various other authors, Răutu was not just responsible for cultural repression, but also for the characteristically "ill-adapted", "dull", and "anti-intellectual" essence of Romanian communist propaganda at all times between 1950 and 1989.

[256] According to poet-journalist Radu Cosașu (himself a figure in 1950s literature), Răutu is personally responsible for a slip of the wooden tongue, allowing the notion of Eastern Bloc to be rendered in Romanian as lagărul socialist—which can also be read as "socialist concentration camp".

[261] Critic Nicolae Dragoș, who was in the process of moving from Stalinism to nationalism, made a point of saluting Ivasiuc's book: his own editorial for the review România Literară carried the unsettling title Te recunosc, domnule Trotușeanu ("I Recognize You, Mr.

[227] Although highly decorated and commended as a positive example, the Agitprop Section founder was generally introduced as a dedicated "party activist", a communist powerhouse rather than a national instructor: while honoring him with the Star of the Socialist Republic, Ceaușescu made sure to remind the audience that Răutu's history had its share of "minuses and unfulfilled chapters".

[268] This lobby, associated for a while with the journal Luceafărul, was tolerated by Ceaușescu as the radical facet of his national communism: Barbu and fellow novelist Ion Lăncrănjan, who had debuted as orthodox Stalinists and had won Răutu's approval, became proponents of the neotraditionalist revival.