The paper assesses the intellectual profile of Romanian ethnologist Mihai Pop, from the doublefold perspective of theoretical thinking and institutional work in his field. Lettered in Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism during the inter-war period, Mihai Pop managed to accomplish his formation in a remarkable structuralist-semiotic setting in postwar Romania, in a theoretical stance which remained singular in Romanian research during communism and acquired a well-deserved international recognition. Among others, this stance enabled Mihai Pop to rebuild the domain of Romanian Folklore studies, after the 1948 education reform, and safeguard the field against ideologization, which was about to return in full force after 1971 and after his 1975 retirement . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]