This article aims to provide a double-layered analyze. On the one hand, it will present and discuss the instruments used by the communist decision-makers in charge with the cultural propaganda, focusing the Romanian Institute for the Cultural Relations Abroad (I.R.R.C.S., Romanian abbreviation). In a second layer of analysis, starting from the institutional framework offered by I.R.R.C.S. and from the symbolic capital employed by this institution on the arena of the international cultural relations, this article aims to discuss two different patterns normally used when it comes to assess the efficiency and the effectiveness of the cultural propaganda, and which one suits the Romanian model better. The first method is strictly quantitative, and measures the activities carried on by institution of cultural propaganda, the numbers of it, the type etc. The second, qualitative method, consists of the analyze of the impact and value that activities really brought on the international arena and what the results of that activities were. The motivation for this topic was based on the fact that although it represented a priority for the totalitarian regime, the cultural propaganda is an understudied field of research within the Romanian historiography of the present time.