Silviu Brucan (born Saul Bruckner; January 18, 1916 – September 14, 2006) was a Romanian communist politician. Though he disagreed with Nicolae Ceauşescu's policies, he never gave up his communist beliefs and did not oppose communist ideology. After the Romanian Revolution, a political analyst and author of books on Communism and Eastern Europe.
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Silviu Brucan was born in Bucharest to Jewish parents, his father being the owner of a wool business which went bankrupt during the Great Depression.[1] He attended the German-language Evangelische Schule and the Saint Sava National College.[2] He subsequently worked as a journalist in media linked to the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), which he joined age 19.[2]
In September 1944, upon Romania's exit from the Axis camp and the onset of Soviet occupation, he was named the general secretary of Scînteia (the deputy editor in chief to Leonte Răutu), the official newspaper of the PCR,[2][3][4] and, in this capacity, supported the prison sentences of Iuliu Maniu, Gheorghe I. Brătianu and Corneliu Coposu (see Tămădău Affair).[5] He also supported the repression of anti-Communist journalists, such as Radu Gyr and Pamfil Şeicaru, asking for the death penalty for the latter.[5] During this period, Brucan's wife, the Stalinist Alexandra Sidorovici, became a public prosecutor of the People's Tribunals, an office which allowed her to ask for death sentences for many enemies of the Communist regime; the sister of Teofil Sidorovici,[6] she was a member of the nomenklatura after the Communist government's establishment.[5][7] For a short while (1948–1949), Brucan was Professor of Journalism at the University of Bucharest.[2]
A close collaborator of Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej,[2][6] Brucan, with Sorin Toma and Mihail Roller, was among the prominent Party ideologues of the group coordinated by Răutu after the late 1940s and into the 1950s.[6][8] He was an ambassador of Romania to the United States in 1955, using his experience as the basis of a book he co-authored with Sidorovici (a virulent attack on American institutions),[6] and to the United Nations (between 1959 and 1962), as well as the head of Romanian Television.[3][9]
Progressively from the 1960s, Brucan became an opponent of the new PCR leadership around Ceauşescu. Initially, upon news that Ceauşescu had been appointed general secretary, he considered renouncing his political career and focus on an office at the University, before being persuaded by Emil Bodnăraş to remain an activist.[3] He was a professor of Scientific Socialism at the Bucharest Faculty of Medicine.[5][10] According to Brucan himself, he faced a period of financial insecurity, and began work as a translator in order to cover his expenses.[3] He also sent several works, subject to censorship at home, to be published in the United States; they showed his move towards reformism, which he advocated to be applied inside the Eastern bloc.[11]
In 1987, after sending an anti-Ceauşescu declaration to the foreign press (to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune, and United Press International), a relatively mild criticism for the violent repression of the Braşov Rebellion,[2][6][7][12] he was sentenced to house arrest. At the time, Brucan had won the approval of Soviet authorities, which had by then already engaged in Perestroika policies, and had been extended informal protection by the Soviet embassy in Bucharest (allowing him a relevant degree of freedom).[13]
With help from Iulian Vlad, the chief of the Securitate, he was issued with a passport, and in 1988, despite being expelled from the PCR,[2] spent six months in the United States, where he was in contact with the United States Department of State[3] (headed by George P. Shultz). Brucan also claimed to have been invited to Moscow by Soviet politicians Mikhail Gorbachev and Anatoly Dobrynin,[2][3] who endorsed criticism of Ceauşescu and a Romanian version of Glasnost;[6] based on the personal testimonies of Gorbachev's advisers, the scholar Vladimir Tismăneanu has disputed Brucan's account in its entirety.[6]
In March 1989, together with five other Communist dignitaries (Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Grigore Răceanu, Corneliu Mănescu, and Constantin Pîrvulescu), he signed the open letter known as Scrisoarea celor şase - "The Letter of the Six".[2][3][6][14][15]
The document, which was immediately broadcast on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, was a left-wing critique of Ceauşescu's policies,[6][16] and it led to the swift arrest and interrogation of the signatories by the Securitate, and then to their internal exile and house arrest at various locations.[2] The Securitate depicted Brucan as one of several "hostile, inveterate, elements" and "the agent of foreign imperialist secret services".[14] Although lacking in actual popular support,[17] the letter was argued to be the among most important and influential acts of opposition during its period, and a notorious break with the tradition of strict obedience and party discipline.[17]
Brucan was sent to a location on the outskirts of Bucharest, in Dămăroaia[2] — the reason for his subsequent colloquial moniker, "The Oracle of Dămăroaia".[5] Despite increased pressure, most contributors to the protest refused to withdraw their statement.[17] Brucan later accused Apostol of having given in to pressures.[18]
Brucan was part of the National Salvation Front (FSN) during the 1989 Revolution, joining the Provisional Council of FSN and its Executive Committee. As a member of the Council, he was also involved in selecting Roman for the office of Premier.[6][19]
According to the testimony of Petre Roman, Brucan was among those who insisted that Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu be executed[3] and according to Dumitru Mazilu, he wanted that the 10-point programme read on national TV on December 22 to include a clause saying that Romania will honour its obligations under the Warsaw Pact.[19]
While in early January, Brucan assured that the FSN has no intention of turning into a political party, but just supporting some candidates,[20] only three weeks later, he supported the transformation of FSN into a political party,[6] arguing that without the FSN, there would be a "political vacuum" which the new political parties would be unable to fill.[21]
In February 1990, Brucan resigned from the FSN, claiming that he has accomplished his mission, to restore stability in Romania and to put the country on a course toward multi-party elections.[19]
He did not wish to run in the 1990 elections,[21] being just the adviser of President Iliescu.[22] Nevertheless, he later issued a vocal criticism of President Ion Iliescu.[2][3][11] In 1990, Brucan made a forecast which became well-known in Romania: he contended that Romanians would need 20 years to become accustomed to democracy.[2]
In the eve of the election day, Brucan argued that the 1989 Revolution was not anti-communist, being only against Ceauşescu, not against the communism of the 1950s and 1960s, saying that Iliescu made a "monumental" mistake in "conceding to the crowd" and banning the Romanian Communist Party.[22]
From the late 1990s, Brucan hosted a news commentary program on the ProTV network (Profeţii despre trecut - "Foretellings on the Past"), initially together with Lucian Mândruţă. During his final years, he was also a columnist for Ziarul Financiar.
In 1998, he was brought to court by Vasile Lupu, a leader of the Christian-Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNŢCD) and a deputy for Iaşi County.[5] Speaking on his show, Brucan had called Lupu "astute to the square" and "trained Securitate informant", indicating that "any good-faithed National Peasantist who still views himself as a party colleague with Vasile Lupu is self-excluding himself from the PNŢCD".[5] In 2002, courts decided in Lupu's favor, and Brucan was found guilty of calumny; he was required to pay Lupu the sum of 30 million lei as compensation.[5]
At the age of 90, Brucan underwent a seven-hour stomach operation on September 4, 2006.[2] Despite an initial good recovery from surgery, his condition suddenly worsened on September 13 and he died the following day due to cardiac arrest.[2]
Writing in 2006, Vladimir Tismăneanu criticized Brucan, arguing that, despite his renunciation of Communism, Brucan had continued to support authoritarianism in public life and to display a taste for intrigue, and that he had attempted to transform the FSN into a "big party", virtually replacing the PCR.[6][23] Tismăneanu pointed out Brucan's post-1990 opposition to the Mircea Răceanu, who had been imprisoned on dubious charges espionage under Ceauşescu, and who was later rehabilitated by Romanian courts.[6] He has also contended that memoirs authored by Brucan showed little remorse for his early involvement in support of political repression.[24]
According to Victor Neumann, Brucan's role in the Bucharest episode of the 1989 Revolution had indirectly helped the original and virtually unrelated revolt in Timişoara, especially by preventing a more violent repression against it.[25] He also argued that Brucan's group of inner-Party dissidents was, in the eyes of the public at large, the only "credible alternative" at the time,[26] and cited Brucan's own statement: "The train had arrived in the station and we were the only ones who could get on it. What were we to say, that we will not get on? We did it".[27] Overall, Neumann contended, Silviu Brucan's political and diplomatic expertise, as well as his adaptability, had made him the "ideologist of political transformations in 1989 Romania",[28] and had contributed to the supremacy of left-wing discourse in the years following the Revolution[29] (in regard to the latter point, he cited Brucan arguments, which challenged the existence right-wing themes in the ideological makeup of the 1989 movement).[30]