Letter of the Six

The Letter of the Six (Romanian: Scrisoarea celor șase) was an open letter signed in March 1989 by Silviu Brucan, together with five other Romanian Communist dignitaries (Gheorghe Apostol, Alexandru Bârlădeanu, Grigore Răceanu, Corneliu Mănescu, and Constantin Pîrvulescu).

The six communist politicians met and discussed the letter in parks in Bucharest, in order to prevent the Securitate from hearing the details. They were however, not isolated, but they were followed and had contacts with Soviet, American, British and Romanian intelligence officers and diplomats.

The initiative came from Brucan, who discussed the plan with Apostol and then discussed it with Bîrlădeanu, the architect of Romanian economic development of the 1960s.

After these first contacts, Brucan paid visits to the embassies of the United States and of the United Kingdom in Bucharest. In an exceptional way, the Securitate does not arrest him and the government allows him to visit the United States in June 1988. The Department of State was enthusiastic about the letter, but he was advised to publish it after returning to Romania, or else he would be forced to remain in exile. After this followed a tour of the United Kingdom, where he held conferences in Oxford, at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and had meetings at the Foreign Office; Brucan then went to Moscow, where he met Gorbachev (or according to other accounts, Alexander Yakovlev) in an hour-long meeting, being given assurances that in case of ousting Ceaușescu, the Soviet Union would not intervene. During his return by train in November 1988, Brucan was arrested at the border, but he was let go.

Bîrlădeanu disputed the account of Brucan, arguing that, while they discussed the letter, it was called off after it proved impossible to gather enough signatures. Bîrlădeanu claims that Brucan betrayed the other co-signatories by going to the American embassy without telling the others.

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Wikipedia