„Scrisoarea celor șase”, o sfidare la adresa regimului Ceaușescu 11 martie 1989

As part of the events dedicated to Romanian history and culture, the "Friedrich Schiller" Culture House, through the Culture, Education, Tourism Directorate of the Bucharest City Hall, in partnership with the Institute of the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, organized on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, at 6:00 p.m., the debate "The Letter of the Six, a defiance against the Ceaușescu regime (March 11, 1989)". Presented by: Dr. Florian BANU, historian Dr. Constantin CORNEANU, historian Project coordinator: Aurora FABRITIUS The "Letter of the Six" (March 11, 1989) generated a special emotion throughout Romanian society, in party and state activity. In April 1988, according to his own confessions, Silviu Brucan discussed with Gheorghe Apostol, in Herăstrău Park, about what would become the “Letter of the Six”. Corneliu Mănescu will state that the initiative for an open opposition action belonged to Gheorghe Apostol who had already discussed with Silviu Brucan, Alexandru Bârlădeanu and Constantin Pârvulescu at the moment he contacted him. The former director of the SRI, Virgil Măgureanu, believes that the “Letter of the Six” was, in fact, “addressed to the party and, in a way, to Romanianness”, so that “if we take into account that this (PCR – n. n.) was, clearly, a mass organization, it was therefore addressed to the most politically integrated part of Romania”. Political scientist Virgil Măgureanu believes that, however, the “Letter of the Six” represents “a retrograde document”, from a doctrinal and ideological point of view. “In the opinion of the authors of that protest message, according to what my father explained, all the group’s actions were not aimed at abandoning the communist system, which was easy to understand considering that we were dealing with old party cadres attached to the communist ideology, but only at reforming it, simultaneously with the removal of the Ceaușescu clan from power, in the spirit of the reforms initiated by Gorbachev in the USSR,” confesses former diplomat Mircea Răceanu. On March 10, 1989, journalist Misha Glenny from the BBC called Bucharest and had two telephone conversations with Silviu Brucan, the first at 8:47 p.m. and then at 8:52 p.m., interrupted by Securitate specialists. Florian BANU is a senior advisor at the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, graduated from the Faculty of History at the “Dunărea de Jos” University, Galați, 1997; doctor in history (2001). He has published four volumes as an author and another 15 volumes as editor, co-editor and co-author, over 250 studies and articles on topics of contemporary history of Romania in specialized journals, collective volumes, thematic volumes. Participation in over 80 conferences and symposia with a historical profile, organized in the country and abroad. Recent volume: "Prin noi înşine!" A history of the National Liberal Party, co-author, Bucharest, 2019. Constantin CORNEANU is a Romanian historian and specialist in geopolitics. He is a founding member and the President of the Board of Directors of the European Association for Geopolitical and Strategic Studies "Gheorghe I. Brătianu" (AESGS) since September 2009. Prior to the founding of AESGS, he was an advisor at the Romanian Government Office for Managing Relations with the Republic of Moldova (June 1, 2004 – July 31, 2007) and a journalist at the Press Trust of the Ministry of National Defense within the editorial office of TV Pro-Patria (1999 – 2000) and at the Military Observatory (2000 – 2004). He has over two decades of experience in the field of international relations analysis, his area of ​​expertise including foreign affairs and security policies, especially in the ex-Soviet space, as well as the relationship between the Republic of Moldova and Romania. He is a doctor in history since 2003 with a thesis related to the geopolitics of Romania during the Second World War. He graduated from the National Defense College (1998) and the Faculty of History (1994) of the University of Bucharest.