for two high-level activists to be sent as party representatives in Moscow; as the first picks, Luca and Ștrul Zighelboim attempted to make their way across the Soviet–Romanian border in Bukovina. They were apprehended by the Romanian Border Police and jailed at Cernăuți. These events prompted Foriș and Teohari Georgescu to take over the mission, by crossing into Soviet territory during May. This was just ahead of a Soviet ultimatum that resulted in Romania's cession of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. From 22 May the interim leadership of the PCR most likely went to another duo, formed by Chișinevschi and Gavrilă Birtaș. According to Apostol, it was still Foriș who dictated the party line, especially by advising all PCR men who wished to serve the cause to simply emigrate into the Soviet Union—resulting in another mass desertion from party ranks. Having secured support from the Comintern, Foriș was appointed general secretary in lieu of the ousted Stefanov. Its approval came despite negative referrals from Georgescu and Kohn. The former saw Foriș as irritable and negligent, while the latter described Foriș's decision-making process as "sluggish". This verdict is also backed by Sorin Toma, who first met Foriș in the home of his father, the poet Alexandru Toma. He recalls that the agitprop leader was unbearably silent and stressed out, and would only address his peers after first smoking a cigarette or two. At the time a PCR cadre, Grigore Răceanu sees Foriș as "intelligent just as he was sly", but also prone to "aggressive behavior" whenever he was contradicted. Rădulescu found him to be "always serious, a man of few words." Foriș merely "seemed sluggish", but was in fact a "true intellectual, with a deep and thorough manner of thinking, and soul-wise a sensitive man, with his warm amiable smile as a window into his soul." A 1949 report by communist sympathizer Gheorghe Micle has it that, while abroad in July 1940, Foriș transmitted a Soviet offer for a military protectorate over Romania. As Micle puts it, Birtaș and Iosif Rangheț backed the effort, which required Micle to contact the PNȚ for a "National Unity" government (and a platform of "national anti-fascist resistance"). The offer was rejected by Maniu, who noted that the Soviet Union was itself "imperialistic", with the Bessarabian ultimatum being proof of this; his own priority was in "reunifying the Nation". According to Răceanu, Foriș himself approved of the