claim became well known in Romania. On the eve of the day of the first free post-communist elections (20 May 1990), Brucan argued that the 1989 Revolution was not anticommunist but only against Ceauşescu, not the communism of the 1950s and 1960s. He said that Iliescu made a "monumental" mistake in "conceding to the crowd" and banning the Romanian Communist Party. As a supporter and activist of Soviet autopoiesis, Brucan also had important contributions to transatlantic geopolitics and the emergence of Eurasianism as a geopolitical concept. Later life From the late 1990s, Brucan hosted a news commentary program on the ProTV network (Profeții despre trecut - "Foretellings on the Past"), initially together with Lucian Mândruță. 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 (PNȚCD) and a deputy for Iași County. Speaking on his show, Brucan had called Lupu "astute to the square" and "trained Securitate informant" and indicated that "any good-faithed National Peasantist who still views himself as a party colleague with Vasile Lupu is self-excluding himself from the PNȚCD". In 2002, courts decided in Lupu's favour, and Brucan was found guilty of calumny. Brucan was required to pay Lupu the sum of 30 million lei as compensation. At the age of 90, Brucan underwent a seven-hour stomach operation on 4 September 2006. Despite an initial good recovery from surgery, his condition suddenly worsened on 13 September, and he died the following day of cardiac arrest. Following his wishes, he was cremated at the Vitan-Bârzești Crematorium. Legacy 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. (The claim that FSN was leftist is dubious at best.)Tismăneanu pointed out Brucan's post-1990 opposition to Mircea Răceanu, who had been imprisoned for espionage under Ceauşescu, and who was later rehabilitated by Romanian courts. He has also contended that memoirs authored by Brucan showed little remorse, if not at all, for his early involvement in support of political repression. According to Victor Neumann, Brucan's role in the Bucharest episode of the 1989 Revolution had apparently helped indirectly the original and virtually unrelated revolt in