professional newspaper. However, Brucan recounts that as party newspapers and independent newspapers were forcibly closed, one by one, by the new communist authorities, the Scînteia journalists became office clerks working 9 to 5 and writing ideological editorials for the indoctrination of the workers, who were "full of hope for a glorious future". As editor of Scînteia, he supported the prison sentences of Iuliu Maniu, Gheorghe I. Brătianu, and Corneliu Coposu (see Tămădău Affair). He also supported the repression of anti-communist journalists, such as Radu Gyr and Pamfil Șeicaru, asking for the death penalty for the latter. During this period, Brucan's wife, the Stalinist Alexandra Sidorovici (with whom he had three children: daughter Anca, and sons Dinu and Vlad), became a public prosecutor of the Romanian People's Tribunals, which allowed her to ask for death sentences for many war criminals; the sister of Teofil Sidorovici, she was a member of the nomenklatura of the Communist government. For a short while (1948–1949), Brucan was Professor of Journalism at the University of Bucharest, although he never graduated from college. A close collaborator of Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Brucan, along with Sorin Toma and Mihail Roller, was among the prominent party ideologues of the group that was co-ordinated by Leonte Răutu after the late 1940s and into the 1950s. Ambassador to the United States A loyal Soviet agent, Brucan was ambassador of Romania to the United States in 1955. He used the experience as the basis of a book that he co-authored with Sidorovici (a virulent attack on American institutions). He was the Permanent Representative of Romania to the United Nations between 1959 and 1962 as well as the head of Televiziunea Română. Conflict with Ceaușescu According to his declarations after the fall of Ceaușescu, Brucan became an opponent of the new leadership around Ceaușescu progressively from the 1960s. Initially, upon news that Ceaușescu had been appointed general secretary, he reportedly considered renouncing his political career to focus on an office at the university, but he was persuaded by Emil Bodnăraș to remain an activist. He was a professor of Scientific Socialism at the Bucharest Faculty of Medicine. According to Brucan himself, he faced a period of financial insecurity and began work as a translator to cover his expenses. He also sent several works, subject to censorship at home, to be published in the United States. They showed his move towards reformism that he