Silviu Brucan, 90; Former Romanian Ambassador to U.S.

Silviu Brucan, 90, who once served as Romania’s ambassador to the United States and went on to oppose dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, died Wednesday of a heart attack at a Bucharest hospital after recent stomach surgery, the Romanian state news agency said.

Brucan ran the Communist daily newspaper Scanteia in 1944 and was named head of the public television station, a post he held in the 1950s and 1960s. He was appointed Romania’s ambassador to Washington in 1955. From 1959 to 1962, he served as his country’s ambassador to the United Nations.

In 1987, in the last years of Ceausescu’s rule, Brucan was placed under house arrest after he criticized the dictator’s regime. Ceausescu was ousted and executed in 1989.

Brucan was born Saul Bruckner in Bucharest on Jan. 18, 1916, and later changed his name. After communism ended, Brucan became one of the country’s most respected political analysts.