Cornea illegally sent the first letter to Radio Free Europe in 1982. It was the first in a series of texts and protests against the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. She saw the crisis not just an economic one, but also a spiritual crisis.She said that the Romanian people "a people fed solely on slogans", who value more material values rather than spiritual values, which she defined as the ones which "generated intelligence, ethics, culture, liberty and responsibility".