ABSTRACT
The Romanian Revolution began in Timisoara, sparked by the courage of one man, the Reverend Laszlo Tokes, a pastor of the Reformed Church and a member of the Hungarian ethnic minority. More than four decades of harsh Communist rule in Romania came to an abrupt end on December 22, 1989. On that day, the wave of popular anger that started in mid-December in Timisoara reached its climax in Bucharest and in a matter of hours swept away the Nicolae Ceausescu regime and with it the Romanian Communist Party as a formal organization. The National Salvation Front, or more specifically, its Council, was led by a group of old Communists, including army and Securitate generals who had been instrumental in the anti-Ceausescu coup. The National Peasant Party was led by Corneliu Coposu, an old activist who had spent nearly two decades as a political prisoner after his party had been outlawed by the Communists in 1947.
