Ion Iliescu

Ion Iliescu married Nina Șerbănescu in 1951. The couple does not have any children.

Ion Iliescu was born on 3 March 1930 in Oltenița, Călărași, Romania, to Alexandru Iliescu. His father was a railroad worker with Communist views who went to the Soviet Union to take part in the Communist Party Congress of Moscow when Ion was a small child. He was arrested upon his return.

He attended the Industrial Polizu High School, Spiru Haret High School and Sfantul Sava High School. Inheriting his father’s passion for communism, he joined the Union of Communist Youth in 1944.

Iliescu studied fluid mechanics at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and was accepted as a foreign student at the Energy Institute of the Moscow University.

He began working as a designer engineer at the Energy Engineering Institute in Bucharest in 1955. He was also active in politics during this period, having joined the Communist Party in 1953. He founded the Union of College Students’ Associations of Romania in 1956.

He was a protégé of the powerful communist politician Nicolae Ceaușescu and greatly benefitted when Ceaușescu was elected the party general secretary in 1965. Iliescu became a member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party the same year.

Over the ensuing years he gained considerable power within the Romanian Communist Party and at one point of time he served as the head of the Central Committee's Department of Propaganda. From 1967-71, he was the Minister for Youth-related Issues.

Iliescu’s rising political stature, however, disturbed Ceaușescu who started feeling threatened. By 1971, Ceaușescu began marginalizing Iliescu who was by now being viewed as his heir apparent.

In 1974, Ceaușescu became the President of Romania. During this time, Iliescu was made the president of the Iași Council. By this time he had fallen out of favor with Ceaușescu who divested Iliescu of all major responsibilities. When Iliescu started opposing the president’s increasingly harsh rule, he was expelled from the Central Committee in 1984.

Ion Iliescu played a major role in the Romanian Revolution which brought an end to 42 years of Communist rule in Romania with the show trial and execution of the last Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. He became the acting president of the nation when a new government was formed after the revolution.