Ion Iliescu is a Romanian politician who served as the President of Romania from 1989 until 1996, and from 2000 until 2004. Over the course of his extensive political career he also served as a senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD) from 1996 to 2000 and from 2004 until his retirement in 2008. The son of a man who harbored communist views, Iliescu’s interest in politics took root when he was quite young. He studied at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute before moving to Russia as a foreign student at the Energy Institute of the Moscow University. He joined the Communist Party in 1953 and has been playing a vital role in Romania’s politics since then. By 1965, he had become a member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. Once a protégé of the powerful politician Nicolae Ceaușescu, he was gradually marginalized by his former mentor who had started viewing the rising stature of Iliescu as a threat. He opposed President Ceaușescu's harsh rule and played a leading role in the Romanian Revolution following which Ceaușescu was overthrown and executed. Ion Iliescu then became the country’s first freely elected head of state and assumed the office of the president.