Let us give thanks in this holiday season for Havel and Walesa and Tokes, for all the men and women on both sides of the Iron Curtain who resisted and kept on resisting the evil empire over a span of 40 years
The Pastor Who Brought Down a Dictator
You’ve probably heard of Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia and Lech Walesa of Poland, both Noble Laureates and heroes of the Cold War who precipitated the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe a quarter of a century ago.
But how many of us know the story of Laszlo Tokes, a Protestant pastor who in December 1989 stood up to the Romanian communist despot Nicolae Ceausescu and sparked a people’s revolution that freed Romania from a tyranny the equal of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin?
In the spring of 1989, while other Soviet satellites were challenging their communist leaders, Romania remained in the iron grip of the totalitarian Ceausescu regime. Few dared to speak out against “President” Ceausescu and his Stalinist secret police, the Securitate.
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The Heritage Foundation is the nation’s most broadly supported public policy research institute, with more than 453,000 individual, foundation and corporate donors. Heritage, founded in February 1973, mission is
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