join the anti-Nazi Alliance (USA, UK, USSR) (an alternative kept by the Antonescu government). In his "secret diary", Coposu explained the role of Iuliu Maniu as the main organizer of the coup d'état against Antonescu. In 1945, after the royal coup against the Antonescu regime, Coposu became deputy secretary of the PNŢ and, after the reintegration of Northern Transylvania, the party's delegate to the leadership of provisional administrative bodies. He was also active in organizing the party as the main opposition to the Communist Party and the Petru Groza cabinet before the 1946 general election. Communist persecution The communist regime established and controlled by the Soviets, arrested him on 14 July 1947, together with all the leadership of the National Peasants' Party, after some of the party leadership had allegedly tried to flee the country in a plane landed at Tămădău (see Tămădău Affair). His mentor, Iuliu Maniu, the leader NPP, the most important political organization in Romania, received a life sentence in a show trial. Maniu died in 1953, in the infamous Sighet Prison, but his death certificate was released only eight years later. Coposu was imprisoned without trial for nine years, as all charges brought against him were dismissed due to lack of evidence. Coposu later attested that his imprisonment, imposed by Soviet officials overseeing the Securitate, was among those causing a stir in the higher echelons of the Communist Party. Belu Zilber, a Communist who was purged together with Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu, later told him that prominent party politician Ana Pauker had unsuccessfully opposed the move in front of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. In 1956, Coposu was sentenced to life imprisonment for "betrayal of the working class" and "crime against social reforms". In April 1964, he was freed after 15 years of detention and 2 years of forced residence in Rubla (Brăila County), having spent, in all, 17 years of incarceration in 17 notorious detention and hard labor facilities associated with the communist regime, including Sighet Prison, Gherla Prison, Jilava, Râmnicu Sărat Prison, Pitești Prison, and the Danube–Black Sea Canal (where he was imprisoned with his friend and collaborator Șerban Ghica). Coposu later testified having been impressed by the deep scars collectivization had left in the country, as well as by the resilience of the Rubla deportees (see Bărăgan deportations) — "They traded in vegetables they had grown themselves while locals could not be convinced that these could actually grow