Elena Ceaușescu

Elena Ceaușescu
Deputy Prime Minister of Romania
In office March 1980 - 22 December 1989
President	Nicolae Ceaușescu
Prime Minister	Ilie Verdeţ Constantin Dăscălescu
Personal details
Born	7 January 1916(1916-01-07)
Died	25 December 1989(1989-12-25) (aged 73)
Political party	Romanian Communist Party
Spouse(s)	Nicolae Ceaușescu (m.1947-1989)

Elena Ceaușescu (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈlena t͡ʃe̯auˈʃesku]; January 7, 1916 – December 25, 1989) was the wife of Romania's Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.

Background

She was born Elena Petrescu into a peasant family in Petrești commune, Dâmboviţa County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her family was supported by her father's job as a ploughman. Her records show she left school only with a good mark in needlework in primary school. After primary school, she moved along with her brother to Bucharest, where she worked as a laboratory assistant before getting a job at a textile factory. She joined the Romanian Communist Party in 1937 and met 21-year-old Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1939. Ceaușescu was instantly smitten by her; reportedly he never looked at another woman in a sexual way again. Their relationship was interrupted by Ceaușescu's frequent stints in prison, but they finally married on December 23, 1947.

Career in government

Elena Ceaușescu receiving an honorary doctorate in Manila

After the Communists took power, Ceaușescu worked as a secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was an unimportant figure until her husband became general secretary of the party. Ceaușescu was fluent in French. Starting in July 1972, Elena Ceaușescu was given various offices at senior levels in the Romanian Communist Party. In June 1973 she became a member of the Politburo of the Romanian Communist Party, becoming the second most important and influential person after Ceauşescu himself. She was deeply involved in party administration alongside her husband, and was one of the few spouses of a Communist Party boss to become a power in her own right.

Ceaușescu frequently accompanied her husband on official visits abroad, and it was during the state visit to the People's Republic of China in June 1971, where she noticed how Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing had her own position of real power in the state, that Elena's remarkable rise was inspired. In July 1971 she was elected a member of the Central Commission on Socio-Economic Forecasting, and in July 1972 she became a full member of the Romanian Communist Party Central Committee. She was elected a member of the Executive Committee in June 1973, after being proposed by Emil Bodnăraş. In November 1974, at the 11th party congress, she was made a member of the (renamed) political executive committee and in January 1977 became a member of the highest party body, the Permanent Bureau of the Political Executive Committee. In March 1980, she was made a First Deputy Prime Minister.

Ceaușescu was the object of a personality cult as intense as that of her husband, which exalted her as the "Mother of the Nation." By all accounts, her vanity and desire for honours exceeded that of her husband. As with her husband, Romanian Television was under strict orders to take great care portraying her on screen. For instance, she was never supposed to be shown in profile because of her homely appearance (though she'd been very attractive in her youth) and large nose. Publicly, Ceauşescu said that it was an honor to be referred to as "comrade", but Romanian expatriates in the United States frequently referred to her as "Madame Ceauşescu" with great disdain.

Fall from power

Ceaușescu fled with her husband on December 22, 1989, after the events in Timişoara led to the Romanian Revolution, but she and her husband were captured in the town of Targoviste. At the show trial that took place, she answered only a few questions since her husband took a protective role, asked her to calm down and shook his head each time her mouth opened to reply in anger. On the afternoon of December 25, 1989, (Christmas Day) in Târgovişte they were turned over to a firing squad and executed. She was almost 74 years old.

Ceaușescu was outlived by her almost 100-year old mother, her brother Gheorghe Petrescu (also an important figure in the party) and her three children: Valentin (b. 1948), Zoia (1949–2006) and Nicu (1951–1996), who was also a very important member of the Romanian Communist Party.

Reputation as a chemical researcher

In 1957 she was a research scientist at ICECHIM (National Institute for Chemical Research). In the early 1960s she was reported to be secretary of the party committee of the Bucharest Central Institute of Chemical Researches, and, when her husband Ceauşescu took over the party leadership in March 1965, she was listed as the institute's director. In December of the same year, she was elected a member of the newly established National Council of Scientific Research, and in September 1966 she was awarded the Order of Scientific Merit First Class.

Ceaușescu was given many honorary awards for scientific achievement in the field of polymer chemistry during the period when her husband ruled Romania. However, her educational and scientific achievements are disputed.

Despite leaving grammar school at the age of 14, Ceauşescu graduated from the University of Bucharest with a PhD in polymer chemistry and top in a class of 100 women with the honor of summa cum laude. Her thesis has 162 pages, 32 tables, 40 figures and 440 references and describes the invention of a very valuable artificial material. Critics consider it unlikely that a textile worker would have been able to write a thesis in chemistry. After the Revolution of 1989, several scientists have claimed that Elena had forced them to write papers in her name. Claims have also arisen that the university gave her the honor of the doctorate solely because of her political position.

Most of the respected academic institutions and universities in the West refused to acknowledge her alleged academic merit. She was made a member of the Illinois Academy of Sciences. Elena Ceauşescu later complained that she never heard of Illinois and that the membership was given by the "dirty Jew". President of the Academy of Sciences was Jewish-American chemist Emanuel Merdinger at that time. She allegedly obtained these awards with money, instead of merit.

In March 1974, she was made a member of the Romanian Academy's Section for Chemical Sciences. At the time when she wanted to receive her doctorate from the Bucharest Faculty of Chemistry, she met with strong opposition from respected Romanian chemist Costin D. Nenițescu, the dean of the faculty. She was forced instead to present her thesis to Cristofor Simionescu and Ioan Ursu at the University of Iași, where she met with complete success.^{[citation needed]}

In popular culture

She was sometimes nicknamed "Codoi", referring to her alleged mispronunciation of the name of the chemical compound CO₂ ("Co" being the C for carbon, O for oxygen, and "doi" being Romanian for "two"). She was mocked by many, including an official who called her by this nickname during her show trial. Contributing to the humorous effect, "codoi" is an actual word in Romanian, meaning "big tail"

Publications

• Research work on synthesis and characterization of macromolecular compounds, Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1974
• Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, 1982
• Nouvelles Recherches Dans Le Domaine Des Composes Macromoleculaire, 1984
• Dostizheniia v khimii i tekhnologii polimerov, 1988

See also

• Communist Romania
• Romanian Communist Party

Bibliography

• John Sweeney. The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceauşescu. 1991
• Edward Behr. Kiss The Hand You Cannot Bite, 1991. ISBN 0-67-940128-8

External links

• Ceausescu web resource