ROMANIA: DEATH OF A DICTATOR : The ‘Mother’ Lived Like a Queen

Elena Ceausescu, the textile worker who rose to virtual second in command of Romania, was praised by her husband’s Communist regime as “the best mother of Romania,” but insiders say she derided her people as “worms.”

During the years of Nicolae Ceausescu’s repressive rule, she also developed a taste for furs and jewelry, and she was honored for scientific expertise that she did not possess. She also had electronic “bugs” planted to spy on her children.

Official biographies shaved two years off her age, to make her one year younger than her husband. She actually was 72, a year older than the deposed dictator.

Bucharest Radio said she and her husband were put on trial secretly and executed Monday for genocide and other crimes against Romania.

Elena Ceausescu was born in Petresti, a village in southern Romania, in 1917. She married Ceausescu when both were teen-age revolutionaries and joined the Communist Party in 1937 in Bucharest, where she worked in a textile factory.

After Ceausescu’s takeover in 1965, she rapidly rose in the party hierarchy. She was named a member of the party executive committee in 1973 and also was a member of the Politburo and first vice prime minister. She had virtual control over party membership.

She once was elected queen of a workers’ parade, and she lived like one in the last two decades.

Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu acted much like a royal family, traveling abroad, conducting well-staged visits to farms and factories and making a regal promenade at state receptions.

Romanian television on Sunday showed footage from one of the Ceausescus’ residences, displaying some of her jewelry and Western currency allegedly prepared in a bag for escape.

One of her many expensive fur coats was found at the Communist Party headquarters Friday and paraded in front of photographers after she and her husband fled the capital by helicopter.

Sources close to her entourage said she was cynical and paid no attention to the real needs of the 23 million Romanians, whom they said she despised.

“The worms never get satisfied, regardless of how much food you give them,” she was once overheard saying, referring to complaints about food shortages that plague Romania.

Elena Ceausescu was said to be a trained chemist and was praised as a “scientist of world fame.” Her works filled Romanian bookstores and were translated into foreign languages. But they were believed to be ghostwritten by other scientists.

During her time as director of the Central Institute of Chemical Research, she took the floor at several national conferences and meetings but spoke only on general matters.

Whenever a specific scientific theme arose, she deferred to a “Comrade Engineer,” who then explained the details.

As chairman of the national council for science and education, she was in charge of all curricula, from elementary schools to higher education.

Gen. Ion Pacepa, chief of Romanian intelligence operations abroad until 1978, when he defected to the United States, said in a book published last year that his duties included collecting classified technological information to be used in the books by Romania’s first lady.