Elena Ceaușescu
| Elena Ceaușescu | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Deputy Prime Minister of Romania | |
|
In office 29 March 1980 – 22 December 1989 |
|
| President | Nicolae Ceaușescu |
| Prime Minister |
Ilie Verdeț Constantin Dăscălescu |
| First Lady of Romania | |
|
In office 9 December 1967 – 22 December 1989 |
|
| Succeeded by | Nina Iliescu |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lenuța Petrescu 7 January 1919 Petrești, Dâmbovița, Romania |
| Died | 25 December 1989 (aged 70) Târgoviște, Dâmbovița, Romania |
| Political party | Romanian Communist Party |
| Spouse(s) |
Nicolae Ceaușescu (m.1947–1989) |
| Children |
Valentin Zoia Nicu |
Elena Ceaușescu (Romanian pronunciation: [eˈlena t͡ʃe̯auˈʃesku]; née Lenuța Petrescu; 7 January 1919 – 25 December 1989) was the wife of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Communist leader of the Socialist Republic of Romania. She was also the Deputy Prime Minister of Romania.
She was born Lenuța Petrescu into a peasant family in Petrești commune, Dâmbovița County, in the informal region of Wallachia. Her father worked as a ploughman. Her records show she left school with a good mark only 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 1939 and met 21-year-old Nicolae Ceaușescu. Ceaușescu was instantly attracted to her which, reportedly, made him never look at another woman in a romantic manner. Their relationship was interrupted by Ceaușescu's frequent stints in prison, but they finally married on 23 December 1947.
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. 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 have a high political profile of her own.
Ceaușescu frequently accompanied her husband on official visits abroad. During a state visit to the People's Republic of China in June 1971, she took note of how Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, maintained a position of real power. Most likely inspired by this, she began to engineer her own political rise in Romania. 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. In June 1973, after having been nominated by Emil Bodnăraș, she was elected to the party's Executive Committee. In November 1974, at the 11th Party Congress, she was made a member of the (renamed) political executive committee, and in January 1977, she became a member of the highest party body, the Permanent Bureau of the Political Executive Committee. In March 1975, she was elected to the Grand National Assembly, the country's national legislature, holding the seat for Pitești, Arges County, the most important industrial region of the country, until her death in 1989. In March 1980, she was made a First Deputy Prime Minister, a state title she also held until she was executed in the Romanian Revolution.
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