Romanian Scientists Rush To Condemn Elena Ceausescu

Abstract

One of the strangest chapters in contemporary science diplomacy involves the celebrated but now apparently fraudulent scientific career of Elena Ceausescu, the wife of Romanian chief of state and Communist Party chairman Nicolae Ceausescu. The deception—credit for published material she never researched and technical degrees granted but never earned—was long-lived, generally known, but unchallenged. Western scientists and their Eastern bloc counterparts, by their silence, maintained her charade in the hope of protecting the careers and the families of Romanian scientists and engineers subject to the regime. The deception was critical to Elena's ego, to the maintenance of her power in the Romanian communist hierarchy, and to Romanian-American relations between 1965 and about 1984. At that time Romania's policy of defiant independence of the Soviet Union was working to the apparent advantage of the western powers. But it turns out, too, that the tilt of Romania toward the West was also a deception. The Ce...