Nexhmije Hoxha, who joined with her husband, Enver Hoxha, the Communist dictator of Albania, in overseeing an oppressive regime that isolated the country after World War II, executed dissenters and drove the economy into the ground, died on Feb. 26 at her home near the capital, Tirana. She was 99.

Her death was announced by her son Ilir Hoxha and confirmed by Agence France-Presse and other news outlets.

In the decades after the war, Nexhmije Hoxha (pronounced nedge-MEE-yah HOH-jah) was a top Communist official in her own right in her small mountainous Balkan nation, Europe’s most secretive and poorest country. When her husband was incapacitated by ill health, she became more influential, controlling Albania’s secret police and orchestrating purges, arrests and show trials.

Of the many spouses of dictators, the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare said, she was “the most evil, the most perverse.” The Guardian called her “Europe’s last unrepentant Stalinist.” Her foes settled for “Lady Macbeth.”