Albania

COMMUNIST ALBANIA

Official Albanian scribes and artists presented the history of communist Albania as the saga of a backward, besieged people marching toward a Stalinist utopia. The actual story of communist Albania is, however, quintessentially dystopian, a bleak inventory of bloody purges and repression, a case study in betrayal and obsessive xenophobia, a cacophony of bitter polemics with real and fantasized enemies that the outside world barely took time to notice.

After five years of party infighting and extermination campaigns against the country's anticommunist opposition, Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu emerged as the dominant figures in Albania. The duumvirate concentrated primarily on securing and maintaining their power base and secondarily on preserving Albania's independence and reshaping the country according to the procrustean precepts of orthodox Stalinism. In pursuit of these goals, the communist elite co-opted or terrorized the entire Albanian population into blind obedience, herding them into obligatory front organizations, bombarding them with propaganda, and disciplining them with a police leviathan untrammeled by anything resembling legal, ethical, religious, or political norms. Hoxha and Shehu dominated Albania and denied the Albanian people the most basic human and civil rights by presenting themselves, as well as the communist party and state security apparatus they controlled, as the vigilant defenders of the country's independence. After Albania's break with Yugoslavia in late 1948, Albania was a client of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet Union's rapprochement with Tito after Stalin's death, Albania turned away from Moscow and found a new benefactor in China. When China's isolation ended in the 1970s, Albania turned away from its giant Asian patron and adopted a strict policy of autarky that brought the country economic ruin. But through it all, Hoxha engineered an elaborate cult of personality (see Glossary) whose spokesmen elevated his persona to the status of a god-man. When he died in 1985, few Albanian eyes were without tears.

Data as of April 1992

Albania - TABLE OF CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION
• Historical Setting
  • THE ANCIENT ILLYRIANS
  • THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS AND THE MIDDLE AGES
  • THE ALBANIAN LANDS UNDER OTTOMAN DOMINATION, 1385-1876
    • The Ottoman Conquest of Albania
    • Albanians under Ottoman Rule
    • Local Albanian Leaders in the Early Nineteenth Century
  • NATIONAL AWAKENING AND THE BIRTH OF ALBANIA, 1876-1918
    • The Rise of Albanian Nationalism
    • The Balkan Wars and Creation of Independent Albania
    • World War I and Its Effects on Albania
  • INTERWAR ALBANIA, 1918-41
    • Albania's Reemergence after World War I
    • Social and Economic Conditions after World War I
    • Government and Politics
    • Italian Penetration
    • Zog's Kingdom
    • Italian Occupation
  • WORLD WAR II AND THE RISE OF COMMUNISM, 1941-44
    • The Communist and Nationalist Resistance
    • The Communist Takeover of Albania
  • COMMUNIST ALBANIA
    • Consolidation of Power and Initial Reforms
    • Albanian-Yugoslav Tensions
    • Deteriorating Relations with the West
    • Albania and the Soviet Union
    • Albania and China
    • The Cultural and Ideological Revolution
    • The Break with China and Self-Reliance