HISTORICAL SETTING
Historical works and official documents published in Tirana as late as
1970 stressed two major themes: the importance of patriotism and
nationalism and the achievements, real or fancied, of the Communist
regime since it assumed control of the country in November 1944. The
appeal to nationalism always strikes a responsive chord among the
Albanians not only because their history is replete with humiliations
and injustices heaped upon them by long domination of foreign powers but
also, and especially, because of the territorial aspirations and claims
of its neighbors--Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece. The political scene in
Albania since it formally won an independent existence from Turkey in
1912 has indeed been dominated by attempts of one, or a combination, of
its neighbors to dismember it.
The boundaries of Albania in 1970 were essentially the same as those
delineated by representatives of the Great Powers after Albania had
declared its independence. Ethnic problems raised by the drawing of the
boundaries have never been solved to the satisfaction of the countries
involved. The Albanians hold that in 1913 about 40 percent of their
territory, with a population at that time of about 600,000 ethnic
Albanians, was unjustly assigned to Serbia. The area has been a
continuing source of friction between Albania and Yugoslavia.
A source of tension between Albania and Greece has been the status of
Albania's two southernmost districts. Known to the Greeks as Northern
Epirus, this region was awarded to Albania by the boundary delineations
of 1913, but the Greeks have never relinquished their claims to the
area.
Italy, located only about forty-five miles across the narrow Strait of
Otranto, has attempted on several occasions to impose its hegemony over
Albania. The extreme influence exercised on Albanian affairs by Italy
between 1925 and 1939 that culminated in a military invasion in April of
1939 has been a source of great resentment by the Albanian people.
The Communist Party of Albania assumed control of the country in 1944.
The fact that the Communist regime installed itself in the capital city
of Tirana on November 28, Albania's traditional Independence Day, was
an indication that originally it did not intend to cut off all ties with
the past, although its declared intention was to create a new social
order. A year later, however, on November 29, the regime proclaimed a
new national holiday, which it called Liberation Day. Until about 1960
the traditional Independence Day was mentioned only in passing, whereas
Liberation Day was celebrated with considerable publicity.
A basic change of attitude, however, occurred when the regime broke with
the Soviet Union in the 1960-61 period. The ruling elite, apparently
feeling insecure both for their personal safety and for the future of
the country, launched an intensive campaign to win popular support by
appealing to the people's nationalist and patriotic sentiments. The
country's major patriots who were responsible for the national awakening
in the second half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth
centuries had been forgotten after the Communist seizure of power. In
1961 and 1962, however, books and pamphlets began to be published
praising nearly all those, irrespective of their social backgrounds, who
had played a role in the national awakening and in the declaration of
the country's independence in 1912.
Intensive preparations were made in 1962 to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of the country's independence, and on November 28, 1962, all
the top leaders of the party and government went to Vlore, where
independence had been declared, to stage one of the biggest patriotic
celebrations in the country's modern history. Among the many books and
documents published on this occasion to glorify the country's past was
one entitled _Rilindja Kombetare Shqipetare_ (Albanian National
Awakening), which included photographs of most patriots who had taken
part in winning the country's independence, even those of the landed
aristocracy (_beys_--see Glossary), whom the regime had previously
branded as the "blood-suckers" of the peasants.
This appeal to the past was also accentuated in 1968 in connection with
the 500th anniversary of the death of the country's national hero,
Skanderbeg. The regime sent a number of scholars and historians to
search for historical documents in Vienna and Rome in preparation for
the celebration.
With the exception of these efforts to resurrect the past after a hiatus
of fifteen years, the primary function of the country's historians, all
under the control of the Party, is to glorify the country's achievements
in the period under communism. The Party is given credit for all that
has been done in the economic development of the country, in
improvements in the people's health, and in expansion of educational and
cultural facilities, all of which have been considerable. In 1970 Enver
Hoxha, first secretary of the Party, like Stalin in his day and Mao
Tse-tung in 1970, was daily quoted and glorified.
ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES
The modern Albanians call their country Shqiperia and themselves
Shqipetare. In antiquity the Albanians were known as Illyrians, and in
the Middle Ages they came to be called Arbereshe or Arbeneshe, and their
country Arberia or Arbenia. The present European forms, Albania and
Albanians, are derived from the names Arbanoi and Albanoi or Arbaniti,
which appeared in the eleventh century.
In antiquity the Albanians formed part of the Thraco-Illyrian and Epirot
tribes that inhabited the whole of the peninsula between the Danube
River and the Aegean Sea. Until 168 B.C. the northern and central part
of present-day Albania comprised parts of the Kingdom of Illyria, whose
capital was Shkoder. The Illyrian Kingdom was conquered by the Romans in
168-167 B.C., and thereafter it was a Roman colony until A.D. 395, when
the Roman Empire was split into East and West, Albania becoming part of
the Byzantine Empire.
Under the Roman Empire, Albania served as a key recruiting area for the
Roman legions and a main outlet to the East. The present port of Durres
(the ancient Durrachium) became the western terminum of Via Egnatia, an
actual extension of Via Appia, by which the Roman legions marched to the
East. It was during the Roman rule that Christianity was introduced into
Albania.
From the fifth century to the advent of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans
in the fourteenth century, invasions from the north and east, especially
by the Huns, the Bulgarians, and the Slavs, thinned the indigenous
Illyrian population and drove it along the mountainous Adriatic coastal
regions. During the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Albania became a thoroughfare for the crusading armies, which used the
port of Durres as a bridgehead. By this time the Venetian Republic had
obtained commercial privileges in Albanian towns and, after the Fourth
Crusade (1204), it received nominal control over Albania and Epirus and
took actual possession of Durres and the surrounding areas. In the
middle of the thirteenth century Albania fell under the domination of
the kings of Naples, and in 1272 armies of Charles I of Anjou crossed
the Adriatic and occupied Durres. Thereupon, Charles I issued a decree
calling himself Rex Albaniae and creating Regnum Albaniae (the Kingdom
of Albania), which lasted for nearly a century.
OTTOMAN TURK RULE
In the period after the defeat of the Serbs by the Ottoman Turks in 1389
in the battle of Kosovo, most of Albania was divided into a number of
principalities under the control of native tribal chieftains, most of
whom were subsequently forced into submission by the invading Turks.
Some of these chieftains, however, were allowed their independence under
Turkish suzerainty. One of the most noted of these was John Kastrioti of
Kruje, a region northeast of Tirana, whose four sons were taken hostage
by the sultan to be trained in the Ottoman service. The youngest of
these, Gjergj, was destined to win fame throughout Europe and to be
immortalized as the national hero of his country. Gjergj (b. 1403) soon
won the sultan's favor, distinguished himself in the Turkish army,
converted to Islam, and was bestowed the title of Skander Bey (Lord
Alexander), which, in Albanian, became Skanderbeg or Skenderbey.
In 1443 Hungarian King Hunyadi routed at Nish the sultan's armies, in
which Skanderbeg held command; Skanderbeg fled to his native land and
seized from the Turks his father's fortress at Kruje. His defection and
reconversion to Christianity and the creation in 1444 of the League of
Albanian Princes, with himself as its head, enraged the Ottomans, who
began a series of intense campaigns that lasted until Skanderbeg's
natural death in 1468. In his wars against the Turks, Skanderbeg was
aided by the kings of Naples and the popes, one of whom, Pope Nicholas
V, named him Champion of Christendom.
Skanderbeg's death did not end Albania's resistance to the Turks;
however, they gradually extended their conquests in Albania and in time
defeated both the local chieftains and the Venetians, who controlled
some of the coastal towns. The Turkish occupation of the country
resulted in a great exodus of Albanians to southern Italy and Sicily,
where they preserved their language, customs, and Eastern Orthodox
religion.
One of the most significant consequences of Ottoman rule of Albania was
the conversion to Islam of over two-thirds of the population. As the
political and economic basis of the Ottoman Empire was not nationality
but religion, this conversion created a new group of Muslim Albanian
bureaucrats, who not only ruled Albanian provinces for the sultans but
also served in important posts as _pashas_ (governors) in many parts of
the empire. A number of them became _viziers_ (prime ministers), and
one, Mehmet Ali Pasha, at the beginning of the nineteenth century
founded an Egyptian dynasty that lasted until the 1950s.
Some of the Albanian beys and pashas, especially in the lowlands, became
almost independent rulers of their principalities. One of these, Ali
Pasha Tepelena, known in history as the Lion of Yannina, whose
principality at the beginning of the nineteenth century consisted of the
whole area from the Gulf of Arta to Montenegro. By 1803 he had assumed
absolute power and negotiated directly with Napoleon and the rulers of
Great Britain and Russia. The sultan, however, becoming alarmed at the
damage Ali Pasha was doing to the unity of the empire, sent his armies
to surround him in Yannina, where he was captured and decapitated in
1822.
Under the Turks, Albania remained in complete stagnation and, when the
Turks were expelled from the Balkans in 1912, they left it in about the
same condition as they had found it. The Albanian highlanders,
especially in the north, were never fully subjected, and their tribal
organizations were left intact. Turkish suzerainty affected them only to
the extent that it isolated them from the world. Thus, they preserved
their medieval laws, traditions, and customs. As a result, Western
civilization and development did not begin to penetrate Albania in any
meaningful way until it became independent in 1912.
NATIONAL AWAKENING AND INDEPENDENCE
The Albanian national awakening made rapid strides after the Treaty of
San Stefano in 1877, imposed on Turkey by the Russians, gave the Balkan
Slavic nations large parts of Albania. The Western powers, refusing to
accept Russia's diktat on Turkey, met in Berlin the following year to
consider revision of the Treaty of San Stefano. Albanian leaders in the
meantime convened at Prizren and founded the League for the Defense of
the Rights of the Albanian Nation. Although the league was unable to
bring sufficient pressure on the Congress of Berlin to save Albania from
serious dismemberment, it set in motion a political movement that had
tremendous influence on Albanian nationalist activity for decades to
come.
Most of the league leaders held high positions in, or were influential
members of, the ruling Turkish elite and were fully aware of the shaky
position of the Ottoman Empire; they therefore demanded from the Turks
administrative and cultural autonomy for all Albanian lands united in a
principality. The Turkish government refused and in 1881 forced the
dissolution of the league. Meanwhile, Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungary
began to take an active interest in Albania. Russia aimed at blocking
expansion of Austrian influence in the Balkans and supported the
territorial demands of Serbia and Montenegro. Italy and
Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, concerned over Russia's influence
extending to the Adriatic, attempted to influence developments in
Albania.
The advent of the Young Turks regime (1908), in whose establishment
Albanian officials in the service of the empire played a major role,
encouraged the Albanians to found cultural and political clubs for the
propagation of Albanian culture and the defense of Albanian rights. In
1908 a congress of intellectuals from all parts of Albania and the
Albanian colonies abroad, especially the Italo-Albanian colonies in
Italy, convened in Monastir (Bitolj) to decide on an Albanian alphabet;
it adopted the Latin one as most suitable for the country. This decision
marked a great advance toward Albanian unification and eventual
statehood.
In the summer and fall of 1912, while Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and
Greece, prodded by Russia, were waging war against Turkey, the Albanians
staged a series of revolts and began to agitate for the creation of an
autonomous and neutral Albania. Accordingly, a group of Albanian
patriots, led by Ismail Qemal bey Vlora, a member of the Turkish
Parliament, proclaimed Albania's independence at Vlore on November 28,
1912, and organized an Albanian provisional government. Supported by
Austria and Italy, Albania's independence was recognized on December 12,
1912, by the London Conference of Ambassadors, but its boundaries were
to be determined later. In March 1913 agreement was reached on the
northern frontiers, assigning Shkoder to Albania but giving Kosovo and
Metohija (Kosmet), inhabited then chiefly by Albanians, to Serbia. This
frontier demarcation was very similar to the frontiers between
Yugoslavia and Albania as they existed in 1970.
The boundaries in the south were more difficult to delineate because
Greece laid claim to most of southern Albania, which the Greeks call
Northern Epirus. The Conference of Ambassadors appointed a special
commission to draw the demarcation line on ethnographic bases and in
December 1913 drafted the Protocol of Florence, which assigned the
region to Albania. The 1913 boundaries in the south, like those in the
north, were almost the same as those that existed between Greece and
Albania in 1970. The Albania that emerged from the Conference of
Ambassadors was a truncated one; as many Albanians were left out of the
new state as were included in it.
The Conference of Ambassadors also drafted a constitution for the new
state, which was proclaimed as an autonomous principality, sovereign,
and under the guarantees of the Great Powers; created an International
Control Commission to control the country's administration and budget;
and selected as ruler the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied. Prince Wied
arrived in March 1914 but had to flee the country six months later
because of the outbreak of World War I and the difficulties caused by
the unruly feudal beys. As a consequence, Albania's independence came to
an end, and for the next four years the country served as a battleground
for the warring powers.
CREATION OF MODERN ALBANIA
At the end of World War I Albania was occupied by the Allied armies,
mostly Italian and French. The Secret Treaty of London, concluded in
1915 and published by the Russian Bolsheviks after the October 1917
Revolution, provided for the partition of nearly all Albania among
Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. Another accord, known as the
Tittoni-Venizelos Agreement, concluded between Italy and Greece in 1919,
also called for the dismemberment of Albania. At the 1919-20 Paris Peace
Conference Greece laid claim to southern Albania; Serbia and Montenegro,
to the northern part; and Italy, to the port of Vlore and surrounding
areas. But President Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination
and his personal insistence on the restoration of an independent Albania
saved the country from partition. In the summer of 1920 an Albanian
partisan army drove the Italians from Vlore, and the Italian government
recognized Albania's independence.
In the meantime, in January 1920 a congress of representatives met in
Lushnje, in central Albania, and created a government and a Council of
Regency composed of representatives of the four religious denominations
prevailing in Albania: the two Muslim sects (Sunni and Bektashi), Roman
Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox (see ch. 5, Social System).
From 1920 to 1924 there was political freedom in the country along with
extreme political strife. A group of statesmen and politicians, mostly
from the old Turkish bureaucracy, attempted to lay the foundation of a
modern state, but there was a bitter struggle between the old
conservative landlords and Western educated or inspired liberals. The
landowners, led by Ahmet Zogu, advocated the continuance of feudal
tenure and opposed social and economic reforms, especially agrarian
reforms. The liberals, led by Bishop Fan S. Noli, a Harvard University
graduate who had founded the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in
Boston in 1908 and had returned to Albania in 1920, favored the
establishment of a Western-type democracy. The country was torn by
political struggles and rapid changes of government revealed
considerable political instability.
In June 1924 the liberals staged a successful coup against the
conservative landlords, forcing their leader, Ahmet Zogu, to flee to
Yugoslavia, and formed a new government under Bishop Noli. But Noli was
too radical to command the support of the disparate coalition that had
ousted Zogu. Internally he proposed radical agrarian reforms, the
purging and reduction of the bureaucracy, and the establishment of a
truly democratic regime. In foreign affairs he extended recognition to
the Soviet Union, a move that alienated some of his supporters at home
and alarmed some neighboring states. As a consequence, Zogu, having
secured foreign support, led an army from Yugoslavia and in December
1924 entered the capital city of Tirana and became ruler of the country.
Bishop Noli and his closest supporters fled abroad; some eventually went
to Moscow, and others fell under Communist influence in Western
capitals.
Zogu's rule in the 1925-39 period, first as President Zogu and after
September I, 1928, as Zog I, king of the Albanians, brought political
stability and developed a national political consciousness that had been
unprecedented in Albanian history. To secure his position both
internally and externally, he concluded in 1926 and 1927 bilateral
treaties with Italy, providing for mutual support in maintaining the
territorial status quo and establishing a defensive alliance between the
two countries. These two treaties, however, assured Italian penetration
of Albania, particularly in the military and economic spheres.
King Zog ruled as a moderate dictator, his monarchy being a combination
of despotism and reform. He prohibited political parties but was lenient
to his opponents unless they actually threatened to overthrow his rule,
as happened in 1932, 1935, and 1937. But even during these open revolts,
he showed a good deal of leniency and executed only a few ringleaders.
He effected some substantial reforms both in the administration and in
society, particularly outlawing the traditional vendetta and carrying of
arms, of which the Albanians were very fond. The most significant
contribution of Zog's fourteen-year rule, the longest since the time of
Skanderbeg, was the development of a truly national consciousness and an
identity of the people with the state, although not necessarily with the
monarchy, and the gradual breakdown of the traditional tribal and clan
systems.
In April 1938 Zog married Geraldine Apponyi, a Hungarian countess with
an American mother. Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano was the best
man. On Ciano's return to Italy from the wedding, he proposed to his
father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy, the
annexation of Albania. The following year, on April 7, 1939, Ciano's
suggestion was consummated. Italian forces invaded Albania on that day,
forcing Zog to flee the country, never to return. In the next few months
rapid steps were taken to unite Albania with Italy under the crown of
King Victor Emanuel III and to impose a regime similar to that of
Fascist Italy. Albania as an independent state disappeared.
COMMUNIST SEIZURE AND CONSOLIDATION OF POWER
Resistance to the Italian invaders began soon after the invasion, but
the few insignificant Communist groups that existed at that time did not
join the fray until after Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, attacked the
Soviet Union in June 1941. These Communist groups, acting generally
independently of each other, were composed chiefly of young
intellectuals who had revolted against the country's medieval society.
Educated mostly in the West, they felt that their country's economic
development and their desire to use their Western education for their
own and their country's advancement were frustrated by Zog's concept of
personal rule, by the hostility of traditional chieftains and _beys_,
and by the lack of opportunities in the country's underdeveloped society
and economy.
The leaders of these disparate groups convened clandestinely in Tirana
on November 8, 1941, and under the guidance of two emissaries from the
Yugoslav Communist Party, Dusan Mugosha and Miladin Popovic, founded the
Albanian Communist Party--known since 1948 as the Albanian Workers'
Party. Enver Hoxha, a young schoolteacher who had studied in France and
Belgium, was elected provisional and, subsequently, permanent secretary
general. In 1970 he still held the same position, under the title of
first secretary. From the outset the strategy of the Party was to
conceal its true Marxist program and orientation and to stress
nationalism and patriotism. To this end, the front technique, through
the National Liberation Movement, was used.
The National Liberation Movement was created by the Conference of Peze
that was convened, also clandestinely, on September 16, 1942, for the
purpose of creating a militant organization to coordinate and intensify
the activities of a number of guerrilla bands then active against the
Italian occupiers. It was sponsored by the Party and attended by the
Party leaders, who at that time paraded as patriots and vehemently
denied in public that they were Communists, and by a number of
nationalist resistance chieftains. The National Liberation Movement was
dominated from the beginning by the Communists, as were its military
formations, known as partisans.
The movement was further strengthened in July 1943 at the Conference of
Labinot, when the General Staff of the Army of National Liberation of
Albania was created, with Enver Hoxha as chief commissar. Thereafter,
under the guise of the National Liberation Movement, the Communist
leaders devoted all their energies to obtaining complete control of the
partisan formations and to preparing the ground for a seizure of power
as soon as the Axis powers should be defeated. Their prime objectives in
the 1943-44 years were to immobilize the nationalist elements who were
still in the movement by surrounding them with loyal commissars and, at
the same time, to try to annihilate other nationalist groups that had
refused from the outset to collaborate with the movement. There was a
full-scale civil war in the country from September 1943 to November
1944.
The civil war was fought between the partisan formations and the two
principal anti-Communist organizations--Balli Kombetar (National Front)
and the Legality Movement. The Balli Kombetar emerged as an organization
soon after the National Liberation Movement was founded; it was led by
Midhat Frasheri, a veteran patriot who had formed a clandestine
resistance movement during the early days of Italian occupation. The
Balli Kombetar extolled the principles of freedom and social justice and
championed the objective of an ethnic Albania; that is, the retention of
the Yugoslav provinces of Kosovo and Metohija, which the Italians had
annexed to Albania in 1941. For some time it made efforts to collaborate
with the National Liberation Movement, but to no avail.
In July and August 1943 representatives of the two movements finally met
at Mukaj, a village near Tirana, to try to work out an agreement of
collaboration against the Axis forces. The chief obstacle to an accord
was the disposition of Kosmet. The Balli Kombetar refused to consider
collaboration unless the movement joined in the demand that Kosmet
remain a part of Albania after the war. Finally an agreement was reached
for collaboration, with the provision that the question of Kosmet be
resolved after the war.
The emissaries of the Yugoslav Communist Party interpreted the agreement
as a victory for the nationalists and demanded that the Albanian
Communist Party not only denounce the agreement but also launch a
full-scale attack on the Balli Kombetar. The Albanian Communists bowed
to this demand and, in September 1943, launched the attack against Balli
Kombetar and subsequently against the Legality Movement. This movement
was founded in November 1943 by Abas Kupi, who until August 1943 had
been a member of the Central Council of the National Liberation Movement
but broke away from it after the Mukaj agreement was denounced.
In May 1944 the National Liberation Front, as the movement was by then
called, sponsored the Congress of Permet for the purpose of creating the
necessary machinery to seize power. The Congress appointed Hoxha
commander in chief of the Army of National Liberation and elected the
Albanian Anti-Fascist Liberation Council, which in turn created the
Albanian Anti-Fascist Committee, under the presidency of Hoxha, as the
executive branch of the council. The Congress of Berat, convened by the
front in October of the same year, converted the committee into a
coalition provisional "democratic" government, which in the following
month seized control of the whole country and on November 28, Albania's
traditional Independence Day, installed itself in Tirana.
In many respects the 1943-44 civil war in Albania followed a course
similar to that which took place between the partisan forces (Communist)
of Josip Broz (Tito) and General Mihailovich's Chetniks (loyalist) in
Yugoslavia. The Communist operations and final seizure of power in
Yugoslavia played a major role in the Communist takeover in Albania.
Albania was the only European Communist country that was freed from the
Axis invaders without the actual presence of Soviet forces and without
direct military assistance from the Soviet Union. Political direction
was supplied by the emissaries of the Yugoslav Communist Party attached
permanently to the Albanian Communist Party after its founding in 1941.
The Anglo-American command in Italy supplied most of the war material to
the Albanian partisan forces.
Albania's future was never specifically discussed by the Big
Three--Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States--at either
the Teheran or the Yalta conferences. Nor did Albania figure in the
discussions in Moscow in October 1944 between Churchill and Stalin, when
they informally agreed to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of
influence, at least for the duration of the war. Accordingly, when the
last German troops were driven out of Albania, there was a kind of
political vacuum that the Communists, with superior political
organizations and substantial armed partisan groups, were able to fill.
In August 1945 the first congress of the National Liberation Front was
held, and the name of the organization was changed to the Democratic
Front in an effort to make it more palatable to the public. Contending
that the Democratic Front represented the majority of the population
because all political opinions and groups except Fascists were included
in it, the Communist rulers allowed only Democratic Front Candidates for
the first postwar national elections held in December 1945.
The Constituent Assembly elected at this polling was originally
composed of both party members and some nationalist elements. The latter
apparently continued to feel that cooperation with the Communists was
possible but, within a year after the elections, they were summarily
purged from the Assembly, and subsequently a number of them were tried
and executed on charges of being "enemies of the people." All national
and local elections since 1945 have been held under the aegis of the
Democratic Front.
Even after the "liberation," the Party continued its conspiratorial
nature and did not come into the open until the First Party Congress was
held in November 1948. Before that time all its meetings were held in
closest secrecy, and no statements, communiques, or resolutions were
published in its name. The Party thus continued to use the front
technique effectively even after it became the undisputed ruler of the
country.
THE COMMUNIST PERIOD
The Constituent Assembly, elected on December 2, 1945, proclaimed on
January 11, 1946, the People's Republic of Albania; and on March 14 it
approved the first Albanian Constitution, based largely on the Yugoslav
Communist Constitution. In this first Constitution no mention of any
kind was made of the role played by the Party or any other political
organizations. The Constitution was, however, amended after the break
with Yugoslavia in 1948, and revisions of the Constitution published
since 1951 have cited in Article 12 the Albanian Workers' Party as the
"vanguard organization of the working class."
The Communist regime quickly consolidated its power through a ruthless
application of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The first measures
were both political and economic. In the political field a large number
of nationalist leaders who had chosen to remain in the country when the
Communists seized power rather than flee to the West, as many of them
did, were arrested, tried as "war criminals" or "enemies of the people,"
and were either executed or given long-term sentences at hard labor. All
families considered potentially dangerous to the new regime, especially
families of the landed aristocracy and the tribal chieftains, were
herded into concentration or labor camps, in which most of them perished
from exposure, malnutrition, and lack of health facilities. Some of
these camps were still in existence in 1970.
In the economic field a special war-profits tax was levied, which
amounted to a confiscation of the wealth and private property of the
well-to-do classes. A large number of those who could not pay the tax,
because it was higher than their cash and property assets, were sent to
labor camps. All industrial plants and mines were nationalized without
compensation, and a radical agrarian reform law was passed providing for
the seizure of land belonging to the _beys_ and other large landowners
and its distribution to the landless peasants.
The 1944-48 period was characterized by an increase of power and
influence of the Yugoslavs over the Party and the government. This in
turn engendered resentment even among some top Party Leaders, who were
kept in check or purged by Koci Xoxe, minister of interior and head of
the secret police. Backed by the Yugoslavs, he had become the most
powerful man in the Party and government but was tried in the spring of
1949 as a Titoist and executed. By the beginning of 1948 preparations
had been completed to merge Albania with Yugoslavia, but the plan was
not consummated because of the Stalin-Tito conflict, which resulted in
Tito's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform--see
Glossary) on June 28. 1948.
The Stalin-Tito rupture offered Enver Hoxha and his closest colleagues
in the Albanian Party Political Bureau (Politburo) the opportunity to
rid themselves of both their internal enemies, such as Koci Xoxe, and of
Yugoslav domination. A few days after the Cominform resolution against
Tito, the Albanian rulers expelled all Yugoslav experts and advisers and
denounced most of the political, military, and economic agreements.
Albania immediately established close relations with Moscow, although
Stalin never signed a mutual assistance pact with Tirana, as he had done
with all the other European Communist countries. The Party leadership
was now concentrated in the hands of Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu. Shehu
had been dismissed in January 1948 as Chief of Staff of the Albanian
People's Army, because he had opposed the integration of the Yugoslav
and Albanian armed forces and the stationing of two Yugoslav divisions
on Albanian soil. He was rehabilitated immediately after the break with
Yugoslavia.
The period of direct Soviet influence in Albania began in September
1948, when the first joint economic agreement was signed. After the
establishment of the Council for Economic Mutual Assistance (CEMA) in
February 1949, of which Albania became a member, the other Soviet bloc
countries began to extend economic aid. As a result, an intensified
program of economic development began. From 1951 to 1955 industrial and
agricultural production increased rapidly, and the basis was laid for
transforming Albania from a backward agricultural economy to a more
balanced agricultural-industrial one.
The de-Stalinization campaign in the Soviet Union had serious
repercussions in the internal situation in Albania. Although Hoxha
vetoed any relaxation of police controls and stamped out any dissenting
voice within the Party after Stalin's death, by 1956 there was a
significant minority in the Party elite that hoped to profit by
de-Stalinization. The opposition reached its peak at a Party conference
in Tirana in April 1956, held in the aftermath of the Soviet Twentieth
Party Congress. Some of the delegates, including Central Committee
members, criticized openly the conditions in the Party and requested
that the topics of discussion be concerned with such topics as the cult
of personality, the rehabilitation of Koci Xoxe and other top Party
leaders purged since 1948, Party democracy, and the people's standard of
living.
Hoxha silenced the dissident elements, however, and had most of them
expelled from the Party or arrested. Some were subsequently executed.
Among those executed were Lira Gega, formerly a member of the Politburo,
and her husband, Dalli Ndreu, a general in the Albanian People's Army.
Soviet Premier Khrushchev charged at the Soviet Twenty-second Congress
that Gega was pregnant when she was executed.
Workers' riots in Poland and full-scale revolt in Hungary in late 1956,
followed by general uneasiness throughout Communist East Europe, gave
Hoxha additional reasons to increase his control over the Party
apparatus and to sidestep all pressures from Khrushchev for
reconciliation with Tito. Indeed, in an article published in the
November 8, 1956, issue of the Soviet newspaper _Pravda_ (Truth), Hoxha
accused Yugoslavia of being at the root of the Hungarian Revolution and
implied that the relaxation of internal tensions in some of the
Soviet-bloc countries had endangered the existing regimes. In a speech
to the Party's Central Committee in February 1957 he came openly to the
defense of Stalin and lashed out against "those who attempt to discount
the entire positive revolutionary side of Stalin."
Hoxha did, however, pay lip service to the collective leadership
principle enunciated in Moscow after Stalin's death. In July 1954 he
relinquished the premiership to Mehmet Shehu, keeping for himself the
more important post of first secretary of the Party. But aside from this
he made no changes in his Stalinist method of rule. He demonstrated this
after the Party conference in Tirana in April 1956, when he suppressed
ruthlessly all those demanding the elimination of personal rule.
Hoxha showed the same determination in the summer of 1961, when
Khrushchev apparently enlisted a number of Albanian leaders, including
Teme Sejko, a rear admiral and commander of the navy who had been
trained in the Soviet Union to overthrow the Hoxha-Shehu duumvirate and
replace it with a pro-Moscow group. Sejko and his colleagues were
arrested, and he and two others were later executed.
In September of the same year Hoxha arrested a number of other top Party
leaders who were suspected of pro-Moscow sympathies. Among these were
Liri Belishova, a member of the Politburo, and Koco Tashko, head of the
Party's Auditing Commission; these two were also cited by Khrushchev as
examples of the alleged reign of terror that prevailed in Albania.
After the break with Moscow, Albania remained nominally a member of both
the CEMA and the Warsaw Pact. It did not, however, attend any meetings,
and it withdrew officially from the Warsaw Pact after the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Unlike Albania's relations with the Communist world, which have been
varied and fluctuating, those with the Western countries have been, with
minor exceptions, static and rigid, particularly toward the United
States. Only two major Western powers, France and Italy, initially
recognized the Communist regime and established diplomatic relations
with it. Proposals made in November 1945 by the American and British
governments to normalize relations with the Tirana regime were never
consummated, chiefly because of the regime's consistent inimical
attitude toward them.
There have been three distinct periods in the history of the country
under Communist rule. The first, from 1944 to 1948, was characterized by
Yugoslav domination. The country's rulers, however, had no difficulty
extricating themselves from this domination once Stalin broke with Tito.
In the second period, 1948 to 1961, Soviet predominance was evident
everywhere in the country. All the armed and security forces wore
Soviet-type uniforms. The regime copied much of the Soviet governmental
system. The same kind of bureaucracy and the same secret police,
functioning with the same supervision as in the Stalinist era in the
Soviet Union, prevailed. In major branches of the government, the
military, and the security forces, there were Soviet advisers and
experts. The economic and cultural fields were also patterned after
those of the Soviet Union. But despite this widespread penetration, the
Soviets were in the last analysis unable to impose their will on the
Albanian rulers, and in 1961 they withdrew completely from that country.
The third period, begun in 1961, saw the penetration of Communist
Chinese influence in many aspects of political, military, and economic
life. Like the Yugoslavs and Soviets before them, the Chinese introduced
their advisers and experts in various governmental organs and economic
enterprises, and probably in the military and security forces as well,
but they were there at the invitation of the Albanian regime (see ch. 6,
Government Structure and Political System).