CHAPTER 5

SOCIAL SYSTEM

The Communist regime was still striving in 1970 to alter the traditional

tribal and semifeudal social patterns of the country and to restructure

the whole system to fit Marxist-Leninist principles of a socialist

society. Until after World War II the strongest loyalties of the people

had been toward family and larger kin groups, which have been the most

important units in Albanian society. Kin groups had been held together

by strong spirit and loyalties, as well as by economic factors. The head

of the family, usually the eldest male member, historically exercised

patriarchal authority, with general responsibility for the welfare and

safety of the members. In this patriarchal society, respect for parental

authority was dominant.

Local autonomy and suspicion of central authority had for centuries been

a way of life for Albanian society. This way of life persisted until the

twentieth century, despite the foreign cultural and political influences

to which the society was subjected during the long domination by the

Ottoman Turks.

Of particular social importance during this domination was the

conversion of the majority of the people to the Islamic faith. Even

before this conversion, however, the people had been segmented by the

schism between the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches. The people in

the north were usually Roman Catholic, and those in the south, Eastern

Orthodox. Tolerance, however, has been a marked feature of the people

and, accordingly, religious divisiveness has had no great effect on the

tribal and semifeudal structure of the society. Indeed, the three

religious faiths in the country--Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Eastern

Orthodox--have represented traditional loyalties rather than living

creeds for the Albanians.

Until the Communist takeover in 1944, there had been two broad social

classes in the country, an upper and a lower class. The upper class was

composed of the landowning _beys_ (see Glossary); some _bajraktars_

(relatively well-to-do tribal chieftains); and a smaller number of rich

Christian farmers, merchants, small industrialists, some intellectuals,

and the higher clergy. The lower class, amounting to about 90 percent of

the population, was composed of a small group of workers, the peasant

masses, livestock breeders, and the lower clergy.

The Communist regime's political, social, and economic measures aimed at

redirecting the traditional social patterns have resulted in more social

transformations than at any time since the Turkish invasions in the

fifteenth century. Collectivization of agriculture, industrialization

and the consequent migration from rural to industrial areas, and a

widespread educational system have done much to transform the tribal

character of the society.

Although in 1970 the patriarchal system was still a way of life in the

countryside, especially in the highlands, the authority of the master of

the house had been considerably reduced. Marriage customs in particular

had changed. As a result, the position of the close-knit family had been

altered. Radical changes had occurred also in the life of women. Many of

them have had to work outside the home to compensate for the generally

low wages of their husbands. Day-care nurseries had been set up to make

it easier for mothers to work and also to give the regime an early

opportunity to indoctrinate the children.

Despite such transformation, however, the family was still the most

significant unit in the society. The allegiance given to the family,

coupled with the individualism characteristic of the people and the

traditions of political autonomy in local affairs, had made it difficult

for the regime to fully implement its policies for restructuring the

society in general and the family in particular.

Reflecting the influence of the standard Marxist-Leninist dogma, the

regime officially recognized only two classes--one composed of workers

and considered the leading class and the other consisting of the working

peasants, a third group usually being referred to as the people's

intelligentsia. Actually, a distinct new upper class, constituting less

than 10 percent of the total population, emerged under Communist rule to

replace the upper ruling and middle classes that existed before the

Communist takeover. This new upper class was composed of the top ruling

elite that controlled all facets of society and its supporting echelons,

made up of officials of the Party and state apparatus; mass

organizations; and professional and technical people, such as doctors,

lawyers, engineers, and managers of state enterprises.

Membership in the Party or sympathy toward communism was the chain that

linked this upper class together. All its segments had benefited from

the Communist system, having enjoyed considerable advantages over the

rest of the population; they formed practically the only social group

with a vested interest in the perpetuation of the system. The rest of

the population--peasants, workers, and remnants of the upper and middle

classes--were only cogs in the Communist apparatus, all used for the

purpose of implementing the Party policies for the building of a

Communist society.

Under Communist rule the stabilization of the class differentiations had

lessened social mobility both upward and downward. In 1970 it was

difficult to alter one's social status except through a long process of

training and education. Educational opportunities, however, had been

greatly expanded, although they were still limited in the rural areas.

The best opportunities were offered to the children of the Party elite

and Party faithful. But because of the great demand for qualified

personnel to manage the growing socialist sectors of the economy, some

children of worker and peasant backgrounds had opportunities to continue

their education to the highest levels and to fully develop their

abilities and capacities. The whole educational system, however, was

geared to the demands of the Party, and its first objective was the

inculcation of the youth with Communist ideology.

Perhaps the most radical change in the whole social system had been

effected in the area of religion. By 1970 the country's three principal

religious faiths had been eliminated as organizational bodies. All

churches and mosques had been closed; the clergy was not permitted to

function; and the country had been declared by the official media to be

the first atheist nation in the world. Top Party and government

officials admitted, however, that the closing of the houses of worship

and the action against the clergy had not eliminated the religious

feelings and beliefs of the people.

TRADITIONAL SOCIAL PATTERNS AND VALUES

The social structure of the country was until the 1930s basically tribal

in the north and semifeudal in the central and southern regions. The

highlanders in the north retained intact their medieval tribal pattern

of life until well into the twentieth century and were considered the

last peoples in Europe to preserve tribal autonomy. In the central and

southern regions, however, increasing contact with the outside world and

invasions and occupations by foreign armies had reduced the tribes to

tenure peasants.

Traditionally, there have been two major groupings or sub-cultures in

the country: the Gegs in the north, probably numbering slightly over

half the total population, and the Tosks in the south. Although the

terms _Geg_ and _Tosk_ have disappeared from the vocabulary because they

connote division rather than Communist unity, Tirana officials and the

press have often implied in recent years that the old differences and

contrasts between the two groups still existed. These differences were

marked not only in the physical appearance of the people and in dialect

but also in the way of life in general.

The Gegs, partly Roman Catholic but mostly Muslim, lived until after

World War II in a mountain society characterized by blood feuds and

fierce clan and tribal loyalties. The Tosks, on the other hand, were

considered more civilized because of centuries of Greek and other

foreign influences. Coming under the grip of the Muslim landed

aristocracy, the Tosks lost the spirit of individuality and independence

enjoyed for centuries by the Gegs, especially in the highlands.

Until the end of World War II society in the north and, to a much lesser

extent, in the south was organized in terms of kinship and descent. The

basic unit of society was the extended family, usually composed of a

couple, their married sons, the wives and children of married sons, and

any unmarried daughters. The extended family formed a single residential

and economic entity held together by common ownership of means of

production and common interest in defense of the group. Such families

often included scores of persons, and as late as 1944 some contained as

many as sixty to seventy persons living in a cluster of huts surrounding

the father's house.

Extended families were grouped into clans, the chiefs of which

preserved, until the end of World War II, patriarchal powers over the

members of the entire group. The clan chief arranged marriages, assigned

tasks, settled disputes, and decided what courses should be followed in

such basic issues as blood feuds and politics. Descent was traced from a

common ancestor through the male line, and brides were usually chosen

from outside the clan. Clans in turn were grouped into tribes.

In the Tosk regions of the south the extended family was also the most

important social unit, although patriarchal authority had been diluted

by the feudal conditions imposed by the _beys_. The clan and tribal

systems had disappeared at a much earlier period in the south and were

retained into the mid-twentieth century only among the northern

highlanders.

Leadership of society in the lowlands was concentrated in the hands of

semifeudal tribal _beys_ and _pashas_ (see Glossary). The general Tirana

region, for example, was controlled by the Zogolli, Toptani, and Vrioni

families, all being Muslim _pashas_ or _beys_ and all owning extensive

agricultural estates. Ahmet Zogu, subsequently King Zog I, was from the

Zogolli family. Originally the _pasha_ class ranked slightly higher than

that of the _bey_, but differences gradually diminished and all members

were called _beys_. In the northern highlands the _bajraktars_ were the

counterparts of the _beys_ and enjoyed similar hereditary rights to

titles and positions.

The Geg clans put great importance on marriage traditions. Marriage

customs and prohibitions designed to perpetuate these traditions were

still practiced at the end of World War II. According to the custom a

young man from a given clan always married a young woman from outside

the clan but from within the same tribe. In some tribes marriages

between Christians and Muslims were tolerated even before the advent of

the Communist regime, but as a rule such marriages were frowned upon.

A variety of offenses against women served as an igniting spark for

blood feuds. Many girls were engaged to marry in their infancy by their

parents. If later the girl did not wish to marry the man whom the

parents had chosen for her and married another, in all likelihood a

blood feud would ensue. Among the Tosks, religious beliefs and customs,

rather than clan and tribal traditions, were more important in

regulating marriages.

The family had for centuries presented the basic, most important unit in

the social structure of the country. One aspect of this was the deep

devotion of a person to his parents and family. This feeling took a

striking form because the family was a social unit occupying to a great

extent the place of the state. Children were brought up to respect their

elders and, above all, their father, whose word was law in the confines

of his family.

Upon the death of the father the authority of the family devolved upon

the oldest male of the family. The females of the household, with the

exception of the mother, occupied an inferior position. The unwritten

law of family life was based on the assumption that a daughter was part

of the family until she married. When the time came for sons to set up

their own households, all parental property was equally divided among

them; the females did not share in this division.

Geographical conditions affected Tosk social organization. The region's

accessibility led to its coming much more firmly under Turkish rule.

This rule in turn resulted in the breakup of the large, independent

family-type units and their replacement by large estates owned by

powerful Muslim landowners, each with his own retinues, fortresses, and

large numbers of tenant peasants to work the lands. Their allegiance to

the sultans in the period before 1912 was secured by the granting of

administrative positions either at home or elsewhere in the Ottoman

Empire.

The large estates were usually confined to the plains, but the process

of their consolidation was a continuing one. Landowning _beys_ would get

peasants into their debt and thus establish themselves as semifeudal

patrons of formerly independent villagers. In this way a large Muslim

aristocracy developed in the south, whose life style was in marked

contrast both to that of the chieftains of the highlands in the north

and to that of the peasantry, the majority of whom assumed the

characteristics of an oppressed social class. As late as the 1930s

two-thirds of the rich land in central and southern parts of the country

belonged to the large landowners.

There was a sharp contrast between the tribal society of the Geg

highlanders and the passive, oppressed Tosk peasantry, living mostly on

the large estates of the _beys_ and often represented in the political

field by the _beys_ themselves. This semifeudal society in the south

survived well into the twentieth century because of the lack of a strong

middle class. After independence in 1912, however, a small Tosk middle

class began to develop, which in the 1920-24 period, having common

interests with the more enlightened _beys_, played a major role in

attempts to create a modern society. But the advent of Zogu in 1925 as a

strong ruler put an end to Tosk influence and, from that time until the

Italian invasion in 1939, Zog cemented his power in the tribal north by

governing through a number of strong tribal and clan chiefs. To secure

the loyalty of these chiefs, he placed them on the government payroll

and sent several of them back to their tribes with the military rank of

colonel.

In the 1939-44 period general anarchy prevailed throughout the country,

and in the north the tribal chieftains assumed their old independent

positions. The three major resistance movements that developed during

World War II represented the principal social classes then in existence

in the country. The Communist-dominated National Liberation Movement was

composed chiefly of low-level Tosk intellectuals and bureaucrats, some

labor leaders, and a few chieftains from the Geg areas, such as Haxhi

Leshi, who was head of state in 1970. The movement derived its main

support from the small working class and the poor peasants.

The nationalist Balli Kombetar (National Front) was composed of

nationalist _beys_ and Orthodox intellectuals and derived its support

from well-to-do peasants, merchants, and businessmen. The Legality

Movement, a pro-Zog organization, was headed by a chieftain from Mat,

and its supporters were confined to that region. Farther north the

resistance groups were led by the local chieftains, such as Muharem

Bajraktari and Gani bey Kryeziu. The collaborators with the Italian

authorities were composed of reactionary _beys_, Geg chieftains (both

Muslim and Catholic), and a small group of intellectuals that had

embraced the fascist ideology. This group had little or no popular

support.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION UNDER COMMUNIST RULE

The general class structure of the country at the advent of the

Communist regime in 1944 consisted of the peasants and workers making up

the lower class and a small upper class. The peasants represented over

80 percent of the total population, most of whom lived at or below

subsistence level. Chiefly because of the old grievances against the

landowning _beys_ and the promises made by the National Liberation

Movement (which presented itself as a purely patriotic, democratic

movement for agrarian reforms), a large number of peasants, especially

the tenant and landless ones, sided with the movement (see ch. 1,

General Character of the Society).

Nonagricultural workers numbered about 30,000 persons, most of whom

worked in mines and in the small handicraft industries. The movement

found strong support from this group also. The upper class comprised

professional people and intellectuals; medium and small merchants;

moneylenders; and well-to-do artisans, whose capital was invested mostly

in trade, commerce, and the Italian industrial concessions. The

industrialists also belonged to this class; they owned very small

industries and workshops. Both the _beys_ and the tribal chiefs of the

north had been somewhat reduced in importance politically and

economically during Zog's rule, but it was chiefly from these two groups

that Zog created the ruling elite that helped him to control the country

until the Italian invasion in 1939.

The clergy of the three religious denominations did not form a distinct

social group. The higher clergy was intellectual and upper class in

structure; it supported the ruling elite but did not mix in politics

after Bishop Fan Noli, leader of a short-lived reformist government, was

driven out of the country in 1924. The income from the fairly extensive

church estates and the state subsidies provided a good, but not

luxurious, living for the higher clergy. The rank-and-file clergy,

however, were derived from peasant origins, and most of their parishes

were as impoverished as the peasant households they served.

The events immediately preceding and following the Communist seizure of

power forebode the doom not only of the _beys_ and tribal chiefs but

also of most of the upper class and intellectuals, who had refused to

collaborate with the National Liberation Movement. In the summer and

fall of 1944, while civil war was raging between the Communist-controlled

partisan formations and anti-Communist bands, nearly all the influential

_beys_ and _bajraktars_ either fell in battle or fled the country; those

who remained were quickly rounded up by the Communist security forces

and subsequently tried as "enemies of the people" (see ch. 2, Historical

Setting).

The whole leadership of the two nationalist organizations, the Balli

Kombetar and the Legality Movement, fled to Italy. Influential patriots

and intellectuals who had remained neutral during the so-called War of

National Liberation but who were considered potentially dangerous to the

Communist regime were apprehended and tried en masse in the spring of

1945. Some were executed; others were sent to labor camps, where most of

them died from malnutrition and lack of medical care.

A new Communist social order was legally instituted in the country with

the adoption of the first Communist Constitution in March 1946, which

created a "state of workers and laboring peasants." The various

constitutional articles dealing with the new social order abolished all

ranks and privileges that had derived from reasons of origin (such as

the tribal chiefs and the _beys_), position, wealth, or cultural

standing. All citizens were considered equal regardless of nationality,

race, or religion.

Marriage and family were brought under the strict control of the state,

which determined by law the conditions of marriage and the family.

Marriages could be considered legal only when contracted before

competent state organs, and only state courts had jurisdiction on all

matters connected with marriage. Included in the 1946 Constitution also

was the Marxist tenet "from each according to his ability and to each

according to his work." Subsequent revisions to the Constitution gave

legal sanction to the existing situation that the Party and its members

were the leading, or vanguard, group in the country.

_E Drejta Kushtetuese e Republikes Popullore te Shqiperise_ (The

Constitutional Right in the People's Republic of Albania), published in

1963 by the Faculty of Jurisprudence of the State University of Tirana,

stated that the War of National Liberation was actually class warfare, a

civil war whose purpose was as much national as it was social

liberation--that is, the establishment of the "people's power" and the

"dictatorship of the proletariat."

Communist spokesmen listed three principal classes prevailing in the

early years of the regime: the working class, the laboring peasants,

and, in their terms, the exploiting class, that is, the landowners in

the agricultural economy and the bourgeoisie in trade. The exploiting

class was liquidated through a rapid revolutionary process in the early

stages of the regime. The middle and high bourgeoisie was destroyed as a

result of the nationalization of industry, transport, mines, and banks

and the establishment of a state monopoly on foreign commerce and state

control over internal trade. The feudal landlords disappeared with the

application of the agrarian reforms in the 1945-47 period. These steps

were followed by a program of rapid industrialization, with the

consequent creation of a strong working class, and the collectivization

of agriculture, supposedly resulting in the formation of a homogeneous

peasant class.

After the destruction of the old class structure, the Communist regime

claimed that only two classes existed in the country, the workers and

the working peasants. A somewhat different social composition of the

population, however, has been given by the government's statistical

yearbooks, based on the last official census, taken in 1960. Under the

title "Social Composition of the Population," for instance, the 1965

statistical yearbook listed, in order, the following groups; workers,

employees (civil servants), collective and private farmers (officially

called villagers), collective and individual artisans, collective and

private traders, free professions, clergymen, and unemployed and unknown

(see table 4).

In the 1967-70 period several of these groups disappeared. The

individual farmers were all collectivized; the artisan collectives were

converted to state industrial enterprises; the private traders, except

the peasant open markets, were reduced to a minimum, and members of the

clergy were sent to work either in industrial plants or agricultural

collectives.

The number of families almost doubled in the 1945-60 period. In the

cities they grew from 48,800 to 95,500 and in the countryside, from

148,000 to 184,305. The greatest rate of increase, almost 8 percent,

occurred during the 1950-55 period in the urban sector; this was

attributed primarily to the creation of an industrial base.

The expansion of the existing cities, especially the capital city of

Tirana, caused by the establishment of a number of industrial projects,

drew people from the rural regions into the urban centers. This new

migration was reinforced by the relocation of entire families. In

addition, new family units were formed by the younger migrants once they

settled in the newly developing industrial centers. During the decade

of the 1950s the trend was toward larger families.

_Table 4. Social Composition of the Population of Albania_*

_(according to the 1960 official census)_

Average

Number of Number of number per

Social Groups families persons Males Females family

Workers 79,804 433,040 237,307 195,733 5.9

Employees (civil

servants) 36,891 182,913 98,279 84,634 4.3

Collective farmers 105,778 670,422 331,269 339,153 6.8

Private farmers 44,419 275,169 136,683 138,486 6.4

Collective artisans 5,255 35,056 17,304 17,752 5.3

Individual artisans 1,846 8,950 4,683 4,267 5.4

Collective traders 431 2,328 1,216 1,112 5.0

Private traders 751 3,474 1,880 1,594 5.0

Free professions 166 889 498 391 4.1

Clergymen 831 2,785 1,668 1,117 n.a.

Unemployed and

unknown 3,633 11,289 5,507 6,782 3.0

Total 279,805 1,626,315 836,294 791,021 5.8

n.a.--not available.

* According to 1965 data, the family of seven or eight members was then

typical in the villages for the agricultural collectives that were

researched and, in the peasant families as a whole in 1965, the average

family had 6.2 persons.

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh._, Tirana, 1968,

pp. 74-77; and _Ekonomia Popullore_, Tirana, November to December 1965.

Aside from the workers and peasants, the only group to which the Tirana

authorities have continued to give special attention has been the

so-called intelligentsia. Usually termed a layer or stratum of the new

social order, the intelligentsia was considered, in 1970 to be a special

social group because of the country's needs for professional, technical,

and cultural manpower. To justify this special attention, the

ideologists have often quoted Lenin to the effect that "the

intelligentsia will remain a special stratum until the Communist society

reaches its highest development."

In the development of the social structure under the Communist regime,

basic transformations have occurred in the social composition of the

intelligentsia. This transformation, during the 1944-48 period, involved

not only the purging of a number of Western-educated intellectuals whom

the regime considered potentially dangerous but also some top Communist

intellectuals who were suspected of having anti-Yugoslav or pro-Western

feelings. The remaining old intellectuals were reeducated and reoriented

and were utilized for the preparation of new personnel for the

bureaucracy and industry. Finally, a new intelligentsia was created,

thoroughly imbued with the Communist ideology and recruited generally

from among the children of the Party leaders, workers, and peasants.

The Communist regime created another social group at the bottom rung of

the ladder. This group was composed largely of elements of the upper

classes in existence before 1944. The tribulations of this class had by

1970 reduced it to a small minority, some members of which were still

interned in forced labor camps. It was actually a class of outcasts,

discriminated against politically, socially, and economically.

Most of the members of this group were used as so-called volunteer

laborers on construction projects and in other menial tasks, and their

children did not enjoy the same rights to higher education and other

opportunities open to the other classes. Discriminatory measures against

this class continued to be taken in the late 1960s; in 1968, for

instance, the government passed a law prohibiting them from receiving

money remittances or food and clothing packages from their relatives and

friends abroad.

The Communist assertion of the existence of only two social classes did

not correspond to the real class structure that prevailed in the country

in 1970. In fact, there existed different classes and gradations of rank

and privilege, beginning with an upper class, composed of the Party

elite, leaders of the state and mass organizations, and the leading

members of the armed and security forces. The top Party elite itself was

composed of two distinct social groupings, the higher group consisting

of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of eleven regular and five candidate

members and the chiefs of the Directorates of the Central Committee the

lower group being made up of the rank-and-file members of the Central

Committee.

Family connections played a key role in the composition of the Politburo

in 1970. The top three families were those of First Party Secretary

Enver Hoxha and his wife Nexhmije, who headed the Directorate of

Education and Culture in the Central Committee; Prime Minister Mehmet

Shehu and his wife, Fiqrete, who headed the top Party school; and Party

Secretary Hysni Kapo and his wife, Vito, who headed the politically and

ideologically important women's organization. General Kadri

Hasbiu--minister of interior, head of the security forces, and a

Politburo candidate member--was a brother-in-law of Mehmet Shehu.

Similar family relationships existed between the other Politburo

members. About half of the sixty-one members of the Central Committee

were also related.

Just below the Politburo and the Central Committee were the vast Party

and government bureaucracy, professional people and intellectuals, and

managers of state industrial and agricultural enterprises. There were

some basic social differences between the top Party elite and the lower

Party functionaries and state officials in terms of privileges,

influence, authority, and responsibility. This group of lower Party and

state officials was bound together by the economic privileges and

prestige that went with their positions and membership in, or sympathy

for, the Party; they all benefited from the regime and enjoyed

educational and economic advantages denied the rest of the population.

Below this group were the rank-and-file Party members, whose leadership

role was constitutionally guaranteed. Aside from the prestige enjoyed as

Party members, however, their privileges and economic benefits did not

differ much from the next class in Communist structure of Albanian

society, namely the workers.

Constituting about 15 percent of the total population, the working

class, styled by the regime as the leading class, was created mostly

after the Communist seizure of power and was composed almost wholly of

peasant stock. This group, probably more so than the peasant masses, has

been under constant pressure to work harder, to produce more, and to

work longer, often even after their normal schedules were completed.

Although the regular work schedule was eight hours, workers were called

upon to perform volunteer labor and to overfulfill norms. There was very

little chance for rest and recreation.

Before 1967 the workers could take advantage of religious holidays,

which provided some time for recreation, but since then all religious

holidays have been banned. The only legal holidays were New Year's Day;

Republic Day, on January 11; May Day; Army Day, on July 10; and

Independence and Liberation Days, on November 28 and 29, respectively.

There were, however, a few local socialist holidays connected with the

liberation of the areas by the partisan formations in 1944. The workers

also received two-week paid vacations annually.

The largest class, that of the peasants, represented about two-thirds of

the total population and, according to Communist dogma, was allied with

the working class and led by it. The regime's policy of complete

agricultural collectivization has been distressing for the peasant

class. A lover of his land, irrespective of its size, and of his

independence, the peasant was deprived of his farmland, except for a

tiny plot, and herded into a collective. His income in the collective

was only on the subsistence level. Collective peasants were called upon

to perform 300 to 350 workdays a year.

A constant complaint of the regime has been that the peasants have not

been "freed from the psychology of the small owner, the concept of

private property." As of 1970 there were actually no social differences

between the workers and peasants because nearly all the workers were of

peasant stock and still had close ties with relatives in their native

villages, and indeed some workers continued to keep their families in

the villages.

Soon after the adoption of the Constitution in 1946, a number of laws

were adopted regulating marriage and divorce. The law on marriage,

adopted in 1948, provided that marriages had to be contracted before an

official of the local People's Council, and strong penalties were

prescribed for any clergyman performing a religious ceremony before a

civil ceremony had taken place. The legal age for contracting marriage

was set at eighteen for both sexes, but persons as young as sixteen

years of age could enter into marriage with the permission of the

people's court. In such cases the minors did not need parental consent,

and the law considered them "emancipated."

Marriage was based on the full equality of rights of both spouses. Thus

the concept of the head of the family, recognized by pre-Communist civil

law and so important for Albanian family life, was eliminated. Each of

the spouses, according to the 1948 law, had the right to choose his or

her own occupation, profession, and residence. Marriage with foreigners

was prohibited unless entered into by permission of the government.

The laws on divorce were designed to facilitate and speed up divorce

proceedings. The separation of spouses was made a ground for divorce

under the law, and in such cases a court could grant a divorce without

considering related facts or the causes of the separation. The basic

divorce law, which was originally passed in 1948 and, after some

modifications, was still in effect in 1970, provided that each spouse

may ask for divorce on grounds on incompatibility of character,

continued misunderstandings, irreconcilable hostility, or for any other

reason that disrupted marital relations to the point where a common

marital life had become impossible. Certain crimes committed by the

spouse, especially political crimes, the so-called crimes against the

state, and crimes involving moral turpitude, were also made causes for

divorce.

In the 1950-64 period the total number of marriages averaged about

12,000 annually, except in 1961, when 18,725 marriages were registered;

for the whole fourteen-year period marriages averaged about 7.8 per

1,000 population annually. During the same period there were about 1,000

divorces a year in the whole country; this represented about 0.2

percent of the total married population.

The problems still facing the Communist regime in its efforts to change

the traditional character of society, especially in the countryside,

were highlighted in a strong editorial in the February 8, 1970, issue of

_Zeri i Popullit_ (The Voice of the People), the Party's official daily.

According to the article, the most dangerous antisocial phenomenon in

the social life of the country was patriarchalism. This phenomenon was

particularly strong in the mountainous north where it was firmly

entrenched and involved people from rank-and-file villagers to Party

members.

The basic difficulty derived from the fact that the local Communist

leaders entertained patriarchal notions about the Party; they considered

the Party organization as one in which they found a reincarnation of the

clan. There was a tendency therefore for the Communists to admit to the

Party organization people from their own _bajrak_, or clan, in order to

have a dominant position in, and exercise command over, such socialist

organizations as agricultural collectives. In a Party organization the

head of one _bajrak_ was put in command so that he could rule over the

other, just as if he were the head of the clan. As in the old clan

society, quarrels often occurred in basic Party Organizations when one

_bajraktar_ attempted to wrest control of the organization from another.

Entrance into the Party was considered by the patriarchal-minded

highlanders as penetration into places where they could enjoy privileges

and prestige. A similar situation prevailed in the agricultural

collectives, in which the presidents of the collectives, imbued with the

traditional idea of chieftainship, behaved toward the property of the

collectives as if it were their own. The problems of the collectives

were not submitted to either the basic Party organizations or to the

general assembly of the collective. According to official criticism,

everything was settled in the "clan style, in the spirit of family

interest, of the clan, of the entity, precisely because they formed a

family within which defense and support of their interests, right or

wrong, had become the rule."

Enver Hoxha stated in a speech in 1968 that the position of the

secretary of the Party organization or of an agricultural collective was

considered in many areas as inheritable, just as the chieftainship in

the tribal society has been inherited. The difficulties faced by the

regime's attempts to eradicate the persistent patriarchal notions were

succinctly phrased by Hoxha in his address to the Democratic Front

Congress in September 1967. Declaring that the social problems in the

country were complex in the towns and more so in the countryside, he

lamented the fact that the rural areas:

have their own written and especially unwritten laws, which

are often expressed in various regressive and harmful

customs, in norms that are alien to our Communist morals.

These are very dangerous and obstinate; they insistently

resist the new and are liquidated with difficulty. These

customs and norms have their own economic, ideological,

religious, and ethical basis; they have their own class

roots from capitalism to feudalism, indeed from the _bajrak_

and the tribe.

In an obvious effort to root out some of the old prevailing customs and

traditions, the Party inaugurated in 1967 a movement aimed at

revolutionizing the family and, in Party jargon, liberating it from the

remnants of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. The targets have

been directed toward the youth, both boys and girls. In resolutions

adopted by the Party's Central Committee it was charged that in some

families, because of the conservative and patriarchal mentality of the

parents, the children were still not allowed to participate in parental

conversations, especially the girls, on the pretext that they were too

young and immature.

Discussions on morals, such as relations between boys and girls, love,

and the creation of a socialist family, were particularly limited. It

was the parents' view that they should not discuss such things with

their children since this would undermine the traditional respect and

authority of the parents. As stated in the January 30, 1970, issue of

_Zeri i Popullit_, the need to strengthen the struggle against alien

concepts that still plagued families became clearer when one considered

some negative concepts that were evident in young people. Families of

intellectuals were particularly singled out for criticism because,

according to the Party journal, they manifested liberal attitudes in

their attempts to satisfy every petty bourgeois craving and desire of

their children; they instilled in them their own intellectual tendencies

and fed and dressed them beyond their means.

Evidence of the Party's failure to detach the people completely from

their traditional habits and customs was forcefully presented by the

Party in a book published in 1968 under the title _Party Basic

Organizations for Further Revolutionizing the Life of the Country_. It

was freely admitted that much remained to be done in the struggle to

emancipate the women and to draw boys and girls from the tutelage of

their parents.

When the wife of a Party member decided to join the Party, for example,

her husband addressed a note to the secretary of the basic Party

organization saying that should the secretary enroll his wife in the

Party, he would be destroying a family because he could not possibly

live with his wife on an equal basis. Similarly, when a woman in a

village was proposed as a member of the council of the agricultural

collective, her brother-in-law objected strenuously, saying that her

candidacy should be rejected since it was advanced without obtaining his

permission as the head of the family and that in any case the "men of

that family were not yet dead."

In a village in Kruje the first woman to become a Party candidate was

asked to leave the Party because she did not belong to the same clan to

which the Party secretary belonged. In another case, when a candidate

was proposed for Party membership, someone reportedly stated that "we

must enlist one from our clan also" in order to maintain the clan

equilibrium in the Party.

The problem of social and family relations was still a major concern for

the regime at the end of 1969. For example, in a major speech on family

and social relations in November 1969, Hysni Kapo, the third-ranking man

in the Party hierarchy, blamed the class enemy for the slow progress the

Party had registered in creating a new social structure. The class

enemy, Kapo admitted, was found everywhere, in and outside the Party,

and it was striving hard to obstruct the path of socializing the family

and emancipating the women.

Kapo bemoaned the fact that the men of the socialist society had not

shaken off the vestiges of the past and that there were yet a large

number of people who, with their behavior and actions at work, in

society, and at home, were in contradiction to the requirements of the

personality of the new man in the socialist society. Villages,

agricultural collectives, artisan and trade cooperatives, and work

centers daily faced such social problems as betrothals and marriages

that did not follow guidelines set by the Party, conservative attitudes

toward women and youth, and widespread tendencies toward clannishness.

According to Kapo, there were a large number of Communists who made

little effort to implement the Party social line because the customs

inherited from the old society still existed in the minds and hearts of

the people and because the Party had been unable to divest people of all

that was "hostile and reactionary and clothe them with the Party

ideology." Kapo considered the most disturbing feature of this state of

affairs to be the religious and patriarchal aspects that prevented the

youth from creating a new socialist society and that continued to exist

even among Communist cadres.

Western correspondents reporting from Tirana, in commenting on Kapo's

speech, stated that what actually disturbed the Party most was the

persistent opposition of the parents to new social standards set by the

Party to regulate and control family life in general and the life of the

youth in particular. Standards for dating, mixed Muslim-Christian

marriages, engagement of boys and girls within socially accepted classes

(the aim being to isolate the children of the former upper classes), and

working and living together in various so-called volunteer construction

projects were objectionable to parents.

EDUCATION

Pre-Communist Era

As late as the 1940s over 80 percent of the people were illiterate. The

principal reason for this was that schools in the native language were

practically nonexistent in the country before it became an independent

state in 1912. Until about the middle of the nineteenth century the

Ottoman rulers prohibited the use of the Albanian language in schools.

The Turkish language was used in the few schools that existed, mainly in

cities and large towns, for the Muslim population. The schools for

Orthodox Christian children were under the supervision of the Istanbul

Ecumenical Patriarchate. The teachers for these schools were usually

recruited from the Orthodox clergy, and the language of instruction, as

well as that used in textbooks, was Greek. The first known school to use

the native tongue in modern history was in a Franciscan seminary that

was opened in 1861 in Shkoder, where the Jesuits in 1877 founded a

seminary in which the native tongue also was used.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first

decade of the twentieth, a number of patriots who were striving to

create a national consciousness founded several elementary schools in a

few cities and towns, mostly in the south, but they were closed by the

Turkish authorities. The advent of the Young Turks movement in 1908

encouraged the Albanian patriots to intensify their national efforts,

and in the same year a group of intellectuals met in Monastir (Bitolj),

Yugoslavia, to formulate an Albanian alphabet. Books written in Albanian

before that date used a mixture of alphabets, consisting mostly of a

combination of Latin, Greek, and Turkish-Arabic letters.

The Monastir meeting developed a unified alphabet based on Latin

letters. As a result, a number of textbooks were written in the new

alphabet, and elementary schools were soon opened in various parts of

the country. In 1909, to meet the demands for teachers able to teach in

the native tongue, a normal school was inaugurated in Elbasan. But in

1910 the Young Turks, fearing the emergence of Albanian nationalism,

closed all schools that used Albanian as the language of instruction.

Even after the country became independent, schools were scarce. The

unsettled political conditions caused by the Balkan wars and World War I

hindered the development of a unified educational system. The foreign

occupying powers, however, opened some schools in their respective areas

of occupation, each using its own language. A few of these schools,

especially the Italian and French, continued after the end of World War

I and played a significant role in introducing Western educational

methods and principles. Of particular importance was the French Lycee in

Korce, founded by the French army in 1817.

Soon after the establishment of a national government in 1920, which

included a Ministry of Education, the foundations were laid for a

national educational system. Elementary schools were opened in the

cities and some of the larger towns, and the Italian and French schools

opened during the war were strengthened. In the meantime, two important

American schools were founded--the American Technical School in Tirana,

established by the American Junior Red Cross in 1921, and the American

Agricultural School in Kavaje, sponsored by the Near East Foundation. An

important girls' school was also founded by Kristo Dako, an

Albanian-American, whose teaching language was English. The two top

leaders of the Country in 1970, Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha and

Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, were educated in these foreign schools;

Hoxha graduated from the French Lycee in 1930, and Shehu from the

American Technical School in 1932.

In the 1920s, the period when the real foundations of the modern

Albanian state were laid, education made considerable progress. In 1933

the Albanian Royal Constitution was amended, making the teaching and

educating of citizens an exclusive right of the state. Education was

thus nationalized, and all foreign-language schools, except the American

Agricultural School, were either closed or nationalized. The reason for

this move was to stop the rapid spread of schools sponsored directly by

the Italian government, especially among the Catholic element in the

north.

The nationalization of schools was followed in 1934 by a far-reaching

reorganization of the whole school system. The new system provided for

obligatory elementary education from the ages of four to fourteen; the

expansion of secondary schools of various kinds; the establishment of

new technical, vocational, and commercial secondary schools; and the

acceleration and expansion of teacher training. The obligatory

provisions of the 1934 reorganization law, however, were never enforced

in the rural areas because of the economic conditions of the peasants

who needed their children to work in the fields and because of the lack

of schoolhouses, teachers, and means of transportation.

The only minority schools operating in the country before World War II

were those for the Greek minority of about 35,000 living in the

prefecture of Gjirokaster. These schools too were closed by the

constitutional amendment of 1933, but Greece referred the case to the

International Permanent Court of Justice, which forced Albania to reopen

the schools.

There was no university-level education in prewar Albania. All advanced

studies were pursued abroad. Every year the state granted a number of

scholarships to deserving high school graduates who were economically

unable to continue their education. But the largest number of students

were from well-to-do families and thus privately financed. For instance,

in the 1936/37 academic year, only 65 of the 428 students attending

universities abroad had state scholarships. The great majority of the

students attended Italian universities because of geographic proximity

and because of the special relationship between the Rome and Tirana

governments. The Italian government itself, following its policy of

political, economic, military, and cultural penetration of the country,

granted a number of scholarships to Albanian students recommended by its

legation in Tirana.

There are no reliable prewar statistics on school population. The

1967-68 Albanian official statistical yearbook placed the total 1938/39

school enrollment at 56,283. Other sources placed it at over 60,000.

Soon after the Italian occupation in April 1939 the educational system

came under complete Italian control. The Italian language was made

compulsory in all secondary schools, and fascist ideology and

orientation were inserted into the school curricula. After 1941,

however, when guerrilla bands began to operate against the Italian

forces, the whole educational system was paralyzed. In fact, secondary

schools became centers of resistance and of guerrilla recruitment, and

many teachers and students went to the mountains and became members or

leaders of resistance bands. By September 1943, when Italy capitulated

and German troops occupied the country, education came to a complete

standstill.

Education Under Communist Rule

Immediately upon seizure of power in November 1944, the Communist regime

gave high priority to opening the schools and organizing the whole

educational system along Communist lines. The Communist objectives for

the new school system were to liquidate illiteracy in the country as

soon as possible, to struggle against "bourgeois survivals" in the

country's culture, to transmit to the youth the ideas and principles of

the Party, and to educate the children of all classes of society on the

basis of these principles. The first Communist Constitution (1946) made

it clear that the intention of the regime was to bring all children

under the control of the state. The state, constitutionally, took

special care for the education of youth, and all schools were placed

under state management.

The Educational Reform Law of 1946 provided specifically that

Marxist-Leninist principles would permeate all school texts. This law

also made the struggle against illiteracy a principal goal of the new

school system. A further step in this direction was taken in September

1949, when the government promulgated a law requiring all illiterates

between ages twelve and forty to attend classes in reading and writing.

Courses for illiterate peasants were established by the education

sections of the people's councils. The political organs in the armed

forces provided parallel courses for its illiterate military personnel.

The 1946 education law, in addition to providing for seven-year

obligatory schooling and four-year secondary education, called for the

establishment of a wide network of vocational, trade, and pedagogical

schools to prepare personnel, technicians, and skilled workers for the

various social, cultural, and economic fields. Another education law

adopted in 1948 provided for the further expansion of vocational and

professional courses to train skilled and semiskilled workers and to

increase the theoretical and professional knowledge of the technicians.

A further step was taken in 1950 to expand technical education.

Secondary technical schools were established along Soviet lines by the

various economic ministries. In 1951 three higher institutes of learning

were founded: the Higher Pedagogic Institute, the Higher Polytechnical

Institute, and the Higher Agricultural Institute, all patterned along

Soviet models. The Council of Ministers said that their purpose in

founding these institutes was to create conditions for further

development "according to the example of science, culture, and technique

of the Soviet Union."

In the 1949-54 period the school system was given a thorough Soviet

orientation both ideologically and structurally. Most textbooks,

especially those dealing with scientific and technical matters, were

Soviet translations. Soviet educators were attached to the major

branches of the Ministry of Education. The Russian language was made

compulsory as of the seventh grade, and Soviet methodology was applied.

Large numbers of students and teachers were sent to Soviet pedagogical

schools for study and training.

Courses for teacher preparation were established in which the Russian

language, Soviet methods of pedagogy and psychology, and

Marxist-Leninist dialectics were taught by Soviet instructors. A law

adopted in 1954 reorganized the Ministry of Education, renamed it the

Ministry of Education and Culture, and, among other things, provided for

the dissemination of Communist principles "supported by the school

experience of the Soviet Union." In 1957, when the State University of

Tirana was opened, a team of Soviet educators laid its structural,

curricular, and ideological foundations.

Parallel with the Sovietization of the school system in the 1950s, the

government made a concerted effort to implement the idea that education

must be directly connected with daily living. A large number of

white-collar and blue-collar workers were registered in evening and

correspondence courses in the various trade and professional schools.

According to government statistics, in the late 1950s one out of every

four workers was taking some kind of course. Importance was particularly

given to improving polytechnical and related work experiences and to the

dissemination of manual work in most of the schools. Attempts were made

to build vocational workrooms in most elementary and secondary schools.

Emphasis was placed on technical and agricultural subjects.

By 1960 the system of elementary and secondary education had evolved

into an eleven-year program made up of schools of general education and

of vocational and professional schools. The schools of general education

consisted of primary grades one to four, intermediate grades five to

seven, and secondary grades eight to eleven. In October 1960, however,

as the Soviet-Albanian conflict was reaching the breaking point, the

Party adopted a resolution calling for a reorganization of the whole

school system, the real aim being to purge the schools of Soviet

influence and rewrite the textbooks. One more year was added to the

eleven-year general education schools, and the whole school program was

integrated more closely with productive work so as to prepare youths to

work in industry to replace some of the Soviet specialists should the

latter be withdrawn, as they actually were in January and April 1961.

Another far-reaching school reform became effective on January 1, 1970.

Two factors seemed to have accounted for the new reorganization: the

apparent lack of success in completely ridding the schools of so-called

revisionist Soviet influences and the decision, evidently related to the

Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, to introduce military

training in the whole school system. The reform was decreed by the

Party's Central Committee in a special plenum held in June 1969. At the

plenum the principal speakers were Party First Secretary Hoxha and Prime

Minister Shehu, the latter in his capacity as chairman of a special

education commission attached to the Central Committee. Hoxha charged

that the old school system had left vestiges of the past in the

consciousness of many intellectuals, teachers, professors, and men of

science.

According to Hoxha the aim of the reform was to revolutionize the

schools so that the new generation would be imbued with scientific and

theoretical concepts of Marxism-Leninism and to combine these concepts

with physical and military training. The new educational system was to

persist in its struggle against old customs in society and in its

efforts to inculcate youth with atheistic ideas. The new system, Hoxha

declared, was intended in particular "to safeguard our schools from the

Soviet revisionist school," which in a "demagogic way was degenerating

into a bourgeois school." Accordingly, the Soviet concept in pedagogy

was to be eradicated from the Albanian schools.

As reorganized on January 1, 1970, the system was divided into four

general categories: preschool, general eight-year, secondary, and higher

education (see fig. 5). On December 23, 1969, the government submitted

to the People's Assembly a draft bill on educational reform, which was

approved and became effective on January 1, 1970. The preamble to the

law set the ideological tone of the new system. Its aim was to make "a

decisive contribution to the training and education of the new man with

comprehensive Communist traits, loyal to the end to the Party's cause,"

closely linking "learning with productive work and with physical and

military education, giving absolute priority to Marxism-Leninism." In

presenting the bill on the school reform to the People's Assembly,

Minister of Education and Culture Thoma Deljana listed the three

components of the reorganized school system as academic education,

production, and military education.

The educational system in 1969 was divided into two general parts: one

dealt with full-time pupils and students from the kindergarten to the

university level, and the other with adult education for employed

people. The eight-year education was obligatory, beginning at age six

and ending at age thirteen; secondary education began with grade nine,

or age fourteen, and ended with grade twelve.

[Illustration: _Figure 5. Educational System in Albania, 1969_]

Before a full-time student proceeds to higher education, he must pass a

probationary period of one year in production work. The eight-year

system was described as the fundamental link of the entire educational

system; it was intended to provide the pupils with the primary elements

of ideological, political, moral, aesthetic, physical, and military

education. The new eight-year system differed from the old in that it

lowered the entrance age from seven to six, and there were no longer

separate primary and intermediate schools; that is, there was a single

eight-year school, which was, however, completely separate from the

secondary school.

The secondary schools were of many kinds, consisting of four-year

general education courses and four-year vocational and professional

courses (industrial, agricultural, pedagogic, trade, arts, health, and

others). Some of these courses lasted only two years. In his report to

the Party's Central Committee in June 1969 on the reform of the school

year, Prime Minister Shehu said that the secondary schools were to have

a standard curriculum for the school year. Priority was to be given to

academic subjects, followed by production and by physical and military

education.

Shehu formulated the structure of the academic year in all secondary

schools as follows: 6-1/2 months of academic study, 2-1/2 months of

productive work, 1 month of military training, and 2 months of vacation.

The curriculum of the secondary schools and, with slight differences, of

the higher schools was divided as follows: academic subjects, 55 to 56

percent; production work, 26 to 27 percent; and physical and military

education, 17 to 19 percent. Shehu also said that terms borrowed from

the Soviet school system, would be dropped, and in the future secondary

schools would be known by such names as general secondary school and

industrial, agricultural, construction, trade, art, and sanitation

secondary schools.

The terms of study in the higher institutes lasted from three to five

years. Provision was also made to expand higher education by increasing

the number of full-time students, setting up new branches in places

where there were no higher institutes, and organizing specialization

courses for those who had completed higher education to train highly

qualified technical and scientific cadres. All full-time graduate

students had to serve a probationary period of nine months in production

and three months in military training, in addition to the prescribed

military training received while in school.

Adult education had the same structure as that for full-time students,

with two exceptions: first, the eight-year general education was not

compulsory and was contracted into a six-year program allowing for

completion of the first four grades in two years; second, those who

wanted to proceed to higher institutes after graduating from secondary

school had to devote one year to preparatory study instead of engaging

in production work, as did full-time students.

According to official statistics, in the late 1960s, the regime had made

considerable strides, at least quantitatively, in education since it

came to power in 1944 (see table 5). From a total enrollment of less

than 60,000 students of all levels in the 1938/39 school year, according

to the Tirana press, the number had reached over 570,000 in the 1969/70

school year, with a teaching staff of 22,000. The total enrollment

included pupils in the compulsory eight-year schools and students,

workers, and collective farmers in the eight-year general education,

secondary, trade, and professional schools, the State University of

Tirana, and other higher institutes of learning.

Nearly half of the total enrollment represented adults attending evening

and correspondence courses. An article in the April 5, 1970, issue of

_Zeri i Popullit_ admitted that, of those originally enrolled in

September 1969 in evening elementary, secondary, higher education,

trade, and vocational courses, from 25 to 50 percent either dropped out

or were often absent.

According to available official statistics, nearly 500,000 people were

enrolled in schools and courses in the 1967/68 academic year; this

included all adults who registered for, but did not necessarily attend

regularly, technical and vocational courses, evening classes, or

correspondence courses. In the same academic year the State University

of Tirana and five other higher institutes of learning had a total

enrollment of 12,435 students, of whom nearly 8,000 attended the State

University of Tirana (see table 6). Of the total enrollment, over 4,000

were adults or part-time students.

In the 1945-56 period, that is, before the founding of the State

University of Tirana, the government sent a number of students to pursue

their education in the Soviet-bloc countries, mostly the Soviet Union.

When the break came with Moscow in 1961, all students were either

expelled or withdrawn from all these countries. According to documents

published by the Tirana government after the break, at the beginning of

the 1961/62 academic year there were 1,213 Albanian students already

enrolled in Soviet institutions, and an additional 100 were to enroll

during that academic year. They were all expelled by the Soviets except

for a few who asked for and obtained political asylum. In 1970 an

unknown number of students were attending schools in the People's

Republic of China (Communist China), and a few in Romania and Italy.

_Table 5. Summary of Educational Institutions, Pupils, and Teachers

in Albania, for Selected Years_

1938/39 1950/51 1960/61 1967/68

_Primary and Secondary Education_

Schools 649 2,222 2,990 3,597

Pupils 55,404 172,831 290,728 455,557

Teachers 1,477 4,942 9,071 16,758

_Secondary Professional Schools_

Schools 5 17 34 25

Pupils 879 4,818 14,105 21,005

Teachers 34 171 511 638

Normal Schools

Schools (3) (8) (11) (5)

Pupils (675) (2,525) (5,591) (2,708)

Teachers (18) (61) (200) (115)

Technical Schools

Schools (2) (9) (23) (20)

Pupils (204) (2,253) (8,514) (18,297)

Teachers (16) (110) (311) (522)

_Higher Education_

Institutes 1 6 6

Students 304 6,703 12,436

Professors and assistants 13 288 606

_All Educational Systems_*

Schools 654 2,240 3,030 3,628

Pupils and students 56,283 177,953 311,536 498,997

Teachers and instructors 1,511 5,126 10,942 18,001

* The lower vocational schools are not included.

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh._, 1967-68,

Tirana, 1968, p. 115.

The chain of command in the organization of the educational system in

1970 ran from the Party Politburo to the education sections in the

district people's councils. The Politburo set the general policy

guidelines and directives. In 1968 the Politburo created a Central

Commission on Education attached to the Central Committee and headed by

Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu. The commission's function was to elaborate

the Politburo's directives on reforming the school system. When Mehmet

Shehu submitted the report on behalf of the commission to the plenum of

the Central Committee in June 1969 concerning the reorganization of the

school system, it was decided to continue the commission for an

indefinite period.

A more permanent body in the Party's Central Committee was the

Directorate of Education and Culture, headed by Nexhmije Hoxha, wife of

Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha. This body, guided by the directives

prescribed by the Politburo, supervised the Ministry of Education and

Culture in implementing the Party's ideological and political

guidelines.

_Table 6. Students Attending Higher Institutes in Albania

(academic year 1967/68)_

Total Number of Students Full-Time Students

Total Female Total Female

State University of Tirana

_Faculties_

Economics 1,275 271 437 137

Geology 255 10 255 10

History and Philology 1,944 701 984 462

Engineering 1,259 139 1,102 120

Law 504 62 163 29

Medicine 1,034 378 1,034 378

Natural Sciences 1,683 529 1,262 440

----- ----- ----- -----

Total 7,954 2,090 5,237 1,576

Higher Agricultural Institute

_Faculties_

Agronomy 1,234 62 839 58

Forestry 174 10 150 8

Veterinary 324 23 324 23

----- ----- ----- -----

Total 1,732 95 1,313 89

Higher Institute of Arts 239 60 232 60

Higher Institute of Physical

Culture 191 39 169 37

Two-Year Higher Institute of

Pedagogy, Tirana 1,113 458 331 140

Two-Year Higher Institute

of Pedagogy, Shkoder 1,206 446 859 316

------ ----- ----- -----

Grand Total 12,435 3,188 8,141 2,218

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh., 1967-1968_,

Tirana, 1968, p. 125.

The Ministry of Education and Culture was responsible for executing

Party policies and for administering the whole school system. It had

education sections in all the district people's councils, which

administered and, through their inspectors, controlled the teachers and

the teaching programs. Party control at all levels was exercised either

directly by the Party's basic organizations, as was the case in the

higher institutes, or through the branches of the Union of Albanian

Working Youth, the Party's most powerful front organization. The

majority of the teachers in secondary schools and higher institutes

were Party members.

By the beginning of 1970 the regime seemed to have scored substantial

progress in the field of education. Illiteracy had been reduced

considerably, if not actually eliminated. Through an intensive program

to train elementary and secondary school teachers, build schoolhouses,

and make schooling obligatory up to the eighth grade, the government had

enabled all the country's children to obtain some kind of rudimentary

education. It had also instituted a system of higher education and had

founded the first university in the history of the country and was thus

no longer dependent on foreign universities to train people in the

various professions. It had also instituted a widespread network of

professional and vocational schools intended to train badly needed

technicians and skilled workers.

The whole education network, however, was a one-track system geared to

serve the ideological and political objectives of the Party. The Party,

through the Central Commission on Education and the Directorate of

Education and Culture, both attached to the Party's Central Committee,

controlled every facet of the school system: programs, curricula,

administration, teaching staffs, and funds. The schools, students,

teachers, and professors were so organized as to form a monolithic

establishment centrally directed and completely immersed in

Marxism-Leninism.

The entire system was dedicated to the education of the new man with

Communist traits and morality. As defined by the Party leaders and Party

theoreticians, these traits and morality meant the development of a

"revolutionary spirit and responsibility for one's tasks for society and

the cause of socialism, the defense of the basic principles of the Party

and the implementation of its correct policy." The whole school system,

as developed in the past twenty-five years, therefore, was for the

building of communism as defined and interpreted by the Albanian

Communists. All other ideologies, beliefs, cultures, and thoughts were

banned from the country's schools.

RELIGION

Situation Before the Communist Takeover

One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was

the conversion of over 70 percent of the population to Islam. When

independence came, therefore, the country emerged as a predominantly

Muslim nation, the only Islamic state in Europe. No censuses taken by

the Communist regime since it assumed power in 1944 have shown the

religious affiliations of the people. It has been estimated that of a

total population of 1,180,500, at the end of World War II, about 826,000

were Muslims, 212,500 Eastern Orthodox, and 142,000 Roman Catholics. The

Muslims were divided between adherents of the Sunni branch and over

200,000 followers of a dervish order known as Bektashi, an offshoot of

the Shia branch.

Christianity was introduced early in Albania, having been brought in

during the period of Roman rule. After the division of the Roman Empire

into East and West in 395, Albania became politically a part of the

Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire but remained ecclesiastically dependent on

Rome. When, however, the final schism occurred in 1054 between the Roman

and Eastern churches, the Christians in the southern part of the country

came under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople Ecumenical

Patriarchate. This situation prevailed until the Turkish invasions of

the fourteenth century, when the Islamic faith was introduced. The

apostasy of the people took many decades.

In the mountainous north the propagation of Islam met strong resistance

from the Catholics. Gradually, however, backwardness, illiteracy, the

absence of an educated clergy, and material inducements weakened

resistance. Coerced conversions occurred, especially when Catholic

powers, such as the Venetian Republic and Austria, were at war with the

Ottoman Empire. By the close of the seventeenth century the Catholics in

the north were outnumbered by the Muslims.

Large-scale forced conversions among the Orthodox in the south did not

occur until the Russo-Turkish wars of the eighteenth century. Islamic

pressure was put on the Orthodox Christians because the Turks considered

them sympathetic to Orthodox Russia. The situation of the Orthodox

improved temporarily after a Russo-Turkish treaty of 1774 in which

Russia was recognized as the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the

Ottoman Empire. The most effective method employed by the Turks in their

missionary efforts, especially in the central and southern parts of the

country, was the creation of a titled noble Muslim class of _pashas_,

_beys_, and _agas_ (Albanian tribal chiefs in Turkish service), who were

endowed with both large estates and extensive political and governing

powers. Through their political and economic influences these nobles

controlled the peasants, large numbers of whom were converted to Islam

either through coercion or through promise of economic benefits.

In the period from independence to the Communist seizure of power, the

Muslim noble class composed the country's ruling elite, but this elite

never interfered with religious freedom, which was sanctioned by the

various pre-World War II constitutions. The church and state were

separate. These constitutions had declared that the country had no

official religion, that all religions and faiths were respected, and

that their freedom of exercise was assured. These provisions had

expressed the true feelings of the people who, whether Muslim, Eastern

Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, were tolerant on religious matters.

Tolerance has been a marked characteristic of all Albanians, as

indicated in part by the fact that even after accepting Islam, many

people privately remained practicing Christians, or so-called

crypto-Christians. As late as 1912 in a large number of villages in the

Elbasan area, most men had two names, a Muslim one for public use and a

Christian one for private use. A characteristic remark on the religious

tolerance of the Albanians was made by Lord Byron, who observed in one

of his diaries that elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire a man would declare

himself to be either a Muslim or a Christian when asked what he was, but

the Albanian would reply that he was an Albanian.

Situation Under Communist Rule

The Communist regime has exhibited in its attitude toward religion a

wide gap between precept and practice. The Communist Constitution,

adopted in March 1946 and as subsequently amended, contains liberal

provisions with regard to religion. Freedom of conscience and religion

is guaranteed to all citizens; the church is separate from the state;

religious communities are free to exercise and practice their creeds; it

is forbidden to use the church and religion for political purposes, and

political organizations based on religion are outlawed; and the state

may give material assistance to religious organizations.

Even before the adoption of the Constitution, however, legislative

measures had already been taken to curb the freedom and power of all

religious bodies. For example, the agrarian reform law of August 1945

made special provision for the confiscation of all their wealth,

especially the estates of monasteries, orders, and dioceses, and the

seizure of their libraries and printing presses. But the first major law

aimed specifically at the control and regulation of all religious bodies

and at the elimination of all distinguished clergymen was enacted two

years after the promulgation of the Constitution. This law is known as

Decree No. 743 On Religious Communities, approved by the Council of

Ministers on November 26, 1949, converted into Law No. 773 on January

16, 1950, and amended by Decree No. 3660 of April 10, 1963.

The law provided that religious communities through their activities had

to develop in their followers a sentiment of loyalty toward the People's

Republic of Albania. In order to organize and function, religious

communities had to be recognized by the state, such recognition taking

place as a result of the approval of their statutes by the Council of

Ministers. All regulations and bylaws issued on the basis of such

statutes had also to be approved by the Council of Ministers, and the

heads of religious communities and sects had to be approved by the

Council of Ministers after being elected or appointed by the proper

religious organs. Religious communities or branches, such as the Jesuit

and Franciscan orders, that had their headquarters outside the country

were henceforth prohibited and ordered to terminate their activities

within a month of the enactment of the decree.

All religious communities were obliged to send at once to the Council of

Ministers all pastoral letters, messages, speeches, and other

instructions of a general character that were to be made public in any

form. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with

the education of the young since this was the exclusive right of the

state, and all religious communities were prohibited from operating

philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals or from owning real

estate.

On the basis of Decree No. 743 the Council of Ministers on May 4, 1950,

issued Decrees Nos. 1064, 1065, and 1066, approving respectively the

statutes of the Sunni, Orthodox, and Bektashi religious communities. A

common provision of all three decrees was that each religious community

had to develop the "sentiment of loyalty in their followers toward the

people's power and the People's Republic of Albania, as well as their

patriotic feelings." The Statute of the Independent Catholic Church of

Albania was approved by Decree No. 1322 of July 30, 1951.

The regime's policy toward each of the three religious denominations,

although differing somewhat in tactics, aimed from the outset at the

eventual destruction of all organized religion. The regime achieved

control over the Muslim faith by dealing with each sect separately. The

first measure aimed at dividing the Sunni and Bektashi, which was

effected, officially, in May 1945, when the two were declared completely

independent of each other.

In dealing with the Sunni clergy, the government arrested and executed

as "enemies of the people" those members of the top hierarchy who were

reluctant to toe the Communist line, while others were imprisoned or

sent to concentration camps. It named as head of the Sunni community

Hafez Musa Haxhi Ali, who in 1950 led a delegation of the Sunni clergy

to the Soviet Union, visiting Uzbekistan and the Muslim religious

shrines of Samarkand and Tashkent and meeting with many Soviet Muslim

leaders. He was also used in appeals for world peace and other slogans

directed at the Muslim countries in the Middle East.

The policy followed toward each group differed somewhat. The Bektashi

group had always been much more liberal and forward looking than the

Sunni. During the war a few leading Bektashi clergymen had joined the

National Liberation Movement, and three of them--Baba Mustafa Faja

Martaneshi, Baba Fejzo, and Sheh Karbunaro--played major roles in

bringing about close collaboration between the Bektashi order and the

regime. In March 1947, however, Baba Faja and Baba Fejzo were

assassinated at the group's headquarters in Tirana, where they had gone

to meet with the World Bektashi Primate Dede Abazi (the Bektashi had

moved their world headquarters in the 1920s from Ankara to Tirana). As

the Tirana press reported the event: "The leaders of the Bektashi, Baba

Faja and Baba Fejzo, cooperating with the people's government, visited

Dede Abazi to discuss the democratization of the religious organization.

Dede Abazi answered with bullets, killing them both. Later he shot

himself." Taking advantage of this incident, the regime eliminated those

leaders of the Bektashi clergy it considered disloyal.

Because of the traditionally nationalistic character of the Albanian

Orthodox Church, the regime has attempted from the outset to use it as

an instrument for mobilizing the Orthodox population behind its

policies. Using the church for its own ends, the regime took steps to

purge all those elements within it that were considered unreliable.

Clergymen who did not yield to the demands of the regime were purged.

Among the purged Orthodox leaders was the primate of the church,

Archbishop Kristofor Kisi, who was deposed in the late 1940s and

subsequently died in jail. The regime replaced Kisi with Pashko Vodica,

a renegade priest who had joined the ranks of the partisan formations.

On assuming the office of primate, under the name of Archbishop Paisi,

he stated that it was the church's duty to be faithful to the People's

Republic of Albania and to the people's power and added: "Our Church

must be faithful to the camp of Peace, to the great anti-imperialist and

democratic camp, to the unique camp of socialism led brilliantly by the

glorious Soviet Union and the Great Stalin...."

Archbishop Paisi brought about close ties between the Albanian Orthodox

Church and the Moscow Patriarchate. These ties were further strengthened

after a delegation of Soviet religious leaders, headed by Bishop Nikon

of Odessa, visited Tirana in the spring of 1951. After the 1960-61

Moscow-Tirana break, however, these ties lapsed.

The Roman Catholic Church, chiefly because it maintained close relations

with the Vatican and was more organized than were the Muslim and Eastern

Orthodox faiths, became a principal target of persecution as soon as the

Communists assumed power. In May 1945 Monsignor Nigris, the apostolic

nuncio in Albania, was arrested on charges of fomenting anti-Communist

feelings and deported to Italy. In 1946 a number of Catholic clergymen

were arrested and tried on charges of distributing leaflets against the

regime; some were executed, others given long prison terms at hard

labor.

According to Vatican sources, from 1945 to 1953 the number of Catholic

churches and chapels in Albania was reduced from 253 to 100. Both

seminaries in the country were closed, and the number of monasteries

dropped from ten to two. All twenty convents were closed, as were

fifteen orphanages, sixteen church schools, and ten charitable

institutions. Both Catholic printing presses were confiscated, and the

publication of seven religious periodicals ceased.

The ranks of Catholic priests were thinned from ninety-three in 1945 to

ten in 1953, twenty-four having been executed, thirty-five imprisoned,

ten either missing or dead, eleven drafted into the army, and three

having escaped from the country. Secular officials and laymen active in

church affairs also suffered execution, imprisonment, and harassment.

The Catholic school system was completely eliminated. This included five

secondary schools with a total enrollment of 570 and ten elementary and

vocational schools with 2,750 pupils. All Catholic associations were

suppressed.

A severe blow against the Catholic church was struck in 1951, when the

regime mustered a small group of clergymen to hold a national Catholic

assembly to draw the statute for the church. As approved by the Council

of Ministers on July 30 of that year, the statute provided that the

"Catholic Church of Albania has a national character ... [and that] it

shall no longer have any organizational, political, or economic

relations with the Pope." The statute provided further that the church

was to be directed both in religious and administrative matters by a new

Catholic Episcopate, that relations concerning religious questions

could be established only through governmental channels, and that the

church would submit to the canon law of the world Catholic church only

if the provisions of this law did not contradict the laws of the

People's Republic of Albania.

Enver Hoxha himself spearheaded the campaign against the Catholic

church. In 1952, for example, he purged Tuk Jakova, the only Catholic

member of the Politburo and previously one of Hoxha's closest

collaborators, because he had allegedly befriended the Catholic clergy.

In his speech to the Second Party Congress in 1952, in an attempt to

justify Jakova's purge, Hoxha said: "Comrade Tuk Jakova, in

contradiction to the political line of the Party and of the state

concerning religion generally and the Catholic clergy in particular, has

not properly understood and has not properly acted against the Catholic

clergy. Without seeing the great danger of the reactionary clergy,

Comrade Tuk Jakova has not hated them in sufficient measure...."

A new policy aimed at the complete destruction of organized religion was

enunciated by Hoxha in a speech to the Party's Central Committee on

February 6, 1967. Calling for an intensified cultural-education struggle

against religious beliefs and declaring that the only religion for an

Albanian should be Albanianism, he assigned the antireligious mission to

the youth movement. By May of the same year religious institutions were

forced to relinquish 2,169 churches, mosques, cloisters, and shrines,

most of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. As

the literary monthly _Nendori_ (November) in its September 1967 issue

reported the event, the youth had thus "created the first atheist nation

in the world."

According to Western correspondents in Tirana, the procedure employed in

seizing the places of worship was to assemble the villagers or

parishioners in order to discuss Hoxha's speech and to take measures to

eliminate what the regime referred to as harmful survivals of religious

customs. A decision was then taken to ask the government for permission

to close a church, mosque, or monastery. A few days later the

government, stating that it was following the will of the people, would

issue orders to close the house of worship.

Drastic measures were reportedly taken in cases where the clergy opposed

the government order. The strongest resistance came from the Catholic

clergy, resulting in the detention of some twenty priests. The cloister

of the Franciscan order in Shkoder was set afire in the spring of 1967,

resulting in the death of four monks. The Catholic cathedral in Tirana

had its facade removed, and on June 4, 1967, it was taken over by the

government and converted into a museum. A similar fate befell the

Catholic cathedrals in Shkoder and Durres.

After the seizure of the houses of worship, the younger clergymen were

forced to seek work either in industry or agricultural collectives. The

elder clergy were ordered to return to their birthplaces, which they

could not leave without permission from the authorities. Monsignor

Ernest Coba, bishop of Shkoder and acknowledged head of the Catholic

church in Albania, was evicted from the cathedral in April 1967 and was

forced to seek work as a gardener on a collective farm. He was still

alive but ailing at the end of 1969.

By the beginning of 1970 the provision of the Constitution concerning

freedom of religion was ostensibly in effect, but government decrees had

made such a provision a dead issue. On November 22, 1967, a significant

measure was taken that apparently aimed at delivering the coup de grace

to formal religious institutions. On that day _Gazeta Zyrtare_, the

government's official gazette, published Decree No. 4337 of the

Presidium of the People's Assembly entitled, "On the Abrogation of

Certain Decrees." Specifically, the new decree annulled all previous

decrees dealing with organized religion, thus removing official sanction

from religious bodies and, in effect, placing them outside the law.

The 1949 decree on religion had provided for subsidies from the state to

the three religious denominations. These subsidies had become

indispensable for their survival because their property and all other

material means of subsistence had been confiscated and nationalized in

1945, and without state help the churches could not function. Concurrent

with the official moves against religions, a number of antireligious

brochures and pamphlets were prepared and distributed by the Democratic

Front in an effort to prepare the people for the attacks on their

religious institutions.

Even though organized religion had been destroyed by the end of 1967,

the regime was still struggling as of early 1970 to eradicate religious

thought and beliefs. The _Nendori_ article that proclaimed the creation

of the first atheist state in the world admitted that "despite the hard

blows religion had suffered through the destruction of its material

institutions, religious ideology is still alive."

Hoxha himself has often admitted that antireligious measures and the

closing of places of worship have not sufficed to eradicate religious

beliefs. Thus, addressing the Fourth Congress of the Democratic Front in

September 1967, he declared that it was misleading to hold that religion

consisted of church, mosque, priests, icons, and the like, and that if

all of these disappeared, then automatically religion and its influence

on the people would vanish. The struggle against religious beliefs, he

added, had not ended because for centuries they had been deeply rooted

in the conscience of the people.

Hoxha reverted to the subject again in his speech to the Party's Central

Committee plenum in June 1969, devoted to reforming the school system,

in which he said that one of the aims of the reorganized schools would

be to bring up the new generation imbued with scientific and theoretical

knowledge; for, according to Hoxha, religious beliefs could be

eradicated only through the elimination of old concepts still prevalent

in the minds of the people.

At the beginning of 1970 Party leaders in their speeches and in the

press were continuing to call for an intensification of the struggle

against religious ideology and especially for the eradication of every

religious influence or belief among students, who were still under the

influence of parents. The older generation, according to the leadership,

continued to entertain the religious beliefs that everything in nature

has been created with a predetermined purpose by God. The press has also

reported on several occasions that there was strong resistance to the

closing of places of worship and that the clergy resorted to all kinds

of subterfuge to continue their religious activities.