The People's Republic was dissolved in 1991-92 after protests beginning in 1989 and reforms made by the communist government in 1990, and the Republic of Albania was founded. The Communists retained a stronghold in parliament after popular support in the elections of 1991. However, in March 1992, amid liberalisation policies resulting in economic collapse and social unrest, a new front led by the new Democratic Party took power. The economic crisis spread in late 1996 following the failure of some Ponzi schemes operating in the country, peaking in 1997 in an armed rebellion that led to another mass emigration of Albanians, mostly to Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Germany and North America. In 1999, the country was affected by the Kosovo War, when a great number of Albanians from Kosovo found refuge in Albania. Albania became a full member of NATO in 2009, and is applying to join the European Union.
The People's Socialist Republic of Albania was the
official name of Albania from 1976
until 1991. From 1946–1976 it
was known as the People's Republic of Albania and from 1944 to 1946 as
the Democratic Government of Albania.
Consolidation of power and initial reforms
On 29 November 1944, Albania was liberated by the National Liberation
Movement (LNC). The Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, formed in May,
became the country's provisional government.
The government, like the LNC, was dominated by the two-year-old Communist
Party of Albania, and the party's first secretary, Enver Hoxha, became Albania's prime
minister. From the start, the LNC regime was an undisguised Communist regime. In the other countries in
what became the Soviet bloc, the Communists were part of coalition governments
for a few years before taking complete control and establishing out-and-out
Communist dictatorships. Having sidelined the nationalist Balli Kombëtar, the
government moved quickly to consolidate its power, liberate the country's
tenants and workers, and join Albania fraternally with other socialist
countries. King Zog I
was barred from ever returning to Albania, though the country nominally remained
a monarchy.
The internal affairs minister, Koçi Xoxe, an erstwhile pro-Yugoslavia tinsmith,
presided over the trial and the execution of thousands of fascists who were
condemned as war criminals. They were imprisoned for years in work camps and
jails and later settled on state farms built on reclaimed marshlands.
The communists' consolidation of control also produced a shift in political
power in Albania from the northern Ghegs to the southern Tosks. Most communist leaders were middle-class Tosks, and
the party drew most of its recruits from Tosk-inhabited areas.
In December 1945, Albanians elected a new People's Assembly, but voters
were presented with a single list from the Communist-dominated Democratic Front (previously the
National Liberation Movement). Official ballot tallies showed that 92% of the
electorate voted and that 93% of the voters chose the Democratic Front
ticket.
The assembly convened in January 1946. Its first act was to formally abolish
the monarchy and declare Albania a "people's republic." However, as mentioned
above, the country had been a Communist state for just over two years. After
months of angry debate, the assembly adopted a constitution that mirrored the
Yugoslav and Soviet constitutions. Then in the spring, the assembly members
chose a new government. Hoxha became prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, and
the army's commander in chief. Xoxe remained both
internal affairs minister and the party's organizational secretary.
In late 1945 and early 1946, Xoxe and other party hard-liners purged
moderates who had pressed for close contacts with the West, a modicum of
political pluralism, and a delay in the introduction of strict communist
economic measures until Albania's economy had more time to develop. Hoxha
remained in control despite the fact that he had once advocated restoring
relations with Italy and even allowing Albanians to study in Italy.
The communists also undertook economic measures to expand their power. In
December 1944, the provisional government adopted laws allowing the state to
regulate foreign and domestic trade, commercial enterprises, and the few
industries the country possessed. The laws sanctioned confiscation of property
belonging to political exiles and "enemies of the people." The state also
expropriated all German- and Italian-owned property, nationalized transportation
enterprises, and canceled all concessions granted by previous Albanian
governments to foreign companies.
The government took major steps to introduce a Stalinist-style centrally planned economy in 1946. It
nationalized all industries, transformed foreign trade into a government
monopoly, brought almost all domestic trade under state control, and banned land
sales and transfers. Planners at the newly founded Economic Planning Commission
emphasized industrial development, and in 1947 the government introduced the
Soviet cost-accounting system.
In August 1945, the provisional government adopted the first sweeping
agricultural reforms in Albania's history. The country's 100 largest landowners,
who controlled close to a third of Albania's arable land, had frustrated all
agricultural reform proposals before the war. The communists' reforms were aimed
at squeezing large landowners out of business, winning peasant support, and
increasing farm output to avert famine.
The government annulled outstanding agricultural debts, granted peasants access
to inexpensive water for irrigation, and nationalized forest and
pastureland.
Under the Agrarian Reform Law, which redistributed about half of Albania's
arable land, the government confiscated property belonging to absentee landlords
and people not dependent on agriculture for a living. The few peasants with
agricultural machinery were permitted to keep up to 400,000 square metres of
land; the landholdings of religious institutions and peasants without
agricultural machinery were limited to 200,000 square metres and landless
peasants and peasants with tiny landholdings were given up to 50,000 square
metres, although they had to pay nominal compensation.
Until Yugoslavia's expulsion
from the Cominform in 1948,
Albania was effectively a Yugoslav satellite. In repudiating the 1943 Albanian
internal Mukaj agreement under pressure from the
Yugoslavs, Albania's communists had given up on their demands for a Yugoslav
cession of Kosovo to Albania after the war. In January 1945, the two governments
signed a treaty establishing Kosovo as a Yugoslav autonomous province. Shortly
thereafter, Yugoslavia became the first country to recognize Albania's
provisional government.
In July 1946, Yugoslavia and Albania signed a treaty of friendship and
cooperation that was quickly followed by a series of technical and economic
agreements laying the groundwork for integrating the Albanian and Yugoslav
economies. The pacts provided for coordinating the economic plans of both
states, standardizing their monetary systems, and creating a common pricing
system and a customs union. So close was the Yugoslav-Albanian relationship that
Serbo-Croatian became a
required subject in Albanian high schools.
Yugoslavia signed a similar friendship treaty with Bulgaria, and Marshal Josip Broz Tito and Bulgaria's Georgi Dimitrov talked
of plans to establish a Balkan federation to include Albania, Yugoslavia, and
Bulgaria. Yugoslav advisers poured into Albania's government offices and its
army headquarters. Tirana was desperate
for outside aid, and about 20,000 tons of Yugoslav grain helped stave off
famine. Albania also received US$26.3 million from the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration immediately after the war but had to rely on
Yugoslavia for investment and development aid.
Joint Albanian–Yugoslav companies were created for mining, railroad
construction, the production of petroleum and electricity, and international
trade. Yugoslav investments led to the construction of a sugar refinery in
Korçë, a food-processing plant in Elbasan, a hemp factory at Rrogozhinë, a fish cannery in Vlorë, and a printing press, telephone exchange, and
textile mill in Tirana. The Yugoslavs also bolstered the Albanian economy by
paying three times the international price for Albanian copper and other
materials.
Relations between Albania and Yugoslavia declined, however, when the
Albanians began complaining that the Yugoslavs were paying too little for
Albanian raw materials and exploiting Albania through the joint stock companies.
In addition, the Albanians sought investment funds to develop light industries
and an oil refinery, while the Yugoslavs wanted the Albanians to concentrate on
agriculture and raw-material extraction. The head of Albania's Economic Planning
Commission and one of Hoxha's allies, Nako
Spiru, became the leading critic of Yugoslavia's efforts to exert economic
control over Albania. Tito distrusted Hoxha and the other intellectuals in the
Albanian party and, through Xoxe and his loyalists, attempted to unseat
them.
In 1947, Yugoslavia acted against anti-Yugoslav Albanian communists,
including Hoxha and Spiru. In May, Tirana announced the arrest, trial, and
conviction of nine People's Assembly members, all known for opposing Yugoslavia,
on charges of antistate activities. A month later, the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia's Central Committee accused Hoxha of following "independent" policies
and turning the Albanian people against Yugoslavia. Apparently attempting to buy
support inside the Albanian Communist Party, Belgrade extended Tirana US$40
million worth of credits, an amount equal to 58% of Albania's 1947 state budget.
A year later, Yugoslavia's credits accounted for nearly half of the state
budget. Relations worsened in the fall, however, when Spiru's commission
developed an economic plan that stressed self-sufficiency, light industry, and
agriculture. The Yugoslavs complained bitterly, and when Spiru came under
criticism and failed to win support from anyone in the Albanian party
leadership, he committed suicide.
The insignificance of Albania's standing in the communist world was clearly
highlighted when the emerging East European nations did not invite the Albanian
party to the September 1947 founding meeting of the Cominform. Rather,
Yugoslavia represented Albania at Cominform meetings. Although the Soviet Union
gave Albania a pledge to build textile and sugar mills and other factories and
to provide Albania agricultural and industrial machinery, Joseph Stalin told Milovan
Djilas, at the time a high-ranking member of Yugoslavia's communist
hierarchy, that Yugoslavia should "swallow" Albania.
The pro-Yugoslav faction wielded decisive political power in Albania well
into 1948. At a party plenum in February and March, the communist leadership
voted to merge the Albanian and Yugoslav economies and militaries. Hoxha, to the
core an opportunist,[citation
needed] even denounced Spiru for attempting to ruin
Albanian-Yugoslav relations. During a party Political Bureau (Politburo) meeting a month later, Xoxe proposed
appealing to Belgrade to admit Albania as a seventh Yugoslav republic. When the
Cominform expelled Yugoslavia on June 28, however, Albania made a rapid
about-face in its policy toward Yugoslavia. The move surely saved Hoxha from a
firing squad and as surely doomed Xoxe to one. Three days later, Tirana gave the
Yugoslav advisers in Albania 48 hours to leave the country, rescinded all
bilateral economic agreements with its neighbor, and launched a virulent
anti-Yugoslav propaganda blitz that transformed Stalin into an Albanian national
hero, Hoxha into a warrior against foreign aggression, and Tito into an
imperialist monster.
Albania entered an orbit around the Soviet Union, and in September 1948
Moscow stepped in to compensate for Albania's loss of Yugoslav aid. The shift
proved to be a boon for Albania because Moscow had far more to offer than
hard-strapped Belgrade. The fact that the Soviet Union had no common border with
Albania also appealed to the Albanian regime because it made it more difficult
for Moscow to exert pressure on Tirana. In November at the First Party Congress
of the Albanian Party of Labor (APL), the
former Albanian Communist Party renamed at Stalin's suggestion, Hoxha pinned the
blame for the country's woes on Yugoslavia and Xoxe. Hoxha had Xoxe sacked as
internal affairs minister in October, replacing him with Shehu. After a secret
trial in May 1949, Xoxe was executed. The subsequent anti-Titoist purges in
Albania brought the liquidation of 14 members of the party's 31 person Central
Committee and 32 of the 109 People's Assembly deputies. Overall, the party
expelled about 25% of its membership. Yugoslavia responded with a propaganda
counterattack, canceled its treaty of friendship with Albania, and in 1950
withdrew its diplomatic mission from Tirana.
Deteriorating relations with the West
Albania's relations with the West soured after the communist regime's refusal
to allow free elections in December 1945. Albania restricted the movement of
United States and British personnel in the country, charging that they had
instigated anticommunist uprisings in the northern mountains. Britain announced
in April that it would not send a diplomatic mission to Tirana; the United
States withdrew its mission in November; and both the United States and Britain
opposed admitting Albania to the United Nations (UN). The Albanian regime feared
that the United States and Britain, which were supporting anticommunist forces
in the civil war in Greece, would back Greek demands for
territory in southern Albania; and anxieties grew in July when a United States
Senate resolution backed the Greek demands.
A major incident between Albania and Britain erupted in 1946 after Tirana
claimed jurisdiction over the channel between the Albanian mainland and the
Greek island of Corfu. Britain challenged
Albania by sailing four destroyers into the channel. Two of the ships struck
mines on October 22, 1946, and 44 crew members died. Britain complained to the
UN and the International Court of Justice
which, in its first case ever, ruled against Tirana.
After 1946 the United States and the United Kingdom began implementing an
elaborate covert plan to overthrow Albania's communist regime by backing
anticommunist and royalist forces within the country. By 1949 the United States
and British intelligence organizations were working with King Zog and the
mountainmen of his personal guard. They recruited Albanian refugees and émigrés
from Egypt, Italy,
and Greece; trained them in Cyprus, Malta, and the Federal Republic of Germany
(West Germany); and
infiltrated them into Albania. Guerrilla units entered Albania in 1950 and 1952,
but Albanian security forces killed or captured all of them. Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent
working as a liaison officer between the British intelligence service and the
United States Central Intelligence Agency, had leaked details of the
infiltration plan to Moscow, and the security breach claimed the lives of about
300 infiltrators.
Following a wave of subversive activity, including the failed infiltration
and the March 1951 bombing of the Soviet embassy in Tirana, the Albanian regime
implemented harsh internal security measures. In September 1952, the assembly
enacted a penal code that required the death penalty for anyone over eleven
years old found guilty of conspiring against the state, damaging state property,
or committing economic sabotage.
Albania became dependent on Soviet aid and know-how after the break with
Yugoslavia in 1948. In February 1949, Albania gained membership in the communist
bloc's organization for coordinating economic planning, the Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance (Comecon). Tirana soon entered into trade agreements with Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Soviet and East European technical
advisers took up residence in Albania, and the Soviet Union also sent Albania
military advisers and built a submarine installation on Sazan Island. After the Soviet-Yugoslav split,
Albania and Bulgaria were the only
countries that the Soviet Union could use to funnel war material to the
communists fighting in Greece. What little strategic value Albania offered the
Soviet Union, however, gradually shrank as nuclear arms technology
developed.
Anxious to pay homage to Stalin, Albania's rulers implemented new elements of
the Stalinist economic system. In 1949 Albania adopted the basic elements of the
Soviet fiscal system, under which state enterprises paid direct contributions to
the treasury from their profits and kept only a share authorized for
self-financed investments and other purposes. In 1951, the Albanian government
launched its first five-year plan, which emphasized exploiting the country's
oil, chromite, copper, nickel, asphalt, and coal resources; expanding
electricity production and the power grid; increasing agricultural output; and
improving transportation. The government began a program of rapid
industrialization after the APL's Second Party Congress and a campaign of forced
collectivization of farmland in 1955. At the time, private farms still produced
about 87% of Albania's agricultural output, but by 1960 the same percentage came
from collective or state farms.
Soviet-Albanian relations remained warm during the last years of Joseph Stalin's life
despite the fact that Albania was an economic liability for the Soviet Union.
Albania conducted all its foreign trade with Soviet European countries in 1949,
1950, and 1951 and over half its trade with the Soviet Union itself. Together
with its satellites, the Soviet Union underwrote shortfalls in Albania's balance
of payments with long-term grants.
Although far behind Western practice, health care and education improved dramatically for
Albania's 1.2 million people in the early 1950s. The number of Albanian doctors
increased by a third to about 150 early in the decade (although the
doctor-patient ratio remained unacceptable by most standards), and the state
opened new medical training facilities. The number of hospital beds rose from
1,765 in 1945 to about 5,500 in 1953. Better health care and living conditions
produced an improvement in Albania's dismal infant mortality rate, lowering it
from 112.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1945 to 99.5 deaths per 1,000 births
in 1953. The education system, considered a tool for propagating communism and creating the academic
and technical cadres necessary for construction of a socialist state and
society, also improved dramatically. The number of schools, teachers, and
students doubled between 1945 and 1950. Illiteracy declined from perhaps 85% in
1946 to 31% in 1950. The Soviet Union provided scholarships for Albanian
students and supplied specialists and study materials to improve instruction in
Albania. The State University of Tirana (now University of Tirana) was founded in 1957
and the Albanian Academy of Sciences opened 15 years later. Despite these
advances, however, education in Albania suffered as a result of restrictions on
freedom of thought. For example, educational institutions had scant influence on
their own curricula, methods of teaching, or administration.
Stalin died in March 1953, and apparently fearing that the Soviet ruler's
demise might encourage rivals within the Albanian party's ranks, neither Hoxha
nor Shehu risked traveling to Moscow to attend his funeral. The Soviet Union's
subsequent movement toward rapprochement with the hated Yugoslavs rankled the
two Albanian leaders. Tirana soon came under pressure from Moscow to copy, at
least formally, the new Soviet model for a collective leadership. In July 1953,
Hoxha handed over the foreign affairs and defense portfolios to loyal followers,
but he kept both the top party post and the premiership until 1954, when Shehu
became Albania's prime minister. The Soviet Union, responding with an effort to
raise the Albanian leaders' morale, elevated diplomatic relations between the
two countries to the ambassadorial level.
Despite some initial expressions of enthusiasm, Hoxha and Shehu mistrusted Nikita Khrushchev's
programs of "peaceful coexistence" and "different roads to socialism" because
they appeared to pose the threat that Yugoslavia might again try to take control
of Albania. Hoxha and Shehu were also alarmed at the prospect that Moscow might
prefer less dogmatic rulers in Albania. Tirana and Belgrade renewed diplomatic
relations in December 1953, but Hoxha refused Khrushchev's repeated appeals to
rehabilitate posthumously the pro-Yugoslav Xoxe as a gesture to Tito. The
Albanian duo instead tightened their grip on their country's domestic life and
let the propaganda war with the Yugoslavs grind on. In 1955 Albania became a
founding member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, better known as the Warsaw Pact, the only military
alliance the nation ever joined. Although the pact represented the first promise
Albania had obtained from any of the communist countries to defend its borders,
the treaty did nothing to assuage the Albanian leaders' deep mistrust of
Yugoslavia.
Hoxha and Shehu tapped the Albanians' deep-seated fear of Yugoslav domination
to remain in power during the thaw following the Twentieth
Party Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet
Union in 1956, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in his "secret speech."
Hoxha defended Stalin and blamed the Titoist heresy for the troubles vexing
world Communism, including the disturbances in Poland and the rebellion in Hungary in 1956. Hoxha
mercilessly purged party moderates with pro-Soviet and pro-Yugoslav leanings,
but he toned down his anti-Yugoslav rhetoric after an April 1957 trip to Moscow,
where he won cancellation of about US$105 million in outstanding loans and about
US$7.8 million in additional food assistance. By 1958, however, Hoxha was again
complaining about Tito's "fascism" and "genocide" against Albanians in Kosovo.
He also grumbled about a Comecon plan
for integrating the East European economies, which called for Albania to produce
agricultural goods and minerals instead of emphasizing development of heavy
industry. On a twelve-day visit to Albania in 1959, Khrushchev reportedly tried
to convince Hoxha and Shehu that their country should aspire to become socialism's "orchard."
Albania in the
Chinese Sphere
Enver Hoxha in 1971.
Albania played a role in the Sino-Soviet conflict far outweighing either its
size or its importance in the communist world. By 1958 Albania stood with the People's Republic of China
(PRC) in opposing Moscow
on issues of peaceful coexistence, de-Stalinization, and
Yugoslavia's "separate road to socialism" through decentralization of economic
life. The Soviet Union, other East European countries, and China all offered
Albania large amounts of aid. Soviet leaders also promised to build a large Palace of Culture
in Tirana as a symbol of the Soviet people's "love and friendship" for the
Albanians. But despite these gestures, Tirana was dissatisfied with Moscow's
economic policy toward Albania. Hoxha and Shehu apparently decided in May or June 1960 that
Albania was assured of Chinese support, and when sharp polemics erupted between
the PRC and the Soviet
Union, they openly sided with the former. Ramiz Alia, at the time a candidate-member of the
Politburo and Hoxha's adviser on ideological questions, played a prominent role
in the rhetoric.
The Sino-Soviet
split burst into the open in June 1960 at a Romanian
Workers' Party congress, at which Khrushchev attempted to secure condemnation
of Beijing. Albania's delegation,
alone among the European delegations, supported the Chinese. The Soviet Union
immediately retaliated by organizing a campaign to oust Hoxha and Shehu in the
summer of 1960. Moscow cut promised grain deliveries to Albania during a
drought, and the Soviet embassy in Tirana overtly encouraged a pro-Soviet
faction in the Party of Labour of Albania (APL) to
speak out against the party's pro-Chinese stance. Moscow also apparently
involved itself in a plot within the APL to unseat Hoxha and Shehu by force. But
given their tight control of the party machinery, army, and Shehu's secret
police, the Directorate of State Security (Drejtorija e Sigurimit të Shtetit—Sigurimi), the two Albanian leaders
easily parried the threat. Four pro-Soviet Albanian leaders, including Teme Sejko and Tahir Demi, were eventually tried
and executed. The PRC immediately began making up for the cancellation of Soviet
wheat shipments despite a paucity of foreign currency and its own economic
hardships.
Albania again sided with the People's Republic of China when it launched an
attack on the Soviet Union's leadership of the international communist movement
at the November 1960 Moscow conference of the world's 81 communist parties.
Hoxha inveighed against Khrushchev for encouraging Greek claims to southern Albania, sowing
discord within the APL and army, and using economic blackmail. "Soviet rats were
able to eat while the Albanian people were dying of hunger," Hoxha railed,
referring to purposely delayed Soviet grain deliveries. Communist leaders loyal to Moscow described Hoxha's
performance as "gangsterish" and "infantile," and the speech extinguished any
chance of an agreement between Moscow and Tirana. For the next year, Albania played proxy for
Communist China. Pro-Soviet communist parties, reluctant to confront the PRC
directly, criticized Beijing by castigating Albania. Communist China, for its
part, frequently gave prominence to the Albanians' fulminations against the
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which Tirana referred to as a "socialist hell."
Hoxha and Shehu continued their harangue against the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia at the APL's Fourth Party Congress in February 1961. During the
congress, the Albanian government announced the broad outlines of the country's
Third Five-Year Plan (1961–65), which allocated 54% of all investment to
industry, thereby rejecting Khrushchev's wish to make Albania primarily an
agricultural producer. Moscow responded by canceling aid programs and lines of
credit for Albania, but the Chinese again came to the rescue.
After additional sharp exchanges between Soviet and Chinese delegates over
Albania at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Twenty-Second Party
Congress in October 1961, Khrushchev lambasted the Albanians for executing a
pregnant, pro-Soviet member of the Albanian party Politburo Liri Gega,
and the Soviet Union finally broke diplomatic relations with Albania in
December. Moscow then withdrew all Soviet economic advisers and technicians from
the country, including those at work on the Palace of Culture, and halted shipments of
supplies and spare parts for equipment already in place in Albania. In addition,
the Soviet Union continued to dismantle its naval installations on Sazan Island, a process that
had begun even before the break in relations.
Communist China again compensated Albania for the loss of Soviet economic
support, supplying about 90% of the parts, foodstuffs, and other goods the
Soviet Union had promised. Beijing lent the Albanians money on more favorable
terms than Moscow, and, unlike Soviet advisers, Chinese technicians earned the
same low pay as Albanian workers and lived in similar housing. China also
presented Albania with a powerful radio transmission station from which Tirana
sang the praises of Stalin, Hoxha, and Mao Zedong for decades. For its part, Albania
offered China a beachhead in
Europe and acted as Communist China's chief spokesman at the UN. To Albania's
dismay, however, Chinese equipment and technicians were not nearly as
sophisticated as the Soviet goods and advisers they replaced. Ironically, a
language barrier even forced the Chinese and Albanian technicians to communicate
in Russian. Albanians no longer took part in Warsaw Pact activities or Comecon agreements. The other East European communist
nations, however, did not break diplomatic or trade links with Albania. In 1964,
the Albanians went so far as to seize the empty Soviet embassy in Tirana, and
Albanian workers pressed on with construction of the Palace of Culture on their
own.
The shift away from the Soviet Union wreaked havoc on Albania's economy. Half
of its imports and exports had been geared toward Soviet suppliers and markets,
so the souring of Tirana's relations with Moscow brought Albania's foreign trade
to near collapse as China proved incapable of delivering promised machinery and
equipment on time. The low productivity, flawed planning, poor workmanship, and
inefficient management at Albanian enterprises became clear when Soviet and East
European aid and advisers were withdrawn. In 1962, the Albanian government
introduced an austerity program, appealing to the people to conserve resources,
cut production costs, and abandon unnecessary investment.
Withdrawal from
the Warsaw Pact
In October 1964, Hoxha hailed Khrushchev's fall from power, and the Soviet
Union's new leaders made overtures to Tirana. It soon became clear, however,
that the new Soviet leadership had no intention of changing basic policies to
suit Albania, and relations failed to improve. Tirana's propaganda continued for
decades to refer to Soviet officials as "treacherous revisionists" and "traitors
to communism," and in 1964, Hoxha said that Albania's terms for reconciliation
were a Soviet apology to Albania and reparations for damages inflicted on the
country. Soviet-Albanian relations dipped to new lows after the Warsaw Pact invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968, Albania felt that the Soviet Union itself had become
too liberal since the death of Joseph Stalin, so it withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. Leonid Brezhnev made no
attempt to force Albania to remain.
Cultural and
Ideological Revolution
A manhole cover from the Communist period is
stamped "The Partisans' Metal Shop of Tirana".
In the mid-1960s, Albania's leaders grew wary of a threat to their power by a
burgeoning bureaucracy. Party
discipline had eroded. People complained about malfeasance, inflation, and low-quality goods. Writers strayed
from the orthodoxy of socialist realism, which demanded that art
and literature serve as instruments of government and party policy. As a result,
after Mao Zedong unleashed the
Cultural
Revolution in China in 1966, Hoxha launched his own Cultural and Ideological
Revolution. The Albanian leader concentrated on reforming the military,
government bureaucracy, and economy as well as on creating new support for his
system. The regime abolished military ranks, reintroduced political commissars
into the military, and renounced professionalism in the army. Railing against a
"white-collar mentality," the authorities also slashed the salaries of mid- and
high-level officials, ousted administrators and specialists from their desk
jobs, and sent such persons to toil in the factories and fields. Six ministries,
including the Ministry of Justice, were eliminated. Farm
collectivization spread to even the remote mountains. In addition, the
government attacked dissident writers and artists, reformed its education
system, and generally reinforced Albania's isolation from European culture in
an effort to keep out foreign influences.
In 1967, the authorities conducted a violent campaign to extinguish religious
life in Albania, claiming that religion had divided the Albanian nation and kept it
mired in backwardness. Student agitators combed the countryside, forcing
Albanians to quit practicing their faith. Despite complaints, even by APL
members, all churches, mosques, monasteries, and other religious institutions
had been closed or converted into warehouses, gymnasiums, and workshops by
year's end. A special decree abrogated the charters by which the country's main
religious communities had operated. The campaign culminated in an announcement
that Albania had become the world's first atheistic state, a feat touted as one
of Enver Hoxha's greatest achievements.
Traditional kinship links in Albania, centered on the patriarchal family,
were shattered by the postwar repression of clan leaders,
collectivization of agriculture, industrialization, migration from the
countryside to urban areas, and suppression of religion. The postwar regime
brought a radical change in the status of Albania's women. Considered
second-class citizens in traditional Albanian society, women performed most of the work at home and
in the fields. Before World War II, about 90% of Albania's women were
illiterate, and in many areas they were regarded as chattels under ancient
tribal laws and customs. During the Cultural and Ideological Revolution, the
party encouraged women to take jobs outside the home in an effort to compensate
for labor shortages and to overcome their conservatism. Hoxha himself proclaimed
that anyone who trampled on the party's edict on women's rights should be
"hurled into the fire."
Albania and
Self-Reliance
Albanian-Chinese relations had stagnated by 1970, and when the Asian giant
began to reemerge from isolation in the early 1970s, Mao and the other Communist
Chinese leaders reassessed their commitment to tiny Albania. In response, Tirana
began broadening its contacts with the outside world. Albania opened trade
negotiations with France, Italy, and the recently independent Asian and African
states, and in 1971 it normalised relations with Yugoslavia and Greece. Albania's leaders
abhorred the People's Republic of China's contacts with the United States in the
early 1970s, and its press and radio ignored President Richard Nixon's trip to
Beijing in 1972. Albania actively worked to reduce its dependence on
Communist China by diversifying trade and improving diplomatic and cultural
relations, especially with Western Europe. But Albania shunned the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe and was the only European country that
refused to take part in the Helsinki Conference of July 1975. Soon after
Mao's death in 1976, Hoxha criticized the new leadership as well as Beijing's
pragmatic policy toward the United States and Western Europe. The Chinese
retorted by inviting Tito to visit Beijing in 1977 and ending assistance
programs for Albania in 1978.
The Sino-Albanian split left Albania with no
foreign protector. Tirana ignored calls by the United States and the Soviet
Union to normalise relations. Instead, Albania expanded diplomatic ties with
Western Europe and the developing nations and began stressing the principle of
self-reliance as the keystone of the country's strategy for economic
development. However, Hoxha's cautious opening toward the outside world stirred
up nascent movements for change inside Albania. As the dictator's health
slipped, muted calls arose for the relaxation of party controls and greater
openness. In response, Hoxha launched a series of purges that removed the
defense minister and many top military officials. A year later, Hoxha purged
ministers responsible for the economy and replaced them with younger
persons.
As Hoxha's health declined, the dictator began planning for an orderly succession. He
worked to institutionalise his policies, hoping to frustrate any attempt his
successors might make to venture from the Stalinist path he had blazed for
Albania. In December 1976, Albania adopted its second Stalinist constitution of
the postwar era. The document guaranteed Albanians freedom of speech, the press, organization,
association, and assembly but subordinated these rights to the individual's
duties to society as a whole. The constitution enshrined in law the idea of autarky and prohibited the government
from seeking financial aid or credits or from forming joint companies with
partners from capitalist or revisionist communist countries. The constitution's
preamble also boasted that the foundations of religious belief in Albania had
been abolished.
In 1980, Hoxha turned to Ramiz
Alia to succeed him as Albania's communist patriarch, overlooking his
long-standing comrade-in-arms, Mehmet Shehu. Hoxha first tried to convince Shehu
to step aside voluntarily, but when this move failed, Hoxha arranged for all the
members of the Politburo to rebuke him for allowing his son to become engaged to
the daughter of a former bourgeois family. Shehu allegedly committed suicide on
December 18, 1981. It is suspected, however, that Hoxha had him killed. Hoxha,
obviously fearing retaliation, purged the members of Shehu's family and his
supporters within the police and military. In November 1982, Hoxha announced
that Shehu had been a foreign spy working simultaneously for the United States,
British, Soviet, and Yugoslav intelligence agencies in planning the
assassination of Hoxha himself. "He was buried like a dog," Hoxha wrote in the
Albanian edition of his book, The Titoites.
Hoxha went into semi-retirement in early 1983, and Alia assumed
responsibility for Albania's administration. Alia traveled extensively around
Albania, standing in for Hoxha at major events and delivering addresses laying
down new policies and intoning litanies to the enfeebled president. When Hoxha
died on April 11, 1985, he left Albania a legacy of repression, technological
backwardness, isolation, and fear of the outside world. Alia succeeded to the
presidency and became legal secretary of the APL two days later. In due course,
he became a dominant figure in the Albanian media, and his slogans appeared
painted in crimson letters on signboards across the country.
Transit
After Hoxha's death, Alia took his place. He tried to follow in his
footsteps, but the changes had already started and the fall of communism
throughout south central
Europe led to widespread changes within Albanian society. Mikhail
Gorbachev had appeared in the Soviet Union with new policies (glasnost and perestroika). The communist regime was pressured by
the US and Europe and also by the hate of its own people. After Nicolae
Ceauşescu (the communist leader of Romania) was executed in a revolution, Alia knew that
he would be next if changes were not made. He signed the Helsinki
Agreement (which was signed by other countries in 1975) that respected some
human rights. He allowed
pluralism under the enormous pressure from students and workers. Under Alia's
regime, the first pluralist elections took place since the communists assumed
power in Albania. Alia's party won the election of March 31, 1991. Nevertheless, it was
clear that the change would not be stopped. Pursuant to a 1991 interim basic
law, Albanians ratified a constitution in 1998, establishing a democratic system
of government based upon the rule of law and guaranteeing the protection of
fundamental human rights.
The position of the communists was confirmed in the first round of elections
under the interim law, but fell two months later during a general strike. A
committee of "national salvation" took over but also collapsed in six months. On
March 22, 1992 the Communists were
trumped by the Democratic Party in national elections. The change from
dictatorship to democracy had many challenges. The Democratic Party had to
implement the reforms it had promised, but they were either too slow or didn't
solve the problems, so the people were disappointed when their hopes for fast
prosperity went unfulfilled. In the general elections of June 1996 the
Democratic Party tried to win an absolute majority and manipulated the results.
This government collapsed in 1997 in
the wake of the additional collapse of pyramid schemes and
widespread corruption, which caused anarchy and rebellion throughout the
country. The government attempted to suppress the rebellion by military force
but the attempt failed, due to long-term corruption of the Armed Forces.
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