Louis Zanga Nearly Half a Century of Albanian Communist History

Louis Zanga Nearly half a Century of Albanian communist history On November 28th Albania, a country that traces its roots back to ancient II- lyria, marked the 75th anniversary of its independence and emergence from 500 years of Ottoman rule. The fact that Albania has existed a mere 75 years as a unified nation, a period marred by renewed foreign invasions, partitions and encroachments, explains in great part its politically anachronistic and al most paranoid fear of the outside world. The next day, November 29th, this small Balkan country marked the 43rd anniversary of its liberation from Nazi occupation and the communist seizure of power. The country came under the iron rule of Enver Hoxha, whose mis- trust of the outside world became a matter of national policy embodied in the Stalin-inspired slogan: “Albania’s savage revisionist-imperialist encirclement.” Communist Albania became a unique model of isolationism, an extreme ex- ample of the price that small but strategically placed countries pay for inde pendence. Its Strategie location has been responsible for a history of foreign occupations: first the Romans, later the Ottomans, and finally the Axis occu pation during World War II. After the war, Albania’s experimental alliances with larger and stronger communist countries playing partners-cum-protectors were all judged to have failed. Hoxha first defied Yugoslavia, then the Soviet- led communist bloc, and finally post-Mao’s China. Nor did he fail to tum his back on the noncommunist world, though his defiance took a bizzare shape through the assertion that it was the rest of the world that had isolated Alba nia. After Hoxha’s death and under the new leadership of Ramiz Alia, Alba nia began to modify its it incongruous political behavior by claiming that it was part of Europe after all. Hoxha and Albanian Communism Communist Albania remains inseparably linked with the name of Enver Hoxha. He was the creator, organizer, and executor of the Albanian brand of communism for nearly half a Century: and whatever form Albanian commun ism takes in the future, his name will loom large. He was bom in October 1908; and when he died, on 11 April 1985, he was the longest serving leader of a communist country, a feat made all the more remarkable by the wide array of distabilizing forces that he survived: Albanian tribal intrigue, traditional Yugoslav coercion, Anglo-American Subversion, Kremlin plotting, and Chi nese political and economic pressure. Despite the new nuances in the present-day Albanian domestic and foreign Nearly half a Century of Albanian communist history 691 policy, H oxha’s presence in the daily life of the country rem ains undim in- ished. H is successor Ram iz A lia never fails to rem ind his audiences in alm ost religious term s of the continuity w ith H oxha’s line. A nd in his latest speech he w ent so far as to refute predictions abroad that A lbania w ould go the “revisionist” w ay, an allusion to the changes that took place in the Soviet U nion after Stalin, in China after M ao, and in Y ugoslavia after Tito. H e drew the conclusion that history had no general, inevitable rules applying to all coun tries, clearly im plying that there w ould be no de-Hoxhaization in A lbania under A lia’s authority. A fter H oxha’s death, som e of the m ost im portant institutions and places in the country w ere nam ed after him , including the state university in Tirana; the m ain port city of D ürres w as renam ed and so w ere m ajor industrial Centers. To m ark his 80th anniversary of his birth, a huge H oxha m onum ent facing that of the national hero Skanderbeg in Tirana’s central square w ill bei un- veiled in 1988. H is W orks continue to be published, and now they num ber 56 volum es containing his m aterials for the period up to 1976. Since these volum es are issued at an average of tw o per year, the 10 rem aining volum es should be out by 1992. H oxha’s W orks are obligatory reading for party activist since they provide the guidelines for political action in every aspect of the country’s daily life. In the late seventies, in addition to his W orks, Tirana began to publish a series of H oxha’s m em oirs on foreign relations and develop- m ents covering the w hole period from the Second W orld W ar through A lbania’s successive alliances w ith Yougoslavia (“The Titoites”), the Soviet U nion (“The Khrushchevites”), M ao ’s China (“Reflections of China”) and so forth. The prolific record of H oxha’s flood of m em oirs, w ritten in an intelligent, cul- tured and very observant m anner, but heavy on invectives, self-righteousness and Stalinist-style allegations, has yet to be equalled by any other w orld leader, com m unist or non-communist. A H istory Full of Purges From the beginning, the A lbanian com m unist pary w as beset by purges reaching from the highest to the low est party levels. N o com m unist leadership has experienced such repeated purges and decimations as A lbania’s. Right from the beginning in 1941, there w ere constant struggles for pow er on both person al and ideological grounds. The first great purge occurred in 1943 and affected A nastas Lulo and Sadik Prem te, tw o early representatives of A lbanian com - m unism accused of Trotskyism. Then during the im m ediate post-w ar period, the “Y ugoslav period” betw een 1944 and 1948, a battle for pow er ensued betw een the H oxha-led group of intellectuals and the proletarian group headed by K oci X oxe, w hich w as supported by the Y ugoslavs. The crisis reached a culmination follow ing the Stalin-Tito break in 1948, w hen H oxha’s opponents w ere defeated and K oci X oxe w as executed (in 1949) for “treason” in conspir- acy w ith the Y ugoslavs. The A lbanian com m unists quickly approved the Com m in- 692 Louis Zanga form Resolution against Tito, and the way was paved for the Yugoslav-Albanian conflict and the longest lasting rift between two communist countries. The ensuing years, the “Soviet period” (1948-61), witnessed further purges and by 1955 Hoxha remained the sole surviving member of the founding Cen tral Committee group. This enabled him successfully to meet the 1955-56 challenge of Khrushchev’s destalinization campaign and the subsequent Moscow-Belgrade rapprochement, which planted the seed for the Soviet- Albanian break of 1961. The two main victims of this momenteous event in Albanian communist history were the pro-Soviet Politbüro member Liri Beli- shova and the CC party secretariat member Koco Tashko. Albania’s next communist alliance was with Mao’s China, the “Chinese period” (1961-78), whose early cracks became visible following the US-Sino ping-pong diploma- cy in 1972; it ended with further major purges in the Albanian leadership. Thus, in early seventies, the axe feil on the intellectuals Fadil Pacrami and Todi Lubonja, accused of excessive liberalism. In 1974, it was the tum of the top military ranks to be wiped out: Politbüro member and Minister of De fense Beqir Balluku, along with his key aides Petrit Dume and Hito Cako, for alleged putchist crimes and too much pro-Chinese sympathy. This was followed by the purges to the highest administrative ranks in 1975, affecting the Politbüro members Abdyl Kellezi, Koco Theodosi and a number of ministers, accused of “revisionist” practices. In December 1981 the most spectacular downfall of all occurred: the al leged “suicide” of long-time Premier Mehmet Shehu followed by Hoxha’s paranoid denunciation of him as a “multiple agent” of foreign secret Services. Widespread purges reaching into the highest party ranks followed Shehu’s de- mise, which included that of Politbüro member and Minister of Defense Kadri Hasbiu in 1982; and in the process most of the house that Hoxha had built collapsed. Building almost from scratch, the new one was erected around the oldtimer Ramiz Alia whom Hoxha picked as his successor. A few months before his death, Hoxha told a warm French supporter of the Albanian brand of communism that he was ready to die peacefully because the question of succession had been settled. And it seems that Hoxha had good reason to sound so self-assured. Had he failed to get rid of the Shehu clique, he prohably would not have died in such a peaceful frame of mind. Shehu’s presence at the heim in the post-Hoxha period would almost certainly have created an explosive Situation in the country, both within the party and among the public, for it would be not too far-fetched to say that if Hoxha is referred to as Albania’s Stalin, then Shehu was Albania’s Beria. Under his rule, Albania would have quickly become prone to great internal upheavals. Alia has shown his appreciation of Hoxha’s far-sighted decision to pick him as his successor by calling his maker “the greatest historical flgure of the Alba nian nation,” placing him above even the country’s national hero Skanderbeg. Nearly half a Century ofAlbanian communist history 6 9 3 T h e A lia L e a d e rs h ip A lm o st th re e y e a rs h a v e p a s s e d s in c e H o x h a ’s d e a th a n d th e re a re n o s ig n s th a t th e A lb a n ia n W o rk e rs ’ P a rty is in a s ta te o f d is a rry w ith o u t th e m a n w h o w a s its le a d e r fo r s o m a n y y e a rs.

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