PEOPLE'S SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ALBANIA: THE CLOSEST REGIME OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN EUROPE
16/11/2021
In 1946, Albania becomes the People's Socialist Republic of Albania led by the head of the Labor Party, Enver Hoxha. Until his death in 1985 he will isolate the country and implement an authoritarian regime based on the fear of the nuclear bomb. The dark history of Albania during the post-WW2 isn't well-known, although Albania was the closest country of Europe until it reopened in 1991.
Enver Hoxha: the dictator's route to power
Just like many European countries, post-WW2 Albania has erected a narrative of national war heroes. The National Anti-Fascist Liberation movement led by Hoxha played a key resistance role, whereas the Red Army's role wasn't as important as it was in other European countries. Interestingly, the movement also receives an important help from the communist resistants of Yugoslavia, the Partisans. The Allies also provided Albania in order to use it as a cordon sanitaire toward communist countries.
After Liberation in 1944, Hoxha turns round and organizes the shooting of many former resistants in order to focus the after-war national narrative on himself and earn Yugoslavia's trust and support. He also threatens the Allies who prefer to step back from the country. First and foremost, he gives up the project of a Greater Albania, which was the unifying cause of the Albanian resistant groups. That means, among others, to not solve the issue of Albanians in Kosovo, a region whose status is still in between an independent State and a Serbian province today.
1946, Hoxha is one of the only war heroes still alive. His bonds with Yugoslavia also make him a perfect leader for the other countries of the Eastern Bloc. The same year, some Yugoslavian superintendents sent by the Comintern place Hoxha at the head of the Labor Party and create the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania.
On Stalin's footsteps: spies, labor camps and executions
After world war 2, Hoxha quickly industrializes the country in order to form a a massive working class. His political measures tend to erase social classes: lower interval between low and high salaries, compulsory work experience in plants for non-manual workers, ban of private property, nationalizations, etc.
But Hoxha is an unconditional admirer of Stalin, who undertook radical socialist reforms when Lenin before him agreed on some consensus about private property instead. His politics are inspired by the dictator's methods to rule the country without any resistance or counter-power. Despite the social and economic progresses, Hoxha’s obsession for power and control quickly impoverishes the nation. Hoxha’s control over his population revolves around:
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The adhesion to the ideology: cult of Hoxha’s personality, propaganda.
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Violence: devoted secrete police using torture and arbitrary sentences to intimidate and kill.
Just like Stalin, Hoxha initiates exemplary trials on arbitrary grounds in order to terrorize his own population. In Hoxha’s Albania, listening to Western music can be sentenced to years in jail or labor camp. Numerous internment places are created and a total of 10% of the Albanian population is convicted over the 41 years.
The Sigurumi created in 1944 as the intelligence service and secret police of the State becomes an NKVD-like admninistration using various torturous methods, ungrounded charges and encouraging denunciation in order to contain or stifle any risk of any minor questioning about Hoxha’s policy. At least one Albanian on ten is considered as a political threat and put under the Sigurumi’s surveillance without necessarily knowing it, and one Albanian on three is arrested by the services. The Sigurumi’s mission is then enlarged to the management of the camps and jails. Some famous places such as the Tirana International Hotel, still operating today, are at that time stuffed with microphones and spies as many political personalities and powerful persons stay there.
The diplomatic isolation
Hoxha’s paranoia makes him constantly fear an attack against himself of his regime. Just like he did after the Liberation, he organizes the killing of his political allies (and enemies). Even Mehmet Shehu, his right arm during world war 2 and all over his reign, was assassinated in 1981.
On the international scene, this lack of trust and Hoxha’s diplomatic changeability gradually deprives the country from international support and fundamental exportations. 1948, the dictator decides to back up USSR in the Tito-Stalin split, brutally ending the friendship between Albania and Yugoslavia. 1956, Hoxha disagrees with Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization in USSR and radically cuts off the diplomatic relations between the two countries. This decision leads to wheat and electric shortages as they were delivered by the USSR, the raise of food prices and food deprivation for the population. It also restrains the diplomatic influence of Albania. The new alliance with Mao’s People’s Republic of China softens the consequences of the Hoxha-Khrushchev split, but the two countries end their cooperation after Mao’s death in 1976. Just like he did with Khrushchev, Hoxha criticizes post-Mao China for being “revisionist” with its opening to the West.
The country’s borders were fenced with electrified barbwire and a voluntary army was standing guard to shoot anyone who would attempt to leave the country. Hoxha died in 1985 and the regime opened again only in 1991 after the collapse of socialism in Europe. Today, Albania’s landscape is still covered with 170 000 above-ground round roofs hiding underground bunkers. They were built from 1967 in case of an attack from the outside and have never been used. They are evidences of Hoxha’s insane paranoia and obsession for control, as he dedicated money and working force to build them at the detriment of guaranteeing the basic needs of the working class and the growth of the industries, which were supposed to be at the heart of the socialist project...
Albanians and Enver Hoxha today
A wide majority of Albanians now consider Hoxha’s reign as a dictature and the crimes his government and the Sigurumi commited are exposed in numerous museums of the capital city Tirana. These museums also smartly emphasize our responsability in accepting - or not - ideological systems that threaten the integrity or lifes of the others. At the time I visited, the National Art Gallery actually exhibited the work Inflammatory Essays of the US artist Jenny Holzer, which really stroke me. Her essays are inspired from political and religious fanatism. I read this one about ten times:
Hoxha's grave has been moved from the WW2-heroes cemetary to an industrial suburb. In the center though, its residency is renovated and unhabited. It stands in the neighborhood of Blloku, a vibrant neighborhood of Tirana where trendy young Albanians now hang out. I was very often told by locals that Albania’s priority today isn’t to look at the past. The country was left in a difficult economic position and looking back at Hoxha's regime isn't a priority for the youngsters.