Communist Albania: Enver Hoxha, Isolation and the Bunker Legacy

From 1944 to 1990, communist Albania was ruled by the Communist Party, and for almost all of that time its leader was Enver Hoxha. The regime abolished private property and political opposition, fought illiteracy and built up heavy industry. Along the way Albania broke in turn with Yugoslavia, the USSR and China, and by the 1980s it had become one of the most closed countries in the world.

This is the seventh chapter of our guide to the history of Albania. It covers the period from the elections of 1945 to the crisis of the late 1980s, and also looks at Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia.

How communist Albania came into being

The communists already held power after liberation, and in 1945–1946 they made it official. The elections of 2 December 1945 offered voters a single list. On 11 January 1946 the People's Republic of Albania was proclaimed, and on 14 March a constitution modelled on the Yugoslav and Soviet ones was adopted.

For a long time the Communist Party operated covertly, hiding behind the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Front. The communists pursued three main goals: to extend the Front's power, to eliminate their political opponents and to rebuild the state apparatus. On 5 August 1945 the Front was succeeded by the Democratic Front, which became the most important political organisation in the country.

The USSR, its allies and France recognised Enver Hoxha's government. The USA and Britain made recognition conditional on the elections. The USSR officially recognised the Albanian government in November 1945, and Yugoslavia was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with it. Only Democratic Front candidates appeared on the ballot, and according to official figures the Front won about 93% of the vote. The newly elected assembly then abolished the monarchy.

The electoral law introduced universal suffrage for citizens aged 18 and over, and in the elections of 2 December 1945 Albanian women voted and stood for office for the first time. Apart from the Front, only a handful of independent candidates were allowed to run, and the Front took every seat. Gjergj Kokoshi, minister of education in 1944–1945, opposed the electoral laws, arguing that there could be no talk of democracy without political parties.

Power was concentrated in the hands of one man. In 1946 Enver Hoxha was simultaneously prime minister, foreign minister, defence minister and commander-in-chief. He remained prime minister from October 1944 to July 1954, after which Mehmet Shehu headed the government. The Communist Party, founded on 8 November 1941, was renamed the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA) in 1948.

The new economy. State ownership and a single central plan were declared the foundation of the state. The regime introduced an extraordinary tax on war profits, which hit the big merchants hard. The agrarian reform (a 1945 law, carried out mainly in 1946) took land from large landowners and religious institutions without compensation. In 1946 all industry was nationalised, foreign trade became a state monopoly, and the buying and selling of land was banned. The country was rebuilt largely through voluntary labour, with important aid from the relief agency UNRRA. Albania took part in the Paris Peace Conference in July 1946, though not on an equal footing with the other countries, and was awarded 5 million dollars in reparations from Italy.

At first Albania attended the conference as an observer; later it was recognised as an "allied power". On 10 February 1947 Albania signed a peace treaty with Italy.

How power was organised

The representative body of the new state was the People's Assembly. Formally, the head of state was the chairman of its Presidium, a post first held by Omer Nishani, but real power lay with Enver Hoxha.

The separation of powers was a mere facade: decisions were taken by the Politburo and the Plenum of the party's Central Committee. The textbook describes this "party-state" system as a dictatorship on the model of Stalin's USSR. Officially it was called a people's democracy: a totalitarian system in which the state owns and manages the means of production and places the common interest above the individual.

The main features of the system were class struggle, Marxist-Leninist ideology and the personality cult. According to the textbook, in February 1946 the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee declared "class struggle" the driving force of political life, and the Communist Party became the sole leading force in the country. The regime rested on two pillars: violence and propaganda.

Crushing the opposition

The regime wiped out the opposition within its first few years. Balli Kombëtar activists were persecuted as "collaborators", thousands of opponents were put on trial as "war criminals", and armed uprisings in the north were put down.

In January 1945 an uprising broke out in Koplik, and in September 1946 another in Postriba near Shkodër. Their suppression was followed by executions, arrests and internment. In September 1947 Tirana staged the trial of the "group of deputies": 24 people stood trial, and 16 were sentenced to death. In 1949 émigrés set up the National Committee for a Free Albania, but the regime had the country firmly under control and these efforts came to nothing. Even criticism within the party was not tolerated. At the Tirana Conference of 1956, inspired by the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, some delegates criticised the party line, and they were punished for it. Such groups within the party were not a genuine opposition to the regime.

Special courts for "war criminals"

As early as December 1944, commissions and special courts were set up to deal with "war criminals", that is, collaborators. On 1 March 1945 the Special Court for War Criminals opened, and many other trials followed.

Armed resistance in the north

Anti-communist resistance in 1945–1948 took two forms: attempts to overthrow the regime by force and the creation of political opposition groups.

In Mirdita the resistance was led by Mark Gjon Markaj. He brought the anti-communists of the North together in the National Mountain Committee, also known as the League of the Mountains.

One of these revolts was the uprising in Koplik, whose organisers included Lesh Marashi, Dom Nikollë Gazulli and others. Both uprisings were brutally suppressed.

The Democratic Union and the opposition deputies

The peaceful opposition tried to operate in the towns. In November 1945 in Tirana, Gjergj Kokoshi, Musine Kokalari, Suat Asllani and their like-minded associates drew up the platform of an organisation called the Democratic Union. In January 1946 the organisation was uncovered and its members were convicted as traitors.

There were dissenters within the Democratic Front too: deputies such as Riza Dani, Shefqet Beja, Selaudin Toto and others, who held pro-Western views. On 15 May 1947 the People's Assembly stripped the opposition deputies of their immunity, and the main trial against them followed: the case of the "group of deputies".

Emigration and agent drops

Opponents of the regime who had ended up abroad counted on help from the West. In 1949–1953 the USA and Britain dropped political émigrés into Albania to spark an uprising. The operation failed: the Sigurimi caught the agents.

Politics in 1948–1978

After the break with Yugoslavia the regime grew stronger, but at home the purges, campaigns and sharp policy turns that followed shifts in foreign policy went on.

The New Course and the Tirana Conference

Stalin died in March 1953, and the Soviet Communist Party came to be led by Nikita Khrushchev, who condemned Stalin's personality cult at the 20th Congress in 1956. In the spirit of the "New Course", Enver Hoxha gave up the posts of foreign minister, defence minister and prime minister, keeping only that of First Secretary of the PLA Central Committee.

At the Tirana party conference of 14–19 April 1956, delegates condemned Hoxha's personality cult and the privileges of the "Blloku". This was the name of a district in central Tirana where the families of Politburo members lived; it was guarded by the Guard and the Sigurimi, and ordinary residents were not allowed in. Hoxha returned from Vlorë and denounced his critics as Yugoslav agents.

After the break with the USSR in December 1961, Hoxha returned to the Stalinist model and staked everything on China.

The revolutionisation of 1966

In 1966, following the example of China's "Cultural Revolution", the PLA launched a campaign of "revolutionisation" against bureaucracy and "backward customs". The emancipation of women was part of the campaign: early marriages were condemned and education for women was encouraged.

At the same time the regime tightened its control over the army, and in February 1967 it turned on religion.

The liberalism of the early 1970s and the 11th Festival

The early 1970s brought a brief spell of relative liberalism, especially in art and culture, which absorbed Western influences. It was ended by the 11th Radio and Television Song Festival in December 1972, in which the regime saw Western influence. The director was arrested and given a long sentence, and the singers were punished too.

In December 1976 the People's Assembly adopted the constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania. The country was declared atheist, and its isolation was enshrined in law.

Alliances and breaks

Communist Albania's foreign policy was a string of alliances, each of which ended in a break. Yugoslavia came first as the main ally, followed by the USSR and then China. After 1978 the country stood alone.

Yugoslavia. In November 1946 Albania signed an economic convention with Belgrade providing for coordinated plans, a customs union and a common currency. In June 1948, however, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform. Tirana tore up the agreements and turned to the USSR. Yugoslavia's chief supporter in Albania, Interior Minister Koçi Xoxe, was removed in 1948 and executed in 1949 after a closed trial.

In 1944–1948 plans were drawn up for a customs union, a common currency and a joint military command with Yugoslavia, and they threatened Albania's independence. When the USSR and Yugoslavia fell out in 1948, Hoxha used the opportunity to break with Belgrade.

The USSR. In February 1949 Albania joined Comecon. In 1955 it became one of the founding members of the Warsaw Pact and joined the UN in the same year. The first five-year plan of 1951 was drawn up with Soviet help. In November 1960, at the meeting of 81 communist parties in Moscow, Hoxha openly criticised Khrushchev. In 1961 the USSR stopped its aid and recalled its specialists, and in December it broke off diplomatic relations. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Albania left the Warsaw Pact in September.

Comecon was the economic organisation of the socialist countries. Albania was admitted to the UN on 14 December 1955, which strengthened its international position. Hoxha's speech in Moscow in 1960 was the decisive step towards the break.

China became the main ally after the break with Moscow. In 1978, however, it stopped its aid, and the alliance collapsed.

Albania needed economic and military aid, and distant China posed no threat either to its independence or to the regime's hold on power. In the 1970s relations cooled because of the PLA's constant demands and China's rapprochement with the USA, and in 1978 they were broken off. After that Albania was left without major allies and followed the principle of "relying solely on its own forces".

Relations with the West were poor from the outset. In 1946 British ships struck mines in the Corfu Channel. The case went to the International Court of Justice, and Albanian gold ended up frozen. When London later offered to restore relations, Tirana insisted on the return of the gold as a condition. Relations with West Germany were never established because Albania demanded reparations, whereas France upgraded its mission to an embassy. Only in the late 1980s did Tirana begin to signal that it was ready for relations with the USA, the USSR and the European Common Market, and for joining the Helsinki process.

Neighbours and the West

Relations with the USA soured because Tirana refused to recognise the interwar treaties, and relations with Britain because of the Corfu Channel incident, which sharply worsened relations with the whole of the West.

Relations with Greece deteriorated over Greek claims to southern Albania and Albania's support for the Greek communists in the civil war. Albania established diplomatic relations with Greece for the first time since the Second World War only in 1971.

Albania remained the only European country that did not take part in the CSCE and did not sign the Helsinki Final Act. In 1987 relations with Greece improved, and diplomatic relations were established with West Germany and Canada. To revive the economy, Tirana expanded trade with France, Italy and Scandinavia. In the late 1980s it also declared its readiness to settle the question of the monetary gold.

The socialist economy

The regime built an economy without private property or foreign money. It rested on state ownership and heavy industry, and the country was meant to develop by "relying on its own forces".

The first five-year plan, launched in 1951, focused on heavy industry and natural resources. Collectivisation of agriculture was the slowest process of all: it reached the mountain areas by the late 1960s and, according to the textbook, was completed in 1967. The constitution of the 1970s explicitly banned foreign investment and loans.

By the 1980s the economy had reached a dead end. Families received basic foods such as meat, sugar and oil on ration coupons. The regime confined itself to cosmetic measures: a "New Economic Mechanism" and rationed supplies. Peasants' private livestock was also absorbed into collective herds.

Nationalisation and the plan

The state rejected private property as a capitalist element and allowed no foreign investment, whether private or state. According to the textbook, in February 1946 the 5th Plenum of the Communist Party's Central Committee declared war on private property.

Nationalisation proceeded in stages. Laws passed in December 1944 introduced state control over private industry, a state monopoly on foreign trade and the nationalisation of the property of those who had fled. Later, foreign-owned property, the National Bank, mines, roads and waters passed to the state, and in 1946 the nationalisation of industry was completed.

The agrarian reform also took land from the owners of çifliks (large estates). The regime itself saw it as a temporary measure on the road to collectivisation.

A State Planning Commission was set up to run the economy. Albania built a state-controlled planned economy on the Soviet model, and over time this led to stagnation and crisis.

Construction projects and collectivisation

In the 1950s, with aid and loans from the USSR and the Soviet bloc, a sugar factory was built in Maliq, a textile mill in Tirana and a hydroelectric power station on the Mat river. In 1970 the electrification of the country was completed.

The cooperatives were set up in the countryside zone by zone. In 1959 the process was declared complete in the lowland and hill areas, and it began in the mountain areas.

The economy in the 1980s

When China stopped its aid, the state was left without the means to pay for industrialisation, and stagnation turned into a deep crisis. In November 1980 it was decided to collectivise the peasants' livestock: the animals were driven into collective herds known as tufa, and in the early 1980s the cooperative members' household plots were abolished as well. This plunged the countryside into a deep crisis and caused food shortages.

The talon was the name of the coupon with which families received rationed food. These measures were carried out under the slogan of the "course of continuity" and changed nothing of substance.

Repression and control over everyday life

The regime relied above all on the Sigurimi secret police. The party stood above the law and human rights, and "class struggle" was treated as the driving force of society. Propaganda portrayed Albania as the only "truly socialist" country, surrounded by a hostile "encirclement".

The principle of "politics in command" meant that every action was judged by its political consequences. Propaganda about the "imperialist-revisionist encirclement" raised fears of a threat from the West and from former allies, and was used to justify hardship and isolation.

The families of political prisoners and of "hostile classes" were interned or sent to state farms. The internment camp at Tepelena (1949–1954) held mostly such families, including many children, and several hundred people are estimated to have died there. In 1968 the Spaç prison and forced-labour camp opened at the copper and pyrite mines, and in May 1973 its prisoners rose in revolt.

Atheism. Following a speech by Hoxha in February 1967, all religious institutions were closed and Albania declared itself the world's first atheist state.

Control reached into every area of life:

• in 1966, following the example of China's Cultural Revolution, military ranks were abolished and party commissars were introduced in the army;

• people of working age had to attend periodic military training, known as zbor (military training call-up);

• "workers' control" gave groups of workers oversight of the administration, officially to combat bureaucracy;

• jamming aerials, called zhurmues ("noisemakers"), made it hard to watch foreign television;

• the official ideal was the "new socialist man", shielded from "alien bourgeois manifestations".

The most visible legacy of the era is some 173,000 concrete bunkers, built in the 1970s and 1980s in case of an attack from abroad. Many of them are still standing.

The army, stripped of ranks and placed under the supervision of commissars, was called a "people's army". The "new socialist man" was raised on Marxist ideology, and the zbor was part of the militarisation of civilian life. The bunkers were designed for a single person.

The Sigurimi and the "treason" laws

Repression began in late 1944, when the security service was given the name Directorate for the Defence of the People. In March 1946 it was renamed the Sigurimi (Directorate of State Security) and placed under the Interior Ministry; Koçi Xoxe became interior minister in 1946. At the 1st Congress of the Communist Party, Enver Hoxha called the Sigurimi "the eyes and ears of the party".

The Criminal Code of 1952 equated fleeing abroad, as well as agitation and propaganda against the authorities, with treason against the homeland.

Prisons and camps

Political prisoners were held above all in the prisons of Burrel and Spaç. Spaç was located in the Mirdita and Lezhë area. Tepelena, by contrast, held entire families of "class enemies".

The war on religion

The regime regarded religion as the main rival of Marxism, and many clergymen were convicted in the very first years. The open campaign began on 6 February 1967 after a speech by Hoxha: religious services and religious holidays were banned. Places of worship were destroyed or turned into warehouses and cultural centres.

Schools, science and culture

After the war, the biggest problem in education was illiteracy: according to the textbook, about 80% of the population could not read. The regime organised mass literacy courses, made schooling compulsory, and opened the country's first university and the Academy of Sciences.

The education reform law of August 1946 made schooling secular, state-run and uniform, and compulsory education was then extended in stages: according to the textbook, to seven years in 1962 and to eight in 1968. The reform of the 1960s emphasised the class character of the school and introduced an "ideological axis" of study, productive labour and military training. In 1957 the State University of Tirana opened as Albania's first university, and in 1972 the Academy of Sciences began its work.

The 1946 law established 11 years of general education in three stages: elementary (compulsory), lower secondary and secondary. It also provided for vocational education and adult education.

From 1945, when the Writers' Union was founded, literature and the arts had to follow "socialist realism" under censorship, and modernists were punished. The 1960s brought the first major scientific achievements, including work on a unified standard Albanian language. Healthcare was free. Fighting tuberculosis and malaria was an urgent priority, which included draining the marshes.

Albanology developed alongside the study of the language.

Literature, theatre and film

Well-known writers of the period include Ismail Kadare, Dritëro Agolli, Fatos Arapi and Fatos Kongoli.

The Theatre of Opera and Ballet opened on 29 November 1953. The first Albanian opera was Mrika by Prenkë Jakova.

In 1952 the New Albania film studio opened. The film Skanderbeg was made jointly with Soviet filmmakers and actors.

The emancipation of women

As early as the Second World War, women joined the leadership bodies of the Communist Party and the units of the National Liberation Army. After the war the party launched a campaign for women's emancipation, and their mass organisation became the Union of Albanian Women.

In the 1945 elections women gained the right to vote and to be elected for the first time. The 1966 campaign against "backward customs" condemned early marriages and encouraged education for girls.

The crisis of the regime

In the 1970s and 1980s the regime turned ever more inward and hunted for enemies at home. A new constitution, finally adopted in December 1976, renamed the country the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and enshrined the leading role of the party in law.

On 17 December 1981 Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu was found dead at his home. The official version was suicide, and he was posthumously branded an "enemy" and the leader of a "hostile group". Other leaders soon fell as well, Kadri Hazbiu among them.

Enver Hoxha, born on 16 October 1908 in Gjirokastër, died on 11 April 1985 in Tirana. On 13 April Ramiz Alia, who had chaired the Presidium of the People's Assembly since 1982, was elected First Secretary of the PLA. He stuck to a "course of continuity", but the crisis only deepened. From 2 July 1990 about 4,800 Albanians took refuge in foreign embassies in Tirana, and a few days later they were allowed to leave the country.

Hoxha's successor

Hoxha began grooming a successor in the mid-1970s, and by the end of 1981 it was clear that it would be Ramiz Alia. After Hoxha's death Alia took over the PLA, and the party's 9th Congress was dubbed the "Congress of continuity".

The concessions of 1990

In 1990 the regime made its first concessions. Religious practice was permitted again and the Ministry of Justice was reopened. Internment for political offences was banned, and the death penalty for fleeing abroad was abolished, as was the article on agitation and propaganda.

Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia (1945–1989)

After the war Kosovo remained part of Yugoslavia as an autonomous region within Serbia, and Albanians were treated as a national minority. Kosovo's path from military administration in 1945 to broad autonomy in 1974 and its abolition in 1989 is a separate exam topic.

During the war, organisations in Kosovo voiced the will to unite with Albania, and the Yugoslav communists promised self-determination after the war, but they did not keep that promise. The uprising in Kosovo in the winter of 1944–1945 was crushed with mass killings.

In 1945 Kosovo was placed under military administration. The period brought terror against Albanians, a campaign to confiscate weapons, and the massacre in Bar in spring 1945. After 1950 many Albanians were pressured into emigrating to Turkey. The secret organisations "National Democratic" and "Besa Kombëtare" opposed Serbian policy, and the main instrument of persecution was the Yugoslav state security service, the UDB.

The secret organisations aimed to liberate Kosovo and unite it with Albania. The expulsions to Turkey went hand in hand with Serbian terror and amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Kosovo's status after the war

In July 1945 in Prizren, the Assembly of the Regional People's Council, which included only 33 Albanian delegates, declared Kosovo part of federal Serbia. This created the autonomous region of Kosovo. The region found itself in a double dependency, on Serbia and on the federation.

The Yugoslav constitution of January 1946 recognised Albanians as a national minority and divided them between Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. The 1963 constitution of the SFRY was steeped in a unitarist spirit: it weakened the autonomy of Kosovo and made it dependent on Serbia. At the Brioni Plenum on 1 July 1966, these unitarist tendencies were condemned.

The demonstrations of 1968 were put down by force, but they compelled the authorities to adopt amendments that improved Kosovo's status. The 1974 constitution of the autonomous province reduced its dependence on Serbia to a minimum, and the Yugoslav constitution of the same year gave Kosovo a degree of autonomy unprecedented for its time.

Key dates:

• 27 November 1968: demonstrations in Prishtina and other towns demanding republic status and a university; the University of Prishtina opened in the 1969–1970 academic year.

• February 1974: the constitution of the autonomous province and the new Yugoslav constitution give Kosovo broad autonomy, with equal status for language, culture, flag and symbols.

• 1979: income per head in Kosovo is a quarter of the Yugoslav average, and unemployment is 2.5 times higher.

• 11 March 1981: student demonstrations in Prishtina under the slogan "Kosovo a republic"; on 2 April a state of emergency is declared, thousands are arrested, and purges of Albanians from the administration and schools begin.

• February 1989: the Trepça miners' hunger strike against the curtailing of autonomy.

• March 1989: under pressure from Serbia, led by Milošević, the Kosovo Assembly abolishes the province's autonomy.

• 23 December 1989: the Democratic League of Kosovo is founded in Prishtina, led by Ibrahim Rugova.

Inequality and the purges of the 1980s

Kosovo remained the most backward region of Yugoslavia. Serbs and Montenegrins, though a minority in the province, dominated the administration and industry.

The state of emergency of 1981 was imposed by the Presidency of Yugoslavia. After the demonstrations the authorities launched the so-called "process of ideological and political differentiation": a purge of Albanians from the administration, the party and the education system.

The situation worsened after 1987, when Milošević consolidated his power in the League of Communists of Serbia. The abolition of autonomy in 1989 took the form of amendments adopted by the Kosovo Assembly.

Next: Democratic Albania and Kosovo. Previous: Albania in the Second World War.