Socialist People's Republic of Albania
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Socialist People's Republic of Albania (Albanian Republika Popullore Socialiste e Shqipërisë) was the official name of Albania during the communist rule between 1976 and 1992. The first name of the state was the People's Republic of Albania (Albanian Republika Popullore e Shqipërisë) which was used from 1946 to 1976. After the adoption of a new constitution in 1976, the state's name was changed to the People's Socialist Republic.
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[edit] Origins
In November 1944 Albania was liberated from the Italian invasion, and a provisional government led by communists ruled the country until the abolishment of the monarchy and the establishment of a people's republic. Albania remained closely related with the Soviet Union, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Finland
From 1944 Albania became a Communist country, suffering a Stalinist[1] totalitarian regime classified as one of the most repressive.[2] Because of its association with the years of oppression under communism, Albanians have developed an aversion to collective life in any form, even where it. A one party-state political system was adopted, and Enver Hoxha promoted himself 1st Secretary of the Albanian Communist Party, Head of the State and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
[edit] 1960s and 1970s, Supression of Religion
Howevever, with Stalin's death (1953), on the occasion of Sino-Soviet split (1960), Enver Hoxha sided with China, his last political supporter.
All minorities were suppressed. Beginning in 1967, a campaign by Albania’s communist party, the Albanian Party of Labour (PLA), aimed to eradicate organised religion, a prime target of which was the Orthodox Church. Many churches were damaged or destroyed during this period, and many Greek language books were banned because of their religious themes or orientation. Yet, as with other communist states, particularly in the Balkans, where measures putatively geared towards the consolidation of political control intersected with the pursuit of national integration, it is often impossible to distinguish sharply between ideological and ethno-cultural bases of repression. This is all the more true in the case of Albania’s anti-religion campaign because it was merely one element in the broader “Ideological and Cultural Revolution” begun by Hoxha in 1966 but whose main features he outlined at the PLA’s Fourth Congress in 1961.[3]"The area studied was confined to the southern border fringes, and there is good reason to believe that this estimate was very low". "Under this definition, minority status was limited to those who lived in 99 villages in the southern border areas, thereby excluding important concentrations of Greek settlement in Vlora (perhaps 8000 people in 1994) and in adjoining areas along the coast, ancestral Greek towns such as Himara, and ethnic Greeks living elsewhere throughout the country. Mixed villages outside this designated zone, even those with a clear majority of ethnic Greeks, were not considered minority areas and therefore were denied any Greek-language cultural or educational provisions. In addition, many Greeks were forcibly removed from the minority zones to other parts of the country as a product of communist population policy, an important and constant element of which was to pre-empt ethnic sources of political dissent. Greek place-names were changed to Albanian names, while use of the Greek language, prohibited everywhere outside the minority zones, was prohibited for many official purposes within them as well."[4][5]"They [Greeks] suffered the same cultural repression as other small minorities, in so far as their language had no official status" and their ethnic character altered.
"When ethnic Greeks were caught attempting to escape to Greece, penalties were severe for the actual offender execution was common and his whole family might be condemned in internal exile for many years usually in the mining camps of northern and central Albania"[6] that led to misery, further financial, psychological[7] and material ruin for the Albanian citizens.
Upon China's establishing diplomatic relations with US in 1978, Hoxha denounced even the new friendship and decided to pursue a policy of self-reliance. The result was an extreme isolation [8]
[edit] 1978 to 1992: Further isolation
From 1978 to 1992, Albania was an extremely isolated country following anti-revisionist views. Enver Hoxha, as well as his successor Ramiz Alia, emphasized the necessity to remain loyal to Marxist-Leninist ideals and conducted his rule in much of a Stalinist way. Albania became an autarktic in its economy, despite a few cultural ties with European countries such as France. It is noted that the Albanian population had steadily increased during this period and the communist government could hardly supply the people with food.
Following bureaucratic struggles, Alia began to moderate his policies, and the SPR of Albania came to an end in 1992 when the single-party constitution was abrogated in order to introduce democratic, political, and economic reforms which led to the current Republic of Albania.
Huge funds were spent between 1974 and 1986 to build approximately 700,000 concrete bunkers (pill-boxes) to defend the country against a hypothetic multi-front attack.
Upon Hoxha’s death in 1985, Ramiz Alia succeeded him as State and communist party leader. Alia was Hoxha’s protégé, but was less repressive than the former leader and tolerated minor insignificant reforms. The process was accelerated due to following changes in other communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
[edit] List of leaders
General Secretaries of the Party of Labour of Albania:
Chairmen of the Presidium of the People's Assembly:
[edit] References
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan IdentityISBN 1850652791,by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999,page 222,"the French Communist Party, then ultra-Stalinist in orientation. He [Hoxha] may have owed some aspects of his political thought and general psychology to that"
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan IdentityISBN 1850652791,by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999,,page 138
- ^ http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/csrc/document-listings/balkan/G97
- ^ http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/csrc/document-listings/balkan/G97
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan IdentityISBN 1850652791,by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999,page 201
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity ISBN 1850652791, by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999, page 190
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity ISBN 1850652791,by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999,page 116, "what Enver Hoxha did; brainwashing young people, but to the other extreme."
- ^ Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan IdentityISBN 1850652791,by Miranda Vickers & James Pettifer, 1999,page 2,"Enver Hoxha's regime was haunted by fears of external intervention and internal subversion. Albania thus became a fortress state"
