Area Handbook for Albania Part 2

A basic change of att.i.tude, however, occurred when the regime broke with the Soviet Union in the 1960-61 period. The ruling elite, apparently feeling insecure both for their personal safety and for the future of the country, launched an intensive campaign to win popular support by appealing to the people's nationalist and patriotic sentiments. The country's major patriots who were responsible for the national awakening in the second half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries had been forgotten after the Communist seizure of power. In 1961 and 1962, however, books and pamphlets began to be published praising nearly all those, irrespective of their social backgrounds, who had played a role in the national awakening and in the declaration of the country's independence in 1912.

Intensive preparations were made in 1962 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the country's independence, and on November 28, 1962, all the top leaders of the party and government went to Vlore, where independence had been declared, to stage one of the biggest patriotic celebrations in the country's modern history. Among the many books and doc.u.ments published on this occasion to glorify the country's past was one ent.i.tled _Rilindja Kombetare Shqipetare_ (Albanian National Awakening), which included photographs of most patriots who had taken part in winning the country's independence, even those of the landed aristocracy (_beys_--see Glossary), whom the regime had previously branded as the "blood-suckers" of the peasants.

This appeal to the past was also accentuated in 1968 in connection with the 500th anniversary of the death of the country's national hero, Skanderbeg. The regime sent a number of scholars and historians to search for historical doc.u.ments in Vienna and Rome in preparation for the celebration.

With the exception of these efforts to resurrect the past after a hiatus of fifteen years, the primary function of the country's historians, all under the control of the Party, is to glorify the country's achievements in the period under communism. The Party is given credit for all that has been done in the economic development of the country, in improvements in the people's health, and in expansion of educational and cultural facilities, all of which have been considerable. In 1970 Enver Hoxha, first secretary of the Party, like Stalin in his day and Mao Tse-tung in 1970, was daily quoted and glorified.

ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

The modern Albanians call their country Shqiperia and themselves Shqipetare. In antiquity the Albanians were known as Illyrians, and in the Middle Ages they came to be called Arbereshe or Arbeneshe, and their country Arberia or Arbenia. The present European forms, Albania and Albanians, are derived from the names Arbanoi and Albanoi or Arbaniti, which appeared in the eleventh century.

In antiquity the Albanians formed part of the Thraco-Illyrian and Epirot tribes that inhabited the whole of the peninsula between the Danube River and the Aegean Sea. Until 168 B.C. the northern and central part of present-day Albania comprised parts of the Kingdom of Illyria, whose capital was Shkoder. The Illyrian Kingdom was conquered by the Romans in 168-167 B.C., and thereafter it was a Roman colony until A.D. 395, when the Roman Empire was split into East and West, Albania becoming part of the Byzantine Empire.

Under the Roman Empire, Albania served as a key recruiting area for the Roman legions and a main outlet to the East. The present port of Durres (the ancient Durrachium) became the western terminum of Via Egnatia, an actual extension of Via Appia, by which the Roman legions marched to the East. It was during the Roman rule that Christianity was introduced into Albania.

From the fifth century to the advent of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans in the fourteenth century, invasions from the north and east, especially by the Huns, the Bulgarians, and the Slavs, thinned the indigenous Illyrian population and drove it along the mountainous Adriatic coastal regions. During the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Albania became a thoroughfare for the crusading armies, which used the port of Durres as a bridgehead. By this time the Venetian Republic had obtained commercial privileges in Albanian towns and, after the Fourth Crusade (1204), it received nominal control over Albania and Epirus and took actual possession of Durres and the surrounding areas. In the middle of the thirteenth century Albania fell under the domination of the kings of Naples, and in 1272 armies of Charles I of Anjou crossed the Adriatic and occupied Durres. Thereupon, Charles I issued a decree calling himself Rex Albaniae and creating Regnum Albaniae (the Kingdom of Albania), which lasted for nearly a century.

OTTOMAN TURK RULE

In the period after the defeat of the Serbs by the Ottoman Turks in 1389 in the battle of Kosovo, most of Albania was divided into a number of princ.i.p.alities under the control of native tribal chieftains, most of whom were subsequently forced into submission by the invading Turks.

Some of these chieftains, however, were allowed their independence under Turkish suzerainty. One of the most noted of these was John Kastrioti of Kruje, a region northeast of Tirana, whose four sons were taken hostage by the sultan to be trained in the Ottoman service. The youngest of these, Gjergj, was destined to win fame throughout Europe and to be immortalized as the national hero of his country. Gjergj (b. 1403) soon won the sultan's favor, distinguished himself in the Turkish army, converted to Islam, and was bestowed the t.i.tle of Skander Bey (Lord Alexander), which, in Albanian, became Skanderbeg or Skenderbey.

In 1443 Hungarian King Hunyadi routed at Nish the sultan's armies, in which Skanderbeg held command; Skanderbeg fled to his native land and seized from the Turks his father's fortress at Kruje. His defection and reconversion to Christianity and the creation in 1444 of the League of Albanian Princes, with himself as its head, enraged the Ottomans, who began a series of intense campaigns that lasted until Skanderbeg's natural death in 1468. In his wars against the Turks, Skanderbeg was aided by the kings of Naples and the popes, one of whom, Pope Nicholas V, named him Champion of Christendom.

Skanderbeg's death did not end Albania's resistance to the Turks; however, they gradually extended their conquests in Albania and in time defeated both the local chieftains and the Venetians, who controlled some of the coastal towns. The Turkish occupation of the country resulted in a great exodus of Albanians to southern Italy and Sicily, where they preserved their language, customs, and Eastern Orthodox religion.

One of the most significant consequences of Ottoman rule of Albania was the conversion to Islam of over two-thirds of the population. As the political and economic basis of the Ottoman Empire was not nationality but religion, this conversion created a new group of Muslim Albanian bureaucrats, who not only ruled Albanian provinces for the sultans but also served in important posts as _pashas_ (governors) in many parts of the empire. A number of them became _viziers_ (prime ministers), and one, Mehmet Ali Pasha, at the beginning of the nineteenth century founded an Egyptian dynasty that lasted until the 1950s.

Some of the Albanian beys and pashas, especially in the lowlands, became almost independent rulers of their princ.i.p.alities. One of these, Ali Pasha Tepelena, known in history as the Lion of Yannina, whose princ.i.p.ality at the beginning of the nineteenth century consisted of the whole area from the Gulf of Arta to Montenegro. By 1803 he had a.s.sumed absolute power and negotiated directly with Napoleon and the rulers of Great Britain and Russia. The sultan, however, becoming alarmed at the damage Ali Pasha was doing to the unity of the empire, sent his armies to surround him in Yannina, where he was captured and decapitated in 1822.

Under the Turks, Albania remained in complete stagnation and, when the Turks were expelled from the Balkans in 1912, they left it in about the same condition as they had found it. The Albanian highlanders, especially in the north, were never fully subjected, and their tribal organizations were left intact. Turkish suzerainty affected them only to the extent that it isolated them from the world. Thus, they preserved their medieval laws, traditions, and customs. As a result, Western civilization and development did not begin to penetrate Albania in any meaningful way until it became independent in 1912.

NATIONAL AWAKENING AND INDEPENDENCE

The Albanian national awakening made rapid strides after the Treaty of San Stefano in 1877, imposed on Turkey by the Russians, gave the Balkan Slavic nations large parts of Albania. The Western powers, refusing to accept Russia's diktat on Turkey, met in Berlin the following year to consider revision of the Treaty of San Stefano. Albanian leaders in the meantime convened at Prizren and founded the League for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nation. Although the league was unable to bring sufficient pressure on the Congress of Berlin to save Albania from serious dismemberment, it set in motion a political movement that had tremendous influence on Albanian nationalist activity for decades to come.

Most of the league leaders held high positions in, or were influential members of, the ruling Turkish elite and were fully aware of the shaky position of the Ottoman Empire; they therefore demanded from the Turks administrative and cultural autonomy for all Albanian lands united in a princ.i.p.ality. The Turkish government refused and in 1881 forced the dissolution of the league. Meanwhile, Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungary began to take an active interest in Albania. Russia aimed at blocking expansion of Austrian influence in the Balkans and supported the territorial demands of Serbia and Montenegro. Italy and Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, concerned over Russia's influence extending to the Adriatic, attempted to influence developments in Albania.

The advent of the Young Turks regime (1908), in whose establishment Albanian officials in the service of the empire played a major role, encouraged the Albanians to found cultural and political clubs for the propagation of Albanian culture and the defense of Albanian rights. In 1908 a congress of intellectuals from all parts of Albania and the Albanian colonies abroad, especially the Italo-Albanian colonies in Italy, convened in Monastir (Bitolj) to decide on an Albanian alphabet; it adopted the Latin one as most suitable for the country. This decision marked a great advance toward Albanian unification and eventual statehood.

In the summer and fall of 1912, while Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece, prodded by Russia, were waging war against Turkey, the Albanians staged a series of revolts and began to agitate for the creation of an autonomous and neutral Albania. Accordingly, a group of Albanian patriots, led by Ismail Qemal bey Vlora, a member of the Turkish Parliament, proclaimed Albania's independence at Vlore on November 28, 1912, and organized an Albanian provisional government. Supported by Austria and Italy, Albania's independence was recognized on December 12, 1912, by the London Conference of Amba.s.sadors, but its boundaries were to be determined later. In March 1913 agreement was reached on the northern frontiers, a.s.signing Shkoder to Albania but giving Kosovo and Metohija (Kosmet), inhabited then chiefly by Albanians, to Serbia. This frontier demarcation was very similar to the frontiers between Yugoslavia and Albania as they existed in 1970.

The boundaries in the south were more difficult to delineate because Greece laid claim to most of southern Albania, which the Greeks call Northern Epirus. The Conference of Amba.s.sadors appointed a special commission to draw the demarcation line on ethnographic bases and in December 1913 drafted the Protocol of Florence, which a.s.signed the region to Albania. The 1913 boundaries in the south, like those in the north, were almost the same as those that existed between Greece and Albania in 1970. The Albania that emerged from the Conference of Amba.s.sadors was a truncated one; as many Albanians were left out of the new state as were included in it.

The Conference of Amba.s.sadors also drafted a const.i.tution for the new state, which was proclaimed as an autonomous princ.i.p.ality, sovereign, and under the guarantees of the Great Powers; created an International Control Commission to control the country's administration and budget; and selected as ruler the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied. Prince Wied arrived in March 1914 but had to flee the country six months later because of the outbreak of World War I and the difficulties caused by the unruly feudal beys. As a consequence, Albania's independence came to an end, and for the next four years the country served as a battleground for the warring powers.

CREATION OF MODERN ALBANIA

At the end of World War I Albania was occupied by the Allied armies, mostly Italian and French. The Secret Treaty of London, concluded in 1915 and published by the Russian Bolsheviks after the October 1917 Revolution, provided for the part.i.tion of nearly all Albania among Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. Another accord, known as the t.i.ttoni-Venizelos Agreement, concluded between Italy and Greece in 1919, also called for the dismemberment of Albania. At the 1919-20 Paris Peace Conference Greece laid claim to southern Albania; Serbia and Montenegro, to the northern part; and Italy, to the port of Vlore and surrounding areas. But President Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination and his personal insistence on the restoration of an independent Albania saved the country from part.i.tion. In the summer of 1920 an Albanian partisan army drove the Italians from Vlore, and the Italian government recognized Albania's independence.

In the meantime, in January 1920 a congress of representatives met in Lushnje, in central Albania, and created a government and a Council of Regency composed of representatives of the four religious denominations prevailing in Albania: the two Muslim sects (Sunni and Bektas.h.i.+), Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox (see ch. 5, Social System).

From 1920 to 1924 there was political freedom in the country along with extreme political strife. A group of statesmen and politicians, mostly from the old Turkish bureaucracy, attempted to lay the foundation of a modern state, but there was a bitter struggle between the old conservative landlords and Western educated or inspired liberals. The landowners, led by Ahmet Zogu, advocated the continuance of feudal tenure and opposed social and economic reforms, especially agrarian reforms. The liberals, led by Bishop Fan S. Noli, a Harvard University graduate who had founded the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Boston in 1908 and had returned to Albania in 1920, favored the establishment of a Western-type democracy. The country was torn by political struggles and rapid changes of government revealed considerable political instability.

In June 1924 the liberals staged a successful coup against the conservative landlords, forcing their leader, Ahmet Zogu, to flee to Yugoslavia, and formed a new government under Bishop Noli. But Noli was too radical to command the support of the disparate coalition that had ousted Zogu. Internally he proposed radical agrarian reforms, the purging and reduction of the bureaucracy, and the establishment of a truly democratic regime. In foreign affairs he extended recognition to the Soviet Union, a move that alienated some of his supporters at home and alarmed some neighboring states. As a consequence, Zogu, having secured foreign support, led an army from Yugoslavia and in December 1924 entered the capital city of Tirana and became ruler of the country.

Bishop Noli and his closest supporters fled abroad; some eventually went to Moscow, and others fell under Communist influence in Western capitals.

Zogu's rule in the 1925-39 period, first as President Zogu and after September I, 1928, as Zog I, king of the Albanians, brought political stability and developed a national political consciousness that had been unprecedented in Albanian history. To secure his position both internally and externally, he concluded in 1926 and 1927 bilateral treaties with Italy, providing for mutual support in maintaining the territorial status quo and establis.h.i.+ng a defensive alliance between the two countries. These two treaties, however, a.s.sured Italian penetration of Albania, particularly in the military and economic spheres.

King Zog ruled as a moderate dictator, his monarchy being a combination of despotism and reform. He prohibited political parties but was lenient to his opponents unless they actually threatened to overthrow his rule, as happened in 1932, 1935, and 1937. But even during these open revolts, he showed a good deal of leniency and executed only a few ringleaders.

He effected some substantial reforms both in the administration and in society, particularly outlawing the traditional vendetta and carrying of arms, of which the Albanians were very fond. The most significant contribution of Zog's fourteen-year rule, the longest since the time of Skanderbeg, was the development of a truly national consciousness and an ident.i.ty of the people with the state, although not necessarily with the monarchy, and the gradual breakdown of the traditional tribal and clan systems.

In April 1938 Zog married Geraldine Apponyi, a Hungarian countess with an American mother. Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano was the best man. On Ciano's return to Italy from the wedding, he proposed to his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy, the annexation of Albania. The following year, on April 7, 1939, Ciano's suggestion was consummated. Italian forces invaded Albania on that day, forcing Zog to flee the country, never to return. In the next few months rapid steps were taken to unite Albania with Italy under the crown of King Victor Emanuel III and to impose a regime similar to that of Fascist Italy. Albania as an independent state disappeared.

COMMUNIST SEIZURE AND CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

Resistance to the Italian invaders began soon after the invasion, but the few insignificant Communist groups that existed at that time did not join the fray until after n.a.z.i Germany, under Adolf Hitler, attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. These Communist groups, acting generally independently of each other, were composed chiefly of young intellectuals who had revolted against the country's medieval society.

Educated mostly in the West, they felt that their country's economic development and their desire to use their Western education for their own and their country's advancement were frustrated by Zog's concept of personal rule, by the hostility of traditional chieftains and _beys_, and by the lack of opportunities in the country's underdeveloped society and economy.

The leaders of these disparate groups convened clandestinely in Tirana on November 8, 1941, and under the guidance of two emissaries from the Yugoslav Communist Party, Dusan Mugosha and Miladin Popovic, founded the Albanian Communist Party--known since 1948 as the Albanian Workers'

Party. Enver Hoxha, a young schoolteacher who had studied in France and Belgium, was elected provisional and, subsequently, permanent secretary general. In 1970 he still held the same position, under the t.i.tle of first secretary. From the outset the strategy of the Party was to conceal its true Marxist program and orientation and to stress nationalism and patriotism. To this end, the front technique, through the National Liberation Movement, was used.

The National Liberation Movement was created by the Conference of Peze that was convened, also clandestinely, on September 16, 1942, for the purpose of creating a militant organization to coordinate and intensify the activities of a number of guerrilla bands then active against the Italian occupiers. It was sponsored by the Party and attended by the Party leaders, who at that time paraded as patriots and vehemently denied in public that they were Communists, and by a number of nationalist resistance chieftains. The National Liberation Movement was dominated from the beginning by the Communists, as were its military formations, known as partisans.

The movement was further strengthened in July 1943 at the Conference of Labinot, when the General Staff of the Army of National Liberation of Albania was created, with Enver Hoxha as chief commissar. Thereafter, under the guise of the National Liberation Movement, the Communist leaders devoted all their energies to obtaining complete control of the partisan formations and to preparing the ground for a seizure of power as soon as the Axis powers should be defeated. Their prime objectives in the 1943-44 years were to immobilize the nationalist elements who were still in the movement by surrounding them with loyal commissars and, at the same time, to try to annihilate other nationalist groups that had refused from the outset to collaborate with the movement. There was a full-scale civil war in the country from September 1943 to November 1944.

The civil war was fought between the partisan formations and the two princ.i.p.al anti-Communist organizations--Balli Kombetar (National Front) and the Legality Movement. The Balli Kombetar emerged as an organization soon after the National Liberation Movement was founded; it was led by Midhat Frasheri, a veteran patriot who had formed a clandestine resistance movement during the early days of Italian occupation. The Balli Kombetar extolled the principles of freedom and social justice and championed the objective of an ethnic Albania; that is, the retention of the Yugoslav provinces of Kosovo and Metohija, which the Italians had annexed to Albania in 1941. For some time it made efforts to collaborate with the National Liberation Movement, but to no avail.

In July and August 1943 representatives of the two movements finally met at Mukaj, a village near Tirana, to try to work out an agreement of collaboration against the Axis forces. The chief obstacle to an accord was the disposition of Kosmet. The Balli Kombetar refused to consider collaboration unless the movement joined in the demand that Kosmet remain a part of Albania after the war. Finally an agreement was reached for collaboration, with the provision that the question of Kosmet be resolved after the war.

The emissaries of the Yugoslav Communist Party interpreted the agreement as a victory for the nationalists and demanded that the Albanian Communist Party not only denounce the agreement but also launch a full-scale attack on the Balli Kombetar. The Albanian Communists bowed to this demand and, in September 1943, launched the attack against Balli Kombetar and subsequently against the Legality Movement. This movement was founded in November 1943 by Abas Kupi, who until August 1943 had been a member of the Central Council of the National Liberation Movement but broke away from it after the Mukaj agreement was denounced.

In May 1944 the National Liberation Front, as the movement was by then called, sponsored the Congress of Permet for the purpose of creating the necessary machinery to seize power. The Congress appointed Hoxha commander in chief of the Army of National Liberation and elected the Albanian Anti-Fascist Liberation Council, which in turn created the Albanian Anti-Fascist Committee, under the presidency of Hoxha, as the executive branch of the council. The Congress of Berat, convened by the front in October of the same year, converted the committee into a coalition provisional "democratic" government, which in the following month seized control of the whole country and on November 28, Albania's traditional Independence Day, installed itself in Tirana.

In many respects the 1943-44 civil war in Albania followed a course similar to that which took place between the partisan forces (Communist) of Josip Broz (t.i.to) and General Mihailovich's Chetniks (loyalist) in Yugoslavia. The Communist operations and final seizure of power in Yugoslavia played a major role in the Communist takeover in Albania.

Albania was the only European Communist country that was freed from the Axis invaders without the actual presence of Soviet forces and without direct military a.s.sistance from the Soviet Union. Political direction was supplied by the emissaries of the Yugoslav Communist Party attached permanently to the Albanian Communist Party after its founding in 1941.

The Anglo-American command in Italy supplied most of the war material to the Albanian partisan forces.

Albania's future was never specifically discussed by the Big Three--Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States--at either the Teheran or the Yalta conferences. Nor did Albania figure in the discussions in Moscow in October 1944 between Churchill and Stalin, when they informally agreed to divide Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, at least for the duration of the war. Accordingly, when the last German troops were driven out of Albania, there was a kind of political vacuum that the Communists, with superior political organizations and substantial armed partisan groups, were able to fill.

In August 1945 the first congress of the National Liberation Front was held, and the name of the organization was changed to the Democratic Front in an effort to make it more palatable to the public. Contending that the Democratic Front represented the majority of the population because all political opinions and groups except Fascists were included in it, the Communist rulers allowed only Democratic Front Candidates for the first postwar national elections held in December 1945.

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly elected at this polling was originally composed of both party members and some nationalist elements. The latter apparently continued to feel that cooperation with the Communists was possible but, within a year after the elections, they were summarily purged from the a.s.sembly, and subsequently a number of them were tried and executed on charges of being "enemies of the people." All national and local elections since 1945 have been held under the aegis of the Democratic Front.