Area Handbook for Albania Part 3

Even after the "liberation," the Party continued its conspiratorial nature and did not come into the open until the First Party Congress was held in November 1948. Before that time all its meetings were held in closest secrecy, and no statements, communiques, or resolutions were published in its name. The Party thus continued to use the front technique effectively even after it became the undisputed ruler of the country.

THE COMMUNIST PERIOD

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, elected on December 2, 1945, proclaimed on January 11, 1946, the People's Republic of Albania; and on March 14 it approved the first Albanian Const.i.tution, based largely on the Yugoslav Communist Const.i.tution. In this first Const.i.tution no mention of any kind was made of the role played by the Party or any other political organizations. The Const.i.tution was, however, amended after the break with Yugoslavia in 1948, and revisions of the Const.i.tution published since 1951 have cited in Article 12 the Albanian Workers' Party as the "vanguard organization of the working cla.s.s."

The Communist regime quickly consolidated its power through a ruthless application of the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat. The first measures were both political and economic. In the political field a large number of nationalist leaders who had chosen to remain in the country when the Communists seized power rather than flee to the West, as many of them did, were arrested, tried as "war criminals" or "enemies of the people,"

and were either executed or given long-term sentences at hard labor. All families considered potentially dangerous to the new regime, especially families of the landed aristocracy and the tribal chieftains, were herded into concentration or labor camps, in which most of them perished from exposure, malnutrition, and lack of health facilities. Some of these camps were still in existence in 1970.

In the economic field a special war-profits tax was levied, which amounted to a confiscation of the wealth and private property of the well-to-do cla.s.ses. A large number of those who could not pay the tax, because it was higher than their cash and property a.s.sets, were sent to labor camps. All industrial plants and mines were nationalized without compensation, and a radical agrarian reform law was pa.s.sed providing for the seizure of land belonging to the _beys_ and other large landowners and its distribution to the landless peasants.

The 1944-48 period was characterized by an increase of power and influence of the Yugoslavs over the Party and the government. This in turn engendered resentment even among some top Party Leaders, who were kept in check or purged by Koci Xoxe, minister of interior and head of the secret police. Backed by the Yugoslavs, he had become the most powerful man in the Party and government but was tried in the spring of 1949 as a t.i.toist and executed. By the beginning of 1948 preparations had been completed to merge Albania with Yugoslavia, but the plan was not consummated because of the Stalin-t.i.to conflict, which resulted in t.i.to's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform--see Glossary) on June 28. 1948.

The Stalin-t.i.to rupture offered Enver Hoxha and his closest colleagues in the Albanian Party Political Bureau (Politburo) the opportunity to rid themselves of both their internal enemies, such as Koci Xoxe, and of Yugoslav domination. A few days after the Cominform resolution against t.i.to, the Albanian rulers expelled all Yugoslav experts and advisers and denounced most of the political, military, and economic agreements.

Albania immediately established close relations with Moscow, although Stalin never signed a mutual a.s.sistance pact with Tirana, as he had done with all the other European Communist countries. The Party leaders.h.i.+p was now concentrated in the hands of Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu. Shehu had been dismissed in January 1948 as Chief of Staff of the Albanian People's Army, because he had opposed the integration of the Yugoslav and Albanian armed forces and the stationing of two Yugoslav divisions on Albanian soil. He was rehabilitated immediately after the break with Yugoslavia.

The period of direct Soviet influence in Albania began in September 1948, when the first joint economic agreement was signed. After the establishment of the Council for Economic Mutual a.s.sistance (CEMA) in February 1949, of which Albania became a member, the other Soviet bloc countries began to extend economic aid. As a result, an intensified program of economic development began. From 1951 to 1955 industrial and agricultural production increased rapidly, and the basis was laid for transforming Albania from a backward agricultural economy to a more balanced agricultural-industrial one.

The de-Stalinization campaign in the Soviet Union had serious repercussions in the internal situation in Albania. Although Hoxha vetoed any relaxation of police controls and stamped out any dissenting voice within the Party after Stalin's death, by 1956 there was a significant minority in the Party elite that hoped to profit by de-Stalinization. The opposition reached its peak at a Party conference in Tirana in April 1956, held in the aftermath of the Soviet Twentieth Party Congress. Some of the delegates, including Central Committee members, criticized openly the conditions in the Party and requested that the topics of discussion be concerned with such topics as the cult of personality, the rehabilitation of Koci Xoxe and other top Party leaders purged since 1948, Party democracy, and the people's standard of living.

Hoxha silenced the dissident elements, however, and had most of them expelled from the Party or arrested. Some were subsequently executed.

Among those executed were Lira Gega, formerly a member of the Politburo, and her husband, Dalli Ndreu, a general in the Albanian People's Army.

Soviet Premier Khrushchev charged at the Soviet Twenty-second Congress that Gega was pregnant when she was executed.

Workers' riots in Poland and full-scale revolt in Hungary in late 1956, followed by general uneasiness throughout Communist East Europe, gave Hoxha additional reasons to increase his control over the Party apparatus and to sidestep all pressures from Khrushchev for reconciliation with t.i.to. Indeed, in an article published in the November 8, 1956, issue of the Soviet newspaper _Pravda_ (Truth), Hoxha accused Yugoslavia of being at the root of the Hungarian Revolution and implied that the relaxation of internal tensions in some of the Soviet-bloc countries had endangered the existing regimes. In a speech to the Party's Central Committee in February 1957 he came openly to the defense of Stalin and lashed out against "those who attempt to discount the entire positive revolutionary side of Stalin."

Hoxha did, however, pay lip service to the collective leaders.h.i.+p principle enunciated in Moscow after Stalin's death. In July 1954 he relinquished the premiers.h.i.+p to Mehmet Shehu, keeping for himself the more important post of first secretary of the Party. But aside from this he made no changes in his Stalinist method of rule. He demonstrated this after the Party conference in Tirana in April 1956, when he suppressed ruthlessly all those demanding the elimination of personal rule.

Hoxha showed the same determination in the summer of 1961, when Khrushchev apparently enlisted a number of Albanian leaders, including Teme Sejko, a rear admiral and commander of the navy who had been trained in the Soviet Union to overthrow the Hoxha-Shehu duumvirate and replace it with a pro-Moscow group. Sejko and his colleagues were arrested, and he and two others were later executed.

In September of the same year Hoxha arrested a number of other top Party leaders who were suspected of pro-Moscow sympathies. Among these were Liri Belishova, a member of the Politburo, and Koco Tashko, head of the Party's Auditing Commission; these two were also cited by Khrushchev as examples of the alleged reign of terror that prevailed in Albania.

After the break with Moscow, Albania remained nominally a member of both the CEMA and the Warsaw Pact. It did not, however, attend any meetings, and it withdrew officially from the Warsaw Pact after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Unlike Albania's relations with the Communist world, which have been varied and fluctuating, those with the Western countries have been, with minor exceptions, static and rigid, particularly toward the United States. Only two major Western powers, France and Italy, initially recognized the Communist regime and established diplomatic relations with it. Proposals made in November 1945 by the American and British governments to normalize relations with the Tirana regime were never consummated, chiefly because of the regime's consistent inimical att.i.tude toward them.

There have been three distinct periods in the history of the country under Communist rule. The first, from 1944 to 1948, was characterized by Yugoslav domination. The country's rulers, however, had no difficulty extricating themselves from this domination once Stalin broke with t.i.to.

In the second period, 1948 to 1961, Soviet predominance was evident everywhere in the country. All the armed and security forces wore Soviet-type uniforms. The regime copied much of the Soviet governmental system. The same kind of bureaucracy and the same secret police, functioning with the same supervision as in the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union, prevailed. In major branches of the government, the military, and the security forces, there were Soviet advisers and experts. The economic and cultural fields were also patterned after those of the Soviet Union. But despite this widespread penetration, the Soviets were in the last a.n.a.lysis unable to impose their will on the Albanian rulers, and in 1961 they withdrew completely from that country.

The third period, begun in 1961, saw the penetration of Communist Chinese influence in many aspects of political, military, and economic life. Like the Yugoslavs and Soviets before them, the Chinese introduced their advisers and experts in various governmental organs and economic enterprises, and probably in the military and security forces as well, but they were there at the invitation of the Albanian regime (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

CHAPTER 3

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Albania has land borders on the north and east with Yugoslavia and on the south and southeast with Greece. Tirana, the capital, is less than an hour by aircraft from eight other European capitals and barely more than two hours from the most distant of them. The coastline is adjacent to s.h.i.+pping lanes that have been important since early Greek and Roman times. Nevertheless, partly because of its rugged terrain and partly because of its political orientation, the country remains remote and isolated from its European neighbors (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

The large expanses of rugged and generally inaccessible terrain provided refuge for the Albanian ethnic group and permitted its distinctive ident.i.ty to survive throughout the centuries. Although the country was almost always under foreign domination, it was never extensively colonized because of the lack of arable land, easily exploitable resources, and natural inland transportation routes. It has been, and continues to be, poorly developed. Agricultural and pastoral pursuits have been the primary means of livelihood, and only after 1950 did industry begin to be developed to any appreciable degree.

Until recently, the coastal lowlands supported few people and did not provide easy access to the interior. The mountains that const.i.tute 70 percent of the country's area are difficult to traverse and generally inhospitable. Rivers are almost entirely unnavigable, and only in the south are there valleys wide enough to link the coast with the interior.

By 1970 no railway and only three good roads crossed the national borders.

The physical characteristics of the land have contributed to differing living conditions and social relations.h.i.+ps in the various sectors of the country. Before independence in 1912, the area of modern Albania had never been politically integrated, nor had it ever been an economically viable unit. It owes its existence as a state to the ethnic factor, and survival of the ethnic group is attributable to the natural isolation of the country.

The area is 11,100 square miles. The boundaries, established in principle in 1913 and demarcated in 1923, were essentially unchanged in 1970, although Greece had not dropped its claim to a large part of southern Albania. The eastern boundary divides the Macedonian lake district among three states--Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia--that have ethnic populations in the area and follows high mountain ridges wherever possible to the north and south of the lakes. The northern and southern borders were drawn to achieve a separation between the Albanians and neighboring nationalities, although there is a large group of Albanians in the Kosovo area of Yugoslavia across the northeastern border, and Greeks and Albanians intermingle in the southeast (see fig. 1).

Resources are insufficient to make the country wealthy, and some that are available have not been thoroughly exploited. Interior regions have been inaccessible. Agricultural land has been inefficiently used for centuries because people having large landholdings preferred to maintain more profitable livestock herds rather than cultivate the earth for foodstuff production. Malaria, until the 1930s, prevented development or reclamation of the coastal lowlands. Lacking the capital investment necessary, extensive development projects had not been undertaken by 1970.

The lowlands and the lower mountains of the south have a Mediterranean climate; weather in the northern and eastern highlands is dominated by the continental air ma.s.ses that persist over central and Eastern Europe.

Overall rainfall is plentiful throughout the country, but most areas receive it seasonally.

Apart from the bare rock mountains and portions of the alluvial lowlands that are alternately parched and inundated, most of the land encourages a wide variety of wild vegetation. Areas suitable for cultivation, however, are small. There are good soils on about 5 percent of the land surface, but land three or four times that percentage is considered arable. Forests cover nearly one-half of the land. About one-fourth is suitable for grazing animals.

The citizen relates closely to the land. Although he has been nationally independent for only a few years in the twentieth century and very seldom earlier, his property has been so difficult to reach that occupying powers have often left him alone. The land has had beauty that has fostered pride and loyalty, and a hardy breed has survived the constant struggle to derive an existence from it.

NATURAL REGIONS

The 70 percent of the country that is mountainous is rugged and often inaccessible. The remaining alluvial plain receives its precipitation seasonally, is poorly drained, is alternately arid or flooded, and much of it is devoid of fertility. Far from offering a relief from the difficult interior terrain, it is often as inhospitable to its inhabitants as are the mountains. Good soil and dependable precipitation occur, however, in river basins within the mountains, in the lake district on the eastern border, and in a narrow band of slightly elevated land between the coastal plains and the higher interior mountains (see fig. 2).

North Albanian Alps

The mountains of the far north of Albania are an extension of the Dinaric Alpine chain and, more specifically, the Montenegrin limestone (karst) plateau. They are, however, more folded and rugged than the more typical portions of the plateau. The rivers have deep valleys with steep sides and do not furnish arable valley floors; most of the grazing and farming are done on the flatter mountaintops. The rivers provide little access into the area and are barriers to communication within it. Roads are few and poor. Lacking internal communications and external contacts, a tribal society flourished within this Alpine region for centuries.

Only after World War II were serious efforts made to incorporate the people of the region into the remainder of the country.

Southern Mountains

The extent of the region occupied by the southern mountains is not settled to the satisfaction of all authorities. Some include all of the area in a large diamond shape roughly encompa.s.sing all the uplands of southern Albania beneath lines connecting Vlore, Elbasan, and Korce.

Although this area has trend lines of the same type and orientation, it includes mountains that are a.s.sociated more closely with the systems in the central part of the country. Other authorities confine the area to the mountains that are east of Vlore and south of the Vijose River.

These have features generally common to southern Albania and the adjacent Greek Epirus. This demarcation is considered preferable because it more nearly defined a traditional area that tends to lose some of the more purely national character of the lands north of it.

The southern ranges revert again to the northwest to southeast trend lines characteristic of the Dinaric Alps. They are, however, more gentle and accessible than the serpentine zone, the eastern highlands, or the North Albanian Alps. Transition to the lowlands is less abrupt, and arable valley floors are wider. Limestone is predominant, contributing to the cliffs and clear water along the Albanian Riviera. An intermixture of softer rocks has eroded and become the basis for the sedimentation that has resulted in wider valleys between the ridges than are common in the remainder of the country. This terrain encouraged the development of larger landholdings, thus influencing the social structure of the area (see ch. 5, Social System).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Source: Adapted from Norman J. G. Pounds, _Eastern Europe_, Chicago, 1969, p. 824.

_Figure 2. Landform Regions in Albania_]

Lowlands

A low coastal belt extends from the northern boundary southward to about Vlore. It averages less than ten miles deep but widens to about thirty miles in the Elbasan area. In its natural state it is characterized by low scrub vegetation, varying from barren to dense. There are large areas of marshland and other areas of bare eroded badlands. Where elevations rise slightly and precipitation is regular--in the foothills of the central uplands, for example--the land is excellent. Marginal land is being reclaimed wherever irrigation is possible.