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Enver Hoxha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Enver Hoxha
Enver Hoxha

In office
November 1944 – April 1985
Succeeded by Ramiz Alia

Born October 16, 1908
Gjirokastër, Albania
Died April 11, 1985
Tirana, Albania
Political party Albanian Party of Labour
Spouse Nexhmije Hoxha

Enver Hoxha , (IPA /ɛn'vɛɾ 'hɔʤa/, October 16, 1908April 11, 1985) was the leader of Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Communist Albanian Party of Labour. He was also Prime Minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1946 to 1953. Under Hoxha, whose rule was characterized by isolation from the rest of Europe and by his proclaimed firm adherence to Marxism-Leninism, Albania's government of the time projected the image that it had emerged from semi-feudalism to become an industrialized state.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Discarded bust of Enver Hoxha
Discarded bust of Enver Hoxha

Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër, a city in southern Albania that has been home to many prominent families. He was the son of a cloth merchant who traveled widely across Europe during his childhood, and the major influence on Enver during these years was his uncle, Hysen Hoxha (/hy'sɛn 'hɔʤa/). Hysen Hoxha was a militant who campaigned vigorously for the independence of Albania - which occurred when Enver was four years old. Enver took to these ideas very strongly, especially after King Zog came to power in 1928. Whether his uncle was indeed among Independence proclaimers and subscribers is disputed. There is a photo of the independence of Albania, he is present there but many think that it is a retouch, a common practice during Hoxha's years. He routinely removed "enemies" from photos.

In 1930, he went to study at the University of Montpellier in France on a state scholarship given to him by the Queen Mother, but he soon dropped out. From 1934 to 1936 he was a secretary at the Albanian consulate in Brussels, attached to the personnel office of Queen Mother Sadia. He returned to Albania in 1936 and became a teacher in Korçë, after stealing the consulate's yearly funds. However, he was never arrested or charged.

Hoxha was dismissed from his teaching post following the 1939 Italian invasion of World War II for refusing to join the Albanian Fascist Party. He opened a tobacco shop in Tirana where soon a small communist group started gathering. He was helped by Yugoslav communists to found and become leader of the Albanian Communist Party (called Party of Labour afterwards) in November 1941, as well as the resistance movement (National Liberation Army), which took power in November 1944.

Hoxha declared himself an orthodox Marxist-Leninist and strongly admired Joseph Stalin. He adopted the model of the Soviet Union and severed relations with his former Yugoslav communist allies following their ideological breach with Moscow in 1948. He had defence minister Koçi Xoxe (/'kɔʧi 'ʣɔʣɛ/) executed a year later for alleged pro-Yugoslav activities.

Hoxha's regime confiscated farmland from wealthy landowners and consolidated it into collective farms (Cooperatives), imprisoning and executing thousands in the process. The Hoxha regime's propaganda took great pride in claiming that Albania had become completely self-sufficient in the production of food crops during communist rule, as well as developing Albanian industry and bringing electricity to most rural areas, all the while stamping out illiteracy and disease.

Pill boxes in Albania built during Hoxha's rule to avert possible internal revolution or external invasion. Over half a million were built; most have now been removed.
Pill boxes in Albania built during Hoxha's rule to avert possible internal revolution or external invasion. Over half a million were built; most have now been removed.

However, the opening of Albania's borders to the outside world, following the collapse of the communist regime, revealed a completely different picture. Albania was not the industrialized, advanced nation of communist party propaganda, but in fact a country that was backward, not only by Western standards, but also by those of other Eastern Bloc countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. The vaunted industry of Albania was, in fact, fictional, while the farming collectives used agricultural methods of the previous century. Telephone communication, long established in every household in Albania's neighboring countries, was rare in most areas; while communist propaganda claimed telephone use was "available for everyone through communal telephone offices...throughout Albania." In fact, very few Albanians other than higher-echelon party apparatchiks had access to such services. Worker wages and living standards were remarkably low by European standards, a fact that led to a massive exodus of Albanian workers into neighbouring Greece and Italy, where they could sustain better standards of living as illegal immigrants, than they did in their country as nationals.

Despite his grandstanding, it appeared that Hoxha's major legacy was a complex of over 600,000 one-man concrete bunkers across a country of 3 million inhabitants, to act as look-outs and gun emplacements, pointed towards towns and villages just as often as away from them. The paranoid nature of Hoxha's character, which was beset by fears of an American invasion just as much as by fears of an internal revolution, was apparent in the design. When Stalin died in 1953, Hoxha developed a fear that the Soviet Union would invade Albania, and eventually, though to a much lesser extent, believed that Yugoslavia could possibly invade Albania.

Hoxha had remained a firm Stalinist despite new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalin's excesses in 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, and this meant Albania's isolation from the rest of communist Eastern Europe. In 1960, Hoxha aligned Albania with the People's Republic of China, which also continued to uphold Stalin's legacy, in the Sino-Soviet split, severing relations with Moscow the following year. In 1968, Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in response to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Hoxha's internal policies were true to the Stalinist paradigm he admired, and the personality cult organized around him bore a striking resemblance to that of Stalin. Internally, the "Sigurimi" Albanian secret police made sure to replicate the repressive methods of the NKVD, MGB, KGB, and Stasi. Its activities permeated Albanian society to the extent that every third citizen had either served time in labor camps or been interrogated by Sigurimi officers. To eliminate dissent, the government resorted systematically to purges, in which opponents were dismissed from their jobs, imprisoned in forced-labour camps, and often executed. Travel abroad was forbidden to all but those on official business, in order to sustain the myth of an advanced Albania. Any trace of individuality and creativity in cultural life was stifled, as the arts and belles lettres were allowed to exist only to the degree they served as mouthpieces for the government.

In 1967, following two decades of progressively harsher persecution of religion under his rule, Hoxha triumphantly declared his nation to be the first and only officially atheist state in history. Partly inspired by China's Cultural Revolution, he proceeded to confiscate mosques, churches, monasteries, and shrines. Many were immediately razed, others turned into machine shops, warehouses, stables, and movie theaters. Parents were forbidden to give their children religious names. Anyone caught with the Qu'ran, Bibles, icons, or religious objects faced long prison sentences.

According to a landmark Amnesty International report published in 1984, Albania's human rights record was dismal under Hoxha. The regime denied its citizens freedom of expression, religion, movement, and association although the constitution of 1976 ostensibly guaranteed each of these rights. In fact, certain clauses in the constitution effectively circumscribed the exercise of political liberties that the regime interpreted as contrary to the established order. In addition, the regime denied the population access to information other than that disseminated by the government-controlled media. The Sigurimi routinely violated the privacy of persons, homes, and communications and made arbitrary arrests. The courts ensured that verdicts were rendered from the party's political perspective instead of affording due process to the accused, who were often sentenced without even the formality of a trial.

Hoxha was unhappy with China's reapprochment with the USA in the early seventies. He had himself normalized relations with Albania's neighbors immediately before Mao's death in 1976 and the defeat of the Gang of Four in China's subsequent inner-party struggle in 1977 and 1978 led to the Sino-Albanian split and Albania's retreat into political isolation, with Hoxha claiming the anti-revisionist mantle to criticize both Moscow and Beijing. Deprived of its last main trading partner, Hoxha's Albania became a near-autarky from 1976 onwards.

Hoxha was exhumed in 1992 and informally reburied. The picture shows his second grave.
Hoxha was exhumed in 1992 and informally reburied. The picture shows his second grave.

In 1981, Hoxha ordered the execution of several party and government officials in a new purge. Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu was reported to have committed suicide following a further dispute within the Albanian leadership in December 1981, but it is widely believed that he was killed.

Later, Hoxha withdrew into semi-retirement and turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. He suffered from continuous dreams about the return of the Monarchy, and King Zog. Hoxha's death on April 11, 1985 left Albania with a legacy of repression, technological backwardness, isolation, and fear of the outside world. As communist party rule weakened throughout Eastern Europe, his succession by Ramiz Alia led to some relaxation in internal and foreign policies, culminating in Albania's abandonment of one-party rule in 1990 and the reformed Socialist Party's defeat in the 1992 elections.

[edit] Kosovo and Albanian nationalism

Enver Hoxha, as a communist, embraced ideas of internationalism and brotherhood among different peoples. This point of view made Hoxha very close to Yugoslavian communist during World War II and afterwards until the break-up of 1948. Such ideals are thought to be the reason why Hoxha decided to fight against Albanian nationalist who sought unification of Albanian-inhabited land. However, especially in 1980s, Hoxha used several speeches to gain popularity among Albanians in Yugoslavia. During the demonstrations in Kosovo in 1981, ethnic Albanians of Yugoslavia largely identified with Enver Hoxha as a symbol of nationalism, and regarded Albania, which they had no opportunity to visit, as a very prosperous country where human rights and equity are widely respected.

Sinan Hasani, an ethnic Albanian who was member of the Yugoslavian presidency, tagged Enver Hoxha “a scabby goat”, while Hoxha called Hasani “a Serbian dog” in response. This gave a lot of credit to Hoxha, while Hasani, highly disliked by the Albanians, became even more unpopular.

[edit] Trivia

  • The movie Inside Man features a tape of Hoxha played to a "bug" via an iPod with a portable speaker system.

[edit] References

  • Albania in Occupation and War, Owen S. Pearson, I.B. Tauris, London 2006, ISBN 1-84511-104-4
  • Albanian Stalinism, Pipa, Arshi, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1990, ISBN 0-88033-184-4

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
King Victor Emmanuel III (de jure)
Leader of Albania
1944–1985
Succeeded by
Ramiz Alia
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