"The History of the Party of Labour of Albania" is an old
classic, published in 1971 by the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies of the
said party's Central Committee.
The book's title is self-explanatory. Yes, it really is an official history of the Communist Party of Albania, later called the Party of Labour of Albania. It could be of interest to students of Albanian history, but must (of course) be double-checked with non-Communist sources for veracity.
A large part of "The History of the PLA" deals with various factional struggles within the Albanian Communist movement. The great hero of the story is, unsurprisingly, Enver Hoxha. His early opponents are, rightly or wrongly, referred to as "anarchists" and "Trotskyists". Later opponents are dubbed "Titoists". The arch-enemy is Koci Xoxe, an Albanian Communist leader closely associated with Tito's Yugoslavia. Hoxha managed to outmanoeuvre Xoxe after Tito's break with the Soviet Union (Hoxha supported Stalin). Curiously, the book doesn't mention that Xoxe was subsequently executed on Hoxha's orders. Other renegades we are supposed to hate include the "Trotskyist" Zjarri group, Sejfulla Malëshova, Sadik Premte and Liri Belishova. (The book was published before Mehmet Shehu's fall from grace.) As a side point, let me note that "real" Trotskyists staunchly deny that there ever were Trotskyists in Albania. This is hardly surprising, since the Zjarri group seems to have been on friendly terms with both the Italian fascists who occupied Albania in 1939, and the politically dubious Balli Kombëtar organization. At least according to this book! (Sadik Premte did join the Trotskyist Fourth International after leaving Albania for safer havens, but that's another show.)
Much of the book deals with real or perceived foreign threats to Albanian national sovereignty, and it's obvious that Hoxha's dogmatic Marxism-Leninism was combined with a kind of nationalism. Hoxha's conflicts with both Yugoslavia and Khrushchev's Soviet Union are dealt with in some detail. So are Albania's economic problems and "socialist construction", including the collectivization of the countryside and the fight against the kulaks. All "mistakes" of the PLA are either attributed to dissident factions, or (more graciously) to the inexperience of the party leadership, but never to Stalin, despite the fact that both the "leftist" and "rightist" deviations must have been ordered from Moscow! Thus, both the super-radical slogans circa 1939-41 and the super-popular front circa 1941-48 are similar in character to the policy of other Communist Parties during exactly the same time frames, so they must have been the brainchild of the Soviet leader. Since this would lead to awkward questions concerning his Marxist-Leninist credentials, the official history simply shoves the whole thing under the rug. Milovan Djilas claims in his book "Conversations with Stalin" that Stalin originally supported the Yugoslav plans to "swallow Albania" (Stalin's own words). Naturally, this isn't discussed in "The History of the PLA" either, which depicts Stalin as a great friend of the Albanian people. More sensationally, sources hostile to Hoxha claim that the Albanian Communist Party was actually founded by the Yugoslav "Titoists", with Hoxha and Xoxe being about equally pro-Yugoslav until the Tito-Stalin split, when Hoxha skillfully stabbed Tito and Xoxe in the back! I'm not sure if this has ever been conclusively proven, but (of course) no objective discussion can be expected on the issue in the officially approved Hoxhaite-Stalinist history of the PLA.
It's also intriguing to compare the chapters on Communist strategy during World War II with Hoxha's later musings in "Imperialism and revolution", published in 1978. In that book, Hoxha strikes a super-revolutionary pose when attacking Mao Zedong. Hoxha charges that Mao based his revolution on the peasantry rather than the working class, and attacks the "revisionist" line concerning "new democracy", etc. But in "The History of the PLA", we learn that the Albanian Communists had a line similar to that of Mao during World War II: create a broad "democratic front" with everyone willing to fight the Axis powers, regardless of their political opinions. This is not surprising, since both Hoxha and Mao took their cues from Stalin. "The History" further states that Albania was nominally ruled by the Democratic Front until 1948, with the Communist Party being semi-secret! This sounds similar to "new democracy" á la Mao. The book also admits that 80 % of the Communist-controlled partisans were peasants. So what's the difference between Mao and Hoxha, really? It's also curious that the Albanian Communist Party, the purest of pure Marxist-Leninists, actually changed their name to the more neutral-sounding Party of Labour. I strongly suspect that this, too, was an idea cracked by Uncle Joe in the Kremlin. Many other East European CPs adopted similar names around the same time...
Otherwise, I was struck by how radical Hoxha's regime became subsequently, once they were firmly entrenched (and firmly isolated). In most Communist states, including North Korea, collectivized peasants had the right to keep their own private plots alongside the collective farm. In Albania, however, a "voluntary" campaign attempted to get rid even of these. Religion was another enemy to eradicate. In 1967, the people "voluntarily" demanded the closing of every church and mosque, which was subsequently carried out. Also, all icons and other religious symbols were removed even from private homes. The publication of religious scriptures and the education of priests or imams had been banned already after World War II. Curiously, Hoxha himself seems to have admired Muslim high culture and the Bektashi Order (not mentioned in this book, however). It's not clear to me why he didn't simply set up pro-Communist religious fronts, a policy followed by most other Communist regimes, even by - wait for it - Kim Il Sung. At one point, "History of the PLA" refer to these and other actions as a "cultural revolution", a term obviously borrowed from Mao's ditto in China. Later, Hoxha would repudiate both the Cultural Revolution and Mao en toto, but without changing his radical domestic policies. Hoxha's successor Ramiz Alia mentions a failed attempt to collectivize sheep herds and goat herds, carried out during the last years of Hoxha's long rule.
"The History of the Party of Labour of Albania" is, of course, an immensely boring book, unless you happen to have some kind of love-hate relationship with the Hoxhaite variety of Marxism-Leninism, or consider yourself an Albanian history buff. (I doubt, however, that modern Albanians read this kind of stuff!) As usual, I have no idea how to rate PLA paraphernalia, so in the end I award this work three red stars out of five.
Red Front salute, comrades. :D
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