Decoding Ramiz Alia

A review of Ramiz Alia´s report to the 1986 congress of the Albanian Communist party, which actually exists in an English translation. 

Ramiz Alia was the successor of Enver Hoxha as leader of the Communist regime in Albania. He was also the first elected president of post-Communist, democratic Albania. This little book contains Alia's keynote speech to the 9th congress of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), held in 1986. At the time, the PLA was the ruling Communist party of Albania (and the only legal party).

As usual, it's difficult to decode documents like this one. After all, they were intended for public consumption. On many points, Alia sounds like Hoxha. One-party rule is explicitly said to be necessary, the isolationism of Communist Albania is defended, and various "revisionists" are attacked. The text also contains a strong emphasis on Albanian nationalism (the Albanians are, of course, descended from the ancient Illyrians). If this was also Hoxha's line, I don't know.

On other points, Alia sounds cautiously reform-minded. He attacks a botched attempt to collectivize sheep and goats, calls for political decentralization, and wants every village to be self-reliant on food (in reality, a veiled way to introduce local markets). The Albanian leader even calls for free international trade! Apparently, Albania was badly hit by the protectionism of the major economies. Alia boasts about Albania's good relations with both Greece and Turkey, and a whole host of other nations, both capitalist and Communist. Friendly relations with Italy are on Alia's horizon, too. Yugoslavia is something else again - Alia attacks the Yugoslav repression in Kosova: "They are still suffering from nostalgia for Koci Xoxe". (A pro-Yugoslav Albanian Communist, and hence arch-traitor in PLA demonology.)

I also noticed that Alia regards the United States as the most dangerous super-power, a clear revision of Hoxha's original line that both super-powers (the US and the USSR) are equally dangerous. But then, Hoxha himself seems to have adopted this line in practice just a few years after Albania's break with China. While Albania didn't have any relations with the Soviet Union itself, they traded with other states in the Eastern bloc and had good relations with Vietnam, Cuba, Burkina Faso and other nations broadly in the Soviet orbit. Perhaps Alia's plan was to normalize relations with the Western powers, too? Not the United States, but he is clearly wooing Britain and West Germany in his report.

I'm not sure how to decode Ramiz Alia, but perhaps he was - ever so cautiously - attempting to become Albania's very own Gorbachev? If so, he seems to have succeeded. In return, the ungrateful "Illyrians" threw Alia into prison and re-introduced blood feuds. But that, comrades, is another story entirely...