An Albanian Sojourn: A Staffer Recalls an Unusual Odyssey
Douglas P. Munro, Ph.D.
1999-04-01
Volume IV, Number 1, Spring 1999
I was looking for something in my basement the other day. As is so often the case, I did not find what I was looking for. But I did find something better - two photo albums filled with snaps I had taken during a trip to Albania in 1987. This prompted a frantic search for an old diary essay I had written after the trip and which I later published in the Hopkins Spectator, a now defunct conservative student publication at Johns Hopkins. For once, my search was successful. I found the Spectator in question, with its Albanian reminiscences intact.1
Given recent blanket media coverage of the ongoing war in Kosovo between Serbians and ethnic Albanians, we thought to reproduce the essay here. Few Marylanders have ever set foot in Albania; we suspect none did when it was still communist. In 1987, Albania was an entirely closed society, like North Korea.
The essay below is reproduced as it was written at the time, summer 1987. Some of it may appear anachronistic: It was written before the fall of Albanian communism, before the breakup of Yugoslavia and before the outbreak of the war in Kosovo. Nonetheless, the essay makes repeated reference to Albanian/Serbian tension, for it was evident even then. To bring readers up to date on occurrences since 1987, explanatory end notes absent in the Spectator version of this article have been added to this reprint. All names of people with me on the trip have been reduced to initials. At the time, Albanians were very reluctant to let one use their full names, so I complied. I cannot now remember their real names. - Ed.
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"Welcome to Albania," said the Yugoslavian border guard, grin on face, evidently finding even the thought of spending time in this little country unendingly amusing. We left him and our bus behind us.
With some trepidation, we set out on foot - Yugoslavian vehicles are not allowed to set tire in Albania - to cover the hundred-or-so yards to the Albanian frontier. Including Ma and myself, there were 32 of us. It was spring 1987. We had come to see the world's second most closed society, after North Korea. Americans may not enter Albania; all of us carried British passports. Direct flights from the West are forbidden, too, so we came by way of the Yugoslavian republic of Montenegro - which we were now about to leave for the most fascinating trip of my life.
The weather was glorious. The view reminded me of nothing so much as a tin-horn Balkan scene from one of Herge's Tintin books. Ahead stood an armed guard, a swing barrier and a dilapidated building. To my left loomed the foothills of the Montenegrin mountains, green and vine-covered initially, but soon giving way to harsh, gray rock face. To my right, Lake Shkoder, shared with the Yugoslavians. Albanians take their insularity seriously, I thought, observing the chain-link fence running the width of the water and demarcating Albania's territory.
But Albania is not all it seems. The People's Infantryman looked bored and teen-aged. The famous disinfectant ditch, a shallow sheepdip-like affair through which one once paddled to be rid of Yugoslavian impurities, lay still and rainwater-filled. Unused, I assumed, since the death Comrade Enver Hoxha (pronounced Hojja), founder and general secretary of the Albanian Party of Labor (APL), and absolute ruler of this unique country from 1946 to 1985. We were let through without quibble. A plaque inside the customs house reminded us - in English - of that old Enverism, "Even if we have to go without bread, we Albanians do not betray principles. We do not betray Marxism-Leninism." Indeed not, I thought, observing the crude surroundings that no bureaucrat would tolerate in the West.
I filled in a rather badly produced form, declaring I had not on my person any "regrigarars" [sic] or washing machines, and listing precisely what I had in the way of "priuted matter and foreign cnrrencies" [sic]. I was ushered by our Albanian "Albturist" guide toward the excise man.
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| Bunkers litter the countryside like half-buried soccer balls. They traverse the terrain from north to south, placed indiscriminately in fields, towns, gardens. They are unused except for storage and stringing clotheslines between. |
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Having mentally prepared myself for the most intimate of body searches, I felt let down when not a finger was laid upon me and my suitcase was given merely the most cursory inspection. The only thing confiscated was my western published Albanian travel book. I was later told by S.G., our British group leader, that this particular work, and bibles, are all they are interested in. I could even have gotten away with my Ayn Rand. Probably.
We boarded our new bus. "There are no photographing restrictions," explained E., our Albanian guide, "except for military buildings and persons in uniform."
Splendid, I thought to myself, before realizing that this condition, like "anti-Soviet activities" in Russia, is something of a catch-all as at least one in ten Albanians is in uniform of some sort and the country is littered with concrete defense bunkers, like giant, half-buried soccer balls, as often as not facing the home of the hated Serb. (Albania once claimed Yugoslavia's Kosovo region, populated by ethnic Albanians.)2 There are rows and rows of these things, stretching from the sea, over the central plain and eastwards into the mountains. (See photo 1.) They traverse the terrain from north to south, and are placed indiscriminately in fields, towns, gardens. They are not used, except for storage and for stringing clotheslines between (photo 2).
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| There are statues all over of Uncles Joe and Cladimir Ilyich, but one wonders how seriously they are taken |
For Albania is nothing if not paradoxical. The military presence is everywhere, yet militarism is apparently lacking. The people have been saddled with what is theoretically one of Europe's most rep-ressive regimes, and yet they are among the most warm, charming, inquisitive, well mannered - I exhaust my supply of superlatives.
Socialist Nationalism
Communism, I always think, suits certain people. It is dour and puritanical, like stony-faced Muscovites and hard-headed Prussians. It is plainly less acceptable to the freedom-loving Poles or the U.S.S.R.'s Jewish intelligentsia. The result is a blending of tradition and textbook dogma. This is nowhere more evident than in Albania. Her people are too easygoing by far to be international revolutionaries. Here, Marxism - or, more correctly, Stalinism - has all but been replaced by the cult of Albanianism. True, there are statues all over of Uncles Joe and Vladimir Ilyich, but one wonders how seriously they are taken (photo 3). The communist-style wheat sheaves that on the current official state emblem surround the pre-Marxist national crest - a rather Hapsburgian black, double-headed eagle on a red background - are generally not to be seen on the flags the peasants sometimes plant in their fields. The older, pre-revolutionary version is generally displayed for all to view.3
In religion, too, the old lives on: Worry-beads are still daily rubbed, and pigs are a rarity, reflecting the country's Otto-man Muslim past.
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| Cultured, cain and tyannical, Enver Hoxha was the absolute ruler of Albania from 1946 to 1985. |
At every turning there are monuments to the twin national heroes of Gjergj Skenderbeg (1405-68), who fought the Serbs and Turks,4 and Enver Hoxha (1908-85), who snubbed his nose at world (photo 4). History is rewritten - with Albania and Enver at its center. Purposefully isolated. Capitalist-hating. Revisionist-reviling. National socialism.
It is this intense nationalism that is at once the Albanians' most endearing and infuriating - certainly their most memorable - feature. The Roman amphitheater at the shipping center of Durres was described to us as an Albanian structure - with "Roman influences," if you please - because the actual bricklaying had been done by Illyrians (the original people of this region). One hardly liked to point out that Rome's Coliseum could not, simply by dint of having been built by slaves, be described as a Gallo-Nubian edifice (photo 5).
But it is the example of Skenderbeg that is perhaps the most amusing: He is invariably portrayed as having been tall, massive and Aryan (photo 6). When in truth, if he was anything like Albania's modern citizenry, he would have been short, stocky and swarthy. No Nordic gods here.
The irritating side of this nationalist trait becomes apparent when talking about World War II. One is left with the impression that the Albanian partisans - now nationally revered and with a brand of cigarette named after them - won the war single-handedly, with no thanks to the Allies and despite, rather than with the help of, the dastardly Serbs. Of course, one could not blame the individual museum curators and tour guides; they knew no better. But it annoyed some of us, especially Ma, though the limo-libs loved it.
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| This is not, contrary to what your first instincts may tell you, a Roman amphitheater: It is an Illyrian ediface - so Albanian nationalism would have you believe - with "Roman influences"! |
That said, I thought it unfair to be too harsh on the Albanians' version of events. Their purpose was manifestly not actively to put others down, but simply to elevate their own beloved country. With no prestige granted them by the outside world, they must manufacture their own. (It also keeps the minds of an impoverished proletariat from its material lackings.) In its relations with other countries, Albania is bellicose but not belligerent. It denounces America, Russia and China with equal enthusiasm. It goes without saying, though, that special venom is reserved for the "Titoites," after Yugoslavian strongman Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980), who endured a standoff with Hoxha for decades.5 (Interestingly, Tito was a Croat.)
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| Skenderbeg is invariably portrayed as having been tall, massive and Aryan. |
With Hoxha now dead, it will be fascinating to see whether Albanian socialist nationalism - simultaneously so quaint and exasperating - will be able to hold its own in a new and less isolationist era.6 The romantic might half wish it well.
Though Hoxha appears to have had less than full sympathy for the notion of democracy (to say the least), there can be small doubt that he is still venerated by many of his countrymen. He was both a good orator and handsome. Having studied law in Paris prewar, he was a linguist and highly cultured. All along, he found the Chinese frustratingly alien and the Russians to be both bores and boorish. Shortcomings he had - he was vain and tyrannical - but many Albanians seem prepared to overlook this. (Just as Stalin still has his fans in Russia.) The bigger hills to this day have emblazoned in them in giant stone letters, "PARTI ENVER" (Enver's Party). Bulletin boards abound, either singing his praises or enlightening the people of one or other of his many profundities. At one point we saw five bunkers next to each other. Each had painted on its roof a large letter: Together they spelled E-N-V-E-R. By contrast, placards proclaiming, "Rroftë Ramiz Alia,"7 his successor as general secretary, are relatively rare (photo 7).
Alia is interesting. Having initially supported Mussolini's invasion of 1939, he changed sides during the war (seeing either the error of his ways or the communists as a better bet, depending on how charitable one feels). He became Hoxha's chief ideologist - this would not necessarily have involved much philosophical shift - and set about building his powerbase. By the late 1970s, Hoxha was fading.
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| Placards proclaiming, "Rroftë Ramiz Alia," Hoxha's successor as APL general secretary, are relatively rare. |
The other main contender to the succession was Mehmet Shehu, Hoxha's prime minister since 1954. Muscling in, Shehu played his hand too early. Hoxha proved more alert than he seemed. In 1981 Shehu "committed suicide," duly to be denounced as a multiple agent in the pay of the forces of capitalism and counter-revolution.8
Alia had only to wait. His moment came in April 1985, when the old man died. Reputed to be something of a moderate (!), he hopes to pitch Albania into a (marginally) more market-oriented future.9 Some of those on our trip half hoped he'd fail. Whatever one's philosophical point of view, one cannot but admire a country so steadfastly swimming against the tide of history.
And limited access to consumer goods would create envies hitherto lacking and an anticipation of that which could never be granted: political freedom, at least if socialism is to survive.10 Further, there is certainly a case to be made that under Hoxha Albanians were better off than they had been under the former king, Zog I.11 A government-owned press, a party-approved physician, a doctrinaire education - these are arguably better than none at all. For that is all Albania had under Zog, nothing at all.
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| In the countryside, conscripts sit astride donkeys with milk-churns on either side of their saddles. This is not the Red Menace I've been brought up to fear. |
To give Hoxha his due, he created a nation out of what was - when oppressors were not creating a false sense of unity - little more than a series, in good Balkan tradition, of squabbling feudatories. If the price has been arbitrary rule and a permanent war of nerves with Yugoslavia, shamelessly used to galvanize national sentiment, then the western romantic, at least, might claim it's been worth it.
Though no doubt they are, it is hard to escape the impression that Albanians don't seem oppressed. Despite the ban on photographing uniforms, no one objected on the countless occasions when I did just that. The guards at Hoxha's tomb reply to your "Hello." The same goes for most of the military. Doing their annual two weeks of military service, their hearts are hardly in it. The soldier at the Ministry of Transport entrance leans on a pillar, rifle against wall, cigarette in hand, rose in mouth, girlfriend nearby. Female reservists walk arm-in-arm down the street. In the countryside, conscripts sit astride donkeys with milk-churns on either side of their saddles. This is not the Red Menace I've been brought up to fear (photo 8).
And the peasants, ignorant, seem happy.
Time Travel
The meat of the matter is this: A trip to Albania is not so much one in dictatorship-viewing as in time-traveling. The country is what it has always been: authoritarian on the surface, while relaxed underneath.
The introduction of Marxism has presented no break with the past. The isolation, the nationalism, the poverty have always been there. Plus ça change. Here, communism has become Albania. Far from being the harbinger of a new order, it has become the ultimate reactionary creed. Its purpose, certainly, is to redistribute wealth (not that there has ever been much to go around), but also to preserve the identity of Albania in a distastefully modern world.
Even in this, the world's first officially atheist state (a title it proudly claims for itself), mosques and churches, while converted to other uses, have their exteriors lovingly restored. They must: They are history. Museums, monuments, castles, ruins, temples, amphitheaters are a aplenty. At times one could be forgiven for thinking oneself in Greece - the climate and terrain are similar - but here there a no Club Medders. Albania loves culture.
Mind you, all is not rosy. Certainly it is true that Marx would barely recognize Albania as one of his offspring. As ever, his creed has found itself distorted by the culture it has attempted to subordinate to the workers' cause. Communism in this part of the world is not quite what it seems, rather as one might imagine its being in, say, Sicily. But brutality and hardship there can be. They are obvious to all but the idealist and the well-meaning fool. In July 1987, two months after my visit, one Prerin Gegaj drowned after eight hours' swimming, trying to escape this proletarian paradise.
Oh, the guides will tell you, Albanians are free to leave. Provided they have the correct paperwork. Indeed, this is true. The rider is that they are not allowed to spend so much a lek (25˘) in so doing.
As we bastions of capitalism (and reaction, etc.) in the West have said all along, a nation too scared to let go of its people has surely got something to hide. It is this.
The APL has imposed an stultifying monotony. The local clothing, when not of the traditional lace-and-pompom variety, is badly made and ill-fitting. The bars, while friendly, lack any joie de vivre - and close at 10 p.m. Interiors, be they of hotels or people's cultural palaces, are massive, square, spartan. Materials - clothes, chair covers, drapes - are plain and predominantly rayon or nylon. (Kilowatts of static must be generated.)
Propaganda is everywhere: Our Tirana hotel lobby was scattered with English, French and German translations of the Albanian Telegraphic Agency's News Bulletin. When I was there, among the topics covered were: "The undertaking by voluntary work of the working class" [sic]; the emancipation of Albanian women; olive production ("perceptibly increased during this five-year period"); tension in the Persian Gulf ("the hegemonic and expansionist policy of the two superpowers..."); "imperialist aids on food-enslaving means" (i.e., third-world relief work); and (with great glee) price increases in Yugoslavia.
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| In Tirana, buildings give off that air - so prevalent in southern Europe - of slightly seedy and rundown, but nonetheless unmistakable, grandeur. |
Not wholly convincing reading, perhaps. Certainly not ideal vacation reading. But is Ocean City more interesting?
Housing Contrasts
Architecturally, Albania sees a strange mixture of shoddy high-density housing and the delights of old Mediterranean construction. In Tirana, the capital, buildings give off that air - so prevalent in southern Europe - of slightly seedy and rundown, but nonetheless unmistakable, grandeur (photo 9). Peeling paint cannot hide the truly beautiful craftsmanship.
In rural areas, too, there are joys to behold: The richer farmers, at least, are allowed to own their homes, usually spotlessly clean, whitewashed affairs, with red-tiled roofs and gardens of cacti and fig trees (photo 10).
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| The richer farmers are allowed to won their homes, usually spotessly clean, whitewashed affairs, with red-tiled roofs and gardens of cacti and fig trees. |
New housing for the work force - the stuff of revolution - is a different matter. The Albanian equivalent of the municipal project should give the nation no pride (photo 11). The blocks on these conglomerations are typically six or seven stories high. The rough bricks are neither painted nor plastered. The connecting roads are unpaved. The enduring memory is of clean washing drying and dirty children playing. And the ubiquitous mural: "Lavdi Marksizem-Leninizmit."12 (Next to it stands the notice board with photos of this month's top 10 hardest working proletarians.) It is here that this small nation's physical poverty and imaginative sterility are at their most obvious (photo 12).
Notwithstanding, industrialization and so presumably wealth-creation there have been. The country produces massive amounts of chromium and is self-sufficient in oil. Indeed, on the central plain there are hundreds of oil derricks, similar to the ones seen in Texas, planted seemingly at random in the middle of fields of potatoes or tobacco.
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| The Albanian equivalent of the municipal project should give the nation no pride. |
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that the government has not got quite the monopoly of information distribution one might expect. True, it owns the only newspapers available. But rather surprisingly many Albanians - and positively the majority of all urban Albanians - possess televisions, sometimes color (no less) and quite often those natty little Japanese jobs, not the monstrous valve efforts one finds in the Soviet Union. Albanian TV is as in other communist countries: a wholesome diet of "cultural events," news bulletins and a steady stream of films on the heroic crushing of Nazism. Nevertheless, Albanians can - and, more oddly, are allowed to - receive Italy's RAI stations.13
Most things non-political are acceptable and even news watching is relatively interference-free. Because, as elsewhere in the West, Italian news is predominantly concerned with political scandal and the like, it can be used as indirect socialist propaganda. One thing that is not tolerated, however, is so much as the obliquest reference to the pope. Instant jamming.
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| It is here that this small nation's physical poverty and imaginative sterillity are at their most obvious |
Progress
While still hardly an "open" country, this People's Republic has made progress over the past two decades. When our British tour leader first went in the early 1970s, both he and his northern Albanian guide were spat upon and stoned in the southern mountain town of Gjirokaster (Hoxha's birthplace, incidentally). Embarrassed, the guide explained that this was not out of malice, but the result of naked fear of the unknown. The country is all of 150 miles long! Now there are tourist trinket shops this beautiful town. See it, before it gets worse.
Despite recent traveler incursions, Albania remains mostly rural - over 80 percent by population. The peasants rarely leave the land, generationally or otherwise. Their methods are by and large of an era long gone in the rest of Europe. Occasionally, a caterpillar-tractor makes an appearance.
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| Rush hour in Tirana is a pedestrian affair. This is Skenderbeg Square, in the very center of town. |
Old women refuse to be photographed in case this results in the theft of their souls. Without hint of affectation, traditional costumes are worn in the fields both by the women - breaking their backs, hoes in hand - and their men folk, usually adopting the more sensible policy of directing proceedings from the shade of a tree. It all seemed idyllic.
As our group explored cobbled streets, shaded by overhanging, tiled eaves, I felt fully at peace, watching the old men in the fez factories, the women behind their hand-looms, the youths - only marginally more up to date - in their worn stackheels and patched bell-bottoms.14 Why change it? They appeared contented.
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| At one point we saw an ambulance that looked like something directly out of World War II. There again, it probably was. |
And eager to please. One incident in particular remains with me. It was in the picturesque southern port of Sarende, shimmering, semi-circular, surrounded by hills. Along with one or two others, I went exploring in the midday sun. (The only limitation: no use of public transport for foreigners.) We walked about a mile around the bay and stopped, worn out, to peer into the clear Ionian Sea. J.'s sunglasses tumbled into the water. Within seconds we were surrounded by Albanians gesticulating advice.
Small boys started diving for the glasses. Ten minutes of activity proved fruitless. Unlike them, we gave up and started back to the hotel. We had gone about three-quarters of a mile when a barefooted child pounded up behind us. In his hand were the shades! He refused all payment, be it in the form of money, apple or ice cream. It had been enough to serve.
So why change it? Returning to my capitalist senses, I realize that the answer, when it comes, will be: liberty. Albanian charm and independence is not a result of their system; it shines through despite it. One gets the idea the government feels that if it makes enough regulations, some will be heeded. It is a tribute to this indomitable people that they have made "Marksizem-Leninizem" their own and have forced it to adjust.
But it should not be there at all. At sunset, walking around the medieval castle at Butrint, I squinted down the barrel of an ancient cannon aimed out to sea. Ironic, I thought: Its target was Corfu and freedom.
Dr. Munro is the president of the Calvert Institute. This article was previously published in the Hopkins Spectator, of which Munro was the editor. Publication does not imply that Albania is currently as described here. All photo credits C.E.D. Munro or D.P. Munro.
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End Notes
[Top] 1. See Douglas P. Munro, "An Albanian Sojourn," Hopkins Spectator, Vol. II, No. 1, p. 12.
[Top] 2. In 1389, medieval Serbian forces were defeated by the Ottoman Turks at a battle in what is today Kosovo. With the rest of the region, Serbia was incorporated into the Ottoman empire, a province of which it remained for the next 500-odd years, though it never converted to Islam. In 1830, Serbia was made an autonomous principality within the Ottoman empire. The same autonomy was not granted to Albania. By 1878, Serbia had secured independence from Turkey. Albania, which had converted to Islam centuries earlier, was more integrated into the empire and did not achieve independence until the early 20th century. Peace treaties after both world wars upheld the Yugoslavian (and thus Serbian) claim on the Kosovo area. Though by the 1960s and '70s vocally anti-Serbian, in 1946 Hoxha himself had allowed Yugoslavia's Marshall Josip Broz Tito to solidify his possession over the disputed region because Hoxha needed communist Tito's support in consolidating his own power against non-communist insurgents in the mayhem of post-World War II Albania. Tito himself was not a Serb but, rather, a Croat.
[Top] 3. The double-headed eagle crest in fact dates back centuries. The 15th-century Albanian hero, Gjergj Skenderbeg (1405-68), used the Byzantine two-headed eagle on his seals, hence the modern flag. Skenderbeg led early resistance against the Ottoman empire, a province of which Albania was until 1912. Early 20th-century Albanian nationalists adopted the Skenderbeg seal for their flag. Variants on the theme have been used ever since (even by the fascist puppet government of the early 1940s). The communist additions to the emblem were removed in the early 1990s. The two-headed eagle logo is also used by Kosovar nationalists today in their fight against the Serbs.
[Top] 4. Born Gjergj (George) Castriota, Skenderbeg was an Albanian Muslim of Christian heritage who became a Turkish general in the 15th century under the name of Iskander Bey, or Skenderbeg. He later turned Christian and led the Albanian fight against the Turks in the 1440s.
[Top] 5. Albania was a client state of Yugoslavia from 1946 through 1948, when Yugoslavia broke with Stalin. Albania was then a client of the Soviet Union until 1961 and then of China until 1978.
[Top] 6. It did not survive. In 1992, Hoxha's communist successor, Ramiz Alia, after having allowed a modicum of political opposition in 1990, lost control to a more or less democratic movement in 1992.
[Top] 7. I.e., "Long live Ramiz Alia."
[Top] 8. Hoxha himself described Shehu "a multiple agent of the imperialist-revisionist secret services." See Enver Hoxha, The Titoites: Historical Notes (Tirana, Albania: Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies at the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, 1982), pp. 642-643.
[Top] 9. This 1987 prediction about Alia proved quite accurate. According to the Encarta on-line encyclopedia, "In 1990, after the collapse of Communist governments across Eastern Europe and widespread protests in Albania, Alia allowed some political opposition. His popularity soared when he eased restrictions on travel, religion, speech and political activities. Alia's reforms eventually led to multiparty elections and the end of the Communist hold on power [in 1992]." Nonetheless, in 1994 he was given a nine-year sentence after being found guilty of abuse of power and violation of citizens' civil rights. See Encarta, entry under "Alia, Ramiz," Internet site (http://encarta.msn.com/index/ conciseindex/BE/0BE71000.htm), downloaded March 24, 1999.
[Top] 10. This proved to be the case exactly. Having granted limited political reform in 1990, Alia simply whetted Albanians' appetite for more.
[Top] 11. Ahmed Bey Zogu, born in 1895, was a feudal power broker in post-World War I Albania. He became prime minister in 1922, president in 1925, and declared himself king in 1928. When the Italians invaded in 1939, Zog fled to Britain. In 1946, he was deposed in absentia by Enver Hoxha's victorious communist resistance movement. He moved to the United States and thence to the French Riveria, where he died in 1961.
[Top] 12. I.e, "Glory to Marxism-Leninism."
[Top] 13. I.e., Radio Televisione Italiana.
[Top] 14. These items are of course now highly fashionable among late 1990s American youth. However, in 1987 they were as unfashionable as it was possible to be.