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ALBANIA
a country study
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Edited by
Raymond Zickel
and Walter R. Iwaskiw
Research Completed April 1992
On the cover: Clock tower, mosque of Ethem Bey in central Tiranë
Data as of April 1992 April 1992
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FOREWARD
This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the Department of the Army. The last two pages of this book list the other published studies.
Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign country, describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions, and examining the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order.
The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not be construed as an expression of an official United States government position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. Corrections, additions, and suggestions for changes from readers will be welcomed for use in future editions.
Louis R. Mortimer
Chief
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C. 20540-5220
Data as of April 1992
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge the numerous individuals who contributed to the preparation of this edition of Albania: A Country Study. The work of Eugene K. Keefe, Sarah J. Elpern, William Giloane, James M. Moore, Jr., Stephen Peters, and Eston T. White, the co-authors of the previous edition who completed their research in 1970, is greatly appreciated as both substantive and useful. Special thanks go to Charles Sudetic for expending his time and energy to take the many interesting photographs from which those in the book were selected.
The authors also gratefully acknowledge Ralph K. Benesch for his oversight of the Country Studies--Area Handbook Program for the Department of the Army and Sandra W. Meditz of the Federal Research Division for her guidance and suggestions. Special thanks also go to the following individuals: Marilyn L. Majeska for reviewing editing and managing production; Andrea T. Merrill for editorial assistance; Teresa E. Kamp for cover and chapter illustrations; David P. Cabitto for graphics and map support; Harriet R. Blood, together with the firm of Greenhorne and O'Mara, for preparation of the maps; Pirkko M. Johnes for researching and writing the Country Profile; and Helen Fedor for preparing photograph captions.
Special thanks are also owed to Evan A. Raynes and Vincent Ercolano, who edited the chapters, and to Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson, who did the word processing. Catherine Schwartzstein performed the final prepublication editorial review. Joan C. Cook compiled the index, and Linda Peterson of the Library of Congress Printing and Processing Section, prepared the camera-ready copy, under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.
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Table of Contents
* ALBANIA
* FOREWARD
* ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* Preface
* Table A. Chronology of Important Events
* COUNTRY PROFILE
o COUNTRY
o GEOGRAPHY
o SOCIETY
o ECONOMY
o TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
o POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
o NATIONAL SECURITY
* INTRODUCTION
* Chapter 1. Historical Setting
o THE ANCIENT ILLYRIANS
o THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS AND THE MIDDLE AGES
o THE ALBANIAN LANDS UNDER OTTOMAN DOMINATION, 1385-1876
* The Ottoman Conquest of Albania
* Albanians under Ottoman Rule
* Local Albanian Leaders in the Early Nineteenth Century
o NATIONAL AWAKENING AND THE BIRTH OF ALBANIA, 1876-1918
* The Rise of Albanian Nationalism
* The Balkan Wars and Creation of Independent Albania
* World War I and Its Effects on Albania
o INTERWAR ALBANIA, 1918-41
* Albania's Reemergence after World War I
* Social and Economic Conditions after World War I
* Government and Politics
* Italian Penetration
* Zog's Kingdom
* Italian Occupation
o WORLD WAR II AND THE RISE OF COMMUNISM, 1941-44
* The Communist and Nationalist Resistance
* The Communist Takeover of Albania
o COMMUNIST ALBANIA
* Consolidation of Power and Initial Reforms
* Albanian-Yugoslav Tensions
* Deteriorating Relations with the West
* Albania and the Soviet Union
* Albania and China
* The Cultural and Ideological Revolution
* The Break with China and Self-Reliance
* Chapter 2. The Society and its Environment
o PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
* National Boundaries
* Topography
* Drainage
* Climate
o THE ALBANIAN PEOPLE
* Population
* Ethnicity
* Gegs and Tosks
* Greeks and Other Minorities
* Albanians in Kosovo
* Languages and Dialects
* Settlement Patterns
o SOCIAL SYSTEM
* Traditional Social Patterns and Values
* Social Structure under Communist Rule
o RELIGION
* Before 1944
* Hoxha's Antireligious Campaign
* The Revival of Religion
o EDUCATION
* PreCommunist Era
* Education under Communist Rule
o HEALTH AND WELFARE
* Medical Care and Nutrition
* Housing
* Social Insurance
* Chapter 3. The Economy
o ECONOMIC POLICY AND PERFORMANCE
* The Precommunist Albanian Economy
* Imposition of the Stalinist System
* Dependence on Yugoslavia, 1945-48
* Dependence on the Soviet Union, 1948-60
* Dependence on China, 1961-78
* Isolation and Autarky
o ECONOMIC SYSTEM
* Governmental Bodies and Control
* Ownership and Private Property
* Enterprises and Firms
* Finance and Banking
* Currency and Monetary Policy
* Government Revenues and Expenditures
* Savings
o WORK FORCE AND STANDARD OF LIVING
* Prices and Wages
* Domestic Consumption
* Standard of Living
* Population and Work Force
* Women in the Work Force
* Trade Unions
o AGRICULTURE
* The Land
* Land Distribution and Agricultural Organization
* Structure and Marketing of Agricultural Output
* Livestock and Pasturelands
* Mechanization
* Fertilizers, Pesticides, and Seeds
* Forests
* Fisheries
o INDUSTRY
* Energy and Natural Resources
* Manufacturing
* Chemicals
* Engineering
* Light Industry
* Food Processing
* Construction
* Environmental Problems
o TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
* Road Transportation
* Railroads
* Air Transportation
* Water Transportation
* Telecommunications
o RETAIL TRADE, SERVICES, AND TOURISM
* Retail Trade and Services
* Black Market
* Tourism
o FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS
* Foreign Trade Organization
* Foreign Trade Balance and Balance of Payments
* Trade Partners
* Commodity Pattern of Trade
* Activities of Foreign Companies in Albania
* Foreign Assistance
o PROSPECTS FOR REFORM
* Chapter 4. Government and Politics
o ORIGINS OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM
* Albania after World War II
* The Hoxha Regime
* Alia Takes Over
o ALBANIA'S COMMUNIST PARTY
o THE GOVERNMENT APPARATUS
* People's Assembly
* Council of Ministers and People's Councils
* Courts
o MASS ORGANIZATIONS
* Democratic Front
* Union of Albanian Working Youth
* Union of Albanian Women
* United Trade Unions of Albania
o MASS MEDIA
o REFORM POLITICS
* Initial Stages
* Human Rights
* Further Moves Toward Democracy
* Multiparty System
* The Coalition Government of 1991
o FOREIGN POLICY
* Shifting Alliances
* Changes in the 1980s
* Alia's Pragmatism
* Albania Seeks New Allies
* Chapter 5. National Security
o DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMED FORCES
* From Independence to World War II
* World War II
* Postwar Development
o EVOLUTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
o DEFENSE ORGANIZATION
* Political Control
* People's Army
* Ground Forces
* Air and Air Defense Forces
* Naval Forces
* Military Manpower
* Conscript Training
* Paramilitary Training
* Military Schools
* Military Budget and the Economy
o INTERNAL SECURITY
* Domestic Repression under Hoxha and Alia
* Penal Code
* Penal System
* Security Forces
* Directorate of State Security
* Frontier Guards
* People's Police
* Auxiliary Police
* Appendix. Tables
* Bibliography
* Glossary
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Preface
Preparation of this edition of Albania: A Country Study began as popular revolutions were drastically altering the political and economic systems of the communist countries of Eastern Europe. In Albania extreme isolation and Stalinist policies slowed, but could not stop, the revolution that striking workers and irate citizens directed against the regime. In early 1992, the Albanian people forced the communist government's fall and elected Sali Berisha, a surgeon, to be their president in the first free election in Albanian history. Thus began a long-term transition from totalitarianism toward democracy and from a centralized command economy to one based on a private market.
The uncertainty of both the process and the outcome of the transition make descriptions of the changing structures of government, economy, and society somewhat tentative in nature. The authors have attempted to describe the existing, but possibly transitional structures, using scholarly materials, which even from Western sources are very limited. Such descriptions can form a sound basis for readers to understand the ongoing events and assess change in Albania. The most useful sources are cited by the authors at the end of each chapter. Full references to these and other sources are listed in the Bibliography. A Country Profile and a Chronology are also included in the book as reference aids.
Transliteration of Albanian personal names and terms generally follows the Library of Congress transliteration system. Transliteration of place-names, however, follows the system developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names. In the ecclesiastical context, preference is given to the generic term Orthodox," rather than Eastern Orthodox. The term Greek Orthodox like Serbian Orthodox or Albanian Orthodox) is used to designate ethnic affiliation, not historical background. Measurements are given in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist readers unfamiliar with that system (see Table 1, Appendix).
Finally, readers will note the body of the text reflects information available as of April 1992. Certain other portions of the text, however, have been updated: the Introduction discusses significant events that have occurred since the information cutoff date; the Chronology and the Country Profile includes updated information as available; and the Bibliography lists recently published sources thought to be particularly helpful to the reader.
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Table A. Chronology of Important Events
Period
Description
ca. 1000 B.C.
Illyrians, descendants of ancient Indo-European peoples,
settled in western part of the Balkan Peninsula.
358 B.C.
Illyrians defeated by Philip II of Macedonia.
312 B.C.
King Glaucius of Illyria expels Greeks from Durrës.
229 B.C. and 219 B.C.
Roman soldiers overrun Illyrian settlements in Neretva River
valley.
165 B.C.
Roman forces capture Illyria's King Gentius at Shkodër.
FIRST CENTURY A.D.
Christianity comes to Illyrian populated areas.
A.D. 9
Romans, under Emperor Tiberius, subjugate Illyrians and
divide present-day Albania between Dalmatia, Epirus, and
Macedonia.
A.D. 395
Roman Empire's division into eastern and western parts
leaves the lands that now comprise Albania administratively
under the Eastern Empire but ecclesiastically under Rome.
FOURTH CENTURY-SEVENTH CENTURY
Goths, Huns, Avars, Serbs, Croats, and Bulgars successively
invade Illyrian lands in present-day Albania.
732
Illyrian people subordinated to the patriarchate of
Constantinople by the Byzantine emperor, Leo the Isaurian.
1054
Christianity divides into Catholic and Orthodox churches,
leaving Christians in southern Albania under ecumenical
patriarch of Constantinople and those in northern Albania
under pope in Rome.
1081
Albania and Albanians mentioned, for the first time in a
historical record, by Byzantine emperor.
TWELFTH CENTURY
Serbs occupy parts of northern and eastern Albania.
1204
Venice wins control over most of Albania, but Byzantines
regain control of southern portion and establish Despotate
of Epirus.
1272
Forces of the King of Naples occupy Durrës and establish an
Albanian kingdom.
1385
Albanian ruler of Durrës invites Ottoman forces to intervene
against a rival; subsequently, Albanian clans pay tribute
and swear fealty to Ottomans.
1389
At Kosovo Polje, Albanians join Serbian-led Balkan army that
is crushed by Ottoman forces; coordinated resistance to
Ottoman westward progress evaporates.
1403
Gjergj Kastrioti born, later becomes Albanian national hero
known as Skanderbeg.
1443
After losing a battle near Nis, Skanderbeg defects from
Ottoman Empire, reembraces Roman Catholicism, and begins
holy war against the Ottomans.
1444
Skanderbeg proclaimed chief of Albanian resistance.
1449
Albanians, under Skanderbeg, rout Ottoman forces under
Sultan Murad II.
1468
Skanderbeg dies.
1478
Krujë falls to Ottoman Turks; Shkodër falls a year later.
Subsequently, many Albanians flee to southern Italy, Greece,
Egypt, and elsewhere; many remaining are forced to convert
to Islam.
EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Some Albanians who convert to Islam find careers in Ottoman
Empire's government and military service.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
About two-thirds of Albanians convert to Islam.
1785
Kara Mahmud Bushati, chief of Albanian tribe based in
Shkodër, attacks Montenegrin territory; subsequently named
governor of Shkodër by Ottoman authorities.
NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
1822
Albanian leader Ali Pasha of Tepelenë assassinated by
Ottoman agents for promoting an autonomous state.
1830
1000 Albanian leaders invited to meet with Ottoman general
who kills about half of them.
1835
Ottoman Sublime Porte divides Albanian-populated lands into
vilayets of Janina and Rumelia with Ottoman
administrators.
1861
First school known to use Albanian language in modern times
opens in Shkodër.
1877-78
Russia's defeat of Ottoman Empire seriously weakens Ottoman
power over Albanian-populated areas.
1878
Treaty of San Stefano, signed after the Russo-Turkish War,
assigned Albanian-populated lands to Bulgaria, Montenegro,
and Serbia; but Austria-Hungary and Britain block the
treaty's implementation. Albanian leaders meet in Prizren,
Kosovo, to form the Prizren League, initially advocating a
unified Albania under Ottoman suzerainty. During the
Congress of Berlin, the Great Powers overturn the Treaty of
San Stefano and divide Albanian lands among several states.
The Prizren League begins to organize resistance to the
Treaty of Berlin's provisions that affect Albanians.
1879
Society for Printing of Albanian Writings, composed of Roman
Catholic, Muslim, and Orthodox Albanians, founded in
Constantinople.
1881
Ottoman forces crush Albanian resistance fighters at
Prizren. Prizren League's leaders and families arrested and
deported.
1897
Ottoman authorities disband a reactivated Prizren League,
execute its leader later, then ban Albanian language books.
1906
Albanians begin joining the Committee of Union and Progress
(Young Turks), which formed in Constantinople, hoping to
gain autonomy for their nation within the Ottoman Empire.
1908
Albanian intellectuals meet in Bitola and choose the Latin
alphabet as standard script rather than Arabic or Cyrillic.
1912 May
Albanians rise against the Ottoman authorities and seize
Skopje.
October
First Balkan War begins, and Albanian leaders affirm Albania
as an independent state.
November
Muslim and Christian delegates at Vlorë declare Albania
independent and establish a provisional government.
December
Ambassadorial conference opens in London and discusses
Albania's fate.
1913 May
Treaty of London ends First Balkan War. Second Balkan War
begins.
August
Treaty of Bucharest ends Second Balkan War. Great Powers
recognize an independent Albanian state ruled by a
constitutional monarchy.
1914 March
Prince Wilhelm, German army captain, installed as head of
the new Albanian state by the International Control
Commission, arrives in Albania.
September
New Albanian state collapses following outbreak of World War
I; Prince Wilhelm is stripped of authority and departs from
Albania.
1918 November
World War I ends, with Italian army occupying most of
Albania and Serbian, Greek and French force occupying
remainder. Italian and Yugoslav powers begin struggle for
dominance over Albanians.
December
Albanian leaders meet at Durrës to discuss presentation of
Albania's interests at the Paris Peace Conference.
1919 January
Serbs attack Albania's inhabited cities. Albanians adopt
guerrilla warfare.
June
Albania denied official representation at the Paris Peace
Conference; British, French, and Greek negotiators later
decide to divide Albania among Greece, Italy, and
Yugoslavia.
1920 January
Albanian leaders meeting at Lushnjë reject the partitioning
of Albania by the Treaty of Paris, warn that Albanians will
take up arms in defense of their territory, and create a
bicameral parliament.
February
Albanian government moves to Tiranë, which becomes the
capital.
September
Albania forces Italy to withdraw its troops and abandon
territorial claims to almost all Albanian territory.
December
Albania admitted to League of Nations as sovereign and
independent state.
1921 November
Yugoslav troops invade Albanian territories they had not
previously occupied; League of Nations commission forces
Yugoslav withdrawal and reaffirms Albania's 1913 borders.
December
Popular Party, headed by Xhafer Ypi, forms government with
Ahmed Zogu, the future King Zog, as internal affairs
minister.
1922 August
Ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople recognizes the
Autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church.
September
Zogu assumes position of prime minister of government;
opposition to him becomes formidable.
1923
Albania's Sunni Muslims break last ties with Constantinople
and pledge primary allegiance to native country.
1924 March
Zogu's party wins elections for National Assembly, but Zogu
steps down after financial scandal and an assassination
attempt.
July
A peasant-backed insurgency wins control of Tiranë; Fan S.
Noli becomes prime minister; Zogu flees to Yugoslavia.
December
Zogu, backed by Yugoslav army, returns to power and begins
to smother parliamentary democracy; Noli flees to Italy.
1925 May
Italy, under Mussolini, begins penetration of Albanian
public and economic life.
1926 November
Italy and Albania sign First Treaty of Tiranë, which
guarantees Zogu's political position and Albania's
boundaries.
1928 August
Zogu pressures the parliament to dissolve itself; a new
constituent assembly declares Albania a kingdom and Zogu
becomes Zog I, "King of the Albanians."
1931
Zog, standing up to Italians, refuses to renew the First
Treaty of Tiranë; Italians continue political and economic
pressure.
1934
After Albania signs trade agreements with Greece and
Yugoslavia, Italy suspends economic support, then attempts
to threaten Albania.
1935
Mussolini presents a gift of 3,000,000 gold francs to
Albania; other economic aid follows.
1939 March
Mussolini delivers ultimatum to Albania.
April
Mussolini's troops invade and occupy Albania; Albanian
parliament votes to unite country with Italy; Zog flees to
Greece; Italy's King Victor Emmanual III assumes Albanian
crown.
1940 October
Italian army attacks Greece through Albania.
1941 April
Germany, with support of Italy and other allies defeat
Greece and Yugoslavia.
October
Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav communist leader, directs
organizing of Albanian communists.
November
Albanian Communist Party founded; Enver Hoxha becomes first
secretary.
1942 September
Communist party organizes the National Liberation Movement,
a popular front resistance organization.
October
Noncommunist nationalist groups form to resist the Italian
occupation.
1943 August
Italy's surrender to Allied forces weakens Italian hold on
Albania; Albanian resistance fighters overwhelm five Italian
divisions.
September
German forces invade and occupy Albania.
1944 January
Communist partisans, supplied with British weapons, gain
control of southern Albania.
May
Communists meet to organize an Albanian government; Hoxha
becomes chairman of executive committee and supreme
commander of the Army of National Liberation.
July
Communist forces enter central and northern Albania.
October
Communists establish provisional government with Hoxha as
prime minister.
November
Germans withdraw from Tiranë, communists move into the
capital.
December
Communist provisional government adopts laws allowing state
regulation of commercial enterprises, foreign and domestic
trade.
1945 January
Communist provisional government agrees to restore Kosovo to
Yugoslavia as an autonomous region; tribunals begin to
condemn thousands of "war criminals" and "enemies of the
people" to death or to prison. Communist regime begins to
nationalize industry, transportation, forests, pastures.
April
Yugoslavia recognizes communist government in Albania.
August
Sweeping agricultural reforms begin; about half of arable
land eventually redistributed to peasants from large
landowners; most church properties nationalized. United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration begins
sending supplies to Albania.
November
Soviet Union recognizes provisional government; Britain and
United States make full diplomatic recognition conditional.
December
In elections for the People's Assembly only candidates from
the Democratic Front are on ballot.
1946 January
People's Assembly proclaims Albania a "people's republic";
purges of noncommunists from positions of power in
government begins.
Spring
People's Assembly adopts new constitution, Hoxha becomes
prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, and
commander-in-chief; Soviet-style central planning begins.
July
Treaty of friendship and cooperation signed with Yugoslavia;
Yugoslav advisers and grain begin pouring into Albania.
October
British destroyers hit mines off Albania's coast; United
Nations (UN) and the International Court of Justice
subsequently condemn Albania.
November
Albania breaks diplomatic relations with the United States
after latter withdraws its informal mission.
1947 April
Economic Planning Commission draws up first economic plan
that established production targets for mining,
manufacturing and agricultural enterprises.
May
UN commission concludes that Albania, together with Bulgaria
and Yugoslavia, supports communist guerrillas in Greece;
Yugoslav leaders launch verbal offensive against anti-
Yugoslav Albanian communists, including Hoxha; pro-Yugoslav
faction begins to wield power.
July
Albania refuses participation in the Marshall Plan of the
United States.
1948 February-March
Albanian Communist Party leaders vote to merge Albanian and
Yugoslav economies and militaries.
June
Cominform expels Yugoslavia; Albanian leaders launch anti-
Yugoslav propaganda campaign, cut economic ties, and force
Yugoslav advisers to leave; Stalin becomes national hero in
Albania.
September
Hoxha begins purging high-ranking party members accused of
"Titoism"; treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia abrogated by
Albania; Soviet Union begins giving economic aid to Albania
and Soviet advisers replace ousted Yugoslavs.
November
First Party Congress changes name of Albanian Communist
Party to Albanian Party of Labor.
1949 January
Regime issues Decree on Religious Communities.
February
Albania joins Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(Comecon); all foreign trade conducted with member
countries.
December
Pro-Tito Albanian communists purged.
1950
Britain and United States begin inserting anticommunist
Albanian guerrilla units into Albania; all are unsuccessful.
July
A new constitution is approved by People's Assembly. Hoxha
becomes minister of defense and foreign minister.
1951 February
Albania and Soviet Union sign agreement on mutual economic
assistance.
1954 July
Hoxha relinquishes post of prime minister to Mehmet Shehu
but retains primary power as party leader.
1955 May
Albania becomes a founding member of the Warsaw Pact.
1956 February
After Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" exposes Stalin's
crimes, Hoxha defends Stalin; close relations with Soviet
Union become strained.
1959
Large amounts of economic aid from Soviet Union, East
European countries, and China begin pouring into Albania.
May
Khrushchev visits Albania.
1960 June
Albania sides with China in Sino-Soviet ideological dispute;
consequently Soviet economic support to Albania is curtailed
and Chinese aid is increased.
November
Hoxha rails against Khrushchev and supports China during an
international communist conference in Moscow.
1961 February
Hoxha harangues against the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at
Albania's Fourth Party Congress.
December
Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations; other East
European countries severely reduce contacts but do not break
relations; Albania looks toward China for support.
1962
Albanian regime introduces austerity program in attempt to
compensate for withdrawal of Soviet economic support; China
incapable of delivering sufficient aid; Albania becomes
China's spokesman at UN.
1964
Hoxha hails Khrushchev's removal as leader of the Soviet
Union; diplomatic relations fail to improve.
1966 February
Hoxha initiates Cultural and Ideological Revolution.
March
Albanian Party of Labor "open letter" to the people
establishes egalitarian wage and job structure for all
workers.
1967
Hoxha regime conducts violent campaign to extinguish
religious life in Albania; by year's end over two thousand
religious buildings were closed or converted to other uses.
1968 August
Albania condemns Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia,
subsequently Albania withdraws from Warsaw Pact.
1976 September
Hoxha begins criticizing new Chinese regime after Mao's
death.
December
A new constitution promulgated superceeding the 1950
version; Albania becomes a people's socialist republic.
1977
Top military officials purged after "Chinese conspiracy" is
uncovered.
1978 July
China terminates all economic and military aid to Albania.
1980
Hoxha selects Ramiz Alia as the next party head, bypassing
Shehu.
1981 December
Shehu, after rebuke by Politburo, dies, possibly murdered on
Hoxha's orders.
1982 November
Alia becomes chairman of Presidium of the People's Assembly.
1983
Hoxha begins semiretirement; Alia starts administering
Albania.
1985 April
Hoxha dies.
1986 November
Alia featured as party's and country's undisputed leader at
Ninth Party Congress.
1987 August
Greece ends state of war that existed since World War II.
November
Albania and Greece sign a series of long-term agreements.
1989 September
Alia, addressing the Eighth Plenum of the Central Committee,
signals that radical changes to the economic system are
necessary.
1990 January
Ninth Plenum of the Central Committee; demonstrations at
Shkodër force authorities to declare state of emergency.
April
Alia declares willingness to establish diplomatic relations
with the Soviet Union and the United States.
May
The Secretary General of the UN visits Albania.
May
Regime announces desire to join the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe. People's Assembly passes laws
liberalizing criminal code, reforming court system, lifting
some restrictions on freedom of worship, and guaranteeing
the right to travel abroad.
Summer
Unemployment throughout the economy increases as a result of
government's reform measures; drought reduces electric-
power production, forcing plant shutdowns.
July
Young people demonstrate against regime in Tiranë, and 5,000
citizens seek refuge in foreign embassies; Central Committee
plenum makes significant changes in leadership of party and
state. Soviet Union and Albania sign protocol normalizing
relations.
August
Government abandons its monopoly on foreign commerce and
begins to open Albania to foreign trade.
September
Alia addresses the UN General Assembly in New York.
October
Tiranë hosts the Balkan Foreign Ministers' Conference, the
first international political meeting in Albania since the
end of World War II. Ismail Kadare, Albania's most prominent
writer, defects to France.
December
University students demonstrate in streets and call for
dictatorship to end; Alia meets with students; Thirteenth
Plenum of the Central Committee of the APL authorizes a
multiparty system; Albanian Democratic Party, first
opposition party established; regime authorizes political
pluralism; draft constitution is published; by year's end,
5,000 Albanian refugees had crossed the mountains into
Greece.
1991 January
First opposition newspaper Rilindja Demokratike begins
publishing. Thousands of Albanians seek refuge in Greece.
March
Albania and the United States reestablish diplomatic
relations after a thirty-five year break. Thousands more
Albanians attempt to gain asylum in Italy.
March-April
First multiparty elections held since the 1920s; 98.9
percent of voters participated; Albanian Party of Labor wins
over 67 percent of vote for People's Assembly seats;
Albanian Democratic Party wins about 30 percent.
April
Communist-dominated People's Assembly reelects Alia to new
presidential term. Ministry of Internal Affairs replaced by
Ministry of Public Order; Frontier Guards and Directorate of
Prison Administration are placed under the Ministry of
Defense and the Ministry of Justice, respectively. People's
Assembly passes Law on Major Constitutional Provisions
providing for fundamental human rights and separation of
powers and invalidates 1976 constitution. People's Assembly
appoints commission to draft new constitution.
June
Prime Minister Nano and rest of cabinet resign after trade
unions call for general strike to protest worsening economic
conditions and killing of opposition demonstrators in
Shkodër. Coalition government led by Prime Minister Ylli
Buti takes office; Tenth Party Congress of the Albanian
Party of Labor meets and renames party the Socialist Party
of Albania (SPA); Albania accepted as a full member of CSCE;
United States secretary of state, James A. Baker, visits
Albania.
July
Sigurimi, notorious secret police, is abolished and replaced
by National Information Service.
August
Up to 18,000 Albanians cross the Adriatic Sea to seek asylum
in Italy; most are returned. People's Assembly passes law on
economic activity that authorizes private ownership of
property, privatizing of state property, investment by
foreigners, and private employment of workers.
October
United States Embassy opens in Tiranë. Albania joins
International Monetary Fund.
December
Coalition government dissolves when opposition parties
accuse communists of blocking reform and Albanian Democratic
Party withdraws its ministers from the cabinet. Prime
Minister Bufi resigns and Alia names Vilson Ahmeti as prime
minister. Alia sets March 1992 for new elections.
1992 February
Albanian People's Assembly prevents OMONIA, the party
representing Greek Albanians, from fielding candidates in
the elections planned for March.
March
Albanian Democratic Party scores decisive election victory
over the Socialist Party of Albania in the midst of economic
freefall and social chaos.
April
Sali Berisha, a leader of the Albanian Democratic Party,
becomes the first democratically elected president.
June
Albania signs Black Sea economic cooperation part with ten
other countries, including six former Soviet republics.
July
Socialist Party of Albania gains significantly in local
elections.
September
Former President Alia and eighteen other former communist
officials, including Nexhmije Hoxha, arrested and charged
with corruption and other offenses.
December
Albania joins the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
1993 March
Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
visits Tiranë.
April
Albania recognizes the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia.
September
President Berisha and President Momir Bulatovic of
Montenegro meet in Tiranë to discuss ways of improving
Albanian-Montenegrin relations.
October
Greece recalls its ambassador for consultations after series
of border incidents and alleged human rights abuses in
Albania.
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COUNTRY PROFILE
COUNTRY
Formal Name: Republic of Albania.
Short Form: Albania.
Term for Citizens: Albanian(s).
Capital: Tiranë.
Date of Independence: November 28, 1912 is a national holiday celebrated as Liberation Day.
GEOGRAPHY
Size: 28,750 square kilometers (land area 27,400 square kilometers); slightly larger than Maryland.
Location: Southeastern coast of the Adriatic Sea and the eastern part of the Strait of Otranto, opposite the heel of the Italian boot; between approximately 40° and 43° north latitude.
Topography: A little over 20 percent is coastal plain, some of it poorly drained. Mostly hills and mountains, often covered with scrub forest. The only navigable river is the Bunë.
Climate: Mild temperate; cool, cloudy, wet winters with a January low of 5°C; hot, clear, dry summers with a July high of 28°C; interior is cooler and wetter.
Boundaries: Land boundaries total 720 kilometers; borders with Greece 282 kilometers; border with former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 151 kilometers; border with Serbia 114 kilometers; border with Montengro 173 kilometers; coastline 362 kilometers.
SOCIETY
Population: 3,335,000 (July 1991), growth rate 1.8 percent (1991). Birth rate 24 per 1,000 population, death rate 5 per 1,000 population. Total fertility rate 2.9 children per woman. Infant mortality rate 50 deaths/1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth 72 years for males, 79 years for females.
Ethnic Groups: Albanian 90 percent, divided into two groups: the Gegs to the north of the Shkumbin River and the Tosks to the south. Greeks probably 8 percent, others (mostly Vlachs, Gypsies, Serbs and Bulgarians) at least 2 percent.
Languages: Albanian (Tosk is official dialect, Geg also a much-used variant), Greek.
Religion: In 1992, an estimated 70 percent of people were Muslim, 20 percent Orthodox, and 10 percent Roman Catholic. In 1967 all mosques and churches were closed and religious observances prohibited; in December 1990, the ban on religious observance was lifted.
Education: Free at all levels. Eight-grade primary and intermediate levels compulsory beginings at age six. Literacy rate raised from about 20 percent in 1945 to an estimated 75 percent in recent years. In 1990, primary school was attended by 96 percent of all school-age children, and secondary school by 70 percent. School operations were seriously disrupted by breakdown of public order in 1991.
Health and Welfare: All medical services are free. Six months of maternity leave at approximately 85 percent salary; noncontributory state social insurance system for all workers, with 70-100 percent of salary during sick leave. Pension about 70 percent of average salary. Retirement age 50-60 for men, 45-55 for women. In the early 1990s, the health and welfare system was adversely affected by economic and social disintegration.
ECONOMY
Salient Features: Until 1991, centrally planned Stalinist economy. Economic reforms crippled by economic and social disintegration in early 1990s. In 1992, new Democratic government announced "shock therapy" program to establish a market economy.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): L16,234 million in 1990, US$450 per capita, a drop of 13.1 percent from the previous year; preliminary figures indicated a 30-percent drop for 1991.
Gross National Product (GNP): Estimated at US$4.1 billion in 1990; per capita income estimated in range US$600- US$1,250; real growth rate not available.
Government Budget: Revenues US$2.3 billion; expenditures US$2.3 billion (1989). Note: Albania perennially ran a substantial trade deficit; government tied imports to exports, so deficit seems to have been greatly reduced if not eliminated.
Labor Force: 1,567,000 (1990); agriculture about 52 percent, industry 22.9 percent (1987). Females made up 48.1 percent of the labor force in 1990.
Agriculture: Arable land per capita is the lowest in Europe. Self-sufficiency in grain production achieved in 1976, according to government figures. A wide variety of temperate-zone crops and livestock raised. Up to 1990, Albania was largely selfsufficient in food; thereafter drought and political breakdown necessitated foreign food aid.
Land Use: Arable land 21 percent; permanent crops 4 percent; meadows and pastures 15 percent; forest and woodland 38 percent; other 22 percent.
Industry: Main industries in early 1990s were food products, energy and petroleum, mining and basic metals, textiles and clothing, lumber, cement, engineering, and chemicals.
Natural Resources: Chromium, coal, copper, natural gas, nickel, oil, timber.
Imports: US$255 million (1987 estimate). Major commodities: machinery, machine tools, iron and steel products, textiles, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.
Exports: US$378 million (1987 estimate). Major commodities: asphalt, bitumen, petroleum products, metals and metallic ores, electricity, oil, vegetables, fruits, tobacco.
Trading Partners: Italy, Yugoslavia, West Germany, Greece, East European countries, and China.
Economic aid: In fiscal year 1991 United States government provided US$2.4 million; the European Community (EC) pledged US$9.1 million; and Italy provided US$196 million for emergency food aid, industrial inputs and the education system. In July 1991 the EC enrolled Albania in its program for technical assistance to former communist countries.
Currency: Lek (pl., leke); exchange rate in January 1992 L50 per US$1.
Fiscal year: calendar year.
TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Roads: Between 16,000 and 21,000 kilometers of road network suitable for motor traffic; 6,700 kilometers of main roads. In the mountainous north, communications still mostly by pack ponies or donkeys. Private cars not permitted until the second half of 1990; bicycles and mules widely used.
Railroads: Total of 543 kilometers, all single track, 509 kilometers in 1.435-meter standard gauge; thirty-four kilometers in narrow gauge. Work on the Yugoslav section of the fifty-kilometer line between Shkodër and Titograd was completed in late 1985; the line opened to freight traffic in September 1986.
Aviation: Scheduled flights from Rinas Airport, twentyeight kilometers from Tiranë to many major European cities. No regular internal air service.
Shipping: In 1986 Albania had twenty merchant ships, with a total displacement of about 56,000 gross tons. Main ports were Durrës, Vlorë, Sarandë and Shëngjin. Completion of the new port near Vlorë by early 1990s will allow a cargo-handling capacity of 4 million tons per year.
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Political Parties: Albanian Party of Labor (APL), the communist party, became the Socialist Party of Albania in 1991. Other parties allowed to form December 1990, resulting in Albanian Democratic Party, Republican Party, Ecology Party, OMONIA (Unity--Greek minority party).
Government: Until April 1991 single-chamber People's Assembly with 250 deputies met only a few days each year; decisions made by the Presidium of the People's Assembly whose president is head of state, and Council of Ministers; from April 1991, interim constitution provided for president who could not hold other offices concurrently; People's Assembly with at least 140 members was the legislative, Council of Ministers was top executive organ.
Ministries: As of November 1992: agriculture and food; culture, youth and sport; defense; education; finances and economy; foreign affairs; foreign economic trade relations; health and environmental protection; industry, mining, and energy resources; justice; labor, emigration, social welfare, and the politically persecuted; public order; tourism; and transport and communication.
Administrative Divisions: Country is divided into twenty-six districts each under a People's Council elected every three years.
Judicial System: Supreme Court, elected by People's Assembly, also district and regional courts.
Flag: Black, two-headed eagle centered on a red field.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Armed Forces: In 1991 the People's Army included ground forces, air and air defense forces, and naval forces and comprised about 48,000 active-duty and 155,000 reserve personnel.
Ground Forces: Numbered about 35,000, including 20,000 conscripts. Organized along Soviet lines into four infantry brigades, one tank brigade, three artillery regiments, and six coastal artillery battalions. Tanks numbered about 190 and were old, Soviet-type T-34 and T-54s. Artillery was a mixture of outdated Soviet and Chinese origin equipment and consisted of towed artillery, mortars, multiple rocket launchers, and antitank guns. Infantry brigades operated 130 armored personnel carriers.
Air and Air Defense Forces: About 11,000 members, the majority of whom were officers assigned to air defense units, which also had about 1,400 conscripts assigned. Combat aircraft, supplied by China in the 1960s and early 1970s, numbered less than 100. Air Forces organized into three squadrons of fighterbombers , three squadrons of fighters, two squadrons of transports, and two squadrons of unarmed helicopters. Air Defense Forces manned about twenty-two Soviet made SA-2s at four sites.
Naval Forces: About 2,000 members, of which 1,000 were conscripts, organized into two coastal defense brigades. Thirtyseven patrol and coastal combatants, most of which were torpedo craft of Chinese origin. Two Soviet-made Whiskey-class submarines. One mine-warfare craft of Soviet origin.
Defense Budget: In 1991 about L1 billion or about 5 percent of Gross National Product and 10 percent of total government spending.
Internal Security Forces: In 1989 about 5,000 uniformed internal security troops, organized into five regiments of mechanized infantry, and another 5,000 plain-clothed officers. In July 1991 reorganized by People's Assembly.
Frontier Guards: About 7,000 members organized into several battalion-sized units.
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INTRODUCTION
ALBANIA, PROCLAIMED A "PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC" in 1946, was for more than forty years one of the most obscure and reclusive countries in the world. A totalitarian communist regime, led by party founder and first secretary Enver Hoxha from 1944 until his death in 1985, maintained strict control over every facet of the country's internal affairs, while implementing a staunchly idiosyncratic foreign policy. After World War II, Hoxha and his proteges imposed a Stalinist economic system, and turned alternately to Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and China for assistance, before denouncing each of these communist countries as "bourgeois" or "revisionist" and embarking on a course of economic self-reliance. Notwithstanding some notable accomplishments in education, health care, and other areas, Hoxha's policies of centralization, isolation, and repression stifled and demoralized the population, hindered economic development, and relegated Albania to a position of technological backwardness unparalleled in Europe.
Ramiz Alia, Hoxha's handpicked successor, introduced a modicum of pragmatism to policy making, but his ambiguous stance toward reform did little to ameliorate a growing social and economic crisis. Like President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policy of perestroika in the Soviet Union, Alia's efforts at reform were prompted, and tempered, by a commitment to preserving the system that had facilitated his accession to power. In both countries, however, the departure from traditional hard-line policies sufficed merely to unshackle the forces that would accelerate the collapse of the old system.
In December 1990, swayed by large-scale student demonstrations, strikes, and the exodus of thousands of Albanians to Italy and Greece, and fearing the prospect of a violent overthrow, Alia yielded to the popular demand for political pluralism and a multiparty system. The newly created Albanian Democratic Party (ADP), the country's first opposition party since World War II, quickly became a major political force, capturing nearly one-third of the seats in the People's Assembly in the spring 1991 multiparty election. And several months later, as the economy continued to deteriorate, the ADP participated in a "government of national salvation" with the communist Albanian Party of Labor (APL), subsequently renamed the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA). The fragile coalition government led by Prime Minister Ylli Bufi fell apart when the ADP decided to pull out in December. An interim government of nonparty members and specialists headed by Vilson Ahmeti struggled on until the ADP scored a decisive election victory on March 22, 1992, amidst economic free-fall and social chaos, receiving about 62 percent of the vote to the SPA's 26 percent. Alia resigned as president shortly afterward, paving the way for the ADP to take over the government. On April 9, Sali Berisha, a cardiologist by training and a dynamic ADP leader who had figured prominently in the struggle for political pluralism, became Albania's first democratically elected president in seventy years. The first noncommunist government, headed by ADP founding member Aleksander Meksi, was appointed four days later. This "cabinet of hope," as it was popularly dubbed, consisted mainly of young ADP activists, intellectuals without prior government experience. Unlike their communist predecessors, most of whom were of southern Albanian origin, the ministers hailed from various parts of the country. The new government made remarkable progress in restoring law and order, reforming the economy, and raising the population's standard of living. It privatized small businesses, closed down unprofitable industrial facilities, distributed about 90 percent of the land previously held by collective farms to private farmers, began to privatize housing, improved the supply of food and basic consumer goods, reduced the rate of inflation, stabilized the lek (Albania's currency unit), cut the budget deficit, and increased the volume of exports. However, more than one year after the Democrats came to power, Albania's economic plight was far from over. Its 400,000 newly registered private farmers had yet to assume full ownership rights over their land, there was insufficient investment in private agriculture, and shortages of tractors and other farming equipment continued to impede agricultural production. Approximately forty percent of the nonagricultural labor force was unemployed, corruption pervaded the state bureaucracy, and the country remained dependent on foreign food aid. In addition, partly because of the general political instability in the Balkans, particularly in the former Yugoslavia (see Glossary), direct investment from abroad was not forthcoming. Although President Berisha's "shock therapy" received the imprimatur of the International Monetary Fund (IMF-- see Glossary), it drew sharp criticism from the SPA, which had been resuscitated by significant gains in the July 1992 local elections. The SPA argued that the reforms should have been implemented gradually, that many more jobs had been eliminated than created, and that at least some of the old state-run factories should have been kept open.
In March 1993, SPA chairman Fatos Nano called on the entire cabinet to resign, accusing it of incompetence. On April 6, President Berisha, citing a need to "correct weaknesses and shortcomings" in the government's reform efforts, replaced the ministers of agriculture, internal affairs, education, and tourism (although ADP chairman Eduard Selami denied that these changes had been made in response to the opposition's demands). The new appointees included individuals with greater professional expertise and two political independents. The outgoing ministers of agriculture and internal affairs assumed other government posts. Despite the Socialist challenge, opposition from right- wing extremists, and some manifestations of discord within the ADP, there appeared to be no imminent domestic threat to the Democratic government remained in a strong position in late 1993.
In foreign policy, the unresolved question of the status of Kosovo, a formerly autonomous province of Serbia, predominated. Although in September 1991 Kosovo's underground parliament proclaimed this enclave with its large majority of ethnic Albanians a "sovereign and independent state," Albania was the only country that had officially recognized Kosovo's independence from Serbia. The Serbian government carried out a policy of systematic segregation and repression in Kosovo that some Western observers have compared with South Africa's apartheid system. Concerned that Serbia's ethnic cleansing campaigns would spread from Bosnia and Hercegovina to Kosovo and that Albania could be dragged into the ensuing confrontation (potentially a general Balkan war), President Berisha forged closer relations with other Islamic countries, particularly Turkey. In December 1992, Albania joined the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a move denounced by the SPA as a detriment to the country's reintegration with Europe. But Berisha also sought ties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and urged repeatedly that NATO forces be deployed in Kosovo. In March 1993, NATO secretary general Manfred Wörner visited Tiranë, and later that month Albanian defense minister Safet Zhulali participated in a meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in Brussels. Wörner offered various forms of technical assistance to the Albanian armed forces, though membership in NATO itself was withheld.
In April 1993, Albania granted recognition to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Important factors in relations between the two countries were the human rights of the Albanian minority in Macedonia, estimated to amount to between a fifth and a third of the population, and possible Albanian irredentism. Relations benefited from the inclusion of ethnic Albanians in the Macedonian government. Good relations were maintained with Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania as well, and steps were taken to improve relations with the neighboring Republic of Montenegro, also home to a large minority Albanian community. In September, Montenegro's president, Momir Bulatovic, met with President Berisha in Tiranë for the highest level talks between the two countries in a half-century. Attempts to expand cooperation and exchanges with Montenegro, however, were hampered by a UN embargo against the rump Yugoslavia.
Relations with Greece, Albania's ancient southern neighbor (which, for religious and historical reasons, was expected to side with Serbia in the event of war in Kosovo), deteriorated rapidly in the early 1990s. The tension stemmed primarily from two issues: the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, mostly economic immigrants, from Albania to Greece, and the treatment of ethnic Greeks in Albania. Greco-Albanian relations worsened markedly when the Albanian parliament voted in February 1992 to prevent OMONIA (Unity), the political party representing Greek Albanians, from fielding candidates in the March 1992 election. A compromise was reached, permitting OMONIA's members to register under the name of the Union for Human Rights and to have their representatives included among the candidates, but mutual recriminations persisted.
Another major setback occured in June 1993 when Albania expelled a Greek Orthodox priest for allegedly fomenting unrest among ethnic Greeks in southern Albania, and Greece retaliated by deporting 25,000 Albanian illegal immigrants. Several weeks later Greece's prime minister, Constantinos Mitsotakis, demanded "the same rights for the Greek community living in Albania as those that the Albanian government demands for the Albanian communities in the former Yugoslavia." A potential problem was posed also by the status of "Northern Epirus," the Greek-populated region in southern Albania on which Greece had made territorial claims in the past. The regional instability created by such ethnic tensions, combined with continued economic deprivation, threatened Albania's transition to democracy.
October 4, 1993
Walter R. Iwaskiw
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Chapter 1. Historical Setting
"THE ALBANIAN PEOPLE have hacked their way through history, sword in hand," proclaims the preamble to Albania's 1976 Stalinist constitution. These words were penned by the most dominant figure in Albania's modern history, the Orwellian postwar despot, Enver Hoxha. The fact that Hoxha enshrined them in Albania's supreme law is indicative of how he--like his mentor, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin--exploited his people's collective memory to enhance the might of the communist system, which he manipulated for over four decades. Supported by a group of sycophantic intellectuals, Hoxha repeateded transformed friends into hated foes in his determination to shape events. Similarly, he rewrote Albania's history so national heroes were recast, sometimes overnight, as villains. Hoxha appealed to the Albanians' xenophobia and their defensive nationalism to parry criticism and threats to communist central control and his regime and justify its brutal, arbitrary rule and economic and social folly. Only Hoxha's death, the timely downfall of communism in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, and the collapse of the nation's economy were enough to break his spell and propel Albania fitfully toward change.
The Albanians are probably an ethnic outcropping of the Illyrians, an ancient Balkan people who intermingled and made war with the Greeks, Thracians, and Macedonians before succumbing to Roman rule around the time of Christ. Eastern and Western powers, secular and religious, battled for centuries after the fall of Rome to control the lands that constitute modern-day Albania. All the Illyrian tribes except the Albanians disappeared during the Dark Ages under the waves of migrating barbarians. A forbidding mountain homeland and resilient tribal society enabled the Albanians to survive into modern times with their identity their Indo-European language intact.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Ottoman Turks swept into the western Balkans. After a quixotic defense mounted by the Albanians' greatest hero, Skanderbeg, the Albanians succumbed to the Turkish sultan's forces. During five centuries of Ottoman rule, about two-thirds of the Albanian population, including its most powerful feudal landowners, converted to Islam. Many Albanians won fame and fortune as soldiers, administrators, and merchants in far-flung parts of the empire. As the centuries passed, however, Ottoman rulers lost the capacity to command the loyalty of local pashas, who governed districts on the empire's fringes. Soon pressures created by emerging national movements among the empire's farrago of peoples threatened to shatter the empire itself. The Ottoman rulers of the nineteenth century struggled in vain to shore up central authority, introducing reforms aimed at harnessing unruly pashas and checking the spread of nationalist ideas.
Albanian nationalism stirred for the first time in the late nineteenth century when it appeared that Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece would snatch up the Ottoman Empire's Albanian-populated lands. In 1878 Albanian leaders organized the Prizren League, which pressed for autonomy within the empire. After decades of unrest and the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First Balkan War in 1912-13, Albanian leaders declared Albania an independent state, and Europe's Great Powers carved out an independent Albania after the Second Balkan War of 1913.
With the complete collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires after World War I, the Albanians looked to Italy for protection against predators. After 1925, however, Mussolini sought to dominate Albania. In 1928 Albania became a kingdom under Zog I, the conservative Muslim clan chief and former prime minister, but Zog failed to stave off Italian ascendancy in Albanian internal affairs. In 1939 Mussolini's troops occupied Albania, overthrew Zog, and annexed the country. Albanian communists and nationalists fought each other as well as the occupying Italian and German forces during World War II, and with Yugoslav and Allied assistance the communists triumphed.
After the war, communist strongmen Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu eliminated their rivals inside the communist party and liquidated anticommunist opposition. Concentrating primarily on maintaining their grip on power, they reorganized the country's economy along strict Stalinist lines, turning first to Yugoslavia, then to the Soviet Union, and later to China for support. In pursuit of their goals, the communists repressed the Albanian people, subjecting them to isolation, propaganda, and brutal police measures. When China opened up to the West in the 1970s, Albania's rulers turned away from Beijing and implemented a policy of strict autarky, or self-sufficiency, that brought their nation economic ruin.
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THE ANCIENT ILLYRIANS
Mystery enshrouds the exact origins of today's Albanians. Most historians of the Balkans believe the Albanian people are in large part descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and clans. The name Albania is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Arber, or Arbereshë, and later Albanoi, that lived near Durrës. The Illyrians were Indo-European tribesmen who appeared in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula about 1000 B.C., a period coinciding with the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age. They inhabited much of the area for at least the next millennium. Archaeologists associate the Illyrians with the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age people noted for production of iron and bronze swords with winged-shaped handles and for domestication of horses. The Illyrians occupied lands extending from the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Sar Mountains. At various times, groups of Illyrians migrated over land and sea into Italy.
The Illyrians carried on commerce and warfare with their neighbors. The ancient Macedonians probably had some Illyrian roots, but their ruling class adopted Greek cultural characteristics. The Illyrians also mingled with the Thracians, another ancient people with adjoining lands on the east. In the south and along the Adriatic Sea coast, the Illyrians were heavily influenced by the Greeks, who founded trading colonies there. The present-day city of Durrës evolved from a Greek colony known as Epidamnos, which was founded at the end of the seventh century B.C. Another famous Greek colony, Apollonia, arose between Durrës and the port city of Vlorë.
The Illyrians produced and traded cattle, horses, agricultural goods, and wares fashioned from locally mined copper and iron. Feuds and warfare were constant facts of life for the Illyrian tribes, and Illyrian pirates plagued shipping on the Adriatic Sea. Councils of elders chose the chieftains who headed each of the numerous Illyrian tribes. From time to time, local chieftains extended their rule over other tribes and formed short-lived kingdoms. During the fifth century B.C., a well-developed Illyrian population center existed as far north as the upper Sava River valley in what is now Slovenia. Illyrian friezes discovered near the present-day Slovenian city of Ljubljana depict ritual sacrifices, feasts, battles, sporting events, and other activities.
The Illyrian kingdom of Bardhyllus became a formidable local power in the fourth century B.C. In 358 B.C., however, Macedonia's Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, defeated the Illyrians and assumed control of their territory as far as Lake Ohrid (see fig. 5). Alexander himself routed the forces of the Illyrian chieftain Clitus in 335 B.C., and Illyrian tribal leaders and soldiers accompanied Alexander on his conquest of Persia. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., independent Illyrian kingdoms again arose. In 312 B.C., King Glaucius expelled the Greeks from Durrës. By the end of the third century, an Illyrian kingdom based near what is now the Albanian city of Shkodër controlled parts of northern Albania, Montenegro, and Hercegovina. Under Queen Teuta, Illyrians attacked Roman merchant vessels plying the Adriatic Sea and gave Rome an excuse to invade the Balkans.
In the Illyrian Wars of 229 and 219 B.C., Rome overran the Illyrian settlements in the Neretva River valley. The Romans made new gains in 168 B.C., and Roman forces captured Illyria's King Gentius at Shkodër, which they called Scodra, and brought him to Rome in 165 B.C. A century later, Julius Caesar and his rival Pompey fought their decisive battle near Durrës (Dyrrachium). Rome finally subjugated recalcitrant Illyrian tribes in the western Balkans dwing the region of Emperor Tiberius in A.D. 9. The Romans divided the lands that make up present-day Albania among the provinces of Macedonia, Dalmatia, and Epirus (see fig. 2).
For about four centuries, Roman rule brought the Illyrian-populated lands economic and cultural advancement and ended most of the enervating clashes among local tribes. The Illyrian mountain clansmen retained local authority but pledged allegiance to the emperor and acknowledged the authority of his envoys. During a yearly holiday honoring the Caesars, the Illyrian mountaineers swore loyalty to the emperor and reaffirmed their political rights. A form of this tradition, known as the kuvend, has survived to the present day in northern Albania.
The Romans established numerous military camps and colonies and completely latinized the coastal cities. They also oversaw the construction of aqueducts and roads, including the Via Egnatia, a famous military highway and trade route that led from Durrës through the Shkumbin River valley to Macedonia and Byzantium (later Constantinople --see Glossary). Copper, asphalt, and silver were extracted from the mountains. The main exports were wine, cheese, oil, and fish from Lake Scutari and Lake Ohrid. Imports included tools, metalware, luxury goods, and other manufactured articles. Apollonia became a cultural center, and Julius Caesar himself sent his nephew, later the Emperor Augustus, to study there.
Illyrians distinguished themselves as warriors in the Roman legions and made up a significant portion of the Praetorian Guard. Several of the Roman emperors were of Illyrian origin, including Diocletian (284-305), who saved the empire from disintegration by introducing institutional reforms, and Constantine the Great (324-37)--who accepted Christianity and transferred the empire's capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he called Constantinople. Emperor Justinian (527-65)--who codified Roman law, built the most famous Byzantine church, the Hagia Sofia, and reextended the empire's control over lost territories- -was probably also an Illyrian.
Christianity came to the Illyrian-populated lands in the first century A.D. Saint Paul wrote that he preached in the Roman province of Illyricum, and legend holds that he visited Durrës. When the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves in A.D. 395, the lands that now make up Albania were administered by the Eastern Empire but were ecclesiastically dependent on Rome. In A.D. 732, however, a Byzantine emperor, Leo the Isaurian, subordinated the area to the patriarchate of Constantinople. For centuries thereafter, the Albanian lands became an arena for the ecclesiastical struggle between Rome and Constantinople. Most Albanians living in the mountainous north became Roman Catholic, while in the southern and central regions, the majority became Orthodox.
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THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS AND THE MIDDLE AGES
The fall of the Roman Empire and the age of great migrations brought radical changes to the Balkan Peninsula and the Illyrian people. Barbarian tribesmen overran many rich Roman cities, destroying the existing social and economic order and leaving the great Roman aqueducts, coliseums, temples, and roads in ruins. The Illyrians gradually disappeared as a distinct people from the Balkans, replaced by the Bulgars, Serbs, Croats, and Albanians. In the late Middle Ages, new waves of invaders swept over the Albanian-populated lands. Thanks to their protective mountains, close-knit tribal society, and sheer pertinacity, however, the Albanian people developed their distinctive identity and language.
In the fourth century, barbarian tribes began to prey upon the Roman Empire, and the fortunes of the Illyrian-populated lands sagged. The Germanic Goths and Asiatic Huns were the first to arrive, invading in mid-century; the Avars attacked in A.D. 570; and the Slavic Serbs and Croats overran Illyrian-populated areas in the early seventh century. About fifty years later, the Bulgars conquered much of the Balkan Peninsula and extended their domain to the lowlands of what is now central Albania. Many Illyrians fled from coastal areas to the mountains, exchanging a sedentary peasant existence for the itinerant life of the herdsman. Other Illyrians intermarried with the conquerors and eventually assimilated. In general, the invaders destroyed or weakened Roman and Byzantine cultural centers in the lands that would become Albania.
Again during the late medieval period, invaders ravaged the Illyrian-inhabited regions of the Balkans. Norman, Venetian, and Byzantine fleets attacked by sea. Bulgar, Serb, and Byzantine forces came overland and held the region in their grip for years. Clashes between rival clans and intrusions by the Serbs produced hardship that triggered an exodus from the region southward into Greece, including Thessaly, the Peloponnese, and the Aegean Islands. The invaders assimilated much of the Illyrian population, but the Illyrians living in lands that comprise modern-day Albania and parts of Yugoslavia (see Glossary) and Greece were never completely absorbed or even controlled.
The first historical mention of Albania and the Albanians as such appears in an account of the resistance by a Byzantine emperor, Alexius I Comnenus, to an offensive by the Vatican-backed Normans from southern Italy into the Albanian-populated lands in 1081.
The Serbs occupied parts of northern and eastern Albania toward the end of the twelfth century. In 1204, after Western crusaders sacked Constantinople, Venice won nominal control over Albania and the Epirus region of northern Greece and took possession of Durrës. A prince from the overthrown Byzantine ruling family, Michael Comnenus, made alliances with Albanian chiefs and drove the Venetians from lands that now make up southern Albania and northern Greece, and in 1204 he set up an independent principality, the Despotate of Epirus, with Janina (now Ioannina in northwest Greece) as its capital. In 1272 the king of Naples, Charles I of Anjou, occupied Durrës and formed an Albanian kingdom that would last for a century. Internal power struggles further weakened the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century, enabling the Serbs' most powerful medieval ruler, Stefan Dusan, to establish a short-lived empire that included all of Albania except Durrës.
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THE ALBANIAN LANDS UNDER OTTOMAN DOMINATION, 1385-1876
The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At first, the feuding Albanian clans proved no match for the armies of the sultan (see Glossary). In the fifteenth century, however, Skanderbeg united the Albanian tribes in a defensive alliance that held up the Ottoman advance for more than two decades. His family's banner, bearing a black two-headed eagle on a red field, became the flag under which the Albanian national movement rallied centuries later.
Five centuries of Ottoman rule left the Albanian people fractured along religious, regional, and tribal lines. The first Albanians to convert to Islam were young boys forcibly conscripted into the sultan's military and administration. In the early seventeenth century, however, Albanians converted to Islam in great numbers. Within a century, the Albanian Islamic community was split between Sunni (see Glossary) Muslims and adherents to the Bektashi (see Glossary) sect. The Albanian people also became divided into two distinct tribal and dialectal groupings, the Gegs and Tosks. In the rugged northern mountains, Geg shepherds lived in a tribal society often completely independent of Ottoman rule. In the south, peasant Muslim and Orthodox Tosks worked the land for Muslim beys, provincial rulers who frequently revolted against the sultan's authority. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman sultans tried in vain to shore up their collapsing empire by introducing a series of reforms aimed at reining in recalcitrant local officials and dousing the fires of nationalism among its myriad peoples. The power of nationalism, however, proved too strong to counteract.
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The Ottoman Conquest of Albania
The Ottoman Turks expanded their empire from Anatolia to the Balkans in the fourteenth century. They crossed the Bosporus in 1352, and in 1389 they crushed a Serb-led army that included Albanian forces at Kosovo Polje, located in the southern part of present-day Yugoslavia. Europe gained a brief respite from Ottoman pressure in 1402 when the Mongol leader, Tamerlane, attacked Anatolia from the east, killed the Turks' absolute ruler, the sultan, and sparked a civil war. When order was restored, the Ottomans renewed their westward progress. In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II's forces overran Constantinople and killed the last Byzantine emperor.
The division of the Albanian-populated lands into small, quarreling fiefdoms ruled by independent feudal lords and tribal chiefs made them easy prey for the Ottoman armies. In 1385 the Albanian ruler of Durrës, Karl Thopia, appealed to the sultan for support against his rivals, the Balsha family. An Ottoman force quickly marched into Albania along the Via Egnatia and routed the Balshas. The principal Albanian clans soon swore fealty to the Turks. Sultan Murad II launched the major Ottoman onslaught in the Balkans in 1423, and the Turks took Janina in 1431 and Arta on the Ionian coast, in 1449. The Turks allowed conquered Albanian clan chiefs to maintain their positions and property, but they had to pay tribute, send their sons to the Turkish court as hostages, and provide the Ottoman army with auxiliary troops.
The Albanians' resistance to the Turks in the mid-fifteenth century won them acclaim all over Europe. Gjon Kastrioti of Krujë was one of the Albanian clan leaders who submitted to Turkish suzerainty. He was compelled to send his four sons to the Ottoman capital to be trained for military service. The youngest, Gjergj Kastrioti (1403-68), who would become the Albanians' greatest national hero, captured the sultan's attention. Renamed Iskander when he converted to Islam, the young man participated in military expeditions to Asia Minor and Europe. When appointed to administer a Balkan district, Iskander became known as Skanderbeg. After Ottoman forces under Skanderbeg's command suffered defeat in a battle near Nis, in present-day Serbia, in 1443, the Albanian rushed to Krujë and tricked a Turkish pasha into surrendering him the Kastrioti family fortress. Skanderbeg then reembraced Roman Catholicism and declared a holy war against the Turks.
On March 1, 1444, Albanian chieftains gathered in the cathedral of Lezhë with the prince of Montenegro and delegates from Venice and proclaimed Skanderbeg commander of the Albanian resistance. All of Albania, including most of Epirus, accepted his leadership against the Ottoman Turks, but local leaders kept control of their own districts. Under a red flag bearing Skanderbeg's heraldic emblem, an Albanian force of about 30,000 men held off brutal Ottoman campaigns against their lands for twenty-four years. Twice the Albanians overcame sieges of Krujë. In 1449 the Albanians routed Sultan Murad II himself. Later, they repulsed attacks led by Sultan Mehmed II. In 1461 Skanderbeg went to the aid of his suzerain, King Alfonso I of Naples, against the kings of Sicily. The government under Skanderbeg was unstable, however, and at times local Albanian rulers cooperated with the Ottoman Turks against him. When Skanderbeg died at Lezhë, the sultan reportedly cried out, "Asia and Europe are mine at last. Woe to Christendom! She has lost her sword and shield."
With support from Naples and the Vatican, resistance to the Ottoman Empire continued mostly in Albania's highlands, where the chieftains even opposed the construction of roads out of fear that they would bring Ottoman soldiers and tax collectors. The Albanians' fractured leadership, however, failed to halt the Ottoman onslaught. Krujë fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1478; Shkodër succumbed in 1479 after a fifteen-month siege; and the Venetians evacuated Durrës in 1501. The defeats triggered a great Albanian exodus to southern Italy, especially to the kingdom of Naples, as well as to Sicily, Greece, Romania, and Egypt. Most of the Albanian refugees belonged to the Orthodox Church. Some of the émigrés to Italy converted to Roman Catholicism, and the rest established a Uniate Church (see Glossary). The Albanians of Italy significantly influenced the Albanian national movement in future centuries, and Albanian Franciscan priests, most of whom were descended from émigrés to Italy, played a significant role in the preservation of Catholicism in Albania's northern regions.
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Albanians under Ottoman Rule
The Ottoman sultan considered himself God's agent on earth, the leader of a religious--not a national--state whose purpose was to defend and propagate Islam. Non-Muslims paid extra taxes and held an inferior status, but they could retain their old religion and a large measure of local autonomy. By converting to Islam, individuals among the conquered could elevate themselves to the privileged stratum of society. In the early years of the empire, all Ottoman high officials were the sultan's bondsmen the children of Christian subjects chosen in childhood for their promise, converted to Islam, and educated to serve. Some were selected from prisoners of war, others sent as gifts, and still others obtained through devshirme, the tribute of children levied in the Ottoman Empire's Balkan lands. Many of the best fighters in the sultan's elite guard, the janissaries (see Glossary), were conscripted as young boys from Christian Albanian families, and high-ranking Ottoman officials often had Albanian bodyguards.
In the early seventeenth century, many Albanian converts to Islam migrated elsewhere within the Ottoman Empire and found careers in the Ottoman military and government. Some attained powerful positions in the Ottoman administration. About thirty Albanians rose to the position of grand vizier, chief deputy to the sultan himself. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Albanian Köprülü family provided four grand viziers, who fought against corruption, temporarily shored up eroding central government control over rapacious local beys, and won several military victories.
The Ottoman Turks divided the Albanian-inhabited lands among a number of districts, or vilayets. The Ottoman authorities did not initially stress conversion to Islam. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, economic pressures and coercion produced the conversion of about two-thirds of the empire's Albanians.
The Ottoman Turks first focused their conversion campaigns on the Roman Catholic Albanians of the north and then on the Orthodox population of the south. For example, the authorities increased taxes, especially poll taxes, to make conversion economically attractive. During and after a Christian counteroffensive against the Ottoman Empire from 1687 to 1690, when Albanian Catholics revolted against their Muslim overlords, the Ottoman pasha of Pec, a town in the south of present-day Yugoslavia, retaliated by forcing entire Albanian villages to accept Islam. Albanian beys then moved from the northern mountains to the fertile lands of Kosovo, which had been abandoned by thousands of Orthodox Serbs fearing reprisals for their collaboration with the Christian forces.
Most of the conversion's to Islam took place in the lowlands of the Shkumbin River valley, where the Ottoman Turks could easily apply pressure because of the area's accessibility. Many Albanians, however, converted in name only and secretly continued to practice Christianity. Often one branch of a family became Muslim while another remained Christian, and many times these families celebrated their respective religious holidays together.
As early as the eighteenth century, a mystic Islamic sect, the Bektashi dervishes, spread into the empire's Albanian-populated lands. Probably founded in the late thirteenth century in Anatolia, Bektashism became the janissaries' official faith in the late sixteenth century. The Bektashi sect contains features of the Turks' pre-Islamic religion and emphasizes man as an individual. Women, unveiled, participate in Bektashi ceremonies on an equal basis, and the celebrants use wine despite the ban on alcohol in the Quran. The Bektashis became the largest religious group in southern Albania after the sultan disbanded the janissaries in 1826. Bektashi leaders played key roles in the Albanian nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century and were to a great degree responsible for the Albanians' traditional tolerance of religious differences.
During the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Albanian lands remained one of Europe's most backward areas. In the mountains north of the Shkumbin River, Geg herders maintained their self-governing society comprised of clans. An association of clans was called a bajrak, (see Glossary). Taxes on the northern tribes were difficult if not impossible for the Ottomans to collect because of the rough terrain and fierceness of the Albanian highlanders. Some mountain tribes succeeded in defending their independence through the centuries of Ottoman rule, engaging in intermittent guerrilla warfare with the Ottoman Turks, who never deemed it worthwhile to subjugate them. Until recent times, Geg clan chiefs, or bajraktars, exercised patriarchal powers, arranged marriages, mediated quarrels, and meted out punishments. The tribesmen of the northern Albanian mountains recognized no law but the Code of Lek, a collection of tribal laws transcribed in the fourteenth century by a Roman Catholic priest. The code regulates a variety of subjects, including blood vengeance. Even today, many Albanian highlanders regard the canon as the supreme law of the land.
South of the Shkumbin River, the mostly peasant Tosks lived in compact villages under elected rulers. Some Tosks living in settlements high in the mountains maintained their independence and often escaped payment of taxes. The Tosks of the lowlands, however, were easy for the Ottoman authorities to control. The Albanian tribal system disappeared there, and the Ottomans imposed a system of military fiefs under which the sultan granted soldiers and cavalrymen temporary landholdings, or timars, in exchange for military service. By the eighteenth century, many military fiefs had effectively become the hereditary landholdings of economically and politically powerful families who squeezed wealth from their hard-strapped Christian and Muslim tenant farmers. The beys, like the clan chiefs of the northern mountains, became virtually independent rulers in their own provinces, had their own military contingents, and often waged war against each other to increase their landholdings and power. The Sublime Porte (see Glossary) attempted to press a divide-and-rule policy to keep the local beys from uniting and posing a threat to Ottoman rule itself, but with little success.
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Local Albanian Leaders in the Early Nineteenth Century
The weakening of Ottoman central authority and the timar system brought anarchy to the Albanian-populated lands. In the late eighteenth century, two Albanian centers of power emerged: Shkodër, under the Bushati family; and Janina, under Ali Pasha of Tepelenë. When it suited their goals, both places cooperated with the Sublime Porte, and when it was expedient to defy the central government, each acted independently.
The Bushati family dominated the Shkodër region through a network of alliances with various highland tribes. Kara Mahmud Bushati attempted to establish an autonomous principality and expand the lands under his control by playing off Austria and Russia against the Sublime Porte. In 1785 Kara Mahmud's forces attacked Montenegrin territory, and Austria offered to recognize him as the ruler of all Albania if he would ally himself with Vienna against the Sublime Porte. Seizing an opportunity, Kara Mahmud sent the sultan the heads of an Austrian delegation in 1788, and the Ottomans appointed him governor of Shkodër. When he attempted to wrest land from Montenegro in 1796, however, he was defeated and beheaded. Kara Mahmud's brother, Ibrahim, cooperated with the Sublime Porte until his death in 1810, but his successor, Mustafa Pasha Bushati, proved to be recalcitrant despite participation in Ottoman military campaigns against Greek revolutionaries and rebel pashas. He cooperated with the mountain tribes and brought a large area under his control.
Ali Pasha (1741-1822), the Lion of Janina, was born to a powerful clan from Tepelenë and spent much of his youth as a bandit. He rose to become governor of the Ottoman province of Rumelia, which included Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace, before establishing himself in Janina. Like Kara Mahmud Bushati, Ali Pasha wanted to create an autonomous state under his rule. When Ali Pasha forged links with the Greek revolutionaries, Sultan Mahmud II decided to destroy him. The sultan first discharged the Albanian from his official posts and recalled him to Constantinople. Ali Pasha refused and put up a formidable resistance that Britain's Lord Byron immortalized in poems and letters. In January 1822, however, Ottoman agents assassinated Ali Pasha and sent his head to Constantinople. Nevertheless, it took eight more years before the Sublime Porte would move against Mustafa Pasha Bushati. The sultan sent an Ottoman general to Bitola (then called Monastir, in Macedonia), where he invited 1,000 Muslim Albanian leaders to meet him, and in August 1830 Reshid Pasha had about 500 of the Albanian leaders killed. He then turned on Mustafa Pasha, who surrendered and spent the rest of his life as an official in Constantinople.
After crushing the Bushatis and Ali Pasha, the Sublime Porte introduced a series of reforms, known as the tanzimat, which were aimed at strengthening the empire by reining in fractious pashas. The government organized a recruitment program for the military and opened Turkish-language schools to propagate Islam and instill loyalty to the empire. The timars officially became large individual landholdings, especially in the lowlands. In 1835 the Sublime Porte divided the Albanian-populated lands into the vilayets of Janina and Rumelia and dispatched officials from Constantinople to administer them. After 1865 the central authorities redivided the Albanian lands between the vilayets of Shkodër, Janina, Bitola, and Kosovo. The reforms angered the highland Albanian chieftains, who found their privileges reduced with no apparent compensation, and the authorities eventually abandoned efforts to control them. Ottoman troops crushed local rebellions in the lowlands, however, and conditions there remained bleak. Large numbers of Tosks emigrated to join sizable Albanian émigré communities in Romania, Egypt, Bulgaria, Constantinople, southern Italy, and later the United States. As a result of contacts maintained between the Tosks and their relatives living or returning from abroad, foreign ideas began to seep into Albania.
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NATIONAL AWAKENING AND THE BIRTH OF ALBANIA, 1876-1918
By the 1870s, the Sublime Porte's reforms aimed at checking the Ottoman Empire's disintegration had clearly failed. The image of the "Turkish yoke" had become fixed in the nationalist mythologies and psyches of the empire's Balkan peoples, and their march toward independence quickened. The Albanians, because of the preponderance of Muslims link with Islam and their internal social divisions, were the last of the Balkan peoples to develop a national consciousness, which was triggered by fears that the Ottoman Empire would lose its Albanian-populated lands to the emerging Balkan states--Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece. Albanian leaders formed the Prizren League in 1878, which pressed for territorial autonomy, and after decades of unrest a major uprising exploded in the Albanian-populated Ottoman territories in 1912, on the eve of the First Balkan War. When Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece laid claim to Albanian lands during the war, the Albanians declared independence, and the European Great Powers endorsed an independent Albania in 1913, after the Second Balkan War. The young state, however, collapsed within weeks of the outbreak of World War I.
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The Rise of Albanian Nationalism
The 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula, leaving the empire with only a precarious hold on Macedonia and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece fueled the rise of Albanian nationalism. The first postwar treaty, the abortive Treaty of San Stefano (see Glossary) signed on March 3, 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary and Britain blocked the arrangement because it awarded Russia a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in Berlin.
The Treaty of San Stefano triggered profound anxiety among the Albanians meanwhile, and it spurred their leaders to organize a defense of the lands they inhabited. In the spring of 1878, influential Albanians in Constantinople--including Abdyl Frasheri, the Albanian national movement's leading figure during its early years--organized a secret committee to direct the Albanians' resistance. In May the group called for a general meeting of representatives from all the Albanian-populated lands. On June 10, 1878, about eighty delegates, mostly Muslim religious leaders, clan chiefs, and other influential people from the four Albanian-populated Ottoman vilayets, met in the Kosovo town of Prizren. The delegates set up a standing organization, the Prizren League, under the direction of a central committee that had the power to impose taxes and raise an army. The Prizren League worked to gain autonomy for the Albanians and to thwart implementation of the Treaty of San Stefano, but not to create an independent Albania.
At first the Ottoman authorities supported the Prizren League, but the Sublime Porte pressed the delegates to declare themselves to be first and foremost Ottomans rather than Albanians. Some delegates supported this position and advocated emphasizing Muslim solidarity and the defense of Muslim lands, including present-day Bosnia and Hercegovina. Other representatives, under Frasheri's leadership, focused on working toward Albanian autonomy and creating a sense of Albanian identity that would cut across religious and tribal lines. Because conservative Muslims constituted a majority of the representatives, the Prizren League supported maintenance of Ottoman suzerainty.
In July 1878, the league sent a memorandum to the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin, which was called to settle the unresolved problems of Turkish War, demanding that all Albanians be united in a single Ottoman province that would be governed from Bitola by a Turkish governor who would be advised by an Albanian committee elected by universal suffrage.
The Congress of Berlin ignored the league's memorandum, and Germany's Otto von Bismarck even proclaimed that an Albanian nation did not exist. The congress ceded to Montenegro the cities of Bar and Podgorica and areas around the mountain villages of Gusinje and Plav, which Albanian leaders considered Albanian territory. Serbia also won Albanian-inhabited lands. The Albanians, the vast majority loyal to the empire, vehemently opposed the territorial losses. Albanians also feared the possible loss of Epirus to Greece. The Prizren League organized armed resistance efforts in Gusinje, Plav, Shkodër, Prizren, Prevesa, and Janina. A border tribesman at the time described the frontier as "floating on blood."
In August 1878, the Congress of Berlin ordered a commission to trace a border between the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. The congress also directed Greece and the Ottoman Empire to negotiate a solution to their border dispute. The Great Powers expected the Ottomans to ensure that the Albanians would respect the new borders, ignoring that the sultan's military forces were too weak to enforce any settlement and that the Ottomans could only benefit by the Albanians' resistance. The Sublime Porte, in fact, armed the Albanians and allowed them to levy taxes, and when the Ottoman army withdrew from areas awarded to Montenegro under the Treaty of Berlin, Roman Catholic Albanian tribesmen simply took control. The Albanians' successful resistance to the treaty forced the Great Powers to alter the border, returning Gusinje and Plav to the Ottoman Empire and granting Montenegro the mostly Muslim Albanian-populated coastal town of Ulcinj. But the Albanians there refused to surrender as well. Finally, the Great Powers blockaded Ulcinj by sea and pressured the Ottoman authorities to bring the Albanians under control. The Great Powers decided in 1881 to cede Greece only Thessaly and the small Albanian-populated district of Arta.
Faced with growing international pressure "to pacify" the refractory Albanians, the sultan dispatched a large army under Dervish Turgut Pasha to suppress the Prizren League and deliver Ulcinj to Montenegro. Albanians loyal to the empire supported the Sublime Porte's military intervention. In April 1881, Dervish Pasha's 10,000 men captured Prizren and later crushed the resistance at Ulcinj. The Prizren League's leaders and their families were arrested and deported. Frasheri, who originally received a death sentence, was imprisoned until 1885 and exiled until his death seven years later. In the three years it survived, the Prizren League effectively made the Great Powers aware of the Albanian people and their national interests. Montenegro and Greece received much less Albanian-populated territory than they would have won without the league's resistance.
Formidable barriers frustrated Albanian leaders' efforts to instill in their people an Albanian rather than an Ottoman identity. Divided into four vilayets, Albanians had no common geographical or political nerve center. The Albanians' religious differences forced nationalist leaders to give the national movement a purely secular character that alienated religious leaders. The most significant factor uniting the Albanians, their spoken language, lacked a standard literary form and even a standard alphabet. Each of the three available choices, the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts, implied different political and religious orientations opposed by one or another element of the population. In 1878 there were no Albanian-language schools in the most developed of the Albanian-inhabited areas-- Gjirokastër, Berat, and Vlorë--where schools conducted classes either in Turkish or in Greek (see Education: Pre-Communist Era, ch. 2).
Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, Sami Frasheri founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox Albanians. Naim Frasheri, the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Romania, and the United States supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.
The Ottoman Empire continued to crumble after the Congress of Berlin. The empire's financial troubles prevented Sultan Abdül Hamid II from reforming his military, and he resorted to repression to maintain order. The authorities strove without success to control the political situation in the empire's Albanian-populated lands, arresting suspected nationalist activists. When the sultan refused Albanian demands for unification of the four Albanian-populated vilayets, Albanian leaders reorganized the Prizren League and incited uprisings that brought the Albanian lands, especially Kosovo, to near anarchy. The imperial authorities again disbanded the Prizren League in 1897, executed its president in 1902, and banned Albanian- language books and correspondence. In Macedonia, where Bulgarian-, Greek-, and Serbian-backed terrorists were fighting Ottoman authorities and one another for control, Muslim Albanians suffered attacks, and Albanian guerrilla groups retaliated. In 1906 Albanian leaders meeting in Bitola established the secret Committee for the Liberation of Albania. A year later, Albanian guerrillas assassinated Korçë's Greek Orthodox metropolitan.
In 1906 opposition groups in the Ottoman Empire emerged, one of which evolved into the Committee of Union and Progress, more commonly known as the Young Turks, which proposed restoring constitutional government in Constantinople, by revolution if necessary. In July 1908, a month after a Young Turk rebellion in Macedonia supported by an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and Macedonia escalated into widespread insurrection and mutiny within the imperial army, Sultan Abdül Hamid II agreed to demands by the Young Turks to restore constitutional rule. Many Albanians participated in the Young Turks uprising, hoping that it would gain their people autonomy within the empire. The Young Turks lifted the Ottoman ban on Albanian-language schools and on writing the Albanian language. As a consequence, Albanian intellectuals meeting in Bitola in 1908 chose the Latin alphabet as a standard script. The Young Turks, however, were set on maintaining the empire and not interested in making concessions to the myriad nationalist groups within its borders. After securing the abdication of Abdül Hamid II in April 1909, the new authorities levied taxes, outlawed guerrilla groups and nationalist societies, and attempted to extend Constantinople's control over the northern Albanian mountainmen. In addition, the Young Turks legalized the bastinado, or beating with a stick, even for misdemeanors, banned carrying rifles, and denied the existence of an Albanian nationality. The new government also appealed for Islamic solidarity to break the Albanians' unity and used the Muslim clergy to try to impose the Arabic alphabet.
The Albanians refused to submit to the Young Turks' campaign to "Ottomanize" them by force. New Albanian uprisings began in Kosovo and the northern mountains in early April 1910. Ottoman forces quashed these rebellions after three months, outlawed Albanian organizations, disarmed entire regions, and closed down schools and publications. Montenegro, preparing to grab Albanian-populated lands for itself, supported a 1911 uprising by the mountain tribes against the Young Turks regime that grew into a widespread revolt. Unable to control the Albanians by force, the Ottoman government granted concessions on schools, military recruitment, and taxation and sanctioned the use of the Latin script for the Albanian language. The government refused, however, to unite the four Albanian-inhabited vilayets.
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The Balkan Wars and Creation of Independent Albania
The Albanians once more rose against the Ottoman Empire in May 1912 and took the Macedonian capitol, Skopje, by August. Stunned, the Young Turks regime acceded to some of the rebels' demands. The First Balkan War, however, erupted before a final settlement could be worked out. Most Albanians remained neutral during the war, during which the Balkan allies--the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks--quickly drove the Turks to the walls of Constantinople. The Montenegrins surrounded Shkodër with the help of northern Albanian tribes anxious to fight the Ottoman Turks. Serb forces took much of northern Albania, and the Greeks captured Janina and parts of southern Albania.
An assembly of eighty-three Muslim and Christian leaders meeting in Vlorë in November 1912 declared Albania an independent country and set up a provisional government, but an ambassadorial conference that opened in London in December decided the major questions concerning the Albanians after the First Balkan War in its concluding Treaty of London of May 1913. One of Serbia's primary war aims was to gain an Adriatic port, preferably Durrës. Austria-Hungary and Italy opposed giving Serbia an outlet to the Adriatic, which they feared would become a Russian port. They instead supported the creation of an autonomous Albania. Russia backed Serbia's and Montenegro's claims to Albanian-inhabited lands. Britain and Germany remained neutral. Chaired by Britain's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, the ambassadors' conference initially decided to create an autonomous Albania under continued Ottoman rule, but with the protection of the Great Powers. This solution, as detailed in the Treaty of London, was abandoned in the summer of 1913 when it became obvious that the Ottoman Empire would, in the Second Balkan War, lose Macedonia and hence its overland connection with the Albanian-inhabited lands.
In July 1913, the Great Powers opted to recognize an independent, neutral Albanian state ruled by a constitutional monarchy and under the protection of the Great Powers. The August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest established that independent Albania was a country with borders that gave the new state about 28,000 square kilometers of territory and a population of 800,000. Montenegro, whose tribesmen had resorted to terror, mass murder, and forced conversion in territories it coveted, had to surrender Shkodër. Serbia reluctantly succumbed to an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy to withdraw from northern Albania. The treaty, however, left large areas with majority Albanian populations, notably Kosovo and western Macedonia, outside the new state and failed to solve the region's nationality problems.
Territorial disputes have divided the Albanians and Serbs since the Middle Ages, but none more so than the clash over the Kosovo region. Serbs consider Kosovo their Holy Land. They argue that their ancestors settled in the region during the seventh century, that medieval Serbian kings were crowned there, and that the Serbs' greatest medieval ruler, Stefan Dusan, established the seat of his empire for a time near Prizren in the mid-fourteenth century. More important, numerous Serbian Orthodox shrines, including the patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, are located in Kosovo. The key event in the Serbs' national mythology, the defeat of their forces by the Ottoman Turks, took place at Kosovo Polje in 1389. For their part, the Albanians claim the land based on the argument that they are the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, the indigenous people of the region, and have been there since before the first Serb ever set foot in the Balkans. Although the Albanians have not left architectural remains similar to the Serbs' religious shrines, the Albanians point to the fact that Prizren was the seat of their first nationalist organization, the Prizren League, and call the region the cradle of their national awakening. Finally, Albanians claim Kosovo based on the fact that their kinsmen have constituted the vast majority of Kosovo's population since at least the eighteenth century.
When the Great Powers recognized an independent Albania, they also established the International Control Commission, which endeavored to exert its expand its authority and elbow out the Vlorë provisional government and the rival government of Esad Pasha Toptani, who enjoyed the support of large landowners in central Albania and boasted a formidable militia. The control commission drafted a constitution that provided for a National Assembly of elected local representatives, the heads of the Albanians' major religious groups, ten persons nominated by the prince, and other noteworthy persons. The Great Powers chose Prince Wilhelm of Wied, a thirty-five-year-old German army captain, to head the new state. In March 1914, he moved into a Durrës building hastily converted into a palace.
After independence local power struggles, foreign provocations, miserable economic conditions, and modest attempts at social and religious reform fueled Albanian uprisings aimed at the prince and the control commission. Ottoman propaganda, which appealed to uneducated peasants loyal to Islam and Islamic spiritual leaders, attacked the Albanian regime as a puppet of the large landowners and Europe's Christian powers. Greece, dissatisfied that the Great Powers did not award it southern Albania, also encouraged uprisings against the Albanian government, and armed Greek bands carried out atrocities against Albanian villagers. Italy plotted with Esad Pasha to overthrow the new prince. Montenegro and Serbia plotted with the northern tribesmen. For their part, the Great Powers gave Prince Wilhelm, who was unversed in Albanian affairs, intrigue, or diplomacy, little moral or material backing. A general insurrection in the summer of 1914 stripped the prince of control except in Durrës and Vlorë.
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World War I and Its Effects on Albania
Political chaos engulfed Albania after the outbreak of World War I. Surrounded in by insurgents Durrës, Prince Wilhelm departed the country in September 1914, just six months after arriving, and subsequently joined the German army and served on the Eastern Front. The Albanian people split along religious and tribal lines after the prince's departure. Muslims demanded a Muslim prince and looked to Turkey as the protector of the privileges they had enjoyed. Other Albanians became little more than agents of Italy and Serbia. Still others, including many beys and clan chiefs, recognized no superior authority. In late 1914, Greece occupied southern Albania, including Korçë and Gjirokastër. Italy occupied Vlorë, and Serbia and Montenegro occupied parts of northern Albania until a Central Powers offensive scattered the Serbian army, which was evacuated by the French to Thessaloniki. Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces then occupied about two-thirds of the country.
Under the secret Treaty of London signed in April 1915, the Triple Entente powers promised Italy that it would gain Vlorë and nearby lands and a protectorate over Albania in exchange for entering the war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia and Montenegro were promised much of northern Albania, and Greece was promised much of the country's southern half. The treaty left a tiny Albanian state that would be represented by Italy in its relations with the other major powers. In September 1918, Entente forces broke through the Central Powers' lines north of Thessaloniki, and within days Austro-Hungarian forces began to withdraw from Albania. When the war ended on November 11, 1918, Italy's army had occupied most of Albania; Serbia held much of the country's northern mountains; Greece occupied a sliver of land within Albania's 1913 borders; and French forces occupied Korçë and Shkodër as well as other with sizable Albanian populations, regions such as Kosovo, which were later handed over to Serbia.
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INTERWAR ALBANIA, 1918-41
Albania achieved real statehood after World War I, in part because of the diplomatic intercession of the United States. The country suffered from debilitating lack of economic and social development, however, and its first years of independence were fraught with political instability. Unable to survive in a predatory world without a foreign protector, Albania became the object of tensions between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), which were both bent on controlling the country. With the kingdom's military assistance, Ahmed Bey Zogu, the son of a clan chieftain, emerged victorious from an internal political power struggle in late 1924. Zogu, however, quickly turned his back on Belgrade and looked to Mussolini's Italy for patronage. In 1928 Zogu coaxed the country's parliament to declare Albania a kingdom and name him king. King Zog remained a hidebound conservative, and Albania was the only Balkan state where the government did not see fit to introduce a comprehensive land reform between the two world wars. Mussolini's forces finally overthrew Zog when they occupied Albania in 1939.
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Albania's Reemergence after World War I
Albania's political confusion continued in the wake of World War I. The country lacked a single recognized government, and Albanians feared, with justification, that Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy would succeed in extinguishing Albania's independence and carve up the country. Italian forces controlled Albanian political activity in the areas they occupied. The Serbs, who largely dictated Yugoslavia's foreign policy after World War I, strove to take over northern Albania, and the Greeks sought to control southern Albania. A delegation sent by a postwar Albanian National Assembly that met at Durrës in December 1918 defended Albanian interests at the Paris Peace Conference, but the conference denied Albania official representation. The National Assembly, anxious to keep Albania intact, expressed willingness to accept Italian protection and even an Italian prince as a ruler so long as it would mean Albania did not lose territory.
In January 1919, the Serbs attacked the Albanian inhabitants of Gusinje and Plav with regular troops and artillery after the Albanians had appealed to Britain for protection. The Serb forces massacred some of the Albanians and forced about 35,000 people to flee to the Shkodër area. In Kosovo the Serbs subjected the Albanians to brutalities, stripped them of territory under the guise of land reform, and rewarded Serb colonists with homesteads. In response, Albanians continued guerrilla warfare in both Serbia and Montenegro.
In January 1920, at the Paris Peace Conference negotiators from France, Britain, and Greece agreed to divide Albania among Yugoslavia, Italy, and Greece as a diplomatic expedient aimed at finding a compromise solution to the territorial conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia. The deal was done behind the Albanians' backs and in the absence of a United States negotiator.
Members of a second Albanian National Assembly held at Lushnjë in January 1920 rejected the partition plan and warned that Albanians would take up arms to defend their country's independence and territorial integrity. The Lushnjë National Assembly appointed a four-man regency to rule the country. A bicameral parliament was also created, appointing members of its own ranks to an upper chamber, the Senate. An elected lower chamber, the Chamber of Deputies, had one deputy for every 12,000 people in Albania and one for the Albanian community in the United States. In February 1920, the government moved to Tiranë, which became Albania's capital.
One month later, in March 1920, President Woodrow Wilson intervened to block the Paris agreement. The United States underscored its support for Albania's independence by recognizing an official Albanian representative to Washington, and in December the League of Nations recognized Albania's sovereignty by admitting it as a full member. The country's borders, however, remained unsettled.
Albania's new government campaigned to end Italy's occupation of the country and encouraged peasants to harass Italian forces. In September 1920, after a siege of Italian-occupied Vlorë by Albanian forces, Rome abandoned its claims on Albania under the 1915 Treaty of London and withdrew its forces from all of Albania except Sazan Island at the mouth of Vlorë Bay. Yugoslavia pursued a predatory policy toward Albania, and after Albanian tribesmen clashed with Serb forces occupying the northern part of the country, Yugoslav troops took to burning villages and killing and expelling civilians. Belgrade then recruited a disgruntled Geg clan chief, Gjon Markagjoni, who led his Roman Catholic Mirditë tribesmen in a rebellion against the regency and parliament. Markagjoni proclaimed the founding of an independent "Mirditë Republic" based in Prizren, which had fallen into Serbian hands during the First Balkan War. Finally, in November 1921, Yugoslav troops invaded Albanian territory beyond the areas they were already occupying. Outraged at the Yugoslav attack and Belgrade's lies, the League of Nations dispatched a commission composed of representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan that reaffirmed Albania's 1913 borders. Yugoslavia complained bitterly but had no choice but to withdraw its troops. The so-called Mirditë Republic disappeared.
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Social and Economic Conditions after World War I
Extraordinarily undeveloped, the Albania that emerged after World War I was home to something less than a million people divided into three major religious groups and two distinct classes: those people who owned land and claimed semifeudal privileges and those who did not. The landowners had always held the principal ruling posts in the country's central and southern regions, but many of them were steeped in the same Oriental conservatism that brought decay to the Ottoman Empire. The landowning elite expected that they would continue to enjoy precedence. The country's peasants, however, were beginning to dispute the landed aristocracy's control. Muslims made up the majority of the landowning class as well as most of the pool of Ottoman-trained administrators and officials. Thus Muslims filled most of the country's administrative posts.
In northern Albania, the government directly controlled only Shkodër and its environs. The highland clans were suspicious of a constitutional government legislating in the interests of the country as a whole, and the Roman Catholic Church became the principal link between Tiranë and the tribesmen. In many instances, administrative communications were addressed to priests for circulation among their parishioners.
Poor and remote, Albania remained decades behind the other Balkan countries in educational and social development. Illiteracy plagued almost the entire population. About 90 percent of the country's peasants practiced subsistence agriculture, using ancient methods and tods, such as wooden plows. Much of the country's richest farmland lay under water in malaria-infested coastal marshlands. Albania lacked a banking system, a railroad, a modern port, an efficient military, a university, or a modern press. The Albanians had Europe's highest birthrate and infant mortality rate, and life expectancy for men was about thirtyeight years. The American Red Cross opened schools and hospitals at Durrës and Tiranë, and one Red Cross worker founded an Albanian chapter of the Boy Scouts that all boys between twelve and eighteen years old were subsequently required to join by law. Although hundreds of schools opened across the country, in 1938 only 36 percent of all Albanian children of school age were receiving education of any kind.
Despite the meager educational opportunities, literature flourished in Albania between the two world wars. A Franciscan priest, Gjergj Fishta, Albania's greatest poet, dominated the literary scene with his poems on the Albanians' perseverance during their quest for freedom.
Independence also brought changes to religious life in Albania. The ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople recognized the autocephaly of the Albanian Orthodox Church after a meeting of the country's Albanian Orthodox congregations in Berat in August 1922. The most energetic reformers in Albania came from the Orthodox population who wanted to see Albania move quickly away from its Muslim, Turkish past, during which Christians made up the underclass. Albania's conservative Sunni Muslim community broke its last ties with Constantinople in 1923, formally declaring that there had been no caliph (see Glossary) since the Prophet Muhammad himself and that Muslim Albanians pledged primary allegiance to their native country. The Muslims also banned polygamy and allowed women to choose whether or not to wear a veil.
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Government and Politics
Albania's first political parties emerged only after World War I. Even more than in other parts of the Balkans, political parties were evanescent gatherings centered on prominent persons who created temporary alliances to achieve their personal aims. The major conservative party, the Progressive Party, attracted some northern clan chiefs and prominent Muslim landholders of southern Albania whose main platform was firm opposition to any agricultural reform program that would transfer their lands to the peasantry. The country's biggest landowner, Shefqet Bey Verlaci, led the Progressive Party. The Popular Party's ranks included the reform-minded Orthodox bishop of Durrës, Fan S. Noli, who was imbued with Western ideas at his alma mater, Harvard University, and had even translated Shakespeare and Ibsen into Albanian. The Popular Party also included Ahmed Zogu, the twenty-four-year-old son of the chief of the Mati, a central Albanian Muslim tribe. The future King Zog drew his support from some northe |
