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Albania
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 northern clans and kept an armed gang in his
service, but many Geg clan leaders refused to support either main
party.
Interwar Albanian governments appeared and disappeared in rapid
succession. Between July and December 1921 alone, the premiership
changed hands five times. The Popular Party's head, Xhafer Ypi,
formed a government in December 1921 with Noli as foreign minister
and Zogu as internal affairs minister, but Noli resigned soon
after Zogu resorted to repression in an attempt to disarm the
lowland Albanians despite the fact that bearing arms was a traditional
custom. When the government's enemies attacked Tiranë in early
1922, Zogu stayed in the capital and, with the help of the British
ambassador, repulsed the assault. He took over the premiership
later in the year and turned his back on the Popular Party by
announcing his engagement to the daughter of the Progressive Party
leader, Shefqet Beg Verlaci.
Zogu's protégés organized themselves into the Government Party.
Noli and other Western-oriented leaders formed the Opposition
Party of Democrats, which attracted all of Zogu's many personal
enemies, ideological opponents, and people left unrewarded by
his political machine. Ideologically, the Democrats included a
broad sweep of people who advocated everything from conservative
Islam to Noli's dreams of rapid modernization. Opposition to Zogu
was formidable. Orthodox peasants in Albania's southern lowlands
loathed Zogu because he supported the Muslim landowners' efforts
to block land reform; Shkodër's citizens felt shortchanged because
their city did not become Albania's capital, and nationalists
were dissatisfied because Zogu's government did not press Albania's
claims to Kosovo or speak up more energetically for the rights
of the ethnic Albanian minorities in present-day Yugoslavia and
Greece.
Zogu's party handily won elections for a National Assembly in
early 1924. Zogu soon stepped aside, however, handing over the
premiership to Verlaci in the wake of a financial scandal and
an assassination attempt by a young radical that left Zogu wounded.
The opposition withdrew from the assembly after the leader of
a radical youth organization, Avni Rustemi, was murdered in the
street outside the parliament building. Noli's supporters blamed
the murder on Zogu's Mati clansmen, who continued to practice
blood vengeance. After the walkout, discontent mounted, and by
July 1924 a peasant-backed insurgency had won control of Tiranë.
Noli became prime minister, and Zogu fled to Yugoslavia.
Fan Noli, an idealist, rejected demands for new elections on
the grounds that Albania needed a "paternal" government. In a
manifesto describing his government's program, Noli called for
abolishing feudalism, resisting Italian domination, and establishing
a Western-style constitutional government. Scaling back the bureaucracy,
strengthening local government, assisting peasants, throwing Albania
open to foreign investment, and improving the country's bleak
transportation, public health, and education facilities filled
out the Noli government's overly ambitious agenda. Noli encountered
resistance to his program from people who had helped him oust
Zogu, and he never attracted the foreign aid necessary to carry
out his reform plans. Noli criticized the League of Nations for
failing to settle the threat facing Albania on its land borders.
Under Fan Noli, the government set up a special tribunal that
passed death sentences, in absentia, on Zogu, Verlaci, and others
and confiscated their property. In Yugoslavia Zogu recruited a
mercenary army, and Belgrade furnished the Albanian leader with
weapons, about 1,000 Yugoslav army regulars, and refugee troops
from the Russian Civil War to mount an invasion that the Serbs
hoped would bring them disputed areas along the border. After
Noli's regime decided to establish diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union, a bitter enemy of the Serbian ruling family, Belgrade
began making wild allegations that the Albanian regime was about
to embrace Bolshevism. On December 13, 1924, Zogu's Yugoslav-backed
army crossed into Albanian territory. By Christmas Eve, Zogu had
reclaimed the capital, and Noli and his government had fled to
Italy.
Zogu quickly smothered Albania's experiment in parliamentary
democracy. Looking after the interests of the large landowners,
clan chiefs, and others with a vested interest in maintaining
the old order, he undertook no serious reform measures. The parliament
quickly adopted a new constitution, proclaimed Albania a republic,
and granted Zogu dictatorial powers that allowed him to appoint
and dismiss ministers, veto legislation, and name all major administrative
personnel and a third of the Senate. On January 31, Zogu was elected
president for a seven-year term. Opposition parties and civil
liberties disappeared; opponents of the regime were murdered;
and the press suffered strict censorship. Zogu ruled Albania using
four military governors responsible to him alone. He appointed
clan chieftains as reserve army officers who were kept on call
to protect the regime against domestic or foreign threats.
Data as of April 1992
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