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Albania
The Communist and Nationalist Resistance
Faced with an illiterate, agrarian, and mostly Muslim society
monitored by Zog's security police, Albania's communist movement
attracted few adherents in the interwar period. In fact, the country
had no fully fledged communist party before World War II. After
Fan Noli fled in 1924 to Italy and later the United States, several
of his leftist protégés migrated to Moscow, where they affiliated
themselves with the Balkan Confederation of Communist Parties
and through it the Communist International (Comintern), the Soviet-sponsored
association of international communist parties. In 1930 the Comintern
dispatched Ali Kelmendi to Albania to organize communist cells.
But Albania had no working class for the communists to exploit,
and Marxism appealed to only a minute number of quarrelsome, Western-educated,
mostly Tosk, intellectuals and to landless peasants, miners, and
other persons discontented with Albania's obsolete social and
economic structures. Forced to flee Albania, Kelmendi fought in
the Garibaldi International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War
and later moved to France, where together with other communists,
including a student named Enver Hoxha, he published a newspaper.
Paris became the Albanian communists' hub until Nazi deportations
depleted their ranks after the fall of France in 1940.
Enver Hoxha and another veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Mehmet
Shehu, eventually rose to become the most powerful figures in
Albania for decades after the war. The dominant figure in modern
Albanian history, Enver Hoxha rose from obscurity to lead his
people for a longer time than any other ruler. Born in 1908 to
a Muslim Tosk landowner from Gjirokastër who returned to Albania
after working in the United States, Hoxha attended the country's
best college-preparatory school, the National Lycée in Korçë.
In 1930 he attended the university in Montpelier, France, but
lost an Albanian state scholarship for neglecting his studies.
Hoxha subsequently moved to Paris and Brussels. After returning
to Albania in 1936 without earning a degree, he taught French
for years at his former lycée and participated in a communist
cell in Korçë. When the war erupted, Hoxha joined the Albanian
partisans. Shehu, also a Muslim Tosk, studied at Tiranë's American
Vocational School. He went on to a military college in Naples
but was expelled for left-wing political activity. In Spain Shehu
fought in the Garibaldi International Brigade. After internment
in France, he returned to Albania in 1942 and won a reputation
for brutality fighting with the partisans.
In October 1941, the leader of Communist Party of the Yugoslavia,
Josip Broz Tito, dispatched agents to Albania to forge the country's
disparate, impotent communist factions into a monolithic party
organization. Within a month, they had established a Yugoslav-dominated
Albanian Communist Party of 130 members under the leadership of
Hoxha and an eleven-man Central Committee. The party at first
had little mass appeal, and even its youth organization netted
few recruits. In mid-1942, however, party leaders increased their
popularity by heeding Tito's order to muffle their Marxist-Leninist
propaganda and call instead for national liberation. In September
1942, the party organized a popular front organization, the National
Liberation Movement (NLM), from a number of resistance groups,
including several that were strongly anticommunist. During the
war, the NLM's communist-dominated partisans, in the form of the
National Liberation Army, did not heed warnings from the Italian
occupiers that there would be reprisals for guerrilla attacks.
Partisan leaders, on the contrary, counted on using the lust for
revenge such reprisals would elicit to win recruits.
A nationalist resistance to the Italian occupiers emerged in
October 1942. Ali Klissura and Midhat Frasheri formed the Western-oriented
and anticommunist Balli Kombetar (National Union), a movement
that recruited supporters from both the large landowners and peasantry.
The Balli Kombetar opposed King Zog's return and called for the
creation of a republic and the introduction of some economic and
social reforms. The Balli Kombetar's leaders acted conservatively,
however, fearing that the occupiers would carry out reprisals
against innocent peasants or confiscate the landowners' estates.
The nationalistic Geg chieftains and the Tosk landowners often
came to terms with the Italians, and later the Germans, to prevent
the loss of their wealth and power.
With the overthrow of Mussolini's fascist regime and Italy's
surrender in 1943, the Italian military and police establishment
in Albania buckled. Albanian fighters overwhelmed five Italian
divisions, and enthusiastic recruits flocked to the guerrilla
forces. The communists took control of most of Albania's southern
cities, except Vlorë, which was a Balli Kombetar stronghold, and
nationalists attached to the NLM gained control over much of the
north. British agents working in Albania during the war fed the
Albanian resistance fighters with information that the Allies
were planning a major invasion of the Balkans and urged the disparate
Albanian groups to unite their efforts. In August 1943, the Allies
convinced communist and Balli Kombetar leaders to meet in the
village of Mukaj, near Tiranë, and form a Committee for the Salvation
of Albania that would coordinate their guerrilla operations. The
two groups eventually ended all collaboration, however, over a
disagreement on the postwar status of Kosovo. The communists,
under Yugoslav tutelage, supported returning the region to Yugoslavia
after the war, while the nationalist Balli Kombetar advocated
keeping the province. The delegates at Mukaj agreed that a plebiscite
should be held in Kosovo to decide the matter; but under Yugoslav
pressure, the communists soon reneged on the accord. A month later,
the communists attacked Balli Kombetar forces, igniting a civil
war that was fought for the next year, mostly in southern Albania.
Germany occupied Albania in September 1943, dropping paratroopers
into Tiranë before the Albanian guerrillas could take the capital,
and the German army soon drove the guerrillas into the hills and
to the south. Berlin subsequently announced it would recognize
the independence of a neutral Albania and organized an Albanian
government, police, and military. The Germans did not exert heavy-handed
control over Albania's administration. Rather, they sought to
gain popular support by backing causes popular with Albanians,
especially the annexation of Kosovo. Some Balli Kombetar units
cooperated with the Germans against the communists, and several
Balli Kombetar leaders held positions in the German-sponsored
regime. Albanian collaborators, especially the Skanderbeg SS Division,
also expelled and killed Serbs living in Kosovo. In December 1943,
a third resistance organization, an anticommunist, anti-German
royalist group known as Legality, took shape in Albania's northern
mountains. Legality, led by Abaz Kupi, largely consisted of Geg
guerrillas who withdrew their support for the NLM after the communists
renounced Albania's claims on Kosovo.
Data as of April 1992
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