— Ahmet Qeriqi —
Ahmet Qeriqi: Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) is honoured and respected in Kosova, while not a single negative word is uttered about Josip Broz Tito in Albania since 1991
In Kosova, Enver Hoxha was idealised and, to a considerable extent, continues to be idealised to this day. Songs have been composed and are still performed in his honour. His works are read, and he is commemorated on the anniversaries of his birth and death. In Albania, songs dedicated to Enver are not legally prohibited, yet those who perform them are few.
The remembrance, respect and veneration accorded to Enver Hoxha in Kosova — more often discreetly, though also openly — is highly meaningful and warrants a thorough and comprehensive study in order to present the reality and to examine it both synchronically and diachronically.
On this occasion, I shall confine myself to several comparisons, which shed light on a reality that has not been sufficiently studied.
Enver Hoxha is honoured and respected in Kosova.
In Albania, he is anathematised by politicians of both the left and the right, though not by the people.
Since 1990, politicians in Kosova have neither anathematised nor do they anathematise Enver Hoxha.
Whereas in Kosova Josip Broz Tito is regarded as a dictator and anti-Albanian, in Albania he appears to be a taboo subject.
Josip Broz Tito and the Titoites appear to have been rehabilitated in Albania, albeit not officially.
For some, it is symptomatic that no leader of Kosova — from Ibrahim Rugova to the present day — has attacked, insulted, disparaged or ignored Enver Hoxha, as many leaders and petty leaders in Albania have done, above all those who once served him — indeed, many of them more zealously than mere subordinates — the majority of whom, across all parties, whether nominally right-wing or left-wing, do not constitute genuinely established or ideologically consolidated political parties.
No speech by Ibrahim Rugova can be found in which Enver Hoxha is discredited, nor any by Fehmi Agani; to my knowledge, nor by Isa Mustafa, except perhaps for some incidental mention. Enver Hoxha has not been insulted or disparaged by Hashim Thaçi, nor by Kadri Veseli, nor indeed by Jakup Krasniqi, nor by Ramush Haradinaj, nor by Albin Kurti; nor, thus far, by Vjosa Osmani or Glauk Konjufca. Yet he is insulted by a pitiable specimen of a human being such as Donika Shvarc, who, following the murder of her father by the Yugoslav UDBA in Germany in 1982, lived in Albania with her entire family in better social conditions than the sons and daughters of Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu. This is the singular paradox of a wretched mind that consumes bread only to overturn the bowl.
The communist leader of Albania, Enver Hoxha, has never been insulted by Albanian leaders in Macedonia, Montenegro or eastern Kosova, which suggests something that is, above all, part of national and human morality, transcending day-to-day politics.
Paradoxically, the contemporary leaders of Albania, after Ramiz Alia, not only refrain from insulting Josip Broz Tito, but do not even criticise him. In Albanian media, except on rare occasions, there is no discussion of Tito’s crimes; massacres are not mentioned, and even the Tivar Massacre of 1945 is at times attributed to Enver Hoxha rather than, under any circumstances, to Josip Broz Tito. There is no discussion of the mass crimes at the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo, nor of those in Gjilan and eastern Kosova, nor of the widespread bloodshed and destruction in Drenica during the war of Shaban Polluzha in the winter of 1945. Nor is there any discussion or writing on the campaign to collect weapons exclusively from Albanians in the winter of 1955–56 in Kosova. The Albanian National Democratic Movement is not discussed and is indeed wholly ignored, although it was not a Ballist formation, a position it had explicitly rejected at one of its congresses through a distinct decalogue.
All the realistic, scientifically and historically documented criticism by the Party of Labour of Albania concerning the crimes of Titoism in Kosova, Macedonia, eastern Kosova and Montenegro has been silenced in the self-proclaimed democratic Albania from 1991 to the present.
It is unclear who has heard Sali Berisha speak about Tito’s crimes in the occupied Albanian territories, especially from 1944 to 1951 — crimes which, in numerical terms, were four times greater than those committed by Milošević during the most recent war in Kosova, though they were not carried out with the same barbarous frenzy associated with Milošević.
I have not heard a single word from Fatos Nano, Aleksandër Meksi, Rexhep Meidani, Edi Rama, Ilir Meta, Sali Berisha or any other figure in which Tito and Titoism are mentioned in a negative light or described as dictatorial. Some may, perhaps rightly, observe that Tito belongs to the past and that contemporary Albanian politicians have no reason to concern themselves with him. Yet Enver Hoxha likewise belongs to the past — a past to which these very individuals rendered service beyond what the Party itself required — and today they curse and insult not merely others but their own legacy, themselves, assailing, in a frenzied, inhumane and irrational manner, none other than their own political progenitor.
In Tirana stands a statue of Ahmet Zogu, the most bloodstained killer in the entirety of Albania’s history, the murderer of Bajram Curri, the leader of the Albanian peasantry, of Hasan Prishtina and Luigj Gurakuqi, of Avni Rustemi and Elez Isufi, and of many others besides.
Some assert that Enver, too, committed killings. Yet which personality of national importance, of a stature comparable to those mentioned above, was killed by Enver’s regime?
Can figures such as Koçi Xoxe, Hamit Matjani or other violent bandits be regarded as such? There were indeed unjust killings — this cannot be denied — but not from among the national elite, not of the stature of Hasan Prishtina or Luigj Gurakuqi. It is the facts that speak, not the absurd fabrications of Blendi Fevziu, Fatos Lubonja, Gani Mehmetaj, Baton Haxhiu or others of that ilk.
The regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania had lifted the country out of its centuries-long Asiatic backwardness and transformed it into a vast construction site over the full 45 years of his people’s rule — governance under the dictatorship of the proletariat, a powerful reality of its time across the world, until the onset of the Soviet Union’s decline.
Under Enver, Albania brought five times more land under cultivation than it had previously possessed. It constructed the entire infrastructure of the state across all sectors of urban life, developed the countryside, reclaimed agricultural land, built hundreds of hospitals, and opened schools in all cities and villages. It electrified the country, constructed railways and roads, and succeeded in organising secure shelters for the entire urban population in the event of war. Above all, it built over 150,000 bunkers, which served as a reliable shield against any attempted invasion by neighbouring states. It established universities, faculties and higher education institutions, as well as nurseries, maternity hospitals and cultural centres in every village and urban neighbourhood. It developed agriculture and ensured domestic food supply. Tourism was also expanded in general, and coastal tourism in particular, primarily to meet the needs of the population, but also for broader touristic purposes.
Together with the entirety of its governing class, it had established a strong people’s defensive army, which successfully withstood diversionary attacks from Greece and Yugoslavia, as well as numerous armed groups recruited and infiltrated into Albania by air and land — not only by the CIA, but also by other intelligence services and bands of mercenaries.
It had challenged the revisionist Soviet Union of Khrushchev’s era, expelled Soviet forces and unilaterally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968. It did not sign the Helsinki Agreement of 1974 on the inviolability of borders, as it had never reconciled itself to the partition of Albanian territories.
None of these, nor the hundreds of other facts and arguments, can be denied; they may be ignored by Zogite, fascist, Serbian and Greek remnants, yet this does not alter history.
Such colossal achievements cannot be fully conveyed even in an entire book, let alone in a single article, however concise, written today on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the passing of the unparalleled leader of socialist Albania, Enver Hoxha.
Updated
11 April 2024
Prishtina
(Translated from the Albanian original here)