Description
Laver Stroka and Fitim Çaushi’s book Confronting the Falsifiers of History is an historical polemic fundamentally rooted in the socio-political change of early 1990s Albania. As the socialist system fell and new rulers took their place, the “Democrats” began to undermine the founding principles of the previous period, including its historical basis — the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War. In attempts by President Berisha and the “Democrats” to rehabilitate the so-called wartime “nationalists” such as the Balli Kombëtar and Legaliteti, the period of war for national liberation was officially reclassified as a civil war for ideology.
Stroka and Çaushi’s written opposition is neither detached nor typical of a dry scholarly type. It is, at once, both polemical and deeply emotive, not only indicative of the social importance of defending the legacy of the war, but also of the Albanians’ new “democratic” society in which such views were increasingly subject to repression. It is in this environment that the “Democrats” of the 1990s are presented as the successors of the Ballists of the 1940s. Yet the authors still root their arguments in documentary evidence, drawing particularly on reports from Anglo-American intelligence. This book sears with passionate defence of the National Liberation War based on these documents, arguing that the Ballists and Zogites did not fight the occupiers but either remained passive or collaborated. On the contrary, Enver Hoxha and the National Liberation Front are portrayed as the liberators of the country who, by securing its liberation on 29 November 1944, also offered a significant contribution to the Allied victory.
In today’s world where the victory of the Allied coalition is increasingly subject to historical revisionism, Confronting the Falsifiers of History represents one attempt to re-establish the importance of this vital period, through the arguments and evidence which its authors viewed most suitable in their place and time.