Speech delivered by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania at the mass rally of the capital on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Enver Hoxha on Skanderbeg Square on October 16, 1988
Dear comrades, sisters and brothers,
Citizens of Tirana and the whole of Albania,
We have gathered in this great popular rally in order to celebrate an historic day and to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the birth of the legendary leader of our people and Party, Comrade Enver Hoxha.
It was the ardent desire of the whole Albanian people that on the 80th anniversary of his birth we should unveil the monument to Enver. And the Party worked with persistence, the artists worked untiringly in order to fulfil this noble desire. In these solemn moments we can say: We have Enver Hoxha here, in the middle of the capital, where he led the people in one of the first actions of the war for the freedom of the Homeland; in this historical square where our people saw him and heard him speak often about socialism and Albania.
The majestic monument which the Party and the people set up to Enver Hoxha is an expression of their gratitude, love and esteem for everything which he did for the Homeland and socialism. With this monument they desire to perpetuate his struggle and work, his name and contribution, the socialist road which he showed, the communist ideal to which he dedicated himself.
On this memorable day allow me, dear comrades, to convey to you the warmest greetings of the Central Committee of our Party, along with an homage to Enver Hoxha.
Our people have always known how to assess and prize all those who have fought unsparingly for the fundamental interests of the country. By honouring them they honour their own national history, they honour the victories they achieve and the ideals which lead them towards the future. Therefore, our respect for Enver Hoxha is respect for socialism, for the free and independent Albania, for the radical changes it has made in the years of our new life. It is a respect which will continue to grow in proportion with the size of our future victories.
Enver Hoxha’s name and work have been identified with the most brilliant pages of the history of modern Albania. They have been cast into one with the epic of the National Liberation War and the struggle for the construction of the new society. With them is connected the greatest change in the history of the Albanian people, the national revival after the savage fascist occupation, and the deepest social transformation of our country — the triumph of socialism.
Enver Hoxha is the founder of the new Albania. For nearly half a century under his leadership we weathered the greatest storms which swept our country, both in the time of the war for liberation and after the war, when we began to build the new life. With him in our lead, we broke the blockades and the interventions of the imperialists and revisionists, withstood their pressure and foiled their plots.
As a man he embodied whatever is beautiful and valuable in the Albanian people, the freedom-loving tradition and the revolutionary thinking, the inherited virtues and the newest moral values formed during the socialist construction. Enver judged and acted in accord with the thinking of the people. He rose high the great interest and the noble ideal for which he fought.
Our Party and people honour and respect Enver Hoxha not only for what he did for Albania, which is a magnificent, indelible and immortal deed. We honour him also for the many-sided political, ideological and cultural legacy which he bequeathed us, for the secure prospects he projected, which will inspire us at any time to find the most correct roads and most suitable solutions in order to carry socialism in our country forward.
Comrade Enver Hoxha was creative and innovative in everything he did. Any set scheme and any stereotype was devaluated confronted with his powerful thinking. His work reflects the development of life in all its variety. It is the work of a thinker with a fresh logic and an optimistic spirit. His work is permeated by a creative dialectical method of analysis in reaching conclusions, by the courage to discard the old and to support the new. By implementing the Marxist-Leninist doctrine in a creative manner in Albania he showed what strength socialism has, showed that this is the only social order with a future, the only alternative to the liquidation of oppression and the exploitation of man by man.
Enver Hoxha has proved with all-sided arguments that socialism is a social system capable of providing answers to all the questions of progress, and of withstanding all the challenges of the time.
Of course, the construction of socialism, as a new experience in the history of mankind, comes up against great difficulties, which are connected with the degree of the economic and cultural development of the country, with the intensity of the class struggle and other conditions of this description, as well as with the denigration and the unlimited efforts of the external enemies against socialism.
The question is how to cope with these difficulties, how to surmount them with the least pain. Enver Hoxha teaches you and convinces you that they can be withstood and overcome if you have confidence in socialism and, above all, if you work and fight in order to raise it to new heights. He concludes that the proletariat, as a social class which is capable of overthrowing the old society, is also capable of building the new society by working together with the peasantry and the intelligentsia.
Socialism, as Enver Hoxha conceived it and as our Party and people are building it in our country, represents not only a theory and social practice, but also an ideal, an aim, an impulse which drives mankind ahead, a force which drives it towards progress.
In the present situation we are faced with a great task, which has a national and international importance. The question is about the strengthening and advance of socialism in Albania. This is our ideal, and our historical obligation.
Our example, our practice, the heroic struggle which our Party and people wage in order to score more and more victories, constitute an internationalist contribution which we make to the defence and advance of socialism in the world, to the defence and advance of the revolution, to the defence and advance of Marxism-Leninism.
We wage this struggle and we have set this example which confirm the vitality of socialism and Marxist-Leninist ideas in Albania, while preserving our freedom, defending the state of the people, our social justice and socialist culture, and raising our new creative man higher.
Our working masses, which in less than half a century have overtaken a whole epoch, which are witnesses of the heroic and persistent struggle which pulled Albania from darkness into light, have a right to look forward to the future with optimism. This conviction is nourished by the ideology of the Party, the creative strength of the people and our social order. Socialist Albania, which continues on its triumphant road and scores new successes in the political, economic, social, education and other fields, will remain a great example.
We have come to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the birth of our teacher with this spirit, with this confidence, with this determination. What we can say today, and we will always say it, is that the Albanian people and their Party of Labour will march non-stop on the road of Enver Hoxha, that we will work and fight to make Albania rise to new heights, as he wished, always remaining the red bastion of socialism, the country of free and independent people, open and hospitable to its friends, closed and impenetrable to its enemies.
The figure of Enver Hoxha, his thinking, soar higher in this turbulent international period, when world capitalism and the revisionist betrayal have gone over to the offensive against socialism and the revolutionary forces, when a great many plans and arguments are set up and invented, when the whole history of the world communist and revolutionary movement is being revised, when all those who fought, sacrificed themselves and gave their lives for communism have been tarnished and blackened, in order to justify the counter-revolutionary changes and to negate socialism as a theory and practice.
Enver Hoxha has been and remains to this day the only name among the communist leaders of the last 4-5 decades who defended the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, the ideals of the revolution and socialism, both in theory and practice. He was the first who noticed and made the diagnosis of the opportunist disease which began to erode the international communist and workers’ movement, who fought with such great passion against modern revisionism, who defended socialism and its triumphant practice with such ardour.
Enver Hoxha’s struggle against the great front of modern revisionism has not been a theoretical struggle of drawing-room philosophers, but the struggle of a revolutionary leader who sought to test the correctness of his thinking and principles in practice.
What he defended was not a dogma, but the revolutionary spirit of the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, the dialectical method of analysis, the truth proved in practice and whatever enrichment this method makes every day to policy and ideology.
In the present situation, when capitalism and revisionism have joined in one front in order to denigrate Marxism-Leninism and destroy socialism, Enver Hoxha’s thinking, his life and work, are a source of strength, confidence, courage and valour to fight and win.
The capitalists and revisionists claim that the human society reaches its culmination with the liberalized economy, with the private initiative, with the capitalist relations in production. To accept this means to accept that the exploitation of man by man is a permanent ill that cannot be changed.
But can the working people accept no other alternative except capitalism, or that social justice and equality cannot be established, that the capitalist exploitation cannot be liquidated?
Can the working people accept that national oppression is unavoidable, that colonialism cannot be overthrown, that racism cannot be wiped out?
Enver Hoxha believed that the world can and must be changed. He was convinced about this, because history itself has shown that the people’s desires and struggles for freedom, independence and social justice can never be wiped out.
Capitalism and revisionism can succeed in turning back one or some socialist countries, in causing the degeneration in one or some communist parties, in checking the revolutionary impulse for a given time. But they cannot wipe out socialism, because they cannot smother the illuminated aspirations of mankind, cannot change the nature of the working man, cannot stop him from striving for progress and social emancipation.
Comrades,
We must work tirelessly, we must work with knowledge and culture, with a creative and innovative spirit in order to safeguard the victories achieved, to make Albania still more beautiful, to realize the noble aims of the Party and the people. Socialism needs everyone’s work, everyone’s mind. Therefore, as the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party pointed out, our people, in every sector of social activity, must be characterized by the revolutionary passion and determination which stems from our common ideal, our common aim, our one objective: the progress and flourishing of our socialist Homeland.
Life has taught us that without successes in production and culture there can be no development of the country, no increase in its well-being. Our people are aware of this. Therefore, the working class, the cooperativist peasantry and the intelligentsia are working with great revolutionary enthusiasm. They have mobilized themselves and are working selflessly in order to increase production, to develop the economy and culture, to strengthen the defence capacity of the country.
This is the road which Enver Hoxha indicated to us, the road of the non-stop development of the country, the only road of consolidating the positions of socialism. This is also the road on which the difficulties and shortcomings that accompany the process of our development for objective and subjective, internal and external reasons, are overcome.
Our country has great material and human possibilities and reserves in order to fully respond to the requirements of the time for raising the standard of living of the working masses uninterruptedly. A guarantee for this is the correct line of our Marxist-Leninist Party, our socialist order which creates conditions for the effective use of the many assets of the country and the inexhaustible energies of the people for the benefit of society. The guarantee lies in our people, who are characterized by a lofty patriotic spirit, a firmness of purpose to build and defend socialism, to march constantly ahead and only ahead.
In the present state of the socialist construction, the task of constantly raising the productivity of labour and perfecting the organization and management in all fields of social activity has been set. With unshakeable confidence in the vitality of our social order and the Marxist-Leninist ideology, we must make our contribution to ensure that the political, ideological, economic, cultural and scientific activity is as effective as possible, as tangible as possible both in the spiritual and the material sphere, so that new horizons should be opened before the people and socialism, so that our working man should express his abilities ever better, and the strength of his muscles and mind are spent in the most advantageous manner.
Let the great example and the revolutionary creative thinking of our unforgettable Enver inspire us in our work, encourage us and lead us towards new victories!
Dear comrades,
Throughout the whole of his life Enver Hoxha fought for the creation and strengthening of the unity of the people, for rallying them around the Party. His name and work always call on us to strengthen and temper this unity, which represents one of the greatest values created by our revolution and the construction of socialism, one of the most brilliant characteristics of our society.
The strength of the Albanian people has been and is in their unity around the ideals of freedom and independence, its social and cultural progress. Only by uniting as one around the Party can we withstand the tests of the time, can we achieve the objectives we aspire to and fight for.
Comrade Enver called continuously on the communists, the patriotic and the progressive men of the nation to devote themselves to high aims, to rise above petty things and the narrow petty-bourgeois influences, to see far ahead of them and to be inspired by the future, by the major interests of the country which are foremost and above everything. We must remember this behest every day, we must be inspired by it when we combat bureaucracy and liberalism, the blemishes of the past and alien influences, when we extend our socialist democracy and strive for order, discipline and law.
Our unity is based on stable moral norms. Therefore, in order to make it more and more wholesome, we must preserve our good traditions, those norms which in the centuries have shaped the character, the mentality and psychology of the Albanians, just as we must preserve and develop the new norms of the socialist life, which are the source of our conviction and strength for the defence of the victories achieved and for more and more persistent struggle to increase the glory of our beloved Homeland.
Comrades, ours is a small country. But the problems which we encounter and which we must solve are not in direct proportion to the square miles of our territory and the size of our population. They are numerous. But the primary consideration for each country is the political line, is the road it selects for internal economic and cultural development, is the foreign policy it pursues.
Our general line of development, worked out by the Party and Enver Hoxha, has been and is correct. This has been confirmed by the triumph of the revolution, the construction of socialism, our new life. It has been confirmed by everything we have built, our sound international position, the honoured name which socialist Albania enjoys in the world today.
On this tested line our people will always forge ahead, with this tested line they will develop their socialist economy, will enrich their culture, will raise the standard of living, will make the defence of the Homeland secure and strong.
Our Party and state, with Enver Hoxha at their head, have always been principled and consistent in international relations. We have been and will be resolute in our fight against American and Soviet imperialism, against reaction and revisionism, just as we have been and will be champions of peace and international security, in solidarity with and support of the peoples who fight for freedom and independence, for democracy and social progress.
We have sought and will seek friendship and collaboration with our neighbours and the other peoples of Europe, but always, just as yesterday, the interests of the Homeland, the security of freedom and independence, will remain foremost for today and for tomorrow. Only that friendship and collaboration which are based on equality and reciprocal interest, on non-interference and respect of sovereignty, can be stable. No pressure, no blandishment, no threat can swerve us from this road.
Dear comrades,
Dear citizens of Tirana and the whole of Albania,
The celebration of the 80th anniversary of Comrade Enver Hoxha’s birth, the commemoration by the whole people throughout the country of his life and of the contribution he has made, once again show the infinite respect which they have for their glorious leader, their unswerving loyalty to his work and their determination to march on his road.
Let these pure and sincere feelings, these strong and unshakeable convictions, serve as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for unity and mobilization, for marching always forward, for achieving new victories!
Let this monument, which we unveiled here, in the heart of Albania, convey to the present and rising generations a message of continuity on the road which our revolution opened and on which our Party of Labour leads us with wisdom!
Long Live the Heroic Albanian People!
Long Live the Party of Labour of Albania!
Glory to the Work and Life of Our Great Leader and Teacher, Enver Hoxha!