Enver Hoxha Collected Works
Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2023 10:41 am
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Selected Works --------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography
(b. Oct. 16, 1908, Gjirokastër, Albania - d. April 11, 1985, Tiranë, Albania)
Albania's first Communist head of government, a capacity in which he served for four decades. He is perhaps best remebered for his polemics with the post-Stalin leadership of the USSR and with Maoist China.
Hoxha was a school teacher at the French lycée in Korcë until the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939, whereupon he was dismissed for refusing to join the newly-formed Albanian Fascist Party. Hoxha then opened a tobacco shop in Tiranë, which, in time, became the center for a communist cell. After the German invasion of Albania in 1941, Hoxha and other militants formed the Albanian Communist Party, which was later renamed the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA). Hoxha was named secretary of the party's Central Committee and political commissar for the Army of National Liberation, which fought against the German army and fascist and feudal Albanian forces. From 1944 until 1954 he was Albania's prime minister, and later held other posts in the government, but as secretary of the PLA's Central Committee, effectivel controlled the government until his death.
Following liberation from the Italian and German occupations, Albania's society and economy were revolutionized. The feudal relations which had remained from Ottoman rule were swept away and agriculture was collectivized, enabling Albania to eventually attain near-self sufficiency in food. Simultaneously, industry, which had previously been almost nonexistent, grew to contribute more than 50% of the gross national product by the 1980s. Electricity was brought to every rural district, epidemicdiseases were controlled, and illiteracy was made a thing of the past.
In 1948 Hoxha broke relations with Yugoslavia and drew closer to the Soviet Union, and to Joseph Stalin, for whom he held a life-long admiration. Indeed, after Stalin's death and Nikita Krushchev's "secret speech" denouncing him, Hoxha and the PLA broke with the Soviet Union and formed a bloc with the Communist Party of China in denouncing the post-Stalin USSR as "revisionist" and "social-imperialist" . (See, for example, his speech at the Meeting of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in 1960, "Reject the Revisionist Theses of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Anti-Marxist Stand of Krushchev's Group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism!".)
However, Hoxha's relations with the Maoists were not entirely smooth. For one thing they had differing notions of "protracted people's war." Mao and his followers world-wide insisted that in peasant countries urban insurrection must occur in the last stages of the revolutionary war, which until then would have the countryside as its theater of operations. Hoxha insisted, on the other hand, that the cities ought not to be left until last but that actions must be carried out simultaneously in city and countryside. As revolutionary movements gathered momentum in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, continents with large rural populations, these issues were at the center of intense debates between "Hoxhaists" and Maoists.
Relations grew further strained as the cult of personality around Mao grew, China drew closer to the United States and other capitalist countries, and as China's stature and influence increased internationally. Eventually, Hoxha broke with that country in 1978 after the death of Mao Zedong and China's rapprochement with the West. In that year he published Imperialism and the Revolution, in which he declared that Mao Zedong was not a Marxist-Leninist and that there were no Marxist-Leninists in China. From then on, Hoxha's Albania turned in on itself as Hoxha, having alienated every ally and workers' government, declared that Albania not only would become a model socialist republic on its own, but that it was the only socialist country left in the world.
The reins of government were handed to Hoxha's protegé, Ramiz Alia, who suceeded him upon his death in 1985.
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Selected Works --------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography
(b. Oct. 16, 1908, Gjirokastër, Albania - d. April 11, 1985, Tiranë, Albania)
Albania's first Communist head of government, a capacity in which he served for four decades. He is perhaps best remebered for his polemics with the post-Stalin leadership of the USSR and with Maoist China.
Hoxha was a school teacher at the French lycée in Korcë until the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939, whereupon he was dismissed for refusing to join the newly-formed Albanian Fascist Party. Hoxha then opened a tobacco shop in Tiranë, which, in time, became the center for a communist cell. After the German invasion of Albania in 1941, Hoxha and other militants formed the Albanian Communist Party, which was later renamed the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA). Hoxha was named secretary of the party's Central Committee and political commissar for the Army of National Liberation, which fought against the German army and fascist and feudal Albanian forces. From 1944 until 1954 he was Albania's prime minister, and later held other posts in the government, but as secretary of the PLA's Central Committee, effectivel controlled the government until his death.
Following liberation from the Italian and German occupations, Albania's society and economy were revolutionized. The feudal relations which had remained from Ottoman rule were swept away and agriculture was collectivized, enabling Albania to eventually attain near-self sufficiency in food. Simultaneously, industry, which had previously been almost nonexistent, grew to contribute more than 50% of the gross national product by the 1980s. Electricity was brought to every rural district, epidemicdiseases were controlled, and illiteracy was made a thing of the past.
In 1948 Hoxha broke relations with Yugoslavia and drew closer to the Soviet Union, and to Joseph Stalin, for whom he held a life-long admiration. Indeed, after Stalin's death and Nikita Krushchev's "secret speech" denouncing him, Hoxha and the PLA broke with the Soviet Union and formed a bloc with the Communist Party of China in denouncing the post-Stalin USSR as "revisionist" and "social-imperialist" . (See, for example, his speech at the Meeting of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in 1960, "Reject the Revisionist Theses of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Anti-Marxist Stand of Krushchev's Group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism!".)
However, Hoxha's relations with the Maoists were not entirely smooth. For one thing they had differing notions of "protracted people's war." Mao and his followers world-wide insisted that in peasant countries urban insurrection must occur in the last stages of the revolutionary war, which until then would have the countryside as its theater of operations. Hoxha insisted, on the other hand, that the cities ought not to be left until last but that actions must be carried out simultaneously in city and countryside. As revolutionary movements gathered momentum in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, continents with large rural populations, these issues were at the center of intense debates between "Hoxhaists" and Maoists.
Relations grew further strained as the cult of personality around Mao grew, China drew closer to the United States and other capitalist countries, and as China's stature and influence increased internationally. Eventually, Hoxha broke with that country in 1978 after the death of Mao Zedong and China's rapprochement with the West. In that year he published Imperialism and the Revolution, in which he declared that Mao Zedong was not a Marxist-Leninist and that there were no Marxist-Leninists in China. From then on, Hoxha's Albania turned in on itself as Hoxha, having alienated every ally and workers' government, declared that Albania not only would become a model socialist republic on its own, but that it was the only socialist country left in the world.
The reins of government were handed to Hoxha's protegé, Ramiz Alia, who suceeded him upon his death in 1985.
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