In 1991 Albania, which had once been socialist, bursted for good like a soap-bubble. Nothing, really nothing has remained of this courageous country. That small state of only 2 million inhabitants still 25 years ago was able to vehemently resist the dominating big powers. This collapse, however, is not the result of the last few years. 

One could support Albania until 1971. Still in 1968 it was Albania which spoke against the occupation of the CSSR, in opposition to many other countries and indirectly also to the forces which were influenced by the USA, as the USA and the Soviet Union in 1968 were demonstrating the demarcation of their spheres of hegemony in Europe. Albania even was one of the countries which most unequivocally and loudly spoke against this matter. In the beginning of  the sixties it had been Albania which refused to submit to the Soviet Union's hegemonistic grip and resisted Khrushchew's revisionist, favour-currying policy with regard to the USA, which came down to suppressing the Third World. It was a state which straight out lend its voice to the proletariat of the world. All of this under difficult conditions, as Albania until 1944 had remained directly or in fact a colony,  it was the poorest country in Europe, which today it is again. The first 20 to 30 years were characterized by the construction of an at any rate successful socialism, autochthonous foundations for industry and agriculture were laid. These are achievements of the communist Albania which are not to be underestimated. Certainly also here a criticism of certain principles has to be applied, but in the overall evaluation we have to pass a positive judgement. 

Against all of this work stood the country's cultural backwardness. 

Very different were the latest 20 years. Albania's decay was by far not limited to the foreign policy alone. It is impossible for a government to stay credible if it asks of its people radical swings from one side to the opposite and every time expects everybody to be a sheer yes man, and rigorously suppresses any form of opinion and democratic discussion. During the seventies, Albania's policy  under Enver Hoxha descended into the most hollow phrase-mongering behind which no true willingness to confront oneself with reality was hidden,  neither with the domestic social reality nor with the international one. This was a true degeneration. One left behind the style of work which had dominated during the time when in the Second World War one had successfully lead a national and a civil war and had liberated oneself. 
Soon we shall once again go into the question why also in Albania such a phenomenon occurred, and what are the things which might be common to processes in other countries. 

The decline of Albania became apparent already in the beginning of the seventies. Already in 1972 it was no longer possible to support Albania in the same way as before. Whereas the People's Republic of China drew its consequences from the massive threat which was posed by the Soviet arming and anyhow made the attempt, simultaneously continuing the class struggle and the domestic social policy, to open itself to the West (that is to say already during the time of the Cultural Revolution), Albania balked at the realization that such a move, such a decided condemnation of revisionist movements is necessary also in Europe. Towards the end of the seventies Albania slandered the Chinese revolution and particularly the Cultural Revolution, which previously they always had defended and to which they were linked because of their own struggle, in such a way that one had to ask oneself if the CIA was not already a co-author in Albania. By these attacks they supported the overthrow in China which had the condemnation of the Cultural Revolution as its core. Under the cover of a general condemnation of the "Three Worlds Theory" they utterly disparaged Mao Zedong. 

Decisive representatives in the organs dealing with foreign contacts led the people in Albania to believe that in the form of parties like the "KPD/ML(Roter Morgen)" ("Communist Party of Germany/Red Morning") or foreign parties connected to it there existed a strong sound "proletarian movement". But this party, to put it mildly, showed a strong lumpenproletarian influence. And indeed there is the question how far the infiltration of the party of labour of Albania had gone already long-time before the year 1989. The Albanian party supported interspersed groups like the "Red Morning" in Germany in a pedantic manner,  shove aside any argumentation and not at all wanted to go into questions concerning that policy. The decisive representative within the party of labour of Albania during the seventies and the eighties who conducted this policy was nobody else but Ramiz Alia who from the position of the responsible for the international connections later became president of the party of labour of Albania and president of Albania himself. 
The Albanian party did not want to take notice of any tips pointing to the subversion against the communist movement from the part of such groups as the "KPD/ML (Roter Morgen)", the destructive and run-down character of which had long-time become obvious in this country, and they continued to admit such people into their country. This is a clear indication that Albania, although allegedly totally isolated and totally shielded, in fact had its doors open for the subversion from diverse directions. This was favoured by the Albanians' policy, by their doctrinarism. 
During the seventies the Albanian party put forward the absurd assertion  that with them there was no class struggle and no really serious social struggle. What an absurd assertion if you look at today's reality. 

The Albanians closed their eyes against the necessity to critically debate the own cultural traditions of their country. Their stubborn and absurd assertion that there was nothing but sunshine in their country and that there was no need to worry about social questions, was devoid of any reality and was only a passing over the real contradictions which comprised also the historic and social role of the country's population and its historical traditions. Albania's is by far not only Skanderbek's tradition who with great courage fought the Turkish domination. Albania's is also the sad tradition of later having become a reserve army of the Ottoman empire, what for a long time also left its mark on the people. During the whole of the 19th century the "Arnauts" were regarded as the utmost reactionaries and a totally backward force in Europe, as kind of police and reserve troops of the Ottoman empire. It was only by Albania's independence and also by the war of liberation led by the Albanian people against  fascism later on during the Second World War, that new, modern components entered the Albanian history. It was impossible to live on this successful struggle eternally, though, but it was necessary to deal also with the cultural roots in the own country. If the communists successfully carried forward the alphabetization and successfully created foundations for the basic building up, during the forties, the fifties and sixties, they also afterwards had to think of a more profound dealing with the historic roots and the development of the own people. To this the Albanian communists because of their dogmatic, doctrinarian, narrow-minded attitude balked completely. For Enver Hoxha "the Albanians" just had a certain mentality of liberation, they allegedly had completely liberated themselves from all evils of religion, of social class contradictions and other matters in history. Others who preached struggle, the two line struggle, the necessity to make compromises to them, were condemned as deviants, as collaborators with the enemy. All of this has proven to be completely hollow and had been hollow from the first day. 
 
 

The Albanian decline has in common with the decline of other communist parties, e.g. in the Soviet Union, that one to a high degree closed one's mind to the historic foundations of the own country, that one missed completely the connection to the modern development during the seventies and eighties, and that one allowed oneself to be led by the nose exactly by the power which one thought to be, so to speak, the only certain enemy: the USA. 

When the American Foreign minister Baker in the past year visited Albania, all at once 400.00 out of 2,5 million Albanians were in the streets to greet Baker. This really could not have happened by chance. How long have the US been stirring things up in Albania, via Albanian officials and via foreign parties which were under their control? This is the question to be put in this context. The now emerging vandalism, assumed by the Western newspapers, and the emerging mentality of panic flight which gives evidence of a refusal to tackle things in the country itself, are the result of such an ignorant policy, but also of the mentality which has grown in the population on the basis of past centuries. 

Since the end of the eighties Albania and the Albanian leadership under Ramiz Alia already has conducted eocapitalisation and the total opening for the foreign capital. Consistently, the so-called democrats in Albania derived their success from that, and not at all without reason now gained the majority in the country. But neither they are able to effect a building-up. The cheers about the democrats' victory will have even much more evil consequences than the cheers which certain circles in the German population allowed themselves two, three years ago who meanwhile have experienced a rude awakening. Albania now, after coming into the complete capitalism, is in fact confronted with hunger and misery, and one must hope that in some way the autochthonous forces of coping with the problems will be supported. . A flight movement serves nobody. Albania, in the end, has to be forced to cope with its reality and must free itself of that phrase-mongering and that backwardness in thinking which still are a relic of Ottoman times. The revolutionary tasks in the first half of the century awakened Albania. New elements crowded in on the Albanians, one was forced to confront reality and to lead a hard struggle. In this situation the revolutionary Albanians stood the test, later on they did not. 

The Albanians refused to take notice of the ever further-going uncovering of the reactionary character of the revisionist system in the Soviet Union. Whereas the Chinese under Mao Zedong were proceeding in the criticism of revisionism and since the beginning of the seventies pronounced that the revisionist system in the Soviet Union was worse than Western capitalism, that Western capitalism still permits the development of man to some degree as compared with, e.g., the revisionist system, the Albanians closed their mind to this realization. Whereas the Chinese policy thus paved the way for a further criticism of capitalism and revisionism, the Albanians denied the progress which anyhow was contained also in the progressive development within the capitalist countries in the meantime, the progress involved in the modern technology, in the application of new technologies. Consistently, the Albanian party also supported the campaign against nuclear power plants, its negative consequences for the social development included. Whoever was analyzing the different aspects of the development in some more subtle way was shouted down by these people as "revisionist" or something similar. Now for all of this the inevitable price has been paid. 

Serious people in Albania today have to realize to which extent they deceived themselves by their so-called communist parties as the "Roter Morgen" and falsely imagined to be member of an international movement, while they were leaving themselves more and more in the hands of the big powers. 

Spring 1992