Enver Hoxha
Enver Hoxha (October 16, 1908 - April 11, 1985) was prime minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and minister of foreign affairs from 1946 to 1953. He headed of the Party of Labour of Albania from its foundation (as the Communist Party) in 1941. This allowed him to seize dictatorial power and become president of the country until his death. Under Hoxha, Albania emerged from semi-feudalism to become an industrialized, totalitarian state.
Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër, a city in southern Albania. In 1930, he went to study at the University of Montpellier, France on a state scholarship, but he soon dropped out. From 1934 to 1936 he was a secretary at the Albanian consulate in Brussels. He also studied law at the university there. He returned to Albania in 1936 and became a teacher in Korçë.
Hoxha was dismissed from his teaching post following the 1939 Italian invasion of World War II for refusing to join the Albanian Fascist Party. He opened a tobacco shop in Tiranë where soon a small communist group started gathering. He was helped by Yugoslav communists to found and become political leader of the Albanian Communist Party (called Party of Labour afterwards) and the resistance movement (National Liberation Army), which took power in November 1944.
Hoxha was an ultra-orthodox Marxist-Leninist and strongly admired Joseph Stalin. He adopted the model of the Soviet Union and severed relations with his former Yugoslav communist allies following their ideological breach with Moscow in 1948. He executed defence minister Koçi Xoxe (pron. Kochi Dzodze) a year later for alleged pro-Yugoslav activities.
Hoxha confiscated farmland from wealthy landowners and consolidated it into collective farms (Cooperatives) that eventually enabled Albania to become almost completely self-sufficient in food crops. He also developed the industry and brought electricity to most rural areas. Epidemics of disease and illiteracy were stamped out, but so were political and human rights as Albania became a totalitarian state. Many people were sent to internment camps and prisons while others were killed for speaking out or because they were believed to be against the government. The families of the condemned would likely also suffer because of the association. It would not be until 1992 that political prisoners were released and the atrocities of the regime became known.
He remained a firm Stalinist despite new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalin's excesses in 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, but this meant that his brand of communism was increasingly isolated in Europe. In 1960 Hoxha aligned Albania with the People's Republic of China, in the Sino-Soviet split severing relations with Moscow the following year. In 1967, at the height of Chinese leader Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, Hoxha procaimed Albania the world's first atheist state. Hoxha was also responsible for the destruction of thousands of mosques and synagogues around the country. To defend against foreign invasion, he built almost ten thousand pillboxes around the country's borders.
Mao's death in 1976 and the defeat of the Gang of Four in China's subsequent inner-party struggle in 1977 and 1978 led to Albania's retreat into political isolation, with Hoxha claiming the anti-revisionist mantle to criticize both Moscow and Beijing.
In 1981, Hoxha ordered the execution of several party and government officials in a purge. Prime minister Mehmet Shehu was reported to have committed suicide following a further dispute within the Albanian leadership in December 1981.
Later, Hoxha withdrew into semiretirement and turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. Hoxha's death on April 11, 1985 led to some relaxation in internal and foreign policies under his successor Ramiz Alia, as communist party rule weakened throughout eastern Europe, culminating in Albania's abandonment of one-party rule in 1990 and the reformed Socialist Party's defeat in the 1992 elections.