William Tyler
Albania: Nearly a Century of Modern Nationhood, 1912-2022

William Tyler - Albania: Nearly a Century of Modern Nationhood, 1912-2022

- So, welcome everyone. We are talking today about Albania, as part of the short series we’re doing about the Balkans, and mine is Albania, a modern history of nationhood. And it takes us from the year 1912 to the present day. It’s a European country, which most of us who are Europeans know very little about. Over the centuries, Albania has been dominated and ruled by many different peoples and polities, but especially by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire ruled Albania from 1385, right through to 1912. Hence why 1912 is our starting point for the story of today, 1385 to 1912. It also explains, of course, why something like 60% of all Albanians are practising Muslims. That is a result of the Ottoman conquest. There was a Victorian woman, British woman, traveller and explorer called Edith Durham. And Edith Durham wrote a travel book about Albania, in which she said, “They are strewn with the wreckage of dead empires, past powers. Only the Albania goes on forever.” And rather like Slovenia, which only achieved a nationhood after the collapse of Marxist communism, Albania only claimed nationhood. There’s arguments where you can argue that it had nationhood in part of the Middle Ages, but that’s a different period. But you can argue that it is only since 1912 that the Albanians themselves have ruled themselves. The Ottomans ruling for over 600 years nearly. 1385, right the way through, over 600 years. The Ottomans were there. There’s a new book coming out, and I’ll let you have the details once it’s published. It’s by a gentleman who’s an American academic, who’s called Jacob, I got to look at this. Mikanowski, Jacob Mikanowski. He’s an American poll, and he’s written a book called “Eastern Europe is disappearing”.

Not off the map of the, not off the map, but as an idea. Well, I’m not sure I agree with the title. The book is excellent, and I shall recommend it once I’ve got publishing details. He, his argument is that Eastern Europe no longer exists because of NATO and EU, but I’m not sure that I agree with that. He thinks it’s a meaningless term. I don’t think it is. I think we’ve had this division in Europe for a long time, in religious terms, a division between Western Catholic Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and also a division between Christianity, whatever shape it took, and Islam. And that is a, that’s a theme that runs right the way through Balkan history. We also, of course, have a problem in the Balkans, that the territories of the modern states were largely, as in Albania’s case, drawn up by external powers, which means the Western allies. And in that case, some people who are ethnically Albanian, or the same can be said of Macedonians and Greeks and all the rest of it. But in terms of Albania, it means that there are ethnic Albanians living elsewhere. They’re living in Greece, they’re living in Montenegro, they’re living in Macedonia, and they’re living in Bosnia and Kosovo. And we remember the religious clashes as part of that Yugoslav civil war with Kosovo and Bosnia. It’s a mess, is the Balkans, and it’s always been a mess, from the beginning of time, it seems to me. And Albania has been, as I said earlier, conquered and ruled by large numbers of people, until in 1385, it becomes Ottoman, and remains Ottoman until 1912.

Therefore, the Albanians, in a sense had to discover whom they were in 1912. And I would argue they’re still exploring who they are today in 2023. There are only, in Albania, there’s only just over 3 million Albanians. It’s a very small number of people. The country is as rugged as the people are rugged. They’re mountain people, they’re tribal people. And the tribal element is not entirely gone even today. A feudal tribal people right up to the Second World War, and I would argue onwards from there. Ethnically, over 80% of Albanians are Albanians ethnically. The next biggest population are of Greeks. Language, 90, virtually 100%, 98.8% at the last survey spoke Albanian. So it’s, what with 86% or so of the people being Albanian, 99% of the people speaking Albanian, it has a certain cohesion, but that cohesion is broken, as I’ve just said by the Albanians who don’t live in Albania. And I’ve also said something about religion, that the largest religion is Islam. There is a small part of that Islamic religion, which is a Sufi sect, and more of them in a moment. And they approximate to about 60% of the population. After that, you’ve got Roman Catholics at about 10%, and then you’ve got Orthodox Christians, Eastern Christians, about 7%. So it is overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly a population that has a lot in common with each other. This is not one of those countries, whether you’ve got large minorities, you’ve got minorities, but not large minorities, either in ethnicity or in language, or in religion. In the book that I’ve been talking about, “Eastern Europe is disappearing”, I wanted to read you this piece here, if I may. It goes like this, “Nowhere were Muslim and Christian beliefs more elaborately intertwined than in Albania.

A single highland clan.” Another word for tribe. “A single highland clan could have three branches, one branch of the clan Islamic, one branch of the clan Catholic, and one branch of the clan Orthodox.” Well, it’s odd. It really is odd. “They all avoided eating pork. The story is told, we hear, to explain this, that once upon a time, the oldest brother in the family converted to Islam. The youngest kept Halal out of deference to the elder. An Italian fryer visiting an Albanian village in Kosovo in 1638 was welcome into a Muslim home with the words "Come in, father.” In our house we have Catholicism, Islam, and Orthodoxy. Shocked, he reported that the Albanians seemed to glory in the diversity of religions. Imagine how much more upset he would’ve been to hear the preaching of the Sufi’s in Albania, who used to tell Christians that Mohamed and Christ are brothers?“ When Trudy is going to be speaking about Albania, she’ll explain how this laissez faire attitude to religion was very important in the war, in the safeguarding of Jews. They don’t, they don’t really take religion in terms of specific religions, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Catholic Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, as separate and warring factions. They rather see them as one and the same. And of course, under communism, after the Second World War, that was the way that, well, not openly, but privately, they were able to challenge Marxist beliefs. In the 19th century, another British traveller, not Edith Durham in this case, but earlier than her, Lord Byron visited region, and he wrote a poem, at which some of you may have had to learn at school, God help you, called "Childe Harold”. And in “Childe Harold”, Byron wrote this line, “Land of Albania, let me bend my eyes on the, the rugged nurse of savage men.”

Now, interestingly, Byron wrote that poem in 1812, precisely 100 years before our starting point of 1912. But it was still viewed in the West after 1912, really right through until the collapse of communism in 1991, it was still viewed as a country which we knew very little about, and was full, as in the words of Lord Byron, of “Savage, rugged men.” It was a, it didn’t really feel European, what we heard about it didn’t seem European. All was still rugged when we begin our story, and our story unfolds for the 20th century. Western Europeans would agree, when talking or writing about, not just Albania, but the people of the Balkans, that they were backward in all sorts of ways, not least in their rushing to fight, either nation against nation, or even village against village, or even one family against another family, or in Albania’s case, one tribe against another. It was a rough air, it did not look like Western Europe. It simply didn’t look like Western Europe. As Bismarck once says, “The East begins in Vienna.” To the east of that is almost like a map which says unknown territory. And yet it was European. But European with Islam. And that doesn’t fit very well, because one definition of Europe that one can use, is it’s based upon Christian principles. Well, that doesn’t work in Eastern Europe where there’s large numbers, and in the past, larger numbers of Muslims living. Mikanowski says this. “For much of its history, Eastern Europe was on the edge of Europe.

In the early Middle Ages, the reason for this was simple. Europe meant Christendom. And Christendom ended wherever the last Pagan ruler still held sway. As the pagans got swept away in the Christian tide, Eastern Europe became a frontier in a more specifically Christian sense. It was the place where the Catholic church met its Orthodox counterpart. It was the border between Rome and Constantinople, Latin and Greek, gothics fires and wooden domes.” And subsequently, as I’ve already said, it was a place where Islam met Christianity. Even today, with the Ottoman Empire now 110 years or more in the past, it’s last holdings in Eastern Europe gone with the exception of Eastern Thrace, and Adrianople on the European side of the Bosporus, very important to Turkey. It allows Turkey to enter the European song contest. But, I like this paragraph that Jacob writes, “Today, Bosnia and Albania remain Muslim majority nations, and so does Kosovo. While Bulgaria, Montenegro and North Macedonia are home to sizable Muslim minorities. Traces of a centuries long Muslim presence remain also in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Belarus. Eastern Europe is not so much on the edge of Europe then, as it is an Islamic periphery.” That’s a very interesting way, let me just read that again. That’s a very interesting way to look at it. “Eastern Europe is not so much the edge of Europe, as it’s an Islamic periphery, one of the many fringes of a Muslim belt, that stretches all the way from West Africa to Southeast Asia. To see it as such requires a radical shift in orientation. We need to stop looking south from Budapest and East from Vienna, and start looking east from Istanbul, and North from Cairo.” Well, that’s a different view of the world. It’s important sometimes to see the world in different ways.

Do you remember in the 1960s, they began drawing maps of the world in a different way, so that Europe didn’t dominate the map of the world? And this is the argument that Mikanowski uses here. We must think of Europe, not in terms of Britain, France, Spain, Germany, as Christian Europe, but we must think of Europe as embracing this Muslim East, and Orthodox East, as well as the Catholic and Protestant West. And that is a process that is still, is still happening today. Just think of Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine wishes to join NATO, Ukraine wants to join the EU, and Russia says no, because Russia is losing control of those areas in Eastern Europe that it once controlled. And some of those areas like Azerbaijan are themselves Islamic. To see the world from a different viewpoint is always difficult, but always profitable. And that’s, as it were, one bought for today, if you were making notes, that’s an interesting thought to book down. And I promise I will put the details of the book on my blog once I’ve got the details to me. I’m actually interviewing the author, Jacob Mikanowski on a Zoom interview as part of the British Jewish Book Week. So if any of you are interested, you can have a look at on the net, at the British Jewish Book Week, and see when I’m doing it. And if you were interested, you can zoom from anywhere in the world. By the turn of the 20th century, things were beginning to happen in Eastern Europe, even though the Ottomans were still there. And even though it compared to Western Europe, Eastern Europe was behind.

Well, that’s how we always look at it in the West, you name anything, and Eastern Europe was light years behind the West. Now had I started by saying that, no one I think will be sending me in emails tonight saying, “Oh, I’m so pleased to point you out, you’re quite wrong.” I don’t think many people would. But Mikanowski explains in this way, this is fascinating. He writes, “Materially by 1900, things had never been better. Europe was nearing the end of almost a half century of barely interrupted peace. Most adults had never heard a shot fired in anger. That same half century witnessed an unprecedented burst of economic growth and technical innovation. When steamships were dropping passengers off, the citizens of Budapest were already riding the city’s first underground metro state line.” Well, Budapest Metro is the second metro in the world after London. It’s also an extraordinarily well-built line. You could eat your, well, when I went to Budapest, you could literally eat your supper off the platforms. They were spotlessly key, as were the trains. He goes on, “This underground railway in Budapest, opened in 1896. Cities for the first time were illuminated at night, something eastern Europe took an unexpected leading. Lviv, in, of course, Ukraine now. Lviv was the first city to use modern kerosene lamps. Timișoara, in Romania today, became the first city to be lit by electricity.” Now, I think if we said, name the first city to be lit by electricity, very few of you would’ve said Timișoara, or the first city to use modern kerosene lamps. I don’t think many people would’ve said Lviv. Well, that’s true. “Railways now crisscross the continent. Grain from Ukraine flooded the American market.”

Well, we know all about Ukrainian grain at the moment. “While wood from the remotest forest of Lithuania could be shipped all the way to Liverpool and beyond.” Well, actually, wood from the Baltic, from Lithuania had been coming to Britain since the Middle Ages. “Buoyed by these new connections, landowners grew suddenly and unexpectedly rich, and spent their holidays in places like Provence, Florence and Saint Moritz.” So if you like, a simple way of expressing that would be to say that Eastern Europe was coming out of the closet, and joining Western Europe in a modern world by 1900. So all that is background, but it’s necessary background to understand what’s going to happen in Albania. Now, I chose the date 1912, because this is the year in which the Ottoman’s lost control of Albania. And the year in which Albania declared its independence. It declared its independence on the 28th of November, 1912. So the story of modern Albania begins then at the end of 1912. But 1912 was a difficult year in the Balkans because it’s the year of the first Balkan war. A war in which Greece and Serbia and Montenegro attacked the Ottomans in the hope of freeing other parts of the Ottoman Empire. They themselves were already free. Because they had Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbs living in parts of the Ottoman Empire still. And they felt an obligation, I think that they would’ve said that anyhow, an obligation to free their own ethnicities from Islamic, Muslim rule. Albania was not involved, but from 1911 onwards, there were riot, there was rioting, trouble on the streets and in the countryside in Albania, as Albanians began to resist Ottoman Rule, 1911.

And that is to lead with the Ottomans being forced by the first World War to move out of most of Eastern Europe. It meant it was possible in 1912 for Albania to claim independence. Now you can claim independence, but you have to sort of prove it. Well, the second Balkan War, again happened in 1913, Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia. Why? Because it thought Greece and Serbia took more land for themselves than Bulgaria had. There is a big tip from the 19th and 20th centuries. If your country goes to war, do not have Bulgaria as an ally, because Bulgaria has been on the wrong side of every war there has been in the 19th and 20th centuries, other than the First Balkan war. So here, they are again on the wrong side. The Ottomans are also involved, and the whole thing is a Balkan mess in 1913, but Albania had declared its independence in 1912, the Ottomans have left. All it needs to do now is to persuade Greece and Serbia and Bulgaria to recognise it, and also the western powers of France, Italy, Germany, and Britain. And that is actually what in the end happens. It happens in the final treaty, which isn’t until 1915, the Treaty of London, which laid down the borders of modern Albania. Now, it wasn’t always to the Albanians liking, but Kosovo, heavily ethnicity wise, Albanian, was not given to Albania. And after the wars end, it goes to the newly created country of Yugoslavia. But nevertheless, the map that you’ve got before you of Albania is agreed in 1915, and has remained such from 1915 to the present day, however much they want other Albanians to join. Mind you, there is now a firm link between, there’s a rail link, for instance, between Albania and Kosovo. And so there’s much more cultural integration and to some extent, political integration between Kosovo, or Albanian Kosovors, and Albanians living in Albania.

So they’re free. Now, what do they do? They decide they better have a monarchy. This is 1912, 1913. This is pre World War I. So in 1913, what you have to have, you have to have a monarchy. And so they decided, the elite decided, the 1% of the feudal landlords, in other words, decided that they would offer the throne to an Ottoman. And they offered it to a man called Ahmed Izzet Pasha. Now, he did have some Albanian background, but he’s an official of the Ottoman Empire. They believed that if they didn’t do that, Albania, now independent, would become a mere play thing of the Western powers, Italy, Germany, France, Britain. And they really didn’t want that. So the local landowner said come, but he thought better of it. Sensible man. No, he wanted nothing to do with it. They then approach an Englishman, with the name of Aubrey Herbert. Now, Aubrey Herbert was a member of Parliament in Britain, and he’d been passionately advocating the cause of Albanian independence in the House of Commons and in the press. And they thought, well, he’s British, so they, he’d be a good bet, because we’d have all the power of the British Empire behind us. So they offered it the crown of Albania to him. And Prime Minister Asquith said, “No, you don’t, you don’t get Britain involved with Albania. You ought to turn it down.” And he did. But there’s a very odd PS to this story, which there seems some doubt nowadays of whether this story is true or not. I would like it to be true. It may be, maybe only partly true. It’s thought that the crown was offered later, after the first World War, to the English all round sportsman, CB Fry.

He played cricket for England, he played soccer for England, and he held the world long jump record. He was involved in politics. He failed to get elected to the House of Lords. In fact, he failed to be elected as a candidate for the House of Commons. I mean, he failed to be elected as a house, he failed to be elected as a candidate for the House of Commons. So he never entered parliament in Britain. And it is said that he was seriously interested in accepting the crown of Albania. In a quite recent article, the Financial Times of London wrote, had Fry not turned down the Albanian invitation, perhaps Albania and England will be even more similar. And at the very least, we will be meeting regularly in test matches. Well, there you are. Take it or leave it. Now, none of these people very keen in the end, they got a German prince. He was a Prussian, but not of the great ruling Hohenzollern family. His name was Prince Wilhelm Helm of Wied. W-I-E-D. And Wilhelm accepted the crown, and he arrived just before the first World War began. He arrived in March, 1914, World War I comes in August of that year. He was asked by Austria-Hungary, by Vienna, by Franz Joseph, to put Albanian troops at the disposal of the Austro-Hungarian empire, allied to Germany, in the fight against Serbia and in the fight against Russians. And he said no, because that would break Albania’s guarantee of neutrality. But things got quite heavy for him, to be honest. He was losing, well, I don’t know that he ever was fully in control of the situation in Albania anyhow, as a foreigner. And he became less and less in control. The Italians were moving in on him. For example, the Italians who trained and armed the Albanian army, he brought in British police officers to train the Albanian gendarmerie, but under strong Italian pressure, he had to, he had to withdraw that.

So there were real problems for Wilhelm, as he becomes king in 1914. In fact, in fact, by the end of the year, he’s left. He’s left, and he goes back to Germany and he enrols in the Kaiser’s army under a pseudonym. What an extraordinary thing. Albania, is neutral, and its king is fighting for the Germans under a pseudonym. You couldn’t make up this history. And he never returns. And he’s just a flash in the pan. But it gives you an idea that the Albanian’s thought they needed a king. So, what happens during the First World War? Well, during the First World War, Albania keeps out of it. But the question arises at the end of the first World War, what are they going to do? How, they’ve got rid of the Italians who invaded. What are they going to do? Well, they decide they will have a republic this time, and not a monarchy. And there is a man called Zog, Z-O-G. Sometimes he’s called Zogu, Z-O-G-U, which is a reference to the tribe that he belonged to. But we know him as Zog. And he became prime minister, and then he became president, and rather the same as Louie Napoleon in France, he then decided, well, he might as well be king. And so we get King Zog and Queen Geraldine. So when you are asked in one of these quizzes on, if you are on a television quiz show, and they say, what country was Geraldine Queen of? The answer is, unlikely though it sounds, Albania. He, Zog, he’s a funny character. He’s a brigand really, from the mountains. But he’s turned himself into a king. He, what a surprise, is very right wing and very authoritarian.

And he enters into pact with Mussolini’s fascist Italy. And as before, Italy seeks to control Albania, Italy really thinks Albania should be Italian. It’s part of Mussolini’s dream, for the greater empire of Rome. You remember all his expeditions, for example in Ethiopia. Here he is in Europe trying to expand Italy. And Albania, he believes, should be part of Italy. And it’s all very difficult for the Albanians. And it gets worse through the 19, early 1930s. The Italians even send a fleet off of Albania to push them into agreement over various trade deals. The Albanians resisted, but the writing is on the wall. He, in the end, Mussolini offered Zog, who is the Albanian government for all intents and purposes, a gift of 3 million gold Francs. But when war comes, Italy invades and takes Albania. And it is from Albania that Mussolini plans the Italian invasion of Greece, which went so disastrously wrong with, for him, and indeed, for the German cause as a whole. When Italy surrendered to the allies and withdrew from Albania, the Germans moved in, in 1943. So, there are Germans now in Albania. It’s a bad, bad moment. The Germans rule in their normal Nazi way. So much so, that during the occupation by the Germans, there grew up various gorilla groups in Albania to fight the Germans. Some were Democratic nationalists, but the most important ones were the communists. And that this is a very similar story to the story of Yugoslavia in the war. Those who followed the king in exile and those who followed the communist Tito. So it is here. So, when eventually the Germans are forced to withdraw troops from Albania, because of threats to German interests elsewhere, the communists, who’ve been at war with Germany in Albania, in the south of Albania since 1944, now begin to take action. And in November, 1944, they recapture the capital of Tirana.

So, if you capture the capital, and you are in control of much of the country, not all of it, but much of it, then you have the upper hand, and the communists, therefore, by the end of World War II, held the upper hand in Albania. And so, at the end of the war, as the allies in the West look anxiously at the Balkans, you remember that Tito plays in the Cold War, a game of attempting to be in the middle of communism and capitalism. Albania, the Allies hoped, would become western, a western democracy, instead of which, the communists, under the their leader, Enver Hoxha, take control. And then a very odd event happens, which I’m interested to know, I guess none of you who are listening in Europe or outside of the States know of, but I’m interested to know if anyone in the States knows of, and that is an operation called Operation Valuable. It was an Anglo-American operation of MI5, M16 rather, and the CIA. And they intended to send operatives in to support the Democratic nationalists, and to supply them in with arms, and their purpose all being, the purpose being to overthrow the recently established Marxist government. It’s a very odd moment. Yugoslavia under Tito had already split with Stalin’s Russia in 1948, and the CIA and MI5 reckon that they would be able to pull Albania away from Moscow and establish a democratic, but it really wasn’t going to look like that. This is all happening in 1949, the year after Tito broke with with Stalin, but it didn’t work. 300 people died, and it was all hushed up in Britain and in America. And only in more recent times have the CIA files been released. And we know more details about it. A Albanian politician said at the time, “We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed.”

And a historian comments, “There is no question that the CIA and MI6 used the operation as a small-scale exercise in regime change. Well, we all know about the Americans and regime change, in Central and South America subsequently. But this was an attempt at regime change in the heart of Europe, in 1949. And I don’t think the Albanians were wrong in suspecting the British and the Americans at sort of putting their toe in the water. If it went wrong, which it did, no one will take much notice. If it went right, then might they make an attempt elsewhere? Well, it went wrong, and no further attempt was made. Seven years later, we get the Hungarian Revolution, and despite the pleas over amateur radios to the West, no help came to Hungary. 1968, get the Prague Spring. No help comes, so the Czech’s hide from the West. And I guess some nights Zelensky must wake up in Kiev and think, "Are the British and the Americans always going to be supporting us? Or is it going to be like Hungary and Prague at the end of the day, and no one will support us and we’ll be left on our own?” If I was Zelensky, I think that would be my recurring nightmare, given of course that we still have the problem with Germany not supplying arms, and with the French being, well, French. So, we end up with a communist regime in post World War II Albania. Zog is in exile. The other King Wilhelm is also in exile. They’re not going to have a king now, it’s a communist country. And Enver Hoxha is going to be it’s leader. So, all but the last year of Marxism in Albania, he had the good fortune for himself to die a year before revolution came. Had he not, he might have met the fate of Ceaușescu and his wife in Romania, but he died. He’s the one Marxist leader of Albania.

It has to be said, in Marxist favour, that there was an increased industrialization of Albania that could hardly be not, ‘cause there was no, virtually no industry there at all before before the war. There’s an increased industrialization, there’s an increase in urbanisation. But they, along with that, there’s rapid collectivization on the farms of Albania. But, there was a higher standard of living, I suppose in European terms, you really couldn’t have a lower standard of living than they had in Albania. But it begins to rise. It’s not risen to Western standards. Of course not. But it’s rising. People are seeing a difference. Education improves. I mean, the one thing you can always say of Marxist countries, is that they went for and achieved virtually universal literacy. And that is some achievement, I have to tell you, which we certainly haven’t achieved in Britain in 2023. Now, Hoxha realised, as Zog had realised before and before him, Wilhelm realised, you need bigger friends. 3 million only Albanians. So Zog, first of all, thought Yugoslavia is the best bet, but when Tito became so pro-western, he dropped Yugoslavia, and cozied up to Russia. But when Russia, under Khrushchev, began, I mean it seems weird to say so, but in Albanian terms, when Khrushchev became more liberal, he jettison Russia and allied himself with China, which caused a flurry in the dovecotes in European parliament, and European security services, and all the rest of it. Because it meant that China had a way into Europe. Now, we know today, China has many ways into Europe, and the problem hasn’t gone away. The problem has got worse. But in this Cold War period, China’s influence in Albania was thought to be disastrous. Well, China’s influence has been disastrous, but we seem unable at the moment to deal with it successfully. So Hoxha follows a path which is entirely Albanian.

He basically closes the border. As we’re very interested to hear of any of you before 1991 visited Albania, and if you did, can you say so, and also say whether you were Marxist or not. It was a very difficult country to get into. Since the fall of Communism, of course, it’s begun to develop a tourist industry. It has lots of Greek and Roman remains, and Muslim romantics. It’s a fascinating country. I’d love to go there. It’s on my bucket list to go, is Albania. But under the communist rule, which is the second half of the 20th century, give or take, then it’s a closed society. But it is improving, education I’ve mentioned. Agriculture, I’ve mentioned it, becomes actually self-sufficient in agriculture. Not a bad thing to be in the 20th century, and certain something to be desired in the 21st century. It expanded healthcare. So, there were positives to the negatives, but there were certainly serious negatives. For instance, he banned official religion. Islam, along with Christianity, whether it Catholic or Orthodox. And he sold off a great many of the churches and the synagogues and the, and all of the premises used by all religions and destroyed many of them. And that, in a terrible, terrible, cultural excess or anti-cultural success, it didn’t stop people worshipping . People worshipped in private. I’ve written on my notes to myself here, Hoxha’s regime was a particularly nasty form of Eastern European communism, and Maklivich gives some examples of that, which I thought I would share. “Albania, the most isolated and economically challenged member of the Eastern Bloc, did embrace new methods of technology.

At a time when buying a television costs eight months salary, and personal tape recorders simply didn’t exist, the Albanian secret police already had a galaxy, of miniaturised electronic surveillance equipment at their disposal. They hid these bugs in handbags, vases, and handmade wooden pipes. They even manufactured some of their own.” Well, that’s exactly the story of Eastern Europe. It’s the story of Russia entering the Cold War, of spending huge sums of money in the space race with America, whilst people could not afford the televisions and other white goods, which were now so familiar in Western European homes. It goes on to say this, “Even the most innocuous remarks, such as complaining loudly about tomatoes in the market or saying something positive about the West German soccer team could result in years spent in jail. People learned to watch what they said at all times.” “To watch what they said at all times.” And it goes on to say, “For most of these years in power, Hoxha kept Albania sealed off from the rest of the world. Trips to Yugoslavia even became impossible after his split with Tito in '48. The Soviet Union became similarly off-limits after he broke off relations with them. But Albanians, even having relatives abroad was a major demerit, which could prevent them from getting an educational working in sensitive industries.” “Hoxha did his best.” What a, this is a, this is a horrifying paragraph. “Hoxha did his best to keep his countrymen ignorant of their own traditions, as well as what was happening in the rest of the world. Even so, for a moment, at the start of the 1970s, it seemed as if a breath of fresh air was about to enter the stale room of Albanian socialism. As the climate of nervous tension within both the Soviet Bloc and the West began to relax, intricate contemporary fashion began to appear in Albania.

Women cut their hair short in Bobs, men began to wear their hair a bit longer like the Beatles. Skirts rose and sideburns dropped. New tunes started to be hummed in the air.” There was a festival of song in 1972. They always held festivals of song, a very sort of Marxist thing to do. And these festivals were full of patriotic songs. Hero teachers. I quite agree with that. Hero teachers, or the house weather party was, oh gosh, hardly rowsing stuff. But in 1972, pop music entered, Albanian pop music drawing heavily on Italian, and I think Hoxha went ballistic when he heard this, and he attempted to stop this. And I suppose for a time he managed to do so. He had the party censor the festival. Musicians were playing degenerate music. Remember the Nazis and jazz? Same thing. He said, “It was showing a foreign face. It was bourgeois revisionism.” But you can’t hold the tide of history back forever. That’s the 1970s, and things are getting worse during the 1980s. He’s becoming more and more isolated, as places like Czechoslovakia, places like, even Russia, are attempting to deal with the failures of Marxism, the attractions of Western culture and capitalism, and finding their way forward. But in Albania, there’s a complete stoppage. No, you are not going to find your way forward because Hoxha and the communist elite politburo do not want you to. But it can’t, it simply can’t go on and on. There will be at some point a break in this system.

Now, I want to share with you a little bit of one more thing in a moment. They introduced legislation to say that you could not keep two sheep in your house. This is a mediaeval, agricultural economy still, and people had animals living in the house. You could not have two sheep, unless they were of the same sex. Fantastic. So somebody comes along, and checks your sheep. Now, no, you’ve got a male, you’ve got a ram, and you’ve got a ewe, that’s forbidden. You must have two rams or two ewes. You cannot have one of each, because, hmm, well, you know what they will do. And that is not acceptable in communist, Marxist Albania. You really couldn’t make it up, could you? You really couldn’t make it up. Well, Hoxha died in 1988, and the country really collapses. And as Markowitz says, this. “Throughout 1989 and into 1990, the communist party remained firmly in charge of the country. For decades, Albania had been the most isolated country in Europe, having broken successively with Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Maoist China. It could only count on North Korea and Cuba for support. Still, by the late 1980s, some slight cracks began to appear in Albania’s Neo-Stalinist facade. The Beatles could be heard on the radio, but these were only tufts of brass. The rest was concrete.” But the wall comes down in Berlin, and then Gorbachev fails. “It wasn’t until February, 1991, that the Albanian student protestors pulled down the gigantic bronze statue of Enver Hoxha, and stood in the capital’s main square.” It is the year when it came down. It wasn’t an easy transition from Marxism, to democracy, as it wasn’t an easy transition between an Ottoman state to a European state. And they’re still working it through.

They’re still working through what Albania is, what Albanians are. There is a book that I put on my blog, which some of you will have seen. “Albanians: A Modern History” by Miranda Vickers. Although it calls it a modern history, it was actually written a little while ago now. It is nevertheless, I think the best book we’ve got on the history of modern Albania. And she writes this. “When in 1991, Albania threw open its doors to embrace the outside world. Modernity and commercialism came flooding in. Daily life is now infinitely more comfortable, albeit far more stressful than the basic subsistence level experienced by many Albanians prior to the fall of communism. Income levels and general living standards have risen dramatically, and the country’s infrastructure has improved from a zero starting point, to being on a par with neighbouring countries. An enormous road building and road repair programme has helped bring Albanians together. A new super highway running from the coastal time of Doris, up to Northern Albania to Kosovo, not only helps Pan-Albanian connections, but also opens up remote districts of Albania itself that were previously, virtually inaccessible.” All of that is true. It’s also true that Albania joined NATO in 2009, and in 2014, received official application status to join the European Union. Now, one of the reasons it hasn’t been allowed in yet is because its democracy is, well, not entirely democratic.

Why not? Well, because there’s been a lot of problems in post-war, post-communist Albania, as there had been throughout history. Vickers writes, “Nevertheless, as with its achievements, the country’s failures are many. Albania’s institutions are weakened by increasing organised crime, endemic corruption, and an inefficient public administration, which is greatly hindering the country’s reform process, and jeopardising Albania’s chances of joining the European Union.” Endemic corruption, inefficient public administration, and organised crime. Well, we know about organised crime in Britain with Albanian refugees. We know about the economic plight of Albania, because many of the refugees are fleeing from extreme poverty from the land, where they can’t find a job and earn a living. Other negative issues include the lack of an independent judiciary, high unemployment, low production, and severe environmental problems. Well, those oh solid reasons for the EU saying no, wait, reform. But on the other hand, Hungary, and to some extent Poland, and the Czech Republic are failing to live up to the standards of the European Union have set. And the European Union is not, seems to be totally unwilling to exclude a member. Maybe Brexit has caused it to think again about excluding people, but those who voted in Britain to come out of the EU will cite the undemocratic nature of many of the administration’s, Hungary in particular. And yet, is Albania worse than Hungary? I don’t know if one can judge things like that. It’s certainly in a bad way. She goes on to say, “It appears that successive Albanian governments have pledged to carry out policies laid down in preconceived schemes, in order to present a good image to the international community.”

Wow. In brackets, that is what Zelensky’s government is and has done in Ukraine. Those of you who followed my course on Ukraine, that JW3 in London, know that I try to get people to understand that the Ukrainian-Russian war isn’t Russians all bad, Ukrainians all good, because the Ukrainians aren’t all good, and their democracy is sullied by much of the same things as Albanian’s democracy is sullied by. That is to say corruption and fraud. “Albania’s laws are largely a melting pot of foreign codes, imported post-communism, which may have read fluently in abstract, but present great difficulties to enforce. This, coupled with the lack of political cohesion to tackle Albania’s major internal problems means that the reform process has been slow and largely superficial.” Now, since she wrote that, there have been improvements, certainly, and the present government, and I think the, you are going to hear the President or Prime Minister speak later this week, will explain to you how Albania is now going forward. And I think it is. But it’s a slow process. But, there is hope. When before, there was very little hope. And in 2023, we can say that as far as Albania is concerned, there is hope.

It’s a member of NATO, it’s opened up its borders to tourism, which is a good thing. It’s engaging with the modern world and in particular with Western Europe. And it seeks for obvious reasons to join the European Union, and that may encourage it to fulfil its obligations as a applicant state to the EU. To sort out some of the problems, like an independent judiciary, like a non-corrupt civil service. In fact, Albania, in 1912 when our story began, looked like a Eastern, not Eastern European, but Eastern, Muslim country run by Turks, now looks like a western country, ruled by Democrats, or at least those attempting to establish a democracy in a country that had never seen any before 1991. So, the story ends on a high and not a low. There is now hope, where previously there was very little hope. Thanks very much for listening. I’m sure I’ve got lots of questions. I hope people tend to tell me things, as well. Should I have a look at questions?

Q&A and Comments:

Oh yeah, Jacqueline, oh, this is wonderful. “David and I were in Albania 2015. We had a wonderful guided tour. What a wonderful, fascinating country. We met the President where there was an annual folk festival.” , no, I’m not going to put the, well, okay, if you want the name of the book, but it isn’t published yet. It will be published in April, at the end of April. It’s called “Eastern Europe is Disappearing”, and it’s author is Jacob, “Eastern Europe is Disappearing”. It may be called, “Goodbye, Eastern Europe”. I’ve got a pre-publication copy, and the title isn’t entirely, entirely agreed, but the author is Jacob, ordinary spelling, Mikanowski, M-I-K-A, Mika, Nowski, N-O-W, M-I-K-A, Mika, Now, N-O-W, ski, S-K-I. But I promise I will put it once I’ve got proper details, the publisher and the rest of it on my blog.

Q: Shelley says, “Nowadays, do you think Albanians only marry each other or do they marry other ethnic groups?”

A: They’re free to marry whom they want, but remember that the ethnic, the ethnicity of Albania is almost entirely Albanian. And do they take on a new identity? No, they don’t.

Interesting that, who is this, sorry, Mona. Interesting that, when our bus got lost travelling Yugoslavia in 1967, we were warned at the danger of approaching Albania as Americans. Later at a conference in New York, I met a group of, oh dear, I’ve lost the rest of your answer, your question, your point.

“But we get the point about how Albania was dangerous. I read a good biography of an Albanian woman growing under communism from a child’s point of view, called "Free”. Yes, I’ve read that, as well. It was a top, non-fiction book in Britain last year. It’s called “Free”, F-R-E-E. And the author is Lea, L-E-A, and I don’t know how you pronounce her surname. Y-P-I. L-E-A, Y-P-I. Ypi, I guess, called “Free”.

Yes, I’m, Carrie, I’m not talking about the war because I don’t want, Trudy and I are usually quite good at not stepping on each other’s toes, and I certainly am not going to get involved with that.

“Eastern Europe, unknown territory. Hungarians would not like that, William.” Says Peter. No, they wouldn’t. But if you think about it, Peter, in terms of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Vienna did see them as the other. The Austrian part saw them as the other. indeed all the parts, the Czech parts saw them as the other. But I undertake, I understand your point, but today, Hungary is a complete mess.

Marinim, “In Così fan tutte, the foreign soldiers were Albanians. Even in Mozart’s time, Europeans had no difficulty in believing that Albanians were strange and foreign.” Yes, no, we believe that. Right up until it, I would argue right up until 1991.

No, I don’t do vigils, Lorna. I do, I don’t do cinema. I do theatre. And they might add interest, but you can look those up yourself if you want pictures. I hate having pictures. It interferes with people listening, and people don’t follow the story there.

I don’t use, no, I don’t. Sorry, David, I don’t use photos. You can easily look up pictures of Tarana. That’s your exercise for the next week.

Shelley?

Sorry, Rita says, “Jess reminds us that we can look up things we want to know in google.com.

Q: Did the Italians behave as badly in Albania as they did Ethiopia?”

A: No, they didn’t, because the Albanians are European. It’s a totally racist distinction that the Italians made. King Zog says, Alan, I think he spent his exile in South Africa.

Well, Myrna says, oh, sorry. Gloria says, “I lost my writing in the previous message. The family later moved to Canada and the grandson worked for one of Canada’s banks. I remember him being honoured at the Beths .” Sorry, I’ve not pronounced that correctly. At the best synagogue.

Q: Maryna says, “Who or what managed Albania between 1914 and 1918?”

A: Well, yep. This is, this is still with the Italians moving in and our friend Wilhelm having to leave. And there’s Civil War. There’s, it’s chaos, during the time of 1914-18.

Who says there, Stephanie. “My husband visited Albania many years ago, and was amused by that adoration of Norman Wisdom.” For those who aren’t British, Norman Wisdom was a slapstick comedian. I think it’s right to call him a slapstick comedian who made films in the 1950s, which unbelievably we all thought were funny at the time. I don’t think we find them funny today. Anyhow, he was always a big hit in Albania, and no one quite realised, no one ever got why.

Val, “I’m reading "A Spy Among Friends” by Ben McIntyre, which shows much about Operation Valuable, and it is Philby who tips off the Communists about every incursion resulting in its failure and the death of hundred.“ Thank you for adding that, Val.

"Alan Dulles, CIA, was involved in more Inter-European politics. The Devil’s Chess board describes his intent to influence elections in Italy, among others.” Thank you for that, .

Celine says, “Here is the last call for help, SOS 1956 from Hungary, and you can see it on YouTube.” Yes, I remember that. I remember that.

I love, Abigail, I’m sorry. It’s, I now realise what you wrote, but I read it as, “How has cheese influenced, been disastrous for Albania?” It isn’t cheese, I think you meant Chinese. I’m sorry for reading it as cheese. Well, Chinese influence now is pretty dead in Albania. At the time, it was the West that worried about it. They put money into it. Now the money is coming to Albania from the West.

Margaret says, “Funnily enough, last night I earmarked a couple of trips to Albania.”

Paul. No, I’m sure, Paul, your pronunciation is probably more better than mine. You know, my pronunciation is always bad.

“Two of my wonderful Albanian ESL students”, says Hindi, “Gifted me with two novels translated English. Both were heavy reads. One was a Pulitzer Prize called "The General”, and the other, I think was “The Concert”. “The Concert” deals with a cellist, I think, giving a concert in China. That’s when I learned of the country’s connection to communist China.“ How interesting is that?

Mona, "Albanian freedom fighters who were scary in their fierceness. I avoided any more conversation, but noted they spoke English while I spoke no language approaching theirs.” No, Albanian is not an easy language. And Yona agrees with that. Linguistically, Albania is isolated, but at least they wrote in the Latin alphabet.

Q: “Would you compare Albanian communism to North Korea?”

A: I think you could make that comparison, yes. And, Yona, you give the correct pronunciation. They also told me how Albanians helped their neighbours who were Jews. Yes, absolutely. And that’s really important. And Trudy is going to explain why it that was important to Albanians, and it’s part of their philosophy that you help those who are fleeing.

There’s a, David says, “There is a decent book titled "The Quiet Americans”, which covers the CIA involved in Albania, and the reason for its failure.“

Paul, "Memories of listening to Radio Toronto on short wave in the 1970s. It could be heard very strongly on the radio, Chinese transmitters, I think.”

Jacqueline mentions Norman Wisdom again. Stan says, “I caravan to and in Albania of May, 2009. Needless to say, very little tourist infrastructure and no caravan sites. Having our own facilities, we managed only visited mountain areas and not Tirana, the capital.

Stan says, "The Albanians coming to Great Britain are economic migrants, not refugees.” Yes, that’s largely true, but not entirely true.

Marcia says, “Quite, and many of them are from the Albanian diaspora in Germany and France, which are no longer as welcoming as they were.” Yes, that’s all true. I’m not getting into the issue about immigration in Britain. It’s too horrendous a topic.

Carrie, “Free, coming-of-age, the end of history by Professor Lee, teach you, teaches at LSE, London School of Economics, is a brilliant accountant growing up in communist Albania. It was a BBC radio four book of the week. Didn’t know that.

Marion, oh, well, thank you.

Q: BC. Why do communist societies have full literacy and democracies fail for even a reasonable level of literacy?

A: For the same reason that literacy took off in the Protestant reformation, so that Protestants could read the Bible, so that, so that Marxist citizens could read the propaganda. It’s as simple as that. The reason is the same. In a democracy, you could argue nobody cares a damn whether people can read or not, and you certainly wouldn’t want to read political manifestos.

"The Balkans” by Misha Glenny is a good survey of Balkan history. It is, it is, it’s excellent.

Barbara says, “It seems that Albania is a metaphor for South Africa.” No comment from me. I don’t, I couldn’t possibly comment on that.

Q: Sharon, “What is the difference between the Balkan and Baltic states?”

A: The Baltic is in the north, the Baltic is Lithuania and Latvia, Estonia and Finland. They, it’s up on the Baltic Sea. The Balkans are down in the, in the mountain ranges or Southeast Europe. One is in Northwest Europe, the other is in Southeast Europe. They just simply happen to begin with B, but they’re quite different.

Yes, I am, Chari. 914281. Obviously sending it from prison, says are you chairing the talk at Jewish Book Week, booked by Jacob Mikanowski online on Tuesday at 12 to one? On, I dunno, which Tuesday it is. Yes.

“Also, my father-in-law escaped from Vienna to Albania before coming to Scotland. In Albania, he was asked as the physician to King Zog to poison the king.” Oh, how wonderful. What a wonderful story. I take it you are in prison for poisoning someone then, 91421. Sorry, I can’t, I can’t read that without just thinking in those terms. Thank you, Susan.

Michael, “In around 1978, I was in Corfu. You could see Albania, which is very close, and it seemed the bleakest place I’ve ever seen.” Indeed, it would’ve done in 1978.

Q: James, “How could they appoint a king who does not speak their language very easily?”

A: England did that in 1714. They appointed George I who couldn’t speak English and only German, and I ought Sandy, you got there before me. Well done. Yeah, people are, I think people are repeating things that others have said.

Well, East, this is the point. East and Western Europe is shorthand. You can use the terminology Central Europe, all of this is shorthand, but we know what Eastern Europe means in the Cold War period. It’s the Marxist countries of the East, and we can define the East in terms of the presence of orthodoxy and the presence of Islam. But you can cut the cake in different ways. You can slice it like that, like that, or you can slice it like that, and it’s up to you. And historians are very good at choosing the one that suits their argument.

Oh, oh, oh, I’ve lost it. Hang on. This seems too good a point to lose. I think I’m further down here. Yeah, I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

The CIA says, Jonathan, the CIA, MI6 attempt to overthrow the communist regime failed because , oh yeah, we covered that.

Elaine, “I tried to cross into Albania in 1973. Oddly, they refused to admit scruffy North Americans in, in rusty VWs. The roads surrounding Albania was filled with huge trucks, filled with vegetables and grain. The trucks were old, filthy and built with wooden slats. Albania was clearly feeding a large part of Europe.”

Q: Sarah, “The Albanians we have seen here have been very poor and many have tried begging for money. If one planned a holiday there, would it be safe, and what would be the best way to see the country?”

A: I’m not the person to ask. You must look up all the tourist information and look at your travel agents and ask. Your best to go on a, if nervous, you are definitely best to go in an organised party.

Jonathan, no, it’s MI6, Jonathon, actually. , I know, thank you.

Martin says, “So I guess that Albania is working on an independent judicial, reducing corruption of civil service. I remember the Orazio Pellicano in Italy, a special programme to receive Albanians after the death of the communist leader. When many Albanians fled to the region of Italy. They had nothing. Let’s hope for the best.” Yes, China are building highways, but they’re building highways. This is the new “Silk Road” that the Chinese are building, and it’s going to come right across Europe. Yeah.

And Monty, the CIA’s been involved in all sorts of things, and that’s why sometimes it’s difficult talking about modern history. No one’s hands are very clean. You support your own side and demonise the other. That’s what we’ve done with Ukraine and Russia. But it isn’t, that isn’t the whole story. Oh, Errol, “There is about 10 great steak restaurants in New York City that are all owned by Albanians. A lot of them started out at Peters Lugers in Brooklyn. They’re all soccer lovers.” Yeah, Albanians are mad about soccer.

Oh, “Early on you said that they are practising Muslims, all the Albanians I know, admittedly a small sample, tell me that they’re only Muslim in name 'cause they were forced to convert by the Ottoman’s.” Yeah, but they were, come on. And they were forced to convert in the 14th century, not yesterday. They all, they all drink alcohol and don’t follow halal dietary laws, nor did they before, before Marxism. But I imagine that some are not Muslim. This is the link to the Jewish book.

Oh, you’ve, you’re poured, how fantastic. This is the link to the Jewish Book Week interview chair by William. You know more than I do. I should look that up myself later.

Paul said, “I found Albania to be very safe and I found people to be very honest, more so than London.” Well, Paul, are you American, I wonder? I don’t know.

That seems to be the end of the questions. Thank you so much for everyone who’s contributed to the questions, and more importantly to those who corrected me and to those who added personal recollections. All of that is very valuable indeed. But I’m sorry for those who want me to show pictures. I don’t do pictures, I’m sorry. But as somebody said, you can bring up any picture you like. Now, I did send you all a couple of maps, because I thought that might be easier as we were speaking just to sort of orient people, to orientate people to what we were talking about. But again, all the maps are readily available on Google and you can find, you can find everything you want to find virtually. So there we are. That is Albania. There’s more about Albania later in the week from lockdown. And next week I’m doing the first of two on Romania. I have to say, the Romanians don’t like the Albanians. And I’ll leave you with a funny story. This is a Romanian joke about Albanians. It probably isn’t PC. It says, how do you stop an Albanian tank? And the Romanian answer is you shoot the man who’s pushing it.

Okay, thanks very much for listening.