Afrim Krasniqi, the director of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies, which implemented the project says “this project is not all-inclusive, but we target making the past known and convey it to the younger generations interested about Albania’s communist past all around the world.”
TIRANA, Oct. 30 – A thorough look into one of the world’s harshest communist regimes has been put online through data, pictures, videos and personal stories in the first online Museum of Memory dedicated to the 45-year communist regime led by Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha.
“Albania in Prison, One Day in Communism, Anticommunist Resistance, Special and Military Trials, Stalinism in Albania, Tortures, Women (condemned & interned), Artists (condemned & deported), Religion, Self-isolation, Forced Labour, the Dictator and His Sons, Revolts, and February 20, 1991 anti-protests which marked the toppling of the dictator’s statue from Tirana’s central square and are some of the headings of the virtual museum.
Afrim Krasniqi, the director of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies, which implemented the project says “this project is not all-inclusive, but we target making the past known and convey it to the younger generations interested in Albania’s communist past all around the world.”
“The idea is not only elaborate on the political victims in Albania, but go beyond, says Krasniqi citing internationally renowned writer Ismail Kadare when he says “The idea is that everybody can reflect, that our conscience reflects toward that period, crimes, absurdity, mentality, behaviour which sometimes is present even among younger generations but even to understand that things that did not go well during the transition have their source somewhere else,” he adds.
“Small Albania during the dictatorship had 23 prisons and 48 internment camps. Some 6,535 were imprisoned and executed during the communist. Albanians served 914,000 years of prison and 256,146 years of internment under communism, which more than 10 millennia. The psychiatric ward in the city of Elbasan served to treat the regime’s political opponents with the therapy of clearing memory, depersonalisation and losing the sense of reality,” says themuzeuimemories.infowebsite.
One Day in communism
Block vs. Albanians
Albania under communism was characterized by a strong contrast between the life of the communist elite’s Bllok area (the privileged area in the center of Tirana where the dictator and the important people of the Communist Party lived) and the life of Albanian citizens mired in misery.
Albania was ranked among the world’s 15 poorest countries in terms of per capita income. The crisis culminated in the years 1982 to 1990 when 300,000 families consumed 0.5 kg meat per week each, 500,000 families consumed 1 kg of butter per month and 600,000 families cooked in the toilet due to lack of space for cooking.
In line for food and authorization
Everybody witnessed the long lines of people for food, clothing and everything else in the state-run shops. Buying a TV or a washing machine, one should provide an authorization. Children’s toys were modest and were bought only for the New Year holidays. There were times when a piece of soap that came from overseas was considered a reckless luxury, while those who lived in true luxury were the communist leaders. Common Albanians never dreamt of this kind of luxury. In communism, people stood in lines to buy bread. If you did not go in time, you could remain without food.
Clothing and Fashion
Albanians were regarded as people with the strangest outfits throughout the communist bloc. If in other communist countries there existed clothing in fashion, in Albania only special and standard clothing was used, regardless of age, place and social class to which the individual belonged. So Albania was the only country in the world where all people dressed alike.
Until 1984, moustache, sunglasses and the small shoulder bag were prohibited as “foreign performances.”Men needed to have very short hair. The beard that recalled most the Muslim mullahs, was forbidden. Young women couldn’t attract attention and jewels were rare. Skirts had to cover the knee without being too long while the coat was very expensive for the time and was bought only once or twice in lifetime.
Economy and private property
The Communist Party in power ran the country’s economy through a series of five-year plans. All means of production were controlled by the state, agriculture was completely collectivized and industry became public property while the private enterprise was strictly prohibited.
In addition, the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Albania banned the government to aks for assistance from abroad, to accept debt or allow foreign investment.
Bicycles were the only private property in communism and everything else belonged to the People’s Republic. The only vehicles that circulated in those years were public ones such as buses, vehicles owned by state enterprises. Public transport was mostly handled by trains. Everybody travelled by train, which were crowded. The cars were very rare. With luck, a woman could only board a car on her wedding day.
Domestic poultry was considered private property at that time. However, in the 1980s, it was forbidden to keep chicken, ducks and geese, and also turkeys, which were purchased only once a year, for the holidays. In this way, the people’s power banned Albanians to sell eggs and chicken. These measures increased the discontent of the people, given the fact that the economy was increasingly impoverishing.
Block!?
At that time, the Bllok area, the residence of the communist elite, was a forbidden fruit for Albanians. You could not enter if you were not a resident. Only members of the Political Bureau lived there, who were considered the elite of the country while their security was very important for the nation. The most beautiful villas on the block was undoubtedly that of communist leader Enver Hoxha.
Hoxha’s family lived in the midst of luxury and led the life of the rich. Besides servants, guards who kept the house under rigorous security measures, they did not spare themselves the vacation homes in Vlora, Durres and Pogradec. In the memoir books that the dictator published, his family’s pictures were seen with surprise. The pictures reflected a life quite different from ordinary Albanians, with expensive clothes, jeans so much dreamed of by Albanians or beautiful games.(http://muzeuimemories.info)
