Never-Ending Journeys to the Past

In 1989, much of the Communist world disappeared. But in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania the Communist leadership hunkered down and insisted its path was uninterrupted by events in countries that had hardly been real socialist countries anyway. By then, Albania’s long-time ruler Enver Hoxha had been dead for four years. Having survived regime changes that shook the Communist world, Hoxha was decidedly obsessed with the ensuring that his succession would ensure that Albanian Stalinism would survive. Starting in 1981, when Hoxha embarked on what would become his last really great purge, one can see signs of what lay ahead. These events shed light on what happened in Albania when Communism started to unravel in late 1990 and inaugurated what looks like a never-ending transition.