Albania’s Global Relations with Communist Actors and Revolutionary Movements during the 1960s: Goals, Models and Self-staging Strategies

This paper examines the complex interactions between politics, ideology, propaganda and identity, as well as between local, regional and global contexts during the Cold War, using Albania’s relations with communist actors and revolutionary movements worldwide as a case study. The study first analyzes the context and character of the relations. Second, it examines the goals, expectations, and inspirational models of the Albanian regime. Finally, it examines how and why the regime sought to stage its global contacts in foreign and domestic propaganda. The paper hypothesizes that the country’s global contacts and their staging were deeply shaped by the domestic context, decisively enabled by global developments, and significantly influenced by regional developments.