Enver Hoxha, born on this day in 1908, was the communist leader of Albania from 1946 to 1985, leaving behind a complex legacy of feminism and greatly improved access to healthcare and education, coupled with a paranoid personality cult and brutal state repression. Hoxha is also known for having sharp ideological and political disagreements with the Soviet Union and communist Yugoslavia, siding most strongly with and receiving aid from Maoist China.

Before coming into power, Hoxha was a French school teacher and librarian, becoming a communist partisan after fascist Italy invaded Albania in 1939. In March 1943, the first National Conference of the Communist Party elected Hoxha formally as First Secretary.

It was in this position as First Secretary that Hoxha became head of state after the Albanian monarchy was abolished in 1946.

In the years after Stalin's death, Hoxha grew increasingly distressed by the policies of the Soviet leadership and of Khrushchev in particular. China was also disillusioned with Soviet behavior at this time, and Hoxha found common ground with Mao Zedong's criticisms of Moscow. By 1961 Hoxha's attacks on the "revisionist" Soviet leadership had so infuriated Khrushchev that he elected first to terminate Moscow's economic aid to Albania and ultimately to sever diplomatic relations entirely.

Under Hoxha's leadership, the Albanian literacy rate improved from 5-10% in rural areas to more 90%. Hoxha was also a proponent of women's rights, stating "the entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women's rights". Accordingly, more than 175 times as many women attended secondary schools in 1978 than had done so in 1938.

Hoxha died in 1985, leading Ramiz Alia to succeed him as head of state. Although Albania was one of the poorest European nations at the time of his death, the country was also economically self-sufficient, carrying minimal foreign debt and boasting a trade surplus of $10 million.

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In which plane did Volodya's father fly?

Volodya asked, "What plane did you fly during the air parade?"

His father sketched a formation of 9 planes.

accompanying visual

"The number of planes to the right of me multiplied by the number of planes to the left of me is 3 less than it would have been if my plane had been 3 places to the right of me."

How did Volodya solve the problem?

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    • eXAt [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Allegedly it’s in this article but I’m not going to bother reading it to find out. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/16/opinion/james-bond-china.html

      • buh [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        On the left now you see several impulses. There is an irrelevant but fascinating fringe of very online “tankies” — a reference to the Communists who justified the U.S.S.R. sending in the tanks to Hungary — actively championing the Beijing regime.

        very online

        they're telling us to log off :agony:

        • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          As a consequence, its relationship to American ideological debates is fluid, fraught and strange. Things were simpler 15 years ago, when openness to China — a politics of commercial exchange, with the expectation of China’s liberalization and occasional envy for its apparent technocratic competence — was the default establishment position, with economic critiques of what the “Chimerican” relationship meant for American workers and fears of Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions concentrated on the farther left and right.

          But as it became clear that the opening to China was not leading to political liberalization, and as its socioeconomic costs to the American heartland became clear as well, there was an ideological scrambling that hasn’t ended yet.

          America: Exports all commodity production with the exception of the highest echelons of technology and weapons production.

          America: China can't keep getting away with this!

          • buh [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Imagine telling people in a dying rust belt town that their jobs were sent to China for the purpose of turning Chinese people into liberals

            • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              LMAO. In those exact terms, considering the way the word "Liberal" is used in this country, it would inspire a right wing putch.