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. 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.
He was First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 until his death in 1985, a member of its Politburo, chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania, and commander-in-chief of the Albanian People's Army. He was the twenty-second prime minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at various times was both foreign minister and defence minister of the country.
Hoxha was born in Ergiri in 1908 and became a grammar school teacher in 1936. Following the Italian invasion of Albania, he joined the Party of Labour of Albania at its creation in 1941 in the Soviet Union.
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.
Hoxha declared himself a Marxist–Leninist and strongly admired Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. The Agrarian Reform Law was passed in August 1945. It confiscated land from beys and large landowners, giving it without compensation to peasants. 52% of all land was owned by large landowners before the law was passed; this declined to 16% after the law's passage.
The State University of Tirana was established in 1957, which was the first of its kind in Albania. The medieval Gjakmarrja (blood feud) was banned. Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swampland. In 1938 the number of physicians was 1.1 per 10,000 and there was only one hospital bed per 1,000 people. In 1950, while the number of physicians had not increased, there were four times as many hospital beds per head, and health expenditures had risen to 5% of the budget, up from 1% before the war.
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.
Relations with Yugoslavia
At this point, relations with Yugoslavia had begun to change. The roots of the change began on 20 October 1944 at the Second Plenary Session of the Communist Party of Albania. The Session considered the problems that the post-independence Albanian government would face. However, the Yugoslav delegation which was led by Velimir Stoinić accused the party of "sectarianism and opportunism" and blamed Hoxha for these errors. He also stressed the view that the Yugoslav Communist partisans spearheaded the Albanian partisan movement.
Tito's position on Albania was that it was too weak to stand on its own and that it would do better as a part of Yugoslavia. Hoxha alleged that Tito had made it his goal to get Albania into Yugoslavia, firstly by creating the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Aid in 1946. In time, Albania began to feel that the treaty was heavily slanted towards Yugoslav interests, much like the Italian agreements with Albania under Zog that made the nation dependent upon Italy
When Yugoslavia publicly broke with the Soviet Union, Hoxha's support base grew stronger. Then, on 1 July 1948, Tirana called on all Yugoslav technical advisors to leave the country and unilaterally declared all treaties and agreements between the two countries null and void
Relations with the Soviet Union
From 1948 to 1960, $200 million in Soviet aid was given to Albania for technical and infrastructural expansion. Albania was admitted to the Comecon on 22 February 1949 and served as a pro-Soviet force on the Adriatic.
Relations with the Soviet Union remained close until the death of Stalin in March 1953. Under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, aid was reduced and Albania was encouraged to adopt Khrushchev's specialisation policy. Under it, Albania would develop its agricultural output in order to supply the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries while they would be developing products of their own, which would, in theory, strengthen the Warsaw Pact. However, this also meant that Albanian industrial development, which was stressed heavily by Hoxha, would be hindered
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. Hoxha and the PLA broke with the Soviet Union and formed a bloc with the Communist Party of China in denouncing the post-Stalin USSR as "revisionist" and "social-imperialist" . (See, for example, his speech at the Meeting of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in 1960, "Reject the Revisionist Theses of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Anti-Marxist Stand of Krushchev's Group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism!".)
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.
Relations with China
However, Hoxha's relations with the Maoists were not entirely smooth. For one thing they had differing notions of "protracted people's war." Mao and his followers world-wide insisted that in peasant countries urban insurrection must occur in the last stages of the revolutionary war, which until then would have the countryside as its theater of operations. Hoxha insisted, on the other hand, that the cities ought not to be left until last but that actions must be carried out simultaneously in city and countryside. As revolutionary movements gathered momentum in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, continents with large rural populations, these issues were at the center of intense debates between "Hoxhaists" and Maoists.
At the start of Albania's Third Five-year Plan, China offered Albania a loan of $125 million which would be used to build twenty-five chemical, electrical and metallurgical plants in accordance with the Plan. However, the nation discovered that the task of completing these building projects was difficult, because Albania's relations with its neighbors were poor and because matters were also complicated by the long distance between Albania and China.
The financial aid which China provided to Albania was interest-free and it did not have to be repaid until Albania could afford to do so. China never intervened in Albania's economic output, and Chinese technicians and Albanian workers both worked for the same wages.
During the Cultural Revolution, China entered into a four-year period of relative diplomatic isolation, however, its relations with Albania were positive. Albania's relations with China began to deteriorate on 15 July 1971, when United States President Richard Nixon agreed to visit China in order to meet with Zhou Enlai. Hoxha believed that China had betrayed Albania.
The result of this criticism was a message from the Chinese leadership in 1971 in which it stated that Albania could not depend on an indefinite flow of aid from China. Following Mao's death on 9 September 1976, Hoxha remained optimistic about Sino-Albanian relations, but in August 1977, Hua Guofeng, the new leader of China, stated that Mao's Three Worlds Theory would become official foreign policy. Hoxha viewed this as a way for China to justify having the U.S. as the "secondary enemy" while viewing the Soviet Union as the main one, thus allowing China to trade with the U.S.
Eventually, Hoxha broke with China in 1978. In that year he published Imperialism and the Revolution, in which he declared that Mao Zedong was not a Marxist-Leninist and that there were no Marxist-Leninists in China. From then on, Hoxha's declared that Albania not only would become a model socialist republic on its own, but that it was the only socialist country left in the world.
On 13 July 1978, China announced that it was cutting off all of its aid to Albania. For the first time in modern history, Albania did not have an ally and it also did not have a major trading partner.
During this period, Albania was the most isolated country in Europe. In 1983, Albania imported goods which were worth $280 million but it exported goods which were worth $290 million, producing a trade surplus of $10 million.
In 1973, Hoxha suffered a heart attack from which he never fully recovered. In increasingly precarious health from the late 1970s onward, he turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who oversaw the fall of communism in Albania.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread
- ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread
- 👊 Share your gains and goals with your comrades in the New Weekly Improvement thread
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
Its so frustating how mainstream anti immigrant/refugee sentiment is, like "not terminally online" people more often than not are hitlerites when it comes to immigrants.
Kamala Harris will nuke the world to prevent GTA 6 and TES6 from being released
Also, much frustration if I try to do something in Blender and I know how trivial it would be in solidworks.
- ShowShow
AI usecase: what if everyone was mindnumbingly incompetent
Idk, but if you give me a template output and the input excel files I could probably do it in under an hour with python. Idg why they don't have a single person who can manipulate data with a general programming language. Like it doesn't have to be what they do full time, and you don't need like a unicorn software engineer to do it. Just insane how most businesses seem to operate on the most broken ad hoc processes lol.
Anyone here go to grad school while working full time?
I'm thinking about maybe one day doing it when I save up more money but I'm worried about feeling overwhelmed
It's gonna depend on the type of grad school. A professional master's may have programs designed to do that. A PhD is often close to a full time commitment. A law degree or MD is designed around the students comitting full time to the degree.
Definitely not thinking about a PhD while still working
Starting to think I should give up on the idea until I'm more stable in my career but I'm worried if I wait too long it'll be too hard to get back into it
I am not sure it is possible in terms of hours per week. There are part time programs, but that assumes you work part time as well.
Id only be able to do part time grad school (in microbiology or something similar) while working full time
I know someone in my department who also worked full time got their masters but they left and I never got to ask how they made it work
I love sitting fucking around instead of doing my obligations and then reaping the consequences. :eviscerated:
Just like me fr fr, except today it seems
Sorry to hear deadline passed :( ,really sucks when that happens
Maybe next time!!
Should you be doing something now and do you want me to pester you about it?
It probably should be the case, but building a vehicle to go on the road costs waaaay more than I thought it would. The design and materials are the cheap part, everything else is like a chain of expensive people saying "yes, bits won't fall off this"
Also, I want nice leftist rifftrax: 3 friendly funny far left nerds chatting about film history and materialism over the top of random movies. The occasional riff, but talking about how this bit of propaganda works, the real world history leading up to the movie being made, etc etc.
TimeGuessr #503 37,352/50,000
🌎🟩🟩🟨 📅🟩⬛⬛
🌎🟩🟩🟨 📅🟩🟩⬛
🌎🟩🟩⬛️ 📅🟩⬛⬛
🌎🟩🟩🟨 📅🟩🟩🟨
🌎⬛️⬛️⬛️ 📅🟩🟩🟨
https://timeguessr.comCW for animal cruelty
spoiler
How the fuck was I to know which championship that was??
Start of the semester, sitting in a crowded room with no windows and only one other person has at least a surgery mask on 😰
At least 50 people here...
edit: and they fucking took it off when they went out into the hall, where there were hundreds of people coming out the lecture halls
This got me really fucked up atm, between my kid going to kindergarten, having to sit in a petri dish (including the library) and winter approaching I don't see how I'm going to avoid covid.
- ∞ 🏳️⚧️Edie [it/its, she/her, fae/faer, love/loves, ze/hir, des/pair, none/use name, undecided]·2 hours ago
Mega mega mega THREAD THREAD
i had an extremely pleasant but intense conversation tonight, chat i think i made a friend
Closest things to a "good guy faction" in elder scrolls is An-Xileel.
Fuck empire fuck the great houses.
Can someone tell me to go clean my room, do things I've been putting off for 9999999999999999 time units?
Okay okay I'm going, I'm going!! Will do the things, thank you
Yesss I did it, got distracted a few times but it's now cleanest it's been in like 6 months lol
Tend to let it get really bad when I'm feeling really bad
Background pain radiation levels in here now muchhh lower
- ∞ 🏳️⚧️Edie [it/its, she/her, fae/faer, love/loves, ze/hir, des/pair, none/use name, undecided]·48 minutes ago
Background radiation levels in here now much lower
PaX doesn't have "operate a nuclear reactor" in profile anymore
Omg people read my bio lol, love to see it tbh. I'm always reading peoples bios
I went back to the Chernobyl reactor sim game, forgot how to operate it, didn't wanna be a RBMK fake fan :(
Maybe I'll put it back if I remember :3