I remember walking through the streets of our small town with my father, hand in hand. Each morning, he would walk me to school, and I, a child with more questions than answers, would ask him the same thing: “When will Albania change for the better?”

At just six years old, I wasn’t dreaming of becoming a ballerina. I dreamt of becoming the Prime Minister. I saw it as the only way to bring the change I so often heard adults talk about. My father, ever patient, would smile and say, “In ten years, when you’re a little older.”

Ten years went by, then fifteen, and now almost twenty. Yet, by my own standards, Albania has still not really changed for the better. The promises of progress and reform remain distant.

Perhaps I am a natural pessimist and hold Albania to high standards, maybe even unrealistic ones considering the not-so-distant past. The question I asked as a child remains on my mind today: when will Albania change for the better? When will we see meaningful reforms that promote economic freedom, strengthen the rule of law, and unleash the potential of every Albanian citizen?

I am now 24 years old, so I decided to return to my father and ask him again. Through conversations with him, I have drawn stark differences between his childhood and mine.

He shared his memories of his life under Albania’s communist dictatorship – memories deeply ingrained in his mind – from his early years up to his young adulthood.

He was kind enough to let me share his story with our readers. A story that we hope will get Britons and others all over the world to see communism for what it really is. For improved readability, I am re-telling his story in the first person singular.

A note on the historical background: “Hoxhaism” was a particularly purist and isolationist variant of socialism. While the other Warsaw Pact states went through a period of “De-Stalinisation” from 1956 onwards, Hoxhaist Albania rejected this course as “revisionist”: a deviation from the true Marxist-Leninist line. Albania later fell out with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries altogether, and aligned itself with Maoist China instead. After Mao’s death, they also denounced China as “revisionist”. The People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was now entirely on its own.

Bizarrely, though, Hoxhaist Albania had a dedicated Western fan club, who saw it as a romantic proletarian paradise (see chapter 7). For example, in the UK, there was the “Albania Society of Britain”, which published the journal “Albanian Life”, there was the “Albania Study Group”, which published the “Albania Report”, and there was the “New Albania Study Group”, which published the journal “Socialist Albania”. More recently, “Hoxhaism” has even made a bit of a comeback as part of a “Tankie” online subculture. 

 

My earliest memory is from when I was around 3 years old. I vaguely remember a propaganda campaign aimed at eliminating religious beliefs by destroying all the religious institutions that existed in Albania, regardless of the faith. Enver Hoxha declared Albania an atheist country in 1967, making it the first atheist state in the world. They went so far as to either demolish these religious buildings or convert them into warehouses or animal stables. A particularly traumatic moment was when agricultural collectivisation took place, meaning all private property became state-owned. This imposed severe restrictions on livestock ownership, allowing families to keep only one cow, making survival and feeding the family extremely difficult.

It’s important to note just how limited the food supply was during this time. There were no more than two or three basic food items available—things like oil, sugar, pasta, and bread. Beans, if we were lucky, would make an occasional appearance, but even these were scarce. Meat and fish felt like luxuries. Even the food we did have was rationed and had to be stretched to make it last, so we often ate just enough to stave off hunger, but never enough to feel truly nourished. I remember how hard it was, especially for us, the children.

Clothing was incredibly scarce. We were lucky if we had one pair of shoes or trousers for an entire year, and those would often be sewn and patched up repeatedly just to make them last. Every tear, every worn-out seam would be mended over and over, as there was no possibility of getting new clothes. I remember how the shoes would wear so thin that we could feel every pebble and crack in the road underfoot. But there was no other option—those shoes had to last, no matter how uncomfortable or worn they became.

As I grew older, I started to understand these problems more clearly. Being the 9th child in my family, the second youngest, meant I inherited what little we had. We shared trousers among my brothers. The more worn and patched-up pairs were passed down to the younger ones, like me, while the older brothers kept the slightly better ones. We had one pair of “good” trousers, the ones without holes or patches, and those were reserved for special occasions—like visiting friends or going somewhere important. It was almost like those trousers were a symbol of dignity, something we held onto because we didn’t have much else. Most of the children around me were living in conditions just as bad, if not worse.

School conditions were miserable too. I’ll never forget the winters at school. The floors were cold cement, and during the freezing months, the cold seemed to seep into our very bones. Our hands and feet were always numb, stiff, and raw from the cold, feeling like pins and needles throughout the day. We couldn’t concentrate; it was almost impossible when all we could think about was the biting cold, and our bodies never seemed to warm up. I can still remember the sharp pain in my fingers, trying to grip a pencil while they were numb from the cold.

After our regular classes, we were obligated to perform various agricultural and livestock-related tasks, such as gathering firewood to heat our homes. Regardless of our young age, we were forced to carry heavy bundles of wood on our backs and bring them home. Every day, mere moments after returning from school and having a meager piece of bread, I would be assigned another chore – collecting more wood or tending to the family’s livestock. Most of the time, we did not dare resist these orders, but instead brought our books with us, attempting to study or complete our homework amidst the physical labor. There was no structured time allotted for proper rest or nourishment.

When it rained, we couldn’t take our books with us, and when we returned in the evening, we were still obliged to study, regardless of the hour. I constantly worried about the risk of ending up in the agricultural cooperative, earning a mere 30 lek per day. My sole focus was to excel in school, in the hopes of being selected for secondary and higher education – though the party, not I, would ultimately decide my path. The best study opportunities, such as law and medicine, were reserved for the children of the political elite.

As I reached 8th grade, I remember vividly seeing a message written on the blackboard that read: “In the unity of the party and the people lies our strength.” Yet my growling stomach and the failing economy failed to recognise where this supposed unity lay. Propaganda, and only propaganda.

In 1972, a brutal class war erupted in my hometown. Individuals who had previously held high-ranking government positions were ruthlessly thrown into re-education camps. Having failed to toe the party line, they were now treated as exiles, banished to impoverished, harsh, and frigid regions. I remember these victims vividly; they were closely monitored by state security forces, their every move scrutinised to prevent them from spreading discontent in these desolate areas.

This crackdown on dissent had begun years earlier, with the systematic destruction of churches and mosques. The elimination of faith instilled a pervasive sense of pessimism, as religious beliefs were cruelly replaced by hollow party slogans. The goal was to strip the people of their spiritual anchors and make them wholly dependent on the whims of the communist regime.

Another devastating development was the nationalisation of all land – the loss of private property. Those who did not comply were either exiled or shot. Over 110 people were killed, and even the wealthiest families were interned, humiliated, and stripped of their property. The Party of Labour destroyed social ties and community bonds: it was impossible for anyone labelled an enemy of the people to get a job. They were kept impoverished and humiliated, forcing them to either kill themselves, or fully submit to the party.

After finishing middle school, I faced a pivotal moment in my education. Initially, I was slated to attend an agricultural high school in rural Kurbnesh, which filled me with dread. I had heard stories of students who moved to major cities for school—they lived in dormitories with structured study schedules and access to proper dining facilities. These tales painted pictures of better food, improved living conditions, and a more comfortable life. My hopes soared when, three weeks later, an unexpected opportunity arose: a transfer to the industrial high school in Rubik, a town 50 kilometers from my hometown. However, reality quickly shattered my illusions.

Our daily meals were a stark reminder of our circumstances. Breakfast consisted of burnt sugar dissolved in boiling water that they called tea, occasionally accompanied by a meager portion of cheese or jam. Most days, we made do with just the tea and apple marmalade. Lunch brought its own disappointments: rice or pasta frequently dotted with flies, sometimes beans or potatoes, and on rare occasions, a precious 30 grams of meat. Evening meals were often reduced to mere tea—the party’s justification being that we were all “overweight” (good luck trying to put on excess pounds in Hoxhaist Albania!).

One Thursday in September stands vividly in my memory. That morning, feeling unwell, I had skipped breakfast. By lunchtime, hunger gnawed at me as we lined up for the canteen. When I asked a friend about the day’s menu, his response—”Leeks and pasta with flies”—prompted an audible groan of disappointment. This caught the attention of the dormitory’s assistant principal, who had been looking for an excuse to assert his authority. As we climbed the twenty concrete steps to the canteen, he suddenly struck me across the face, hitting my nose and drawing blood. Through my pain, I heard his accusations: “Why are you spreading negativity about the food? The food is very good.”

Missing lunch that day meant going hungry—there were no alternatives. After an hour of my stomach growling in protest, a friend with some money to spare bought two byreks and secretly brought them to my room. Though young, I felt my resentment toward the government and its economic policies growing. We learned to whisper our complaints, knowing that informants might be listening to our thoughts about food, heating, and living conditions.

The living conditions tested our resilience daily. Proper bathing was limited to once every two weeks, when we would march in a kilometer-long column to the copper factory in Rubik to use the workers’ showers—often cold water. We lacked basic necessities like proper underwear, forced to wear our few clothes while still damp from washing.

Winter brought particular hardships; with temperatures dropping to -12 degrees Celsius, ice formed like stalactites from cave ceilings. Without proper heating or cooling systems, we sometimes skipped mandatory study sessions to warm ourselves near the metallurgical plant, where molten copper poured onto the ground provided brief respite from the cold.

We were young and passionate about football. As young men with dreams but limited in time and space, two friends and I set out for our mandatory military training in the hills of the city. On the way up the hills, we hid our wooden rifles and decided to head to Burrel to watch a football game between “31 Korriku” and “Lokomotiva e Durrësit.” The thrill of sneaking into the stadium and witnessing “31 Korriku”’s victory momentarily lifted our spirits. However, our return to reality was harsh—we barely made it back to Rubik by 9 p.m., only to find the principal, battalion commander, and teachers waiting at the dormitory entrances, ready to confront us about our disappearance. Little did we know what consequences our risky adventure would bring…

 

To be continued…