the Gegs. Some travelled overseas and brought with them news of different ways of life than their own. The Tosks provided most of the leadership of the Albanian Communist party as well as the backbone of the membership. They are, of course, all Albanians. About 98 percent of the population belongs to the Albanian ethnicity.
Gewehr W. M., and Scheill F. A History of the Balkans Peninsula. New York, 1933; Pano N. C. The People's Republic of Albania. Baltimore, 1968; -----, "Albania," in J. Held, ed. The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1992.
| 1944 | November. Communist government was installed in Tirana. |
| 1946 | January. The newly "elected" communist parliament, whose single-list can- didates received 95 percent of the votes cast, declared Albania a People's Republic. |
| 1950 | May. Rigged elections resulted in 98.18 percent of the votes cast for candi- dates of the Albanian Communist party. The Politburo banned all religious teachings and institutions, and imprisoned most clergymen. |
| 1951 | January-December. The Stalinization of Albania was completed. All indus- trial enterprises, banks, and other businesses were nationalized without com- pensation. The collectivization of land was being undertaken. The Albanian Workers party (AWP) was in control of all political, social, and economic processes in the nation. The first secretary of the AWP, Enver Hoxha, was the most powerful man in the country. Koci Xoxhe, his rival, and an agent of the Yugoslav Communist party, was purged. |
| 1952 | January-December. Soviet technicians and engineers began to build a naval base for Soviet submarines and supply ships in Albania's ports on the Adri- atic sea. |
| 1955 | December. Albania was admitted to membership in the United Nations. |
| 1961 | July. After severe rifts, originating from Albania's refusal to play its assigned role in the Soviet Bloc, all Soviet technicians were withdrawn from the coun- try. Hoxha openly denounced Khrushchev, and the Soviet Union withdrew its diplomatic representatives from Tirana. It also began to dismantle its naval facilities. |
| 1962 | January. A treaty of friendship and cooperation was signed between Albania and communist China. It was followed by the arrival of Chinese technicians and economic and military aid. China contributed heavily to the development of Albania's mining industry. |
| 1966 | February. The cultural revolution began. |
| 1968 | September. In response to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Al- bania withdrew from the alliance, the first among East European socialist states to do so. When the Brezhnev doctrine was proclaimed in Warsaw in |
-39-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Dictionary of East European History since 1945.
Contributors: Joseph Held - Author.
Publisher: Greenwood Press.
Place of publication: Westport, CT.
Publication year: 1994.
Page number: 39.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
One moment ...
- Georgia
- Arial
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- Courier/monospaced
Reset