The Ruins of Albanian Communism
This is Enver Hoxha. He was the First Secretary of the Party of Labor of Albania (Albania’s Communist party). Until his death in 1985, he ruled Albania as the Head of State post-WW2 and had a cult of personality surrounding him not unlike North Korea has today with Kim Jong-Un (and previously Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung).
When speaking to Albanians, one finds that the perspectives of this time are vast. Not a single person shares the exact perspective of another Albanian on the positivity and negativity of Albanian communism. A poorer family may wish for the older times, where they were repressed, but at least they had a job and they had food to put on the table. A richer family may be glad that Hoxha is dead and that communism had fallen. A teacher may be glad communism ended, but still reminisces of the times in Albania where teachers had the utmost respect, and students fell in line completely (much like they did in communism).
Whatever the opinion now is, there was a singular mentality at the end of communism in Albania; anger and revenge. It did not last very long, but the Albanian people became very angry at how much they had been deceived by the Party of Labor of Albania and by Enver Hoxha. The anger spilled over into what communism had built. Buildings, bridges, factories, all relics of oppression and totalitarianism, were broken into pieces and left to decay.
As a side note, many Albanians regret this action. However, I believe all oppressed and repressed people (especially those kept in the dark) feel a sense of anger and revenge once they are free.
This story is the story of the buildings, the decay, and the destruction seen in modern day. It is not complete. The pictures here show a smidgen of what exists in Albania today. It is my hope though that through this journey you can learn a bit about Albania and a bit about the history of communist thought.
Enver Hoxha cemented his cult of personality with fear. Whether it was the potential attack from Americans, or the need to store weapons and food, bunkers needed to be built. The actual estimate isn’t known, but it is generally assumed that hundreds of thousands of bunkers were built under Enver’s rule. Bunkers were a sign that an attack was imminent. Albanians had been told that the outside world was full of starving people, and that the Albanians had it better off than most people (much like what North Koreans are told today).
Bunkers also varied in size. The one pictured above in Peqin (Puh-chin) lead deeper into the mountain with many different entrances and chambers. It also took about an hour to hike to and couldn’t be seen from the village of Peqin itself. Other bunkers were smaller, others were large, and some held one or two people (with a viewing hole for guns to be shot from).
Bunkers also existed both inside and outside of mountains. They existed occasionally on a flatter area and could be seen by everyone. Unfortunately, the Peqin bunker was not used by anyone when this photo had been taken (except a room full of bats that we quickly ran from upon accidentally disturbing them). However, other bunkers had frequent usage. Some people even lived in them, or used them as farmhouses or places to store their possessions.
The picture below is a different entrance to the same bunker above. The layout might seem strange. However, planes would not be able to easily spot the entrance to this part of the bunker (which references the assumption that the bunker may have been a target of attack in the future).
The Peqin bunkers were not the only relics of decaying communism. They had a bridge as well:
As the story went, angry citizens attempted to destroy this bridge leading out of Peqin (there were two other side bridges that were used more frequently, albeit much smaller and not as grandiose). The community attempted to destroy the bridge, which was built during communism, as a symbolic act against Hoxha. They never fully destroyed it though. A few years before this photo was taken, the community decided to fix the actual road on the bridge itself, since it connected them to a new highway which connected them to other major cities.
A 40 minute drive east of Peqin is the city of Elbasan. The city is known for it’s plethora of language schools, as well as being the home of the Ballokume (a large biscuit), which is served on Summer Day (a holiday celebrating the end of winter and the coming of summer).
During communism, Elbasan had a major steel factory within its borders. This made Elbasan an important hub. Considering it’s centrally located in the country, it needed to be well-defended. Thus, it had a large military camp built near it with a large administrative building as well.
As you can see, the walls are lined with chipped paint. Pieces of concrete have completely fallen off. Whatever windows and roof tiling existed is now long gone (most likely smashed or taken as scrap). Some of the people in our group were brave enough to step up the stairs and explore the second level. As they did, we could tell where they were walking because concrete dust would fall from the roof from their footsteps. A once lively place full of communists, the building now lies in almost complete ruin.
The kids outside barely knew what the building was for. They knew it existed during communism, but they hadn’t been told what it was or why it existed. And this is common throughout Albania; students do not fully understand the history of communist Albania. Their parents, somewhat out of shame and somewhat out of negative memories, do not give their children the knowledge of what had happened during this era. A minority of Albanians consider this to be a problem. A few prominent Albanians believe that talking about it will help Albania get over the past, as well as allow future Albanians to not repeat the same mistakes. It is difficult to speak about it though. Unfortunately, many people have benefited from the silence. Some of the wealthier outcasts in some Communities are believed to be opportunists who collaborated with the communists, and then reaped the benefits as a victim of communism after its fall. Whether it is true or not, the Albanian people are hesitant to speak about the past for many reasons.
Some acts post-communism were still done with anger, but not rage.
In the wake of Enver Hoxha’s death in 1985, the Party of Labor of Albania set out to build a structure with him in mind. The cult of personality was still strong and Albania needed something to remember their long-serving leader by. That is how the Pyramid of Tirana came about. It served as a museum dedicated to the life of Enver Hoxha. Nowadays, the exact purpose is up in the air.
However, to the people the Pyramid serves as a message against communism and totalitarianism. Whatever the message, it was done through an act of freedom. Whether it was the F-word, “FREEDOM”, the peace sign, religious symbols, or slang words for genitals, the people vandalized the past.
When I had gone to Albania, the Pyramid had not been specifically opened to the public yet. However, that December I was lucky enough to go to a death metal concert (yes, you read that right) in Albania. The concert took place inside the Pyramid itself. The spray-painted doors had been removed and a cover charge of approximately 10 dollars was given to see the inside of the Pyramid (for the purposes of the concert).
I’m certain this is not what the communists had in mind when they built the place.
Many pieces of history had been kept safe and away from public view as well. Behind one of the major art schools in Tirana stood a few old relics of the past. Pretending to wait for a friend, watching the security guard go for a smoke break, and slowly ninja-prancing behind the school resulted in this photo:
As someone who collects communist relics and artifacts, this was something I had dreamt about for awhile. Being able to get up close (without touching obviously) gave me mixed feelings. These statues made me feel a sense of inferiority. Equally, it also made me feel powerful knowing that I can look at these statues and be free not to follow the ideologies that they represent or be forced into the same actions that many other Albanians had to suffer through because of them. Maybe they shouldn’t be locked up behind a school.
The symbolism was apparent to me in all. Stalin is considered the heir of Marxist-Leninist philosophy (Hoxhaists, Maoists, and Trotskyists would most likely disagree; but Stalin was technically the direct heir to Lenin). Albania and the USSR were allies (and Albania was in the Warsaw Pact until 1968), but when Khrushchev started the policy of De-Stalinization in the USSR, Albania perceived them as destroying the Marxist-Leninist philosophy that Stalin brought about. The female soldier with the braids is a symbol of equality (which was a core tenant of Socialism, even though most of the societies that had adopted Socialism still believed in traditional female stereotypes). The male worker is wearing a workers apron, symbolizing farm or factory work, combined with a gun in one hand and a pick-axe in other (symbolizing the duality between the workers and the military in Albanian communist society; everyone was technically in the military and received military training, but they were also workers who had ordinary, everyday jobs).
Of course, the Lenin statue had the greatest importance, considering Lenin’s stature as the father of Marxism-Leninism, Vanguard theory (that socialists and communists must make a party and through authoritarian means force socialism into existence through laws), and defined the basis for almost every communist regime since 1918. He was quietly removed at midnight after the fall of communism in Albania. It is believed his arm had fallen off after the initial attempts to take him down.
These are relics that have been given some form of protection (except poor Lenin) by the Albanian government. Their destruction was forsaken for the destruction of other things. When regimes fall, usually the statues of those in power are the first to go. The exception being when regime change is a peaceful fall (such as the communists of the Mao era not being relevant to the communists in the modern day People’s Republic of China).
I wanted to take a selfie, but the second I turned around the security guard was running towards me, yelling at me that this was a private area and I wasn’t supposed to be there. I had the freedom to run away. So I did.
If you ask anyone from the small villages in Albania who lived and studied in the times of communism, they know someone who was wealthier from Tirana. “The people in Tirana have better English books”, “The people from Tirana were the wealthy communists”, I constantly heard. And they were definitely right. A lot of the wealthier, English speaking Albanians I made friends with usually had a wealthy relative abroad or in Tirana that somehow benefited from communism at some point. A lot of the real destruction occurred in places away from the center; the north and the south.
There was a strange dichotomy in the north and south of Albania. The south did benefit from communism more than the north. The south has a considerable amount of tourism today, and they have kept a lot of their communist statues and buildings intact (somewhat more than elsewhere at least). The north on the other hand was resistant. In Thethi, the mountains close to Montenegro, they were technically in open rebellion. The north of Albania historically followed a code known as the Kanun (kah-noon) which outlined a conservative and traditional rule of laws on how to treat outsiders and fellow Albanians (the good and the bad).
These mentalities reflect the destruction in many ways.
As I mentioned, the southern cities had a lot more to offer tourism wise. Saranda, Ksamil, Vlore, Himare, Korca, Berat, Corovode, Gjirokaster, and Permet are all cities in the central to southern region and they are all popular tourist destinations. They all still have some of their structures from communism still up.
Don’t get me wrong. People still went out and destroyed things. However, the mindset wasn’t as strong in these regions. Many of the communities mentioned either weren’t popular, weren’t developed, or had alternative purposes. Berat had a lot of manufacturing, Corovode had hundreds of deep bunkers and tunnels that stored weapons and food (and also would serve as the second capital of Albania if Tirana was captured or destroyed). Many of these places had military bases as well, or were places of relaxation for soldiers. Ultimately, the south was a bit better off and it shows through the history they’ve kept alive.
Occasionally leaving something alone and not taking care of it is destruction enough. Letting something decay and used alternatively for other purposes brings forth new ideas on it, or it allows it to be open for future use. The stairway above is still in use. The sign above is within a cemetery. The pool isn’t used as a pool, but people live around it and ducks were using it as something to cool off in. The bridge in the last photo leads to a house. This was Enver Hoxha’s getaway house (as I mentioned, in case Tirana was destroyed or taken).
We did go inside. Although nothing of interest was in it. All the communist stuff had been ripped away. We found a few mattresses, a few needles, some (probably stolen) medical equipment, and thrown food wrapper, cigarettes, and clothing around. We assumed that people who were consuming drugs either stayed here during the night to hang out or simply lived there full time. There was a basement. It was flooded with foot-deep water and we dared not go down into it.
Unlike the military base in Elbasan, the doors had been kept, the windows hadn’t been smashed, and people still used it for a purpose. We were told there were talks of making it into a museum, and although we were doubtful, we did think that if it would ever occur, then the potential was still there.
Maybe Enver Hoxha would get a museum in his honor after all.
Berat as a city has a lot to offer. It sat beside a lake and in between a few large hills and mountains. Many tourists come through and it has a fairly developed walking strip with lots of cafes and restaurants, as well as an old town, a castle, and a plethora of different hotel and food choices. Near the edges of the town though, behind a hotel we were staying at, were what I thought were ruins at first. So I had to explore.
The statue was destroyed from the top, but it obviously had the look of an Albanian female worker. What she had in her hands, I do not know, but it might have been fabric. The engraving is obviously an Albanian woman working with different threads and fabrics. Not too far away were these buildings:
Some of the buildings were closed off, but others still had people working in them. Glancing through the windows I could see them using fabric to design things. I’m not sure exactly what, but they were still using the factory that they hadn’t destroyed in order to preserve the work they may have potentially lost at one point post-communism.
The closed off building on the other side had cracks in the doorway and windows too. Birds fluttered around the rafters in the roof, obviously undisturbed for a long time. Equally, old machinery had obviously seen better, non-rusted days. The roads were overgrown with grass and weeds. Former aspects of planning were simply overridden or never fixed, such as roads or walls.
Probably one of the more interesting parts was a town square of sorts that was a meeting place that could be seen from the street (probably before the hotel blocked it off from view):
The old broken down factory was behind the square, but the grass was well kept, and a fountain lay in the center of it. To the right there is a stage area with benches, most likely where workers meetings could take place and where people could sit and listen. Through all this decay at least some of it was still being used.
The south of Albania seemingly kept it mostly together. They didn’t destroy as much because they had just as much to gain from it and they knew it for the most part. With the destruction that did occur, new buildings replaced them.
The north is quite a different story. I could mention Shkoder, Lezhe, and maybe Bajram Curri, but they have nowhere near the recognizability that the south has. Communism was a stain on their religious and traditional history, and although there is regret over the amount of destruction that occurred, with the way modern Albania treats the people of the north currently, the anger is understandable.
Valbona is considered a top destination in Albania for its beauty. It sits on the south of the Albanian Alps and connects to Montenegro and Kosovo as well. To the north, Valbona does quite well with tourism. There is a connection between Valbona and Thethi (the other large cluster of mountains that are part of the alps) that people can walk between.
Go into Kosovo and follow the highway back into Albania and you’ll eventually see a town called Kukes. Kukes during communism was a place where Enver Hoxha had a hotel.
Clearly the hotel did not fare well in modern day Albania. Signs of marijuana, “Matura 2011–2012” (12th graders), a chair brought out to sit on, etc. all revealed the disregard people had for this aspect of communism. In Kukes they saw a dictator who was for the people, but lived in his own hotel.
The vandalism is apparent over a long period of time. Every year a new group of people have either siphoned resources of the building for themselves (wooden panels instead of expensive firewood, couches and chairs inside their disheveled homes) or smashed the remaining aspects of it to pieces. Beds hang from open air rooms and couches are ripped open with condom wrappers thrown into random corners. The destruction here is one of a purposeful attitude of righteous misuse. People were killed for their religious beliefs and supposed right-wing politics, but Enver Hoxha lived a comfortable life with two homes and his own hotel. Whereas the south saw opportunities in what remained of communism, the north saw a rift of betrayal. It can be seen in the politics as well, where the people in the north have an inherent distrust of the Socialist Party, and also see them as the harbinger of corruption. However, they also feel that nothing can be done to change things, and thus you must either join with them, or fight against them pointlessly. The most recent Albanian election had the Socialists winning, but also had a turnout of 45% of potential voters. The north was mostly won by the opposition party.
One major place that I do not have photos of is Spac. It was the political, open-air prison camp up and deep in the mountains. People were brought to the north to die because of what they believed in. The north remembers.
Fushe-Arrez is another town deep in the mountains. The next nearest major town is 45 minutes away. This is one example where when the factories were destroyed, the people had little work left. Unfortunately, the town itself is dying down. It was mainly a workers town and now it is being left alone. There are no banks, but there is a mine that has mostly foreign workers working within it. It’s a deal with the devil, where the workers bring money to the town, but at the expense of other people from the town working there.
For the workers of Fushe-Arrez, capitalism isn’t working out for them. They’ve been betrayed by the communists and have turned around to destroy the machines which for so long held them down. Ironic that either way the town hasn’t gotten the good end of a bargain in a long time. With the factory destroyed, and the other one not employing them, many of them are attempting to find a way out of the town.
This is actually a problem that plagues most of Albania. Most Albanians want to leave Albania. The wealthy citizens are more likely to stay. However, the wealthy citizens have more agency, and can usually come and go whenever they please. The poor have only known being poor and being in Albania. They associate success with the outside world (especially the USA, whom they credit for their existence).
Northerners get supreme amounts of hate from other Albanians. I’ve met students, adults, important people, and villagers who’ve called them beasts, animals, subhuman, and stuck in the past. This not only saddened me, but it angered me. Most of them had never traveled beyond the safety of the capital. Most of them had private vehicles. Most of them didn’t have to deal with the corruption, or they may had even been a beneficiary from it.
I know this because I lived in the north for two years of my life. I lived in a small town called Rubik. It’s an hour north of Tirana and an hour and a half south of Kukes.
Rubik is a town like no other I have ever lived in or seen. It is the first town I ever lived in where I knew almost everyone, could walk everywhere, and also had many eye-opening conversations in at the same time. I loved my time there.
Rubik is home to a church called the “Church of Ascension”. This church was rebuilt after the original was destroyed. Rubik is in Mirdita; a Catholic region of Albania where you can count the number of Muslims in the province on one two hands (or at least that’s what I was told). The people of Rubik are also open-minded and friendly (moreso than other places in Albania). Of course, no place has a perfect track record with acceptance. However, Rubik is different. They also had a large struggle with communism. In fact, much of the influence that prompted me to write this in the first place came from the people in Rubik.
Behind the Church in Rubik was a military camp during communism. Of course, it was illegal to go to the Church, and so they placed a military camp right at the entrance. The picture of the gate is one of the entrances into a bunker below the Church. The first picture is where a make shift shooting range was (along with some rusted shells in the last photo) and a guard house to go along with it.
The field in the above picture is frequently used by kids and adults as a place to work out, play football or volleyball, or even to have a picnic at. Very little has been salvaged, but the destruction is there. The former barracks’ have all been cleaned out. The toilets (Turkish/squat toilets) have had flowers growing out of them as well. A combination of destruction, cleaning up, leaving things alone, and re-purposing space exists in Rubik.
Rubik was a mining town as well. Copper was a major product in the region and students from the highschool during communism had the opportunity to be picked to learn about mining and explosives. The town of Rubik in the long run has learned to go great things with what they’ve been given. They have a river which ebbs and flows according to the season. They have plenty of farmland (with differing levels of water, because of how dry the weather has been during the summer). They’ve had Peace Corps volunteers helping the town in different ways since 2008. Rubik is my favourite town in Albania.
Rubik, however, like every other part of Albania, suffers from people wanting to leave it. They credit much of their success to the USA, and even further to Peace Corps Volunteers who’ve stayed there. Like the mentality in the rest of Albania, they believe the USA is the reason why they currently exist as a people and a state.
In the 1910s, when the Ottoman Empire fell, the surrounding countries wanted to swallow up much of the Albanian land. Woodrow Wilson, then President, helped Albania establish their borders to what they are today. This single act has immortalized Americans in the eyes of the Albanian people. It is this same immortalization that gives them the desire to go to the USA.
And who can blame them? They suffered through a foreign occupation (Ottoman Empire), a few failed monarchies, fascist rule by Italy, fascist rule by Germany, the failure and corruption of communism, and now they see a system which doesn’t fight for their interests or their well-being. The ruins of communism aren’t only physical, but also mental. It hits the soul and weighs people down to the point of them only being able to get back up for the hope of leaving or the hope of God’s will.
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I hope this cluster of pictures have been eye-opening for you. I grew fond of the Albanian people and the country they live in.
I also want to stress that the history and current story of Albania is far from being covered entirely here. This was my experience, my discovery, and my journey. I do wish I could tell people more about the stories of communism, but I feel that I should have the will of specific community members and people before I go forward with that.
If you disagree with me on something here, then I’d like to hear your side. I may have seemingly mischaracterized the north and south of Albania. However, I do know and have experienced people from the south saying increasingly untrue things about the north. The north gets a bad rap. We constantly hear of the problems the north has and how traditional it is, and although specific places in the north are like that, nothing could ultimately be further than the truth for the general north.
I also want to say that I was a PCV, and now I am an RPCV. None of my views are that of the US government, the Peace Corps, or any other US government organization. These are my own unless otherwise specified.
Also, if you note spelling mistakes, I’d appreciate a message or notification of sorts (unless it’s the British spelling of the word…I’m looking at “favourite” right now).
