The Return of Enver's Portrait

AIM Tirana, February 15, 2001

When two years ago, after a conducted public opinion survey, a Tirana daily carried the news on the plan to proclaim the communist dictator of Albania, Enver Hoxha, the "figure of the century", it sounded like a bad joke and was not taken seriously.

Ten years after his monument in the center of the Albanian capital was pulled down, paradoxically the protests associated with the name of the communist dictator have started anew.

The reason was the decision of Foreign Minister Pascal Milo to exhibit in the Foreign Ministry hall, photographs of all Foreign Ministers who had been in office since the creation of the independent Albanian state in 1912. And since Enver Hoxha was also Foreign Minister in late forties his photo was placed in the main hall of the Albanian diplomatic headquarters.

This event was characterised as a provocation. The entire opposition immediately asked that Enver's photo be removed form the Foreign Ministry. The association of former political prisoners from the times of Hoxha's regime rallied in front of the Foreign Ministry and Parliament buildings to protest against Minister Milo's act. Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission, composed of delegates of major Albanian parties, also unanimously demanded the removal of Enver Hoxha's portrait from the Foreign Ministry's building.

The press and the main media in the country dedicated whole pages and reports to this event, while politicians, journalists and intellectuals joined the debate about the communist past.

Actually, that debate was initiated several days before the appearance of the phantasm of the former Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu (who had committed a suicide), one of the central figures of the communist dictatorship and a man known for his iron fist rule. When everyone least expected it, on the 85th anniversary of his birthday, the Assembly of his hometown proclaimed Mehmet Shehu its "honorary citizen". Moreover, the National Historic Museum in Tirana organised a ceremony in his honour, which was also attended by two highly placed officials of the ruling Socialist Party and a military advisor of the President of the Republic.

As it could be expected, this event provoked strong reactions of the right-wing opposition, which accused the Government and the ruling Socialist majority not only of honouring the dictatorship and a 50 years crime, but also of preparing a strategy for its re-establishment. It seems that this time it was not so easy for the Socialist majority to ignore these accusations and label them as propaganda aimed at intimidating the Albanians and disquieting the international public, as was usually done with the opposition's accusations on the reinstatement of communism in Albania.

That is why the Socialist Party reacted immediately with an official release in which it distanced itself from its two officials who had attended the festivity honouring Mehmet Shehu and explained that it was their private decision and that they were not mandated by their party to represent it at that ceremony organised in his memory.

Many new and old protagonists of the Albanian political scene joined the debate on Hoxha's photo. In the opinion of the dictator's widow, Nexhmije Hoxha, stated in an interview to a Tirana daily, the hanging of Enver's portrait was quite normal since it would be impossible to hide the fact that he was once Foreign Minister and, according to her, even the founder of the new Albanian diplomacy.

In another interview, the famous author, Ismail Kadare, condemned from Paris the putting up of Hoxha's portrait calling it more than a provocation. "This is a mockery of the Albanian state, a hypocrisy towards our Euro-Atlantic allies", said Kadare.

The critics compared the placing of Hoxha's portrait in the Albanian Foreign Ministry with the unimaginable exhibiting of Hitler's portrait in German Federal Government's offices, since according to the same logic, Hitler was also the German Chancellor.

However, for the Foreign Ministry officials and Socialist officials who had gone to pay their respects to Mehmet Shehu, these events should be viewed as simple re-evaluation of history and not as a positive analysis of the communist regime figures.

But, for others, more disquieting than the return of Enver's portrait, is the reinstatement of certain officials of the former regime to state and especially, diplomatic functions. On the other hand, some critics think that there is no use to jaw-jaw about the danger of the return of communism in Albania, but that there is every reason to worry about the recent spreading of a certain feeling that the state should be run with an iron fist. Or, in other words: Like before, like in the days of Enver Hoxha.

The case of police exceeding its authority, the excessive use of force, harsh language used against opponents, are examples that should not be forgotten. The indifference of high officials towards such behaviour proved that a part of the opposition was right to criticise the Government for applying former methods with the sole purpose of resolving the accumulated problems by iron-fist method of running the state. In that context, the honouring of personalities - symbols of dictatorship - seems like an attempt at recognising the ways in which the communist Government ran the country for 50 years in a row.

Even ignoring the reaction of certain population strata (Hoxha's photo remained hanging in the Foreign Ministry hall) was interpreted as a kind of arrogance on the part of the state officials.

These are some elements, not to be neglected, which have prompted the people to think that if the fear of the "red phantasm" seems ridiculous that doesn't mean that methods or acts that resemble it, should be underestimated. The fear of the return of communism, so much insisted on by the opposition, is absurd, so to say, ungrounded. But, that doesn't mean that one should shut his eye before the phenomena or acts which, by their form or contents, bring back the memories of the methods of rule through the so called dictatorship of law by which the latter are so easily violated.

AIM Tirana

Armand SHKULLAKU