Abstract
The geographical configuration of the Balkans, the relative absence of direct interests of the great powers in this region and the existence of wellorganised communist parties loyal to Moscow favoured, during the Second World War, the development of communist resistance movements fighting for ‘national liberation and social revolution’. The South Slav communist resistance movement, which fought in the mountains of the Western Balkans, co-operated and influenced the Albanian communist partisans. In 1941 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, headed from 1937 on by Josip Broz Tito (1892–80), supported Enver Hoxha (1908–85) to become the leader of the Albanian Communist Party and helped establish the Albanian resistance movement, with Hoxha as general commander. The successful outcome of this partisan struggle created communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Albania quite different from those in other Eastern European states. These were regimes that came to power largely by their own efforts. Both regimes were legitimised by the partisan struggle, and the struggle against the Nazi occupiers and their domestic ‘collaborators’.
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Notes
For biographies and studies of Tito see: Arsa Lazarevic, Slobodan Nesovic, Svijet o Titu (The World of Tito) (Zagreb, 1966);
Vladimir Dedijer, Tito (New York, 1972);
Auty Phyllis, Tito: A biography (Harmondsworth, 1974);
Nora Beloff, Tito’s Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West since 1939 (Boulder, 1985);
Savo Krzavac, Tito na raskrscima istorije (Tito on the Crossroads of History) (Belgrade, 1985). For a critical view, by a former colleague, see
Milovan Djilas, Tito — The Story from Inside (London, 1981).
Kosta Cavoski, Tito-tehnologija vlasti (Tito: the Technology of the Power) (Belgrade, 1991), p. 13.
Dusan Mojic, ‘Evolucija Kulta Josipa Broza Tita 1945–1990: analiza stampe’ (The Evolution of the Cult of Josip Broz Tito 1945–1990: The Analysis of the Press), Srpska politicka misao (Serbian Political Thought), 2: 1 (1995), p. 136.
See for example Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London, 1962).
G. R. Swain, ‘Tito — The Formation of a Disloyal Bolshevik’, International Review of Social History, 34 (1989), pp. 248–71;
G. R. Swain, ‘The Cominform, Tito’s International’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), pp. 641–63.
Djilas, AATito — The Story from Inside (London, 1981), p. 64.
G. Swain and N. Swain, Eastern Europe Since 1945 (London, 1998), pp. 76–9.
Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary (London, 1980), pp. 77, 78.
Duncan Wilson, Tito’s Yugoslavia (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 132–4.
Dobrica Cosic, Tito u zapisima savremenika (Tito in the Records of the Contemporaries) (Zagreb, 1965).
Vladimir Dedijer, Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita (New Contributions to a Biography of Josip Broz Tito) (Zagreb, 1980).
Filip Raulovic, Ljubavi Josipa Broza (The Loves of Josip Broz) (Belgrade, 1990).
Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Tito: Yugoslavia’s Great Dictator, A Reassessment (London, 1992), p. 93.
Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 414–15.
Enver Hoxha, Me Stalinin, kujtime (Tirana, 1979);
Enver Hoxha, With Stalin: Memoirs (Tirana, 1979): the book carries the dedication ‘On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the great Marxist-Leninist Joseph Stalin’;
Enver Hoxha, Hrushovianët (Tirana, 1980). Albania was the only country in the Eastern Europe after 1960 to have a town called ‘Qyteti Stalin’ (Stalin’s Town). It was changed into its old name ‘Kuçova’ in 1990 with the fall of the regime.
Alex Standish, ‘Enver Hoxha’s Role in the Development of Socialist Albanian Myths’ in Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd J. Fischer (eds) Albanian Identities, Myth and History (London 2002).
Kristo Dako, Ahmet Zogu, mbret I shqiptarëve (Tirana, 1937).
Bernd Fischer, ‘Albanian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century’ in Peter F. Sugar (ed.) Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Washington, 1995), p. 44.
Miranda Vickers, The Albanians (London and New York, 1995), p. 218.
Arshi Pipa, Albanian Stalinism: Ideo-Political Aspects (Boulder, Colo., 1990), quoted in Brend Fischer, ‘Albanian Nationalism in the Twentieth Century’.
Todi Lubonja, Nën peshën e dhunës (Under the Burden of Violence) (Tirana, 1993), p. 278.
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Sretenovic, S., Puto, A. (2004). Leader Cults in the Western Balkans (1945–90): Josip Broz Tito and Enver Hoxha. In: Apor, B., Behrends, J.C., Jones, P., Rees, E.A. (eds) The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230518216_12
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