Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

In 1977, based on the arguments made by Hoxha in his report at the Seventh Congress, the Albanian Party of Labour wrote an article entitled "The Theory and Practice of Revolution," criticizing the "Three Worlds" theory as an opportunist variant of the international communist movement that aimed to extinguish class struggle and deny the fundamental contradictions of the contemporary world.

China attacked Hoxha as a Trotskyist, while Hoxha published his work "Imperialism and Revolution," fiercely criticizing "Mao revisionism" and various forms of "revisionism," arguing that "Mao Zedong's thought is absolutely not Marxism."

Hoxha launched a comprehensive attack on and complete rejection of China's domestic and foreign policies at the time, and criticized China's main leaders by name. He believed that "China is the most dangerous enemy, more dangerous than the Soviet Union, because China is actually a true revisionist country under the banner of anti-revisionism." He also listed China alongside Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union as "social imperialist" countries.

In this book, Hoxha also accused leaders of various countries and parties of being dictators, fascists, traitors, revisionists, gangsters, madmen, clowns, rappers, and so on. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hoxha published several theoretical works, and his series of views and propositions began to be known as "Hoxhaism".

Hoxha possessed extremely high theoretical knowledge, capable of drawing upon a wide range of Marxist-Leninist theories and providing localized interpretations. Influenced by Hoxha and due to China's cessation of substantial aid to Maoist parties in the Third World after the reform and opening up, many Maoist parties in the Third World, such as the Communist Party of New Zealand, the Communist Party of Brazil, the Communist Party of Tunisia, the Communist Party of Canada, and the Communist Party of Colombia, transformed into Hoxha factions, supporting the political line of Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labour.

Hoxha began to attempt to act as a leader of the international communist movement, claiming that Albania was the only socialist country that adhered to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that the capital Tira was the center of the international Marxist-Leninist movement and a showcase of Marxism-Leninism.

From then on, the Hoxha faction adopted "Marx, Engels, Lenin, Hoxha" as the ranking of leaders of the international communist movement, and believed that Hoxha's ideas and teachings were a creative application and development of Marxism-Leninism under Albanian conditions, and that the Albanian Party of Labour was the only truly Marxist-Leninist ruling party.

P.S.: Many people believe that Albania's betrayal of China after accepting aid is ungrateful, but I think this view is too subjective. Hoxha's book, *Imperialism and Revolution*, directly criticizes Mao Zedong Thought; however, if we review the actual decisions of the Albanian Party of Labour, they are remarkably similar to Chairman Mao's policies—in fact, many are identical. The few differences lie in the localization of these policies. Hoxha later said that Mao's Cultural Revolution was wrong after the Sino-Albanian split, yet he himself launched a cultural and ideological revolution.

Therefore, his opposition to Mao was not absolute. In the book, his main points of opposition to Mao are as follows: the Three Worlds theory is imperialism; Mao's thought is a continuation of ancient Chinese philosophy; Mao's ideas on unity and contradiction are wrong; and Mao condoned rightists (referring to Hua and later the dwarf).

Hoxha was a typical Stalinist. After Khrushchev's 20th Congress of the CPSU, besides him, Mao Zedong was another ideological supporter of Stalin, which was the foundation of the friendly relations between China and Afghanistan. (Another "Stalinist" was Pol Pot in Cambodia, but in practice, Pol Pot's work was almost entirely opposite to Stalin's. Hoxha extremely disliked him and called Pol Pot a fascist in his book "Imperialism and Revolution.")

However, Hoxha was indeed widely influenced by Mao in the late 60s and 70s. For example, Mao advocated equality between officers and soldiers and abolished military ranks, and he implemented an Albanian version of the Cultural Revolution in his home country. However, his revolution primarily targeted reactionary religious and clan ideologies. In other words, no matter how much Hoxha claimed to be anti-Mao, Hoxhaism and Maoist thought shared significant similarities.

Returning to the previous question, Hoxha's assessment of Mao's Three Worlds theory and his ability to lead many Maoists in the Third World along the Hoxha line are not without merit. Marxists in Latin America and many other places have prejudices against Mao's theory, considering it nationalist. As Gonzalo of the Peruvian Communist Party said, "The Three Worlds theory is revolutionary, but it is based on the premise that the Soviet Union has become a reactionary state."

In the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao pointed out as early as the early 60s: "The enemy of Africa is imperialism, not capitalism." This is not some kind of "make-up education" theory; these countries practically had no workers! According to Lenin's theory, such countries should rely on the help of a proletarian dictatorship to transition to socialism. The Soviet Union didn't help them; did they expect the chiefs to suddenly upgrade their thinking and establish socialism? Or should they let the imperialists who colonized them do it? Of course not! It's not that Hoxha or Mao were completely wrong, but rather that they viewed the issue from different perspectives.

As for the latter two points of his opposition to Mao, this is related to his Stalinist affiliation. Among all the Stalinists after Stalin's death, Hoxha was definitely the purest. Mao rated Stalin as 30% merit and 70% demerit, while Hoxha saw Stalin as 10% merit and 90% demerit, or even 10% demerit!

Stalin believed that "there is no bourgeoisie in socialist society, only imperialism is threatening socialism." (Source: Stalin's Collected Works, "Summary Report on the Work of the Central Committee of the CPSU (Bolsheviks) at the Eighteenth Congress of the Party", March 10, 1939) Looking back at that period of history, most of the charges during the anti-rightist campaign were imperialist espionage.

Mao Zedong believed that "the contradiction between two classes and two lines still exists in socialist society." He argued that the bourgeoisie was lurking within the Communist Party, raising a problem that Hoxha's existing system could not address:

The party and state apparatus of socialist countries may themselves become vehicles for a new exploiting class.

Within Hoxha's framework, as long as the correct organizational form is maintained (Party leadership, planned economy, public ownership), class struggle is directed outward—against imperialism and revisionism. Mao, however, believed that formal public ownership could not prevent substantive class differentiation; power itself would generate new class relations, and class struggle would continue indefinitely internally.

As a successor to Stalin's theories, Hoxha disagreed with Mao's arguments. For example, after Albanian Prime Minister Shehu committed suicide in 1981, he was initially accused of being a Yugoslav spy, a charge later expanded to include being a spy for the US, the Soviet Union, the UK, and Yugoslavia. This suggests that Hoxha believed the conflict lay only abroad, not domestically, and that the domestic opposition was entirely composed of spies directed by imperialism. He believed the only thing to do domestically was to eliminate religion and outdated clan ideology (which, in retrospect, did have some merit, as declassified CIA documents after the Cold War revealed that the US and the Soviet Union repeatedly orchestrated coups in Albania in an attempt to overthrow Hoxha's regime).

We all know what happened next. Neither Chairman Mao nor Hoxha could defeat time, and the right or wrong of their debate can only be determined by future generations.

But time ultimately proved Mao right. The party and government cadres in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe transformed directly into a new bourgeoisie during the privatization process. This smooth transformation precisely demonstrates that, under the form of public ownership, this class already possessed actual control over resources. The Albanian Party of Labour also ultimately collapsed due to traitors.

Therefore, I oppose calling Hoxha a "traitor to the Party" or a "revisionist." He was by no means like Khrushchev. Mao and Hoxha's theories precisely demonstrate the unity of opposites; both were based on the premise that Marxism-Leninism is a good ideology and on opposition to modern revisionism. The contributions of these two proletarian revolutionaries cannot be erased from each other's minds.

Hoxha's failure lay in prioritizing form over content. The competence of a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary can be divided into two levels: one is familiarity with and ability to cite classical texts; the other is the ability to truly explain new phenomena and generate new understandings using theoretical tools. Hoxha excelled at the first level, but lacked in the second. Therefore, he committed the error of dogmatism, not revisionism or anti-communism.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

After Hoxha left, in addition to a large number of bunkers and weapons, he also left his successor Ramiz Al-Aliayah an orphanage on the verge of economic collapse and without normal diplomatic relations with almost every country in the world.

After the Sino-Albanian split in 78, Albania began to decline due to its heavy reliance on external resources. By the time Hoxha died in 1985, Albania's economy was in dire straits.

Aljaz was Hoxha's handpicked successor. He was ideologically loyal to Hoxha, but relatively mild-mannered. He knew that if Albania continued to be an international pariah, it would be doomed. So, in the latter half of the 1980s, he made some adjustments, restored diplomatic relations with several Western European countries, slightly relaxed religious controls, and was friendly towards Yugoslavia.

By this time, Albania's biggest enemy, Tito, had already passed away. Gorbachev, after coming to power, began liberalization reforms, and Yugoslavia, after Tito's death, also rushed headlong towards liberalization reforms. The difference was that Slava managed to stabilize the economy from 85 to 87 and oust Gorbachev in a coup, but Yugoslavia was not so lucky and headed directly towards disintegration.

The world outside is undergoing tremendous changes.

In late 1987, less than a month after the outbreak of the "Black Monday" economic crisis in the United States, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union convened its 19th National Congress. Following the congress, General Secretary Ivanov addressed the major Eastern European allies, outlining reforms to all of them.

Historically, Gorbachev's choice was "The Soviet Union withdrew its troops and economic support, you are free, as for what will happen to you in the future, only God knows," and that kind of letting go ultimately led to the collective collapse of Eastern Europe.

General Secretary Ivanov chose to intervene. Within six months, conservatives in Eastern European countries retired one after another "due to health reasons," and the newly appointed officials were all Moscow loyalists and technocrats. They accepted Moscow's economic reform plan, the introduction of a computerized planned economy model, and the reorganization of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).

Ivanov's decisiveness was most evident in one instance—taking over the debts of the crumbling Eastern Bloc when the Soviet economy was just beginning to recover. This was tantamount to taking all the profits from a newly profitable company to fill the holes of several other near-bankrupt subsidiaries. There was opposition from within the Politburo and the Central Committee, but Ivanov persisted.

By the end of 1988, all member states of the Eastern Bloc, except Romania, had essentially completed political and economic restructuring and debt guarantees. The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) began reforms, the Soviet Union's self-sustaining capacity improved, and the computerized planned economy model and information technology reforms began to spread to Eastern Europe...

The lives of the people in Eastern Europe began to improve. They couldn't rush into the communist era in two years, but at least they didn't have to queue for too long to buy daily necessities. Although there was no beef stew with potatoes in the pot, there was chicken stew with potatoes. But it was this small improvement that was enough to make people feel that they didn't have to run and that the future was getting better!

All of this was a huge shock to the Albanian Labor Party, which was on the verge of economic collapse.

In March 1989, the KGB finally completed its preparations, and the Ceaușescu regime in Romania was overthrown in a Soviet-backed coup. After a public trial, the Ceaușescu couple were hanged and executed that same day.

This caused concern among Albania's ruling class—the Soviet Union's purge of its own ally seemed a bit too physical. Ceaușescu was overthrown, publicly tried, and hanged by the people and external forces. What would they do if they wanted to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union?

Since Hoxha's death, the Albanian Labor Party leadership has become corrupt very quickly, and Aliya, a moderate, could not keep these veterans in check.

But Albania really had no other choice at that point.

In 1989, China and the Soviet Union became friendly again. Hoxha had befriended China by opposing Soviet revisionism, and then severed ties with everyone by opposing Chinese revisionism—both of those past grievances were now in the past. Moscow and Beijing were shaking hands.

The expansion of Soviet power in Africa, the deepening of Soviet cooperation with Europe, and the improvement of the Soviet economy... This country, once criticized by Hoxha as a bastion of revisionism, is on the road to a great revival.

Despite facing economic difficulties, China successfully navigated the wave of democratization in April 1989, welcomed a new generation of leaders including Jiang Huaimin, and embarked on a path of economic recovery—this country, once criticized by Hoxha as having betrayed Marxism-Leninism, was gradually improving.

Countries that Hoxha once criticized as bastions of imperialism, revisionism, and reaction are all on the rise; now only Albania is declining.

This comparison was more convincing than any theoretical debate, and the mindset within the Labor Party began to waver.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

In 1990, a mass exodus began. Thousands of Albanians scaled walls and stormed foreign embassies in an attempt to leave the country. Some wanted to cross the Adriatic Sea to Italy, while others headed south over the mountains to Greece.

In 1991, several notorious incidents of "boat people" occurred: tens of thousands of people crammed onto cargo ships to cross the Adriatic Sea, packed like sardines on decks, in cabins, and wherever there was room to stand. Italian ports were at a loss when they saw these ships approaching—tens of thousands of ragged people with nothing but worn-out shoes were pouring in!

Italy's choice was, of course, to refuse entry and deport them, even though it claimed in its liberal broadcasts to Albania that "the free world welcomes the Albanian people."

No, you're really coming?

Under pressure, Alia conceded. In March 1990, he recognized a multi-party system. The Albanian Democratic Party was founded in May, led by Sali Berisha, a former professor of cardiology at the University of Tirana.

In September, the Labour Party won the national election again, thanks to its popularity in rural areas. In order to barely maintain power, the Labour Party had to form a governing coalition with the Democratic Party.

In September 1991, the Labour Party lost the second general election. The Democratic Party came to power, and Berisha became president.

The communist era in Albania has ended... temporarily.

...

After taking office, Berisha did something that many new leaders of former communist countries have done—he chose the most extreme path.

Radical marketization, shock therapy implemented in one step.

The privatization of state-owned enterprises was a massive fire sale, with the company being sold to whoever offered the best price. Corruption was rampant in the process—former Labor Party officials and new elites divided up the assets of state-owned enterprises, leaving ordinary people with nothing.

With prices liberalized, inflation immediately spiraled out of control; bread that was affordable yesterday became unaffordable today.

Albania has fully opened its foreign trade—but it has little to sell. Its industrial products are not competitive in the international market. What competitive products can a small country of two million people produce? It can only export chromium ore, a little oil, and heartbreakingly cheap labor.

Albania thus jumped directly from the Stalinist model to the free market without any buffer.

In contrast, its neighbors, the Eastern European countries that joined the COMECON, experienced a gradual economic transformation backed by the Soviet Union. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania... their transformations, while painful, were manageable because they had a major power willing to take over.

Albania has no backing. It severed diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union and China over a decade ago, has no organizational connection with the Eastern Bloc, and neighboring Yugoslavia is embroiled in civil war. The only one who can save it is—

Only the United States

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The US isn't here to rescue Albania as a philanthropist. President Gephat is here to make money to recoup the US's losses, not to throw money around!

After the outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars in 1991, the Balkans became the focus of the world's attention. The Soviet Union and the European Community were deeply involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, while the United States was left out—its influence in the Balkans was far less than its influence in the Middle East.

Albania is a weak point. A small country that is desperately poor, in dire need of external funding, and has no political backing is the easiest to win over.

The United States has run a Ponzi scheme.

Throughout the first half of the 1990s, Albania saw a proliferation of "pyramid schemes": nominally investment companies, but in reality, Ponzi schemes. They promised extremely high returns—30%, 50%, or even 100%—simply to lure people into investing their savings.

Albanians, having just emerged from decades of international isolation, have no experience with financial markets. Formal banking is virtually nonexistent, leaving these informal investment companies to fill the void. Moreover, some of these companies have close ties to the Berisha government. The government not only fails to regulate them but sometimes even endorses them.

It is estimated that in 1993, about two-thirds of Albanian households participated in these investments.

A Ponzi scheme requires a constant influx of new funds to pay returns; as long as the funds keep flowing in, it can maintain the illusion that everyone is making money.

What sustained this inflow of funds was the Yugoslav civil war.

War creates demand for all sorts of supplies—weapons, ammunition, communication equipment, medical supplies. Albania, though poor, has one advantage—it borders Kosovo and is separated from Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Adriatic Sea. It is a natural transit point for smuggling routes.

In addition, the large amount of weaponry left over from the Hoxha era, along with the gray funds brought about by the war economy, quickly flowed into those Ponzi scheme companies to maintain this bubble.

By the end of 1993, the Yugoslav region had returned to stability.

The Soviet Union announced it would guarantee the debts of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—in exchange for the federation accepting Soviet economic reforms and political restructuring. Meanwhile, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, formed by Serbia and Montenegro, became a battleground for influence between the US and the Soviet Union. The US, not wanting Soviet control of the Balkans, began to focus its attention on Serbia.

In short, after a bumpy reform process, the People's Federation of Yugoslavia announced its accession to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) in November 1993.

The war is completely over.

For Albania, this means two things—

First, the war economy disappeared, and the inflow of funds that relied on smuggling and gray trade was cut off.

Second, Serbia suspended its arms orders to Albania. The Kosovo conflict was peacefully resolved under Soviet mediation—the Kosovo Liberation Army was disbanded, and the arms that Albania had originally sold to Serbia were returned.

The war profits are gone, and so is the arms trade!

A Ponzi scheme without new funding will collapse.

In early 1994, the Ponzi scheme began to collapse. One company after another fell like dominoes, and billions of dollars of private wealth, all of which represented the savings of Albanians, evaporated within weeks.

The US is happily withdrawing from Albania with billions of dollars, but what will happen to the local people? Only God knows.

Entering the free market requires paying a price! You can't only support the free market when you're making money.

In February 1994, the Albanian government declared bankruptcy.

The government is out of money; it cannot pay civil servants' salaries, military pay, hospital and school operating costs, or foreign exchange for imported food and fuel.

Foreign exchange reserves were virtually wiped out, domestic savings evaporated, and the tax system collapsed. Riots broke out in the streets, and angry citizens stormed government buildings. The government dispatched military and police to suppress the unrest. As a result, the military and police, who had not received their wages and were struggling to make ends meet, simply opened the armories in the southern region and distributed guns to the civilians (this has actually happened in history). A large number of weapons flowed into the hands of the people, and Albania slid into anarchy within a few weeks.

Albania is poor, very poor, but its neighbors are not poor.

Coincidentally, the Yugoslavian regions that had just finished the civil war were all weak and vulnerable. Wouldn't it be advantageous for us to stockpile weapons while our neighbors stockpile food?

In March 1994, a group of Albanian bandits drove tanks into Greece and robbed a bank. Before the Greek police could react, they fled north to Macedonia.

Macedonia had never seen anything like this before and immediately sought help from Sarajevo. However, Macedonia was surrounded, with NATO member states to the south, Albania and Yugoslavia to the west, and only Warsaw Pact member Bulgaria to the east.

Moscow granted Yugoslav military passage and incidentally brought Yugoslavia into the Warsaw Pact, allowing Yugoslavia to support Macedonia by bypassing Bulgaria.

But the situation was still escalating. Albania's collapse led to a sharp decline in stability in all surrounding regions. The large quantities of military weapons acquired by Albanian gangs began to circulate throughout Europe. By May 1994, Italy, pushed to its limits by the unscrupulous foreign gangs, directly proposed a resolution to the European Community:

Why don't we all chip in some money to help Albania?

The European Community responded that it had no money, so the pressure fell on the United States and the Soviet Union.

The US doesn't care about this, because it's the one responsible for Albania's current predicament; it'll just provide a token amount of humanitarian aid.

Then there's only one answer—now bow your head and apologize to Big Brother, and Big Brother will help you out because everyone was on the anti-fascist side during World War II!

Chapter 126 After all that trouble, socialism is still the best.

The Zogu family all live in Durrës.

Durrës is Albania's largest port city, facing the Adriatic Sea. From Zogu's balcony, one can see the bustling port. Many years ago, this port was leased by the Soviets to house warships, but after the Great Helmsman and Khrushchev fell out, the port returned to Albanian control.

At that time, there were still many ships. Because of the poor relationship between the country and Yugoslavia, and the fact that Greece in the east was eyeing the southern region of the country, the country could only import a large amount of raw materials from abroad to maintain its domestic production order.

Then...then the country severed diplomatic relations with China, and this bustling port gradually became deserted.

The window railings are rusty, the lines on the streets are growing longer, the vehicles are getting more and more dilapidated, and the country is heading towards its twilight.

The Romans were unaware that their empire had disintegrated; they simply discovered that from a certain day onward, the roads were no longer maintained. The same is true for Albania.

Zogu Lama, the eldest son in his family, witnessed decades of change in the country. He was a miner working at the Burleli chromium mine in the central region of the country. His father was also a miner, having worked in the same mine for thirty years. Three generations of their family had lived in Durrës since the time of Hoxha—back then, they had been allocated a two-bedroom apartment where a portrait of Hoxha still hung on the living room wall.

When the great helmsman passed away in 1985, Sako was only 18 years old. He stood at the entrance of the mine listening to the news broadcast. Some of his coworkers cried, while others silently mourned in front of the helmsman's portrait. Sako lowered his head and continued walking into the mine.

He had no affection for Hoxha. The country he grew up in was already on the decline; Albania, having severed diplomatic ties with the US, the Soviet Union, and others, lacked external resources and its economy was deteriorating.

But at that time, the country hadn't yet reached its worst state. His monthly salary was enough to buy bread and cheese. The safety equipment in the mine was from the 1950s, very old, and there were no replacement parts. His lungs were slowly deteriorating, and whether Hoxha died or not had nothing to do with his health.

Albanian youths who did not experience the country's glorious era do not have much affection for the great helmsman.

In the years following the death of the helmsman, the country descended into chaos. The new general secretary began to ease relations with neighboring Yugoslavia, and under his leadership, the country experienced a short-term improvement. However, the global economic crisis that erupted in 1987 and the two oil crises severely impacted Europe, including Albania.

When the year 1990 arrived, everything began to change.

Zogu's younger brother, Alban, was seventeen. Unlike him and his father, Alban held many unorthodox ideas. He had heard news from the outside world on Italian and American radio stations like Radio Free Europe-Liberty—about the atrocities Hoxha had committed during his more than forty years in power, about Tito being a bastard, about the Soviet Union and China, about how communist regimes had killed nearly a hundred million people, and about how communism, since its inception, had dripped with the blood of the people from every pore...

At that time, Albania was in a state of isolation, closing itself off from the world and making it difficult for ordinary people to learn about the outside world. Add to that the current economic crisis, and every small problem can become a big one!

Even if foreign radio stations say that Stalin made Khrushchev dance Swan Lake every time he drank, that Hoxha had three wives and dozens of children, that Albania was deliberately surrounded by communist regimes, and that the Soviet Union made Albania live such a miserable life in order to overthrow Albania, people still believe it! Many young people are influenced by the beautiful descriptions of the free world on Italian radio and believe that as long as the country opens its arms to embrace the free world, all problems will be solved!

Alban began discussing these matters with his classmates at school. Later, he participated in a student demonstration in Tirana, taking a four-hour bus ride from Durrës to the capital, holding a cardboard sign that read "Freedom."

Sako knew his brother had gone to organize a demonstration. He didn't say anything. He neither approved nor opposed it; he just felt that young people always had to stir things up, and that they would come back after they were done.