Memorie.al / A tribute article for the great chief reformer of Albanian education: MIRASH IVANAJ (March 12, 1891 – September 22, 1953), on the occasion of Teacher’s Day.
– “Did you understand, you there?”
– “No, sir, what is there to understand?!”
– “You are sentenced to 7 years in prison”!
– “But what am I being sentenced for, sir”?
– “For agitation and propaganda against the people’s power”.
– “But I haven’t spoken to anyone since I came from Turkey, except about educational work”.
– “But you came from there with that very thought, to carry out propaganda”.
– “But sir, are there laws in the world that punish thought”?!
– “Shut your mouth, you are sentenced”!
With these dialogues, part of the Bolshevik farce, the regime sentenced the chief reformer of national education, Mirash Ivanaj, to 7 years deprivation of liberty…! The miserable life and very hard work in prison as a translator led to the rapid degradation of Mirash Ivanaj’s health. One day, in the house of suffering, according to the memoirs of Jakov Mile, Mehmet Shehu came with Bedri Spahiu. In the translation room, they also met Mirash Ivanaj. The old man stood up respectfully:
– “I believe that during your time in prison, you will have revised your views,” – Bedri Spahiu, then Minister of Education, told him.
– “Not my views, but my convictions,” – Mirashi corrected him. – “To tell you the truth: I haven’t changed any.”
– “Then you’re nothing but a senile old man,” – Mehmet Shehu burst out at him.
– “I am a thinker and a democrat who, even if I were to go back in life, would follow the same path.”
A few weeks before his day of release from prison, he sent a letter to the director, asking him to keep him in prison because he had nowhere to live and had no income to live on. But, worn down by the hard labor and terrible prison conditions, on September 22, 1953, 12 days before the end of his sentence, he closed his eyes forever.
He passed away in Tirana hospital, after a simple surgical intervention, at the age of 62. Fellow sufferer Ibrahim Hasnai, as well as the former hospital laboratory assistant, Enis Boletini, recount that it became known in the hospital that the body of Mirash Ivanaj was in the Anatomy auditoriums of the Medical Faculty, for experiment and teaching demonstration. By the tragic irony of fate, he served Albanian education even in death.
Ten years later, in 1963, when Nikolla Ivanaj’s relatives took him from the place where they had thrown him, to bury him humanely in the Sharrë cemetery, they found him thrown in an unmarked grave, without a coffin, face down on the ground, like a prisoner who is condemned again after death.
Who was Mirash Ivanaj?
Born in Podgorica, he came from a patriotic family from the Albanian regions of Montenegro. A class intellectual and patriot of his country. Writer, essayist, teacher, publicist, humanist…! Educated in Rome in Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Ivanaj was also a polyglot with a full 7 “living” languages and three “dead” ones.
Although he was an admirer of Zog, he was critical of the miserable state of Albanian education. He willingly accepted King Zog’s offer to reform Albanian education. He took the portfolio of Minister of Education in 1933 (after the death of Hilë Mosi) in the government of Pandeli Evangjeli. The intellectual grandeur, the highest level of patriotism, and the miserable state of Albanian education in the 30s were the “instigators” of the Ivanaj Law…!
In September 1934, he presented the new law on education, making 5-year primary education compulsory. He also established various secondary educational institutes. The “Education Law,” or as it became known as the “Ivanaj Law,” was the most important and most comprehensive law of the Evangjeli government period.
The aim of Minister Ivanaj’s reform was for the Albanian school to have its own characteristics and physiognomy, to be secular, state-run, national and democratic, with contemporary textbooks similar to those in Western schools, and to educate and orient the new generation in that direction. He sought to enshrine these ideas in law and in many cases achieved his goal, including the nationalization of private schools, particularly Italian and Greek ones.
“…Our school must provide civic and secular education, because the aim of the school is to form free citizens, with a contemporary scientific and technical education and background…”. (This short fragment is taken from the speech given by Mirash Ivanaj, as Minister of National Education, in the Albanian Parliament, on April 10, 1933)
On August 30, 1935, he resigned in protest after The Hague Court forced the Albanian government to moderate its policies towards minority schools. He was appointed Chairman of the Council of State and advisor to King Zog, until April 7, 1939. He was absolutely against the fascist occupation of Albania and, together with his friends Safet Butka and Qemal Butka, mobilized Albanian students in protests against the occupation.
He left Albania for Turkey in 1939, refusing the fascist occupation of the country. He left his homeland together with his brother, Martin Ivanaj, a distinguished jurist, chairman of the Court of Cessation, and his friends, the architect Qemal Butka and the philosopher Branko Merxhani, as a rejection of the Italian occupation of Albania and as a saving of their lives.
He himself explained this exile in the extraordinary diary “We, who found salvation in leaving”…! He returns to Albania in October 1945, sought after also by Gjergj Kokoshi and convinced that he had no sin on his back.
The high authorities begged him to announce his candidacy for deputy from the Democratic Front, which he refused. He worked at the Pedagogical School of Tirana, from November 1945 until May 15, 1946, when he was arrested as an “agent of the English.”
What was Mirash Ivanaj’s sin?
The only “sin”… he cut the scholarship on February 6, 1934, at the time he was Minister of Education, to the failing student, Enver Hoxha…! It is said that when Mirash Ivanaj returned to Albania, he was received by Enver Hoxha himself, who with his sharp style tells him: “See how we are receiving you… not like you, who took away my scholarship”.
He could have stayed in Turkey. But he came to build Albania… and was condemned by the court of tinsmiths and provincial ruffians. In this way, Albania lost the “iron minister” of Albanian Education, as the distinguished scholar Lazer Radi has called him. Undoubtedly the greatest Minister of Education in the 113-year history of the Albanian state.
Ironically, at that time, the Minister of Education was one of the executioners of the post-war trials… Bedri Spahiu. Mirash Ivanaj died, killed… and education was “reformed” by Bedri Spahiu… and the “freedom-loving” and “education-loving” people had “sung” for this criminal:
“The enemies tremble
Like a mouse.
They are judged by Bedri Spahiu”
One of these “enemies” was Mirash Ivanaj… and his “crime” was because he loved Albania…! / Memorie.al
