Dashnor Kaloçi
Part six
Memorie.al publishes some unknown documents issued by the Central State Archive in Tirana (fund of the former Central Committee of the ALP), which belong to a voluminous file with the initials “Top secret”, where there is a correspondence between the leaders of the communist regime of that time, such as: Hysni Kapo, Mehmet Shehu, Ramiz Alia, Kadri Hazbiu, Hekuran Isai, etc., who through various reports and reports compiled by them, inform the leadership of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ALP, regarding the difficult political and economic situation that our country was going through, before and after the breakdown of political, economic and military relations with the People’s Republic of China. Full correspondence between the main leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Directorate of State Security, the Ministry of People’s Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Party and Executive Committees of the districts, as well as the Branches of Internal Affairs in the cities of for positive and negative conversations and comments made by different people, such as intellectuals, workers, the military and the cooperative peasantry, as well as by “declassed elements and enemies”, regarding the situation in which the country was after the breakdown of relations official of Albania, with the People’s Republic of China and whatever happened after that with the small communist country of the Balkans, which propagated that ‘it would build socialism, only with its own forces’ ?!
In the beginning of 1978, as a result of the deterioration of the official relations of communist Albania with the People’s Republic of China, which had started to take its first rift since the beginning of the ’70s when Mao Zedong’s People’s China with sides of the “ping-pong policy” began to approach the US and received in Beijing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and then President Nixon, it seems that official Tirana “set the alarm”. Among other things, this is clear from a large number of official documents of that time, which contain the “Top Secret” correspondence of the Central Committee of the ALP, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as and Party and Executive Committees in the districts and Branches of Internal Affairs, which clearly reflect not only the official position of the senior leadership of the ALP headed by Enver Hoxha, but in general that of the various strata of society Albanians, (intellectuals, workers, cooperative peasantry, military, schoolchildren and students, communists, “declassed elements and enemies”, etc.), to the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government, regarding the immediate severance of political relations, economic, and military by it on July 28, 1978.
Thus, the former closest ally of official Tirana since the early 1960s, Mao Zedong’s communist China, would suddenly become its biggest ideological enemy, after the US and the Soviet Union. This is clear in the lines of these documents that bear the logo “Top secret”, where there is great fear and deep paranoia that has gripped the communist regime and the highest leaders of its leadership, from: Enver Hoxha, Hysni Kapo, Mehmet Shehu, Ramiz Alia, Kadri Hazbiu, Hekuran Isai, etc., down to the base of that power with local government officials, who transmitted that anxiety and insecurity to the common people, school students, workers, and up to the cooperative peasantry.
These documents, which for the first time see the light of publication by Memorie.al, are a clear picture of the situation and the honorable situation in which the communist regime and official Tirana were at that time, especially after the “Open Letter” to the Chinese leadership. , who accused him of “high treason against the course and line of Marxism-Leninism.” In the context of the development of events, where the top leadership of the communist regime, all raised in alarm, has mobilized all state machinery and its structures, headed by the State Security, to keep the situation under full control. And mainly by surveying her political opponents, whom she considered as “declassed elements and class enemies”, which occupies a key place in these reports-information, where the State Security bodies, through the Minister of Internal Affairs , Kadri Hazbiu and his deputies, such as Feçor Shehu, Rexhep Kolli, etc., inform in detail the senior leadership, mainly Hysni Kapon (member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee of the ALP, which covered the organs of the ‘Dictatorship of proletariat ‘) for everything that the “enemy of the class” spoke and commented on, in every district of the country, as well as the positive comments made by them.
This and others, look best in these archival documents with the initials “Top secret”, where the former “Chinese brothers”, who at that time worked in Albania, as staff and specialists in various industrial works from the South to the North of the country, such as: Metallurgical Plant in Elbasan, Ferro-chrome Plant in Burrel, Paper Factory in Lezha, Pashaliman Military Base, Tank and Artillery Plant in Shish-Tufina, Combat Ammunition Plant in Elbasan Doctors, Weapons Production Plant in Poliçan, etc., have already become “agents, saboteurs and conspirators” and are intercepted everywhere and at every step. The equipment, armaments and all military technology, starting from tanks, planes, submarines, torpedoes, heavy artillery, etc., with which the People’s Republic of China had supplied communist Albania for free for years, were already “severely defective” and sabotaged by “Chinese revisionists”.
Such a thing, the “synoptic picture” that the communist regime was going through before and after the breakup with China, was identical, had been seen several times over the years, when official Tirana, led by Enver Hoxha, decided to sever relations with states that until at the last moment it had its closest “allies”, such as the Anglo-Americans, Tito’s Yugoslavia and Stalin’s Soviet Union, and those who succeeded him, such as Khurshov, Brezhnev, and so on.
The series of “friends-enemies” began with the Anglo-American missions, who until they were expelled from the country in November 1946, were “liberators and true contributors to the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War”, and then returned to countries and states most hated and unwanted for the Albanian communists. The same would happen to the Yugoslavs, who when deported from Albania in 1948-49 were considered “revisionists and agents of the West”. To continue with the “Soviet brothers of father Stalin”, the closest ally of communist Albania who after 1961, were considered by official Tirana, as “the most dangerous revisionists the world had known until then”. And this thing would be repeated identically with the Chinese, which was officially made public, that hot end-July of 1978, when after the “Open Letter” of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ALP and the Council of To the Ministers of the People’s Republic of Albania, sent to the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China, China withdrew from Albania all its specialists, civilian and military?!
Continued from the previous issue
Report of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Defense, sent to the Central Committee of the ALP, on the problems with Chinese specialists at the Pashaliman military base
ALBANIAN LABOR PARTY Secret
MINISTRY PARTY COMMITTEE
POPULAR PROTECTION
Tirana, on 20.7.1978
No. 660/1
Subject; Information; on the stay of Chinese specialists in the Porto-Palermo facility
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF ALP
Comrade GAFUR ÇUÇI
Group of instructors for party organizational matters in the Army
Tirana
In the end they said that starting from the causes that come from above, from your friends, we want to leave from here. Our friends after talking to the Ministry, were told that this is your wish? They replied: yes, it is our wish (keeping our heads down).
On 9.7.1978 after the conditions of transport were created they left Palermo. During the 8th and 9th they did not sleep, but were busy burning documents and other materials. At the time of their departure, on the morning of July 9, 1978, some of them wept and apologized for everything to the cooks, saying, “You have been kind to us and have served us well,” “forgive us. “We are not to blame, others are to blame.” In the end, when they left, everyone honored with a fist, saying in Albanian, “goodbye”.
From our side, the comrades were instructed to check in detail in their premises and from the information they have given us, it turns out that everything was in order in their hotels. In one room they had left the collection of the newspaper ‘Zhenminzhibao’ as well as the collection of information of the Chinese embassy in the Albanian language, which were taken by the comrades of the Detachment.
During the trip to Tirana, they were accompanied by two friends and during the trip they did not talk at all.
SECRETARY OF THE PARTY COMMITTEE
MINISTRY OF PEOPLE DEFENSE
ALI VUKATANA
Report of the Party Committee of the Military Department 1460 of Pashaliman, for the Central Committee of the ALP
ALBANIAN LABOR PARTY Top secret
DEPARTMENT PARTY COMMITTEE MILITARY NO. 1460
No. 108… .prot. Tirana, on March 10, 1978
Subject: On the condition of torpedoes coming from China
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE ALBANIAN LABOR PARTY
Comrade Hysni Kapo
Tirana
In January 1978, from China, in the interest of the Naval Combat Fleet, 30 pieces of torpedoes came for the ‘Torque Squadrons’, which we distributed proportionally to the bases (10 pieces in Shengjin, 10 pieces in Durrës, 10 pieces in Saranda).
From the assemblies and controls so far, it results that: on the whole this contingent has come with numerous technical defects and deficiencies in material parts. Thus, at the Saranda Military Base, during the assembly of the torpedoes, in the main car of the two torpedoes, pieces were found, which is contrary to the rules; in the other two torpedoes it was found that the hydrostatic apparatus was leaking, which if not adjusted causes the torpedo to suffocate during firing; while the friends of Durrës have ascertained that the main car of a torpedo and the hydrostatic apparatus, are welded.
During the assembly it was found that some parts are missing, such as: high pressure air washers, as well as loose parts and other technical deficiencies were found.
All of this shows that the torpedoes must be old and used, which before they were launched, underwent a quick overhaul, focusing their attention only on their painting.
We have taken measures to not only identify all these flaws and defects, but also to eliminate them, putting every torpedo in combat readiness.
We have also thought that 3 torpedoes (one from each base) will pass into full control near the Pashaliman Plant to see and better control the technical condition and draw conclusions and tasks, to act on the latter, to place them on readiness. Our possibilities are complete.
Near the Pashaliman Plant we will send for general control and placement in full readiness even 60 pieces of inert strikes, of these torpedoes, after years, the strikers have come to us with major technical
Defects, which so far we have 80% in readiness and proceed according to a certain plan. Even for this our possibilities and abilities are complete.
We will inform you about their final assembly and control, as well as about the problems that will arise.
In our five-year plans for military problems, we have also provided for the production of military torpedoes in the country.
SECRETARY OF THE PARTY COMMITTEE REP 1460
BEQIR GERBI
Hysni Kapos’s note on the report of the Committee of the Party of the Military Department 1460 of Pashaliman
Everything you can expect from the Chinese. Now and then we have everything clear what they are. Bear in mind that not a bad element harms our armaments, finding pretext that they were sent sabotaged by the Chinese. Vigilance must be strengthened everywhere. Talking to friends.
Hysni Kapo
10.4.1978
Letter from the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, Veli Llakaj, to Hysni Kapon
Comrade Hysni
I am sending you information from the Tanker Directorate on the control of tanks coming from the People’s Republic of China after 1975, according to the order given by Comrade Mehmet, after some of the tanks arrived in 1977, some shortcomings were ascertained.
A copy was also sent to Comrade Mehmet.
Tirana, on April 8, 1978
With respect
Veli LLakaj
Comrade Veli was ordered by Comrade Hysni, on dt. 14.4.1978
Report-information of the Tank Directorate at the Ministry of Defense, sent by Hysni Kapos
I N F O R M A T I O N
ABOUT
COMPLETION OF CONTROL OF WAR TANKS COMING FROM
RP OF CHINA AFTER 1975
Based on the task set, in the first quarter of 1978, the control of tanks coming from the People’s Republic of China after 1975 was organized and carried out.
At the end of the work it turns out that:
- In the tank armor; there are small cracks and poor quality welding.
- In moving parts of tanks; there are welding defects and cracks in some balance limiters.
- In engines and their systems; leaked from a guanion of the engine head, while some tank had oil tap consumption and two spare oil tanks, drilled from the top.
- In the ball stabilization system and in the electrical system; there is a lack of copying of details, lack of oil in the stabilizer as well as those released in the interconnection system.
- In tank armaments; there are details used and latch use arm malfunction in a tank.
- Signs of old paint have been found on some tanks (their tactical numbers appear).
- There is also a lack in completing the tanks with tools and instruments (fiso switches, etc.)
- From what was seen, during the inspections, we conclude that from the tanks coming from China in recent years, there are also details and joints used. Measures were taken to avoid the identified shortcomings.
The tanks are in full technical readiness. /Memorie.al
Tirana, on April 7, 1978
DIRECTOR OF THE TANK DIRECTORY
(ALEKO KOKA)
