Dashnor Kaloçi
The thirtieth part
Memorie.al/publishes some archival documents extracted from the Central State Archive in Tirana (the fund of the former PPSh Central Committee), which belong to the year 1982, where there is a file with relations, reports, instructions, information, letters, minutes of meetings of the Political Bureau, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, etc., regarding the “hostile activity” of the member of the Political Bureau and the Minister of People’s Defense, Kadri Hazbiu, as well as some of his closest collaborators, such as : Feçor Shehu, Mihallaq Ziçishti, Llambi Peçini, Zoi Themeli, etc., who were accused by Enver Hoxha, as “the main collaborators of the police agent Mehmet Shehu”. In the file in question, there is also a document with Kadri Hazbi’s self-criticism, dated September 27, 1982, sent to Enver Hoxha and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PPSh, regarding “his poor work at the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the lack of vigilance, for not detecting hostile groups, all of which the party and Comrade Enver had discovered”. In this document, the former head of the Ministry of the Interior writes: “From the beginning of September, when I was getting my hair cut, a driver who works with the transport lines abroad came to me and told me that, returning from abroad, the drivers they had spoken badly about my fate. I didn’t ask him what he had been told, but I told him to go and report it where it should be. He added in more detail that he had spoken to the companion who stays with me, which I ordered him to report. He told me that he had done this. I don’t know whether I told him about this case or not, friend Hekuran. After a few days when I returned from a 3-4 day service, my family told me for the first time that they are taking us on the phone and so on, in meetings they ask about you, where are you and how are you, because we have heard things not good, as if we have escaped as a family abroad, as if I have been dismissed from my position as Minister of Defense, etc. I told you that anyone who asks about us, you say we are fine and don’t engage in further conversation. I emphasize that these things have spread so much that even one of the workers who serves in my family left without expecting that something is happening with me and my family. All these things, I told my friend Ramiz, together with my opinion that there is not enough fight against these harmful slogans and that they are spreading from Tirana in the first place”. Likewise, the document in question also contains the minutes of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PPSh, held on October 8, 1982, where the “hostile activity of Kadri Hazbi” from the period after the war when he was in the position of Chief of Army Security, which has brought fierce debates, they all discussed, starting from: Adil Çarçani, Hekuran Isai, Simon Stefani, Manush Muftiu, Rita Marko, Prokop Murra, Photo Çami, Lenka Çuko, Pali Miska, Besnik Bekteshi, Muho Asllani and Llambi Gegprifti. Even the debates and strong tones in that meeting were not absent between Enver Hoxha and Kadri Hazbiu, which continued throughout the meeting, for several sessions. But for more about these, we know the document, which is published for the first time by Memorie.al
Continues from last issue
The document with the minutes of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PPSh, held on October 8, 1982, where the “hostile activity” of Kadri Hazbi was analyzed
ALBANIAN LABOR PARTY TOP SECRET
CENTRAL COMMITTEE
RECORDS
OF THE MEETING OF THE POLITICAL BUREAU OF THE PPS CENTRAL COMMITTEE ON OCTOBER 8, 1982
Agenda:
- Discussion on the serious words of friend Kadri Hazbiu
- Approval of the report on transport to the plenum
All members of the Political Bureau are present at the meeting.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEETING
The meeting was opened and led by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the PPS, Comrade Enver Hoxha.
Discussion on the serious crimes of comrade Kadri Hazbiu.
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: Well, this can be seen even today and with Kadriu himself, here in front of the Political Bureau.
COMRADE HEKURAN ISAI: Yes, yes, his attitude is visible even today here in front of the Political Bureau. This is created by the attitude that this one here is holding today. The situation, of course, and with the great help that the Central Committee is giving, will be corrected. Throughout this period that the hostile activity has been taking place, you, Kadri, have been in charge of this familiarity. I don’t want to go on any longer, but I don’t believe that this is just a lack of vigilance on your part, that’s why you should go deeper into this issue, as your friends ordered, with whose opinions I completely agree.
COMRADE LENKA CUKO: The party and Comrade Enver, have taught us how to wage the war against the elements that work to strike the straight line of our Marxist-Leninist Party. After carefully reading the self-criticism made by friend Kadri and I do not agree with him, because I did not understand anything that he wanted to clarify. He goes through the problems clearly and with their handling you let you understand that he wants you to blame others, saying that the Central Committee knows, I have told the corresponding secretary of the Central Committee, etc.
However, these do not hold, because this is shown by the documents we heard here today. The Central Committee was completely unaware of these problems. The presented material does not explain the political and ideological causes of this weak and very hostile work that has been developed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the entire time that Comrade Kadri has been minister and it has not been a little, but almost 30 years in a row. It does not explain the synthesis of the problems raised by Comrade Kadri, in the material that was presented to us at the Political Bureau.
The Party organizations, when they got acquainted with the speech of Comrade Enver, of the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee “On the synoptic picture of Mehmet Shehu’s agency activity”, asked many questions. Comrade Kadri Hazbiu, has known and has been made aware of the hostile activity of Beqir Balluku, Abdyl Këllez, and his company. Many questions were also asked by the common people, and this is where the logic of the problem leads.
Comrade Enver, at the meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee in February 1967, said: “All employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and of the branches of internal affairs, must have the best virtues of communists, have clearly the Party line, to put politics in the foreground, and to understand that their work is a political work”. Comrade Kadri, you didn’t understand this lesson of Comrade Enver, that’s why in the ministry you ran as you say and in the self-criticism you directed to the Political Bureau, you didn’t ensure the correct understanding of the Party’s orientations, for the implementation of its line, for the discovery, unmasking, and strike, of anti-party enemy elements.
Not wanting to follow the Party’s line, you accepted your friends to surround you, to pressure you and their wrong thoughts, to influence you not to act against those who hit the Party’s sound line. This attitude did not throw you into the war to influence them, in order that all the employees of the internal affairs bodies together, fight for the implementation of this line. You say that both your superiors who led you, Mehmet Shehu and Beqir Balluku, as well as your subordinates, Feçor Shehu, Mihallaq Ziçishti, Llambi Peçini, Zoi Themeli, etc., were anti-party elements.
What about you, how come you never understood even a little, their wrong thoughts and actions, and you denounced them to the Party?! Even today, since these wrong thoughts and actions were discovered by the Party and Comrade Enver, you try to emerge as a hero after the battle. This, I think, leaves much to be doubted by the very treatment you give to the problem. You knew that the pressure that Mehmet Shehu and his friends exerted was not directed only at you, but at all State Security employees.
Then how did you stay so cool to this pressure, when you saw that your friends and collaborators were playing with the fortunes of the Party line and the revolution won with so much blood and sacrifice. And this I think, it is not as you explain it, that you have fallen unconsciously into these mistakes, which are not small. And if these had not been discovered, they would have cost the Party and the People heavily. You have never lacked the courage to raise issues as you think.
As long as I have been here in the Political Bureau, you have constantly discussed, criticized your comrades, but you lacked the courage that had to do with the protection of the straight line of the Party and the fate of socialism in Albania, and of this you have been conscious. In your self-criticism, you list a number of issues related to the security work method, Mehmet Shehu’s arrogance and prepotency, with opinions that you say were different from yours, and which favored these enemies to hide from the Party in all these 40 years. Party orders: Trust and Check.
You know this motto very well in theory, but in practice, according to your self-criticism, it turns out that in the presentation of the cases, you were deceived by the disloyalty of Mehmet Shehu and Beqir Balluk, as the first cases judged by your comrades. But I ask you, from which friends?! Central Committee, I don’t know anything. Then the answer is self-explanatory, from Mehmet Shehu’s bosses?! Since you didn’t miss the opportunity to raise your issues with Comrade Enver, then why didn’t you raise your concerns about the smooth running of the Security affairs?!
Or did you not want to break the familiarity created in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to the detriment of the Party?! Regarding the statement you made, that you viewed the insurance work with concern, I ask why?! That the hostile activity of the anti-party elements is not revealed?! Or were you worried about not hitting the Party line?! I think that you, you were worried about money. It was you and the other leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who violated the principles of the Party. You have known many weaknesses in the character of subordinates, which conflicted with the norms and principles of the Party.
Then how did you not have the courage to raise these in the basic organization where you were a part or in the collective, to criticize your comrades, and not allow the Party’s line to be damaged?! How could you not achieve the goal, when you saw that some cadres of the Ministry of Internal Affairs such as Zoi Themeli, Halim Xhelo, Llambi Peçini, Panajot Plaku, etc., should no longer be there because you had smelled the flour?! I think that there is no way that all your superiors and subordinates are enemies and you would not have known at all.
With these you want to throw mud on Comrade Hysni and the Central Committee of the Party, which no one accepts, because they are all baseless. I also do not agree with the opinion you expressed in your self-criticism that you were also influenced by the opinion outside the ministry for some friends. And what opinion?! The opinion of particular persons or the opinion of the Party?! And which opinion do you support?! That the Party teaches us to support the opinion of the Party, and not the opinion of those who fight to discriminate and hit its line.
In your self-criticism, you say that you participated in the trial of the enemy Teme Sejko. As he himself said, he started to open up and tell you about the Yugoslav and Greek agencies, so he started to unravel, but someone from the ministry told him not to talk. With this, you revealed a problem to us, for which you need to give an explanation. The same thing happened with the trial of the coup group of Beqir Balluk and Abdyl Këllez, with company. This means that you have not been honest in front of the Party to tell it, and especially Comrade Enver, everything, especially about those problems that were directly related.
I think that in Comrade Kadri, a pronounced arrogance has been cultivated, because having stayed so many years in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; you thought that you are very capable and hardly anyone can be found to replace you. In the ministry that you led, there was sick familiarity, the ego and the compliments that you gave to others, as he himself points out in his self-criticism, did this so that he would not see what the enemies were doing, if he himself was inside with them.
The self-satisfaction and euphoria of the cadres of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, has been cultivated even below, through the Internal Branches in the districts, the liberalism emphasized in the demand of the account in the Security bodies, the weakness in the development of criticism and self-criticism, has made the comrades who have worked in the State Security bodies to call themselves immune from mistakes.
They did not take into account Comrade Enver’s message at the meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, which I mentioned a little earlier, according to which in order to fight familiarity, it is necessary to find the causes, one of which must be found in the spirit of the guild , to the unfair opinion that internal affairs bodies are a closed special department, to the idea that those who work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and its subordinate bodies are the best people who do not make mistakes, but even when they do they are still good, and everything can be forgiven them, and other wrong thoughts.
I draw lessons from this meeting of the Political Bureau and promise that I will be vigilant to strike as little as possible the actions related to the violation of Party norms, to consistently defend the Party’s line and Comrade Enver’s teachings.
COMRADE RAMIZ ALIA: In almost all districts and in most grassroots organizations, the question has been asked: What responsibility does Comrade Kadri have regarding the hostile activity of Mehmet Shehu’s group?! This question that we asked at the meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee is legal, because Comrade Kadri has worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for 30 or so years, first as Deputy Minister and since 1954, as Minister.
Here it is not a matter of trusting or not trusting a comrade, but of defending the Party line and clarifying a certain situation. The Secretariat of the Central Committee asked Comrade Kadri to reflect on his work and responsibility, and to speak to the Party with an open heart. Has friend Kadri done this in his self-criticism?! I will say that from the beginning I am unhappy with it. Kadri’s self-criticism, as well as the explanations he gave here at the Bureau, is unacceptable.
They lack sincerity, openness, and the words in it are as required, and the thoughts arranged with a goal, to hide the truth, to minimize the responsibilities, to justify and protect themselves. In his self-criticism, Kadriu does not make the necessary efforts to help the Party in these important moments. Of course, this does not allow him to discover the mistakes in his work, he tends to mitigate them, looking for mitigating circumstances, prevents him from making a fair analysis of the actions that were carried out contrary to the interests of the Party and of the State, in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
This tendency leads Kadri to say, “I don’t remember this thing”, or “I should have discussed this with my friends”, even in those cases when the facts are contradictory. In this way, as in the past, he also accuses “fellow Secretaries of the Central Committee who covered the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the cadre”, why they did not correctly evaluate the cadres who were camouflaged enemies in this ministry, and who have kept it hidden from Kadri, and that Feçor Shehu has spoken about the moral side, and that the latter has accused Kadri of guilt since the time of Koci Xoxes.
Of course, with such maneuvers, which aim to hide the truth, and make Kadri out of the blue and innocent, the Political Bureau is not clarified. What do the comrades Secretaries of the Central Committee do here (and I believe that the word here is for Comrade Rita), when it is known that neither Mihallaq Ziçishti, nor Maqo Çomo, nor Llambi Peçin, nor Feçor Shehu, nor Gani Kodra, has found them elevated Comrade Rita, nor any of the Secretaries of the Central Committee?!
All of these are the product of Koci Xoxes, put into service as agents by Mehmet Shehu and whom you friend Kadri, when you were a minister, praised and proposed for ranks and decorations, had and kept as key collaborators key cadres in the State Security bodies. You even nominated Feçor, none other than you, for minister. And it’s not true that you didn’t know anything, that there were words about it.
I am reminding you of a letter from Vullnet Thanasi from 1975, and I have this letter here, which talks not only about the immoral attitudes of Feçor Shehu, but also about his dubious political relations with enemies, such as: Sami Muhameti, Andrea Manço, who were implicated in the conspiracy of Beqir Balluk and Abdyl Këllez. You have read this letter of Vullnet Thanasi and even made notes on it, which are in the text.
So you complain in vain, that the Party has not kept anything hidden from you, not even the accusation of Feçor from 1948, where it talks about crimes committed by you since the time of Koci Xoxes, if you didn’t know there is none importance, because the Party did not take any measures against you. On the contrary, he made you Deputy Minister. But we have the right to ask: Why did you cover Feçor’s guilt and responsibilities?! Why didn’t you go to the end of the alerts that Vullnet Thanasi said, but together with Bato Karafilin you dressed them as gossip?! Memorie.al
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