Memorie.al publishes a full letter from former Defense Minister Beqir Balluku to Enver Hoxha, dated September 18, 1974, sent by Roskovec where he initially suffered internment, accused of being “an enemy of the party and the people”. In the full 24 pages of that letter, Balluku explains everything to his former boss, from the war period to the day he was away, away from friends and separated from his family. And with the big mark as “politically executed” he begs Enver and the Party to put their hand into their hearts and give them the opportunity to spend the next few years of their lives with society socialist, giving his contribution even in hard labor… ?!
His name became known during the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War in the first half of the 1940s when he led guerrilla units of the city of Tirana, and later as Commander of the II Attack Brigade. After the war, Balluku would be appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Army with the rank of Major General, replacing General Spiro Moisiu. From that time until his career ended in 1974, Beqir Balluku would hold a number of senior party and state functions, such as: Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, Member of the Political Bureau, and Member of Parliament in all. legislatures. He was regarded as one of Enver Hoxha’s most loyal people until the late 1960s, which would provoke envy and jealousy on the part of Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, who in the future saw himself as de jure and de facto as the successor of Enver Hoxha. Balluku would gain a lot of credentials in Hoxha’s eyes for his gesture of loyalty to the top leadership of the SPL when the latter were in a very delicate political situation at the 81 Party Conference in Moscow, where he himself (Balluku would declare to the Soviet Ambassador to Tirana, Shikin, that; “If an unpleasant surprise came to the Albanian leadership in Moscow, all Russian citizens living in Albania would be executed without warning.” So even for this fact, after breaking up with the Soviets, the figure of Balluku would have seen an immediate increase in political career, up to the most critical moment of the institution that Balluku himself represented, the removal of the ranks of the Albanian army in 1967. The first crack The silence between Balluku and Hoxha would take place in 1967, when the powerful chief of the Counter-intelligence for the Army, Major General Halim Xhelo, would write the famous anonymous letter to Enver Hoxha protesting for the removal of the Albanian army from the rank system. After discovering Xhelo’s letter and imprisonment, Hoxha, and especially Shehu, would see with great suspicion its true authorship, as it was written under Balluku’s nose, and if he was hiding behind Xhelo, at worst he should had been aware of its existence. At least this was alluded to at the time in the corridors of the Ministry of Defense and the Central Committee of the ASP. If that were not enough, the frequent clashes between Beqir Balluku and his deputy Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Petrit Dume, would begin in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dume, which would provoke some meetings of the Political Bureau, especially over this hassle between the two top military figures. So frequent would be the hassle of the Balluku-Dume hassle, that Beqir himself would have asked Enver Hoxha to resign from the post of Minister of Defense in some extraordinary meetings. A thing that was then categorically rejected by Hoxha. Another pivotal moment for Balluk, who seemed to be “filling the cup”, which cast many doubts but for Hoxha-Shehu, would be the visit of Beqir Balluku at the head of a delegation of senior Army exponents to China. in 1972. During this visit, Chinese Prime Minister Chu En Lai would reject the official request of the Albanian state to send military technology materials, making it clear: “No matter how many weapons we give you, Albania cannot stand an attack. military of the Soviet Union. Your best way to resist, is to retreat to the mountains, or as it is called in military language, the “Slide Theory”. You have to create a Balkan (Tirana-Belgrade-Bucharest) anti-Moscow axis ”. Reportedly, security guards rush to report this fact to Albania’s leadership, adding here another mysterious piece of evidence that Beqir Balluku secretly went to the Soviet embassy in Beijing last night and negotiated with the ambassador and KGB chief. China about a handful of its possible statehood in Tirana in co-operation with 25,000 Soviet Spetznaz (State Security indictments). As if all this were not enough, Beqir Balluku would meet incognito at the airport of Romania, Romanian Defense Minister General Ioan Ionita hours before his arrival in Beijing. The details of this meeting have also remained obscure. But just two years after his visit to Beijing, the notorious August 1974 Army activity, which began at King Zog’s villa in Durres, would begin. At that meeting, which lasted two days, according to Enver’s message, Mehmet and Hysni invited all of Balluku’s subordinates to speak and discuss his “hostile activity”. It would be precisely the content of the “Black Theses”, which would cost dearly to the three main figures of the Albanian army; Baqir Balluk, Petrit Dumes and Hito Çako. It is noteworthy that on the day Balluku was declared a “traitor and a coup d’etat”, former Army Counter-intelligence Chief Halim Xhelo serving his sentence in Burrel Prison would mysteriously die in his cell. (It was said that day, he lost hope that he could be released someday with Balluku’s help). The Plenum of August 1974, however, would be the cautionary trial for the military caste, who would only days later feel all the rage of Hoxha, fury that would lead to the death of three a year later. But before that happened, Beqir Balluku was interned in the small town of Roskovec, from where, on September 17, 1974, he would send a long letter to Enver Hoxha, where in 24 pages he would to explain everything to his chief who had served him devoutly since the time of the War. And that letter sealed in an envelope, Balluku entrusted only to his eldest son, Liberation, who brought it to the office of the Letters of Appeal in the Central Committee of the LLP. What is written in that letter, as Enver considered Beqiri’s self-criticism, and Mehmet Shehu’s notes on it, is disclosed through these documents that Memorie.al is publishing in full exclusively on this upcoming dossier, while what is worth the fact is that Beqir himself never learned the truth if that letter came into the hands of Enver Hoxha… ?! And so he must have escaped this life with the great pledge that his boss had not received the letter, otherwise it would have saved at least his life. This is also confirmed by the Balluku family members, who also had and maintained the same version as their father before the letter was discovered.
follows from the previous number
BEQIR BALLUKU LETTER FOR ENVER HOXHA
At the Defense Council meeting on the approval of my theses, I made some minor remarks that were accepted, and shortly after the approval we worked hard to implement and put them to the test of their lives, work results and organizational-combat traditions. achieved in the military and other defense chains according to thesis requirements are well known. I consider it necessary to point out that the Central Committee and Comrade Enver from the outset followed the right path for drafting the theses, we were given schemes for their drafting, and initially Petri was tasked with the task at the head of a task force. , who, after several months of effort, failed to accomplish, at the time Comrade Mehmet presented the finished project, Comrade Enver told me that if we had material available for the assignment, submit it for consideration. At this time I was seeing that the project presented by Comrade Mehmet was a material that addressed at a high political, ideological and military level all the problems of defense, which were actually a military doctrine and that our first group materials, as well as the second group, were not only distant from him, but pale and close-knit, at this time I told Comrade Enver to rely on material presented by Comrade Mehmet, and so he acted. I have always appreciated Comrade Mehmet’s abilities and talents in all fields, including the military, and have valued Enver’s right arm as a companion who has unleashed and dismantled his ideas with supreme talent and spirit. ML in all fields, and in this particular case in the military field, both during the National Liberation War and in the post-liberation period for the strengthening and modernization of the army, until the drafting of the thesis book, I never thought to draw the line of equality. of my abilities limited to those of Mehmet Shehu.
Balluku: We couldn’t design defense theses
As I said above, even though we were given tactical schemes, and the time to design two-task theses, we could not accomplish this task. Seeing the problem in this plan, I have convincingly accepted the theses and adhered to the fact that we could not perform this task because we were not and unable to capture and treat with such a high and principled spirit a circle. such political, ideological and military problems linked and based on the reality of the Albanian theater and reality, but our main task now is to break them down and put them into action in all levels of defense, so I have embarked on a path of decisive advancement. putting them into practice and into the test of life, both in the field of organizing and training combat and tactical-operative, and in the fortified country, certainly in direct relation to the degree of knowledge and mastery of these new methods, were guarded by the classical forms of the great armies, and by dogmatism in their implementation. During the five year period, ie. until the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the ASP when the Political Bureau considered the problem of the army based on the report of the Political Directorate, and its conclusions drawn after consultations on the state of training and combat readiness as well as on the relations of the military. with Petrit, on such issues of method of work, at this meeting I was criticized for pessimism and tendency to accumulate competence, on this basis organizational measures were taken to improve leadership, dismissing myself from numerous links and the Chief of Staff was in charge. I have elaborated on this period in order to point out that besides the shortcomings and weaknesses in the style and method of work during the 5 years of the work of the Defense Council Theses, we have fought against the weaknesses and shortcomings in the process of combat training, both in its relation to the organizational structure of the army and other defense chains, in improving the teaching method and in ensuring the participation of contingents in order to detect significant liberal weaknesses and since the Plenum 12th of the Central Committee, and especially after the 4th Plenum of the CC, this indicator has undergone major positive changes both in its participation and in its provision of staff and material base, a positive impact in this area has also been created. of garrison-based free schools in the country, deploying them on a battalion-group scale.
Balluku: I focused mainly on coastal defense
So without denying my shortcomings and weaknesses at work, combat training is based on the requirements of the Defense Council Theses, with emphasis on the radical improvement of the small sub-divisions and units training, as a basis for training and compacting the army from the formation. small to large. Along with this fair course almost every year, large-scale troop training and large techno-operational and operational-strategic command-staff exercises have been developed and are being developed, because these are binomial and organically linked to each other, because without their parallel progress, the tasks in the war field provided by the Thesis of the Defense Council cannot be fulfilled. The themes of large complex exercises with the participation of voluntary forces and State party organs such as defenses, counterattacks, raids, blockades and extermination of enemy airborne, have always been characterized in the rapid execution of maneuvers of forces and vehicles, parallel to the front. as well as from the depths under the anti-aircraft cover in many parallel routes at night, to the concentration areas or launch bases for counter-attacks and specially prepared launchers. Also during this 5 year period I have been concerned about improving the coverage and better provision of key directions, especially coastal guidance, so I have progressed in relation to the Thesis of the Defense Council until the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the APL, June 1971. The Plenum Proceedings of the 12th Plenum of the CPSU and Comrade Enver and Mehmet’s speeches at this Plenum are a further affirmation and enrichment of Defense Council theses, but I have misunderstood and dealt with these teachings.
Why did this happen?
Although over a 5 year period, ie. until the 12th Plenum of the K.Q. I did not exhibit any open-mindedness or craft any material, I was under the influence of bourgeois-revisionist ideology. In this look, I have been crystallized over and over again in thoughts and concepts that run counter to the theses of the Council of Defense, which erupted shortly after the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee and led me to these grave errors and faults.
Balluku: I walked blindly, I remembered i was fine
In undertaking this elaboration I have walked with the calm awareness that I am allegedly relying on the conclusions of the Plenum and in the name of the new, judging this phenomenon in the wrong positions that had occupied my head, I thought that martial arts more that every other discipline is in dynamic motion and that this phenomenon requires recognition and control and effective measures are timely countermeasures, this path is just and necessary when done within the principles of martial arts and the path is harmful and punishable that I followed who was stuck with foreign concepts I was blindly convinced that I was doing something good and necessary. During 1971-1972 both the first material and the second material were not accepted by friends, I at this time thought that despite the weaknesses and corrections to be made to the material, the new one had difficulty entering and insisted that this material reproduce and in the process give birth to the third material with its incorrect content, throughout this process I have never thought about giving up the positionally-active protection on the throne, I have never thought of leaning in and touching unity at all. in all instances, and especially in the Bureau between Comrade Enver and Mehmet, whom I have kept in every circumstance and situation like the eyes of the brow, or never thought that the book as a whole, of theses, be replaced by a new platform, this one it is the cursory and general judgment of a sick person and the opening of the path and leaving it free to act, the causes in the concrete case, the concepts and foreign liberal worldviews.
The question is why did I go to these mistakes and faults?
The only answer is one, it has been that I, under the influence of bourgeois-revisionist ideology, has thrown out ideas and opinions that revise the essential problems of popular martial arts and that the way in which they are argued in the present case leads to the violation of unity in the Bureau and touching on the other problems I will talk about below. During this time I have not fought a fierce war with my inner world, I admit that my bourgeois-revisionist misconceptions such as liberalism, subjectivism, conceit, low ideological level have led me to revisit the military line of the Party that expresses itself. in the theses of the Council of Defense, and their replacement by principles and norms that change the prescribed character of the defense.
Balluku: We would fight like the Vietnamese, partisan war
As in the first, second and third material, the main topic is the topic of positional-active defense where ideas are put on the forms of its organization and activity, both in the tactical and operational field, the changes anticipated in this material affect problems that constitute the main axis upon which the whole system of theses is built, such as organizational principles, principles and rules of combat in defense, counter-attacks and counter-attacks. The changes envisaged in the third material will inevitably lead to maneuverable combat, especially of the losing forces, and the organic link to art-machine gun forces that cover the given direction because the law of positional-active warfare requires the link Organic defensive fighting in positions, footholds, defense nodes and generations with anticipated and planned activity summarized in the delivery of counterattacks and counterattacks. This essential change is best reflected in the changes envisaged in the third material allegedly in the name of increasing activity and raising the offensive spirit of defense, counterattacks are replaced with strikes and counter-strokes, this is a thick and timeless graft. principles, rules of war in the front and the back, with the war maneuvered without the front in the enemy’s back, as the Vietnamese do today, or how our army will do in the event of an adversity, when fighting in the front is not possible, then switched to the low degree of partisan war. In this regard and the problems that are opposed to the theses by the so-called defense theme “turn the fields into mountains”, where the essential problem is affected and that their change leads to inevitable actions to change all the constituent parts of the Theses that are related and, to each other’s mind, this path would inadvertently lead to the creation of a new thesis platform, a path I had been blindly pursuing until June 1973, convinced that I was doing a good job, after processed and systemized, submitted to the Defense Council for approval.
Balluku: I was not vigilant in defending the principles
It is questionable why I did not stop to see that the principles are being affected here?
Or why was I not vigilant in defending principles?
I could not do this because the pressure of bourgeois-revisionist ideology had overpowered and paralyzed me, I had seen these problems through the eyes of the liberal and the opportunist, so in this case I had lost the true qualities of the communist to defend with vigilance and discipline to iron the line of the Party, but I have walked this path with the mind that I know these things and that these new elements at the present stage are necessary for our protection. As mentioned above, I have considered Petriti’s objections to the second material as matters of reluctance and reluctance to introduce the new. At the end of the third material that was delivered to my friends 40 days before the directors meeting, except for Hito and Sadik, who told me they had remarks, even Hito told me I gave it to Rahman, Comrade Petri didn’t tell me anything about it material, other than the letter he sent me the night before the meeting for remarks, that this material be canceled in contravention of the Theses. Why didn’t I put this material in close circle with my friends for discussion and remarks? Why did I fall into this mistake which is an elementary rule? I have fallen into this error because I have been led by the erroneous view that Petriti was embracing the young with difficulty and opposing the a priori without arguing and grounding his thoughts and that looking at this problem in the board of directors would be objective and a circle for correction and systemizing material on all aspects of weapons and services, remarks they made in writing the night before the meeting, this is not only the wrong method, but also a violation of the unity of thought and command action, as opposed opinions should to be elected and elected at the highest instance and not at meetings and consultations as in the present case.
Balluku: Before the meeting, I canceled Petri Dume’ theses
So the material with Petrit’s signal the night before the meeting that he was in opposition to the theses I canceled and at the same moment I took the material and, looking at it, I noticed that the friends’ remarks were:
With the fighting lineup
Counter-attacks, counter-attacks
Mobile war according to conversation with Hito
On some formulations and dynamics of the war in defense, etc. In this asset I raised the problem that the design of materials should only be done in accordance with the theses of the Defense Council, so I called this material canceled and immediately sat down and wrote the fourth material myself, in this material I deliberately talk about mobile warfare is a form practiced by countries that have large territories and large military forces and is a form practiced in our conditions. Why I closed this issue so simply, without stopping to critically examine and analyze the causes and circumstances that led me to inspire the design of this material which I replaced with the fourth material, after Petrit’s signal, even the written remarks of the directors in the ministry archive, together with the material I sang in June 1974, when the matter came up after meeting Enver. As in meeting with Comrade Mehmet and especially Comrade Enver, I have adhered to the simplistic view that I do not violate theses and that old materials are canceled and unrelated to me, that they are unreadable and that my material is material fourth, without recognizing the fact that the ideas cast in these materials were inspired by me, so they were in my head./Memorie.al
follows tomorrow
