Dashnor Kaloçi
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.
BEQIR BALLUKU LETTER FOR ENVER HOXHA
Central Committee of the PPSH
Comrade Enver
I address this letter to the CC after nearly two months of completing the objectively and patiently reviewing of the M-L of my mistakes and blame for enforcing and defending the Party’s line in the sector where I worked. I consider it necessary from the outset to point out that the consideration of my case on the basis of ML analyzes in the Political Bureau and the Central Committee Plenum, as well as the correct measures taken in relation to the extent of my errors, blame and attitudes towards theirs at the time, are well-founded and well-deserved measures on my part. For all this hard work, for all the efforts made and inspired by high partisanship, to analyze and sift through ML principled problems and to care to the end to heal and lend a hand to the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer, as has been fully done in my case, commits and puts me in office to thank the Political Bureau, the Central Committee and Comrade Enver, and at the same time apologize for all the trouble I have caused to the Party. I sincerely say now that I am politically fired, separated from the bosom of the two most expensive things of my life, the Party and my people, which I have enthusiastically and decisively devoted my energies and being to, and have dreamed of walking in this noble path to the end of life, to the grave, I say now that I have been separated from the family I created in the Party era, and that I have dreamed of being spotless in the bosom of our socialist society, how in the analysis of the Political Bureau, the CSL Central Committee asset and plenum and the assertion of my mistakes and blame, it has not happened because I thought this was the best way and method to defend or fear of measures, but if, despite the clarity and ML argument of the analysis, my ill conscience has not let me see the causes and circumstances of my being in opposition to our line htarakes of the Intentional Hostile Labor Party, which I have aimed at breaking unity in the Bureau, between Comrade Enver and Mehmet, who have worked on the design of a new thesis platform, all of which have fallen to me like a bomb and at first they have created a great psychological blur. After meeting the Bureau in this situation I have been active after 14 days, deeply convinced that my misdeeds and faults will be punished severely because they belong to the Party and not to persons, and I have absolutely hoped no more protection. little by any comrade, being in this state I deliberately at this meeting of the leading army cadres for such a delicate problem, I did not express the reservations I had in my head, but promised to speak at the Plenium.
Balluku: I had bourgeois-revisionist concepts
So throughout the analysis I have been subject to the subjective thinking that I have undertaken the elaboration of a theme based on the conclusions of the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the ASP on the dissemination and enrichment of theses. In my shallow self-criticism at the Bureau, I have acknowledged that I am the inspiration for these materials as well as the errors highlighted in the analysis, and for my stance in opposition to the line of hostile work aimed at breaking unity in the Bureau, I held the view that such qualities and qualities have never been in my character, throughout my life in the Party, so they cannot be today, from these revisionist bourgeois concepts I have been described from the beginning of the analysis to the conclusion of the my issue in the Plenum.
This turbulent ideological mood has led me to stay stubbornly ahead of M-L analysis and even the questions of friends that were helpful to me, to answer what I say to say what you say. As for my mistakes and blame, and especially for their negative attitudes towards them, I was aware that punitive measures would be severe against me.
Balluku: Now my life as a militant is broken
Now that my life as a revolutionary and militant has been tragically cut off and exclusively blamed for my guilt, in order to ease my conscience and keep myself in this state as I am outside of the Party inseparable fire of patriotism against the cause of the Party and of the people, that despite all the mistakes and grievous wrongs I have done, even in this small part of my life I will never line myself up against them, but I will cling to that good part with my nails and teeth. of my life spent in the service of the people and the Party, and I will condemn and disgust and disgust its bad parts. Since my faults and wrongs are related to some important principle problems of popular martial arts, I would first like to point out that after the liberation of the country, under the leadership of Comrade Enver, prioritized over all other state sectors. , began the work of transforming and modernizing our army from a partisan army into a regular army, whose task at the given historical moment was not the liberation of the country, but the protection of the victories of the revolution and the popular power in force against the aggressor with regular military power. To accomplish this task, the Party prepared the staff, provided the material basis and, in relation to human contingents and equipment, drafted the defense strategy and plans which have been developed and refined from time to time to this day. Throughout this period under the leadership of the Party I, with my friends, with flaws and weaknesses, have given my simple contribution. It is worth pointing out that our regulations prior to the release of the Defense Council’s theses on front and rear warfare precluded and did not address withdrawal even by order as a combat phenomenon in both tactical and operational field, while for operations crossing into the enemy’s backyard when fighting on the front was impossible at all.
Balluku: I fell out of sobriety at military mistakes
In my 1966 custom instructions a 25-page material was elaborated called Sliding Theory, which was rejected by the consulting firm, but moving away from regulations that were then a translation of Soviet regulations, I fall into error in dealing with military problems, this fact speaks to the precision of dealing with these problems in terms of specifying our country and the military. This material today and in the future at the level of military development and military thinking is of no use at all, this material together with a small thesis elaboration model, according to the Defense Council scheme, developed by a group jobs at that time were left in my home safe, amidst the old Plan Commission materials, which I handed over to Comrade Hito. The emergence of the Council of Defense theses in 1967 is a landmark event because they are a powerful weapon in the military’s hands, they are the embodiment of the Party’s military line and the teachings of Comrade Enver both during the national liberation war and during the period. of liberation.
Balluku: Enver’s theses should have been our orientation
High-level ML treatment of political-military problems, determination of factors that will act temporarily on the enemy’s side and continuously on our side, as well as defining forms of combat and operation, which are included in initially building and activating strategic defenses. positionally-active and in the aftermath of counter-offensive and offensive for the destruction of the enemy are not only convincing principles that a small country like our country can withstand and break the aggressor or coalition of aggressors, but the only secure form of defense. place in our conditions. In this view of folk art martial arts has an Albanian individuality and is an enrichment, further systematization and development of martial thought, the theses of the Defense Council are paths and paths broken by the Party and Comrade Enver to defend the socialism and dictatorship of the proletariat in the Albania, so I have appreciated, understood and accepted these project theses in 1967./Memorie.al
follows tomorrow
