Memorie.al publishes some documents from the fund of the former Central Committee of the ALP with some minutes marked “secret” where it comes to the meeting of the Politburo held on 2 and 3 July 1974 on the topic “ACTIVITY DANGEROUS AND ENEMY OF BEQIR BALLUKU”, where Enver Hoxha and the Politburo started the first criticism and accusations against the Minister of Defense Beqir Balluku, regarding the preparation of the “Theses of the Defense Council”. All the accusations made against Balluk by Enver and the “friends of the Bureau” such as Hysni Kapo, Ramiz Alia, Manush Myftiu, Rita Marko, etc., and how did Beqiri respond to them iri.?!
DANGEROUS AND ENEMY ACTIVITY OF BEQIR BALLUK
Discussion at the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ALP
July 2-3, 1974
This meeting lasted two days. The Political Bureau of the Central Committee discussed vividly the material “On some important issues related to the situation under the leadership of the Ministry of People’s Defense”. Opening the meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha said: “We are holding this meeting of the Politburo specially to examine some very important problems for the fate of the homeland, which have to do with the Party line in the army. As you have seen in the material we have sent you, one of the issues we were covering was that an organizational problem related to the leadership structure of the ministry was discussed in the Ministry of National Defense. For this problem this leadership was divided in two, one part had an opinion, the other side thought differently. To be honest, as soon as I read this report of the Political Directorate, I was revolted, because it was left to be understood as if the issue was allegedly raised in the form of an academic discussion for the good of the work, while I thought that other non-intentional issues were hidden here good. However, these critical and dangerous issues, as you saw in the material, came out later, in the meeting for consultation that Comrade Hysni had with another, with the three main cadres of the Ministry of Defense, comrades Beqir, Petrit and Hito. At that meeting, Beqiri, all nervous and revolted, threw his fist on the table and asked Comrade Hysni that the Central Committee of the Party should put an end to these issues. That is why today we are fulfilling this wish for him. But already, this is not only the wish of Comrade Beqir, in the first place this is the wish of the Politburo, which has been charged by the Central Committee of the Party to defend the Marxist-Leninist line in all directions and especially for this problem so vital, such as the defense of the Marxist-Leninist line in our army. Therefore, comrades, the discussion that we will have at this meeting of the Politburo has an important value. For this reason, I ask my comrades, first of all comrades Beqir, Petrit and Hito, to show themselves at the right height of the leaders, not to waste time with the Politburo, but to clarify it fully and honestly… It is the duty to spare the leadership questions, to come before them, to speak openly here, based strongly on the Marxist-Leninist norms of the Party. We all know that the leadership of the Party, throughout its life, has encountered from time to time in wrong actions, even many times hostile, but all these she has studied with great care and attention, has judged. with maturity, without fervor and only then did he decide with Marxist-Leninist responsibility and justice. These comrades, to whom we ask today to give us clarifications, know well the straight line of the Party, know its norms, they also have cleared the great love and respect that the comrades of the leadership nurture for each other, of course, while these stand on the right Marxist-Leninist path. They also recognize the inflexibility and rigor of the Party leadership when it comes to defending the interests of the people, the homeland and the Party. I have the issue that in your exhibition, friends, the three of you, be as clear and explicable as possible, speak as communists, so that we too are given the opportunity to judge with objectivity and maturity and to make the most appropriate decisions. in the interest of defending the Party line, in order, in the first place, to have the army, as always, and to make it really stronger and stronger, steely, as the people and the Party want. Since the issue is about a problem of great importance, I think we should not be constrained in terms of extending the time of discussions, let the peers freely express all the views and issues they intend to address and for as long as they want to wish. So, let’s get started. I think that first Comrade Beqir will speak, comrades Petrit and Hito will also speak, then the rest of us will say our point of view. From the beginning of his discussion, Beqir Balluku tried not to tell the Politburo the truth about the weaknesses observed in the implementation of the Party military line, for the purposes of the antitheses that had been secretly prepared to the Central Committee of the Party, against the Council Theses. of Defense etc. For these reasons, the comrades of the Politburo tried to help him with questions and advice, so that he could open up to the Party.
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: We are here in the Politburo, comrades, these we are discussing are very delicate problems, they have to do with military issues, with our tactics and strategy, therefore they must be kept very conspiratorial. The view of the leadership of our Party is known, but you tell a little to the comrades of the Politburo what were the thoughts of the Chinese leadership that they proposed to you? Also, in this issue tell us briefly, that the material is extensive, what the theses of today’s Soviet army led by revisionists recommend in relation to your antitheses. Do they have connections between them or not? In conclusion, what were you actually with? Your discussion lets us know this, but as a communist tell us more clearly so that we too can judge and help you recover.
BEQIR BALLUKU: For the Theses of the Defense Council, I have gone through a process, during which some concepts have been rooted, which have evolved week by week … These concepts were born to me after the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee. I am not saying that even before this Plenum I did not have them, but these have evolved out of nowhere. To the question that was asked to me “Why did I not inform the Party about the material that opposed the Thesis of the Defense Council”, I want to say that this came from my stupidity.
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: Is this stupidity? Rather, it is a great ability to do theses, even contrary to the Party line.
HITO ÇAKO: Ever since comrade Beqir Balluku received our remarks, after the first material, he told me that he talked to the comrades of the leadership, he even told me that he talked to comrade Mehmet [Shehu] about the issue of blocking forces, inhibitors etc.
BEQIR BALLUKU: This is not a thing, I had my opinion on the issue of blocking and restraining forces.
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: Say something, comrade Beqir, why do you not trust the leadership of the Party and its line? I say this because anyone who has faith in leadership tells the Party that I have thought one way or another. to refute the Defense Council Theses, when you think we are going to partisan war, not when the war starts, but even now, because you are afraid, you are afraid of atomic bombs and the Soviet military force, which at least it has instilled horror in you. The whole essence is here. The atomic bomb, there is no question, is a terrible weapon, this should not be underestimated, but this weapon should not make us afraid and surrender, on the contrary, it is our duty to take all measures to oppose this weapon of extermination. Is such a thing possible? Yes, of course, there are opportunities and ways out.
COMRADE RAMIZ ALIA: As it turned out here, you have been suggested several times to inform the leadership about the thoughts you have, and you have never done so. Why this distrust on your part of the Party?
COMRADE MANUSH MYFTIU: Using methods hidden by the Party is not “stupid”. The point is that the “studies” to revise theses, you tried to do for a period of three years and this without anyone noticing at all, until a certain point. You are not the first, comrade Beqir, to make such a dava behind the back of the Party. You know this well.
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: Hallin Beqiri had to deal with many cadres from the army, for this he did not inform the leadership.
COMRADE MANUSH MYFTIU: You, here elaborates the basic thesis on defense, here you seek to resign because you are not capable! With this you cannot fill our minds, comrade Beqir, there is a contradiction in your attitudes.
COMRADE RAMIZ ALIA: On the one hand, he says that the DANGEROUS ACTIVITY OF ‘BEQIR BALLUKU is incompetent, but, on the other hand, he also prepares materials to elaborate theses. Was what you were doing a protest that you did not agree with the Defense Council Theses and said to the leadership: “Do as you wish, I am leaving”?
COMRADE HYSNI KAPO: Twice Beqiri told me about his resignation as Minister of Defense, I was surprised, so I advised him to go and talk to Comrade Enver himself, and I immediately informed Comrade Enver. Here Beqiri raised the issue that “now there are other cadres”, but this is not a reason. In fact, he has other reasons, something boils inside his consciousness.
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: Although Comrade Hysni told him twice to come to me for such requests and Beqiri told him that he would come, in fact, he did not come. Later, when I called him for work, I drew his attention, asked him the reasons why he had not come, what were these demands and what prompted him to resign and not come to me. Was he afraid of me, lest the cabbage noodles be removed?
COMRADE RITA MARKO: You did not explain to us, why did not you evaluate the opinions of the cadres on the materials that oppose the Theses?
BEQIR BALLUKU: I have not seen their thoughts.
COMRADE ADIL ÇARÇANI: You have seen them, even in June 1974. And even before, why not? How is this explained? You have sent them the material to make remarks, it is returned to you by them with remarks and you have not seen these. Is not this your disregard?
COMRADE HAKI TOSKA: What are those “bad” things in the Defense Council Theses that push you to work on other “theses”?
COMRADE ENVER HOXHA: Did it not occur to you, Beqir, that by making these efforts, you want to insert wedges, cracks, in the leadership of the Party? What did I say in the 12th Plenum and what do the Theses say? Have you ever thought that if we do so, we create a rift in leadership? Who is looking for this rift? You said that you did not think, but in practice the material you have prepared is intended for disruption. In addition, this material is accompanied by “quotations” of Enver to oppose theses. This is clear to us. The enemy has always aimed to overthrow the leadership, which is so vital for the Party and the people. Didn’t you like that too? You are not a jerk in these things, you have experience.
(Despite the help given to Beqir Balluku through the questions and interventions of the comrades of the Politburo, he did not say things in their real name. Then it went into discussions. After the comrades of the Politburo spoke, who condemned strict views and dangerous actions of Beqir Balluku, took the floor comrade Enver)
Comrade Enver Hoxha: Allow me, comrades, to express my opinion on this problem of such great importance that it is presented to the leadership of the Party, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. Like all the friends who discussed, I also very much agree with the material that Comrade Hysni submitted to us with the friends in charge. This is a document of ideological, political and military importance, clear and well based on our theory, at the same time it is the objective and conclusion of a quick but careful study of a large number of voluminous, complicated and extremely dangerous materials. For these reasons the material given to us by our friends is of great importance. For this dangerous activity of Beqir Balluku I think we should inform, in the first place, the members of the Central Committee of the Party; then the cadres of the army and the whole Party, of course charging again for this work the comrades who have dealt with it, to properly supplement the first material even with the extremely valuable discussions and with deep communist, Bolshevik content of all comrades of leadership. The issue we are studying, comrades, is the result of a hostile work by Beqir Balluku. This is how we intend to describe his activity from the beginning. Of course, like any action, even what we are analyzing, we see, as always, with the eye of the Marxist-Leninist, in the prism of the class struggle, that is, straight, objectively, from a principled position and not driven by low feelings micro-bourgeois, personal, as only from the war in principled positions depend the successful construction of socialism and the defense of our socialist homeland. The party has always taught us and teaches us that in such cases of serious guilt for big issues (but without neglecting the small ones, because even these then become big), we must be constantly at war. By this I do not mean to suspect every mistake or several mistakes in a row that one can unintentionally make. It is important that mistakes are detected, recognized and corrected, at the same time to see if these are or are not dangerous, have or do not have hostile intentions. We, too, are not allowed to sleep on the mind, from the unjust view that mistakes can only be made by those who are under us, and we, up here, do not make mistakes. If we are guided by such views, then we will go on a very wrong path, which will be bad for the Party. By this I mean that the right, principled and constructive criticisms and self-criticisms that we make, be they mild, in the form of social advice, be it according to the degree of error or guilt even harsh when they should be, should absolutely t ‘become to all those who deviate from the path of the Party, because, without exception, we are all equally accountable to the Party and the people. Let us be aware, comrades, of what, if we have come to some places in leadership, here the Party has brought us, its straight line and our work, therefore this is not a privilege, but a task with the responsibility of great before the Party and the people. Therefore, I want to make it clear that none of us should think about this and think that it is the navel of the world. On the contrary, the leader at all times must be simple, not only in life and in his daily activity as a party leader, but on a larger scale even when the labor sector he leads reaps victories no matter how great. We, the leaders, must be like that, because simplicity is characteristic of mature and brave people, while boasting and megalomania are characteristics of sick people, who take advantage of the situations or positions given by the Party to ride the people. and the Party in the Neck. If we allow such performances, we have not only broken the line of the Party, but with this attitude we are preparing the grave for the homeland. Let us not forget these lessons, as Comrade Beqir Balluku has completely forgotten. As I told you at the beginning, due to the short time, I could not read all these voluminous materials, but I have extracted some extracts from only one of these materials, just to get a general idea of the views dangerous thrown at them and made ostensibly for the purpose of study, but which in fact are in complete contradiction with the Theses of the Defense Council. In this material, which was given to me before, I have thrown some ideas in the form of notes, so let my friends forgive me since they are like detached. Then I will say the opinion, I will make the conclusion on this issue, but for all of us it is clear that the main author of these materials is Beqiri, while the others, which he has activated, are. “Scribe”. The authors of one of the materials that I had the opportunity to read, say that in the introduction, as in the Theses of the Defense Council itself, in the presentation of the forms and ways of conducting hostilities, there are treatments here and there, which did not comply with the requirements. of the principles and basic concepts of our Folk Martial Art expressed in the Theses themselves and in my speech at the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee. This means that Beqiri and his friends propose other theses to “match this martial art”.
This, comrades, is not only false, but at the same time a flagrant and very serious denigration of the leadership, of course, done with malice. “Inconsistency” of the ideas of my speech in the 12th Plenum. of the Central Committee with the Theses of the Defense Council, as those who have prepared these materials try to say, are for example, the acceptance of counterattacks and counterattacks as the highest form of defense activity, operational construction and combat formations of units and of the wards, having, as a rule, the main forces for the protection of the protection belts and regions and not for the development of the defense activity. According to them, we, therefore, have forgotten the development of the defense activity and we look at everything in a tactical way. It was good that Beqiri reminded us and his followers that we would have fallen into the abyss! With these statements, the authors try to put in our mouths the wrong views they have in their heads, in a word, to throw ashes in our eyes, being set in motion with attacks and blows every minute, anywhere and nowhere. But we, more Beqir, do not eat these metaphorical figures. The military concept of our Party is that in the construction of defense combat formations we must keep in mind that the composition and concentration of certain groups in each direction must respond to the idea of combat and make it possible to solve the combat task independently or as independent as possible … keeping in mind not to scatter the forces, not to distribute them evenly across the front, to give depth to the combat formations and to maintain a reserve of powerful in command hand. All of these I mentioned are so clear and so straightforward that they need no comment as the comment can make the idea obscure. Beqiri tries to make such comments with some friends in order to obscure what is clear. Do the authors not want to disguise their dangerous theses, using my righteous statements in the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee? This gives the impression, but we do not allow it to be done, that it is a hoax and not just a hoax, but I agree with what all the Bureau comrades said during their discussions, that this is a dangerous attempt, is the expression of hostile thoughts aimed at disrupting the Party leadership. That this is so, I will explain briefly and later, how Beqiri for another problem, such as that of the structure and organization in the Ministry of Defense, has managed to split the Command in two. So, I say now that this has been another attempt on his part. Theses have correctly defined both positional defense and counterattacks and counterattacks. The antitheses of the material compilers are reprehensible, because they bring out the blows and attacks as one of the most important of the high-level combat phase, a phase which in fact they do not accept. They want to turn our modern army into a partisan squad on the first day of the war. The views of the authors of the material, according to which counterattacks and counterattacks cannot be the highest form of our defense activity because they are not fully based, according to them, on the principles of our Martial Art of People’s War, as they engage our forces in great, protracted fights and battles and are not surprising to the enemy, are utterly wrong, astonishing, even make you think a little deeper than a simple surprise. According to them, the experience of wars has shown that counterattacks and counterattacks, when given with decisive intentions, in most cases have not been fully successful, but have achieved only limited objectives. Moreover, they cannot succeed in our defense against many times larger and more powerful enemies. I ask them the question: where did they get these false theories for bourgeois military science, let alone ours? What a defeatist are these who are taken away from us even as knowledgeable military men! But it is clear that those who have studied or read, have learned superficially and completely backwards either do not want to, or do not fit the situation or better our fight. The authors’ ideas that we should not take countermeasures to liquidate as soon as possible the landed airborne, landed naval landing or enemy ground forces, which have exploded our defense in a certain direction, are extremely wrong, as if it is done as they say, this allows the enemies to be reinforced, to expand, to create conditions to gain as much space as possible, to put to use as widely as possible their military potential. These people think of war as a kind of spontaneous chess game. If you listen to them, they constantly kept in their mouth’s big words, such as: “Not a handful of land to the enemy”, “to make fortifications, to build them, to do these”, and, on the other hand, with their antitheses put mines to strengthen the defense of, homeland. According to the authors, counterattacks and counterattacks are carried out for limited purposes, therefore they remain as simple forms of defensive activity, to increase the resilience of the defense! In this way, they continue, to the existing forms of defense activity, fire, counterattacks and counterattacks, a new form is added, attacks and strikes, which increase the defense activity to the highest degree. For us, these are false ideas, Comrade Beqir, completely wrong and it is quite clear that they were formulated to oppose the right Theses of the Defense Council. The idea of attacks and kicks, as the highest form. of defense activity, according to these authors, does not change the basic concepts on defense provided by our Martial Art of the People’s War, but, they continue, brings essential changes in the idea of building defense, operational and combat formation, as well as even in the very development of combat operations in defense. As you can see, comrades, only from these, the issue is not limited by them to attack and counterattack, to strike and counterattack, but in their works, there is a radical transformation of all that we have done and decided, to all those we have supported in the straight line of our Party, regarding the background, the economy, the perspective, the foreign policy, etc., etc. They are thus trying to make a reorganization not only of the army, but also of the state, to prevent the construction of socialism in our country. This is the beginning, because if they could achieve this, if we had accepted the theses presented to us by them, then things would be chained one after the other, especially and especially to the superstructure, why everything in our country had to be adapted to them. these “directives”. Beqir, this does not mean, as you try to convince us, that you have tried to “improve the directives”, this is simply called putting the pickaxe on socialism. This is what Beqiri and his followers thought. This means that they are not only opposed in principle, but they are also opposed to disintegration, to the construction of defense and to the forms of struggle and to our socialist order. These, it seems to me (no matter what the murmur), it is clear that they refuse protection on the regular front, they are to give territory to the enemy, they want in a word to make our army “grapes and plums” today. “Our martial art, they underline, deals with two kinds of wars: the popular war on the regular front and the popular partisan warfare,” which differ in their aims, forms and main ways of development, when in fact the purpose of our Martial Art of War The people is only one, to annihilate the aggressors within our country and to defend the freedom and victories of socialism./Memorie.al
Continues tomorrow
