Memorie.al publishes an archival document issued by the Central State Archive (fund of the former Central Committee of the ALP) which belongs to 1957, where is the speech of Enver Hoxha held at the III Plenum of the Central Committee of the ALP, where he has analyzed relations with Yugoslavia since the war, when they had in our country military missions led by Velimir Stojnic, accusing its senior leadership of interfering in the internal affairs of Albania , which had tried to make it a seventh republic of Yugoslavia. All the accusations of Enver against the top Yugoslav leadership and some of his close associates, such as Sejfulla Malëshova, Koci Xoxe, Nako Spiru, Dali Ndreu, Liri Gega, etc., whom he considered as “Yugoslav agents”…!
After the Berat Plenum, the positions of anti-party elements such as Koçi Xoxe and Sejfulla Malëshova in the leadership of the Party were strengthened, who supported the introduction of the Yugoslav “experience”. The Yugoslav leadership accuses our Party of unjustly condemning Koçi Xoxen and calls this “patriot” and “Marxist”. What did Koçi Xoxe do? He tried to annihilate the Party, hiding it and merging it with the Front. He kicked the most basic Leninist principles of party building. He put the Party under the control of the State Security organs: 15 thousand files of Party members were found in the Security archive. In every grassroots organization there were Security Networks. He was collecting compromising materials and was preparing the plot for the physical disappearance of Party and state leaders. As interior minister he violated socialist legitimacy in the most brutal way. He agreed with the Yugoslav leadership’s plans to make Albania the seventh republic of Yugoslavia and acted in this direction. For all these crimes, Koçi Xoxe not only should not have been rehabilitated, but if he was alive, he should have been hanged. The Yugoslav leadership is responsible for Nako Spiru’s suicide. He in Berat mixed with Koci Xoxen, etc., but later understood the game of the Yugoslavs and was put on the right track “. This is what Enver Hoxha said, among other things, at the meeting of the III Plenum of the Central Committee of the ALP in February 1957, where he analyzed the relations with Yugoslavia, since the period of the War, when they had sent in our country military missions led by Velimir Stojnic, throwing a series of accusations at them. For more about Enver Hoxha’s speech in that plenum, we know the document in question, which Memorie.al publishes in full and without any abbreviations.
Enver Hoxha’s speech at the III Plenum of the Central Committee of the ALP, held on February 13, 1957
ON OUR RELATIONS WITH YUGOSLAVIA
Albania’s experience in relations with Yugoslavia, better than the experience of any other country, shows the true attitude of the Yugoslav leadership towards Marxism-Leninism, because in no other country have they intervened as brutally as in Albania. The Yugoslav leadership has maintained an anti-Marxist and chauvinist attitude towards our Party, state and people. The goal of the Yugoslav leadership was to turn our Party from a Marxist-Leninist party into an opportunistic party and to make Albania a republic of the Yugoslav state. This is confirmed by the historical facts that I am briefly listing.
a) The Yugoslav leadership in 1944, on the eve of the liberation of Albania, through Velimir Stojnic, interfered in the affairs of our Party and organized in Berat a dangerous faction in order to remove our Party from the Marxist-Leninist straight line. and overthrow its leadership. The Yugoslav leadership accused our Party leadership of following an unjust, sectarian line. But our people on the basis of this line, achieved the historic victory over the invaders and internal reactionaries. The Yugoslav line that Velimir Stojnic tried to impose on us obscured the leading role of the Soviet Union, the leading role of the Party, denied the class struggle and paved the way for opportunistic tendencies.
After the Berat Plenum, the positions of anti-party elements such as Koçi Xoxe and Sejfulla Malëshova in the leadership of the Party were strengthened, who supported the introduction of the Yugoslav “experience”. The Yugoslav leadership accuses our Party of unjustly condemning Koçi Xoxen and calls this “patriot” and “Marxist”. What did Koçi Xoxe do? He tried to annihilate the Party, hiding it and merging it with the Front. He kicked the most basic Leninist principles of party building. He put the Party under the control of the State Security organs: 15 thousand files of Party members were found in the Security archive. In every grassroots organization there were Security Networks. He was collecting compromising materials and was preparing the plot for the physical disappearance of Party and state leaders.
As interior minister he violated socialist legitimacy in the most brutal way. He agreed with the Yugoslav leadership’s plans to make Albania the seventh republic of Yugoslavia and acted in this direction. For all this guilt, Koçi Xoxe not only should not have been rehabilitated, but if he was alive, he should have been hanged. The Yugoslav leadership is responsible for Nako Spiru’s suicide. He in Berat mixed with Koci Xoxen, etc., but later understood the game of the Yugoslavs and was put on the right track. Nakua did not have the courage to tell the Party the truth and killed himself. You know that the assassination of Nako complicated the issue and the intrigues of the Yugoslavs and Koci Xoxa with friends, led to the VIII Plenum ‘. After this plenum, the gates were opened more to the Yugoslav intervention.
b) The economic relations between our two countries have been on anti-Marxist and colonialist bases, even the most basic rules of relations between sovereign countries were violated. In 1946, six Albanian-Yugoslav societies were established, but the Yugoslav side did not make the investments that belonged to it, only received profits from the use of existing Albanian investments. The parification of the Albanian currency with the Yugoslav dinar was done with a large devaluation of the Albanian franc, losing at least 3.5 lek for each franc. The Customs Union paved the way for Yugoslav trade organizations and private traders to seize stocks of goods in our market.
The exchange of goods on the basis of domestic prices and not with international market prices severely damaged our economy. A joint commission was set up to coordinate the plans, headed by Krajger, a commission that is in fact the government over the government of the Albanian state. We have a planning document signed by Kidrig, former chairman of the Yugoslav Planning Commission, which lists Albania as the seventh Yugoslav republic. The Yugoslav leadership is making a lot of noise about the economic aid that Yugoslavia has given to Albania, but the figures for this aid are inflated by high import prices.
The aid for the “industrialization of Albania” was: the destroyed machines of the Sugar Factory “Ali Kelmendi” in Korça that in Yugoslavia had become obsolete, the primitive rope workshop in Rrogozhina, which has no mark left and the railway built by the youth our heroic. If we consider how much the Yugoslavs took from us and how much we took from them, it is not known who owes it. But why don’t the Yugoslavs say half a word about the heroic war of our two divisions, which helped in the liberation of Yugoslavia?
c) In 1948 the Yugoslav leadership asked us to allow the entry into Albania of some divisions, ostensibly to protect Albania from the aggression of the monarcho-fascists. In fact, they wanted to make the invasion of Albania a reality. The people of Yugoslavia whispered up and down about the unification of Albania with Yugoslavia, as the seventh republic. Talks also began on the Balkan Federation. We wrote to the Yugoslav leadership to explain its position on the matter, but it never responded.
d) The Yugoslav leadership during this period tried to isolate our country from the Soviet Union, saying that Albania should receive Soviet assistance and experience only through Yugoslavia, that the Yugoslav experience applies to the conditions of Albania, while the Soviet one does not fit, that Soviet advisers should flee. Especially after Plenum VIII the Yugoslav advisers came in everywhere and they worked against the development of our economy and to make it directly dependent on Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav leadership sought to isolate Albania from the rest of the world. In fact, we had no economic relations with any country other than Yugoslavia, and even with the Soviet Union we had limited ones. Until 1948 we had diplomatic relations only with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary and France. The letters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Information Bureau Resolution of 1948, helped our Party to see clearly the intentions of the Yugoslav leadership towards the Party and our country.
The principled criticisms leveled at the Yugoslav leadership at the time were justified. This is confirmed by the views now nurtured by the Yugoslav leaders. During the years 1948-1953, we wrote and acted against each other, like us, like them. It is not fair to say that during this period we have been at fault. They have acted against our republic by all means, have sent hundreds of saboteurs and armed groups, in addition to the Greek provocation of 1949. No enemy state has carried out such a furious activity against our country as the Yugoslav leadership did after 1948.
As is well known, the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to improve relations and made every effort in this direction. We then proposed that before the Belgrade talks begin, the Informbureau should convene, which in 1948 decided to exclude Yugoslavia, and analyze the issue of the Yugoslavs, outlining their pros and cons and that of the Informbureau. We think that this would have been right, because this would not have left the Yugoslav leaders to cover up their mistakes and put all the responsibility on our countries and come out as flag bearers of the situation. In fact, the initiative of the Soviet Union, they misused. They did not do self-criticism at all, because they were supposedly Marxists. They had to do self-criticism, they had to be asked to do it. They used the new situation to carry out divisive and subversive activity against the parties and states of popular democracy.
Yugoslav legations in the countries of popular democracy, became centers of agency activity; they began to gather anti-party, opportunistic and shaky elements and, under the banner of “destalinization”, to turn them against the parties to overthrow the Marxist-Leninist leadership of our parties and replace them with their own elements, for replacing the straight line with the Titoist line. They also collaborated with enemy elements, such as in Bulgaria with the former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Bulgarian bourgeois, pre-liberation government. After the events in Hungary, the face of the Yugoslav leadership became clearer. Our party held the right position.
We declared that we are ready to improve relations on a Marxist-Leninist basis and not on the old, anti-Marxist basis (the past does not return). But the Yugoslav leaders did not like our position, because they wanted to repeat the situation of 1948, they demanded that we make principled concessions:
- To say that the Yugoslavs are not wrong;
- To rehabilitate Koci Xoxen etc.
We could never do that. This would not be Marxist, this would be a betrayal of the Party and our homeland. Meanwhile, the Yugoslav leaders continued to work intensively against our Party and our state. They can never agree with the leadership of the Party and our state. They want to replace this leadership, which bravely defends Marxism-Leninism, the Party and the independence of our country, with a clique of opportunistic adventurers, to impose on the Party the “Yugoslav line” and make Albania the seventh republic of Yugoslavia. They developed and continue to develop an unbridled propaganda in the press and on the radio against our country, presenting the situation of Albania as hell, where terror and poverty reign. The Yugoslav Legation in Tirana has developed and is developing agency work, trying to gather anti-party elements and organize the fight against our Party.
In the spring of 1956, the Yugoslav leadership, through its legation in Tirana, gathered the Party’s enemies, Dali Ndreu, Liri Gega, etc., and prepared a conspiracy, which aimed to overthrow the Party and state leadership and replaced with enemies of the Party. They organized the hostile work at the Tirana Conference, but the Party discovered this hostile activity and immediately took the necessary measures. The Yugoslav Minister in Tirana, Arso Milatoviç, conducts propaganda and speaks against the policy and situation of the People’s Republic of Albania, against the leadership of the Party and our state, incites weak elements in hostile anti-state and anti-party activities and engages in espionage activities.
To this end, he has tried, through pressure and other means, to exploit the Yugoslav citizens long established in Albania, with whom he maintains active contacts, elements of the Party and the popular power, various individuals who go for official work in the Yugoslav legation, or that he takes to the road in his car, moving through Albania. Violating the official provisions on the circulation of foreign diplomats in our country, he went without the relevant permit to Vlora, where, abusing the hospitality of a patriotic family, he sought to extract information of a political and military nature, on the naval base of Sazan island. He also went to Berat and photographed forbidden military objects and asked to meet with Tuk Jakova.
A serious issue is the fact that there are 3,000 Albanian refugees in Yugoslavia, including many fascist criminals. Given the course of events in Hungary, we have the right to think that provocations can be organized through them, in order to find a reason to attack Albania. In the most tragic moments in Hungary, Vidic, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia, told the press attachés of Bulgaria, Albania, Czechoslovakia, etc.: “Wait, what happened in Hungary will definitely happen in you”. That is why our Party is obliged to be very vigilant towards the Yugoslav leadership. The Yugoslav leadership maintains a chauvinist and inhuman attitude towards the population of Kosovo.
The situation in this province is deplorable, the Yugoslav leadership there is pursuing a policy of extermination. Tens of thousands of Kosovars are forced to leave their land and home to emigrate to Turkey. This policy has not been made even by the kings of Serbia. It does its best to turn Kosovo into a base against Albania, a base to unite Albania through Kosovo with Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav press in Kosovo and Metohija is carrying out a slanderous propaganda every day against the Party and our People’s Republic, which the “Voice of America” envies. The question is asked by us: why this propaganda so dirty and especially special in Kosovo and Metohija against the popular regime of Albania? Will the pollutants in the sewage canals of the Yugoslav press continue to flow like this for a long time? It is clear to us where the Yugoslav leadership is aiming.
She remembers that she is lying to the Kosovo Albanians about the reality of our country, but even if there may be some who have been lied to, our press has an internationalist duty to explain the lies of the dirty nationalist, chauvinist, fascist propaganda. Our party has maintained and maintains a right position on the issue of Kosovo, a Marxist, internationalist position. But we cannot ignore the chauvinist attitude of the Yugoslav leadership in Kosovo, to prove once again that it is in anti-Marxist and anti-human positions, towards the Kosovo Albanians.
In conclusion, comrades, we can say that the attitude of the Yugoslav leadership towards our country is clearly anti-Marxist and chauvinist, that for 13 years it has systematically interfered in the internal affairs of the Party and our state, in order to realize its plans. colonialist towards our country. These plans have failed thanks to the firm stance of our Party. This makes the Yugoslav leadership attack Albania more furiously than other countries. Another reason that the Yugoslav leaders are fighting so fiercely against our Party is that Albania is the document that shows their anti-Marxist and chauvinist position, which proves that their theses on non-intervention, equality, etc., are only demagoguery. And they want to eliminate the witnesses who prove this, just as the killer tries to erase the traces of the crime.
Throughout the report it emerged what the current Yugoslav leaders represent. They are in anti-Marxist positions, they try to revise Marxism-Leninism, they play a divisive role in the international communist movement and the socialist camp, they interfere in the affairs of the parties to eliminate their leaders, to undermine the communist and workers’ parties, and to impose the so-called Yugoslav line. How dangerous has become the spread of their poisonous “theories” and their hostile activity is confirmed by the numerous facts mentioned, summarizing their hostile work towards our country, as well as their role in the development of events in Hungary. They try to incite revisionist elements in Poland, activate the opportunistic elements of the Italian Communist Party, and enter wherever they find themselves in the race. They are very active. The anti-Marxist, divisive and hostile activity that the Yugoslav leaders are carrying out, in parallel with the aggressive activity of the imperialists against the socialist camp, poses a great danger to the entire labor movement. Objectively, this activity serves the plans of imperialism.
It is well known that the American imperialists gave Yugoslavia one billion two hundred million dollars not out of a desire to help build socialism, but because they hope to use Yugoslavia against the camp of socialism. Since 1948, the ideological degeneration of the Yugoslav leadership has developed and a generation of cadres who have a hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union and our socialist camp has grown up there. It would be very wrong to underestimate the damage that the divisive work of Yugoslav leaders could bring, thinking that they lacked that strength. Their strength lies in the fact that they are anti-Marxists and therefore their “theories” and “activities” are supported by all opportunistic and shaky elements, by all the enemies of socialism.
In a way they have had some results, which, though temporary, have severely damaged the question of socialism, as in Hungary. What should be our attitude toward them? We think they will not turn to the Marxist-Leninist path. We say this with full conviction, because the teachings of these thirteen years have taught us not to believe lies and demagoguery, because they were aimed at destroying our Marxist Party and our popular regime. Marxists can make mistakes, but when they recognize the mistakes they turn and come to the rails. The current Yugoslav leaders are not Marxists until we not only see them make no turn, they are deepening their anti-Marxist work even further.
It is enough to read the article of ‘Borba’, where it is about their next congress, to draw the conclusion that this congress will teach the anti-Marxist and revisionist theory of a ruling party to give a line, which, according to their, should be felt by all parties and by all countries. The time and actions of the Yugoslav leadership so far have not proved to us that we were wrong in our thoughts. Let time and their future actions prove to us if these views are wrong and we will be ready, as always, why we are Marxists, to accept if our judgments of the Yugoslavs were not right. In view of all this in our attitude towards the Yugoslav leadership, we must always be guided by Marxist-Leninist principles, without making any concessions and without allowing them to be violated, always keeping in mind the general interests of the international communist movement and the country. our. We do not want to have party relations with them on these terms, but we will work to preserve and strengthen the feelings of sincere friendship with the Yugoslav peoples, we will continue on the path to normalization and improvement of state relations between our country and Yugoslavia., on the principles of equality and non-interference in our internal affairs.
We must be very vigilant against the Yugoslav leadership and all their efforts. We will not only not soften the ideological struggle against their revisionist views, but we will strengthen it even more, in order to destroy the demagogic mask and to expect the destructive work of the anti-Marxist elements, who try to poison with ” theories”- foreign parties and our countries, to lead us off the right Marxist-Leninist path, to divide the camp of socialism and the international communist movement.
The attitude towards them, therefore, must be determined, principled, without any hesitation, without any illusions, because the omissions of liberalism can only bring harm to our cause. On the other hand, we must always be calm in our relations with Yugoslavia, not fall into provocations, but from a principled position criticize the Yugoslav leadership, wage an ideological and political war against it and make the situation known to the People’s Party. truth in Yugoslavia with the catastrophic consequences of the so-called Yugoslav line./Memorie.al
