Dashnor Kaloçi
The third part
Memorie.al publishes some archival documents extracted from the Central State Archive in Tirana (fund of the former Central Committee of the ALP), where Enver Hoxha’s political diary is in the period March-April 1981, when mass demonstrations and protests began of the people of Kosovo, who rose up to demand their legitimate rights and freedoms, just as the other nationalities and nations that made up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had and enjoyed. The entire political diary of the main leader of communist Albania, where he and the official Tirana of that time, closely followed the events of Kosovo and spoke openly in public, coming out openly in defense of our Kosovar brothers across the border who lived for centuries in the lands their ethnic groups, who rose up to demand their legitimate rights and freedoms as they had and enjoyed the other nationalities and nations of Yugoslavia at the time, and accusing official Belgrade of the discriminatory policies pursued by the Titoist regime until at the time against Kosovo and the entire Albanian population living under Yugoslavia, and also accusing the Kosovo leadership of being “pro-Tito”, and “sold to the Belgrade leadership”.
“According to news agencies, in Pristina and Podujeva, yesterday and today, students, who were joined by workers, erupted in demonstrations and other clashes, more furious than the first. The situation has become very honorable. Yugoslav authorities surrounded Pristina with tanks. Large Serbian police and militia forces have arrived in Kosovo from Belgrade. The state of siege was declared, the circulation in groups was stopped and the trenches of the Titoite Lacanians began, from Fadil Hoxha, Xhavit Nimani, Asllan Fazllija and others. What they did not say against the demonstrators, they used all the words contained in the Titoist dictionary, made the dirtiest accusations: “Albanian nationalists”, “irredentists”, “informbureaux”, “agents of imperialism”, “ballists”, etc. After swearing and accusations against Albanian students, hosanara for Tito, for Titoism, for self-government and for “Kosovo’s victories”. After the hosanars for titism, deceptive promises “we will do this”, “we will do it”, “there are difficulties, but the world crisis is to blame” etc. Finally, numerous arrests and threats of even greater retaliation. It is clear, Kosovars are oppressed, miserable, they are bloodied by Serbs and Titoism “.
This is what the former main leader of communist Albania, Enver Hoxha, wrote in his diary of April 3, 1981, focusing on the events in Kosovo, which at that time was the Autonomous Province of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. , where only a few months after the death of Marshal Josof Broz Tito (May 4, 1980), who ruled the country for almost 35 years from the end of World War II, in the Yugoslavia he left behind, the riots would begin. such as the mass demonstrations and protests of the people of Kosovo, who rose up to demand their legitimate rights and freedoms, just as the other nationalities and nations that made up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had and enjoyed passed until the calls “Kosovo Republic”.
As it is already known, which we will see from these archival documents where the political diary of Enver Hoxha, the main leader of communist Albania and official Tirana, is, followed the events of Kosovo and spoke publicly, coming out openly in defense of our Kosovar brothers across the border who have lived for centuries in their ethnic lands and accusing official Belgrade of the discriminatory policy it had pursued up to that time against Kosovo and the entire Albanian population living under Yugoslavia, and also accusing the leadership of Kosovo as “pro-Tito”, and “sold to the leadership of Belgrade”.
But contrary to what he said in words, he never did it with deeds and the attitude that official Tirana held towards the events of Kosovo in the spring of ’81, seems to have been just enough for the facade and only for public consumption in the international arena, as the regime Enver Hoxha’s communist regime from 1949, when official Tirana broke off relations with Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia, until the end of the 1980s, pursued a policy towards Kosovars who came to Albania to escape the persecution of the Titoist regime. even more cruel to them, imprisoning, torturing and interning them, with the accusations of “UDB agents”! Likewise, although in the events of the spring of 1981 and onwards, official Tirana ostensibly supported the demonstrations of the people of Kosovo and their demands for a “Kosovo Republic”, Enver Hoxha would never want that to become a reality. because in a way, two Albanian states would be created, where Kosovo would become a factor and Albania under his leadership, would be defactorized in the international arena. In this context, immediately after those events, official Tirana intensified the persecution and violence against Kosovars who were in Albania, arresting and sentencing to long prison terms some Kosovar intellectuals, such as: Selim Kelmendi, Estref Kelmendi, Shefqet Kelmendi, Naim Lucin, etc., who were arrested in 1983, accused of “attempting to assassinate the main leader, Enver Hoxha, during his visit to the Museum” Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu “in Kruja in 1980”.
And all this was done to lower the reputation of Kosovars and Kosovo in the eyes of the Albanians of the homeland. However, these remain the object of analysis that are not the object of this article, where we are publishing only the political diary of Enver Hoxha, which he kept in that period of time, which Memorie.al publishes for the first time and in full, starting from the number yesterday.
Continues from the last number
Enver Hoxha’s political diary on the events of demonstrations and protests of the people of Kosovo in the spring of 1981
For the Yugoslav government it is normal that the Yugoslavs protect their minorities outside the republic and that the population where these minorities live is neither shot by machine guns nor crushed by tanks, while for the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania it is “chauvinism, irredentism, counter-revolutionary”. Where does this great anti-Albanian “allergy” of the Yugoslavs come from?! The Yugoslav leadership is wrong to lie to people, especially the world opinion, that socialist Albania seeks or plays the game of those who want to undermine the Federation.
The federation has been undermined by Titoism itself, this hostile current of Marxism-Leninism, undermined by the anti-socialist system of self-government, undermined by the huge debts that have covered the people and caused inflation, high unemployment, rising prices, development inequality, poverty. Whoever delves into these key problems, will immediately concluded that socialist Albania is not for undermining the Federation, as Dolanci expressed. Dolanci is seriously mistaken when he thinks of curbing Serbian greed for hegemony in the face of Croatian-Slovenian hegemony, stabbing that “Kosovo will never become a republic.”
Kosovo should not become a tribute to this antagonism. The Yugoslavs are removed as “smart politicians”, but they are not only naive, but also confused. The wound and disruption do not lie in the demonstrations in Prishtina. They must be sought in the Yugoslav leadership, in the great and old chauvinisms created by the old Yugoslav system and their new anti-socialist one. The house is not kept with borrowed flour. Hence the disruption, the evil which we do not want at all for the brotherly peoples of Yugoslavia. The unprincipled policy of the Yugoslav leadership does not lead you in any right direction. We are masters in our own home and we make the policy we find best and fairest. Our people look at us, judge us, defend this policy or condemn it, if it is wrong.
But the facts, life, work show that the Albanian people support with all their might the straight line of the Party and its power. Yugoslav revisionists call us Stalinists, dogmatists, informbureaux and other epithets. Our highest mountains! We are Stalinists, Marxists-Leninists. The peoples of Yugoslavia also make their own policy. Yugoslav leaders, too, make their own policy. And we have the right to judge and condemn their ideology, to judge their politics. But we cannot leave without telling the people of Yugoslavia and all those Yugoslav leaders who reason that “It is the Albanian people living in Yugoslavia who can upset the stability and balance of the Federation, why it seeks recognition of the status of the republic within the Federation “, That Albanians living in Yugoslavia should not be mistreated.
Albanians are brave fighters who have the right to fight for their freedom and for that of the Yugoslav brotherly peoples, in case they are attacked by the aggressive Soviet-Bulgarian revisionists. It is the latter and others like these who endanger Yugoslavia. From the Albanians neither evil has come, nor will any harm come to Yugoslavia. Therefore, the Yugoslav leadership should be very calm and very fair to the Albanians. To stop the barbaric acts against them, to severely condemn those who gave orders and shot at the masses of Albanians, to stabilize the mental and political situation and to stop the Serbo-Croatian-Slovene kasnecs and their Albanian vultures in Kosovo from slandering and to attack the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania and the Albanian people.
If it continues like this, as it is being done by you, nothing good will come of it. Those Albanian leaders in Kosovo, who attacked the people, let them judge for themselves. The Albanian people, living in their own lands in Yugoslavia, know how to distinguish servants from their honest sons and sons, and efforts to compromise them are in vain, forcing them to speak and send telegrams for consumption, to prepared in UDB workshops, spying all over homes and families. Beautiful “self-governing” “freedom” and “democracy”! We want everything to be normalized and we tell the ustash kasnec of Radio Zagreb that “it is true that history will judge who is right”, you or us, the Albanians.
As for fear, it is not the Albanians who know him and he does not find in their history barbarisms like those of the Ustashas, old and young. Books with bombastic titles, which smell of megalomania and unbridled chauvinism with pan-Balkan spaces, such as “The War for the Balkans” by Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempos, “Aspects of the Macedonian Question” and a book “On the Reality in the Balkans” have begun to appear in Belgrade. and Lazar Kolishevski. In revisionist Bulgaria, the real colony of Soviet revisionists, long articles are being written, celebrations are being held and speeches are being made “for the great Bulgaria of St. Stephen”, which leads its borders to Albania! These people have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing from history! Only the Albanians, who have become their prey, are “counter-revolutionaries, chauvinists and irredentists”.
Let us let Mr. Kolishevski, the former President of the Yugoslav Presidency, speak with his mouth in the book in question. He writes exactly (according to the Tanjug agency from Belgrade, on April 15, 1981): “It is a fact that we exist, that the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation are constantly evolving and reaffirming, and that the feeling that nurtures every Macedonian is a part of his nation, is getting stronger regardless of where he lives. “This is a process that no one can stop.” (Underlined by me.) How do we describe these thoughts, Messrs. Dolanc, Dragosavac, Vidic and others, accusing Kosovo Albanians and socialist Albania of being “chauvinist, counter-revolutionary and irredentist”?
“This process of development and affirmation, which no one can stop” is a right only for the Macedonian people of Macedonia (where more than 400 thousand Albanians live in their lands)? But in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia, where more than 1,800,000 Albanians live, is this process not taking place? Is it not a fact that even there there is a nation, which only demands the right to be declared a republic within the Federation? Then this process, “which no one can stop for the Macedonians”, why is it stopped for the Albanians? At least agree with each other, but not at the expense of the Albanian people living in Yugoslavia in particular! Many Yugoslav leaders talk about the national liberation war “that created the unity of the Federation”, but do not forget that the Albanian people did not fight less for the liberation and unity of his nation. He even shed the blood of his sons for the liberation of the peoples of Yugoslavia.
Not only do you not wholeheartedly state this, but you accuse us of being “chauvinists and irredentists”, who we have not been and never will be! The Albanian has historically decided and decides for himself his destinies. Others are mixed and indebted to Albanians. Albanians do not owe anyone, neither moral debts, nor political debts, nor material debts. Our true socialist system, built on the foundations of Marxism-Leninism, you have never stopped, you have never shut your mouth from being attacked with derogatory epithets like “Stalinist”, “statistic-bureaucratic”, and the like. An entire pseudo-theory you have built for this mission. You defend and propagate “your self-governing system” as one of the “most perfect forms of socialism” and, to defend one, attack the other. You even advertise your system as much as you can and to anyone who eats it. This is your job. But it is also our job to defend the Marxist-Leninist theory, scientific socialism and the successful construction of socialism in Albania based on the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
We fight and will fight unwaveringly against world capitalism, against imperialism and modern revisionism, be it Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslav or Euro-communist, as well as against any reformism that preaches the end of the class war, that suppresses the revolution, that degenerates the class. workers, its military unity and lies keep under the yoke of capital the peoples of the world fighting for liberation from any yoke. We are and fight ideologically against your “self-government”, which is for us a capitalist, pseudo-socialist, counter-revolutionary system. We do this and we will do it without hesitation.
It is clear that ideologically and politically we neither agree, nor will we ever agree. We know this truth, you know it too. The whole world knows this. But, despite the fact that ideologically and politically we never agree, we think and have concluded that you too have come to our opinion or have reached a common opinion which consists of this:
Trade and cultural relations should be developed between our two neighboring countries, for the sake of good neighborliness between the two countries and for stability and peace in the Balkan region. We must affirm that understanding has been found on both sides in this path. Trade between us, in our interest not only ours, as the world capitalist bourgeoisie wants to call it, but also in your interest, has developed and is developing. The side of cultural relations and especially ours with Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, have gone well, successfully, with no incidents and in a fruitful understanding. Neither we nor the Yugoslav side encountered any serious obstacles. This, as well as trade relations, we consider as good things that should be continued and not interrupted. Not even the slightest sign of “Albanian chauvinism, of Albanian irredentism”, as is now being claimed by the Yugoslav leadership and its press, has appeared and could not have appeared by any of our citizens who have visited Kosovo, since our Minister of Education and Culture, to the simplest Albanian professors and tourists.
We can say that the same thing happened to the Yugoslav citizens, no such show has been seen to disrupt this flow. As friends of the Yugoslav embassy in Tirana, we welcomed the Prime Minister of Montenegro, the Prime Minister of Macedonia, and welcomed them with traditional Albanian generosity. They have gone where they wanted, seen the place and talked to people. Both sides found this practice normal. We found abnormal only that the Prime Minister of Kosovo did not find time to visit Albania once. We do not know why he did not do so, as did the two neighboring Yugoslav prime ministers. Only the Federation, the leadership of the Federal Republic of Serbia and the leadership of the province of Kosovo can know this.
We do not care about the reason, we just find out, if he had come, we would have waited for him as the first two. What is right we defend and affirm, what is unjust, we denounce and condemn. We have affirmed and affirm that in the last decade the Albanian education and culture in Kosovo (less in Macedonia and Montenegro) have received a commendable boost. Opening of Albanian schools, of the important University of Prishtina, unification of the Albanian language, development of songs, dances, Albanian folklore, processed music, Albanian literature, etc., within the borders of the Federation and alongside the culture of other peoples of Yugoslavia, have taken a leap that was not seen long ago and the reasons are known and we do not want to dwell here. So, we see and equate the past with the present, we see the positive changes made in these areas.
Such a development those who hindered yesterday, cannot hinder today and is contrary to the Constitution of the Federation and the interest of Yugoslavia to stop and hinder. But we cannot say such a thing for the economic development of Kosovo and other areas where Albanians live. The economic and living standards differences between the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and the other republics of Yugoslavia are colossal. These differences cannot be explained, as Yugoslav leaders do, by the reason for the “world crisis”. Differences in living standards between republics and provinces must also be sought in other very large and old, political, ideological and economic reasons. The low number of economic emigrants also speaks about the low development of the economy in Kosovo. The economic emigration of Albanians living in Yugoslavia numbers in the hundreds of thousands. In Turkey alone, about 250,000 people have emigrated, in addition to tens of tens of thousands to other countries in Europe, America, Australia, Africa. Everywhere he finds Albanian emigrants leaving Yugoslavia “self-governing socialist” and no economic emigrant has left “Stalinist, statist-bureaucratic Albania”.
Kosovo youth do not find work, they suffer for bread in Tito’s Yugoslavia and after Tito. The reasons for these problems must be found, diagnosed and the disease cured as soon as possible and as correctly as possible. To speak against the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania and its people, for allegedly non-existent crimes, this problem is not solved with tanks and Rankovich police terror. No one can lie to the Yugoslav press when it says that “Socialist Albania says this because it is jealous of Kosovo’s economic progress.” This is funny. What are the reasons that these non-existent draws are made between Kosovo and socialist Albania and no draws are made between the province of Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia?
There is a political reason that tries to convince someone and hide the reality, both in the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania, in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and in the socialist federal republics of Yugoslavia. In terms of “political rights”, status changes from the province to the republic, etc., have neither been nor are concerns for the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania. These are internal issues of the peoples of Yugoslavia, they are issues of the Albanian people living in their own lands in Yugoslavia, who, according to the laws in force, deriving from the constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, has the right to ‘ask. Not only does no one in the Federation have the right to stop these demands from Albanians living in Yugoslavia, much less to attack them, injure them, kill them and imprison them. For this truth we say, the Yugoslavs accuse us of interfering in their internal affairs.
We have not interfered and do not interfere in these internal affairs of theirs, which we think are resolved fairly only by self-determination, in understanding, by sincere talks and by calmness on all sides. The Socialist People’s Republic of Albania did not make the slightest intervention in Kosovo, did not send tanks, helicopters, police, did not send border guards, did not bring cannon batteries to its borders, and did not make an official protest, but an article of right, measured and argued politically, ideologically and historically, and as such the whole world press described, wrote about the tragedy that was caused in Kosovo. Albania is not responsible for what happened in Kosovo, those who used violence are not responsible, not expediency and reason. Socialist Albania has stated that if any foreign aggressor power touches the borders of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then it and the Albanian people will rise up and fight alongside the peoples of Yugoslavia.
What we say is clear and we keep our promises, we say to the Ustashas who spoke on Radio Zagreb. Nothing unites Albanians with Ustashas, Chetniks and Ballists, on the contrary, Albanians, wherever they are, fight against them, because they have been and are enemies of our peoples, they are mercenaries and bloodthirsty in the service of American imperialism. Soviet social imperialism, etc., working by any means to blow up the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since we wrote the article in “Zeri e Popullit”, until now we have maintained composure, while the Yugoslav leadership and until the last Yugoslav leaflet have vomited bitterness and made attacks against the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania.
The whole raging campaign turned against them. Yugoslav officials accused us of being “nationalists, chauvinists” and so on. We were almost not even accused of being “pan-Slavic”. All these ideologies, and others like these, are anti-Marxist theories, theories of the bourgeoisie. Chauvinism is one of its features and has nothing to do with patriotism and Marxism-Leninism. You can make the revolution, as the Yugoslav leaders talk about it theorizing every day, but you can also deviate and betray it. Modern revisionism, of every color and under every mask to be hidden, is the offspring of the capitalist bourgeoisie that fights the revolution, that deforms and drowns it in blood. The bourgeoisie rules, modern revisionism also does not unite peoples, but divides them.
What is happening in the revisionist Soviet Union? The Great Proletarian Revolution took place there, socialism was established and consolidated there, the USSR, meaning “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, was established, and national issues were settled directly by Lenin and Stalin. Khrushchev’s and modern revisionism diverted the great work of revolution. They established capitalism. Russian chauvinism dominates there savagely, but at the same time Ukrainian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, etc. chauvinism have raised their ears. They are dominated by Pan-Slavism and the Soviet Union from a socialist country turned into an aggressive and belligerent social-imperialist country. Brezhnev’s theory of “limited sovereignty” has engulfed all the Warsaw Pact countries, members of the KNER and the “Socialist Community”, which the strength of Soviet weapons makes them laugh yellow so as not to cry and faint./Memorie.al
Continues in the next issue
