Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0005/00053.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 41KB | 653 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00053}
$Pretitle{298}
$Title{Albania
Chapter 2.    Historical Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe, Sarah Jane Elpern, Willaim Giloane, James M. Moore, Jr., Weston White}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{albania
albanian
party
communist
country
national
political
soviet
italy
movement}
$Date{1971}
$Log{}
Country:     Albania
Book:        Albania, A Country Handbook
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe, Sarah Jane Elpern, Willaim Giloane, James M. Moore, Jr., Weston White
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 2.    Historical Setting

     Historical works and official documents published in Tirana as late as
1970 stressed two major themes: the importance of patriotism and nationalism
and the achievements, real or fancied, of the Communist regime since it
assumed control of the country in November 1944. The appeal to nationalism
always strikes a responsive chord among the Albanians not only because their
history is replete with humiliations and injustices heaped upon them by long
domination of foreign powers but also, and especially, because of the
territorial aspirations and claims of its neighbors-Italy, Yugoslavia, and
Greece. The political scene in Albania since it formally won an independent
existence from Turkey in 1912 has indeed been dominated by attempts of one, or
a combination, of its neighbors to dismember it.

     The boundaries of Albania in 1970 were essentially the same as those
delineated by representatives of the Great Powers after Albania had declared
its independence. Ethnic problems raised by the drawing of the boundaries have
never been solved to the satisfaction of the countries involved. The Albanians
hold that in 1913 about 40 percent of their territory, with a population at
that time of about 600,000 ethnic Albanians, was unjustly assigned to Serbia.
The area has been a continuing source of friction between Albania and
Yugoslavia.

     A source of tension between Albania and Greece has been the status of
Albania's two southernmost districts. Known to the Greeks as Northern Epirus,
this region was awarded to Albania by the boundary delineations of 1913, but
the Greeks have never relinquished their claims to the area.

     Italy, located only about forty-five miles across the narrow Strait of
Otranto, has attempted on several occasions to impose its hegemony over
Albania. The extreme influence exercised on Albanian affairs by Italy between
1925 and 1939 that culminated in a military invasion in April of 1939 has been
a source of great resentment by the Albanian people.

     The Communist Party of Albania assumed control of the country in 1944.
The fact that the Communist regime installed itself in the capital city of
Tirana on November 28, Albania's traditional Independence Day, was an
indication that originally it did not intend to cut off all ties with the
past, although its declared intention was to create a new social order. A year
later, however, on November 29, the regime proclaimed a new national holiday,
which it called Liberation Day. Until about 1960 the traditional Independence
Day was mentioned only in passing, whereas Liberation Day was celebrated with
considerable publicity.

     A basic change of attitude, however, occurred when the regime broke with
the Soviet Union in the 1960-61 period. The ruling elite, apparently feeling
insecure both for their personal safety and for the future of the country,
launched an intensive campaign to win popular support by appealing to the
people's nationalist and patriotic sentiments. The country's major patriots
who were responsible for the national awakening in the second half of the
nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries had been forgotten
after the Communist seizure of power. In 1961 and 1962, however, books and
pamphlets began to be published praising nearly all those, irrespective of
their social backgrounds, who had played a role in the national awakening and
in the declaration of the country's independence in 1912.

     Intensive preparations were made in 1962 to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of the country's independence, and on November 28, 1962, all the
top leaders of the party and government went to Vlore, where independence had
been declared, to stage one of the biggest patriotic celebrations in the
country's modern history. Among the many books and documents published on this
occasion to glorify the country's past was one entitled Rilindja Kombetare
Shqipetare (Albanian National Awakening), which included photographs of most
patriots who had taken part in winning the country's independence, even those
of the landed aristocracy (beys-see Glossary), whom the regime had previously
branded as the "blood-suckers" of the peasants.

     This appeal to the past was also accentuated in 1968 in connection with
the 500th anniversary of the death of the country's national hero, Skanderbeg.
The regime sent a number of scholars and historians to search for historical
documents in Vienna and Rome in preparation for the celebration.

     With the exception of these efforts to resurrect the past after a hiatus
of fifteen years, the primary function of the country's historians, all under
the control of the Party, is to glorify the country's achievements in the
period under communism. The Party is given credit for all that has been done
in the economic development of the country, in improvements in the people's
health, and in expansion of educational and cultural facilities, all of which
have been considerable. In 1970 Enver Hoxha, first secretary of the Party,
like Stalin in his day and Mao Tse-tung in 1970, was daily quoted and
glorified.

Antiquity and the Middle Ages

     The modern Albanians call their country Shqiperia and themselves
Shqipetare. In antiquity the Albanians were known as Illyrians, and in the
Middle Ages they came to be called Arbereshe or Arbeneshe, and their country
Arberia or Arbenia. The present European forms, Albania and Albanians, are
derived from the names Arbanoi and Albanoi or Arbaniti, which appeared in the
eleventh century.

     In antiquity the Albanians formed part of the Thraco-Illyrian and Epirot
tribes that inhabited the whole of the peninsula between the Danube River and
the Aegean Sea. Until 168 B.C. the northern and central part of present-day
Albania comprised parts of the Kingdom of Illyria, whose capital was Shkoder.
The Illyrian Kingdom was conquered by the Romans in 168-167 B.C., and
thereafter it was a Roman colony until A.D. 395, when the Roman Empire was
split into East and West, Albania becoming part of the Byzantine Empire.

     Under the Roman Empire, Albania served as a key recruiting area for the
Roman legions and a main outlet to the East. The present port of Durres (the
ancient Durrachium) became the western terminum of Via Egnatia, an actual
extension of Via Appia, by which the Roman legions marched to the East. It was
during the Roman rule that Christianity was introduced into Albania.

     From the fifth century to the advent of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans
in the fourteenth century, invasions from the north and east, especially by
the Huns, the Bulgarians, and the Slavs, thinned the indigenous Illyrian
population and drove it along the mountainous Adriatic coastal regions. During
the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Albania became a
thoroughfare for the crusading armies, which used the port of Durres as a
bridgehead. By this time the Venetian Republic had obtained commercial
privileges in Albanian towns and, after the Fourth Crusade (1204), it received
nominal control over Albania and Epirus and took actual possession of Durres
and the surrounding areas. In the middle of the thirteenth century Albania
fell under the domination of the kings of Naples, and in 1272 armies of
Charles I of Anjou crossed the Adriatic and occupied Durres. Thereupon,
Charles I issued a decree calling himself Rex Albaniae and creating Regnum
Albaniae (the Kingdom of Albania), which l