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“any other road leads only to the restoration of Capitalism in the Countryside:” land Collectivization in albania1 örJAn sJöBerg “Now look at what Albania is doing. Albania is copying what we had done precisely, only with greater, Asiatic brutality.”2 after splitting with moscow in 1961, albania’s communist party, the albanian party of labor (apl),3 proclaimed that its model of socialism was unique to the eastern Bloc. This was indeed true, at least with respect to how rural areas and agricultural production were organized. although collectivization in its earliest phases mirrored campaigns in other soviet satellites,4 the albanian program soon took on an innovative character—or so the party claimed—which was expected to developed into a full-fledged state farming system before long. only then, the official line suggested, socialism would be firmly established in the countryside. at this point, or so propaganda had it, cooperative forms of organization were replaced by true ownership and management by the people. The party’s claim that albania’s path was unique warrants further scrutiny, in particular since it was based on ideologically charged propaganda. as we shall see, it was not exceptional, but it does contain features that can be considered sin1 i owe the quote which is part of the title to the work of peter prifti. it originates in a speech by enver hoxha at the fifth Congress of the albanian party of labor held in 1966. for context and bibliographic details, please refer to the penultimate section of this article and note 72 below, respectively. 2 “speech of n. s. Khrushchev,” 1962. 3 The albanian Communist party changed its name to the albanian party of labor in 1948; for practical reasons, the latter name is used throughout this article. 4 Wädekin, Agrarian Policies; sjöberg, Rural Change, chapter 4. 370 ÖRJAN SJÖBERG gular. for now, suffice it to note that albania did consciously try to shape its own collectivization policies and solutions with a view to achieving the original aim as set at the very beginning of communist rule. indeed, the fact that albania held on to an orthodox line, also in face of an unyielding reality, helps explain some strange and also seemingly unrelated political events. Thus, the stubbornness with which enver hoxha pursued his goals has a bearing on the last major—and fatal—battle within the apl itself, the main victim of which was hoxha’s long time ally mehmet shehu. This event, which took place in late 1981, in turn marked amongst other things the beginning of yet another attempt to extend the reach of collectivized agriculture. as such it was the final wave of collectivization during the Cold War, but the consequences were little different from the experiences of the 1950s: retail markets for rural produce were outlawed, animals were slaughtered, the supply of eggs, milk, and meat dried up and rationing was reintroduced once again. as for traits it shares with other communist states, albania carried out land reforms before initiating collectivization. as in many eastern european countries, collectivization proved a lengthy process that seldom benefitted the rural poor. The process also hinged on class warfare, which pitted smaller farmers against (at least nominally) wealthier kulaks. once collectivization was achieved—which albania did in a step-by-step fashion over several decades—there remained the problem of ensuring that collectives could deliver the food needed for a rapidly growing population, along with raw materials for processing and manufacturing industries, which at least in albania’s case were controlled by an increasingly stringent autarkic state planning model. This contribution addresses the protracted process of collectivization in albania, emphasizing developments during the second half of the 1940s and during the 1950s, but also following the process through up to the 1980s. The chapter builds on the established chronology of events, noting the measures taken by the apl to collectivize agriculture and to subdue rural areas in order to carry out its political and economic imperatives. rather than relying on firsthand archival research or rehearsing established foreign secondary literature only, the aim here is to fill in some gaps about our understanding of the collectivization process by using the relatively limited post-socialist albanian research. it is yet another step in our endeavor to understand the nature and role of collectivization in albanian efforts to build socialism. To appreciate why this might be of interest, it is useful to consider the current state of research on agrarian development in...

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