Ali Kelmendi (born 1900 in İpek, now Peć, Ottoman Empire – died 11 February 1939 in France), Hero of Albania under the communist government, was a Kosovar Albanian communist, an organizer of the communist movement in Albania.
Ali Kelmendi was born in 1900 in a poor peasant family in the town of İpek in the Kosovo province of the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Kosovo).
In June 1924, he participated in the resurgency led by Fan Noli in Albania as a fighter. After the fall of Noli's regime (December 1924) he emigrated to Italy, thereafter to Austria and then to the Soviet Union. There he joined the Albanian communist group affiliated to the Balkan Confederation of Communist Parties belonging to the Communist International.
In 1930, the Communist International sent Kelmendi to Albania as an organizer of the communist movement. He also made some organizational work in Kosovo. However, his work bore no considerable fruit since Marxism hadn't found any favourable soil in Albania and the clandestine work was very difficult because of the activity of the security police. Kelmendi was arrested several times and in 1936 he was exiled.
Ali Kelmendi participated in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. In 1939, he edited a propagandist newspaper in France together with other Albanian communists. He died in France on 11 February 1939 of tuberculosis.
Famous quotes containing the word ali:
“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer—he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)