Enver Hoxha - Early Leadership (1946-65)

Early Leadership (1946-65)

The sacrifices of our people were very great. Out of a population of one million, 28,000 were killed, 12,600 wounded, 10,000 were made political prisoners in Italy and Germany, and 35,000 made to do forced labour, of ground; all the communications, all the ports, mines and electric power installations were destroyed, our agriculture and livestock were plundered, and our entire national economy was wrecked. —Enver Hoxha

Hoxha declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and strongly admired the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. During the period of 1945–1950, the government adopted policies which were intended to consolidate power. The Agrarian Reform Law was passed in August 1945. It confiscated land from beys and large landowners, giving it without compensation to peasants. 52% of all land was owned by large landowners before the law was passed; this declined to 16% after the law's passage. Illiteracy, which was 90–95% in rural areas in 1939 went down to 30% by 1950 and by 1985 it was equal to that of a Western country.

The State University of Tirana was established in 1957, which was the first of its kind in Albania. The Medieval Gjakmarrja (blood feud) was banned. Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swamplands. By 1985, a case had not been heard of in the past twenty years whereas previously Albania had the greatest number of patients infected in Europe. A case of syphilis had not been recorded for 30 years. In order to solve the Gheg-Tosk divide, books were written in the Tosk dialect, and the majority of the Party's members came from southern Albania where the Tosk dialect is spoken.

By 1949, the United States and British intelligence organizations were working with King Zog and the mountain men of his personal guard. They recruited Albanian refugees and émigrés from Egypt, Italy and Greece, trained them in Cyprus, Malta and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and infiltrated them into Albania. Guerrilla units entered Albania in 1950 and 1952, but they were killed or captured by Albanian security forces. Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent working as a liaison officer between the British intelligence service and the United States Central Intelligence Agency, had leaked details of the infiltration plan to Moscow, and the security breach claimed the lives of about 300 infiltrators.