Rethinking the Place of the Second World War in the Contemporary History of Albania

The Institutional Context of History Writing

The institutional context was fundamental for the workings of Albanian socialist historiography. Given its legitimatory significance, the resistance movement became the most politicized issue of the Albanian national history. Several historians have underlined the state socialist instrumentalization of the war, identifying as its core matters the absolutely dominant role of Enver Hoxha and the partisans; the rejection of what the allies called a ‘civil war’ between the National Liberation Army and the anticommunist Balli Kombëtar; the minimization of the British assistance and material supplies to the partisans; and the deliberate deletion of events and actors from the war narrative.^[1]

The Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania (Partia e Punës e Shqipërisë, PLA), as the Communist Party had been called since 1948, played a central role in the development of the historiography. In 1959, it decided on the publication of a large number of brochures on important historical events and the lives of patriots and revolutionaries, that is the heroes of the National Liberation War and of the party. The Institute of History and Linguistics at the State University of Tirana was tasked with the scientific direction of this endeavour.^[2]

The importance that was laid upon the social sciences for propaganda purposes is evident also from many other documents produced by the Central Committee. In a decision of April 1955, the plenum ordered the further instruction of propagandists and lecturers in Marxist–Leninist ideology. The Directorate of Agitation and Propaganda was responsible for the organization of these qualifying measures targeting lecturers of social and economic subjects in higher institutes of education. It was further decided that a brochure on the history of the party was to be published by 1957, for which a commission at the Central Committee was to be appointed. At the same time, the archive of the party was to be organized, and the establishment of an Institute for the History of the Party was considered.^[3] The latter was established in 1956 precisely as a part of the Central Committee of the PLA; from 1966, it took on the name of Institute of Marxist–Leninist Studies. It was responsible for the publication of the main Marxist–Leninist ideological writings, and for publishing Enver Hoxha’s works. In addition, it supervised all publishing endeavours in order to ensure that the Marxist–Leninist ideology and the party line were respected.

The Institute of Marxist–Leninist Studies supervised and prepared all official publications on the Liberation War. However, the Institute of History, established within the Academy of Sciences in 1972, also featured a special section for the study of the National Liberation War. As a protocol of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the PLA suggested, indeed

‘a more organized collaboration is needed between the publishing house “8 Nëntori” with the Institute of Marxist–Leninist Studies, the Institute of History at the Academy of Sciences, the National Committee of Veterans, the State Archive and the Party Committees in the districts, with the aim to increase the rhythm of the publications and to better implement the defined criteria. In all the publications on the National Liberation War, the organizational, inspiring and leading role of the party should be strongly embodied and all of the frequent subjectivisms should be removed.’^[4]

The Academy of Sciences was admonished, besides studies on the distant past, to orientate better towards the period of the National Liberation War and implement better the Marxist–Leninist ideology:

‘The press sector, the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, and the other propaganda sectors at the Central Committee of the Party should help more closely the publishing house “8 Nëntori” and other publishing institutions in the implementation of the criteria for the preservation of ideological purity and for the increase of quality of political-social publications.’^[5]

As explicitly as this wish to control was articulated, as thorough was the institutional dismantling after the fall of the socialist regime at the beginning of the 1990s, when the right-wing government rearranged the Institute of History. The section on the Liberation War became integrated within the new Department of Contemporary History (Departamenti i Historisë së Sotme), whose assignment was to research Albanian history since 1912. When, after the sociopolitical and economic earthquake of 1997, a centre-left-wing government came to power, it rearranged the Institute of History once more by dissolving the Department of Contemporary History into three departments—the Department of Independence (1912-1939) (Departamenti i Pavarësisë), the Department of the National Liberation War (1939-1944) (Departamenti i Luftës Nacionalçlirimtare), and the Department of the Postwar Period (from 1945 onwards) (Departamenti i Historisë së periudhës së pasluftës)—restoring in fact, to a large extent, the structure the Institute had had during the socialist period;^[6] at that time, the ‘National Liberation War’ section had predominated over other aspects of Albanian history. Its integration in the Department of Contemporary History by the right-wing government at the beginning of 1990s can be read as an attempt to diminish this focus, while its reestablishment by the subsequent left-leaning government aimed at exactly the opposite.

In 2008, research institutions underwent yet another reform, following a decision of the Council of Ministers on 22 August 2007. They were now integrated under the umbrella of the newly established Centre of Albanological Studies (Qendra e Studimeve Albanologjike).^[7] The Institute of History was rearranged a third time and now features the following three departments: the Department for the History of the Medieval, Ottoman and Renaissance Periods (Departamenti i Historisë së Mesjetës, i Periudhës Osmane dhe Rilindjes); the Department of the Independence and the Consolidation of the Albanian State (Departamenti i Historisë së Pavarësisë dhe Konsolidimit të Shtetit Shqiptar); and the Department of Contemporary History (Departamenti i Historisë së Sotme).^[8] However, the status and future of the Centre of Albanological Studies are uncertain, too—yet another reform of research institutions is to be expected soon. The continuous institutional redesign by each government, usually carried out under the umbrella of reforms aiming to improve education and research, betray the perpetuated vested interest of contemporary politics in overseeing historical writing. In fact, history with regard to World War II has continued to be strongly politicized. Wartime Albania has been a subject of fervid debate in the political and wider public space. The past interpretations of the National Liberation War have in fact continued to shape present debates. Political parties in Albania tend to consider themselves, or are viewed by their political opponents or the wider public, as representing the ideals of a former political group active during the war. The Socialist Party (Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë), as the successor of the PLA, carries the legacy of the communist resistance movement. The Democratic Party, in an attempt to establish a historical connection to presocialist Albania, stressed the contribution of nationalist and anticommunist groups during World War Two, depicting them as fighters against the establishment of a communist regime in postwar Albania and for the solution of the national question and the unification of all Albanians into one state. This is in clear opposition to the socialist historiography that represented these groups only as collaborators of the Italian and German occupations.

In June 2016, a group of deputies of the Socialist Party proposed a draft law ‘For the establishment of an Institute of Studies of the Memory of the Second World War’, which subsequently, in September 2016, was discussed and approved by the Parliamentary Commission for Legal Issues, Public Administration and Human Rights. The rhetoric in support of the draft law strongly recalls the language used during socialism: ‘It is time to establish an Institute of the Memory of the Second World War, […] to preserve our national memory in order not to forget the sacrifices of our predecessors’; and ‘The Antifascist National Liberation War is an extraordinary epic, a history written with the blood of thousands of Albanian boys and girls.’^[9] Up to this date (May 2017) the draft law has not been discussed in the plenary session of the Albanian parliament, and the question whether this institute will be established is still open.

Socialist Historiography on the Second World War

A vast number of publications on the National Liberation War were published during state socialism, many of which were translated into various foreign languages. In 1975, the Institute of Marxist–Leninist Studies published two volumes on the history of the Antifascist National Liberation War, executing a decision of the Central Committee of the PLA.^[10] In the course of the discussion of the first draft manuscript, the Politburo of the PLA decided to remove all individuals who had held leading roles during the war but were later condemned by the party, with the argument that ‘if they are mentioned, they remain in history’.^[11] Between 1984 and 1989, this ‘History of the Antifascist National Liberation War of the Albanian People’ was extended and (re-)published in four volumes.^[12] The new edition reflected the consolidation of the leader cult of Enver Hoxha as the founder of the Communist Party (CPA) and the leader in the National Liberation War. Every single event during the war was attributed to his visionary thinking and attitudes. The first volume was published shortly before Hoxha’s death in 1985, the other three in the second half of the 1980s.

The way the role of the CPA during the war was presented served to legitimize Hoxha as the leader of the armed resistance against foreign occupation, and was therefore strongly related to his representation as the party’s founder, who overcame the differences among the Albanian communists. The cult of the individual, that is Hoxha as the architect of the great victory of the Albanian people, constituted a central aspect of the historiography on the National Liberation Movement. Usually, after the cover page of a given publication, a photograph depicted Hoxha wearing a military uniform, and the caption ran ‘Enver Hoxha. Founder and leader of the CPA, organiser of the Antifascist National Liberation War, and Commanding General of the National Liberation Army’.

The omission of significant historical figures amounted to an important strategy in this over-emphasis of Hoxha’s role. Usually, beyond him heroically fallen partisans were mentioned, political opponents who served as the negative counterpart, as traitors or agents of imperialist countries, as well as a few close companions. Due to the continuous purges within the party, former communists were often turned into traitors in the evolving versions of the History of the National Liberation War.

Hoxha’s death in 1985 meant that the historical narrative had now to build on his legacy the legitimacy of the new leadership. The plenum of the Central Committee of the PLA assembled on 12-13 April, two days after Hoxha’s death, and elected Ramiz Alia as First Secretary of the party. Alia swore to remain faithful to Hoxha’s path and teachings. This was confirmed in the Ninth Congress of the PLA in November 1986, which was also labelled as the Congress of Continuity. In his report to the Congress, Alia once again stressed Hoxha’s role as the leader in the National Liberation War and of the Albanian state that came out of the liberation.^[13]

Initially, the emergent leader cult of Enver Hoxha was closely related to the founding of the Communist Party of Albania (CPA) in November 1941 and its role during the resistance to the Italian and German occupation. The Albanian socialist historiography attributed early acts of resistance prior to and during the first months of the Italian occupation of Albania foremost to the leadership of Communists. The armed resistance on the very day of occupation, 7 April 1939, is vaguely attributed to a group of patriots,^[14] not mentioning the resistance of the gendarmerie commander in the town of Durrës, Abaz Kupi, who became an important representative of the non-communist resistance during the war. The silence around the resistance of his troops on the occupation day^[15] made his later denigration and denunciation as a traitor in 1944 easier to justify. Among the communist groups the one from Korça, to which Hoxha belonged, was depicted as stern and calling immediately for armed resistance against the Italian occupation. In contrast, other communist groups were depicted as ridden with internal disputes between members and group leadership.^[16] Various among their important personalities were later accused as traitors and removed from the narrative, which only served to increase the focus on Enver Hoxha.

The socialist historiography stressed the domestic factors in the course of the war, the conditions within the communist movement that led to the foundation of the party, and on Hoxha’s part in unifying the communists. Any role of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) in the founding of the party was denied.^[17] Mostly, no mention is made of the representatives of the CPY who were present at the founding meeting of the Albanian Communist Party in November 1941. The ‘History of Albania’ of 1965 did include a subchapter on the intervention of the ‘revisionist leadership of the CPY’ and argued that since 1943 it aimed to ‘eliminate the Leninist leadership of the CPA and the new Albanian state, and make Albania a Yugoslav province’.^[18] The official ‘History of the PLA’ also dedicated subchapters to the intervention of the CPY in the internal affairs of the CPA during the war.^[19] The denunciation of several Albanian party members as factionists in this process, who had allegedly aimed to depose the party leadership and Enver Hoxha himself,^[20] served as a justification for the purges that were carried out within the party after the break-up with Yugoslavia in 1948, in the course of the Tito–Stalin split. In 1983, in the context of the usual silence around the participation of two CPY emissaries at the founding meeting of the CPA, Xhelal Gjeçovi in his overview of non-Albanian historiography on the Albanian–Yugoslav relations during the Second World War blamed it for being anti-Albanian and insisted that the two Yugoslav emissaries had no role whatsoever in the foundation of the CPA.^[21]

An analogous, literally negative, issue was the role of British aid to the National Liberation Movement—its existence was usually denied, or at least strongly diminished. The official historiography is limited to vivid descriptions of the partisans’ bravery, self-sacrifice and heroic deeds. The accounts on the different brigades of the National Liberation Army in the various regions of Albania included detailed descriptions of military action against both the occupiers and domestic collaborators.^[22] At the most, it is implied that the British sent some military supplies, but, in the words of Enver Hoxha,

‘as for the weapons supply—it was a big bluff never swallowed by our Communist Party. The few weapons that were given to us by the British were ridiculous and were sent only upon the continuous pressure by the General Command of the National Liberation Army.’^[23]

There is even mention of the ‘hostile attitudes’ of the allied military missions’ activities in Albania. The British military missions are depicted in terms of ‘efforts to activate political reactionary groups […] in order to bring Albania under their political influence after the war’.^[24] The allied missions’ efforts to establish contact with resistance groups outside the National Liberation Front were commented on in this way:

‘The Communist Party of Albania understood that the hostile attitudes of the allied missions in Albania, their efforts to darken the National Liberation War of the Albanian people, the support they gave to the traitor organizations of Legaliteti, Balli, as well as local chieftains in northern Albania, were not sporadic attitudes but a result of defined imperialistic politics of certain reactionary circles, which had a strong influence on the British and American governments.’^[25]

Balli Kombëtar(National Front) and Legaliteti(Legality) were non-communist resistance movements formed in November 1942 and November 1943, respectively. Therefore, the official narrative continues, ‘the Central Committee of the Party ordered the party members and the partisan formations to maintain a correct and righteous attitude to the military missions, which should not be allowed to be an arbiter in domestic affairs’.^[26]

This begs explanation. The consideration of the British missions as a danger to the CPA’s goals for the postwar Albanian political system needs to be viewed within the complicated political contexts that emerged, especially with the German occupation after the Italian capitulation of September 1943. The political shift in Albania, which laid the foundations for the establishment of the communist system after the war, occurred during the war years, with the Italian withdrawal accelerating things. Starting from 1942, the CPA took some crucial steps towards establishing itself as the legitimate political force to claim power after the war. These included meetings organized with the participation of different Albanian resistance groups and several party plenum meetings and conferences, which stood at the centre of attention in the socialist historical narrative, as they were considered the main steps towards the establishment and consolidation of the people’s power.

The first of these conferences, at Peza, a village near Tirana, on 16 September 1942, saw the participation of representatives of various resistance groups. The decisions taken at this conference were to wage war against the fascist invaders for a free, independent and democratic Albania; to organize all patriotic forces into a united National Liberation Front; to prepare for the people’s armed uprising; and to establish national liberation councils in all free and occupied regions. According to socialist historiography, the meeting ‘laid the foundations of the people’s power. It confirmed the leading role of the Communist Party of Albania in the National Liberation War and marked the party’s first great political victory.’^[27] The official narrative explicitly intertwined the war against the occupying forces with the war against the inner enemies (and the role of the British missions was ‘simply’ engulfed in this dialectic whirlpool):

‘The new popular power in Albania was born during the Antifascist National Liberation War that our people fought under the leadership of the CPA for their national and social liberation. The entanglement of the National Liberation War with the war against the collaborators and exploiting classes had important revolutionary consequences for the Antifascist National Liberation, giving it the character of a profound popular revolution. The direct result was the overthrow of the main exploiting classes in the country, along with the destruction of the enemy and the liberation of the country. This was a historic merit of our Party, which never separated the Liberation War from the war for the taking over of power by the working class.’^[28]

The National Liberation War was considered ‘the most heroic and triumphant war the Albanians have waged throughout their history’, and that ‘the heroic efforts made, the bloodshed and the huge losses suffered by the Albanian people in the war, were crowned with absolute victory over their external and internal enemies’.^[29] The leadership of the CPA was considered the most important domestic factor for the liberation of the country, since it was ‘the inspirer, organizer and leader of the Antifascist National Liberation War, the architect of victory’.^[30]

Parallel to the contexts of how the socialist regime was consolidated, publications on the Second World War increasingly pointed at collaborators in connection with purges within the party, which had started already during the war.^[31] In 1974, another milestone conference was organized on the Antifascist National Liberation War, which continued to focus on political and military issues. However, one of the six volumes published subsequently was dedicated to sociocultural topics, such as the revolutionary press during the war, education, folklore or music. The chapters in this volume added to the highly ideologized agenda and focused primarily on the establishment of a new revolutionary culture as a result of the policies of the CPA during the war. Among the issues highlighted were: the efforts against illiteracy; the CPA’s war press; and the literature as well as partisan theatres and their ideological basis.^[32]

Revisiting the History of the Second World War after the Fall of the Socialist Regime

Since the fall of the socialist regime, the historiography of the Second World War in Albania has evolved within the broader context of rewriting Albanian national history, which had also fallen prey to the strong ideologization and control.^[33] The topoi of ‘resistance’ and ‘collaboration’ have remained guiding threads in the reconsideration of the older central theses. The revisionist trend was evident from the first issue of the journal of the Institute of History, Studime historike (Historical Studies), which restarted publication in 1994 after some years of interruption. The contributions to the journal reflected the beginning of a general revision process of the national master narrative, including the Second World War.^[34]

Often the discussion on central historical figures and events took place in the daily press, even among historians. Various texts in the first issue of the re-established Studime historike feature a note indicating an earlier publication there; and Albanian historians have been including newspaper articles in collections of their work on the Second World War. For example, historian Ana Lalaj, in her recent publication ‘The War Files’, has collected personal interviews she gave to the daily press on some of the most controversial topics related to the war, in addition to documents and several research articles.^[35]

Several war-related issues fuelled the public discussion. One is the role of the two emissaries of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the foundation of the CPA. Albanian historians have now acknowledged their significance in bringing together the representatives of the different communist groups active in Albania, which resulted in the founding of the Albanian Communist Party in November 1941. They continue to stress that the time was ripe also in terms of internal Albanian developments. As the historian and leader of the Social Democracy Party, Paskal Milo, summed up, ‘the paternity of the Communist Party is Albanian; the midwife that facilitated the birth process was Yugoslav’.^[36]

With regard to the role of the foreign allied missions in Albania, Albanian historians now agree that their aid was unduly diminished by the socialist historiography.^[37] In 2009, British historian Roderick Bailey published an important monograph on the topic, using official files, letters, interviews and diaries of involved persons to analyse the activities of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Albania.^[38] The activities of the representatives of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Albania during the war was analysed by Peter Lucas in 2007. However, he wrote his book in a not too scholarly style and it lacked contextualization of various historical events, which caused him to arrive at some incorrect conclusions, one being his overall evaluation of the role of the British military missions in Albania:

‘The nasty civil war would rage on and the British would inadvertently prolong it by continuing to support the BK [Balli Kombëtar, G.K.]. The British would eventually come around and support the communists, but by then it was clear that Enver Hoxha was going to win anyway. He would not need the British. Hoxha would hate the British for the rest of his life.’^[39]

On the other hand, Bernd Fischer argued that the British support to Hoxha, albeit not decisive, was important in terms of material supplies and military training for the partisans, and actually contributed to ending the civil war, rather than prolonging it.^[40] His is one of the earliest comprehensive monographs on the political developments in wartime Albania. Lucas, in describing individuals or political forces, rather perpetuated some of the simplistic descriptions of the socialist historiography, for example when he states that ‘the Albanian Communist Party was co-founded in Albania by Enver Hoxha, who united several party fractions under his leadership’, or when he describes Balli Kombëtar‘as an anti-Communist nationalist organization that sought to take over the country. The BK collaborated with the German occupiers and fought the Communists in a civil war.’^[41]

Military historian Marenglen Kasmi published a monograph on the institutional framework of the German occupation in Albania, based predominantly on German documents.^[42] His work follows up on previous studies on the German occupation system, such as those by Bernhard Kühmel and Hubert Neuwirth.^[43] Neuwirth’s more recent study takes account of the complexity of the war events in Albania. Importantly, he emphasizes that the conflict between the CPA and Balli Kombëtar was grounded in their different political aims, but that confronting the communists did not automatically mean collaboration with the Italian occupiers.^[44] If it had been published soon after its completion in 1997, Neuwirth’s PhD thesis might have had a stronger impact. Eleven years later, the potentialities of his book were diminished by the fact that in the meantime many of his theses had also been put forth by other scholars. It might be added that several of his arguments in the context of explaining the collaboration or/and resistance of various historical figures with the sociocultural features of Albanian society, such as family organization or the blood feud (besa), remain simplistic, if not culturalist, and would merit a more differentiated elaboration.

The core of postsocialist historiography, thus, pertains to the revision of the previously propagated interpretaments. But Albanian and non-Albanian scholars have also posed several new research questions. Among the more prominent are those about the attitudes of the different religious communities in Albania during the war and those about the situation of ethnic minorities, in particular in the Greek–Albanian border region.

Markus Peters has written a monograph on the history of the Catholic Church in Albania between 1919 and 1996, briefly addressing various issues related to the Second World War, such as: the missionary activities of Catholic priests in southern Albania in the attempts to attract the Christian Orthodox population to the idea of a Uniate Church; the engagement of Albanian Catholic clerics against communism; the attitudes of Catholic clergymen to the Italian occupation; and the relation of Catholic clergymen to Balli Kombëtar.^[45] However, this author, too, expresses several biased and simplistic interpretations. While justifying the collaboration of Catholic priests with the Italian and German occupying administrations with the threat posed by the communists, he argues that ‘the Catholic Church put the national question over the religious affiliation, but did not receive any support from the Muslim population’.^[46] What is more, Peters does not consider the Germans as having been an occupying force at all, a view made explicit in the title of the respective subchapter, ‘The Church in Independent Albania between the German Protectorate and the Communist Terror (1943-1944)’.^[47]

In his study on ‘Nationality and religion in Albania’ between 1920 and 1944, Roberto Morozzo della Rocca argues that the heads of all Albanian religious communities approved of the Italian occupation, observing, however, a discrepancy between the attitudes of clergymen and their parishes.^[48] As far as the leaders of the Catholic community were concerned, Morozzo della Rocca found that while officially they, too, expressed their approval of the new regime, they caused the Italians more trouble than other religious communities, at least at the beginning of the occupation, precisely because of the nationalist orientation existing among Albanian Catholics, which was backed by the clergy. If a considerable number of Catholic individuals collaborated with the Italians, Morozzo della Rocca maintains, they did not do so out of any religious affinities. Many had been politicians in the interwar state apparatus, and their religion was not their primary concern. Rather, their political attitudes depended on their mentality, local traditions, social conditions, tribe, ideology and their regional affiliation.^[49] As for Albania’s Muslim communities, some valuable, if brief, light has been shed on the Bektashi Order,^[50] and especially on one Muslim Bektashi cleric, Baba Faja Martaneshi, who was active in the armed resistance.^[51] The fact that a considerable number of Jews found refuge in Albania during the Holocaust, and most of them survived, has aroused scholarly interest both in terms of how this past is dealt with and in terms of empirical exploration. Daniel Perez has published an excellent analysis of the memory of the Holocaust among Albanian elites, focusing both on the historiography after the fall of the socialist regime and on attitudes and public speeches of members of the political elite.^[52] He identified as one of the subplots of Albanian elite conceptions on the Holocaust that ‘the Albanian rescue is rooted in a set of values allegedly inherent in Albanian culture, such as religious tolerance, hospitality, and honor manifested in the besa’.^[53] Edmond Malaj of the Center of Albanian Studies in Tirana, in his recent study on ‘Jewries in Albanian lands’, briefly assessed the attitudes of the Albanian governments towards Jews during the Italian and German occupation years. He stresses that the main role in the protection of Jews is to be attributed to the state structures and to functionaries who allowed the access and stay of Jews who had escaped to Albania. Through the establishment of camps, they offered shelter to thousands of Jewish refugees, predominantly from Germany, Austria and East Central Europe.^[54] Both concise explorations beg for further, in-depth research.

With regard to the situation of ethnic minorities in wartime, the Albanian minority in northern Greece (Chameria) in particular has aroused scholarly attention, including research more generally into Greek–Albanian relations. Beqir Meta, in his monograph on the Greek–Albanian tensions of the 1940s, focuses on political issues, such as: King Zog’s attitude to Greece after the Italians invaded the country in October 1940; the British and American policies; the attitudes of the Albanian political organizations towards the Greek resistance; and the massacres the resistance movement ‘National Republican Greek League’ (Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos, EDES), led by Napoleon Zervas, committed against the Albanian Muslim population in northern Greece between June 1944 and March 1945.^[55]

Sonila Boçi, in her monograph on ‘Minorities in Albania between identity and integration’ in the 1940s, focuses on how the Italians sought to instrumentalize the national feelings of the Albanian population in Chameria in order to gain support for their military actions against Greece. Boçi finds that since April 1940 the Italians pushed Albanian irredentism in three main directions: propagandistic, stressing the religious and cultural differences between Albanians and their neighbours; political, establishing Albanian irredentist organizations in the cross-border territories; and military, creating clandestine units that were to be used at the right moment for the destabilization of the neighbouring country. Logically, the intensification of the Italian propaganda campaign, simultaneously with preparing to attack Greece, directed the Greek government’s attention towards the Albanian population in Chameria rather than towards the Greek minority in southern Albania.^[56]

While Muharrem Dezhgiu argues that the position of the Albanian population in Çamëria during the war was delicate, not least because of the competing Greek resistance groups, which led to the mentioned massacres against civilians committed by the EDES,^[57] Boçi shows how, in southern Albania, both Albanian and Greek resistance groups worked to gain the support of the Greek minority for political rather than military goals, and how ethnicity ‘counted’. The Albanian National Liberation Front, despite propaganda and many efforts for the inclusion of the minority into the resistance war, proved unable significantly to convince the Greeks. Only from the end of 1943, when the Albanian National Liberation Front allowed emissaries of the Greek National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, EAM) to work in the Greek minority regions, did the situation improve.^[58]

While the integration of Albania into the larger regional and international historiographic debates and research agendas of the Second World War largely remains a desideratum, both Albanian and non-Albanian scholars have dealt with various aspects of international relations, in particular: the position of Albania in the larger frameworks of the war and of the exiled King Zog I;^[59] the ideas the allies nurtured towards Albania’s postwar future or towards different Albanian resistance groups;^[60] and the role of the Albanian diaspora in the United States to secure international support for Albania.^[61] Finally, education and the media during the war have been chosen as research topics. Fatmira Rama, in her monograph on educational practices during the war, analysed: the measures undertaken by the Italian occupation authorities in order to fascistize the schools; the establishment of an Albanian school system in the part of Kosovo that was annexed to Albania in 1941; the efforts for an Albanian language education for the minority in the Chameria (Greece); the resistance to occupation in schools; as well as measures against illiteracy in the framework of the National Liberation War.^[62] Arben Muka analysed the media landscape during Italian and German occupation focusing on the fascist press as well as the antifascist press of different political groups, such as newspapers published by the CPA, Balli Kombëtar, and Legaliteti, focusing on their different propagandistic agendas.^[63] With regard to issues of coming to terms with the war and with the legacy of its socialist instrumentalization, scholars have taken interest in: the political usages of the war for indoctrinatory purposes during the socialist period, such as the highly ideologized partisan songs, as a means for spreading communist ideology;^[64] as well as with current political involvements in the remembrance of war events and the erection of monuments, and their changing (or lost) meaning since the fall of the socialist regime.^[65]

Thus, in synthesis, the historiography on wartime Albania has largely lacked social history approaches and innovative methodology. Topics that beg further exploration are, for example: meso- and micro-scale social, religious and family contexts; the implications of the political constellations during the war for the everyday life of the people; the involvement of ordinary people in the political movements; and the motives behind political attitudes and (changing) loyalties. Such new and broadened perspectives, as well as a fostered integration of Albanian scholars in international debates, would lead to a better understanding of Albanian wartime history and its implications for later political developments.

The Mukje Agreement (August 1943). The Question of Civil War and the National Question

In the last section of this article, I wish to discuss in greater detail the event that more than any other has fuelled public and scholarly debate—the attempt to join forces through a treaty signed between representatives of Balli Kombëtar and the National Liberation Front (among the latter counted, besides the Communists, also Abaz Kupi and several local nationalists) in the village of Mukje in Central Albania on 2 August 1943. The meeting’s aim was to channel the Albanian resistance. It is a question of dispute among historians upon whose initiative the meeting was organized. It has been assigned to the Communist Party, or to Abas Kupi, or to the influence of British officers in Albania.^[66] In the debate on the Mukje agreement, the influence of the socialist historiography on the postsocialist period has been particularly evident. Crucial questions are at stake, including those about resistance and collaboration, communism and anticommunism, the nation, and the inner-Albanian violent conflict that broke out between the participating parties in an attempt to secure postwar power.

At the meeting, the representatives of the National Liberation Front and Balli Kombëtar agreed to establish a Committee for National Salvation, with equal numbers of representatives from both organizations, which would function as a provisional government. The delegates supported the concept of an ethnic Albania based on the right of self-determination. However, shortly after, the Central Committee of the CPA stepped back from the agreement and issued the instruction to terminate any collaboration with Balli Kombëtar. The socialist historiography’s official explanation for the rejection of the Mukje agreement was that the CPA’s emissaries at the meeting had disregarded the cardinal principle that Balli Kombëtar was never to be recognized to have equal status with the National Liberation Front.^[67] The Mukje agreement

‘wrote off the great victories achieved in the antifascist war under the leadership of the Communist Party and, even worse, paved the way for political power to pass into the hands of the reactionary bourgeoisie who had not fired a shot and had not undertaken to fight against the foreign enslavers, but to the contrary had collaborated with them and were actually still doing so’.^[68]

What is more, the socialist historiography considered the denunciation of the Mukje agreement as an important factor in the success of the people’s revolution, as the following sentence clearly shows: ‘The rejection and denunciation of the Mukje agreement was of vital importance for the fate of the war and revolution in Albania, considering the fact that [assuming] power was the main issue of the revolution.’^[69] The thesis that the inner-Albanian struggle contained elements of a civil war taking place simultaneously with the Liberation War was expressed even by historians during socialist times, who consistently put forth the explanation that it was necessary for the National Liberation Front to contain the other groups because they had collaborated with the enemy and fought against the CPA.^[70] Thus, the socialist historiography clearly confirmed the CPA’s will to assume power and the steps it took during the war to reach this goal. For example, in 1977, Luan Omari in his book on ‘The popular revolution and the question of power’ argued that a ‘feature of the Antifascist War of the Albanian people was the intertwining of the National Liberation War against foreign invaders with the popular revolution, with the civil war against the domestic reactionary forces in their service’.^[71] ‘The war against the collaborators’, he continued, ‘was a civil war conducted within the context of the main war against the invaders’.^[72] Nevertheless, the civil war topos was never central to the socialist historiography, and the formulations regarding the power struggle were usually glossed over by the argument that the National Liberation War was a democratic socialist revolution:

‘The Antifascist National Liberation War remained, to the very last, an anti-imperialist and democratic revolution. However, within its framework, elements of the socialist revolution evolved as well, such as the divestment of the bourgeoisie of political power, the establishment of the Communist Party as the sole leader in the new Albanian state, and so on. This came about as a consequence of the continual intensification of the struggle against the principal exploiting classes in the country and the combination of this struggle with the war against the invaders, a matter which still further enhanced the revolutionary character of the National Liberation War.’^[73]

Since 1990, interpretations of the failure of the Mukje agreement have been revised and differentiated. Among the topical threads that have been taken up are: the CPA’s reluctance to divide power with the nationalist forces;^[74] the influence of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia;^[75] the lack of a wish to work together by the CPA and Balli Kombëtar, which led both groups to find a way out of the agreement and blame the other;^[76] and the competing political aims for the postwar order.^[77] A general consensus has been reached that the rejection of the Mukje agreement paved the way to some crucial developments during the German occupation, such as: the beginning of armed confrontation between the CPA and Balli Kombëtar; the foundation of a third party, the monarchist Legaliteti headed by Abaz Kupi; and the open collaboration of Balli Kombëtar with the German occupiers. Muharrem Dezhgiu has argued that the collaborative efforts of Balli Kombëtar came as a consequence of the CPA’s attitude to consider Balli Kombëtar in the same way as the occupiers.^[78] According to him as well as Bernd Fischer, the principal responsibility for initiating the armed confrontation lies in Enver Hoxha’s order of 5 October 1943, calling for the liquidation of the Balli Kombëtar.^[79]

Hence, the responsibilities of the CPA have been made quite clear. Generally, the answers given to the question as to whether a civil war was fought in Albania during the German occupation period can be grouped around three main theses. The first one echoes the socialist interpretaments, insisting that a liberation war took place and not a civil war, since the country was occupied, and the clashes between the Albanian political forces are to be considered as a fight between resisters and collaborationists. The second thesis maintains that the war from 1943 onwards was a civil war alone and not a liberation war, since its main aim was seizure of power. And finally, there are those who see the events as more complex, saying that the Liberation War was imbued with elements of civil war.

Although eminent historians of the first generation, such as Kristo Frashëri, continued to refuse the notion of a civil war, the third thesis, of an entanglement of a war of liberation with elements of civil war, has won ground also among the older generation of historians. Muharrem Dezhgiu, for example, concludes:

‘The war against invaders was a liberation war until the fall of 1943, after that it was intertwined with elements of a civil war. This was the origin of the communist dictatorship which was imposed onto all political forces outside the National Liberation Front and onto the Albanian people.’^[80]

An analogous view is expressed in volume four of the ‘History of Albanian People’, published in 2007 by the Academy of Sciences of Albania,^[81] as well as by other Albanian and non-Albanian historians.^[82] Dezhgiu argues that

‘the contradictions between the Communist Party and the nationalists with anticommunist convictions led to wrong evaluations of their supporters, which in some cases pertained to whole villages or regions. Therefore, the war against the leaders extended to their supporters. It was in this way that the war was transformed into a civil war with visible dimensions.’^[83]

He does not, however, analyse the degree to which supporters of Balli Kombëtar and other anticommunist groups were involved. On the whole, the attitudes and involvement of the civilian population remains a very much underresearched topic; researching the local settings in terms of a sociopolitical history could contribute to an enhanced understanding, not only of the impact the armed confrontation had on the population and the social settings they lived in but also of the social dimensions of the political and armed clashes between the different political parties themselves.

Kosovo

Kosovo held a particularly virulent position in all this. Unsurprisingly, the CPA’s attitude towards the Kosovo question has been an important critical issue in the postsocialist period, and especially in the context of the failed Mukje agreement. The influence of the CPY was considered one of the main factors for the Mukje failure, since there is no way that it could accept the decision to fight for an ethnic Albania.^[84] Luca Micheletta has argued that the CPA’s ambiguity towards national issues was one of the reasons why the Mukje agreement failed and thus was yet another aspect of the responsibility of the Communist side for the inner-Albanian armed conflict.^[85] On the other hand, according to the socialist historiography the reasons for the rejection of Mukje by the CPA were related foremost to the question of power—in the 1980s it was argued that the Mukje agreement was even used by the leadership of the CPY to gain control over the CPA leadership, referring to Tito’s emissary Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, who was in Albania at the time and criticized the agreement as too lenient towards the stances of Balli Kombëtar.^[86]

Despite not being explicitly mentioned, the importance of Kosovo in the relations between the two communist parties becomes clear in assessments such as the following:

‘The Mukja meeting accepted the fake slogan of “ethnic Albania” that Balli and other reactionaries used as the “apple of discord”, as a weapon to deceive the Albanian people, so that they could remove the attention from the war against the fascist invader and start their war against their neighbours.’^[87]

During the socialist period, historians did not deal with the unification of the Italian occupied territories of Albania and Kosovo under the label ‘Greater Albania’ in 1941. If it was mentioned, it was either in the context of collaborators trying to deceive the people, with statements such as ‘Mustafa Kruja tried to convince the public opinion that fascist Italy was the forger of “Greater Albania” and defender of the national independence of the Albanian people’;^[88] or ‘the Communist Party of Albania never accepted the fascist slogan of “Greater Albania”’.^[89] In the ‘History of Albania’ of 1965, ‘Greater Albania’ is not mentioned at all, and the 1984 edition states:

‘The Communist Party of Albania never considered the “unification” of Kosovo with Albania carried out by the nazi-fascists as a liberation from the Serb yoke, but as passing from an old yoke to a new one. This attitude of the Communist Party of Albania was profoundly understood by the Albanian people fighting under its leadership, but for the Kosovars the problem was more difficult.’^[90]

If the CPA responded positively to the CPY’s request to organize the antifascist resistance in Kosovo, this was due to ‘the consideration of general interest in the joint war against fascism and the interests of communism, believing that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was a marxist-leninist party’.^[91] The fourth volume, on the history of the National Liberation War of 1989, then included extended subchapters on (alleged) atrocities committed by the Yugoslav National Liberation Army and the heroic military actions of the National Liberation Army of Albania in Kosovo.^[92] Such extended attention to Kosovo in the 1980s might be, in fact, related to the situation in Kosovo after the violent protests of 1981.

The absence of any information on ‘Greater Albania’ in the socialist historiography is all the more striking because of the existence of a section at the Institute of History that worked on the history of Kosovo. It was established in the 1970s, and its assignment was to deal with Kosovo’s history from 1913 onwards, that is from the end of Ottoman rule in the region. At the beginning of the 1980s, a new section on ‘Ethnic Studies’ was created for studying the history of Albanian-inhabited territories outside the borders of Albania, as well as that of the Albanian diaspora.^[93] I addressed the issue of the total absence of information on ‘Greater Albania’ in a conversation with my colleague at the Department of History at Tirana University, Fatmira Rama, and came to know that research results of the section on the history of Kosovo were seldom published. The reasons, she assumed, might lie in the wish not to provoke Yugoslavia, and the knowledge about how sensitive the issue of Kosovo’s complicated situation during World War II was. When browsing through the journal Studime historike, I found that the majority of the contributions to the journal pertaining to Kosovar history concentrated on the period from 1918 to 1941; I did not find any that dealt with Kosovo under the Italian occupation and ‘Greater Albania’.

Even today, publications on the Italian occupation barely deal with ‘Greater Albania’. The only aspect that has been elaborated to a certain degree is the contribution of the Albanian Ministry of Education to opening Albanian language schools in Kosovo^[94] and Macedonia.^[95] Other aspects remain underresearched, although there are indications that the Albanian government was not very successful in establishing any functional administration at all in the new territories.^[96] Further research is needed in order to comprehend the political, economic, religious, social and cultural impact of this forced and short-lived unification of Albanian-inhabited territories.

One thing is certain: during the Italian and German occupations the Albanian national question was an important element of propaganda to secure the support of Albanians. While the socialist historiography represented every important non-communist local figure and other political parties as collaborators, with no differentiation and contextualization, the picture is more varied after the revision of the wartime Albanian history starting from the 1990s. The collaboration in its various forms has been explained in terms of two principal narratives: the nationalist narrative, as actions in the name of Albanian-nationalist cause with the desire to preserve the wartime unification of Kosovo and Albania; and the anticommunist narrative, which views the collaboration as a result of the attempts of the CPA to monopolize the antifascist armed resistance and prepare for power overtake after the war.

Concluding Remarks

The Second World War constitutes one of the most controversial historical periods of Albanian history. The legacy of the heavily ideologized and politically prescribed master narrative of the socialist era continues to throw its shadows today. Precisely, these manipulated interpretaments of historical writing led to a long phase after 1990 in which Albanian historians, in the midst of heated public debates, revised the hitherto valid main theses on the Second World War. Only recently have scholars started to turn to topics that had been left completely blank. Thus, history writing after 1990 has continued to focus mainly on political issues. The persistent right–left divide of Albanian politics contributed to transferring the cleavages of the socialist period with regard to the meaning of the war events to postsocialist politics, and to controversies about what would be adequate commemoration practices related to the Second World War. Only since the 2000s has the range of research topics slowly begun to widen, albeit without much methodological innovation yet. Formulating new research questions, appropriating international methodological standards and exploring sources beyond the official documents of the state administration, the institutions of the occupiers and the resistance movements would help to better understand the wartime society in Albania.