Remembering Enver Hoxha

Harsh Thakor

April 11th was the 40th death anniversary of Enver Hoxha, one of the greatest Marxist-Leninist personalities of the twentieth century. He served as leader of the Party of Labour of Albania from its founding in 1941 until his death in 1985.

The passing away of Enver Hoxha was an irreparable loss for the Albanian communists and people. It was a precursor to world imperialism, igniting its furious offensive against communism the world over, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the counter-revolutionary tide swept Albania too. The life and work of Enver Hoxha leaves behind an enriching experience for the communist movement in the present era and showcases the credibility of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

Enver Hoxha was attracted to communism as a young student in the 1930s. In the late 1930s and 1940s, his small country Albania, one of the poorest and most backward in Europe, faced the brunt of first the Italian fascists and then the German Nazi s. Under the conditions of war and merciless repression, Enver played a leading role in uniting the different Albanian communists to establish, on November 8, 1941, the Communist Party of Albania (later renamed the Party of Labour of Albania).

The young communist party soon became the sole leading force of the heroic national liberation war of the Albanian people. The Albanian patriotic fighters under the Party’s leadership overpowered more than 700,000 nazi and fascist troops on their soil and liberated their country in November 1944 entirely with their own resources and the sacrifice of 28,000 martyrs.

The end of the War saw the birth of the new state power in Albania, manifesting the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under the leadership of the Party of Labour of Albania, headed by Enver Hoxha, the country made commendable strides in the spheres of post-war reconstruction, the economy, education and health, scientific and technological progress and the well-being of the masses of people. Land reforms gave land to the peasants who hitherto had to toil in miserable conditions for the landlords. Agriculture was extended and put on an increasingly scientific basis, with the perspective of fully providing for the needs of the people. An entirely new socialist industry was built. From having the lowest literacy rates in Europe, literacy rose to over 90%. Before the new state power, Albania had just a handful of doctors, but under socialism, it educated and trained its own medical and scientific, and technical personnel. Diseases like malaria, which once wiped-out whole sections of the population, were completely eradicated. A network of roads and electricity was extended to even the remotest village in this country with a mountainous and difficult terrain. The status of women, which was extremely low in pre-liberation Albania, was immeasurably raised, and women and girls could be found at the forefront of all fields of endeavour in Albania.

Enver Hoxha’s achievement lies not only in the achievements of socialism in Albania, but in his unwavering struggle to uphold the principles of Marxism-Leninism in the conditions of the second half of the twentieth century.

Enver Hoxha’s great work, “Imperialism and the Revolution”, published in 1978, clinically diagnosed and summed up this entire struggle against modern revisionism, reaffirming the Leninist thesis on the character of the epoch as the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. It evaluated the nature of imperialism in the current period as well as on the strategy and tactics that the proletariat must follow to defeat imperialism and build socialism in the present conditions.

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Vol 57, No. 47, May 18 - 24, 2025