• Member of the COMECON People's Republic of Albania, 1949
• Member of the COMECON Mongolian People's Republic, 1962

 

On 29 November 1944, Albania was liberated by the National Liberation Movement (LNC). The Anti - Fascist National Liberation Council, formed in May, became the country's provisional government.

The government, like the LNC, was dominated by the two year old Communist Party of Albania, and the party's first secretary, Enver Hoxha, became Albania's prime minister. From the very first day, the LNC regime was an undisguised Communist dictatorship. In the other countries in what became the Soviet bloc, the Communists were at least nominally part of coalition governments for a few years before seizing outright control. Having crushed the nationalist Balli Kombëtar, the government moved quickly to subdue all potential political enemies, break the country's landowners and middle class, and isolate Albania from the non - Communist world. King Zog I was barred from ever returning to Albania, though the country nominally remained a monarchy.

The internal affairs minister, Koçi Xoxe, an erstwhile pro - Yugoslavia tinsmith, presided over the trial and the execution of thousands of opposition politicians, clan chiefs and members of former Albanian governments who were condemned as "war criminals." Thousands of their family members were imprisoned for years in work camps and jails and later exiled for decades to miserable state farms built on reclaimed marshlands.

The communists' consolidation of control also produced a shift in political power in Albania from the northern Ghegs to the southern Tosks. Most communist leaders were middle class Tosks, and the party drew most of its recruits from Tosk inhabited areas.

In December 1945, Albanians elected a new People's Assembly, but only candidates from the Democratic Front (previously the National Liberation Movement), appeared on the electoral lists, and the Communists used propaganda and terror tactics to gag the opposition. Official ballot tallies showed that 92 % of the electorate voted and that 93 % of the voters chose the Democratic Front ticket.

The assembly convened in January 1946. Its first act was to formally abolish the monarchy and declare Albania a "people's republic." However, as mentioned above, the country had been an out - and - out Communist state for just over two years. After months of angry debate, the assembly adopted a constitution that mirrored the Yugoslav and Soviet constitutions. Then in the spring, the assembly members chose a new government. Hoxha became prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister and the army's commander in chief. Xoxe remained both internal affairs minister and the party's organizational secretary.

In late 1945 and early 1946, Xoxe and other party hard liners purged moderates who had pressed for close contacts with the West, a modicum of political pluralism, and a delay in the introduction of strict communist economic measures until Albania's economy had more time to develop. Hoxha remained in control despite the fact that he had once advocated restoring relations with Italy and even allowing Albanians to study in Italy.

The communists also undertook economic measures to expand their power. In December 1944, the provisional government adopted laws allowing the state to regulate foreign and domestic trade, commercial enterprises and the few industries the country possessed. The laws sanctioned confiscation of property belonging to political exiles and "enemies of the people." The state also expropriated all German and Italian owned property, nationalized transportation enterprises and canceled all concessions granted by previous Albanian governments to foreign companies.

The government took major steps to introduce a Stalinist style centrally planned economy in 1946. It nationalized all industries, transformed foreign trade into a government monopoly, brought almost all domestic trade under state control, and banned land sales and transfers. Planners at the newly founded Economic Planning Commission emphasized industrial development and in 1947 the government introduced the Soviet cost accounting system.

In August 1945, the provisional government adopted the first sweeping agricultural reforms in Albania's history. The country's 100 largest landowners, who controlled close to a third of Albania's arable land, had frustrated all agricultural reform proposals before the war. The communists' reforms were aimed at squeezing large landowners out of business, winning peasant support, and increasing farm output to avert famine. The government annulled outstanding agricultural debts, granted peasants access to inexpensive water for irrigation and nationalized forest and pastureland.

Under the Agrarian Reform Law, which redistributed about half of Albania's arable land, the government confiscated property belonging to absentee landlords and people not dependent on agriculture for a living. The few peasants with agricultural machinery were permitted to keep up to 400,000 square meters of land; the landholdings of religious institutions and peasants without agricultural machinery were limited to 200,000 square meters and landless peasants and peasants with tiny landholdings were given up to 50,000 square meters, although they had to pay nominal compensation.

Thus tiny farmsteads replaced large private estates across Albania. By mid 1946 the Albanian government claimed that its peasants were cultivating more land and producing higher maize and wheat yields than ever before, but the reliability of such claims in light of later international discoveries regarding Albanian industry may be questioned.

Until Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform in 1948, Albania was effectively a Yugoslav satellite. In repudiating the 1943 Albanian internal Mukaj agreement under pressure from the Yugoslavs, Albania's communists had given up on their demands for a Yugoslav cession of Kosovo to Albania after the war. In January 1945, the two governments signed a treaty establishing Kosovo as a Yugoslav autonomous province. Shortly thereafter, Yugoslavia became the first country to recognize Albania's provisional government.

In July 1946, Yugoslavia and Albania signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation that was quickly followed by a series of technical and economic agreements laying the groundwork for integrating the Albanian and Yugoslav economies. The pacts provided for coordinating the economic plans of both states, standardizing their monetary systems, and creating a common pricing system and a customs union. So close was the Yugoslav - Albanian relationship that Serbo - Croatian became a required subject in Albanian high schools.

Yugoslavia signed a similar friendship treaty with Bulgaria, and Marshal Josip Broz Tito and Bulgaria's Georgi Dimitrov talked of plans to establish a Balkan federation to include Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Yugoslav advisers poured into Albania's government offices and its army headquarters. Tirana was desperate for outside aid, and about 20,000 tons of Yugoslav grain helped stave off famine. Albania also received US $26.3 million from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration immediately after the war but had to rely on Yugoslavia for investment and development aid.

Joint Albanian – Yugoslav companies were created for mining, railroad construction, the production of petroleum and electricity, and international trade. Yugoslav investments led to the construction of a sugar refinery in Korçë, a food processing plant in Elbasan, a hemp factory at Rrogozhinë, a fish cannery in Vlorë, and a printing press, telephone exchange and textile mill in Tirana. The Yugoslavs also bolstered the Albanian economy by paying three times the international price for Albanian copper and other materials.

Relations between Albania and Yugoslavia declined, however, when the Albanians began complaining that the Yugoslavs were paying too little for Albanian raw materials and exploiting Albania through the joint stock companies. In addition, the Albanians sought investment funds to develop light industries and an oil refinery, while the Yugoslavs wanted the Albanians to concentrate on agriculture and raw material extraction. The head of Albania's Economic Planning Commission and one of Hoxha's allies, Nako Spiru, became the leading critic of Yugoslavia's efforts to exert economic control over Albania. Tito distrusted Hoxha and the other intellectuals in the Albanian party and, through Xoxe and his loyalists, attempted to unseat them.

In 1947, Yugoslavia acted against anti - Yugoslav Albanian communists, including Hoxha and Spiru. In May, Tirana announced the arrest, trial and conviction of nine People's Assembly members, all known for opposing Yugoslavia, on charges of anti - state activities. A month later, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia's Central Committee accused Hoxha of following "independent" policies and turning the Albanian people against Yugoslavia. Apparently attempting to buy support inside the Albanian Communist Party, Belgrade extended Tirana US $40 million worth of credits, an amount equal to 58 % of Albania's 1947 state budget. A year later, Yugoslavia's credits accounted for nearly half of the state budget. Relations worsened in the fall, however, when Spiru's commission developed an economic plan that stressed self sufficiency, light industry and agriculture. The Yugoslavs complained bitterly, and when Spiru came under criticism and failed to win support from anyone in the Albanian party leadership, he committed suicide.

The insignificance of Albania's standing in the communist world was clearly highlighted when the emerging East European nations did not invite the Albanian party to the September 1947 founding meeting of the Cominform. Rather, Yugoslavia represented Albania at Cominform meetings. Although the Soviet Union gave Albania a pledge to build textile and sugar mills and other factories and to provide Albania agricultural and industrial machinery, Joseph Stalin told Milovan Djilas, at the time a high ranking member of Yugoslavia's communist hierarchy, that Yugoslavia should "swallow" Albania.

The pro - Yugoslav faction wielded decisive political power in Albania well into 1948. At a party plenum in February and March, the communist leadership voted to merge the Albanian and Yugoslav economies and militaries. Hoxha, to the core an opportunist, even denounced Spiru for attempting to ruin Albanian - Yugoslav relations. During a party Political Bureau (Politburo) meeting a month later, Xoxe proposed appealing to Belgrade to admit Albania as a seventh Yugoslav republic. When the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia on June 28, however, Albania made a rapid about - face in its policy toward Yugoslavia. The move surely saved Hoxha from a firing squad and as surely doomed Xoxe to one. Three days later, Tirana gave the Yugoslav advisers in Albania 48 hours to leave the country, rescinded all bilateral economic agreements with its neighbor, and launched a virulent anti - Yugoslav propaganda blitz that transformed Stalin into an Albanian national hero, Hoxha into a warrior against foreign aggression, and Tito into an imperialist monster.

Albania entered an orbit around the Soviet Union, and in September 1948 Moscow stepped in to compensate for Albania's loss of Yugoslav aid. The shift proved to be a boon for Albania because Moscow had far more to offer than hard - strapped Belgrade. The fact that the Soviet Union had no common border with Albania also appealed to the Albanian regime because it made it more difficult for Moscow to exert pressure on Tirana. In November at the First Party Congress of the Albanian Party of Labor (APL), the former Albanian Communist Party renamed at Stalin's suggestion, Hoxha pinned the blame for the country's woes on Yugoslavia and Xoxe. Hoxha had Xoxe sacked as internal affairs minister in October, replacing him with Shehu. After a secret trial in May 1949, Xoxe was executed. The subsequent anti - Titoist purges in Albania brought the liquidation of 14 members of the party's 31 person Central Committee and 32 of the 109 People's Assembly deputies. Overall, the party expelled about 25 % of its membership. Yugoslavia responded with a propaganda counterattack, canceled its treaty of friendship with Albania, and in 1950 withdrew its diplomatic mission from Tirana.

Albania's relations with the West soured after the communist regime's refusal to allow free elections in December 1945. Albania restricted the movements of United States and British personnel in the country, charging that they had instigated anticommunist uprisings in the northern mountains. Britain announced in April that it would not send a diplomatic mission to Tirana; the United States withdrew its mission in November; and both the United States and Britain opposed admitting Albania to the United Nations (UN). The Albanian regime feared that the United States and Britain, which were supporting anticommunist forces in the civil war in Greece, would back Greek demands for territory in southern Albania; and anxieties grew in July when a United States Senate resolution backed the Greek demands.

A major incident between Albania and Britain erupted in 1946 after Tirana claimed jurisdiction over the channel between the Albanian mainland and the Greek island of Corfu. Britain challenged Albania by sailing four destroyers into the channel. Two of the ships struck mines on October 22, 1946, and 44 crew members died. Britain complained to the UN and the International Court of Justice which, in its first case ever, ruled against Tirana.

After 1946 the United States and the United Kingdom began implementing an elaborate covert plan to overthrow Albania's communist regime by backing anticommunist and royalist forces within the country. 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 Albanian security forces killed or captured all of them. 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.

Following a wave of subversive activity, including the failed infiltration and the March 1951 bombing of the Soviet embassy in Tirana, the Albanian regime implemented harsh internal security measures. In September 1952, the assembly enacted a penal code that required the death penalty for anyone over eleven years old found guilty of conspiring against the state, damaging state property, or committing economic sabotage.

Albania became dependent on Soviet aid and know - how after the break with Yugoslavia in 1948. In February 1949, Albania gained membership in the communist bloc's organization for coordinating economic planning, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). Tirana soon entered into trade agreements with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Soviet Union. Soviet and East European technical advisers took up residence in Albania, and the Soviet Union also sent Albania military advisers and built a submarine installation on Sazan Island. After the Soviet - Yugoslav split, Albania and Bulgaria were the only countries the Soviet Union could use to funnel war material to the communists fighting in Greece. What little strategic value Albania offered the Soviet Union, however, gradually shrank as nuclear arms technology developed.

Anxious to pay homage to Stalin, Albania's rulers implemented new elements of the Stalinist economic system. In 1949 Albania adopted the basic elements of the Soviet fiscal system, under which state enterprises paid direct contributions to the treasury from their profits and kept only a share authorized for self financed investments and other purposes. In 1951, the Albanian government launched its first five year plan, which emphasized exploiting the country's oil, chromite, copper, nickel, asphalt and coal resources; expanding electricity production and the power grid; increasing agricultural output; and improving transportation. The government began a program of rapid industrialization after the APL's Second Party Congress and a campaign of forced collectivization of farmland in 1955. At the time, private farms still produced about 87 % of Albania's agricultural output, but by 1960 the same percentage came from collective or state farms.

Soviet - Albanian relations remained warm during the last years of Joseph Stalin's life despite the fact that Albania was an economic liability for the Soviet Union. Albania conducted all its foreign trade with Soviet European countries in 1949, 1950 and 1951 and over half its trade with the Soviet Union itself. Together with its satellites, the Soviet Union underwrote shortfalls in Albania's balance of payments with long term grants.

Although far behind Western practice, health care and education improved dramatically for Albania's 1.2 million people in the early 1950s. The number of Albanian doctors increased by a third to about 150 early in the decade (although the doctor - patient ratio remained unacceptable by most standards), and the state opened new medical training facilities. The number of hospital beds rose from 1,765 in 1945 to about 5,500 in 1953. Better health care and living conditions produced an improvement in Albania's dismal infant mortality rate, lowering it from 112.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1945 to 99.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 1953. The education system, considered a tool for propagating communism and creating the academic and technical cadres necessary for construction of a socialist state and society, also improved dramatically. The number of schools, teachers, and students doubled between 1945 and 1950. Illiteracy declined from perhaps 85 % in 1946 to 31 % in 1950. The Soviet Union provided scholarships for Albanian students and supplied specialists and study materials to improve instruction in Albania. The State University of Tirana (now University of Tirana) was founded in 1957 and the Albanian Academy of Sciences opened 15 years later. Despite these advances, however, education in Albania suffered as a result of restrictions on freedom of thought. For example, education institutions had scant influence on their own curricula, methods of teaching or administration.

Stalin died in March 1953, and apparently fearing that the Soviet ruler's demise might encourage rivals within the Albanian party's ranks, neither Hoxha nor Shehu risked traveling to Moscow to attend his funeral. The Soviet Union's subsequent movement toward rapprochement with the hated Yugoslavs rankled the two Albanian leaders. Tirana soon came under pressure from Moscow to copy, at least formally, the new Soviet model for a collective leadership. In July 1953, Hoxha handed over the foreign affairs and defense portfolios to loyal followers, but he kept both the top party post and the premiership until 1954, when Shehu became Albania's prime minister. The Soviet Union, responding with an effort to raise the Albanian leaders' morale, elevated diplomatic relations between the two countries to the ambassadorial level.

Despite some initial expressions of enthusiasm, Hoxha and Shehu mistrusted Nikita Khrushchev's programs of "peaceful coexistence" and "different roads to socialism" because they appeared to pose the threat that Yugoslavia might again try to take control of Albania. Hoxha and Shehu were also alarmed at the prospect that Moscow might prefer less dogmatic rulers in Albania. Tirana and Belgrade renewed diplomatic relations in December 1953, but Hoxha refused Khrushchev's repeated appeals to rehabilitate posthumously the pro - Yugoslav Xoxe as a gesture to Tito. The Albanian duo instead tightened their grip on their country's domestic life and let the propaganda war with the Yugoslavs grind on. In 1955 Albania became a founding member of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, better known as the Warsaw Pact, the only military alliance the nation ever joined. Although the pact represented the first promise Albania had obtained from any of the communist countries to defend its borders, the treaty did nothing to assuage the Albanian leaders' deep mistrust of Yugoslavia.

Hoxha and Shehu tapped the Albanians' deep - seated fear of Yugoslav domination to remain in power during the thaw following the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union in 1956, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in his "secret speech." Hoxha defended Stalin and blamed the Titoist heresy for the troubles vexing world Communism, including the disturbances in Poland and the rebellion in Hungary in 1956. Hoxha mercilessly purged party moderates with pro - Soviet and pro - Yugoslav leanings, but he toned down his anti - Yugoslav rhetoric after an April 1957 trip to Moscow, where he won cancellation of about US $105 million in outstanding loans and about US $7.8 million in additional food assistance. By 1958, however, Hoxha was again complaining about Tito's "fascism" and "genocide" against Albanians in Kosovo. He also grumbled about a Comecon plan for integrating the East European economies, which called for Albania to produce agricultural goods and minerals instead of emphasizing development of heavy industry. On a twelve day visit to Albania in 1959, Khrushchev reportedly tried to convince Hoxha and Shehu that their country should aspire to become socialism's "orchard."

Albania played a role in the Sino - Soviet conflict far outweighing either its size or its importance in the communist world. By 1958 Albania stood with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in opposing Moscow on issues of peaceful coexistence, de-Stalinization, and Yugoslavia's "separate road to socialism" through decentralization of economic life. The Soviet Union, other East European countries, and China all offered Albania large amounts of aid. Soviet leaders also promised to build a large Palace of Culture in Tirana as a symbol of the Soviet people's "love and friendship" for the Albanians. But despite these gestures, Tirana was dissatisfied with Moscow's economic policy toward Albania. Hoxha and Shehu apparently decided in May or June 1960 that Albania was assured of Chinese support, and when sharp polemics erupted between the PRC and the Soviet Union, they openly sided with the former. Ramiz Alia, at the time a candidate - member of the Politburo and Hoxha's adviser on ideological questions, played a prominent role in the rhetoric.

The Sino - Soviet split burst into the open in June 1960 at a Romanian Workers' Party congress, at which Khrushchev attempted to secure condemnation of Beijing. Albania's delegation, alone among the European delegations, supported the Chinese. The Soviet Union immediately retaliated by organizing a campaign to oust Hoxha and Shehu in the summer of 1960. Moscow cut promised grain deliveries to Albania during a drought, and the Soviet embassy in Tirana overtly encouraged a pro - Soviet faction in the Party of Labor of Albania (APL) to speak out against the party's pro - Chinese stance. Moscow also apparently involved itself in a plot within the APL to unseat Hoxha and Shehu by force. But given their tight control of the party machinery, army, and Shehu's secret police, the Directorate of State Security (Drejtorija e Sigurimit të Shtetit - Sigurimi), the two Albanian leaders easily parried the threat. Four pro - Soviet Albanian leaders, including Teme Sejko and Tahir Demi, were eventually tried and executed. The PRC immediately began making up for the cancellation of Soviet wheat shipments despite a paucity of foreign currency and its own economic hardships.

Albania again sided with the People's Republic of China when it launched an attack on the Soviet Union's leadership of the international communist movement at the November 1960 Moscow conference of the world's 81 communist parties. Hoxha inveighed against Khrushchev for encouraging Greek claims to southern Albania, sowing discord within the APL and army, and using economic blackmail. "Soviet rats were able to eat while the Albanian people were dying of hunger," Hoxha railed, referring to purposely delayed Soviet grain deliveries. Communist leaders loyal to Moscow described Hoxha's performance as "gangsterish" and "infantile," and the speech extinguished any chance of an agreement between Moscow and Tirana. For the next year, Albania played proxy for Communist China. Pro - Soviet communist parties, reluctant to confront the PRC directly, criticized Beijing by castigating Albania. Communist China, for its part, frequently gave prominence to the Albanians' fulminations against the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which Tirana referred to as a "socialist hell."

Hoxha and Shehu continued their harangue against the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at the APL's Fourth Party Congress in February 1961. During the congress, the Albanian government announced the broad outlines of the country's Third Five Year Plan (1961 – 65), which allocated 54 % of all investment to industry, thereby rejecting Khrushchev's wish to make Albania primarily an agricultural producer. Moscow responded by canceling aid programs and lines of credit for Albania, but the Chinese again came to the rescue.

After additional sharp exchanges between Soviet and Chinese delegates over Albania at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Twenty - Second Party Congress in October 1961, Khrushchev lambasted the Albanians for executing a pregnant, pro - Soviet member of the Albanian party Politburo Liri Gega, and the Soviet Union finally broke diplomatic relations with Albania in December. Moscow then withdrew all Soviet economic advisers and technicians from the country, including those at work on the Palace of Culture, and halted shipments of supplies and spare parts for equipment already in place in Albania. In addition, the Soviet Union continued to dismantle its naval installations on Sazan Island, a process that had begun even before the break in relations.

Communist China again compensated Albania for the loss of Soviet economic support, supplying about 90 % of the parts, foodstuffs and other goods the Soviet Union had promised. Beijing lent the Albanians money on more favorable terms than Moscow, and, unlike Soviet advisers, Chinese technicians earned the same low pay as Albanian workers and lived in similar housing. China also presented Albania with a powerful radio transmission station from which Tirana sang the praises of Stalin, Hoxha and Mao Zedong for decades. For its part, Albania offered China a beachhead in Europe and acted as Communist China's chief spokesman at the UN. To Albania's dismay, however, Chinese equipment and technicians were not nearly as sophisticated as the Soviet goods and advisers they replaced. Ironically, a language barrier even forced the Chinese and Albanian technicians to communicate in Russian. Albanians no longer took part in Warsaw Pact activities or Comecon agreements. The other East European communist nations, however, did not break diplomatic or trade links with Albania. In 1964, the Albanians went so far as to seize the empty Soviet embassy in Tirana, and Albanian workers pressed on with construction of the Palace of Culture on their own.

The shift away from the Soviet Union wreaked havoc on Albania's economy. Half of its imports and exports had been geared toward Soviet suppliers and markets, so the souring of Tirana's relations with Moscow brought Albania's foreign trade to near collapse as China proved incapable of delivering promised machinery and equipment on time. The low productivity, flawed planning, poor workmanship and inefficient management at Albanian enterprises became clear when Soviet and East European aid and advisers were withdrawn. In 1962, the Albanian government introduced an austerity program, appealing to the people to conserve resources, cut production costs and abandon unnecessary investment.

In October 1964, Hoxha hailed Khrushchev's fall from power, and the Soviet Union's new leaders made overtures to Tirana. It soon became clear, however, that the new Soviet leadership had no intention of changing basic policies to suit Albania and relations failed to improve. Tirana's propaganda continued for decades to refer to Soviet officials as "treacherous revisionists" and "traitors to communism," and in 1964, Hoxha said that Albania's terms for reconciliation were a Soviet apology to Albania and reparations for damages inflicted on the country. Soviet - Albanian relations dipped to new lows after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Albania felt the Soviet Union itself had become too liberal since the death of Joseph Stalin, so it withdrew of the Warsaw Pact. Leonid Brezhnev made no attempt to force Albania back into the Warsaw Pact.

In the mid 1960s, Albania's leaders grew wary of a threat to their power by a burgeoning bureaucracy. Party discipline had eroded. People complained about malfeasance, inflation and low quality goods. Writers strayed from the orthodoxy of socialist realism, which demanded that art and literature serve as instruments of government and party policy. As a result, after Mao Zedong unleashed the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966, Hoxha launched his own Cultural and Ideological Revolution. The Albanian leader concentrated on reforming the military, government bureaucracy and economy as well as on creating new support for his Stalinist system. The regime abolished military ranks, reintroduced political commissars into the military and renounced professionalism in the army. Railing against a "white collar mentality," the authorities also slashed the salaries of mid and high level officials, ousted administrators and specialists from their desk jobs, and sent such persons to toil in the factories and fields. Six ministries, including the Ministry of Justice, were eliminated. Farm collectivization spread to even the remote mountains. In addition, the government attacked dissident writers and artists, reformed its education system, and generally reinforced Albania's isolation from European culture in an effort to keep out foreign influences.

In 1967, the authorities conducted a violent campaign to extinguish religious life in Albania, claiming that religion had divided the Albanian nation and kept it mired in backwardness. Student agitators combed the countryside, forcing Albanians to quit practicing their faith. Despite complaints, even by APL members, all churches, mosques, monasteries, and other religious institutions had been closed or converted into warehouses, gymnasiums and workshops by year's end. A special decree abrogated the charters by which the country's main religious communities had operated. The campaign culminated in an announcement that Albania had become the world's first atheistic state, a feat touted as one of Enver Hoxha's greatest achievements.

Traditional kinship links in Albania, centered on the patriarchal family, were shattered by the postwar repression of clan leaders, collectivization of agriculture, industrialization, migration from the countryside to urban areas and suppression of religion. The postwar regime brought a radical change in the status of Albania's women. Considered second class citizens in traditional Albanian society, women performed most of the work at home and in the fields. Before World War II, about 90 % of Albania's women were illiterate, and in many areas they were regarded as chattels under ancient tribal laws and customs. During the Cultural and Ideological Revolution, the party encouraged women to take jobs outside the home in an effort to compensate for labor shortages and to overcome their conservatism. Hoxha himself proclaimed that anyone who trampled on the party's edict on women's rights should be "hurled into the fire."

Albanian - Chinese relations had stagnated by 1970, and when the Asian giant began to reemerge from isolation in the early 1970s, Mao and the other Communist Chinese leaders reassessed their commitment to tiny Albania. In response, Tirana began broadening its contacts with the outside world. Albania opened trade negotiations with France, Italy and the recently independent Asian and African states, and in 1971 it normalized relations with Yugoslavia and Greece. Albania's leaders abhorred the People's Republic of China's contacts with the United States in the early 1970s, and its press and radio ignored President Richard Nixon's trip to Beijing in 1972. Albania actively worked to reduce its dependence on Communist China by diversifying trade and improving diplomatic and cultural relations, especially with Western Europe. But Albania shunned the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and was the only European country that refused to take part in the Helsinki Conference of July 1975. Soon after Mao's death in 1976, Hoxha criticized the new leadership as well as Beijing's pragmatic policy toward the United States and Western Europe. The Chinese retorted by inviting Tito to visit Beijing in 1977 and ending assistance programs for Albania in 1978.

The Sino - Albanian split left Albania with no foreign protector. Tirana ignored calls by the United States and the Soviet Union to normalize relations. Instead, Albania expanded diplomatic ties with Western Europe and the developing nations and began stressing the principle of self reliance as the keystone of the country's strategy for economic development. However, Hoxha's cautious opening toward the outside world stirred up nascent movements for change inside Albania. As the dictator's health slipped, muted calls arose for the relaxation of party controls and greater openness. In response, Hoxha launched a series of purges that removed the defense minister and many top military officials. A year later, Hoxha purged ministers responsible for the economy and replaced them with younger persons.

As Hoxha's health declined, the dictator began planning for an orderly succession. He worked to institutionalize his policies, hoping to frustrate any attempt his successors might make to venture from the Stalinist path he had blazed for Albania. In December 1976, Albania adopted its second Stalinist constitution of the postwar era. The document "guaranteed" Albanians freedom of speech, the press, organization, association, and assembly but subordinated these rights to the individual's duties to society as a whole. The constitution enshrined in law the idea of autarky and prohibited the government from seeking financial aid or credits or from forming joint companies with partners from capitalist or revisionist communist countries. The constitution's preamble also boasted that the foundations of religious belief in Albania had been abolished.

In 1980, Hoxha turned to Ramiz Alia to succeed him as Albania's communist patriarch, overlooking his long standing comrade - in - arms, Mehmet Shehu. Hoxha first tried to convince Shehu to step aside voluntarily, but when this move failed, Hoxha arranged for all the members of the Politburo to rebuke him for allowing his son to become engaged to the daughter of a former bourgeois family. Shehu allegedly committed suicide on December 18, 1981. It is suspected, however, that Hoxha had him killed. Hoxha, obviously fearing retaliation, purged the members of Shehu's family and his supporters within the police and military. In November 1982, Hoxha announced that Shehu had been a foreign spy working simultaneously for the United States, British, Soviet and Yugoslav intelligence agencies in planning the assassination of Hoxha himself. "He was buried like a dog," the dictator wrote in the Albanian edition of his book, The Titoites.

Hoxha went into semi - retirement in early 1983, and Alia assumed responsibility for Albania's administration. Alia traveled extensively around Albania, standing in for Hoxha at major events and delivering addresses laying down new policies and intoning litanies to the enfeebled president. When Hoxha died on April 11, 1985, he left Albania a legacy of repression, technological backwardness, isolation and fear of the outside world. Alia succeeded to the presidency and became legal secretary of the APL two days later. In due course, he became a dominant figure in the Albanian media, and his slogans appeared painted in crimson letters on signboards across the country.

After Hoxha's death, Alia took his place. He tried to follow in his footsteps, but the changes had already started and the fall of communism throughout south central Europe led to widespread changes within Albanian society.

Mikhail Gorbachev had appeared in the Soviet Union with new policies (glasnost and perestroika). The communist regime was pressured by the US and Europe and also by the hate of its own people. After Nicolae Ceauşescu (the communist leader of Romania) was executed in a revolution, Alia knew that he would be next if changes were not made. He signed the Helsinki Agreement (which was signed by other countries in 1975) that respected some human rights. He allowed pluralism under the enormous pressure from students and workers. Under Alia's regime, the first pluralist elections took place since the communists assumed power in Albania. Alia's party won the election of March 31, 1991. Nevertheless, it was clear that the change would not be stopped. Pursuant to a 1991 interim basic law, Albanians ratified a constitution in 1998, establishing a democratic system of government based upon the rule of law and guaranteeing the protection of fundamental human rights.

The position of the communists was confirmed in the first round of elections under the interim law, but fell two months later during a general strike. A committee of "national salvation" took over but also collapsed in six months. On March 22, 1992 the Communists were trumped by the Democratic Party in national elections. The change from dictatorship to democracy had many challenges. The Democratic Party had to implement the reforms it had promised, but they were either too slow or did not solve the problems, so the people were disappointed when their hopes for fast prosperity went unfulfilled. In the general elections of June 1996 the Democratic Party tried to win an absolute majority and manipulated the results. This government collapsed in 1997 in the wake of the additional collapse of pyramid schemes and widespread corruption, which caused anarchy and rebellion throughout the country. The government attempted to suppress the rebellion by military force but the attempt failed, due to long term corruption of the Armed Forces.

Between 1925 and 1928, the new regime became established. At the time, Mongolia was the most backward place in Asia, more than 200 years behind the rest of the world. Industry was nonexistent and all wealth was controlled by the nobility and religious establishments. The population numbered less than a million people and was shrinking due to nearly half of all Mongolian males living in monasteries. In 1928, Stalin ordered the collectivization of Mongolian agriculture. These politics led to a breakdown in economy and transportation, and more importantly to uprisings in the West and the South that could only be suppressed with the help of the Red Army. In 1934, Peljidiin Genden visited Moscow and angrily accused Stalin of "red imperialism". He subsequently died in the Great Purge after being tricked into taking holiday on the Black Sea. After 1932, the implementation of a command economy was scaled back. In 1936, Stalin then ordered the liquidation of the country's Buddhist institutions. Meanwhile, Japanese incursions in Manchuria were a casus belli for Moscow to station troops in Mongolia. At the same time, the Great Purge spilled into Mongolia. Among those killed included Genden, Anandyn Amar, Demid and Losol. After the removal of Genden from power, Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Stalin, took over. The purges led to the almost complete eradication of Tibetan Buddhism in the country, and cost an estimated 30,000 - 35,000 lives, equivalent to about five percent of Mongolia's population.

The explicit limitations on freedom in the constitution of the People's Republic later drew the attention of foreigners such as Dwight Macdonald.

During World War II, because of a growing Japanese threat over the Mongolian - Manchurian border, the Soviet Union reversed the course of Mongolian socialism in favor of a new policy of economic gradualism and build up of the national defense. The Soviet and Mongolian armies defeated Japanese forces that had invaded eastern Mongolia in the summer of 1939 at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, and a truce was signed setting up a commission to define the Mongolian - Manchurian border in the autumn of that year.

After 1941, Mongolia's economy was readjusted to support the Soviet Union in every way possible, including providing funding for several Soviet military units. In the summer of 1945, the Soviet Union used Mongolia as one base for launching the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, a successful attack against the Japanese. The preceding build up brought 650,000 Soviet soldiers to Mongolia, along with massive amounts of equipment. The Mongolian People's Army played a limited support role in the conflict, but its involvement gave Stalin the means to force the Chinese side finally to accept Mongolia's independence.

The February 1945 Yalta Conference provided for the Soviet Union's participation in the Pacific War. One of the Soviet conditions for its participation, put forward at Yalta, was that after the war Outer Mongolia would retain its "status quo." The precise meaning of this "status quo" became a bone of contention at Sino - Soviet talks in Moscow in the summer of 1945 between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek's envoy T.V. Soong.

Stalin insisted on Republic of China's recognition of Outer Mongolia's independence - something that it already enjoyed de facto even as it remained a part of China de jure. Chiang Kai-shek resisted the idea but eventually gave in. However, Chiang extracted from Stalin a promise to refrain from supporting the Chinese Communist Party, partly as a quid pro quo for giving up Outer Mongolia.

Thus, the Sino - Soviet Treaty guaranteed Outer Mongolia's independence. But it also ended Khorloogiin Choibalsan's hopes for uniting Outer Mongolia with Inner Mongolia, which remained in China's hands. Choibalsan initially hoped that Stalin would support his vision of Great Mongolia but the Soviet leader easily sacrificed Choibalsan's vision for Soviet gains, guaranteed by the Sino - Soviet Treaty and legitimized by the Yalta agreements. In this sense, the Sino - Soviet Treaty marked Mongolia's permanent division into an independent Mongolian People's Republic and a neighboring Inner Mongolia.

Secure in its relations with Moscow, the Mongolian government shifted to postwar development, focusing on civilian enterprise. Mongolia was at this time one of the world's most isolated countries, having almost no contact with any nation outside of the Soviet Union. After the war, international ties were expanded and Mongolia established relations with North Korea and the new Communist states in Eastern Europe. Mongolia and the People's Republic of China (PRC) recognized each other in 1949, and the PRC relinquished all claims to Outer Mongolia. However, Mao Zedong privately hoped for Mongolia's reintegration with China. He raised this question before the Soviet leadership as early as 1949 (in meeting with Anastas Mikoyan at Xibaipo), and then, having been firmly rebuffed by Stalin, in 1954, after Stalin's death. In 1956, following Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, the Chinese leaders attempted to present Mongolia's independence as one of Stalin's mistakes in meetings with Mikoyan. The Soviet response was that the Mongols were free to decide their own fate.

In 1952, Choibalsan died in Moscow where he had been undergoing treatment for cancer. He was succeeded as General Secretary of the MPRP by Yumjaagin Tsedenbal. Unlike his predecessor, Tsedenbal was enthusiastic about incorporating Mongolia as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. The idea met with strenuous opposition from other MPRP members and was abandoned.

In the 1950s relations between the MPR and the PRC improved considerably. China provided much needed economic aid, building up entire industries in Ulaanbaatar, as well as apartment blocks (for example, the so called "120 myangat district"). Thousands of Chinese laborers were involved in these projects until China withdrew them after 1962 in a bid to pressure Mongolia to break with Moscow at the time of worsening Sino - Soviet relations.

After the beginning of the Sino - Soviet dispute, Mongolia briefly vacillated, but soon took a sharply pro - Soviet stand, being one of the first socialist countries to endorse the Soviet position in the quarrel with China. Military build up on the Sino - Mongolian border began as early as 1963; in December 1965 the Mongolian Politburo requested the Soviet Union to station its military forces in Mongolia. In January 1966, with Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Mongolia, the two countries signed a mutual assistance treaty, paving way to Soviet military presence in the MPR. In February 1967, following weeks of worsening Sino - Soviet tensions, Moscow officially approved the stationing of what became the 39th Soviet army in Mongolia.

With Soviet encouragement, Mongolia increased its participation in communist sponsored conferences and international organizations. This was not done without some difficulty as Mongolia was widely seen in the international community as a Soviet appendage rather than an independent country. In 1955, Mongolia attempted to join the United Nations, but the request was vetoed by the Republic of China (ROC), which maintained their (renewed) claim over Mongolia. Mongolia became a member of the UN in 1961 after the Soviet Union threatened to veto the admission of all of the newly decolonized states of Africa if the ROC again used its veto. Diplomatic relations with the United States were not established until the end of the Cold War. Mongolia became a bone of contention between the Soviet Union and China during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s because of the presence of Soviet nuclear arms.

By the start of the 1980s, Tsedenbal became increasingly authoritarian and erratic. Following a series of party purges, he was expelled from office in August 1984 on the pretext of "old age and mental incapacity". The removal of Tsedenbal had full Soviet backing, and he retired to Moscow where he lived until his death from cancer in 1991. Jambyn Batmönkh took over as General Secretary and enthusiastically plunged into the reforms implemented in the Soviet Union by Gorbachev.

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, he implemented the policies of perestroika and glasnost. The atmosphere of reform in the Soviet Union prompted similar reforms in Mongolia. Following mass demonstrations in the winter of 1990, the MPRP began to loosen its controls of the political system. The Politburo of the MPRP resigned in March, and in May the constitution was amended, deleting reference to the MPRP's role as the guiding force in the country, legalizing opposition parties, creating a standing legislative body, and establishing the office of president. On July 29, 1990, the first free, multiparty elections in Mongolia were held. The election results returned a majority for the MPRP, which won with 85% of the vote. It was not until 1996 that the reformed MPRP was voted out of office.

The USSR withdrew its troops stationed in Mongolia, and its technical and financial assistance, between 1987 and 1992. Subsequently, the foreign and defense policy of Mongolia profoundly changed: “Maintaining friendly relations with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China shall be a priority of Mongolia’s foreign policy activity. It shall not adopt the line of either country but shall maintain in principle a balanced relationship with both of them and shall promote all round good neighborly cooperation."

On the eve of the 1921 revolution, Mongolia had an underdeveloped, stagnant economy based on nomadic animal husbandry. Farming and industry were almost nonexistent; transportation and communications were primitive; banking, services and trade were almost exclusively in the hands of Chinese or other foreigners. Most of the people were illiterate nomadic herders, and a large part of the male labor force lived in the monasteries, contributing little to the economy. Property in the form of livestock was owned primarily by aristocrats and monasteries; ownership of the remaining sectors of the economy was dominated by Chinese or other foreigners. Mongolia's new rulers thus were faced with a daunting task in building a modern, socialist economy.

Mongolia's economic development under communist control can be divided into three periods: 1921 - 1939; 1940 - 1960; and 1961 to the present. During the first period, which the Mongolian government called the stage of "general democratic transformation," the economy remained primarily agrarian and underdeveloped. After an abortive attempt to collectivize herders, livestock remained in private hands. The state began to develop industry based on processing of animal husbandry products and crop raising on state farms. Transportation, communications, domestic and foreign trade, and banking and finance were nationalized with Soviet assistance; they were placed under the control of Mongolian state and cooperative organizations or Mongolian - Soviet joint - stock companies. Ulan Bator became the nation's industrial center.

During the second period, called the "construction of the foundations of socialism," agriculture was collectivized, and industry was diversified into mining, timber processing and consumer goods production. Central planning of the economy began in 1931 with an abortive five year plan and with annual plans in 1941; five year plans began a new with the First Five Year Plan (1948 - 52). Soviet, and after 1949 Chinese, aid increased, allowing the construction of the Trans - Mongolian Railway -- the Ulan bator Railroad -- and various industrial projects. Although industrial development still was concentrated in Ulan bator, economic decentralization began with the completion of the Ulan bator Railroad and the establishment of food processing plants in aimag centers.

The third stage, which the government called the "completion of the construction of the material and technical basis of socialism," saw further industrialization and agricultural growth, aided largely by Mongolia's joining the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 1962. After the Sino - Soviet split, Chinese aid ceased, but continued Soviet and East European financial and technical assistance in the forms of credits, advisers and joint ventures enabled Mongolia to modernize and to diversify its industry, particularly in mining. New industrial centers were built in Baganuur, Choibalsan, Darkhan and Erdenet, and industrial output rose significantly. Although animal husbandry was stagnant, crop production increased dramatically with the development of virgin lands by state farms. Foreign trade with Comecon nations grew substantially. Transportation and communications systems were improved, linking population and industrial centers and extending to more remote rural areas. In the late 1980s, Mongolia had developed into an agricultural - industrial economy, but the inefficiencies of a centrally planned and managed economy and the example of perestroika in the Soviet Union led Mongolian leaders to undertake a reform program to develop the economy further.

The Mongolian People's Army (Mongolian: Монголын Ардын Арми or Монгол Ардын Хувьсгалт Цэрэг) or Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army was established on 18 March 1921 as a secondary army under Soviet Red Army command during the 1920s and during World War II.

During the Pei-ta-shan Incident, elite Qinghai Chinese Muslim cavalry were sent by the Chinese Kuomintang to destroy the Mongols and the Russians in 1947.

The military of Mongolian's purpose was national defense, protection of local communist establishments, and collaboration with Soviet forces in future military actions against exterior enemies, up until the 1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia.

The Red Mongol Army received sixty percent of the government budget in early years and it expanded from 2,560 men in 1923 to 4,000 in 1924 and to 7,000 in 1927. The native armed forces stayed linked to Soviet Red Army intelligence groups and NKVD, Mongolian secret police, and Buryat Mongol Comintern agents acted as administrators and represented the real power in the country albeit under direct Soviet guidance.