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Enver Hoxha, born on this day in 1908, was the communist leader of Albania from 1946 to 1985, leaving behind a complex legacy of feminism and greatly improved access to healthcare and education. Hoxha is also known for having sharp ideological and political disagreements with the Soviet Union and communist Yugoslavia, siding most strongly with and receiving aid from Maoist China.

He was First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 until his death in 1985, a member of its Politburo, chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania, and commander-in-chief of the Albanian People's Army. He was the twenty-second prime minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at various times was both foreign minister and defence minister of the country.

Hoxha was born in Ergiri in 1908 and became a grammar school teacher in 1936. Following the Italian invasion of Albania, he joined the Party of Labour of Albania at its creation in 1941 in the Soviet Union.

Before coming into power, Hoxha was a French school teacher and librarian, becoming a communist partisan after fascist Italy invaded Albania in 1939. In March 1943, the first National Conference of the Communist Party elected Hoxha formally as First Secretary.

It was in this position as First Secretary that Hoxha became head of state after the Albanian monarchy was abolished in 1946.

Hoxha declared himself a Marxist–Leninist and strongly admired Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. The Agrarian Reform Law was passed in August 1945. It confiscated land from beys and large landowners, giving it without compensation to peasants. 52% of all land was owned by large landowners before the law was passed; this declined to 16% after the law's passage.

The State University of Tirana was established in 1957, which was the first of its kind in Albania. The medieval Gjakmarrja (blood feud) was banned. Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swampland. In 1938 the number of physicians was 1.1 per 10,000 and there was only one hospital bed per 1,000 people. In 1950, while the number of physicians had not increased, there were four times as many hospital beds per head, and health expenditures had risen to 5% of the budget, up from 1% before the war.

Under Hoxha's leadership, the Albanian literacy rate improved from 5-10% in rural areas to more 90%. Hoxha was also a proponent of women's rights, stating "the entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women's rights". Accordingly, more than 175 times as many women attended secondary schools in 1978 than had done so in 1938.

Relations with Yugoslavia

At this point, relations with Yugoslavia had begun to change. The roots of the change began on 20 October 1944 at the Second Plenary Session of the Communist Party of Albania. The Session considered the problems that the post-independence Albanian government would face. However, the Yugoslav delegation which was led by Velimir Stoinić accused the party of "sectarianism and opportunism" and blamed Hoxha for these errors. He also stressed the view that the Yugoslav Communist partisans spearheaded the Albanian partisan movement.

Tito's position on Albania was that it was too weak to stand on its own and that it would do better as a part of Yugoslavia. Hoxha alleged that Tito had made it his goal to get Albania into Yugoslavia, firstly by creating the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Aid in 1946. In time, Albania began to feel that the treaty was heavily slanted towards Yugoslav interests, much like the Italian agreements with Albania under Zog that made the nation dependent upon Italy

When Yugoslavia publicly broke with the Soviet Union, Hoxha's support base grew stronger. Then, on 1 July 1948, Tirana called on all Yugoslav technical advisors to leave the country and unilaterally declared all treaties and agreements between the two countries null and void

Relations with the Soviet Union

From 1948 to 1960, $200 million in Soviet aid was given to Albania for technical and infrastructural expansion. Albania was admitted to the Comecon on 22 February 1949 and served as a pro-Soviet force on the Adriatic.

Relations with the Soviet Union remained close until the death of Stalin in March 1953. Under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, aid was reduced and Albania was encouraged to adopt Khrushchev's specialisation policy. Under it, Albania would develop its agricultural output in order to supply the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries while they would be developing products of their own, which would, in theory, strengthen the Warsaw Pact. However, this also meant that Albanian industrial development, which was stressed heavily by Hoxha, would be hindered

In the years after Stalin's death, Hoxha grew increasingly distressed by the policies of the Soviet leadership and of Khrushchev in particular. China was also disillusioned with Soviet behavior at this time, and Hoxha found common ground with Mao Zedong's criticisms of Moscow. Hoxha and the PLA broke with the Soviet Union and formed a bloc with the Communist Party of China in denouncing the post-Stalin USSR as "revisionist" and "social-imperialist" . (See, for example, his speech at the Meeting of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in 1960, "Reject the Revisionist Theses of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Anti-Marxist Stand of Krushchev's Group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism!".)

By 1961 Hoxha's attacks on the "revisionist" Soviet leadership had so infuriated Khrushchev that he elected first to terminate Moscow's economic aid to Albania and ultimately to sever diplomatic relations entirely.

Relations with China

However, Hoxha's relations with the Maoists were not entirely smooth. For one thing they had differing notions of "protracted people's war." Mao and his followers world-wide insisted that in peasant countries urban insurrection must occur in the last stages of the revolutionary war, which until then would have the countryside as its theater of operations. Hoxha insisted, on the other hand, that the cities ought not to be left until last but that actions must be carried out simultaneously in city and countryside. As revolutionary movements gathered momentum in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, continents with large rural populations, these issues were at the center of intense debates between "Hoxhaists" and Maoists.

At the start of Albania's Third Five-year Plan, China offered Albania a loan of $125 million which would be used to build twenty-five chemical, electrical and metallurgical plants in accordance with the Plan. However, the nation discovered that the task of completing these building projects was difficult, because Albania's relations with its neighbors were poor and because matters were also complicated by the long distance between Albania and China.

The financial aid which China provided to Albania was interest-free and it did not have to be repaid until Albania could afford to do so. China never intervened in Albania's economic output, and Chinese technicians and Albanian workers both worked for the same wages.

During the Cultural Revolution, China entered into a four-year period of relative diplomatic isolation, however, its relations with Albania were positive. Albania's relations with China began to deteriorate on 15 July 1971, when United States President Richard Nixon agreed to visit China in order to meet with Zhou Enlai. Hoxha believed that China had betrayed Albania.

The result of this criticism was a message from the Chinese leadership in 1971 in which it stated that Albania could not depend on an indefinite flow of aid from China. Following Mao's death on 9 September 1976, Hoxha remained optimistic about Sino-Albanian relations, but in August 1977, Hua Guofeng, the new leader of China, stated that Mao's Three Worlds Theory would become official foreign policy. Hoxha viewed this as a way for China to justify having the U.S. as the "secondary enemy" while viewing the Soviet Union as the main one, thus allowing China to trade with the U.S.

Eventually, Hoxha broke with China in 1978. In that year he published Imperialism and the Revolution, in which he declared that Mao Zedong was not a Marxist-Leninist and that there were no Marxist-Leninists in China. From then on, Hoxha's declared that Albania not only would become a model socialist republic on its own, but that it was the only socialist country left in the world.

On 13 July 1978, China announced that it was cutting off all of its aid to Albania. For the first time in modern history, Albania did not have an ally and it also did not have a major trading partner.

During this period, Albania was the most isolated country in Europe. In 1983, Albania imported goods which were worth $280 million but it exported goods which were worth $290 million, producing a trade surplus of $10 million.

In 1973, Hoxha suffered a heart attack from which he never fully recovered. In increasingly precarious health from the late 1970s onward, he turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who oversaw the fall of communism in Albania.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 minutes ago

I really wasn't expecting what I found when I looked at https://darkrenaissance.github.io/darkfi/philosophy/philosophy.html

Citing the PKK and Baudrillard to justify a crypto project? Saying the fall of the Soviet Union was bad? Opposing anarch-capitalism?

Kinda weird, and it doesn't seem like the philosophy has that much to do with the actual code.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 minutes ago

Brat pride cometh before a Brat Fall

[–] [email protected] 5 points 27 minutes ago (1 children)

I'm a little confused why artists are nay-saying the swap from twitter to bluesky so hard. I mean I understand that twitter has a much larger userbase, but I really don't believe that it would be that difficult to establish bluesky as the place to go to see updates from one's favorite artists. After all, not all that long ago almost every artist was using tumblr until that whole snafu happened, and it's not like tumblr had a bigger userbase than twitter at that point, it was just that tumblr was the place to go to see new art drops. So why not just... make a new place again? Or at least give it a shot before immediately giving up on the idea.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 minutes ago

I think its because they think they have to go 100% on posting on bluesky and leave twitter in order to built a big following when i have seen many that just post on both and have grown quite fast especially with the open sign ups

[–] [email protected] 6 points 52 minutes ago

I need some chicken(less) noodle soup, it's chilly and a restful day and I'm still feeling the after effects of the flu and covid shot

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Sometimes when I look up discussions about horror books I've read and see people talking about a scene like it's so disgusting or scary and it didn't bother me that much I'm like huh I guess I'm a freak

[–] [email protected] 4 points 48 minutes ago

I'll spoiler it, but it's about horror stuff lol and what actually gets to me

spoilerNo, I'm always surprised by what other people find too squicky or gross. Like, oh, that's it? It was a bunch of blood and guts and rotting meat that got you and not the abusive dad who keeps coming back to life? Oh, yeah, the clown was super spooky sure NOT the homophobic attack.

And some people just seem to have no constitution or wherewithal, which I guess is fine. I deal with blood and poop and some really fantastically gross diseases at work (don't look it up, but like fungating tumors), but the thing that always gets to me are the parents who choose to feed their addiction rather than their kids - choosing smokes over formula. Or the kids with suspicious bruises and blood in their bellies.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

inexpensive Caribbean jerk soup from the discount bin, very spicy but good for this chilly day comfy-cool

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

think i have some internalized toxic masculinity around my relatively low body count (actually average-ish i think, but lower than a lot of friends of mine), my historical inability to "pull" in a casual sex context, and tbh my rule of thumb lack of enjoyment of casual sex in general. like idk, it all makes me feel less desirable or something. which i know is stupid and bad but it does linger in my brain.

but also not in the mood for a self exploring/self critting effort post so just gonna leave it at that, bye yall!! (do we have a "general feeling of avoidance" emoji?)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 56 minutes ago* (last edited 56 minutes ago) (1 children)

"Body count" is such a gross way to refer to the human beings one has had sex with. I'm not chastising you, mind. I'm aware is it commonly used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 39 minutes ago

it's a terrible term, back in the day i think we just called it your "number" which is not great but better. i only started using it because it's become the accepted phrase. it's very dehumanizing though and sounds borderline homicidal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 30 minutes ago

I think it's important for men to understand that desirability is a strange thing anyway. The only person who can make you feel desirable is yourself, no amount of sexual partners will change how you feel. At he same time, of course, society does pit men against each other on the basis of how many different women they can have sex with. But that is still a comparison between men, women's actual attraction does not ever play a role. They are simply being used as a metric of desirability.

In the real world people are attracted to so many things, there's no need to sweat it. Try to do things for yourself that make you feel good. Buy some good clothes, work out, etc. Don't do these things for women, do them for you. You are the only person you need to worry about finding you attractive.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Returning the new phone. 20-30 hours in the last week trying to fix software issues. Assistant won't respond to wake words so no controlling nav, music, phone, or msgs in the car. Dealbreaker. Couldn't get mtp file transfer to work. Not a dealbreaker but immensely frustrating. Idk what the fuck i'm even doing anymore. I hate these fucking machines.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

If I'm having an argument here, and I write one sentence and the other guy writes 6 paragraphs, I'm not reading it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 minutes ago

use chatgpt to summarize their post lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The true leftist way is for both of you to write 6 paragraphs back and forth but never reading the other person's paragraphs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

And then post a link to your comment in the mega in an effort to get more internet points

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 hours ago

My mother still doesnt trust me to watch the house by myself overnight. I wonder if she'll let me do it by the time im 30.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago

demographic survey where someone selected jewish, christian, and muslim for religion. Abraham enjoyer.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

The mid-century fascination of americans with β€œIndian Burial Ground” superstitions outlines that maybe they did understand the severity of colonization of america and were rightfully worried they’d be cursed for their violence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 minutes ago

cursed for their violence.

sicko-wistful

[–] [email protected] 4 points 47 minutes ago

The weird ontological opposite of that are people who insist on a plantation style wedding, like wtf???? You really want your nuptials on that cursed of land, land that had slavery and genocide all over it???

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

soul-crushing existential dread about the reality of a campaign of wanton barbarity? must be the ghosts. no urge to atone here bucko maybe-later-honey

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It is oddly convient that simply doing the oppose of US policy is the correct thing morally every single time. You would they they would accidentally do something good but the6 never do

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 hours ago (5 children)

I am undateable

I am too weird to date

[–] [email protected] 2 points 46 minutes ago

I definitely read that as under table. Like you were crawling around under tables

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Like how weird ? Manic pixie dream folk where you wear a suit to go swimming? Or passionate about things you like weird?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I still think you're cool :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

Thanks mom!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 hours ago

Normies are boring!!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 hours ago

You have not seen the polycules I ahve been in

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Obsessed with video of a white guy in china speaking fluent, confident mandarin going to the market for ingredients for a seafood boil he made for his chinese friends coming over.

Vibes were immaculate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Tbf to todd howard elder scrolls attributes was so fucking jank to level up that skyrim making it to just health stamina magicka is prob for better. Although IMO the best way would be to implement fallout SPECIAL attributes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

got whiplash since hasan mentioned dandadan off-hand on fear&–streamer knows peak momo-hah

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