Europe. On April 17 Albania's leader,
Ramiz Alia, told the 10th plenum of the ruling Party of Labour that Albania would not object to the reopening of diplomatic relations with the USA and
USSR. Albania has also announced its intention of opening relations with the
European Community and joining the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Albania was the only European country not to join the Helsinki conference in 1975).
New leader seeks continuity with Hoxha
Seeking to retain continuity with the isolationist policies of his predecessor
Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985, Alia said the key question for Albanian foreign policy remained "how to maneuver in the world arena to protect the interests of the homeland". However, in contrast to Hoxha, the new leadership tends to attribute Albania's problems to internal factors rather than
"revisionistto imperialist encirclement".
Following this, the May 7 and 8 ses-
28 sions of the People's Assembly passed new laws on human rights, travel, relig-
International Viewpoint #189 • July 16, 1990 will make it difficult for most Albanians to take this up). Although private criticism of the authorities will no longer be punishable, public criticism will continue to be treated as an appeal for the forcible overthrow of the government. Religious belief is now to be considered "a matter of individual conscience", but there is apparently no plan to reopen churches and mosques closed down during Albania's "cultural revolution" in 1967.
On the economic plane, Alia has indicated that the taboo, enshrined since 1976 in the constitution, on accepting foreign credits, loans and investments, will be reconsidered, providing such agreements do not infringe Albania's national sovereignty. There is to be greater financial autonomy for enterprises. Tourism will be expanded and a first resort is to be opened this summer.
Regime encourages high birthrate
Beyond the immediate impact of the events in Eastern Europe, Albania faces a combination of social, political and economic problems after 45 years of hard line Stalinist rule. This tiny country (3.2 million people spread over 29,000 square kilometres) has the youngest population in Europe with an average age of 26. The regime has encouraged Albania's high birth rate and, as in Ceaucescu's Romania, abortion is banned. But the demographic explosion has not been matched by economic growth.
Albania possesses rich mineral resources and considerable electric power potential, but its two major exports, chrome, of which Albania is the world's second largest producer, and oil, are now less profitable due to extraction quotas and because the price of oil has fallen.
Industrial equipment is obsolete, agriculture backward (two thirds of the population still live in the countryside), and services inadequate. The need for technological inputs accounts to some extent for Alia's new opening to the west; moreover, political liberalization could lead to an influx of much needed foreign currento be led by the Politburo member in charge of culture, Foto Çami.
The promise of liberalization does not yet seem to have moderated the violent methods habitually used for settling inter nal disputes in the Albanian bureaucracy — a Yugoslav newspaper reported on April 25 that Alia had been slightly wounded in an assassination attempt.
Despite obvious disaffection amongst sections of the intelligentsia and youth, there has been no evidence until now of any organized opposition to the regime within the country, nor of any resistance on the part of the working class through strike activity. Pre-Stalinist Albania, furthermore, had a very weak tradition of party politics. Democracy only existed from 1920-24, and the population lacks political reference points. In this context, it is hard to foresee the kind of short term collapse of the regime that we have seen in the other bureaucratic states in Eastern Europe.
### Prospect of serious unemployment
Nonetheless this brutally repressive regime can hardly afford to be complacent. Its role in the wartime period -when it led the struggle against Italian occupation — means little to the youth of today who recall neither the struggle for liberation nor the famine and privation of the post war period. Lacking the safety valve of emigration, the regime is finding it increasingly difficult to provide full employment for the burgeoning population.
Nor would any mass unrest be confined to Albania's borders; the effects of any democratic breakthrough in Albania on the almost two million strong Albanian population of Yugoslavia's Kosovo region would be greatly feared by the Belgrade government. Whilst attacking Yugoslavia in the press, Tirana still hands over Kosovar refugees to the Yugoslavs and has not made any territorial claim to the area, perhaps because of the continuing strength of Islam in Kosovo - Albania remains the world's only officially atheist state.
Unless the hardliners triumph, which seems unlikely, future political developments in Albania should open up the kind of space the workers and peasants of that country need to overthrow Stalinism's last bastion in Europe. *
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bastion begins to crumble