Hoxha’s memory doesn’t hang heavy over Albania; it stalks the psyche
“In Communist times”. If I had a lek for every time an Albanian prefaced a story with these three words, I would have returned from Tirana rich.
Rich in Albanian terms, mind, which isn’t very flush at all. The lek, the Albanian unit of currency, has a woeful exchange rate. A hundred lek is the equivalent of just one euro.
It illustrates Albania’s economic situation. Thirty-five years after Albania put four decades of communist rule behind it, this is a country still struggling to give its people a decent chance.
The shadow of those oft-cited “Communist times” hangs over Albania, for all that its Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha was never deposed, nor disgraced…he just died. In 1985, Hoxha died as he lived — in command of the country he had all but sealed off from the world. It would take another five years for his Communist Party to loosen its stranglehold and open up Albania’s economy and information system to the outside world.
It would be six years after Hoxha’s death that his statue was toppled in Skanderbeg Square, the main plaza in the Albanian capital.
Fast forward to today. Now, there isn’t much sign at all of Hoxha in Tirana.
Except for his house, in the Blloku, the leafy and walkable neighbourhood where the Communist elite lived and worked. Today, Blloku is hip and hopping, with multiple cafes and bars, fancy shops and trendy restaurants. Hoxha’s house still stands primly, its straight lines and clean aspect vaguely reminiscent of a Frank Lloyd Wright build.
And then there is the Pyramid of Tirana, an extraordinary construction designed by Hoxha’s architect daughter, Pranvera and her husband, Klement Kolaneci. The vertigo-inducing, white-tiled structure in central Tirana opened as an Enver Hoxha museum in 1988, three years after the dictator’s death. It was only in 1991 that it became a a conference centre and an exhibition venue.
To outward seeming, Hoxha’s memory doesn’t hang heavy over Tirana. And yet, it stalks the country’s psyche, as becomes clear every time an Albanian begins a story with those three words: “In Communist times”.
– Jack Kerouac
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com