For Hoxhaists.

[Rafiq]

What do you guys think of Ramiz Alia? He's still alive, you know.

[Ismail]

Obviously we don't think of him too highly. He's supposedly a bit more like Egon Krenz ("Oh yeah East Germany had problems, but it's better than what's here today") than Gorbachev though, and he apparently semi-defends Enver Hoxha against some of the more absurd claims of the anti-communists (e.g. he notes that Hoxha wasn't a senile madman near the end.)

Anything specific?

Here's an interview from 2002 on Alia's rise: http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/ALLIANCE48InterviewsCPA%28UNITED%29.html
On revisionism under Alia: http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/ALL38REXH.html (sans some rather lame criticisms of Hoxha)

Evidently he was not an anti-revisionist. Nexhmije Hoxha (Enver's wife, who is still Marxist-Leninist) says that Alia was rather cowardly.

[Rafiq]

Alright, thanks for the info.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Alia was Hoxha annointed successor (by the main man himself) - his political outlook and philosophy was exactly the same as Hoxha. Forty odd years of food shortages and poor industrial and agricultural output had left the economiy in dire straights. Alia attempted to introduce limited 'reforms' in an attempt to remain in power - as in the rest of Eastern Europe it was too little and too late. The collapse of the regime and its replacement by gangster capitalism of course did nothing to improve the lot of the Albanian working class - but it was hardly surprising given the nature of the regime that had existed beforehand.

Of course Mehmet Shehu was the previously annointed successor to Hoxha - having spent forty years as Hoxha's second in command - only to be 'found' dead and declared a CIA/KGB/Yugoslav spy.

[Ismail]

Actually Shehu and Hoxha engaged in a miniature power struggle in the early 1950's which culminated in Hoxha giving up the post of Prime Minister to Shehu. Shehu also wanted to end Albania's adamant anti-imperialist stands and wanted to open up relations once more with the USA and Britain. The man Hoxha most likely wanted to succeed him was Hysni Kapo, who died of pancreatic cancer in 1979.

Hoxha's case against Shehu can be viewed here: http://www.enverhoxha.ru/Archive_of_books/English/enver_hoxha_selected_works_volume_VI_eng.pdf (starting on PDF page 582)

You're free to view it yourself and to comment on it.

It's amusing to note that Shehu's son is an anti-communist today, while Liri Bellishova (who was pro-Soviet and was expelled from the PLA in 1960 for basically being a Soviet puppet (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1960/09/06.htm)) also denounces communism (http://www.zemrashqiptare.net/article/Komente/7564/) and the "Satanic" Enver Hoxha and such whilst praising Albania's entry into NATO and calling Hoxha "not normal" for not going along with the rest of Eastern Europe in praising Khrushchev and denouncing Stalin.