Was Enver Hoxha gay? [Archive]

Ismail

15th April 2014, 06:44

Phelps or Haggard didn't head up a state with the power to punish LGBT people.That's not my point. You'd be hard-pressed to find any mention of homosexuality in Albanian publications during the socialist period. Muho Asllani, who worked with Hoxha, said in a recent interview that "I heard the word homosexual a few years after the collapse of the communist system and did not believe that there was such a phenomenon. I speak of gays, and lesbians also. Homosexuality, drugs, AIDS and many other developments had never been the subject of discussion, as all were unknown to us. Indeed, I was amazed when I learned that hashish was a kind of drug, because our grandmothers used it to put children to sleep."

If you're going to apply the logic of "many homophobes turn out to be gay" to Hoxha, you might as well apply it to Stalin and Engels as well. They never spoke about homosexuals in public, and their private correspondence mentioning homosexuality is very slight indeed (none exists in regards to Hoxha, to my knowledge.)

Of Stalin, there's two instances: a letter to Kaganovich concerning a NKVD report, and Stalin writing "an idiot and a degenerate" on a letter by a gay British guy who made a weird argument trying to justify decriminalizing homosexuality by citing a Stalin speech on economic matters, before sending said letter to the archives unanswered.

As for Engels, well...

The paederasts [homosexual paedophiles] are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state. Only organisation was lacking, but according to this source it apparently already exists in secret. And since they have such important men in all the old parties and even in the new ones, from Rosing to Schweitzer, they cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul [war on the ****s, peace to the arse-holes] will now be the slogan. It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors. But the younger generation! Incidentally it is only in Germany that a fellow like this can possibly come forward, convert this smut into a theory, and offer the invitation: introite [enter], etc. Unfortunately, he has not yet got up the courage to acknowledge publicly that he is ‘that way’, and must still operate coram publico‘ from the front’, if not ‘going in from the front’ as he once said by mistake. But just wait until the new North German Penal Code recognises the droits du cul [rights of the arse-hole] then he will operate quite differently. Then things will go badly enough for poor frontside people like us, with our childish penchant for females.

Danielle Ni Dhighe

15th April 2014, 06:57

Ismail

15th April 2014, 07:09

So homosexual behavior was criminalized in Albania, but senior politicians had no idea homosexuality existed? Or was Asllani just that unworldly?Beyond a part of the legal code attacking "sodomy," no, he didn't. There was never any homosexual "identity" (so to speak) in Albania. Homosexuality simply wasn't discussed outside of very specific situations.

If you want the Albanian view on the subject see: http://ml-review.ca/aml/Albania/ALBANIANLIFE/No441989.htm

I didn't say a single thing about that.Then why reply to what I was saying?

Sea

15th April 2014, 07:25

no (unfortunately)

He had a wife who also happened to be a female.

Danielle Ni Dhighe

15th April 2014, 07:49

If you want the Albanian view on the subject see: http://ml-review.ca/aml/Albania/ALBANIANLIFE/No441989.htm
I've read that before, but thank you anyway. Reading that nonsense literally makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Then why reply to what I was saying?
Just pointing out that even if Hoxha or Stalin went around denouncing homosexuality, they wouldn't be comparable to Phelps or Haggard.

Sinister Cultural Marxist

15th April 2014, 08:25

That's not my point. You'd be hard-pressed to find any mention of homosexuality in Albanian publications during the socialist period. Muho Asllani, who worked with Hoxha, said in a recent interview that "I heard the word homosexual a few years after the collapse of the communist system and did not believe that there was such a phenomenon. I speak of gays, and lesbians also. Homosexuality, drugs, AIDS and many other developments had never been the subject of discussion, as all were unknown to us. Indeed, I was amazed when I learned that hashish was a kind of drug, because our grandmothers used it to put children to sleep."

I think that is one of the costs of living in an illiberal society like Hoxha's Albania. When you see the lifestyles associated with homosexuality as bourgeois decadence and use state power to repress them or take away their free assembly, you take away the ability of people to make public demands or organize politically. You take away their ability to become known to the popular discourse, to challenge reactionary tradition, and to force society to change. You need to make safe havens like Soho and Castro possible, (though hopefully a Marxist-Leninist gay hood would not have such outrageous prices at the bar)

Granted, the US and UK had similarly oppressive laws against homosexuality in the 40s and 50s but these laws went away much more quickly than they did on the other side of the iron curtain. I don't want to defend liberals against the revolutionary Marxist critique, but on creating a society where marginalized groups can freely express themselves, old-school Marxist-Leninists did a poor job overall. Blaming it on Russian and Albanian peasant backwardness isn't fair as the issue isn't in how "backwards" they were but how little they changed.

Of Stalin, there's two instances: a letter to Kaganovich concerning a NKVD report, and Stalin writing "an idiot and a degenerate" on a letter by a gay British guy who made a weird argument trying to justify decriminalizing homosexuality by citing a Stalin speech on economic matters, before sending said letter to the archives unanswered.Yeah well his government also banned the practice under a dubious justification

no (unfortunately)

He had a wife who also happened to be a female.

Meh ... that hasn't stopped a lot of people

Just pointing out that even if Hoxha or Stalin went around denouncing homosexuality, they wouldn't be comparable to Phelps or Haggard.

Yeah this is really a good point. Those kinds of far right Christian bigots, for all their bluster, are effectively powerless, and the more "moderate" center-right ones are slowly losing their voices too. 10 years in jail is much worse than having some asshole with a sign protest at your funeral.

Ismail

15th April 2014, 08:34

Sea

15th April 2014, 08:34

Meh ... that hasn't stopped a lot of peopleHe put his penis into her vagina. Stop and think and visualize that for a minute. Do you still think he was gay? Jesus dude, how else do you want me to explain it?

Danielle Ni Dhighe

15th April 2014, 08:54

He put his penis into her vagina. Stop and think and visualize that for a minute. Do you still think he was gay? Jesus dude, how else do you want me to explain it?
A lot of closeted gay men have been married to women, and even had sex with them. I see no evidence that Hoxha was gay, but the fact that he was married to a woman isn't proof that he wasn't, as you seem to assert.

Sinister Cultural Marxist

15th April 2014, 11:10

The East German revisionists decriminalized homosexuality in the early 70s, which isn't surprising considering the fact that German homosexuals actually had a history of being organized and advocating for equality and not being arrested and whatnot for about 100 years prior, and a significant amount of research into homosexuality was done by Germans.

Albania was the most economically and socially backward country in Europe in 1944. Wives could be shot at will by their husbands for disobeying them. In such a climate it's pretty much inevitable that the conditions for scientific analysis of homosexuality, as well as the formation of a homosexual movement, is going to be sorely lacking, especially in a climate where mainstream opinion in the East and in the West was against it.

Well those conditions aren't traditionally helpful in leading to a worker's revolution, either. Or the rise in secularism and especially atheism.

Anyways, my critique wasn't just that he banned homosexuality in the 40s but that the conditions on the ground did not really make space for an independent gay rights movement to gain ground. That is hard to do when the government does not approve of political movements outside of the party establishment, and when the legal frameworks disapprove of anything already deemed "bourgeois". That might just be a Western mischaracterization of the government in Albania but I haven't seen anything to the contrary.

He put his penis into her vagina. Stop and think and visualize that for a minute. Do you still think he was gay? Jesus dude, how else do you want me to explain it?

You are clearly unaware of the numerous broken marriages left by gay men living a straight lifestyle.

hashem

15th April 2014, 14:21

sexual orientation is a private matter of peoples lives. showing interest in such subjects proves that the questioner is looking for gossip not knowledge.

Hrafn

15th April 2014, 15:07

... why does this thread even exist?

Sea

15th April 2014, 16:13

A lot of closeted gay men have been married to women, and even had sex with them. I see no evidence that Hoxha was gay, but the fact that he was married to a woman isn't proof that he wasn't, as you seem to assert.Yeah, well, Hoxha enjoyed it.
You are clearly unaware of the numerous broken marriages left by gay men living a straight lifestyle.You are clearly unaware that when straight men, like Enver Hoxha, get married, it doesn't suddenly become evidence of homosexuality. That's just silly. As far as we know, Hoxha didn't have a "broken" marriage, and none of you have been able to put forth any evidence that he did.

Your only argument is that he coulda had. Coulda shoulda woulda is a very poor argument because it applies to anybody, gay, straight, asexual, glorious shining light of the PPSh or not the glorious shining light of the PPSh. Granted, the simple fact that he was married isn't definitive proof either way, but the fact that he had a perfectly boring, perfectly bland heterosexual relationship and loved his wife dearly all that kinda is. At most Hoxha was bi but there's no evidence even for that other than "he coulda been".

Five Year Plan

15th April 2014, 17:12

That's not my point. You'd be hard-pressed to find any mention of homosexuality in Albanian publications during the socialist period. Muho Asllani, who worked with Hoxha, said in a recent interview that "I heard the word homosexual a few years after the collapse of the communist system and did not believe that there was such a phenomenon. I speak of gays, and lesbians also. Homosexuality, drugs, AIDS and many other developments had never been the subject of discussion, as all were unknown to us. Indeed, I was amazed when I learned that hashish was a kind of drug, because our grandmothers used it to put children to sleep."

If you're going to apply the logic of "many homophobes turn out to be gay" to Hoxha, you might as well apply it to Stalin and Engels as well. They never spoke about homosexuals in public, and their private correspondence mentioning homosexuality is very slight indeed (none exists in regards to Hoxha, to my knowledge.)

Whether Albanians were aware of a "gay identity" is besides the point. They were aware that men could sexually desire other men, because they punished homosexual behavior. For completely moralistic and anti-materialist reasons. It's amazing that you continue to defend what is in substance a homophobic policy, but think that it is okay because of some technical legal reasoning about identities. The last refuge of a liberal.

As for Engels, well...Engels condemned the Greek practice of "pederasty" because it involved two males, not because it involved age-discrepant sexual relationships. This is also why he made highly derogatory remarks about the book Karl Ulrichs had sent to Marx, who then sent it to Engels. The book in question dealt with age-egalitarian (or what we would call androphilic) relationships, and said nothing about pederasty. Engels still spat upon it. Why? Because it involved males loving males. He hated the idea. Guess what? Marx and Engels were sometimes inconsistent in applying their own methodology. They were sometimes wrong.

It has also already been explained to you in another thread that the Bolsheviks removed criminal sanctions on ephebophilia/pederasty (sexual activity between adult males and adolescents) when all parties involved in such practices were considered to have given simple consent. So trying to argue that Stalin recriminalized all homosexuality because he conflated all homosexuality with pederasty explains exactly nothing, except that Stalin had a more moralistic and bourgeois approach to regulating sexuality than the Bolsheviks who preceded him did.

Ismail

15th April 2014, 19:24

Whether Albanians were aware of a "gay identity" is besides the point. They were aware that men could sexually desire other men, because they punished homosexual behavior. For completely moralistic and anti-materialist reasons. It's amazing that you continue to defend what is in substance a homophobic policy, but think that it is okay because of some technical legal reasoning about identities. The last refuge of a liberal.Albanian law and psychology viewed homosexuality as the remnant of patriarchal and backward class societies, thus trying to provide a materialist analysis of the phenomenon. I never defended the policy. In hindsight we know better, and I'm sure Albanian communists today know better.

And it is very much relevant for homosexuals to identify themselves as such and organize accordingly. Only liberals think that their beneficent grace on "behalf of" groups matter more than the actions of the groups themselves.

Engels condemned the Greek practice of "pederasty" because it involved two males, not because it involved age-discrepant sexual relationships.Yes. I don't know why you're bringing this up.

It has also already been explained to you in another thread that the Bolsheviks removed criminal sanctions on ephebophilia/pederasty (sexual activity between adult males and adolescents) when all parties involved in such practices were considered to have given simple consent. So trying to argue that Stalin recriminalized all homosexuality because he conflated all homosexuality with pederasty explains exactly nothing, except that Stalin had a more moralistic and bourgeois approach to regulating sexuality than the Bolsheviks who preceded him did.In Central Asia homosexuality and pederasty were conflated and punished throughout the 20s. In any case, your hero Trotsky never once brought up the fact that homosexual relations of any sort were criminalized, nor did any other Trotskyist to my knowledge.

Brutus

15th April 2014, 20:29

Schroedinger's Hoxha: until we find out, for definite, that he was gay then he was simultaneously gay and not gay.

Five Year Plan

15th April 2014, 22:52

Albanian law and psychology viewed homosexuality as the remnant of patriarchal and backward class societies, thus trying to provide a materialist analysis of the phenomenon. I never defended the policy. In hindsight we know better, and I'm sure Albanian communists today know better.

The thing is, the Albanian communists who set policies more than twenty years after the Bolsheviks made sweeping changes to the Russian lawbook on issues of sexuality should have known better due to their "hindsight" also. Hoxha's policies were not "comprehensible" in light of their era. They were retrograde in an era where communists, including the Bolsheviks, frequently challenged and in the case of the October Revolution succeeded in making tremendous strides in overturning moralistic hocus pocus in regard to (homo)sexuality.

And it is very much relevant for homosexuals to identify themselves as such and organize accordingly. Only liberals think that their beneficent grace on "behalf of" groups matter more than the actions of the groups themselves.No, your understanding of homoeroticism and its treatment by the law as something relevant only to people with a certain identity smacks of rigid liberal identity politics. Radicals and revolutionaries talk of sexual identities within the context of an entire realm of human practices and experiences that are more or less universal, however different they are in their specifics from person to person, because they touch upon fundamental questions related to how to organize human sexuality.

In Central Asia homosexuality and pederasty were conflated and punished throughout the 20s. In any case, your hero Trotsky never once brought up the fact that homosexual relations of any sort were criminalized, nor did any other Trotskyist to my knowledge.All irrelevant to the point I am making above about retrogression in sexual politics under Stalin and his Eastern European successors.

Psycho P and the Freight Train

15th April 2014, 23:12

Yeah, well, Hoxha enjoyed it.You are clearly unaware that when straight men, like Enver Hoxha, get married, it doesn't suddenly become evidence of homosexuality. That's just silly. As far as we know, Hoxha didn't have a "broken" marriage, and none of you have been able to put forth any evidence that he did.

Your only argument is that he coulda had. Coulda shoulda woulda is a very poor argument because it applies to anybody, gay, straight, asexual, glorious shining light of the PPSh or not the glorious shining light of the PPSh. Granted, the simple fact that he was married isn't definitive proof either way, but the fact that he had a perfectly boring, perfectly bland heterosexual relationship and loved his wife dearly all that kinda is. At most Hoxha was bi but there's no evidence even for that other than "he coulda been".

But they aren't trying to argue that Hoxha was gay, They're trying to argue that just because a man is married to a woman or has had sex with the woman, it does not mean he is not gay. I have hooked up with girls in the past, but I am gay and have exclusively been with guys for years. Are you going to tell me I'm not gay? :unsure:

In fact, I have been involved in the gay scene for years and I cannot tell you how many gays have been with the opposite sex in the past. In fact, I know of a few married men who actually did end up destroying a relationship with their wife because of repression of their sexuality. This mainly happens with older men as being gay has obviously not always been as accepted as it is now.

I'm only arguing this so much because I've experienced it myself and your argument assumes a really narrow binary view of sexuality.

Sea

16th April 2014, 01:20

But they aren't trying to argue that Hoxha was gay, They're trying to argue that just because a man is married to a woman or has had sex with the woman, it does not mean he is not gay. I have hooked up with girls in the past, but I am gay and have exclusively been with guys for years. Are you going to tell me I'm not gay? :unsure:If he married Nexhmije only for political / social status / suppressing ones fabulousness reasons, you likely would have heard about it by now. It would have been all over the (pyramid scheme sponsored) radio and TV. Indeed, were that the case, it would be evidence that he was not straight....
In fact, I have been involved in the gay scene for years and I cannot tell you how many gays have been with the opposite sex in the past. In fact, I know of a few married men who actually did end up destroying a relationship with their wife because of repression of their sexuality....but because he had a standard straight marriage, that fact is evidence of him having been straight.
This mainly happens with older men as being gay has obviously not always been as accepted as it is now.Tell that to the poor Iranian youth who are being hung from cranes. Yeah, it's totally accepted now.
I'm only arguing this so much because I've experienced it myself and your argument assumes a really narrow binary view of sexuality.I already know that happens, that's not like anything new or revelatory. But guess what? Every single time it happens, it's not a regular garden-variety heterosexual marriage, because at least one of those involved is not heterosexual. Such marriages have different characteristics, characteristics which are completely and totally missing in the case of Enver Hoxha.

Ismail

16th April 2014, 18:24

For the record, Nexhmije wrote a two-volume work titled Jeta ime me Enverin (My Life with Enver) in the late 90s. She notes that she had a romantic relationship with Enver during the war and that they were married on January 1, 1945, less than two months after the country was liberated.

The early parts of the first volume of her memoirs were translated into English years back. Random excerpt:

My mother in law, whom I called Ane as did Enver, gave me a wedding ring of her own. It had white precious stones, but, as a partisan, I felt ashamed to put on my finger. I did put it on my finger but I gave it to my daughter later when she got married. For all of my life I haven’t worn a ring. Enver never gave me one and I never gave one to him either. He said playfully: “Why do we need them; they are like chain links.”

Alexios

16th April 2014, 23:43

this must be the only place in the world where anyone cares about this guy...I really never want to hear about him again

Ismail

17th April 2014, 06:00

this must be the only place in the world where anyone cares about this guy...I really never want to hear about him againIs it because you harbor some strange grudge against Albanians that you don't want to divulge? In March you called Albania "the Biggest Little Country in the World" and in November said that "Albania didn't even exist until WW2." Then in response to a reply by YABM back then, "For what, 20 years? Before that it was controlled by the Turks and before that the Byzantines and Bulgarians. Real rich historical content." You never replied to my posts, nor PMs.

In terms of "who cares," Hoxha and Albania under him were certainly more influential than persons like Bordiga or Dunayevskaya. This doesn't necessarily mean that Hoxha's politics were better, but it does suggest that your comment is hypocritical considering your own politics.

Alexios

17th April 2014, 06:56

Is it because you harbor some strange grudge against Albanians that you don't want to divulge? In March you called Albania "the Biggest Little Country in the World" and in November said that "Albania didn't even exist until WW2." Then in response to a reply by YABM back then, "For what, 20 years? Before that it was controlled by the Turks and before that the Byzantines and Bulgarians. Real rich historical content." You never replied to my posts, nor PMs.

Nah, I don't see anyone with a grudge against Albania. I think people are more just creeped out by the fact that some people care so much about a largely irrelevant and bland figure.

In terms of "who cares," Hoxha and Albania under him were certainly more influential than persons like Bordiga or Dunayevskaya. This doesn't necessarily mean that Hoxha's politics were better, but it does suggest that your comment is hypocritical considering your own politics.

Except no one goes around collecting facts about the sex lives of Bordiga and Dunayevskaya, posting endlessly about them on the internet. It's just really bizarre that someone could so unconditionally support such a stupid character as Hoxha. He was a standard Eastern European tyrant with an isolationist stance; get over it.

Brutus

17th April 2014, 08:15

Except no one goes around collecting facts about the sex lives of Bordiga
Yeah, about that...

LuÃs Henrique

17th April 2014, 17:09

Except no one goes around collecting facts about the sex lives of Bordiga

Thankfully.

Maybe god exists, after all.

Luís Henrique

Remus Bleys

17th April 2014, 18:47

Bordiga dropped out of politics and just made houses, claiming illegalism and activism were irrelevant and false tactics. He apparently had a mob like personality in real life, but he would be extremely upset at people if they were going to research his personal life or his sexual orientation - maybe he took this view to far but he would be devastated if someone were to seriously investigate his personal life - his contributions were political and in the name of the invariant program and be recognized as such. I don't think you could find about his personal life not only because he was obscure but because he took steps against it.

Ismail

17th April 2014, 19:44

Nah, I don't see anyone with a grudge against Albania.Except you've attacked Albania and Albanians before, and you still haven't clarified your posts.

I think people are more just creeped out by the fact that some people care so much about a largely irrelevant and bland figure.Again, this post makes no sense coming from someone like yourself. Who decides who is "irrelevant," much less "bland"? For the record a number of bourgeois authors have differentiated Hoxha from other Eastern European leaders, noting the fact that the Albanian Communists were the only ones to take power without the assistance of the Red Army, his defense of Stalin, and the fact that he successfully stood up against Anglo-American, Yugoslav, Soviet, and Chinese attempts to overthrow him.

As for you, at one point you had Stirner as your avatar, someone who is basically only talked about because of the thrashing Marx and Engels gave to his petty-bourgeois politics and whose "portrait" (as such) was the creation of the latter. I doubt you'd care much to debate about how "bland" Stirner was, nor would I under normal circumstances.

Except no one goes around collecting facts about the sex lives of Bordiga and Dunayevskaya, posting endlessly about them on the internet.I wasn't the one who made this topic.

It's just really bizarre that someone could so unconditionally support such a stupid character as Hoxha.Jon Halliday once wrote that Hoxha was "far too intelligent" to draw comparison to other leaders of third world countries (The Artful Albanian, p. 16) Other bourgeois sources attest to the fact that he was considered unusualy well-read for an Eastern European leader.

He was a standard Eastern European tyrant with an isolationist stance; get over it.Actually he wasn't standard at all: at a time when Hungary had its "Goulash Communism," when East Germany had "consumer socialism," when Poland and Romania were joining the IMF, when Yugoslavia had its notorious so-called "workers' self-management," and when Czechoslovakia was being occupied by the Soviet social-imperialists owing to causes of their own making, Albania did indeed stand out, and bourgeois commentators knew it.

Of course the Albanians didn't try to be "novel," they never created a "national road to socialism" à la Titoism, Juche, and the like. They also never sought to elevate their ideology as some supposed "higher stage of Marxism-Leninism" à la Maoism. This is because the ideology of Albania was nothing other than Marxism-Leninism.

That being said, even though Albania never aspired towards nationalist deviations (though it had ample opportunity to do so), it still stood out precisely because of its loyalty to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. As Adi Schnytzer notes (in Stalinist Economic Strategy in Practice: The Case of Albania), in the USSR Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. had little opportunity to be implemented in that country before the post-Stalin leadership attacked and buried it. In Albania, by contrast, the book received serious attention and its contents were followed.

Likewise the Albanians introduced what were known as higher-type cooperatives, an intermediate position between collectives and state farms, which would facilitate the former's transformation into the latter. At a time when the Polish revisionists were "creatively developing" Marxism by rapidly decollectivizing their agricultural sector in the late 50s, and when they and the other revisionists in Eastern Europe and the uSSR were disbanding the machine-tractor stations (a move explicitly warned against by Stalin in his last work), Albania's policies certainly stuck out, to the extent that its agriculture became the most thoroughly collectivized in Eastern Europe.

Alexios

17th April 2014, 22:26

Except you've attacked Albania and Albanians before, and you still haven't clarified your posts.

I've said that it doesn't have enough of a history to warrant the bizarre amount of fanaticism that you dedicate to it. I've never once expressed chauvinist attitudes towards Albanians, but of course a moron like yourself has to accuse his critics of this because he can't engage with them on an ideological level.

Again, this post makes no sense coming from someone like yourself. Who decides who is "irrelevant," much less "bland"? For the record a number of bourgeois authors have differentiated Hoxha from other Eastern European leaders, noting the fact that the Albanian Communists were the only ones to take power without the assistance of the Red Army, his defense of Stalin, and the fact that he successfully stood up against Anglo-American, Yugoslav, Soviet, and Chinese attempts to overthrow him.

That's not at all what you do though. It would be normal for someone to engage in a study on Albania during World War 2 while actually bothering to investigate the larger implications of its role. This is different from poring over every Albanian work that's ever been written and quote mining worthless passages to support your idiotic arguments in an internet forum.

As for you, at one point you had Stirner as your avatar, someone who is basically only talked about because of the thrashing Marx and Engels gave to his petty-bourgeois politics and whose "portrait" (as such) was the creation of the latter. I doubt you'd care much to debate about how "bland" Stirner was, nor would I under normal circumstances.

Lol shut up, the only reason I had that as my avatar was because it looked cool. I've never read a single piece of Stirner's works, nor have I ever expressed sympathy to his ideology. Though it's not surprising that you would choose to attack me on something like this, since your understanding of Marxist theory is so poor that you can't criticize people from a communist standpoint and instead have to resort to personal attacks or gross exaggerations, like calling Reb a Trotskyist.

blah blah blah

Nah, I think the vast majority of historians, whether Albanian or not, would agree that Hoxha isn't significant enough of a figure to warrant the amount of fanaticism that you give him. It's one thing to study Hoxhaist Albania as an objective historian, using it to draw larger conclusions. It's something entirely different to go around collecting random facts about the guy and holding him up as some kind of amazing and pure figure. You've said before that you don't believe Hoxha ever did a single thing wrong. That's not History; it's creepy fanboy fanaticism.

Also, you can stop spamming my (and everyone else's) PM box with urgent requests to read your posts.

reb

17th April 2014, 22:26

Bravo, our Albanian Maoist here.. oh while we are at it...

http://dudewheresmygomar.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/3720829054_b3d189e5fc_o.jpg
“the power of the people was born from the barrel of a rifle”

... continues his defense of Hoxha and Albania based on Marxism-Leninism. An ideology so bourgeois that it relies on idealism to explain away it's defeats. So when did revisionism bring down Socialist Albania? Any chance to stand up for an Albanian nationalist.

Comrade Jacob

17th April 2014, 22:43

I don't know and I don't think it is relevant to put it simply.

Bostana

17th April 2014, 22:53

I doubt he was gay but we'll never know for sure

The Intransigent Faction

17th April 2014, 23:02

Don't know, don't really care.
Don't recall him ever criticizing Stalin's recriminalization of homosexuality, though, or even commenting on it for that matter. Even if he were gay, nothing stands out in his policies as LGBTQ-friendly (heh, understatement much?), and that matters more than his own sexuality.

Ismail

17th April 2014, 23:28

I've said that it doesn't have enough of a history to warrant the bizarre amount of fanaticism that you dedicate to it.This is absurd and clearly chauvinistic. Albania has plenty of history. Your claim is no more valid than racists who claimed that Africans "had no history" before colonialism. Furthermore you are confusing my upholding of Socialist Albania as the only socialist country in the world after the 50s with interest in Albania in general. Both apply to me.

I've never once expressed chauvinist attitudes towards Albanians,Belittling their history and calling Albania "the Biggest Little Country in the World" certainly counts as chauvinist.

but of course a moron like yourself has to accuse his critics of this because he can't engage with them on an ideological level.I certainly can. It is you who has been attacking Hoxha from any other angle but that of ideology.

That's not at all what you do though. It would be normal for someone to engage in a study on Albania during World War 2 while actually bothering to investigate the larger implications of its role. This is different from poring over every Albanian work that's ever been written and quote mining worthless passages to support your idiotic arguments in an internet forum.This thread isn't about Albania during WWII, so this paragraph is irrelevant.

Lol shut up, the only reason I had that as my avatar was because it looked cool. I've never read a single piece of Stirner's works, nor have I ever expressed sympathy to his ideology."It looked cool" probably describes your ideology in general.

Though it's not surprising that you would choose to attack me on something like this,Only because it's relevant to you claiming Hoxha is "irrelevant."

since your understanding of Marxist theory is so poor that you can't criticize people from a communist standpoint and instead have to resort to personal attacks or gross exaggerations, like calling Reb a Trotskyist.I've never called him a Trotskyist. He has, however, called Lenin and Stalin "social-democrats." I'd say that's patently ridiculous.

It's one thing to study Hoxhaist Albania as an objective historian, using it to draw larger conclusions. It's something entirely different to go around collecting random facts about the guy and holding him up as some kind of amazing and pure figure. You've said before that you don't believe Hoxha ever did a single thing wrong. That's not History; it's creepy fanboy fanaticism.I uphold Hoxha because he was the sole statesman in the world to uphold Marxism-Leninism, and because of his struggle against revisionism in all its hues, from Castroism to Maoism, from Eurocommunism to Soviet revisionism, etc.

I think the question of any mistakes Hoxha may have committed can be summarized the same way as Stalin's. To quote Bill Bland:

JP: As far as the history of the Soviet Union is concerned and the triumph of revisionism there, do you think that Stalin shares any of the responsibility for what has happened?

WB: All share responsibility. You could always say that Stalin could have done more, could have done this, could have shot this person beforehand. But I would be unwilling to criticise Stalin at all, because I feel that Stalin stands head and shoulders above all of us, all existing communists as far as his line was concerned – I think it is becoming more and more clear, if our analysis is correct, that Stalin was not the all seeing all powerful dictator that he is presented as being, but was in fact one member of a collective, in which membership was included concealed revisionist conspirators, and people were able to be misled by these conspirators, by their wrong line, even though they weren’t conspirators themselves, then I think we must, our admiration for Stalin must increase tremendously because he was able to prevent this revisionist group from taking any steps which really critically damaged socialist society, and it was not until three years after his death that the first moves were made to change, to start disrupting socialist society. It took another thirty years or so before they were able to actually come out and disrupt the whole structure of socialism as handed down by Stalin. I don’t think we have anything to criticise Stalin for, of course one could point out mistakes that Stalin made, but Stalin being a living person and not a divinely inspired person, must have made some mistakes, but I can’t find any. I have read the whole of his works and I can find nothing today even after all this hindsight that is available to us now, there is nothing he said, definitely said, that is inaccurate now. Therefore I think Stalin was a model, as Lenin was, for a correct Marxist-Leninist way of life.

Also, you can stop spamming my (and everyone else's) PM box with urgent requests to read your posts.The only other person who claims that I "spam" their PM box is reb, who you probably talk with frequently. Speaking of reb...

Bravo, our Albanian Maoist here.. oh while we are at it...You still can't explain how Hoxha was a Maoist.

“the power of the people was born from the barrel of a rifle”Yes. There's a 1986 work, The People's Revolution in Albania and the Question of State Power (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-bm9jX0lxR3k3M0E/edit?usp=drive_web), which substantiates this slogan. As the author notes (p. 163), "The whole development of the political, economic and ideological life in socialist Albania has been carried out on the basis of the general laws of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because the PLA adheres to these laws, Albania is the only country in which genuine socialism is being built today." The symbol of the Party as early as its Second Congress in 1952 was "a pickaxe in one hand and a rifle in the other."

So when did revisionism bring down Socialist Albania?The year 1990 was obviously the turning point. It was during that year that economic "reforms" were carried out which went halfway between Khrushchevite and Gorbachev-style policies. The economic laws of socialism were ignored in order to justify these changes. A year earlier the Albanian revisionists had begun praising their East German counterparts as "socialist," which was an example of revisionism in the ideological field. In December 1990 the leading role of the PLA was revoked, and in June 1991 the lipservice the revisionists paid to Marxism-Leninism was thrown aside once and for all.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

17th April 2014, 23:39

^^That Bill Bland quote is creepy, cultish and is so ahistorical it betrays a total lack of understanding of the importance of critical analysis.

When it comes down to it, Ismail, your views on Enver Hoxha are fanatical and, most importantly, lack any sort of ability to critically analyse and make a proper evaluation of his rule in Socialist Albania. It is classic great man theory of history. It is akin to when I tell my year 7 students (11-12 year olds) that they need to move on from grand narratives to starting explaining/analysing WHY events happen rather than making simple and banal statements. What is sad is that, unlike a year 7, you clearly have some level of intelligence and a great penchant for research and debate; it's sad that you are wasting your clearly not insignificant intelligence on defending some minor footnote in world history whose ideas will never resurrect.

Alexios

18th April 2014, 00:01

This is absurd and clearly chauvinistic. Albania has plenty of history. Your claim is no more valid than racists who claimed that Africans "had no history" before colonialism. Furthermore you are confusing my upholding of Socialist Albania as the only socialist country in the world after the 50s with interest in Albania in general. Both apply to me.

When in doubt, accuse your enemy of racism. You've cleverly left out Hoxha's rants against "jungle music."

Belittling their history and calling Albania "the Biggest Little Country in the World" certainly counts as chauvinist.

There's actually nothing chauvinistic about that at all. I guess you're too much of a shut-in weirdo to recognize that it's a reference to Reno.

I certainly can. It is you who has been attacking Hoxha from any other angle but that of ideology.

I'm attacking you and your fanatical, creepy devotion to a dead tyrant.

This thread isn't about Albania during WWII, so this paragraph is irrelevant.

Nah, you were the one who started talking about Albanian partisans in World War 2, and the Hoxhaist state was built out of this struggle so it clearly is relevant. This is a pretty pathetic attempt at dodging the point.

"It looked cool" probably describes your ideology in general.

lol

reb

18th April 2014, 00:07

Should I post the spam messages that I "claim" ismail sent me? Everyone of which I should add tried to connect me to trotskyism because he cant deal with any actual critique?

Ismail

18th April 2014, 00:09

When in doubt, accuse your enemy of racism.You've put forward practically nothing else but snide remarks about Albania and Albanians. The only other thing I could accuse you of is trolling.

I'm attacking you and your fanatical, creepy devotion to a dead tyrant.Is this because you've never actually addressed the points I made (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2741067&postcount=38) in regard to your original reply about Hoxha? Presumably because you cannot do so.

Nah, you were the one who started talking about Albanian partisans in World War 2, and the Hoxhaist state was built out of this struggle so it clearly is relevant. This is a pretty pathetic attempt at dodging the point.I mentioned the fact that the Albanian Communists liberated their country without Red Army assistance as one of the things that are considered interesting about them compared to other Eastern European Communists. I didn't pull out a quote from my library to prove this, and I didn't discuss Albania in WWII in any other way, so your paragraph was, in fact, irrelevant.

I've written two large Wikipedia articles in response to requests from RevLefters for information about the subjects. I've never seen anyone on Wikipedia take issue with them (in fact the first one has the status of a "good article") and they are what happen when I make an effort towards something:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet-Albanian_split
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Albanian_split

Over time I will write more such articles on Yugoslav-Albanian relations, the National Liberation War, etc.

Should I post the spam messages that I "claim" ismail sent me?No, you should PM admins or bring it up in the relevant forum area if me sending you such messages was such a traumatic experience you can't bring yourself to delete them after all these months of me not sending you any.

Art Vandelay

18th April 2014, 00:24

I wonder what the total number of members here is that Ismail has claimed are chauvanists due to making somewhat snide comments about "socialist" Albania, all the while claiming that Hoxha calling jazz "jungle music" was not in the slightest way racist. I know I'm on the list and Alexios apparently is too now.

Ismail

18th April 2014, 00:29

I wonder what the total number of members here is that Ismail has claimed are chauvanists due to making somewhat snide comments about "socialist" AlbaniaCalling Albania a "shithole" as a justification for writing it off is something I consider chauvinistic, yes.

Also Hoxha never called jazz "jungle music." This is the quote:

"Our social opinion quite rightly strongly condemned such degenerate 'importations' as long hair, extravagant dress, screaming jungle music, coarse language, shameless behaviour and so on. If the influences and manifestations of the bourgeois-revisionist way of life are not nipped in the bud, they open the way to the corruption and degeneration of people which are so dangerous to the cause of socialism."
(Enver Hoxha. Selected Works Vol. IV. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1982. p. 836.)

reb

18th April 2014, 00:32

A feeble attempt at intimidation by someone who has to stoop to bourgeois idealist tactics.

Alexios

18th April 2014, 00:33

You've put forward practically nothing else but snide remarks about Albania and Albanians. The only other thing I could accuse you of is trolling.

Nice job ignoring the jungle music comment. And you're really nothing other than a mild-mannered troll, stalking threads and posting your fanboyist bullshit every time someone mentions Hoxha. You just seem to thrive on attention.

motion denied

18th April 2014, 00:36

"Our social opinion quite rightly strongly condemned such degenerate 'importations' as long hair, extravagant dress, screaming jungle music, coarse language, shameless behaviour and so on. If the influences and manifestations of the bourgeois-revisionist way of life are not nipped in the bud, they open the way to the corruption and degeneration of people which are so dangerous to the cause of socialism."
(Enver Hoxha. Selected Works Vol. IV. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1982. p. 836.)

"Degenerate importations" such as long hair, screaming jungle music (how lovely)etc are signs of bourgeois-revisionist way of life.

Can't you notice how pathological this sounds?

reb

18th April 2014, 00:37

Rühle and the Trots Why did Rühle partake in a blatant Trot front, the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, and then its creation, the Dewey Commission?

Both were largely comprised of anti-communists, as noted by IsItJustMe's two posts in this thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/fewer-outs...508/index.html (http://www.revleft.com/vb/fewer-outsiders-better-t124508/index.html)

Albert Einstein, who was invited to attend, said that the Commission would do little more than be a podium for Trotsky to grandstand.

One would think Rühle, for all your attempts to identify "Stalinists" and Trots together, would have taken the same position.

Quote:
Originally Posted by reb
Considering that you presumably think that the USSR was socialist, as in non-capitalist, I think your opinion on anything and everything should be openly mocked and not taken seriously. I don't debate entrenched bourgeois zealots, like you, in the same way that I don't debate entrenched religious zealots.
So you can't explain why Rühle participated in a Trot front group. Alrighty.[/quot]

[quote] Dunayevskaya Another person who was associated with Trotsky.

Not doing too good, here...
__________________

Re: Dunayevskaya Quote:
Originally Posted by reb
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ismail
Another person who was associated with Trotsky.

Not doing too good, here...
Pretty sure Lenin was affiliated with Trotsky at one point to.
Yes, after Trotsky dropped his Trotskyism and joined the Bolsheviks. After Lenin died his claim made as late as April 1917 that Trotsky posed as a "leftist" but helped the right was once more demonstrated.

Rühle participated in the Dewey Commission and Dunayevskaya was a secretary to Trotsky during his Mexican exile. Not comparable.

At which point I removed the ability for people to send me private messages. If Ismail is too much of a chicken to post his comments publicly then I won't reply to them. I'm not here for his personal education.

Ismail

18th April 2014, 00:43

Nice job ignoring the jungle music comment.It's not relevant, but since 9mm/Inertia actually misquoted it (claiming that Hoxha specifically described "black" music as "jungle music") it appears I have to discuss it as well.

And you're really nothing other than a mild-mannered troll, stalking threads and posting your fanboyist bullshit every time someone mentions Hoxha. You just seem to thrive on attention.I barely post on RevLeft except to reply to threads or posts concerning Hoxha and Albania, because, as you may have noticed, I've been on this forum for quite a few years and in those years I concluded that hundreds of threads about Lenin and Stalin, about Kronstadt, the Spanish Civil War, and so many other subjects were generally a big waste of time to post in because few persons responded with any actual sources at their disposal, just personal insults and snide remarks.

So I figure that by mostly limiting my activity to a subject I'm particularly interested in (and obviously know more about than any other user), I could maintain an interest in and contribute to RevLeft. I still log in every day and check the groups I'm a member of. I certainly don't think anyone expected me to not reply to this topic.

"Degenerate importations" such as long hair, screaming jungle music (how lovely)etc are signs of bourgeois-revisionist way of life.

Can't you notice how pathological this sounds?To quote Hoxha again, this time in 1968 while ridiculing the "reasons" the Soviet revisionists gave for invading Czechoslovakia:

Of what fight against bourgeois ideology can the Soviet revisionists speak while revisionism is nothing else by a manifestation of the bourgeois ideology in theory and practice, while egoism and individualism, the running after money and other material benefits are thriving in the Soviet Union, while careerseeking and bureaucratism, technocratism, economism and intellectualism are developing, while villas, motor-cars and beautiful women have become the supreme ideal of men, while literature and art attack socialism, everything revolutionary, and advocate pacifism and bourgeois humanism, the empty and dissolute living of people thinking only of themselves, while hundreds of thousands of western tourists that visit the Soviet Union every year, spread the bourgeois ideology and way of life there, while western films cover the screens of the Soviet cinema halls, while the American orchestras and jazz bands and those of the other capitalist countries have become the favorite orchestras of the youth, and while parades of western fashions are in vogue in the Soviet Union? If until yesterday the various manifestations of bourgeois ideology could be called remnants of the past, today bourgeois ideology has become a component part of the capitalist superstructure which rests on the state capitalist foundation which has now been established in the Soviet [email protected], as you can see, I never called you a Trotskyist, I just found it amusing how you sought to "equally" attack both "Stalinists" and Trots (no doubt to show how much of an ideological badass you are) even though your heroes were always closer to Trotskyism than "Stalinism." Also I PMed you because what I wrote wasn't enough to constitute a thread, nor are threads meant for just two persons to discuss things back-and-forth.

Art Vandelay

18th April 2014, 00:43

Ismail, I called it a "state-capitalist shithole" and spent the rest of the thread justifying why it would of sucked to live under that regime. Literally everyone but you and one other Hoxhaist fanboy jumped to my defense as you went on your multiple page crusade accusing me of chauvanism over and over, as you apparently still do with other folks, simply because no one else takes anything about that forgotten "socialist" nation as seriously as you do.

The fact that you don't see what is wrong with that quote is just as bad as your attempts to contextualize and justify Albania and the USSR's homophobic policies. Anyways this discussion is pointless, I'll bow out, just thought it was humorous to see you going about your petty accusations of chauvanusm again.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

18th April 2014, 10:30

Calling Albania a "shithole" as a justification for writing it off is something I consider chauvinistic, yes.

Also Hoxha never called jazz "jungle music." This is the quote:

"Our social opinion quite rightly strongly condemned such degenerate 'importations' as long hair, extravagant dress, screaming jungle music, coarse language, shameless behaviour and so on. If the influences and manifestations of the bourgeois-revisionist way of life are not nipped in the bud, they open the way to the corruption and degeneration of people which are so dangerous to the cause of socialism."
(Enver Hoxha. Selected Works Vol. IV. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1982. p. 836.)

You support a dictator who wanted to control what haircuts people had, how they dressed, what music they listened to, how they spoke and what social actions they took.

Sinister Cultural Marxist

18th April 2014, 19:54

All those controls on people's personal lives are the very things I was mentioning as evidence of the kind of government which would not really allow free expression about a number of issues such as alternative sexuality. It's a petty form of illiberalism which has more in common with that obnoxious neighbor who calls the cops on you for listening to Nirvana at 4 in the afternoon at a reasonable volume than any authentic critique of bourgeois ideology.

Also talking about "jungle music" sounds pretty racist to me no matter what genre he is talking about. The "jungle" is the lawless land, the "heart of darkness" and all that filled with tribal drums and dark men. I am sure for Hoxha it had to do with cultural degeneracy of a backwards people and whatnot, no racial essentiallism, but I think our modern understanding can establish how that is still a form of perhaps more subtle racism.

Mr Hoxha does have some nice sounding quotes and Ismail seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of them, but his government was clearly authoritarian in the bad sense of the word. Few people want to live in a country where their haircuts are dictated and they can't listen to the Beattles because they have that rhythmic "jungle music". It's almost like Hoxha's government so hated liberalism that any expression of personal freedom was taken as bourgeois decadence. It's similar to the mindless critique against homosexuality that the regime put out.

Oh, and Sea, no I'm not saying Hoxha is gay because he was married you fool, I'm just saying it is possible for gay men to get married since you used that as ironclad "proof" of his heterosexuality.

Lensky

18th April 2014, 20:36

Lensky

18th April 2014, 20:39

I think people have stopped trying to address Ismail's points a long time ago and are now just trolling his identity on this forum, what immature prattle.

Alexios

18th April 2014, 21:10

I think people have stopped trying to address Ismail's points a long time ago and are now just trolling his identity on this forum, what immature prattle.

Nah it's pretty clear that he intentionally trolls the forum with his long-winded rants on Hoxha, hoping that some poor sap will come in and try to argue with him.

reb

18th April 2014, 21:24

Nah it's pretty clear that he intentionally trolls the forum with his long-winded rants on Hoxha, hoping that some poor sap will come in and try to argue with him.

Or stick up for him as if he is a guiding light of marxism-leninism even though all he does is spam the forum with unrelated Hoxha quotes and links to tha completely fucking stupid Bill Bland. Stalinists really need to learn how to form a proper argument instead of relying on a handful of totally insane people to copy and paste from or trying to characterize people they don't agree with as trots or some other tendency that allows for more Hoxha quotes. Either that or just fuck off back to the 1950s.

The Garbage Disposal Unit

18th April 2014, 22:08

Verbal Warning. Next post that's a personal dig at another poster gets infracted.

Alexios

18th April 2014, 22:18

Verbal Warning. Next post that's a personal dig at another poster gets infracted.

You're the worst hypocrite I've ever seen. Had any other member of this forum gone on a rant defending a racist, homophobic dictator's use of the phrase "jungle music" you would've flipped a shit. But because it's the lovable and harmless Comrade Ismail you're going to issue a 'verbal warning' when people call him out on his nonsense.

Ismail

18th April 2014, 22:36

You're the worst hypocrite I've ever seen. Had any other member of this forum gone on a rant defending a racist, homophobic dictator's use of the phrase "jungle music" you would've flipped a shit. But because it's the lovable and harmless Comrade Ismail you're going to issue a 'verbal warning' when people call him out on his nonsense.Out of everything being discussed in this thread (claims that Hoxha was a homosexual, the class character of Albania under him, his "authoritarianism," etc.) you've suddenly decided to latch onto the phrase "jungle music" because you somehow think it takes the heat off of your absurd and clearly chauvinistic claims like "Albanians don't have a history" and because you're unable to actually argue with me on an ideological basis.

You still haven't addressed the majority of my second reply to you (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2741067&postcount=38), that which actually discusses what distinguished Socialist Albania from other states in Eastern Europe, and Hoxha personally compared to other leaders. You've talked about how I'm a supposed fanatic, how I'm a mean ol' "Stalinist," and this thread might as well be renamed "Is Ismail gay [for Hoxha]?" for all the talking about me.

The Garbage Disposal Unit

18th April 2014, 23:46

I agree that Hoxha's "jungle music" comment was implicitly racist. However, as far as I can tell, all Ismail has done is correct a misquote. Regardless of one's feelings about his politics, one has to be impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of Hoxha and Stalin.

In any case, whatever, please, feel free to continue arguing with Ismail, but please, ffs, lay off the personal attacks. They're detrimental to the quality of the board.

cobrawolf_meiji

19th April 2014, 01:52

If he was, that is news to me. He banned Homosexuality on the basis that it was a part of Western Culture. He was totally Anti-Homosexual and had many homosexuals sent to Mental Institutions and labor camps.

Ismail

19th April 2014, 01:57

He banned Homosexuality on the basis that it was a part of Western Culture.I already gave the reasons on the first page of this thread.

had many homosexuals sent to Mental Institutions and labor camps.I actually don't recall homosexuals being sent to mental institutions in Albania, only labor camps. In the USSR after the 50s, and in the rest of Eastern Europe afterwards, homosexuality was classed as a mental illness and there were attempts to "cure" it. In Albania and in the USSR of the 30s-50s it was treated in a more political manner, since it with linked with the remnants of feudalism in Albania and with fascism in the USSR.

Remus Bleys

19th April 2014, 15:30

I actually don't recall homosexuals being sent to mental institutions in Albania, only labor camps.

What does this even mean? You don't recall? You weren't there you don't recall anything about Albania you've read about it. Not everything was written down, things could be lost, things could be untranslated and you probably didn't read everything. You are not a primary source you've simply read a shit ton, but you not recalling something does not mean there is no evidence.
Homosexuals in Albania were probably left alone by the state. The citizens probably attacked them, and the state probably didn't defend it. The charges seem like they would simply be used as a convenient way of charging political rivals. Who would care if a couple gays got killed in the context of "backwards tribal" Albania?

Ismail

19th April 2014, 21:45

What does this even mean? You don't recall? You weren't there you don't recall anything about Albania you've read about it. Not everything was written down, things could be lost, things could be untranslated and you probably didn't read everything. You are not a primary source you've simply read a shit ton, but you not recalling something does not mean there is no evidence.There are various sources on the treatment of homosexuals in countries like the USSR, GDR, Czechoslovakia and the like. They mention mental institutions and attempts to "cure" homosexuality. As far as Albania goes I've only ever read that homosexual relations were an offense in the penal code.

Keep in mind that this has a deeper significance. As you know, after 1956 the Soviet revisionists claimed that the basis for class struggle no longer existed in the USSR, something revisionists in Eastern Europe likewise followed. Dealing with anti-communists who broke the law (or anyone the revisionists didn't like) was done increasingly via mental health institutions rather than through the penal code. That's why in the USSR there were new mental health categories like "delusion of reformism" and "sluggish schizophrenia" introduced after Stalin's death. I do recall reading that the treatment of homosexuality in the USSR likewise changed from being a penal offense to being more of a mental health issue. The Albanians by contrast pointed out the absurdity of the Soviet revisionists dabbling in mental health. They continued to adhere to Stalin's words on the aggravation of class struggle under socialism. Considering that the Albanians (and Soviet authorities, at least in the 30s-40s) saw homosexuality as a mainly political issue, it would make sense for them to react to it via penal code.

While I can't prove that homosexuals weren't sent to mental health institutions in Albania (I'm sure this existed), it does seem that being sent to a labor camp was far more likely for a homosexual in Albania at any point between 1944-1991 than it was for a homosexual in, say, Hungary in the 60s-80s.

Homosexuals in Albania were probably left alone by the state.The penal code allowed for "unnatural sexual relations" ("sodomy" in the generic sense) between men and women, and between women. Known male homosexuals were arrested. I'm sure the state didn't actively go around being like "let's arrest all the gays," but still.

Invader Zim

21st April 2014, 10:56

This is absurd and clearly chauvinistic.

No, it isn't. Your hagiographical worship of Hoxha and his regime is indeed absurd - as it would be of any individual or regime. No country or individual has enough history to justify your deification of its or their past.

"It looked cool" probably describes your ideology in general.

Ironic from a Tanky.

In the USSR after the 50s, and in the rest of Eastern Europe afterwards, homosexuality was classed as a mental illness and there were attempts to "cure" it.

Unlike in the Soviet Union from 1933 to 1953, where homosexuals were sent to undertake five year stints of slave labour, of course an entirely different situation to that which preceded it where the Soviet Union arguably had the most progressive legislation in the world (i.e. no legislation) regarding homosexuality.

"Our social opinion quite rightly strongly condemned such degenerate 'importations' as long hair, extravagant dress, screaming jungle music, coarse language, shameless behaviour and so on. If the influences and manifestations of the bourgeois-revisionist way of life are not nipped in the bud, they open the way to the corruption and degeneration of people which are so dangerous to the cause of socialism."
(Enver Hoxha. Selected Works Vol. IV. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1982. p. 836.)

Dude, that is still obviously racist - unless of course, Hoxha was having a premonition regarding a strain of 1990s drum and bass, which, incidentally, is awesome.

X-8lssnV1VU

Invader Zim

21st April 2014, 11:00

Verbal Warning. Next post that's a personal dig at another poster gets infracted.

This is total nonsense:

"Flaming

Excessive flaming is not permitted on RevLeft. While we understand that many issues discussed here are controversial and emotionally charged, we also understand that emotional responses can get out of hand. This means that posts containing little but personal insults, name-calling and/or threats are not permitted.

Repeated flaming in posts containing nothing of substance except flames will result in warning points, and incorrigible offenders may be banned. In some cases threads which degenerate into "flame wars" will be locked with the participants prohibited from reviving them in any form."

Obviously, none of the above, with its clearly built in caveats, applies to anything stated in this thread.

Ismail

21st April 2014, 23:45

No country or individual has enough history to justify your deification of its or their past.Apparently Albania really doesn't have enough history for this, if we are to believe Alexios who claimed that Albanian history apparently began in WWII and remarked sarcastically that it had "real rich historical content" indeed before 1939.

Good job trying to provide an inoffensive cover for his obviously absurd statement though. It's not surprising coming from someone who excused Orwell writing that Paul Robeson was "very anti-white."

Ironic from a Tanky.Most "tankies" I know of have a positive view of Yugoslavia (presumably due to its army) and that the revisionist, state-capitalist regimes in East Germany and elsewhere were totally tubular, not to mention that they tend to have a positive opinion on the treacherous, anti-Marxist leaders of the USSR (sans Gorby, of course) which followed Stalin's death.

I'm not a "tankie," I don't uphold Albania because Hoxha looks like a badass guerrilla warrior (note: he doesn't) or because of Albania's army (note: ranks were abolished in the late 60s and Albanian military doctrine was based on an armed populace, not professional military cadres.)

As for the historical usage of the term by Trots, Hoxha certainly criticized the Soviet treatment of Hungary. An excerpt from his memoir The Khrushchevites, on visiting the country shortly before the counter-revolutionary events in 1956:

In the evening they put on a dinner for us in the Parliament Building, in a room where a big portrait of Attila hanging on the wall struck the eye. We talked again about the grave situation that was simmering in Hungary. But it seemed that they had lost their sense of direction. I said to them:

“Why are you acting like this? How can you sit idle in the face of this counter-revolution which is rising, why are you simply looking on and not taking measures?

“What measures could we take?” one of them asked.

“You should close the ‘Petöfi’ Club immediately, arrest the main trouble-makers, bring the armed working class out in the boulevards and encircle the Esztergom. If you can’t jail Mindszenty, what about Imre Nagy, can’t you arrest him? Have some of the leaders of these counter-revolutionaries shot to teach them what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.”

The Hungarian comrades opened their eyes wide with surprise as if they wanted to say to me: “Have you gone mad?” One of them told me:

“We cannot act as you suggest, Comrade Enver, because we do not consider the situation so alarming. We have the situation in hand. What they are shouting about at the ‘Petöfi’ Club is childish foolishness and if some members of the Central Committee went to congratulate Imre Nagy, they did this because they had long been comrades of his and not because they disagree with the Central Committee which expelled Imre from its ranks.”

“It seems to me you are taking the matter lightly,” I said. “You don’t appreciate the great danger hanging over you. Believe us, we know the Titoites well and know what they are after as the anti-communists and agents of imperialism they are.”

Mine was a voice in the wilderness. We ate that ill-omened dinner and during the conversation which lasted for several hours, the Hungarian comrades continued to pour into my ears that “they had the situation in hand” and other tales.

In the morning I boarded the aircraft and went to Moscow. I met Suslov in his office in the Kremlin....

“In regard to what you say, that the counter-revolution is on the boil,” said Suslov, “we have no facts, either from intelligence or other sources. The enemies are making a fuss about Hungary, but the situation is being normalized there. It is true that there are some student movements, but they are harmless and under control. The Yugoslavs are not operating there, as you say. You should know that not only Rakosi but also Gerö have made mistakes. . .”

“Yes, it is true that they have made mistakes, because they rehabilitated the Hungarian Titoite traitors who had plotted to blow up socialism,” I interjected. Suslov pursed his thin lips and then he went on:

“As for Comrade Imre Nagy, we cannot agree with you, Comrade Enver.”

“It greatly astonishes me,” I said, “that you refer to him as ‘Comrade’ Imre Nagy when the Hungarian Workers’ Party has thrown him out.”

“Maybe they have done so,” said Suslov, “but he has repented and has made a self-criticism.”

“Words go with the wind,” I objected, “don’t believe words. . .”

“No,” said Suslov, his face flushing. “We have his self-criticism in writing,” and he opened a drawer and pulled out a note signed by Imre Nagy, addressed to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in which he said that he had been wrong “in his opinions and actions” and ‘sought the support of the Soviets.’

“Do you believe this?” I asked Suslov.

“Why shouldn’t we believe it!” he replied, and went on, “Comrades can make mistakes, but when they acknowledge their errors we must hold out our hand to them.”

“He is a traitor,” I told Suslov, “and we think that you are making a great mistake when you hold out your hand to a traitor.”

The Garbage Disposal Unit

22nd April 2014, 03:11

Re: Zim

a moron like yourself has to accuse his critics of this because he can't engage with them on an ideological level.

poring over every Albanian work that's ever been written and quote mining worthless passages to support your idiotic arguments in an internet forum.

your understanding of Marxist theory is so poor that you can't criticize people from a communist standpoint

I guess you're too much of a shut-in weirdo to recognize that it's a reference to Reno.

you're really nothing other than a mild-mannered troll

You're the worst hypocrite I've ever seen

Not to mention other users (e.g. reb) posting images like this is chit-chat, and generally being obnoxious.

In any case, if you have an issue with my moderating, please PM an admin instead of derailing threads.

Thank-you.

synthesis

22nd April 2014, 03:29

Re: Zim

Not to mention other users (e.g. reb) posting images like this is chit-chat, and generally being obnoxious.

In any case, if you have an issue with my moderating, please PM an admin instead of derailing threads.

Thank-you.

You still shouldn't have infracted him, since his post was in response to yours and thus you were involved in the discussion. Not to mention the fact that both of those users you've mentioned (reb and Alexios) are people with whom you personally have had antagonistic arguments very recently. If someone challenges a (pretty unprecedented, outside of the Learning forum) dictate, the person who originally entered the dictate gets another BA member to infract the member for them. Also, you aren't really using the "PM an admin instead of publicly criticizing me" properly, since you were directly contradicting board policy the entire time.

Invader Zim

22nd April 2014, 15:11

Apparently Albania really doesn't have enough history for this, if we are to believe Alexios who claimed that Albanian history apparently began in WWII and remarked sarcastically that it had "real rich historical content" indeed before 1939.

Yes, set against the context of your constant gushing.

That said, you're right that Albania, of course, has its own history an deserves to be studied. However, given your infatuation with political and Great Man history, as opposed to cultural, gender and social history, one has to reflect that Albania during the Cold War was hardly as major a player as many other states during the same period.

It's not surprising coming from someone who excused Orwell writing that Paul Robeson was "very anti-white."

If you want to rehash your past humiliations and schooling then be my guest. However, this is somewhat rich given your apologism for Hoxha's racist, paternalistic, chauvinistic commentary in this very thread.

I'm not a "tankie,"

I suppose you're right about that, but 'Pillbox enthusiast' doesn't quite have the same rhetorical neatness. Then again, you do sport an avatar depicting Stalin in military khaki and hat steering the ship that was the USSR.

I also note your failure to address the issue of the Stalinist regime's homophobic legislation (and of course, we could also add misogynistic and virulently anti-Semitic to that roster of fail).

Ismail

22nd April 2014, 22:04

However, given your infatuation with political and Great Man history, as opposed to cultural, gender and social history, one has to reflect that Albania during the Cold War was hardly as major a player as many other states during the same period.It didn't invade foreign countries, prop up reactionary regimes, be on the receiving end of a proxy war, or engage in demagogic claims to being "non-aligned." And Albania was so much the better for doing so, being the sole European state to denounce the Helsinki Accords and various other schemes which American imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism created.

As Hoxha noted, "In many regions of the world the struggle between the two imperialist superpowers, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, not excluding imperialist China and other capitalist powers, has assumed new, major proportions. Each of these powers is striving to achieve economic, political and military superiority over the other and to capture new strategic positions...

Of course, while we observe that the rivalry between the superpowers and the sharpening of contradictions between them constitute the main source of present-day international conflicts and the danger of war, we cannot fail to notice also their efforts to reach compromises and agreements and even temporary alliances. The effort to come to terms to the detriment of the peoples has always been the response of imperialists to the tendency towards inter-imperialist clashes and conflicts. However, an atmosphere of mutual trust can never exist between imperialist states." (Selected Works Vol. VI, pp. 375-376.)

Albania was the only country during the Cold War (after the counter-revolutionary processes in the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe in the 50s) to actually take a Marxist and truly internationalist stand on the subject. It was also the only country genuinely building socialism in the 60s-80s, which has its own significance.

If you want to rehash your past humiliations and schooling then be my guest. However, this is somewhat rich given your apologism for Hoxha's racist, paternalistic, chauvinistic commentary in this very thread.I don't recall ever being "humiliated" or "schooled" by you. In fact I recall a number of persons pointing out that Orwell in his last years was, in effect, a right-wing social-democrat, something you can't seem to admit, probably because your ideology is not far off.

I also note your failure to address the issue of the Stalinist regime's homophobic legislationI have done so, many times in fact, in this thread and in other threads throughout the years.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

22nd April 2014, 22:22

You still shouldn't have infracted him, since his post was in response to yours and thus you were involved in the discussion. Not to mention the fact that both of those users you've mentioned (reb and Alexios) are people with whom you personally have had antagonistic arguments very recently. If someone challenges a (pretty unprecedented, outside of the Learning forum) dictate, the person who originally entered the dictate gets another BA member to infract the member for them. Also, you aren't really using the "PM an admin instead of publicly criticizing me" properly, since you were directly contradicting board policy the entire time.

I think this is something of an issue, actually.

Moderators are not meant to take administrative action when they are involved in the thread/discussion at hand. TGDU really needs to come out and hold their hands up to this one.

Invader Zim

23rd April 2014, 00:00

It didn't invade foreign countries, prop up reactionary regimes, be on the receiving end of a proxy war, or engage in demagogic claims to being "non-aligned."

No, it merely was a reactionary satellite (albeit occasionally stubborn and uncooperative) regime. And, doubtless of course, if it did have either the military or economic prowess to engage in the kinds of foreign policy adventurism you describe above it would have.

And your reply is, of course, indicative of my earlier observation regarding your hagiographical approach to Albania. Rather than comment on the wider history of Albania and its people, which as you suggest is doubtless very rich, you fixate on reproducing quotations from Hoxha.

I don't recall ever being "humiliated" or "schooled" by you. In fact I recall a number of persons pointing out that Orwell in his last years was, in effect, a right-wing social-democrat, something you can't seem to admit, probably because your ideology is not far off.

Really, because I recall that I, and others, pointed out to you that Orwell was a product of his time and that, ironically enough, your denunciation of him for comments written in his private diary (which did not, contrary to your aspersions otherwise, did not go to the IRD) were hardly unusual given the various prejudices which still pervaded the left during that period - including, regardless of you apologism and whitewashing, the virulent anti-antisemitism rearing its ugly head in the highest echelons of the Soviet Union. And, I also recall you ignoring/denying the well documented racism within bodies such as the CPGB, etc.

I have done so, many times in fact, in this thread and in other threads throughout the years.

Except, in all that time you have never manged to bridge the intellectual cleavage resulting from your apologism for the Stalinist regime and the fact that Stalin inherited a leadership of the state with arguably among the most progressive legislation in the world regarding homosexuality and abortion and then proceeded to introduce reactionary legislation. In fact, so reactionary that it was more punitive than the Tsar's legislation a century earlier.

Ismail

23rd April 2014, 03:22

No, it merely was a reactionary satellite (albeit occasionally stubborn and uncooperative) regime.This just reflects your own ignorance. If you mean it was a "satellite" of the USSR under Stalin, this is incorrect. Even though Albania carried out its revolution without the assistance of the Red Army, it never adopted a nationalist course, unlike the Yugoslavs. You'd be hard-pressed to find bourgeois commentators who note any "exploitative" relationship between the USSR and Albania in the 1948-56 period.

It was the Soviet revisionists who began to see Albania as a neo-colony, who called on Hoxha to abandon the "Stalinist" strategy of industrializing the country in favor of becoming the "garden" of Eastern Europe and the USSR. And when the Albanians refused to follow the revisionist course, Khrushchev tried to use the threat of famine against Albania. To quote one bourgeois work, "An interesting sidebar to the issue of Khrushchev's tardy decision to provide only a small amount of grain to Albania at this time is a comparison to Stalin's handling a similar situation on an earlier occasion. Enver Hoxha waxed nostalgically about Stalin who never would let the Albanian people starve. Hoxha remembered: 'In 1945, when our people were threatened with starvation, comrade Stalin ordered the ships loaded with grain destined for the Soviet people, who also were in dire need of food at that time, and sent the grain at once to the Albanian people. Whereas, the present Soviet leaders permit themselves these ugly deeds.'" (O'Donnell, A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha, p. 51.)

Albania joined the Warsaw Treaty in 1955 on the basis of its stated aim to serve as a counter against NATO. In 1961 Albania was barred from any further activity in that treaty, as well as from Comecon. As the decade progressed the Albanians noted that both organizations had been transformed into mechanisms for Soviet social-imperialism. Besides this, the Soviet revisionists unilaterally broke off all diplomatic and economic relations with Albania in 1961. The idea that it was a "satellite" afterwards, which would be merely dumb to say beforehand, would just be a display of you talking out your ass.

And your reply is, of course, indicative of my earlier observation regarding your hagiographical approach to Albania. Rather than comment on the wider history of Albania and its people, which as you suggest is doubtless very rich, you fixate on reproducing quotations from Hoxha.Apparently a proper reply to your claim that Albania's impact on the Cold War was relatively small would have been to cite the life and times of the Frashëri brothers or Skanderbeg's attempts to resist the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, rather than to actually note why Albania's role in the Cold War wasn't so very significant (read: it opposed it and refused to be involved), and to point out Hoxha's correct analysis of the fact that the USA and USSR had become rival imperialist superpowers.

Really, because I recall that I, and others, pointed out to you that Orwell was a product of his timeCalling Paul Robeson "very anti-white" is not a product of one's time anymore than calling MLK Jr. or Nkrumah "very anti-white" would have been a decade later. I pointed out that you didn't analyze the issue in a Marxist manner, you didn't look at the sort of brazen chauvinism and petty-bourgeois mentality required to call someone like Robeson "very anti-white."

That sort of comment suggests that somehow Robeson's denunciation of racism and colonialism was inherently against the interests of whites, or that Robeson espoused a doctrine of racial supremacy through such opposition, both obviously false. You responded over and over by pointing out that Marx once insulted Lassalle by calling him a "Jewish nigger," whereas a relevant example would have been if Marx wrote about Nat Turner or Dred Scott and claimed that they exhibited all the "classic symptoms" of drapetomania.

and that, ironically enough, your denunciation of him for comments written in his private diary (which did not, contrary to your aspersions otherwise, did not go to the IRD)Nice to know that he merely kept some of his absurd anti-communism and racism to himself.

And, I also recall you ignoring/denying the well documented racism within bodies such as the CPGB, etc.Perhaps the CPGB did have racism in it, I haven't studied the subject and Orwell was never a CPGB member so I also don't particularly care insofar as this discussion is concerned. You and Alexios seem to be playing by the same rulebook wherein "X was racist, but did you know Y was [maybe, probably not] racist too!?!?"

Except, in all that time you have never manged to bridge the intellectual cleavage resulting from your apologism for the Stalinist regime and the fact that Stalin inherited a leadership of the state with arguably among the most progressive legislation in the world regarding homosexuality and abortion and then proceeded to introduce reactionary legislation. In fact, so reactionary that it was more punitive than the Tsar's legislation a century earlier.You know, even though my knowledge of the CPGB is virtually non-existent, I still own 4 books originating from them. Here's an excerpt from one:

"A matter which has raised considerable doubts in the minds of many protagonists of sex-equality in this country is the law, passed in 1936, making abortion illegal except in cases where it is justified by consideration for a woman's health or the danger of hereditary disease. This change in the law has been treated as an attack on sex-equality.

It is of the greatest importance in this connection, to refer back to the text of the original law which legalised abortion in Soviet Russia in 1921. It is important to note that in this law not a word was said about sex-equality, and the right to have an abortion was never put forward as a fundamental right of the Soviet woman. On the contrary, abortion was treated as a social evil, but an evil which was likely to be less harmful when practised legally than when carried out under conditions of secrecy. Here is part of the text of the original law permitting abortion:

'During the past decades the number of women resorting to artificial discontinuation of pregnancy has grown both in the West and in this country. The legislation of all countries combats this evil by punishing the woman who chooses to have an abortion and the doctor who performs it. Without leading to favourable results, this method of combating abortion has driven the operation underground and made the woman a victim of mercenary and often ignorant quacks who make a profession of secret operations. As a result, up to 50 per cent of such women are infected in the course of the operation, and up to 4 per cent of them die.

'The Workers' and Peasants' Government is conscious of this serious evil to the community. It combats this evil by propaganda against abortions among working women. By working for Socialism, and by introducing the protection of maternity and infancy on an extensive scale, it feels assured of achieving the gradual disappearance of this evil. But as moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to this operation. . .' it is allowed in State hospitals.

The essential feature of this law is that it was based on 'difficult economic conditions,' and was of a temporary nature. The right to abortion was never introduced as one of the rights of Soviet women, to be enjoyed in all circumstances. It was considered an 'evil,' and was introduced as a makeshift to combat the serious mortality rate from illegal abortions carried out under unsatisfactory conditions. There is evidence that, at the present time, owing to the increased knowledge of contraceptives on the one hand and the growing sense of economic security on the other, women will not now practise abortion in this way, and that therefore the permissive law is no longer necessary in the interests of health. Abortion in Soviet legislation has always been regarded primarily as a question of health, not of equality. Since thousands of women have been neglecting the use of contraceptives because they could obtain an abortion, the legality of the less satisfactory method of discontinuing pregnancy has actually to some extent prevented more satisfactory methods from being used of avoiding pregnancy altogether."
(Sloan, Pat. Soviet Democracy. 1937. London: Victor Gollancz. pp. 125-126.)

Well, so much for the distinction between "reactionary" and "progressive" legislation in-re abortion when the original law was attacking abortion as a supposed "evil" that would cease having reason to exist under socialism!

Invader Zim

23rd April 2014, 23:59

This just reflects your own ignorance. If you mean it was a "satellite" of the USSR under Stalin, this is incorrect. Even though Albania carried out its revolution without the assistance of the Red Army, it never adopted a nationalist course, unlike the Yugoslavs. You'd be hard-pressed to find bourgeois commentators who note any "exploitative" relationship between the USSR and Albania in the 1948-56 period.

This assumes that a satellite state must be subject to exploitation from the larger power in whose sphere of influence it resides. This is plainly misleading, as satellite states regularly are economically reliant upon their 'senior partner' state - Albania being a case in point, in that its hideously mismanaged economy required propping by the Soviet Union. Of course, if Albania was not a satellite state of significant geo-political interest to the Soviet Union one has to wonder why it propped up Hoxha's regime (until the split in the 1960s) - of course, it can't have been anything to do with Greece, etc., now could it?

Apparently a proper reply to your claim that Albania's impact on the Cold War was relatively small would have been to cite the life and times of the Frashëri brothers or Skanderbeg's attempts to resist the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, rather than to actually note why Albania's role in the Cold War wasn't so very significant (read: it opposed it and refused to be involved), and to point out Hoxha's correct analysis of the fact that the USA and USSR had become rival imperialist superpowers.

The Cold War long predated 1953, one has to wonder whether Hoxha was merely blind to the international situation between 1944 and 1956, or even the international situation between 1917 and 1941? And there is an obvious reason why Albania's role in the Cold War was minimal, at least after 1949, was because it lacked the material or strategic means of being anything other than a second (or more like forth or fifth) fiddle to those states in whose sphere of influence it resided. Much, ironically, like Britain after 1956.

And, of course, none of this is my point. My point is that you would be far more likely to make a meaningful contribution to discussion and knowledge on this board if you stepped away from your Great Man considerations (and commentary on political history) and instead incorporated, give or take, 90-100 years of historiographical developments into your perspective. Why not, for instance, consider Albania as an ample opportunity to discuss 'history from below'?

Calling Paul Robeson "very anti-white" is not a product of one's time

Which reveals nothing other than your painful ignorance of British racial politics in the first half of the 20th century - that and further highlighting your near ubiquitous propensity for anachronism.

than calling MLK Jr. or Nkrumah "very anti-white" would have been a decade later.

Again, a more complete understanding of social history would provide more insightful discussion here. You might (though should not) be surprised to know that Britain in the 1950s, and certainly 1960s, was remarkably different to the same society in the 1940s. It would have been entirely different, in no small part because the Civil Rights movement, which brought race to the forefront of US, and in turn British, political discourse had not even begun in earnest until after Orwell's death. Again, this returns us to the point that racism was ubiquitous in Britain, including among its left, in no small part because key social and cultural developments, such as the arrival of the Empire Windrush (which marked a major turning point in British post-war social history) did not arrive at Tilbury until the summer of 1948. But then again, given your apparent disdain for social history and chronology, it hardly a shock that the possibility that the nuances of the historical context might have an impact on attitudes to race, are factors not that the forefront of your post. To repeat Marx's oft-quoted and highly useful comment:

"The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

Of course, when it comes to the Stalinist regime and homosexuality and abortion, his regime introduced all of these after a significant period after they had previously been rendered permissible. The regime also enacted highly racist policies in the post war period, again, in relative terms, a new development. Therefore, the Stalinist regime's prejudices, unlike Orwell's, can not easily be explained in immediate cultural and social terms.

Nice to know that he merely kept some of his absurd anti-communism and racism to himself.

Which were, given the social class into which he was born and the cultural climate in which was brought up, remarkably few and far between. His denunciation of antisemitism, and attacks on prominent white-western paternalism and colonialism were still more remarkable, and certainly far more advanced and nuanced than anything produced by the CPGB.

Perhaps the CPGB did have racism in it,

The fact that you employ the word 'perhaps' is rather revealing - the reality is that the only thing that would be genuinely surprising is if, in large degrees, it did not.

I haven't studied the subject and Orwell was never a CPGB member so I also don't particularly care insofar as this discussion is concerned. You and Alexios seem to be playing by the same rulebook wherein "X was racist, but did you know Y was [maybe, probably not] racist too!?!?"

Well, the point is that you are not looking at this issue through the prism of historical materialism. The point is that Orwell was, despite being socially and culturally abnormal in a great many respects, hardly immune from the social, economic and cultural forces which were ubiquitous during his lifetime. Again, 'It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.' While Orwell was remarkably progressive in many arenas, it was all within the confines of the historical context of his day - however, he was no more immune to socially constructed norms than anyone else is. The question is, as I have laid out before and you have singularly failed, despite some effort, to suggest that his rare racially charged remark was anything which we might not expect. More worrying, I would suggest, is actually his views on masculinity and femininity - thought given Stalin's massively patriarchal and chauvinistic attitude, it is no wonder that you have largely steered well clear of such issues.

You know, even though my knowledge of the CPGB is virtually non-existent, I still own 4 books originating from them. Here's an excerpt from one: -- etc ---

Which tells us only that progressive policy was the product of less enlightened motives, it in no way alters the fact that Stalin inherited society in which abortion and homosexuality were permissible and then enacted legislation which turned convicted homosexuals into slave laborers and women into incubators for the state. And in doing so, enacted policy more punitive than any in living memory.

Ismail

24th April 2014, 04:44

This assumes that a satellite state must be subject to exploitation from the larger power in whose sphere of influence it resides. This is plainly misleading, as satellite states regularly are economically reliant upon their 'senior partner' state - Albania being a case in point, in that its hideously mismanaged economy required propping by the Soviet Union.Albania's "hideously mismanaged economy" achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world. It obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets (cf. total rupture of diplomatic and trade relations after 1961), though such aid was certainly welcome considering the wartime destruction and backward economic base the new government inherited.

Of course, if Albania was not a satellite state of significant geo-political interest to the Soviet Union one has to wonder why it propped up Hoxha's regime (until the split in the 1960s) - of course, it can't have been anything to do with Greece, etc., now could it?Albania, like the USSR under Lenin and Stalin, was under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The USSR, acting on the basis of internationalism, assisted the Albanian people. Of course Albania had strategic value, but so does just about every other country. The USSR did not treat Albania as a neo-colony (except, of course, after the counter-revolution in the USSR), and that's what matters.

The Cold War long predated 1953, one has to wonder whether Hoxha was merely blind to the international situation between 1944 and 1956, or even the international situation between 1917 and 1941?In his memoirs (e.g. Laying the Foundations of the New Albania and With Stalin) he discusses the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, his conversations with Stalin over Greece and the mistakes of the KKE, and the aggressive activities of Western countries. What was relevant was that the West instigated the Cold War against a socialist USSR, whereas after the 50s the USSR itself had seen the restoration of capitalism within it and had become a rival imperialist superpower.

Albania took a number of practical steps to ensure it would not be used as a pawn by the Americans or the Soviet revisionists, or any regional power. These included such things as outlawing foreign investments and the stationing of military bases in Albanian territory in its 1976 Constitution, formally withdrawing from the Warsaw Treaty in protest of the Soviet social-imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, refusing to get involved with the Helsinki Accords or other diplomatic maneuvers, refusal to get involved with Comecon or the EEC, etc.

Of course, when it comes to the Stalinist regime and homosexuality and abortion, his regime introduced all of these after a significant period after they had previously been rendered permissible.Stalin enacted restrictions on abortion based on the original law permitting abortion, which regarded it as a "social evil," allowed for propagandizing against abortions, and considered that the necessity of abortions would cease to exist once the proper amount of "economic security" was guaranteed to women.

As for homosexuality, as you're well aware there weren't even laws concerning it. It was decriminalized when the Tsarist legal code was abolished, but homosexual relations were not actually protected by law. The fact that seemingly no anti-"Stalinist" of note seems to have remarked on the re-criminalization of homosexuality during the time when it came into effect means that they evidently didn't consider the matter all that important and that, in fact, the material conditions did matter on this subject.

Which tells us only that progressive policy was the product of less enlightened motives,In which case that policy was objectively progressive, and the reversal of that policy objectively regressive, but it makes little sense to blame Stalin for doing what the original law called upon the Bolsheviks to do.

As for the debate on Orwell (and your attempts to bring in the CPGB), I'd rather this thread stick to the subject of Albania and Hoxha. Whatever racism existed in the ranks of the CPGB, they presumably didn't call Paul Robeson, or anyone else advocating independence for colonies and equality between "races," "very anti-white."

Alexios

24th April 2014, 14:43

Albania's "hideously mismanaged economy" achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world. It obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets (cf. total rupture of diplomatic and trade relations after 1961), though such aid was certainly welcome considering the wartime destruction and backward economic base the new government inherited.

Albania, like the USSR under Lenin and Stalin, was under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The USSR, acting on the basis of internationalism, assisted the Albanian people. Of course Albania had strategic value, but so does just about every other country. The USSR did not treat Albania as a neo-colony (except, of course, after the counter-revolution in the USSR), and that's what matters.

In his memoirs (e.g. Laying the Foundations of the New Albania and With Stalin) he discusses the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, his conversations with Stalin over Greece and the mistakes of the KKE, and the aggressive activities of Western countries. What was relevant was that the West instigated the Cold War against a socialist USSR, whereas after the 50s the USSR itself had seen the restoration of capitalism within it and had become a rival imperialist superpower.

Albania took a number of practical steps to ensure it would not be used as a pawn by the Americans or the Soviet revisionists, or any regional power. These included such things as outlawing foreign investments and the stationing of military bases in Albanian territory in its 1976 Constitution, formally withdrawing from the Warsaw Treaty in protest of the Soviet social-imperialist invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, refusing to get involved with the Helsinki Accords or other diplomatic maneuvers, refusal to get involved with Comecon or the EEC, etc.

Stalin enacted restrictions on abortion based on the original law permitting abortion, which regarded it as a "social evil," allowed for propagandizing against abortions, and considered that the necessity of abortions would cease to exist once the proper amount of "economic security" was guaranteed to women.

As for homosexuality, as you're well aware there weren't even laws concerning it. It was decriminalized when the Tsarist legal code was abolished, but homosexual relations were not actually protected by law. The fact that seemingly no anti-"Stalinist" of note seems to have remarked on the re-criminalization of homosexuality during the time when it came into effect means that they evidently didn't consider the matter all that important and that, in fact, the material conditions did matter on this subject.

In which case that policy was objectively progressive, and the reversal of that policy objectively regressive, but it makes little sense to blame Stalin for doing what the original law called upon the Bolsheviks to do.

As for the debate on Orwell (and your attempts to bring in the CPGB), I'd rather this thread stick to the subject of Albania and Hoxha. Whatever racism existed in the ranks of the CPGB, they presumably didn't call Paul Robeson, or anyone else advocating independence for colonies and equality between "races," "very anti-white."

http://f.kulfoto.com/pic/0001/0015/47t2114508.jpg

Invader Zim

24th April 2014, 16:00

Albania's "hideously mismanaged economy" achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world. It obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets (cf. total rupture of diplomatic and trade relations after 1961), though such aid was certainly welcome considering the wartime destruction and backward economic base the new government inherited.

By 1952 a third of Albania's budget was based on aid from the Soviet Union and other satellite states. Moreover, several thousand Soviet advisors were shipped in to help manage Albanian industry and agriculture. This is common knowledge, and that you deny it is really rather bizarre. The fact that, by the 1960s Albania's material situation had altered to the point that it no longer required propping up by the Soviet Union, and was able to shift its allegiance towards China, substituting geo-political body in order to orbit another, does not alter the fact that from the late 1940s until the early 60s Albania was undeniably a satellite state and economically tied and propped by the Soviet Union.

Furthjermore, your argument that because Albania saw economic improvements and therefore could not have been an economically dependent satellite is absolutely nonsensical. Britain, undeniably a political and economic satellite of the USA (as well as the recipiant of huge economic backing in the post-war period) also saw considerable increases to standards of living and increased GDP per capita:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/files/2013/04/Van-Reenen-fig-2.png

That did not stop the UK being a US satellite dependent on US money. It was prosperous because of US investment.

Meanwhile, you also said earlier that no 'bourgeois' commentators described Albania as a satellite state, when, in fact, the CIA (in documents released only in 2007) described Albania as "clearly one of the most obedient of satellites" up until the split with the USSR. See:

CURRENT INTELLIGENCE STAFF STUDY - SOVIET - ALBANIAN RELATIONS, 1940-1960, 22 JUNE 1962

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/14/esau-19.pdf

The USSR aided Albania because it was of strategic importance and extended the Soviet sphere of influence. I.e., like all states the USSR was acting within its own interests and against those of its competitors. You appear to have replaced materialism with idealism.

[QUOTE=Ismail]Albania, like the USSR under Lenin and Stalin, was under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Ha, good one.

I'll deal with the rest later.

Sea

25th April 2014, 01:52

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/files/2013/04/Van-Reenen-fig-2.png
And is this graph supposed to prove or deny that Hoxha was gay?

(given your history of rather creative reasoning and conclusion-drawing, this actually might be a serious question)

synthesis

25th April 2014, 02:57

And is this graph supposed to prove or deny that Hoxha was gay?

(given your history of rather creative reasoning and conclusion-drawing, this actually might be a serious question)

Yeah, God forbid this discussion might broaden into something slightly less trivial.

Sea

25th April 2014, 03:35

Yeah, God forbid this discussion might broaden into something slightly less trivial.Yes, on its own that is trivial, but the point is that some of you are revisionologically trying marginalize Albania's progress under their leader Enver Hoxha.

The fact is that you couldn't be more wrong:

https://i.imgur.com/kuYru5c.png

Look at all the progress they made. Look at it. Compare it to the bourgeois countries that are getting more and more backwards with each passing year.

Ismail

25th April 2014, 04:54

By 1952 a third of Albania's budget was based on aid from the Soviet Union and other satellite states. Moreover, several thousand Soviet advisors were shipped in to help manage Albanian industry and agriculture. This is common knowledge, and that you deny it is really rather bizarre.I didn't deny it. Albania was a country which, in relative terms, suffered the most out of all European countries in WWII in terms of wartime damages, and it obviously had a very poor base upon which to industrialize to begin with.

The fact that, by the 1960s Albania's material situation had altered to the point that it no longer required propping up by the Soviet Union, and was able to shift its allegiance towards China, substituting geo-political body in order to orbit another, does not alter the fact that from the late 1940s until the early 60s Albania was undeniably a satellite state and economically tied and propped by the Soviet Union.You wrote that "it merely was a reactionary satellite (albeit occasionally stubborn and uncooperative) regime," implying that throughout the entire existence of Socialist Albania it was a "satellite."

Romania also had disputes with the post-Stalin Soviet leadership, but these were not based on the counter-revolutionary ambitions of the latter. Its relationship with the Soviet revisionists was "occasionally stubborn and uncooperative," whereas the Soviet revisionists hated Albania. Khrushchev referred to Hoxha as a "monster" in his autobiography and openly called for his overthrow at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in 1961.

The Albanian leadership was certainly "obedient" to the socialist camp, as it existed in the 40s and 50s. Hoxha was unlike Gomułka, Kádár, Ulbricht and other opportunists who took the rehabilitation of Tito and reactionary theses of the 20th Party Congress as a clarion call for their own revisionist policies.

Your entire argument is pretty much worthless to begin with, unless you think that Albania should have been the center of international socialism in the 1944-56 period or that the Albanian leadership should have expected that there would be a counter-revolution in the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe that would mean that only Albania stood alone as a country actually building socialism rather than restoring capitalism.

Furthjermore, your argument that because Albania saw economic improvements and therefore could not have been an economically dependent satellite is absolutely nonsensical.Except I didn't make that argument, I was criticizing your claim that the economy was "mismanaged," pointing out the economic progress made.

Meanwhile, you also said earlier that no 'bourgeois' commentators described Albania as a satellite state,Wrong again, I said that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bourgeois commentator who claims that the Soviets "exploited" Albania.

The USSR aided Albania because it was of strategic importance and extended the Soviet sphere of influence. I.e., like all states the USSR was acting within its own interests and against those of its competitors.For Marxists what is important is if an imperialist relationship exists, not if X country has "strategic interests" or not. I'm pretty sure Soviet support for the revolution in Mongolia in 1921, efforts to reach Warsaw, assistance to Turkey and Afghanistan, etc. all acted against the interests of "its competitors" (i.e. virtually the whole world at that point) and had some material benefit for Soviet Russia.

Alexios

25th April 2014, 05:16

Yeah, God forbid this discussion might broaden into something slightly less trivial.

Very slightly less, considering Ismail's ridiculous debate tactics and insistence on arguing over whatever tiny points with which he can bullshit for 10 pages.

Sea

25th April 2014, 07:19

Very slightly less, considering Ismail's ridiculous debate tactics and insistence on arguing over whatever tiny points with which he can bullshit for 10 pages.I stopped caring around the middle of page 2 but Ismail's last post (88) was well thought out and well-referenced. An argument that contains more content may very well be longer than the average, but carries more weight as well. Given Ismail's extensive knowledge of Albanian history, and particularly of Albanian history during Hoxha's tenure, your comment is rather out of line. That is the period of Albanian history that we are discussing, is it not? How can you find fault in someone for leveraging what they know? Perhaps you are flustered by the realization that your knowledge is too lacking for you to do the same. Yes, I'm defending him, considering the fact that some posters in this thread (Jolly Red Giant, et al) have posted things that are baseless and have no factual basis, and considering the general uninformed hounding of Marxism-Leninism that occurs on this board, I cannot let a knowledgeable poster be harangued and slapped around like a rag doll due to the ignorance of others without consequence. You criticize Ismail for arguing over "tiny points", but it is more likely that you simply understand neither the relevance nor significance of the points being made. What is really a tiny point? See the "He who does not work.." thread.

Idiotically choosing to form an opinion on the former PSRA without clearly understanding the arguments that both sides present - or, for those "left-communists" here, having an opinion dictated to you by your tendency and repeating it as dogma - is no excuse for personal insult. This goes for most subjects, political and otherwise. Recall this post, the context behind which has a lot to do with why I stopped caring:
Verbal Warning. Next post that's a personal dig at another poster gets infracted.
How someone can pretend to have an understanding of the politics of a country's leader sufficient to debate on, let alone to criticize the debating of others, without at least being familiar with said leader's work and policies is beyond me. I still do not consider my understanding of the PSRA, and my knowledge of Hoxha personally, to be extensive enough, despite having read several of his works (and not entirely hating them, I might add) to make such accusations as you are making.

Ismail

25th April 2014, 11:02

Very slightly less, considering Ismail's ridiculous debate tactics and insistence on arguing over whatever tiny points with which he can bullshit for 10 pages.You still haven't replied to the second half of this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2741067&postcount=38), the half that actually discusses Albania and Hoxha. You can either admit you were wrong or try to reply. Or you can not reply and lose the benefit of doing either.

Invader Zim

25th April 2014, 14:16

And is this graph supposed to prove or deny that Hoxha was gay?

Who cares if Hoxha was gay? The discussion has moved on.

but the point is that some of you are revisionologically trying marginalize Albania's progress under their leader Enver Hoxha.

First, the point with the graph was to illustrate the error in Ismail's contention that because Albania "achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world", and therefore, "it obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets", when in reality what gains were made were, in fact, paid for by the Soviet Union - and that it is hardly unusual for major powers to economically back their satellites. Second, what improvements? OK, the regime was in a position to encourage important agricultural reform in the 1940s, but the majority of economic 'strides' taken by the regime were not home grown, but rather underwritten by external powers - initially Yugoslavia, then the Soviet Union, and then China.

The fact is that you couldn't be more wrong:

Given that you've been waxing lyrical about the quality of Ismail's contributions to the new direction of discussion this thread has moved, precisely what benefit do you feel this, not particularly funny, emendation of the graph i provided adds?

I stopped caring around the middle of page 2 but Ismail's last post (88) was well thought out and well-referenced.

The former is subjective, and the latter is simply incorrect - Ismail's post contains not a single reference. Nevertheless, it is a post with far more value in terms of discussion than the question posited in the OP.

I didn't deny it.

You denied precisely that. To remind you, you denied that Albania was a satellite state and that its economy was underscored by the Soviet Union. Specifically, you said:

"[Albania] obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets"

Yet, as noted, the material reality is that, the Soviet Union did precisely that - because Albania was one of its Satellite States.

Albania was a country which, in relative terms, suffered the most out of all European countries in WWII in terms of wartime damages,

Now this is a genuinely interesting point - perhaps you could expand on it? Or alternatively provide some reading?

"it merely was a reactionary satellite (albeit occasionally stubborn and uncooperative) regime," implying that throughout the entire existence of Socialist Albania it was a "satellite."

Well, after the split from the Soviet Union Albania fell under the Chinese sphere of influence and became one of its satellites. Which proved to be a smart move given that Albania did far better out of China than much of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. China reduced its trade and support across the board - particularly during the early 60s, with the loan exception of Albania, which was beginning to realign itself to fall under Chinese influence. That, as I recall reading, included, when China was suffering massive famine, the shipping of tens of thousands of tons of grain to Albania (for free) at the height of the Chinese famine. In other words, the Hoxha regime simply switched its allegiance to another great benefactor. Albania still remained a client state - at least until the 1970s, at which point its economy spectacularly collapsed. And before Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform in 1948 Albania acted as satellite to Yugoslavia. In other words, it was the regimes policy to make itself a useful satellite state for any larger power which it could attach itself for the better part of three decades.

Khrushchev referred to Hoxha as a "monster" in his autobiography and openly called for his overthrow at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in 1961.

Hardly surprising given that Krushchev and his regime were in the process of losing a hitherto loyal satellite state to China - bitterness directed at Hoxha is hardly surprising. Which rather sums up Khrushchev and his regime; aside from a certain base cunning which allowed him (unlike many of his political peers) to survive the Stalinist regime, he was stupid and, worse still, his regime was typically ineffective.

Your entire argument is pretty much worthless to begin with, unless you think that Albania should have been the center of international socialism in the 1944-56 period or that the Albanian leadership should have expected that there would be a counter-revolution in the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe that would mean that only Albania stood alone as a country actually building socialism rather than restoring capitalism.

My argument is that Hoxha and Albania were far more small fry, on the international Cold War scene, than your hagiographical worship gives him credence given your high-political approach to examining history. I can kind of understand why people spend a life time studying Stalin, etc., even though I think it is intellectually pedestrian and produces largely third rate history. But at least they do it properly, complete with actual historical analysis, what you are is a hagiographer with an antiquarian approach to the collection of obscure quotations as a substitute to actual analysis. And as noted, your posts would be far more interesting if you examined the history of Albania from below as opposed, as ever, from above - which is hardly an unorthodox recommendation in a leftist community.

Except I didn't make that argument,

You:

"Albania's "hideously mismanaged economy" achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world. It obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets". Which I noted has now subtly shifted into the rather different position that while the Soviet Union did prop up Albania's economy that was because of the need for post-war reconstruction. Regardless, I accept your concession that Albania's post-war recovery and growth was almost entirely underwritten by the Soviet Union and other states under its direct sphere of influence (at least until the 1960s) and that Albania was, indeed, a Soviet satellite for virtually the entire opening phases of the post-war Cold War.

Wrong again, I said that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bourgeois commentator who claims that the Soviets "exploited" Albania.

Well no, because as the CIAs classification of Albania shows, that is exactly how (and quite accurately) the US bourgeois state viewed Albania and Hoxha's regime.

Ismail

25th April 2014, 17:34

It's probably a good idea to clarify what you mean by "satellite." I already noted that I had assumed you thought Socialist Albania was a Soviet "satellite" throughout its existence (1944-1991.)

You denied precisely that. To remind you, you denied that Albania was a satellite state and that its economy was underscored by the Soviet Union. Specifically, you said:

"[Albania] obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets"

Yet, as noted, the material reality is that, the Soviet Union did precisely that - because Albania was one of its Satellite States.It is worth noting that Soviet economic development objectives for Eastern Europe changed after Stalin. As one bourgeois work notes, Comecon under Stalin had promoted "autarky on the model of the inter-war USSR, and thus the seeds of later difficulties were sown. . . . Stalin's death in 1953 opened a second phase in which the new Soviet collective leadership made significant changes. The pursuit of autarky was largely abandoned, and there was a shift towards the 'socialist division of labour', in which countries were to specialise in what they could do best and trade their surpluses to meet other member's deficits. . ." (Dawson, Planning in Eastern Europe, 1987, p. 299.) As another source notes, Soviet materials on Albania's economy in the late 50s were calling Albania's investment in heavy industry a wrong course.

The fact that it was the USSR under Stalin which assisted the Albanians and laid the economic foundations upon which they could resist the attempts of the Soviet revisionists to make them submit is notable. As I said before, the revisionists wanted Albania to be the "garden" of Eastern Europe, dependent on the USSR for industrial resources.

Talking about Albania from 1944-56 is besides the point for this purpose. It had relatively little to take issue with in regards to the USSR and made no secret of the aid the Soviets gave to the economy.

Now this is a genuinely interesting point - perhaps you could expand on it? Or alternatively provide some reading?Perhaps not all wartime damages, but for instance: "Counting only those whose deaths were directly due to enemy action there were 28,000 killed or over 2½% of the population. In proportion to its size Albania lost in the war three times as many people as Britain and 17 times as many as the United States. In military losses 11,000 partisans were killed in action or 1% of the population. Only the Soviet Union had a higher percentage of people wounded, and 44,500 Albanians were imprisoned or deported.

Material damage was also staggering. More than a third of all habitations and, indeed, of all buildings of any kind, were totally destroyed. More than a third of the livestock was butchered or stolen and the same proportion of fruit trees and vineyards had been ruined. Nearly all the mines, ports, roads and especially bridges were wrecked, and not a single industrial plant was in working order." (Ash, Pickaxe and Rifle, 1974, p. 78.)

Another source, "The International Center for Relief to Civilian Populations, with headquarters at Geneva, reported that 'Albania is one of the most severely devastated countries of Europe'. From their survey we have the following facts. The housing losses were 'catastrophic.' More than 60,000 buildings had been destroyed, many villages wiped out. One-tenth of the population was literally homeless.... Transport without railway or waterway was 'particularly thorny,' all bridges having been destroyed, roads greatly damaged, trucks and buses lacking. In brief, Albania was 'reduced to terrifying distresses.' 'Construction of the country must begin at zero.'

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) mission in Albania reported that nothing of any value was left anywhere in the country. General Lowell Rooks, general director of UNRRA.... visit[ed] Greece, Yugoslavia, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and parts of Russia, [he] declared again, 'Of all the places in Europe I have visited, in Albania i saw with my own eyes worse hunger conditions than anywhere else'."(Jacques, The Albanians Vol. 2, 1993, pp. 426-427)

Other sources note that Albania, already having been the poorest country in Europe in 1939, became a still much poorer country in 1944.

Well, after the split from the Soviet Union Albania fell under the Chinese sphere of influence and became one of its satellites. Which proved to be a smart move given that Albania did far better out of China than much of the rest of the Eastern Bloc.Well again, your definition of "satellite" would be welcome. I think the discussion is still pretty useless since Albania obviously had various disputes with the Chinese, made its divergences known in writing (e.g. flatly saying they opposed the Chinese line on the Sino-Soviet border dispute, Nixon's visit to China, etc.), and so on. There was a (basically) common foreign policy between them up until the early 70s because the Chinese were claiming to continue Stalin's foreign policy line of resistance to imperialism, proletarian internationalism and the like.

In other words, the Hoxha regime simply switched its allegiance to another great benefactor.This analysis is flawed. Many authors have noted that Chinese aid to Albania, although it was done on "better" terms than the Soviets (in terms of Chinese workers in Albania being paid the same wages as their Albanian counterparts, more favorable loan conditions, etc.), the quality of that aid was below the Soviet level. It is pretty obvious that by 1961 the Soviet leadership flat-out wanted Hoxha removed from power. It was the Soviets, not the Albanians, who broke diplomatic and trade relations.

Furthermore this analysis, which presents Hoxha as a mere opportunist, does not explain why Albania dismissed American overtures in the early 70s (i.e. to follow China in rapprochement) and Soviet revisionist overtures in the late 70s (as the revisionists offered to reestablish relations and demagogically referred to Albania as a "fellow" socialist country from the late 60s onwards.) As one bourgeois work notes, "From the Albanian side, the leading cause [of the Sino-Albanian split] seems to have been ideological. Hoxha has a distinguished record as a doctrinaire communist and was apparently willing to risk a rift with the Chinese comrades in defense of the communist faith, when in his view China embarked on a revisionist path." (Prifti, Socialist Albania since 1944, 1978, p. 260.) Elez Biberaj in his book Albania and China also notes that unlike Albania's split with the USSR, its split with China was pretty much initiated entirely by the Albanian side, which could have easily just went along with China's new foreign policy course of siding with American imperialism against Soviet social-imperialism.

My argument is that Hoxha and Albania were far more small fry, on the international Cold War scene, than your hagiographical worship gives him credenceI don't see why you're bringing this up though. I don't think Hoxha was a person worth upholding because of how "influential" he was as a statesman in relation to other states. If that were the case I'd be upholding Tito, Ceaușescu or Kim Il Sung, men known for their "personal diplomacy" and having friendly relations with all sorts of regimes.

Albania's notability in the Cold War (or, if you want to be specific, the Cold War after 1956) was exactly the opposite of every other state, and this stemmed from the fact that it was the only state actually pursuing a Marxist-Leninist foreign and domestic policy course. If that made Albania a "small fry" then so be it.

You:

"Albania's "hideously mismanaged economy" achieved some of the highest growth rates in the world. It obviously didn't require "propping up" by the Soviets". Which I noted has now subtly shifted into the rather different position that while the Soviet Union did prop up Albania's economy that was because of the need for post-war reconstruction. Regardless, I accept your concession that Albania's post-war recovery and growth was almost entirely underwritten by the Soviet Union and other states under its direct sphere of influence (at least until the 1960s) and that Albania was, indeed, a Soviet satellite for virtually the entire opening phases of the post-war Cold War."The growth of Albania's industry was quite amazing, in both speed and in extent. When one considers the extent of damage done in Albania during World War II, it is quite impressive that Albania was able to recover from this damage and by 1946 equal her pre-war level of industrial production. However, even more impressive is the fact that by 1948, Albania doubled its pre-war industrial production." (O'Donnell, A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha, 1999, pp. 157-158.)

Before you mention Yugoslavia, one source notes that the vast majority of wartime reconstruction aid was provided by the UNRRA, not the Yugoslavs. I doubt this means that Albania was a satellite of the West.

Well no, because as the CIAs classification of Albania shows, that is exactly how (and quite accurately) the US bourgeois state viewed Albania and Hoxha's regime.The fact that you take the CIA's word as valid without any other evidence is worrying. Nonetheless, "Relations between Albania and the Soviet Union continued to be extremely cordial during the remaining years of Stalin's life. While the USSR was extracting resources from other East European nations in the form of raw materials and machinery, it was extending economic assistance to Albania and compelling its satellites to do so as well." (Freedman, Economic Warfare in the Communist Bloc, 1970, p. 60.) I do not recall any bourgeois academic source that claims that the Soviets exploited Albania in any economic sense under Stalin. Plenty of information on "Soviet penetration" of society and the economy, but nothing about actually screwing over Albania to the benefit of Soviet coffers.

Invader Zim

25th April 2014, 18:39

I don't mean that a satellite state is a geopolitical entity ruled either directly or by proxy by another power, akin to a colonial outpost run by a govenor (as the British did). Rather a satellite state is a smaller state which attaches itself, either ideologically, militarily or economically, to a larger state. While it retains some autonomy over its affairs, it tends to follow the line instructed from the body in which it is in orbit. Thus, in the case of Albania, it ideologically and economically wedded itself to the Soviet Union, and furthermore, it allowed the Soviet Union to install key military apparatus and materiel in a highly important strategic location from which the Soviet Union was removed. In return, The Soviet Union guaranteed Albanian geopolitical and economic integrity.

In the 1960s, when Albania shifted its orbit from the Soviet Union to China, a not dissimilar relationship resulted. China utilised Albania as a European foothold from which the regime could act as a mouthpiece for China's interests at a time when China was particularly marginalised, and also to thwart Soviet interests. Meanwhile, China assisted Albania avoid external pressure from the Soviet Union (which was to both China and Albania's benefit) and provided considerable economic support.

as I noted earlier, clear continuity can be drawn between Britain and the USA - while certainly independent and not directly 'ruled' by the USA, Britain during the Cold War, was a satellite state - the most clear example being of Britain's shift in policy in 1956 when she realised that the US would not support her Foreign Policy. Lend-Lease and the Marshall plan locked Britain into an orbit revolving around US, and in exchange Britain became one of the key 'Five Eyes' in the Cold War, a state to chant from the same ideological anti-community hymn sheet during the Cold War, a major US military/strategic beach-head in Europe, and a state which could (usually) be relied upon to follow US foreign policy - a situation which still persists as shown by Britain's lapdog attitude towards US's bloody military adventures in the Middle East since 2001. Of course, that goes some way, and the US backed Britain during the Falklands War, clearly viewing Britain as a more important satellite than Argentina.

Well again, your definition of "satellite" would be welcome. I think the discussion is still pretty useless since Albania obviously had various disputes with the Chinese, made its divergences known in writing (e.g. flatly saying they opposed the Chinese line on the Sino-Soviet border dispute, Nixon's visit to China, etc.), and so on.

Of course, Satellite states do not always toe-the-line, for example Wilson refused Johnson's pressure to send troops to Vietnam.

synthesis

25th April 2014, 20:27

The fact that you take the CIA's word as valid without any other evidence is worrying.

...wow. His comment was in response to this:

Wrong again, I said that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bourgeois commentator who claims that the Soviets "exploited" Albania.

So the CIA's word itself is the evidence that you said would rebuke your claim. Any evidence of a "bourgeois commentator claiming that the Soviets exploited Albania" would be subject to that same claim, that one is "taking their word as valid without any other evidence."

That's just a really dishonest and almost contemptible way of debating.

Ismail

26th April 2014, 05:00

So the CIA's word itself is the evidence that you said would rebuke your claim.Only if you're an illiterate. I asked for evidence that the Soviets "exploited" Albania. I still haven't received any.

Any evidence of a "bourgeois commentator claiming that the Soviets exploited Albania" would be subject to that same claim, that one is "taking their word as valid without any other evidence."Zim's excerpt was in regards to his claim that Albania was a "satellite" of the USSR. He seems to imply that economic exploitation and being a "satellite" are synonymous, which is obviously wrong.

If I replied to Zim exclusively with Albanian sources I'd be criticized, so why exclusively take the word of the CIA rather than the word of various anti-communist academic works which Zim ordinarily values so much?

synthesis

26th April 2014, 06:44

Only if you're an illiterate. I asked for evidence that the Soviets "exploited" Albania. I still haven't received any.

Zim's excerpt was in regards to his claim that Albania was a "satellite" of the USSR. He seems to imply that economic exploitation and being a "satellite" are synonymous, which is obviously wrong.

If I replied to Zim exclusively with Albanian sources I'd be criticized, so why exclusively take the word of the CIA rather than the word of various anti-communist academic works which Zim ordinarily values so much?

I've noticed this tactic seems to work pretty well for you in debates. Make a claim, someone responds to that claim, then argue that you never made that claim so that the subject of the argument becomes whether or not you made the claim in the first place.

Meanwhile, you also said earlier that no 'bourgeois' commentators described Albania as a satellite state,

Wrong again, I said that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bourgeois commentator who claims that the Soviets "exploited" Albania.

Well no, because as the CIAs classification of Albania shows, that is exactly how (and quite accurately) the US bourgeois state viewed Albania and Hoxha's regime.

The fact that you take the CIA's word as valid without any other evidence is worrying.

...the CIA's word itself is the evidence that you said would rebuke your claim. Any evidence of a "bourgeois commentator claiming that the Soviets exploited Albania" would be subject to that same claim, that one is "taking their word as valid without any other evidence."

Only if you're an illiterate. I asked for evidence that the Soviets "exploited" Albania.

I have a hard time believing that anyone is this oblivious, but it's still really hard to tell if you've really convinced yourself of this hilarious doublethink. I'm actually really looking forward to seeing how you'll spin this; with your talent at mental gymnastics, you should have been in Sochi last February.

Ismail

26th April 2014, 07:06

synthesis

26th April 2014, 09:20

All I'm saying is that he could have tried finding a better source than the CIA. I already noted that the claim that Albania was a "satellite" under Stalin doesn't matter, it's irrelevant to the discussion as far as I can see. I'm interested in sources that claim that Albania was "exploited" by the USSR under Stalin. The discussion on whether or not Albania was a "satellite" is very close to the question of economic relations between the USSR and Albania for obvious reasons, so Zim was focusing on one thing and I was focusing on another.

Just because I called for bourgeois commentary doesn't mean I called for any and all such commentary. I'm pretty sure if Zim had solely quoted something from the John Birch Society I'd be even more critical of relying on such a source.

But that wasn't a source for the claim that Albania was a satellite or that it was exploited. It was a source for the claim that "bourgeois commentators" viewed the situation as such. So any evidence for that claim would have to be subject to the same criticism, that "only bourgeois commentators are being considered." Well, no shit - that's the only evidence that can prove the claim.

Ismail

26th April 2014, 09:36

But that wasn't a source for the claim that Albania was a satellite or that it was exploited. It was a source for the claim that "bourgeois commentators" viewed the situation as such. So any evidence for that claim would have to be subject to the same criticism, that "only bourgeois commentators are being considered." Well, no shit - that's the only evidence that can prove the claim.Well, again, I was trying to see if Zim could find evidence of bourgeois works claiming that Albania was economically exploited by the USSR under Stalin.

It should go without saying that I'm aware every bourgeois source groups Albania with most of the rest of the Eastern European countries in the 40s-50s as a "satellite" of the USSR. The Albanians never had issues with the USSR under Stalin. To quote them, "Ceaseless strengthening of the fraternal friendship and collaboration with the socialist countries was the foundation stone of the foreign policy of the Government... The main partner in these relations was the Soviet Union... For the close friendly relations between Albania and the Soviet Union, a special merit belonged to J.V. Stalin, who considered the People's Republic of Albania a free, sovereign state, politically and economically independent, and a true ally of the USSR. Stalin felt it his internationalist duty to provide aid for socialist Albania and spared nothing to fulfil its requirements according to the possibilities he had. But this healthy situation in Albanian-Soviet relations began to be undermined by the Khrushchevites." (The History of the Socialist Construction of Albania, 1988, p. 152.)

So I don't see the point in going on and on about how it was "satellite." The Albanians were not nationalists, they didn't whine about how mean ol' Stalin was "dogmatic" and "suspicious" like Mao, Dej, Gomułka, and other enthusiasts of "national roads to socialism." The Albanians stated time and time again in their polemics against the Soviet revisionists that they never confused the Soviet people and the USSR in the time of Lenin and Stalin with the state-capitalist regime under the rule of the new bourgeoisie.