Albania: An atheist state

Abstract

Isolation of the spirit is one of the most important principles upon which Albanian communists base their dominance. Nearly three quarters of the Albanian people were born after Enver Hoxha's seizure of power and so know no other political system than the so-called worker's control. remaining quarter, the middle-aged and older generation, consist in the main of illiterates a late legacy of Ottoman domination. Thanks to this isolation, the ideologists of the communist Albanian Party of Uibour (abbreviated as APL below) are able to falsify the recent church history of their country and their own propaganda from the years immediately before and after the end of the war to suit current requirements. As its main argument in the against Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics, the APL claimed that all three religious bodies would destroy the National Uniqueness of Albanians. In contrast, the exploiting role of the clergy was not attacked as in other communist countries. So the real motive behind the against religion was not socialism but nationalism. Nationalism is the source of totalitarianism in Albania. slogan, The Religion of Albanians is Albanianism, which belongs to Enver Hoxha's current vocabulary, stems in fact not from Albania's socialist era, but was formulated by the nineteenth century poet Vaso Pasha. census of 1938 showed that of the then I. I million inhabitants (2.5 million at the end of 1972) 69% were Muslim, 20.7% Orthodox and 10.3% Catholic. 200 Albanians had admitted they were Jewish. This number grew to 300 by the end of the war because the German occupation forces, owing perhaps to the small numbers, had not persecuted the Jews. first statement from the Central Committee of the Albanian Communist Party (founded 8 November 1941) declared, among other things, that the communists must struggle against the attempt by fascism to split up the Albanian people by means of religion. Following the seizure of power, however, they adopted exactly the same method as the Fascists. First the Catholic Church was declared a foreign element. In 1939 there were 141 native and 62 foreign priests, 16 native and 16 foreign monks and 73 native and 60 foreign nuns. first Franciscan monk had come to Albania around 1250; individual Jesuits from Dalmatia had begun to work in Albania after the middle of the 16th century and the