Albania Today: A Portrait of Post-Communist Turbulence by Clarissa De Waal (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 175 De Waal, Clarissa.AlbaniaToday: A Portrait of Post-Communist Turbulence. I. B. Tauris in association with The Centre for Albanian Studies, London, 2005. viii + 268 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?45?00? ALBANIANS had a hard life under Communism. Under post-Communism, it grew worse. This account of the immediate post-Communist period (from I99I to about 2003) gives a vivid picture of the bleak conditions Albanians faced, and the spirit of endurance and resignation with which they faced them. Clarissa de Waal carried out her ethnographic fieldwork from I99I to I992, startingin Tirana and moving on to the ruralareas.She aims to 'convey the social process experienced by Albanians during the first decade of post-communism'. The book sets out to examine the effects of political and economic events on the survivalstrategiesof individualsand households, and in particularto provide 'an ethnographic record of customary practice in a province (Mirdita)notable for its culturalcontinuity'.It succeedsadmirablyin these aims, so long as the reader is content with accuratelyobservedpersonal impressionsrather than statisticsand documents. The firstchapter gives a clear overview of the main political and economic developments of the decade. The harshnessof life in rural Albania pervades this account, evoking the feeling of a Kadare novel. She writes, 'in the spring of I999, Albania's role in the Kosovo crisis, the readiness to respond unstintingly, the enormous generosity towards so many refugees, brought internationalacclaim. But once the crisiswas over, the flatnessof unemployment , the absence of prospects,hit the population with even more force than before [.. .] The body of a 25-30 year old man drowned off the coast of Vlora had been found and brought to the morgue. The newsreader concluded: "The refrigeratorin the morgue is not working"'. The perspectiveis remorselesslythe worm's eye view. But the observationis acute. De Waal describesthe adaptabilityof formerpartymembers in Tirana: 'Most foreigners [...] rented flats from members of the former Communist elite who were strikinglyfree of any ideological hang-ups about forming a rentier class.' The main theme is life in the countryside,and in particularthe impact of the de-collectivization of land and the rapid emigration from the villages which followed. There is a fascinatingaccount of the reappearanceof customary law and its adaptation to new conditions. De Waal notes that the Kanun was observed even in the land commissions that were set up by the state to redistributethe land, and members of the Socialist and Democratic parties treatedit with equal respect.She describesa gradualloss of confidence in state law, combined with general demoralizationand dwindling hope for employment . As robbery and violence against the person increased and the police stood aside, wolves began to stalkthe Albanian landscape. The breakdownof public services was almost complete, and the effects on ordinarypeople are very apparent. De Waal followed some households who migrated from the villages to the coastal plains and the urban shanties.Here there was 'protracteduncertainty, I76 SEER, 85, I, 2007 an insecurityof tenurewhich speltterriblehardship'.Although some squatters earned enough to buy houses and land legally, the majority could not, and resistedgovernment officialswho tried to evict them. The book gives a good account of education in Albania and notes that educational experience has a strong impact on life outcomes. Depressingly, post-Communist Albania has not sustained the Communist regime's impressive investment in education. Many teachers have been forced to leave Albania because their wages are too low. Many children fail to attend school and school-books are in poor supply. Without the safety valve of large scale emigration to Greece and Europe and the sending of remittances from abroad, conditions would have been even worse. The author's sobriquet, 'agitated stagnation', accuratelyconveys the Albanian reality of this decade. The book is very well written and its judgements are sharp and wry. But readers who want to find the big themes laid out analyticallywill have to excavate among the detailsfor themselves.It is not even easy to find the parts of the book dealing with the towns, the villages and the shanties.The organization follows the author'stravels,but there is little structureotherwise. The index is of limited value. Chapter headings such as 'Developments' and 'Village Life' give little away. Despite this, the book gives a strong and...