ALBANIA striking and baffling paradoxes of the communist world. These close neighbours on the Adriatic shore of the Balkan peninsula are both communist states, and have gone through political experiences not unlike each other. Yet their relationship has been for years one of almost unrelieved hostility which shows no sign of abating. Both regimes were established at about the same time, in the closing years of World War II, and by the somewhat similar historical process of partisan action, with little or no direct military aid from the Soviet Union. Indeed, Albania owes much to the assistance of Yugoslavia at that time, in the forming both of her partisan movement and of the communist party itself, and in the economic development of the country in the first years after liberation. Both have shown a similar unwillingness to accept certain Soviet policies or to consent to Soviet dictation, and a common ability to defend their independence successfully against Soviet pressure, the Yugoslavs since 1948, the Albanians since 1961. Both may, therefore, be regarded as ex-satellites, their membership in the communist bloc and in its institutions having terminated. Strangely enough, these common experiences have not brought them together. Even the Albanian breach with the Soviet Union, which bears striking resemblances to that of Yugoslavia fifteen years earlier, has not produced any noticeable change of attitude of the two states towards each other. Nor has there been as yet any substantial modification of Albanian institutions or practices which would suggest an approximation to the path towards socialism which Yugoslavia has been gradually evolving these past fifteen years.