Born October 16,
1908 in
Gjirokastër,
Albania, Enver Hoxha was the
Marxist-Leninist dictator of Albania from November
1944 to his death on April 11,
1985, and was most noted for the utter
isolation and
opression brought down upon the
Albanian people.
During Hoxha's rule, the
Communist Albanian
government confiscated the farmland of many wealthy farmers and redistributed the land as "
Cooperatives" in typical
Communist fashion. A
paranoid, Hoxha set to building over 600,000 single-man
concrete fortifications to look out not just for potential invaders, but for any signs of opposition within their own borders. While making
false claims to the outside world that he had completely
modernized Albania, after he died and his
regime collapsed, the world saw a very different view of Albania, which, instead of being a modern, efficient economic
powerhouse had become the poorest nation in
Europe, with many citizens well below the
poverty line.
As with many other
Communist governments, Hoxha's
secret police strictly enforced a ban on all
religions, destroying religious buildings and severely punishing anybody caught with
Bibles,
Qur'ans, and any symbols or religious writings. All of this went on despite the
constitution of
1976, which guaranteed
freedom of expression,
freedom of religion,
freedom of association, and other basic
human rights. All of these rights were denied to worldwide protest, most notably a report published by
Amnesty International in
1984 (the year, not the book, although that's quite the
coincidence there, if I may say so).
Eventually,
Hoxha went into semi-retirement and
passed the torch to his successor,
Ramiz Alia. Hoxha's death in
Tiranë in April of
1985 led to the relaxation of both Albania's
internal and
foreign policies, while
Communism saw itself weakening and eventually collapsing. His death marked the beginning of the end of the
imprisonment and
execution of
political prisoners throughout Albania.