The Legitimation of the Albanian Totalitarian Regime

Abstract

The totalitarian regime in Albania has been considered as one of the most rigid and isolated of the twentieth century, in the whole Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1991. Even though the isolationist ideology has been convenient to support the status-quo of the communist regime, it led to the social-economic crises, and consequently to the collapse of the communism. However, in order to understand the totalitarian ideology and the behavior of its leader Enver Hoxha, it is important to focus on the particular philosophical principles where the regime found the necessary base to legitimate itself. This specific totalitarian philosophy, in the Albanian post- communist literature, is known as “Enverism”. Indeed, the totalitarian leader, tried to legitimate his totalitarian power by pretending and propagandizing that the Marxist-Leninist doctrine constituted the only pure truth, and the common good. In one hand, totalitarian leader tried to legitimate the suppression of any kind of resistance against the totalitarian project. On the other hand, the citizens obeyed to the regime, because they believed that this project would be the embodiment of the pure truth and the common good. This paper will analyze the Albanian dictatorship ideology as an instrument of legitimating. Therefore a strong base of study will be the communist literature that was used as a propaganda instrument. It is significant the fact that the Albanian dictator has published hundreds of books as an author and other hundreds have been published by the Institute of the Marxism Leninism Studies, that was an exclusive propaganda tool of the dictatorship. Through the methodology of the literature review, the paper will try to find out how the E. Hoxha and his oligarchy could justify the choice of communism, but which is more important, how could they stand this regime for almost a half century. In the end the paper will try to answer to the research question: was Enverism a peculiar product of some social, political and historical circumstances?

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p500