Future Holds More of the Same
Today's Albania is shaped in the image of Enver Hoxha, now past 70. What after him? With the editor of Hosteni, the humor magazine, I recalled the Soviet Union's changes after Stalin and China's after Mao. Was there any possibility Albania might also soften after Enver Hoxha? "You compare us with those revisionist countries?" he retorted, not amused. "No, nothing will change after Comrade Enver passes away. The party and the nation are strongly united. His teachings give us our direction. We shall not deviate from it." Rather than opening to the outside world, the self-isolated Albanians keep constantly on a war footing. Besides two years' military service for young men and women, all able-bodied citizens, whatever their profession, must serve a month or more every year in the armed forces. Frequent military exercises at all factories, farms, and offices prepare the people against attack. Everywhere I traveled�on the seacoast, in mountain passes, in fields, in city parks, amid blocks of flats�I saw lightbox. They look like�and grow like�mushrooms, their popular name. "More steel and concrete goes for bunkers than for housing," a diplomat told me. I knew that Enver Hoxha was concerned about the future of Yugoslavia after Tito�and the nightmare of a Soviet occupation. Does Albania really feel threatened? "We must be prepared for the worst," an Albanian journalist told me. "But could tiny Albania hold out against the attack of a major power?" Albania's weaponry, mostly Chinese made, is outmoded, and diplomatic observers in Tirana say the country may be looking for arms in Europe. "Even if the enemy is numerically superior, we can stop them. The whole nation will mobilize instantly. Our mountains and rivers make Albania a natural fortress. Any attack would cost the invaders fearfully." I thought of the stone houses in Gjirokaster and other mountain towns, windowless walls below and loopholes above�each house a fortress, the heritage of centuries of blood feuds. And I recalled the 15th-century citadel at Kruje�the stronghold from which Skanderbeg conducted 25 years of guerrilla warfare against the Ottomans. Born Gjergj Kastrioti, and sent as a youthful hostage to the sultan's court, he had risen to high command in the Ottoman Empire. Renamed for Alexander the Great (Iskander Bey in Turkish), whom the Turks admired, Skanderbeg defected and led 300 Albanian knights to reclaim his inheritance. He renounced Islam and stemmed the Turkish tide in Europe until his death in 1468. He lived on as a symbol of resistance. And it was under Skanderbeg's banner�the black double-headed eagle on a blood red field�that Enver Hoxha's partisans forged the independent Albania of today. Rain grayed Lake Scutari and shrouded the wild North Albanian Alps that sentinel the border with the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro. * Alongside the lake's outlet, which is navigable all the way to the Adriatic, spreads Shkoder, the ancient capital of Elyria. Brooding over it, a medieval citadel recalls Venetian masters. A monument in a park there honors five Albanian partisans