1944 heralded the end of the Nazi occupation of Albania, as the country was liberated by the the National Liberation Movement (LNM). The anti-Fascist National Liberation Council became the country‘s provisional government.
The new government was dominated by members of The Communist Party of Albania; the first post-war Prime Minister was Enver Hoxha who gained power in 1946, when the country was renamed The People‘s Socialist Republic of Albania. From the very first day the regime was an undisguised communist dictatorship. The leaders undertook economic measures to expand their power: allowing the state to regulate foreign and domestic trade, commercial enterprise and the few other industries the country possessed. Furthermore the government took major steps to introduce a Stalinist style of politics, such as a centrally planned economy.
Hoxha went into semi-retirement in 1983 and died 1985. After his death Albania was left with a legacy of repression, technological backwardness, isolation and fear of the outside world. Ramiz Alia gained leadership of the country and allowed some liberalisation, but the public had had enough and dramatic shifts had already started; the fall of communism throughout south central Europe led to unrest and new ideas within Albanian society.
The Hoxhaist regime collapsed in 1990, and the first free election were held in 1991, but it was more chaotic than in other Eastern European countries and was marked by a mass exodus of refugees to Italy and Greece in 1991 and 1992, possibly the largest movement in Europe since the Second World War. Between 1989 and 2001, roughly 800,000 left Albania.
The second wave occurred due to an economic crisis in 1996 following the failure of pyramid schemes operating in the country and continuing in 1997 due to an armed rebellion that triggered a call for UN intervention to restore order. One of the results of this process was a massive brain drain and in 2006 the Albanian authorities and the UNDP compiled a program to encourage the skilled diaspora to contribute to the development of the country, sadly this has been largely inefficient.
For nearly half a century Albanians lived under one of the most repressive communist dictatorships in the world; economically impoverished and lacking any kind of democratic political culture. Albania was considered one of the least likely countries in the region to complete the transition to a stable and prosperous democracy. But in 2009, Albania became a full NATO member and on October 10th 2012 the EU Commission proposed EU Candidate Status. The EU executive made the proposal subject to completion of key judicial and public administration reforms, but the reforms failed and Albania is not expected to join the EU until 2015. Nevertheless, the progress marks a major milestone for a country that was one of Europe’s most isolated just two decades ago.
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