On December 18, 1981, the "country of mountain eagles" Albania came from the radio with shocking news that Shehu, the second person in Albania, had committed suicide. As soon as the news came out, people were surprised and talked about.
Among Albania's leaders, the country's former prime minister, Sheikh, is perhaps a well-known name for many Chinese. But the mystery of his suicide in 1981 did cast a shadow over Albanian politics.
Regarding Shehu, here is a brief introduction. In 1913, Shehu was born into a wealthy merchant family in central Albania. In his youth, Shehu, yearning for revolution, went abroad to join the Spanish International Column, during which time he joined a communist organization. In 1942, Shehu was ordered to return to China, and the following year he was elected a member of the Albanian Central Committee and formed the First Assault Brigade of Albania. Under his leadership, the 1st Assault Brigade defeated the invaders and liberated the capital, Tirana.
After the liberation of Albania, with his outstanding military skills and leadership skills, Shehu successively served as a member of the Politburo, chairman of the Council of Ministers, and prime minister of the government. It can be said that from 1958 to 1981, Shehu was the second most important person in Albania, the successor of Supreme Leader Hoshaneddin. But it is really puzzling that such a powerful person actually committed suicide at home.
In fact, a closer look at the national conditions in Albania at that time can roughly understand the internal roots of Shehu's suicide. During The reign of Hoxha, an important tool for Albania to unite the whole Party was to establish external enemies. Guided by this strategy, Yugoslavia under Tito's leadership was the first example of Hoxha's success.
In order to maintain domestic rule, the Albanian Party also made a great deal of a cult of personality for Hoxha. In analyzing the reasons for the prevalence of the cult of personality, Hoxha's successor, Aliyah, said in his memoirs: "It was we and his colleagues who guided his cult of personality. It is precisely because of this that all Albanian senators fell into a state of pride and complacency, and Hoxha was no exception.
Although in terms of foreign relations, Hoxha's policy did create many incidents in the party, especially the blind pursuit of the Soviet model, which had serious consequences for the Albanian economy. But Aliyah still believes that Hoxha was the most prominent leader in Albania in the second half of the twentieth century. Of course, this kind of evaluation is the opinion of the benevolent and the wise.
At the end of the 1940s, with the turn of Hoxha and Tito, a domestic purge was also launched in Albania. After the Anan conflict, many senior cadres who had fought alongside Hoxha were imprisoned, including senior leaders such as Politburo members. Between 1973 and 1975, tiny Albania dug up four "anti-party groups" and deprived baluku, the country's number four figure, to death.
The long period of intra-party struggle and political purges has left Albania with indelible psychological trauma. This unbridled political crackdown has actually targeted Sheikh, the party's second-largest figure. In 1982, the then prime minister, Sheikh, committed suicide, not to mention that before that, Shehu was hailed as Hoxha's closest comrade-in-arms and successor in the party. With Shehu's suicide, the whole world has come to realize that there is a big problem in the Albanian Party.
Regarding the death of Shehu, Albanian officials have not yet reached a conclusion. But what is certain is that Shehu's death was not as simple as the official interpretation of "schizophrenia" at the time. Especially after Shehu's death, Hoxha repeatedly made a large number of public remarks attacking Shehu, indicating that there was a lot of inside information. When Hoxha died of illness in October 1985, the Albanian economy was already in jeopardy.
After the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in order to avoid a recurrence of the Romanian tragedy, two consecutive plenary sessions of the Albanian Party were held in 1990, acknowledging that the party line was not consistently wrong, and announcing the acceptance of ideological pluralism, which effectively gave up the party's dominance. In June 1991, the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania was held to debate hoxha's historical merits. In this fierce political chaos, Hoxha was knocked off the altar. Hoxha's body was then re-exhumed and reburied in a regular cemetery, and the flogging humiliation suffered by Hoxha was undoubtedly a major blow to the Albanian Workers' Party.
In the forty years of Hoxha's reign, people described it as "one two three four five six seven eight ninety", which seemed to be unbearable behind it, but in fact, it also expressed the heartache of the Albanian people at that time. But even so, Hoxha cannot be said to be useless, at least he was once an Albanian faith!