Albania, which is across the sea from Italy, is obviously rich in natural resources and is self-reliant enough, but it insists on being a "parasite". However, even if it has been supported by many countries for a long time, it still cannot change the fact that it is poor and backward.
Since Albania declared independence in 1946, it has been successively supported by the Soviet Union and China, but Albania is like a "Adou" that cannot be supported, no matter how it is "raised", it is still the same.
In the past 70 years from 1946 to the present, what has happened to Albania?
Albania during the colonial period
With regard to poverty in Albania, some signs were already visible long before the establishment of the Albanian People's Republic.
Before its founding, Albania had been occupied by Western colonizers, including Italy.
After the Italian invasion of Albania, it did not, like most Western countries, only plunder Albania endlessly, without paying.
On the contrary, after Italy became a colonizer of Albania, it also gave Albania some financial support.
For Albania, which was plundered by Western colonizers at that time, it was tantamount to "a long drought and a nectar". At the same time, for Albania, which was in the colonial period, it also gave it a taste of being "raised".
At the beginning of the Second World War, with the defeat of Italy, Albania's "big brother" was changed from Italy to Germany, and Albania's "lying flat life" came to an end again.
Germany did not want to support Albania, but only plundered endlessly, and exchanged it as its own territory with other countries.
Later, because Albania was too small and backward, Germany did not have much of the mind to deal with it.
Therefore, not long after Albania was colonized by Germany, Germany "lost" Albania to Albania's neighbor Yugoslavia in a battle with the other side.
After all, there is really nothing to use for this place in Germany.
At this time, Albania was like a commodity, ceded between different countries at will.
Logically speaking, this is a humiliating thing, but Albania has found its own way in it: to survive by relying on a strong country.
Before and after the establishment of Albania, it took the initiative to make overtures to Yugoslavia, and as a result, it received economic support from Yugoslavia for three years.
This includes food support, loans, and infrastructure development. According to statistics, in 1945 alone, Yugoslavia provided Albania with a loan of 2 billion dinars, and thousands of tons of wheat and corn.
Later, Yugoslavia's assistance to Albania covered all aspects, from Xi books, candy, and leather shoes for students to write homework, to the construction of railway tracks in Albania.
However, this support did not last long before it changed again.
Albania is going further and further on the road of being "raised".
The change this time is not that Albania has suffered another war, but that Albania has "taken the initiative".
Although Albania has a land area of less than 30,000 square kilometers, the country's natural resources are not bad, and after the establishment of the country, it can also eat enough with its own hands.
However, it is not known whether Albania is Xi to long-term dependence on other countries for survival, and in the decades before and after its establishment, it has slowly changed from passive acceptance of "dependence" to active acceptance.
And this time the number one target of "active acceptance", Albania chose the USSR.
At that time, Yugoslavia had a delicate relationship with the Soviet Union, which wanted to win over the Yugoslavia, which had defeated Germany with partisans during World War II, and made many promises of financial support, but it was slow to fulfill.
Yugoslavia, on the other hand, after repeated pushbacks from the Soviet Union, began to move in the opposite direction with the Soviet Union, which was friendly from the beginning.
After Albania saw that relations between the two countries were getting worse and worse, it approached the Soviet Union without saying a word, and praised Stalin with a burst of bottomless praise, while directly drew a line with Yugoslavia, which had helped it.
Finally, thanks to Albania's non-stop efforts, it gained the support of the Soviet Union for fifteen years.
Fifteen years is already a long time, especially for the Soviet Union, sending a lot of supplies and benefits to Albania is more like one-way support, the Soviet Union can not get reciprocal benefits, but who made Stalin want it?
Of course, there have been times when Albania has not been so smooth in the past decade or so. That is, after Stalin stepped down, the Soviet Union began to turn around and express its unwillingness to continue to support.
In this regard, Albania is also quick to detect the change in wind direction.
So in order to continue to get the support of the Soviet Union, Albania ran to the newly appointed Khrushchev and belittled its former supporter Stalin, in order to gain Khrushchev's favor.
However, Khrushchev had clearly made up his mind, and no matter what Albania said, he was unmoved. So in 1961, Albania had to seek other countries that were willing to continue to "feed" itself.
At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union had already entered the Cold War stage, and the mainland's relations with the Soviet Union had completely broken down. In the face of this situation, the mainland's need for diplomacy is rather urgent. And it was at this time that Albania came to the mainland.
As the only European country to support the continent at that time, although it did not play a big role, the mainland still gave Albania 20 years of help as a gratitude.
In the late 50s and early 60s, the mainland's economic situation was not very good, but when it came to Albania's support, the mainland did not hesitate in the slightest.
Even at that time, the Albanians as a whole ate and drank, did not have much enthusiasm, and had rich savings in their hands, but the mainland still saved money and gave Albania support.
In the past 20 years, the mainland has not only given Albania tens of billions of aid, but also provided Albania with a lot of various materials.
However, when the establishment of diplomatic relations between the mainland and the United States began, Albania turned its back.
It is worth mentioning that the reason why Albania turned around at the beginning was because it felt that the mainland had betrayed communism, and when decades passed, it began to try its best to enter the European Union.
I have to say that the speed of Albania's "change of face" is really extraordinary!
Albania today
Albania's rapid "change of face" has allowed it to "move left and right" in the torrent of history, making it seem that it only needs to stretch out its hands to other countries and open its mouth to receive assistance and feed its people.
As everyone knows, in the process of seeking help, a larger hidden crisis is also quietly coming.
Over the decades, Albania's economic situation has not improved as a result of aid from other countries.
By contrast, by the end of 2020, Albania's external debt had reached $5.5 billion, and its GDP per capita was even more miserable.
The long-term "seeking assistance" has gradually caused Albania to lose the mind to struggle, and the entire country's social construction and social atmosphere from top to bottom have been disturbed.
In the case of infrastructure, Albania has experienced major power outages that have left many parts of the country with one-half of their daily electricity.
And the hydropower plants with only the only power supply were built for Albania when the countries that were stabbed in the back helped Albania.
What's even more outrageous is that in Albania, people's travel and the transportation of goods mainly rely on a 45-kilometer highway. There are other roads, but most of them have not been paved for decades.
Not to mention anything else, these two points alone have made many businessmen from other countries who want to invest in Albania and open factories to rest their minds.
Albania, which has not developed industrially, mainly relies on tourism and agriculture in the mainstay of its economy.
But the embarrassing thing is that the tourism industry can be said to be extremely vulnerable to the big environment, and in Albania has no corresponding supporting infrastructure, the tourism industry is also miserable.
More than 40% of the people in Albania are engaged in agriculture, but due to the lack of synchronization in industry and infrastructure, many food products can no longer be processed in a complex way, so Albanian agricultural products can only be sold at low prices.
For a country, infrastructure construction is the most basic guarantee for economic development. This is obviously a bit difficult for Albania to explain.
In terms of social climate, Albania is a headache for many countries.
In 1992, the Albanian government raised funds from the people and promised high interest rates, but in the end it was unable to repay, leaving many Albanians directly bankrupt.
For a time, Albania was in turmoil, and in the end, it was the United Nations that intervened to quell the turmoil in Albania.
Later, as the Albanian economy got worse and worse, many Albanians went to other European countries to find work, and this included the Albanian underworld.
Many countries surrounding Albania have found that the vast majority of criminals are Albanians when they are strictly controlling illegal activities.
Under the influence of multiple factors, Albania's social climate can be said to be notorious among the surrounding countries.
epilogue
From the founding of the state in 1946 to the present state, Albania is inseparable from the corruption and incompetence of the government, and even more inseparable from the idea that it relied on "speculation" and the support of other countries to try to embark on a smooth road.
And under such thinking, even with the help of many countries, Albania cannot "help", which is an inevitable result. If a person wants to achieve great things, he must be self-reliant, let alone a country?
How much do you know about Albania as a country?
- Author: Mu Tao
- Edit: The sound of the night rain is annoying