POLITICAL PERSECUTION

The various purges that have taken place within the Albanian Communists party since 1943 have brought about the elimination of the disappearance from the political scene of the best known and most popular Comrades. One of the first to be done away with was Dr. Lazar Fundo, one of the most cultured and better prepared Albanian Communists, an intimate friend of the Bulgarian Dimitroff, who knew Russia well from having lived there for a long time and having finished his University studies there. Mr. Fundo was well known in all the Communists circles of Europe; he had lived for various years in Paris, keeping close relations with the journalists of the extremist newspapers. He was eliminated because he was considered too independent in his ideas. 

Another Communist leader killed by his own party was Mustafa Gjinishi, who had studied at the American technical school of Tirana. After having been the soul of the partisan war against the Italian and German forces of occupation and having rendered very important services to his cause, he was eliminated in 1945 because he was believed to be not entirely faithful to the orders of the Slav agents. 

But the most sensational event was the removal from the office of Minister of Public Instruction and Propaganda and the successive deportation to Russia of Prof. Seifullah Maleshova, considered the Togliatti of Albania. His long residence in Russia, his direct acquaintance with all the personages of the Bolshevik regime, the liking which Stalin was said to have for him and the unusual cultural preparation made him the leader of the Albanian Communist party. The reason for his political disgrace is said to be his opposition to the evident methods of Slavization. His departure from Tirana for Moscow, in the first part of  May 1947, was immediately followed by a series of arrests of Communist personalities, accused of conspiring against the regime: Konstantin Bashnjaku, considered the founder of the Communist party in Albania, where he had been making converts ever since coming back from Russia in 1921, and at the time of his arrest a member of the Presidium and the director of the National Bank of Albania; Sheh Karbunara, a Mohammedan priest, in exile for 15 years during the Zog regime, a very clever and influential man, and a deputy when arrested. Other Communist deputies arrested on the same day were: Kol Kuqali, Dr. Selahudin Toro, Dr. Enver Sazani, Colonel Islam Radovicka, Shefqet Beja, Irfan Majuni, Colonel Faik Shehu.

Also under arrest is one of the Communist heroes of the partisan war, the sanguinary much decorated Colonel Kadri Hoxha, once commander of a group of Red brigades.

These sensational arrests were caused by the fact that these Communist leaders who had rendered great services to the party, questioned the orders of the Russian agents, orders which they held not in the best interests of the nation.

Today, the ruling power is in the hands of two semi-illiterates: the former plumber Koci Xoxe, Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, and former carpenter’s apprentice Tuk Jakova, head of the trade unions. The ignorance of these two Red officials is such as to force them to follow blindly the instructions of the Slav agents at their sides. 

Hoxha, a decorative puppet, has never counted for much in the party.