From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World

by Elidor Mëhilli

Elidor M'hilli has produced a groundbreaking history of communist Albania that illuminates one of Europe's longest but least understood dictatorships. From Stalin to Mao, which is informed throughout by M'hilli's unprecedented access to previously restricted archives, captures the powerful globalism of post-1945 socialism, as well as the unintended consequences of cross-border exchanges from the Mediterranean to East Asia.

After a decade of vigorous borrowing from the Soviet Union--advisers, factories, school textbooks, urban plans--Albania's party clique switched allegiance to China during the 1960s Sino-Soviet conflict, seeing in Mao's patronage an opportunity to keep Stalinism alive. M'hilli shows how socialism created a shared transnational material and mental culture--still evident today around Eurasia--but it failed to generate political unity. Combining an analysis of ideology with a sharp sense of geopolitics, he brings into view Fascist Italy's involvement in Albania, then explores the country's Eastern bloc entanglements, the profound fascination with the Soviets, and the contradictions of the dramatic anti-Soviet turn. Richly illustrated with never-before-published photographs, From Stalin to Mao draws on a wealth of Albanian, Russian, German, British, Italian, Czech, and American archival sources, in addition to fiction, interviews, and memoirs. M'hilli's fresh perspective on the Soviet-Chinese battle for the soul of revolution in the global Cold War also illuminates the paradoxes of state planning in the twentieth century.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Russia, 20th Century

346 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 2017

Reviews

[Inna]

This is an excellent book on how the kind of interaction post-WWII Albania had with its wealthier socialist counterparts ended up with its proudly Stalinist self-isolation. The point the author makes is that openness towards the world, which pushed the rest of Eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union to liberalize, at least to some extent, could and did work differently elsewhere. Albania was too poor to offer anything to other countries and counted for years on assistance from Yugoslavia, later Soviet Union and its block of socialist countries, and then China. The problem was that it found itself again and again taking part in battles against its previous patron initiated by the patron's socialist competitor. But then, the competitors made peace and Albania was left more and more isolated, not really worthwhile enough to make an effort and compromise with. Albania reacted with increasing ideological fanaticism as well as with an increasing nationalist isolationism. That ensured that the resources which its former patrons poured into its industrialization program kept drying up. This went on until the regime's eventual collapse.

[Rob M]

I'm pretty sure this rigorous, source-based history of Albanian socialism is the first of its kind.

Mëhilli joins the growing ranks of revisionist, post-Cold War historians (for example Kristen Ghodsee, Gal Kirn and, iconically, Sheila Fitzpatrick) who have written about the socialist world more or less on its own terms, untroubled by the need to proselytise and propagandise for one side or the other.

We learn a huge amount about the Albania's post-war experiment in socialist construction, set within the framework the system of Marxist-Leninist international relations and its concomitant history of cultural and economic exchange.

This sense of perspective is particularly important in the case of Albania, a bizarre pariah state in almost every regard. The virtue of Mëhilli's work is to place such an unusual history into its own particular context, in a way that invites understanding ahead of judgement.

There is, one feels, a much bigger book hidden in the pages of From Stalin to Mao. Mëhilli's scholarship has opened up the space for a great diversity of stories and narratives on 20th century Albania, a gap already being filled, for example, by Lea Ypi's wonderful Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History.

By concentrating on the era of post-war construction and international exchange, Mëhilli leaves several important parts of the history unexplored. We learn little about Albania's war of liberation on one end of the narrative period, and its descent into paranoid 'Bunkerizimi' on the other. We learn nothing about the actual functioning of Albania's infamous system of repression. This, as Mëhilli notes in his afterward, is in some cases due to the absence of written records, and in others due to the ongoing inaccessibility of the appropriate archives.

Considering the paucity of material on this subject, From Stalin to Mao is a satisfying, thorough, and enjoyable work of scholarship. A word of caution however - the reader will require substantial background knowledge on the socialist world. Little in this book will make complete sense without a good prior understanding of 1930s Stalinist industrialisation, the Eastern Bloc political system of 'Peoples Democracy', Khrushevite reformism, and the Sino-Soviet split.

All in all, an essential read for any committed student of European socialism.

[Klea Bogdani]

This book provides a thorough overview of Hoxhas relationship with the Soviet Union and China during Communism. I especially liked that the author included first hand experiences of those who lived the isolated regime, as well as personal comments about those in the higher echelons of the Hoxha government. The jump from the severing of Hoxhas relationship with Mao, immediately to 1999 felt a bit disjointed, but necessary and interesting nonetheless. Would recommend for anyone looking to learn a little bit more about Albania!

[Keen Reader]

After King Zog fled during WWII and the Nazi occupation (1939-44) and then being a Yugoslavian satellite (1944-48), by the time the Russians took an interest in the country, Albania was still a pre-industrial nation largely made up of peasants, shepherds, petty shop keepers and a largely illiterate (some estimates put it at over 80%) population, so there was no working class as such, and so the USSR had to help create one to fit into the Marxism-Leninism template, which was no easy task.

In many ways Hoxha and Albania were playing a dangerous game in courting the attention of various vast, powerful nations, playing them off each other, as they did with China and the USSR, without meeting serious consequences, Lumumba in the Congo tried to do something similar between the USSR and the USA and eventually paid the ultimate price. Hoxha like his tyrannical neighbour Tito in Yugoslavia, was certainly not afraid to speak up against the Russians and beat his own path, which would lead to Albania breaking ties with Yugoslavia in 1948, severing relations with the Soviet Union 1960-61 and then doing the same with China 1976-78 as they grew more insular.

There were many problems faced in trying to shape and mould Albania into an approximation of the Soviet model, the illiteracy, the lack of money, the non-existent manufacturing base and the limited natural resources, but the language barrier was possibly the most difficult of all, it proved to be a huge and on-going problem for Albania. In some instances double translation was required when meeting with the likes of the Chinese, as more often than not no one could speak the other’s language and so they both had to translate to Russian and then to Mandarin or Albanian, which resulted in obvious problems.

This book hints a lot about the one of the most repressive regimes in the Eastern bloc, whilst telling us almost nothing at all about what that actually involved. We hear little to nothing about Hoxha’s policies with his own people or what it was like for them living day to day, instead what we get are fairly tedious details relating to dealings, pleas, constructions and agreements with other communist countries, which I was really disappointed about.

There is absolutely nothing at all about the 1980s, in one sense that’s fair enough as it does say in the title it’s about the Stalin to the Mao era, but then why do we have 1991?...To me leaving out so much about Enver Hoxha was a lost opportunity and a let-down, by placing the focus more on tedious trade deals and exchange workers and political plays, this really fell flat. The shape of the structure seemed a bit baggy too.

This book seems to suffer from what I’ve found to be a fairly common enough problem, when American or American based lecturers and academics write books, they may have a certain amount of education, knowledge and expertise, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they are any good at writing an enjoyable or accessible account of their subject. So often what you get is a dry, lacklustre and occasionally tedious account of an otherwise potentially fascinating subject.

I learned a bit about post war Albania from this, and there are some interesting details in here, I enjoyed the part about Ismael Kadare and there are some really good quality photographs, particularly during the 40s and 50s which capture the era nicely, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the way it was communicated, this isn’t a bad read but it is not what I was expecting at all.

[Logan Borges]

Fascinating account of how commonalities and differences between members of the Communist 2nd World influenced state-based International Marxism, fuelling interactions and exchanges but simultaneously emphasizing differences between them and thereby aggravating their relations. This is all portrayed in a microcosmic scope by narrating how Communist Albania used the connections of the 2nd World to fuel its industrialization while simultaneously committing itself to Stalinism. The climax of this system comes with the Sino-Soviet split of 1961 when Albania's leader Enver Hoxha chose to side with China. The style in which this story is told could be done better, some of the academic lingo holds it back from being really readable, which does a disservice to the parts where the author uses anecdotes to communicate a point. Otherwise it's a good read for understanding 2nd World interactions, something not really understood, even forgotten, today.

[Doğukan]

There is a discrepancy between the title and content of the book. Because almost half of the book is about the urbanism of Socialist Albania. And the rest is about how Albania gets some economic aid from other socialist bloc countries, by the way. If you are looking for diplomatic or theoretical information on Albania's relationship with other socialist countries (and why not, it sounds quite reasonable and understandable to me), Mëhilli's work offers very little. Albania and the Socialist World is a well-detailed, decent academic book with an adequate archival research for sure. However, even though its content can not be considered completely irrelevant to what the title suggests, it only contains only one certain aspect of it.

Still you can learn a lot about the effects of Italian and Soviet architecture on Albania's socialist era. Also this book gives you an opportunity to gain some knowledge about how Soviet technocrats settled in Albania and what they did at that time. If you are dazzled by these subjects, then Mëhilli's work can be a masterpiece for you. If you're just interested in these topics, then without doubt, I can predict that it will be an enjoyable reading. Readers like me? Get ready to be overwhelmed with pages of explanation about factories and government buildings.

[Earl Ecklund III]

Albania is one of the most overlooked countries in terms of Cold War history. In this book Elidor Mëhilli gives a rare glimpse into how the Eastern European bloc countries worked as a unit and how the challenges of being Europe's poorest country made it harder to achieve the rapid industrialization that the Communist leadership so greatly desired. Mëhilli pays extra attention to the process of urban planning and development which is so rarely considered in the histories of the Eastern European Communist countries. An excellent addition to the study of Albania and Cold War history.

[Richard Stoller]

It's an interesting book but it's frustrating--he's seen archival material that few people have seen, and he has the language skills, but he's too eager (or professionally pressured) to theorize rather than giving us a sense of what's in the archives. My other complaint is that the book runs out of steam by the time Albania casts its lot with China, and that's the more interesting (certainly weirder) story. Compared to Blendi Fevziu's mess of a book this is a model of scholarship and organization, and certainly worth reading, but one could hope for more or at least different.

[Engjëll Roshi]

Superb

In depth, well sourced and a multi panoramic view of Albania during its tumultuous experience of being part of the socialist world.

[Alex Liannoy]

Too much concentration on how Albania borrowed money for construction works and industrialization.
Expected to see a bit more info about other aspects of life during these years.