LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Albania: Enver Hoxha
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With their independence, Albania faced new problems with the rise of the communist People's Republic of Albania in 1941. College instructor Enver Hoxha became ruler of the party, and eventually a cunning, ruthless, and oppressive leader.
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TIRANA, Albania -- Near the end of his 40 years in power, Enver Hoxha prepared his tiny country for an invasion he warned was sure to come. The Marxist dictator built 750,000 concrete bunkers in the 1970s and 1980s and imported large quantities of weapons to repel an expected attack by Americans, Soviets, Yugoslavs or perhaps all three at once.
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The U.S. closed its mission to Albania in 1946 after relations began to sour under the Hoxha regime but reopened the embassy in 1990. Since re-establishing ties, the U.S. has committed more than $300 million to Albania's humanitarian needs and economic and political transformation. In 1999, the U.S. provided $30 million through the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act. In the proceeding 2 years, the U.S. gave approximately $66 million to Albania under the SEED program. The $30-million Albanian-American Enterprise Fund (AAEF), launched in 1994, is actively making debt and equity investments in local businesses. Also, a bilateral investment treaty between the U.S. and Albania was signed in 1995 and entered into force January 3, 1998.
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After the First Balkan War, Albania declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, but the country remained in unrest. Occupied by Italy during World War II, the (mainly communist) resistance led by Enver Hoxha seized control when the Italians left.
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A 1984-study commissioned by Amnesty International identified Hoxha's Albania as one of the world's most repressive regimes. Albanians were denied the freedoms of expression, religion, movement, and association in contradiction to the country's 1976 constitution, which stated the nation's political liberties. The only information available to the Albanian people came from the government-controlled media. Hoxha's death in 1985 led to minor improvements in the communist rule of Albania under Hoxha successor, Ramiz Alia. Alia loosened some of the nation's harshest restrictions on human rights and the media. Internal dissent and mounting demonstrations in Albania led Alia to sign the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which guaranteed Albanians both human and political rights as part of the Helsinki accords of 1975.
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After five years of party infighting and extermination campaigns against the country's anticommunist opposition, Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu emerged as the dominant figures in Albania. The duumvirate concentrated primarily on securing and maintaining their power base and secondarily on preserving Albania's independence and reshaping the country according to the procrustean precepts of orthodox Stalinism. In pursuit of these goals, the communist elite co-opted or terrorized the entire Albanian population into blind obedience, herding them into obligatory front organizations, bombarding them with propaganda, and disciplining them with a police leviathan untrammeled by anything resembling legal, ethical, religious, or political norms. Hoxha and Shehu dominated Albania and denied the Albanian people the most basic human and civil rights by presenting themselves, as well as the communist party and state security apparatus they controlled, as the vigilant defenders of the country's independence. After Albania's break with Yugoslavia in late 1948, Albania was a client of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet Union's rapprochement with Tito after Stalin's death, Albania turned away from Moscow and found a new benefactor in China.
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Enver Hoxha