LITMIR.BIZ

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for the country. This decision marked a great advance toward Albanian unification and eventual statehood.

      In the summer and fall of 1912, while Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece, prodded by Russia, were waging war against Turkey, the Albanians staged a series of revolts and began to agitate for the creation of an autonomous and neutral Albania. Accordingly, a group of Albanian patriots, led by Ismail Qemal bey Vlora, a member of the Turkish Parliament, proclaimed Albania's independence at Vlore on November 28, 1912, and organized an Albanian provisional government. Supported by Austria and Italy, Albania's independence was recognized on December 12, 1912, by the London Conference of Ambassadors, but its boundaries were to be determined later. In March 1913 agreement was reached on the northern frontiers, assigning Shkoder to Albania but giving Kosovo and Metohija (Kosmet), inhabited then chiefly by Albanians, to Serbia. This frontier demarcation was very similar to the frontiers between Yugoslavia and Albania as they existed in 1970.

      The boundaries in the south were more difficult to delineate because Greece laid claim to most of southern Albania, which the Greeks call Northern Epirus. The Conference of Ambassadors appointed a special commission to draw the demarcation line on ethnographic bases and in December 1913 drafted the Protocol of Florence, which assigned the region to Albania. The 1913 boundaries in the south, like those in the north, were almost the same as those that existed between Greece and Albania in 1970. The Albania that emerged from the Conference of Ambassadors was a truncated one; as many Albanians were left out of the new state as were included in it.

      The Conference of Ambassadors also drafted a constitution for the new state, which was proclaimed as an autonomous principality, sovereign, and under the guarantees of the Great Powers; created an International Control Commission to control the country's administration and budget; and selected as ruler the German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied. Prince Wied arrived in March 1914 but had to flee the country six months later because of the outbreak of World War I and the difficulties caused by the unruly feudal beys. As a consequence, Albania's independence came to an end, and for the next four years the country served as a battleground for the warring powers.

      CREATION OF MODERN ALBANIA

      At the end of World War I Albania was occupied by the Allied armies, mostly Italian and French. The Secret Treaty of London, concluded in 1915 and published by the Russian Bolsheviks after the October 1917 Revolution, provided for the partition of nearly all Albania among Italy, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. Another accord, known as the Tittoni-Venizelos Agreement, concluded between Italy and Greece in 1919, also called for the dismemberment of Albania. At the 1919-20 Paris Peace Conference Greece laid claim to southern Albania; Serbia and Montenegro, to the northern part; and Italy, to the port of Vlore and surrounding areas. But President Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination and his personal insistence on the restoration of an independent Albania saved the country from partition. In the summer of 1920 an Albanian partisan army drove the Italians from Vlore, and the Italian government recognized Albania's independence.

      In the meantime, in January 1920 a congress of representatives met in Lushnje, in central Albania, and created a government and a Council of Regency composed of representatives of the four religious denominations prevailing in Albania: the two Muslim sects (Sunni and Bektashi), Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox (see ch. 5, Social System).

      From 1920 to 1924 there was political freedom in the country along with extreme political strife. A group of statesmen and politicians, mostly from the old Turkish bureaucracy, attempted to lay the foundation of a modern state, but there was a bitter struggle between the old conservative landlords and Western educated or inspired liberals. The landowners, led by Ahmet Zogu, advocated the continuance of feudal tenure and opposed social and economic reforms, especially agrarian reforms. The liberals, led by Bishop Fan S. Noli, a Harvard University graduate who had founded the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Boston in 1908 and had returned to Albania in 1920, favored the establishment of a Western-type democracy. The country was torn by political struggles and rapid changes of government revealed considerable political instability.

      In June 1924 the liberals staged a successful coup against the conservative landlords, forcing their leader, Ahmet Zogu, to flee to Yugoslavia, and formed a new government under Bishop Noli. But Noli was too radical to command the support of the disparate coalition that had ousted Zogu. Internally he proposed radical agrarian reforms, the purging and reduction of the bureaucracy, and the establishment of a truly democratic regime. In foreign affairs he extended recognition to the Soviet Union, a move that alienated some of his supporters at home and alarmed some neighboring states. As a consequence, Zogu, having secured foreign support, led an army from Yugoslavia and in December 1924 entered the capital city of Tirana and became ruler of the country. Bishop Noli and his closest supporters fled abroad; some eventually went to Moscow, and others fell under Communist influence in Western capitals.

      Zogu's rule in the 1925-39 period, first as President Zogu and after September I, 1928, as Zog I, king of the Albanians, brought political stability and developed a national political consciousness that had been unprecedented in Albanian history. To secure his position both internally and externally, he concluded in 1926 and 1927 bilateral treaties with Italy, providing for mutual support in maintaining the territorial status quo and establishing a defensive alliance between the two countries. These two treaties, however, assured Italian penetration of Albania, particularly in the military and economic spheres.

      King Zog ruled as a moderate dictator, his monarchy being a combination of despotism and reform. He prohibited political parties but was lenient to his opponents unless they actually threatened to overthrow his rule, as happened in 1932, 1935, and 1937. But even during these open revolts, he showed a good deal of leniency and executed only a few ringleaders. He effected some substantial reforms both in the administration and in society, particularly outlawing the traditional vendetta and carrying of arms, of which the Albanians were very fond. The most significant contribution of Zog's fourteen-year rule, the longest since the time of Skanderbeg, was the development of a truly national consciousness and an identity of the people with the state, although not necessarily with the monarchy, and the gradual breakdown of the traditional tribal and clan systems.

      In April 1938 Zog married Geraldine Apponyi, a Hungarian countess with an American mother. Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano was the best man. On Ciano's return to Italy from the wedding, he proposed to his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy, the annexation of Albania. The following year, on April 7, 1939, Ciano's suggestion was consummated. Italian forces invaded Albania on that day, forcing Zog to flee the country, never to return. In the next few months rapid steps were taken to unite Albania with Italy under the crown of King Victor Emanuel III and to impose a regime similar to that of Fascist Italy. Albania as an independent state disappeared.

      COMMUNIST SEIZURE AND CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

      Resistance to the Italian invaders began soon after the invasion, but the few insignificant Communist groups that existed at that time did not join the fray until after Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. These Communist groups, acting generally independently of each other, were composed chiefly of young intellectuals who had revolted against the country's medieval society. Educated mostly in the West, they felt that their country's economic development and their desire to use their Western education for their own and their country's advancement were frustrated by Zog's concept of personal rule, by the hostility of traditional chieftains and beys, and by the lack of opportunities in the country's underdeveloped society and economy.

      The leaders of these disparate groups convened clandestinely in Tirana on November 8, 1941, and under the guidance of two emissaries from the Yugoslav Communist Party, Dusan Mugosha and Miladin Popovic, founded the Albanian Communist Party—known since 1948 as the Albanian Workers' Party. Enver Hoxha, a young schoolteacher who had studied in France and Belgium, was elected provisional and, subsequently, permanent secretary general. In 1970 he still held the same position, under the title of first secretary. From the outset the strategy of the Party was to conceal its true Marxist program and orientation and to stress nationalism and patriotism. To this end, the front technique, through the National Liberation Movement, was used.

      The National Liberation Movement was created by the Conference

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