As of 2025, it is likely that outside of Albania, very few inhabitants of the planet Earth recall who Enver Hoxha was. This is a conundrum.
On one hand, recognition that Hoxha existed might be taken as approval of his record as brutal dictator. On the other, without remembering who Hoxha was and what he did, we’re more likely to be ignorant of the warning signs if someone like him comes around again.
Far more readers understand the current situation in hermetic North Korea, so perhaps it is easier to think of Hoxha as a nominally communist dictator in the fashion of the Kim family (a paranoic cult of personality). Hoxha presided over the North Korea of Europe from 40 years until his death in 1985, after which his impoverished surveillance state trundled unsteadily forward until its wheels at last fell off in 1991, whereupon Albania’s return to the European mainstream left it the poorest country on the continent.
Albania became independent only in 1912 following centuries of Ottoman occupation, subsequently traversing two World Wars and the ensuing communist period. Add it all together, and when I first toured the country in 1994, it seemed that the recovery was going to take a long, long time.
But that’s why I cheer for the underdogs, not Elon Musk.
The cost of living in Albania is low, because per capita income is around $10K annually; however, this is an improvement. Tirana is ahead, and the countryside behind. Most of the economic indicators show steady improvement during the three decades between my visits. Nothing’s ever neat and clean, and Albania is still considered a developing country.
Three decades is a lifetime, and to me, Tirana was unrecognizable. I’d hazard a guess that for residents who are my age, this is a good thing.
In 1994 I made it a point to seek out Enver Hoxha’s house, located in the neighborhood called Blloku, which during communism was the district where the elites lived, not walled or fenced but policed and controlled. By dictatorial standards, this house might be viewed as modest, and hardly a palace; still, I can attest that in 1994 it stood out from the smudgy urban landscape nearby.
That’s all in the past. Blloku is now a trendy Bohemian area, and tall new buildings have popped up on all sides of Hoxha’s refuge. The view of the building itself has barely changed at all.
