Documents as Weapons: The Uses of a Dictatorship’s Archives

Abstract

Close to thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall Albania remains a blind spot in the literature on twentieth-century socialism. International histories of the Cold War continue to 'de-centre' Europe, and the focus increasingly shifts to relations between big powers and the so-called Third World. But this recent euphoria of 'the global' has also tended to obscure how a small European country can remain terra incognita for so long. In much of the former communist world, the socalled 'archival revolution' of the 1990s has helped produce a now large body of literature. Such a process has been slow and complicated in Albania. This essay begins by asking why. It first offers an overview of Albanian-language historical work from roughly the last two decades, placing it alongside other relevant contributions in English, German, Italian and French, to highlight trends and suggest possible analytical paths. My thoughts are organised around the problem of the country's archives, which took many years to become available to historians. Shrouded in mystery, communist era archives have often become places of political controversy over major themes like the Second World War and the origins of communist power. This essay argues for making archives objects of analysis, too. After surveying how authors have and have not approached the party-state's sources, it offers a history of archiving as an example of state led centralisation. The push to centralise archives coincided with a period in which Albania's regime sought to make sense of shifting foreign alliances: from a dedicated ally of the Soviet Union to an anti-Soviet voice during the revolutionary 1960s. Rather than as depositories of hidden truths, archives emerge as part of a larger project to define the state and discipline its past. They can shed much light on the domestic landscape of this period, but they can also offer new insights into how processes of nationalisation have been deeply intertwined with internationalist imperatives. Blind Spots Founded in 1941, the Communist Party of Albania (renamed Party of Labour, after consultations with Stalin, seven years later) was initially bound to neighbouring Yugoslavia, which provided tactical advice. Yugoslav advisors immersed themselves in planning affairs after Albania's liberation, an arrangement initially also supported by Stalin. Within a few years, however, the Soviet leader had grown impatient with his Yugoslav counterpart, Josip Broz Tito. During the Soviet-Yugoslav rift in 1948, Albania's cunning party chief Enver Hoxha saw an opportunity to escape from Yugoslav dependency, professing loyalty to the Kremlin. Purges of so-called pro-Yugoslav individuals ensued, followed by years of intense borrowing from the Soviet Union: desperately Thanks to Emily Greble for commissioning this essay and for providing detailed feedback, and to the anonymous reviewer for a sharp reading, which helped me bring discipline to the text. I presented some of these ideas at the conference 'Mes apatisë dhe nostalgjisë: Kujtesa publik...