Chapter 5: Social System (2)

The educational system in 1969 was divided into two general parts: one dealt with full-time pupils and students from the kindergarten to the university level, and the other with adult education for employed people. The eight-year education was obligatory, beginning at age six and ending at age thirteen; secondary education began with grade nine, or age fourteen, and ended with grade twelve.

Before a full-time student proceeds to higher education, he must pass a probationary period of one year in production work. The eight-year system was described as the fundamental link of the entire educational system; it was intended to provide the pupils with the primary elements of ideological, political, moral, aesthetic, physical, and military education. The new eight-year system differed from the old in that it lowered the entrance age from seven to six, and there were no longer separate primary and intermediate schools; that is, there was a single eight-year school, which was, however, completely separate from the secondary school.

The secondary schools were of many kinds, consisting of four-year general education courses and four-year vocational and professional courses (industrial, agricultural, pedagogic, trade, arts, health, and others). Some of these courses lasted only two years. In his report to the Party's Central Committee in June 1969 on the reform of the school year, Prime Minister Shehu said that the secondary schools were to have a standard curriculum for the school year. Priority was to be given to academic subjects, followed by production and by physical and military education.

Shehu formulated the structure of the academic year in all secondary schools as follows: 6-1/2 months of academic study, 2-1/2 months of productive work, 1 month of military training, and 2 months of vacation. The curriculum of the secondary schools and, with slight differences, of the higher schools was divided as follows: academic subjects, 55 to 56 percent; production work, 26 to 27 percent; and physical and military education, 17 to 19 percent. Shehu also said that terms borrowed from the Soviet school system, would be dropped, and in the future secondary schools would be known by such names as general secondary school and industrial, agricultural, construction, trade, art, and sanitation secondary schools.

The terms of study in the higher institutes lasted from three to five years. Provision was also made to expand higher education by increasing the number of full-time students, setting up new branches in places where there were no higher institutes, and organizing specialization courses for those who had completed higher education to train highly qualified technical and scientific cadres. All full-time graduate students had to serve a probationary period of nine months in production and three months in military training, in addition to the prescribed military training received while in school.

Adult education had the same structure as that for full-time students, with two exceptions: first, the eight-year general education was not compulsory and was contracted into a six-year program allowing for completion of the first four grades in two years; second, those who wanted to proceed to higher institutes after graduating from secondary school had to devote one year to preparatory study instead of engaging in production work, as did full-time students.

According to official statistics, in the late 1960s, the regime had made considerable strides, at least quantitatively, in education since it came to power in 1944 (see table 5). From a total enrollment of less than 60,000 students of all levels in the 1938/39 school year, according to the Tirana press, the number had reached over 570,000 in the 1969/70 school year, with a teaching staff of 22,000. The total enrollment included pupils in the compulsory eight-year schools and students, workers, and collective farmers in the eight-year general education, secondary, trade, and professional schools, the State University of Tirana, and other higher institutes of learning.

Nearly half of the total enrollment represented adults attending evening and correspondence courses. An article in the April 5, 1970, issue of _Zeri i Popullit_ admitted that, of those originally enrolled in September 1969 in evening elementary, secondary, higher education, trade, and vocational courses, from 25 to 50 percent either dropped out or were often absent.

According to available official statistics, nearly 500,000 people were enrolled in schools and courses in the 1967/68 academic year; this included all adults who registered for, but did not necessarily attend regularly, technical and vocational courses, evening classes, or correspondence courses. In the same academic year the State University of Tirana and five other higher institutes of learning had a total enrollment of 12,435 students, of whom nearly 8,000 attended the State University of Tirana (see table 6). Of the total enrollment, over 4,000 were adults or part-time students.

In the 1945-56 period, that is, before the founding of the State University of Tirana, the government sent a number of students to pursue their education in the Soviet-bloc countries, mostly the Soviet Union. When the break came with Moscow in 1961, all students were either expelled or withdrawn from all these countries. According to documents published by the Tirana government after the break, at the beginning of the 1961/62 academic year there were 1,213 Albanian students already enrolled in Soviet institutions, and an additional 100 were to enroll during that academic year. They were all expelled by the Soviets except for a few who asked for and obtained political asylum. In 1970 an unknown number of students were attending schools in the People's Republic of China (Communist China), and a few in Romania and Italy.

_Table 5. Summary of Educational Institutions, Pupils, and Teachers
in Albania, for Selected Years_

1938/39 1950/51 1960/61 1967/68

_Primary and Secondary Education_
Schools 649 2,222 2,990 3,597
Pupils 55,404 172,831 290,728 455,557
Teachers 1,477 4,942 9,071 16,758

_Secondary Professional Schools_
Schools 5 17 34 25
Pupils 879 4,818 14,105 21,005
Teachers 34 171 511 638

Normal Schools
Schools (3) (8) (11) (5)
Pupils (675) (2,525) (5,591) (2,708)
Teachers (18) (61) (200) (115)

Technical Schools
Schools (2) (9) (23) (20)
Pupils (204) (2,253) (8,514) (18,297)
Teachers (16) (110) (311) (522)

_Higher Education_
Institutes 1 6 6
Students 304 6,703 12,436
Professors and assistants 13 288 606

_All Educational Systems_*
Schools 654 2,240 3,030 3,628
Pupils and students 56,283 177,953 311,536 498,997
Teachers and instructors 1,511 5,126 10,942 18,001

* The lower vocational schools are not included.

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh._, 1967-68, Tirana, 1968, p. 115.

The chain of command in the organization of the educational system in 1970 ran from the Party Politburo to the education sections in the district people's councils. The Politburo set the general policy guidelines and directives. In 1968 the Politburo created a Central Commission on Education attached to the Central Committee and headed by Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu. The commission's function was to elaborate the Politburo's directives on reforming the school system. When Mehmet Shehu submitted the report on behalf of the commission to the plenum of the Central Committee in June 1969 concerning the reorganization of the school system, it was decided to continue the commission for an indefinite period.

A more permanent body in the Party's Central Committee was the Directorate of Education and Culture, headed by Nexhmije Hoxha, wife of Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha. This body, guided by the directives prescribed by the Politburo, supervised the Ministry of Education and Culture in implementing the Party's ideological and political guidelines.

_Table 6. Students Attending Higher Institutes in Albania
(academic year 1967/68)_

Total Number of Students Full-Time Students
Total Female Total Female

State University of Tirana
_Faculties_
Economics 1,275 271 437 137
Geology 255 10 255 10
History and Philology 1,944 701 984 462
Engineering 1,259 139 1,102 120
Law 504 62 163 29
Medicine 1,034 378 1,034 378
Natural Sciences 1,683 529 1,262 440
----- ----- ----- -----
Total 7,954 2,090 5,237 1,576

Higher Agricultural Institute
_Faculties_
Agronomy 1,234 62 839 58
Forestry 174 10 150 8
Veterinary 324 23 324 23
----- ----- ----- -----
Total 1,732 95 1,313 89

Higher Institute of Arts 239 60 232 60

Higher Institute of Physical
Culture 191 39 169 37

Two-Year Higher Institute of Pedagogy, Tirana 1,113 458 331 140

Two-Year Higher Institute
of Pedagogy, Shkoder 1,206 446 859 316
------ ----- ----- -----
Grand Total 12,435 3,188 8,141 2,218

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh., 1967-1968_, Tirana, 1968, p. 125.

The Ministry of Education and Culture was responsible for executing Party policies and for administering the whole school system. It had education sections in all the district people's councils, which administered and, through their inspectors, controlled the teachers and the teaching programs. Party control at all levels was exercised either directly by the Party's basic organizations, as was the case in the higher institutes, or through the branches of the Union of Albanian Working Youth, the Party's most powerful front organization. The majority of the teachers in secondary schools and higher institutes were Party members.

By the beginning of 1970 the regime seemed to have scored substantial progress in the field of education. Illiteracy had been reduced considerably, if not actually eliminated. Through an intensive program to train elementary and secondary school teachers, build schoolhouses, and make schooling obligatory up to the eighth grade, the government had enabled all the country's children to obtain some kind of rudimentary education. It had also instituted a system of higher education and had founded the first university in the history of the country and was thus no longer dependent on foreign universities to train people in the various professions. It had also instituted a widespread network of professional and vocational schools intended to train badly needed technicians and skilled workers.

The whole education network, however, was a one-track system geared to serve the ideological and political objectives of the Party. The Party, through the Central Commission on Education and the Directorate of Education and Culture, both attached to the Party's Central Committee, controlled every facet of the school system: programs, curricula, administration, teaching staffs, and funds. The schools, students, teachers, and professors were so organized as to form a monolithic establishment centrally directed and completely immersed in Marxism-Leninism.

The entire system was dedicated to the education of the new man with Communist traits and morality. As defined by the Party leaders and Party theoreticians, these traits and morality meant the development of a "revolutionary spirit and responsibility for one's tasks for society and the cause of socialism, the defense of the basic principles of the Party and the implementation of its correct policy." The whole school system, as developed in the past twenty-five years, therefore, was for the building of communism as defined and interpreted by the Albanian Communists. All other ideologies, beliefs, cultures, and thoughts were banned from the country's schools.

RELIGION

Situation Before the Communist Takeover

One of the major legacies of nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule was the conversion of over 70 percent of the population to Islam. When independence came, therefore, the country emerged as a predominantly Muslim nation, the only Islamic state in Europe. No censuses taken by the Communist regime since it assumed power in 1944 have shown the religious affiliations of the people. It has been estimated that of a total population of 1,180,500, at the end of World War II, about 826,000 were Muslims, 212,500 Eastern Orthodox, and 142,000 Roman Catholics. The Muslims were divided between adherents of the Sunni branch and over 200,000 followers of a dervish order known as Bektashi, an offshoot of the Shia branch.

Christianity was introduced early in Albania, having been brought in during the period of Roman rule. After the division of the Roman Empire into East and West in 395, Albania became politically a part of the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire but remained ecclesiastically dependent on Rome. When, however, the final schism occurred in 1054 between the Roman and Eastern churches, the Christians in the southern part of the country came under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarchate. This situation prevailed until the Turkish invasions of the fourteenth century, when the Islamic faith was introduced. The apostasy of the people took many decades.

In the mountainous north the propagation of Islam met strong resistance from the Catholics. Gradually, however, backwardness, illiteracy, the absence of an educated clergy, and material inducements weakened resistance. Coerced conversions occurred, especially when Catholic powers, such as the Venetian Republic and Austria, were at war with the Ottoman Empire. By the close of the seventeenth century the Catholics in the north were outnumbered by the Muslims.

Large-scale forced conversions among the Orthodox in the south did not occur until the Russo-Turkish wars of the eighteenth century. Islamic pressure was put on the Orthodox Christians because the Turks considered them sympathetic to Orthodox Russia. The situation of the Orthodox improved temporarily after a Russo-Turkish treaty of 1774 in which Russia was recognized as the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The most effective method employed by the Turks in their missionary efforts, especially in the central and southern parts of the country, was the creation of a titled noble Muslim class of _pashas_, _beys_, and _agas_ (Albanian tribal chiefs in Turkish service), who were endowed with both large estates and extensive political and governing powers. Through their political and economic influences these nobles controlled the peasants, large numbers of whom were converted to Islam either through coercion or through promise of economic benefits.

In the period from independence to the Communist seizure of power, the Muslim noble class composed the country's ruling elite, but this elite never interfered with religious freedom, which was sanctioned by the various pre-World War II constitutions. The church and state were separate. These constitutions had declared that the country had no official religion, that all religions and faiths were respected, and that their freedom of exercise was assured. These provisions had expressed the true feelings of the people who, whether Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, were tolerant on religious matters.

Tolerance has been a marked characteristic of all Albanians, as indicated in part by the fact that even after accepting Islam, many people privately remained practicing Christians, or so-called crypto-Christians. As late as 1912 in a large number of villages in the Elbasan area, most men had two names, a Muslim one for public use and a Christian one for private use. A characteristic remark on the religious tolerance of the Albanians was made by Lord Byron, who observed in one of his diaries that elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire a man would declare himself to be either a Muslim or a Christian when asked what he was, but the Albanian would reply that he was an Albanian.

Situation Under Communist Rule

The Communist regime has exhibited in its attitude toward religion a wide gap between precept and practice. The Communist Constitution, adopted in March 1946 and as subsequently amended, contains liberal provisions with regard to religion. Freedom of conscience and religion is guaranteed to all citizens; the church is separate from the state; religious communities are free to exercise and practice their creeds; it is forbidden to use the church and religion for political purposes, and political organizations based on religion are outlawed; and the state may give material assistance to religious organizations.

Even before the adoption of the Constitution, however, legislative measures had already been taken to curb the freedom and power of all religious bodies. For example, the agrarian reform law of August 1945 made special provision for the confiscation of all their wealth, especially the estates of monasteries, orders, and dioceses, and the seizure of their libraries and printing presses. But the first major law aimed specifically at the control and regulation of all religious bodies and at the elimination of all distinguished clergymen was enacted two years after the promulgation of the Constitution. This law is known as Decree No. 743 On Religious Communities, approved by the Council of Ministers on November 26, 1949, converted into Law No. 773 on January 16, 1950, and amended by Decree No. 3660 of April 10, 1963.

The law provided that religious communities through their activities had to develop in their followers a sentiment of loyalty toward the People's Republic of Albania. In order to organize and function, religious communities had to be recognized by the state, such recognition taking place as a result of the approval of their statutes by the Council of Ministers. All regulations and bylaws issued on the basis of such statutes had also to be approved by the Council of Ministers, and the heads of religious communities and sects had to be approved by the Council of Ministers after being elected or appointed by the proper religious organs. Religious communities or branches, such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, that had their headquarters outside the country were henceforth prohibited and ordered to terminate their activities within a month of the enactment of the decree.

All religious communities were obliged to send at once to the Council of Ministers all pastoral letters, messages, speeches, and other instructions of a general character that were to be made public in any form. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young since this was the exclusive right of the state, and all religious communities were prohibited from operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals or from owning real estate.

On the basis of Decree No. 743 the Council of Ministers on May 4, 1950, issued Decrees Nos. 1064, 1065, and 1066, approving respectively the statutes of the Sunni, Orthodox, and Bektashi religious communities. A common provision of all three decrees was that each religious community had to develop the "sentiment of loyalty in their followers toward the people's power and the People's Republic of Albania, as well as their patriotic feelings." The Statute of the Independent Catholic Church of Albania was approved by Decree No. 1322 of July 30, 1951.

The regime's policy toward each of the three religious denominations, although differing somewhat in tactics, aimed from the outset at the eventual destruction of all organized religion. The regime achieved control over the Muslim faith by dealing with each sect separately. The first measure aimed at dividing the Sunni and Bektashi, which was effected, officially, in May 1945, when the two were declared completely independent of each other.

In dealing with the Sunni clergy, the government arrested and executed as "enemies of the people" those members of the top hierarchy who were reluctant to toe the Communist line, while others were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. It named as head of the Sunni community Hafez Musa Haxhi Ali, who in 1950 led a delegation of the Sunni clergy to the Soviet Union, visiting Uzbekistan and the Muslim religious shrines of Samarkand and Tashkent and meeting with many Soviet Muslim leaders. He was also used in appeals for world peace and other slogans directed at the Muslim countries in the Middle East.

The policy followed toward each group differed somewhat. The Bektashi group had always been much more liberal and forward looking than the Sunni. During the war a few leading Bektashi clergymen had joined the National Liberation Movement, and three of them--Baba Mustafa Faja Martaneshi, Baba Fejzo, and Sheh Karbunaro--played major roles in bringing about close collaboration between the Bektashi order and the regime. In March 1947, however, Baba Faja and Baba Fejzo were assassinated at the group's headquarters in Tirana, where they had gone to meet with the World Bektashi Primate Dede Abazi (the Bektashi had moved their world headquarters in the 1920s from Ankara to Tirana). As the Tirana press reported the event: "The leaders of the Bektashi, Baba Faja and Baba Fejzo, cooperating with the people's government, visited Dede Abazi to discuss the democratization of the religious organization. Dede Abazi answered with bullets, killing them both. Later he shot himself." Taking advantage of this incident, the regime eliminated those leaders of the Bektashi clergy it considered disloyal.

Because of the traditionally nationalistic character of the Albanian Orthodox Church, the regime has attempted from the outset to use it as an instrument for mobilizing the Orthodox population behind its policies. Using the church for its own ends, the regime took steps to purge all those elements within it that were considered unreliable. Clergymen who did not yield to the demands of the regime were purged.

Among the purged Orthodox leaders was the primate of the church, Archbishop Kristofor Kisi, who was deposed in the late 1940s and subsequently died in jail. The regime replaced Kisi with Pashko Vodica, a renegade priest who had joined the ranks of the partisan formations. On assuming the office of primate, under the name of Archbishop Paisi, he stated that it was the church's duty to be faithful to the People's Republic of Albania and to the people's power and added: "Our Church must be faithful to the camp of Peace, to the great anti-imperialist and democratic camp, to the unique camp of socialism led brilliantly by the glorious Soviet Union and the Great Stalin...."

Archbishop Paisi brought about close ties between the Albanian Orthodox Church and the Moscow Patriarchate. These ties were further strengthened after a delegation of Soviet religious leaders, headed by Bishop Nikon of Odessa, visited Tirana in the spring of 1951. After the 1960-61 Moscow-Tirana break, however, these ties lapsed.

The Roman Catholic Church, chiefly because it maintained close relations with the Vatican and was more organized than were the Muslim and Eastern Orthodox faiths, became a principal target of persecution as soon as the Communists assumed power. In May 1945 Monsignor Nigris, the apostolic nuncio in Albania, was arrested on charges of fomenting anti-Communist feelings and deported to Italy. In 1946 a number of Catholic clergymen were arrested and tried on charges of distributing leaflets against the regime; some were executed, others given long prison terms at hard labor.

According to Vatican sources, from 1945 to 1953 the number of Catholic churches and chapels in Albania was reduced from 253 to 100. Both seminaries in the country were closed, and the number of monasteries dropped from ten to two. All twenty convents were closed, as were fifteen orphanages, sixteen church schools, and ten charitable institutions. Both Catholic printing presses were confiscated, and the publication of seven religious periodicals ceased.

The ranks of Catholic priests were thinned from ninety-three in 1945 to ten in 1953, twenty-four having been executed, thirty-five imprisoned, ten either missing or dead, eleven drafted into the army, and three having escaped from the country. Secular officials and laymen active in church affairs also suffered execution, imprisonment, and harassment.

The Catholic school system was completely eliminated. This included five secondary schools with a total enrollment of 570 and ten elementary and vocational schools with 2,750 pupils. All Catholic associations were suppressed.

A severe blow against the Catholic church was struck in 1951, when the regime mustered a small group of clergymen to hold a national Catholic assembly to draw the statute for the church. As approved by the Council of Ministers on July 30 of that year, the statute provided that the "Catholic Church of Albania has a national character ... [and that] it shall no longer have any organizational, political, or economic relations with the Pope." The statute provided further that the church was to be directed both in religious and administrative matters by a new Catholic Episcopate, that relations concerning religious questions could be established only through governmental channels, and that the church would submit to the canon law of the world Catholic church only if the provisions of this law did not contradict the laws of the People's Republic of Albania.

Enver Hoxha himself spearheaded the campaign against the Catholic church. In 1952, for example, he purged Tuk Jakova, the only Catholic member of the Politburo and previously one of Hoxha's closest collaborators, because he had allegedly befriended the Catholic clergy. In his speech to the Second Party Congress in 1952, in an attempt to justify Jakova's purge, Hoxha said: "Comrade Tuk Jakova, in contradiction to the political line of the Party and of the state concerning religion generally and the Catholic clergy in particular, has not properly understood and has not properly acted against the Catholic clergy. Without seeing the great danger of the reactionary clergy, Comrade Tuk Jakova has not hated them in sufficient measure...."

A new policy aimed at the complete destruction of organized religion was enunciated by Hoxha in a speech to the Party's Central Committee on February 6, 1967. Calling for an intensified cultural-education struggle against religious beliefs and declaring that the only religion for an Albanian should be Albanianism, he assigned the antireligious mission to the youth movement. By May of the same year religious institutions were forced to relinquish 2,169 churches, mosques, cloisters, and shrines, most of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. As the literary monthly _Nendori_ (November) in its September 1967 issue reported the event, the youth had thus "created the first atheist nation in the world."

According to Western correspondents in Tirana, the procedure employed in seizing the places of worship was to assemble the villagers or parishioners in order to discuss Hoxha's speech and to take measures to eliminate what the regime referred to as harmful survivals of religious customs. A decision was then taken to ask the government for permission to close a church, mosque, or monastery. A few days later the government, stating that it was following the will of the people, would issue orders to close the house of worship.

Drastic measures were reportedly taken in cases where the clergy opposed the government order. The strongest resistance came from the Catholic clergy, resulting in the detention of some twenty priests. The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkoder was set afire in the spring of 1967, resulting in the death of four monks. The Catholic cathedral in Tirana had its facade removed, and on June 4, 1967, it was taken over by the government and converted into a museum. A similar fate befell the Catholic cathedrals in Shkoder and Durres.

After the seizure of the houses of worship, the younger clergymen were forced to seek work either in industry or agricultural collectives. The elder clergy were ordered to return to their birthplaces, which they could not leave without permission from the authorities. Monsignor Ernest Coba, bishop of Shkoder and acknowledged head of the Catholic church in Albania, was evicted from the cathedral in April 1967 and was forced to seek work as a gardener on a collective farm. He was still alive but ailing at the end of 1969.

By the beginning of 1970 the provision of the Constitution concerning freedom of religion was ostensibly in effect, but government decrees had made such a provision a dead issue. On November 22, 1967, a significant measure was taken that apparently aimed at delivering the coup de grace to formal religious institutions. On that day _Gazeta Zyrtare_, the government's official gazette, published Decree No. 4337 of the Presidium of the People's Assembly entitled, "On the Abrogation of Certain Decrees." Specifically, the new decree annulled all previous decrees dealing with organized religion, thus removing official sanction from religious bodies and, in effect, placing them outside the law.

The 1949 decree on religion had provided for subsidies from the state to the three religious denominations. These subsidies had become indispensable for their survival because their property and all other material means of subsistence had been confiscated and nationalized in 1945, and without state help the churches could not function. Concurrent with the official moves against religions, a number of antireligious brochures and pamphlets were prepared and distributed by the Democratic Front in an effort to prepare the people for the attacks on their religious institutions.

Even though organized religion had been destroyed by the end of 1967, the regime was still struggling as of early 1970 to eradicate religious thought and beliefs. The _Nendori_ article that proclaimed the creation of the first atheist state in the world admitted that "despite the hard blows religion had suffered through the destruction of its material institutions, religious ideology is still alive."

Hoxha himself has often admitted that antireligious measures and the closing of places of worship have not sufficed to eradicate religious beliefs. Thus, addressing the Fourth Congress of the Democratic Front in September 1967, he declared that it was misleading to hold that religion consisted of church, mosque, priests, icons, and the like, and that if all of these disappeared, then automatically religion and its influence on the people would vanish. The struggle against religious beliefs, he added, had not ended because for centuries they had been deeply rooted in the conscience of the people.

Hoxha reverted to the subject again in his speech to the Party's Central Committee plenum in June 1969, devoted to reforming the school system, in which he said that one of the aims of the reorganized schools would be to bring up the new generation imbued with scientific and theoretical knowledge; for, according to Hoxha, religious beliefs could be eradicated only through the elimination of old concepts still prevalent in the minds of the people.

At the beginning of 1970 Party leaders in their speeches and in the press were continuing to call for an intensification of the struggle against religious ideology and especially for the eradication of every religious influence or belief among students, who were still under the influence of parents. The older generation, according to the leadership, continued to entertain the religious beliefs that everything in nature has been created with a predetermined purpose by God. The press has also reported on several occasions that there was strong resistance to the closing of places of worship and that the clergy resorted to all kinds of subterfuge to continue their religious activities.