Enver Hoxha

Biography

Enver Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër, then in the Ottoman Empire, in 1908. He studied at the French-language national lyceum in Korçë and in 1930 went to the University of Montpellier on a state scholarship to study botany, which he abandoned. He worked as a secretary at the Albanian consulate in Brussels in 1935-36 and then taught French at the Korçë lyceum until 1939.

After Italy invaded Albania in 1939 he helped unite the country's divided communist groups into the Communist Party of Albania, founded in November 1941, and he led it as first secretary for the rest of his life. When the communist-led partisans took power in 1944 he became prime minister, holding the post until 1954 and for years also serving as foreign and defence minister.

Hoxha ruled by a strict anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism. He broke with Yugoslavia, then with the Soviet Union after Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation, and finally with China in the late 1970s, leaving Albania isolated. His Cultural and Ideological Revolution of 1966 set out to remove religion from public life under a policy of state atheism. His government banned private property and foreign travel and imprisoned, executed or exiled thousands of people, while industry and living standards advanced. He died in Tirana in 1985 and was succeeded by Ramiz Alia.