Voices of communist Albania from young generation

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Voices of communist Albania from young generation

© EU in Albania

"My mother's grandfather was an anti-communist intellectual. Arrested in 1944 and sentenced for 24 years, he died in Burrel's prison in 1949 due to torture. His body was never given to the family and all the documents about him were disappeared. My grandmother never knew her father, and never learned his fate". For a 16 years old girl, student at "Asim Vokshi" high school, communism was a sad story of a relative who couldn't come back home, a story she used to listen as a child instead of a lullaby. Almost avoiding her emotions, she speaks calmly as she is transmitting her grandmother's pain, to an audience who has similar backgrounds, sometimes hard to tell.

One of her peers, recalls her own grandparents, who were writers, afraid of writing down their thoughts, their ideas or their books, on a time of paranoia as she calls it. "They would tell me their fears, describing thoroughly a day when ex security officers ransacked my grandfather's office, searching for any document or note that would implicate them in any anti-communist plot. He almost lost all his works trying to hide them and save himself and his family", tells Abi, another 16-years old student.

They shared their family stories during a literary meeting with Margo Rejmer, a polish writer who has published the book "Mud sweeter than honey- Voices of communist Albania", during the Festival of European Literature in Tirana organised by the European Union Delegation to Albania. Interested in Rejmer's findings over Albanian history, they tell how they understand the regime, their mixed feelings about safety, education, healthcare and even ask her, about values, and when where people happier- then or now? The part of the book, she has chosen to read, gives an answer to most of them.

"Once upon a time, paradise was created in the most perfect socialist country in the world. Where everything belonged to everyone, and nothing belonged to anyone. Where everyone knew how to read and write, but they could only write what the authorities endorsed, and they could only read what the authorities approved. Where mass education was a priority, but every few years purges were carried out among the elite. Where everyone was entitled to celebrate progress and cheer at public parades, but telling a joke meant challenging fate and the authorities. For that reason, the citizens were advised to feel enthusiastic and happy…", Rejmer writes.

Trying to explain to a young generation the complexity of a dictatorship system, she mentions the concepts of freedom and dissidence and how some could find internal freedom in an oppressed country mentioning the case of the writer Fatos Lubonja, who in the book is portrayed counting six circles a prisoner went through in prison: rubble, isolation, hunger, cold, pain and despair. "I knew one day I'd write about everything that happened in prison. I could distance myself from the suffering", he has told.

Beside the people who suffered there were also people who recall another reality. "I would like to offer a different approach to communism. My grandparents were part of the Communist Party and my grandfather was an officer. His job was to protect the borders, in cities like Tropoja or Kukes. I could say that they lived well in the communist Albania", says Ajla, another young student.

Dozens of Albanians were killed at the borders trying to escape convictions, prisons and executions, but the lack of freedom and the power of propaganda have built an official narrative that has been difficult to challenge even in three decades of political pluralism. Margo Rejmer advices young generation to get their own research comparing family stories with the history of the country. "You have to ask your grandparents, about your family stories, because they will be gone one day, and you are going to lose such an important part of your own biography and identity. And then you will find your own truth because they might have a completely different perspective, as you see even here we have narrations that were different from each other, not corelating. You are the generation who will build the future of Albania so you have to know, and you have to understand, and the best way to know and understand, is to collect as many information as you can, from your family and books", she emphasises.

The discussion goes on, explaining the concepts of enemy, the concept of good/bad biography, the difference between propaganda and facts, life in isolation and the tension between freedom and feeling safe. Being a patriot and being against communism could have been the same thing, but the communist regime would consider a treason thinking differently from the Communist Party transmitting hate and equalising wrongly, the party with the country.

"I love you, muddy Albanian soil. Magic. Sweet as honey, bitter as wormwood. I love you ferociously, desperately". This poem by Mitrush Kuteli, also a politically imprisoned writer, for Margo Rejmer, shows best the ambiguity of the meaning of the country, propaganda and love at that time. It also inspired the tittle of her book, which listens the voices that were silenced.