The Albanian–Soviet split (Russian: Албано-советский раскол, romanized: Albano-sovetskiy raskol; Albanian: Ndarja shqiptaro-sovjetike) was the gradual worsening of relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People's Republic of Albania, which occurred in the 1956–1961 period as a result of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with Yugoslavia along with his "Secret Speech" and subsequent de-Stalinization, including efforts to extend these policies into Albania as was occurring in other Eastern Bloc states at the time.
However, the Albanian–Soviet split did not become public until 1960, when, during the Bucharest Conference of Representatives of Communist and Workers Parties, the Albanian delegation, led by Hysni Kapo, did not support Khrushchev's ideological views on the Sino-Soviet split.
The Albanian leadership under Enver Hoxha perceived Khrushchev's policies as contrary to Marxist–Leninist doctrine and his denunciation of Joseph Stalin as an opportunistic act meant to legitimize revisionism within the international communist movement. Occurring within the context of the larger split between China and the USSR, the Soviet–Albanian split culminated in the termination of relations in 1961, however Albania did not withdraw from the Warsaw Pact until 1968, mainly as a reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Background
The Communist Party of Albania—known as the Party of Labour of Albania after 1948—was founded in November 1941 in the context of the foreign occupation of the country, with the majority of its members including its leader, Enver Hoxha, having no connection to the Comintern. Historian Jon Halliday commented "it was set up without any known direct contact with Moscow." Halliday argues that "middle-class intellectuals" with "Western intellectual traditions" were the most significant force behind the foundation of the Communist Party of Albania. Albania was also the only Eastern European country liberated from Axis occupation without the presence of the Red Army on its soil. A combination of these factors led Stalin to initially have been "both curious and suspicious about the only leader of a Communist regime in the Soviet bloc who escaped from any historical ties or contact with the Soviet Union." This, Halliday continues, "was true not just of Hoxha as an individual, but of almost the entire leading group in Albania." Despite this, however, for Halliday, Hoxha's cult of personality made him "the quintessential Stalinist". Halliday considers that many of the reasons used by Nikita Khrushchev to denounce Joseph Stalin, were applicable to Enver Hoxha.
Following Albania's liberation, the country's economic and foreign policies were dominated by its neighbour Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, and Albania became in the words of historian Miranda Vickers a "sub-satellite." During this period ties with the Soviet Union remained limited, though formal diplomatic relations were established in December 1945.
Soviet–Yugoslav split
Within the leadership of the Communist Party of Albania tensions arose between pro– and anti–Yugoslav factions and personalities, with the latter increasingly coming under attack by Koçi Xoxe, the head of the pro–Yugoslav faction. Hoxha was threatened on the basis of his opposition to the pro–Yugoslav line, as Xoxe's final goal was to overthrow Hoxha and to incorporate Albania into Yugoslavia as its Seventh Republic. The Soviet–Yugoslav split in 1948, however, had allowed Albania to break from Yugoslav dominance, and it became the first state to side with the Information Bureau (better known in the West as the Cominform) with its resolution attacking the Yugoslav leadership for allegedly pursuing a road of nationalist deviation and capitalist restoration.
From that point onward, relations between Albania and the Soviet Union were relatively close until 5 March 1953, following the death of Stalin. In the words of historian Nicholas C. Pano, "by the beginning of 1949, Albania had progressed from the status of a sub-satellite to that of a full-fledged satellite of the Soviet Union." Albania became a member of Comecon in 1949, and joined the Warsaw Treaty upon its founding in 1955. In addition the Soviets built a submarine base at Vlora in 1952.
Death of Stalin
In his memoirs, Hoxha recounts the apprehension he and others had about the post-Stalin leadership, just days after Stalin's death. "The way in which the death of Stalin was announced and his funeral ceremony was organized created the impression ... that many members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been awaiting his death impatiently."
A meeting with Soviet leaders held in June that year further raised his suspicions about the intentions of the new leadership, as did a reduction in Soviet and Eastern Bloc aid to Albania in early-1954 as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev 'generally believed that the trade cost for the support of Albania did not generate enough return for Soviet interests and their strategic interests'. Reacting to early post-Stalin Soviet pressure on the East European countries to pursue economic and political reforms, Albania announced slight changes in planning priorities and some willingness to improve state relations with Yugoslavia as the Soviets were doing. There was also a reshuffling of political portfolios in line with the Soviet re-emphasis on the principle of collective leadership.
Hoxha regarded Soviet pressure as acting in the service of ulterior, revisionist aims in an effort to unseat or otherwise undermine "Stalinist" leaders. Thus in a meeting with Khrushchev on the issue of collective leadership, he recalled:
Khrushchev told us that the other sister parties had been told of the Soviet "experience" of who should be first secretary of the party and who prime minister in the countries of people's democracy. "We talked over these questions with the Polish comrades before the congress of their party," Khrushchev told us. "We thrashed matters out thoroughly and thought that Comrade Bierut should remain chairman of the Council of Ministers and Comrade Ochab should be appointed first secretary of the party ..." Hence, right from the start Khrushchev was for pushing Bierut aside in the leadership of the party ... [the Soviets] were giving the green light for all the revisionist elements, who, up till yesterday, were wriggling and keeping a low profile, awaiting the opportune moments. Now these moments were being created by Khrushchev who, with his actions, stands and "new ideas", was becoming the inspirer and organizer of "changes" and "reorganizations".
Beginnings of the split
Per Jon Halliday, the relationship between Albania and the Soviet Union was observably good until the late 1950s. Differences in views emerged between the Soviet Union and Albania over Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with SFR Yugoslavia, the "revisionist" 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the anti-Stalin campaign, the Hungarian Revolution, and the rising Sino-Soviet dispute. In June 1954, Khrushchev sent a letter to the leaders of the parties of the Eastern Bloc in which the Cominform resolutions denouncing Yugoslavia in the 1948–1949 period were criticised for allegedly forcing Tito and the rest of the Yugoslav leadership "into the arms of the United States and Great Britain and had led to Yugoslavia's conclusion of a military pact with two NATO members." Hoxha, however, disagreed with this view, later writing, "even if the Yugoslav leadership had been unjustly condemned in 1949, as Khrushchev was claiming, nothing could permit or justify its falling into the lap of imperialism."
In May 1955, Khrushchev led a Soviet delegation to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade with the aim of rehabilitating Tito, a move which encouraged reformist and dissident trends in Eastern Europe. The Albanian government had received a letter two days before the Soviet delegation was to leave Moscow. The Soviets requested the Albanians approve a statement drawn up by Khrushchev in the name of the Information Bureau even though he had not convened it. The move was refused by the Albanians 'with reasoning that the Yugoslav leadership had had no change since its condemnation in 1948 by the communist and workers' parties represented on the Bureau'.
On 25 May, the Central Committee of the Party of Labour sent a letter to its Soviet counterpart, stating among other things, "In our opinion such a hasty (and ill-considered) decision on an issue of great importance and of principle" was conducted "without first making a profound analysis together with all the parties interested in this issue." With only Albania among the Eastern Bloc states opposing Khrushchev's move, the Soviets succeeded in unilaterally rehabilitating Tito's standing within the international communist movement and apologized for past Soviet activities in relation to Yugoslavia.
20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, Khrushchev issued—in addition to his main report—his "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin. In addition to its attack on Stalin, Hoxha later stated about the Congress that:
all the distortions of the major issues of principle, such as those about the character of our epoch, the roads of transition to socialism, peaceful coexistence, war and peace, the stand towards modern revisionism and towards imperialism, etc., etc., which later became the basis of the great, open polemic with modern revisionism, have their official beginning in Khrushchev's report to the 20th Congress ... we saw how the Khrushchevites, in order to consolidate their power, operated allegedly with "a great party spirit", "free from the fear of Stalin" ... Every good thing of the past was distorted, allegedly in light of the "new situations", "new developments", "new roads and possibilities", in order to go ahead.
A notable event at the Congress was the promotion of the policy of "peaceful coexistence" by Khrushchev, which officially was a policy to increase East–West collaboration against the threat of nuclear war, but which anti-revisionists believed to be a means to separate the world into influential provinces in which each side would occupy complete control. One anti-revisionist author described Khrushchev's policy as follows: "Khrushchev made it clear that he was prepared to give up international class struggle, renouncing on behalf of the colonial peoples any right to liberate themselves from oppression and reassuring capitalist governments by emphasising 'peaceful transition to socialism' or the Parliamentary road ..." He then quoted Khrushchev as saying "'if any mad man wanted war, we [the Soviet Union and the United States], the two strongest countries in the world, would have but to shake our fingers to warn him off.'"
Third Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania
One of Tito's preconditions for improving relations with the Soviets was for a Soviet-backed removal of "Stalinist" leaders in Eastern Europe, such as Mátyás Rákosi of Hungary and Valko Chervenkov of Bulgaria; Hoxha was also an obvious target for removal due to his intransigent position on Yugoslavia. The Soviets sought without success to force Hoxha to rehabilitate Koçi Xoxe. In April 1956, a party conference was held in Tirana: various delegates, inspired by Khrushchev's actions, attacked the line of the Party of Labour, calling for a review of the case of Xoxe along with other political and economic policies and phenomena. However, Hoxha entered the conference and managed to defeat these proposals. The Third Congress of the Party of Labour was convened a month later, electing a Central Committee and Politburo "composed of staunch Hoxha loyalists" while also demonstrating "Hoxha's first public defiance of the Soviet Union" by refusing to rehabilitate Xoxe and other persons linked with, or otherwise supportive of, rapprochement with Yugoslavia.
Although the Third Party Congress did not openly criticize the 20th Party Congress of the CPSU partly because "the real aims of [the Soviets] were still not fully recognized", and because of a perceived necessity to preserve the unity of the international communist movement, it did declare the line of the Party of Labour had been "followed [correctly] up to now", and thus tacitly rejected Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policies.
Following the Hungarian Uprising in November 1956, relations between Albania and the Soviet Union improved somewhat due to Yugoslavia's part in the event, which caused friction in Yugoslav–Soviet relations. On 7 November, Hoxha wrote an article for Pravda denouncing Tito for encouraging the activity of the rebels, though the Soviets rebuked Hoxha for his harsh tone soon after. Soviet efforts to improve relations with Yugoslavia resumed before long, prompting a further deterioration in Soviet–Albanian relations.