Stories from the international communist movement: the Chinese front in Europe and the limits of the anti-revisionist struggle

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the political life of two important European communist activists who, in the aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, decided to support China and Albania against the Soviet Union: Kazimierz Mijal, a Polish communist who, in the mid-1960s, decided to exile himself to Albania, from where he promoted the ‘China way’ of communism; and Jacque Grippa, a Belgian communist who struggled to find space between the Western European left, Beijing, and Moscow. The article analyses how apparently marginal protagonists of the Cold War gained a prominent position and played an important role in the dynamics created within the communist world following the Sino-Soviet split.

KEYWORDS:

• International communist movement
• Mijal
• Grippa
• Albania
• China

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Prof. Han Xiaorong for his support and his precious advice; the external reviewers for their valuable comments; and Prof. Li Yiping for his support in my current research at Xiamen University. A special thanks goes to my friend Dr James Fellows for his help with the proofreading of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ For the Sino-Soviet split and subsequent competition between China and the Soviet Union, see Li Danhui and Xia Yafeng, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1959–1973: A New History (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017); Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns In The Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–67 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); and Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). For the Soviet-Albanian split see Ylber Marku, “Communist Relations in Crisis: The End of Soviet-Albanian Relations, and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1960–1961,” The International History Review 42, no. 4 (2020), DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2019.1620825; Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2017): 187–220; and William E. Griffith, Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1963).

² China’s front extended far beyond Europe. Among many studies, see Jodie Yuzhou Sun, “‘Now the Cry was Communism’: the Cold War and Kenya’s Relations with China, 1964–70,” Cold War History (2019), doi: 10.1080/14682745.2019.1602120; Joshua Eisenman, “Comrades-in-arms: the Chinese Communist Party’s Relations with African Political Organizations in the Mao Era, 1949–76,” Cold War History 18, no. 4 (2018): 429–45; Quinn Slobodian, “The Maoist Enemy: China’s Challenge in 1960s East Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 51, no. 3 (2016): 635–59; Matthew D. Rothwell, Transpacific Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Latin America (New York and London: Routledge, 2013); and Jeremy Friedman, “Soviet Policy in the Developing World and the Chinese Challenge in the 1960s,” Cold War History 10, no. 2 (2010): 247–72.

³ Mingjiang Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma (London: Routledge, 2012).

⁴ Quinn Slobodian, “The Maoist Enemy,” 635–59; Dan Berger, ed., The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

⁵ AQSH, F.14/AP, Fondi i Solidaritetit, Top-Secret: Decision Nr. 293, 22 September 1964, Central State Archive – Arkivi Qëndror i Shtetit (AQSH) (Fund – Fondi [F], Party’s Archive – Arkivi i Partisë [AP], Year – Viti [V], File/Folder – Dosje [D], page – flete [f]). . Translation of the archives is mine. On the decision to provide monetary assistance to Marxist parties and groups, AQSH, F.14/AP, Sekretariati, V. 1964, D. 26, f. 36–37.

⁶ Top-Secret: The first official meeting between the delegations of the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in Beijing at 4pm, 11 June 1962, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKK, V.1962, D6, f.14. On the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha, see Blendi Fevziu, Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania, ed. Robert Elsie, trans. Majlinda Nishku (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016).

⁷ Tirana, The meeting of Pirro Bita, Head of the PLA Foreign Directorate (International Liaison Department) with the vice director of the CCP International Liaison Department, Liu Ningyi, 18 September 1963, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKK, V. 1963, D. 10.

⁸ Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao, 217; Elidor Mëhilli, “Documents as Weapons: The Uses of a Dictatorship’s Archives,” Contemporary European History 28, no. 1 (2019): 82–95, 92–3. Dozens of political parties, as well as revolutionary groups from Europe, Africa, and Latin America received economic and, in some cases, military training in Albania. Documents in AQSH, F.14. AP-OU and AQSH, F.14, AP-STR, in particular the period 1962–78.

⁹ Elidor Mëhilli, “Globalized Socialism, Nationalized Time: Soviet Films, Albanian Subjects, and Chinese Audiences across the Sino-Soviet Split,” Slavic Review 77, no. 3 (2018): 611–37 (613).

¹⁰ Margaret K. Gnoinska, “Promoting the ‘China way’ of Communism in Poland and Beyond during the Sino-Soviet Split: the Case of Kazimierz Mijal,” Cold War History 18, no. 3 (2018): 343–59.

¹¹ Christophe Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes: La folle histoire des gardes rouges fançais (Paris: Plon, 2007), 68–9; Pascal Delwit, Les gauches radicales en Europe (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2016), 354–8. Additional information about Grippa can be found in http://www.centremlm.be/+-Jacques-Grippa-+; and in: www.marxist.org (last accessed 15 March 2020).

¹² Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes, 69.

¹³ On the concept of Maoism and its spread beyond China, see the recent contribution of Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (London: Bodley Head, 2019). For the influence of Maoism in modern and contemporary art see Jacopo Galimberti, Noemi de Haro-García, and Victoria H. F. Scott, eds., Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). For an interesting account of how Maoism resonated in Western cultural movements see Alfred Hornung, “Maoism and Postmodernism,” European Review 23, no. 2 (2015): 261–72.

¹⁴ Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes, 69–70.

¹⁵ Ibid.; Tirana, Correspondence between the Party of Labour of Albania and the Communist Party of Belgium (m-l), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 9, f. 63.

¹⁶ In the Albanian archives Mijal’s party has the Albanian acronym PKP (m-l): Partia Komuniste e Polonisë (Marksiste-Leniniste).

¹⁷ Tirana, Report of the Foreign Directorate, 21 September 1971, on the assistance provided by the Party of Labour of Albania to the Polish Communist Party, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1971, D. 2. The translation is from the Albanian documents, but Gnoinska in her article provides the more accurate translation from Polish, as ‘Struggle Brings Victory’.

¹⁸ Gnoinska, “Promoting the ‘China Way’ of Communism,” 8–9.

¹⁹ Durrës (coastal city in Albania) Notes from the conversation of comrade Ramiz Alia with Kazimierz Mijal, 23 April 1966, in AQSH, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 3, f. 2.

²⁰ Tirana, Hysni Kapo to Koço Prifti, 19 January 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 1.

²¹ Gnoinska, ‘Promoting the “China Way”,’ 354; AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 1. In a document of 1970, when the Albanian authorities celebrated the fifth anniversary of Mijal’s party, they recalled the key moments of Mijal’s activities, including his exile, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1970, D. 4.

²² Tirana, Hysni Kapo to Koço Prifti (undated, probably January 1966), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 1, f. 11.

²³ Tirana, Information, 3 January 1971. Some remarks of comrade Mijal regarding the moving of his wife to Albania, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1971, D. 7, f. 1–2.

²⁴ Information, 21 April 1966, AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 12, f. 4.

²⁵ Notes from the conversation between Enver Hoxha and Kazimierz Mijal, 30 April 1966, in Tirana, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 4.

²⁶ Report of the Foreign Directorate, 21 September 1971, on the assistance provided by the Party of Labour of Albania for the Communist Party of Poland (m-l), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1971, D. 2, f. 4.

²⁷ Tirana, Information of the party Foreign Directorate, 25 August 1966 [on the correspondence of Mijal], in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 10. Correspondence between Mijal and his comrades in Poland, 10 November 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 11.

²⁸ Minutes of the meeting of Enver Hoxha with Kazimierz Mijal in Tirana on 27 February 1967, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1967, D. 1, f. 17.

²⁹ Ibid., f.29–30. Rokossowski was purged during what is known as the ‘Polish October’, in 1956 when Gomulka returned to power and purged some of the old Stalinist guard; see Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (London and New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 276–7.

³⁰ Elidor Mëhilli, “Defying De-Stalinization. Albania’s 1956,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 4 (2011): 4–56; and Ana Lalaj, Pranvera e Rrejshme e ’56-s. [The deceptive spring of 1956] (Tirana: Infbotues, 2015).

³¹ Tirana, Enver Hoxha, ‘On the Polish Communist Party [Mijal],’ 30 July 1967, extracted from his diary, f. 7–13.

³² AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1971, D. 2, f. 4.

³³ Tirana, Report of Koçi Zengo, 15 April 1967, on his meeting in Warsaw with the members of the KPP (m-l), St. Brodziński and H. Chełchowski, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1967, D. 6, f. 33–36. The Polish names in the documentation are often inaccurate because they are referred to only with the Albanian transliteration.

³⁴ Tirana. Notes and biographic data of some members of the leadership of the KPP (m-l), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1972, D. 23; AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1970, D. 4; AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1972, D. 23.

³⁵ Tirana. Minutes of the conversation during the meeting between Enver Hoxha and Kazimierz Mijal, 23 March 1968, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1968, D. 1; copy of the accusations of the Polish prosecutors against Stanislaw Brodziński, Zbigniew Osten, Eugeniusz Baranowski, and Stanislaw Wiktorowski, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1968, D. 7.

³⁶ Tirana. Information, 17 March 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 2, f. 1–6.

³⁷ Tirana. Information, 18 April 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 12.

³⁸ Ibid., f. 31.

³⁹ Tirana, Report of the Foreign Directorate, 12 July 1966, regarding some issues with the Belgian Communist Party (m-l), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 13, f. 6–7.

⁴⁰ AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 5, f. 28–30; Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes, 70–1.

⁴¹ AQSH, F.14, AP-PKB, V. 1950 – V. 1966; AQSH, F.14, AP-PKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1950 – V. 1966.

⁴² Delwit, Les gauches radicales en Europe, 321; Secret: Report on the meeting with the member of the Communist Party of Belgium (m-l), (undated, autumn 1962), in AQSH, F.14, AP-PKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1962, D. 3.

⁴³ Delwit, Les gauches radicales en Europe, 355.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes, 70 [text in original: avec autant d’honneurs qu’un gouvernement étranger’]. Translation is mine.

⁴⁶ Tirana. Notes from the meeting between Hysni Kapo, Ramiz Alia, Pirro Bita, and Jacques Grippa, 11 November 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 9.

⁴⁷ Tirana. Information, October 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 13, f. 9–10.

⁴⁸ Tirana. Information, December 1966, in ibid., f. 18.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Tirana. Information of the Foreign Directorate, 11 June 1964, in AQSH, F.14, AP-STR, V. 1964, D. 626, f. 3–6.

⁵¹ Tirana. Information of the Foreign Directorate, 25 June 1964, in AQSH, F.14, AP-STR, V. 1964 D. 627, f. 11–17. For a comparative study of the North Korean and Albanian regimes see Elidor Mëhilli, ‘States of Insecurity,’ The International History Review, vol. 37, no. 5 (2015): 1037–58.

⁵² Tirana. Information of the Foreign Directorate, 6 April 1964, in AQSH, F.14, AP-STR, V. 1964, D. 819, f. 10.

⁵³ Alessandro Brogi, Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). The author, among others, outlines and analyses the differences between the two parties, arguing how the French Communist Party was ‘more subordinate to the Soviet dictates’ (p. 15).

⁵⁴ Tirana. Minutes of the conversation between Hysni Kapo, Ramiz Alia, and Kazimierz Mijal on 19 November 1969, regarding the visit of Mijal in China, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1969, D. 2.

⁵⁵ Among the many contributions on the Chinese Cultural Revolution see Jicai Feng, Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China’s Cultural Revolution (San Francisco: China Books, 1996); Barbara Barnouin and Changgen Yu, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution (London and New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1993); Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006); and Yiching Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

⁵⁶ Tirana. Information, 6 September 1966, on some issues raised by comrade Mijal, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 12, f. 11–12.

⁵⁷ Tirana. Information, 17 October 1966. Some opinions of comrade Kazimierz Mijal about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 12, f. 12, and D. 14, f. 2.

⁵⁸ Minutes of the conversation between Enver Hoxha and Kazimierz Mijal in Tirana, 27 February 1967, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1967, D. 1.

⁵⁹ Tirana. Information about the meeting of comrade Mijal with the Chinese delegation, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1966, D. 19, f. 1.

⁶⁰ Tirana. Information on the visit of comrade Kazimierz Mijal to China, from 14 November to 29 December 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1966, D. 20, f. 1.

⁶¹ Ibid., f. 3–4.

⁶² Ibid., f. 33.

⁶³ Ylber Marku, “China and Albania: The Chinese Cultural Revolution and Cold War Relations,” Cold War History, vol. 17, no. 4 (2017): 367–83.

⁶⁴ Minutes of the conversation between Hysni Kapo, Ramiz Alia, and Kazimierz Mijal on 19 November 1969, regarding the visit of Mijal to China, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1969, D. 2, f. 10.

⁶⁵ The visit of comrade Mijal to China, 14 November–29 December 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 20.

⁶⁶ Ibid., f. 44.

⁶⁷ Marku, “China and Albania.”

⁶⁸ The issue was also raised by scholars during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. See Benjamin I. Schwartz, “The Reign of Virtue: Some Broad Perspectives on Leader and Party in the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1968).

⁶⁹ The visit of comrade Mijal in China, 14 November–29 December 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1966, D. 20, f. 44.

⁷⁰ Ibid., f. 46.

⁷¹ Tirana. Vasil Jani (Kazimierz Mijal) to Pirro Bita (International Liaison Department), 19 June 1967, with information addressed to the Chinese embassy in Tirana, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1967, D. 17; notes of Koçi Zengo, July 1967, in ibid., f. 5.

⁷² Ma Jisen, The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2004); Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Chinese Foreign Policy during the Cultural Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and Melvin Gurtov, “The Foreign Ministry and Foreign Affairs during the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly, no. 40 (1969): 65–102.

⁷³ Information on the last mail from Poland, and the conversation with Mijal, 1969 (undated, probably February 1969), in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1969, D. 10, f. 5–9; information, 21 November 1969, on the talks held in Beijing in October 1969 between Kazimierz Mijal and the Chinese comrades headed by Kang Sheng, in AQSH, F. 14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1969, D. 19, f. 4–5. About the concept of Trotskyism instead see A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States (New York: Praeger, 1988). For more on international Trotskyism, see Robert Jackson Alexander, International Trotskyism, 1929–1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).

⁷⁴ Notes from the meeting of Ramiz Alia and Xhaferr Spahiu with Jacques Grippa in Tirana, 16 August 1967, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 5, f. 28.

⁷⁵ Records of the meeting of comrades Hysni Kapo and Ramiz Alia with comrade Jacques Grippa, 11 November 1966, in AQSH, F.14, AP-PKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1966, D. 9, f. 15.

⁷⁶ AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 5, f. 30.

⁷⁷ Ibid., f. 34.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Ibid., f. 34–43.

⁸⁰ Ibid., f. 35.

⁸¹ The text of the book can be found at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm (last accessed 8 March 2020).

⁸² Benjamin I. Schwartz, China and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 172.

⁸³ Notes from the meeting of Ramiz Alia and Xhafer Spahiu with Jacques Grippa in Tirana, on 16 August 1967, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 5, f. 39.

⁸⁴ Ibid., f. 40.

⁸⁵ Ibid., f. 40–41. Years after his return to the United States Rittenberg wrote a book on his experience in China. See Sidney Rittenberg and Amanda Bennett, The Man Who Stayed Behind (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001).

⁸⁶ Marku, “China and Albania.”

⁸⁷ Tirana. AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 7, f. 12.

⁸⁸ Hoxha wrote his opinions on the notes extracted from the records of the Grippa-Alia meeting, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 6.

⁸⁹ Schwartz, China and Others Matters, 172.

⁹⁰ AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 7, f. 1.

⁹¹ Ibid., f. 14.

⁹² AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), Jacques Grippa, V. 1967, D. 8.

⁹³ ‘Declaration and the resolution of the Belgian Communist Party (m-l): On the denunciation of the revisionist line of Jacques Grippa; On the solidarity with the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution’, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKB (m-l), V. 1967, D. 1.

⁹⁴ For an account of the protagonists of the Sino-American rapprochement first, and normalisation later, see Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Press, 2011); John H. Holdridge, Crossing the Divide: An Insiders’ Account of Normalisation of U.S.-China Relations (New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).

⁹⁵ Qingdao (China), 22 July 1971. Information sent by Koçi Zengo on Mijal’s opinion regarding the meeting of Zhou Enlai with Henry Kissinger, in F.14, AP-MPKP (m-l), V. 1971, D. 13, f. 8–11, AQSH.

⁹⁶ Ibid., f.12. For an analysis of how the Soviet threat boosted Sino-American rapprochement see Evelyn Goh, “Nixon, Kissinger, and the ‘Soviet Card’ in the U.S. Opening to China, 1971–1974,” Diplomatic History 29, no. 3 (2005): 475–502; and Kuisong, “The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969.”

⁹⁷ Beijing, 3 June 1971. Information from Koçi Zengo, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1971, D. 12, f. 13–21.

⁹⁸ Tirana, Report of Enver Hoxha to the Sixth Party Congress on 1 November 1971, in AQSH, F.14, OU, V. 1971, D. 14, f. 26

⁹⁹ Tirana, Minutes of conversation of Hysni Kapo and Ramiz Alia with Kazimierz Mijal, 20 October 1971, regarding the visit of Mijal in China, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1971, D. 2, f. 5–6.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., f. 14.

¹⁰¹ Tirana, Information, December 1971, on the letter Kazimierz Mijal addressed to the CCP regarding the lack of publication of the declaration of the talks of Mijal with Chinese leaders during his visit in 1971, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1971, D. 15.

¹⁰² Tirana, Information, 5 February 1972, on the new raids of the Polish security against the Polish Communist Party, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1972, D. 4, f. 1–4.

¹⁰³ Tirana, Information, 28 June 1972, on some issues emerging from the mail of comrade Mijal in June 1972, in ibid., f. 13–15.

¹⁰⁴ Tirana, Information 22 June 1974, on the activities of the PCP, in ibid., f. 1–4.

¹⁰⁵ Enver Hoxha, 19 August 1974, ‘The Issue of the Polish Comrade Mijal’, in AQSH, F. Enver Hoxha, Personal Diary, V. 1974.

¹⁰⁶ Tirana, Information, 27 July 1974, on the meetings and the conversation with Osten, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1974, D. 4.

¹⁰⁷ Tirana, Information by Agim Popa, 27 July 1974, in AQSH, F.14, AP-MPKP, V. 1974, D. 5, in ibid., f. 11.

¹⁰⁸ Enver Hoxha, 19 August 1974, ‘The Issue of the Polish Comrade Mijal’, in AQSH, F. Enver Hoxha, V.1974, Personal Diary, f. 6–7.

¹⁰⁹ “They Condemned me to Silence and Passivity,” Interview with Kazimierz Mijal, January 1980, in Revolution 4, no. 3 (January 1980).

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Ylber Marku

Ylber Marku finished his PhD in History in 2017 at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and is currently appointed Postdoctoral Research Fellow in World History at the School of International Relations/Research School for Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, China. Dr. Marku has published, among others, with The International History Review in 2019, with Cold War History in 2017, with the Shanghai based Journal of Cold War International History Studies, in 2016, and another article is forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies. His research focuses on the Sino-Albanian Cold War relations, Albania’s communist past, East European History, the history of the International Communist Movement, the Global South in the Sixties, and China’s relations with Eastern Europe.