Changing the Face of Power: The Literary Re-education of a Dictator

ABSTRACT

In communist Albania in the early seventies a controversial novel appeared from the hand of leading writer, Ismail Kadare. The dictator, Enver Hoxha appeared in an idealized role in the context of the break with Khrushchev’s post-Stalinist Soviet Union in 1961. However this was no mere panegyric. Kadare’s idealized image of Hoxha was motivated by the intention of educating the dictator, to remind him of the figure he had once (almost) been. In this paper I explain the logic behind Kadare’s risky attempt to instruct the dictator by means of the manipulation of his public image. Kadare carried out a strategy of literary mirroring of the persona of the leader back onto himself in a way that was unparalleled in the European socialist environment, where literary portraits of leaders were routinely modelled on Stalinist eulogy. The paper thus engages with aspects of the mobilization of political symbolism, and specifically with the attempt of a leading writer in the late Stalinist environment of Albania to influence the communist leadership through manipulation of the literary image.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Professor Peter Morgan (PhD) is Director of the European Studies Program at the University of Sydney. Key publications are in the areas of German and comparative literature, with particular reference to socio-historical and political contexts, and in the pedagogy of European Studies. Most recent book publications are: Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship (Cambridge: Legenda, 2010) and the edited volume, Text, Translation, Transnationalism in 2016, and articles have appeared in journals including, Zeitschrift für Germanistik, German Quarterly, German Life and Letters, The Modern Language Review, East European Politics and Society, Monatshefte, Journal of European Studies, World Literature Today, Thesis 11 and New Left Review. A comparative study of aspects of identity and change in the European modernist novel focusing on the exploration of masculinity and homosexuality is currently underway.

Notes

1 See Blendi Fevziu, Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016), esp. pp. 46–64.

2 This expression, used by Joseph Stalin in his ‘Speech at home of Maxim Gorky’, 26 October 1932, underpinned the development of Socialist realism by Andrei Zhdanov over the following years. See Alaina Lemon, ‘Sympathy for the Weary State? Cold War Chronotopes and Moscow Others’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51/4 (2009), pp. 832–864 (858).

3 Kenneth Jowitt defines ‘breaking through’ as ‘the decisive alteration or destruction of values, structures and behaviours which are perceived by a revolutionary elite as comprising or contributing to the actual or potential existence of alternative centres of political power’. Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania, 1944–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 8.

4 The Albanian Communist Party was founded on 8 November 1941 with Enver Hoxha as its elected leader. In September the following year the National Liberation Front and in mid-1943 the National Liberation Army were formed. After liberation of the country from German troops by November 1943, a provisional government was established and at national elections held in December 1945 the Democratic Front, the successor party to the National Liberation Front, won office with a landslide majority. In early 1946 the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Albania was promulgated by the Presidium of the Constituent Assembly. See Peter Morgan, Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship, 1957–1990 (Oxford Legenda, 2010), 10–18, and Owen Pearson, Albania in the 20th Century, vol 3, Albania in Dictatorship and Democracy: 1945–1999 (London: I. B. Tauris/Centre for Albanian Studies, 2006), p. 21.

5 Jean-Paul Champseix, ‘Communisme et tradition: un syncrétisme dévastateur’ in Sonia Combe and Ivalyo Ditchev (eds) Albanie Utopie: Huis clos dans les Balkans (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 1996), pp. 53–61 (p. 57).

6 See Elidor Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. Ithaca (Cornell University Press, 2017), p. 79.

7 Vladimir, Tismaneanu, ‘Lenin’s Century: Bolshevism, Marxism, and the Russian Tradition’ in Vladimir Tismaneanu, Marc Morjé Howard, and Rudra Sil (eds) World Order after Leninism: Essays in Honour of Ken Jowitt (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), pp. 19–33 (20).

8 Ibid., pp. 19–20, 22.

9 See Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 70.

10 Leninism involved the acceptance of the party’s claim to valid understanding of the laws of history as well as its messianic role. The Leninist principle of ‘party mindedness’ resulted in the infallible image bestowed on the General Secretary (see Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 77–78. Hoxha understood that the softening of the boundaries between the Party and the people, identified by Jowitt in Khrushchevism as the third, ‘inclusionist’, phase of Soviet-style communism, represented a danger to the stability of his regime. In this phase ‘the party seeks to integrate itself with unofficial, non-party sectors of society without yielding its authoritative claims to the “correct line”’ (Ken Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 88–120).

11 Tismaneanu, Sil and Howard, op. cit., p. 4.

12 Belishova features in Australian communist writer, Dymphna Cusack’s rapturous celebration of Albanian socialism in her documentary novel, Illyria Reborn (1966). After her visit in 1958, Cusack appears to have been unaware of Belishova’s fate after 1960 when she was imprisoned for pro-Soviet sympathies.

13 Pearson, op. cit., vol 3, p. 602.

14 Kadaré, Printemps albanais, p. 160; Albanian Spring, p. 154.

15 See Mëhilli,op. cit., p. 76.

16 See Mëhilli,op. cit., p. 74.

17 See Morgan, op. cit., pp. 37–38.

18 Cf. Kolakowski,op. cit., p. 90.

19 Kadare uses the term ‘post-dictatorial’ to express the difference between Albanian Stalinism and the environment of dissidents such as Havel and Solzhenitsyn, Printemps albanais: Chronique, lettres, réflexions; transl. Michel Métais (Paris: Fayard, 1991), pp. 62–63; Albanian Spring: The Anatomy of Tyranny; transl. Emile Capouya (London: Saqi Books, 1995), p. 64. All further references are indicated in brackets after the text. Structural changes and developments within Eastern European totalitarian states especially after the death of Stalin are analysed by Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, rev. ed. (San Diego: Harvest/HBJ, 1973), pp. 305–340, and Vaclav Havel, ‘The Power of the Powerless’, in Paul Wilson (ed) Open Letters: Selected Prose 1965–1990 (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), pp. 125–214. The concept of post-totalitarianism is discussed by Ágnes Heller, Der Affe auf dem Fahrrad: Eine Lebensgeschichte, bearbeitet von János Köbányai (Berlin: Philo, 1999), p. 402, and Das Alltagsleben: Versuch einer Erklärung der individuellen Reproduktion (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1978), pp. 55–65 and passim.

20 On Kadare’s early attitudes to communism, see Ismaïl Kadaré, Entretiens avec Eric Faye (Paris: Jose Corti. 1991), p. 97; Champseix and Champseix, L’Albanie ou la logique du désespoir (Paris: Editions de la Découverte) p. 218.

21 Robert Elsie, ‘The National Role of the Albanian Literary Journals’, in Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer (eds) History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries, vol. 3,The Making and Remaking of Literary Institutions (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2004), p. 93.

22 Shaban Sinani, Le Dossier Kadaré suivi de La Vérité des souterrains; trans. Tedi Papavrami (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), p. 128.

23 Ismail Kadaré, Dialogue avec Alain Bosquet; transl. Jusuf Vrioni (Paris: Fayard, 1995) p. 65.

24 Kadare writes that the Sigurimi was the ‘magic key’ to the regime and that it was controlled by Nexhmije Hoxha, Hysni Kapo, and Kadri Hazbiu, Minister of the Interior. Kapo and Hazbiu would both fall foul of the dictator and die under questionable circumstances. Ismail Kadaré, Le Poids de la croix, in Invitation à l’atelier de l’écrivain suivi de Le Poids de la croix; transl. Jusuf Vrioni (Paris: Fayard, 1991), pp. 311, 328.

25 Hoxha may perhaps have copied this strategy from Stalin. My thanks to Prof. Graeme Gill for this suggestion.

26 Kadaré/Bosquet, op. cit., pp. 44–45.

27 Kadaré/Bosquet, op. cit., p. 71.

28 Nexhmije’s motives in arranging Kadare’s access to the secret archive of the 1960 meeting are open to conjecture. She was a hard-line Stalinist devoted to maintaining the stability of the regime, her own and Enver’s position. Her judgements and actions appear to have been dictated entirely by dogma, not personal attachment. She was wily enough to recognize in Kadare potentially a valuable ally as well as a dangerous enemy by 1970 when his reputation had reached France (and probably before). Perhaps Nexhmije saw in this novel the means of making or breaking Albania’s only alternative voice to the regime. If Kadare were given the freedom to make irreparable mistakes in this novel about Hoxha and the break with the Soviet Union, he would be discredited for life, particularly with Enver, who had protected him in the past. If he succeeded in writing a novel acceptable to the regime, he would become unattractive to his supporters in the West. For Nexhmije, who viewed the world in black-and-white, there was no possibility of Kadare negotiating the fine line between these two extremes. See Fevziu, op. cit., pp. 185–200.

29 Ramiz Alia had been a member of the Central Committee and Secretariat of the Communist Youth Organization since the late forties, became Minister of education in 1955. In 1958 he became Director of agitation and propaganda in the Central Committee, and in 1960 Central Committee secretary for ideology and culture. At the Fourth APL Congress in February 1961, Alia was promoted a full member of the Politburo. When Hoxha suffered a heart attack in late 1973, Alia replaced Mehmet Shehu as Hoxha's second-in-command and closest confidant. After Shehu's death under suspicious circumstances in December 1981, Alia was appointed president of Albania, and was elected First Secretary after the death of Hoxha in 1985.

30 István Bibò, Misère des Petits Etats D’Europe de L’Est (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993), p. 47.

31 For a detailed study of the origins and history of this work, see Morgan, op. cit., pp. 139–155, and Fevziu, op. cit., pp. 185–200.

32 Thomas Schreiber, Enver Hodja: Le sultan rouge (Paris: J.-C. Lattès, 1994), p. 114.

33 Kadaré, Le Poids, p. 360.

34 Kapo was to die early, presumably of cancer at the age of 64 in Paris in September 1979, and Shehu apparently committed suicide under suspicious circumstances in December 1981.

35 Power resided in the networks of clans as well as in political and other allegiances. According to Jean-Paul Champseix, about twelve clans wielded power under the watchful eye of the dictator, see ‘Itinéraire d’une oeuvre inespérée’L’Oeil de Boeuf, 20 (May 2000), p. 39; see also Miranda Vickers, and James Pettifer, The Albanian Question: Igniting the Balkans (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 12, 28, 33.

36 Ismaïl Kadaré and Denis Fernandez-Récatala, Temps barbares: De l’Albanie au Kosovo, Entretiens (Paris: L’Archipel, 1999), p. 80. According to Kadare the average first print run in Albania was 30,000 copies, after which additional printings would reach 60,000–100,000 copies. Hence, he claims, his work was well known throughout Albania under the dictatorship. Cf. Kadaré/Faye, Entretiens, p. 79; Paul de Sinety, ‘Entretien avec Claude Durand’, L’Oeil de Boeuf, 20 (May 2000), 29–34 (p. 33).

37 Ismail Kadare, Le grand hiver; transl. Jusuf Vrioni (Paris: Fayard, 1978), p. 556. My transl.

38 Koço Bihiku, Histoire de la littérature albanaise (Tirana: Editions ‘8 Nëntori’, 1980), p. 222. My transl.

39 The 1999 paperback edition of L’Hiver de la grande solitude is, with minor differences, the same version as that printed in OEuvres, vol. 7, and is thus essentially the same as the first version of the novel. The main additions that Kadare made for the second edition in 1978 are suppressed. Kadare writes that passages were inserted into the second (1978) version, ‘qui laissent penser que le people fait bloc derrière ses dirigeants’, (‘which encourage the reader to think that the people rise up in support of their leaders’). These insertions were deleted for the 1999 paperback edition ‘qui, grosso modo, constitue un retour à la version originelle’, (‘which, more or less, constitutes a return to the original version’). Ismail Kadaré, L’hiver de la grande solitude (Paris: Fayard, 1999), rear cover.

40 Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (La trahison des clercs) (Boston: Beacon Press, [1927] 1959); Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New York: F. Praeger, 1957); György Konrád and Ivan Szelényi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power; transl. Andrew Arato and Richard E. Allen (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979); Alvin Ward Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (London: Macmillan, 1979).

41 Reinhard Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1976).

42 For figures such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer and Jacob Talmon the utopian became totalitarian in the historical process. Milovan Djilas (1957) and Gjörgy Konrád and Ivan Szeleny (1979) trace the ‘new class’ of the intellectuals or the bureaucracy back to Bakunin in 1870. See Theodor W. Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1986); Jacob Leib Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker & Warburg, 1952); Lawrence P. King and Iván Szelényi, Theories of the New Class: Intellectuals and Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. xvii; Djilas, op. cit., passim; Konrad and Szelényi, op. cit., passim; Rudolf Bahro, Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus (Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1977), pp. 135–206; Michael S. Voslensky, Nomenklatura: Die herrschende Klasse der Sowjetunion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (München: Nymphenburger, 1987), passim.

43 Johann P. Arnason, The Future that Failed: Origins and Destinies of the Soviet Model (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 30–31 and passim.