Word: albania
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...communist regime was in a position to fend off the wave of popular revolt that has washed over Europe in the past two years, the Party of Labor of Albania seemed the best bet. Since coming to power in 1944, Albania's communists have gone to great lengths to avoid all compromising entanglements with the outside world. Enver Hoxha, socialist Albania's founder, rejected all contact with the West and broke ranks with communist allies in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China when they deviated from strict orthodoxy...
...many of Albania's 3.2 million people, the elections alone offered insufficient hope of change. Less than a week before the voting, thousands gathered in the port city of Durres, drawn by fantastic rumors of waiting ships, including a ferryboat bound for Boston. Police fired automatic weapons over the heads of a stone-throwing throng trying to storm the harbor; 29 people, including 12 police, were reported injured. Earlier in March some 20,000 Albanians had scrambled aboard any boat bound for the nearest ports in Italy, and thousands more are desperate to leave...
...even in remote towns, pledged to introduce privatization through shock therapy, breaking up the country's agricultural collectives and allowing immediate land sales. Industrial conglomerates would be cut up into smaller chunks that could be bought and sold, even by foreigners. Democratic party co-leader Gramoz Pasko promised that Albania would be the first Balkan country after Greece to join the European Community...
...long. Following an emergency Cabinet session in Rome, Deputy Prime Minister Claudio Martelli declared that "this exodus cannot continue." The vast majority of Albania's visitors are "not political refugees but economic refugees," he said, and as such they fail to qualify for asylum under Italian law and will be returned home within a few days by Italian ships. That decision, doubtless influenced by Italy's 11% unemployment rate, was the most dramatic display to date of Western Europe's growing reluctance to receive waves of immigrants from the East...
Even after his death in 1985, Enver Hoxha dominated the town and city squares of Albania. Statues of the dictator were everywhere, including a 30-ft. bronze monolith in the center of Tirana, the capital. But the legacy of the Stalinist strongman has come under assault in recent months, and last week Hoxha's statues were falling. Students in the capital, demanding that Enver Hoxha University be renamed, threw ropes around the monument and brought it crashing down...