Word: albania
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Inside the fence is a minute, mountainous country of 11,000 sq. mi. and 1,800,000 people, poor in living conditions, rich in anachronisms and completely alone in its bizarre comradeship with Red China, which began in 1961. That was the year that Russia broke with Albania because of Albania's support of Red China in the Moscow-Peking feud; Red China, in turn, quickly stepped in with a life-saving $125 million in credits. "Now," remarked an Italian businessman in the capital of Tirana, "the Chinese are here to stay, and stay, and stay." Fully...
Propaganda Tableau. Albania is using its own version of Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution to galvanize its lethargic citizens, and portraits of Mao and Party Boss Enver Hoxha hang side by side in shops and offices. Wall posters criticize laggard factory managers and party officials, women's high heels and short dresses, and everyone who dodges early-morning gymnasium classes. Like a propaganda tableau out of Red China, party members and intellectuals gather in the fields against a majestic background of snow-capped mountains, reading Hoxha's thoughts to the toiling farmers and spurring them...
...tropics where so many gorgeous displays of flowers, fruit and foliage bloom in such casual profusion. The Albanians are gradually enlarging and renovating existing hotels and building new ones to more exacting Western standards of comfort with an eye to eventually attracting more Western tourists. But so far, Albania lets in only a dribble of outsiders each year and carefully screens them; U.S. citizens and those of Greece, with whom Albania is technically still at war, are automatically barred from entry. They would probably feel uncomfortable anyway. In every town and village stand the real symbols of Albania...
...Western traveler, he can be fairly certain of one thing: he will never be run over. Only one of every 10,000 Albanians owns a car, and traffic is practically nonexistent. As a result, people stroll down the center of empty boulevards; Tirana is the only city in Albania with traffic cops, who stand idly at crossroads, waiting for the occasional passing...
...Guards" into the mountains a few months ago to increase the amount of arable land, has launched.a national drive to have Albanians plant and eat more potatoes. He has discreetly stepped up trade with Yugoslavia and Greece, both of which he continues to vilify. For all that, Albania has a very long distance to go before it gets even near the 20th century. An Albanian farmer earns only $32 a month; small locally manufactured radios cost $76. Worst of all is the high cost of Communism in terms of lost freedom, for which Albanians are still paying the highest price...