Word: skanderbeg
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Peeling Gumshoes. Elsewhere in Communist Europe, the once familiar busts and images have disappeared, but recent visitors to Albania, notably a group of German journalists, still find the old Stalin pictures-and the old Stalin touch-in a ramshackle Balkan setting. In the capital city of Tirana, wide Skanderbeg Square boasts three white-uniformed traffic cops on duty-but no traffic for them to direct. Heavily-armed police and soldiers stand guard before ministries and embassies, on street corners, in parks, in front of and behind hotels. Other guards, toting machine guns, pace before the residences of top Red officials...
Albania's favorite national hero is Skanderbeg, a ferocious Turk-fighter of the 15th century. Another Albanian, Mehemet Ali, conquered Egypt, and it took the combined efforts of Britain, France and Czarist Russia to keep him out of Europe by sinking his fleet in 1827. Modern Albania won its independence from Turkey in 1913, and a German princeling named William of Wied was selected by the Great Powers to be its King. William could stand Albania for only six months. Ten years later, Ahmed Bey Zogu, son of a tribal chief, successively became Prime Minister, President and then King...
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