Every December in recent years, I think back to the time when Jeremy Corbyn, then the leader of the opposition Labour Party in my adopted country, the United Kingdom, quoted from a New Year’s speech that had a familiar ring to it. “This year will be tougher than last year,” he said. Corbyn’s words were familiar because he was quoting Enver Hoxha, the infamous communist leader of my native country, Albania, who added, “On the other hand, it will be easier than next year.” The comment caused an uproar, with some seeing it as evidence that Labour had turned into a Marxist cult, while others decried its insensitivity to the traumas left open by Albania’s communist past.
Under “Uncle Enver,” the Albania of much of my childhood was one of the most isolated places on earth, cut off from both the “revisionist” East and the “imperialist” West. It existed in its own time capsule, a harsh reality forged through loyalty, propaganda, surveillance, and the repression of dissent. Its sense of the future was shaped by past myths of heroic sacrifice and self-reliance, embedded in conspiracies of imminent foreign aggression.
Every New Year brought with it new paranoias, new shortages, new disciplinary measures, new calls for endurance. The only consistent investment the state made was in bunkers. How could one even remotely compare it to what was going on in the West?