How did relations develop between the Albanians remaining in Yugoslavia and the Albanians of Albania, how were cultural exchanges made possible, how did those who hoped to find the “Albanian paradise” end up in prison? The documentary film “The Red Border – Foreigners Among Ourselves” attempts to answer these questions. This film should be viewed by many viewers in Kosovo, Albania and wherever Albanians live, including the diaspora. The authors have done a valuable job of documenting an important segment of inter-Albanian history.
In 1946, British politician Winston Churchill, prime minister from 1940 to 45, first spoke of the Iron Curtain that cemented the division of Europe between communist and democratic countries. Around that time, another Iron Curtain was erected between the remaining Albanians in Yugoslavia and Albania, where a handful of communists with massive support from Belgrade began the journey to establish the foundations of a brutal dictatorship with North Korean features.
In 1946, at the height of the brotherhood of Albanian communists with Yugoslav ones, the new dictator Enver Hoxha said: “Democratic Yugoslavia is more advanced, more progressive than us. Our interest is that it be strong, because with a strong Yugoslavia there will be democracy in the Balkans. Is it in our interest to seek Kosovo? This is not progressive.”
Although in 1948 Enver Hoxha and Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito parted ways – the former remained loyal to Soviet dictator Stalin, the latter opposed him – Enver Hoxha maintained his respect for Tito, as his widow Nexhmije Hoxha testified in an interview with the German magazine “Der Spiegel” in 2004: “Although Tito later became our ideological archenemy, my husband (Enver Hoxha, vj) respected him as a factor of stability in the Balkans. When Tito fell terminally ill, Enver surprised me with these words: ‘I had wished he had lived a few more years.’” During his rule, Enver Hoxha adhered to the message that Stalin had given him in 1949 during a meeting in Sukhum near the Black Sea: “The Kosovo issue must be left in the background and not put in the foreground by you.”
To protect his regime, Hoxha could count on support from Yugoslavia. “Northern Albania has remained reactionary and uniting Kosovo with Northern Albania would mean easily suppressing the National Liberation War and the Government of Enver Hoxha,” declared Predrag Ajtic at the so-called Prizren Conference (March 1945), where it was “decided” that Kosovo would remain part of Serbia. Ajtic had been a Yugoslav communist functionary and a Prizren Serb. In July 1954, Ajtic was appointed Yugoslav ambassador to Tirana. Hoxha’s regime had no objections to him.
That was “high politics”.
And what was daily life like, how were and how did relations develop between the Albanians remaining in Yugoslavia and the Albanians of Albania, how were cultural exchanges made possible? These questions are attempted to be answered by the documentary film “The Red Border – Foreigners Among Themselves”, written by Admirina Peçi and directed by Rezart Shehu. This film should be viewed by many viewers in Kosovo, Albania and wherever Albanians live, including the diaspora. Much can be learned from it.
In 1955, a group of high school students were arrested in Tirana for daring to openly support Kosovo as part of ethnic Albania. Inspired by this event, the poet Arshi Pipa wrote the poem “Kosovo”, where the first stanza describes the gloom imposed by the communist regime in Albania: “Albanian brother, Kosovo is not ours. / Whoever dares to mention it commits treason! / O wretch who will never be forgotten! / Kosovo will rise, lie down and die in captivity”.
What this meant in everyday life is shown by the writer Primo Shllaku. Belgrade’s message to Tirana, according to him, was this: we do not interfere in your affairs, you do not interfere in our affairs (read: in the unresolved issue of Kosovo). Thus, Shllaku adds, history was divided between two parts of a nation.
But the ties could not be severed. There were people in Kosovo who took risks, crossed the barbed wire at the border and went to Albania with great expectations. Critic Behar Gjoka mentions in the film several personalities from Kosovo who, upon their arrival in Albania, as it were, with their very presence proved to Albanian society that beyond Vermoshi, Kukës and Pogradec, Albanians also lived.
Many of them were viewed with suspicion by the regime and cultural functionaries in Tirana. Linguist Selman Riza ended up in prison both in Yugoslavia and in Albania. Professor Rexhep Ismajli has written a brilliant paper on Riza’s difficult path (“Passions and Sufferings of Selman Riza”, published by the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, 2009). Agim Gjakova was a talented author and, according to Behar Gjoka, he was mentioned along with Ismail Kadarena, Dritëro Agolli, Fatos Arapi – “but he was followed by the shadow of coming”. Coming from Kosovo. This was a kind of stigma.
Sadri Ahmeti, later a famous painter, also paid a very high price. In 1957, he escaped from Montenegro to Albania, together with his three brothers. He did not find the imagined paradise, but prison. For a month he was kept in isolation and under pressure to admit that he was an agent of the Yugoslav services. He was sent to a camp in Llakatund, Vlora. When, finally, he was given the right to study, the notorious Sigurimi still did not leave him alone. They asked him to write 70 pages against his friends. Sadri Ahmeti, originally from Vuthaj, handed over 70 pages without a single letter on them. They arrested again “the man who only smiled” (as Behar Gjoka testifies in the film).
Also impressive is the testimony of the writer Nazmi Rrahmani, who for decades directed the publications of the Kosovo “Rilindja” enterprise and built the first bridges of cultural cooperation between Pristina and Tirana. It seems incredible how many years passed until the communist regime in Tirana allowed the publication of books by authors from Kosovo. It was not until 1970, 25 years after the Second World War, that Nazmi Rrahmani’s novel “Malësorja” and a volume of poetry entitled “Për ty” were published in Tirana. These are the first two works by Kosovo Albanian writers to see the light of day in Tirana.
At that time, “Rilindja”, according to Nazmi Rrahmani, imported about 50 books a year from Tirana with 1000 to 5000 copies. Albania was very restrictive and imported few books from Kosovo. Suspicion was high, especially towards writers like Anton Pashku, who were labeled as decadents who wrote “obscure verses” (according to a document of the communist censors of Albania).
Together with a group of young authors, Pashku declared war on socialist realism through a manifesto published in 1971. Influenced by French literature and especially by representatives of the anti-novel movement such as Nathalie Sarraute, André Gide, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor, Anton Pashku wrote the novel “Oh”, an attempt to connect Albanian literature with the literary trends of Western Europe. Not only did this literary experiment hinder the censors in Tirana. Writing in Ghegnish, as Anton Pashku had practiced in the novel “Oh”, was also frowned upon.
In 1973, Albania’s very short phase of liberalism in the field of culture came to an end. During a visit to Tirana, Nazmi Rrahmani noted with shock that “people did not want to meet”, they turned away out of fear when they saw authors from Kosovo. Albania decided to deepen relations with China and expand the cultural revolution according to the Chinese model. This lasted until 1978, when China gave signals that it wanted to get closer to the United States of America. In December of that year, the visit of the Chinese communist leader, Teng Hsiao-ping, to the USA was announced. In late January and early February 1979, Teng Hsiao-ping visited Washington and several American states. In Atlanta, the Chinese communist leader visited the Coca Cola factory and signed an agreement to allow the famous American company to enter the Chinese market. Enver Hoxha called Teng Hsiao-ping’s new political course a betrayal of communism. This is where the “Albanian-Chinese brotherhood” ended. Now Enver Hoxha, the great opponent of capitalism and Coca Cola, decided to play the role of the nationalist. In 1979, the famous writer Ismail Kadare visited Kosovo. In April of that year, the Albanian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra began a 17-day tour of Kosovo. Dejanira Cara, a cellist, recalls this trip in the film “Red Border – Foreigners Among Ourselves”. Her story reveals a world that from today’s perspective seems surreal. In Pristina, Dejanira Cara was impressed by the beautiful night, the city all lights, “Tirana at that time was dark”, she says. Then Cara describes the environment in the Grand Hotel, at that time a building that was supposed to symbolize the modernity of Kosovo. “There was a big bar (in the Grand Hotel), we had never seen it before, only in films, we didn’t think it could exist in Kosovo”, says Dejanira Cara. When the artists left Tirana, they asked to buy trees for the street, but “there was nothing”: “The store near Grandi had trees, vegetables, bananas, that we had never seen before.”
These testimonies are valuable not to illustrate the alleged superiority of one side or the other, but to reveal a world in which Albanians in the Balkans lived at that time – a world with borders, with obstacles, with poverty, with oppression. Some protagonists in the film cannot escape pathos or anecdotal stories without facts, but in its entirety the film “The Red Border – Foreigners Among Ourselves” is a valuable work to document an important segment of inter-Albanian history.