Communism Balkan Style-Four Articles
GAGE, ELIZABETH POND / ROBERT LITTELL / ADRIAN JAFFE / NICHOLAS
Communism Balkan Style - Four Articles An Exercise in Sofiology By Elizabeth Pond SOFIA Five months and one secret trial later, no outsider yet knows what happened. It still remains a matter of...
...In the same speech, Chernev said said that Americans do not appreciate the depth of feeling that ties Bulgaria to the Soviet Union...
...The consensus seems to be that nationalists of probably conservative hue banded together with various other malcontents on the basis of opposition to the status quo, and that the division of spoils and policy was to be decided after victory-a dangerous but not unprecedented course...
...Assuming the existence of a conspiracy, or worse, the question naturally arises: Who were the conspirators...
...In 1963, Bulgaria got 90 per cent of its tractors and 70 per cent of its trucks from the Soviet Union...
...In Bulgaria's case, however, the plot supposedly called not for politicking among the members of the Central Committee, but for surrounding the Central Committee and arresting as many members as might be necessary to seize power...
...families have to share units...
...Suslov, working through the Soviet ambassador in Tirana, found two willing candidates to lead the conspiracy: Koco Tashko, president of the Party Auditing Commission and a former envoy to Moscow, and Uri Belishova, the highest ranking woman in the Party and a power in the Central Committee...
...One high Bulgarian Communist, Purvan Chernev, head of the Foreign Ministry's Americas Department, complained that the United States refuses to believe that Bulgaria is an independent and sovereign country...
...And there was Tsolo Krustev, Chief of the Asian department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
...The changes in the Army may be interpreted as a certain insurance against disaffection, and the trial may be interpreted as a mild preventive purge and a warning to anyone who might think that thing can be done in the old Balkan style of military takeover...
...Stalin," Hoxha said in a 1957 speech, "was never mistaken in such questions as the fight against imperialism and other enemies of Socialism...
...The other "plotters" were a former teacher, a former employe of the Central Cooperative Union, and a journalist (who, despite his 10-year sentence, somehow escaped the damning adjective "former...
...Great Britain severed relations with Hoxha in 1946, after two British destroyers were sunk by Albanian mines in the Corfu channel and the Albanians refused to pay damages, even though the World Court said it should...
...The relative unimportance of the people sentenced (there is every reason to believe Bulgarian protestations that even General Anev was only a protocol figure rather than a real commander of troops) and the absence of notable shifts of governmental personnel since April 7 indicate that things are running smoothly...
...Rumania's so-called declaration of independence, a statement by the Communist party issued in April 1964 (which insisted on the "principle of non-interference in other parties' domestic affairs") stirred Bulgarians...
...Eight months later, following the Hungarian Revolution, the gap between Tirana and Moscow widened further when Khrushcbev refused to back Albania's attempt to blame the revolt on Yugoslav revisionism...
...The bulk of income is thus spent for food, clothing and a variety of consumer items...
...With added subtlety, a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press section went around to all the Westerners and inquired casually if they had met the general and found him interesting to talk to...
...I think we will go the way of Rumania," he yelled over the sound of the band...
...Vasil Makarski, Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, was suspected by Western observers- only to be trotted out with much fanfare to represent Bulgaria at an international conference in Western Europe...
...instead there is genuine pride in the achievements of the past 20 years and in the development of a new national posture...
...So we said, 'Now the ax will fall,' and we waited for what would surely follow...
...He looked around, then back at me...
...he blames the new leaders for the "Soviet crimes against Albania" no less than he does Khrushchev...
...There is no question that the success of the Rumanian "experiment" has hurt Bulgaria's pride...
...the statistical (proclaiming various achievements of the regime such as increases in the production of milk, oil, steel, and electric power) and the hortatory (urging the workers of the world to unite, wishing long life to the Rumanian People's Republic, and occasionalADRIAN JAFFE, who teaches American and comparative literature, was a Fulbright professor for the last year at Bucharest University...
...The Albanian felt no personal love for Stalin, but Stalinist methods were keeping him in power and he could not afford to give up the symbol of Hoxha experienced an even greater shock when the Soviet Premier delivered his 1956 "secret speech" denouncing Stalin...
...The indignant BTA release of April 22, the first even semi-official word on the events, was surely one of the classics of information mismanagement...
...The small Fiat costs 38,000 lei (about $3,100 at current exchange rates), but only a few private citizens have managed to save enough to buy them...
...Mao Tse-tung could not himself openly attack Khrushchev at the time...
...The majority of Bulgarians view close ties with the Soviet Union as beneficial, or at least see no particular advantage in loosening the ties...
...therefore, they must have had someone else in mind, whether or not such a person actively participated in their plans...
...It still remains a matter of conjecture whether the "events" of April 7 in Sofia amounted to an attempted coup, a conspiracy, or simply a mild preventive purge...
...The Chinese are in no position to give Hoxha the assistance Albania requires...
...It wasn't enough that the hapless general was introduced to every chief of mission present...
...In addition, the fact that the trial was closed, despite earlier hints of an open trial, lends credibility to the rumor (denied by the BTA) that those arrested refused to confess and continued to maintain their purity as Communists and their loyalty to Bulgaria...
...Among the more popular Western authors are Dreiser, C. P. Snow, Hemingway, Faulkner, London, Sillitoe, Wain, and Braine...
...Hoxha experienced an even greater shock when the Soviet Premier delivered his 1956 "secret speech" denouncing Stalin...
...Hoxha then began to defend Stalin, publicly, although cautiously because he had not yet found a new patron...
...Chernev's estimate is probably a fair one...
...He was and remains an exemplary figure...
...Lunch is eaten at four, dinner as late as 10 or 11 P.M., and work goes on six days a week...
...Rumania's Brasov factory, which used to manufacture Soviet-designed trucks, switched two years ago and now produces 20,000 Rumanian designed vehicles every year...
...Hoxha does not want to tear down the Stalinist trappings that keep him in control, but he wants very much to build up Albania economically...
...Those with intimations of intellectuality have been seduced into becoming functionaries...
...Albania's standard of living is the lowest in Europe...
...Here fruits and vegetables tend to be fresher than in the State stores, where prices rarely vary, and the laws of supply and demand operate...
...Too many people remember their horrible experience in the inter-war period, and they don't want this kind of instability again...
...Of those sentenced, only Anev and Krustev had been named prior to the announcement of the military tribunal's decision...
...They speak and they are listened to...
...A final subject of speculation has been Luchezar Avramov, a powerful, young (in his 40s) Central Committee secretary born and trained in the So viet Union, and often viewed by foreign diplomats as a likely successor to Zhivkov...
...Bulgaria, on the other hand, has gone through the post-1956 ritual of deStalinization (changing, for example, Stalin Boulevard back to its old name, Vitosha Boulevard...
...English language books are available mainly in Russian editions, with prefaces in Russian, or in a series printed in Budapest...
...He withdrew the Soviet submarines guarding Albania from the Sixth F1eet, recalled all Soviet technicians, terminated all credit and shut off all aid...
...Hoxha protested that the rehabilitation of Xoxe would open the door to the Yugoslavs again and place his position, indeed his life, in danger...
...Many Russian- speaking foreigners find that Bulgarians dislike speaking Russian, though the languages are probably the closest of any two Slavic tongues...
...In any case, stability can result from resignation, and Bulgarians are resigned to their present lot...
...A new French envoy sent to Tirana several months ago was received with a warmth not accorded a Western diplomat in 20 years...
...Yet, Hoxha, remembering the years Italy controlled and ruled Albania, does not feel safe dealing with Rome either...
...Clothing is expensive but available...
...The wooden carts, covered with plaited rush tops, sway and creak precariously in their long lines, posing a particular hazard at night because of the Rumanian custom of turning off headlights when a car approaches from the opposite direction...
...We were walking through ZUM (a stepchild of Moscow's GUM), Sofia's largest department store, and from a window you could see the red star on top of the Party House...
...He came back when the Red Army liberated us...
...The twist, though, was the order of the night...
...But it has become something of a fence-sitter between Moscow and Peking...
...it has actually voted against the Soviet Union in the United Nations a number of times, and is opening trade and cultural channels with the West...
...Hoxha refused, and the alienation from Moscow began...
...So effective are the Sigurimi, so brutal are the reprisals against relatives, that Albania has had the fewest defections of any Communist country...
...The Italians, pleased when the Soviet submarines went home in 1961, quickly negotiated an agreement doubling trade with Albania to $8 million a year...
...Bulgaria always looked to St...
...The Bucharest radio carries music ranging from Mozart to Brubeck, delightfully free from the moronic vaporings of disc jockeys...
...Always dependent on outside help, its lone period of progress since the War was made possible by large-scale economic assistance from the Soviet Union...
...Unimpressed, Khrushchev told Hoxha in his frank and paternal way that he was shocked at the pretentiousness of the improvement programs and at the Stalinist methods still evident everywhere...
...for the favor, but the visitor today finds that more and more Bulgarians seem to think it has been paid in full...
...If it was aimed, as it said, at stilling "arbitrary" and "tendentious" speculation stirred up by the Western press, it achieved just the opposite effect by its vague wording...
...Flattered, Hoxha took Khrushchev on a tour of the country to show him the changes that were taking place...
...Now, slowly, year by year, that changes," she added...
...Just what his absence proves one way or another is less clear...
...Seven hundred years ago we were a strong Balkan power...
...The prospect of a dull life in a dull provincial backwater is probably less of an offense to a university graduate in Bulgaria than in any other Eastern European country...
...But this is the first one I've seen run by the head of city hydraulics, a city garrison commander, and a section chief in the foreign ministry...
...In the face of both legends, Alexander and his horse have remained understandably unmoved In 1878 a Russian Army, under Alexander's orders, swept the Turks out of Bulgaria and ended almost 500 years of Ottoman rule in the country...
...The thin blanket of industrialization the Communist regime has woven provides little warmth for the majority of citizens...
...and newly-married couples find it hard to get a flat of their own...
...If this assumption does not prove the seriousness of the plotters' challenge to the leadership, it at least indicates that in 1965 there are limits to the regime's authority and that offenders cannot be browbeaten-either physically or morally-into confessions of anti-state activity...
...Both suffered from great poverty and illiteracy, adhered to the Orthodox religion, depended upon agriculture for income, and had large surplus labor forces and low productivity...
...Examples of Russification persist, though, like Georgi Dimitrov's mausoleum in Sofia, which is a carbon copy of Lenin's tomb in Red Square...
...Albania, of course, has never been a country on the move...
...one group was singing, in faulty English, "I want-to-be-In-Ah-mer-ee- kah, O-K-by-me-in-Ah-mer-ee-kah...
...The man in the street throughout Eastern Europe, between chuckles, interpreted the denial as sure confirmation that something serious had indeed happened...
...We thought it was American propaganda...
...Khrushchev persisted...
...When products are available, many of them are expensive-sugar costs $1.20 a pound, butter $1.75, meat $2 and coffee $4...
...On one recent visit here, I found myself in the midst of a youth festival...
...Staples and some delicacies, canned and frozen, are remarkably good, although supplies are sometime unpredictable...
...Fortunately, the presence of some Russians in the Bulgarian-Rumanian defense forces meant that the "invasion" could be allowed an initial success and then be gracefully repulsed...
...But the country most in need of change has barely budged...
...We don't need thick walls and small windows...
...The Rumanians themselves are gregarious, cheerful, highly civilized and intelligent, with a passion fot music, art, literature and the theater...
...the butcher shops have fresh beef on occasion, but it is cut in such curious ways that the Westerner does not know quite what to order...
...Fourth, the Kremlin coup of last October provided a ready model for the overnight displacement of a Communist leader...
...Taking no chances, he lives in a fortress surrounded by high walls in a barbed-wire encircled area of Tirana that no one is allowed to approach...
...Along them, with Burma-Shave frequency, are billboards of two categories...
...A good pair of shoes costs almost a month's salary, and a man has to work a month and a half for a decent suit...
...This attitude, he said in a speech delivered after the April "coup," hurts Bulgarian pride...
...We are behind the other countries...
...Soon Chinese delegations began to arrive in Tirana, the staff of the Chinese Embassy became the largest diplomatic mission in Albania, and in November 1957 Ho xha received a $25 million loan from Peking...
...In the presence of all delegates, he stood up and denounced Khrushchev as a "traitor to the Communist idea, a weakling and a revisionist.' "You have covered me with dung, comrade," Khrushchev roared after the attack...
...The Rumanians greeted the news with pointed silence...
...Shortly afterward, Russia broke off diplomatic relations with Albania following which all the East European ambassadors were recalled from Tirana except the Polish envoy, who was given a caretaker's vigil...
...He goes whenever he can get the chance...
...1 don't know what the answer is," he said, "but whatever it is, it must come from Sofia and not Moscow...
...Barring a political miracle, therefore, the Albanian people can only look forward to more of the same narrow bureaucracy, the same brutality, the same poverty they have known now for 20 years...
...Derogation of Western culture is seldom heard...
...As one diplomat commented delicately: "I've seen a lot of coups in my time...
...Hoxha was infuriated...
...since neither people nor carts carry tail lights, it is often impossible to avoid serious collisions...
...Stalin," Hoxha said in a 1957 speech, "was never mistaken in such questions as the fight against imperialism and other enemies of Socialism...
...The people said, 'It is like the Russians and therefore it is good.' But we have a Mediterranean climate...
...The rules of the game seem to demand that two approaching vehicles grope blindly toward each other in pitch darkness...
...The well-publicized joint military games of last summer, when Soviet troops and artillery parachuted onto Bulgarian territory, were taken as a warning that although the Red Army withdrew from Bulgaria after the War and from neighboring Rumania in 1958, it can return at will...
...The apartments, four to a floor, consist mainly of one or two bedrooms, kitchen, bath, and small vestibule...
...Evidence of factionalism within the Bulgarian government in the past three years has been compared by some observers with that under Hungary's first Nagy government in the early '50s...
...Among the Rumanian intellectuals I have met, there is, in general, a kind of liberalism-a recognition of the existence of different views and an avoidance of narrow defensiveness...
...About 80 per cent of Bulgaria's trade is with Communist countries, and more than 50 per cent is with the Soviet Union itself...
...A third person had been named earlier: He was Ivan Todorov- Gorounya, head of the Central Administration of Water Economy and member of the Central Committee, who committed suicide -if suicide it was-long before the trial...
...The unmoving horse and rider in the square, along with other items of lingering Russification, are a kind of LO.D...
...Instead they stayed on, treating the country as a province and Hoxha as a provincial official...
...Rumors proliferated in the wake of the curt press release, among both Bulgarians and foreigners...
...Half of the men still wear the Turkish tar bush and the baggy pantaloons generally abandoned in other Balkan states 40 years ago, and most of the women wear traditional peasant dress...
...Thus Hoxha was quite shaken when Nikita Khrushchev came to power and decided to attempt a reconciliation with Tito...
...Second, Zhivkov and his colleagues took power by deposing Prime Minister Anton Yugov at the Eighth Party Congress in 1962, and those who rule by coup are liable to overthrow by coup, especially in a country which is, after all, Balkan, despite 20 years of Communism...
...There is an old legend that if a virgin walks in front of the horse it will lift a front leg and salute...
...Right now, for example, we stay in the Common Market (he meant COMEON-East Europe's version of the European Common Market) because it helps us...
...The young man answered his own question: "It was during the Stalin period...
...They came out of the same Ottoman mold at the same time (Bulgaria in 1878, Rumania a year later...
...Far enough not to arouse his xenophobic sensibilities, powerful enough to be of considerable help, and independent enough not to get Hoxha involved with his many enemies, France is the kind of patron he is looking for...
...While such words angered Moscow, they delighted Peking...
...there are performances of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Sophocles and Rumanian authors as well as ballet, puppetry, and opera...
...And one meets a number of Bulgarians who talk openly of their dislike of the Russians...
...When he comes home he always tells me how wonderful everything is there, how advanced it is, how it should be our inspiration...
...The latter view holds that neither Anev, Krustev, nor Todorov-Gorounya had the stature to take over the post of First Secretary...
...One Albanian in five either serves in the Armed Forces or works for the Sigurimi, the dreaded secret police...
...Italy, on the other hand, has been responsive and helpful...
...They were generous for a brief period after Moscow cut off its aid, but have delivered little that they promised...
...In many respects the problem stimulating Bulgarians-both young and old-is pride...
...With the Russians behind him, Hoxha ruthlessly purged Titoists from the Party, executed Yugoslav officials, incited the 700,000 Yugoslavs living in the Kosmet region of Yugoslavia and issued violent denunciations of Tito...
...Even before the trial defendants were named and convicted, it was obvious that Army officers were involved in the thick of the plot...
...Stalin's tragedy was that when he made serious mistakes, he thought they were necessary for the protection of the Revolution...
...Most observers, however, ELIZABETH POND is a British correspondent traveling in the Balkans...
...The other Eastern European countries, which tend to regard Bulgaria as a somewhat bucolic and flat-footed cousin, saw ample confirmation of their view in the BTA statement...
...Perhaps the clearest indication of how far Rumania has come, and how far Bulgaria has to go, was the way the two nations reacted when Premier Khrushchev "retired" last October...
...Hoxha refused to apologize, but was clearly frightened...
...They help us build factories...
...Purges, sudden arrests and executions are still commonplace...
...The withdrawal of Soviet assistance blasted Hoxha's dream of making Albania an industrial nation and shattered the economy...
...Their arrest "for hostile activities" was announced in September 1960, and the two were never heard from again...
...The leadership went to some lengths to placate the Army...
...he needed Soviet aid for the Great Leap Forward he was planning in China...
...Bulgaria immediately announced that it approved of the change-the only East European country to do so Nowhere are Bulgaria's ties to the USSR clearer than in the sphere of trade...
...Moscow was apparently sufficiently concerned to send ideologist and Central Committe member Mikhail Suslov to Sofia to look things over at the end of May, just before the trial...
...He was and remains an exemplary figure...
...What Hoxha would like to do most is strengthen his relations with France, which has never occupied, dominated or abused Albania...
...The highways from the west cross green valleys, go over high mountains and curve through delightful gorges...
...Shortly after the Soviet Premier visited Yugoslavia in June 1955, Hoxha received a note from Moscow suggesting the posthumous rehabilitation of one Koci Xoxe, a founder of the Albanian party who had been executed as a Titoist in 1949...
...In the last few years Bucharest, which refused to be a mere breadbasket for the Communist bloc, has doubled its trade with non-Communist countries and reduced its trade with Communist countries...
...Since rents are the same in the old mansions, and do not vary according to neighborhood either, there is little relation between where a family lives and its economic condition...
...He kept this up for years, secure in the belief that Belgrade and Moscow would remain enemies and he would be on the stronger side...
...There were seven price cuts during the last five years Russia was supporting Albania, and there has not been a single one since the Chinese became the providers...
...A French cultural office has opened in the capital, and Rumanians can read Steinbeck, Saroyan and Kerouac in translation...
...Hoxha then began to defend Stalin, publicly, although cautiously because he had not yet found a new patron...
...As for the West, Albania has had no diplomatic relations with the U.S...
...Television sets, radios, washing machines, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, while not cheap, are well within reach of many Rumanians and they are plentiful...
...Word of the Rumanian "experiment" (that is what the Bulgarians call it-an experiment) has seeped into the country via tourists and on the radio...
...By 1959, Khrushchev was sufficiently concerned about the alliance to fly to Tirana and try to win Albania back...
...ROBERT LITTELL is an international affairs editor of Newsweek...
...On a more general level, it would be a mistake to think that discontent in Bulgaria is the kind which moves governments...
...The many American-style supermarkets are clean and spacious, with attractive displays and modern counters...
...Though the countryside itself is neat, the roads are crowded with disorderly clusters of cars, carts, domestic fowl, people, and livestock...
...If you keep your headlights on, even dimmed, you unleash a furious war of blinks...
...Criminal case :#:2/1965 is no:" closed in the Bulgarian books...
...Despite pressure from Moscow, he refused to downgrade the Soviet dictator...
...He joined the resistance movement orzanized by Yugoslavs who moved into the country when the War broke out and began to curry their favor: A handsome, ambitious, and proud Balkan with a slight stutter that lends his speech a certain charm, he had no difficulty winning Yugoslav approval and was tapped for the Albanian Party leadership...
...The "nothing-happened" case can be briefly and less vaguely stated: In Bulgaria so little has changed for so long that one tends to lose perspective and perceive geological movements in ripples...
...But we will keep the plants...
...Then, at the 22nd casu Congress in October 1961, he denounced Hoxha and made it clear that Albania would be ostracized by the Soviet family of states...
...I asked him what he thought the answer was for Bulgaria...
...He has always been a good Communist...
...There were five "former officers" (to borrow the laconic BTA terminology), the highest of whom was General Tsvetko Anev, Military Commandant of Sofia...
...You will wash it away...
...Third, there is an undercurrent of anti-Russian feeling in the country, despite Bulgaria's traditional Russophilism...
...to 4 P.M., with no lunch break...
...In his May 9 speech to the Rakovsky Military Academy, for example, Zhivkov stressed the Army's loyalty to the Central Committee-s-and, significantly, to Bulgaria's close ties with the Soviet Union...
...That ended four years ago when Moscow severed relations with Tirana...
...Second, that the art of Sofiology lags behind that of Kremlinology Bulgaria's Restless Youth By Robert Littell SOFIA A large equestrian statue of tsar Alexander II dominates the central square in Sofia...
...At one extreme in the gamut of conjecture there is the view that a would-be coup was blocked within a few hours of realization, and that even now the most highly placed of the conspirators have been allowed their freedom and anonymity on good behavior to prove to the world the solidarity of the Bulgarian leadership...
...At any rate, there have been no conspicuous absences at the top since April 7. In a month flush with parades, all the expected people turned up on the reviewing stands for the May Day, World War II Victory Day, and Day of the Alphabet (May 24) celebrations...
...Last year Italy raised the status of its diplomatic mission in Tirana to full embassy rank...
...I saw many of the things he saw...
...He avoided Khrushchev for the rest of the visit and as soon as the Soviet leader left, he resumed his attacks on the Kremlin...
...There is little possibility that he will be deposed...
...An effort has been made to avoid monotony by painting them different colors, setting them back from the road, placing them at various angles and allowing for air and space, with plazas and wide boulevards...
...But Mao wanted a mouthpiece and he quickly recognized that he could have one in Hoxha...
...So we copy the Americans...
...The man chiefly responsible for this state of affairs is Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Albanian Worker's party, who has ruled since the Communists came to power at the close of World War II...
...Practically, the Bulgarian economy is linked with the Soviet economy...
...In Sofia, a government-paid English language expert was translating To Kill A Mockingbird into Bulgarian because it was "progressive," but he could not get his hands on a dictionary of English slang to help with the Southern idiom of the novel...
...And the final Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) press release committed itself only so far as to call the men "plotters," a not altogether bold advance in precision over earlier circumlocution...
...Hoxha cannot industrialize his country until he secures a sound economic foundation...
...For Rumania's slow-paced and successful de-Russification has made Bulgaria's young people jealous...
...Air Force Commander- in-Chief Lieutenant General Slavcho Trunski was rumored to be under arrest-only to turn up rather conspicuously as the one uniformed guest at a reception for the Finnish Foreign Minister...
...The only major private sector of the economy is the produce market, where peasants sell the products of the small parcels of private land they have been permitted to retain...
...When it did not come, when the Russians did not act, when instead Rumanian Communists began to travel to Washington and Paris and Moscow and Peking and were received with dignity, then we decided, 'This is where Bulgaria must go.' We must stand on our own feet...
...Sometimes a dead truck waits to be taken to the junkyard, or an old bus shaking with differential ague stands forlorn in the exact center of the highway...
...Everyone is salaried by the State except licensed artisans-shoe repairmen, dressmakers, seamstresses, watch repairers and the like-who have their own little shops...
...He cannot make up with Moscow - even though Khrushchev's successors have made some moves toward reconciliation -because he still fears Yugoslavia...
...Probably no one now believes, however, that the people involved were seriously pro-Chinese, even if they were old Stalinists...
...The case for the "coup" view runs as follows...
...The Red Chinese had to buy 2.2 million bushels of wheat from Canada in 1961 and send it directly to Albania to meet a serious food shortage, and they had to provide $123 million worth of credit to save the country from economic collapse...
...It was duly noted that Avramov was out of the country on April 7, as he was the last time some anti-governmental action appeared to be brewing...
...Notes on Rumania By Adrian Jaffe BUCHAREST Like switzerland's, the Rumanian countryside gives the impression of having been swept...
...In addition, he has admired French culture since his student days in Paris...
...We need large windows and aluminum...
...The comparison of Rumania and Bulgaria is a natural one for everyone concerned...
...The Army people named were in the World War II partisan movement together not far from the Yugoslav border, and presumably were closely associated with the Yugoslav partisans...
...The bread on most tables of the average Albanian is black, hard, and carefully rationed...
...Albania -the smallest, poorest, most backward state in the Communist world -has kept its Iron Curtain tightly drawn...
...In the south most of the city streets are very rough cobblestone, of the kind one would have found along the rundown sections of the Appian Way...
...Our people liked Russia-but not wisely," a young girl told me...
...He then went on to promise more military hardware and a better life for officers...
...Many of them require you to choose an item, ascertain its price, stand in line to pay at the cashier's desk, then stand in line again with your receipt to pick up your purchase...
...since 1939, and Hoxha has been so rigid in his hostility toward Washington in the last 20 years that an about face seems impossible...
...Salaries vary: A factory worker will get around 1,500 lei ($120) a month, a full professor 4,000, a shop clerk 900, plus allowances for children...
...When Bulgarians learned that I had recently been to Rumania, they invariably asked for details...
...The military tribunal of the Bulgarian Supreme Court sentenced nine defendants to imprisonment for up to IS years simply for still-unspecified "activity incompatible with the law...
...He suggested that Albania forget about industrialization and concentrate on becoming a supplier of food, raw materials and Adriatic beach resorts to the rest of the bloc...
...Pointing to the massive Stalin-Gothic Party House in downtown Sofia, a young Bulgarian asked: "Why did we build those big buildings in the center of town...
...Now I wonder if we are talking about the same country, my father and I." And a teacher in Plovidov observed: "I have no doubt that the Russians were our friends, but somewhere along the way they started taking advantage of the friendship...
...He has, for example, laced the capital city of Tirana with wide, well-paved roads, and placed smartly uniformed policemen at every intersection-even though there are less than 1,000 automobiles in the whole country and the policemen wait endlessly to guide a single car through...
...There had been no attempted coup, it said, and calm reigned in the country...
...Finally, the aftermath suggests that there was a significant threat to Zhivkov's leadership...
...Foreign movies are presented in the original without dubbing...
...adding simply: "Certain persons" had "violated the laws of the country...
...Soviet secret police-who everyone agrees foiled the plot-probably got wind of the potential danger months in advance and kept an eye on the ringleaders thereafter, working with the Soviet Ambassador in Sofia, Georgi Organov...
...Americans, for the most part, have never realized that the bonds between Bulgarians and Russians were honest and strong-so strong, in fact, that Bulgaria refused to declare war on the Soviet Union in World War II despite intensive German pressure...
...Well-placed Party members and Sigurimi agents live a little better than others...
...Since then, Hoxha has been trying to get the kind of economic aid Albania needs from Communist China, but he has received only enough to keep the country from sliding backward...
...Albania: Island of Misery By Nicholas Gage TIRANA Since the first liberal breakthrough nine years ago, much has changed in the Communist bloc...
...Rents are negligible, medical care is free, schooling is free, jobs are secure, pensions are assured, vacations at the seaside or in the mountains are paid for...
...He was able to do little about the situation until he secured Russian support when Stalin broke with Tito in 1948...
...Bulgaria has been rewarded for its loyalty in the past by Soviet credits, and in its low state of economic development it cannot risk the withdrawal of Soviet aid...
...But apparently Charles de Gaulle does not feel Albania is worthy of his attention, for he has not responded to Hoxha's overtures...
...A mountainous nation the size of Maryland that is wedged between Greece and Yugoslavia, Albania remains as over-armied and undernourished, as oppressive and xenophobic as any Soviet satellite in Stalin's heyday...
...Rumania is still a tightly-controlled Communist country, to be sure...
...It wants Albania to remain separated from Moscow and the West so the Strait of Otranto-i-the door to the Adriatic- will not be controlled by a major power...
...The only signs remotely resembling advertising are those announcing the virtues of Peco, the State-owned gasoline which is the only available brand...
...Indeed, wherever one goes he has the feeling of being in a pre-World War II atmosphere...
...Elected tenant committees deal with local problems...
...Both fought on the German side in World War II, were occupied by the Red Army, and turned to Communism after the War...
...Household appliances are so out of range that the average worker would have to sacrifice a year's salary for a small refrigerator...
...Moreover, an intelligentsia that might eventually provide alternative leadership, or an alternative policy, is singularly lacking...
...Although it has a population of only 1.8 million, and almost half the work force is NICHOLAS GAGE, a Balkan specialist, writes for Associated Press engaged in agriculture, it is a land of food shortages...
...Indeed, the fact that no high-level personage has been implicated can be taken to indicate either the unimportance of the plot or the existence of bigger fish who are still at large...
...Clean and fresh, it has none at the usual Balkan untidiness...
...Our diplomats speak-and everyone yawns because everyone knows just what they will say...
...The First Secretary's active travels about the provinces in the past five months carry overtones of an ex post facto fence-mending tour...
...His singularly energetic touring of the country and opening of new factories hither and yon, in the company of Prime Minister Georgi Traykov, prompted one Sofia diplomat to comment that Organov has been acting less like an ambassador and more like a governor-general...
...An estimated 45,000 Albanians have been executed since the Communists began to gain power in 1944, and about 20,000 political prisoners still languish in primitive jails...
...Although Albania has survived the boycott, it has not been able to make any significant progress...
...They resemble the design of American cars circa 1951, so that one sometimes feels one is living in the past, surrounded by vintage Buicks and Chevrolets and such Lazarus-like cars as Packards and La Salles...
...He left the conference a week before it ended and stayed close to his Tirana fortress in the next months, afraid that Khrushchev would have him killed A quick death, however, was not what Khrushchev had in mind...
...Bookstores are numerous and crowded, with handsome, cheap editions of Rumanian authors and of many foreign writers in translation...
...The evidence we have to go on is so slight as to be meaningless, and no Westerner has access to the inside story...
...First, there is large-scale dissatisfaction at all levels of Bulgarian society, and it is generally conceded that Communist party First Secretary Todor Zhivkov is quite unpopular in the country...
...But if we build that way they say, 'Ha, you copy the Americans.' So what...
...The Albanian felt no personal love for Stalin, but Stalinist methods were keeping him in power and he could not afford to give up the symbol of 16 his authority...
...The conspirators have been variously identified as Titoists, proChinese, anti-Russians, nationalists, conservatives, liberals, revisionists, and even decentralizers...
...The 1962 coup in itself is cited as proof of this, as is the 1963-64 turnover at the Party cell and district level, and the accompanying deportations from Sofia...
...While most of the villages are strung out along the highways, without cross streets or town centers, the cities are large and bustling, with wide streets, well-tended parks and a sense of openness...
...Off in one comer a Bulgarian student talked politics with me...
...Rumania has become a thorn in Moscow-oriented Bulgaria's side...
...Last year I had a chance to go there myself...
...The Soviet Union has built 120 factories in Bulgaria and is committed to build more...
...From the meager evidence available, two conclusions can be reached: First, that there certainly is continuing opposition to Zhivkov in the Party and in the Army, but how far this extends or how readily it might be focused into united action is moot...
...In a few years when we are industrialized we may leave it...
...Any country that preserved its national identity under five centuries of the Turkish yoke+in the natural order of Bulgarian syntax "yoke" follows "Turkish" as night follows day-must have a strong national pride...
...In the Army too, despite the fact that all the higher officers are Moscow- trained, there are grumblings about Bulgarian servility to the great Soviet Union...
...The Yugoslavs, however, did not leave Albania after the War as Hoxha had hoped...
...He needs a trained labor force, access to machinery and spare parts, liberal trade agreements and extensive credit...
...There are good reasons for this interest...
...What we are we owe to them, of course, but what we shall become-for that we must be independent...
...Should you fail to get the message, the offended driver often comes to a full stop, like a neurotic subterranean insect immobilized by being able to see...
...that indeed, as the Bulgarian government said, a few wishful thinkers were apprehended before they had an opportunity to form any real organization...
...In the past year, a number of Fiats have been imported under an agreement with Italy, and it is rumored that next year there will be imports of Volkswagens, Renaults and Citroens...
...Hoxha remembers, too, that Suslov was the man who tried to depose him...
...At the start of World War II Hoxha, son of a merchant wealthy enough to have him educated in Paris, was a school-teacher in a small Albanian town...
...Many feel that the West let them down between the wars and that it will do nothing to redeem itself now Similarly, although anti-Russian feeling exists in Bulgaria, its potential effect should not be exaggerated...
...He assigned Mikhail Suslov- the man who was to engineer the Soviet leader's own downfall later-the task of inspiring willing elements in the Albanian party to overthrow Hoxha...
...On the Black Sea I met a young student who remarked, "My father spent the War years in Russia...
...The pro-Chinese theory leaned on Krustev's role as head of the Asian department of the foreign ministry, Anev's known friendliness with the Chinese military attache, and the sudden return to Sofia of the Chinese Ambassador, who arrived shortly after April 7 following a three-month absence...
...Even if something should happen to Hoxha, those in line to succeed him-Premier Mehmet Shehu, 52, and Foreign Minister Behan Shytlla, 46-have reason to share most of his fears and cannot be expected to behave any differently...
...There is also a new legend: If a young Bulgarian walks past who likes the Russians as much as his father did, the horse will rear up on its hind legs and stand at attention...
...But the building boom has not kept pace with needs, and shortage of housing presents problems: There are strict priorities...
...They are all in the same style: about eight stories high, with small balconies and large windows...
...The Chinese have built 25 new plants and have helped meet some of the conspicuous goals of the Five-Year Plan ending this December, but the standard of living is still not what it was before the boycott...
...The price of a single egg, for example, rises to two lei (about 26 cents) during the winter, and drops to one in the summer Shopping is something of an adventure in the larger stores...
...All this means Albania is likely to remain a bleak island of misery as long as Enver Hoxha rules...
...hundreds of students crowded into the main room upstairs, twisting and turning in front of a band until the early hours of the morning...
...Hoxha's grip on the Armed Forces and the secret police is tight and he has been able to crush all opposition...
...The average monthly industrial wage is 7,500 lek (about $60...
...At first we couldn't believe it...
...The Soviet Ambassador also has stepped up his already numerous contacts with regional Party leaders...
...doubt Bulgaria's aptitude for such dangerous finesse, and some contend that nothing happened...
...Rumania, in fact, is topic A in Bulgaria...
...such efforts failed when masters like Suslov and Tito were behind them...
...On the other hand, they also represent the conservative Stalinist-trained element that has resented the incursions of the young "technicians...
...Supermarkets carry frozen packaged meats, mainly pork...
...The Rumanians hold their heads up all over the world," one young girl complained...
...Some of the older buildings are in bad repair, some streets are worse than others, some sections do not have gas-but there are no Western-type slums The Rumanian work day is a long one, from about 7 A.M...
...While this does not seem much, it has to be measured in terms of purchasing power...
...Hoxha's opportunity to get even with the Soviet leader came at the Conference of 81 Communist Parties in November 1960...
...Since the War he has been back [to the USSR] a number of times-vacations, cultural exchanges, exhibitions...
...By 1963 Rumania had "liquidated" the Russian bookstore, the Gorki Institute of Russian Studies, the Rumanian edition of the Soviet magazine New Times, the obligatory study of the Russian language in the schools, and a map full of Russian street names...
...The maneuvers, as a matter of fact, presented a ticklish problem: The landing obviously had to succeed, while the defense couldn't be made to look too bad either...
...The larger cars are quite out of reach in price Wherever you turn, in Bucharest or in the provincial cities, new blocks of apartment houses are rising...
...Groups of students, arms linked, wandered past a lone Marine standing guard in front of the American Legation, where the windows had been smashed in government- organized anti-American riots...
...When other Moscow pressures failed to bring Tirana into line, Khrushchev decided to have Hoxha deposed...
...ly requesting greater consumption of tomato juice...
...The defendants were remarkably low- and medium-level men...
...They are light and airy, have good central heating and hot water, and are well maintained...
...Within the power structure, discontent has been especially widespread among Army officers and among partisans and old-guard Communists, who feel that their own careers have been unjustly slighted to benefit the younger generation of "technicians" with more education but a great deal less proven political reliability...
...Trucks and buses of Rumanian manufacture are numerous, but most of the private cars, which have been coming into the country more frequently in the past year, are from Iron Curtain countries: Volgas and Moskwitches from the Soviet Union, Wartburgs from East Germany, Tatras from Czechoslovakia...
...In Bucharest, de-Russification started with the 1952 ouster of Moscow loyalist Ana Pauker and her clique...
...Bulgarian leaders, though, apparently do Dot wish to admit that the bonds between their country and the USSR have worn thin, that young Bulgarians, born and raised during and after World War II, do not consider themselves in Moscow's debt "A thousand years ago my country reached from the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea," a student said as he showed me around Turnovo, the capital of 12th-century Bulgaria...
...He would like to be the ruler of a modern, industrial nation, and in fact, tries to give the impression that he does rule such a state already...
...But Tashko and Belishova failed disastrously...
...At the height of the festival there was a gala dance...
...We read a copy in English brought in by some Polish tourists," a student vacationing on the Black Sea recalled...
...In some shops, however, a sign proclaims with great pride: "Here You May Pay the Clerk DIRECTLY...
...Rents, however, are low-$16 a month maximum...
...Petersburg as a Slav savior from the Turks, and some of this aura remains...
...This common background highlights today's differences...
...As long as the Soviets remain on good terms with Tito, Moscow could serve as a back door to Tirana for the Yugoslavs...
...Other shortages include such staple diet items as fat, beans and rice...
...With Chinese credit in his pockets, the Albanian leader found new energy to press his attack on Kremlin policies...
...The English have thought little of the Albanians since, and they did not receive a trade mission from Tirana a while back with any enthusiasm...
...Then we read it again and decided that it sounded like a Communist party document...
...Hoxha is thinking about going elsewhere for help, but he has no place to go...
...In a basement room a dozen students surrounded an older man who played a guitar and sang Russian folk songs...
...Theaters are jammed...
...Now we are a Communist country that nobody outside of Russia ever heard of...
...Since he is only 56 and in excellent physical condition, that may well be a long time...
Vol. 48 • September 1965 • No. 18
