Hoxha seems to have suspected what he was getting into with the Chinese as early as 1956, and wanted to have a detailed record. With Stalin and The Khrushchevites are later narrative accounts, based on extensive notes Reflections on China are selections from diaries written at the time. To judge from internal evidence, it was his experience with the Russians which led Hoxha to keep a diary during his alliance with China. This history of procrastination, secrecy, skulduggery and sabotage by Albania’s allies seems designed to prevent Hoxha’s successors ignoring his advice.
One is that Hoxha boiled over after decades of dreadful alliances with thuggish, boorish partners in Eastern Europe and China the other is that, as he began to contemplate his own demise and what he regarded as failed transitions in other Communist countries, he thought it wise to leave a solid information base for future generations. Why did this self-disciplined man suddenly decide to reveal so much? And is his account reliable? My feeling is that there are two main reasons for publication, the first of which also relates to the question of authenticity. He was the main political leader in the Resistance and, at 73, is the longest-lasting non-hereditary political leader in the world, having been in power since the liberation in November 1944.
He is quite cultured but you sense Western influence in his upbringing.’ He has been described as a ‘garrulous charmer’. Molotov is reported to have said of him: ‘He is very handsome and leaves a good impression. Hoxha came from a Muslim family, studied law briefly at Montpellier University and lived several years in France and Belgium. The paradoxes are many, not least that of the cultured brigand. Yet within the rigid framework of 100 per cent Stalinism lurks a shrewd and lively observer who can quote hunks of Byron to visiting British Army officers during World War Two. Over several thousand pages, the Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, vents his undying rage against ‘revisionism’, his wilfully blind adoration of Stalin, his fierce nationalism, in tones which are alternately aggrieved, suspicious and self-righteous. Now, suddenly, out of this hermetically-sealed country has exploded a series of volumes unprecedented in the history of world Communism, more remarkable and much more revealing than Khrushchev’s Memoirs. Albania has distinguished itself for secretiveness even among secretive Communist governments, vouchsafing little information to either its own people or the outside world.
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