The beginning of the end of a rebellion: Southern Albania, May-June 1997

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 543-565

  Nicholson, Beryl ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033433199     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325499013003004     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. Piotr Sztompka, "The Intangibles and Imponderables of the Transition to Democracy," Studies in Comparative Communism 25:3 (1991): 295-312.
2. E.g., Franz Vranitzky, "Albanians did it all themselves," Illyria, #674, 18-20 October 1997.
3. "OSCE Asked Albanian Politicians to Honour Poll or Lose Aid," Albanian Daily News, 10 July 1997.
4. By this time the administration of the legal authorities had been restored and the so-called salvation committees had evaporated. One of the first tasks of the coalition government appointed on 11 March was to restore local government functions, which it did.
5. Klan, 1 June 1997.
6. Personal communication by telephone from an informant in Gjirokastër, 15 March 1997.
7. See Beryl Nicholson, "Inside Southern Albania May-June 1997," Albanian Life 62 (Winter 1997): 7-10, and "Down among the bandits: Fieldwork in South Albania May-June 1997," Network 69 (January 1998): 27-28.
8. See Beryl Nicholson, "Inside Southern Albania May-June 1997," Albanian Life 62 (Winter 1997): 7-10, and "Down among the bandits: Fieldwork in South Albania May-June 1997," Network 69 (January 1998): 27-28.
9. Marash Mirashi, "Tre milion pushkë i shpallin luftë qiellit," Koha jonë, 4 June 1997, 14.
10. My guess is that by early summer the bandits in the Gjirokastër and Tepelenë areas amounted to, at most, barely one in a thousand of the total population.
11. Albanian registration numbers, with a few notable exceptions, begin with the first two consonants of the district name, e.g., TR for Tiranë, TP for Tepelenë. The origin of any vehicle is thus immediately obvious.
12. tvsh (Albanian television), 30 May and 3 June 1997.
13. Stories are a part of Albanian life. They may or may not be absolutely true, but that is not important. Their message is conveyed by allusion, which has to be interpreted. They are distinguished from the bush telegraph, which conveys information quickly and, in my experience, reliably.
14. Le Monde, 11 March 1997.
15. Koha Jonë, 25 May 1997.
16. There was a story (see no. 12) that some buses from Tiranë that went along the notoriously dangerous road to Vlorë had disguised their license plates with white paint so TR looked like TP.
17. At that time the exchange rate for the lek was between 188 and 177 to the dollar (tvsh, 29 May 1997) and falling. In November 1996 it had been valued at 96 to the dollar (Kosta Barjaba, Cesaro Quinto di Cameli, and Luigi Perrone, "Storia di un disastro annunciato," Futuribile 1996, 2-3 [1997]: 31).
18. People in South Albania resent the way Albanian immigrants are treated in Greece, and they suspect that, whatever its public position, Greece maintains its illicit claim to their region.
19. cf., Jochen Blanken, "Pyramidengesellschaften und wirtschaftlicher Kollaps in Albanien," Albanische Hefte 26, 1 (1997): 8.
20. cf. Blanken, "Pyramidengesellschaften," 6.
21. Blerim Çela, "Untersuchungsbericht über die Firma Gjallica," Albanische Hefte 26:1 (1997): 14.
22. Blanken, "Pyramidengesellschaften," 7.
23. Blanken, "Pyramidengesellschaften," 8.
24. Whatever its financial position, Vefa's commercial activities apparently continued. An advertisement placed by Vefa Holdings in Koha Jonë on 1 June 1997 announced that Vefa Lines would start a weekly shipping service between Durrës (the port of Tiranä) and Patras (Greece) on 3 June. In October it was said to have started to make repay-ments to savers, but only to fifty per day, Le Monde, 3 October 1997.
25. Whatever its financial position, Vefa's commercial activities apparently continued. An advertisement placed by Vefa Holdings in Koha Jonë on 1 June 1997 announced that Vefa Lines would start a weekly shipping service between Durrës (the port of Tiranä) and Patras (Greece) on 3 June. In October it was said to have started to make repay-ments to savers, but only to fifty per day, Le Monde, 3 October 1997.
26. "Pyramid schemes declared illegal and those initiating or running them punishable by long terms of imprisonment," Abstracts Russian and East European Series (ABREES) 118 (1997): 1
27. "OSCE Asked Albanian Politicians to Honour Poll or Lose Aid."
28. Ibid.
29. The pretender's father, the self-proclaimed King Zog, went into exile in 1939.
30. Koha Jonë, 3 June 1997.
31. Even before recent events it was striking that people seemed to regard it as normal to have a political party identification. One might speculate that this was due to their experience of a highly politicized totalitarian state, now translated into pluralist terms. It extended to non-state institutions, too. In March 1997, the Catholic bishops had expressed their full support for Berisha (Barjaba et al., 1997, p. 33). During the election campaign, representatives of the three main religious groups (none of them looking comfortable) were in a prominent position in the audience at a televised PD rally in Shkodër (tvsh 31 May 1997).
32. See for example, Vranitsky, "Albanians did it all."
33. Kosta Barjaba, "La ribellione albanese: motivazioni regionali o politiche?" in Emmanuela C. del Re, ed., Albania punto a capo (Rome: Edizione SEAM, 1997), 212.
34. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth. The Remaking of Social Analysis (London: Routledge, 1989), 19.
35. Tobias F. Svenningsen, Albansk kultur og samfunn i 90-årene. En del av Europa? (Bergen, Norway: Forlaget Migrasjonslitteratur, 1997), 137. It has been suggested that anticommunist sentiment "largely subsided with the disappearance of the communist system," (Reginald Hibbert, "Dealing with the Dispossessed," The World Today 53:5 [May 1997]: 120). This is too broad a generalization. Anticommunists remain anticommunists, those who were never anticommunists remain socialists. Even in the south, in private at least, in 1997 the former matched the vehemence of their neighbors who were opposed to Berisha. I never asked direct questions about political allegiance. Many people gave their views quite openly, but with few exceptions in the negative terms of whom they opposed, not whom they would support in the election. Individual opinions have been carefully hidden to protect the confidentiality of informants.
36. Tobias F. Svenningsen, Albansk kultur og samfunn i 90-årene. En del av Europa? (Bergen, Norway: Forlaget Migrasjonslitteratur, 1997), 137. It has been suggested that anticommunist sentiment "largely subsided with the disappearance of the communist system," (Reginald Hibbert, "Dealing with the Dispossessed," The World Today 53:5 [May 1997]: 120). This is too broad a generalization. Anticommunists remain anticommunists, those who were never anticommunists remain socialists. Even in the south, in private at least, in 1997 the former matched the vehemence of their neighbors who were opposed to Berisha. I never asked direct questions about political allegiance. Many people gave their views quite openly, but with few exceptions in the negative terms of whom they opposed, not whom they would support in the election. Individual opinions have been carefully hidden to protect the confidentiality of informants.
37. Svenningsen, Albansk kultur, 120.
38. Stephan Lipsius, "Albanien - Dauerkrise oder Neubeginn?" Südosteuropa Mitteilungen 37:4 (1997): 250.
39. Jochen Blanken, "Unser Mann in Tirana: Politischer Kommentar," Albanische Hefte 26:1 (1997): 12.
40. Lipsius, "Albanien," 268.
41. Friedrich Wallisch, Neuland Albanien, 2nd edition (Stuttgart: Franck'sche, 1931), 110.
42. Field research coincided with France 98, which was probably watched by every Albanian male.
43. tvsh, 27 June 1998.
44. Personal communication.
45. Michael Schmidt-Neke, "555 Jahre und ein halbes: Vorläufige Bilanz des Machtwechsels in Albanien," Südosteuropa 46:12 (1997): 637.
46. As of June 1998, approximately US $60.
47. This is a deliberate reference to the irony of a slogan in the Leipzig demonstrations in 1989, "Keine Experimente mehr" (No more experiments), the experiment referred to being the communist system (Wolfgang Schneider, ed., Leipziger Demontagebuch [Leipzig and Weimar: Gustav Kiepenhauer, 1990], 128, 133). What has happened in Eastern Europe in the few years since then is, arguably, one of the most far-reaching social experiments ever undertaken.