The ‘Lady Macbeth’ of communist Albania
The world of Cold War communist dictatorships was overwhelmingly male-dominated. Yet within some regimes were women who played a significant role. Examples including Madame Mao and Elena Ceausescu, who was executed by firing squad next to her husband.
Yet almost unknown outside her hugely isolated country was Nexhmije Hoxha, wife of Enver Hoxha who ruled Albania for several decades.
Unlike some first ladies, Hoxha, who has died aged 99, was not content to remain unheard. She served in several key roles in the Albanian Communist Party’s institutions, including promoting the cause of women’s education.
Yet there was a menacing side to this chilly, twinset-wearing woman with the scraped-back hair. Not for nothing was she known as ‘‘the Crow’’ and the ‘‘Lady Macbeth of Albania’’. Described as the only person her famously paranoid husband could trust, she joined in the persecution of his opponents and attempted to retain a grip on power after his death in 1985.
After the final overthrow of the regime in 1991 she was convicted of corruption and served several years in prison. But she showed no sign of repentance for her actions, nor for the catastrophic effects of communist rule.
Hoxha’s bond with her husband emerged from their shared experience of wartime. She was born Nexhmije Xhuglini in Bitola, now part of North Macedonia, but later moved with her parents to the Albanian capital, Tirana. While training as a teacher she joined the Communists in 1941 and, through them, became involved in resistance against the occupation of Albania, first by Mussolini and later, after Italy’s capitulation, by the Nazis.
As the war moved towards its end, she married another ambitious young member of the communist resistance, Enver Hoxha, and joined him in securing prominent positions in the party as it moved to monopolise political power.
First there was adulation of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Then, after a break with Moscow, came alignment with China. Religion was banned, with one cathedral turned ostentatiously into a basketball court. Nexhmije Hoxha even decreed that all foreign men entering the country had to have their moustaches and beards shaved off by customs officials.
When relations with China soured, the regime retreated into an extraordinary kind of self-imposed isolation, ruled by the elite around Hoxha and backed by the Sigurimi secret police. Its symbol was the building of hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers in a country with a population of only about 3 million.
The Hoxha family, however, enjoyed life at the apex of a privileged elite, with access to foreign goods, and foreign doctors to treat Enver’s poor health. Nexhmije took great care to control access to her ailing husband while trying to plan a succession favourable to her own political ambitions.
Even after she was jailed in 1993, there was no contrition. ‘‘I do not regret anything, and there’s nothing I should feel guilty for,’’ she said. ‘‘I continue to have faith in the communist ideal that will never die.’’
Around her, meanwhile, Albania embarked on the long road to recovery from the condition that decades of Hoxha rule had left it in. – The Times