When people talk about “stability” as one of the achievements of recent decades, I often think of the leader of communist Albania, Enver Hoxha, who ruled the country from 1945 to 1985.

At first, Albania under his rule differed little from other Eastern European neighbors – the construction of a “people’s democracy” was in full swing, Soviet specialists helped to create industry, and peasants were herded into collective farms. Over the course of 15 years, a fairly stable system of socialist management with typical pluses and minuses was formed. Despite any reservations and excesses, the economy grew quite dynamically, and the standard of living for the majority of the population increased.

When the winds of change blew through the USSR in the form of the thaw and the debunking of the personality cult, Hoxha decided that all these phenomena were dangerous for socialist stability, broke off relations with the Soviet Union and relied on Maoist China in his foreign policy. Stability was preserved, but economic development suffered greatly: the severance of economic ties and the end of Soviet support put an end to plans for the forced industrialization of the country.

After the reformist contagion spread in China in the mid-1970s, Hoxha once again chose stability over cooperation, fell out with his last ally, and found himself completely isolated. Over the next decade and a half, socialist Albania became an analogue of today’s North Korea – without allies and economic partners, surrounded by enemies, and completely dependent on Juche.

However, if the level of stability inside the country increases, while in the external environment it decreases, an effect similar to the effect of pressure difference in bordering environments arises. The greater this difference, the greater the risk that instability from outside, having broken all the barriers erected, will flood the small island of Albanian stability.

To counter this threat, the Albanian leadership cut off all cultural and economic contacts with the outside world, and seriously and consistently prepared to repel aggression from the Warsaw Pact, NATO and Yugoslavia at the same time. An incredible number of various types of defensive structures were built to protect stability. According to various estimates, by the end of the 1980s, in Albania, which has a population of less than three million, there were between 500,000 and 700,000 (!) defensive structures.

Among them were underground air bases for 50 aircraft, underground submarine bases, shelters for armored vehicles and anti-aircraft guns. However, the overwhelming majority were ordinary machine gun pillboxes scattered at road intersections, heights, and even just in yards and gardens. For every 4-5 Albanians, including the elderly and infants, there was one pillbox. It is hard to imagine, but for every Albanian family, deprived of a personal car and often a separate home, there was almost a guarantee of a separate pillbox.

Photo.

Europe outside the EU: How and what Albania lives

Politics / Photo

But every process has its downside: stability had to be paid for with mobility. And in the most literal sense.

By 1991, there were, according to various estimates, only 5,000–7,000 cars for 2.7 million people in Albania. This is approximately 30 times less than the number of cars per 1,000 people in the late USSR, or 5 times less than in modern North Korea. There were approximately 100 times fewer cars in the country than pillboxes.

Albania is a small country, half the size of, for example, the Moscow region, but any movement within it for its own citizens was extremely difficult.

In order to visit relatives in a neighboring village, a special permit was required; to visit a city, papers were sometimes processed for months. Even between different districts of the same city, there was a pass system. Different districts had different populations and different supplies, so ordinary Albanians could never in their lives get, for example, to one of the central districts of the capital, where the party nomenklatura lived.

The mobility of Albanian citizens was extremely limited in every sense, but they could enjoy incredible stability. A leader who had been constant for 40 years, a constant party policy without significant fluctuations, social and economic stability, 100% employment and housing close to work. They simply had no need to leave their place of life and work. Why? And we must not forget that any mobility threatens stability, at least of thought, and only then of politics.

Nothing lasts forever, and the stability of Enver Hoxha's political regime did not long outlive its creator. Although three years later than its neighbors in the socialist camp, in 1992 the winds of change swept away all stabilizers and the communist dictatorship fell. After 46 years of stability, Albania found itself the poorest country in Europe, and Albanians, hungry for mobility, dispersed throughout the world as labor migrants.

It’s not that I want to draw far-fetched parallels, but I can’t help but notice that as stability has increased in our country, mobility has also for some reason begun to decline: Russians, on average, have begun to travel abroad significantly less, the previously rapid growth of the national vehicle fleet has practically stopped, contacts with the outside world have decreased at all levels, and there are even greater problems with vertical social mobility.

It's just that every process has a downside. Stability, even from the point of view of the very meaning of the word, is the absence of certain types of unwanted mobility.

It should not be forgotten that the first 15 years of Hoxha's rule were also extremely successful economically, with factories being built instead of pillboxes, and foreign specialists being the main driving force of modernization. However, all of this inevitably threatened stability, in the name of saving which it was necessary to sacrifice first economic growth, and then any unmotivated mobility in general.

The author is a candidate of economic sciences

Full version of the article. The abridged newspaper version can be viewed in the Vedomosti archive (smart version)

Albania's Experiment with Stability