JOHN NELSON WASHBURN* The People's Republic of Albania: Twenty-five Years Of Confrontation? + Introduction - How Present Sino-Albanian Ties Relate to the United States The People's Republic of Albania is strategically located, and rugged yet vulnerable. Its great importance to world peace despite its small size is best reflected in the graphic sentence contained in a telegram dated September 17, 1968 from Communist Party Chairman Mao, Communist Party Vice-Chairman Lin Piao and Premier Chou En-lai, addressed to Albanian Labor Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Mehmet Shehu, which appeared high on the front page of Peking's official Chinese-language daily, Renmin Ribao: If the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet modern revisionists and their running dogs dare touch a hair on the head of Albania, nothing but complete, ignominious and irrevocable defeat awaits them. Those prone to discount such a lopsided Asian-European military link, as at the most merely symbolic, should ponder the message published in the official English-language weekly Peking Review, No. 29, July 16, 1971, alongside the Hsinhua News Agency dispatch, announcing that Premier Chou En-lai and Dr. Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's Assistant for National Security Affairs, held talks in Peking from July 9 to 11, 1971. That message, dated July 9, was from the Minister of National Defense of the People's Republic of China to the Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Defense of the People's Republic of Albania, on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Albanian People's Army, and concluded: *Mr. Washburn, formerly attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser, Department of State, 1958-1966, and foreign affairs officer (consultant) to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department, 1970-1971, is currently a contract Russian language interpreter for the Department's Language Services Division. He was educated at Dartmouth College (B.A. 1946), John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (M.A. 1947), Columbia University (Certificate of the Russian Institute 1949, Ph.D. 1970) and University of Michigan (LL.B. 1957). +In view of the very detailed references given in the text of this lengthy article, the author believes footnotes are neither necessary nor desirable. Research for the article was made possible by a grant from the Earhart Foundation, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The People's Republic of Albania 719 Let us, the Chinese and Albanian peoples, unite with the people throughout the world and strive jointly to defeat the U.S. aggressors and their running dogs completely! A Review of United States Recognition Policies Toward Albanian Governments: 1921-1971 Since December 1921, the United States Government has continually been faced with appraisals and reappraisals of various Albanian governments, in order to determine the feasibility as well as the timing of according de jure recognition after considering conditions in that country, the stability of those in authority, existing or prospective American interests there, and whether or not other nations had arranged to accord de jure recognition. United States conduct towards Albanian Governments, in according and in withholding de jure recognition between World War I and II, as well as during and after World War II, can with the benefit of hindsight provide us with useful clues as to what approach to try in 1972 with respect to the People's Republic of Albania. The instances investigated and reviewed below in considerable detail, are believed to hold the key in charting our future policy in the direction of recognition. Prewar (1922) Recognition In July 1922, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes completed swift action to recognize an Albanian government, in the light of warnings received in April 1922 from Ambassador Richard W. Child at the American Embassy in Rome. He had expressed fear that American interests in Albania would be harmed, should other countries gain early ascendancy there. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in Washington, had reached the same conclusion after talking with a representative of the Sinclair Oil Company negotiating for an Albanian oil concession. Ambassador Child had concluded: It is quite possible that if skillfully handled some definite benefit could accrue to American interests through the promise of recognition and the timely culmination of the event. Secretary Hoover, in his letter dated April 26, 1922 to Secretary Hughes, had pointed to recognition of the Albanian Government by England and Italy, and then asked him "to give serious consideration to the recognition of Albania." By the time (May 22, 1922) Hughes had answered Hoover's letter, help for American interests was on its way in the person of Consul General Blake, formerly Diplomatic Agent and Consul General at Tangier. On Blake's recommendation of the "propriety and expediency of immediately according American recognition of Albania," based on the commitments in writing favoring American commercial interests made by Albanian Prime Minister Djafer Ypi under date of June 25, 1922, Hughes telegraphed Blake on July 25 that he could extend United States de jure recognition on July 28, 1922. Prewar (1924) Non-Recognition A new Albanian government seeking United States de jure recognition between June and December 1924, met with American inaction and was overthrown. Within a week of the public announcement in mid-June of the composition of the Albanian Government headed by Prime Minister Fan Noli, American Minister in Albania, Grant-Smith, had received the Prime Minister, who pleaded for recognition by the United States. The American Minister informed his visitor that American policy in Europe regarding recognition was one of "avoiding the impression of hasty actions." He then reminded Noli that the prior Albanian régime "had failed to fulfill its promises as to equality of opportunity” and had not yet brought to justice those responsible for the murder of two Americans in Albania on April 6, 1924. Secretary of State Hughes did no more than authorize Minister Grant-Smith to continue at his discretion to carry on relations with the then present Albanian Government; action constituting de jure recognition on the part of the United States Government was not taken. On October 10, 1924 the American Chargé d'affairs in Tirana reported that the Noli Government was as weak as ever and the Prime Minister remained abroad. He concluded: I do not believe that it will serve American interests to take up formal relations at present with the Nationalist regime, in view of all the facts and considering that Greece is the only nation represented here which is not reserving recognition for a more favorable time. On December 25, 1924 Minister Grant-Smith telegraphed the Secretary of State that the Albanian revolution had succeeded, Ahmet Zogu having entered Tirana that morning. Prewar (1925) Recognition Following the reconvening of the Constituent Assembly on January 15, 1925 for the purpose of regularizing the new regime, which appeared to American Minister Grant-Smith to be "relatively stable," a Republic was proclaimed on January 21. Ahmet Zogu became its President. In a telegram dated January 22, 1925, Secretary of State Hughes said: "There is nothing to be gained by indefinitely withholding recognition." Nevertheless, he requested certain assurances from President Ahmet Zogu, that more vigorous action would be taken with respect to those Albanians responsible for killing American citizens Coleman and De Long on April 6, 1924. American Minister Grant-Smith obtained such assurances. Informed of this January 30, Secretary of State Hughes on January 31 cabled Minister Grant-Smith authorization "to extend recognition to the new régime in Albania and to acknowledge the receipt of official notification of establishment of the republic." This was done under date of February 2, 1925. Within a year the new American Minister in Albania, Charles C. Hart, could report that, by virtue of a unanimous vote of both houses of the Albanian Parliament: Engagements made by the Albanian state as the conditions upon which recognition was granted by the American Government on July 28, 1922, have at last been removed from the field of controversy. . . . After the measure passed unanimously by parliament on December 14 was signed December 21 by President of the Republic Ahmet Zogu, equal commercial opportunity for the United States became part of the law of Albania on December 28, 1925, the statute taking effect on that day with its publication in the Official Gazette. Events Preceding Wartime (1944) Non-Recognition of the Hoxha Government Formed at Berat The Albanian Government of former President Ahmet Zogu, on September 1, 1928 proclaimed His Majesty Zogu I, King of the Albanians. He was of the illustrious Albanian family of Zogu, and thereafter ruled in accordance with the Fundamental Statute of the Kingdom of Albania, but his government disintegrated following the occupation of Albania by Italian troops in April 1939. King Zogu eventually received admission to England. The United States Government never formally terminated its relations with King Zogu, but instructions were given to American Minister Hugh G. Grant to leave Albania, and the Albanian Legation in Washington was closed late in the spring of 1939. The United States Government never recognized the subsequent annexation of Albania by the Italian crown, and it refused to recognize the puppet government established in Albania by Italy; moreover, from 1942 to 1944 it publicly sought to encourage Albanian resistance and unity. In a widely disseminated "Statement by the Secretary of State," released to the press on December 10, 1942 (and published in the Department of State Bulletin December 12, 1942) a call for self-government was issued within the context of the restoration of a free Albania, as envisaged in the joint declaration of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, made on August 14, 1941 and known as the "Atlantic Charter." A sequel termed "Statement by the Department of State" was released to the press April 6, 1944 (and published in the Department of State Bulletin April 8, 1944). It expressed pleasure that the Albanian struggle for freedom had not been abandoned after the fall of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini in 1943, and the commencement of the Nazi German occupation of Albania. The first formal step toward Albanian unification within Albania took place in Permet, a small town in southern Albania not far from the Greek frontier, even before Allied Forces had entered Rome. The First Anti-Fascist National Liberation Congress, adopted in Permet on May 24, 1944, a lengthy "Declaration" in which Secretary of State Cordell Hull's Statement, and similar ones also released in December 1942, by British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Anthony Eden and by Vyacheslav Molotov's People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, were referred to in a preambular paragraph as constituting solemn recognition of Albania's right to independence. There followed a paragraph ascribing exceptional importance to this First Anti-Fascist National Liberation Congress, because it would create an Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council as the Albanian people's "supreme legislative and executive organ," which would in turn create an Anti-Fascist National Liberation Committee as the "chief executive organ, with the attributes of a provisional government." The formal decision of the Permet Congress to elect such a Council, and to empower it to form such a Committee, came on May 27. Thereupon this Council, on May 27, issued a six-point decree, providing for this Committee “having all the attributes of a provisional people's government." Later that day this Council issued three more decrees. One of the three named Enver Hoxha Commander in Chief of the Partisan Volunteer National Liberation Army and bestowed upon him the rank of Colonel General. This decree took on added significance due to the fact that the Permet Congress had indicated, as the eighth point of its formal decision of May 27, the desire of the Congress that both the Soviet Union and the United States of America send military missions to be attached to the PVNLA's General Staff. Of possible interest, but little importance, was the fact that all these Permet decrees dated May 27 or 28, 1944 bore the signature of the Secretary of the Anit-Fascist National Liberation Council, Koço Tashko, who had attended Harvard University in 1921. The Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Albania, by virtue of its decree dated October 22, 1944, issued in the city of Berat, was transformed into a "Democratic Government of Albania." The adjective "provisional" rendered both as "përkohëshme" and "provizore" in the Permet Congress declaration of May 24, and the AFNL Council decrees |