Like Father, Like Son: Generals of the Communist Party
Fortuzi…the road that changed names like Spiro changed uniforms… Soldier of the Republic of Albania… Captain of the King of Albania, Major of the King of Italy and, finally, General of the Communist Party.
On this road, slightly before its intersection with Mine Peza Road, on the right, lived the “honorable” family of communist General Spiro Moisiu from Kavaja. The general was a lackey of the dictator Enver Hoxha. He was a man known by many titles but, in the end, was degraded to the humiliating “Supervisor of the Hunter’s Club”.
His servility was visible. The main window that faced the road on the first floor of Spiro’s villa always remained curtain-less: everything inside was able to be seen. The indoor lighting shone night and day as though it were a holy place. Against the backdrop of a gracefully furnished room was a statue of Dictator Enver Hoxha, elevated on a carved wooden pedestal. The pedestal was tall so that even one who happened to be near the window, which was three meters above the road, would notice this statue.
In front of the house, a military automobile was always positioned—and frequently there would be two, one belonging to the son, the young general, communist Alfred Moisiu, former DEBATIK (United Boys under Communist Ideals) and graduate of a military academy in the Soviet Union. His hat invariably showcased the emblem of the sickle and hammer with the red star. When his father ended up with the hunters and the hounds of a Hunter’s Club, Alfred was sent to the Military Brigade in Burreli. Alfred was not appointed the communist Minister of Defense to fight against imperialism and revisionism, a position to which he had aspired and had been committed. Simply for that, Alfred, the Bolshevik of communist ideals, called himself a “dissident”, changed his uniform as his father had, and became a democrat. He represented Albania as a consultant in the NATO alliance by turning his back on the Warsaw Pact. Was his new outlook genuine? The naïve may believe so while the others, temporarily, will act as if they do.
In 1992, then Alfred Moisiu was sixty-two and still in his home were the communist party medals and on his shoulders communist general’s shoulder straps. How could this sixty-two-year-old man morph from a hardened communist? Was he going to change like Nicola Bombacci? Today, this “honorable” man de jure runs the affairs of Albania or, more precisely, jumbles them.
Albania needs to be cleansed by young leaders with pure blood; it needs knowledgeable leaders with dignity, leaders who are upright and devoted to its blessed people and country. Albanians need to stop, once and for all, electing leaders contaminated by the Communist Party; otherwise there will be no progress. This land will go into a social and moral regress up to the point that it will not be able to survive, thus enabling foreigners to engulf it…
Today, Albania needs a Nicolas Sarkozy and not a communist. It needs to lean first on the United States and then on Western Europe, moreover, on that part of Europe whose leaders do not belong to the communist leftists.
My father had been sentenced for thirty years to the Burreli Prison by the Special Trial of 1945 for being the Assistant Joint Chief of Staff of the King’s Army and General Commander of the border. Two days before he was released from prison, he was given an injection in the infirmary as though it were a vaccine and was left half paralyzed. One day he was returning home, a room 3m by 3m on the second floor of a building with one bathroom for seven families, depressed. I met him on the spiral steps as I, too, was going home.
“What is wrong, father? Why are you so saddened?”
“No, nothing is wrong,” he said. (May he rest in peace! He was direct and stoic in life. He was a man of few words and never complained.)
“There is something you are not telling me. I can see you are not in the right mood…”
After some more steps, we reached the room. Mother had made lunch and we sat around the table which we put away after every meal so it would not take up space. My mother noticed my father’s silence and she, like me, asked him what was wrong. He hesitated to speak, but then he exploded.
“Yesterday I went to the house of Spiro Moisiu. His wife came to the door for he was not there. I went to him so that he might help me find work, any kind of job, because we are in a very poor state with only our son’s pay. As he was not there, I left word so that he would find it when he came home. Today I went again, but his wife came to the door and said that if I wanted to meet Spiro, I should go to the Hunter’s Club, for he would be there. She was his second wife, I did not recall her.”
“And why were you upset about this?”
“How can I tell you… When I was a lieutenant in 1920, Spiro was a soldier in my unit. He kept my horse by the reins and he did me other personal services that I will not talk about. I promoted him to the rank of officer, I sent him to Military Academy. When Italy came, he always took advice from me— you know that. Do you remember? He was like our son and today he will not receive me at his house, but rather leaves word with his wife for me to go and see him at the Hunter’s Club! When I left his house, I said to myself, ‘Away with you, unscrupulous... Forbid my love.’ That is why I am not well,” father ended his explanation.
“You are upset because of this? Father, people have changed. There is no more manhood and honor, pride and friendship. The nameless people are on top; the communist revolution raised them beyond their wildest dreams, but they are falling one after the other, into the same mud they were lifted from. I do not know what to say about Spiro, but when I was a soldier in the labor unit, one day he came for a visit to Rrapi i Trishtit, where we were working, accompanied by engineer Dhimiter Dhespoti (a former officer of the Albanian Royal Army, majored in Torino, Italy, later first captain of the Italian Royal Army, and after the communists took power, kept as infantry Major for two years). When they saw me, Dhimiter stopped, saying to Spiro, ‘Do you know him?’ Spiro looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, ‘Who is he?’ he asked. ‘He is the son of Colonel Sami,’ replied Dhimiter. Spiro, without asking me any questions said, ‘What about Pullumb, the other brother, where is he?’ ‘In Australia,’ I answered cautiously. (During that time my brother had escaped from the country and worked in an atomic base in the Pacific, and later, for the Voice of America). Spiro glanced at me once more and left without saying a word. Dhimiter continued to speak with Spiro. Don’t forget, Father, Spiro is devoted, head to toe, to Dictator Enver Hoxha. His son, Alfred, is a Communist Colonel. Forget that he exists, he and the others. All of them have turned their backs on you.”
“I know, son. I know: if you fall from power no one says ‘hello’ to you anymore. I recall Fejzi on trial. (Fejzi Alizoti was the Secretary of State, the Governor of Kosova, and the brother-in-law of Sami Koka, who was executed by communists in 1945). When Bedri Spahiu, the communist state prosecutor of the Special Trial in 1945, said to Fejzi, ‘Traitor, you have done this and that… how many uniforms have you changed?’ Fejzi replied, ‘Honorable Prosecutor, don’t forget me and remember these words: if you one day will fall from power, what you are saying to me today, someone else will say to you tomorrow.’ Trust and virtue have died, but I hope this country falls into the hands of real Albanians.”
Much time has passed since then. Here and there, I have read in the press about the current “honorable” president of “democratic” Albania, Alfred Moisiu. This individual, who only knows how to mess things up, is a devotee of Bolshevism and such... Subsequently, the question arises, why did people vote for him? Where were the wandering minds of Albanians who elected the 62-year-old devoted communist to be president? His term is ending, but Albanians must think about the next president they will elect in July.
Translated from The Albanian by Hilda M. Xhepa
