The decision of the Albanian communists in the summer of 1941 to establish internationalist relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia showed the maturity which the communist movement in Albania had achieved at that time. The worthiest representatives of the communist groups had begun the fight against the fascist occupiers as early as 1939. Just as they were boldly and resolutely overcoming the feuds and divisions amongst themselves, and heading with conviction towards the founding of the Communist Party of Albania, with similar courage and maturity they were surmounting the old animosities, feuds and the deep gulf which had been created over centuries in the relations of our country with its Yugoslav neighbours.

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    It is an indisputably recognized fact, accepted by all, that to describe the relations between our two countries before 1941 as embittered is putting it mildly. Over their whole range, they consist of dramas and tragedies of the gravest kind, packed with aggressions, murders and plunderings, reeking with bloody crimes which were committed openly in <<modern>> Europe over the territories and fate of a small, but brave and invincible people -- the Albanian people.

    This whole grievous legacy which had been built up over decades had been created through no fault of the peoples, and the Albanian people in particular have never, on any occasion, been to blame for it. The blame for this rests on the anti-Albanian policy of the monarchs of Serbia and princes of Montenegro who wanted to gobble up Albania, on the policy of violence, expansion and genocide which they, aided and abetted, openly or secretly, by the Great Powers of that time, had pursued towards the Albanian people and the Albanian territories.

    Without going any further back in history, everybody knows about the fresh great tragedy which began to be played to the detriment of the Albanian people, especially in the second half of the last century.

    When it became clear that the <<Sick Man of the Bosphorus>> was on his death bed, both the hopes and possibilities that the Albanian people would win the independence which they had been seeking by force of arms for centuries, and their struggle and efforts to bring this day as close as possible, quickly mounted. But precisely when the day was approaching for Albania to throw off the yoke of Ottoman rule, new ferocious enemies, with aims identical with those of the Ottomans, thought that the time had come for them to get little Albania into their clutches. The monarchs of Italy, Austro-Hungary, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria rushed to grab whatever they could from what they called <<the periphery of the Ottoman Empire>> This was an extremely grave and painful <<reward>> which the neighbours gave the brave and dauntless Albanian people, who had poured out torrents of blood in raising a strong wall against

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the further advance of the Ottoman hordes towards Europe. This was the deepest ingratitude towards that nation which, whether in the battles of the neighbouring peoples for defence against the Ottoman onslaughts or in their movements and uprisings for liberation, had not spared its own finest sons who gave their lives precisely as if they were defending the freedom of their own people.

    In particular, the Serbian and Montenegrin hordes, incited by the reactionary cliques of that time, assailed the Albanian territories, killing, plundering and destroying whatever they found in front of them. The chronicles of that time are filled with the most blood-curdling events. Under fire from many enemies, who fought sometimes each on their own account, sometimes in agreement to divide the prey jointly, the Albanian people responded to the new situation with endless wars. However, the ratio of forces was such that, after shedding torrents of blood, the Albanian population was forced, with unallayable grief, to relinquish whole pieces of its Homeland on the borders with Serbia and Montenegro. Besides the thousands who were killed and burned out, tens of thousands of Albanians were expelled from their lands and driven towards the south, or left to roam about Europe and Asia as refugees. Statistics show that at the end of the last century, as a result of the occupation of the outermost regions of Kosova by Serbia, Montenegro and Austro-Hungary, about 300 000 Albanians who had been violently expelled had settled in the internal regions of the vilayets of Kosova and Shkodra alone.

    Naturally, this unprecedented genocide and developing danger which threatened the whole of Albania was bound to arouse the greatest hatred and bring the whole country to its feet to resist both the Ottoman Turk and the shkja [1], <<a

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scourge worse than the Ottoman>>, as the people described the Serbian occupiers at that period. The Albanian League of Prizren of great fame was founded and carried out its unforgettable historic activity precisely at this grave period, setting as its objective both the struggle for freedom and independence and the struggle in defence of the integrity of the national territory, in defence of the legitimate rights of a people threatened with extermination.

    The Albanian patriots and people left nothing undone to prevent the menace which came from the north! They were ready to turn over the page of all the past and there was never any lack of messages seeking friendship and good neighbourly relations with the fraternal Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian and other peoples.

    But the fact is that there was no limit to the greed of the chauvinists, monarchs and princes of the neighbouring countries, and as a result, the threat to Albania from the north became more and more serious. Behind them stood the blackest European reaction. Through the policy which it pursued, Serbia became, in the mind of the freedom-loving Albanian, the symbol of his sworn enemy.

    Gallons of blood were shed by both sides and thousands and thousands of Serbs, Montenegrins and others left their bones in our mountain passes and on our plains. Obviously, the flower of friendship could not sprout through these pools of blood, but the thorn of hatred and hostility would flourish and grow. However, the Albanians did not shed their blood on the soil of Serbia and Montenegro, the Albanians did not descend with fire and steel upon the neighbouring countries and peoples. The opposite occurred. The Albanians defended their own lands, wives and children, their homes and possessions.

    This situation continued until 1912, when the great victory -- the independence of Albania, was quickly followed by one of the greatest injustices of this century in Europe: Albania was cut in half -- Kosova and other Albanian re-

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gions were violently annexed to Yugoslavia. Naturally, if you cut the body of a country and a people in half, and artificially attach one half to another creation, such an act cannot serve as a <<bridge to conciliation>>, <<friendship>> and <<fraternity>>.

    If this were not enough, however, even after 1912-1913 the anti-Albanian policy of the Karadjordjevices and all the unscrupulous great-Serb reaction was intensified in all forms and directions. The policy of extermination, discrimination and denationalization of the Albanian population which had been placed under Serbian occupation was followed by secret plans for the annexation of other parts of Albania. The secret Treaty of London of 1915, which two years later the great Lenin published to the world and denounced, is further evidence of the notorious, unrelenting anti-Albanian policy, not only of the reactionary Great Powers of that time, but also of the then Yugoslav state, a creation of imperialism. The public denunciation of this predatory Treaty did not make the face of Great-Serb chauvinism blush or go pale. A little later Yugoslavia once again sanctioned de jure its <<rights>> to the occupied Albanian territories and set out with greater zest on the course of the denationalization of the Albanian population which it had placed under occupation.

    At the same time it tried to find new ways to realize its old dream of gobbling up the whole of Albania. It was precisely the Serbian monarchs who came to the aid of Zog who had fled from Albania in June 1924; it was they who kept him, found him mercenaries, supplied him with forces and weapons and created all the conditions for the future despot to carry out the counter-revolution in Albania in December 1924. In return, Zog initially gave the Serbs other pieces of Albanian territory, such as Vermosh and Shën-Naum, and, assuredly, in time would have given them the whole of Albania, if the great gamble of the Great Powers had not thrown the puppet king finally into the lap of fascist Italy and set the country on the course of Italian fascist colonization.

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    But even after this, there is a whole bitter history of open and disguised acts carried out by the reactionary governments of Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbia, in the direction of the Albanian state.

    When the reactionary Serbian governments saw that others had gained control of the card of Zog, they set in motion their secret agency within our country and among the reactionary Albanian emigrants in Yugoslavia and made all kinds of efforts to create an explosive situation within the Albanian Kingdom. Later, under the cloak of an <<uprising>> against the Zogite tyranny, the Serb secret agents would turn for aid to the same Serbian circles that had brought Zog to power a few years earlier.

    These chauvinist circles, always ready to stage an invasion as <<aid>>, trained whole regiments and kept them in readiness around the borders of Albania. The vanguard of these mercenary regiments consisted of hardened criminals, Yugoslav and non-Yugoslav, who, decked out in authentic Albanian national costumes, would be the first to pour over the borders at the appropriate moment. But the fact is that, despite all their stage props, these plans remained only on paper. This occurred not only because fascist Italy and international reaction, which backed it for its own interests, would not and did not allow the Albanian apple to assuage the appetite of the Great-Serbs, but also because the Serbian secret agency and propaganda in Albania was able to find a favourable terrain only among a few degenerate elements without any influence, but never among broad strata and, even less, among the people. On account of the atrocities committed, Serbia had long become synonymous with evil in the mind of the Albanian.

    The denationalizing policy which the Great-Serbs pursued towards Kosova and towards the Albanian population in Montenegro and Macedonia deepened the hatred and made any sign of reconciliation more impossible. From 1913 on, the chauvinist regime of the Great-Serb bourgeoisie employed

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the most inhuman political, economic, ideological and military methods and means to denationalize the annexed Albanian territories and populate them with Slavs. During the years 1913-1927 in Kosova and the other Albanian regions in Yugoslavia, by means of the so-called <<denationalization through physical elimination>>, more than 200 thousand Albanians were killed, tens of thousands of others were imprisoned and whole Albanian villages wiped out. Fascism, which was rising in Europe at that time, was finding a worthy forerunner and fellow-traveller in the Great-Serbs. Stojadinovic of Serbia, together with Mussolini, prepared the plan for the division of Albania.[1]

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other regions were not wiped out, either with gunpowder or with fire, but on the contrary, the number of the Albanian population on its own territories increased in relation to the Serbian and Montenegrin element in these territories.

    Insatiable in their cruelty and infuriated by the motto of the Albanians, <<We may die but we'll not give up our country>>, the Great-Serbs set in motion the <<science>> of extermination, the ideology and means of the pogrom. Precisely to this phase belong the inhuman deeds of notorious Great Serbs of the type of Vaso Cubrilovic, Atanasije Urosevic and other such monsters of the so-called Serbian Cultural Club in Belgrade, the vicious creation of the reactionary Serbian bourgeoisie in the years 1937-1939, and, regrettably, as we were to learn much later, the forerunner of institutions with the same platform in the Yugoslavia of the years from 1945 on. This is not the place, nor is it the purpose of my notes, to dwell at length on the programs and theories of extermination of these neo-Malthusians, whom the Tito regime was later to preserve and raise to the highest ranks of the scientific institutions of <<socialist>> Yugoslavia. I want to point out only that, on the basis of what they themselves wrote, further incalculable damage was inflicted on the Albanian population, and the hatreds and animosities which for decades had divided the Albanian people, on the one hand, from the Serb, Montenegrin and other peoples, on the other hand, became even more profound.

    The truth is that at that time we knew nothing about these <<scientific works>> and <<platforms>>, worked out and approved, and heard nothing about the authors of them, but with grief we saw and heard about the results of their practical application. Militating in the ranks of our communist groups at that time were a number of comrades from Kosova. They were either the sons of displaced families or individuals who had managed to leave Kosova secretly and had come to mother Albania to escape persecution by the Great-Serbs, to continue their schooling or to find work. Our picture of

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the relations between our peoples in general and about the situation in Kosova in particular was made more complete with the blood-curdling stories and facts which these comrades told us.

    This was the situation in 1941, when the resistance of our people to the fascist occupiers was continuing all over the country and we were faced with the urgent necessity of founding the Communist Party of Albania.

    As can be imagined, to seek relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in such a situation was by no means easy and simple. To us communists, however, the problem was clear. In principle, we could never link communism with chauvinism, nor the Communist Party of Yugoslavia with the reactionary and chauvinist policy of the Yugoslav government towards Albania.

    The fact is that Vasil Shanto, Qemal Stafa and I and, after a series of hesitations, Koço Tashko, too, who became the initiators for the establishment of relations with the CPY, knew little or nothing about the life, activity and situation in that party. We had heard that it had been formed after the October Socialist Revolution, that in the first 10-15 years of its existence it had gone through a series of ups and downs, feuds and factions, that various of its cadres had been criticized at different times by the Comintern for stands and lines that were anti-Marxist, Trotskyite, nationalist, and so on, that it had been reorganized in recent years, and was said to have placed itself on a correct line. We knew none of its leaders, indeed we had not heard who they were or what they were called, but the fact that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was a member of the Comintern, the fact that it had expressed itself in favour of open struggle against the fascist danger and, after April 1941, when the Yugoslav monarchy capitulated, the fact that it had launched the slogan of raising all the peoples of Yugoslavia around itself in the fight against the nazi-fascist occupation, impelled us to link ourselves with it, as a sister party

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which was fighting for that great cause, which was our cause, too.

    As communists, we thought and believed that, since the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had risen in struggle for a new Yugoslavia, it would finally free itself from and destroy all that legacy from the old Yugoslavia, that is, its chauvinism and its long-standing savage and unscrupulous policies against the Albanians. For these reasons, we considered the establishment of relations with the CPY a correct and mature act on our part. That is what we thought and we were quite right.

    As I said, however, this was our view, the communists' view. Would the people understand this idea and aim of ours? Would they follow us in the steps which we were going to take? A whole burden of opinion built up over scores and scores of years had to be overcome, and as I mentioned above, this was not an opinion created simply by words or statements, but by torrents of blood, by villages and towns destroyed, by boys and girls cut off in the flower of their youth, by mothers left desolate, by Albanians whose deep-rooted, freedom-loving and patriotic spirit had been profoundly antagonized. Now we were going to tell them: We, the Albanian communists, are going to create close fraternal links with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, with that party in the ranks of which militate Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, etc.

    From what has been said above, it is understandable why the Albanian has regarded the Serb with diffidence. But we were determined to take this step because we considered to be the right thing to do. Even if some of our people would not understand us at first, they would soon be convinced and understand us.

    We regarded the links with the CPY as something natural, as links between communists, between brothers of common ideals. We would exchange experience and assist one another in the sacred fight for the freedom and independence of our

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countries, and between us, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, we could settle justly all the ugly things which history had left in the relations between our peoples. The peoples are essentially freedom-loving. Our people, in particular, have never harassed the others and have respected the heroes and peoples who have fought against invaders. Now the peoples of Yugoslavia were at war against the same enemy -- the foreign nazi-fascists and the internal reactionaries, therefore, we were convinced that our splendid people would understand and support us. Thus, with this act which we undertook to carry out, we were taking the first step not only to eliminate any eventual obstacle to the mobilization of the peoples of the respective countries in the fight for freedom, but also to make real, great progress toward settling historical injustices and overcoming the legacy of hostilities created in the past.

    We undertook to explain to the Albanian people, to talk to the people openly about our ideas, and we did so. Our people, our marvellous people, whose eyes have never been blinded by the diseased principles of chauvinism, understood us. We believed, indeed we were convinced, that the Yugoslav comrades thought and judged matters in the same way. Therefore, we decided to establish links with them. Time would prove to what extent they were truly Marxist-Leninists, whether they would put into practice what they declared unreservedly in their statements.

    In the step which we took by deciding to establish contact with the CPY at those moments, we were faced, among others, with the very great difficulty which was very hard to deal with. What was bombastically proclaimed as <<the liberation of Albanian territories from the Serbian yoke>>, the formation of <<Greater Albania>>, had been <<realized>> under the jackboot of fascism and in the interests of fascism. It cannot be concealed that this demagogy confused many people in Kosova and also deceived some in Albania who called themselves nationalists.

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    Naturally, we were not going to be and were not taken in by this trick of fascism, therefore, we told the people clearly and precisely: We must not be deceived by the <<liberation>> and propaganda of this occupier which poses as a <<liberator>>(!), but which in fact has enslaved the whole of Albania. We can never expect nazi-fascism, the most ferocious enemy of the freedom and independence of the peoples, to solve our problems, big or small, can never expect any benefits from fascism which has placed us in the most hideous bondage, which is maiming and killing the finest sons and daughters of the people, the plague which has set itself the aim of destroying mankind. Irreconcilable struggle against it, everywhere, at every moment -- this is our immediate duty.

    All these things and others of the same type we discussed during those days of summer 1941, when we decided to enter into internationalist relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. We were convinced that in this way we were making the proper contribution to the great cause of the war against fascism and for the accomplishment, along with the liberation war, of the social revolution, too, the revolution which would solve everything.

    This is how we considered the matter and this is what we decided to do, in this way performing an act worthy of genuine, mature communists, communists with clear minds and pure hearts.

    Ahead of us lay practice, life, the war. What would they prove to us?

    The truth is that the start of our relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was a happy and promising start. As I shall relate in detail later, this had to do with all that period when the internationalist communist Miladin Popovic was amongst us, especially with the period before the emissaries of Tito began to come to Albania. Beginning from March 1943, however, when Tito's first emissary Blazo Jovanovic uttered the first absurd anti-Marxist claim against

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our Party, and over the next five or six years, step by step we were to enter into conflict with Tito's men, were to clash with them and oppose them, and they were to oppose us. These were five or six years of the process of getting to know each other, a process of stern, extremely difficult and complicated struggle, a struggle against traps and plots hatched up by the Yugoslav leadership in order to subjugate us and turn us into their obedient tools.

    All the documents and facts prove that the leaders of the CPY, headed by Tito, had made plans to subjugate the Communist Party of Albania, to put it under their direct leadership, and consequently make our National Liberation War an appendage of their war. They had thought and planned to have their men placed everywhere by the time Albania was liberated, so they could act with Albania in every direction -- politically, economically, militarily, organizationally and in the international plane, as they wished. Naturally, all this activity was hidden under the cloak of the common aims of the National Liberation War against the occupiers, under the leadership of two communist parties which had linked themselves like flesh to bone with the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik Party and Stalin.

    The Yugoslavs were so conceited and had created such a megalomaniacal idea of themselves and their war, making them underrate our war, that they had reached the point of thinking that without them there would be no communist party and no national liberation war in Albania. As a result of this conceit, the Yugoslav leadership minimized our war and took no interest in really informing itself about and studying our objective conditions, social and economic situations, the class struggle, the bases of the occupiers, or the glorious revolutionary past of the Albanian people. It avoided such analysis also because of the age-old anti-Albanian sentiments and aims of the Serbs and of pan-Slav expansionism in general. The Yugoslav leadership maintained the same stand also towards the Albanians of Kosova, whom not only

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it did not help to take part fully in the war against the occupier, but on the contrary sabotaged their war, always terrorized, killed and tortured them.

    All those whom Tito and the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia sent to us, allegedly to assist us and exchange experience, came with plans prepared in advance, with <<directives>> which they dictated to us and we were supposed to apply, came as <<masters>> of the revolution and national liberation war to <<their apprentices>>. Beginning from Blazo Jovanovic, Vukmanovic-Tempo, Dusan Mugosa, Velimir Stojnic, Nijaz Dizdarevic down to those who came after Liberation, Josip Djerdja, Savo Zlatic, Sergej Krajger, General Kupresanin, and others, their megalomania and arrogance knew no bounds.

    We were in opposition to and quarrelled with all these people over many issues of principle, from the first contacts we had with them. Obviously, for our part, this was done over problems of the work and in a comradely way, because we considered many of their ideas and assessments, whether in connection with the situation in the army, the organization of the Party, or the policy of the Party, the Front, and so on, to be incorrect and out of place for us. For their part they hated us and, as emerged clearly from their activity, they studied amongst us the elements most suitable to serve them for the accomplishment of their aims. Hence, the Yugoslav leadership had been at work for a long time and had decided to purge from the ranks of our leadership anyone who opposed their plans so that the way would be open to them.

    Especially following the 2nd Plenum of the CC of the CPA in Berat, in November 1944, and throughout the whole period from Liberation on, their anti-Marxist and anti-Albanian struggle and attempts became more open and more ferocious.

    It is difficult for those who have not lived especially through the period up to 1948 to understand and form an accura-

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te image of that extremely complicated struggle which we had to wage in those years against the Titoites. We had to uncover the subversive struggle which those who posed and advertized themselves as friends were waging against us, to expose the savage sworn enemies, not only of our Party and people, but also of Marxism-Leninism, of the theory and practice of the revolution.

    We had just set out on the new course of the construction of the socialist society and, understandably, experience was lacking in this direction. From ignorance mistakes could easily be made, and grasping at this, our <<friends>> deliberately, for ulterior motives, strove with all their might to confuse us, to put us on a fatally wrong course by offering us their <<aid>> and <<experience>>. We were to cope with this evil, and we did cope with it, but only at the cost of great toil, effort and sacrifice.

    This was our first clash with modern revisionism. But here, too, we lacked experience. The fact that we had these enemies <<right inside the house>>, as you might say, made the struggle even more complicated. We had been gravely betrayed in the trust that we had placed in them, in our communist honesty, and in the proletarian sincerity that we had shown towards them, Indeed, the Titoite spider-web had been spun even within our own ranks. What Tito and his henchmen were unable to achieve from <<outside>> was made up for by their agents who had long been prepared by Dusan Mugosa, Vukmanovic-Tempo and Velimir Stojnic, and had gone on the offensive within the ranks of our top leadership, inside our Political Bureau. Thus, we had to uncover, define accurately and defeat the Titoite plot in conditions not just of the lack of unity in our leadership, but of a fierce struggle which was launched from outside and from inside the sound body of our Party. However, we waged this struggle, too, and crowned it with success.

    Fortunately for the future of the Party, the Homeland and socialism in Albania, precisely at the moment when it

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seemed that the Titoite plot had gained control of everything, it was exposed and crushed. The relations between us and the Communist Party and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia had reached the point of open hostility. Stalin's letters sent to the CP of Yugoslavia threw light on the anti-Marxist revisionist line and activity of the Tito clique. Many things which Tito and company had done or were doing against our Party and country, now became quite clear to us. The strivings, efforts, mistakes and successes of that struggle would be turned, as they were, into a great school to raise the political and ideological level of our communists and people, into a colossal experience which was to serve us, as it did, in the new battles which would be imposed on us in the future, right down to the present day, destroying even the last cards which the Yugoslav agency kept up its sleeve for better or worse days that might present themselves in the future.

    The way in which our Party waged this great and stern struggle to detect and attack Titoite revisionism is a whole history in itself. The whole dialectical process, from the first contacts up to the moment when we broke off all contacts or relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia once and for all, has been analysed and summed up in many main documents and materials of our Party, which belong to that time and the whole of the subsequent period. I personally, as a direct participant in this struggle from its first moments, have gone back over that period again and again. The lessons which we have drawn from that period of clashes and struggle over principles in the ideological, political, economic, organizational and military planes are inexhaustible and will remain permanently valid. The past always serves the present and the future. That is why we are going back over the 6-7 year period when behind <<the outstanding leader Tito>> we discovered the inveterate renegade Tito, when behind the <<internationalism>> of Tito and his henchmen we discovered nationalism and chauvinism, when behind their <<friendship>> we

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discovered the bonds of a new enslavement, when behind their <<communism>> we discovered the revision of Marxism-Leninism in theory and practice.

    Subsequently we developed and carried the struggle which we had begun long before against the Yugoslav revisionists further and further forward and we were not nonplussed and did not retreat either in the 50's, when Khrushchev and company took the road of betrayal and embraced Tito, or in the 70's, when Mao Zedong fell on his knees before the old renegade of Belgrade. We did not retreat and were not nonplussed, in 1981, either, following the events in Kosova caused by the savage Great-Serb chauvinist oppression, when in order to cope with the situation in Yugoslavia and among world opinion, Tito's successors hatched up the most monstrous plot to disturb the situation in Albania and to overthrow the sound leadership of our Party, just as the Titoites had wanted to do in Berat, on the eve of the liberation of the country, in November 1944.

    For about forty years the Yugoslav revisionists have been wrong and have failed in their open plans and secret plots against Albania, and still they refuse to accept that the citadel of the Party and socialist Albania cannot be taken either from outside, with armies, pressures and provocations of any kind, or from inside, through their agents of any calibre whom they have trained and held in reserve for more than forty years, or have borrowed from the CIA, the KGB, the Intelligence Service, or any other agency.

    Our Party has waged and will always wage the ideological struggle against the Yugoslav revisionists consistently, because it is thoroughly acquainted with their real features as anti-Marxists, chauvinists, and inveterate agents of imperialism The whole history of relations between our Party and the Yugoslav leadership has been and still is a history of unrelenting plots by the Titoite clique for the subjugation of our Party, for the liquidation of the independence of our country,

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a history of the heroic resistance of the Party of Labour of Albania and our people to the diabolical plans of this clique and its endless threats and blackmail. These notes of mine are dedicated precisely to this history, especially to its first period.

July 1982

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    Our first contacts with the Yugoslav communists indicated a promising beginning. In the autumn of 1941 the Montenegrin internationalist communist, Miladin Popovic, was among us.

    He had been elected secretary of the newly created Provincial Committee of the CPY for Kosova and in the summer of 1941, after an action in Mitrovica, had been arrested by the fascists and sent to an internment camp in Albania. Those were the moments when we, the representatives of the three main communist groups in Albania (of Korça, Shkodra and the <<Youth>>), had reached agreement, in principle, on founding

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know. We had been told only that he was a cadre who came directly from the main staff of the Yugoslav leadership and was bringing important information for our Party. This news pleased us, because, as I will relate later, we had been waiting for 7 to 8 months for an answer, if not through an emissary, at least in any other possible way, to the request we had made through the Yugoslav leadership to the Comintern for recognition of our new Communist Party. We took all measures to ensure our guest a trip with the least possible danger and in the last days of December 1942 the emissary of the CC of the CPY arrived fit and well in Labinot of Elbasan. He was Blazo Jovanovic.

    The coming of this delegate to Albania marked the first official contact of the leadership of our Party and of Miladin Popovic personally with the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Regrettably, this first contact also marked the beginning of frictions and clashes between our two parties.

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    <<It's very good that you've come back,>> I said, slapping him on the back, <<because here we have so much work!>>

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Blazo, we understand the circumstances and conditions in which this letter was written. As you yourself are aware, it was written at the end of September, brought to us in December, and refers to problems which were relevant to our Party before April 1942. At the same time, it refers to those problems which we ourselves raised at the 1st Consultative Meeting of the Activists of the Party in April, about which we informed your party through Dusan.>>

    <<Then, according to you, Comrade Tito has merely repeated what you have already raised!>> said Blazo, piqued.

    <<That's not what I said. In the materials we sent to the Comintern, we related how matters stood with us. Judging on this basis, Tito gives us certain advice. We thank him for his concern and interest.>>

    <<Is it only for this you value the letter?>>, asked Blazo in the same tone.

    <<Please, don't misunderstand us, >> I said. <<Now it is January 1943, and obviously we have not been marking time since April 1942. On the contrary, we have tried to solve correctly, not only the problems of that period, but also those which have arisen since, and now, comparing our actions with the directives of the Comintern which you have just brought us, we can only rejoice when we see that we have truly acted as we should have done.>>

    Continuing the talk, I dwelt concretely on what Tito had written in his letter, explained the development of events and the truth is that Blazo listened to us and was convinced about what we told him. That closed the matter, and for years on end Tito's <<first letter>> was never mentioned again. Perhaps, it would not have been worth mentioning this letter here, either, but the fact that later the Yugoslav propaganda built it up and published it as a <<message which saved the situation>>, as an <<outstanding contribution by Tito in favour of the Albanian Party and the Albanian National Liberation War>>, etc., etc., impels me to dwell a little on this so-called outstanding document once again.

    I must say that the best assessment that can be put on

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On the contrary, if we had simply waited for <<guidance>>, from abroad, this would have been an unpardonable sin.

    However, while the <<instruction>> on the question of the Front and, identical with it, that on the question of national liberation councils made us smile, something which followed made us, comrades of the leadership, laugh, and Miladin along with us.

    In September 1942 Tito, writing from Glamoc, instructed us, <<You must expose the Trotskyite Zai Fundo before the members of the CPA and inform its members that he is an open enemy of the International and the Party!>>

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where, including the book <<The Anglo-American Threat to Albania>>, so there's no need to dwell on it. Here we are considering the letter of 1942. It was like this from beginning to end -- a letter of advice that came too late. Right at the end, however, almost in passing, as an <<afterthought>>, Tito made this request: <<The resolution which you will compile at the Conference should be as short as possible. . . Likewise, send us the biographies of the new members of the Central Committee, together with their names, because we have to send them to the Comintern.>> (?!)

    This request made an impression on us. We asked one another whether the Comintern could really need the biographies of the members of the Central Committee of the CPA(?!), but since we did not know how to explain this, we found the <<reason>>: Tito knows about such things! Perhaps he has instructions to this effect!

    This, then, is all there was to Tito's letter which the Yugoslav propaganda builds up as an <<important contribution>> to our Party's pursuing a correct line! This they present as an <<argument>> in support of their claim that the growth of the CPA was allegedly due to them! But their blindness and irrestrainable chauvinist instincts lead them to self-exposure. Had they been more cool-headed, even simply in regard to their hostile claim, they would never have mentioned this letter.

    It is incontestable evidence of the fact that, at least until the end of 1942, when the letter reached us, the Communist Party of Albania had not had any assistance, any instruction or any directive from the CC of the CPY. At the same time, it shows that even the <<advice>> and <<instructions>> at the end of 1942 arrived in Albania too late to affect the issues and, consequently, were no longer of any value.

    But let us return to the beginning of 1943, to the days when we had Blazo Jovanovic amongst us, and examine his <<contribution>> to our work. After he transmitted to us what they had told him to say, the fact is that he displayed discretion and <<sat on the sidelines>>, you might say, waiting to carry out the last task for which he had been

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sent: to bring greetings on behalf of the CC of the CPY to the 1st National Conference of our Party. He saw for himself that we were engaged in the war and in work day and night, saw the trips that we made back and forth between Elbasan and Tirana, with our heads at stake, the meetings and contacts that we organized, and the fact is he never showed any sign of dissatisfaction. Naturally, there were occasions when he, too, became involved in the talks we held on one problem or the other, when we asked him something about one of the problems we were going to deal with in the reports to the Conference, and he expressed his opinion frankly. The things he said were not particularly brilliant and I was soon convinced that, about the problems of organization, in particular, and the leadership and life of the party as a whole, he did not know much. Perhaps the fact that he had been engaged mainly in military problems explains this. However, during the whole period up to the Conference Blazo never exceeded his authority, did not try to impose anything on us, just as he had nothing to contribute when we asked him. In brief, he spent 2-3 months with us in normal relations, often without making his presence felt at all, but nevertheless in a friendly atmosphere.

    And this same Blazo Jovanovic gets up at the 1st National Conference,[1] amongst the delegates from all parts of Albania, and, quite unexpectedly, drops a gem:

    <<Two Yugoslav communists created the Communist Party of Albania!>>

    He was referring to Miladin Popovic and Dusan Mugosa.

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that this crazy statement made to last long. As soon as Blazo finished speaking, Miladin Popovic stood up and addressed both him and us:

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a chance conversation or argument. Whereas he said it precisely, not when he was speaking or arguing in his own name, but when he was delivering a greeting on behalf of the CC of the CP of Yugoslavia. Then, was it just a slip, or was Blazo instructed to let it drop, as though by accident, in the main forum of our Party?

    However, these were only doubts which arose in our minds those days and we had no other reason or fact which would make us think that the allegation was not Blazo's own. In the letter which I mentioned, Tito did not make even the remotest allusion in this direction, while Blazo himself, after Miladin's immediate reply, closed his mouth tight, and we left it at that in the belief that it was simply an aberration of the delegate.

    Matters were to develop and the day would come when we would be convinced that both the bad impression and our doubts of March 1943 aroused by Blazo Jovanovic's allegation were not without foundation. Thus, the day would come when Tito and his henchmen, in the course of all sorts of savage accusations and slanders against us, would openly publicize one of their most absurd and unscrupulous claims -- the claim that they, the Yugoslavs, had allegedly formed the Communist Party of Albania!

    From the moment when this claim was first made openly down to this day we have rejected this fabrication of the Titoites, not only with indignation, as such a crazy claim deserves, but also with calm arguments we have explained the whys and wherefores of things, and in particular, we have uncovered and denounced the sinister megalomaniacal and hegemonic aims lurking behind it. All the documents of our Party which refer to this claim are proof of this. I personally, in a series of speeches, reports, articles and in my notes, have dealt extensively with the truth about it. However, since our relations with the Titoites are the main subject of these notes and reminiscences, I consider it reasonable to dwell once again on the truth about this claim. The fact that this claim has served the Titoites as the basis, as the central

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pillar upon which all their anti-Albanian activity and propaganda has been built up, makes this even more necessary.

    In the first place, the Titoites' claim that they allegedly created the Communist Party of Albania cannot stand from the viewpoint of theory, of principle. In this respect it is a blatant violation of the law of development of communist parties in general, and the principles on which they are born, created and strengthened in particular.

    We know that Marxism-Leninism always regards the internal cause, the internal factor, as the main determining factor in the birth and evolution of every phenomenon. The process of the birth and formation of a communist party can never be an exception to this law, hence, the process of the founding of our Communist Party cannot be an exception to it, either. Had the internal factor, the Albanian factor, not existed, had the internal conditions not existed and been ripe for it, a communist party could not have been created here, either with two or ten Yugoslav communists, or even if the whole Yugoslav leadership had come to Albania. Hence, the CPA was not created because of the whim or demand of a certain Tito from Yugoslavia, but it was created because the Albanian people, the Albanian communist movement, which had been striving for this result for more than a decade, demanded its birth as something indispensable, the historical moment through which the country was passing, the past, the present and the future of Albania itself demanded it.[1]

    Another fact which testifies to this: when Tito and company were allegedly so <<strong>> and <<capable>> that they could create a communist party in Albania <<from outside>>, why did they not do this, let us say, in 1935, 1937, 1939, or in 1940?! Was it only in 1941 that they <<discovered>> that on the borders of Yugoslavia there was Albania which was waiting for the <<creator>> Tito to say, <<Let there be the

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party>>, just as, according to the Bible, the world waited for the <<great creator>> to say, <<Let there be light>>!

    If- there is anything further to be said on this aspect of the problem, then it is no fault of ours that there is only room for irony. Thee absurdity of such <<creators>> deserves nothing else.

    In the concrete case, the Titoites' claim collapses not only from the theoretical viewpoint. The very practice of the founding of the Communist Party of Albania is another argument which is a slap in the face for them. It is truly ridiculous that on the one hand, the Titoite build up the <<gigantic>> claim that they <<created>> the Communist Party of Albania, while, on the other hand, in proof of this, they bring out a lilliputian <<argument>>: the fact that the Yugoslav communist, Miladin Popovic, and, as his interpreter and associate, Dusan Mugosa attended and took part in the Founding Meeting of our Party.

    Our Party has never concealed or denied the presence of these two comrades at the Founding Meeting and subsequently, just as it has never hidden or denied anything else about their stay and work in Albania. It is Tito and company who have deliberately hidden and denied the most important aspects of this problem. Concretely:

    First, the Yugoslav leadership has always passed over in silence the fundamental fact that Miladin Popovic was not sent to Albania either by Tito, or by the leadership of the CP of Yugoslavia. He emerged from the ranks of Montenegrins-Albanians and had gone underground in Kosova. In the summer of 1941 he was arrested by the Italian fascists and sent to Albania, to the internment camp at Peqin. We carried out an operation to release him from internment, and this occurred precisely at those moments when we, the representatives of the three main communist groups, had reached agreement to hold a meeting to found the Communist Party of Albania. As I have described in detail in the book of memoirs <<When the Party Was Born>>, at that period we had taken the initiative to make contact with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and expressed the desire that it should

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send us a comrade to attend and to assist us in the great event we had before us. Since it chanced that we liberated Miladin Popovic and he was in Albania, we asked him to stay for a time as a <<third>>, neutral party amongst us. After we reached agreement with him, we also sought authorization from the leadership of the CP of Yugoslavia. About the end of October 1941 Dusan Mugosa brought its authorization and, after this, Miladin Popovic linked himself more closely with us in our work, and in this context also took part in the Founding Meeting.

    Second, not only was Miladin Popovic not sent to us from Tito's staff, but he took part in our Founding Meeting without having any orientation, directive, instruction, etc. from the Yugoslav leadership about any <<special role>> in this event. It was we ourselves, the Albanian communists, participants in the Meeting, who guided and ran its proceedings from start to finish as Marxism-Leninism taught us. There we had no <<orientations>> or <<instructions>> of any kind from outside, either from the Yugoslav party, or even from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or any other party. Up till now at least, even the anti-Albanian propaganda of the Titoites has never fabricated any <<document>> to <<prove>> the opposite.

    Then, how could a communist party have been created by a member of another party, moreover, when he had not been directly delegated by this party and had no directions or instructions from it?!

    Only the logic of Titoites can unravel this.

    Third, as I mentioned above, and as he proved throughout his entire stay in Albania, Miladin himself never assumed <<merits>> which did not and could not belong to him. On the contrary, with indignation and determination he rejected any allusion or cunning flattery which Tito's delegates tried to make in order to attribute to him a role which, not even a whole party, let alone one person, could perform from outside.

    In short, only those who could and whose duty it was, the Albanian communists, founded the Communist Party of Albania.

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    The Yugoslavs' claim on this problem, then, is nothing but the assumption of undeserved merits.

    However, the permanent persistance of the Belgrade revisionists to assume a role which does not belong to them should not be seen simply as their mania to boast, to win fame, to use this as another shiny medal on their chest covered with decorations for <<great heroic deeds>>. No, as a whole history has proved, they assumed the role of the <<creators>> of the CPA with the aim that their <<creature>> should behave towards them like an infant to its parent, be educated and raised in their spirit and, hence, become a blind and obedient tool in the service of the <<mother party>> -- the CP of Yugoslavia. The whole history of the relations of the CPA with the CPY, especially beginning from the summer of 1943 up to the beginning of 1948 and later, is a history of the struggle against the aims, attempts and plots of the CPY and the Yugoslav state to subjugate and enslave our Party and the new Albanian people's state, a history of the heroic resistance of the leadership of our Party and state, not only to avoid subjugation, but also to attack the betrayal openly, ceaselessly and without any hesitation. This we shall examine later.

    Here it is in order to point out that, just as the Yugoslav pretension about who created the CPA is absurd and without any foundation, their other pretension, that our Party is allegedly indebted to the CP of Yugoslavia for its growth, strengthening and line during the years of the National Liberation War, is equally absurd and without foundation. This pretension, too, they base on the role of their emissaries in Albania.

    As I have stated, up till the end of 1942 neither the leadership of the CPA, Miladin, nor anyone else amongst us had had any kind of contact, had received any kind of letter or material from the CPY, in fact, we hadn't even any information about what the comrades of the sister party were doing, and how matters stood with them.

    With this I do not want to imply in any way that we were annoyed because for a year or so they showed no signs of life and gave us no kind of help. No, we could imagine

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the difficult conditions in which they had to fight, and it was our heartfelt desire and wish that things would go as well as possible with them for the good of the fraternal Yugoslav peoples, for the good of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and for the good of the liberation war of the world anti-fascist coalition. Naturally, I do not want to imply, either, that we did not feel the need for an exchange of experience with comrades of the same ideal, especially in the conditions when our Party was young, the comrades without any experience, and the conditions in which we fought extremely difficult.

    But to do nothing and to pretend that you have done everything, as is the concrete case with the leadership of the CPY, this we have not accepted and never will accept.

    To convince people about their <<contribution>>, Tito's spokesmen were also to talk about the role of Blazo Jovanovic, especially at the 1st National Conference of the CPA. This is a claim which should not even be mentioned by people with pure hearts and sound judgment. With the exception of what he said about the creation of the CPA, Blazo Jovanovic made no other <<contribution>>, even for those who had sent him, let alone for us.

    We Albanian communists, now organized in the ranks of a Party with more than a year's experience in the fire of the war, had undertaken the work for the preparation and holding of the 1st Conference of the Party and we carried it through to the end, as we did with everything else. I have described in detail the work that we did for this Conference[1], therefore

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it is unnecessary to repeat what is already known. I want only to add something: later, especially in the grave situation which Tito's men created before and during the Berat Plenum, in November 1944, amongst other things they accused me, as well as others, of a <<grave>> mistake which we had allegedly permitted at the 1st National Conference -- the procedure followed in the election of the Central Committee of the Party!

    And what was this <<mistake>> that was exaggerated so much that Tito's emissary Velimir Stojnic shook his finger at us so hard as soon as he arrived in Albania, at the end of August 1944, that we wondered what terrible thing we had done?!

    The truth is that the way in which we acted over the elections at the 1st National Conference of the CPA was not any great mistake, especially in the conditions of that time, and the main thing is that we had no ulterior motive in the procedure we followed. The candidates were proposed to the delegates not by name, but, for reasons of security, by description of their characteristics. They went like this: a comrade is proposed who has these or those qualities, has these or those good points or weaknesses, has this past, has inclinations to this sector, has weaknesses in this direction, etc. The delegates approved those who seemed to them the best.

    Even if we assume that this procedure may have been wrong, after all, this was an internal matter for our Party and was imposed on us by the conditions of deep illegality.

    The important thing was the fact that we proceeded from the principle that each communist is a leader and we sincerely believed that mentioning not names, but qualities, was more democratic and with less possibility of subjective judgment. This, we reasoned, was the best way, and this is what we did. At the same time, we admit that we did not have the necessary experience of the procedure of elections to such high forums. It never occurred to us, or to Miladin, that we were acting wrongly. The only person among us who had experience

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in this matter was Blazo Jovanovic, but he told us nothing. However, time was to make clear that Tito and his emissaries would seize on this <<mistake>>, not because the violation of the <<rules of procedure>> on our part was painful to them. The main reason lay elsewhere: by acting in this way, keeping the names secret in the elections, Tito's demand that we should send him the names and surnames and biographies of the members of our Central Committee could not be fulfilled in the way he wanted.

    Precisely on this point we had unwittingly trodden on Tito's toes and, when he sent Stojnic to Albania later, he did not forget to instruct him to rap our knuckles over the <<mistake>> of March 1943.

    Matters reached such a point that when Nako Spiru, Koçi Xoxe, Sejfulla Malëshova[1] and others associated themselves with Stojnic, this <<procedural mistake>> completely overshadowed the indisputable success of the Conference itself. As is known, the organization of the Conference was in order and the delegates were elected according to all the norms of democratic procedure, despite the difficult circumstances. The spirit of the reports and the contributions to the discussion were more than healthy, each delegate had the right to speak. to ask questions, to interject, to discuss, to criticize and to propose.

    However, Tito's accusation over <<the election procedure>> belonged to another period about which I will speak in detail later. Here I want only to emphasize the truth that, including the 1st National Conference of the CPA, that is, up until the end of March 1943, the aid of the CC of the CPY for our Party was totaly non-existent. Of course, we would never

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ended his introduction with that same tone with which he had started and began to look around to see what effect the knowledge of all this <<heavy burden>> that history had placed on the shoulders of this 30-year old, had made on us!

    Conceited and haughty, this was the first impression that struck my mind there and then about <<the man of the Balkans>>. However, he had come as a guest and perhaps fatigue and the struggle against difficulties had worn him out and he had lost control of himself for a moment. So, to soften the atmosphere, I began to speak. I thanked him for the chance visit he was paying us, told him that it was a joy for us when we met communists from sister parties and, regardless of the functions they performed in their own parties, we considered the exchange of opinions with them mutual aid, and better acquaintance with one another, very important.

    <<I don't want to detain you long because you have a long way to go,>> I told him and added, <<but there is one thing you should bear in mind: if you have occasion to pass through Albania again, don't take unnecessary risks, as you have done this time. We would not like to hear that the fascists had captured a communist from a sister party somewhere in Albania, especially in the case of a comrade with all those responsibilities you mentioned to us. 'Surrender' to us,>> I said laughing, <<and our comrades, who are everywhere, will take you wherever you have to go.>>

    It was plain that this pleased him. He thanked me for the offer of assistance and immediately added:

    <<I am always travelling from one place to another. I hadn't planned this meeting, but some knowledge of the situation in your country would be of great help to me in my work. We can also exchange opinions about the situation in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. I have come from there and I believe that their problems are not without interest for you. Do you agree?!>>

    We had no reason to oppose a free exchange of opinions. Moreover, after my words, it seemed that he toned down his bragging somewhat.

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    I started by giving him a brief picture of the life and activity of our Party from the time of its founding, told him something about the work with the Front, with the national liberation councils, as well as about the çetas, battalions and other partisan units. I dwelt a little more extensively on the proceedings of the 1st National Conference of the Party and its very important decisions, especially about the new, higher phase which our war had entered, about the organization and strengthening of our National Liberation Army, about the creation of the General Staff of the Army in the near future, etc.

    Not without purpose, I spoke to him in a very quiet and sincere way, bearing in mind to point out the successes achieved and the struggle waged for them, as well as the shortcomings and weaknesses observed and our critical stand towards them. I acted in this way in order to pave the way for our guest and let him understand that this is the spirit in which we talked to comrades and that we expected the same comradely spirit from them. But all this remained only a pious wish.

    <<From the exposé which the comrade General Secretary gave us,>> began Tempo as if he were speaking at some meeting between parties, <<I see that you have made progress. I am pleased about this. I have some comments (I think Ramadan Çitaku was translating) about your work up to date, but first, I want to give you a picture of the situation in Macedonia and of how the Bulgarian and Greek communists understand the character of the war.>>

    From all the things he prattled about in this first conversation, as well as on two or three other occasions during the summer of that year, he wanted to present himself, not simply as an <<expert>> on Balkan problems, but as a <<great politician>> of the Balkans, as a person who was in a position, there and then, to reach <<conclusions and take stands of decisive importance>>! Both from the tone in which he spoke and from the cut-and-dried manner in which he issued his phrases, as though they were <<the last word>>, he gave the impression that you were facing a man who held all the

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strings of the Balkans in his hands and that the present and future of the countries of this region depended on him alone!

    We were very unfavourably impressed by this person's open lack of respect towards the leaders of the two sister parties of Bulgaria and Greece, as well as by his use, from beginning to end, of the term <<stereotyped>> and <<stereotypism>>. We were soon to learn what he was getting at.

    <<The Bulgarian comrades,>> he told us among other things, <<do not act according to the existing situation, but imitate the experience of the past, learned from books in a stereotyped way. They are waiting for strikes and demonstrations to break out in the cities, as in Russia in 1917, and then they will begin the next phase, the armed insurrection! This means to put an end to the war against the occupiers before it has even begun. And the Greeks are doing the same thing. They have concentrated on the cities alone and expect to seize power later through parliamentary discussions. These things are asinine!>> he exclaimed without the slightest embarrassment (we were soon to get used to this vocabulary which this Serbo-Montenegrin had on the tip of his tongue). <<Everybody knows,>> he continued, <<that a person with any brains ought to see a bit further than the end of his own nose, but not in a stereotyped way, not failing to see or underrating what, you might say, is right under his nose. I am referring,>> he said, all arrogance, <<to the experience of our Party and our General Staff. We are in the mountains, we are waging the great war without waiting for the Bulgarians' and the Greeks' strikes and demonstrations! This is the example that should be followed, especially in the Balkans,>> he said, <<and we are not going to keep it from anybody!>>

    He paused for a moment and then he turned to me:

    <<So, I am pleased that you, too, have begun the war in the mountains, the partisan war. This is a good sign, but you must speed things up. You are still in the stage of çetas and guerrilla units. Forget about the guerrilla units in the cities, fill the mountains with partisans because, I tell you,

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if the struggle is concentrated in the cities alone, then you fall into stereotypism, blindly copy the experience of others, whatever the revolution it is the experience of. . .>>

    This communist braggard was flying very high. Was it his custom to speak with such brutal arrogance or did he consider us <<juniors>> and think that he could say whatever came into his head to us? I could not permit him to go on like this, in that tone and with those words. I interrupted him:

    <<We do not know the sister parties of Bulgaria and Greece at first hand and we have not had the occasion and possibility to know their current situation in detail. For this reason I do not consider it in order,>> I continued, <<for us even to speak about them and their line here. However, since you have had your say, I have to tell you my opinion.>>

    <<I raised this only as an example with no intention of discussing them,>> Tempo tried to excuse himself. <<This is simply a free conversation.>>

    <<And I shall speak freely, too,>> I said and continued: <<For them as two communist parties, members of the Comintern, we have always nurtured the same feelings and opinions as for your party and for any other communist party. For such leaders as Comrade Dimitrov in particular, we have always had the best of opinion. I tell you this because the way you speak about the leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party simply astonishes us.>>

    <<We, too, have respect for Comrade Dimitrov,>> put in Tempo, <<but in the concrete instance even he is for pursuing a stereotyped line>> on the question of the war against the occupiers. Perhaps this comes about because he works in Moscow in the Comintern and is acquainted with no other experience than that of earlier revolutions and the war of the Red Army. Precisely here stereotypism. . .>>

    <<You make much use of the term 'stereotype', and from what I can see, with this you imply, first of all, the experience of the October Revolution. Or am I mistaken?!>> I said bluntly.

    <<In some ways I mean that, too, but let us understand. . .>>

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<<Excuse me,>> I interrupted, <<but for us the October Revolution and all its experience is something sacred. Perhaps we have not gone into matters quite as deeply as you,>> I said, not without irony, <<but one thing we know very well: the revolution, especially the October Revolution, is a great thing, a name, a world phenomenon which, above all, means the radical overturning of society. It does not include only strikes and demonstrations, as you said, but above all, it contains in itself the final struggle with such authoritarian means as rifles, artillery and machine-guns. Hence, for us, the revolution is a struggle which is developed gradually and uninterruptedly through all its forms, methods and means, from the most elementary to the general armed insurrection.>>

    <<We don't deny these things,>> he interjected, <<but you are going into theory. I was talking about the present war.>>

    <<That's what I am speaking about, too,>> I said, <<and by no means simply in the field of theory. I want to tell you that in our whole line we base ourselves on and learn from the irreplaceable experience of the October Revolution above all, of course, while trying to acquaint ourselves with it as thoroughly as possible and to adopt it in conformity with the time, circumstances and conditions of the situation today.>>

    I noticed that he was waiting impatiently for me to finish. He was drumming irritably and impatiently on his boots with a twig of wild cherry.

    <<This is a complete misunderstanding,>> he said. <<I was referring to something else, but let us leave these things. The problem is that. . .>>

    <<And I also have something to say in connection with what you said about the Bulgarian comrades, especially about Comrade Dimitrov,>> I persisted. <<I repeat that we have had no direct contacts with them and have no concrete knowledge of the state of affairs with them. However, I think that you are wrong when you say that Comrade Dimitrov is against the immediate development in breadth of the armed struggle against the nazi-fascist occupation.>>

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<<I spoke about what I saw and heard,>> Tempo interjected.

    <<A few months ago,>> I objected, <<we received the directives of the Comintern about the line of our Party in the National Liberation War. I am certain that in defining the instructions and directives that the Comintern issues, Comrade Dimitrov has his say and a major place.>>

    <<Indisputably!>> said Tempo. <<He is engaged directly with the Comintern.>>

    <<How then,>> I asked, <<are we to understand what you said, when, in the directives which are sent to us, we are not told 'wait in the cities', 'busy yourselves only with strikes', but are told 'develop and deepen the war, mobilize all the forces in the armed struggle against the fascist occupiers'?!>>

    Tempo's face went red, however he still persisted in his opinion, while stressing that he did not know the directives that had come to us, but knew <<the concrete reality in the line of the Bulgarian comrades>>.

    I did not allow him to say any more about the others and he himself drew in his horns, while repeating that he did not open up that theme in order <<to speak ill of third parties>>, but simply for a <<consultation between comrades>>.

    The time came for him to issue <<some comments>> about our work. From the first <<comments,>> I saw that he was not so uninformed about our situation as he had pretended to be at first. After saying a few things perfunctorily and <<sweetening us up>> with some talk about our successes, he found it order to list his <<comments>>:

    <<First,>> he said, <<sectarian tendencies and stands have been displayed by the Party over collaboration with and approaches to strata and groups of individuals with influence among the people; second, the liberation character of the war should be linked more closely with the problem of the elimination of the old regime, hence, with the creation of national liberation councils; third, the partisan çetas and units should not be considered 'çetas of the Party'; fourth,. . .>>

    <<We should denounce the Trotskyite Zai Fundo, as an enemy of the Party!>> interjected there and then.

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Tempo was shocked and dumbfounded by my interjection, but quickly tried to recover himself.

    <<Yes,>> he said, <<I was going to speak about him, too!>>

    <<Comrade Tempo>>. I said quietly, <<these things that you are mentioning to us, we have read two or three months ago in the letter which Comrade Tito sent us and we have discussed them at length with Blazo. It seems that you, too, have been well-informed about them. We can only be pleased about this general interest of yours in our problems.>>

    <<Why, don't you want us to be interested?>> he asked irritably. <<Have you no need for aid? Or do you consider our comments out of order?>>

    <<Very briefly I told him what we had discussed and what we thought about those things which Tito wrote and, in order to take him down a peg or two, I told him bluntly:

    >>In principle those comments might have some basis, but we received them too late. They reached us when those things no longer existed as problems for us. It is of even less value to talk about them now.>>

    <<Perhaps,>> said Tempo, <<but when you were speaking at first about the line of the Party, you continuously mentioned the term 'our partisan units', or 'our çetas'. You are speaking as General Secretary of the Party, are you not?>>

    <<I certainly am!>>

    <<Then it turns out that you, too, consider the çetas and battalions as 'units of the Party'! Precisely this is a mistake of a sectarian character. They are the armed forces of the people, not simply of the Party. . .>>

    <<Let us not play with words,>> I interrupted him. <<When we say 'our units and çetas', we always have in mind the people and the Party. Of course, they are armed forces of the people, because the people -- the peasants, the workers and the youth, are filling their ranks. But,>> I continued, <<we do not in any way consider it a mistake, in fact we cannot even distinguish the mistake you see, when we link the çetas and other partisan units closely with the Party. Our Communist Party is the sole creator, the irreplaceable or-

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ganizer and leader of them. We inherited nothing from the old army of the ex-king, not even a squad of soldiers, let alone larger units. Thus, all the forces which have gone to the mountains are the fruit of the correct line of our Party which has created them, and in this direction we are not wrong when we call the partisan units ours. Now we have other major tasks ahead of us: we are going to organize big fighting units, starting from brigades, and are about to set up the General Staff of our National Liberation Army. We can never conceive these formations and organs apart from the Party, apart from its role as founder and leader.>>

    This person with whom I was talking had a strange habit: whenever he felt himself in a tight spot, he would say, <<All right, all right,>> and immediately hop off arrogantly to some other subject. This is what happened in all the talks we held with him.

    <<I don't deny the role of the Party, but it is a mistake to apeak like that, because it appears as if the units are comprised only of communists,>> he put in.

    <<That's absurd,>> I said. <<There are many fighters in our çetas and battalions and their ranks are increasing ceaselessly. How can it be thought they are all communists! No, Comrade Tempo, this could not happen. The communists are the vanguard, the forefront of the fighters, they are their <<outstanding leaders, but not the whole effective of fighters.>>

    <<Then it turns out, at least, that your staffs are comprised only of communists! This, too, is a criticism we have for you. Since it is a people's army, non-communist elements ought to be included in the staffs, and this work should not be left in the hands of communists only.>>

    <<There's no basis for this 'criticism', either,>> I retorted. <<Indeed, I can tell you that most of the leading bodies of our military units are not comprised of communists, but honest patriots, fighters who want the freedom and independence of the Homeland and who have consciously embraced the line of our Communist Party. Naturally, in all this work we stress as the main thing the fact that the central staff, the

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leading staff which determines the line, which leads the Front, the work of the national liberation councils and the entire war, is the Party. This we do not deny. On the contrary, we consider it the fundamental factor and the main victory we have achieved.>>

    Soon I was to be convinced that it was not the way in which we operated in the Front, the work with the nationalists, or the role of communists and elements not organized in the Party, in the staffs, that Tempo was worrying about. He repeated the things we had read in Tito's letter apparently to show us that <<he knew how to make concrete criticism>>, but after our objections he did not enter into debate. He had something else at the back of his mind.

    <<Big staffs must be created without fail,>> he said, continuing the talk, <<because we can't do without them! You, Comrade Enver, said that the leading, central staff is the Party. I agree, but the party is the party while the staff is the staff! The latter has its own functions and role, especially in the direction of following up and co-ordination of the fighting actions. You have remained at the stage of staffs of çetas and battalions. You have delayed too long. Where are your brigade staffs, where is your General Staff?!>>

    <<We're listening to you, Comrade Tempo,>> I broke in abruptly, <<but, please remember where you are speaking and why you are speaking. I told you in a comradely way about the development of the war and of our partisan formations up to the 1st National Conference. Likewise, I told you about the concrete tasks which the Conference set in the direction of the creation of bigger fighting formations, and in this context, also about the formation of the General Staff of our army in the near future.>>

    <<But where are they!>> he interrupted again with an impatience which I could not understand.

    <<In the mountains!>> I said raising my voice. <<In the villages and cities of Albania, everywhere that a whole people, with their Party at the head, are being organized, mobilized and are fighting. Don't you concern yourself, Comrade Tempo,

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about whether our affairs are going properly. Everything will be done as it should, at the proper time, and not just as I, you, or anybody else fancies.>>

    <<I understand, I understand, Comrade Enver,>> he suddenly softened his tone, <<but look how matters stand: for some time I've been turning over a great idea in my head. It includes Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece.>>

    <<Since it includes the whole of the Balkans it really is a big idea,>> I jibed gently.

    <<Yes, the whole of the Balkans!>> he repeated without hiding his satisfaction and continued, <<I have an idea in my head about a big staff, a staff above the staffs, as you might say, a universal organization. Do you understand?>>

    <<I'm listening, I'm listening,>> I replied to avoid saying I could not agree with what he was telling me.

    <<This staff,>> he continued, <<will be an inter-Balkan staff, or let us call it a Balkan staff for short, and I think it should be comprised of representatives of the general staffs of all the Balkan countries. It would be charged with important functions, would. . .>>

    I felt this was not the time for sarcasm, or for taking what-he said lightly. Therefore, I pulled myself together to listen with all the attention that his <<idea>> deserved. Apparently he noticed the sudden change in my attitude and he immediately lowered the euphoric tone of what he was saying:

    <<Let us be quite clear,>> he said, <<that I mentioned these things to you only because I chanced to pass through these parts. I'm still turning over the idea in my head, you might say, as a draft idea. I've exchanged some opinions with a comrade of the Greek party and with one of the Bulgarian party, but I mentioned it to them, too, just like this, in passing. I only wanted to set them thinking. The idea still needs time to mature, I have to elaborate it, then we shall put it forward in the proper way. But,>> he continued, <<to round off this talk which we have had, I still insist on what I said earlier: you must create your staffs, especially the General Staff, as soon as

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possible. This has great importance. Assuming for a moment that we reach agreement with the Bulgarian and Greek comrades that we should concretize the idea of the 'Balkan Staff', assuming that you agree, too, how are you to take part in it when you still do not have your General Staff?! This is what I was getting at,>> he said and looked up at me to see my reaction.

    <<The main thing is that we must have the leading staff, the Party,>> I told him. <<With it at the head, the commands and staffs of units of a higher level will be created at the proper moment, in conformity with the needs and the rates of the development of the war. As to the exact moment when they will be created, this, I think, you're not asking to know, and I have no reason to tell you. It is a matter for the Central Committee of our Party and the General Council of the National Liberation Front.>>

    <<It seems to me you have misunderstood me!>> interrupted Tempo who had been listening to me with his eyes on the ground. <<I told you all this in relation to the idea I have in my head. This is what's on my mind. . .>>

    <<To tell the truth,>> I replied, <<such an idea has never crossed our minds, so I cannot take any stand about it, either on behalf of the CC of the Party, or even on my own behalf. Moreover, as you