Hoxha was not just 'quite' cultured, he was very cultured. In spite of coming from the most backward country in Europe, he was by far the best-read head of any Communist party in the bloc. On visits to the other countries in Eastern Europe, he often comments on the philistinism of his bloc colleagues. Hoxha knew fluent French and had a working knowledge (either verbal or written) of Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Russian and English. The range of references in his memoirs is not what one would expect from a Balkan ex-Muslim Stalinist.
Enver Hoxha
Hoxha was often called a Stalinist. He was a Stalinist in two important ways. One was his advocacy of a very rigid form of centralised planning... The other was his use of brutal methods and often concocted evidence, compounded by his outspoken enthousiasm for harsh measures. But he was not 'Stalinist' in other important aspects. He was a cultured and well-read man. He was also in much closer contact with the population of his country than Stalin...
Enver Hoxha
Hoxha is both unusually well read and intelligent on the one hand, and an out-and-out Stalinist, on the other. These two sides of his character coexist without any resolution or synthesis. For Hoxha, Stalin can do no wrong. The world is divided into black and white: Stalin and those who agreed with him are good; those against Stalin are bad. On these issues, Hoxha is entirely predictable and often boring. He manifestly distorts events and flatly refuses to confront the evidence, for example, on Stalin's purges and the show trials in Eastern Europe after the war... In effect, when in troublem he wheels out Marxism-Leninism and deploys it like magic, in an incantatory, ritualistic way. But it is a magic straitjacket.
Enver Hoxha
In 1990 [Mother Teresa] made a trip to Albania, then the most oppressive of the Balkan Stalinist states, and laid a wreath on the grave of the dictator Enver Hoxha as well as on the irredentist monument to "Mother Albania". She was herself of Albanian descent (born in Skopje, Macedonia), but many Albanians were shocked by her embrace of Hoxha's widow and her silence on human rights.
Enver Hoxha
We are now more Socialist in many ways than any other developed country outside the Communist bloc—in the size of the public sector, the range of controls and the telescoping of net income. And what is the result? Compare our position today with that of our neighbours in north west Europe—Germany, Sweden, Holland, France. They are no more talented than we are. Yet, compared with them, we have the longest working hours, the lowest pay and the lowest production per head. We have the highest taxes and the lowest investment. We have the least prosperity, the most poor and the lowest pensions. We have the largest nationalized sector and the worst labour troubles.
Keith Joseph
Albania's Enver Hoxha was unusual in being well read in the European literature classics - and Molotov thought his cosmopolitanism a reason for suspicion. But Hoxha was a conventional communist dictator in denying his people access to disapproved alien culture.
Enver Hoxha
Hoxha, Enver
Hoyle, Fred
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