Address delivered by the First Secretary of the CC of the Party of Labour of Albania and President of the Presidium of the People’s Assembly of the PSR of Albania, at the memorial meeting on the occasion of the burial of Comrade Enver Hoxha
Comrades, brothers and sisters,
We are parting from the greatest man that Albanian soil has ever brought forth, the founder of the New Albania, our beloved leader, our dear comrade, brother and teacher, Enver Hoxha.
In this square where we have gathered for the last meeting with him, fourty-four years ago He led the great anti-fascist demonstration and called on the people to rise against the occupiers and traitors. And from that day until the end of His life He remained at the head of the Party and the people as the legendary leader of the National Liberation War and the heroic leader of the construction of socialism.
The life and activity of Comrade Enver Hoxha is the living history of the Albanian people during these last 50 years. It is the history of the founding of the Party and its growth, the history of the People’s Revolution and its triumph, the history of the revival of Albania and the construction of the new life, the history of the struggle against external and internal enemies and the victory over them. The name of Enver Hoxha is linked with the opening of broad roads in which our people have advanced triumphantly in the years of the epoch of the Party. His work has been poured into all the solid foundations on which the present-day Albania has been built, His thinking has illuminated all the heights to which our society has been raised, His wise and ardent words have warmed the hearts of all our people.
Not only has Enver Hoxha been a direct participant in all the great transformations of the most recent history of our people but has also exerted a direct influence on the development of it. And it has been the great good fortune of the Albanian people that at those moments they have had for their leader a consistent communist, an ardent patriot and an outstanding statesman such as He. In His person He embodied the finest virtues of our ancient people, that noble and militant character, that brilliant and heroic tradition, that spirit of revolt and generosity, which have been formed and tempered through so many wars, hardships and battles through the centuries for freedom and independence, for light and knowledge, for land and bread.
When the country was being trampled under the jackboots of foreign occupiers and covered by fascist darkness, only such a Man could feel the gravity and the historic importance of the moment, could understand what the people really wanted and what had to be done to fulfil their aspirations. Only such a Man as Enver Hoxha, who not only felt, but also understood politically and ideologically what was the responsibility and duty of Albanian revolutionaries and patriots, could realize what was the road for the salvation of the Homeland.
The great act which Enver Hoxha accomplished in that dark and troubled November of 1941 by founding the Communist Party gave the Albanian people the light they were lacking, gave them the mind to see the future, gave them the staff which would lead them in the titanic life and death struggle. The burden which the Albanian communists assumed at that time was heavy and their shoulders were very young. But they bore it with honour and carried it through to the end, because at their head they had a great leader who knew very well what was required and where they must go. What Enver Hoxha understood and presented with such clarity and conviction from His first speech at the meeting of communists for the founding of the Party was that the sufferings and misfortunes of the Albanian people came not only from the foreigners, but also from the political classes which had ruled Albania up till that time, who had always collaborated with and submitted to foreigners. He understood that without fighting with the same determination against both these hostile forces simultaneously, genuine freedom could not be achieved, national independence could not be realized and the social aspirations of the masses could not be fulfilled.
That, perhaps unique, phenomenon which occurred in Albania, where the struggle for national liberation was combined with a broad popular revolution, was no accident. Without a profound ideological conviction and great political clarity this could not have been achieved. It was Comrade Enver Hoxha who placed this great creative revolutionary idea at the basis of the line of the Party and the platform of the National Liberation War, it was Comrade Enver Hoxha who, being in the leadership of the Party, at the head of the National Liberation Front and in command of the partisan army, made its achievement possible.
The people followed the communists and accepted their leadership not only on account of their valour, their courage, their sacrifice and self-abnegation. Of course, their example had importance, indeed very great importance, but it was not decisive. The decisive thing was the fact that the call which the Party made to the people to fight for the expulsion of the foreign occupiers and the establishment of the People’s Power expressed their true desires, their age-old dreams.
We have said and say that the National Liberation War was the greatest our people have ever waged, although they have waged many wars, have shed torrents of blood and have suffered incalculable damage and hardships. The National Liberation War led by the Party, with Comrade Enver Hoxha at the head, was great, because of its ideas and, above all, because of its results. It alone led to securing the true national freedom and complete independence of the Homeland and, above all, it alone established the People’s Power.
The whole conscious life of Comrade Enver Hoxha has been struggle. Struggle for the freedom of the Homeland, struggle for the construction of socialism, struggle for the emancipation of the people, struggle against external and internal enemies who sought to return us to the former slavery. Just as He stood in the forefront of the battles and clashes of the National Liberation War, with the same rare political courage and profound ideological maturity He led the Party and the people in the clashes with the many plots, pressures and interference of enemies during these 40 years of our socialist life. The Albanian communists and the people with Enver Hoxha at the head smashed the intrigues and threats of imperialists one after the other, withstood the anti-Albanian attacks of the Titoite revisionists, successfully resisted the pressures of the Khrushchevites and were not deceived by the perfidious acts of the Chinese revisionists.
When the Anglo-American former allies stirred up the tempests of “the cold war” and “the hot war,” Enver Hoxha knew how to steer the small, but steel, Albanian ship with a steady hand to safe shores. He was not disturbed because they did not want to recognize the Democratic Government which came down from the Albanian mountains, nor was He shaken by their political pressures or economic blockades.
The Albanian people, with the Party at the head, withstood that long diplomatic struggle with rare pride and crushed with an iron fist the efforts of reaction and foreign agents to undermine and overthrow their People’s Power. Through the mouth of Enver Hoxha our people told those who threatened Albania that those who would dare to lay a finger on the borders of Albania have not yet been born just as they told the Khrushchevites that the Albanians will even eat grass but will not yield to their pressures.
This courage and this dauntless stand lie in the foundations of the Albanian fortress, therefore, it has always been strong and impregnable against any wave or tempest from whatever direction it might come.
The figure and rare personality of Enver Hoxha stood out with special brilliance at the time when the opportunist betrayal covered the international communist movement. Our Party of Labour with Comrade Enver at the head did not allow modern revisionism to pass in Albania. And it did not pass because Enver Hoxha had tempered the Party in stern political battles in defence of independence and socialism and educated it so that it would always remain loyal to Marxism-Leninism and would be irreconcilable to the end to ideologies hostile to the proletariat.
The ideological struggle against modern revisionism which Comrade Enver Hoxha has waged with consistency and determination has remained and will always remain at the basis of our socialist development, it has been and will be another permanent duty of our Party and people.
Comrade Enver Hoxha is the architect of New Albania, the organizer and direct leader of all those revolutionary transformations which have been carried out since Liberation, the inspirer of all those monumental works which have changed the appearance of our country.
The Party of Labour of Albania mobilized and led the people to turn Albania from a poor country into a developed country. Comrade Enver Hoxha has worked out and defined the economic line of the Party. The policy of the industrialization of the country, of the collectivization and modernization of agriculture, bear the brand of His creative and original thinking. He has been the inspirer of our 5-year plans, which represent the steps of the growth and development of our economy, the foundations of the construction of the economic base of socialism in Albania. There is no project which has been built in our country in which His initiative and thinking are absent. From the rebuilding of the first bridges destroyed during the war to the construction of the Koman hydropower station, from the first repairing of homes burnt by the occupiers to the Metallurgical Combine, from the first combination of yokes of oxen to the draining of the plains of Myzeqeja, and the terraces of the coast — in all these things His ideas, His encouragement and inspiration have been present.
The economic line which has been followed, the brilliant results which have been achieved in all sectors, have provided complete proof of their correctness and effectiveness. Our task is to proceed with determination on this broad road which the Party and Comrade Enver Hoxha have opened to us, to adhere unwaveringly to His orientations and teachings, to mobilize our forces even more, to make our country even more prosperous and the life of the people still happier.
No one else has been so strongly aware of the great thirst for education and culture which has accompanied our people through the centuries as Comrade Enver Hoxha, who had emerged from the ranks of the common people, who had been educated with the great sentiments of the men of our Renaissance, and who had mastered the Marxist teachings about the emancipation of mankind. And it would be hard to find any other country in which an ideological and cultural revolution has been carried out as profound in content and as widespread in extent as in Albania. It would be hard to find another country where within a very short time such a great leap forward in education, culture, technique and science has been made. The great teachings of Comrade Enver Hoxha and His tireless activity to build a new culture, revolutionary in content, with a firm national base and a powerful popular and democratic spirit, have been and will be an unerring guide to show us the right course on which we must proceed, in order to work and fight tirelessly to make our Homeland a country ever more emancipated, ever more cultured.
Throughout His life Comrade Enver Hoxha fought to strengthen the leading role of the Party, to temper it ideologically, to strengthen it organizationally, to ensure the unity of its ranks and enhance the militant spirit of its members.
The strength of the Party is the strength of our socialist society and the guarantee of our communist future. By remaining loyal to the glorious Party which Comrade Enver Hoxha has founded, raised and educated, by uniting ever more closely around it, by mobilizing themselves to put its line and directives into practice our people will always achieve new victories, will safeguard the freedom and independence of the Homeland and the great victories of the People’s Revolution.
Comrade Enver Hoxha continually instructed the communists to fight tirelessly for the continual strengthening of the ties of the Party with the masses and for the unity of the people. In these links and in this unity He saw the powerful shield against internal and external enemies, a great motive and mobilizing force to carry our society continually forward, an inexhaustible source of energy to cope with any situation.
Our Party and people have always been guided by these teachings and have always emerged triumphant. And so it will be in the future, too. The unity of the people around the Party will always be like steel. Any external or internal enemy who tries to harm the Party, the People’s Power and our socialist victories will smash his head against its walls.
As the militant Leninist which He was, Comrade Enver Hoxha always fought to safeguard the principles with which our People’s Revolution triumphed and our new life was built. He taught the Party that it must always remain loyal to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and all the experience of the revolutionary struggles of the world proletariat, must wage the class struggle correctly and must never forget that it is the motor which carries human society forward, must defend the People’s Power unwaveringly, the powerful weapon of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and must be irreconcilable with imperialism and revisionism, with bourgeois and opportunist ideologies. He taught the Party and people how to build socialism and how to defend the country with our own forces, how to be proud of our country and never bend the knee to foreigners.
Nothing can turn the Party and our people from these teachings, no force can divert them from the principled policy, the policy of Enver Hoxha. In the future as in the past, our Party, its leadership, our whole people, the working class, the cooperativist peasantry, the youth, the women, the intelligentsia, the veterans of the war and the soldiers will always march forward on that road which the People’s Revolution opened and which the construction of socialism confirmed, the road of defending the lofty interests of the Homeland and the cause of the revolution.
Enver Hoxha is an outstanding figure of international communism. Just as He was an ardent patriot He was also an ardent internationalist. His struggle and work devoted to the progress of the revolutionary movement of the international proletariat, the defence of Marxism-Leninism, and the support of the cause of the national and social liberation of the peoples represent a brilliant example of dedication to the cause of communism.
The genuine Marxist-Leninist fighters have had in Enver Hoxha a comrade and friend who has always given them fraternal support and encouragement. His theoretical thinking on the problems of the revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism, His analysis of imperialism and the revisionist degeneration are an outstanding contribution to the theoretical treasury of Marxism-Leninism and revolutionary practice world-wide.
Comrade Enver Hoxha always raised His powerful voice in defence of the national and democratic rights which belong to our Albanian brothers of Kosova and other parts of Yugoslavia. On account of this correct, just and principled stand He became and remains loved, respected and honoured by all Albanians.
The revolutionary theoretical and practical work which Comrade Enver Hoxha has left us is a great heritage. His style and method of work as a party leader and statesman comprise an example to which the present and future generations will turn in order to learn and find guidance.
The figure of Enver Hoxha is great and many-sided. There is no field of the political, ideological and social activity of the Party and state in which His philosophical thinking, organizational strength and leading activity have not been expressed.
A man who combined the qualities of the Marxist thinker and leader of the revolution, the military commander and statesman, the diplomat and publicist, the erudite intellectual and educator of the masses, the fiery orator and friend of the common folk is rare indeed.
Our people have been and will always be proud of this great son to which they gave birth, and our Party will always be proud of its outstanding leader which it had. The greatest honour for the Work of Comrade Enver Hoxha, the greatest gratitude for everything which He has done for the Party and our people is to proceed resolutely on His revolutionary course, to master and put into practice His immortal teachings, to work and build as He worked for the cause of socialism and the communist ideals.
Today we are parting with Comrade Enver Hoxha, but He lives and will live forever in the hearts and minds of the Albanian people. He is immortal, because His work is immortal, because the Party which He founded and led is immortal, because socialist Albania which He built is immortal.
His last work, Laying the Foundations of the New Albania, Comrade Enver closed with the belief that no harm would come to Albania so long as the people and Party are linked as closely as flesh to bone. Let us raise the prosperity, security and name of our People’s Socialist Republic higher and higher, He told us. In the name of the bloodshed and toil, the sweat and privations let us transmit to the coming generations the great message which history has taught us: we must always be vigilant, always at work and on the attack to defend the victories achieved and carry them further forward. We must allow no one, whoever he may be, to violate and negate our immortal and sacred work, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. In this way our fortress, socialist Albania, will be strengthened and rise even more majestically from generation to generation! Let our hearts beat always with its great heart!
Our Party will never forget this message. Just as Comrade Enver wished, its heart will always beat as His great communist heart beat, as the heart of our glorious people beats.
Comrade Enver left us a free and independent Albania, with a strong and reliable defence, with a developed and stable economy, an Albania without debts or obligations to anyone. He left us a People’s Power which has the unanimous support of our whole people, left us a Party tempered ideologically and purged of enemies, left us an Albania honoured and respected throughout the world.
The Party and the people swear to You, Comrade Enver, that they will keep Albania like this forever, that it will always be strong, always red, just as You wanted it. We will carry the construction of socialism further and further ahead and will raise the name of our beloved Albania higher and higher.
Goodbye, our dear leader and teacher!
Goodbye, our beloved friend and brother!
Goodbye, Comrade Enver!
Long live the Party!
Published in:
