– N. Ribar, The Voice of Albania –
On July 1, 2024, Ismail Kadare died in a hospital in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Who was this man who is known by the name “Ismail Kadare”? He was once known as the most prolific man of literature in the second half of the 20th century, a man who wrote epochal classics that were certain to live through the centuries. He was born on January 28, 1936 in Gjirokastra, and lived to the age of 88.
By the age of 12, his short stories were being published in Pioneri, the organ of the pioneer youth of Albania. And once he turned 17, he won a poetry contest in the capital Tirana, for which he was granted the privilege of completing a study program in Moscow at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. Here he was taught in the principles of socialist realism and learned to be a writer by and for the masses of the people. He returned home in October 1960, one month before tensions between the Khrushchevites and the Albanian people were to reach a boiling point with Enver Hoxha’s famous speech at the meeting of the 81 communist and workers’ parties in Moscow. Later, Ismail Kadare was to write an 800-page socialist realist novel about the heroism of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian people in those days, The Great Winter.
His first great novel, The General of the Dead Army, became an acclaimed masterpiece all throughout the world and was translated into dozens of languages in a time when Albanian literature was all but unknown. The Wedding was next, tracing the emancipation of women since the People’s Revolution. The Castle, about Skanderbeg’s heroic rebellion against the Ottoman hordes, succeeded. Chronicle in Stone followed, his first book about the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, revolving around a child caught in the occupations of nazis and fascists. It should not be forgotten that Ismail Kadare himself grew up amidst this occupation and terror. The Great Winter, which I have already mentioned, was released next. This is only a glimpse at his works, which are too voluminous to expound in a single article. These writings brought news of the Albanian people’s literature to the entire world, brought honour to the Albanian nation and made it well-known. Ismail Kadare proved that beloved works of literature not only came from the dregs of the imperialist countries, but that the small heroic countries and peoples who fought so valiantly for their freedom and independence could have their say as well.
Throughout this entire people, Ismail Kadare worked as the editor of the magazine New Albania and as one of the leaders of the Writers’ and Artists’ League of Albania, as a dedicated member of the Party of Labour of Albania, as a leader of the Democratic Front of Albania and an admirer of Enver Hoxha. Anyone who was an enemy of the great Albanian Comrade Enver Hoxha, he considered among his own enemies. Nobody forced him to do all this.
Take the case of his book The Wedding, which has been completely obscured by the modern Euro-American bourgeoisie in their praise of him because it is indefensible from their reactionary viewpoint. At the beginning of the ideological and cultural revolutionization in 1967, Ismail Kadare heeded the call of the Party for writers to go amongst the people, experience their life, live as they did and write about what they saw. From the obscurantism of the veil and the Canon of Lekë Dukagjini, the Albanian woman came into the light, forged her own life, threw off the yoke of religious and backwards customs, loved who she chose to love, and rose up to the heights of modernity in every sense of the word. Ismail Kadare saw this and wrote his masterpiece The Wedding because he went to the countryside and saw this revolution for himself.
As late as 1989, Ismail Kadare harshly criticized anyone who opposed the policy of the Party of Labour of Albania and Enver Hoxha. At the Scientific Conference held on November 13-14, 1989, he gave a speech entitled “Our Time and Our Literature.” In this speech, he stated: “The time of socialism in Albania is one of extraordinary events and the greatest emancipation the Albanian people have seen throughout their whole history.” He also stated, most revealingly: “In post-Liberation Albania, the institution of censorship has never existed and does not exist, which is to the credit of our socialist state.”
Yet one year later, in 1990, allured by the open bank accounts of the Euro and the dollar, of the promises of the Euro-American imperialists, he fled his Homeland in the midst of the greatest crisis they were facing since the time of the National Liberation War. Ismail Kadare fictionalized better than anyone the heroic epochs in the history of the Albanian people — Skanderbeg’s Rebellion, the National Renaissance, the Congress of Vlora and Independence, the National Liberation War — but he did not understand the kernel of these struggles. Instead of staying in Albania and fighting for the independence of his Homeland, like Skanderbeg, Abdyl Frashëri, Ismail Qemali and Enver Hoxha did, he defected to the enemies like Hamza Kastrioti, Esad bey Toptani and Mithat Frashëri did.
This stinging wound of betrayal is still fresh in the historical memory of the Albanian people. I republish in full below the announcement by the Presidency of the Writers’ and Artists’ League of Albania in the newspaper Drita, on October 28, 1990, following Ismail Kadare’s defection to France:
“As reported by the foreign press, Ismail Kadare who was on duty in Paris since a month ago, asked for political asylum in France the day the Conference of the Foreign Ministers of the Balkan countries was winding up its proceedings in Tirana. Through this shameful act he has offended especially the Albanian intellientsia, the creators and the national consciousness of the people, putting himself on the same side as those who do not love Albania and its progress. His fleeing the country cannot be justified from either social positions or from the literary ones: through his creativeness he enjoyed authority among the people, was a member of the Academy of Sciences, member of the Presidency of the Writers’ and Artists’ League of Albania, Vice-Chairman of the Presidency of the Democratic Front, etc. His books were published without exception and his own say in the public and in the press was completely free.
“Through this act, which brings no honour to the one who commits it, Ismail Kadare separated himself from the writers and artists at a time when profound processes for the democratization of the Albanian society are being carried out and when the Homeland needs the word and deed of the honest creators.”
This statement fully conforms with the truth and delves into the heart of the matter.
Since this time, that is for the last 34 years of his life, Ismail Kadare served as an anti-Albanian voice of reaction. He has claimed without evidence that his books served as veiled criticism of the system of people’s state power in Albania, opposed to Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. But during this time, he wrote all of his books in conformity with the line of the Party and indeed treated with scorn and contempt any Albanian writer who defied this line. If you do not believe my word, read these books for yourself and see. He was required to denounce himself, or rather lie about his motives, by the Euro-American imperialists in order to achieve his sought-after life of fame. This is why he defected in 1990, and this was the aim of all of his anti-communist and anti-Albanian books since that time.
When he was nominated for a Neustadt International Prize in Literature in 2020, his nominating juror compared his writings with that of Franz Kafka, considering Kadare his successor. But reading his writings during the time of socialism, there are no comparisons to be made between the two. Ismail Kadare considered the trend of existentialism as an anti-socialist, anti-people trend and not only did not follow it in his own writings, but polemicized against it as a trend of the old bourgeois order.
The claim of Ismail Kadare that he was really a loyal bourgeois through and through, and wrote in spite of the censorship of the “totalitarian communist regime of Enver Hoxha,” do not hold water in the light of truth. He himself stated that one of the merits of this system was that it never allowed a system of censorship to be implemented, and considered censorship to be an aspect of the revisionist system of Khrushchevite rule. And if there was any pressure for a writer to fictionalize in favour of socialism and communism, Ismail Kadare was not a victim of this pressure but was in fact its chief administrator over all the writers in Albania. If there were decisions made to publish this or that piece of fiction based on its ideological line, Ismail Kadare was among those who made these decisions. Nobody, not even Ismail Kadare himself, can erase the ink from the pages of the literary works he wrote in the style of socialist realism, in support of the new society of socialism and communism, in support of the people’s state power in Albania. These books were printed and exist objectively, no matter what anyone says, no matter what he himself said.
I thus conclude on the statement that there were two Ismail Kadares in history. One brought honour and dignity to his small Albanian nation, emerging as the greatest writer humanity produced since Maxim Gorky, inspiring the people to higher and higher deeds in service of the progress of society. I would say that the Albanians and friends of Albania mourn this Ismail Kadare, but we have been mourning this loss not since this morning, but for 34 years since October 1990. The other Ismail Kadare served reaction, dishonoured his nation, blackened his comrades and his own works in order for some vain self-serving praise and dollars accorded by the imperialists. One wishes they could ask him before his death: “Was the money you made and the praise you gained worth selling out your Homeland? Your Homeland, since the end of socialism, has lost over half its population to emigration, is mired in corruption, drug-dealing and scandal. This is the purpose you sold yourself out to in 1990. Only a ignorant fool or an agent of the enemy imperialists, who have conspired against the Albanians many times in history, can slander the name and work of Enver Hoxha, of the Albanian people in his time, especially in the face of what has happened over the last 34 years. Was this all worth it?” There is nothing else to be said about the loss of this Ismail Kadare, the one who died on July 1, 2024.
Published in:
