The Unknown Tyrant of Tirana

摘要

For most mainstream-especially Soviet and Chinese-Cold War intelligence analysts, Albania could seem like a low-grade fever that flared up periodically: the Yugoslav-Soviet break (1948); a split with the Khrushchev-led Soviet Union (1961); development of an alliance with China after the split with the USSR (1964-1971); and the demise of the Chinese relationship (1978). The man at the center of these events, Enver Hoxha, was an admirer of Josef Stalin and a fervent nationalist who dominated Albanian politics and life, much as Stalin had weighed in the life of the USSR. Blendi Fevziu's Enver Hoxha: The Iron Fist of Albania, the first full-length English-language biography of Hoxha, is a translation of his Albanian-language book published in 2011.