Nako Spiru

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Nako Spiru (born January 4, 1918 in Durrës , † November 1947 in Tirana ) was an Albanian politician and high functionary of the Communist Party of Albania (PPSh).

Life

Spiru came from a Greek Orthodox family from the Adriatic port city of Durrës. He first studied economics in Turin . After the Italian annexation of Albania in 1939, he joined the resistance as a partisan and acted as Enver Hoxha's right-hand man in the national liberation army . In 1941 he became a member of the newly founded Communist Party of Albania (APC) under the guidance of the Yugoslav Communist Party , which remained a satellite of the Yugoslav sister party until the break between Tito and Stalin . In 1943 he was promoted to a member of the Politburo .

After the end of the Second World War , Spiru became head of the “State Planning Commission” and thus the highest economic director in Albania. The leadership of the Communist Party of Albania was split into two factions at this time: On the one hand, the so-called “intellectuals” or “moderates” around Nako Spiru, Chief of Staff Mehmet Shehu and the Minister of Culture and Propaganda Sejfulla Malëshova ; on the other hand the so-called "workers" under the leadership of Koçi Xoxe , deputy prime minister, interior minister and head of the Sigurimi State Security Service .

In a friendship and economic treaty of July 1946, enforced by Xoxe against the resistance of Spirus, a merger of the economic systems of Albania and Yugoslavia was agreed. The ultimate goal was the integration of Albania into the Yugoslav Federation. Communist General Secretary and Prime Minister Enver Hoxha feared a power struggle controlled by Tito for the leadership of the Albanian Communist Party and stepped on the side of the Xoxe-hostile faction. In April 1947, Spiru led new negotiations in Belgrade , in which he demanded the conclusion of a revised trade agreement and increased economic aid. The Yugoslavs refused and instead demanded the immediate coordination of the economic plans of both states. With the backing of Hoxha, Spiru refused. Instead, Hoxha and Spiru went to Moscow in July 1947 and signed an economic agreement with the Soviet Union that guaranteed Albania the support Yugoslavia had refused to provide.

Supported by Tito, who attacked Spiru as a “traitor” in a letter to the Albanian Communist Party, Xoxe began a smear campaign against Spiru. In November 1947, at a meeting of the Central Committee , Xoxe accused him of "anti-party, nationalist activity". The Hoxha, wavering between the adversaries, agreed to an investigation against Spiru. The next day he was found shot dead in his apartment. According to a first published account, he accidentally killed himself while handling his revolver, a second official statement declared the death to be a suicide from "remorse over his betrayal". After Tito's public condemnation and after Xoxe was hanged as a “spy” and “ Titoist ”, it was finally said that Spiru had been murdered or driven to suicide by the State Security Service on behalf of Xoxes. In 1991, however, Liri Belishova , Spirus' widow, charged that Enver Hoxha had killed her husband.

literature

  • George Hermann Hodos: Show trials. Stalinist purges in Eastern Europe 1948–1954. AtV, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7466-8051-4 .
  • Owen Pearson: Albania As Dictatorship And Democracy. From Isolation to the Kosovo War 1946-1998 . IB Tauris, London 2006, ISBN 1-84511-105-2 , ( Albania in the Twentieth Century. A History 3).
  • Robert Elsie: A Biographical Dictionary of Albanian History , IBTauris London / New York 2012, p. 422 (online version)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. Owen Pearson: Albania As Dictatorship And Democracy. London 2006, p. 238.
  2. ↑ Quotation from: GH Hodos: show trials. Berlin 2001, p. 34.
  3. ↑ Albanian Angels of Innocence . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1948, pp. 12 ( online - March 20, 1948 ).
  4. ^ O. Pearson: Albania As Dictatorship And Democracy. London 2006, pp. 238f.
  5. ↑ Quotation from: GH Hodos: show trials. Berlin 2001, p. 34.
  6. ^ O. Pearson: Albania As Dictatorship And Democracy. London 2006, pp. 306, 573; see. Enver Hoxha's description in: The Titoites. Tirana 1982, p. 373ff.
personal data
SURNAME Spiru, Nako
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Albanian communist politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Durrës
DATE OF DEATH November 1947
Place of death Tirana