The social and economic aspects of the Albanian question

    The Albanians remain the poorest people in Europe, both the half of them living in rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Macedonia and the other half living in Albania itself. This is apparent from their towns and settlements with their antiquated infrastructures which are not really fit for human habitation, but also from the pale faces of the inhabitants, malnourished children in elementary schools, malnourished students in secondary schools and universities, malnourished peasants working in the fields, malnourished workers toiling in the factories - pale and sallow faces at all levels of Albanian society. There are other peoples in southeastern Europe whom one could call more or less poor, but poverty among the Albanians is something quite different. It is systematic, permanent and universal poverty. Under the monstrous communist system, this poverty became a threat to the very survival of the nation. As the great Albanian writer Ismail Kadare aptly put it, "it threatened the very essence of our race." If Albanians in rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Macedonia are not dying of hunger, it is only because they are living off the remittances of other Albanians who have managed to find work in the West, i.e. in the United States, Canada, Australia and especially in Western Europe. The inhabitants of Albania, for their part, manage to survive only with the help of aid from the international community and from the remittances of the increasingly large number of emigrants working in Western Europe and in the United States.
    Why are the Albanians so incredibly poor? Because they don't know how to work? Because they don't want to work? No.
    One of the reasons for the economic backwardness and poverty of the Albanians was the communist system which held them in power for almost half a century. But this is not the only reason, and certainly not the earliest historical reason for this state of things. The Albanians were late to develop economically. As a people they were poor long before communism, and as anyone can guess from their present state, they will remain poor for some time after the fall of communism, at least for as long as they are divided into several countries. The division of Albanian territory into several states and consequently, the disintegration of the Albanians as a people has, as a matter of course, impoverished them even further and jeopardized their economic survival. As a result, opportunities for their development, progress and well-being have been cramped, confined and restricted. How could it be otherwise? This ethnic, cultural and geographical entity, i.e. a natural entity, has been unnaturally and forcibly chopped into pieces and is now struggling to return to its unity of old, for which the political, economic, commercial, intellectual and cultural prerequisites no longer exist.
    Our Balkan neighbours, the Serbs and Montenegrins, and subsequently the Macedonians, who took possession of Albanian territory either because they feared the understandable and inevitable irredentist demands of the Albanians or because they were simply power-hungry, will do their utmost to ensure that any agreements reached between the Albanians on the two sides of the border will be blocked - not only political agreements, but also any cultural, economic and commercial ties. The Albanian people are therefore in a political and economic situation which was unknown to them in the past. In Kosovo and in other parts of former Yugoslavia they find themselves in a colonial situation which has become more intolerable than it was under the Turks. Their language and culture are proof of their common identity as one people but so is poverty, which has become the common denominator of their economic and social situation. With this in mind, it is clear that their dreams of freedom and independence, cherished for five hundred years under the Turkish yoke, have ended in a national catastrophe, i.e. in the division of a nation. One half of this nation ended up under foreign rule no better than the one before it, and the other half, after years of trials and tribulations to maintain its independence, ended up in an unspeakable communist dictatorship, from which it will take much longer to recover than might be expected at the moment.
    The border which runs through the middle of Albanian territory, as if right through the heart of the nation, has been the major cause of the systematic and seemingly never-ending poverty of the Albanians on both sides of it. This poverty in turn, not to mention persecution and political terror in Yugoslavia, has been the major factor in the uninterrupted emigration of Albanians abroad from the time of the Balkan Wars to the present day: to Turkey, to the United States, Australia, Canada and subsequently to Western Europe. This flow of emigrants, which has been much more rapid and dramatic in recent years, has brought the Albanian question to the fore in international politics. This mass migration, the consequences of which the Western world is only beginning to comprehend, has been caused more than anything by the division of Albanian territory and the division of the Albanian people. It is the result of a political and historical error now working at the expense of those who committed it in the first place: the Great Powers of Western Europe. Indeed, this political injustice is returning to haunt them, and they will, alas, have to pay dearly for it.