Albania And Then There Were None

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

Despite the calendar, the revolutions of 1989 have not yet ended. As one East bloc regime after another was shaken by political change last fall, only one Communist government in Europe managed to withstand the political earthquake unscathed. Now, nearly six months later, the leadership of tiny Albania is finally loosening its ultra-orthodox Stalinist grip. Last week the legislature in Tirana voted a series of political and legal reforms that may mark the beginning of the end of decades of repression and isolation.

The Continent's poorest and most backward country, Albania is a wedge of Balkan territory on the southern Adriatic coast between Yugoslavia and Greece. An agrarian land where workers earn an average wage of $85 a month, the country is as rigid economically as it is politically. Albania even broke relations with the Soviet Union in 1961 and China in 1978 after those powers experimented with early liberalization programs. Since he succeeded the late dictator Enver Hohxa in 1985, President Ramiz Alia, 65, has only gradually modified the most egregious of his predecessor's restrictive policies.

The laws approved at last week's two-day session of the 250-member People's Assembly are something different. In its most symbolic decree, the legislature announced that for the first time since the Communist takeover in 1944, Albanians would have the right to travel abroad freely. Although many of the country's citizens are too poor to go anywhere, the previous restrictions rankled. The new ruling also apparently means that Albanian emigres will have the right to go home on visits, and thousands are already making plans to do so. In addition, the Assembly abolished a 24-year-old ban on religious practices, which presumably will mean the reopening of Islamic mosques as well as Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches that have been used in the Communist era as everything from museums to sports clubs.

Taking important legal steps, the government reestablished the Ministry of Justice, which had been abolished in 1966, and put an Alia aide in charge of it. Suspected criminals were granted the right to an attorney from the time of arrest, and the number of capital offenses was reduced from 34 to eleven. Says Nicholas Pano, an Albanian specialist at Western Illinois University: "Albania is serious about shedding its Stalinist heritage."

Behind the announcement of domestic reforms is President Alia's desire to re-establish Albania's long-dormant relations with most of the outside world. Deputy Prime Minister Manush Myftiu told last week's legislative session, for example, that the government wants to join the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Before it could have done that, however, it had to endorse some of CSCE's basic human-rights requirements, including freedom of travel and other civil rights guarantees. Even the United Nations is looking anew at Albania: Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar made his first visit to Tirana last week. In Washington a State Department spokeswoman has declared optimistically that "the door is open to the resumption of diplomatic relations" between the U.S. and Albania. Though the process has only begun, it seems clear that last year's political tremors accomplished what decades of isolation failed to do: convince Tirana that it is time to come in from the cold.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Rome