More Tourism, Trade With Soviet Bloc and Western Nations : Albania Shows Signs of Ending Self-Imposed Isolation

“We can now watch Italian and Yugoslav television programs, and we know of Western rock bands,” a young Albanian identifying himself only as Azim was saying on Durres’ town square.

He glanced around furtively as he spoke. Rock music is officially banned, and even casual contact with foreigners could mean trouble if noticed by the Sigurimi, Albania’s secret police.

Azim didn’t know, however, what is widely known in the West--that Albania, sealed off by its Stalinist leaders from the rest of the world for most of the postwar era, had established diplomatic relations with West Germany and Canada in September and that Westerners were interpreting that as an opening up.

On a sandy beach near this Adriatic port, a military bunker seems to epitomize today’s Albania. The bunker is one of the tens of thousands put up in the Albanian countryside to fight off foreign invaders. But graffito on the wall reads “AC/DC, Iron Maiden,” two popular Western heavy metal rock groups, and the bunker’s weapons slit is bricked over.

“We don’t need them anymore,” said Agim Sionimeri, a guide for the official Albturist travel agency, after explaining the original purpose of the bunkers.

Harsh Rule

Since World War II, Albania, which is no bigger than Maryland and has a population of about 3 million, has been governed by the harshest Communist regime in Europe.

But since the death in 1985 of Communist Albania’s founder, Enver Hoxha, successor Ramiz Alia has slowly relaxed the country’s rigid isolationism.

Albania closed its borders with neighboring Greece and Yugoslavia in the 1940s, and ordinary Albanians are forbidden to travel abroad. Foreign visitors are rarely allowed in, and when they are, they are restricted to organized group travel.

“About 8,000 tourists, mostly from Western Europe, visited Albania in 1986, but the number is going to be considerably higher this year,” Sionimeri said.

He added that Albania’s pristine sandy beaches and spectacular mountain vistas would be a “sure-fire attraction.”

The countryside is marred, however, by the concrete bunkers that seem to have been sown at random, either individually or in ugly clumps.

But most of them now apparently are used by peasants to store hay or to shelter cattle.

In an apparent effort to stimulate the sluggish performance of its economy, Europe’s poorest country has recently made a number of gestures indicating that it seeks improved ties with the West.

Although Albania remains implacably opposed to restoring the relations it broke with the Soviet Union after the downgrading there in the mid-1950s of Josef Stalin, ties with some Soviet Bloc nations have taken on greater importance.

Trade Visit

In September, Foreign Trade Minister Shane Korbeci made a rare visit to Czechoslovakia, where he signed an agreement for a 10% increase in bilateral trade in 1988.

Even relations with the United States, considered Albania’s greatest enemy, took a slight turn when Albanian authorities rescued a damaged American yacht during a storm in the Adriatic and sheltered its four passengers for three days in June.

The U.S. and Albanian embassies in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, exchanged formal diplomatic notes during the yacht incident, and one Western diplomat there called it an “unprecedented good-will gesture by the Albanians.”

Some Skeptical

However, some political observers view the signs of an Albanian opening with skepticism.

“One should not be deceived by Albania’s alleged opening,” said a senior European diplomat in Tirana, the Albanian capital. “If they were really to open up, the regime could not survive the onslaught of imported ideas.”

A few signs of change are evident to foreign visitors as they pass through Albanian towns, where the streets are lined with rows and rows of decrepit concrete tenements.

In Tirana, the Boulevard of the Heroes of the People, once virtually traffic-free, is now used by an increasing number of vehicles, although private cars are still forbidden.