NEWS ANALYSIS : Albania, Last of Stalinist States, May Fall Next

East Europe’s last Communist domino, rigidly Stalinist Albania, may be tottering.

The fall of the Nicolae Ceausescu regime in nearby Romania, coupled with severe economic problems in Albania itself, last month triggered the first serious anti-government demonstration since the Communist revolution in 1944, U.S. analysts say.

The student-led protest in the northern city of Shkoder, Albania’s second-largest city and a major industrial and transportation center, appears to have been put down “immediately and violently,” according to a State Department official, though the event passed almost unnoticed in the West.

But the growing undercurrents of resistance to Europe’s most backward, isolated and totalitarian regime led a senior U.S. analyst to predict that “Albania will fall as a Communist, Stalinist state--if not from an uprising, then from economic necessity.”

A State Department specialist agreed. “Now that Romania is over, all eyes are moving to Albania. . . . It’s only a question of timing and how it plays out.”

Upheaval in Albania would complete a clean sweep of the Continent’s Communist regimes.

A land of rugged mountains along the Adriatic Sea, Albania has been ruled sinc 1944 by a Communist government so uncompromising that its leaders broke with Moscow in the 1960s, criticizing Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev as too soft. They still count Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as their model.

Now, however, President Ramiz Alia appears to be on the defensive. Alia, a relative centrist in a fragmented Politburo, is thought to be uncertain whether to crack down or ease up.

The senior analyst said: “We’re seeing a pattern of economic concessions and warnings to people that what happened elsewhere is not going to happen in Albania. The regime is obviously nervous.”

For example, Alia, in his New Year’s address to the nation, alluded to the pressures engendered by the dramatic pace of change elsewhere in Eastern Europe: “The events that have occurred recently in East Europe have inspired certain known anti-Albanian forces to resume the campaign of slanders against our country. But, as our people say, they cannot succeed in doing us harm.”

Since last summer, there have been unconfirmed reports of demonstrations in other Albanian towns and villages, including the oil center at Fier and the southern city of Korca.

Albania’s economy has suffered throughout much of the 1980s, bringing increasing deprivation to what was already Europe’s poorest state. After three years of drought, the country, once self-sufficient, had to import food in 1988.

Albanian officials have reported publicly that 1989 brought a marked recovery, but a U.S. official warned, “None of their figures have ever been reliable.”

“Economic difficulties and necessity are driving Albania into the 20th Century and forcing it to deal with the outside world,” another U.S. official said.

As with most of the new opposition movements in Eastern Europe, anti-government activity appears to be centered among students. They are a particularly important segment of the population of Albania because, with one of the highest birthrates in Europe, an estimated two-thirds of its 3.2 million people are under 30 years old.

Ironically, the Communist regime may have helped spawn its own opposition. Albanian government statistics show that only 15% of the population was literate in 1944. In one of its few positive accomplishments, the regime has raised that figure to 75%, according to U.S. analysts.

“This generation of Albanian youth is pretty well educated. It’s surprising how many speak foreign languages, especially German and English,” the State Department specialist said.

“They’re also not as isolated as we once thought,” he added.

Another U.S. expert agreed: “Albania is an island politically from the rest of Eastern Europe. But geographically it is still there--and the impact has to be felt.

“Albanians are not isolated from news. They get Yugoslav, Greek and Italian TV, plus the Voice of America. They even get ‘Dallas’ in Italian. The Albanian press has also given pretty accurate coverage of events in Romania. They know what’s going on,” he said.

“They want to read, to travel, to eat well and to be fashionable,” he said.

In an officially sanctioned poll last fall, students showed unprecedented interest in Western rock music.

The Albanian press has recently reported on extensive “hooliganism,” widely interpreted by Western specialists as a denunciation of new student activism.

“This is going to be a young people’s revolution,” one such analyst predicted.

Another potential source of opposition comes from within the peasant community, which accounts for 70% of the population and is divided among Albania’s legendary clans.

“(The late President Enver) Hoxha never controlled the peasants. And among the peasants today, the Communists have no credibility. They are known only for the negative, not the positive,” a U.S. analyst said. “The peasants don’t think in terms of liberation. They only know that the government has taken away their land and their animals.”

Hoxha, who died in 1985, was the guerrilla leader who led the resistance against the Italians and Germans in World War II and who ruled the state for four decades in a staunchly Stalinist fashion.

The tightly knit clans have also proven largely impenetrable by the state’s Draconian secret police, the Sigurimi, U.S. officials say.

Ironically, the first visible signs of opposition have emerged at a time when Alia appears to be moving cautiously toward reform. In a series of steps, he has encouraged Albania’s government-run media to report objectively about some issues and has publicly criticized the government bureaucracy.

He has also allowed a handful of American tourists to visit and has established links with American-Albanian organizations.

Alia has even eased the country’s official atheism, allowing religious ceremonies in private homes.

There have also been tantalizing hints of a desire on Alia’s part for official contacts with the United States--the first from an Albanian leader since the 1950s.

An official of the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States, the Very Rev. Arthur Liolin, was granted a brief meeting with Alia in November, the first time an Albanian Communist leader has met with such a prominent religious figure.

Liolin met last week with Asst. Secretary of State Raymond Seitz and said Albania has loosened its prohibition on religious practices and is seeking business contacts with U.S. firms. “They are very interested in the United States,” he said in a telephone interview.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Albania at any level, a State Department official said.

Alia also allowed the publication of a book that denounced the brutality, absolute power and human rights abuses of the Sigurimi.

“Alia is trying to save the (Communist) Party by finding scapegoats, either in the bureaucracy or the secret police,” said Elez Biberaj, the director of the VOA’s Albanian service and the author of several works on Albania.

He and several U.S. officials pointed out that Alia is trapped in a political Catch-22.

“The party must reform itself for the sake of the economy, and there are some indications that Alia is trying to do it. But if he should carry out radical reforms, it would almost surely lead to the decline of the party and the system. It’s a no-win position,” Biberaj said.

U.S. officials predict that Albania’s looming upheaval is likely to be violent.

“When Albania goes, it will probably go along the lines of the Romanian model. In other words, it will start with an incident, a protest over something like a missed food shipment. That will lead to massive repression and deaths. Then it snowballs into an uprising,” a U.S. analyst said.