Volume 40, Number 1 & 2 · January 14, 1993
Slouching Toward Democracy
By Jeri Laber
Albania, fifty miles across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, has the same beautiful coastline as Montenegro and Croatia to its north and Greece to its south. The 3.3 million citizens of this small, mountainous country roughly the size of Maryland suffered longer and more silently under communism than those of any other European nation. Economically backward, militarily insignificant, and politically isolated, Albania slipped out of sight during the cold war. For forty-five years, from 1944 to 1989, it remained closed, as remote to its European neighbors as a mountaintop Himalayan kingdom. Few people knew, or cared, about the brutality of its leaders or the persecution of its people.
Feature, 5351 words
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