> Albania was still ruled by iron-handed communist regime and at least based on surface reading seemed to be deeper in the (Stalinist/Communist) ideology than many others, including post-Stalin Soviet Union.

I don't understand this part given that the rest of your post, and the article you link, makes it clear that they had transitioned out of communism 6 years previously. But yeah they were still terribly poor and perhaps worse off under the post-communist regime. They were seen as more backward and less Western than, say, post-Soviet Latvia which was already deep in talks to join the EU - something that remains a long way off for Albania more than 20 years later.