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Comment by quasse | Hacker News Reader

What is the general view on Enver Hoxha by today's Albanian population?

My wife is Albanian, I lived there in 2021/2022.

I found that many people think positively of the regime and its dictator. The population was ill-equipped to deal with a market economy when the regime fell, and many Albanians believe the country has gone down a very chaotic path. They thought the dictatorship provided more structure. My grandmother-in-law (in her 60s), whose family suffered greatly when Hoxha took over, is one such Albanian who thinks positively of him, despite how the regime treated them. This feels a bit like Stockholm syndrome.

This mass Stockholm syndrome shit that every post communist country goes through with their hitler-tier leaders is evidence for me that god doesn't exist, and that we deserve the leaders we get.

I swear to god, we could liberate North Korea and they'd turn around and cry about how good it was during the Kim era because apparently we humans are deeply masochistic to our core. We want the boot stomping on our face forever.

That's too bitter. Speaking as a westerner married into an East German family, what people seem to crave more than anything is stability, which the dead hand of The Party delivered. When I talk to them about the comforts and freedoms of their post-1990 life there's a long list of details but behind it there's a ground state of "Ostalgie", gentle yearning for a time when if tomorrow wouldn't bring especial wonders nor would it bring calamity. And crucially this would be true for everyone in your community: with far less latitude for personal decisions of consequence nobody was far ahead or behind.

What people hate is that every such regime that falls is immediately picked clean by western vultures and remainders of old power structures in new coats. If you wanted people to think positively of liberal democracy you'd have the CIA going medieval on all the crooks behind the scenes, not apparently precisely the opposite.

If you liberate DPRK and the South Koreans march in, "legitimately" buy up all the land and property and "fairly" put all the poor inhabitants into functionally perpetual indentured servitude there will eventually be some resentment.

Plus the current state of North Korea owes a lot of its conditions to the Americans. Before someone accuses me of being a Tankie I do think the Kim dynasty is absolutely deranged and I obviously think that the average North Korean would be better off if they were toppled and I am an anarchist not an auth-communist.

But let's not forget that the Americans completely levelled the territory, including destroying dams that provided people's drinking water (a war crime then and now), and then gloated about it, and have then proceeded to consistently act in bad faith.

So when the comment above talks about "liberating" I do wonder exactly what they mean and how it would be different to the first time they tried it and how might the average North Korean react.

Maybe they would install a new dictator more amenable to the "rules-based international order" (i.e. the US and people who agree with them) like they did in South Korea or countless other countries across Latin America.

the same apply to Vietnam and Cambodia. yet those countries are far more functional than DPRK. the extreme and dynastic cult of personality seems unique to the Kim family.

North Korea was the rich, industrialized half of the country, South Korea was poorer and extensively damaged by the Korean War. The fact that the South is now 10x richer and way better on any measurable metric tells you all you need to know about how well Juche and the Kims are working for the North.

Probably has more to do with sanctions and the US spending shitloads of money to rebuild and trade with only the South.

I've read a few of these sources, it is my understanding that nearly 2/3 of all buildings in

North Korea were destroyed in the Korean War. S3 Sources - Blowback https://search.app/8ZBidRZFnNxnWUcG9

I don't think it's too hard to figure out why the US has worked closely with the South Korean for decades. They're anti Communist.

The problem is expectation management. In Eastern Germany and generally Eastern / South Eastern Europe, many envied the West, its lifestyle and wealth.

But once the various dictatorships, be it the USSR, Yugoslavia, Hoxha or whoever, fell... it became clear that it would take a long time until their life materially improved other than not having to be afraid of getting gulaged randomly. Corruption continued to exist on all levels from small (police "roadblocks" with made-up traffic violation tickets) over middle (building permits taking years if not "accelerated" with bakshish) to large (to this day, most government-owned companies are looted by the elites), cost of life expenses for everything not produced domestically can be on par with Western countries... it's not much in visible improvement over the "old days" where you could at least survive as long as you kept your mouth shut.

I was in Tirana last October, he seems to be treated as some kind of whimsical amusement and mascot rather than a historical tyrant. His residence is still intact and visible in the city center and is something of a tourist photo opportunity. AFAIK it's fully closed, but from the top of the rotating restaurant nearby you can see into it.

I am Italian, I know many Albanians and I visited the country too. As far as I know there is still somebody that feel nostalgia about the dictator, but 90% of the people are really happy about the democracy and they want to join the UE. Just to give an anedoct: in front of Berat there is a mountain where Oxha wrote with trees his name Enver. After the end of communism, they changed in Never.

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