Part VI: Minority Report

From "Albanian Minorities Under Zog" by Andrea LaFontaine, University of Toronto Press 1997)

Despite the fact that Zog ruled over one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the Balkans, his record towards the minority communities within his country stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. While a sizeable portion of this policy, particularly towards the Greek community in the south, was determined by foreign pressure, (1) clear evidence exists to show that Zog saw the benefits of a multicultural Albania decades before the first hints of its emergence. Zog's willingness to draw upon the labour, intelligence, and allegiance of Albanian minorities in addition to women and workers all contributed to the construction of the most powerful political constituency in Albanian history…

Albanian Romani both Jevgs (2) and Gabels (3) formed an integral part of FMSh's Infrastructure Division particularly in the early years of the monarchy.​

Given the importance of Zog's Rural Road Program (Programi per Rruget Rurale) it is unsurprising that Albanian Romani communities were one of the first Albanian minorities to be incorporated into the Zogist coalition. Albanian Romani, in particular the settled Jevg population, had served as the backbone of the Albanian construction industry since the Ottoman conquest due to Albanians' traditional aversion to physical labour. However even into the 1920s their willingness to perform this essential service was not valued by their Albanian neighbours who continued to perpetuate stereotypes of the "listless and thieving Gypsy." Even Zog's own views took time to evolve as evidence exists of him perpetuating those same stereotypes prior to his coronation in 1928.

Only after his coronation did Zog begin to interact with Albanian Romani more closely as he took a keen interest in the spending of the SVEA loan around Durres. When confronted with the casual racism faced by Albanian Romani construction workers in addition to the challenges facing their Albanian neighbours, Zog's stereotypical view of the Jevgs began to change. This change accelerated when it became apparent that the SVEA loan would only cover a portion of his kingdom's infrastructure needs. The Italians had done an admirable job of building up Durres' harbor, the city around it, and several major roads, but the majority of Albanians still lacked access to reliable infrastructure.(4) Zog needed a new network of rural roads to make his vision for Albania a reality and despite negative reports from his advisors he began to see that the most experienced construction workers at his disposal were mostly Romani.

Based on this observation, even before the final francs from the SVEA loan had been spent, Zog had already put in place a program to identify the best construction workers currently employed by the Italians. As with the other divisions of FMSh, identifying prospective employees proved to be the largest obstacle and resulted in an excruciatingly slow start. For decades this slow start baffled Zog's critics who pointed out that unlike the other FMSh endeavours, thousands of workers in Albania had experience building infrastructure. Zog could have retained the entire SVEA workforce and turned them towards his own projects had he not chosen to invest in Albanian labour rather than continue to rely on Italian skilled labourers. (5) Instead Zog seemed content with retaining a few hundred Albanian workers and overseeing the slow but steady growth of the FMSh Infrastructure Division and his rural road program.

Only with the release of newly released documents are historians able to fully grasp the rationale behind Zog's decision to pursue a more gradual program. Unsurprisingly, many of the most important reasons behind Zog's decision to pursue a gradualist program were easily apparent to both contemporary observers and historians alike. Zog's journals reveal that he was deeply concerned with ensuring that he prioritized investments in the productive divisions of FMSh, oil, and other stocks in order to maintain his and by extension Albania's financial independence from Italy. Unlike other countries, Italian control over the Albanian National Bank prevented Zog from being as aggressive has he would have liked during the 1930s as any loans either came with dire political consequences or would be taken out by himself personally. Zog also wanted to develop the necessary skilled labour force required to undertake independent infrastructure programs and recognized that developing those workers would take time.

Zog's recently released journals also show that a remarkably prescient fear of Italian invasion guided many of his decisions during the First Albanian Economic Miracle. Even in 1930, Zog firmly believed that the Italians would occupy the entire country, and both take advantage of and ultimately destroy most of the infrastructure that he built. More than any other consideration, this fear guided his hesitancy to build additional bridges during the 1930s and his emphasis on rural roads and survey work for the second wave of projects which defined the early phase of the Second Albanian economic miracle. As with the other Albanian branches of FMSh, Zog's fear of an Italian invasion and his distrust of Albania's Italian trained army also pushed him to invest heavily in personnel and lay the foundation for a future resistance network.

Ultimately, these considerations combined resulted in only two hundred workers making the initial transition from working for SVEA to working for FMSh's Infrastructure Division in 1930/31. Such a transition was nothing short of a godsend for these fortunate individuals who, like other FMSh workers, found themselves recipients of a massive pay increase, far better working conditions, education opportunities, and a union membership. For the Romani who comprised nearly half of the Infrastructure division these benefits were compounded by Zog's efforts at meritocracy within FMSh and his recognition of their experience. For the first time in their lives these Romani workers were given a pathway to social mobility and unsurprisingly many of them took it.

In exchange for all of these benefits, infrastructure workers found that far more was expected of them than ever before. For many of them Zog's stringent demands proved to be too much and the temptation to continue doing things as they had always been done was too strong. This attitude proved to be quite common among the handful of old foremen Zog recruited who were not only accustomed to working for the Italians but also found the newfound equality of their Romani co-workers to be jarring. Unfortunately for these foremen and other workers, refusal to conform to the company's new culture was the only excuse Zog needed to replace them with another willing candidate. This phenomenon also retarded Zog's rural road initiative as a near constant string of dismissals in 1931-32 kept him from increasing the size of the division as he had initially planned.

Yet for every individual fired, another was willing to try his hand at becoming "A Company Man" and another fully bought into the future Zog had laid out. Stone by stone, man by man Zog built his new Albania and at its foundation lay dozens of Romani men who took hold of the possibilities offered by them with both hands and rose rapidly through the ranks. Their success inspired others who in turn inspired others and resulted in construction remaining a "Gypsy profession" in the eyes of many Albanians. Yet with the expansion of FMSh's Infrastructure Division coinciding with Zog's Tax Reform eliminating the hated corvee labour tax anti-Roma rhetoric remained relatively low. Instead increasing employment among both Jevgs and Gabels was initially seen by most Albanians as a net positive in that it ostensibly cut down on crime while at the same time providing the infrastructure necessary to fully take advantage of Zog's removal of the agricultural tithe. It should also be noted that the massive increase in the standard of living, particularly among the Jevg community, inspired dozens of Albanians to reconsider their attitudes towards construction.

Evidence of these shifting attitudes became increasingly prevalent as the 1930s progressed and Zog chose to invest more resources and expand the Infrastructure Division. With the organization's culture now firmly entrenched, the resulting expansion served as a vital agent of secondary socialization which not only expanded Zog's support base but also served as a nation building tool. Zog's policy of "regionally mixing" work crews to emulate the mixing that was also taking place in FMSh factories also had a profound effect on creating a truly national movement. More importantly in Zog's eyes however was that the expansion gave him license to hire additional "security guards" to ostensibly to "prevent worksite theft." Recruited from within the organization, these guards provided Zog with yet another opportunity to train and arm soldiers for the coming conflict…

Vasileios Sachinis (b.1897) A Gjirocastran Businessman and one of Zog's first allies within the Greek Albanian Community (6)​

…For many Greeks outside of the clergy and nationalist intelligentsia, the economic opportunities offered by Zog's reforms far outweighed the "insult" of founding an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church. (7) All the fiery rhetoric in the Greek papers aside, Zog's religious policy towards the Greek minority meant that their churches continued to function like they always had. (8) His economic policy on the other hand meant a tangible increase in their standard of living as the tax reform and anti-corruption measures resulted in an end to the capricious and often nationally motivated demands of individual gendarmerie officers. Despite initial fears that the new sales tax was merely a cover to shift the burden of taxation onto the Greeks and continued complaints about lax compliance outside of the cities, a crackdown on corruption eventually resulted in the Greek community actually experiencing a slight decrease in effective taxation during the 1930s.

Zogist industrial policy had a similarly mixed initial reception in Albania's Greek community but likewise eventually contributed to raising their standard of living. Like the rest of Albania, the Greek communities reacted incredulously to news of Zog's new factories in Durres and the seemingly fantastical pay and benefits offered to prospective workers. This incredulousness turned to fear as the reality of FMSh's success began to sink in and a slow trickle of Greek workers began to respond to FMSh recruitment efforts. Though all businesses and factories in Albania suffered from FMSh effectively poaching their best workers, higher levels of education and entrepreneurship resulted in a proportionately larger impact within the Albanian Greek minority. Conscious of their fragile position in Albanian society, the Greek minority's fears of further measures aimed at their assimilation grew as FMSh continued to defy the odds and expand amidst the Great Depression.

However just as the flow of bi-lingual workers to Greek businesses in Albania and Greece not only slowed to a crawl but began to reverse, Zog initiated his 1933 Business Relief Program. While this did nothing to prevent Greek workers from joining the ever-expanding operations of FMSh, it did provide a vital lifeline to businesses throughout Albania who had lost some of their best workers. Facing increasingly uncertain economic prospects, few entrepreneurs chose to turn their noses up at Zog's offer even within the Greek community. When it became apparent that Zog had no cultural or linguistic agenda outside of maintaining and bolstering the peaceful inter-ethnic relations in Southern Albania required for economic growth, even the few holdouts had difficulty joining the program. The resulting unprecedented level of integration into the broader Albanian economy Greek businesses achieved during this period meant that even those who did not join the ranks of FMSh workers experienced the broader effects of the First Albanian Economic Miracle.

Of course, Greeks who did join FMSh experienced far more of the First Albanian Economic Miracle with many taking advantage of their education to rise quickly through the ranks particularly after Zog decided to expand the geographical scope of FMSh's Albanian operations in the mid-1930s. Zog hoped that establishing satellite factories in Saranda, Vlora, and Shengjin (9) would not only make use of Albania's remaining port capacity, but also alleviate concerns about overcrowding in Durres while also expanding the geographic range of his Albanian investments. Though each of the new satellite factories was established with a core "launch team" of FMSh veterans from Durres, in each city Zog sought to take advantage of the local labour force and selected the launch team accordingly. In Saranda, this meant that the majority of the launch team was comprised of Greeks or bi-lingual Albanians and that those factories became effectively bi-lingual and remained so until FMSh's restructuring in the 1960s.

…Though many observers focus on the political benefits Zog reaped from incorporating members of the Greek minority into his coalition, the economic benefits proved to be particularly important in the short term as FMSh goods carved out a niche within the Greek market. Increasing commercial ties with Albania's Balkan neighbours, combined with Zog's flirtation with the Balkan pact in the early 1930s proved to be a decisive factor in his negotiations with Italy and helped lay the foundations for future postwar commercial relations. Furthermore, Zog's focus on economically integrating the Greek Albanian community proved to be far more effective than the "Albanification" policies advocated by figures such as Mirash Ivanaj (10) in securing Albania's southern frontier. Without the resulting economic growth, the outcry over the stagnant number of Greek language schools and the construction of new mosques in the region might have caused significant and immediate foreign and domestic problems.

As effective as Zog's inclusion of the Greek minority in FMSh proved to be, his policy was not without its share of detractors. To keep dissenting voices in line, Zog constantly sought to play various factions off one another while ensuring that his focus remained on developing an ethnically Albanian labour force. When combined with the astonishing level of economic growth Albania experienced during the 1930s, these measures seemed quite effective. However certain decisions such as the decision to allow for the construction of a small Greek Orthodox Church in Durres to serve Greek FMSh workers and the promotion of several key Greek figures created a sense of alienation among some Albanians which lurked beneath the surface…

Hermann Bernstein 1876-1935, US Minister in Albania 1930-33​

At the time of Zog's coronation less than one hundred Jews lived in Albania, forgotten by the world and indeed most of the country. Clustered in a pair of tightly knit but well-respected communities residing in the coastal cities of Durres and Vlora they were content with being an afterthought in Albanian political life. (11) Few expected the new king to pay any attention to them or the plight of their co-religionists around the world and none of them could have even imagined what the future had in store for them and for Albanian-Jewish relations…

…In many ways the small size of Albania's Jewish community in 1928 was indicative of the country's tortuous history. The most recent archaeological evidence presents evidence of Jewish communal life in Albania as early as the 1st century CE and numerous accounts exist of flourishing Jewish communities in Vlora and Berat during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period respectively. However, in both cases, Albania's relegation to an Ottoman backwater led to their decline and ultimate disappearance. Only when the region became the site of increasing Italian and Habsburg trade in the early 20th century did a group of enterprising Jews from Ioannina move north to take advantage of the new commercial opportunities… (12)

…Needless to say, no one in the Albanian Jewish Community expected Zog to approach them and ask for help in distributing and marketing FMSh goods yet that is precisely what he did. As he did around the world, Zog left no stone unturned to find opportunities to advance his industrial policy and though not all of his efforts bore fruit, his use of the Albanian Jewish community's networks certainly did. For, in addition to selling to their Albanian neighbours, Jewish Albanians also opened doors to FMSh products in Ioannina and around the world…

…As important as Zog's incorporation of the Albanian Jewish Community into his industrial policy was, a far more consequential turning point came about with the arrival of the newly appointed US Minister in Albania: Hermann Bernstein. While Zog had cultivated friendly relations with all of the American ambassadors, his relationship with Bernstein was an entirely different animal due partly to their respective personalities but also due to the fact that Bernstein was incredibly well placed to advance Zog's larger goal of reforming Albanian agriculture. Though Zog's journals show that he had contingency plans, Bernstein's ties with both ORT (13) and the Zionists presented an opportunity to exponentially speed up the process of bootstrapping an Albanian cooperative farming movement.

Despite never visiting Palestine, Zog kept a close eye on developments within the Yishuv (14) and their experience with cooperative farming. While the kibbutz movement had been what initially attracted his interest, Zog saw the development of the moshav in 1921 as more applicable to the Albanian situation. The moshav's maintenance of the family as the unit of production of consumption and eschewing of radical social experiments seemed to Zog to provide a more realistic vision for prospective Albanian cooperative farms. Unable to capitalize on its long relationship with Austria to take advantage of their cooperative farming expertise due to Italian influence, Zog saw an immense opportunity in cultivating a closer relationship with the Zionist movement.

Without a direct relationship to any major Jewish organization, Zog chose instead to work through Bernstein while also advancing a parallel goal of maintaining a good relationship with the United States to safeguard his American investments. After convincing Bernstein of Albania's relative lack of antisemitism by sending him on a grand tour of the country, (15) Zog and the American minister got down to business and opened-up formal negotiations with both Zionist and other Jewish groups in 1931 for the establishment of not one but two training farms outside of Durres. Utilizing his power as Albanian Head of State and his newfound financial independence, Zog was willing to provide Jewish organizations with a considerable amount of aid provided that in addition to training Jewish youth for work in Palestine, they also trained Albanians in cooperative farming principles. The uniqueness of such an arrangement coupled with Zog's seemingly perilous reliance on Italian support proved too be too much for ORT but the more desperate Habonim and Hashomer Hatzair organizations eventually opted to capitalize on one of the most generous offers they had received to date. (16)

The prospect of free land, Zog's personal guarantee to cover a large portion of the startup costs, the prospect of further expansion, and climactic similarities between Albania and Palestine proved to be too much for both Zionist organizations to resist. The only real barrier was the fact that Zog's insistence on maintaining a 1-1 ratio between Albanian and Jewish students clashed directly with the linguistic capabilities of both sides. Fortunately, the desire of both sides to begin work meant that they quickly reached a compromise and through recruiting Zionists from both Italy and Kosovo found enough interpreters to begin work on training young Albanians.

Unfortunately for Zog, the process of training young Albanians to work on cooperative farms proved to be far easier said than done. Clashing cultures, language barriers, and a lack of experience all combined to push the experiment to the brink of failure numerous times through the early 1930s. High numbers of both students and teachers dropping out of the program coupled with increased pressure from the events of the Holocaust meant that by 1935 Zog had to completely abandon any hope of maintaining his 1-1 training ratio. (17) Zog's dream of founding of dozens of cooperative farms in the 1930s quickly shriveled up as the program's graduates were instead immediately plugged in to take the place of their former teachers. While this process did eventually result in a more sustainable training program, even this modest success did not alter the dramatic postponement of Zog's dreams for widespread agricultural modernization and reform.

The experience of Jewish student farmers stood in stark contrast to their Albanian neighbours. With the benefit of years of experience in running similar kibbutzim, training programs ran with similar rates of success as kibbutzim elsewhere and achieved exponentially higher graduation rates than the Albanian training farm. While this would normally not pose a significant problem, growing anxiety over Nazi policies resulted in significant pressure on both Zog and the teachers on the ground. Only after all possible efforts to improve Albanian graduation rates failed and the passage of the Nuremberg Laws did Zog agree to allow for the intake of additional Jewish students. While Italian pressure did result in Albania eventually closing this program in 1939, (18) when combined with other avenues of immigration, it did provide a key escape route for Jews from the Third Reich and Austria in particular…

…Despite the fact that the majority of the participants in cooperative farming training schools came from the most ideologically motivated portions the Albanian community, they quite rarely participated in the actual fighting. Whereas Zog placed almost no restrictions on Jews remaining in Albania or many employees from FMSh, graduates from the cooperative farms along with other trained workers were explicitly barred from fighting and were instead employed in the massive education efforts undertaken by the resistance. Unlike his policies in the 1930s, Zog's decision to keep these trained farmers from fighting bore immediate fruit with the cessation of hostilities. Without them, it is hard to imagine Zog's sweeping land and agricultural reforms being as successful…

…Tragically, not every Albanian's attitudes towards their non-Albanian neighbours changed for the better during the 1930s. As these communities reaped the benefits of full participation in Zog's nation building efforts jealousy within certain sectors of Albanian society began to mount. To his credit Zog's journals from the time show an awareness of this sentiment but also a belief that they were manageable. Little did he know just how they would be manipulated during the coming conflict…

Notes

1. In OTL Zog's decision to nationalize the Albanian education system violated the 1921 agreement Albania signed regarding the treatment of minorities and provoked considerable Greek resistance due to their continued ambitions in the region. These developments will be described in more detail in the Education, Culture, and Propaganda update.

2. The name for the settled Roma in Albania.

3. The name for Roma living a more traditional nomadic lifestyle.

4. This remains a major issue today as well unfortunately.

5. In OTL the reliance on Italian skilled labour persisted well after the Italy's surrender in 1943 and repatriating Italians who were forcibly employed by the Albanians proved to be a major headache for the postwar Italian government. Considered to be part of the "reparations" Hoxha believed Albania was owed, most of these Italians found themselves in a state of indentured servitude which only really began to change when significant numbers of Soviet experts began to arrive.

6. In OTL he ended up leading an anti-Italian Greek resistance group in Northern Epirus/Southern Albania.

7. There were similar complaints after Zog replaced Vassan with Kissi in OTL. In TTL Zog didn't bother with Vassan and went straight to Kissi which means that these complaints have more time to emerge before the war.

8. Zog adopted a similar policy in OTL after pressure from both the Patriarchate and the Greek government. In TTL Jack doesn't care about forcibly assimilating Albania's Greek population at all so follows this policy right off the bat.

9. Shengjin serves as the major port for Shkodra and Northern Albania as a whole.

10. Ivanaj was the major figure behind the ill-advised nationalization of education in OTL. Needless to say, in TTL he doesn't get anywhere near becoming the Minister of Education.

11. Albanian census data from the time isn't the greatest but this is the best info I have. This is the total Hermann Bernstein came to when he was ambassador in OTL. My sources for most of the information regarding Bernstein can be found in his personal papers which are available for researchers at YIVO in New York.

12. All from OTL based on information from Matsas and Bernstein.

13. Obchestvo Remeslenogo (pronounced: Remeslenava) Truda, "Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades" Founded in St. Petersburg in 1880. Non-Zionist in ideology, they founded training farms among other initiatives in numerous countries but focused most of their efforts on the Soviet Union.

14. "Settlement" Hebrew name for the Jewish community in Palestine pre-1948.

15. Bernstein's tour of Albania happens a bit earlier than OTL but his conclusions regarding a lack of Albanian antisemitism are the same.

16. In OTL the idea of a training farm for Jewish Youth in Albania was Bernstein's idea and he initiated it. Without more than tentative support from Zog, detailed plans emerged in 1932 which are described in detail in Bernstein's papers. Using American machinery, the plan was to drain some of the swamps outside of Durres to provide the land but in OTL Zog provided no other support and there was no desire on his part to seriously reform Albanian agriculture. In OTL only the Zionists showed any real interest in setting up a training farm in Albania.

17. I'd be more than happy to see data suggesting otherwise, but everything I've seen suggests that these kinds of inter-ethnic training farms don't have great success rates.

18. In OTL Albania passed antisemitic legislation due to Italian pressure in 1938. However, it should be noted that, like all Albanian laws, these measures were very poorly enforced. In OTL, due to Zog's belief that he could use Jewish refugees to break Albania away from Italian influence and several benevolent Albanian diplomats and local officials Albania remained effectively open for Jews until it was invaded after 1939. After the Italian invasion, the closure of all foreign embassies in Tirana meant that Albania was no longer seen as a good place to wait for a visa from another country resulting in Jewish immigration drying up until 1941 when Italian occupied Albania became a relative safe haven compared to German occupied Yugoslavia or Greece and Bulgarian occupied Macedonia. More information on the fate of these Jews and others will be forthcoming in future updates.