WHERE WILL THE CRISIS OF THE ALBANIAN "LEFT" BE
The problems of socialism with a human face, pluralism and multiparty politics, soviets and monism, are reappearing in today’s Albanian conditions.
The problems of an evolution with a turn toward social democracy, of socialism with a human face, pluralism and multiparty politics, are reappearing in today’s Albanian conditions.
After a chronic disorder in decision-making so as not to break with the political groups of the East European past, which were by no means clear and not in the service of defending democratic gains, there has recently been an unusual awakening within the Albanian left. At the center of attention has been the idea of holding a congress to create a new social-democratic force. This idea cannot fail to remind the Albanian public of the long-standing attempts to transform the PPSH into a socialist party oriented toward the later Eurocommunist models. It was an effort that from the outset was strongly supported both by the intellectual branches of the PPSH and by certain well-known public figures, who sought to preserve political continuity after the fall of the communist monopoly.
But what is today being presented as a reformist project in fact has a long history of wavering, division and failure. From the attempts to invent a democratic socialism distinct from the classic Marxist-Leninist model, to the imitations of Western social democracies, the Albanian left has not succeeded in clearly defining its own identity. Today’s debate on social democracy is nothing other than the continuation of an old dilemma: can a modern left be built without truly breaking with the totalitarian legacy?
In these conditions, the crisis lies not simply in the rivalry of individuals or groups, but in the lack of a credible vision. Many of those who speak today of reform, yesterday were part of the structures of the PPSH, and later of the PS, without ever making an honest accounting of their responsibilities. That is why every new initiative is perceived with distrust, especially when it is accompanied by vague terminology and by attempts to hide the past.
If the Albanian left truly seeks to be reborn as a modern European force, it must finally separate itself from the political culture of monism, from the practices of ideological command, and from the relativization of the crimes of the dictatorship. Otherwise, every congress, platform or new project will remain merely an internal maneuver for political repositioning.
The crisis of the Albanian left will therefore be the crisis of the inability to choose between nostalgia and modernization, between preserving the old apparatus and building a new identity. And this is precisely where the essential question lies: where will this crisis be tomorrow, if today the past is not acknowledged and the future is not built on truth?
MUF BUÇPAPAJ