THE 10th PLENUM—A PROGRAM FOR ACTION We write to you as we feel Letters and telegrams have come, and continue to come, to Comrade Ramiz Alia from workers’ collectives, workers, cooperative members, intellectuals and military personnel, from young and old people in various districts and regions of the country, expressing enthusiasm, solidarity and a high level of readiness to put into practice the decisions of the 10th Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee. The telegram received from the people of the village of Bushnesh, belonging to the «Bajram Curri» high-type agricultural cooperative of Burizanë, Krujë district, says, among other things: Having learned through the newspaper «Zëri i popullit» of your speech at the 10th Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee, we met today, on 19.4.1990, and discussed together with great enthusiasm the further measures the Party is taking to strengthen and democratize life in the country, strengthen the socialist economy, safeguard complete independence and freedom, and connect Party and state bodies with the broad working masses, while fighting more forcefully against some old bureaucratic methods that have outlived their time in production and services. We are also enthused by the measures the Party is taking to improve the mechanism of leadership and organization, and to increase production and the people’s well-being. Your words, so warm and expressive of the Party’s concern for the people and for supplying them with ever more livestock products, make us happy and at the same time give us strength to take on greater tasks: achieving the plan targets, increasing vigilance and strengthening defensive capability. Enemy propaganda and its aims toward our country do not frighten us, and it will find no welcoming ground on which to penetrate and poison our conscience. On the contrary, we are studying more deeply in order to become better acquainted with our Party’s political line and its implementation in concrete conditions, in accordance with the stage of economic and social development. It will find no place among us because it will encounter the unity of the people around the Party and our sound convictions regarding its correct line and policy. We assure you, Comrade Ramiz, that among the people of the village of Bushnesh you will always find people closely bound to the Party, a hardworking and tireless people at the forefront of the work of fulfilling their tasks, always faithful to the Party’s line and to the cause of socialism. The possibilities for progress in our socialist society, says, among other things, the telegram from the workers’ collective of the enterprise trading in miscellaneous goods in Gjirokastër, are something we see concretely in our organization and reserves. So far, we have established and put into operation four sectors of the enterprise, each with separate accounts and around 600 employees, in place of the four operational branches that functioned previously. We have thus moved from administrative management to economic management, putting into practice the tasks of the 9th Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee. Although we are at the beginning of this work, we have already seen the benefits of this form of organization in the first quarter. Thus, in the first quarter we achieved a sales volume 2 million lekë higher than in the four-month period of the previous year, and 200 million lekë more than the increase in sales volume for the whole of 1989, which was 1.8 mi- (Continued on page 2) The bank in an active and responsible role Today’s development and the independence of economic sectors, deepening it through separate accounting, necessarily require an increase in the bank’s active role, its duties and its responsibilities. At the 10th Plenum it was emphasized that the needs of expanded reproduction would be financed from enterprise resources and through bank loans. To carry out this task, it has been envisaged that, alongside enterprises’ own resources, the bank’s participation through short-term loans will also increase, meeting their need for working capital to develop production activities. This will give enterprises room to breathe and increase production by removing obstacles caused by a lack of financial resources. At the same time, enterprises and the bank will bear greater responsibility for the efficient use of loans. In addition to short-term loans to provide working capital, the bank is expected to grant loans under a special arrangement (at special interest rates) to cover enterprises’ unplanned losses. This will increase the bank’s responsibility for monitoring the progress of the enterprises it lends to, so they can meet their economic and financial targets, increase the efficiency of expenditure and cover losses. The bank will also begin granting enterprises long-term loans for new productive investments, as well as for the technical and technological reconstruction of facilities. When investment projects are planned, it will offer its views on their priority order. For investments it finances through loans, the bank will examine and monitor the studies, designs and estimates; it will approve the loan only when the projects are economically and socially worthwhile. The investment-credit mechanism also gives the bank relative independence from the plan and the finance system. The bank will not consider its task completed once it has approved an investment loan: it will monitor and supervise the progress of construction in accordance with the designs and estimates, the timely commissioning of facilities in line with efficiency indicators, and repayment of the loan. For projects financed from enterprises’ own resources and the state budget, the bank will strengthen its oversight, beginning with the preparation of studies, assessment of viability, planning and financing. It will have the duty and the right, when it discovers violations of regulations or deviations from the purpose of an investment, to suspend financing and order construction work to stop. As the 10th Plenum emphasized, special tasks also lie before the bank in developing foreign relations on trade, technical and economic cooperation, finance, etc. Like enterprises, the bank will also be organized according to the separate-accounting method. A portion of the net income secured by the bank Research and creation, a spirit of self-criticism The 10th Plenum did not directly address problems of the arts, but we feel entirely part of it. The profound analysis and important decisions that will further strengthen the economy and deepen the democratization and revolutionary transformation of society as a whole open up new horizons for dramatic and theatrical creativity. We are aware that we have not responded as fully or as well as we should have to the demands and pace of development. We must free ourselves from many prejudices, self-restraint, old bureaucratic practices and mechanical hesitation, and move away from outdated formulas and approaches to major problems, so that the spirit of our time may come to our stages more powerfully and fully. Drama and theatre, among the most democratic art forms, with their direct communication with the public, must make even better use of this key—not only through new themes and perspectives, but also with a new, contemporary spirit—to support and convey artistically the Party’s great program, which is ideological and political as well as national and patriotic. Its realization also requires important psychological transformations throughout all social strata. The contribution of drama and theatre in this respect is enormous. The changes we are making will not come about by themselves. They require more skilled work in every respect. New tasks cannot be solved with old methods and mindsets.

— In the apparatus of the Berat District Party Committee, 50 percent of the employees were laid off — Yesterday, the plenum of the Party Committee of the district of Berat met especially to make concrete decisions on implementing the instructions of the 10th Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee. Many issues were discussed there; in particular, the plan regarding staffing focused on the idea that the Party apparatus could carry out its duties with half its current staff. It proceeded to take concrete action, reducing the number of employees by 50 percent: 10 instructors and 18 secretaries of Party bureaus in enterprises and cooperatives. The important thing, people believe, is how this problem was addressed and conceived, and how it can be translated into concrete action. This is not an arithmetic cut, nor a reduction that would subsequently undermine the Party’s work with people. The aim is to deepen ties with the grassroots while improving the quality of the work of apparatus employees, from the secretary of the district Party committee to the instructor and the secretary of the Party bureau in enterprises and agricultural cooperatives. “We had been thinking about this for some time,” Hy sen Shahu, first secretary of the District Party Committee, told us. “More specifically, people—the masses themselves—pointed it out to us. It used to be said that the apparatus functioned as a separate body, but the organization of the work and its division into specialized sectors meant that it was not really so.” The Party apparatus will no longer have specialized instructors—for example, for the economy, in the group of instructors, in the education sector, and so on—but simply instructors of the Party committee. And indeed, such a division previously meant that work with the masses was incomplete. Why, for instance, should there be education sectors? Is not all the work of the apparatus, of every one of its employees, in the service of education? The same can be said of the economic sector, which until now has sometimes duplicated the sections of the executive committee of the district Party committee. With the new organization, instructors will deal with all the concerns the Party has at the grassroots. This made it possible to reduce the number of instructors by 10, bringing them closer to production and to the people there, while also assigning them Party duties. We believe this measure also makes the practice of selecting and appointing instructors relevant. The instructor will be a person with a broad education, capable of dealing with (Continued on page 2)

In his speech, Comrade Ramiz Alia posed the question: “What does history teach us?” This is not merely a theoretical question. The present cannot be understood without the help of the past, without knowing it. The way we turn to history offers a clear indication of how it should be defended and how it can be protected from tendencies to study it merely for erudition or to satisfy curiosity. These point the way to returning to the past courageously in order to draw the right lessons from it. Our Party, as the heir to and worthy continuer of the people’s patriotic traditions, has never allowed itself to lose its ties with their revolutionary past; in this spirit it also educates the popular masses, first and foremost the younger generations, the country’s future. That is not all. By ensuring that knowledge of the present does not become detached from knowledge of the past, the conditions are created for scientific guidance in addressing current problems through the unity of such knowledge. Concrete historical material has been skillfully used to formulate and substantiate broad theoretical generalizations, because the roots of all present-day events and phenomena lie in the past. Such a profound view of the connection between present developments and the past helps, first of all, to clearly envision how tasks interweave on the national and social planes, and how closely connected are the efforts of our people’s masses to preserve the victories already achieved, freedom and national sovereignty, and their struggle to open the way further to social progress. For every serious historian seeking to penetrate deeply into the phenomena of the past, maintaining an ongoing connection with the present is a primary task. And often, in order to clarify our concepts and ideas about the past, the historian must come right up to the present day. The message conveyed by Comrade Ramiz in his speech at the 10th Plenum of the Central Committee, as he confidently turns to history, proves once again that history is one of the oldest sciences, yet it continues to remain ever new in its interpretation of the world and events, thereby striving for its progress. GAZMIEND SHPUZA

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, the continuer of the work of Marx and Engels, the great leader of the October Revolution and builder of the world’s first socialist state, yesterday morning the District Party Committee and the director of the «V. I. Lenin» Higher Party School in Tirana organized a commemorative meeting. Students and teachers of the school, as well as other invitees, took part. Also present were members of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Party’s Central Committee, Comrade Foto Çami; candidate member of the Political Bureau of the Party’s Central Committee and first secretary of the Tirana District Party Committee, Comrade Piro Kondi; and other comrades. Comrade Pirro Kondi opened the meeting and, among other things, emphasized that great Lenin was the first to rise up, in armed insurrection, the workers, peasants and (Continued on page 3)

Yesterday in Tirana, the protocol on the exchange of goods and payments between the government of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania and the government of the Republic of Poland for 1990 was signed. On behalf of the Albanian side, the protocol was signed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, Altin XIII, and on behalf of the Polish side by the Deputy Minister of Tra- (Continued on page 4)

Everyone can add something to this topic Does land have a price or not? Let us cite a few facts. Last year, 200 hectares of construction sites were requested nationwide for industrial construction. In other words, land. And 130 hectares were taken. This is considered a significant “saving.” But what was actually saved? Not a single qindarkë. Because land has no price. It is allocated to an enterprise. It is given to the user by an executive decision, with a few signatures. And since it costs nothing, why not aim to get as much land as possible for a house, a factory, a road, a city...? This mindset, this freedom, leads to a huge waste of land. One calculation: the land occupied by construction last year alone would have been enough to supply half the capital with tomatoes every year. But we no longer have that land; it has “disappeared,” diminished, while our brothers, our people, are increasing in number. The logic of life sends us the message that land does not belong to just one generation. It is the property of generations. A badly built neighborhood, a road or an industrial facility constructed without a proper design, and so on, can be demolished and corrected by time and by the generations that come after us. They can correct them, at least. But land covered by buildings, cities and villages is lost to society forever. That is why the consequences for it are so serious. Land has been too precious for us to buy, too precious for us to sell. In Ninat, Sarandë, people once used to plant crops. “Whoever has a field in Mëkër-Kum takes his bride with a trousseau.” We recall that the land called this had the privilege of yielding its fruits, while the population increased. Logically, even a slight advantage in providing a better livelihood—and, why not, a better bride. For you had in your use something precious called land, which your neighbor lacked, or had but was losing, as the people say. That is why our farmer gave the land, without stint, what he held most precious and best, even his life. And agriculture here, in the fullest sense of the word, was practiced not only in the villages but also inside our few, undeveloped towns. We need not go far. We have witnesses right here, in today’s industrial towns and in the capital. They can tell you that in Shkodër, Tirana, Elbasan and Korçë (to name the larger towns), many townspeople by trade were farmers. They produced in their gardens as well as vegetables, and lived on them in a certain way. Within these urban spaces there were fewer flower gardens, but more trees. What is the situation today? The urban population has grown, and there are more city residents who go to the market and buy. This is natural. It is of the times. But are there things for which we can say that we already regret them? Take, for example, Allia of Tirana, renowned for vegetables, in one of the most fertile plains: it no longer exists. Construction has swallowed it up. “Well, what can you do? That’s how growth goes,” people say blithely. But could things be done differently? Let us not rush, and let us go toward Laz prakës, where recently a block of trees was razed and another residential neighborhood has begun to go up. “Well, people want homes.” Agreed. And the same is happening in Selitë, and in ... Only one thing is clear: these people who increase in number, these people who are being depleted, do not want only beautiful homes; they also want shops full of goods. The first problem of the century, we have said: how beautiful Tirana is, how beau-