3,633 11,289 5,507 6,782 3.0

Total 279,805 1,626,315 836,294 791,021 5.8

n.a.--not available.

* According to 1965 data, the family of seven or eight members was then
typical in the villages for the agricultural collectives that were
researched and, in the peasant families as a whole in 1965, the average
family had 6.2 persons.

Source: Adapted from _Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh._, Tirana, 1968,
pp. 74-77; and _Ekonomia Popullore_, Tirana, November to December 1965.

Aside from the workers and peasants, the only group to which the Tirana
authorities have continued to give special attention has been the
so-called intelligentsia. Usually termed a layer or stratum of the new
social order, the intelligentsia was considered, in 1970 to be a special
social group because of the country's needs for professional, technical,
and cultural manpower. To justify this special attention, the
ideologists have often quoted Lenin to the effect that "the
intelligentsia will remain a special stratum until the Communist society
reaches its highest development."

In the development of the social structure under the Communist regime,
basic transformations have occurred in the social composition of the
intelligentsia. This transformation, during the 1944-48 period, involved
not only the purging of a number of Western-educated intellectuals whom
the regime considered potentially dangerous but also some top Communist
intellectuals who were suspected of having anti-Yugoslav or pro-Western
feelings. The remaining old intellectuals were reeducated and reoriented
and were utilized for the preparation of new personnel for the
bureaucracy and industry. Finally, a new intelligentsia was created,
thoroughly imbued with the Communist ideology and recruited generally
from among the children of the Party leaders, workers, and peasants.

The Communist regime created another social group at the bottom rung of
the ladder. This group was composed largely of elements of the upper
classes in existence before 1944. The tribulations of this class had by
1970 reduced it to a small minority, some members of which were still
interned in forced labor camps. It was actually a class of outcasts,
discriminated against politically, socially, and economically.

Most of the members of this group were used as so-called volunteer
laborers on construction projects and in other menial tasks, and their