the enterprise strove to achieve the
same results, namely, to increase production and improve the material
and cultural conditions of all the workers. To assure their own welfare,
the workers in turn had to assume certain obligations; they were duty
bound to guard socialist property, which was the "sacred and inviolate
basis of the people's democracy, the source of power of the homeland and
of the welfare and culture of the workers."

The theoretical mechanism evolved for the exercise of power through
freely elected representatives had no resemblance to the actual locus of
power and the state institutions created to wield this power. The source
of political and economic power was neither the workers and peasants nor
the organs presumably elected by them. A perfect example was the actual
power and influence of the People's Assembly, to which official
documents attributed the power to appoint all the higher state organs
and on which all state organs were dependent. In actual practice, the
People's Assembly held only two sessions a year, each lasting about two
days; the delegates heard reports made by Party and government
officials, approved without debate all bills and appointments presented
to them, and then adjourned. The Presidium of the People's Assembly was
also given wide constitutional powers in the fields of legislation and
control of the state apparatus, but in reality its main function was to
promulgate draft laws submitted to it by the Council of Ministers.

The Albanian Workers' Party

National Organization

The real source of all power was the Party, whose all-powerful Politburo
was the country's top policymaking body. But even this body, composed of
eleven regular and five candidate members, was under the firm control of
Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha, who has headed the Party since it was
founded on November 8, 1941, and Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, who
emerged as the military strategist in the Communist-dominated Army of
National Liberation during World War II.

Although Hoxha, as first secretary and as the only surviving member of
the small group of Communists who founded the Party, was considered the
leader and the foremost Albanian Marxist-Leninist, he and Shehu have
shared almost equal power since 1949 (see ch. 2, Historical Setting).
The real base of their power has rested in the security and armed
forces, and Hoxha and Shehu have divided this power. As minister of
defense until 1953, Hoxha