Warsaw Pact and the Council for Economic
Mutual Assistance.

Soviet influence in Albanian affairs was pervasive from 1948 to 1960
but, from a material point of view, Albania benefited from the
relationship. The Soviets canceled a large debt and sent aid and
advisers to help develop the backward Albania economy. Internally, the
ruling elite, headed by Enver Hoxha, maintained a rigid regime of the
Stalinist type. In foreign affairs the country became a cold war
participant completely accepting directions from Moscow.

Its thirteen years as a Soviet satellite were years of turmoil for
Albania, particularly after the death of Joseph Stalin and the rise of
Nikita Khrushchev to the Soviet leadership. Khrushchev's policy of
seeking a rapprochement with Yugoslavia worried both Hoxha, the Party
leader, and Shehu, the premier, because of the difficulties they had
encountered in purging their Party of a strong pro-Yugoslav faction
while in the process of securing their own positions of power. In the
Albanian view Stalin had been a great hero, and Tito of Yugoslavia, a
great villain. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and wooing of Tito
brought consternation to Tirana, but reliance on Soviet aid apparently
tempered Albanian reactions.

During the 1950s the Albanian leadership, coaxed by Moscow, made some
attempts at restoring normal relations with Yugoslavia. After the riots
in Poland and the revolt in Hungary in 1956, however, the Albanians
raised strident voices against Yugoslavia's so-called revisionism--that
is the alleged perversion of Marxism-Leninism--which they asserted was
the basis for the troubles afflicting Eastern Europe. According to
official Albanian dogma the two greatest evils in the world were
revisionism and imperialism, personified, respectively, by Yugoslavia
and the United States. Toward the end of the 1950s it became apparent to
Hoxha and Shehu that they were closer ideologically to Peking than to
Moscow, and only the latter's economic aid prevented an open break.

In 1960, as Khrushchev sought to line up Communist parties for a
condemnation of Communist China, Albania refused to participate and, by
the end of the year, the Soviet-Albanian dispute was made known openly.
By the end of 1961 diplomatic relations between the two countries were
severed, Soviet aid ceased, and Soviet advisers and technicians left
Albania, to be replaced by those of Communist China. Although not
formally breaking off diplomati