ans were cancelled in their entirety in the
spring of 1961. A partial list of Soviet loan commitments, compiled by a
Western student from Soviet economic literature, totaled US$172 million
for 1957-61. The actual amount disbursed, however, was much smaller.

Aid deliveries, as reflected in official Soviet statistics, totaled only
US$39.4 million for the years 1955-61. Similar information on aid
deliveries from 1949 to 1954 was not readily available. Western
observers believe that the economic crisis created by the Soviet
withdrawal of aid forced Albania to default on the outstanding loans.

Loans granted by East European Communist states and outstanding in 1965
(in terms of United States dollar equivalents) were given by a Soviet
source as follows: Bulgaria, US$11 million; Czechoslovakia, US$25
million; East Germany, US$15 million; and Romania, US$7.5 million.
Information about repayments of these loans was not available. Only a
fraction of the outstanding amounts could have been liquidated through
Albania's trade surplus with these countries. Some Western estimates
placed the debt to the Soviet Union and East European Communist states
at the end of 1968 at a minimum of the equivalent of US$500 to US$600
million.

Economic aid by Communist China dates back at least to late 1954. Stated
in United States dollar equivalents, Albania received in that year a
grant-in-aid of US$2.5 million and a loan of US$12.5 million. An
additional credit of US$13.75 million was made available in early 1959,
and a loan of US$123 million for the purchase of industrial equipment
during the Third Five-Year Plan (1960-65) was extended in early 1961,
after Albania's break with the Soviet Union. Two more loans, for
undisclosed amounts, were negotiated in June 1965 and November 1968 to
finance the fourth and fifth five-year plans, respectively. In public
references to the 1968 loan, Party and government officials gave the
impression that it was substantially higher than the loan of
US$123-million obtained in 1961. Aid has been provided by Communist
China free of interest.

A Western scholar reported unidentified sources to have suggested that
the 1965 loan amounted to about US$214 million, a sum substantially in
excess of the credits granted up to that time. Another Western source
estimated total direct credits for the 1960-68 period to have been more
than US$450 million, exclusive of substantial grants. Yet, other Western
sources thought at t