gh a ruthless
application of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The first measures
were both political and economic. In the political field a large number
of nationalist leaders who had chosen to remain in the country when the
Communists seized power rather than flee to the West, as many of them
did, were arrested, tried as "war criminals" or "enemies of the people,"
and were either executed or given long-term sentences at hard labor. All
families considered potentially dangerous to the new regime, especially
families of the landed aristocracy and the tribal chieftains, were
herded into concentration or labor camps, in which most of them perished
from exposure, malnutrition, and lack of health facilities. Some of
these camps were still in existence in 1970.

In the economic field a special war-profits tax was levied, which
amounted to a confiscation of the wealth and private property of the
well-to-do classes. A large number of those who could not pay the tax,
because it was higher than their cash and property assets, were sent to
labor camps. All industrial plants and mines were nationalized without
compensation, and a radical agrarian reform law was passed providing for
the seizure of land belonging to the _beys_ and other large landowners
and its distribution to the landless peasants.

The 1944-48 period was characterized by an increase of power and
influence of the Yugoslavs over the Party and the government. This in
turn engendered resentment even among some top Party Leaders, who were
kept in check or purged by Koci Xoxe, minister of interior and head of
the secret police. Backed by the Yugoslavs, he had become the most
powerful man in the Party and government but was tried in the spring of
1949 as a Titoist and executed. By the beginning of 1948 preparations
had been completed to merge Albania with Yugoslavia, but the plan was
not consummated because of the Stalin-Tito conflict, which resulted in
Tito's expulsion from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform--see
Glossary) on June 28. 1948.

The Stalin-Tito rupture offered Enver Hoxha and his closest colleagues
in the Albanian Party Political Bureau (Politburo) the opportunity to
rid themselves of both their internal enemies, such as Koci Xoxe, and of
Yugoslav domination. A few days after the Cominform resolution against
Tito, the Albanian rulers expelled all Yugoslav experts and advisers and
denounced most of the political, military, and economic agreemen