in Hungary in late 1956,
followed by general uneasiness throughout Communist East Europe, gave
Hoxha additional reasons to increase his control over the Party
apparatus and to sidestep all pressures from Khrushchev for
reconciliation with Tito. Indeed, in an article published in the
November 8, 1956, issue of the Soviet newspaper _Pravda_ (Truth), Hoxha
accused Yugoslavia of being at the root of the Hungarian Revolution and
implied that the relaxation of internal tensions in some of the
Soviet-bloc countries had endangered the existing regimes. In a speech
to the Party's Central Committee in February 1957 he came openly to the
defense of Stalin and lashed out against "those who attempt to discount
the entire positive revolutionary side of Stalin."

Hoxha did, however, pay lip service to the collective leadership
principle enunciated in Moscow after Stalin's death. In July 1954 he
relinquished the premiership to Mehmet Shehu, keeping for himself the
more important post of first secretary of the Party. But aside from this
he made no changes in his Stalinist method of rule. He demonstrated this
after the Party conference in Tirana in April 1956, when he suppressed
ruthlessly all those demanding the elimination of personal rule.

Hoxha showed the same determination in the summer of 1961, when
Khrushchev apparently enlisted a number of Albanian leaders, including
Teme Sejko, a rear admiral and commander of the navy who had been
trained in the Soviet Union to overthrow the Hoxha-Shehu duumvirate and
replace it with a pro-Moscow group. Sejko and his colleagues were
arrested, and he and two others were later executed.

In September of the same year Hoxha arrested a number of other top Party
leaders who were suspected of pro-Moscow sympathies. Among these were
Liri Belishova, a member of the Politburo, and Koco Tashko, head of the
Party's Auditing Commission; these two were also cited by Khrushchev as
examples of the alleged reign of terror that prevailed in Albania.

After the break with Moscow, Albania remained nominally a member of both
the CEMA and the Warsaw Pact. It did not, however, attend any meetings,
and it withdrew officially from the Warsaw Pact after the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Unlike Albania's relations with the Communist world, which have been
varied and fluctuating, those with the Western countries have been, with
minor exceptions, static and rigid, particularly toward the United
States.