Albania. A small country in Eastern Europe, between the mountains and the sea, with a (and this is understating it) strange history. But did you know that it has trains?
Albanians live in a nation cascading down from their alps through hills to the plains, wetlands and islands of the west. From 1385, the Ottoman Empire breached those mountains and conquered Albania, converting a great many of them to Islam. Albanians remained a part of the Ottoman Empire, save for the Skanderbeg years for the next 500 years. The First Balkan War saw Serbia nearly conquer it’s way to the sea, and Austria-Hungary intervened in the peace negotiations to halt this. The result was the Principality of Albania was created mostly out of spite in 1912. The new nation was impoverished and undeveloped, while the government did not really control much of the country, leaving rule to local clans and landowners. Indeed, the government largely concerned itself with trying to annex Kosovo off Yugoslavia. The new government was also invaded by the retreating Serbian army and then Austria-Hungary chasing that army, during which time some Decauville narrow-gauge railways were built. After years of ineffective governance and an empty throne, a republic was declared, followed by President Zog declaring himself the king, mostly to enrich himself and his followers, establishing a dictatorship. The new kingdom became dependent on Mussolini’s Italy to support itself until they invaded to secure their influence in 1939. Now where have we heard that one before?
Zog fled the country, and Mussolini dragged it into the Second World War. Under Italian and then German occupation, the leader that rose to the top of the partisans was Enver Hoxha, a communist. Hoxha got to work, organising the country on Stalinist lines. Resdistribution of land, rapid crash economic development and an iron fist was to follow. Albania nearly joined Yugoslavia, but dropped out after Hoxha found out he could be replaced by someone else by Tito. Hoxha became convinced that Tito was plotting to invade, and remained consistently paranoid for the rest of his life, to the detriment of the nation.
Albania, due to events outlined above, was the last place on earth which has railways to get them. The first line, from Tirana to Durres, was inaugurated in 1947, with Soviet help. The new national railway was to be called Hekurudha Shqiptare (HSH). The first diesel trains arrived ten years later. The communists realised that they could not produce enough cars, lorries and buses to move the nation, and in any case, that would use so much valuable oil as to cause a complete breakdown of the economy. A national railway network was built out to much of the country. Lines spread from Durres to Vlore, Elbasan, Ballsh, Kruje and Shkoder. The triumph of this was the Elbasan to Pogradec line, through the mountains, which was held up as one of the crowning achievements of the communist government.
The problem was that the communists couldn’t do anything else. After Stalin died, Enver Hoxha’s totalitarianism started to really take off. 14 days of mourning were declared, and he demanded that the people of Tirana take a 2000-word oath of “eternal fidelity to their beloved father.” Hoxha believed that as a process of Destalinisation, the new leader of the Soviet Union was plotting to have him replaced. Khrushchev did mistrust the Albanians, and used food shipments, foreign aid and Greek claims on parts of the South to keep Hoxha in line. Unlike other Eastern Bloc governments, if the Soviets felt Albania slipping through their fingers, then there could be no military invasion to secure their influence. The last straw came when Hoxha discovered a plot to overthrow him by a Soviet-trained rear admiral. Hoxha denounced Krushchev by the end of 1961. The only nation willing to help Hoxha out was China.
China provided cheap loans, cheap food, cheap oil and cheap concrete and even some trains, as the two nations were the only ones who had any semblance of warm relations. However, even absolute dictatorship had fallen out of fashion in China. After Nixon visited Beijing, Hoxha fell out with China. Albania was now on it’s own.
Now completely isolated and blocked off from all trade, the Albanian economy fell into the gutter. Unable to import fuel, or even that much food, private cars and tractors were banned. The nation became dependent on the railways, which were always over capacity but could not be expanded. Tractors rusted in the fields while a national horse-breeding programme was announced to resolve the food shortages. Albania became a fully atheist state, completely banning all worship. Hoxha became convinced that Yugoslavia was about to invade at any moment, despite this not being true, that didn’t stop him from building seven hundred and fifty thousand bunkers across the nation. In addition, young communists were asked to place metal spikes atop trees to stop paratroopers. It’s not even clear if this would have worked – there were nowhere near enough guns and fuel even train a small fraction of the force needed to defend all the bunkers. In the midst of this economic, societal and political collapse, the communist elite adopted the “if I just ignore my problems, they’ll go away” principle and sealed themselves off in the luxurious Blokku neighbourhood of Tirana, filled with grand villas, verdant gardens, fast cars and the best teachers, doctors and banquets the foreign aid reserves could buy. Just outside, a new monument to Hoxha was completed, an pharonic Ozymandian ode to incompetence and delusion. The Tirana Pyramid was unveiled to an unbelieving crowd.
In 1985, Hoxha died and was replaced by Ramiz Alia. He tried to reform communism, gradually opening up to the outside world and introducing some market reforms. Tense negotiations saw a détente in Albanian-Yugoslav relations which led to a railway being extended from Shkoder to Montenegro. After Nicolae Ceausescu, dictator of Romania who had also tried to preserve Stalinism, was executed on live TV, Alia became scared that he would follow the same fate. Elections were held in 1991, which Alia suprisingly won, but then the government collapsed. In the resulting power vacuum, criminals, inexperienced conservatives, old communists and even monarchists vied for control. The Democratic Party tried to keep things together, but the new government was much more concerned with stealing money rather than fixing problems. Many politicians and criminals started pyramid schemes and encouraged voters to buy in. In the end $1.2 billion disappeared and almost everybody was affected when the pyramid schemes collapsed at the end of 1996, around the same time as the fraudulent elections. The chaos caused by this boiled over into a civil war which the UN had to intervene in. The new elections were won by the Socialist Party, which guided Albania towards constitutional rule of law.
As you may expect, the railways were neglected during these years. Trains were almost all abandoned, rails became overgrown and even the tracks themselves were stolen for scrap. EU funds for infrastructure development were mostly ploughed into roads. By the end of the 90s, the only trains operating ran from Durres to Shkoder, Tirana and Elbasan. Today, the only trains operating on Albanian railways extend from Durres to Elbasan, and from Shkoder to Lac. But plans are afoot. A new railway, fast and electric is being built from Tirana to the airport and thence to Durres. Soon Albania’s railways may face a renaissance.
S.