Rethinking the Place of the Second World War in the Contemporary History of Albania

Abstract

The Second World War in Albania was a central topic of socialist historiography because of the importance laid upon the National Liberation War for the legitimation of the establishment of communist rule in 1944. History writing was a very centralized process, controlled by party institutions responsible for safeguarding the implementation of Marxist‒Leninist principles and party lines. Since the 1990s, the history of the Second World War has been revised in the framework of a general revision of Albanian national history. History writing developed as an open process and now included historians from countries other than Albania, as opposed to the previous state socialist isolation. The extent to which the war history had been distorted and manipulated during socialism has influenced the subsequent process of rewriting that first focused on adjusting the existing narratives. Thus, despite an increasing variety of research topics, the historiography on wartime Albania has remained dominated by political and military history, and by the national master narrative.