Letters to Enver Hoxha

A Journey into Everyday Life under Communist Rule
Seminars and Colloquia

From after World War II until his death in 1985, thousands of Albanians wrote letters to Enver Hoxha, a mixture of trivial everyday concerns and exceptional episodes that are tragic, heart-warming and absurd in equal measure. These letters were meticulously archived by the authorities, discussed and acted upon. Put in context, they reveal an abysmal world in which the Party was in control of all aspects of life – a national trauma that has not been addressed to this day.

Nikolai Antoniadis is a  freelance journalist and author. From November 2020 to January 2021 he was a Milena Jesenska Visting Fellow at the IWM.

Comment by:
Fatos Lubonja, Writer, Journalist, and Dissident; former IWM Visiting Fellow