The issue whether to broadcast propaganda movies produced by Kinostudio has caused a divisive debate (for and against, communists and anticommunists, those nostalgic of the era and its opponents). It also sheds light on a sad fact: The process of reflection on the dictatorship is endemic, making its first steps and there is historical urgency in the need to understand the past!
At first glance, it seemed that the debate to “stop” these movies brought forth the nostalgia of Albanians for their communist past. I don’t believe for a second that the avid supporters of Kinostudio productions would want to go back to a repressive system, like the one practiced by Hoxha. Maybe some would still want that, but let us assume they are small in number. The nostalgia that suffocated social media, press pages, and TV channels stemmed from the desire to protect a piece of identity of those who lived during the hard times of dictatorship.
From today’s perspective, nobody can suppose that the villager would give away his land voluntarily, or that the believer would become an atheist, or that the child would love the leader more than its own mother, and other similar nonsense. But from 1990 until now, disheartened by the “democratic” reality, people have chosen the positive aspects of the life during that system and have integrated them into today’s reality. This is understandable and people cannot be blamed for this.
Our society should be embarrassed about the fact that we still have not accepted that the communist period was the darkest era of Albanian history! This seems to be the main reason of our collective forgetfulness. And the responsible entities have not been clearly identified to this day. The act of condemning the past didn’t happen, even after the nineties, when the propagandist narrative of the system of 45 years appeared naked in its deception and manipulation of the masses. The state imperative is missing and the institutions have not been transparent regarding the communist regime, from its fall until today, the public opinion has seen the victories of “Albania through rose-colored glasses,” as proclaimed by the system. The silent corpses are not hidden underground but they stand out as a living evidence of the pressure and terror exerted on whoever dared to think differently.
The national TV screens in Germany always show Hitler’s crimes against Jews and other grtoups accompanied with testimonies from survivors. They don’t want to allow the new generations to forget what happened in the past and what one man is capable of doing to another. The question being discussed here is what have Albanians chosen to remember from their past, what is the evaluating mechanism of this dictatorship? Why do we practice this tolerance about the crimes of communism and don’t face its evil?
The debate to broadcast movies “within criteria” shows exactly a deep unawareness of the reality of the regime on a general level. Our people do not know much about the prosecutors and the prosecuted; we do not know about the functions of the control of the state and other assisting organizations on the daily life of Albanians; we do not know the ways in which propaganda functions, leaving us exposed at current hidden propaganda; we do not know the importance that PPSh (Party of Labor of Albania) , Enver Hoxha, the Security etc., had for people of different classes during the time; we do not know how spying against each other happened or how it was spread in everyday life; we do not know why people didn’t show solidarity towards each other and, above all, how could a society bear for such a long time an oppressive system?!
In the past two decades there has been an effort to document individual memories with autobiographies, documentaries, and museum artifacts that explain the other side of the regime. All these confessions have one thing in common, they tell that after the war of national liberation, always deemed heroic in history books, for some Albanians began the real hell. Assassinations and incarcerations with or without judgment, massive deportations of families fpr many generations, from babies to children, from women to the elderly.
These publications are little known by the large public that get their cultural fodder from culture “gurus” of the screen and social media. But on the other hand, “cultural pluralism,” for commercial factors and otherwise, has largely exposed it to memories of ambassadors, bodyguards, cooks, former investigators and former collaborators of the Security, friends and supporters of the regime who have embedded the idea that communism was good rather than bad, despite the fact that the regime continued to kill and prosecute people until its last breath in 1990.
We cannot keep alive the banner of the “good old days of communism” and simultaneously applaud our fragile democracy, without first having condemned the crimes of communism on the institutional and social plane. The debate on movies had a good side to it. It gave us, for the first time, an opportunity to objectively face the legacy of our past. Let us make it our priority to aim at fundamental changes to the school curriculum that has been raising generations without a memory.
Let us reflect about areas of art and culture, still faced with products in transition that do not enter in a dialogue with that epoch from today’s context, choosing to remain “politically correct” according to the reminiscent clichés of the culture of the proletariat. Let us make biographies and lived stories of resistance public in order to remember and respect the victims and turn a page in our collective memory and our stand against dictatorship. And what’s more, let us refrain from repeating the forms and realities of that system in the future.
The deep juxtaposition that was present in this debate: on one side the (aggressive) stance of disciples of the so called “historical and cultural heritage” who were largely supported by the traditional media, and on the other side, tens of thousands of victims and their predecessors, their thoughts falling on deaf ears in the traditional media. Thus, one can conclude that the totalitarian system of the past that used propagandist persecution could reemerge at any time. Therefore this debate must be organized, expanded and deepened beyond the Kinostudio!
