Description
Book SynopsisElidor Mëhilli has produced a groundbreaking history of communist Albania that illuminates one of Europe's longest but least understood dictatorships. From Stalin to Mao, which is informed throughout by Mëhilli's unprecedented access to previously restricted archives, captures the powerful globalism of post-1945 socialism, as well as the unintended consequences of cross-border exchanges from the Mediterranean to East Asia.
After a decade of vigorous borrowing from the Soviet Unionadvisers, factories, school textbooks, urban plansAlbania's party clique switched allegiance to China during the 1960s Sino-Soviet conflict, seeing in Mao's patronage an opportunity to keep Stalinism alive. Mëhilli shows how socialism created a shared transnational material and mental culturestill evident today around Eurasiabut it failed to generate political unity. Combining an analysis of ideology with a sharp sense of geopolitics, he brings into view Fascist Italy's involvement in Albania,
Trade Review
An important contribution to our understaning of socialist Albania, especially in a transnational context.... An engaging, thought-provoking work that will be of use to historians of the Cold War, communism, Eastern Europe, and Albania for years to come.
* H-Net *
Mëhilli's case study of Albania under communist rule presents several interesting points.... Albanian communist leaders turned to Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and China over the decades for patronage and financial support to build up its industries, housing, and infrastructure. Mëhilli effectively uses the evidence of this Soviet material culture and points to the Albanian architects and construction workers who built much of modern Albania.
* Choice *
Transcending national history, offering glimpses into the lives of party leaders, expatriate experts and peasants and bringing forward many stimulating thoughts, From Stalin to Mao is a significant contribution to the emerging body of scholarship on transnational history of communism.
* HSozKult *
Mëhilli's book is a crisply written, well organized, and well supported account of a Soviet connection with a greater attraction and then a greater rejection than in the rest of Eastern Europe.
* Journal of Modern History *
Mëhilli's book is a must read for students of Communism and the Cold War, both between West and East and inside the Eastern bloc.
* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Mëhilli has proven himself to be not only a first-rate scholar, but an excellent writer, too. For years to come, From Stalin to Mao will be the definitive work on Albanian economics from 1945 to the end of Marxism in the early 90's.
* Slavic and East European Journal *
