Voldemort in Albania WAS: Re: Horcrux Issue

Fri Sep 9 04:07:00 UTC 2005

No: HPFGUIDX 139830

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "rtbthw_mom" <dossett at l...> 
wrote:
> > Juli now: 
> >  
> > I believe there are a few reasons Voldemort stood all those years 
> as vapor!mort in Albania:
> <snip of Juli's reasons, which could be read UPTHREAD>
> 
> Pat again:
> 
> But - why Albania?? Okay, I see the point about the Aurors, but he 
> has no body: apparently he left no instructions like, if something 
> strange should happen, check out Albania!  Maybe it's JKR's way of 
> just getting him out of the big picture, I don't know.  But it 
seems 
> way off base to me.
> 

I've just filled by hip flask with Polyjuice Potion to morph into 
Professor Binns. 

After Halloween 1981, Voldemort retreated to the nation of Albania 
after his attempt to murder Harry Potter disastrously boomeranged on 
him.  Except for a brief interlude in 1991-1992 with Professor 
Quirrell, he remained in that tiny nation until his return to England 
under Wormtail's escort in the summer of 1994. 

Geographically, Albania is a small nation on the Adriatic Sea, about 
the size of Maryland, it is about 210 miles north to south, 90 miles 
east-west at its widest point.  It enjoys a Mediterranean climate 
along the coastal area, cooler temperatures in the higher 
elevations.  Its population was roughly 2.5 million in 1980. A 
tourist-oriented site offers some of its attractions:

http://www.geocities.com/paris/louvre/6820/

I don't think JKR's selection of Albania as the land to which 
Voldemort retreated was an arbitrary one. Assuming that Voldemort in 
his shattered condition wanted above all else an isolated 
inhospitable region in which to recuperate, a place in which a high 
frequency of misery and suffering would abound, he could scarcely 
have made a better choice than Albania, circa 1980.  To understand 
Albania in the 1980s, some historical background is necessary:  

The region now known as Albania has a long history of suffering, 
poverty, political and religious conflict, as far back as the days of 
the Roman Empire, it was to later fall beneath the sway of such 
hegemonies as the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire.  It formally constituted itself a nation in 
1912, in the days just prior to WWI. Following a long series of weak 
and ineffectual governments, Albania was conquered by Fascist Italy 
in 1939, and entered WWII on the side of the Axis.  

However, there was always strong resistance to the Fascist 
occupation, led by the nascent Communist Party under Evner Hoxha 
(1908-1985), one of those real-life Lord Voldemorts who have been 
responsible for making the 20th century the most murderous in 
recorded history.   The Communist and their allies drove the fascists 
out of their nation, and took formal control of the government on 
November 29, 1944.  Albania was first Central European nation to 
adopt the Communist form of government, and remained the only 
European nation to adopt it without Soviet intervention.  

Over the next several decades,  Albania followed a familiar pattern 
of  Marxist "reforms": collectivation, five-year plans, abolition of  
legal political opposition, governmental control of all cultural 
media, etc.  However, Hoxha established a tyranny even more 
oppressive (though far less geopolitically significant) than even the 
regimes of Stalin or Mao. He defiantly decreed that he alone 
practiced Marxist-Leninist doctrine in a pure and uncontaminated 
form, and eventually broke off diplomatic relations with all other 
communist nations for what he saw as deviations from true Marxism: 
beginning with neighboring Yugoslavia in 1949, and the Soviet Union 
(along with the other Marxist nations of Central Europe) in 1961, he 
finally cut off ties with his only remaining big-power ally China in 
July 1978.  Hoxha strongly disapproved of the liberalization of 
economic policy adopted by Deng Xiopang, following the death of Mao.  
For the rest of Hoxha's rule (until 1985) Albania was perhaps the 
most politically isolated nation on earth.

Human rights abuses were widespread. Albania was called "the little 
nation with the big gulag."  As of 1984, Hoxha maintained at least 
six prisons, nine concentration camps, and 14 areas of internal 
exile.  Conditions were often extremely brutal, and prisoners 
sometimes were reported to commit suicide 
Watching a television 
broadcast from Yugoslavia, conversing with a foreign tourist, or 
possessing books deemed inappropriate by authorities could result in 
a prison sentence. The families of convicted prisoners often held to 
be "socially dangerous"  had to serve the same sentence as the 
condemned.  (Amnesty International found no examples of acquittals)

Although every Communist regime imposed great restrictions on 
religious liberty, they still tolerated it to varying degrees, and 
guaranteed its free expression in their written constitutions 
(however much they may have suppressed its expression in practice). 
Albania acquired the unique distinction of being the only nation to 
ever attempt the complete abolition of religion,  with a 
constitutional prohibition of religious practice.  This was formally 
entered into the constitution in November 1967.  Earlier that year 
(between February and May 1967), the Albanian government launched a 
draconian anti-religious campaign (the primary religions of Albania 
are Roman Catholic, Albanian Orthodox, and Islam, with a small number 
of Jews and Protestants).   Over this three-month span, all 2,169 of 
the nation's churches, synagogues and mosques were stormed by the 
police or by the military, stripped of their artifacts and forcibly 
closed. The physical structures were then either demolished or 
converted to other uses.  Priests, ministers and imans were ordered 
to denounce their religion or face arrest.  The leadership of the 
Jewish, Christian and Islamic places of worship were imprisoned, and 
most of them were executed.  Ordinary citizens were required to turn 
in all crucifixes, icons, Bibles, Korans, etc., and their possession. 
"The dissenter must be destroyed like a weasel in the chicken coop,"  
declared Hoxha.

So after 1978, Albania was quite isolated, with only minimal contact 
with the West, and no contact at all with other Marxist states.  The 
government launched a campaign of "economic independence."  Hoxha 
wanted to preserve Albania from  "ideological contamination from the 
west.  He reminded his people continually of `savage encirclement and 
economic blockade of the Western bloc and the revisionist-socialist 
imperialism of the Eastern bloc."  He rehearsed the historic threats 
to Albanian independence and warned darkly of the hostile intent of 
its near and distant neighbors. He dramatized the imminent threat by 
constructing many thousands of mushroom-shaped concrete pillboxes to 
resist invasion from the beaches , the mountain passes and the skies 
above. He induced a siege mentality by instituting universal military 
training and the enlistment of all the fine arts to intensify the war 
psychosis. Foreign newspapers, magazines and films were forbidden.  
Travel abroad and foreign tourism within the country were carefully 
restricted.  As a result, Albania was characterized as isolated, a 
hermit nation, xenophobic, the Tibet of Europe.

Hoxha's paranoia seemed to increase with age, and during the last few 
years of his life, a number of top aides were executed or imprisoned. 
In December 1981, the Prime Minister was reported to have committed 
suicide. 

Hoxha died on April 11, 1985 coincidentally, a month after the death 
of Konstantine Chernenko, the last of the old-line Soviet leaders 
from the Stalinist generation.  Though the nation was plunged in 
grief, and pledged to honor his memory forever, Albania almost 
immediately began moving toward realigning itself with the world, 
under the rule of Ramiz Alia, his successor.  As most of the European 
Communist regimes collapsed in 1989, the Alia government gradually 
relaxed the totalitarian restrictions.  Diplomatic relations with 
many nations was restored.  The widow of Hoxha was arrested and 
sentenced to prison for her involvement with her husband's oppressive 
regime.  

Alia's reforms eventually led to multiparty elections and the end of 
the Communist hold on power in Albania. Alia announced his 
resignation on April 3, 1992, on the eve of the second round of 
multiparty elections in which the Albanians elected a non-Communist 
parliament. In August 1993 Alia was placed under house arrest and 
charged with abuse of power and violation of citizens' civil rights. 
In a May 1994 trial, he was found guilty and given a nine-year 
sentence.

Religion liberty was restored. In November 1990, the first place of 
worship – a mosque – reopened in Shkodra. In the same month, Father 
Simon Jubani, who had spent 26 years in prison for refusing to 
renounce his faith performed an outdoor mass in the capitol city of 
Tirana before a crowd of 50,000. 

It would be pleasant to report that, having transitioned out of  
totalitarianism, Albania fell into happier times. But such was not 
the case.   Poverty and misery still prevailed. With exposure to the 
previously suppressed outside world, many Albanians were for the 
first time able to compare their own abject conditions with their 
more prosperous neighbors.  Ironically, in 1991, at the same time 
that Voldemort was departing Albania "under wraps" with Professor 
Quirrell, a massive exodus out of the country was taking place.  A 
small number of citizens made their way through the rugged and 
mountainous regions to escape into Greece or Yugoslavia; but the 
largest exodus was a flood of refugees who streamed into Italy.  Over 
200,000 Albanians attempted to gain entry to Italy, so many that 
Italy closed its borders, and forcibly returned many tens of 
thousands to their homeland. 

A 1994 Italian film L'America by director Gianni Amelio provides an 
unforgettable look at Albania in its disintegrating post-Communist 
era. And remember all those old clothes you donated to the Salvation 
Army back in 1978? - well, here's your chance to see where they wound 
up. You can also see Hoxha's pillboxes in every direction.....

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/B0001Y4LD2/qid=1126237827/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-0004733-8922441?
v=glance&s=dvd

And why is an Italian-made film about Albania titled "L'America"? – 
You'll have to see the film's poignant conclusion to learn the answer 
(be assuaged, fellow right-wing neandethals: the significance is not 
at all anti-American)

   - CMC