university of nova gorica graduate school contested spaces and ...

Silent Stories of Communism
Historiographers’ notes and my informants’ stories imply that the closure of the state border
has somehow also closed the access to the communist past in Dhërmi/Drimades. When I
summarise the historiography of this period for the area of Himarë/Himara (Chapter Two),
illustrate the content of the stories about the paths of the ancestors, recalled by elderly
villagers (Chapter Three), or look at negotiations about the responsibility for trash disposal on
the coast (Chapter Four), one thing emerges: the absence of recollections from the period of
communism. On the other hand, however, if I analyse this absence, the presence and impact
of communism can be seen and read between the lines of written and oral accounts and
statements. It seems that communism was and continues to be powerful in its presence exactly
because of its absence on the surface. The absence is only a latent one. Communism is
mapped into the landscape in a more silence manner, telling its story through visible objects
from that period: mushroom-like bunkers, destroyed buildings (e.g. Hotel Dhërmiu),
abandoned plantations of citruses and olive trees, and fading inscriptions “Pionirët e Enverit”
on some of the walls. The bitter story of communism lies behind all these witnesses of the
past; it can be glimpsed at in statements such as those of Lefteria’s husband and elderly
ladies: “Even Enver Hoxha said that he was not interested in politics and he asked us how we
live and what we eat. But eventually he sent us all to prison!” Stories of communism also
show their traces in particular places mapped by story-tellers, in negotiations over rubbish
disposal, and in Anastas’ story about the lack of modernization.
The absence of stories from the period of communism indicates how the era of closure and
repression is still alive in the minds of especially older villagers. The power of communist
authority, enforced by the figure of Enver Hoxha, permeating people’s daily routine
(prohibition of movement outside the state borders and control over movements inside them,
collectivization of land, national homogenization and unification of people), is now replaced
and represented by the ruling political party. Although its power to certain extent influences
people’s everyday praxis, it is nevertheless disclosed in a quite different way. Today villagers
have to face repeating electrical blackouts and water supply shortages, numerous migrations,
minority issues and regionalisms such as locality, special policies regarding the issuing of
visas and Special Cards for aliens of Greek origin, denationalization and collectivization of
those parts of the coast, which look promising for the development of tourism, constant
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