Memory sites in Tirana provide a deep connection to Albania’s recent past

The National Museum is housed in a monumental building in Tirana, designed specifically for the institution. It is located in the city’s main square – Skanderbeg Square – on the site of a former neo-Renaissance town hall built during the Second World War. The building itself is already a relic of its time. Photo: roibu / Shutterstock

Memory and amnesia

The National Historical Museum in Tirana was established during the communist regime. It tells the story of the Albanian nation since pre-historic times. The collection involves a chronological presentation, starting with the history of Albania from late Neolithic cave paintings and the history of the Illyrians. These people are the ancestors of modern Albanians and came from Central Europe to settle in the Western Balkans. The very fact that references are made to Illyrian culture shows that the museum’s narrative has succumbed to propaganda. Showing the connection between antiquity and the present is strategic, as it justifies the existence of a country surrounded by “hostile” Slavs and Greeks. It also promotes the “glorious” origins of the Albanian people and their right to territory.

The museum weaves a tale involving eras such as the Komani-Kruja culture, and the medieval period with its barbarian invasions. It also presents the 15th century history of the Kastrioti family, which was the oldest noble family in Albania, as well as Skanderbeg – the Albanian national hero who led the uprising against the Ottomans. The museum offers a detailed story of Skanderbeg and his ancestors, who ruled over Macedonia and Epirus for more than 100 years. The 19th century National Revival movement is also discussed alongside the Albanian Declaration of Independence on November 28th 1912. Finally, the museum addresses the world wars, while the topic of communism is barely noted.

Bunk’Art 1 and 2 and the House of Leaves are museums that, according to Péter Apor, can be considered museums of communism. However, the National Museum hardly discusses the subject of the regime. It is included in this analysis because it was opened in 1981 and therefore under communism. In itself, it is a relic or artefact of the past.

The National Museum is housed in a monumental building in Tirana, designed specifically for the institution. It is located in the city’s main square – Skanderbeg Square – on the site of a former neo-Renaissance town hall built during the Second World War. The building itself is already a relic of its time. In the words of Walter Benjamin, it can be said that the museum played a role in the “aestheticisation of politics”. This involves physically depicting political ideology, with the monumentality of buildings and spaces seen as a means of making the regime visible. The museum is disproportionately large in comparison to the square, thus reflecting the importance of history and art in society. On one of the museum’s walls is a mosaic depicting, in typical Socialist Realist style, thirteen figures from different periods of Albania’s history, with “Mother Albania” standing in the middle.

The angular, solid interior of the building and the way the walls are designed is a reminder of the socialist realism so familiar to audiences from Central and Eastern Europe. The National Museum in Tirana itself is therefore a museum object, a place of memory. It can be regarded as a product of the Albanian cultural revolution, and as a tool of memory appropriation and amnesia. It also shows how national museums seek to transform historical memory into an ideological tool, and how interpretations of the past shift after the impact of political change. In the case of the Tirana museum, it reveals how historical narratives under the communist regime changed to better fit the period of Albanian society’s shift to capitalism.

Cleansing of memory

In 1991, the “cleansing of memory” began which, in the case of the National Museum in Tirana, involved only a select part of the museum. The exhibition depicting the construction of socialism in Albania, as well as the monuments to Stalin and Enver Hoxha, were all removed. Five years later, the museum unveiled the “Pavilion of Communist Terror” to tell the story of communism through the photos of the period’s victims, alongside personal items, documents and press clippings. It also recreated a cell in a labour camp at 1:1 scale. In this sense, this exhibition takes on the characteristics of a communist museum, as it introduces a vitriolic narrative, focusing on the victims. Minor modifications were also made to the “Hall of Albanian Independence”, where references to Marxist-Leninist symbols were eliminated and a room was added to show the story of Albania’s independence from a different perspective. The mosaic was also redesigned and the large red star next to Mother Albania was erased.

Despite these fragments of the past being eliminated, there has been no change in the way the nation’s history is told. The museum’s decision to change a fragment of the historical narrative can be seen as an attempt to interpret actions in a political manner. As a result, the institution attempts to control the process of remembering and forgetting, disrupting the “natural passage of time”.

Two important facts are worth mentioning at this point. First, the communist regime in Albania was different from that in other countries. Enver Hoxha himself distinguished “Eurocommunism”, which he viewed as a form of anti-communism, from “pure” Albanian communism. Some 18,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons in Albania under the dictatorship, nearly 8,000 of whom were women. More than 1,000 people died in political prisons. Daily life was constantly under surveillance and control. The state outlawed religion altogether, making Albania an atheist country. In 1967 Hoxha boasted that Albania was the first atheist country in the world.

Communism in Albania lasted for more than 40 years until 1991. In the 1970s the ideology emphasised the “people’s war”. Albania was then portrayed as the only socialist country in the world, under siege from the two superpowers and their allies. Ultimately, self-isolation kept Albanian society under total state control. Moreover, there was never an organised opposition in Albania and all cultural institutions were used for propaganda purposes. It was only in 2006 that the Albanian government officially admitted that the communist regime had committed human rights violations, murder, individual and mass executions (with or without trial), death in concentration camps, death by starvation, slavery, physical and mental terror, and genocide. The Hoxha regime was also guilty of committing violations of freedom of conscience, speech, religion, press and political pluralism. For more than a dozen years after the fall of communism, no coherent memory policy emerged, nor was it decided to establish an institution to conduct research into the communist period. Paul Connerton wrote that “societies in which democracy is restored after a recent undemocratic past, or in which democracy is just being born, must establish institutions and make decisions that foster both forgetting and remembering.” It was not until 2010 that the Institute for the Study of the Crimes and Consequences of Communism was established.

Narratives from the bunkers

Bunk’Art 1 was established in 2014, while two years later Bunk’Art 2 was launched. Both institutions are located inside former shelters. Indeed, as part of the bunkerisation project in the 1970s and early 1980s in Albania, the communist government built more than 173,371 fallout shelters. They were built on the slopes of mountains, complete with underground corridors and buildings covered with several metres of concrete. In the event of a nuclear attack, key figures such as Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu were supposed to take refuge in such buildings in Tirana. During the eight years in which the bunkers were built, hundreds of soldiers and civilians died. They are among the most forgotten victims of communism. Yet, the bunkers themselves were never used and today the bunkers located in Tirana are home to a cultural institution that allows visitors to explore the traumatic past, opening the door to the vault of collective memory and the underground world of the dictatorship.

Bunk’Art 1, located in the Hoxha shelter, features artistic installations, a historical exhibition depicting the history of Albania from 1939 (from the entry of the fascists) to 1990 (the liberation of the country). It also features a museum exhibition that is made up of the rooms of Hoxha and Shehu, who personally supervised the construction of the structure. In other rooms, you can see a communications room and the interior of a store, and learn about the value of home and family for Albanians. In Albania’s national culture, the home represents the heart and symbol of multi-generational families. Even the communist regime, which plunged the private property system into deep crisis, never dared to deny this principle.

The exhibit also addresses the subjects of education and sport and highlights the interesting topic of surveillance of athletes, who were allowed to travel outside the country. Of course, they had to be given permission by members of the notorious Sigurimi.

The Bunk’Art 2 exhibition also follows the theme of the Sigurimi and freedom. Bunk’Art 2 is located in the heart of the city near the National Museum and ministerial buildings. It is a museum of communism which tells the story of the victims. The exhibition consists of a historical exhibition (Ekspozita Historike), which presents the history of the gendarmerie from independence to the Second World War, and the police from the fascist invasion to liberation. There is also a section on the police and the Sigurimi during the communist dictatorship. The last part of the exhibition describes the security service’s methods of investigation and operations, surveillance, internment and exile, confinement of citizens in labour camps and prisons, and execution. It even discusses incidents of secret rebellion against the regime. The museum exhibition shows part of the bunker which housed the office of the interior minister. The room was never used by any minister but was considered part of contingency planning. Subsequent installations show the apparatus and means by which the Sigurimi photographed and recorded citizens in their homes and outside. An interrogation room is also recreated. In a museum room illuminated by strobe lights, there is a list of 35 different types of torture used by the security service. This was compiled by the Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism in Albania.

House of Leaves

In the case of Bunk’Art 1 and 2, it is not so much the description of past events and the artefacts collected in the rooms that impact visitors the most, but rather the historical and real location of the site itself. In Bunk’Art, as in the House of Leaves, the idea is not only to preserve history but also to indicate the roles people played in it and to clarify who was who. This idea led to the creators of the House of Leaves, also known as the Museum of Secret Surveillance, being honoured in 2020 with the Council of Europe Museum Award. This museum is entirely dedicated to restoring the memory of the period of the communist regime in Albania from 1944 to 1991, a time in which citizens were the victims of total governmental control and psychological violence. The museum is housed in a unique, romantic and historic building called the House of Leaves, where vines cover the exterior.

The building was built in 1931 as Albania’s first private maternity clinic, founded and overseen by the prominent physician and healthcare pioneer Janu Basho. The clinic operated throughout the 1930s. During the Second World War and the occupation of Albania, the building housed a Gestapo unit. Until the end of the war, the House of Leaves served as a unit for health workers and was later converted into a detention centre, where prisoners were tortured. During the communist era, the building housed some operations of the Sigurimi intelligence agency. The unit there specialised in the interception of communications and the surveillance of foreigners.

Like the history of Albania under communism, the story of the House of Leaves remained untold for a long time. The mysterious, abandoned building was a place about which various stories were told. The adaptation of the building for Tirana’s newest and certainly most intriguing museum in 2017 made it possible to tell the story of the darkest period in Albania’s history. The museum at the House of Leaves is divided into nine sections and consists of 31 connected rooms, each with a special function. One key section is devoted to the subject of surveillance, where technology is discussed as a political tool that can control people.

The museum also highlights the theme of Albania’s self-isolation under communism and discusses life under the regime, reminding us that everyday life was also subject to surveillance that included representatives of all social strata. Every action, such as a word, a song or a meeting, could be treated as a form of hostility against the state. In the section titled “Voices of the Past”, visitors have the opportunity to listen to voices captured years ago by electronic systems, designed to encourage the visitor to reflect on the past. The documents presented there are from the Albanian interior ministry and show what methods were used to capture various types of messages.

Outside, visitors encounter a wall exhibit depicting the photographs of those responsible for human rights violations and repression. The photographs are of those who showed no remorse and were not punished, including members of political-communist offices, directors of the security services, judges and prosecutors, investigators, heads of internal military units, and commanders of prisons and camps. The creators of the exhibition note that after the fall of the regime, no investigation was ever carried out and the perpetrators were never brought to justice. There has been no official public apology to the victims of communist crimes. This part of the exhibition ends with a quote: “Maybe I didn’t think so at the time, but later I thought that those people who didn’t apologise had brazen courage.” These are the words of Amik Kasoruho, an Albanian writer, translator and publicist.

Making the experience real

The most important characteristic of the House of Leaves and Bunk’Art 1 and 2 is that they are located in places marked by history that have been preserved almost intact, with original furnishings and recordings stored in their archives. In all three, the way of telling the story of communism and earlier times is very simple. The narrative is served by artefacts and plaques informing us about past events, the content of which is reinforced by artistic installations. However, it is the original sites themselves that testify to the past and make the story credible and emotionally impactful.

Although the visitor is in a different temporal reality from the traumatic events that took place in the building or shelter, a direct connection to the past seems to be made through the experience of the place and contact with the original artefact. After all, these are signs of a very special nature – they are traces of the past, of what actually happened there. In this way, these museums shift the focus from guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimisation under communist rule. The visitor becomes aware that tragic events took place in this space and this awareness makes the experience real. It becomes a tangible experience.

The Tirana National Museum, on the other hand, is itself a site of memory. It is a relic of the times of the regime, as is the historical narrative spun there. The National Museum acts as a reminder of the communist past. The museum building therefore has the same value as a shelter built under the regime, or a private clinic building turned into the headquarters of the surveillance services. All three sites prove that museums commemorating the regime are sites directly exploring the historical and contemporary processes of negotiating or deconstructing a difficult heritage. Thus, all three tell the same story and prove that this difficult story should be presented. The narrative is determined not only by the time the exhibition was created but also by where it is displayed.

It seems that seeing all three stories about the regime allows for a full understanding of what communism was in Albania and the traces it left behind: in the architecture, in the ways of telling the nation’s history, and in the politics of memory and commemoration. However, one must ask whether this form of storytelling determined by the original site is sufficient for a young audience. Is the fact that these museums stand in places where important events took place important going forward or is it only significant for representatives of the generation that lived or clearly remembers the communist era? How do we share today the memory of the victims of communism, which is becoming a type of European heritage? How do we pass on to future generations these memories, which are also a part of European identity? These are questions that museum professionals will soon have to answer. They will have to consider to what extent they want to defend the position of the place/witness to history, and how they teach the younger generation about the experiences connected to such places. They will also have to think about how they may replace the existing narrative with micro-histories, potentially deciding on a new form of expression.

Kinga Anna Gajda is an associate professor at the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Albania, history, memory politics