People's Socialist Republic of Albania

The People's Socialist Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika Popullore Socialiste e Shqipërisë) was the communist state that existed in Albania from 10 January 1946 to 29 April 1991. Originally founded as the People's Republic of Albania from 1946 to 1976, it was governed by the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA), which had a constitutionally enshrined monopoly on state power.

The PLA enforced its state power monopoly by colonising the state and other mass organisations, and by controlling Albania's supreme organ of state power, the People's Assembly.

Communist Albania was established after the end of World War II, succeeding the communist-dominated National Liberation Movement-led (or LANÇ) Democratic Government of Albania. Under the leadership of the PLA and especially Enver Hoxha, Albania pursued an anti-revisionist Stalinist form of Marxism-Leninism, which led to the Albanian-Soviet split in 1956 and then the Sino-Albanian split in 1978. The state was first led by Enver Hoxha from 1946 to 1985, and then by Ramiz Alia from 1985 to 1991. The period of Enver Hoxha's leadership is commonly referred to as Hoxhaist Albania and as the Hoxhaist regime.

Governed as a totalitarian dictatorship, travel and visa restrictions made Albania one of the most difficult countries to visit or travel from. Being Europe's only Muslim-majority country at the time, it declared itself the world's first atheist state in 1967. It was the only Warsaw Pact member to formally withdraw from the alliance before 1990, an action which was occasioned by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. The government implemented reforms which were aimed at modernizing Albania, and they resulted in significant gains in the areas of industry, agriculture, education, the arts, and culture, which contributed to a general increase in the Albanian population's standard of living. However, these developments coincided with political repression by the secret police, the Sigurimi, for the purposes of preventing a counter-revolution, which included dismissal from employment, imprisonment in forced labor camps and executions.

The first multi-party elections in Socialist Albania took place on 31 March 1991 – the Communists gained a majority in an interim government. The Republic of Albania was proclaimed on 29 April 1991 and the country's first parliamentary elections were held on 22 March 1992 leading to the anti-communist oppositional victory. On 7 April 1992, all communist symbols were removed and the legal foundation of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania was only repealed on 28 November 1998 upon the adoption of the new Constitution of Albania.

On 29 November 1944, Albania was liberated^{[clarification needed]} by the National Liberation Movement (In Albanian: Lëvizja Nacional-Çlirimtare LNÇ). The Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, formed in May, became the country's provisional government.

The government, like the LNÇ, was dominated by the two-year-old Communist Party of Albania, and the party's first secretary, Enver Hoxha, became Albania's prime minister. From the start, the LNC government was an undisguised Communist regime. In most of the rest of what became the Eastern Bloc, the Communist parties were nominally part of a coalition government for a few years before seizing full control and creating one-party states.

Having sidelined the nationalist Balli Kombëtar after their collaboration with the Nazis, the LNÇ quickly moved to consolidate its power, liberate the country's tenants and workers, and fraternally link Albania with other socialist countries. King Zog I was permanently barred from returning to Albania.