Second world war, communism and post-communism in Albania, an equilateral triangle of a tragic trans-Adriatic story. The Eftimiadi’s Saga

Abstract

The complicated, troubled and tragic events of a wealthy family from Vlorë, Albania, which a century ago expanded its business to Italy, in Brindisi and Trieste, and whose grand land tenures and financial properties in Albania were nationalized by Communism after the Second World War. Hence the life-long solitary and hopeless fight of the last heir of the family to reconquer his patrimony that had been nationalized by Communism. Such properties would have been endowed to a planned foundation, which aims at perpetuating the memory of his brother, who was active in the resistance movement during the war and therefore hung by the Germans. His main institutional purpose is to help students from the Vlorë area to attend the University of Trieste. The paper is a travel in time through history, sociology and the consolidation of a state’s fundamentals, by trying to read the past aiming to understand the presence and save the future. The paper highlights the need to consider past models of social solidarity meanwhile renewing the actual one. This as a re-establishment of rule and understanding, a strategy to cope with pressures to renegotiate the social contract, as a universal need, by considering the past’s experiences as a firm base for successful social interaction. All this, inside a story which in the first look seems to be too personal and narrow, meanwhile it highlights the present and the past in a natural organic connection, dedicated to a nation in continuous struggle for its social reconstruction.