Democratic Front (Albania)

The Democratic Front of Albania (Albanian: Fronti Demokratik i Shqipërisë) was the largest mass organization of the Party of Labour of Albania (known from 1941-1948 as the Communist Party of Albania) which united all other mass organizations of the Party within it, was responsible for carrying out the Party's cultural and social programs to the masses, and was in charge of nominating candidates in elections.

On September 16, 1942, the National Liberation Front was established at the initiative of the Communist Party of Albania and with the aim of uniting all Albanians in a national liberation war against the Italian (and later Nazi German) occupiers. On November 29, 1944 the country was liberated, and the NLF began its First Congress on August 5, 1945. It elected Enver Hoxha Chairman, renamed itself the Democratic Front, and oriented its work "against the manoeuvres of reaction, its organizational consolidation, the activization of the masses in concrete actions, the political mobilization of the whole people to wipe out the remnants of fascism in the political, economic and cultural fields." Subsequent Congresses were held in May 1950, June 1955, September 1967, June 1979 and June 1989. The Front gained official recognition alongside labor unions, cooperatives, and other mass organizations of the Party of Labour in July 1950 following amendments to the Constitution.

Party historiography summed up the early work of the Front as follows: "The front was to be the mainstay of the people's power in its struggle to safeguard freedom and national independence, to reconstruct the country, to achieve its economic, social and cultural development on the road to socialism. The role of the front was the mobilization and political education of the broad masses of the people and the strengthening of the political unity of the Albanian people around the CPA.... The leading force in the front was the working class, to which were now opened wide vistas of increasing in numbers and becoming an industrial working class of a high socialist consciousness... The laboring peasantry, which had borne the brunt of battle in the National-liberation War, remained the broadest base of the Democratic Front."

At the 7th Congress of the Party of Labour in 1976 Hoxha referred to the Front as a "great political organization which realizes the unity of the Albanian people under the leadership of the Party, has wide scope of action in this field." Continuing, he stated that, "In cooperation with the other social organizations, the Front is called upon to carry out all-round work with the urban and rural masses to make the policy, orientations and directives of the Party clear to them, to educate them in the spirit of socialist patriotism, revolutionary vigilance, combat readiness and irreconcilability towards all alien manifestations, to constantly strengthen and temper the unity of the people. The Democratic Front has been and remains a great tribune of the revolutionary opinion of the masses, a powerful lever of the Party to draw the working people into governing the country and solving problems of the socialist construction and the defence of the homeland."

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