Soviet–Albanian split

The Soviet–Albanian split refers to the worsening of relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People's Republic of Albania, which occurred in the 1955–1961 period as a result of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with Yugoslavia along with his "Secret Speech" and subsequent de-Stalinization policies, including efforts to extend these policies into Albania as was occurring in other Eastern Bloc states at the time. The Albanian leadership under Enver Hoxha perceived Khrushchev's policies as contrary to Marxist–Leninist doctrine and his denunciation of Joseph Stalin as an opportunistic act meant to legitimize revisionism within the international communist movement. Occurring within the context of the larger split between China and the USSR, the Soviet–Albanian split culminated in the rupturing of relations in 1961.

The Communist Party of Albania (known as the Party of Labour of Albania after 1948) was founded in November 1941 in the context of the foreign occupation of the country, with the majority of its members including its leader, Enver Hoxha, having no connection to the Comintern. Historian Jon Halliday has commented that "it was set up without any known direct contact with Moscow. It was not at all a 'Moscow creation' ... the bulk of the founding leadership were middle-class intellectuals on whom the strongest influences were Western intellectual traditions." Albania furthermore was the only country in Eastern Europe which had liberated itself without the presence of the Red Army on its soil. A combination of these factors led Stalin to initially have been "both curious and suspicious about the only leader of a Communist regime in the Soviet bloc who escaped from any historical ties or contact with the Soviet Union." This, Halliday continues, "was true not just of Hoxha as an individual, but of almost the entire leading group in Albania." Despite this, however, Hoxha was "the quintessential Stalinist. Many of the descriptions Nikita Khrushchev used to denounce Josef Stalin ... could easily be applied to Enver Hoxha."

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