John Lennon, in his classic song "Imagine," asked his audience to picture a world where there is "nothing to kill or die for and no religion, too." A world without religion doesn't exist, but one tiny nation in the Balkans, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, has taken a giant step to rid itself of what Karl Marx called "the opium of the people."
The mystery-shrouded land of Albania, which is ruled by the world's most Stalinist Communist Party, has taken Marxist-Leninism to its logical conclusion and officially declared God dead. Since 1967, all churches and mosques have been closed for worship. Thousands of Christian and Moslem leaders have been imprisoned or shot, and all vestiges of religion - 70 percent of Albanians were Muslim, the rest Orthodox and Catholic with just a handful of Protestants - have, on the surface, been brutally suppressed.
It seems, at first glance, that this beautiful mountainous country of approximately three million people, which shares a border with Yugoslavia on the north and Greece to the south, is proof that John Lennon's dream has come true, in part, with a people living in harmony, and with no religion interfering with their goal to become the world's purest socialistic society. As a special bonus, no one has to pay income tax and all medical and educational bills are paid by the state. Abortion, which is widely practiced in many of the so-called Christian nations of the West, has even been outlawed.
Albania is, however, a land which places very little trust in other societies and is constantly on the alert for invaders. Throughout the country there are countless thousands of concrete "pillboxes" which look like gigantic mushrooms. Every valley, hill, beach, village, town, and city has them.
Americans and Russians are not allowed into the country. It is easy to understand why Americans were banned, but Russians?
"The reason is that they are revisionists," said one Albanian. "We consider what they are doing in the world today as nothing but socialistic-imperialism." In other words, they are too right-wing for the Albanians!
Workers' paradise
But is Albania really the "workers' paradise on earth" the aging leadership would like the world to believe it is? Curious to find the answer to this question, I found that the only way to learn the truth about the situation in this highly secretive society, which endured the Spartan life-style and congenital xenophobia of strongman Enver Hoxha's Balkan enclave, was to join a tour from Great Britain organized by Regent Holidays (UK) Limited, of Bristol. Regent has been arranging vacations to Albania for 16 years and, until recently, was the only British tour operator with permission to take in visitors from that country. I still maintain my British passport, which allowed me to circumvent the Albanians' ban on American visitors.
The official brochure from Regent explained, "As Albania is officially an atheistic state, Bibles and other religious literature, whether or not for personal use, are not allowed to be brought into the country."
Our group of 18
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