Ramiz Alia must have sensed his days were numbered. Communist states were crumbling around him. Nicolae Ceauşescu had just been executed in the wake of the Romanian revolution. And word was beginning to spread, albeit slowly at first, that the Berlin Wall had finally come down.
Alia probably woke in the night, startled, visions of his own head on a pike rendering sleep all but impossible.
By 1990, after half a century under communist rule, the Albanian people were starting to look - and sound - as though they had finally had enough. Alia's predecessor, the murderous Enver Hoxha, was only five years dead. People were slow to forget Alia's own role in the ruthless regime.
Even by notoriously wretched communist standards, Albania's own experiment ranks poorly. Private property was, of course, rendered unto the State. Freedom of expression was outlawed. Political dissent was dealt with by means of torture, "disappearances" and outright execution. At one point, the Sigurimi (Albania's secret police, similar to Russia's KGB and East Germany's Stasi), had interrogated or incarcerated in labor camps one-third of the entire population. Travel abroad was strictly prohibited, except for those embarking on official State business.
Among the many liberties to come under the State's jackboot, freedom to practice one's religion was particularly, aggressively targeted. During holy periods - Lent, Ramadan, etc. - the State's schools served students food their religious affinities would have forbidden. Children who refused to eat were denounced to the Sigurimi... and dealt with accordingly. So to were their families. Even wearing a beard was strictly prohibited.
To severe political and social curtailments, add the weight of an economy fully collapsed under the yoke of failed centralization. Having isolated itself from Tito's Yugoslavia, Khrushchev's Soviet Union and, eventually, Mao's China, Albania found itself alone in the world. For three straight decades, it ranked as the poorest country in Europe.
And it wasn't over yet...
- - -
Back to Butrint (more about which is in Part I)...
After a modest hike, and not before we discovered we'd forgotten to pack enough water, we came upon the Lion's Gate. Atop the entrance sits a huge stone. The relief (pictured above) depicts a lion feasting on an ox. It was meant to strike fear into the hearts of all who entered... a cautionary reminder to be on their best behavior whilst visiting the city.
We tried to imagine what the tired and thirsty travelers must have thought when they first set sights on this gate in ancient times. Were they suitably scared? Relieved? Welcomed?
As we have seen, Butrint (literally "Wounded Ox") had grown into a flourishing port city during the reigns of Emperors Caesar and Augustus. Coins minted around the time show Butrint's impressive aqueduct, which stretched out to the plains beyond the city walls and provided water for the public baths, fountains and private homes.
Roman architecture was built on Greek foundations... the agora converted into a forum... the theatre modified and enlarged to accommodate an increasingly wealthy, thriving population. The outer defense walls were also expanded to cover what one archeologist described as "an apron of low-lying land beside the channel."
Cometh the fifth century and the ascendancy of Constantinople, and it must have seemed as though the Fates were indeed smiling on "Wounded Ox." This shady fulcrum of Mediterranean trade routes swelled in prosperity. The residents enjoyed a fine life, dined in lavish style and supped from intricately decorated vessels. A Baptistery - the second largest in the Eastern Roman Empire (honors going to Hagia Sophia) and a Grande Basilica provided space for worship and praise. Rich mosaics of birds, fish and land animals depict an era of plenty.
But nothing lasts forever...
As the tide of Roman influence (and protection) ebbed, so too did the fortunes of Butrint. Without its powerful benefactor, the city was left in a precarious position in a region overrun with Gothic tribes and barbarians. The sixth and seventh centuries saw the area's population rapidly dwindle until, sometime around the 650s, the last holdouts packed up and left the city of Wounded Ox to try their fortunes elsewhere...
- - -
The Albania of today is unlike that known to the Hellenes or the Romans and, thankfully, unlike that known to its poor, suffering 20th century residents.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite States, communist Albania - eventually - gave way to freer markets.
Alia's attempts to assuage the uprising against him with token gestures were to no avail. Working-class folk and intellectuals alike - groups that had, in the early 1940s, been at the political vanguard agitating
for communism - joined the youth in demanding Stalin's statues be removed from the town squares and their country delivered to modernity.
Though the communist party prevailed in the 1991 elections - the first in the country in over half a century - a general strike later that year made clear the population's dissatisfaction with the result. In March 1992, amid economic collapse and widespread social unrest, the communists were finally routed. A decade and more of armed conflict, mass emigration, war and governmental corruption awaited them.
The project toward peace and stability is, in fact, still underway...
- - -
Back in the taxi, traversing the mountainside road back to our lodging, we reflected on the transience of politics, the fickle whims of man, the corrupting nature of power and the careless ebb and flow of history.
At the hotel desk, the owner's teenage daughter greeted us with a genuine smile.
"How was Butrint?" she inquired, glancing up at us from behind a dog-eared book.
"More and more people are coming to see it... you know, the ruins. And coming to Albania too. It's good for us. It's good for our future."
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
for Free Market Café
Follow Joel on Twitter
@JoelBowman 
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