Totalitarian Albania and the new man

In this Prishtina Talks presentation, Ergys Mërtiri — a well-known commentator on political, cultural and social questions — takes up in depth the nature of Albanian totalitarianism and the communist project of “creating the new man”. Starting from Hannah Arendt's theoretical frame, which identifies two pillars of totalitarian society, terror and totalitarian logic, Mërtiri sets Enver Hoxha's regime in the wider context of modern totalitarianism and argues that Albanian communism was one of the most extreme variants of that historical form of oppression.

Mërtiri uses Zygmunt Bauman's idea of “solid modernity” (totalitarian societies such as communism) against “liquid modernity” (liberal societies), and argues that both are forms of the same modern project for controlling society, only by different means. He describes in detail the concrete machinery of Albanian communism: the State Security service that “atomised” society by driving fear all the way into private life, the war on the family as a natural unit, systematic indoctrination, and the crimes themselves, from the camps of Maliq and Tepelenë to the killing of pregnant women.

In the second half, Mërtiri turns to the harder question: how do the consequences of that regime still work today, in Albanian politics, in the academy and in the culture? He identifies the new dangers of a “light totalitarianism” in today's forms of social control, and argues that the seed of totalitarianism stays alive wherever power claims to “create the new man” and to do away with an independent civil society. The lecture closes with the practical question of how values, the family and communities are to be defended now, when the danger comes in a new and unfamiliar shape.

Some of the points covered: 📌 Hannah Arendt's two pillars of totalitarian society: terror and totalitarian logic 📌 Zygmunt Bauman: solid modernity against liquid modernity 📌 Communism as a form of modernity, not its opposite 📌 The State Security service, and the “atomising” of Albanian society 📌 The crimes themselves: the camps of Maliq and Tepelenë, the pregnant women killed 📌 The project of the “new man”, and the war on the family 📌 The inheritance today: the consequences in politics, the academy and culture 📌 The dangers of a “light totalitarianism” in the forms it takes now

📍 Prishtina Talks