Albania was known in ancient times as Illyricum, the very province that Apostle Paul visited in the early days of the Church (Romans 15:19).
The Albanians call their country Shqiperia which means "land of the eagle." The national flag is red with a double-headed eagle and is based on the banner of Skanderbeg (their greatest national hero). With his famous declaration, "I have not brought you liberty, I found it here, among you". Skanderbeg rallied the other Albanian princes.
During his lifetime he successfully drove back the Ottomans, thus protecting Europe from Ottoman invasion.
After his death the Ottomans invaded Albania and occupied it for over 400 years.
By the 17th century two thirds of the nation had converted in order to escape violence or a crushing tax levied on Christians.

Unlike the other communist satellites, the Albanians had no direct support from Moscow. Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist dictator took a very isolationist view, but he was also able to establish Albania's first ties to Moscow. Upon several visits to Moscow, Hoxha soon became an avid disciple of Stalin due to their mutual bloodthirsty and Machiavellian paradigms.
Hoxha suffered a blow after Stalin's death in 1953. Nikita Khrushchev (a reformist and anti-Stalinist) came to power. The stress between Albania and Moscow continued to mount as Hoxha took personally their attempts to force him to accept reforms and abandon Stalinism. In 1960 Albania sided with China during their early ideological disputes with Moscow. Consequently, Moscow broke off diplomatic relations in 1961 and stopped all economic, industrial and military aid.
The Chinese took up these roles, but the alliance was short lived. On the one hand, Hoxha embraced Mao's cultural revolution. He began a violent campaign in 1967 when religious leaders were arrested and executed, and all religious practices were declared illegal. He even went so far as to declare Albania as the world's first official atheistic state!
The alliance was finally severed In 1978 China withdrew its economic, industrial, and military aid and once again Albania was completely isolated both ideologically and economically. Hoxha spurned the outside world and declared that Albania would become a model socialist republic on its own. However, the industrial plants of the 50's, built with Soviet aid, were outdated and rapidly deteriorating. A shortage of machinery led to widespread manual labor on collective farms. Hoxha's paranoia complicated matters as his highly centralized bureaucracy impeded any hope of improvement. The people were bombarded with contradictory government propaganda. There was a constant demand to increase production but people were also encouraged to rely on their own efforts for survival.
In 1981, in an effort to ensure the succession of a younger generation of leaders, Hoxha executed several party and government officials. He then withdrew from the forefront and most state functions were assumed by Ramiz Alia, who succeeded Hoxha when he died in 1985.

With Enver Hoxha's death in 1985, his hand-picked successor, Ramiz Alia, inherited a failing economy and a disgruntled people. To counter the decline Alia legalized foreign investment, instigated some reforms, and began to establish diplomatic contacts with the west. However, the fall of communism in eastern Europe in 1989 encouraged resistance among the people.
Each concession to the opposition only weakened the communist monopoly. In January the first opposition newspaper was published. On February 20th, 1991 thousands of protesters toppled the statue of Enver Hoxha in the capital.
Elections were held in March of 1992 and the Democratic Party came to power. Dr. Sali Berisha was sworn in as president in April. New Democracy didn't bring peace, however. Many Albanians invested in get-rich-quick pyramids. When these pyramid schemes failed in the spring of 1997 widespread rioting resulted. Citizens blamed Berisha for not warning them, and some even thought the arrest of the pyramid leaders caused the schemes to collapse. Many lost their life savings, and were embittered when Berisha did not suffer financially as well. The resulting riots led to the death of more than 1,500 people and thousands of machine guns fell into the hands of citizens when they looted the military armories. Soon criminal gangs controlled the countryside and Albania nearly collapsed in total anarchy.





To a great extent this material is by courtesy of CCL Albania, for a more comprehensive look on Albanian history, click here: http://www.ccl-al.org/historyr.htm