"Fear That Guards the Vineyard"

"I guess we have lost Albania," said Nikita Khrushchev to a Chinese delegation in 1961, "and you have gained an important ally." Khrushchev, of course, was being heavily sarcastic after Albania's party boss Enver Hoxha sided with the Chinese against the Soviet revisionists. But ever since Albania has been China's sole friend in Europe. And for the last decade it has been as angry and insulated as Peking itself. Now, following China's lead, Albania is gradually looking outward. It has established trade and diplomatic relations with its long-estranged neighbors, Greece and Yugoslavia, and an expanding list of other West European nations. It is even building a few tourist hotels for those who want to view socialism in the raw. Most Americans are still barred, but TIME's Robert Kroon, traveling on a Dutch passport, recently visited the "land of the eagles," as the Albanians call it, and cabled this report:

TIRANA (pop. 190,000) is probably the bleakest capital in the world. It is a city of dilapidated houses of pale red brick sometimes trimmed in yellow or faded blue, and ramshackle brick apartment buildings, of wooden street-corner stalls selling fruits, soft drinks and sweets, and of a few shops that feature more slogans than merchandise. The cafes are eternally packed with workers in shirtsleeves who sip Turkish coffee and pass the time in endless conversation in apparent defiance of the Communist Party's credo of hard work. It is a pedestrian's heaven; Albania is quite possibly the most earless country anywhere. The people are suspicious, curious, unsmiling--testimony to the effectiveness of Party Boss Hoxha's motto: "It is fear that guards the vineyard."

Western fads are not tolerated. After the surly, green-uniformed customs officials have finished their examinations, visitors arriving at Tirana's bucolic, one-strip airport are immediately advised that socialist Albania frowns on long hair, shorts or deep decolletage. "We don't need hash, long hair or jazz music," one crew-cut student told a modishly dressed but severely disillusioned Italian Maoist in our group, pointing to his body-hugging Via Veneto shirt, bell-bottom jeans and wide belt. "A socialist does not dress like an American cowboy." A Swedish girl, who ventured out of her beachside hotel in hot pants one scorching day, got the point even more strongly when a bunch of dedicated puritans from a nearby party youth camp pelted her with rocks and catcalls.

Tirana was our takeoff point for a 600-mile drive in a new 75-h.p. Chinese minibus, a product of the Tientsin Motor Works. The expert driver managed to maintain a 25-m.p.h. average speed as he dodged potholes, people, oxcarts, donkeys and trucks. The only passenger cars belong to party officials or diplomats. The Chinese ambassador drives a Mercedes; the North Vietnamese, a sporty Alfa-Romeo. The one common feature of the landscape--verdant coastal plains rising to shrub-covered mountains in the interior--is a multitude of party slogans posted on farmhouse walls, on smokestacks or even planted on stakes in placid mountain lakes. One was made up of letters in white stone, 100 ft. high and stretching across a mountainside. The message is always the same: "Glory to the Albanian Workers' Party," or "Long Live Comrade Enver," a reference to Albania's ubiquitous leader.

Leaps Forward. Hoxha, a hero of Albania's World War II resistance against the Italian and German occupation, is a good candidate for the title of the world's most autocratic ruler. Yet after 25 years under his tutelage, Albania has progressed from feudal backwardness and poverty to an egalitarian society with enough food, clothing, shelter and free medical care for all of its 2,000,000 people. Its achievements, if painfully modest by Western standards, are giant leaps forward to Albanians. Before Hoxha there were no railroads at all; now a modest rail net links the country's major cities. Once 90% illiterate, Albania now can claim schools for both children and adults and a university in Tirana. Swamps have been drained, irrigation ditches installed, and the agricultural cooperatives that cultivate every square inch of arable land keep Albanians comfortably well fed. Moreover, the current five-year plan has brought electricity to every rural district, thanks largely to the giant new Mao Tse-tung hydroelectric plant near the Adriatic port of Durres.

China has paid a high price for its ally, which it has had to help support since Russia pulled out its technicians after the 1961 split between Tirana and Moscow. Chinese aid since then has been estimated at $100 million or more. Even such simple items as matches and light bulbs are shipped all the way around the Cape of Good Hope from Shanghai. Albania is rich in minerals such as chrome, nickel and copper but understandably poor in industry. The most spectacular Chinese project is a sprawling textile plant at Berati, where workers put in a no-nonsense 48-hour, six-day work week for a minimum wage of 600 lek ($70) a month--100 lek more than factory workers elsewhere.

A manager usually earns twice that amount, though the highest paid state employee--Hoxha himself--takes home only 2,000 lek ($240) a month. Retired workers (men at 60, women at 55) receive 70% of their former salary. If a worker manages to obtain a state-built apartment, he pays what is certainly Europe's lowest rent, from $2.50 to $6 a month. Other items, however, are not nearly so cheap, and the most desirable luxury of all, a Chinese bicycle, costs a month's wages. Watches, refrigerators, washing machines and TV sets are beyond the reach of the average worker. But Hoxha can boast that "Albania is the only country in the world with no taxes" (government revenues are provided by profit from state-owned factories, farm cooperatives, exports and Chinese aid).

However austere the Albanian way of life, at least a couple of Americans who had returned to visit relatives were favorably impressed (members of the U.S.'s 100,000-member Albanian-American community, about half of whom live in the Boston area, are the only U.S. visitors allowed). "My relatives in Korrce have a roof over their heads, enough to eat, and they like Hoxha," said one. "It may not be paradise, but it is a well-disciplined, proud society with no junkies, pushers, dropouts and free-sex maniacs. I guess Agnew would like it."

Fierce Nationalism. Much of Albania's rejection of outside influence stems from a fierce nationalism. As Hoxha once put it: "Albanians have hacked their way through history, sword in hand." They usually lost, and in this century alone have been under the rule of the Turks, Austro-Hungarians, Italians, Greeks and Germans. In fact, except for a brief period between the World Wars, when it was ruled by the feudal King Zog, Albania had not been independent since the 15th century. Perhaps its history provides a feeling of kinship with the historically xenophobic Chinese. But even beyond that, the Albanians seem to like the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 resident civilian Chinese, mostly diplomats and technicians. "They don't impose themselves like the Russians did," said a party member in Tirana. "The Soviets lived it up here, earning eight or nine times as much as Albanian colleagues. The Chinese get the same pay as we do and don't demand to live in the best places." Presumably, the Albanians will turn out an unaccustomedly friendly welcome when Chinese Premier Chou En-lai arrives on an official visit this fall. But they have shown themselves less than flattering in one respect: Peking's presence has so far spawned not one Chinese restaurant.

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