Tuk Jakova, a People’s Hero and activist of the communist movement, passed away in the prison hospital of Tirana following a surgical intervention. Born in Shkodër in 1914 to a family originally from Gjakova, he was forced to stop his high school education due to economic reasons and worked as a carpenter. Jakova became a member of the communist group in Shkodra and was sentenced to imprisonment during the trial against communists in February 1939. After escaping from prison following the fascist aggression on April 7, he went underground. He participated in the founding meeting of the Albanian Communist Party, representing the Shkodra group, and was elected a member of the Provisional Central Committee. At the First Country Conference of the Albanian Communist Party in 1943, he was elected to the Central Committee and appointed political commissar of the 1st Assault Brigade and later the 1st Assault Division. At the 1st National Liberation Anti-Fascist Congress in Përmet in May 1944, he became a member of the National Liberation Anti-Fascist Council and achieved the rank of “colonel.” In November 1944, he was appointed commissar of the III Assault Corps and served as the President of the Trade Unions of Workers and Clerks of Albania in September 1945. Jakova led the first Albanian delegation to the United Nations in June 1946 and was subsequently appointed ambassador of the People’s Republic of Albania to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1948. At the First Congress of the Albanian Communist Party in 1948, he was elected to the Political Bureau and became secretary of the Central Committee. He was promoted to Major General in July 1949 and served as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister from 1950 to 1955. A Member of Parliament since 1945, he held the positions of chairman of the Constitutional Assembly and the People’s Assembly from 1946 to 1950. However, due to opposing views with the leadership of the Labor Party of Albania, he was expelled from the Central Committee and the party during the Plenum on June 17, 1955, and dismissed from all state duties. Jakova was interned in Berat in 1956 and arrested in 1957, receiving a 20-year prison sentence. He died in the prison hospital of Tirana in 1959. (In the photo: Tuk Jakova)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 2, Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 1060.
Photo: © https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuk_Jakova
Graphic processing: AHCF
