In Tirana, Mehmet Shehu, a prominent figure in the anti-fascist and communist movement, one of the leaders of the National Liberation Anti-Fascist War, a high-ranking official of the state and the Albanian Party of Labor, Prime Minister, and People’s Hero, committed suicide. He was born in \u00c7orrush, Mallakast\u00ebr, in 1913. He attended the Technical High School of Tirana (1932). In 1935, he won a scholarship to attend the Military Academy in Naples but was expelled due to his anti-fascist activities. In the summer of 1937, he volunteered in Spain, where he participated in the International Brigade XII (1937\u20131939) and became a member of the Communist Party of Spain. After the departure of volunteers from Spain in February 1939, he was interned in a concentration camp in France, where he became a member of the Italian Communist Party. In August 1942, he returned to Albania and joined the National Liberation Anti-Fascist Movement; member of the Albanian Communist Party since 1942. Commander of the first Mallakast\u00ebr brigade (February 1943), later organizational secretary of the Albanian Communist Party for the Vlor\u00eb district. Commander of the Assault Brigade I since its establishment (August 1943). At the First Anti-Fascist Congress of P\u00ebrmet (May 1944), he was elected a member of the National Liberation Anti-Fascist Council. In August 1944, he was appointed commander of the Assault Division I. From 1945 to 1956, he studied at the “Voroshilov” Military Academy in Moscow. Since the First Congress of the Albanian Communist Party (1948), he was elected a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau and was assigned important duties: Chief of the General Staff of the Army (1946\u20131947), Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs (1948\u20131954), Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1954\u20131981), and Minister of Defense (from 27.12.1978). In the early 1980s, due to the worsening power struggle within the leadership of the Albanian Party of Labor, Mehmet Shehu became a target of attack. His middle son’s engagement to a girl from a family considered politically problematic served as a pretext for this. At a specially convened meeting of the Political Bureau on December 17, 1981, Mehmet Shehu was harshly criticized for class struggle moderation, arrogance, and weakness in his work. Unable to cope with the situation that arose at the meeting and anticipating the consequences that might follow, as had happened with other leaders of the Albanian Party of Labor, on December 18, he committed suicide, leaving a letter for Enver Hoxha explaining the reasons for this act. The day after this event, in assessing the situation, Enver Hoxha labeled him as an enemy and a multi-agent, while the Central Committee Plenum expelled him from the party (posthumously). Later, his wife and one of his sons were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment, while his eldest son committed suicide. (In the photo: Mehmet Shehu)<\/i><\/p>\n
Text:<\/strong> Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 3 <\/i>, Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2009, page 2437.<\/p>\n Photo: <\/strong>\u00a9 https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mehmet_Shehu<\/p>\n Graphic processing: <\/strong>AHCF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mehmet Shehu, an activist of the anti-fascist and communist movement, one of the leaders of the National Liberation Anti-Fascist War, a high-ranking official of the state and the Party of Labor of Albania, Prime Minister, and Hero of the People, committed suicide in Tirana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vdekje"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10811,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7529\/revisions\/10811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albheritage.wpadmin.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}