Beqir Balluku
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Enver Hoxha
14 February 1917
Beqir Balluku | |
|---|---|
.jpeg) | |
| Minister of People's Defence | |
| In office 1 August 1953 – 28 October 1974 | |
| Prime Minister | Mehmet Shehu Enver Hoxha |
| Preceded by | Enver Hoxha |
| Succeeded by | Mehmet Shehu |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Beqir Ali Balluku 14 February 1917 |
| Died | 5 November 1975 (aged 58) |
| Signature | .svg) |
| Military service | |
| Branch/service | Albanian People's Army |
| Years of service | 32 |
| Rank | Lieutenant General |
| Battles/wars | |
Beqir Ali Balluku[2] (14 February 1917 – 5 November 1975) was an Albanian politician, military leader, and Minister of Defense of Albania. Balluku assisted Enver Hoxha in carrying out the 1956 purge within the Party of Labour. However, in 1974, Balluku himself, along with a group of other government members was accused by Hoxha of an attempted coup d'état against the People's Republic of Albania. He was executed the next year.
Balluku was born on 14 February 1917[3] in Tirana, Albania. He studied at a technical high school in Tirana. While he was doing his military service, he joined the ranks of the Albanian resistance against the Axis during the partisan war in Albania.[4]
On 20 May 1943 he was appointed commander of the Communist partisan battalion "Krujë Ishëm", and on 18 September 1943 he was named commissar of the third brigade. Later he was appointed commander of the second brigade.[4]
On 28 January 1948 Balluku was named Chief of the Head Command of the Albanian Army.[5] In 1948, in the first Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania (formerly the Communist Party of Albania), he was elected as a member of the Politburo, a post he held until his arrest,[6] and in 1952 he was named Minister of Defense.[7] One year later he gained the military rank of Lieutenant General. From 1948 to 1974 he was a member of the Albanian parliament.[4]
In 1953 he graduated from the Marshal Voroshilov Military Academy of the USSR Army General Staff. Earlier, in December 1952 the Yugoslav State radio of Belgrade and the newspaper Politika had announced that he had been killed and his family interned, but it turned out that it was just speculation: he had been busy with his studies in Moscow.[8]
In 1956 Balluku was presiding over the municipality of Tirana Conference of the Communist Party when the opponents of the Enver Hoxha - Mehmet Shehu regime nearly overthrew the government. Balluku informed Nexhmije Hoxha (Hoxha's wife) that Enver Hoxha should return from the holidays and keep the situation under control.[9]
Shehu and Balluku's intervention helped cause the 1956 purge of the Albanian Communist Party. After Hoxha returned to Tirana, he first tried to be conciliatory towards his critics and then he retaliated by ordering the arrest of all of those who had spoken up. The troika Hoxha-Shehu-Balluku was so described by Nikita Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:[10]
The Albanians are worse than beasts – they are monsters. Only later did we learn how the Albanian Communist leaders punished and eliminated members of their own Party. They had a sort of troika: Hoxha, Shehu and Balluku. These three used to bring someone to trial, and Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu would sentence the accused to death themselves, without ever putting anything in writing; then they would look for an opportunity to have their victim murdered secretly, and Balluku would personally carry out the execution. It was all very similar to the system used by Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria.
In 1960, following the Sino-Soviet split, Balluku, as a representative of the Albanian Party of Labour, took a strong pro-China and anti-Soviet stand in his speech at the Congress of the North Vietnam Communist Party.[11]
