Deadly Verses: How Communist Albania Executed Poets for Subversion

After a trial that lasted just seven days, Leka, then 36, and Blloshmi, 29, were sentenced to death and then executed on the night of July 17, 1977.

Born in the same village - Berzheshte, in the Librazhd area - the two poets lived a short and difficult life under Hoxha's regime, which kept the country isolated from the democratic world for more than four decades.

This isolation was mirrored in one of Blloshmi's poems, 'Sahara', which brought him before the court.

"Sahara [made of] rocks, sand and stones/Which has only its name as a friend," the poem says.

A photo exhibition in Tirana in honour of poets Vilson Blloshmi and Genc Leka. Photo: BIRN.

'Agitation and propaganda'

In 1966, Blloshmi finished his studies at the School of Pedagogy in the city of Elbasan, but his attempts to find a job as teacher met with no success.

His family had been branded 'kulaks', a word that originated in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule and was used to describe small-scale agricultural landowners who were considered enemies of Communism.

Genc Leka also studied at the School of Pedagogy in Elbasan. Leka worked for a few years as a teacher, but after doing his mandatory military service, he was not allowed to return to teaching and instead was sent to work in agriculture.

This ended when he was arrested in August 1976. Both men were charged with "sabotaging the economy" and "agitation and propaganda" against the Communist regime.

The state security service, the much-feared Sigurimi, conducted an investigation and found that the poems that both men were writing - which were only published after their deaths - were too sad and therefore did not represent "reality".

Among what have...

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