Albania and Italy during the Cold War

24/05/2017 00:00

Common Italians, different from politicians, had less knowledge about
Albania during the Cold War. For them we were an unknown, exotic
country.

While Italian politicians trusted that after breaking up with the Soviet Union, Albania could go back to having good relations with Italy, a country that didn’t want the small Balkan nation to be divided.

A historic conference was held today, titled “Relations between Italy and Albania during the Cold War”. Albanian and Italian scholars held speeches, giving a better view on a historic era that hasn’t been studied enough.

Paolo Rago, responsible for the project, said that political Italy had huge interests on Albania after the country left the Warsaw Treaty. “It remained like a country that could be a barrier to the Eastern Block”, Rago says.

“I remember Radio Tirana, when during long afternoons at the house of my mother, we had created the habit of gathering at 19:00 and listen to the news in Italian. We tried to imagine what were the expectations of the Albanian men and women. What clothes did they wear. What programs did they watch on TV”, says Alberto Cutillo.

But different from them, Albanians knew Italy very well through TV stations. The programs and shows of RAI were seen through amateur antennas made by people secretly.

From the military point of view, former President Alfred Moisiu reminds that when Albania had good relations with the Soviet Union, there were 12 submarines at Albania’s Pasha-Liman base, in a time when the Italian marine owned only three or four”.

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