When, in 1989, communist regimes in Eastern Europe were collapsing, Albania tried to distance itself from the transformations. Speaking at the congress of trade unions in December 1989, the head of the state, Ramiz Alia, said the following words: “There are those abroad who ask: Are the same processes taking place in Albania as in other countries of Eastern Europe? We answer that question decidedly and categorically: No, in Albania there is no such process…”

The purges in personnel consistently conducted for forty years by the government of Enver Hoxha meant that all the best individuals from the dictator's environment had been eliminated. At the end of the 1980s in the APL Political Bureau there was a lack of fully independent politicians, and even more of someone who could be associated with the myth of a political hero and a necessity for the nation.