Yugoslav period

After the end of World War II, the Albanian communists found themselves in a comfortable situation. This was helped by the lack of traditional political parties, as well as the elimination near the end of the war of the majority of potential opponents. The new government inherited a society of millions, which generally treated the ideas of state, parliament and constitution as too abstract and unrelated to the ideas they used in their daily life. In 1944 Albania had an exceptionally large army, formed on the basis of partisan units. The easily-manipulated mass of soldiers with their peasant upbringing created unprecedented possibilities for social advance, simultaneously constituting an obedient and ruthless tool in the pacification of the country. The number of members of the CPA quickly grew during the war. At the end of 1941 it had about 130 members, and in October 1944 that number had already increased to 2250. Only 15% of them were workers, and the dominant group consisted of peasants. In the first post-war years, both the leadership of the communist party, and the armed forces leaders came from the same environment.