Enver Hoxha pivots Albania toward North Korea to bypass the Kremlin
By Vera Kessler ·
Two isolated regimes forged a kinship in 1961 to defy the Soviet Union, sending high-level envoys to Pyongyang to coordinate total state indoctrination.
The language of the socialist bloc was rarely subtle, but in August 1961, it reached a pitch of performative ecstasy. A letter from Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Albanian Party of Labor, to the Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party begins by stating that the invitation to attend the 4th Party Congress was received with "pleasure and unique happiness."
This document, a published English translation from the Cold War International History Project, is a brief piece of diplomatic correspondence. Yet, in the sterile environment of state-to-state communication, the choice of adjectives serves as a map. The letter is not merely a confirmation of travel; it is a declaration of kinship between two of the most isolated regimes of the era.
August 15, 1961
The timing of the letter is precise. Signed and delivered on August 15, 1961, it arrives at a moment when the global communist movement was fracturing. Albania, under Hoxha, had become the vanguard of the Sino-Soviet split in Europe, pivoting away from Moscow and toward Beijing. North Korea, meanwhile, was navigating its own treacherous path, balancing its dependence on the Soviet Union against a growing affinity for Maoist China and its own homegrown ideology of self-reliance.
By framing the Korean Workers' Party as a "sister" party, Hoxha was not just using a cliché. He was signaling a shared identity of the "outsider" state—regimes that viewed the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev as revisionist and weak. The 4th Congress of the Korean Workers' Party provided the necessary theater for this alignment. For Hoxha, sending a delegation to Pyongyang was a way to validate the legitimacy of a hardline Marxist-Leninist path that bypassed the Kremlin.
Manush Myftiu and Thoma Deljana
The composition of the Albanian delegation reveals the importance Hoxha placed on this specific event. He did not send low-level diplomats or career bureaucrats. Instead, he dispatched two men of significant standing within the Party of Labor.
The first was Manush Myftiu, who served as the chairman of the delegation. Myftiu's resume, as listed in the document, is an accumulation of state power: Member of the Political Bureau of the Albanian Party of Labor Central Committee, First Vice Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Albania, and Minister of Education and Culture.
Sending the Minister of Education and Culture is a telling detail. In these regimes, education and culture were not about the arts or pedagogy; they were the primary vehicles for indoctrination and the enforcement of party orthodoxy. Myftiu's presence suggests that the exchange between Tirana and Pyongyang was intended to be ideological as much as political. The mission was likely as much about comparing notes on how to mold a population through state-mandated culture as it was about formal diplomacy.
The second delegate, Thoma Deljana, provided the regional balance. As a Member of the Albanian Party of Labor Central Committee and First Secretary of the Party Committee of the Region of Elbasan, Deljana represented the party's grip on the provincial administration. The pairing of a national heavyweight like Myftiu with a regional power-player like Deljana ensured that the "lessons" of the 4th Congress could be transmitted from the highest levels of the Council of Ministers down to the local party committees.
"Fiery Revolutionary Greetings"
The closing of the letter is where the rhetoric peaks. Hoxha offers "sincere congratulations" for the proceedings of the Congress, describing it as a "very historically important event in the life of the sister Korean Workers' Party and of the Korean people." He signs off with "Fiery revolutionary greetings."
Public records establish that the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), founded in 1949, operated as the absolute center of power in North Korea, controlling the Korean People's Army and rendering all other legal parties—such as the Chondoist Chongu Party—completely subservient. The "historical importance" Hoxha refers to was the consolidation of this total control. The WPK's "leading role" was the very thing Hoxha admired and emulated in Albania.
There is a stark contrast between the "unique happiness" expressed in the prose and the rigid, paranoid nature of the states involved. Both Tirana and Pyongyang were building fortress-states, suspicious of their neighbors and their former mentors. The warmth in the letter is the warmth of two people discovering they are both hiding in the same dark room.
While related files on North Korean diplomacy exist in the UK National Archives and the FRUS records of the State Department, this specific exchange highlights the peculiar bilateralism of the era. It was a diplomacy of mirror-imaging, where the exchange of delegations served to prove that neither state was truly alone in its isolation.
The record concludes with a brief, handwritten note. It confirms that the original document was handed to the Korean ambassador on August 15, 1961, the same day it was signed. The document leaves the actual outcome of the delegation's visit to the 4th Congress unrecorded.