Since communism’s collapse in 1991, state authorities in Albania have grappled with how to address the legacy of human rights abuses from the communist era. In recent years, officials have introduced transitional justice mechanisms such as providing citizens and researchers access to former secret police archives. But despite such reforms and the growing research on the history of communism in Albania, the experiences and voices of the LGBTQ+ community from the time continue to be overlooked.

Searching for LGBTQ+ voices remains challenging due to ongoing stigmatization and pervasive homophobia. Homosexuality was outlawed throughout the communist era, and the impact of that prohibition was severe, its effects reverberating to this day. 

Last year, I conducted ethnographic research on stories of gay men, who despite the communist regime’s brutality in many areas of life, pursued sexual encounters with other men. One of them was Sotiraq, an Albanian man who identifies as gay and lived during the communist regime. 

“You need to understand the core of that system, back then [in 1991] we did not have names or the term ‘gay’ the way we have them today,” Sotiraq told me. His name has been changed to protect his identity. “We did not have a community because there was this fear from the law that prevented us from living our lives as we wanted to.” He also recalled the fear and isolation he experienced, and how he had to conceal his true self to avoid persecution.

Xheni Karaj, lesbian activist and director of Aleanca Kundër Diskriminimit të LGBT, a nongovernmental organization offering support to the LGBTQ+ community, told me that “Gay men of that period cannot say out loud that they are gay.” She added that “even when they speak, they have a very developed sense of paranoia. When you talk to them, you feel the internalized homophobia, the fact that they are not equipped with a language to identify their emotions.” 

Criminalization of male homosexuality

Communist Albania regulated and sought to suppress same-sex sexual desires. While the law criminalizing male homosexuality predated communism, men who engaged in same-sex sexual activities were subjected to even harsher legal prohibition under communist rule. Homosexuality was outlawed in 1925 under the leadership of Ahmet Zog, who served as the prime minister, then president and ultimately king of Albania between 1922 and 1939. During communism, Article 137 of the 1952 Penal Code, as amended in 1958, preserved the criminalization of sexual intercourse between men.

The law defined male same-sex intercourse using pejorative terms such as “pederasty.” This legislation criminalized “pederasty” — a term used pejoratively in Albanian and some other languages to refer to “sexual intercourse between males” — calling for up to 10 years of imprisonment for the offense. The law added that if it was committed violently or against a minor, someone under 14 years of age, the prison sentence would range from five to 15 years. The law further pathologized homosexuality and perpetuated the belief that it was a mental disorder, contributing to the broader marginalization of LGBTQ+ people and creating a hostile environment.

When the Penal Code was revised in 1977, “pederasty” was classified as a crime against administrative order in Albania. That made Albania into one of the states with the most severe punishment against homosexuality in the Eastern Bloc. Men charged with “pederasty” faced 10 years in prison if convicted. Just as Soviet legislation did not regulate female homoerotic desires, authorities in communist Albania did not prohibit lesbian sexual acts. Only same-sex conduct between men was criminalized. 

The Sino-Albanian split, which culminated in 1978, ended Albania’s diplomatic ties with communist China due to Beijing’s broader geopolitical realignment and normalization of relations with the U.S.. It impacted Albania significantly, as the country retreated further into isolation. The cessation of economic aid from China and resulting geopolitical developments heightened Albanian ruler Enver Hoxha’s fears of potential threats and attacks from neighboring countries. 

These circumstances may have prompted the political leadership to worry about falling birthrates despite the pro-natalist policies embraced since the establishment of communism. The changing geopolitical landscape, particularly the Sino-Albanian split, could have played a role in shaping Albania’s repressive criminalization of homosexuality. 

The regime’s paranoia is evident in the 1976 Constitution of the People’s Republic of Albania, which declared Marxism-Leninism as the country’s official ideology. The constitution’s underpinning principle was heavy militarization, and maternity was deemed a socialist duty. Article 33 of the constitution stipulated that education was based on the Marxist-Leninist ideology and combined formal education with military training. 

Additionally, under Article 63, military service and regular training for the defense of the socialist homeland were compulsory for all the citizens. Hence, the decline in fertility coupled with the national need for militaristic self-reliance might have increased the state’s interest in clamping down on non-procreative sexual activity. The state saw homosexuality as a threat to its pro-natalist policies and the national interest in maintaining a strong, self-reliant military force. Albania retained anti-homosexuality legislation until 1995.

Forced underground and cruising in the dark

As narrated by the participants in my research, there were a few gay men who chose to subvert criminalizing discourses and not conceal their sexual identities despite the fear of imprisonment. “I would drive them crazy, those men. ‘There is no one like Tore,’ they would say to me,” Tore, who lived openly as a gay man in Tirana during communism, told me.

Tore, who is now 81, came up in many of my interviewee’s narratives as one of the few gay men who lived openly in communist Tirana. With the help of local organizations and activists, I managed to meet Tore in a bar in Tirana; he shared his experiences of discreetly seeking out sexual encounters without attracting unwanted attention, memories of sex parties in remote places and other perspectives on what it meant to be one of the few gay men publicly out during communism.

Tore was arrested at age 20 for his “immoral” acts. He was convicted of ”pederasty” and spent three years in prison. During one of our meetings, he shared the details of his arrest, which began in the ticket line at a Tirana cinema.

 “I remember that the person selling tickets was a spy [for the Sigurimi, the secret police in communist Albania]. He overheard two boys who were talking about me,” Tore told me. The spy went on to the office and reported Tore. “Later on,” Tore added, “I was arrested at my home, being told that I needed to go to the prosecutor’s office because there was a summons.” He learned the details of these events many years after his release. 

In order to understand more about the surveillance of gay men, I retrieved the criminal files of men arrested and sentenced for homosexual acts during the communist era. After many hurdles in gaining access to the files due to the documents’ sensitive nature, the sources discovered at the National Archives in Tirana directed me to only 10 convictions on “pederasty” charges. The actual number is likely higher due to poor archiving and indexing of documents. These criminal files range from consensual same-sex activity in public to the rape of inmates in carceral spaces and cases of “attempted pederasty.” 

The retrieved documents shed light on criminal cases registered between 1944 and 1980. The court files included a general description of the socioeconomic background of the convicts and testimonies of witnesses. Based on the analysis of legal cases, the state imposed harsher legal sentences on active rather than passive “pederasty,” as determined by the judge, who differentiated between the two perceived roles occupied by men during sex.

Only four of the cases refer to consensual sex acts; the rest of refer to sexual violence as “pederasty performed non-consensually or attempted pederasty” and acts of pedophilia. Despite the harsh legal penalty that the state imposed on male same-sex acts, the state offered amnesty in some of these legal cases. These archival files provide a glimpse into the repressive sexual politics and surveillance of LGBTQ+ lives during the communist era and emphasize the need for more robust research.

Karol Radziszewski, a Polish artist and founder of Queer Archives Institute, an organization dedicated to the research and collection of queer archival materials in Central and Eastern Europe, argues that grounding oral queer stories unfolds new ways of understanding history and memory in Central and Eastern Europe. 

In such an environment, developing an archival project that centers queer voices is needed for preserving stories that might otherwise go untold and challenging the heteronormativity of historical inquiry. Moreover, in the current context of rising violence against LGBTQ+ people in Europe, the search and recovery of stories of gay men persecuted by Albania’s communist regime is crucial. Documenting the stories of under-represented groups is essential for addressing historical injustices. 

Following sexuality as an analytical category can open new avenues for research that center the life stories of ordinary citizens to explore how, despite the state’s attempt to control nearly every aspect of life, people still found ways to resist and embrace individual freedom.

Feature image: Atdhe Mulla / K2.0

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