Sejfulla Malëshova

Sejfulla Malëshova was born on the 2^nd March 1900 in Kelcyre; he died on the 9^th June 1971 in Fier. He was a politician and a writer from Albania.

source of picture: gazetatelegraf.com

Career

In the year 1924, when he was 29, Sejfulla Malëshova was the personal secretary of Fan Noli. He held the post after he had studied some medicine in Italy. After the government of Noli was overthrown, he left the country to Paris and then he relocated to Moscow,a dn it was there that he studied and taught Marxism. From the year 1930 to the year 1932, he was with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, though he was later dismissed as a Bukharinist. He was a charter member of the Albanian Communist Party and he was also a member of the Party’s Politburo prior until the year 1946. He used to show up as a self-proclaimed rebel poet of the guerrilla war that was fought against the Italian and the German occupying soldiers in the country, Albania and he became popular with his pen name, which was Lame Kodra. He was appointed to be the Minister of Culture and Propaganda in the country in the year 1945, and in the same year, he was elected to be the president of the newly discovered Albanian League of Writers and Artists that was made up of 74 members, with many non-communist intellectuals being among them at that time. The league took charge of theb publication of the popular Albanian literature Drita magazine.

 Sejfulla Malëshova had emerged to be moderate communist, usually inviting publications without honor to their ideological content that brought him the wrath of Enver Hoxha, especially after an petition was submitted by the Writers League to harry Truman and Clement Attlee for the western acknowledgement of the country, Albania. He was accused by Hoxha in the year 1946 of ‘rightist deviation’ and he was expelled from the communist party. Many of the writers were persecuted after his dismissal from the party and most of them were harassed and imprisoned by the communist government.

Sejfulla Malëshova spent the remaining part of his life as a warehouseman in Fier, and he was shunned by nearly all the citizens of the country. If any other citizen of the country speaks to him, he would pinch his mouth and that is the reminder of the eternal silence that he signed to keep him alive for survival. He died as an outcast in the year 1971; his burial was attended only by his sister, the gravedigger and two sigurimi agents.