“Të bëjmë fshatin si qytet!”. The urbanization of the countryside in socialist Albania

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the communist party came into power in Albania where most of the society was composed of the peasantry. In line with the Soviet model, the new society that the regime aimed to build was constituted of two social groups creating the working mass: workers and peasants. To pursue the ideal of a new socialist society, efforts in bridging the distances and differences between the urban and rural contexts were conceived as a priority and went on in parallel with the collectivization process of the land, agriculture mechanization, industrialization, and the electrification of the whole country. Under the party maxim “Let’s make the village a city!” the urbanization of the countryside was a declared and tangible project toward a modern socialist rural life. Through the examination of archival documents and literature preserved in the main Albanian State archives, in this paper I will underline which were the new urban planning approach and settlements’ schemes in rural areas and the main architectural elements composing the new Albanian socialist rural village.