Shehu's lead lunch

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the support he gave to the former Red Army chief Tukhachevski.

In 1938 Trepper (political name Domb), renamed Adam Mikler, and an old Palestinian Jewish comrade named Leo Grossvogel set up their cover operation: The Foreign Excellent Trenchcoat Company.

Mikler remained hard working "industrialist" until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 but on the second day of the war his cover was blown. He took a new identity: Jean Gilbert, consultant to two new cover-companies, Simex in Paris and Simexco in Brussels.

The Red Orchestra, as the spy network became known, began to play. Besides the operations in occupied Belgium and France, the Orchestra also had a branch within Germany under the leadership of another brave anti-Nazi, Schulze-Boysen.

This German operation was specifically against the orders of Stalin, who refused to believe that his good friend Hitler would threaten the Soviet Union, even when he was presented with the evidence of A CONSIDERABLE amount of mystery still surrounds recent events in and around Albania, where the Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu was officially reported to have committed suicide on December 18. Little was said by Radio Tirana about Shehu's death, except that it was self-inflicted following 'nervous prablems'. , and nothing has been said of Shehu since.

However, unofficial reports reaching Yugoslavia suggest that he died after attempting to shoot Enver Hoxha (the veteran Stalinist who has been in power in Albania since leading the National Liberation War to victory over the Nazis in December 1944) during a meeting of the politburo of the Albanian Party of Labour (Albanian CP).

An argument seems to have broken out over whether or not to continue with Hoxha's extreme isolationist policies. through which the Albanians 154=... have broken successively with Yugosiavia (1947), the USSR (1955) and China (1977).

Albania's autarkic economy must need outside help now, (the idea of building Socialism in One Country has reached ludicrous proportions in this tiny Balkan country), and it is probable that Mehmet Shchu represented a faction within the party to develop better links with, at least, the Eastern Bioc, Hoxha cannot have agreed, guns were pulled, and in the ensuing battle Shehu died.

Simultaneousiy, Albanians over the border in Yugoslavia are fighting for an autonomous republic within the Yugoslav Federation. When Albania's borders were arbitrarily drawn up by the so-called Great Powers in 1913, large numbers of Albanian nationals found themselves outsiders.

They now live in the region of Kosovo , and • hays never been incorporated into Albania proper or accorded republican status of their own-despite wartime promises by Tito to the Albanian partisans. Demonstrations and rioting have met with increased repression by the Yugoslavs, who are also attempting to move Serbians into the area to reduce the Albanian majority.

Albania, whilst formerly repudiating any territorial claims against. Yugoslavia, supports the Albanian nationals' demands, and relations between the two countries have deteriorated. A note from the Yugoslavian government to the Albanian Ambassador in Belgrade charging his country with internal interference in Yugoslavian affairs was refused at the door; in May 1981 two explosions (bombs?) were heard in the Yugoslavian Embassy in Tirana.

John Riley

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 4 Februarv 1982 Page 14