Koço Tashko
Koço Tashko
Albanian communist activist and diplomat
At the Constituent Assembly's session on 11 January 1946, he was elected chair of a 20-member mandate verification commission, closing its first session; at midday of that day, at the second session, the Assembly proclaimed Albania a People's Republic.
Albanian communist activist and diplomat. Born in Faiyum, Egypt, into a national-movement family, he studied in Beirut and at Harvard, served as Albanian consul in New York in 1923-24, and taught at the Comintern school in Moscow. Sent to Albania in 1938, he took part in the party's founding in 1941, served as secretary of the General National Liberation Council in 1943 and of the Constituent Assembly in 1945, was ambassador to Moscow in 1946-47, Deputy Foreign Minister and ambassador to Sofia in 1954-55, and chaired the Party Control and Revision Commission until 1960, when he was purged: eight years of internment, ten years in Burrel prison, released in 1980, dead in 1984.
Career timeline
- 1923–1924Albanian consul in New York
- late 1920sTaught in the Comintern school's Anglo-American section, Moscow
- 1938Sent to Albania
- 1941Participant in the founding of the Communist Party of Albania
- 1943Secretary of the General National Liberation Council
- 1945Secretary of the Constituent Assembly
- 1946–1947Ambassador to Moscow
- 1954–1955Ambassador to Sofia
- 1955–1960Chair of the Party Control and Revision Commission
- 1960Purged: expelled from the party, interned and imprisoned
- 1969–1980Held in Burrel prison as its oldest prisoner