Party of Labour of Albania

In the 1920s Albania was the only Balkan country without a communist party. The first Albanian Communist Party was formed in the Soviet Union in August 1928, but until 1941 there was no unified organisation inside Albania, and the communists were scattered in small, mutually hostile groups. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Miladin Popović and Dušan Mugoša, sent by Tito under Comintern directives, united these groups, and at the founding meeting of 8–14 November 1941 Enver Hoxha became leader. The Albanian source says that until 1948 the documents of the party's conferences were prepared by the Yugoslavs on Belgrade's instructions.

The party was the dominant element of the National Liberation Movement formed in 1942, and from August 1943 it fought other Albanian forces such as the Balli Kombëtar. After driving out the Germans on 29 November 1944 it took power without the intermediate coalition stage seen in other Eastern European countries. In the Constituent Assembly election of 2 December 1945 the single list of the party-led Democratic Front received 93.7%. The Russian source says the party had little more than 2,000 members in 1945, and it dates the start of the party's rule to 1945, while the English source gives 1944.

In July 1947 Stalin suggested a new name on the grounds that peasants were the majority, and at its First Congress in 1948 the party became the Party of Labour of Albania. In the same year ‘Titoists’ such as Koçi Xoxe were purged. After Stalin's death the party became the most rigidly anti-revisionist party in the Soviet bloc; in 1961 it broke with Khrushchev, purged pro-Moscow figures such as Liri Belishova and Koço Tashko, and sided with China. It formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968, distanced itself from China after Mao's death, and declared its own path in 1978.

After Hoxha died in 1985, Ramiz Alia became first secretary and began gradual reforms. As anti-communist protests spread in 1990, Alia announced that the party was abandoning its monopoly of power and moving to a multi-party system, on 11 December 1990 according to the English source and 12 December according to the Russian source. In the first multi-party election on 31 March 1991 the party officially won 56.2%, though it was no longer a Marxist–Leninist party.

At an extraordinary congress on 13 June 1991 the party renounced Marxism–Leninism and renamed itself the Socialist Party of Albania, which became one of the country's two major parties. According to the Russian source, after the Democratic Party won the election of March 1992, Alia and other former leaders were imprisoned on charges including abuse of power.