The Production of (Public) Space in Rural Socialist Albania: Two Case Studies in the Drino Valley

Abstract

The construction of socialism took root in Albania after the end of the Second World War drawing from the Marxist-Leninist principles on which building the new modern Albanian society. Socialist Albania tended to prioritize the future while glorifying the roots of the Albanian people, by promoting images of the country that had embraced heroic progress to deeply transform its society and territory. In this context, alongside the complex political, social and economic changes, the role of the countryside in the Albanian political debate of the time was importantly evaluated and pivotal in the socialist regime propaganda. In this sense, the Albanian village, conceived as a unity, and the rural communities, underwent profound changes depending on the innovative socialist economic means of production. New socialist rural settlements were established along existing ones and grouped according to the two main economic forms dictated by the regime: the agricultural cooperatives and the agricultural state farms. Within this context, this article proposes a focus on the design and planning of, and the role played by the qendra e fshatit, i.e., the village centre intended both as a public space and as a fundamental part of the village or the new rural settlement, in materialising the socialist turn in the modernisation process of the Albanian rural areas.