Towards a 'Greater' Albania: The Coming Crash: The Albanian Conumdrum in Greece (Part 1)

The Coming Crash: The Albanian Conundrum in Greece

When the Soviet Union collapsed a whole series of satellite states emerged in Eastern Europe which ended up on the path of the Western orbit. The West European ruling classes were instructed by their big boss across the Atlantic to prop up and support these states. Greece adopted Albania and the political parties did all in their power to try to integrate them into economic life. The Albanian experience was the beginning of the end of the Greek labour movement.

For decades the mass media railed against the Soviet Union that the peoples weren’t free and they counldn’t travel to the West. This was of course a smokescreen to justify the demarcation points of the Cold War. The Russians responded in kind by highlighting the degrading conditions of Blacks in America or the Western unemployed. This obviously could no longer hold water come the 1980’s when in Russia they had no unemployment but no actual goods in the stores, making the old dictum now infamous: they pretend to pay us we pretend to work.

1980’s Greece

Greece went through the post war boom in a strong fashion. Money from shipping when there were Greek crews helped the country rebuild itself after the devastations of the 3rd Reich and the subseqent British/US sponsored civil war that sent back the country a decade in fighting and almost total economic devastation and loss in manpower.

Poor but unbowed Greeks rebuilt the country from ashes which resulted in a first class tourist destination, a range of really marketable agricultural products, the development of 14 universities, a national health service and the rise of strong industries: cement, plastics, leather, solar power etc. Alongside this the working class ended up owning a roof over their heads to an extent unparalleled in relation to the rest of Europe. Almost all major utilities were state owned in the 1980’s and Greece was around 40% self-sufficient in energy production for the needs of its civilians.

The strength of labour was such that the six day week gradually gave way to a five day week and zero holidays to six week holidays were granted. The usually non-union building industry set the agenda throughout the 1960’s till the 1980’s and was dominated by the KKE. They set the wages for almost every sector and all governments were frightened of them running amok (ripping up paving slabs and lobbing them at the police were their tricks of their trade when it came to demos).

After all the building trade hadn’t really progressed too much from the 1960’s in terms of technology. Workers still carried cement in buckets after mixing it up wooden ladders in buckets and it was back breaking work and let’s not forget that was the only industry you could work in without a police check, hence thousands of labourers who couldn’t emigrate after the end of the civil war (who were on the left) ended up working in the building trades. But by the mid to late 1980s the building trade had reached saturation point as most things had been built and bosses were frightened of new investments.

So when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse they got the green signal to become unhinged. Via cross party agreements as we had coalition governments in 1989-90 amongst the three main parties New Democracy PASOK and the KKE the agenda was set for the next decade. The bosses would rail against the failure of ‘communism’ and the now without a home (plus source of financing) Greek Left would adopt the multitudes of economic migrants who were going West to make a …killing. Slowly but surely over a period of a decade and a half up until the Olympics 2004 whole swathes of Greek labour were replaced by migrants and when the crash came in 2010 we had an absolute collapse.


Albanians Arrival

Almost all the Albanians that arrived were hard core anticommunists, those that the Greek Left adopted en masse under the guise of helping the imported poor to the detriment of the local population as after all if you are interested in the most recent arrivals that implies defacto that you aren’t interested in your own citizens.



The most infamous case was that of the Foreign Minister at the time Samaras who organised a trip to the Greek areas in Albania and wished them all to be free by next Xmas (in reality stating come on over to Greece). He spoke about Greek business investing in Albania which was one of the demands by US imperialism to co-opt all the old Soviet sattelites. Business would save them if only they came on over….




http://palmosbh.blogspot.com/2010/02/blog-post_09.html
By our decade Greek business was the 2nd biggest foreign investor in Albania. Cross border trade in drugs, women, weapons went through the roof and Greece supported indirectly/directly all operations in the break up of yugoslavia without formal participation the NATO war....