Sejfulla Malëshova (Lame Kodra), political activist, writer, translator, passed away in Fier. He was born in Malëshovë, Këlcyra, in 1900. He completed his primary education in his hometown while his secondary studies at the College of Saint Dhimitër Korona in Calabria (Italy). There, together with his friend Odhise Paskali, he published the magazine “Albanian Student”, where he published his first poems. He completed his medical studies in Rome. 1924 he was elected Fan Noli’s secretary in his democratic government. With the overthrow of Noli, he migrated to Paris and, from there, to Moscow, where he studied and later taught Marxism. In the Soviet Union, in 1930 he joined the Communist Party. In 1938, he returned to Paris and settled in Grenoble after being occupied by the Germans. In the summer of 1943 he returned to Albania, where he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. On October 7th, 1945, he organized the First Congress of Albanian Writers, where the League of Writers of Albania was founded, with 74 members, communists and non- communists. Before long, he became the spokesman for one of the two factions competing for power within the party. But with the support of the Yugoslav communists, the faction of his opponent, Koçi Xoxe, won in early 1946 and Malëshova fell. At a meeting of the Central Committee on February 21st, 1946, Malëshova was accused of opportunism and right-wing deviation and was expelled from both the Political Bureau and the Central Committee. He was exiled for three years in Ballsh, while the rest of his life he spent in internal exile as a storekeeper in Fier, where, for years, no resident of the city dared to speak to him. (In the photo: Sejfulla Malëshova)
Text: Encyclopedic dictionary of victims of communist terror – Vol. V , “West Print”, Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism, Tirana, 2016, page 173-174.
Photo: © Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism
Graphic processing: AHCF
