1968 Chinese Communist Propaganda Map of Albania

An interesting piece of Cold War persuasive cartography, this Chinese-language map of Albania was produced in 1968 by the China Cartographic Publishing House. It is a relic of the oddly bizarrely close Cold War alliance between Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China and Enver Hoxha's People's Republic of Albania.

A Closer Look

The People's Republic of Albania is presented, along with portions of neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece. An impressive number of cities, towns, administrative centers, rivers, ports, and other geographic features have been transliterated into Chinese. Roads and railways are traced throughout. One of the most interesting and revealing elements of the map is a traced maritime route leading from Durrës (都拉斯) into the Adriatic, noting the distance to Guangzhou (13,870 kilometers). An inset map of Europe at bottom-right notes the location of Albania within Europe.

As is common of nearly any printed material from mainland China from this era, multiple quotes from Mao are included, along with his likeness at top-left. The quote at top with Mao's portrait is the same that appears on the cover, deeming Albania 'a great beacon of socialism in Europe.' At right, the congratulatory message of the 'great mentor, great commander, great leader, great helmsman' Mao Zedong to the Fifth Congress of the Albanian Workers' Party (November 1966) is quoted in full. In it, Mao repeats his 'great beacon' phrase, denounces Soviet and Yugoslav 'revisionism,' and heaps praise on his Albanian comrades using flowery idioms that must have presented translators with quite a challenge.

'A Great Beacon of Socialism in Europe'

The de facto alliance between the People's Republic of China and the People's Republic of Albania in the 1960s and early 1970s, largely driven by the 'bromance' between Mao Zedong and Enver Hoxha, is at first glance one of the strangest episodes in the history of the Cold War. Why should China invest so much attention in a tiny, wayward satellite of socialism? And why should Albania court a massive country on the other side of Eurasia? The answer lies in the complicated and contentious international relations within the Communist sphere during the Cold War. Like many smaller Communist countries, especially those with a strong domestic Communist movement which had gained legitimacy through resistance during the World War II (1939 - 1945) (such as North Korea, Yugoslavia, and Vietnam), Albania bristled at attempts by larger Communist countries to control its domestic politics. In particular, the Soviet Union and neighboring Yugoslavia played an outsized role in the early years of the People's Republic of Albania.

During his rise to power in the 1940s, Hoxha fell into deep disagreements with the Yugoslav Communists over issues of ethnicity and territorial boundaries (presaging the conflicts of the 1990s that followed the collapse of Communism). As a result, Hoxha turned to the Soviet Union for support against perceived Yugoslav interference, especially as Yugoslav-Soviet relations worsened in the late 1940s. However, this arrangement proved short-lived; Hoxha, having followed the Stalinist model, felt especially threatened by Khruschev's DeStalinization efforts beginning in 1956, and launched a domestic purge as a result (accusing Yugoslavia of plotting a coup). Stuck between a powerful neighbor and an even more powerful but untrustworthy benefactor (aide form which constituted roughly half of Albania's economy), Hoxha undertook the gambit of reaching out to the People's Republic of China, which also saw worsening relations with the Soviet Union from 1956 onwards. Chinese aid to Albania increased accordingly, and friendly propaganda in both countries increased, with images of the two dictators happily shaking hands being a frequent feature (both had boosted their cult of personality in response to DeStalinization).

As Maoism moved in a more militant direction in the late 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, which was aimed at 'Soviet Revisionism' among other ills, Albania followed suit. One of Hoxha's most tangible legacies was a network of nearly 175,000 bunkers and pillboxes (for a population of 3 million people) strewn across the landscape, a stark reminder of the paranoid mindset that demanded Albanian be prepared for a foreign invasion at any moment.

What did China gain from this arrangement? As the Sino-Soviet Split worsened, China found itself losing influence among the more established Communist parties (including in neighboring North Korea and North Vietnam). As a result, Mao took his battle with Soviet Revisionism 'on the road,' courting younger parties in the Third World that emerged from anticolonial struggles. Hoxha's Albania filled a similar role, acting as a 'great beacon of socialism [i.e. 'true' socialism] in Europe' (欧洲一盏伟大的社会主义的明灯), as the quote from Mao states here. By the end of the 1960s, when China was left with few friends among the established socialist republics of the world, Hoxha was a frequent figure in Chinese propaganda to demonstrate the wide appeal of Mao Zedong Thought beyond China's borders.

However, as China's foreign policy posture changed, especially after its rapprochement with the United States, the 'bromance' between Mao and Hoxha cooled. After Mao's death in 1976, Sino-Albanian relations deteriorated further, with a full Sino-Albanian Split occurring in 1978. Hoxha denounced the reformist direction of China under Deng Xiaoping and developed a more explicit ideology of Hoxhaism, which echoed Maoism in its denunciation of 'revisionism' among other Communist countries, now including China.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared (edited) by the China Cartographic Publishing House and was published by the Beijing publishing branch of the Xinhua Bookstore (新华书店北京发行所). Originally published in September 1967, this example comes from the second printing in October 1968. The OCLC notes two examples of this map, held at the Hangzhou Public Library and the University of Macau, though given the limited integration of mainland Chinese catalogs with the OCLC, it is possible that other institutions in China hold examples.