The Black Panthers – Vanguard of the Revolution

Posted on 18/11/2015 by Michael

Black Panther Party

Considering it’s almost 50 years since they were formed (and almost 40 years since they all but disappeared off the scene) it was about time that someone made a documentary of an organisation, and the mass mobilisation it encouraged, that was such a dominant force in national politics in the United States for the latter half of the 60s. Whether the Black Panthers were actually the vanguard of the revolution is another matter but, at least, for a short time it shock the American establishment (and a lot of white people) to the core for a short time. This mobilisation of significant numbers of young black men and women coming at the same time as the anti-Vietnam War movement would have caused some to think that the revolution was just around the corner.

In some ways the two struggles had close connections. American imperialism was attempting to maintain oppression of the poor in South East Asia whilst in the home of the beast the black population were suffering an oppression little different from antebellum days and violence against black citizens was an everyday occurrence and deeply ‘institutionalised’ – to use a term that became current in the 21st century.

Watching (after so many years) the images of indiscriminate beatings by the police against black people, of all ages but predominantly of the young – beat them whilst young to frighten them for the rest of their lives – it’s no wonder that the beginnings of what became the Black Panther Party was predicated upon self-defence. A loophole in local ordinances in Oakland, California, meant that – as long as the weapons were carried openly – young black men could attend and ‘observe’ those incidences when their brothers and sisters were being abused by the police. One of the pertinent comments in the film here was how the whites felt intimidated (even thought the forces of the state were on ‘their’ side) – how much more must the black population must have felt when this was a situation they lived through everyday, everywhere, all of their lives.

It was no surprise that such a movement attracted many who had previously considered themselves marginalised. And the movement grew, fast, perhaps too fast. And this was accepted by those in the ‘leadership’ at the time and still around today. There was no control, no selection process, no vetting, no monitoring of those who wanted to join the movement, so no one really knew what their motives were. (As I write this I’m reminded of another, recent documentary, this time about efforts to fight against the drug cartels in Mexico (‘Cartel Land’) which also had a problem of being able to identify ‘which side were some of the members really on’?)

But if the honest people in the Black Panther Party (BPP) didn’t know what they were doing the state, especially in the form of J Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), knew exactly what was on the cards. This new, mass movement potentially had the ability to shake the racist state to its foundations.

Hoover sent out instructions that this organisation had to be destroyed and that any tactics could be employed. Infiltration and the use of informers and traitors (easily recruited when false charges – or even real but minor charges – could incur long, long times inside) was considered to be the best means to achieve this and the tactic became so successful that at times the BPP members didn’t know who to trust. A (white) defence lawyer in the case of the New York 21 – framed for dozens of charges, all of which were thrown out after months of incarceration and a trail lasting weeks – even asked, in court, if the FBI hadn’t actually created the BPP in the first place.

And no one should be surprised about that. If movements against the capitalist state don’t have a clear view of where they are going the capitalist state always does – it will do anything whatsoever to maintain that social system, and in the process will lie, misinform, create confusion, use intimidation, spend whatever it might cost (the money of the people being used against the people!), kill if needs be.

The problem is that social movements such as the Black Panthers have never realised and accepted this truth, a truth established centuries ago, and thus continue to make the same mistakes of those in the past, never seeming to learn from past mistakes and ending up either being ground down or totally destroyed. If this film has anything to offer, other than a reminder to those of us around at the time and as an educational tool for the young, it’s the reinforcement of the idea that we must learn from, and understand, history.

Hoover did the job he was paid to do. Contemptible as he was as a human being he knew where his interests lay. There’s no point in arguing that it wasn’t fair, that the FBI was doing something illegal, it’s the winners of the war who decide on the justice or legality of actions taken during that war.

The lack of a real programme (as opposed to a list of ‘demands’) from the start meant that the BPP moved from self-defence to social welfare (in the provision of breakfast clubs for school children, free health clinics, food banks, etc., those basic welfare measures that any decent state would provide for its least well off) to eventually getting involved in the electoral system that perpetuates the system of oppression in the first place – the argument being if you can’t challenge the state then try to ‘reform’ it from within. How many have been bought off by that idea in the past and how many to be bought off in the future?

The foremost representatives of the BPP in the early years were Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. These became the public voice of the organisation and the black jacketed, black beret wearing, pump-shotgun toting young black men, wearing dark glasses, became the poster boys of the ‘revolution’ – images that anyone old enough at the time will remember. However, one of the surprising pieces of information (for me) that came out in the film was that by the end of the 1970s the majority of its membership were young women. A few spoke for the party but the majority, if in the media at all, were depicted due to their hair and dress choices rather than for anything they might have to say. It seems to have been accepted that if the BPP wanted to change certain aspects of the society in which they lived misogyny was not one of them – the Black Panthers were not in the forefront of female liberation.

Black Panther Women

As one of the survivors said in the documentary they were young, idealist and enthusiastic. Those attributes were at the same time positive and negative and had an impact on what they did and how the organisation developed – or not.

Having no uniting idea of what to do the party went from dealing with one crisis to another, surviving one attack to the next one, going from setback to setback. For most of its existence it appeared to be like a rudderless ship, just going where the forces of nature took it, without direction, without destination, without a goal. It’s all very well for people to stand up against the oppression and exploitation under which they live but unless they know what they are fighting for (rather than merely knowing what they are fighting against) any movement will eventually run out of steam.

(We have seen examples of this in recent years, e.g., the anti-City of London/Wall Street, anti-austerity movements throughout the capitalist countries and the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ in many of the countries of Northern Africa. If you have no viable alternative to offer to the people then the old state will re-take the positions of power that might have been under threat for a very short period of time – is austerity less austere in countries such as the UK? In which Arab country are the vast majority of people better off now than they were prior to the mass mobilisations of 2011?)

Because the party had no organisation what developed was a cult of leadership. As the state stepped up its efforts to destroy the party first Newton and then Seale were imprisoned. Cleaver ran away to Algeria where he set up the international section of the party. Although the arrests of the leaders, and the campaigns for their release were beneficial in gaining publicity for the BPP, and also an increase in its membership, this only exacerbated the lack of unity rather than strengthening the group. People joined but they didn’t really know what they were joining.

Before Newton was imprisoned he posed as some modern-day African tribal leader, an image which appeared everywhere at the time, and the campaign to release him almost certainly had the effect of reinforcing his own individual importance in the movement on his release. He later expelled all and sundry, seemingly on a personal whim and basing his decision on nothing other than his own criteria and without reference to any others still in the dwindling organisation. Drugs fuelled his paranoia and megalomania and to those around him just before his death he was considered clinically insane.

Huey Newton

Cleaver took the opportunity to get out of the country when a warrant for his arrest was issued and subsequently led the international section of the party, first in Cuba and then, on a more permanent basis in Algeria. He was then invited to countries that were attempting to construct socialism (such as China, North Vietnam and North Korea) giving him a lot of personal credibility but it’s uncertain what he really had to offer. When the existence of the People’s Republic of China wasn’t officially recognised and whilst B52s were blanket bombing Hanoi from miles up in the sky there was a PR reason for those two countries to align themselves with a movement that could possibly destabilise the United States – but surely they must have known that they were dealing with dilettantes? (Cleaver was to become a born again Christian in the 1980s and even supported Ronald Reagan for President – when Reagan had been governor of California when the BPP was started there in reaction to the violence of the state’s law enforcement against the black population.)

Seale seemed less of a loose cannon but wasn’t able to take the organisation any further despite this. In 1969 he came to world-wide fame when, because he refused to stop interrupting proceedings in the trial of the Chicago 8 (following massive demonstrations around the Democratic Party Convention of the previous year) he was ordered to be tied to his chair and gagged by Judge Julius Hoffman. He was later sentenced to 4 years imprisonment for 16 charges of contempt of court (3 months each) after the same judge ordered that he be ‘severed’ (i.e., no further proceedings to be taken against him on the charge of conspiracy) from the original charge – so he was found in contempt of a court where he shouldn’t have been in the first place. The American judicial system not considering that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way it was being used against the people of the country. On release from prison Seale ran for mayor of Oakland (really the home base and place of origin of the Black Panthers). He got close to victory, but not close enough, and demonstrated the basic flaw within the organisation. You can use the word ‘revolution’ but if you don’t know what it means, and what it entails, you will become nothing more than a reformist.

Bobby Seale in court

Those involved at the time state the lack of proper leadership that could hold the organisation together as being a problem but none of them, in the film, were able to come up with a solution or even, in the 1970s, give any indication what the party was doing to overcome these perceived weaknesses. All they could see as a solution was the slotting into the vacant space left by the previous leadership of Fred Hampton. However, instead of looking at past failings and trying to follow a more ideological and structured development of the party he just carried on with what had become a culture of the ‘cult of the personality’. Hoover feared the rise of a ‘messiah’, a charismatic leader that could overcome the schisms within the BPP, for many at the time Hampton was that ‘messiah’ – but only for a short period of time, the state were going to see to that.

Hampton is shown where he got an audience to repeat, time and time again, the phrase, ‘I am …. a revolutionary’. That’s all very well and good and it must have created a good atmosphere in meetings of people who considered themselves alienated and disenfranchised within the general society of the United States – but it did nothing other than that. Through all the problems the BPP had gone through in its relatively short existence there was never a consideration that, perhaps, what they had been doing had faults and instead of looking at those mistakes and trying not to repeat them they just went on along the same road.

They also, despite innumerable lessons to the contrary, never understood to what extent the State would go to ensure that they wouldn’t even achieve a modicum of success. In the early hours of the 4th December, 1969, in a flat in Chicago, the US State carried out what can only be described as an assassination of Fred Hampton.

William O’Neal, a FBI stooge and informer, had achieved the position of being Hampton’s bodyguard. He was so close to the leadership and had such freedom to move around that he was able to gather information so accurate that the FBI were able to recreate a life-size mock-up of the flat so they were as familiar with the layout of the apartment as those staying there. O’Neal also spiked a drink that Hampton took late the night before so that when the place was raided in a pre-dawn raid he wasn’t aware of anything.

As is not unusual in these circumstances the FBI stated they were only defending themselves but all indicators are that only one shot was fired by any of the Black Panthers – and that was an impulse shot by the Panther on security duty in his death throes. The apartment was riddled with bullet holes and two bullets were put into Hampton’s head at close range. Arresting all the others that survived the attack under spurious charges (later dropped) meant that the FBI was in total control of the situation.

Lie, stonewall and generally create a confused situation was the tactic. What the truth was, and whether it came out or not is not important as long as it happens at some time in the indeterminate future. It wasn’t until 1982 that compensation was paid out by the state, an implied admission of guilt, but by that time the heyday of the Black Panther Movement was long a thing of the past.

Soon after this there was a shoot out in the Oakland, where the Panthers started and always had their largest support. One of the best parts of the film was when one of those Panthers trapped in the building, running out of ammunition and totally surrounded with no way of escape, felt for the first time in his life, totally free, ‘truly alive’. All those that had survived the shoot out were convinced they would be summarily executed if they went outside (they weren’t, almost certainly due to the large media presence and with everything being broadcast live throughout the country). So they had nothing to lose, they had arrived at a time when they had nothing to lose but their chains, a situation which took all the years of oppression off their shoulders.

The BPP existed after this but everything was to go downhill from then on. Those who joined drifted away, either because of fear or the realisation that as they were organised at that time the BPP couldn’t really offer any alternative to the traditional, system orientated parties and organisations.

The Black Panthers as an organisation never accepted, or even realised, the importance of Lenin’s statement in ‘What is to be Done?‘, possible his most important work on party building that ‘Without revolutionary ideology there is no revolutionary movement’. Many wore Mao badges on their berets but didn’t take on board any of Mao’s thinking, any of Mao’s philosophy, strategy and tactics, any of Mao’s experiences of fighting a revolutionary war.

The spur that caused the formation of the Black Panthers was the treatment of black people at the hands of the state, the beatings and the killings, is still endemic within American society to this day. Together with any sense of justice. The list gets bigger all the time, whatever a (black) President promises. From the killing of Taryvon Martin by a so-called security guard, to the recent killings and the resultant demonstrations and mini-riots in Ferguson, St Louis, following the shooting of Michael Brown, to the murder of Oscar Grant (later made into a feature film, ‘Fruitvale Station‘), and other abuses by police officers throughout the United States – often captured on video at the time – all these incidents all go to show that nothing has really changed in the last 50 years.

Not a time for the revival of the Black Panthers but perhaps a time to reassess both the positive and negative experience of those heady days of the 60s and this film can be part of that discussion.

Liri Gero and the 68 Girls of Fier

Posted on 29/10/2015 by Michael

Liri Gero – Tirana Art Gallery

More on Albania …..

Liri Gero and the 68 Girls of Fier

Many monuments, statues and lapidars from Albania’s Socialist period have suffered over the years, through outright political vandalism or just neglect. However, there has been a bit of a sea change in recent years but this has not come without its own problems. Here I want to develop the ideas of Albanian Socialist Realist art by looking at two works produced to commemorate the life of a young partisan woman, Liri Gero, and also a work in commemoration of 68 young women who also left their home town of Fier to join the partisans fighting the Fascist invaders.

Liri Gero

The first thing to know about Liri is the meaning of her name. Liri means Freedom, indicating her parents were at least nationalist, if not much further to the left, and possibly supporting the growing communist movement at the time of her birth. In a country that had a long history of fighting foreign invaders naming your children in such a way was making a political statement.

Soon after the country was invaded by the Italian Fascists in April of 1939 Liri, along with many other young people, started to take part in activities that opposed the occupation and assisted those actively fighting against the invaders, especially after the declaration of the National Liberation Front at the Conference of Peza of 1942.

However, as the struggle became more intense, and the betrayal by the collaborators and sycophants of the ‘nationalist’ Balli Kombetar (who were formed in November 1942 to cause confusion – the name literary means ‘national front’ – amongst the Albanian anti-Fascist masses) became a much more real threat, it was suggested that Liri leave her home town of Fier and join the partisans in the mountains, in the fighting war.

In any guerrilla war the struggle in the owns and cities occupied by the invaders is as important as that on the front line but when such activity ceases to be practical, or too dangerous for particular individuals, then the only way forward is to leave home and join the partisan army. Liri was one of many young women of her generation who did just that. Disguised as the bride in a wedding party she was able to leave Fier, which was then under the under the control of the Italians, in 1943.

Partisan çeta

In October 1944 Liri was part of a unit that attacked a German Nazi column in the vicinity of Fier. Although the partisans inflicted severe damage on the Nazis in this attack Liri was wounded and later captured. With just a matter of weeks before their final defeat (and when the war throughout Europe was going badly for the Germans, especially on the Eastern Front where the Red Army was moving ever closer to the German capital) the Nazis first tortured the 20-year-old and then poured petrol over her and burned her alive – and the reactionaries have established a Nazi war memorial in Tirana.

In volume 2 of ‘Flasin Heronj të Luftës Nacional-Çlirimtare (‘The Heroes of the National Liberation War Speak’) the collection that recounts the stories of many of those who gave their lives in the struggle against Fascism, her dedication, torture and death is described poetically:

‘When you go to the Cemetery (in Fier), under the name of Liri Gero you may think lie the remains of her beautiful young body, but this is not the case. It’s just a handful of ashes from her heart burned for the freedom of Albania.’

Being so young when she got involved in the anti-fascist struggle, and her equally premature death, she became a prime candidate to be singled out and immortalised in bronze during Albania’s Cultural Revolution. She would stand as an example to the young and it would also play a part in commemorating, celebrating and emphasising the role of women in Albania’s Socialist construction, in the past, present and future.

The sculptor chosen for the task was Mumtaz Dhrami, the sculptor who produced so many fine works during this period of artistic development in Albania’s Socialist period, including the monuments at Peze and the magnificent Arch of Drashovice.

(When I first published this post on the 29th October I mistakenly attributed this piece of work to another sculptor, Hektor Dule. These mistakes, unfortunately, will happen from time to time due to the difficulty of obtaining some of the basic factual information.

However, when I started to revise the text to show the facts I realised that this is all part of the different approaches to art in a socialist and capitalist society. Under capitalism the first question is who. Who produced it, as if that person is someone famous then the piece of art might be worth money, and with recent ‘investment’ in art a great deal of money. It’s for this reason a signed sketch on a paper serviette is worth a fortune just because the signature of Pablo Picasso is in the corner. It becomes valuable not because of its intrinsic artistic value but because of its association.

In Socialist Realism the most pressing question is what. What does it represent, what is it trying to convey, what does it mean to the people who see and relate to it, what role can the artistic object play in educating the people. And as those were the most important questions asked in a society attempting to build Socialism the artist as an individual became secondary. For that reason many of the lapidars and monuments in Albania don’t have any indication of who actually provided the artistic skill.

As we live in a world where individuals are praised way above the collective this creates a situation where some ‘artists’ consider that they are being hard done by, in comparison with ‘artists’ in capitalist countries. For this reason they start to grumble and for the same reason some have run away to the capitalist countries, not to have more freedom to express their art, not for the fame, but for the financial reward that they can receive in a different society from the one that nurtured, educated and trained them.

By being somewhat obsessed with getting the details of who might have created any particular piece of art I am also falling into the trap of bourgeois individualism. I find myself reluctant to post an article if it omits such information as it might appear incomplete. But that’s not the meaning of Socialist Realist art – it’s the message not the messenger.

In discussions about art many years ago, when Britain actually produced things rather than being a nation serving countless variations of coffee, it came up that those skilled engineers, for example, who could take a piece of raw metal and with their skills and experience turn it into a part necessary functioning of a complex machine, weren’t used to signing their work. Those who worked in agriculture didn’t sign their potatoes before they sent them to market, but if we didn’t have their skills then the vast majority of the population in so-called ‘developed’ societies would starve.

So why should an artist sign his/her work? Who is the most important in society? No society can produce or develop any sophisticated art unless they first are able to create a surplus of those things that society needs. All artists, in all societies, in all stages of development of civilisation rest on the shoulders of the workers. Why should one be named if the other isn’t?

To finish on this matter, before the whole post goes along too acute a tangent, what of those workers who took Dhrami’s ideas and turned it into the bronze object under discussion. Shouldn’t their names be noted – if the ‘artist’ were to have his signature somewhere in view?)

Liri Gero – National Art Gallery

The statue is slightly larger than life-size but we only have her depicted from the thighs up. She is shown dressed as a Partisan fighter, not in full uniform as such but in a manner that allows no doubt that she is a full-time member of the fighting force. The pose is as if she were standing to attention and she presents a calm demeanour, serene and confident and clear about what she is doing. She wears a cap with the star of a Communist clear at the front.

The only images I have seen of her show her with long tresses, braided on both sides of her head and hanging down in front of her. I’m sure that, as a young woman she was proud of her hair but to go into conflict with such long hair is not a wise move and I would have thought that one of the first acts after joining her partisan çeta would be to visit the barber. None of the pictures of the guerrilla groups show the women with long hair. However, by depicting her with her long tresses Dhrami has made an easy reference to the photos that people would have seen in different museums throughout the country as well as in magazines and other publications produced at the time.

So she has a full head of hair, spilling out from under her cap, and the braids hang down and finish just over her breasts. Around her neck she has a bandana (yet another symbol of her communist affiliations) and she is wearing a thick woollen sweater. There’s a rifle slung over her back and her right hand is holding the strap of that rifle just over her chest. Around her waist she has ammunition pouches attached to her belt and on her right hip hangs a Mills bomb (British made grenade).

It is what she holds in her left hand which makes this statue stand out as one created with a socialist realist perspective. Her left arm hangs loosely down by her side and in her fist she has a bunch of flowers.

Liri Gelo – flowers

This is complimentary to the rifle. Socialism cannot be built, or maintained, without the rifle (symbolising force, or at the very least the threat of force) but the ultimate aim is a society without conflict. How long that will take is still to be decided and the twists and turns along that road are abundant. This idea of flowers in the hand of a young women prepared to use violence (and, for her, ultimately, giving her life) is part of a long-held view of communists, that we fight for bread (meaning freedom from exploitation and oppression, from want and the anarchy that comes with capitalism) but we want the roses too (a fulfilling and productive cultural life in companionship with others, and not just being spoon-fed the ‘culture’ that capitalism supplies, as long as it can make profit.)

I’m not exactly sure where the statue of Liri would have originally stood. Being made of bronze it was designed to be outside (and is still in a very good physical condition). There used to be a properly organised statue park in the area around the National Art Gallery and it would make sense that it was here the work was exhibited. If on a plinth it would have been minimal, just separating the statue from the ground, allowing the viewer the opportunity of being able, physically, to relate to the young heroine and her place in history.

Its location now is with other still extant statues that have come from different parts of the Tirana area. To the right hand side of the Art Gallery there’s a ramp and a service entrance to the building. This doesn’t seem to be used on a regular basis and is not an area that is cared for. When I first visited at the end of 2011 there was a shanty type hut but that has now been removed, but the area is in no way organised or what could be called an exhibition space. The area is dirty and the statues, although out-of-the-way, are not displayed in any manner that you would expect of works of art.

What I have described as the ‘Sculpture Park’ is really just a storage area for the statues. At one time they were all in a line, Liri amongst them but by the time of my visit in 2014 a new statue of Stalin had been added to the collection and Liri was moved so that she had her back to the building and was facing the other statues.

The Original Sculpture Park

Also on my early visits it was possible to get close to the statues without any hassle but a vandal attack on the Soviet produced statue of Stalin and the Albanian (damaged) Lenin, with them having red paint thrown over them in 2011, has meant that visits are discouraged. That’s a pity as, although in a far from ideal circumstance, here it is possible to get an idea of different examples of Albanian Socialist Realist sculpture as well as being able to appreciate the noticeable differences from Russian Soviet interpretations with the black statue of Stalin – presented to the Albanian people upon his death in 1953.

So that’s the Socialist representation of a young woman who gave her life for her country and people.

As stated above Liri was from the town of Fier, which in socialist times was a major industrial centre – that’s all but gone now and is a place of industrial archaeology rather than industrial production.

Although the industry might have gone there has been an effort in recent years to remember and commemorate the past. As part of that Fier is one of the few towns in Albania that has a functioning museum, very recently renovated, where you can find information about the anti-Fascist war as well as some examples of Socialist Realist paintings and sculpture.

(I’ll be writing about the Fier Historical Museum in a future post but here I will just provide information about its location. It can be found in Rruga Leon Rei, which is about 200m west of Sheshi Pavarësia (Independence Square).

Location of the Museum:

GPS:

N 40.72448

E 19.55532

DMS:

40° 43′ 28.1280” N

19° 33′ 19.1520” E

Well worth a visit. Across the road from the museum is a monstrosity of a (at least in May 2015) half-finished and stalled private educational institute.)

As part of this recovery of the past the city decided to erect a completely new statue to Liri Gero – to the best of my knowledge there had been no local monument to her, other than her grave in the Martyrs’ Cemetery. This statue was inaugurated in 2010 and is located at the edge of a small park in the centre of the town.

Whatever the intentions behind its commissioning this modern statue of Liri is a ludicrous and hideous depiction of the woman who Liri definitely wasn’t. It’s the absolute antithesis of the example to be found behind the National Art Gallery in Tirana.

It’s wrong in virtually every way. The figure is similar to the Dhrami piece in that we don’t get the whole body, this one is from the knees up and it is also a little more than life-size. That’s the only things the two statues have in common. The first thing that strikes the viewer is that you get a crick in the neck to look at it close up. The bronze statue is on a plinth more than two metres high and its impossible for the viewer to have any connection with the young woman, she’s placed on a pedestal in the literal and figurative sense.

New Liri Gero Statue

When we get to the statue itself we see no connection with the actual life of young Liri. It’s in a neo-classical style and a silky dress clings to her body, emphasising the female form, her breasts straining to break free of the material. A thin cord around the waist is pulled tight so that it accentuates the hour-glass figure of the torso. The dress itself is of a style that no woman, or even young girl, would have worn in pre-liberation Albania – and would draw a not too sympathetic attention today.

If her clothing is bad things get even worse when we look at her hair. The pictures of Liri show her with long hair, a style that would have been common with girls of her age at that time but here she is represented with hair of which Rapunzel herself would have been jealous. (With the wonders of the internet I’ve just had a look and you can buy Rapunzel wigs that must have been what the sculptor forced his model to wear.)

There’s so much hair!

Liri Gero – hair

Its crazy. This isn’t a young woman who was tortured to death after going to join forces with those wanting to free their country of foreign invaders. No, this is a young woman who’s going out on the town, has been to the supermarket for a bottle of cheap vodka and now intends to dance until dawn, as happens in many British towns and cities.

Whereas the Dhrami Liri is serene, confident, sure of herself the 2010 Liri is flighty, frivolous, would fit into the stereotype of a ‘dippy blond’ (Liri was dark-haired) and wouldn’t know how to spell Fascism let alone have the understanding to fight against it.

I don’t know why such a statue was commissioned by the Fier Bashkia (Town Hall) or what they were thinking about in paying for such a representation of one of the towns most famous daughters. It was good that the town wanted to have their own statue to her but did it have to be so alien to the actual woman herself?

To the best of my knowledge those who are responsible for this monstrosity are the ‘artists’ Haxhiu Kalluci, I Kasem and A Shuraj. How they divided up the work I don’t know but I would have thought that one, at least, would have to have concentrated on the hair – it’s a sculpture in its own right.

The best thing about the monument is the inscription on the front of the plinth.

We have the words:

Liri Gero

1924 – 1944

Heroine e Popullit = People’s Heroine

And a short inscription which reads:

Si flutura drejt drites shkon njeriu drejt lirise

This translate as:

‘As moths are drawn to the light so man is to freedom.’

Across the road is a monument to other brave Fier women. Obviously very well organised, in a town that was occupied by the Fascist invaders, on the 14th September 1943, under the cover of darkness, 68 young women and girls left to join the Partisans. Not only was the actual leaving of the town a dangerous activity they then spent the next few days walking all the way to Berat to join up with the increasingly more powerful and organised Communist led National Liberation fighters.

This quite exceptional (not just in Albania but other parts of Europe fighting against the Fascists) decision of such young women to take the path of the greatest resistance was celebrated in Fier with the commissioning of this simple but nonetheless effective sculpture. The plinth upon which it stands at present is new although the bronze bas-relief fixed to it has all the classic hallmarks of those sculptures produced during Albania’s Cultural Revolution.

Monument to 68 girls joining Partisans

As is normally the case there is no name or date on the sculpture itself so I have no idea who was the artist or exactly when it was inaugurated. As many of the sculptures of this period were commissioned to mark specific anniversaries I would hazard a guess that it was first shown to the public on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the women leaving the town, i.e., 1973.

Neither do I know if it is in the original location or whether it has been moved from somewhere else. (So many lacunae in the history of Albanian lapidars!) Although it does seem to fit where it is now the bas-relief design suggests that it might have been high up on a wall of a building such as the Bashkia – although that’s just speculation on my part.

What can be stated categorically is that it is in a very good condition. It hasn’t undergone any vandalism and the target of the reactionaries, the stars on the flag and the Partisan’s cap, are both intact and undamaged.

The monument consists of one female partisan depicted as if she is emerging from the national flag. The flag is fluttering in the wind and at the extreme left hand side, at the top, can be made out the double-headed eagle with the Communist star above the two heads.

The tips of her fingers of the right hand just brush against the eagle’s feathers as if this is what she is seeking to attain. She’s fighting for Socialism, for a future. Her whole stance is one of going forward, striving for something higher, reaching up to the stars. But to attain that goal she needs to use force, as such aims have never been attained without the use of arms. For that reason she holds a rifle in her left hand, gripping it just in front of the bolt.

Carved into the wooden stock of the rifle are the letters VFLP, signifying “Vdekje Fashizmit – Liri Popullit!” (“Death to Fascism – Freedom to the People!”). This has been seen on a few lapidars previously described, such as Heroic Peza, the Peza War Memorial and the Arch of Drashovice. This tradition of writing slogans on weapons was begun in the 19th century during nationalist struggles and was adopted by the National Liberation fighters in WWII. As well as other imagery, these letters on her weapon declare that she is a Communist Party member.

The young woman is shown in a semi profile and, as I have already said, she emerges from the folds of the flag so we really only see the top half of her body. She’s wearing a thick woollen sweater and around her neck she has what would have been a red bandana, together with the star on her cap a signifier of her political allegiance to the Communist cause. A full head of shoulder length hair pushes out from under her cap.

The bottom half of the bronze statue is fixed to a concrete block faced with slabs of red marble. The top half of the statue extends above the block creating the idea of the free-flowing of the flag and gives the impression that the young woman is almost flying, taking off from the block.

There are two inscriptions on the modern pedestal, on the front:

14 shtator 1943 68 vajza Fierake dolen partizane

‘On 14th September 1943 68 girls from Fier blossomed into Partisans’.

On the back:

Lule, yje për lirinë krenari për Shqipërinë

Flowers, stars for freedom, the pride of Albania

There are certain similarities to the work of Hektor Dule of the female figure which is in what used to be the National Assembly Hall in Tirana – the fluttering material, the figure seeming to emerge from, as well as being a part of, the national flag, together with the determination on the face of the woman.

Although separated by a road and barely 10 metres there’s a world of difference between this depiction of a female partisan and the travesty that is the new statue of young Liri Gero.

This close proximity of two different ideologies, two different world views, as depicted in art helps to understand both. The new Liri statue is populist in place of being popular, in the sense of presenting an image to which ordinary people can relate. It represents the young women as young women see themselves in today’s Albania, not concerned with their own national identity but aiming to ape the banalities of capitalist culture. In a sense it’s the result of the ‘celebrity culture’, the facile, the emptiness of present existence where individuals become famous for being famous, not for anything significant they might have achieved.

The new is brash, vulgar, noisy – it screams at you. But it has nothing to say.

The old is serene, dignified, full of symbolism and meaning.

I read an article where a near-contemporary of Liri and the other young women bemoans the fact that the young people of Fier today don’t know the story of what happened during the occupation. Not only do that not know they don’t want to know. They are so caught up in the accumulation of consumer goods, the search for the ‘good life’, that they don’t know where they got to where they are now. But neo-liberalism doesn’t want people to remember the past, if they did they might want to change the future. Already the crash of 2008 is being forgotten – to be remembered when the next one comes along. And if you can’t completely forget the past – as has been the attempts in the destruction of lapidars and statues throughout the country over the years – then you can distort history so that any meaning is taken out of the images.

If there’s a tragedy surrounding the life of young Liri Gero it’s the way that life, and its violent end, is being ‘celebrated’ in the 21st century.

Location:

About 50 metres south from Sheshi Pavarësia on Rruga Ramiz Aranitasi

GPS:

N 40.724719

E 19.557984

DMS:

40° 43′ 28.9884” N

19° 33′ 28.7424” E

Altitude:

24 m

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Shoket – Comrades – Permet

Posted on 29/09/2015 by Michael

Shoket – Comrades – Permet

More on Albania …..

Shoket – Comrades – Permet

Shoket – Comrades – was one of the early sculptures to be placed in the Martyrs’ Cemeteries throughout Albania, a simple monolith (lapidar) being the most common form of monument. It is the work of Odhise Paskali and was inaugurated in 1964, the same time as the monument to the Permet Congress was unveiled in the main square of the town.

The role of art in a Socialist society

The important role of art in the construction of a socialist society has been a matter for discussion since the first writers started to posit the idea that society doesn’t have to be one created for the benefit of a few parasites who decide what should be the fate of the overwhelming majority of the population. However, no real conclusion was arrived at because such a question could not be answered until the concrete conditions existed when a new departure in art could flourish. That only became a practical problem to overcome once the first workers and peasants state was established in the Soviet Union following the October Revolution of 1917.

When Lenin started to consider this matter from a position of the workers holding state power, even when the outcome of the Civil War was still uncertain, this was at a time when artistic ‘isms’ abounded, mostly from the ‘left’ but, in the main, the majority of them were transient. This huge melting pot had many causes: the increasing speed of technology; the anger and disillusionment caused by the meaningless slaughter of the 1914-18 war; the search for a meaning in life in an increasingly alienating world; the victory of the proletariat in Russia; the defeats in Hungary and Germany; and a general environment that things didn’t have to be as they always had been.

However forward thinking the revolutionary the political ideology of the revolutionaries, first in the Soviet Union, then in the People’s Republic of Albania and later the People’s Republic of China, all those involved had been brought up surrounded by an ideology (economic, political, social, religious, and cultural) that was the antithesis to what they saw as the path into the future. What made the finest of those revolutionaries ‘great’ – at all levels of the Party and society – was their ability to suppress those influences from the past and to create a new set of values for the construction of a society seeking to abolish classes and all that a class based societies entailed.

It took some years and not a little experimentation but eventually the form of propaganda to be used in public art was what is now called ‘socialist realism’. It is country specific as to be effective such artistic endeavours have to have a relationship with the history and culture of the different people’s who have attempted the construction of socialism.

As with all the other major Marxist-Leninist leaders Hoxha understood, and took on board the consequences of, the famous sentence of Karl Marx from the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, of 1859.

‘It is not the consciousness of man that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.’

Yes, the building of socialism had to mean the improvement of the material conditions of all the working population and that task began, initially, with the nationalisation of all the land and the means of production which later led to collectivisation and industrialisation of countries that were economically backward.

But for socialism to succeed and to move to a higher stage it was the thinking of the people which had to be changed. The ‘old order’ had encouraged and nurtured self-serving selfishness, individuality and a concern primarily for personal survival and enhancement and the aim was to change this mindset to one of considering the common good of all as paramount, working and thinking collectively and considering long terms goals, not only for themselves but for generations to come.

All previous social systems have had to address this issue yet it is only when peoples in different countries attempt to move away from class systems and build socialism (with communism being the ultimate goal) that this education and discussion within society is called ‘propaganda’, used in a pejorative sense. If we just take the last two thousand years of world history we have seen the rise (and fall) of slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism. Can anyone really argue that capitalism, for example, could have established itself if a sizeable proportion of the population were thinking in the way of slave-owners or actual slaves. Of course not. Their thinking had to adapt as otherwise the ‘new’ social system would simply remain in a rut.

If people think that capitalism doesn’t also use public art as a weapon in its cultural battle to maintain its control of people’s minds then all you have to do is study the statues and monuments that are the products of their class war in the UK – but it’s the same in all other countries. On war memorials to those who died in the world wars of the twentieth century the phrase ‘died for King and Country’ is repeated constantly. This is carved in huge letters on the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium. Statues to the monarchy are in every major town and city. Statues and memorials of individuals who played a role in the colonialist and imperialist expansion of Britain in the past can be found everywhere, as are statues of individual capitalists as well as those to politicians who ran and controlled the country for the benefit of feudalism and capitalism.

A society reinforces its control in many more ways, too many to go into here, but it might be worth citing a recent example in the UK. The newly elected leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was criticised for not singing the national anthem at yet another event to ‘commemorate’ a specific date in World War Two (these constant, never-ending commemorations are yet other examples of that constant cultural reinforcement of the capitalist state). So even an atheist Republican it is expected and obliged to play the game – is there a greater indication of a sycophantic and pusillanimous population than its general willingness to sing an anthem that contains the words ‘long to reign over us’?

I don’t want to labour the point. I just want to stress that ALL forms of society fight a battle to win the minds of the population, even more so in the early days. The nascent socialist societies were doing nothing different. What was different was that socialism was a society that sought to break completely with the past by doing away with oppression and exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. That meant that the mountain communists had to climb was much steeper and more difficult than had confronted those ‘progressives’ of the past. This was new ground and hence the difference in approach and also accounts for the hostility that capitalism has had to all such efforts – remembering that this attack on any of the achievements and products of a socialist society are all part of the continual class war.

But back to Albania.

From the very first days of the People’s Republic of Albania the Party placed the development of a new, socialist culture to the fore. The Albanian Film Institute was established in 1945 and this became the Kinostudio Shqipëria e Re (New Albania Film Studio). And throughout the period of socialism Albania produced probably more film footage per head of population than any country in the world. Literature, painting and sculpture were also encouraged as was an imaginative approach to folk-lore and folk culture through music and dance. However, monumental sculpture (or ‘monumental propaganda’ as Ramiz Alia described in an article published in 1968, reprinted in ALS Vol. 1) didn’t seem to play much of a role in the early cultural revolution carried through by the new socialist state.

Lapidars and monuments in Martyrs’ Cemeteries were being created but they were simple affairs and it seems there was a trend to construct higher and higher monoliths rather than create sculptures and images to which the people could relate. Interestingly, in the same article mentioned above, Alia commented on the lack of care in the maintenance of those structures that did exist.

In fact, prior to the mid-1960s there were few monumental sculptures in the country. The first that I can find in the records is the Monument to The Partisan, in the centre of Tirana, the work of Andrea Mano, which was inaugurated in 1949. (This is in no way a socialist realist statue. It’s the same sort of statue of a soldier that can be found anywhere. It is also not one of my favourite Albanian statues, he looks too angry, but in the wrong way. Compare this partisan to the one who stands atop the monument at the sea front in Durres.) The next monuments of note to be erected were ‘Shoket – Comrades’ and ‘Monument to the Permet Congress’, both in Permet and both the work of Odhise Paskali, and the ‘Monument to Agrarian Reform’, the work of Kristaq Rama, in Krutje e Sipërme, unveiled in 1966.

Monument to The Partisan, Tirana

The decision to erect the two sculptures in Permet, on the 20th anniversary of the Congress of Permet, indicates that ideas were changing. Thinking in Albania of the role that the construction of ‘monumental propaganda’ could play in the promotion of the socialist ideal seems to have developed much more quickly after the decision was taken, also in 1964, to re-locate the Tirana Martyrs’ Cemetery and to place an iconic and inspirational sculpture in the new location, replacing the simple monolith that stood over the old cemetery in Tirana Park.

On 26th October 1965, in an intervention at the end of the 15th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, Enver Hoxha stated:

‘The further revolutionization of the life in the country cannot be understood without the development and deepening of the ideological and cultural revolution.’

In a sense this could be considered to be the opening shots of what became recognised as Albania’s Cultural Revolution – with capital letters as this was a conscious and considered attempt to counter old ideas and promote the new, mirroring a similar decision in the People’s Republic of China. In both Albania and China this was prompted by the betrayal of the Soviet Party to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution. Over a period of just under 20 years this was to lead to the construction of the many impressive lapidars that are found around the country to this day.

One of the reasons there weren’t that many monumental sculptors in the country prior to the late 1960s might be simply due to the fact that the socialist sculptors – meaning by that those artists who had grown up in a society constructing socialism and who had an idea of what the society was attempting to build – simply didn’t exist until that time. A look at the sculptors whose names can be associated with the socialist realist lapidars would seem to support such a proposition. If we just take the case of three of the finest (and most prolific) sculptors during the twenty year period (Kristaq Rama, Shaban Hadëri and Mumtaz Dhrami) they were all born in the late 20s or early 30s and were reaching their artistic maturity at just the right time. They were from a generation who knew what they were being asked to represent in the period of the Cultural Revolution.

(The fact that some of them turned their backs on the society that had given them an education, even to the extent of getting paid to vandalise some of their own work when the social system was different – as was the case of Agim Nebiu and his ‘modification’ of the Tirana Historical Museum Mosaic – is beside the point.)

One of the most prolific sculptors in the country prior to the war let alone prior to national liberation was Odhise Paskali. He produced works which are still to be seen today throughout the country. The earlier works include: The National Fighter in Korçe (1932); The Standard Bearer in Vlore (1932); Çerçiz Topulli in Gjirokaster, (1934); and The Kolonje Martyrs’ in Erseke, (1938) and the bust to Vojo Kushi (1949) in Tirana. However, these are all inspired by Albania’s nationalist struggle of the past.

Nonetheless, he did produce important works after liberation. Among these are: a bust of Vojo Kushi in Tirana (1949); Shoket – Comrades and The Partisan in Permet (both 1964); The Partisan Triumphant, the original now at Mauthausen, Austria – with a copy in the Armament Museum in Gjirokaster Castle (1968); The Two Heroines in Gjirokaster (1974); and the most recognisable to visitors to Tirana, the Statue of Skanderberg in the centre of the city (1968). However, these are all conventional, they are well done and some of them are very evocative, but he has not brought a lot new to the idea of public sculpture. The fact that he was honoured by the Albanian state for his contribution to the sculptural heritage of the country doesn’t change that at all.

Paskali’s work proves the case that even though works are commissioned and displayed during a period of socialism that doesn’t automatically make them examples of ‘socialist realist’ art. In the same way a piece of art produced before an era of socialism, depicting the struggle of the working class, doesn’t become ‘socialist realist’ after a revolution. This non-socialist realist status is also the fate of those works produced after the socialist state has ceased to be in existence. Perhaps the best term for those particular works would be ‘neo-socialist realist’. ‘Ersatz-socialist realist’ would be the best way to describe the stone bas-reliefs outside one of the private universities in the centre of Tirana, used in a cynical move to attain some after-the-fact credibility.

Socialist Realist art has a reason for its existence, other than art for art’s sake. It’s created for a specific purpose, under certain distinctive circumstances and has a special and unique relationship with the people for whom it was created. It commemorates goals already achieved (as in the victory over Fascism and national Liberation), landmarks in the development of the new society (as in the Monument to Agrarian Reform in Krutja) or a declaration of intent (as in ‘Our Land’ in the centre of Lushnje).

Monument to Agrarian Reform – Krutje

Now we come to ‘Shoket – Comrades’ in Permet Martyrs’ Cemetery.

It’s almost impossible to think that such a monument would have been installed three years later, when the atheist campaign began. The reason it wasn’t removed as part of that campaign, which effectively was in existence until 1990, is a sign of the respect that the Albanian state had for works of art produced during the socialist period which were created to commemorate those who had died in the fight for national liberation – whatever its imagery might imply.

To all intents and purposes it’s a religious piece of art. It’s the type of monument you’re more likely to see in a capitalist country where Christianity is nominally the state religion. It’s an image that abounds in many Catholic churches, on canvas, in marble or in stained glass windows. But you won’t find such an image, created in the socialist period, anywhere else in Albania. It’s atypical of Albanian lapidars, it’s unique in its imagery. And that’s important to remember.

However, being created in Socialist Albania it’s not just a copy of earlier religious images. There are three figures in this sculpture. A seriously injured fighter is on the ground and has his upper body supported by a male comrade. (The title of this sculpture is sometimes translated as ‘Friends’ but that’s totally inaccurate when dealing with Communist Partisans and the correct translation is ‘Comrades’.) The injured partisan’s shoulder rests against the thigh of his comrade, who is kneeling behind him, and his head is being support by the left hand of his helper.

The injured partisan has lost his cap and his shirt is open at the front. They are all in the uniform of the National Liberation Army and we know he is a fighter as there is an ammunition belt around his waist. The male helper is in full uniform, with a star on his cap and has a pistol in a holster attached to his belt on the left hand side. He is bent over and is looking down, sympathetically, onto the face of his fallen comrade, whose eyes are closed. It looks very much as if he is in his death throes. What makes this very different from the Christian myth of the pieta (the name given to those depictions of the moments after Christ had been taken from the cross after his death and he is being mourned by his mother and, sometimes, the Magdalen) is the presence of the rifle that is on the ground between the fallen soldier and his comrade, the top of the barrel of which is just sticking out between the two.

The other figure is a female partisan. She is also in uniform, wearing a cap with a star at the front but there’s nothing to indicate she’s armed. (I’m not aware if there was a specifically devoted corps of medics in the Albanian partisan army.) She holds the right hand of the fallen partisan in her own right and seems to be looking for a pulse with her left. However the composition seems to indicate that this is futile, that they are too late to be able to help him. The injured’s left arm rests on the ground with the hand loosely open as if all life has gone out of the body. Also the right hand of the male partisan hovers over the hands of the dead, or dying soldier, and the female fighter. This seems to be him about to say that there’s no point in checking his pulse, it’s already too late.

Shoket – Permet – Hands

There’s a very tranquil feeling emanating from this scenario. It’s a sad picture. As hard as they try they can achieve nothing. Death is final. Something precious has been lost.

But this is a pessimistic approach to death in war, the capitalist approach. This is the impression we get from the memorials that abound throughout Europe to those who died in the war of 1914-1919 – those who died in previous conflicts seemingly not worthy of remembrance in such a widespread manner.

Capitalism convinces workers to fight and possibly die for reasons that don’t benefit those same workers. This has been the case since capitalism became the dominant political and economic system a few centuries ago – the war against Fascism between 1939 and 1945 being, conceivably, the only exception. However, capitalism cannot celebrate the deaths that are a consequence of their predatory wars. It’s best if these deaths are mourned, quietly. There are annual services of remembrance but these always separate the actual deaths from the reason why they were placed in such a situation in the first place.

To celebrate those deaths might make people wonder what they actually got out of the war. To celebrate the defeat of Fascism might make people think that instead of fighting against something they should fight for something, a change in the system, a new tomorrow.

On the other hand the impression from the overwhelming majority of Albanian lapidars, and socialist realist art in general, is one of defiance, displaying a positive, optimistic, forward-looking and triumphant approach. They celebrate the deaths in the National Liberation War as those men and women fought for a future, for a new society.

In Volume 1 of the Albanian Lapidar Survey report there’s an article by a psuedo-academic called Gëzim Qëndro. In this article he attacks and attempts to denigrate ALL the production of Socialist Realist art (or at least ‘monumental propaganda’) as being the victory of Christian thinking over a proclaimed atheist state. In this article he displays a total lack of understanding of Albanian history, is unable to see any aspect of development in public sculpture from the 1960s onwards and certainly has no understanding of the aims of the country’s Cultural Revolution.

This makes the last sentence in Qëndro’s article, ‘ … the monument Shokët is a clear testimony of the presence of the religious connotations in the atheist art of Albanian socialist realism,’ a totally erroneous and ignorant reading and understanding of Albanian lapidars, their reasons for existence and the story they are attempting to convey.

Like so many bad academics Qëndro chooses his thesis and then looks for ‘facts’ to back it up, relying on most people’s lack of desire or ability to check matters for themselves.

Behind the sculpture there’s a concrete panel to which is attached a monolith (lapidar) that is positioned so that it rises exactly from the middle of the group of three. At my visit the panel was a somewhat sickly pinkish colour and the lapidar yellow. On the right hand side of the panel are the words ‘Lavdi Deshmoreve’, meaning ‘Glory to the Martyrs’.

The only other marking on this panel are the dates 1939 and 1945. This is slightly confusing. On WWII monuments throughout Europe the end date is normally the one where the war was considered to have ended in that particular country. I’ve always worked on the basis that in Albania that was the end of November 1944 so the year 1945 being on this monument is a mystery to me. It has nothing to do with treaties (the reason why some memorials for WWI in the UK show the date 1919 as the end of the conflict) as Albania was not invited to conferences where the likes of reparations were discussed and decided upon.

The sculpture has been ‘cared’ for over the years. Unfortunately this seems to be the sort of care that has more good intentions than actual skill in preservation. Whitewashing of the plaster is gradually causing some of the detail to be lost. However, considering it is now just over 50 years old the statue still allows the viewer to get an understanding of Paskali’s intentions.

As is the case with most of the Martyrs’ Cemeteries a small building was dedicated as a museum of the area, any battles that might have taken place in the vicinity and also a remembrance of the local people who died in the war. The one in Permet seems to be still acting as such (many are either totally abandoned or empty shells of what they used to be). Unfortunately on my visit there was no one around and it was all locked up but there were some busts and pictures still on display.

Shoket – Permet – Museum

To the left of the door of the museum is a rectangular, marble plaque. This doesn’t list the names of the those buried in the cemetery but makes reference to those from the Permet region who are commemorated in the National Martyrs’ Cemetery in Tirana.

Shoket – Permet – Plaque

The words at the top of the plaque – ‘Dëshmorët që kanë eshtrat në varezat e kombit në Tiranë’ translates as ‘Martyrs whose remains are in the National Cemetery in Tirana’. This is something I have not seen elsewhere.

Location:

GPS:

40.23658999

20.35561496

DMS:

40° 14′ 11.7240” N

20° 21′ 20.2139” E

Altitude:

246.0 m

How to get there:

From the main square in the centre of Permet head down towards the bridge over the river. Once on the other side walk straight ahead, in the direction of Tepelene, and the cemetery is about 200m on the right, a short avenue of pine trees lining the path to the cemetery gates.

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