Luigj Gurakuqi

Luigj Gurakuqi was born in 1879 in the village of Frashër in the Ottoman Empire that is now part of Albania. He was from a wealthy and influential family of landowners, and his father was a local leader and hero of the Albanian National Awakening. He attended the French Lycée of Salonica and later studied law and political science in Paris, France. He was the mentor to other Albanian students in Paris, including future Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, to whom he taught law. [1](^1^) Upon returning to Albania he was a member of Avni Rrustemi's Bashkimi organization which he later took over upon Rrustemi's death by assassination in April 1924. Gurakuqi developed connections with Orthodox Bishop Fan S. Noli and played an active role in forcing then-Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu's exile to Yugoslavia that same year. Upon the overthrow of Noli's government in November 1924, Gurakuqi emigrated to Vienna, Austria, becoming member of the Balkan Communist Federation, and then emigrated to the Soviet Union where he became a member of the Comintern. [1](^1^) [2](^2^) In 1929 he took part in the 8th Congress of the Balkan Communist Federation where he discussed the founding of a Communist Party in Albania, having helped establish the Albanian Communist Group in 1928 in Korçë. [1](^1^) From 1930 to 1931 he served as a journalist for the Vienna-based magazine The Balkan Federation. [2](^2^) In 1933 while in Germany he was a partial observer of the Reichstag fire events and traveled with Leipzig Trial participant Georgi Dimitrov (whom he befriended) back to Moscow. During the Spanish Civil War he organized Albanian volunteers for the International Brigades. During these years Gurakuqi began criticizing the pro-Stalin wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as "Stalinist", gravitating more towards the views of Leon Trotsky. During the Great Purge he was expelled from the Comintern in 1938 as a "bourgeois deviationist" and a death sentence was announced against him. However, the intercession of Georgi Dimitrov, then leader of the Comintern, resulted in this sentence being dropped. [2](^2^) [3](^3^) Following the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939, Gurakuqi returned to Albania and served as a secondary school teacher in his hometown of Korçë until his dismissal a year later, as he was a participant in the underground struggles against the Italians. [2](^2^) Exiled on the island of Ventotene as an anti-fascist, he would come into contact with the Italian ideologues, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, with whom Gurakuqi would draft the "Ventotene Manifesto", known as the forerunner of the Hague Congress and the Schuman Declaration. They developed a new vision for the creation of a free and united Europe, based on the idea of sovereignty, workers' movement, common currency, etc. Italian researchers would call the ideas of the lawyer born in Korça and graduated from the Sorbonne as the forerunners of the European Union. [4] In 1925, Gurakuqi was assassinated by a spy sent by the Albanian government of Ahmet Zogu in Bari, Italy, where he had gone to attend a conference of the Albanian diaspora. He was shot in the head while walking on the street with his friend and fellow activist Midhat Frashëri. His death was mourned by many Albanians and Europeans who admired his work and vision. He was buried in Bari, but his remains were later transferred to Albania in 1991. He was posthumously awarded the People's Hero of Albania medal in 1996. [2](^2^) [4]