The Albanian academic describes coming of age at a turning point in history, and the family secrets exposed in its aftermath
One wet afternoon in December 1990, little Lea Ypi ran across Tirana to the garden of the Palace of Culture. Making sure no one could see her, she pressed her warm cheek to the cold thigh of a statue and tried to make her arms encircle its knees. And then she looked up to savour the figure’s friendly moustache, only to suppress a scream. Hooligan demonstrators calling for freedom and democracy had decapitated one of her favourite uncles.
Ypi at the time had two favourite uncles, both communists, both dead, neither actual relations. Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha was one, Joseph Stalin the other, and her superbly unreliable teacher, Nora, had taught her student to venerate both. After all, was it not Marx’s teacher Hangel (not Hegel, Nora clarified), who had described Napoleon as the spirit of history on a horse? Stalin, Nora told Lea, was the spirit of history on a tank. Plus he had a great moustache.
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