On May 7, 2025, Prof. Dr. Fatmir Sulejmani, a lecturer at the University of Tetova, participated in the International Scientific Conference “Albanian Literary Dissidence”, organized by the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts (KASA), in the Language and Literature Session. In this conference, which dealt with important cultural and historical topics, Prof. Dr. Fatmir Sulejmani presented his study titled “Disidenca e mohuar e letrave shqipe” (“The Denied Dissent of Albanian Literature”), which was well received by the attending scholars. In this paper, he addressed the issue of the lack of full recognition of literary dissent in the Albanian space, challenging approaches that limit the concept of dissent solely to its political forms. By analyzing the ways in which Albanian authors expressed disagreement with the regime through artistic means such as allegory, metaphor, and irony, the study emphasizes the need for a more inclusive approach to the literary output of the communist era. Professor Sulejmani provided examples of works that challenged the rigid frameworks of socialist realism and praised the courage of authors who, under repressive conditions, managed to express non-conformist viewpoints.
Based on the views of both foreign and local scholars, such as Rusana Hristova and academician Shaban Sinani, Prof. Dr. Fatmir Sulejmani’s study highlights the importance of critically revisiting the attitudes toward the literature of that time and recognizing the contributions of authors who, through their works, demonstrated clear forms of cultural and literary dissent. The conference “Albanian Literary Dissidence” gathered scholars and experts from the Albanian-speaking regions and beyond, serving as a platform for exchanging ideas and promoting new studies on the role of literature in contexts of ideological oppression.
Below is a short excerpt from the study presented at the aforementioned conference:
Like all other literatures of the communist bloc, Albanian literature also has a list of creators from different types of dissent. However, we seem to hesitate to accept the dissent of our writers, whom we never compare to the dissidents of other countries in the communist bloc, even though they were persecuted and oppressed in the same way for openly or secretly expressing disagreement with the Zhdanovist dogmas, which severely constrained the boundaries of art and culture in general.
Researcher Rusana Hristova from Sofia University emphasizes: “In the search for an answer to which literature written during the communist regime should be considered dissident, it remained between prioritizing persecuted and condemned authors and all creators of works that could have consequences, because the dividing line between different types of dissidence was very thin, and this is understood by those who tasted the flavor of the red hemisphere of the world”.
This stance is enough to understand that, in addition to political dissent, which directly opposes the ruling ideology and calls for system change through public speeches and protests, there are also other forms of dissent, such as literary dissent, which challenges the regime through allegories, allusions, metaphors, and other tools available to the writer.
This is something that everyone who defines the different types of dissent should understand, as illustrated by the following examples:
First example: True dissidents should be sought in states like the USSR, not in states like communist Albania. This is because the USSR regime exiled political and literary dissidents to other countries, whereas the Albanian monist dictatorship punished them with heavy prison sentences or executed them. Such logic aims to convince the reader that true dissidents are only those who receive lighter punishments than execution?!
Second example: A writer can only be called a dissident if they criticize the stances of the government and contribute to raising public awareness about the injustices of a brutal regime. Although literary work is the most effective instrument for expanding influence on the masses, dissent should also be manifested through other actions against the government.
According to this definition, to call someone a literary dissident, they must also necessarily be a political dissident?!
Such unfair judgments emerge whenever someone refers to non-conformist creators as literary dissidents, placing them deliberately into the same category as the mediocre creators of Socialist Realism, who meticulously followed the directives of the monist regime.
However, not everyone denies the existence of literary dissent in Albania and Kosovo, especially that of creators of works such as: “The Monster”, “The Winter of Great Solitude”, “The Palace of Dreams”, “The Rise and Fall of Comrade Zylo”, or “The Snakes of the Blood”, which challenged the brutal regimes, a fact that has also been noted by European critics. For those familiar with the dictatorship, the courage of the authors remains inexplicable—authors who, precisely during the phase of disciplining art and the mandatory application of the basic rules of Socialist Realism, challenged the incompetent heads of state, fully aware that their lives could be at risk. But despite the courage of the writers who stripped bare the Stalinist ideology, the relativism of their dissent continues with the reasoning that they were part of Socialist Realism and tools of the totalitarian system, a stance that contradicts the view of Academic Shaban Sinani, who, in his study on the atypical phenomena in the work of Dritëro Agolli, states, among other things: “Written under the conditions of a strictly controlled society, and to be read, like any other literature, even in the conditions of an open society, Socialist Realist literature cannot avoid the question of whether within it there are real people who develop independently of the ruling ideology…
