From Stalin to Mao

Elidor Mhilli has produced a groundbreaking history of communist Albania that illuminates one of Europes longest but least understood dictatorships. From Stalin to Mao, which is informed throughout by Mhillis unprecedented access to previously restricted archives, captures the powerful globalism of post-1945 socialism, as well as the unintended consequences of cross-border exchanges from the Mediterranean to East Asia. After a decade of vigorous borrowing from the Soviet Unionadvisers, factories, school textbooks, urban plansAlbanias party clique switched allegiance to China during the 1960s Sino-Soviet conflict, seeing in Maos patronage an opportunity to keep Stalinism alive. Mhilli shows how socialism created a shared transnational material and mental culturestill evident today around Eurasiabut it failed to generate political unity. Combining an analysis of ideology with a sharp sense of geopolitics, he brings into view Fascist Italys involvement in Albania, then explores the countrys Eastern bloc entanglements, the profound fascination with the Soviets, and the contradictions of the dramatic anti-Soviet turn. Richly illustrated with never-before-published photographs, From Stalin to Mao draws on a wealth of Albanian, Russian, German, British, Italian, Czech, and American archival sources, in addition to fiction, interviews, and memoirs. Mhillis fresh perspective on the Soviet-Chinese battle for the soul of revolution in the global Cold War also illuminates the paradoxes of state planning in the twentieth century.