The Main Idea: Looking back on the Albanian desocialization drive of the early ’90s, the failure to securitize state-owned assets and the insistence on a disastrous policy of physical land restitution stand out as the main failings.
1. Introduction
1.1 Something more than twenty years ago, the Socialist Regimes of Eastern Europe fell one by one after the unwillingness of the Soviets to resist such development by force became known. Despite having severed all meaningful political connections to its European fellows since the ’50 and its lone Chinese ally since the ’70, the Albanian regime still could not avoid joining the fate of the overt Socialism in Europe, and by 1992 a feverish desocialization effort guided by a new government was in the works.
1.2 Looking back on that effort, what can one say about the long-term effects of the route chosen to transform a state-run economy into a mostly private one? To what extent where the Austrian prescriptions on desocialization followed, and to what effect? I will try to answer these questions, without expecting my analysis to apply to every eastern desocialization effort.