Born: 8 February 1921, North Macedonia
Died: 26 February 2020
Country most active: Albania
Also known as: Nexhmije Xhuglini
Albanian Communist Nexhmije Hoxha was the first lady of Socialist Albania for more than 40 years, from 1944 to 1985, as the wife of Enver Hoxha. Her husband was the first leader of the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania and the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania, and she was one of the few spouses of a ruling Communist party leader to gain her own high political profile.
Born Nexhmije Xhuglini in modern-day North Macedonia, her family moved to the Albanian capital of Tirana, where she attended Queen Mother Pedagogical Institute. She joined the newly formed Albanian Communist Party in 1941, while training as a teacher. A year later, she was elected to the Albanian National Liberation Movement’s General Council. She met Enver Hoxha at a Party of Labour meeting (he was First Secretary from 1941 until his death), and he proposed in 1942; they married in 1945.
During World War II, she was part of the National Liberation Army’s First Division, a primarily Communist resistance group that fought Italian Fascists and German Wehrmacht troops with the support of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. She was elected to the Secretariat of the Albanian Women’s League in 1943, serving as its chairwoman from 1946 to 1952. In 1966, she became the director of the Institute of Marxist–Leninist Studies, which aimed to ensure ideological purity and spread propaganda. She was also rumored to have a relationship with the Sigurimi secret police.
After her husband’s 1985 death, Hoxha defended his legacy during the 1990-91 reforms. She was elected chairwoman of the Democratic Front, but was forced to resign in December 1990. With the fall of Communism in Albania (January 1990 to March 1992), she was expelled from the Party of Labour on 13 June 1991. She was publicly criticised for her supposedly extravagant lifestyle, which she denied. She was arrested on 10 December that year, and in January 1993, was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for embezzling 750,000 leks. Although this was later increased to 11 years by an appeals court, she was released in January 1997. She released a memoir, My Life with Enver, in 1998. Hoxha lived to 99, dying at home in 2020.