Daily: Albanian Rhapsody – Fighting for freedom in Stalinism's last bastion

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Albania in the 1980s was the last bastion of Stalinism in Europe. It was difficult to visit, and a place of poverty, executions and secret police, but for LSE politics professor Lea Ypi it was also home. She talks to Alex Andreou about her astonishing memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, which details her childhood in one of Europe’s most repressive countries, what came afterwards, and what it truly means to be free. “The fall of the Berlin Wall was brushed aside as something that didn’t concern Albania” “At some point the state slogan was gone and was replaced by a coca-cola advert” “I’ve spent half my life under socialism, half my life under liberalism… neither of these systems delivered what they set out to” “To live in real democracy means to have a real say in the laws that are made” “What we have is not a democracy, but rather a liberal representative system” https://amzn.to/3HcK7Qw Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker daily. I am your host Alex Andreu.
1:12.3	Albania in the 80s was the last Stalinist
1:16.7	country in Europe. It was difficult to visit and almost impossible to leave. It was
1:21.3	a place of poverty and queues political executions and
1:24.1	secret police. To my guest today however the author of Freee a deeply affecting and
1:29.2	thought-provoking personal account of those years and the years that followed the toppling of the communist regime in Albania, it was simply home.
1:37.1	Welcome to the bunker, Leah Upe.
1:39.8	Thank you for having me.
1:41.2	Leah, the book begins with you running through the streets of Durez,
1:47.4	which is I think where you grew up during the 1990 student protests
	...

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