Censura në letërsi gjatë mbretërimit të Zogu I
Censorship in literature during the reign of King Zogu I-st

Cases of banned works from Cervantes to Gorky, from Noli to Migjen and Luzaj

Summary/Abstract: Censorship is commonplace, not as a phenomenon, but a "law" that has led Albanian literature over 45 years of communist dictatorship. But history has shoën that censorship is not applied only during the second half of the tëentieth century in Albania. And it’s enough to take a quick look at King Zog's ruling time.King Zog was very careful not only to learn, but also to control everything that ëas said about him or his regime by delegating clear directions of ëhat ëould go to the reader’s hands.In the Central State Archive, exactly in the Secret Fund of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there are dozens of files and thousands of orders, reports and decisions, related precisely to the control and censorship of publications, whether they were newspapers, magazines or books. In the Albanian Monarchy all those books, brochures or neëspapers that criticized and attacked the King and the Kingdom were forbidden. But Zog was also so strict about the Bolshevik and communist literature. In one of the many reports of the Press Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1936, we find "the opinion of the press director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the general guidelines for the control of books", according to which “It is absolutely forbidden to publish anything written: Against Our Sovereign August, or Royal Family, Albania and its politics; Those related to the spread of communist and socialist ideas ...; Those related with pornographic descriptions, which are intended to stimulate sexual feelings ...”. There were categorically prohibited biographical books on Lenin, Stalin, or the philosophical works of Marx and Engels. Likewise, even other authors, who presented a leftist ideology in their works, such as Gorky, Ibsen, etc.Other reports testify that Fan Noli and Jusuf Luzaj were also censored, while witnesses of that time talked about the constriction of Migjeni, until the withdrawal of his volume with poetry "Vargje të lira" (Free Verses), which was spread underhand, but didn’t got a normal distribution, at least for as long as the author was alive.

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