People's Republic of Albania in the context of "Leading role of the party"

The Tito–Stalin split or the Soviet–Yugoslav split was the culmination of a conflict between the political leaderships of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, under Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, respectively, in the years following World War II. Although presented by both sides as an ideological dispute, the conflict was as much the product of a geopolitical struggle in the Balkans that also involved Albania, Bulgaria, and the communist insurgency in Greece, which Tito's Yugoslavia supported and the Soviet Union distanced itself from.

In the years following World War II, Yugoslavia pursued economic, internal, and foreign policy objectives that did not align with the interests of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. In particular, Yugoslavia hoped to admit neighbouring Albania to the Yugoslav federation. This fostered an atmosphere of insecurity within the Albanian political leadership and exacerbated tensions with the Soviet Union, which made efforts to impede Albanian–Yugoslav integration. Yugoslav support of the communist rebels in Greece against the wishes of the Soviet Union further complicated the political situation. Stalin tried to pressure Yugoslavia and moderate its policies using Bulgaria as an intermediary. When the conflict between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union became public in 1948, it was portrayed as an ideological dispute to avoid the impression of a power struggle within the Eastern Bloc.

On 20–21 August 1968, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the Hungarian People's Republic. The invasion stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalisation reforms and strengthened the authoritarian wing of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ).

About 250,000 Warsaw Pact troops (rising afterwards to about 500,000), supported by thousands of tanks and hundreds of aircraft, participated in the overnight operation, which was code-named Operation Danube. The Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania refused to participate. East German forces, except for a small number of specialists, were ordered by Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border just hours before the invasion, because of fears of greater resistance if German troops were involved, due to public perception of the previous German occupation three decades earlier. 137 Czechoslovaks were killed and 500 seriously wounded during the occupation.

The de-satellization of the Socialist Republic of Romania from the Soviet Union was the release of Romania from its Soviet satellite status in the 1960s. The Romanian leadership achieved the de-satellization partly by taking advantage of Nikita Khrushchev's errors and vulnerabilities. Romania's independence was tolerated by Moscow because its ruling party was not going to abandon communism. Although Romania remained a member of both the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, it was not to be a docile member of either.

Even before Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power, Romania was a genuinely independent country, as opposed to the rest of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, it was even more independent than Cuba (a socialist state that was not a member of the Warsaw Pact). The Romanian regime was largely impervious to Soviet political influence, and Ceaușescu was the only declared opponent of glasnost and perestroika. Due to the conflictual relationship between Bucharest and Moscow, the West did not hold the Soviet Union responsible for the policies pursued by Romania, as it did for other countries in the region such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. At the start of 1990, Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze implicitly confirmed the lack of Soviet influence over Ceaușescu's Romania. When asked whether it made sense for him to visit Romania less than two weeks after its revolution, Shevardnadze insisted that only by going in person to Romania could he figure out how to "restore Soviet influence".

The Albanian–Soviet split (Russian: Албано-советский раскол, romanized: Albano-sovetskiy raskol; Albanian: Ndarja shqiptaro-sovjetike) was the gradual worsening of relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the People's Republic of Albania, which occurred in the 1956–1961 period as a result of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's rapprochement with Yugoslavia along with his "Secret Speech" and subsequent de-Stalinization, including efforts to extend these policies into Albania as was occurring in other Eastern Bloc states at the time.

However, the Albanian–Soviet split did not become public until 1960, when, during the Bucharest Conference of Representatives of Communist and Workers Parties, the Albanian delegation, led by Hysni Kapo, did not support Khrushchev's ideological views on the Sino-Soviet split.

The Presidential Office (Albanian: Selia e Presidencës) houses the office of the President of Albania and is the principal workplace of the president. It consists of the immediate staff of the president, as well as support staff reporting to the president. It is located in the capital city of Tirana.

The Presidential Office Building was constructed at first to house the Embassy of the Soviet Union to the People's Republic of Albania, and served for that purpose until 1961, when both countries ceased their diplomatic relations. The discovery of dynamite at the embassy in 1951, as part of an attempted bombing, led to a violent crackdown by the Government of Albania of the time.