Liri Gega

Liri Gega (1917 – December 1956) was an Albanian communist activist and politician. The only female founder member of the Communist Party of Albania, she was one of the first group of women elected to parliament in 1945. However, she was later executed after being accused of being a Yugoslavian agent.

Liri Gega
Member of the Constituent Assembly
In office
1945–1948
ConstituencyVlorë
Personal details
Born1917
Gjirokastër, Albania
DiedDecember 1956
Tirana, Albania

Biography

Gega was born in Gjirokastër in 1917,[1] to Asija and Beso Gega, a pharmacist and mayor of the town. After graduating from the Queen Mother Pedagogical Institute in Tirana,[2] she won a state scholarship to study in Florence. However, she was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned for nearly two years.[1]

She was the only female founder member of the Communist Party in 1941 and became a member of its politburo in March 1943.[1] During the Congress of Përmet in May 1944 she was elected to the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council.[3] In the same year she became secretary general of the Anti-Fascist Women's Union and the Anti-Fascist Youth Union.[1] In August 1944 she murdered fellow politburo member Mustafa Gjinishi under orders from Yugoslavian communists after he had made an agreement with the anti-communist Balli Kombëtar.[1] She was subsequently removed from the politburo in November, although she remained head of the Women's Union until 1946.[1]

Gega contested the December 1945 parliamentary elections in the Vlorë constituency, and was one of three women elected to the Constituent Assembly alongside Naxhije Dume and Ollga Plumbi.[1][4] She married Dali Ndreu the following year. At a meeting of the Communist Party's central committee in 1948, Gega was accused of sympathising with separatists in northern Albania, political terror and sectarianism.[1] This was a result of her opposition to eliminating the units that had operated in the area following the end of World War II.[1] She was removed from the Assembly and subsequently worked as a teacher. In 1956 she and her husband were arrested while trying to leave Albania. She was charged with collaboration and the couple were executed for being 'Titoist agents'.[5] Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed that Gega was pregnant at the time.[6]

References
  1. Wojciech Roszkowski & Jan Kofman (2016) Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, p280
  2. "Nana Mbretneshë", instituti që edukoi vajzat shqiptare Na Ishte Dakur, 30 September 2007
  3. Ligjvënësit Shqiptarë në Vite Parliament of Albania
  4. Sonila Boçi The December 2nd, 1945 Albanian Elections: Legitimization, or Mere Formalization for Communist Power?
  5. Peter Morgan (2017) Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957–1990, p313
  6. Memorandum of Meeting with Khrushchev, Moscow Wilson Center
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