Perhaps the most radical change in the whole social system had been effected in the area of religion. By 1970 the country's three principal religious faiths had been eliminated as organizational bodies. All churches and mosques had been closed; the clergy was not permitted to function; and the country had been declared by the official media to be the first atheist nation in the world. Top Party and government officials admitted, however, that the closing of the houses of worship and the action against the clergy had not eliminated the religious feelings and beliefs of the people.
TRADITIONAL SOCIAL PATTERNS AND VALUES
The social structure of the country was until the 1930s basically tribal in the north and semifeudal in the central and southern regions. The highlanders in the north retained intact their medieval tribal pattern of life until well into the twentieth century and were considered the last peoples in Europe to preserve tribal autonomy. In the central and southern regions, however, increasing contact with the outside world and invasions and occupations by foreign armies had reduced the tribes to tenure peasants.
Traditionally, there have been two major groupings or sub-cultures in the country: the Gegs in the north, probably numbering slightly over half the total population, and the Tosks in the south. Although the terms Geg and Tosk have disappeared from the vocabulary because they connote division rather than Communist unity, Tirana officials and the press have often implied in recent years that the old differences and contrasts between the two groups still existed. These differences were marked not only in the physical appearance of the people and in dialect but also in the way of life in general.
The Gegs, partly Roman Catholic but mostly Muslim, lived until after World War II in a mountain society characterized by blood feuds and fierce clan and tribal loyalties. The Tosks, on the other hand, were considered more civilized because of centuries of Greek and other foreign influences. Coming under the grip of the Muslim landed aristocracy, the Tosks lost the spirit of individuality and independence enjoyed for centuries by the Gegs, especially in the highlands.
Until the end of World War II society in the north and, to a much lesser extent, in the south was organized in terms of kinship and descent. The basic unit of society was the extended family, usually composed of a couple, their married sons, the wives and children of married sons, and any unmarried daughters. The extended family formed a single residential and economic entity held together by common ownership of means of production and common interest in defense of the group. Such families often included scores of persons, and as late as 1944 some contained as many as sixty to seventy persons living in a cluster of huts surrounding the father's house.
Extended families were grouped into clans, the chiefs of which preserved, until the end of World War II, patriarchal powers over the members of the entire group. The clan chief arranged marriages, assigned tasks, settled disputes, and decided what courses should be followed in such basic issues as blood feuds and politics. Descent was traced from a common ancestor through the male line, and brides were usually chosen from outside the clan. Clans in turn were grouped into tribes.
In the Tosk regions of the south the extended family was also the most important social unit, although patriarchal authority had been diluted by the feudal conditions imposed by the beys. The clan and tribal systems had disappeared at a much earlier period in the south and were retained into the mid-twentieth century only among the northern highlanders.
Leadership of society in the lowlands was concentrated in the hands of semifeudal tribal beys and pashas (see Glossary). The general Tirana region, for example, was controlled by the Zogolli, Toptani, and Vrioni families, all being Muslim pashas or beys and all owning extensive agricultural estates. Ahmet Zogu, subsequently King Zog I, was from the Zogolli family. Originally the pasha class ranked slightly higher than that of the bey, but differences gradually diminished and all members were called beys. In the northern highlands the bajraktars were the counterparts of the beys and enjoyed similar hereditary rights to titles and positions.
The Geg clans put great importance on marriage traditions. Marriage customs and prohibitions designed to perpetuate these traditions were still practiced at the end of World War II. According to the custom a young man from a given clan always married a young woman from outside the clan but from within the same tribe. In some tribes marriages between Christians and Muslims were tolerated even before the advent of the Communist regime, but as a rule such marriages were frowned upon.