The number of families almost doubled in the 1945-60 period. In the cities they grew from 48,800 to 95,500 and in the countryside, from 148,000 to 184,305. The greatest rate of increase, almost 8 percent, occurred during the 1950-55 period in the urban sector; this was attributed primarily to the creation of an industrial base.
The expansion of the existing cities, especially the capital city of Tirana, caused by the establishment of a number of industrial projects, drew people from the rural regions into the urban centers. This new migration was reinforced by the relocation of entire families. In addition, new family units were formed by the younger migrants once they settled in the newly developing industrial centers. During the decade of the 1950s the trend was toward larger families.
Table 4. Social Composition of the Population of Albania*
(according to the 1960 official census)
| Average | |||||
| Number of | Number of | number per | |||
| Social Groups | families | persons | Males | Females | family |
| Workers | 79,804 | 433,040 | 237,307 | 195,733 | 5.9 |
| Employees (civil servants) | 36,891 | 182,913 | 98,279 | 84,634 | 4.3 |
| Collective farmers | 105,778 | 670,422 | 331,269 | 339,153 | 6.8 |
| Private farmers | 44,419 | 275,169 | 136,683 | 138,486 | 6.4 |
| Collective artisans | 5,255 | 35,056 | 17,304 | 17,752 | 5.3 |
| Individual artisans | 1,846 | 8,950 | 4,683 | 4,267 | 5.4 |
| Collective traders | 431 | 2,328 | 1,216 | 1,112 | 5.0 |
| Private traders | 751 | 3,474 | 1,880 | 1,594 | 5.0 |
| Free professions | 166 | 889 | 498 | 391 | 4.1 |
| Clergymen | 831 | 2,785 | 1,668 | 1,117 | n.a. |
| Unemployed and unknown | 3,633 | 11,289 | 5,507 | 6,782 | 3.0 |
| Total | 279,805 | 1,626,315 | 836,294 | 791,021 | 5.8 |
| n.a.—not available. | |||||
| * According to 1965 data, the family of seven or eight members was then typical in the villages for the agricultural collectives that were researched and, in the peasant families as a whole in 1965, the average family had 6.2 persons. | |||||
| Source: Adapted from Vjetari Statistikor i R. P. Sh., Tirana, 1968, pp. 74-77; and Ekonomia Popullore, Tirana, November to December 1965. | |||||
Aside from the workers and peasants, the only group to which the Tirana authorities have continued to give special attention has been the so-called intelligentsia. Usually termed a layer or stratum of the new social order, the intelligentsia was considered, in 1970 to be a special social group because of the country's needs for professional, technical, and cultural manpower. To justify this special attention, the ideologists have often quoted Lenin to the effect that "the intelligentsia will remain a special stratum until the Communist society reaches its highest development."
In the development of the social structure under the Communist regime, basic transformations have occurred in the social composition of the intelligentsia. This transformation, during the 1944-48 period, involved not only the purging of a number of Western-educated intellectuals whom the regime considered potentially dangerous but also some top Communist intellectuals who were suspected of having anti-Yugoslav or pro-Western feelings. The remaining old intellectuals were reeducated and reoriented and were utilized for the preparation of new personnel for the bureaucracy and industry. Finally, a new intelligentsia was created, thoroughly imbued with the Communist ideology and recruited generally from among the children of the Party leaders, workers, and peasants.
The Communist regime created another social group at the bottom rung of the ladder. This group was composed largely of elements of the upper classes in existence before 1944. The tribulations of this class had by 1970 reduced it to a small minority, some members of which were still interned in forced labor camps. It was actually a class of outcasts, discriminated against politically, socially, and economically.
Most of the members of this group were used as so-called volunteer laborers on construction projects and in other menial tasks, and their children did not enjoy the same rights to higher education and other opportunities open to the other classes. Discriminatory measures against this class continued to be taken in the late 1960s; in 1968, for instance, the government passed a law prohibiting them from receiving money remittances or food and clothing packages from their relatives and friends abroad.
The Communist assertion of the existence of only two social classes did not correspond to the real class structure that prevailed in the country in 1970. In fact, there existed different classes and gradations of rank and privilege, beginning with an upper class, composed of the Party elite, leaders of the state and mass organizations, and the leading members of the armed and security forces. The top Party elite itself was composed of two distinct social groupings, the higher group consisting of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of eleven regular and five candidate members and the chiefs of the Directorates of the Central Committee the lower group being made up of the rank-and-file members of the Central Committee.
Family connections played a key role in the composition of the Politburo in 1970. The top three families were those of First Party Secretary Enver Hoxha and his wife Nexhmije, who headed the Directorate of Education and Culture in the Central Committee; Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu and his wife, Fiqrete, who headed the top Party school; and Party Secretary Hysni Kapo and his wife, Vito, who headed the politically and ideologically important women's organization. General Kadri Hasbiu—minister of interior, head of the security forces, and a Politburo candidate member—was a brother-in-law of Mehmet Shehu. Similar family relationships existed between the other Politburo members. About half of the sixty-one members of the Central Committee were also related.