This persistent lag in farm output has been extensively and publicly discussed by the leadership, which is intent on raising the general level of performance in agriculture and ensuring an adequate domestic supply of food products. Although some blame has been attached to unfavorable weather conditions, the lag has been ascribed primarily to the reluctance of peasants to adopt modern production techniques, poor farm management, insufficient effort to use available resources to best advantage, widespread indifference and negligence, and an excessive preoccupation with personal interests leading to an irresponsible attitude toward work in the collective sector. These shortcomings were said to exist not only among the peasantry at large but also among Communists, who should be serving as models of responsible behavior. The basic reason that clearly emerges from public discussion is a widespread opposition of peasants to the collectivization of farms and an associated tendency to devote their best efforts to the cultivation of their own private plots.

Impressive evidence on this point is provided by official production statistics for 1964, the latest available on this subject. These data show that output per acre on the small private plots of collective farmers and state farm workers was four times larger than output on state farms and six times larger than that on collective farms. Constituting only 6 percent of the cultivated land, the private plots produced 23 percent of the total farm output. Nevertheless, the leadership has publicly credited the advance in agricultural production to the collectivization of farms.

In 1967 the government proceeded to reduce the size of the private plots, with a view to their eventual elimination, both for ideological reasons and as a means of forcing peasants to devote greater efforts to work on collectivized land. Subsequent steps were taken to transfer to collective ownership some of the livestock allotted to the farm families by the collective farm statute.

This action did not measurably improve agricultural performance. Shortfalls in the production of several important crops, including cotton, tobacco, and rice, were admitted to have occurred both in 1968 and 1969, and the situation in the livestock sector continued to be unsatisfactory. A scaling down of the original production goal for 1970 could therefore not be avoided. The farm output target set by the annual plan for 1970 was 12.5 percent below the minimum and 15 percent below the maximum five-year plan figures for the same year.

INDUSTRY

A few primitive plants producing consumer goods had been built before World War II, but industrial development began only in 1949, when construction was undertaken of a 50,000-kilowatt hydroelectric power station, a textile mill capable of producing 22 million yards of cloth per year, and a sugar mill with an annual capacity of 10,000 tons of sugar. Industrial construction continued under the first and second five-year plans (1951-55 and 1956-60, respectively) during the 1950s, with substantial financial and technical assistance from the Soviet Union. This development was temporarily interrupted in the wake of the political break with the Soviet Union in 1961 but was soon resumed with aid from Communist China ([see ch. 6], Government Structure and Political System). The interruption was said by the Albanian leadership to have retarded industrial growth by three years. Disinterested foreign observers, however, reported that the equipment acquired with the aid of Communist China was better suited to the needs of the country and of better quality than that supplied by the Soviet Union.

Among the major industrial projects completed or under construction in 1970 with the assistance of Communist Chinese technicians were: copper, chromium, and iron-nickel mines; an oil refinery at Fier with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons of crude oil, a 225,000-kilowatt hydroelectric power station at Vau i Dejes on the Drin River; a 100,000-kilowatt capacity of 500,000 tons of crude oil; a 225,000-kilowatt/thermal power-plant at Fier; a copper-ore dressing installation and a copper-wire drawing mill; a steel-rolling mill at Elbasan; cement mills at Elbasan and Kruje; large textile combines at Tirana and Berat; and a knit goods factory at Korce.

Of special benefit to agriculture was the construction of a nitrate fertilizer plant at Fier, a superphosphate plant at Lac, and a plant for the manufacture of tractor spare parts at Tirana. A variety of smaller plants were also built for the production of such items as caustic soda, sulfuric acid, rubber products, electrical equipment and light bulbs, footwear, and vegetable oils.

Along with the construction of technologically up-to-date plants, others were built with outdated technology through the lack of construction experience or knowledge of more advanced methods. At the same time, obsolete plants and workshops remained in use. In 1969 these technologically backward plants produced less than half the total output but employed more than half the industrial labor force.

Available information on the structure of industry is ambiguous because of uncertainties regarding the pricing methods underlying the relevant data. According to the official figures for 1967 based on 1966 prices, the food industry accounted for nearly one-third and light industry for almost one-fourth of the total industrial output. The balance of 44 percent was produced by some fourteen or more industry branches, the relative shares of which ranged from 8.0 percent for metalworking and for timber and wood processing to 0.3 percent for the bitumen industry. As a group, six industry branches engaged in oil production and mining contributed about 15 percent of the output. The building materials industry accounted for 5 percent and electric power production, for not quite 4 percent.