To paint a complete picture, let me say a few words about Albanian communism. Throughout the regime, there were only two leaders: Enver Hoxha ruled for over 40 years and his successor Ramiz Alia lasted 7 years.

Enver was a fanatical admirer of Stalin. After Stalin's death, attitudes toward the former Soviet General Secretary began to shift in other Eastern Bloc countries, but not in Albania. Due to ideological differences, the Albanian dictator fell out with Khrushchev and the USSR first, then with Tito and Yugoslavia, and eventually even with China. Each was successively condemned as a traitor to Marxist-Leninist ideas and Stalin personally. This whole drama even crystallized into its own branch of communism — Hoxhaism.

But as political ties severed, economic ones did too. By the early 1980s, the country found itself in complete isolation. The food ration coupons, housing queues, and chronic shortages so familiar to late Soviet citizens thrived here in full force. Add to that a system of denunciations and repression, censorship, corruption, and the list goes on. On top of that, you couldn't leave Albania legally, and illegally was extremely dangerous: the border guards themselves would open fire to kill. And if someone managed to escape, it guaranteed problems for their remaining relatives.

The state survived on self-sufficiency, but of course you can't produce everything. For example, there was basically no automobile industry. In 1990, Albania had fewer than 5,000 cars for its entire population of 3 million people. So when the country suddenly opened to the world, driving culture developed quite chaotically. Even today, road markings aren't always respected, but at least hardly anyone tears around at insane speeds. And overall, speed limits are quite low.

Hoxha's successor's main achievement was a bloodless transition to a democratic system. The country experienced unrest (called a civil war in the English Wikipedia), but much later, in 1997. The trigger was the collapse of financial pyramids.

As our guide in Tirana said: "Don't build communism at home—we already tried it for you."