The only "sin" of the Albanian education reformer: He gave the scholarship to Enver Hoxha!

Homage to the great reformer of Albanian education: Mirash Ivanaj (March 12, 1891 - September 22, 1953)

By: Saimir Kadiu

- Did you hear it, did you?

- No, sir, what do I have to say?

- You are sentenced to seven years in prison!

- What have I been sentenced for, sir?

- For agitation and propaganda against the popular government.

- But when I came back from Turkey, I didn't talk to anyone, except for educational work.

- And with that thought, you came from there to spread propaganda.

- Why are there laws in the world, sir, that punish thought?

- Shut your mouth, you are doomed!

With these dialogues, part of the Bolshevik farce, the regime sentenced the chief reformer of national education, Mirash Ivanaj, to seven years in prison.

The miserable life and very hard work in prison as a translator led to the rapid degradation of Mirash Ivanaj's health.

One day, according to the memoirs of Jakov Miles, Mehmet Shehu came to the house of suffering with Bedri Spahiu. In the translation room they also met Mirash Ivanaj. The old man respectfully stood up:

- I believe that during your time in prison you will have revised your views - Bedri Spahiu, then Minister of Education, told him.

- Not my views, but my beliefs - Mirashi corrected him. - To tell you the truth: I haven't changed any of them.

- Then you are nothing more than a stupid old man - Mehmet Shehu blurted out.

- I am a thinker and a democrat who, even if I could go back in life, would follow the same path.

A few weeks before his release from prison, he sent a letter to the warden asking him to keep him in prison because he had nowhere to go and no income to live on.

But, crushed by the hard work and terrible prison conditions, on September 22, 1953, 12 days before the end of his sentence, he closed his eyes forever.

He passed away in a Tirana hospital, after a simple surgical procedure, at the age of 62.

Fellow sufferer Ibrahim Hasnai, as well as former hospital laboratory technician Enis Boletini, say that the hospital learned that Mirash Ivanaj's body was in the Anatomy auditorium of the Faculty of Medicine, for an experiment and teaching demonstration. In the tragic irony of fate, he served Albanian education even in his death.

Ten years later, in 1963, when Nikolla Ivanaj's relatives removed him from the place where they had thrown him - to bury him humanely in the Sharra cemetery - they found him thrown into a pit without a name, without a coffin, face down like a prisoner who is being sentenced again after death.

Who was Mirash Ivanaj?

Born in Podgorica, he came from a patriotic family from the Albanian regions of Montenegro.

A classy intellectual and patriot of his country. Writer, essayist, teacher, publicist, humanist...

Having graduated in Rome in Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Ivanaj was also a polyglot with a full seven "living" languages ​​and three "dead" ones.

Although he was an admirer of Zog, he was critical of the miserable state of Albanian education.

He willingly accepted King Zog's offer to reform Albanian education.

He took over the portfolio of Minister of Education in 1933 (after the death of Hilë Mosi), in the Government of Pandeli Evangeli.

Intellectual greatness, patriotism of the highest level, and the miserable state of Albanian education in the 30s were the "inciters" of the Ivanaj Law.

In September 1934, he introduced the new Law on Education, making five-year primary education compulsory. He also created various secondary educational institutes. The "Law on Education", or as it became known as the "Ivanaj Law", was the most important and comprehensive law of the Evangelical government period.

The goal of Minister Ivanaj's reform was for the Albanian school to have its own characteristics and physiognomy, to be secular, state-owned, national and democratic, with contemporary textbooks similar to Western schools, and to educate and orient the new generation in that direction. He sought to have these ideas sanctioned by law and, in many cases, he achieved his goal of nationalizing private schools, especially Italian and Greek ones.

"Our school must provide civic and secular education, because the purpose of the school is to form free citizens, with contemporary scientific and technical education and training" (this short fragment is taken from the speech given by Mirash Ivanaj, as Minister of National Education, in the Albanian Parliament, on April 10, 1933).

On August 30, 1935, he resigned in protest after the Hague Tribunal forced the Albanian government to moderate its policies towards minority schools. He was appointed chairman of the Council of State and advisor to King Zog until April 7, 1939.

He was absolutely against the fascist occupation of Albania and, together with his friends, Safet Butka and Qemal Butka, mobilized Albanian students in protests against the occupation.

He left Albania for Turkey in 1939, rejecting the fascist occupation of the country. He left his homeland together with his brother Martin Ivanaj, a prominent jurist, president of the Court of Dictation, and his friends, the architect Qemal Butka and the philosopher Branko Merxhani, as a rejection of the Italian occupation of Albania and as a salvation for their lives.

He himself explained this exile in his extraordinary diary: “We found salvation in fleeing”! He returned to Albania in October 1945, also sought out by Gjergj Kokoshi and convinced that he had no sin on his back.

The higher authorities asked him to declare his candidacy for deputy on behalf of the Democratic Front, which he refused. He worked at the Pedagogical School of Tirana from November 1945 to May 15, 1946, when he was arrested as an "agent of the British".

What was Mirash Ivanaj's sin?

The only "sin" ... was cutting off his scholarship on February 6, 1934, at the time when the "English" Enver Hoxha was Minister of Education.

It is said that when Mirash Ivanaj returned to Albania, he was welcomed by Enver Hoxha himself, who in his biting style said to him: "Look how we are waiting for you... not like you who took away my scholarship."

He could have stayed in Turkey. But he came to make Albania and was sentenced by the court of provincial tinsmiths and scoundrels.

In this way, Albania lost the "iron minister" of Albanian Education, as the prominent scholar Lazër Radi called him. Undoubtedly, the greatest Minister of Education in the 112-year history of the Albanian state.

Ironically, at that time, the Minister of Education was one of the executioners of the post-war trials: Bedri Spahiu. Mirash Ivanaj was murdered and Bedri Spahiu was "reforming" education, and the "freedom-loving" and "education-loving" people had "sang" about this criminal: "Enemies tremble / Like a mouse / Bedri Spahiu judges them"!

One of these "enemies" was Mirash Ivanaj and his "crime" was because he loved Albania.