Camaj, Koliqi and Secret Service

To know whether Camaj was in service of the UDB, the first and last thing to do is enter her archives in Belgrade, which Tare has never looked into. The truth is in those archives. Until we have access to them, we, or we have to remain silent, or if we cannot keep silent, we are forced to enter the world of speculation, which we feed on indirect or secondary and third-hand information sources.

It has been known since the beginning of the time that Koqi and Camaj have been enemies of the communist regime in Albania. Not only declared, but also committed enemies. Camaj had fled Albania at the time of her breakup with Yugoslavia, which was the result of the breakup between Tito and Stalin. Each Albanian crossing the border and entering Yugoslavia ended up in Yugoslav security hands, and there could be no other fate for Camaj. It is also known that the UDB planned that fugitives from Albania be introduced for its propaganda war purposes against Enver Hoxha's regime. How Camaj ended up as an agent UDB's fragments don't prove that. Camaj's academic career in Belgrade cannot be taken as evidence of his employment in the UDB. For a fundamental reason: the Tito regime, unlike Hoxha's regime, enabled someone to make an academic career even without being part of the Yugoslav Communist Party's political-state structures. This has been particularly true after Tito's break with Stalin, when a more liberal climate was established in Yugoslavia, especially in the field of culture and science. Scientific, cultural and literary liberalism needed Tito as an instrument to gain support from the West in terms of the blockade by the Soviet bloc. If someone tried to extend this liberality even to the field of political institutions, he ended up behind bars. The most famous example in this case is that of Milovan Djilas, one of Tito's closest people who was expelled from the party and later imprisoned because of his liberal stances and public criticism of communist ideology.

In many cases, the Yugoslav regime did not operate through direct recruiting but through indoctrinating. This means that a person has initially been identified with the beliefs of the regime and then voluntarily has been put in his service. This may have been the case with Camaj, but his departure to Italy and then to Germany suggests that the Yugoslavia exercised on him has not succeeded. Camaj's marriage to a Serbian student is more evidence that Camaj was put on the gear of Yugoslavisation. The student Nina, whom Camaj married, was the sister of Dimitrije Bogdanovic, a Serbian historian of the medieval period of the Balkans. After 1966, when the fall of Rankovic, the highest Serb representative in the Yugoslav government dome, Bogdanovic, along with many Serbian intellectuals, returned to the positions of Serbian nationalism. From 1966 onward Dimitrije Bogdanovic became one of the most popular voices of Serbian historyist nationalism. He along with many others revived Serbian myths on Kosovo, the Battle of Kosovo myth of 1389, the medieval Kosovo myth without Albanians, the mine of Albanians' arrival in Kosovo after 1689 with the help of the Ottoman Empire and the head of the century-long victimisation of the Serb people by Kosovo Albanians. For his contribution, Bogdanovic, relatively young, succeeded in becoming part of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, which included part of his contribution to her 1986 Memorandum, a Persian pamphlet that served as a theoretical basis for the Milosevic regime. Camaj's separation from his Serbian wife occurred just when her brother radicalised. This may also have happened to the related causes. The final word for this, however, should be said by those who will have the effort to write Camaj's documentary biographies.

Yugoslavianisation of Albanians fleeing Albania has been only one of the methods used by the UDB. There has also been a broader plan to infiltrate Yugoslav secret services throughout Albanian anti-communist migration. All this effort was made in order that in the event of a conflict between Albania and Yugoslavia, driven by Moscow, an Albanian force would be created, which would be listed on the front against the end of the end of the end-of-day regime. In the early 1960 ' s, when the threat of a Soviet aggression over Yugoslavia had passed and Albania itself broke up with Moscow, Tito gave up the activities of infiltrated secret services in Albanian immigration. What has been the efficiency of this infiltrate and who have been the personalities that have fallen into its network, we can only know that the day UDB archives are at the disposal of professional researchers. One thing is known for certain, Albanian anti-communist migration to its overwhelming extent consisted of nationalists, who were not only anti-versary, but also anti-Yugoslav. Albanian nationalists who, after the victory of communism in Albania, left the country in their criticism of Albanian communism repeatedly emphasised the idea that this Communism was a descendant of Yugoslav communism. Camaj and Koliqi naturally belonged to this view. So, logically, they could not act against the communist regime of Tirana by serving the communist regime in Belgrade. In this context, the possibility that they were in service of intelligence agencies of Western countries, which, in addition to divers activities against communist regimes, were also engaged in what is known as “Cold War in the field of culture” The clash between the capitalist West and the Communist East, at its core, also had the ideological component. This meant that the mechanisms of both ideological camps were trying to include intellectuals, writers, artists, people of letters in general.

In 2013 Princeton University had published a series of CIA reports in which it is seen as three leading philosophers of Frankfurt School, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcus and Otto Kirchheimer, during World War II and after that, they had worked in American intelligence services, in the function of their fight against Nazism, and then against communism. All three of these philosophers belonged to the philosophical current known as Western Marxism.

There is another even better - known case. In 1950 the Congress of Cultural Freedom was established in western Berlin. This forum collected well - known names of philosophy and social sciences, which held conferences, symposiums and published articles and works, through which they developed a systematic criticism of the Soviet bloc's communist ideology. Among the names engaged in the activity of this forum were renowned philosophers Carl Jaspers, Raymond Aaron, Bertrant Russell, John Dewey Beneditto Croce, Sidney Hooke, Alfred Ayer, Richard Lowenthal, then historian Arthur Schlestinger, and many others. Years later it was found that this forum was established and financed by the CIA. There were other forms through which the CIA and other Western intelligence services tried to get intellectuals to throw into the fight against Communist ideology. Camaj and Koliqi may have been part of these efforts. This does not make a stain on their biography. A joke would be if they engaged in services that had anti-Albanian purposes. So far we have no evidence of this nature. The evidence we have tells us that Camaj and Koliqi, until they died, worked constantly to confirm their nation's cultural values. This fact proves that they could not be part of the secret games to play at the expense of the Albanian nation, even though the communist regime of Tirana each Albanian who spoke against it tried to brand it a traitor to the nation. And one of the most frequent branding forms has been precisely labelled as UDB collaborators.