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Albania: Communism, capitalism, chaos

We Are History

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The Cost of Baruchia's Siege

In the mid-90s, Albania was seduced by pyramid schemes that looked too good to be true. The new leader behaved increasingly like an autocrat, not allowing any criticism of him. He drafted a new constitution which would strengthen his own power as president but couldn't get through parliament. And he lost that badly despite lots of dodgy manipulation,. Which made him even more determined to fix the next elections in 1996. But all this began with the pyramid buying schemes that had quickly gripped the country in the mid-1990s - and then they collapsed.

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