Albania's transition from totalitarianism to pluralism is a moral renaissance. Every Albanian has to contribute to a new social consciousness, a new ethics. What is the intelligentsia's role? That is my subject.

As a result of the so-called "people's character" of education, one out of every forty-two Albanians has received higher education. But that statistic shows nothing about the role of the intelligentsia in "socialist" society. Its role doesn't depend on numbers.

In Albania, the communist regime treated the intelligentsia as "a loyal auxiliary" of the Party. The Labor Party (the communists) used the intelligentsia as agitators of Marxist Leninist ideology, Albanian science, and "socialist progress." The intelligentsia, more than any other social stratum, worked under the pressure of the Party. Party pressure did not stimulate; it restricted. This, in part, explains the limited impact of the intelligentsia on our society during the communist period.

There is another cause as well: the intellectuals had continuously been prevented from directing the most important fields of social life. The regime had most oppressed professional groups such as writers, artists, researchers, social scientists, teachers, and lawyers. For a long time this merely caused dissatisfaction among them. But, when the opportunity came, lawyers, writers, artists, and physicians were among the first groups to abandon the Party (and communism). This was one factor in the rapid decline of the one party system.

Is political pluralism possible in Albania? Albanian intellectuals started discussing that question some time ago. In the summer of 7990, the Albanian leader, Ramis Alia, organized a meeting with representatives of the intelligentsia. The most distinguished of the intelligentsia asked for more freedom, democracy, and human rights. According to them, political pluralism should be allowed in Albania.

This helped Ramis Alia against the conservatives. But it helped the intellectuals, too What was happening in Albania did not depend any more on the old regime. A dozen thoughtful articles attacking the dictatorship soon appeared in the Albanian press. In the vanguard of dissidents were several famous journalists, writers, physicians, lawyers, and scholars. By December 1990, when political pluralism was legalized in Albania, most intellectuals were in the forefront of the struggle for democracy, not only because they were intellectually and economically oppressed, but because they were conscious that well-educated people have more to gain from a democratic system than do workers or farmers.

December's movement led by the students and professors of Tirana University was at first intellectual and non-populist. But participants soon realized that a merely intellectual movement could not give Albania what a broader people's movement eventually gave it. In Albania back then, the government controlled the press, the chief means of intellectual struggle. Intimidation was widespread. Communist myths and dogmas were still untouched. Only a people's rebellion could overthrow them.

The further development of democracy made the role of the intelligentsia more important, but more difficult. Political parties here try to claim different groups of intellectuals as their own. This has led to the foundation of the Independent Intellectuals Forum and the Liberal Party, both of which claim to be a party of intellectuals. But intellectual tolerance is not yet part of Albanian political habits. Populism sometimes overrules it. Intellectuals have distanced themselves from the populist tendencies of the democratic process and the calls of extreme sides for using violence. They have insisted on peaceful transition to a democratic society.

Albanians move towards national reconciliation is a result of the vision of intellectuals. They have often had to reconstruct or rectify what the parties' blind passions, old quarrels about the division of land or plundering of cultural institutions, have destroyed. The intellectuals have also had to clarify the perspective of small businessmen for whom an hour's income is much more than what an intellectual earns in a day. The hard economic situation of intellectuals is not only a big disadvantage to pluralism and democracy, it also stimulates anarchy and the moral decomposition of society.

The new ethics of social relations is jeopardized by the inertia of traditional dogmas of the former official communist morality and too strict an interpretation of Albanian customs. For example, when Albanian intellectuals started opposition parties, the official propaganda appealed to the Albanian institution of "the promised word:' According to traditional Albanian morality, everyone must keep his promise. (An Albanian myth tells of a dead brother who in order to keep his promise to his mother, got out of the grave and brought her the sister married and living in Bohemia, many mountains and valleys away.)

Communist propaganda exaggerated that institution, hoping to persuade public opinion that leaving one party and joining another one means not to respect, but to abandon, a promise. According to communist propaganda, the national morality is political. That interpretation was strongly criticized not only by intellectuals of the opposition but by several former communist intellectuals who are now members of the Socialist Party.

Despite the majestic victory of the Democratic Party in elections of 22 March, the fruits of democracy cannot be seen yet. The intellectuals seem to be idealists in their efforts for democracy and prosperity. Even the political parties sometimes try to destroy what intellectuals are trying to create. The parties have, for example, resisted the intellectual initiative of national reconciliation. That resistance caused a group of famous Albanian intellectuals to call upon the political parties to judge and act according to a national morality and not a political one.

Insofar as political pluralism has not caused serious conflict at work, in social relations, or within the family, it is because of the intellectuals. A survey carried out in summer 1991, shows that professional groups are the ones least divided by political differences. The deformation of work relations was confirmed by 30% of interviewed intellectuals, the deformation of family life by 7.5%, and the deformation of social behavior only by 3.5% of them. These percentages in the case of workers were 80%, 29% and 25%.