Communist leaders in the Clogg Collection
Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the British School at Athens the processing of Richard and Mary Jo Clogg’s Levant Library, which was donated to BSA, is continuing. Project librarian Evgenia Villioti is now working on the part of the collection dedicated to Modern Balkan History.
Here we present two books that are special because they carry handwritten signatures and reflect the donor’s interest in communist regimes across Europe during the 20th century.
The first book, Reflections on China (vol. 1) is written by Enver Hoxha, the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania and Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Albania from 1946 to 1985. The book deals with the Chinese perception of communism from the Albanian perspective. You may find many books written by Enver Hoxha and other communist politicians in the new collection, dealing with their parties’ policies. The signature however belongs to an Albanian historian (possibly Xhevat Lloshi) who donated the book to Prof. Richard Clogg at a conference in 1979.
The second book, Pages from the history of the Romanian army, is a collection of essays dealing with the military history of Romania from the 3rd century AD to the 1970s. It was published during the infamous communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. It is signed by his brother, Deputy Defense Minister, army general and historian, Ilie Ceaușescu, an acquaintance of Richard Clogg in Ankara in 1979. The Levant library includes a great number of books dealing with different periods of Romanian history, starting from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
