Education
He held that position after having studied some medicine in Italy.
He held that position after having studied some medicine in Italy.
In 1924, a 23 years old Malëshova was Fan Noli"s personal secretary. In 1930-1932 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but was subsequently expelled as a Bukharinist. He used to appear as a self-proclaimed rebel poet of the guerrilla war against the Italian and German occupying armies in Albania, and became known by his pen name Lame Kodra.
In 1945, he was appointed Minister of Culture and Propaganda.
In the same year, he was elected president of the newly founded Albanian League of Writers and Artists, which consisted of seventy-four members initially, with several non-communist intellectuals among them. The League took over the publication of well-known Albanian literature Drita magazine.
Malëshova had emerged as a moderate communist, often inviting publications without regard to their ideological content, which brought him the wrath of Enver Hoxha, particularly after an appeal by the Writers League to Harry Truman and Clement Attlee for Western recognition of Albania. In 1946, Hoxha accused Malëshova of "rightist deviation" and expelled him from the communist party.
Following his dismissal, a persecution against the writers ensued, many of whom were harassed and imprisoned by the communist authorities.
Malëshova spent the rest of his life as a warehouseman in Fier, shunned by almost all fellow citizens. If anyone dared speak to him, he would pinch his lips with his fingers, to remind the vow of eternal silence which would ensure his survival. He died an outcast in 1971.
After Noli"s government was overthrown, Malëshova fled to Paris and then to Moscow, where he studied and then taught Marxism.
He became a charter member of the Albanian Communist Party and a member of its Political Bureau prior until 1946.