Koçi Xoxe

The Soviets wanted to paint Tito as the mastermind of anti-Marxist and anti-Albanian activities with the trials of Xoxe and the others. Xoxe was tortured in prison repeatedly until he confessed to conspiring with Tito against the Albanian government. In May 1949, he was placed on trial where he confessed to having been recruited by Ahmet Zogu, as well as British intelligence and that Tito was an agent of the west. Xoxe was sentenced to death and was hanged on June 11, 1949.

Tito planned to send two army divisions into Albania under the pretense of protecting it from a Greek invasion, a move that angered Moscow. He then pushed Xoxe to convene a meeting of the Central Committee where he expelled Hoxha’s supporters and pushed a motion to combine Albania’s economy and military with Yugoslavia’s. Hoxha fought back with Soviet support and cancelled his agreements with Yugoslavia and expelled the country’s advisors. Xoxe attempted to save himself by declaring his support for the Soviet Union and arresting supporters of Tito in the government. The Central Committee, however, flipped on Xoxe, stripping him of his posts and expelling him from the party. In November 1948, he and many others were arrested.

Around 1937 he emerged among others, such as Enver Hoxha and Koço Tashko, as prominent leaders of communist Albania.

Koçi Xoxe (pronounced [ˈkɔtʃi ˈdzɔdzɛ]; 1 May 1911 – 11 June 1949) was an Albanian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania. He was supported by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito during efforts to bring Albania into the Yugoslav federation. After Albania's leader, Enver Hoxha, established the country's independence with the support of the Soviet Union, Xoxe was arrested, tortured and executed.

Xoxe was born in 1911 in Negovan, near Florina in Greece, back then part of the Manastir Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. Negovan (today Flampouro/Φλάμπουρο) had a majority of Orthodox Albanians, many of whom sided with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and a minority of Aromanians (Vlachs). According to some sources, Xoxe was an ethnic Macedonian or ethnic Bulgarian from Aegean Macedonia and was initially a tinsmith.