When I first arrived in Albania, I lived in Tirana with the family of my Albanian teacher, Rajmonda. During socialism, she and her husband, Qani, had been part of what in other contexts would have been called the middle-class. Rajmonda had been working as a language instructor at the Agricultural University and Qani was a pharmacist with the military. Surely, their background as educated and relatively well-to-do city dwellers colored the anecdote that Qani told me one evening when we were talking about the life of rural people under the socialist regime.

Years ago, Qani explained, he had been stationed in a remote village near Puka in northern Albania. There, he had heard about a cooperative family who committed an audacious act of insubordination. It was rumored that the family had secretly raised a piglet. Roasted, the little pig was meant to be the highlight of their Christmas celebration. In the early 1980s, this information was already scandalous and dangerous for those involved. Not only was the family obliged to hand over all offspring of their one sow to the cooperative, but celebrating Christmas was illegal because the government had outlawed all religious practices.

There was even more to the story. According to Qani, the family was running a great risk because at times the cooperative leadership sent inspectors to check for the illegal possession of livestock. Those convicted of such acts faced imprisonment in one of the notorious forced labor camps, and their families were “de-classed” (deklasuar).