children did not enjoy the same rights to higher education and other
opportunities open to the other classes. Discriminatory measures against
this class continued to be taken in the late 1960s; in 1968, for
instance, the government passed a law prohibiting them from receiving
money remittances or food and clothing packages from their relatives and
friends abroad.

The Communist assertion of the existence of only two social classes did
not correspond to the real class structure that prevailed in the country
in 1970. In fact, there existed different classes and gradations of rank
and privilege, beginning with an upper class, composed of the Party
elite, leaders of the state and mass organizations, and the leading
members of the armed and security forces. The top Party elite itself was
composed of two distinct social groupings, the higher group consisting
of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of eleven regular and five candidate
members and the chiefs of the Directorates of the Central Committee the
lower group being made up of the rank-and-file members of the Central
Committee.

Family connections played a key role in the composition of the Politburo
in 1970. The top three families were those of First Party Secretary
Enver Hoxha and his wife Nexhmije, who headed the Directorate of
Education and Culture in the Central Committee; Prime Minister Mehmet
Shehu and his wife, Fiqrete, who headed the top Party school; and Party
Secretary Hysni Kapo and his wife, Vito, who headed the politically and
ideologically important women's organization. General Kadri
Hasbiu--minister of interior, head of the security forces, and a
Politburo candidate member--was a brother-in-law of Mehmet Shehu.
Similar family relationships existed between the other Politburo
members. About half of the sixty-one members of the Central Committee
were also related.

Just below the Politburo and the Central Committee were the vast Party
and government bureaucracy, professional people and intellectuals, and
managers of state industrial and agricultural enterprises. There were
some basic social differences between the top Party elite and the lower
Party functionaries and state officials in terms of privileges,
influence, authority, and responsibility. This group of lower Party and
state officials was bound together by the economic privileges and
prestige that went with their positions and membership in, or sympathy
for, the Party; they all benefited from the