regime and enjoyed
educational and economic advantages denied the rest of the population.
Below this group were the rank-and-file Party members, whose leadership
role was constitutionally guaranteed. Aside from the prestige enjoyed as
Party members, however, their privileges and economic benefits did not
differ much from the next class in Communist structure of Albanian
society, namely the workers.

Constituting about 15 percent of the total population, the working
class, styled by the regime as the leading class, was created mostly
after the Communist seizure of power and was composed almost wholly of
peasant stock. This group, probably more so than the peasant masses, has
been under constant pressure to work harder, to produce more, and to
work longer, often even after their normal schedules were completed.
Although the regular work schedule was eight hours, workers were called
upon to perform volunteer labor and to overfulfill norms. There was very
little chance for rest and recreation.

Before 1967 the workers could take advantage of religious holidays,
which provided some time for recreation, but since then all religious
holidays have been banned. The only legal holidays were New Year's Day;
Republic Day, on January 11; May Day; Army Day, on July 10; and
Independence and Liberation Days, on November 28 and 29, respectively.
There were, however, a few local socialist holidays connected with the
liberation of the areas by the partisan formations in 1944. The workers
also received two-week paid vacations annually.

The largest class, that of the peasants, represented about two-thirds of
the total population and, according to Communist dogma, was allied with
the working class and led by it. The regime's policy of complete
agricultural collectivization has been distressing for the peasant
class. A lover of his land, irrespective of its size, and of his
independence, the peasant was deprived of his farmland, except for a
tiny plot, and herded into a collective. His income in the collective
was only on the subsistence level. Collective peasants were called upon
to perform 300 to 350 workdays a year.

A constant complaint of the regime has been that the peasants have not
been "freed from the psychology of the small owner, the concept of
private property." As of 1970 there were actually no social differences
between the workers and peasants because nearly all the workers were of
peasant stock and still had close ties w