„THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”: MEMORY, DIPLOMACY, AND THE BRITISH MILITARY CEMETERY IN TIRANA FROM THE COLD WAR TO POST-COMMUNIST TRANSITION
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2026, N 1, pp. 50-77
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62761/645.EB.LXII1.02
Klejd KELLICI 
University of Tirana, Albania
Abstract: Anyone strolling by the Frashлri Brothers Memorial, in the Lake Park, in Tirana encounters a small space enclosed by metal railings. At its center rises a granite monument, on the base of which several commemorative stelae are placed. This memorial ensemble, known in everyday language as the English Cemetery and officially listed as the Tirana Park Memorial Cemetery, belongs to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), a United Kingdom agency that administers around 25,000 burial sites worldwide, including the one in Tirana. Inaugurated in 1995, the cemetery houses the remains of soldiers of the former British Empire who fell on Albanian territory during the Second World War. This study aims not only to reconstruct the process through which this cemetery was established, but, above all, to situate it within the political and cultural context of the Cold War and Albania’s transition to democracy. Historically, the construction of this monumental cemetery marks a clear dividing line that corresponds to the beginning and end of the Cold War in the country: the establishment and the collapse of the dictatorship. As such, it reflects the phases of deep isolation and hostility toward the West, but also the processes of opening up, re-establishing international relations, and Albania’s symbolic return to Europe – particularly when this development is read in continuity with the anti-regime movements that swept across Eastern Europe. The study draws on Albanian archival sources as well as CWGC documentation.
Keywords: dead bodies, Cold War, British soldiers, political transition