LJUBLJANA, Slovenia ¨C Lea Ypi¡¯s ¡°Free: Coming of Age at the End of History¡± has met with a hostile reception in her home country of Albania, and it is easy to see why.
Her self-description as a ¡°Marxist Albanian professor of political theory at the London School of Economics¡± says it all.
Reading Ypi¡¯s book, I was struck by the parallel between her life and that of Viktor Kravchenko, the Soviet official who defected while visiting New York in 1944. His famous bestselling memoir, ¡°I Chose Freedom,¡± became the first substantial eyewitness account of the horrors of Stalinism, beginning with its detailed description of the Holodomor (famine) in Ukraine in the early 1930s. Still a true believer at the time, Kravchenko had participated in enforcing collectivization and therefore knew of what he spoke.
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