Albania
From RationalWiki
Albania is a country in southeastern Europe.
It was invaded by Italy (under Benito Mussolini's fascist regime) in 1939, who set up a puppet government. From the end of World War II to 1985 it had a communist government led by Enver Hoxha, who was so extreme he denounced the Soviet Union as insufficiently communist and led his country into near-isolation from the rest of the world except for his sole ally, China. He would go on to denounce and cut off ties with China too after he decided Mao's "Cultural Revolution" was anti-communist revisionism.
Albania began introducing small reforms after Hoxha's death in 1985, and fully democratized after 1990.
In 1996-97, a series of pyramid schemes took hold in Albania which led to rioting and the near-collapse of the government when these schemes imploded.
Albania is the only European country with a majority population of Muslim heritage (some would include Turkey in Europe). During the latter part of Hoxha's reign starting in 1967 religion was officially banned, so demographic surveys dating from this period often show the country as 70%+ atheist or agnostic[1] which may result from the period of official state atheism from 1967 to 1992.
