ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores what meant for the many people who carried out religious duties while living under communism. It demonstrates that the relations between the Albanian communist regime and the Albanian Orthodox Church were not static but in constant flux. The book analyzes how the regime gained social support to the point of declaring Albania the only atheist country in the world by 1967. It narrates a story with many voices along with a varied number of actors operating within the Albanian clerical, state, and party structures, whose interaction created fluctuating dynamics, not at all predetermined by any clear vision, which guided the policy of the communist regime towards the country's Orthodox Church.
