ABSTRACT
After the changes at the head of the AOCA, Archbishop Paisi Vodica and his supporters took great care to consolidate their power and transform the Orthodox Church into an organization that unreservedly supported Albania's communist regime. The accomplishment of this process was not without tension: a rival faction with solid ties to the regime openly challenged the new archbishop's authority. Indeed, during the 1950s, despite the intervention of state authorities, the AOCA remained deeply divided between rival factions, and the archbishop failed to fully impose his will on his flock. Meanwhile, until 1953 the AOCA actively took part in the organized activities of the Russian Patriarchate, which was serving as a lever of foreign policy for the Albanian communist regime. After Stalin's death in 1953—and especially after Khrushchev came to power—the importance of the Russian Church in Soviet foreign policy declined, a change which also diminished the role of the AOCA in the eyes of the Albanian communist regime. As a result of the unwillingness of the Albanian communist leadership to continue to use the Orthodox Church as a tool of foreign policy, throughout the second half of the 1950s the AOCA became increasingly isolated from its Orthodox siblings in the Soviet bloc.
