Enver Hoxha

A few years after the death of Joseph Stalin, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev had a confidential document uncovered by a Reuters reporter which detailed a series of political reforms that would include dismantling the cult of personality that Stalin had grown during his life. This document didn't just upset those in the USSR who had supported Stalin but also an Albanian man named Enver Hoxha who was a hard core Stalinist. Hoxha (to get an idea on how to pronounce his surname, it rhymes with lodger) was Albania's first communist chief of state and was more than your typical communist stooge. We mean it, he was just about the most reckless!

Hoxha not only left the economy in shambles but he kept all Albanians on a permanent nuclear war footing more than what the main character from When the Wind Blows by the late Raymond Briggs (yes the same chap that wrote The Snowman) and Hoxha did this by having numerous concrete bunkers able to withstand nuclear fallout.

Enver also had the borders shut to prevent Albanians leaving the country and entering it. The cherry on top? Much like Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov, Enver Hoxha barred people from having beards and he had gulags opened to liquidate those with facial hair. Safe to say that we're glad he died in 1985 because he would've become more reckless than he ever was with the hipster communities we have now. Oh and he also had relations with China's Chairman Mao until after his 1976 passing. The communism Albania came down in the early 1990s, over 5 years after Hoxha bit the dust from various previously diagnosed conditions like diabetes and circularity problems.