Lay Out Your Military Usage Questions

[BishopofBling]

Kind of late getting in on this thread, but just wanted to say thanks to Bishop of bling for all the follow up and information. It has been a good read.

No problem man, unfortunately not much has been written on the SKS compared to say German Mausers or M1 Garands so its always good when we can gather info somewhere.

[Steve2021]

The Albanian SKS has been called the ‘July 10th’ rifle here in the states.  Is there a significance to that date in the context of 1990 or 1997?  Wikipedia and my limited knowledge of the events of that time (I was 15 in ‘90 and still in high school) don’t really say much about that date.

This page calls 10 July, "Army Day"...

https://www.national-day.com/albania-national-day/

[running-man]

Interesting.  Using that as a basis for a google search, I found this document:

http://sks-files.com/Pictures/Albanian/misc/19620710_situation_report.pdf

If July 10, 1962 was the 19th anniversary of the founding of the Albanian People's Army, they would have been founded in ~'43?  Looks like that time period was right at the end of Italian occupation before the Germans moved in. 

Wikipedia has this to say about that time period:

The NLM formally established the National Liberation Army (NLA) in July 1943 with Spiro Moisiu as its military chief and Enver Hoxha as its political officer. It had 20,000 regular soldiers and guerrillas in the field by that time. However, the NLA's military activities in 1943 were directed as much against the party's domestic political opponents, including prewar liberal, nationalist, and monarchist parties, as against the occupation forces.[17]

[BishopofBling]

It's nuts, I recommend From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World by Elidor Mëhilli. He is an Albanian historian living in the US and the book outlines a pretty good history about the background of the party and the alignment with the different camps.

You have to be careful with Albanian communist history as official sources at the time would constantly rewrite history such as butting out the effort Yugoslavia took to help rebuild the country.