Liri Gega

Gega was born in Gjirokastër in 1917,[1] to Asija and Beso Gega, a pharmacist and mayor of the town. After graduating from the Queen Mother Pedagogical Institute in Tirana,[2] she won a state scholarship to study in Florence. However, she was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned for nearly two years.[1]

She was the only female founder member of the Communist Party in 1941 and became a member of its politburo in March 1943.[1] During the Congress of Përmet in May 1944 she was elected to the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council.[3] In the same year she became secretary general of the Anti-Fascist Women's Union and the Anti-Fascist Youth Union.[1] In August 1944 she murdered fellow politburo member Mustafa Gjinishi under orders from Yugoslavian communists after he had made an agreement with the anti-communist Balli Kombëtar.[1] She was subsequently removed from the politburo in November, although she remained head of the Women's Union until 1946.[1]

Gega contested the December 1945 parliamentary elections in the Vlorë constituency, and was one of three women elected to the Constituent Assembly alongside Naxhije Dume and Ollga Plumbi.[1][4] She married Dali Ndreu the following year. At a meeting of the Communist Party's central committee in 1948, Gega was accused of sympathising with separatists in northern Albania, political terror and sectarianism.[1] This was a result of her opposition to eliminating the units that had operated in the area following the end of World War II.[1] She was removed from the Assembly and subsequently worked as a teacher. In 1956 she and her husband were arrested while trying to leave Albania. She was charged with collaboration and the couple were executed for being 'Titoist agents'.[5] Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed that Gega was pregnant at the time.[6]