Liri Gega

Liri Gega (1917 – December 1956) was an Albanian communist activist and politician. The only female founder member of the Communist Party of Albania, she was one of the first group of women elected to parliament in 1945. However, she was later executed after being accused of being a Yugoslavian agent.

Biography Gega was born in Gjirokastër in 1917, to Asija and Beso Gega, a pharmacist and mayor of the town. Her father’s roots may be from northern Albania as the surname Gega represents Ghegs usually. After graduating from the Queen Mother Pedagogical Institute in Tirana, she won a state scholarship to study in Florence. However, she was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned for nearly two years. In the same year she became secretary general of the Anti-Fascist Women's Union and the Anti-Fascist Youth Union. 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. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed that Gega was pregnant at the time.