Kelmendi, Ali

Born 1900 in Peć, Serbia; died Feb. 11, 1939. One of the organizers of the communist movement in Albania. The son of a poor peasant.

Kelmendi fought with the insurgent forces in the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Albania in June 1924. In December 1924, after the defeat of the revolution, he emigrated to Italy, then to Austria, and finally to the Soviet Union, where he joined an Albanian communist group. In 1930 he returned to Albania, where he helped organize communist groups and was repeatedly arrested. In 1936 he was exiled from the country. He continued revolutionary activity in emigration.