In 1991, protesters toppled a massive statue to end decades of isolationist rule

On February 20, 1991, a massive crowd of students and citizens gathered in Albania's Skanderbeg Square to challenge the remnants of a hardline communist regime. They successfully pulled down a thirty-foot bronze statue of Enver Hoxha, the dictator who had kept the nation in total isolation for forty years. The falling of the monument became the definitive symbol for the birth of Albanian democracy.