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The inter-war period was a phase of political and economic instability in Albania's history. Prior to the introduction of the Albanian Lek* in 1926, Albania did not have its own currency; the Ottoman piastre was in full circulation before the First World War, and it was then replaced by the gold Franc in the 1920s. In the inter-war period, the value of Albanian imports and exports had generally been on the rise until the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. This saw the value of Albania's imports and exports fall greatly over the next five years, to less than a third of their 1929 level. There was some recovery in the late 1930s, before Italy's annexation of the region in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War.

Data becomes available again after the Second World War, and is shown in Albanian Lek. From here until the mid-1960s, Albania became a satellite state and dependency of the Soviet Union (as tensions rose with neighboring Yugoslavia), although relations frayed in the wake of Stalin's death in 1953. At the end of the 1950s, Albania played a surprisingly large role in the Sino-Soviet split; as both sides attempted to curry favor with as many communist countries as possible. Albania eventually split with the Soviets in 1961 and sided with Mao Zedong's China; this transition is one explanation for the trends shown in the final years of the data.