The LPK was formed in the early 1980s, during the turmoil which would bring the Albanian population of Yugoslavia to wider attention. During the 1981 protests in Kosovo, protesters demanded that Kosovo become a republic within the Yugoslav Federation. The movement was crystallized on Feb 17th, 1982, in Switzerland, as a Marxist-Leninist union of Albanian diaspora organizations with support and sympathy for/from the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, struggling for the rights of Albanians throughout Yugoslavia and unification with Albania, originally named LRSHJ, to be renamed later as PMK.