Dusan T.Batakovic. The Kosovo Chronicles Published by PLATO, Beograd 1992. Translated to English by Dragana Vulicevic Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION by Milan St. Protic PART ONE: HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY THE KOSOVO AND METOHIA QUESTION Ethnic Strife and the Communist Rule The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept in dealing with the ethnic question The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war (1941-1945) Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and Metohia Centralism in Yugoslavia and the role of the secret police in Kosovo and Metohia Kosovo and Metohia in the transition from the centralist to the federal model The epilogue of the communist solution to the ethnic question in Yugoslavia: the example of Kosovo Continuity and discontinuity KOSOVO AND METOHIA: A HISTORICAL SURVEY The Age of Ascent The Age of Tribulation The Age of Migrations The Age of Oppression The Age of Restoration The Age of Communism PART TWO: THEOCRACY, NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM FROM THE SERBIAN REVOLUTION TO THE EASTERN CRISIS: 1804-1875 The Serbian Insurrection and Pasha-Outlaws Time of Reforms in Turkey Pogroms in Metohia Population Political Action of Serbia Restoration of Religious and Cultural Life The Economy ENTERING THE SPHERE OF EUROPEAN INTEREST Eastern Crisis and the Serbian-Turkish Wars The Albanian League Court-Martial in Pristina Albanians Under the Sultan's Protection Activities of the Serbian Government Flaring of Anarchy Religious, Educational and Economic Conditions The Decline in Population ANARCHY AND GENOCIDE UPON THE SERBS Serbia's Diplomatic Actions Austria-Hungary and the Expansion of Anarchy Failure of Reforms Young Turk Regime LIBERATION OF KOSOVO AND METOHIA Albanian Incursions into Serbia In World War One SERBIAN GOVERNMENT AND ESSAD PASHA TOPTANI PART THREE: RELIGION AND CIVILISATION KOSOVO AND METOHIA: CLASH OF NATIONS OR CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS FIGURES: Otoman Vilayets Serbia 1804-1913 Comunist Yugoslavia: Federal Organization Settling of Albanian Tribes AUTHOR: Dusan T. Batakovic (born 1957) is one of the distinguished Serbian historians. He works in Historical Institute of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts as Research Fellow. Among dozens of articles on Serbian and Balkan history, he had published several books: Savremenici o Kosovu i Metohiji 1852-1912 (Contemporaries on Kosovo and Metohia 1852-1912), Belgrade 1988; Kolubarska bitka (Battle of Kolubara), Belgrade 1989; Decansko pitanje (The Decani Question), Belgrade 1989; Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji (Kosovo and Metohia in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989 (co-author); Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaskim odnosima (Kosovo and Metohia in Serbo-Albanian Relations), Belgrade 1991; and edited Memoirs of Gen. P. Draskic, Belgrade 1990 and Portraits by V. Corovic, Belgrade 1990. This book is the collection of his articles on major topics of history of Kosovo and Metohia and its recent political consequences. Dusan T. Batakovic THE KOSOVO CHRONICLES Izdavac: Knjizara Plato, Beograd, Cika Ljubina 18-20 Za izdavaca Branislav Gojkovic Urednik Ivan Colovic Recenzenti: Prof. dr Radovan Samardzic i dr Milan St. Protic Beograd, 1992. INDEX 215 THE HISTORY CARDS OF KOSOVO CHRONICLES 219 - 222 QP- Katalogizacija u publikaciji Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Beograd 949.711.5 BATAKOVIC, Dusan T. [Kosovo Chronicles] The Kosovo Chronicles / Dusan T. Batakovic; prevela na engleski Dragana Vulicevic. -Beograd: Knjizara Plato, 1992 | (Beograd: Vojna stamparija). - 218 Str.; 20 cm. - (Biblioteka Na tragu) Tiraz 1000 - Registar. ISBN86-447-0006-5 a) Kosovo i Metohija - Istorija 4986380 INTRODUCTION by Milan St. Protic The modern history of Serbia is indeed pregnant with controversial questions. Probably the most complex one is the history of -- Kosovo and Metohia. It was only in the last few years that several historiographical works on Kosovo and Metohia had been written and published. The pioneer in this field which deals with a particularly important segment of Serbia's past and present is undoubtedly the author of this book. This is trully the first serious attempt to cover two centuries of history of Kosovo and Metohia and to present its complex historical development in its full. In a series of articles dealing with various problems of Kosovo and Metohia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the author definitely succeeded to make a complete picture of Kosovo and Metohia's troubled history. It seems appropriate, therefore, to name his book -- The Kosovo Chronicles. The diversity of various topics which form the collection most clearly shows that the author is the master of the subject he chose to write about. Mr. Batakovic presented himself as a mature historian of the Balkan history as a whole as much as the sharp analyst of one specific aspect of it. One cannot but to welcome this book. For two major reasons at least. First, for its wide-angle approach to the problem. And second, for its attempt to avoid typical black and white stereotypes. Kosovo and Metohia undoubtedly belong to the corpus of the Serbian history. No question about that. It was the cradle and the center of the medieval Serbian state, it was the region won by the Serbian army from the Turks in the First Balkan War (1912), it was incorporated in the Serbian state territory and thus had entered into Yugoslavia in 1918. It was only after the victory of the Communist Revolution in Yugoslavia that the question of Kosovo emerged as a separate problem outside and even against Serbia. That was the moment in which the political position of Kosovo and Metohia moved away from Serbia and became a problem of Albanian national rights in the eyes of very many foreign and Yugoslav observers. That crucial borderline was rightfully pointed out by the author of this volume. From the standpoint of form, this book represents a collection of articles. It is comprised of two major parts. The first entitled, named History and Ideology, treats the problem of Kosovo and Metohia, within the framework of the Yugoslav unified state, during the World War Two and the Communist rule since 1945. The second Theocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism deals with the different aspects of the 19th century history of Kosovo and Metohia until the Yugoslav unification of Yugoslavia. The second part of Mr. Batakovic's book covers the period in which this particular area belonged to the state territory of the Ottoman Empire, in which the ethnic Serbs were subjects of constant pressures and abuses by the Ottoman administrators and, much more, by ethnic Albanians who, under the Turkish protection, conducted a real terror over the Serbs. The difference between the Christian Serbs fighting for their national emancipation against the oriental Islamic and oppressive regime of the Ottomans. As the Ottoman system crumbled within itself, its peripheral provinces became areas of abuse rule of the local population. The local Albanians, also Muslims for the most part, found the best way to suppress the Serbs by putting themselves in the service of the Turkish authorities. The author's archival findings clearly proved what was really happening in Kosovo and Metohia during the 19th century and what were the true origins of ethnic clashes in that particular area. This part of Mr. Batakovic's volume represents, in fact, a comprehensive history of Kosovo and Metohia during the 19th century, starting from the First Serbian Insurrection against the Turks (1804) to the First Balkan War (1912) when, after the victory of the Serbian army, the region of Kosovo and Metohia had been incorporated in the bulk of the Serbian state. It is essentially a historical analysis of complex ethnic, religious and political relations in the triangle Serbs-Turks-Albanians based on a rather deep archival and documentary research. The author managed to trace down the roots of these conflicts, their nature and development. Parallel to this, he gave the historical background for the events which occurred in the 20th century, when the problem of Kosovo and Metohia reached its peak in both, crisis and international attention. This segment of book should serve as a textbook of Kosovo and Metohia's history to everyone who is interested in this particular field. Mr. Batakovic's collection of articles contains several synthetical pieces written on the subject of the history of Kosovo and Metohia. This region of constant clashes needed to be defined in terms of general categories. In an attempt to discover the real nature of those conflicts the author searched for the answer to the following questions: what really lays in the bottom of centuries long clashes in the history of Kosovo and Metohia, is that the conflict of religions, nations or civilizations? One will find the author's answers both original and inspiring. Contradictory problems need to be thought about. And that is exactly what Mr. Batakovic has done. A special attention should be paid to the article entitled "The Kosovo And Metohia Question - ethnic strife and communist rule". It stands as the pivotal piece among all other articles in this book. It is at the same time the most important and the most complex attempt to analyze the situation in Kosovo in Metohia in the last fifty years, since the communists took over in Yugoslavia. This is the first time in Serbian and Yugoslav historiography that someone tried to look on the Kosovo and Metohia question outside the framework of political and ideological clichs. The article of Mr. Batakovic represents a pioneer work in a noncommunist approach to contemporary history of Kosovo and Metohia. Trying to see the problem in the realm of communist regime and its policies in Yugoslavia, and in Serbia specifically, the author found a whole new field of research and reasoning. With strong foundations in his knowledge of Kosovo and Metohia's history, both distant and recent, Mr. Batakovic made a successful synthesis of Serbo-Albanian misunderstandings in Kosovo and Metohia, finding a balance between contemporary politics and traditional differences between ethnicities living in this region. His final conclusion that the Titoist politics had been detrimental to the positive solution of this serious problem seems persuasive and largely acceptable. One should appreciate the courage of the author to tackle such a complicated question of history and politics which touches the very essence of the present day Serbia and Yugoslavia. Mr. Batakovic's writing should contribute in clarifying many problems which had been heavily misinterpreted in recent years, both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Escaping numerous traps of Marxist historiography and reasoning, the author leads us on the road of new and modern way of thinking about nationalism and statehood. By combining historical analysis and archival research with original synthesis, the author left us with a lot of vastly unknown factography and even more conclusions and assertations which inspire further work and thoughts. The author of this volume belongs to the new generation of Serbian historians. To the generation whose intellectual and professional maturity presently shows itself in full intensity. It is a general hope that these young people will drive Serbia out of Marxist dogmas not only in their intellectual work but also in everyday politics. The book we have before us is one of those important steps in the direction of modern, non-ideological view of our past and present. Milan St. Protic PART ONE: HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY THE KOSOVO AND METOHIA QUESTION Ethnic Strife and the Communist Rule In the 20th-century history of the two southern regions of Serbia -- Kosovo and Metohia -- there are two periods that are clearly separated by ideological borders. In the first period (1912-1941), in the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, ethnic issues were mainly dealt with in keeping with the civic standards of inter-war Europe, notwithstanding the suffering endured during the war and latent political instability. Compared to ethnic minorities in other countries, the ethnic Albanian minority in Kosovo and Metohia, despite its open antagonism towards the state, was not in an particularly unfavorable position. By Saint-Germain Treaty (1919) minorities on Serbian territory within borders of 1913 (including Kosovo and Metohia), were formally excluded from international protection but it was not particularly used against interests of ethnic Albanians in Serbia.1 In the second period, commencing with the war (1941-1945) and concluded after the establishment of communism in Yugoslavia (1945), the question of Kosovo and Metohia was dealt with in keeping with the Party leadership's ideological stands regarding the ethnic question. Precisely during this period solutions were found providing strong impetus to the old ethnic conflict between Serbs and Albanians, causing deep rifts difficult to surmount today. Ethnic tension in Kosovo and Metohia thus offers a paradigmatic example of the ability of the communist rule to completely change the demographic picture of an area by instrumentalizing existing ethnic differences. Kosovo and Metohia, and entire Yugoslavia for that matter, depended on the rule of the communist leadership, which cunningly used the manipulation of ethnic differences to consolidate and maintain power. The national policy of the Yugoslav communists was an ideological and national negation of the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which the Serbs saw as their own - the heir to the political traditions and democratic institutions of the Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbs posed the greatest threat for Yugoslav communists in number and political affiliation: to them, communism was a foreign ideology viewed slightingly, as a vogue of the small-in-number deluded youth; but recognized during the war as the gravest threat to independence and freedom. The communists regarded the Serbs as a nation with strong politically constructive traditions and a pronounced national conscience who, spread through the length and breadth of Yugoslav territory, had learned to conduct foreign policy on their own, without tangible foreign support, a nation united by a single Orthodox Church - the bearer of an anti-Soviet mood in the country. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) drafted its followers among the Serbs chiefly from the lower social strata (especially patriarchal communities in Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia and Vojna Krajina) unestablished in Serbian state and political traditions, people who in the name of idealistic Yugoslavism and proletarian internationalism rejected Serbian interests and blindly obeyed the orders of the Titoist leadership. The Albanians, a people whose national integration fell a whole century behind those of the other Balkan nations, remained in communist Yugoslavia against their will, but found a common interest with the ruling communist party in an anti-Serbian policy via which to achieve their national goals. Time was to pass for the backward ethnic Albanian milieu to admit its new authorities and for the CPY to come to terms with representatives of the ethnic Albanian minority. The question of Kosovo and Metohia was thus dealt with in the inter-relation of three gravity centers of political forces -1. the CPY leadership as the leading factor of might in the country; 2. the ethnic Albanian national movement which had evident continuity despite the ideological affiliation of its bearers; 3. Serbian communists who, though numerically superior in the army, party and politics, as Yugoslavs and internationalists consistently implemented the Titoist policy. The origin of this relation can be seen in the chronological sequence of developments of the CPY's national policy under different political and international conditions. 1 R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova. Politicko-pravna studija, Beograd 1985, pp. 100-105. The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept in dealing with the ethnic question There is evident continuity in the CPY's policy in dealing with the position of ethnic minorities which shows that, despite individual aberrations due to the position of communist Yugoslavia in foreign policy, basic political principles, outlined in party programs and resolutions in the inter-war period, were consistently implemented. The CPY coordinated its program of solutions to the ethnic question in the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the general stands of the Third International (Comintern), within the framework of which it acted as a separate section, as its work was prohibited in the country. The Comintern was an important lever of Soviet foreign policy. The Comintern's attitude towards the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was determined by the Soviet policy towards the "Versailles system" of states created under imperialistic peace accords" after World War I, in which enemies of the Bolshevik regime - Great Britain and France - were dominant. The Fifth Congress of the Comintern (1924) abandoned the principle of a federal restructuring of states, created as a cordon sanitaire primarily as a defense against the "proletariat revolution" and a struggle against the Soviet Union, with the explanation that "western imperialists" were preparing an assault on the "first country of socialism". The new political platform's starting point was to break up the cordon surrounding the Soviet Union by singling out and rendering independent the oppressed nations among those states in the enemy camp, including the Kingdom of Yugoslavia - the right of Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia to separation was emphasized, and a special resolution stressed the need to aid the movements of the oppressed nations for the formation of their independent states and "for the liberation of the Albanians". The policy of the Yugoslav authorities had some effect on the Comintern's stand towards Yugoslavia: the royal authorities had failed to recognize the new Soviet state and provided shelter to a large number of Russian emigrants and White Guard military units in the 20s, including the troops of General Vrangel, while Russian societies frequently greeted their patron, King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic (related to the Romanov dynasty through his sister Jelena and his Montenegrin aunts), as the new Slavic tsar. The CPY, and the Comintern, advocated the stand that the state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was an unnatural creation which cannot be regarded as a homogeneous national state (comprising three tribes which make up a nation) with a few ethnic minorities, but a state wherein the ruling class of one (Serbian) nation was oppressing the other nations. The thesis on a Greater Serbian bourgeoisie and Greater Serbian hegemony owed much to the theses of the Austro-Hungarian public opinion prior to and during World War I, whereby the Greater Serbian threat posed a chief obstacle to the stabilization of political conditions in the Balkans. Similar stands, only with a more pronounced ideological component, can be found in the works of Austro-Marxists whence such stereotypes were taken and constructed into the views of the Third International regarding the ethnic question in the Balkans.1 The policy to break up Kingdom of Yugoslavia culminated in the decisions of the CPY's Fourth Congress, held in Dresden in 1928. The statement that about one-third of the Albanian nation had remained under the rule of the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie, which was implementing the same oppressive regime" against it as in Macedonia, was supplemented by the stand that its liberation and unification with Albania can be achieved only in a joint struggle with the CPY. With regard to this, support was extended to the Kosovo Committee, an organization of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia who, aided by the Albanian government and Mussolini, raided Yugoslav territory with the aim of winning the annexation of Kosovo, Metohia and western Macedonia to Albania. Tens of thousands of Serbian colonists - chiefly volunteers in World War I and indigent families from Montenegro, Vojna Krajina and Dalmatia, were sealed by the party press as servants of the Greater Serbian policy, although the land they were allotted was not taken from ethnic Albanians. Similar stands were reitered at the Fourth National Conference of the CPY held in Ljubljana in 1934, which stressed the assessment that the Yugoslav kingdom was nothing but the "occupation of Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbian troops" and that it was thus imperative to execute the "persecution of Serbian Chetniks from Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Vojvodina, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo". Renouncing these regions any Serbian character at all, the CPY believed that these provinces should be organized as separate federal units within the frame of a future communist Yugoslavia. The stand to break up Yugoslavia was changed in 1935, when the Comintern established a new course of struggle of the "national front" against the danger looming from Nazism and Fascism in Europe.2 The CPY abandoned its decision on the annexation of Kosovo and Metohia to Albania in 1940, at the Fifth National Conference in Zagreb, at a time when Albania had been under Italian occupation for a year, but even then, the "colonialist methods of the Serbian bourgeoisie" were condemned and the need for the creation of a separate republic of Kosovo emphasized - "the ethnic problem can be resolved by the forming of a free labor-peasant republic of Kosovo after the Greater Serbian fascist and imperialist regime is overthrown".3 By demonizing Serbian domination in Yugoslavia, Yugoslav communists distinguished less and less the bourgeoisie from the people - thus the idea to form a separate party for Serbia was abandoned, although party organizations for the other Yugoslav provinces were formed. Maintaining such a stand, the CPY received Nazi Germany's attack on Yugoslavia in April, 1941. 1 K. Cavoski, KPJ i kosovsko pitanje, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, Beograd 1988, pp. 361-381. Cf documents in: Istorijski arhiv Komunisticke partije Jugoslavije, Beograd 1949, vol. I-II, passim; Komunisticka internacionala, Gornji Milanovac 1982, vol. VIII, passim. 2 K, Cavoski, op. cit., pp. 365-369. 3 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, p. 321 The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war (1941-1945) The Kosovo and Metohia question was raised again when the flames of war spread on April 6,1941, throughout Yugoslavia: its army was forced to unconditional capitulation 11 days later and its territory divided among Hitler's allies. Owing to their loyalty to old allies France and Great Britain, and for fomenting a putsch on March 27, 1941 (thereby practically canceling any agreement with the Axis powers), the Serbs were punished as the Third Reich's chief enemy in the Balkans by a division of the Serbian territories: most of Kosovo along with Metohia, western Macedonia and fringing areas of Montenegro were allotted to Albania, which had been under Italian occupation for two years. Bulgaria was given a small part of Kosovo, while its northern parts entered the composition of Serbia where a German protectorate was established. Under a decree by King Vittorio Emmanuele, dated August 12, 1941, Greater Albania was founded. An Albanian voluntary militia numbering 5,000 men - Vulnetari - was set up in Kosovo and Metohia to assist the Italian forces in maintaining order, but which carried out surprise attacks on the Serbian population on its own. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia, who were declared by Italian and communist propagandas as victims of Greater Serbian hegemony, received, besides the right to hoist their own flag, the right to open schools in their mother tongue. The patriarchal and tribal ethnic Albanian society in Metohia and Kosovo, accustomed to extreme subordination and absolute submission to the local land holders, received the new order wholeheartedly. The destruction of the Yugoslav state, which they never took as their own, was received with vindictive ardor. In the first few months of the occupation, some ten thousand colonist houses were burned in night raids and their owners and families expelled. Colonist estates were ploughed afresh in order that every trace of Serbian presence be eradicated and in the event of their return, to render difficult the recognition of their estates. The destruction of colonist villages according to a plan was to help show international commissions after the war, when new borders would be drawn, that Serbs never lived there. An ethnic Albanian leader from Kosovo, Ferat-bey Draga, said that the "time has come to exterminate the Serbs ... there will be no Serbs under the Kosovo sun".1 Orthodox churches were burnt and destroyed and graveyards desecrated. Ethnic Albanians sought to eradicate every trace of Serbian presence in these areas. During the war, some 100,000 colonists and indigenous Serbs fled for Serbia and Montenegro ahead of Albanian terror, and some 10,000 were killed.2 Along with this, under a plan of the Italian government, adopted before the occupation of Yugoslavia, began an extensive settlement of Albanians from Albania on the estates of the expelled colonists. Their number is roughly estimated at 80,000-100,000; the first postwar estimate put it at about 75,000.3 The insurrection against the occupier in mid-May, 1941, was raised by Serbian officers under the command of Colonel Draza Mihailovic, who organized the Chetnik (guerrilla) movement throughout Yugoslavia: his troops, organized throughout the country, were proclaimed by the government in exile the Yugoslav army in the homeland, and he was made general and minister of war. Two weeks after Hitler's assault on the Soviet Union, Yugoslav communists stirred up an uprising at Moscow's call, which, under the mask of a people's liberation struggle, was in fact a movement for a revolutionary shift of power. After initial talks with Mihailovic's Chetniks, Tito's Partisans set out on a long and bloody civil war. Although there were several collaborationist regimes in the country with strong military formations, the Partisans - the military force of the CPY, saw the Chetniks as their arch-enemy who incorporated the state and political continuity of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the civil war that ensued, Kosovo and Metohia assumed a secondary role. The Chetnik movement, organized into two Kosovo corps (about 1,500 men), operated in mountainous regions on the outskirts of Kosovo and Metohia. Cooperation between the occupational Italian forces and the Albanian voluntary gendarmery left no room for their stronger military engagement and protection of the Serbian population. The persecuted Serbs sought refuge in occupied Serbia, where they were received first by the commissariat administration and then a special refugees commissariat under the regime of General Milan Nedic.4 Metohia, which was settled by primarily Montenegrin colonists, had many followers of the CPY, though at the outbreak of the war its membership comprised a mere 270, including some two dozen ethnic Albanians. Even though the CPY condemned in numerous declarations prior to the war the Greater Serbian policy of the bourgeoisie and called during the war on the ethnic Albanian population to rise together with the colonists and Serbian natives for the creation of a "new, justice society", the response was negligible. A party leader, Ali Shukria, tried in 1941 to justify this reaction by saying that the mere name Yugoslavia provoked unanimous indignation among the ethnic Albanians. Clashes between Partisan and Chetnik formations on the one hand and the ethnic Albanian gendarmery on the other showed that ethnic Albanians saw in both of them only Serbs, their age-old enemies.5 The number of ethnic Albanians mustered in partisan units in Kosovo and Metohia was extremely low, numbering only several dozen. Individual units were named after prominent ethnic Albanian communists (Zeinel Aidmi, Emin Duraku), and then after distinguished leaders of the secessionist movement against Serbia and Yugoslavia (Bairam Cum); agitations among the population constantly stressed that after the war, the ethnic Albanians would win their rights, labeling the prewar policy as fascist and maleficent. However, winning over ethnic Albanians for the restoration of Yugoslavia under a communist leadership was slow, since among the ethnic Albanian members of the CPY most had hoped that Kosovo and Metohia would remain in the composition of Albania after the war. In the Communist Party of Albania (CPA), which was formed from various factions on February 8, 1941, under the supervision of Yugoslav instructors (Miladin Popovic and Dusan Mugosa), were numerous followers of a Greater Albania under communist rule. Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha had taken the first step towards an accord for the creation of a Greater Albania after the war with a short-lasting agreement reached on August 2,1943, in the village of Mukaj with representatives of the Balli Kombetar, a very active organization in Kosovo.6 Miladin Popovic held a similar stand, proposing that ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia be placed under the command of the Chief Staff of Albania and that Metohia come under the organization of the CPA.7 Such aspirations attained their fullest expression in a declaration issued on January 2, 1944 in the village of Bunaj (Bujan), in a conference attended by 49 political representatives of the ethnic Albanian and Yugoslav partisan units (43 ethnic Albanians, 1 Moslem and 7 Serbs present): "Kosovo and Metohia is an area mostly inhabited by ethnic Albanians, who have always wished to become united with Albania. We, therefore, feel it our duty to point to the road that is to be followed by the ethnic Albanian people in the realization of their wishes. The only way for the Kosovo and Metohia ethnic Albanians to unite with Albania is through a common struggle with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against the invader and his lackeys. It is the only way of winning freedom, when all the peoples, including ethnic Albanians, will be able to make their options with a right to self-determination, including secession. The guarantee for it is the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the National Liberation Army of Albania, with which it is closely linked."8 The decisions reached in Bunaj, under which the name Metohia was replaced by an Albanian term Rrafshe Dukadjini, were contrary to a declaration by a grand communist assembly held in Jajce in late November, 1943 AVNOJ (the National Antifascist Liberation Council of Yugoslavia - NALCY) at which it was decided that a new, communist Yugoslavia, headed by Tito as partisan marshal, be established on a federal principle whereby "all peoples ... will be fully free and equal", and the ethnic groups guaranteed all the rights of an ethnic minority.9 In his instructions to the communist leaders in Kosovo and Montenegro, Tito rejected the decisions reached in Bunaj, believing that they raised issues which should be dealt with after the war: he realized only too well that his movement would have lost many followers if he had upheld the demands of the ethnic Albanians, as he had proclaimed in principle the restoration of Yugoslavia within its prewar borders. In conditions when the war was not yet over and the establishment of a communist system uncertain, the decision not to touch the borders of Yugoslavia was the only possible solution. The hostility of ethnic Albanians towards Yugoslav partisans did not wane, despite efforts by party activists to win over fresh adherents. The membership of the ethnic Albanian Balli Kombetar increased and their national solidarity proved to be stronger than ideological divisions. After the capitulation of Italy, the German occupational authorities encouraged aspirations towards the creation of an ethnic Albania, thus on September 19, 1943, the Second Albanian League was founded on the model of its predecessor - the First Albanian League (1878), advocating fiercer clashes with the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia, and a separate SS-Division Scenderbey was set up from the local Albanian forces. A delegate of the partisan Supreme Command, Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo, sent in 1943 to reorganize the partisan units in Kosovo, Metohia and Macedonia, informed of "powerful chauvinist hatred between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs ... The extent of the Albanian chauvinist animosity towards the Serbs is evident from the fact that one of our [partisan] units, comprising ethnic Albanians, was surrounded by 2,000 armed ethnic Albanian peasants, and after several hours of fighting the latter recognized that the unit comprised ethnic Albanians. They dispersed, leaving the Italians in the lurch".10 Fresh partisan units, set up in September and October 1943, operated outside Kosovo and Metohia, with not more than 800 men in five battalions. The unit was reorganized in the summer and fall of 1944, but the number of ethnic Albanians remained the same. A large-scale revolt of the Balli Kombetar followers and Albanian units mustered into partisan formations (November-December, 1944), which broke out after the retreat of the German troops and the establishment of communist rule (the liberation of Kosovo was assisted at Tito's request by two brigades of ethnic Albanian partisans) was thus not unexpected. The revolt was crushed when additional troops were brought in, and military rule was set up in Kosovo and Metohia from February to May, 1945. A leading ethnic Albanian communist from Kosovo maintained contact with the outlaws. He was soon discovered, but A. Rankovic, Tito's closest associate at the time, assessed that his execution would stir up a fresh revolt, thus he was appointed minister in the Serbian governament.11 Initial concessions heralding a lenient attitude towards ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia were made immediately after the new authorities were established: the settlement of at least 75,000 colonists from Albania was tacitly legalized, and a special decree issued on March 16, 1945, forbade about 60,000 Serbs settled in the inter-war period from returning to their estates.12 The conflict between the CPY and the ethnic Albanians during the war was of ideological and state character. The CPY could not allow the fascist forces in Kosovo to create a Greater Albania and thus disrupt the state integrality of the newly established communist Yugoslavia. Most ethnic Albanians continued to support the Balli Kombetar and its solution to the ethnic question. Albanian communists on both sides had hoped that the triumph of communism would bring quicker unification to all Albanians into a single state; thus communist Yugoslavia was regarded as the continuation of the Kingdom. 1 H. Bajrami, Izvestaj Konstantina Plavsica Tasi Dinicu, ministru unutrasnjih poslova u Nedicevoj vladi oktobra 1943, o kosovsko-mitrovackom srezu, Godisnjak arhiva Kosova XIV-XV (1978-1979), p. 313 2 S. Milosevic, Izbeglice i preseljenici na teritoriji okupirane Jugoslavije 1941-1945, Beograd 1981, p.56-104. 3 V. Djuretic, op. cit., p. 323-325 4 Documents published in R. V. Petrovic, Zavera protiv Srba, Beograd 1990, pp. 137-175, 353-358. 5 Dj. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski odnosi kroz vekove sa posebnim osvrtom na novije vreme, Himelstir 19832, pp. 307-336, 3437-455. 6 The agreement with the CPA was short-lived and the Balli Kombetar (set up in 1942) entered into cooperation with the German occupational forces after the capitulation of Italy (1943) 7 Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilackom ratu jugoslovenskih naroda, vol. VII, t. 1, Belgrade 1952, pp. 338-339. 8 A. N. Dragnich and S. Todorovich, The Saga of Kosovo. Focus on Serbian-Albanian Relations, Boulder Colorado 1984, pp. 143. 9 Prvo i drugo zasedanje AVNOJ-a, Beograd 1953, pp. 227-228. 10 Zbornik dokumenata, vol. X, t. 2, p. 153. 11 S. Djakovic, Sukobi na Kosovu, Beograd 1986, pp. 227-228. 12 V. Djuretic, op. cit. p. Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and Metohia However, the ethnic Albanians, both nationalists and communists, failed to properly assess the CPY's intentions. The question of Kosovo and Metohia was an important point of support in the CPY's plan to square accounts with Serbia. The squaring of accounts, outlined in party programs, could start only with the achievement of full communist domination. Serbia's conduct during the war provided additional strength to the party's stands: a country with bourgeois traditions and small peasant landholders, devoted to politically constructive institutions and the dynasty, leaned towards the Chetnik movement of Draza Mihailovic. After failing in Serbia in 1941, the small-in-number communists transferred the weight of their operations to Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and the Military Frontier (Krajina) in Croatia, where the entire Serbian population rose against large-scale terror wrought by the Ustashas (the authorities of fascist Croatia). Cunningly manipulating the indigent Serbian hilly population who, void of developed state and political traditions, cherished a devotion to the cult of "mother Russia" and patriarchal egalitarianism, the communists managed - by calling on the authority of Moscow - to win over many of them who had fallen in numerous Chetnik formations after the capitulation of Italy. The communists won the bloody civil war, in which ethnic and religious divisions were the chief instigators of massacres, owing to crucial aid from the Soviet troops which, in agreement with Tito, crossed over to Yugoslav territory in the fall of 1944, and helped bring the communists to power and defeat the Yugoslav army in the homeland - the Chetnik movement of Dr