officials did not get
a true picture of the persecutions until a Serbian consulate was opened in
Pristina in 1889, five centuries after a battle in Kosovo. The government
was informed that ethnic Albanians were systematically mounting attacks on a
isolated Serbian villages and driving people to eriction with treats and
murders: "Go to Serbia -you can't survive here!". The assassination of the
first Serbian Consul in the streets of Pristina revealed the depth of ethnic
Albanian intolerance. Until 1905, not a single Serbian diplomat from
Pristina could visit the town of Pec or tour Metohia, the hotbed of the
anarchy. Consuls in Pristina (who included the well-known writers Branislav
Nusic and Milan M. Rakic) wrote, aside to their regular reports, indepth
descriptions of the situation in Kosovo and Metohia. Serbia's sole
diplomatic success was the election of a Serbian candidate as the
Raska-Prizren Metropolitan in 1896, following a series of anti-Serbian
orientated Greek Bishops who had been enthroned in Prizren since 1830.
Outright campaigns of terror were mounted after a Greaco-Turkish war in
1897, when it appeared that the Serbs would suffer the same fate as the
Armenians in Asia Minor whom the Kurds had wiped out with blessing from the
sultan. Serbian diplomats launched a campaign at the Porte for the
protection of their compatriots, submitting extensive documentation on four
hundred crimes of murder, blackmail, theft, rape, seizure of land, arson of
churches. They demanded that energetic measures be taken against the
perpetrators and that the investigation be carried out by a joint
Serbo-Turkish committee. But, without the support of Russia, the whole
effort came to naught. The prime minister of Serbia observed with
resignation that 60,000 people had fled Old Serbia for Serbia in the period
from 1880 to 1889. In Belgrade, a Blue Book was printed for the 1899 Peace
Conference in the Hague, containing diplomatic correspondence on acts of
violence committed by ethnic Albanians in Old Serbia, but Austria-58
Hungary prevented Serbian diplomats from raising the question before
the international public. In the ensuing years the Serbian government
attempted to secretly supply Serbs in Kosovo with arms. The first larger
caches of guns were discovered, and 190l saw another pogrom in Ibarski
Kolasin (northern Kosovo), which ended only when Russian diplomats
intervened.6
The widespread anarchy reached a critical point in 1902 when the
Serbian government with the support of Montenegrin diplomacy again raised
the issue of the protection of the Serbs in Turkey, demanding that the law
be applied equally to all subjects of Empire, and that an end be put to the
policy of indulging ethnic Albanians, that they be disarmed and that Turkish
garrisons be reinforced in areas with a mixed Serbian-ethnic Albanian
population. Russia, and then France, supported Serbia's demands. The two
most interested parties, Austria-Hungary and Russia, agreed in 1897 to
maintain the status quo in the Balkans, although they initiated a reform
plan to rearrange Turkey's European provinces. Fearing for their privileges,
ethnic Albanians launched a major uprising in 1903; it began with new
assaults against Serbs and ended with the assassination of the newly
appointed Russian consul in Mitrovica, accepted as a protector of the Serbs
in Kosovo.
The 1903 restoration of democracy in Serbia under new King Petar I
Karadjordjevic marked an end to Austrophile policy and the turning towards
Russia. In response, Austria-Hungary stepped up its propaganda efforts among
ethnic Albanians. At the request of the Dual Monarchy, Kosovo and Metohia
were exempt from the Great Powers Reform action (1903-1908). A new wave of
persecution ensued: in 1904,108 people fled for Serbia from Kosovo alone.
Out of 146 different cases of violence, 46 ended in murder; a group of
ethnic Albanians raped a seven-year-old girl. In 1905, out of 281
registrated cases of violence, 65 were murders, and at just one wedding,
ethnic Albanians killed nine wedding guests.7
The Young Turk revolution in 1908, which ended the "Age of Oppression"
(as Turkish historiography refers to the reign of Abdulhamid II), brought no
changes in relations between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. The Serbs' first
political organization was created under the auspices of the Young Turk
regime, but the ethnic Albanian revolt against the new authorities'
pan-Turkish policy triggered off a fresh wave of violence. In the second
half of 1911 alone, Old Serbia registrated 128 cases of theft, 35 acts of
arson, 41 instances of banditry, 53 cases of extortion, 30 instances of
blackmail, 19 cases of intimidation, 35 murders, 37 attempted murders, 58
armed attacks on property, 27 fights and cases of abuse, 13 attempts at
Islamization, and 18 cases of the infliction of serious bodily injury.
Approximately 400,000 people fled Old Serbia (Kosovo, Metohia, Raska,
northern and northwest Macedonia) for Serbia ahead of ethnic Albanian and
Turkish violence, and about 150,000 people fled Kosovo and Metohia, a third
of the overall Serbian population in these parts. Despite the persecution
and the steady outflow of people. Serbs still accounted for almost half the
population in Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. According to Jovan Cvijic's
findings, published in 1911, there were 14,048 Serbian homes in Kosovo, 3,
826 in Pec and its environs, and 2,400 Serbian homes with roughly 200,000
inhabitants in the Prizren region. Comparing this statistics dating from the
middle of the century, when there were approximately 400,000 Serbs living in
Kosovo and Metohia, Cvijic's estimate that by 1912 about 150,000 refugees
had fled to Serbia seems quite acceptable.8
The Serbian and Montenegrin governments aided the ethnic Albanian
rebels against Young Turks up to a point: they took in refugees and gave
them arms with a view to undermining Turkish rule in the Balkans, dispelling
Austro-Hungarian influence on their leaders and curbing the violence against
Serbs. But it was all in vain as intolerance for the Serbs ran deep in all
Albanian national movements. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece
realized that the issue of Christian survival in Turkey had to be resolved
by arms. Since Turkey refused to guarantee the Christians the same rights it
had promised the ethnic Albanian insurgents, the Balkan allies declared war
in the fall of 1912.
1 D. T. Batakovic, Od srpske revolucije do istocne krize: 1804-1878,
in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 172-208.
2 D. T. Batakovic (ed.), Savremenici o Kosovu i Metohiji 1852-1912,
(Beograd 1988), Forward, pp. XVII-XXXVII.
3 Ibid
4 D. T. Batakovic, Ulazak u sferu evropskog interesovanja, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 216-231.
5 V. Bovan, Jastrebov u Prizrenu, (Pristina 1984), pp. 180-185.
6 Documents diplomatoques. Correspondence concernant les actes de
violence et de brigandage des Albanias dans la Vielle Serbie (Vilayet de
Kosovo) 1898-1899, (Belgrade MDCCCXCIX), pp. 1-145
7 List of violence, in. Zaduzbine Kosova, pp. 672-697.
8 D. T. Batakovic, Anarhija i genocid u Staroj Srbiji, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 271-280.
The Age of Restoration
Serbia and Montenegro, states whose national ideologies were based on
the Kosovo covenant, welcomed the war as a chance to fulfill their
centuries-old desire to avenge Kosovo. Volunteers from all the Serbian lands
rushed to join the army. Carried by the feeling that they were fulfilling a
historic mission, Serbian troops set out for Kosovo. Attempts to isolate
ethnic Albanians from the war actions failed: the leaders of their movement
had decided to defend their Ottoman homeland in arms. The Serbian army,
together with Montenegrin, liberated Kosovo without much fight, and its 3rd
army stopped in Gracanica to hold a commemoration for the heroes of 1389
Kosovo battle. Montenegrin troops marched into Pec, Decani and met Serbian
troops in Djakovica. Leaders of the ethnic Albanian movement fled to Albania
where an independent state had been pro-clamed under the auspices of the
Austro-Hungarian diplomacy. Seeking an outlet to the Adriatic sea in order
to save themselves from the over-tightening grip of Austria-Hungary, Serbian
troops entered norther Albanian ports, but under the decisions of the
Conference of Ambassadors in London (1912-1913), they were forced to
withdraw. Austria-Hungary struggled to win as big an Albanian state as
possible to counter-balance Serbia and Montenegro, but both delegations
stressed that under no conditions would they agree to let Kosovo and
Metohia, as holy lands of Serbs, remain outside their borders. Raids on
Serbian territory by armed Albanian detachments in 1913, protected by
Turkish and Austro-Hungarian services, were aimed at destabilizing the
administration in the newly liberated regions, heralding Austria-Hungary's
imminent setting of accounts with Serbia, the chief obstacle to the German
Drang nach Osten.
World War I hindered not only the stabilization of the Serbian
administration in Kosovo and Montenegrin in Metohia, but also the creation
of a union between the two Serbian states. Austria-Hungary helped the
revanchist aspirations of fugitive ethnic Albanian leaders and fanned plans
for the creation of a Greater Albania inclusive of Kosovo, Metohia and
western Macedonia. Organized by Austro-Hungarian military and diplomatic
services, detachments comprising ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo and
Macedonia were formed in Albania (where civil war was raging), with a view
to provoking an uprising in Kosovo and opening an another front toward
Serbia. In the summer of 1914, the Serbian government helped Essad-Pasha
Topfani, a supporter of the Balkan cooperation and the Entente powers, to
assume power in Albania and with him signed a treaty on military cooperation
and one on a real union. In the summer of 1915, following the letter of the
treaty, the Serbian army intervened in Albania to protect Essad-pasha's
regime and crush an uprising by supporters of the Triple Alliance. After a
joint Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian offensive against Serbia in the
fall of 1915. The initial plan had been to put up decisive resistance in
Kosovo, but the view that it was better to reach the allied forces on the
Albanian coast prevailed. Owing to hunger, disease, a bad winter and clashes
with Albanian tribes in areas not controlled by Essad-Pasha, approximately
70,000 of the 220,000 soldiers died in Albania, and only a third (about
60,000) of the 200,000 civilian refugees made it to Corfu and
Bizerte.1
After penetrating the Salonika front in the fall of 1918, the allied
troops liberated Kosovo and Metohia and turned over power to the Serbian
administration. There were sporadic revolts, especially after the founding
of the Kosovo Committee in Albania which called men to fight for the
creation of a Greater Albania. Serbian troops occupied Albanian border areas
and tried to put in power Essad-Pasha, who was at the allied camp in Athens.
Italy, having assumed the role of Albania's protector after the
collapse of Austria-Hungary, became the chief opponent of the newly
proclaimed Yugoslav-state. Owing to a dispute over supremacy along the
Adriatic littoral, Italy set up a puppet regime in Albania, encouraged its
aspirations in Kosovo, Metohia and northwestern Macedonia, with the aim of
turning Albania into a foothold for its advance and expansion into the
Balkans.
At the Peace Conference in Paris, the Yugoslav delegation upheld the
stand that Albania should be an independent state within the borders of
1913, but in the event such a solution was rejected, it demanded territorial
compensation from the Drim River to Scutari. After strong external pressure
and internal upheaval, the question of Albania's independence was resolved
at the Conference of the Great Powers ambassadors in 1921, and the border
with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was finally drawn in 1926.
Kosovo emigrants in Albania worked to expand the movement for the creation
of a Greater Albania. Guerilla detachments were infiltrated into Yugoslav
territory and, clashing with Yugoslav troops and the authorities, they
created an unsafe border area which had to be placed under a special regime.
The involvement of Yugoslav diplomacy in internal tribal, religious and
political struggles in Albania was aimed at edging out a foreign influence
and helping to establish a regime that would sever the continual subversive
activities.
Owing to new political factors within the Yugoslavia and new
international circumstances, the creation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (which in 1931 became Kingdom of Yugoslavia), lent a fresh
dimension to Serbo-Albanian relations in Kosovo and Metohia, and to state
relations between Yugoslavia and Albania (although they had been defined by
the inherited ethnic strife). The Albanian question once again became a
means of political pressure on the new state, especially against Serbs as
its driving force. With fascism and Nazism emerging, revanshist states
defeated in World War I, unsatisfied with the set borders and the
distribution of political power, rallying around Italy, tried to undermine
the foundations of Yugoslavia in its most vulnerable spots - Kosovo, Metohia
and Macedonia, lands where burden of five centuries of Ottoman rule opened
the deepest civilisational chasms.2
The new state had the difficult task of severing feudal relations in
Kosovo, Metohia and Macedonia, of carrying out the agrarian reform and of
populating the area. The settlement of Serbs from the passive regions of
Montenegro, Bosnia and Vojna Krajina in Croatia, was meant to bring about
the desirable ethnic balance in the sensitive border region. The first step
in pulling these regions out of their centuries-old backwardness was the
abolition of the feudal system in 1919, when an end was put to serfdom and
the serfs were declared owners of the lands they tilled. For the first time,
native Serbs and many poor ethnic Albanian families obtained their own land.
Colonization began in 1920 without being adequately prepared, thus the
earliest settlers were on their own, and the authorities in charge of
carrying out the task took advantage of rough edges of the reform to engage
in various forms of abuse. After the first decade, the agrarian reform and
colonization proved to suffer from major shortcomings, which were hardest on
the settlers themselves. In principle, taking land away from private owners
for the purpose of settlement was forbidden, though small lots of land were
thus obtained for the purpose of reallocating holdings, and the owners were
alloted land elsewhere. The pseudo-ownership rights of some ethnic Albanians
who could not prove their ownership of the land they had been using after
its real owners had left, created some confusion. Initially, settlers were
mostly alloted untitled land, pastures, clearings, barren or abandoned land,
forests and, to a lesser extent, lands of fugitive outlaws. Only 5% of the
total amount of land was arable. During the two waves of colonisation, from
1922-1929 and from 1933-1938, 10,877 families, some 60,000 people settled on
120,672 hectares of land (about 15, 3% of the land). Another 99,327 hectares
planned for settlement were not alloted. For the incoming settlers, 330
settlements and villages were built with 12,689 houses, 46 schools and 32
churches.3
The kacak (renegade, outlaw) movement, which posed a growe threat to
personal safety of settlers living in border areas during the 1920's was a
major obstacle to efforts at stabilizing the political situation. The kacak
movement, a remaining from the Turkish times, was mostly coordinated by
ethnic Albanian emigrants from Kosovo, as a movement for the unification of
Kosovo and Metohia with Albania. Operating separately were a number of
outlaw bands which plundered the remote and poorly protected border areas,
evading taxes and military service. The border military authorities
responded to the perpetual assaults and murders of local officials,
gendarmes, priests and teachers, to the looting of and setting fire to
isolated Serbian estates, by driving out the perpetrators, using artillery
in the worst of cases. The estates of the most dangerous outlaws were
confiscated and the homes of their accomplices set afire as a warning. The
1921 amnesty for all crimes excepting murder produced only partial results:
the outlaws surrended just before winter, but were back in the forests by
spring. From 1918 to 1923,478 kacaks surrendered, 23 were captured and 52
killed. Most of those (231) who were captured or who surrendered were sent
to military commands (they evaded regular military service), 195 were turned
over to the courts, and 75 were acquitted. The kacak movement began tapering
off in 1923 when on of the more liberal governments issued a decree on
amnesty inclusive of more serious crimes. The amnesty and good relations
with Albania helped bring an end to the kacak movement.4
The ethnic Albanian and Turkish population in Kosovo and Metohia were
reluctant to reconcile with living in a European-organized state where,
instead of the status of the absolutely privileged class they had enjoyed
during the Turkish rule, they acquired only civil equality with what had
previously been the infidel masses. In 1919 the leading ethnic Albanian beys
from Kosovo, Metohia and northwestern Macedonia founded the Dzemijet,
political party which in 1921 had 12 seats in Parliament and 14 two years
later. The Dzemijet was banned in 1925 because of its ties with kacaks and
the government in Tirana, but in continued to operate clandestinely. Besa, a
secret student organization financed by Tirana and then by the Italian
legation in Belgrade, propagated the annexation of Kosovo and Metohia to
Albania. Because of their support to the kacaks and ties with Kosovo migr
circles, ethnic Albanians were regarded with suspicion in Yugoslavia, as a
subversive element ready to revolt at a given opportunity and annex certain
regions to Albania. Under the Constitution, ethnic Albanians, as a national
minority, were guaranteed the use of their mother tongue in elementary
schools, but everything was reduced to education in religious schools. The
Yugoslav government wished to resolve the rights of minorities reciprocally,
with the Serbian minority in Albania being allowed to open its own schools
and the question of the Orthodox eparchy in Albania being resolved, but
agreement was never reached. Not even the leading beys from the Dzemijet,
who looked out solely for their own privileges, raised the question of the
schooling for their compatriots. They were satisfied with religious schools
for ethnic Albanian youth. Out of 37,685 pupils in 252 compulsory schools in
1940/1941, 11, 876 ethnic Albanian pupils attended classes in the
Serbo-Croatian language.5
Discontent with the new state among the ethnic Albanian masses stepped
up emigration to Turkey, in whose Muslim environment they felt at home. Many
openly admitted that they could not bear being ruled over by members of the
former infidel masses, Serbs, whom they pejoratively called Ski (Slavs).
Emigration started right after the Balkan wars and many refugees who had
fled to Albania to avoid conflicts with the authorities, returned to their
homes after the war and the quelling of kacak operations. By the 1930's,
thousands of ethnic Albanian and Turkish families had voluntarily moved to
Turkey, and in 1938, after lenghtly negotiations, the Yugoslav and Turkish
governments prepared a convention on the emigration of some 200,000 Muslims
(ethnic Albanians and Turks) from Kosovo-Metohia and Macedonia to Turkey.
Because the Turkish government abandoned the agreement and a lack of funds
to dispatch the emigrants, the convention was never implemented. According
to official figures, from 1927 to 1939, the number of ethnic Albanian
emigrants in Turkey numbered 19,279, and 4,322 in Albania. In comparison
with the 30,000 Serbs, Creates and Slovenes who emigrated annually for
economic reasons to the United States and other transoceanic countries,
migrations from far more backward regions to Turkey and Albania were not a
remarkable phenomenon.6
Population census covering the inter-war period shows no major
emigration of ethnic Albanians. According to the 1921 census there were 439,
657 ethnic Albanians in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (accounting for 3,67 of
the country's total population), 15,000 less than prior to the liberation in
1912, and they lived in Kosovo, Metohia and in Macedonia. The 1931 census
gives following figures: 505,259 ethnic Albanians (3,62% of the total
population), lived in three administrative units (banovina): in Zetska
banovina 150,062 (16%), in Moravska banovina 48,300 (3,36%), in Vardarska
banovina 302,901 (19,24 %). Figures from the 1939 census show that the
non-Slav population (ethnic Albanians, Turks, Gypsies, etc.) numbered
422,828 people, or 65,6%, the native Slav population accounted for 25,2% and
the settlers (mostly Serbs) for 9,2% .7
After the Yugoslav army capitulated in the April war of 1941, the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia was torn asunder: Serbia came under direct German
occupation, and its individual parts divided among the allies of the Third
Reich. During the April war, armed groups of ethnic Albanians attacked the
army, unarmed settlers and native Serbs. Because of the Trepca mines, the
district of Kosovska Mitrovica remained under German occupation, while the
eastern parts of Kosovo where given to Bulgaria, and on August 12, 1941, the
rest of Kosovo along with Macedonia and parts of Montenegro and Macedonia
were annexed to Greater Albania under Italian protectorship. Almost all
settlers houses were set afire within just a few days, their owners and
families killed or forced to leave for Montenegro and Serbia. Forced
migration is believed to have encompassed some 100,000 Serbs from Kosovo and
Metohia. From 1941 to 1944, ethnic Albanians serving the Italian and German
occupation authorities killed some 10,000 Serbs; the worst of suffer were
Serbs in Pec and Vitomirica where ethnic Albanian volunteers formations
wrought terror: before executing their victims they gouged out their eyes,
sliced off their ears and severed other parts of their bodies. Dozens of
Orthodox churches were destroyed, set afire and looted, priests and monks
were arrested and killed and many Orthodox cemeteries desecrated. Divided up
into several police and paramilitary formations, ethnic Albanians were in
the forefront of the massacres, and the German command was forced to
intervene to stop them. Ethnic Albanians used various forms of intimidation
in an effort to drive away the remaining Serbs from Kosovo. After the
collapse of Italy in 1943, Kosovo and Metohia came under German
administration, which supported the Greater Albanian ideology of national
leadership, helping the forming of the Second Albanian League at the and of
1943. The 21st SS "Scanderbey" division was formed out of ethnic Albanian
volunteers in the spring of 1944. The Balli Kombelar, Greater Albanian
organization, took the lead in ethnically purging Kosovo, warning the
Serbian population to move out of Kosovo and Metohia before it was too late.
The last migratory wave was registrated in the first months of
1944.8
Civil war in Yugoslavia (1941-1945) raged in Kosovo between the
Chetniks, regular royalist forces, led by general Dragoljub Mihailovic,
which operated mainly in northern parts of Kosovo, and partisan units of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) led by Josip Broz Tito. Both armies
dashed with the occupational troops and ethnic Albanian formation. The CPY
condemned the "the Serbian bourgeoisie's policy" in inter-war period, thus
there were a few hundred ethnic Albanians in the partisan detachments. The
policy of winning over ethnic Albanians and aid provided by CPY instructors
in the forming and developing of Communist Party in Albania did not produce
the expected results. Moreover, representatives of ethnic Albanian
communists from Yugoslavia and Albania meeting at a conference in Bunaj (on
Albanian territory), January 1-2,1944, adopted a resolution on the
annexation of Kosovo and Metohia to Albania after the end of the war. The
common ethnic Albanians saw both the partisans and Chetniks as Serbs, their
age-old enemies.9
1 D T Batakovic, Oslobodjenje Kosova i Metohije, in: Kosovo i Metohija
u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 249-280
2 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 178-182.
3 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 95-106; N. Gacesa, Naseljavanje Kosova i Metohije
posle Prvog svetskog rata, in: Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost, pp. 95-106;M.
Obradovic, Agrarna reforma i kolonizacija na Kosovu (1918-1941), Pristina
1981.
4 B. Gligorijevic, Fatalna jednostranost. Povodom knjige B. Horvata
"Kosovsko pitanje", Istorija XX veka, 1-2 (1988), pp. 179-193.
5 R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova. Istorijsko-pravna studija, (Beograd
1985), pp.
6 B. Gligorijevic, op. cit., pp. 185-192
7 Ibid, pp. 187-191.
8 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 199-210; V. Djuretic, op cit.,
pp. 311-318; A. Jeftic, Hronika stradanja Srba na Kosovu i Metohiji
(1941-1989), in Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 405-414.
9 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 320-325
The Age of Communism
With the arrival of Soviet troops in Yugoslavia, partisan units,
well-armed and their ranks freshly recruited, liberated Kosovo and Metohia
in the late fall of 1944, and established their rule. Local ethnic Albanian
communists were entrusted with setting up power, and thousands of ethnic
Albanians were drafted and sent to the front (two mutinies occurred in Vrsac
and Bar). Few weeks after the establishment of communist rule major armed
revolt broke out among the newly mobilized ethnic Albanian units unsatisfied
with the solution that Kosovo will remain within the borders of Yugoslavia.
For the quelling of ethnic Albanian revolt troops had to be brought in from
other areas and in February 1945 military rule was imposed in Kosovo and
Metohia.
By decree of the new communist authorities (March 16, 1945), Serbian
and Montenegrin settlers who had been expelled during the war were banned
from returning to their abandoned estates as they were considered exponents
of the inter-war "Greater Serbian hegemonistic policy" On the other hand,
international circumstances and particularly close ties with the communist
leadership in Albania, prompted Tito to take a lenient attitude towards the
ethnic Albanian minority: ethnic Albanians settled in Kosovo by the Italians
and Germans during the war were not expelled; on the contrary, the border
was open to new immigrants from Albania until 1948. The precise number of
ethnic Albanians who settled in Kosovo during and after the war is yet
unknown: estimates range from 15,000 to 300,000, but the first figures after
the war were from 70,000-75,000. Compared with the 100,000 Serbs who had bee
forcibly moved out and forbidden to return after the war, these figures show
that acceptance of the situation created under the occupation created major
disturbance in the ethnic structure of Kosovo and Metohia.1
The evolution of Kosovo and Metohia political status in communist
Yugoslavia cannot be comprehended without some knowledge about the CPY's
national policy in the inter-war period. As a section of the Communist
International (Comintern), the CPY worked after World War I to destroy the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia as a "Versailles creation" in which "Greater Serbian
hegemony" oppressed the other nations in the state. Following Moscow's
instructions, the CPY adopted the stand in 1924 that Yugoslavia's
non-Serbian nations should be allowed to create their own separate national
states and that minorities should be allowed to join their parent states:
Albania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The policy of destroying the "Versailles
system" in Europe, as an instrument of imperialist powers -Great Britain and
France, was to be completed in the case of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the
breaking up of the Serbian lands.
When the Comintern changed its political course in 1935, deciding to
preserve the Yugoslav community with the a view to grouping together
anti-fascist forces, the CPY changed its course too, leaving the question of
settlement of position and status of the minorities for a later date.
Contrary to the prewar thesis that a strong Serbia guaranteed a strong
Yugoslavia, the communists upheld the view that the only way to establish a
stable state was by federalizing Yugoslavia and breaking the supremacy of
the Serbs. In its proclamations to the people of Kosovo and Metohia, the CPY
blamed the Serbian bourgeoisie for the mistreatment and persecution of the
ethnic Albanian population, thus indirectly shifting the blame from the
ruling structures of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to the entire Serbian
nation.2
Communist rule was thus established in 1945 with such stands regarding
the national question. After a strong ethnic Albanian revolt in the winter
of 1944/1945, representatives of the new authorities voted in July 1945 that
Kosovo and Metohia remain within Serbia. In September that same year, a
separate autonomous region called Kosmet was formed, and in northern Serbia,
the autonomous province of Vojvodina. This solution set the precedent only
in Serbia: the borders of other Yugoslav republics were drawn so as to
remedy as much as possible the "injustices" done in the inter-war period,
although their ethnic structures gave cause for creation of autonomous
units. The policy of pacifying Serbia and the Serbs as a hegemonic nation
was implemented by the CPY leadership, headed by Josip Broz Tito, with the
slogan "brotherhood and unity" of all Yugoslav nations, Serbian communists,
imbued with Yugoslavism and the proletarian internationalism, followed
Tito's political conceptions to the last without realizing its far-reaching
effects.3
The extent to which Serbian lands were of the disposal of Yugoslavia's
communist leadership is evident from conceptions about the internal borders
in the projected Balkan federation of communist countries. In negotiations
with the leader of the Albanian communists, Enver Hoxha, Tito promised to
concede Kosovo and Metohia to Albania if it entered the Balkan federation.
After Yugoslavia broke with Stalin and Cominform in 1948, Enver Hoxha's
Albania became a dangerous center of propaganda and subversive activities
against regime in Yugoslavia, ultimately aimed at annexing Kosovo, Metohia
and parts of Macedonia to Albania, where "Albanianism", embodied in the idea
of creating a Greater Ethnic Albania, entered the foundation of state
ideology.4
Established under the 1946 Constitution, the autonomy of Kosovo and
Metohia was considerably by the 1963 Constitution, and after inter-party
strife and fall of Tito's deputy and chief of the State Security Service,
party strife and fall of Tito's deputy and chief of the State Security
Service, Aleksandar Rankovic (1966), accused in Kosovo and Metohia of taking
a discriminatory attitude towards ethnic Albanians, the purging on a
large-scale of Serbian cadres in high offices in the administration and
police started. They were accused by ethnic Albanian communists of
persecution and abuse of innocent people, particularly in drives of Security
Service to confiscate weapons, although Serbs suffered from the persecutions
just as much as ethnic Albanians. The Serbian Orthodox church suffered most
of all. Church lands came under the blow of agrarian reforms, monastic
property was confiscated, priests and monks were arrested and convicted and
in 1950 in Djakovica, one of the biggest churches in Metohia was destroyed
in order that a monument for Kosovo partisan be erected.5
Mass demonstrations by ethnic Albanians (mostly students) in Kosovo and
Metohia in November 1968 (under the slogan "Down With The Serbian
Oppressors"), showed that the struggle against abuses by the state security
bodies was turning into a revanchist policy towards Serbs and Serbia, and
that at its roots lax the idea of a Greater Albania. The demonstrations were
staged during a major political upheaval over the reorganization of the
Yugoslav federation, changes resulting from the 1974 Constitution, when the
federal status of Kosovo and Metohia (renamed the Province of Kosovo, since
Metohia had a Serbian and Orthodox connotations) was legally sanctioned as a
constitutive element of the Yugoslav state. The autonomous province of
Kosovo, a political community with many elements of statehood (it was even
granted the right to a Constitution), and only formally dependent on Serbia,
served the plans of secessionists who wanted to drive the Serbian population
out of these regions and create an ethnically pure Kosovo. The policy of
ethnically purging a territory is racist, and the means to effect it are
always violent.6
The normalization of Yugoslavia's relations with Albania in 1971 and
the free exchange of ideas, teachers and school books encouraged the
Albanization of Kosovo and Metohia. In less than a decade, Kosovo's leaders
managed to impose the ethnic Albanian language as the official language in
the province and impose, though the system's legal institutions,
discriminatory attitude to the Serbian population. The extent of the
discrimination was most evident when the so-called principle of ethnic
representation was applied: job hiring and enrolment at higher institutes of
learning were done according to the size of the population. For instance,
out of five job vacancies only one Serb could be hired, regardless of the
applicant's qualifications and abilities. The same principle was applied at
the University: only one out of every five registrated students could be a
Serb. The 1981 population census showed a drastic decline in the Serbian and
Montenegrin population, but also in the Turkish, Gypsy and Islamized Slav
minorities in Kosovo and Metohia. While Serbs were leaving their native land
for northern Serbia, many members of non-Slav minorities were pressured into
declaring themselves as ethnic Albanians. Along with growing number of
emigrants from Albania, this substantially increased the total number of
ethnic Albanians in the Province and their representation in the local
administration, schooling and culture.
The majority of Serbs (with the exception of the thin layer of
high-ranking officials) were subjected to various forms of pressure, ranging
from being deprived of employment and promotion, to threats and blackmail;
in villages, as in the last century of Ottoman rule, by the usurping of
property, physical assault, the setting of fire to houses and harvests,
stealing livestock, attacks and rape of women and children, murder at one's
doorstep. The local administration gave out lands abandoned by resettled
Serbs to emigrants from Albania, and many lots were illegally taken over by
neighboring ethnic Albanian families. Since all administrative power, from
the judiciary to the police, was in hands of ethnic Albanians, they passed
verdicts in favor of their compatriots whenever deciding on
inter-nationality disputes. The injured Serbian parties had no one to
complain to because the Republic of Serbia did not have judicial
jurisdiction over Kosovo, and when they wrote to the federal bodies, their
appeals remained unanswered. Dignitaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church
were, from 1945 onwards, the most persistent in lodging complaints to the
highest state bodies aboud the stepped-up physical and psychological
pressures suffered by Serbs, citing hundreds of examples, from the
desecration of graves to the raping of nuns, but their petitions had no
impact.
The attacks culminated with the March 1981 attempt to set fire in the
Pec Patriarchate, when the large living quarters burned down, together with
the furniture and library. The arsonists were never discovered and the
investigating authorities kept claiming that the fire had broken out because
of a breakdown in the electrical installations. The handful of Serbian
communist officials who did speak out against Kosovo's overt Albanization
during the 1968-1981 period were dismissed from their posts on charges of
being chauvinists and hegemonists. The Serbs who collaborated with the
ethnic Albanian communist leadership in the Province were rewarded with high
posts in the federal bodies.7
The Albanization of Kosovo and Metohia was especially bolstered by the
Province's unhindered communication with Albania, from where professors came
to the Pristina University in the seventies, spreading Greater Albanian
propaganda. With the import of textbooks from Tirana, whole generations of
young Albanians were raised in the spirit of Greater Albanianism and in
hatred for Serbia and Yugoslavia. Political officials and scholars from
Tirana moved freely about Kosovo, spreading sentiments and calling for the
creation of a large ethnic Albania. Huge sums of money allocated by the
Yugoslav federation for Kosovo's economic growth (Serbia's was the biggest
share) were spent on building large state institutions for the local
bureaucracy which tried to set up national institutions as swiftly as
possible: the Academy of Science of Kosovo, the University, institutes for
Albanian language, history and folklore, museums, the theater, television,
radio, newspaper and publishing houses. Paradoxically the Yugoslav state
financed the secessionist movement in Kosovo and Metohia itself.
Assessing that, with the death of Josip Broz Tito (May 1980), the
Yugoslav state was on The verge of collapse, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians
staged large-scale demonstrations in March and April 1981, with the blessing
of the Province's authorities, glorifying the regime of Enver Hoxha and
demanding that Kosovo be declared a republic, since, under the Yugoslav
Constitution, only republics have the right to secede. The establishment of
Kosovo as a republic would denote a transitional phase toward full
independence and then unification with Albania.8
Ethnic Albanian national and political dominance in Kosovo and Metohia
was enhanced by a large demographic explosion, as their number tripled from
about 480,000 in 1948 to 1,227,000 in 1981. Meanwhile, from the early
sixties onwards, the number of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia steadily
declined. According to official figures, 92, 197 Serb