backed by Serbian volunteers, reached the Western Morava River where they
established a new frontier. Ethnic Albanians collectively guaranteed to the
Porte the safety of the regions in the immediate vicinity of Austria, and
were in return exempted from the heaviest taxes. Towards the end of the war
(1717), a major Serbian uprising broke out in Vucitrn and its surroundings:
it was brutally crushed and the troops sent to allay the rayah and launch an
investigation, perpetrated fresh atrocities. Excessive dues, robbery and the
threat of extermination put before the Kosovo Serbs the choices of either
converting to Islam or finding a powerful master who would protect them if
they accepted the status of serfs. Many opted for a third solution: they
moved to surrounding regions where life was more tolerable.5
The following war between Austria and Turkey (1737-1739) ended with the
routing of the imperial troops from Serbian territory. The border was
reestablished at the Sava and Danube rivers, and Serbs set out on another
migration. Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic, along with the religious and
national leaders of Pec, drew up a plan for cooperation with the Austrian
forces, and contacted their commanders. A large-scale uprisings broke out
again in Kosovo and Metohia, engaging some 10.000 Serbs. They were joined by
Montenegrin tribes, and Austrian envoys even stirred up the Kliments, a
Catholic tribe from northern Albania. A Serbian militia was formed again,
but the Austrian troops and insurgenta were forced to retreat in the face of
superior Turkish power: reprisals ensued, bringing death to the insurgents
and their families. Serbs withdrew from the mining settlements around
Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and Kopaonik. In order to keep the remaining
populace on the land, the Turks declared an amnesty. After the fall of
Belgrade, Arsenije IV moved to Austria. The number of refugees from Serbia,
including Kosovo and Metohia, along with some Kliments has yet to be
accurately determined, as people were moving on all sides and the process
lasted for several months. The considerably reduced number of taxpayers in
Kosovo and Metohia and in other parts of Serbia points to a strong migratory
wave.6
Unrest in the Ottoman empire helped spread anarchy in Kosovo and
Metohia and rest of Serbia. Raids, murder, rape against the unarmed
population was largely committed by ethnic Albanian outlaws, who were now
numerically superior in many regions. Outlaw bands held controll over roads
during Turkey's war with Russia (1768-1774), when lawlessness reigned
throughout Serbia. Ethnic Albanian outlaws looted and fleeced other regions
as well, which sent local Muslims complaining to the Porte seeking
protection.
During the last Austro-Turkish war (1788-1791); a sweeping popular
movement again took shape in northern Serbia. Because of the imperial forces
swift retreat, the movement did not encompass the southern parts of Serbia:
Kosovo, Metohia and present-day northern Macedonia. The peace treaty of
Sistovo (1791) envisaged a general amnesty for the Serbs, but the ethnic
Albanians, as outlaws or soldiers in the detachments of local pashas,
continued unhindered to assault the unprotected Serbian population. The wave
of religious intolerance towards Orthodox population, which acquired greater
proportion owing to the hostilities with Russia at the end of 18th century,
effected the forced conversion to Islam of a larger number of Serbian
families. The abolition of the Pec Patriarchate (1766), whose see and rich
estates were continually sought after by local ethnic Albanian pashas and
beys, prompted the final wave of extensive Islamization in Kosovo and
Metohia.7
Those who suffered the most during these centuries of utter lawlessness
were the Serbs, unreliable subjects who would rise every time the Turks
would wage war against one of the neighboring Great Powers, and whose
patriarchs led the people to enemy land. Although initially on a small
scale, the Islamization of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia began before the
penetration of ethnic Albanians. More widespread conversion to Islam took
place in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic
Albanians began to wield more influence on political events in these
regions. Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for
the moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most
of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized
Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially
slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday). But several
generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they
gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their
narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into being
a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national
feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a long
time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi, until the
memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old customs and
legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation to the
next.8
For a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic
Albanians, because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they
did not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the turn of
the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames as Dokic,
Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably indicated their
Serbian origin. The situation was similar in Pec and its surroundings where
many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically Serbian surnames:
Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc. The eastern parts of
Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian settlements, were the last to
undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization in Upper Morava and Izmornik
is pinpointed as taking place in the first decades of the 18th century, and
the latest in 1870s. Toponyms in many ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo
show that Serbs had lived there the preceding centuries, and in some places
Orthodox cemeteries were shielded against desecrators by ethnic Albanians
themselves, because they knew that the graves of their own ancestors lay
there.9
In the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region
near Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving
their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also some cases of
conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century, especially
during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor and property,
though far more pronounced at the time was the process of emigration, since
families, sometimes even entire villages, fled to Serbia or Montenegro.
Extensive anthropogeographic research indicates that about 30% of the
present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia is of Serbian
origin.10
1 N. Samardzic, Savremena strana stampa o Velikoj seobi Srba,
Istorijski Casopis, vol. XXXII (1985), pp. 79-103; R. Trickovic, Velika
seoba Srba 1690. godine, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp.
127-141.
2 N. Samardzic, op. cit., pp. 136-139.
3 R. Trickovic, Ustanci, seobe i stradanja u XVIII veku, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 149-169
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 J. Cvijic, La peninsule balkanique. Geographic humaine, (Paris 1918),
pp. 343-355.
9 A. Urosevic, Kosovo, (Beograd 1965); D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski
odnosi kroz vekove, pp. 95-127.
10 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, I-III, (Beograd 1906-1911).
The series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans,
triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier
centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of whom
were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European provinces
of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was again being
raised, particularly in the final quarter of 19th and the first decade of
20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument of Turkey's policy
in crushing the liberation movements of other Balkan states. After the
congress of Berlin (1878) an Albanian national movement flared up, and both
the Sultan and Austria-Hungary, a power whose occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina heralded its further expansion deep into the Balkans,
endeavored, with varying degrees of success, to instrumentalize this
movement. While the Porte used the ethnic Albanians as Islam's shock cutting
edge against Christians in the frontier regions towards Serbia and
Montenegro, particularly in Kosovo, Metohia and the nearby areas,
Austria-Hungary's design was to use the Albanians national movement against
the liberatory aspirations of the two Serbian states that were impeding the
German Drang nach Osten. In a rift between two only seemingly contrary
strivings, Serbia and Montenegro, although independent since 1878, were
powerless (at least until the Balkan wars 1912-1913) without the support of
Russia or other Great Power to effect the position of their compatriots
within the borders of Ottoman Empire.1
During the Serbian revolution, which ended with the creation of the
autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman empire (1830), Kosovo
and Metohia acquired special political importance. The hereditary ethnic
Albanian pashas, who had until then been mostly renegades from the central
authorities in Constantinople, feared that the flames of rebellion might
spread to regions they controlled thus they became champions for the defense
the integrity of the Turkish Empire and leaders of many military campaigns
against the Serbian insurgents, at the core of the Serbian revolution was
the Kosovo covenant, embodied in the "revenge of Kosovo", a fresh, decisive
battle against the Turkish invaders in the field of Kosovo. In 1806 the
insurgents were preparing, like Prince Lazar in his day, to come out in
Kosovo and weigh their forces against the Turks, However, detachments of
Serbian insurgents reached only the fringes of northern Kosovo. Metohia, Old
Raska (Sandzak), Kosovo and northern Macedonia remained outside the borders
of the Serbian principality. In order to highlight their importance in the
national and political ideologies of the renewed Serbian state, they were
given a new collective name. It was not by chance that Vuk Stefanovic
Karadzic, the father of modern Serbian literacy, named the central lands of
the Nemanjic state - Old Serbia.2
Fearing the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo pashas engaged in ruthless
persecution in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious
holdings. The French travel writer F.C.H.L Pouqueville was astounded by the
utter anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians.
Jashar-pasha Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several
churches in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks. In just a few
years of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages
between Vucitrn and Gnjilane, dividing up the seized land among the local
Islamized population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern
Albania. The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor
highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate.
The revolt of the ethnic Albanian pashas against the reforms introduced
by the sultans and fierce clashes with regular Turkish troops in the
thirties and forties of the 19th century, emphasized the anarchy in Kosovo
and Metohia, causing fresh suffering among the Serbs and the further
devastation of the ancient monasteries. Since neither Serbian nor
Montenegro, two semi-independent Serbian states, were able to give any
significant help to the gravely endangered people, Serbian leaders form the
Pristina and Vucitrn regions turned to the Russian tsar in seeking
protection from their oppressors. They set out that they were forced to
choose between converting to Islam or fleeing for Serbia as the violence,
especially killings, the persecution of monks, the raping of women and
minors, had exceeded all bounds. Pogroms marked the decades to come,
especially in period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) when anti-Slav
sentiments reached their peak in the ottoman empire: ethnic Albanians and
the Cherkeses, whom the Turks had resettled in Kosovo, joined the Ottoman
troops in persecuting Orthodox Serbs.
The brotherhood of Decani and the Pec Patriarchate turned to the
authorities of Serbia for protection. Pointing to the widespread violence
and increasing banditry, and to more frequent and persisted attempts by
Catholic missionaires to compel the impoverished and spiritually discouraged
monk communities to concede to union. Prior Serafim Ristic of Decani loged
complaints with both the sultan and Russian tsar and in his book Plac Stare
Srbije (Zemun 1864) he penned hundreds of examples of violence perpetrated
by the ethnic Albanians and Turks against the Serbs, naming the
perpetrators, victims and type of crime. In Metohia alone he recorded over
one hundred cases in which the Turkish authorities, police and judiciary
tolerated and abetted robbery, bribery, murder, arson, the desecration of
churches, the seizure of property and livestock, the rape of women and
children, and the harassment of monks and priests. Both ethnic Albanians and
Turks viewed assaults against Serbs as acts pleasing to Allah acts that
punishing infidels for not believing in true God: kidnapping and Islamizing
girls were a way for true Muslims to approach Allah. Ethnic Albanian outlaws
(kayaks) became heroes among their fellow-tribesmen for fulfilling their
religious obligations in the right way and spreading the militant glory of
their clan and tribe.
Eloquent testimonies to the scope of the violence against the Serbs in
Kosovo and Metohia, ranging from blackmail and robbery to rape and murder,
come from many foreign travel-writers, from A. F. Hilferding to G. M.
McKenzie - A. P. Irby. The Russian consul in Prizren observed that ethnic
Albanians were settling the Prizren district underhidered and were trying,
with the Turks, to eradicate Christians from Kosovo and Metohia. Throughout
the 19th century there was no public safety on the roads of Metohia and
Kosovo. One could travel the roads which were controlled by tribal bands,
only with strong armed escort. The Serbian peasant had no protection in the
field where he could be assaulted and robbed by an outlaw or bandit, and if
he tried to resist, he could be killed without the perpetrator having to
face charges for the crime. Serbs, as non-Muslims, were not entitled to
carry arms. Those who possessed and used arms in self-defence afterwards had
to run for their life. Only the luckiest managed to reach the Serbian or
Montenegrin border and find permanent refuge there. They were usually
followed by large families called family cooperatives (zadruga), comprising
as many as 30-50 members, which were unable to defend themselves against the
numerous relatives of the ethnic Albanian seeking vengeance for his death in
a conflict with an elder of their clan.
Economic pressure, especially the forced reducing of free peasants to
serf, was fostered by ethnic Albanian feudal lords with a view to creating
large land-holdings. In the upheavals of war (1859, 1863) the Turkish
authorities tried to restrict enterprising Serbian merchants and craftsmen
who flourished in Pristina, Pec and Prizren, setting ablaze entire quarters
where they worked and had their shops. But it was the hardest in rural
areas, because ethnic Albanians, bond together by tight communities of blood
brotherhoods or in tribes, and relatively socially homogeneous, were able to
support their fellow tribesman without too much effort, simply by
terrorizing Serbs and seizing their property and livestock. Suppression in
driving of the Serbian peasantry, space was made for their relatives from
northern Albania to move in, whereby increased their own prestige among
other tribes. Unused to life in the plains and to hard field-work, the
settled ethnic Albanians preferred looting to farming.
Despite the hardships, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia assembled in
religious-school communes which financed the opening of schools and the
education of children, collected donations for the restoration of churches
and monasteries and, when possible, tried to improve relations with the
Turkish authorities. In addition to monastic schools, the first Serbian
secular schools started opening in Kosovo from mid-1830s, and in 1871 a
Seminary (Bogoslovija) opened in Prizren. Unable to help politically, the
Serbia systematically aided churches and schools from the 1840s onwards,
sending teachers and encouraging the best students to continue with their
studies. The Prizren seminary the hub of activity on national affairs,
educated teachers and priests for all the Serbian lands under Turkish
dominion, and unbeknownst to authorities, established contact on a regular
basis with the government in Belgrade, wherefrom it received means and
instructions for political action.
Ethnic circumstances in Kosovo and Metohia in the early 19th century
can be reconstructed on the basis of data obtained from the books written by
foreign travel writers and ethnographers who journeyed across European
Turkey. Joseph Miller's studies show that in late 1830s, 56,200 Christians
and 80,150 Muslims lived in Metohia; 11,740 of the Muslims were Islamized
Serbs, and 2,700 of the Christians were Catholic Albanians. However, clear
picture of the ethnic structure during this period cannot be obtained until
one takes into account the fact that from 1815 to 1837 some 320 families,
numbering ten to 30 members each, fled Kosovo and Metohia ahead of ethnic
Albanian violence. According to Hilferding's figures, Pec numbered 4,000
Muslim and 800 Christian families, Pristina numbered 1,200 Muslim, 900
Orthodox and 100 Catholic families with a population of 12,000.3
Russian consul Yastrebov recorded (for a 1867-1874 period) the
following figures for 226 villages in Metohia: 4,646 Muslim ethnic Albanian
homes, 1,861 Orthodox and 3,740 Islamized Serbs and 142 homes of Catholic
Albanians. Despite the massive departure of the population for Serbia,
available data show that until Eastern crisis (1875-1878), Serbs formed the
largest ethnic group in Kosovo and Metohia, largely owing to a high birth
rate.
The biggest demographics upheaval in Kosovo and Metohia occurred during
the Eastern crisis, especially during the 1876-1878 Serbo-Turkish wars, when
the question of Old Serbia started being internationalized. The Ottoman
empire lost a good deal of territory in its wars with Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
second war with the Turks, Serbian troops liberated parts of Kosovo: their
advance guard reached Pristina via Gnjilane and at the Gracanica monastery
held a memorial service for the medieval heroes of Kosovo battle... After
Russia and Turkey called a truce, Serbian troops were forced to withdraw
from Kosovo. Serbian delegations from Old Serbia sent petitions to the
Serbian Prince, the Russian tsar and participants of the Congress of Berlin,
requesting that these lands merge with Serbia. Approximately 30,000 ethnic
Albanians retreated from the liberated areas (partly under duress), seeking
refuge in Kosovo and in Metohia, while tens of thousands of Serbs fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of unleashed bashibozouks, irregular
auxiliaries of Ottoman troops.4
On the eve of the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, when the
great powers were deciding on the fate of the Balkan nations, the Albanian
League was formed in Prizren, on the periphery of ethnic Albanian living
space. The League called for the preservation of Ottoman Empire in its
entirety within the prewar boundaries and for the creation of autonomous
Albanian vilayet out of the vilayets of Kosovo, Scutari, Janina and Monster
(Bitolj), regions where ethnic Albanians accounted for 44% of overall
population. The territorial aspirations of the Albanian movement as defined
in 1878, became part of all subsequent national programs. The new sultan
Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) supported the League's pro-Ottoman and pro-Islamic
attitude. Breaking with the reformatory policy of his predecessors, sultan
adopted pan-Islamism as the ruling principle of his reign. Unsatisfied with
the decisions taken at the Congress, the League put up an armed opposition
to concession of regions of Plav and Gusinje to Montenegro, and its
detachments committed countless acts of violence against the Serbs, whose
very existence posed a permanent threat to Albanian national interests. In
1881, Turkey employed force to crush the League, whose radical wing was
striving towards an independent Albanian state to show that it was capable
of implementing the adopted reforms. Notwithstanding, under the system of
Turkish rule in the Balkans, ethnic Albanians continued to occupy the most
prominent seats in the decades to come.
The ethnic Albanians' religious and ethnic intolerance of the Serbs
took on a new, political tone. The strategic objective of their national
policy was to systematically edge the Serbs out of these regions. The
sultan's policy of forming a chain of ethnic Albanian settlements to secure
a new border towards Serbia and to let ethnic Albanians, as advocates of
Islam, crush all unrest by Serbs and other Christians in the Empire's
European provinces, turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battle-ground in
which the persecution of the Serbian populace assumed almost apocalyptic
proportions. From 1876 to 1883, approximately 1,500 Serbian families fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of Albanian violence.5
Surrounded by his influential guard of ethnic Albanians, the Abdulhamid
II became increasingly lenient toward Islamized Albanian tribes who used
force in quelling Christian movements: they were exempt from providing
recruits, paying the most of the regular taxes and allowed at times to
refuse the orders of local authorities. This lenient policy towards the
ethnic Albanians and tolerance for the violence committed against the
Serbian population created a feeling of superiority in the lower strata of
Albanian society. The knowledge that no matter what the offense they would
not be held responsible, encouraged ethnic Albanians to ignore all the
lesser authorities. Social stratification resulted on increasing number of
renegades who lived solely off banditry or as outlaws. The policy of failing
to punish ethnic Albanians led to total anarchy which, escaping all control,
increasingly worried the authorities in Constantinople. Anarchy received
fresh impetus at the end of the 19th century when Austria-Hungary, seeking a
way to expand towards the Bay of Salonika, encouraged ethnic Albanians to
clash with the Serbs and disobey the local authorities. Ruling circles in
Vienna saw the ethnic Albanians as a permanent wedge between the two Serbian
states and, with the collapse of the system of Turkish rule, a bridge
enabling the Dual Monarchy to extend in the Vardar valley. Thus, Kosovo and
Metohia became the hub of great power confrontation for supremacy in the
Balkans.
The only protection for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia until the end
of 1880s came from Russian diplomats, Russia being the traditional guardian
of the Orthodox and Slav population in the Ottoman Empire Russia's waning
influence in the Balkans following the Congress of Berlin had an unfavorable
impact on the Serbs in Turkey. Owing to Milan and Alexander Obrenovic's
Austrophile policy, Serbia lost valuable Russian support at the Porte in its
efforts to protect Serbian population In Kosovo and Metohia, Serbs were
regarded as a rebellious, treasonous element, every move they made was
carefully watched and any signs of rebellion were ruthlessly punished. A
military tribunal was established in Pristina in 1882 which in its five
years of work sent hundreds of national leaders to prison.
The persistent efforts of Serbian officials to reach agreement with
ethnic Albanian tribal chiefs in Kosovo and Metohia, and thus help curb the
anarchy failed to stem the tide of violence. Belgrade 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.
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
established a new frontier. Ethnic Albanians collectively guaranteed to the
Porte the safety of the regions in the immediate vicinity of Austria, and
were in return exempted from the heaviest taxes. Towards the end of the war
(1717), a major Serbian uprising broke out in Vucitrn and its surroundings:
it was brutally crushed and the troops sent to allay the rayah and launch an
investigation, perpetrated fresh atrocities. Excessive dues, robbery and the
threat of extermination put before the Kosovo Serbs the choices of either
converting to Islam or finding a powerful master who would protect them if
they accepted the status of serfs. Many opted for a third solution: they
moved to surrounding regions where life was more tolerable.5
The following war between Austria and Turkey (1737-1739) ended with the
routing of the imperial troops from Serbian territory. The border was
reestablished at the Sava and Danube rivers, and Serbs set out on another
migration. Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic, along with the religious and
national leaders of Pec, drew up a plan for cooperation with the Austrian
forces, and contacted their commanders. A large-scale uprisings broke out
again in Kosovo and Metohia, engaging some 10.000 Serbs. They were joined by
Montenegrin tribes, and Austrian envoys even stirred up the Kliments, a
Catholic tribe from northern Albania. A Serbian militia was formed again,
but the Austrian troops and insurgenta were forced to retreat in the face of
superior Turkish power: reprisals ensued, bringing death to the insurgents
and their families. Serbs withdrew from the mining settlements around
Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and Kopaonik. In order to keep the remaining
populace on the land, the Turks declared an amnesty. After the fall of
Belgrade, Arsenije IV moved to Austria. The number of refugees from Serbia,
including Kosovo and Metohia, along with some Kliments has yet to be
accurately determined, as people were moving on all sides and the process
lasted for several months. The considerably reduced number of taxpayers in
Kosovo and Metohia and in other parts of Serbia points to a strong migratory
wave.6
Unrest in the Ottoman empire helped spread anarchy in Kosovo and
Metohia and rest of Serbia. Raids, murder, rape against the unarmed
population was largely committed by ethnic Albanian outlaws, who were now
numerically superior in many regions. Outlaw bands held controll over roads
during Turkey's war with Russia (1768-1774), when lawlessness reigned
throughout Serbia. Ethnic Albanian outlaws looted and fleeced other regions
as well, which sent local Muslims complaining to the Porte seeking
protection.
During the last Austro-Turkish war (1788-1791); a sweeping popular
movement again took shape in northern Serbia. Because of the imperial forces
swift retreat, the movement did not encompass the southern parts of Serbia:
Kosovo, Metohia and present-day northern Macedonia. The peace treaty of
Sistovo (1791) envisaged a general amnesty for the Serbs, but the ethnic
Albanians, as outlaws or soldiers in the detachments of local pashas,
continued unhindered to assault the unprotected Serbian population. The wave
of religious intolerance towards Orthodox population, which acquired greater
proportion owing to the hostilities with Russia at the end of 18th century,
effected the forced conversion to Islam of a larger number of Serbian
families. The abolition of the Pec Patriarchate (1766), whose see and rich
estates were continually sought after by local ethnic Albanian pashas and
beys, prompted the final wave of extensive Islamization in Kosovo and
Metohia.7
Those who suffered the most during these centuries of utter lawlessness
were the Serbs, unreliable subjects who would rise every time the Turks
would wage war against one of the neighboring Great Powers, and whose
patriarchs led the people to enemy land. Although initially on a small
scale, the Islamization of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia began before the
penetration of ethnic Albanians. More widespread conversion to Islam took
place in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic
Albanians began to wield more influence on political events in these
regions. Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for
the moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most
of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized
Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially
slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday). But several
generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they
gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their
narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into being
a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national
feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a long
time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi, until the
memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old customs and
legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation to the
next.8
For a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic
Albanians, because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they
did not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the turn of
the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames as Dokic,
Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably indicated their
Serbian origin. The situation was similar in Pec and its surroundings where
many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically Serbian surnames:
Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc. The eastern parts of
Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian settlements, were the last to
undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization in Upper Morava and Izmornik
is pinpointed as taking place in the first decades of the 18th century, and
the latest in 1870s. Toponyms in many ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo
show that Serbs had lived there the preceding centuries, and in some places
Orthodox cemeteries were shielded against desecrators by ethnic Albanians
themselves, because they knew that the graves of their own ancestors lay
there.9
In the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region
near Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving
their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also some cases of
conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century, especially
during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor and property,
though far more pronounced at the time was the process of emigration, since
families, sometimes even entire villages, fled to Serbia or Montenegro.
Extensive anthropogeographic research indicates that about 30% of the
present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia is of Serbian
origin.10
1 N. Samardzic, Savremena strana stampa o Velikoj seobi Srba,
Istorijski Casopis, vol. XXXII (1985), pp. 79-103; R. Trickovic, Velika
seoba Srba 1690. godine, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp.
127-141.
2 N. Samardzic, op. cit., pp. 136-139.
3 R. Trickovic, Ustanci, seobe i stradanja u XVIII veku, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 149-169
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 J. Cvijic, La peninsule balkanique. Geographic humaine, (Paris 1918),
pp. 343-355.
9 A. Urosevic, Kosovo, (Beograd 1965); D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski
odnosi kroz vekove, pp. 95-127.
10 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, I-III, (Beograd 1906-1911).
The series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans,
triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier
centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of whom
were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European provinces
of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was again being
raised, particularly in the final quarter of 19th and the first decade of
20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument of Turkey's policy
in crushing the liberation movements of other Balkan states. After the
congress of Berlin (1878) an Albanian national movement flared up, and both
the Sultan and Austria-Hungary, a power whose occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina heralded its further expansion deep into the Balkans,
endeavored, with varying degrees of success, to instrumentalize this
movement. While the Porte used the ethnic Albanians as Islam's shock cutting
edge against Christians in the frontier regions towards Serbia and
Montenegro, particularly in Kosovo, Metohia and the nearby areas,
Austria-Hungary's design was to use the Albanians national movement against
the liberatory aspirations of the two Serbian states that were impeding the
German Drang nach Osten. In a rift between two only seemingly contrary
strivings, Serbia and Montenegro, although independent since 1878, were
powerless (at least until the Balkan wars 1912-1913) without the support of
Russia or other Great Power to effect the position of their compatriots
within the borders of Ottoman Empire.1
During the Serbian revolution, which ended with the creation of the
autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman empire (1830), Kosovo
and Metohia acquired special political importance. The hereditary ethnic
Albanian pashas, who had until then been mostly renegades from the central
authorities in Constantinople, feared that the flames of rebellion might
spread to regions they controlled thus they became champions for the defense
the integrity of the Turkish Empire and leaders of many military campaigns
against the Serbian insurgents, at the core of the Serbian revolution was
the Kosovo covenant, embodied in the "revenge of Kosovo", a fresh, decisive
battle against the Turkish invaders in the field of Kosovo. In 1806 the
insurgents were preparing, like Prince Lazar in his day, to come out in
Kosovo and weigh their forces against the Turks, However, detachments of
Serbian insurgents reached only the fringes of northern Kosovo. Metohia, Old
Raska (Sandzak), Kosovo and northern Macedonia remained outside the borders
of the Serbian principality. In order to highlight their importance in the
national and political ideologies of the renewed Serbian state, they were
given a new collective name. It was not by chance that Vuk Stefanovic
Karadzic, the father of modern Serbian literacy, named the central lands of
the Nemanjic state - Old Serbia.2
Fearing the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo pashas engaged in ruthless
persecution in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious
holdings. The French travel writer F.C.H.L Pouqueville was astounded by the
utter anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians.
Jashar-pasha Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several
churches in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks. In just a few
years of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages
between Vucitrn and Gnjilane, dividing up the seized land among the local
Islamized population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern
Albania. The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor
highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate.
The revolt of the ethnic Albanian pashas against the reforms introduced
by the sultans and fierce clashes with regular Turkish troops in the
thirties and forties of the 19th century, emphasized the anarchy in Kosovo
and Metohia, causing fresh suffering among the Serbs and the further
devastation of the ancient monasteries. Since neither Serbian nor
Montenegro, two semi-independent Serbian states, were able to give any
significant help to the gravely endangered people, Serbian leaders form the
Pristina and Vucitrn regions turned to the Russian tsar in seeking
protection from their oppressors. They set out that they were forced to
choose between converting to Islam or fleeing for Serbia as the violence,
especially killings, the persecution of monks, the raping of women and
minors, had exceeded all bounds. Pogroms marked the decades to come,
especially in period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) when anti-Slav
sentiments reached their peak in the ottoman empire: ethnic Albanians and
the Cherkeses, whom the Turks had resettled in Kosovo, joined the Ottoman
troops in persecuting Orthodox Serbs.
The brotherhood of Decani and the Pec Patriarchate turned to the
authorities of Serbia for protection. Pointing to the widespread violence
and increasing banditry, and to more frequent and persisted attempts by
Catholic missionaires to compel the impoverished and spiritually discouraged
monk communities to concede to union. Prior Serafim Ristic of Decani loged
complaints with both the sultan and Russian tsar and in his book Plac Stare
Srbije (Zemun 1864) he penned hundreds of examples of violence perpetrated
by the ethnic Albanians and Turks against the Serbs, naming the
perpetrators, victims and type of crime. In Metohia alone he recorded over
one hundred cases in which the Turkish authorities, police and judiciary
tolerated and abetted robbery, bribery, murder, arson, the desecration of
churches, the seizure of property and livestock, the rape of women and
children, and the harassment of monks and priests. Both ethnic Albanians and
Turks viewed assaults against Serbs as acts pleasing to Allah acts that
punishing infidels for not believing in true God: kidnapping and Islamizing
girls were a way for true Muslims to approach Allah. Ethnic Albanian outlaws
(kayaks) became heroes among their fellow-tribesmen for fulfilling their
religious obligations in the right way and spreading the militant glory of
their clan and tribe.
Eloquent testimonies to the scope of the violence against the Serbs in
Kosovo and Metohia, ranging from blackmail and robbery to rape and murder,
come from many foreign travel-writers, from A. F. Hilferding to G. M.
McKenzie - A. P. Irby. The Russian consul in Prizren observed that ethnic
Albanians were settling the Prizren district underhidered and were trying,
with the Turks, to eradicate Christians from Kosovo and Metohia. Throughout
the 19th century there was no public safety on the roads of Metohia and
Kosovo. One could travel the roads which were controlled by tribal bands,
only with strong armed escort. The Serbian peasant had no protection in the
field where he could be assaulted and robbed by an outlaw or bandit, and if
he tried to resist, he could be killed without the perpetrator having to
face charges for the crime. Serbs, as non-Muslims, were not entitled to
carry arms. Those who possessed and used arms in self-defence afterwards had
to run for their life. Only the luckiest managed to reach the Serbian or
Montenegrin border and find permanent refuge there. They were usually
followed by large families called family cooperatives (zadruga), comprising
as many as 30-50 members, which were unable to defend themselves against the
numerous relatives of the ethnic Albanian seeking vengeance for his death in
a conflict with an elder of their clan.
Economic pressure, especially the forced reducing of free peasants to
serf, was fostered by ethnic Albanian feudal lords with a view to creating
large land-holdings. In the upheavals of war (1859, 1863) the Turkish
authorities tried to restrict enterprising Serbian merchants and craftsmen
who flourished in Pristina, Pec and Prizren, setting ablaze entire quarters
where they worked and had their shops. But it was the hardest in rural
areas, because ethnic Albanians, bond together by tight communities of blood
brotherhoods or in tribes, and relatively socially homogeneous, were able to
support their fellow tribesman without too much effort, simply by
terrorizing Serbs and seizing their property and livestock. Suppression in
driving of the Serbian peasantry, space was made for their relatives from
northern Albania to move in, whereby increased their own prestige among
other tribes. Unused to life in the plains and to hard field-work, the
settled ethnic Albanians preferred looting to farming.
Despite the hardships, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia assembled in
religious-school communes which financed the opening of schools and the
education of children, collected donations for the restoration of churches
and monasteries and, when possible, tried to improve relations with the
Turkish authorities. In addition to monastic schools, the first Serbian
secular schools started opening in Kosovo from mid-1830s, and in 1871 a
Seminary (Bogoslovija) opened in Prizren. Unable to help politically, the
Serbia systematically aided churches and schools from the 1840s onwards,
sending teachers and encouraging the best students to continue with their
studies. The Prizren seminary the hub of activity on national affairs,
educated teachers and priests for all the Serbian lands under Turkish
dominion, and unbeknownst to authorities, established contact on a regular
basis with the government in Belgrade, wherefrom it received means and
instructions for political action.
Ethnic circumstances in Kosovo and Metohia in the early 19th century
can be reconstructed on the basis of data obtained from the books written by
foreign travel writers and ethnographers who journeyed across European
Turkey. Joseph Miller's studies show that in late 1830s, 56,200 Christians
and 80,150 Muslims lived in Metohia; 11,740 of the Muslims were Islamized
Serbs, and 2,700 of the Christians were Catholic Albanians. However, clear
picture of the ethnic structure during this period cannot be obtained until
one takes into account the fact that from 1815 to 1837 some 320 families,
numbering ten to 30 members each, fled Kosovo and Metohia ahead of ethnic
Albanian violence. According to Hilferding's figures, Pec numbered 4,000
Muslim and 800 Christian families, Pristina numbered 1,200 Muslim, 900
Orthodox and 100 Catholic families with a population of 12,000.3
Russian consul Yastrebov recorded (for a 1867-1874 period) the
following figures for 226 villages in Metohia: 4,646 Muslim ethnic Albanian
homes, 1,861 Orthodox and 3,740 Islamized Serbs and 142 homes of Catholic
Albanians. Despite the massive departure of the population for Serbia,
available data show that until Eastern crisis (1875-1878), Serbs formed the
largest ethnic group in Kosovo and Metohia, largely owing to a high birth
rate.
The biggest demographics upheaval in Kosovo and Metohia occurred during
the Eastern crisis, especially during the 1876-1878 Serbo-Turkish wars, when
the question of Old Serbia started being internationalized. The Ottoman
empire lost a good deal of territory in its wars with Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
second war with the Turks, Serbian troops liberated parts of Kosovo: their
advance guard reached Pristina via Gnjilane and at the Gracanica monastery
held a memorial service for the medieval heroes of Kosovo battle... After
Russia and Turkey called a truce, Serbian troops were forced to withdraw
from Kosovo. Serbian delegations from Old Serbia sent petitions to the
Serbian Prince, the Russian tsar and participants of the Congress of Berlin,
requesting that these lands merge with Serbia. Approximately 30,000 ethnic
Albanians retreated from the liberated areas (partly under duress), seeking
refuge in Kosovo and in Metohia, while tens of thousands of Serbs fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of unleashed bashibozouks, irregular
auxiliaries of Ottoman troops.4
On the eve of the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, when the
great powers were deciding on the fate of the Balkan nations, the Albanian
League was formed in Prizren, on the periphery of ethnic Albanian living
space. The League called for the preservation of Ottoman Empire in its
entirety within the prewar boundaries and for the creation of autonomous
Albanian vilayet out of the vilayets of Kosovo, Scutari, Janina and Monster
(Bitolj), regions where ethnic Albanians accounted for 44% of overall
population. The territorial aspirations of the Albanian movement as defined
in 1878, became part of all subsequent national programs. The new sultan
Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) supported the League's pro-Ottoman and pro-Islamic
attitude. Breaking with the reformatory policy of his predecessors, sultan
adopted pan-Islamism as the ruling principle of his reign. Unsatisfied with
the decisions taken at the Congress, the League put up an armed opposition
to concession of regions of Plav and Gusinje to Montenegro, and its
detachments committed countless acts of violence against the Serbs, whose
very existence posed a permanent threat to Albanian national interests. In
1881, Turkey employed force to crush the League, whose radical wing was
striving towards an independent Albanian state to show that it was capable
of implementing the adopted reforms. Notwithstanding, under the system of
Turkish rule in the Balkans, ethnic Albanians continued to occupy the most
prominent seats in the decades to come.
The ethnic Albanians' religious and ethnic intolerance of the Serbs
took on a new, political tone. The strategic objective of their national
policy was to systematically edge the Serbs out of these regions. The
sultan's policy of forming a chain of ethnic Albanian settlements to secure
a new border towards Serbia and to let ethnic Albanians, as advocates of
Islam, crush all unrest by Serbs and other Christians in the Empire's
European provinces, turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battle-ground in
which the persecution of the Serbian populace assumed almost apocalyptic
proportions. From 1876 to 1883, approximately 1,500 Serbian families fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of Albanian violence.5
Surrounded by his influential guard of ethnic Albanians, the Abdulhamid
II became increasingly lenient toward Islamized Albanian tribes who used
force in quelling Christian movements: they were exempt from providing
recruits, paying the most of the regular taxes and allowed at times to
refuse the orders of local authorities. This lenient policy towards the
ethnic Albanians and tolerance for the violence committed against the
Serbian population created a feeling of superiority in the lower strata of
Albanian society. The knowledge that no matter what the offense they would
not be held responsible, encouraged ethnic Albanians to ignore all the
lesser authorities. Social stratification resulted on increasing number of
renegades who lived solely off banditry or as outlaws. The policy of failing
to punish ethnic Albanians led to total anarchy which, escaping all control,
increasingly worried the authorities in Constantinople. Anarchy received
fresh impetus at the end of the 19th century when Austria-Hungary, seeking a
way to expand towards the Bay of Salonika, encouraged ethnic Albanians to
clash with the Serbs and disobey the local authorities. Ruling circles in
Vienna saw the ethnic Albanians as a permanent wedge between the two Serbian
states and, with the collapse of the system of Turkish rule, a bridge
enabling the Dual Monarchy to extend in the Vardar valley. Thus, Kosovo and
Metohia became the hub of great power confrontation for supremacy in the
Balkans.
The only protection for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia until the end
of 1880s came from Russian diplomats, Russia being the traditional guardian
of the Orthodox and Slav population in the Ottoman Empire Russia's waning
influence in the Balkans following the Congress of Berlin had an unfavorable
impact on the Serbs in Turkey. Owing to Milan and Alexander Obrenovic's
Austrophile policy, Serbia lost valuable Russian support at the Porte in its
efforts to protect Serbian population In Kosovo and Metohia, Serbs were
regarded as a rebellious, treasonous element, every move they made was
carefully watched and any signs of rebellion were ruthlessly punished. A
military tribunal was established in Pristina in 1882 which in its five
years of work sent hundreds of national leaders to prison.
The persistent efforts of Serbian officials to reach agreement with
ethnic Albanian tribal chiefs in Kosovo and Metohia, and thus help curb the
anarchy failed to stem the tide of violence. Belgrade 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.
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