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
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 Serbs and 20, 424
Montenegrins (Serbs from Montenegro) moved to Serbia and other regions from
1961 to 1980. After the secessionist revolt of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
and Metohia in the spring of 1981, another 38,000 Serbs and Montenegrins
moved out under duress. Their emigration has still not been stemmed.
The injuriousness of the policy of narrowing Serbia's sovereignty and
deliberately neutralizing Serbs in communist Yugoslavia is best illustrated
in the case of Kosovo and Metohia, where the Serbs, although formally in
their own state (Republic of Serbia) were forcibly reduced to a minority
with limited civil and national rights. Thanks to the organized actions of
the Province's local administration, which had backing from federal bodies,
the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia were forced in many cases to leave, owing to
the atmosphere of unsafety, fear and persecution. After almost a decade of
waiting in vain for the federal Yugoslav bodies to stop Kosovo's further
Albanization and halt the exodus from Kosovo and Metohia, a large-scale
Serbian movement erupted, aided by the ecclesiastical circles and the
Belgrade liberal intelligentsia, demanding that the 1974 Constitution be
changed and Kosovo returned to Serbian sovereignty. The movement, which
spread to encompass Serbs from all over Yugoslavia, regardless of their
ideological convictions, emerged (afterwards carefully manipulated by new
leadership in Serbia), prior to the 600th anniversary of the Battle of
Kosovo (1989), heralding, not only symbolically, the return to the eternal
foothold of Serbian national entity - the Kosovo covenant.
1 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 326-335.
2 K. Cavoski, Komunisticka partija Jugoslavije i kosovsko pitanje, in:
Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 361-375.
3 K. Cavoski, Uspostavljanje i razvoj kosovske autonomije, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 379-383
4 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, pp. 329-333; More
details in: B. Tonnes, Sonderfall Albanien - Enver Hoxhas "Einiger Weg" und
die historischen Ursprung seiner ideologic, Munchen 1980.
5 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 334-341.
6 Large documentation in: R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova.
Istorijsko-pravna studija, Beograd 1985
7 Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost, pp. 151-257. Cf. J. Reuter, Die
Albaner in Jugoslawien, Munchen 1982, pp. 43-101; S. K. Pavlowitch, The
Improbable Survivor. Yugoslavia and its Problems 1918-1988, London 1988, pp.
78-93.
8 M Misovic, Ko je trazio republiku Kosovo 1945-1985, Beograd 1987.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia
lived under extremely unfavorable circumstances. Toward the end of the 18th
century, the general position of Christian subjects in the European
provinces of the Ottoman Empire was becoming worse with authority
deteriorating in the Turkish administration. A country in which affiliation
to Islam marked the foundation of state ideology, Christians were citizens
of a lower order. The empire was overcome by refeudalization. The
timar-sipahi system was turning into the chiflik-sahibi system, thus
affecting mostly Christian farmers. Arrogation of peasant land and the
imposition of additional taxes were carried out by force. The destruction of
free peasant estates, thus constraining farmers to the position of tenant
farmers (chiflik farmers), the evacuation of entire villages and forceful
Islamization made life insufferable for the Christian people of the Balkans.
Uprisings and movements at the beginning of the century announced a struggle
for the restoration of national states on the Balkan Peninsula.1
The unique religious, ethnic and political character had made life more
difficult for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia than in other European
provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Aside to the misfortune common to all
Christians of the European parts of the empire (religious intolerance, legal
and economic unprotectedness) was an arduous struggle for physical and
national survival. The Serbs of Kosovo and Metohia had intercepted the path
leading to the biological expansion of the powerful Albanian populace living
in neighboring regions or admixed with the Serbs. The Albanians were an
ethnic element with strong tribal organization only consolidated through
Islam. Sloping the grey mountains circumscribing Kosovo and Metohia on the
south, armed Albanian herdsmen descended to the plains of Kosovo and
Metohia, routing native Serbian inhabitants to make space for the settlement
of their fellow tribesmen. Albanian settlements sprouted in Kosovo and
Metohia like freely growing weeds. Wedging themselves like pegs into compact
Serbian settlements, the armed ethnic Albanians imposed upon the unarmed
Serbs an unequal struggle over the land.
On the plane of political determination, ethnic Albanians were the most
conservative element on the Peninsula, loyal to the shenat. Headed by
illiterate and xenophobic tribal chiefs (krenas) and feudal lords, without
true national awareness, the Albanian highlander was doubly intolerant
toward the Orthodox Serbian. As Islamic believers and representatives of a
privileged class in the state, they defined themselves to the Serbs
confessionally, calling them infidels (djaurs), thus underscoring religious
intolerance and social inequality. Certain racial intolerance was older than
Islamization. ethnic Albanians of all confessions living in regions composed
of an intermingled populace, called the Slavic inhabitants derogatorily Ski,
thus emphasizing an ethnic distinction and their superiority.
In the mid-17th century, when Muslim ethnic Albanians more often occupy
the highest positions in Constantinople, the rise of their fellow tribesmen
to the high military and administrative hierarchy of the Ottoman state
began. Their influence on the policies of the Porte was wielded through the
sultan's personal guard comprised mostly of select ethnic Albanians. From
the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century,
mostly during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1878-1909), they largely
attained eminent positions in the army and administration.
Surrounded by companies of their fellow tribesmen, at times when the
authority exercised by the central government was sinking, Albanian Muslims
became autocratic, hereditary feudal lords, and often sinewy outlaws of the
Turkish authorities. During the Napoleonic wars, the rule of independent and
semi-independent pashas marked the political circumstances in the Ottoman
Empire: beginning with the Belgrade pashalik, where power was usurped by
four dahis, proceeding through Vidine and Janina, where Osman Pasha
Pasvanoglu and the famous All Pasha Tepellena ruled, ending with Syria and
Egypt; provincial governors rose to independent and insubordinate rulers.
The feudal lords of Kosovo and Metohia ruled completely independent of
the central government. Following long struggles for dominion in some
regions, several notable families that gave hereditary regents to the
provinces distinguished themselves. In Pristina and Gnjilane the Dime family
ruled until the end of the 18th century, in the Prizren sanjak the
Rotulovices, originally from Ljuma, and in Pec the powerful Mahmudbegovices,
lords of Metohia from mid-18th century. The ethnic Albanians of Muslim
faith, under the leadership of feudal lords or outlawed regents, were
considered followers of the old regime founded on the sheriat law and
liberal tribal privileges. Their rule was tolerated because they secured
Ottoman legitimacy in regions densely populated by Christian Serbian
inhabitants.2
Independent pashas were also carriers of a proselyte policy in the
central countries of the former Nemanjic state. A surge of religious
intolerance, especially from the end of the 18th century, tossed the
systematic persecution of Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire. When
they grew to heavy pogroms, a large part of the already thinned and deeply
inflamed populace in Kosovo and Metohia adopted Islam to save their bare
existence and family hearths. At the end of the 18th century and the
beginning of the 19th century almost all the Orthodox Serbs from Gora, a
zhupa near Prizren, were compelled to convert to Islam.3
Even though the Serbs always regarded conversion as a temporary and
inevitable evil, the second and third generations were already taking wives
from Muslim Albanian families. Thus Islamization became permanent. Among the
descendants who entered Albanian clans through marriage alliances, accepting
the language and gradually becoming Albanized, old family names were an
admonition of the Serbian past, a token to the glory of the cross. The
ethnic Albanians, as the Orthodox Serbs referred to them, became in time the
most extreme tyrants.4
1 The following works provide a synthetical survey on the life of
Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohia in the 19th and the beginning of the
20th century:
Kosovo nekad i sad (Kosova dikur e sot), chapter: Kosovo pod turskom
vlascu, (H, Kalesi), Beograd 1973, pp. 145-176; Istorija srpskog naroda V/1,
Beograd 1981, pp. 14-16, 133-148 (N. Rakocevic, Dj. Mikic); D. Bogdanovic,
Knjiga o Kosovu, Beograd 1983, pp. 126-195; D. Mikic, Drustveno-politicki
razvoj kosovskih Srba u XIX veku, Glasnik Muzeja Kosova, XIII-XIV (1984),
pp. 231-260. Most informative on the first half of the century is a
monography by V. Stojancevic, Juznoslovenski narodi u Osmanskom Carstvu od
Jedrenskog mira 1829 do Pariskog kongresa 1856 godine, Beograd 1971; On
economy see Dj. Mikic, Drustvene i ekonomske prilike kosovskih Srba u XIX i
pocetkom XX veka, od cifcijstva do bankarstva, Beograd 1988; on territorial
organization in the administrative apparatus see H. Kalesi - H-J. Kornrumpf,
Prizrenski vilajet, Perparimi, 1 (1967), pp. 71-124.
2 Istorija srpskog naroda, V/1, A. Urosevic, Etnicki procesi na Kosovu
tokom turske vladavine, Beograd 1987.
3 M. Lutovac, Gora i Opolje, Antropogeografska istrazivanja, Naselja i
poreklo stanovnistva, 35 (1955), pp. 230-279.
4 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, III, Beograd 1911, pp. 1162-1166; Todor P. Stankovic, Putne beleske
po Staroj Srbiji 1871-1898, Beograd 1910, pp. 111-140.
The attempts of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807) to change and modernize
the administrative system of the Ottoman Empire with reforms ended in
failure. Resistance to the reforms was exceptionally strong throughout the
empire. Reform plans to improve the position of Christians turned the
Albanian feudal lords and tribal chiefs of Kosovo against the Orthodox
Serbs - chiflik farmers on their large sipahiliks. Efforts undertaken by the
Sublime Porte to win over support from Albanian lords in Kosovo against
outlawed provincial regents had no apparent effect. Albanian pashas,
availing themselves of a favorable opportunity to greater gain by imposing
new taxes upon the rayah, took no heed to orders from
Constantinople.1
The Serbian Insurrection against the dahis in the Belgrade pashalik in
1804, under the leadership of Karadjordje (Black George), moved the Serbs in
all regions of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning as an uprising against the
dahis, the insurrection soon grew into the first national revolution of
Balkan Christians, opening the perspectives of a total national liberation.
At that moment, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia, remote from the Belgrade
pashalik, unarmed and without immediate contact with the leadership of the
insurrection, had no opportunity to rise and join the insurgents. The feudal
lords of Kosovo used the beginning of the Serbian national revolution to
consolidate and expand their power. The Porte needed their assistance both
to curbe the rebelling forces and as a warrant against any moves the Serbs
might make in regions under their control.
Chronic lawlessness, perpetual danger from possible incursions of
Albanian outlaws, religious intolerance and the unbearable clench of feudal
lords all created an impenetrable wall separating the Serbs of Kosovo and
Metohia from rebelling Serbia. Hardly any testimony remains from individual
participants of the Serbian national revolution. Nevertheless, some
documentation was preserved from the boldest among them, whose affairs took
them to Belgrade and the bordering Austrian regions, and who found
themselves in the center of events.2
An important role in preparations for the rebellion was played by
Andrija, a wealthy merchant from Prizren (father of Sima Andrejevic
Igumanov, a renown Serbian benefactor and founder of the Seminary in
Prizren), who had extensive business ties in Belgrade, Pest and Vienna. On
the eve of the uprising against the dahis, he secretly transported gunpowder
from Zemun to Belgrade. When the uprising began, Andrija continued to supply
the rebellious companies with arms and ammunition. Two of his four sons,
Kraguj and Petar, fought in the insurgent lines with several other Serbs
from Prizren, until the fall of the insurrection in 1813.3
Beside Andrija, the most prominent Serbian from Prizren to take part in
the First Serbian Insurrection was Anta Colak Simonovic, who moved to
Belgrade when he was a young man, and dealt in furs. On the eve of the
insurrection, the Belgrade dahis ordered several loads of guns from him.
Colak Anta obtained the arms in Prizren, but on his return he handed them
over to Karadjordje at Topola. When the surrounding Turkish provinces rose
together with Sumadija (regions between the Drina and Tara rivers, the
tribal regions of Drobnjak, Moraca and Albanian Kliments) in 1805, the
number of volunteers joining Karadjordje's troops from Kosovo, Metohia, Old
Raska and other regions increased.
From the beginning of the uprising, void (supreme leader) Karadjordje
aimed to raise in arms, beside the Belgrade pashalik, as many lands of
Serbia as possible. From 1806, the insurgent army penetrated toward Stari
Vlah, Bosnia and Macedonia. The following year the insurgents reached
Kursumlija, and in 1809, using their alliance with Russia, then at war with
Turkey, the insurgent companies extended to Sjenica, Nova Varos, Prijepolje
and Bijelo Polje. According to the estimates of a French travel writer,
Henri Pouqueville, who passed through Kosovo in 1807, areas around Banjska
were encompassed by the insurrection, while Gerasim, the bishop of Sabac,
left testimony on the area of upper Ibar, on the space between Josanica,
Kopaonik and Vucitrn, where battles were waged with aid from the local
Serbian populace. Historian Stojan Novakovic even believed that the whole
region was under Serbian control until the fall of the Insurrection in
1813.4
Karadjordje's endeavor to establish contact with Montenegrin tribes
through the Sjenica instigated a considerable number of Serbs from Kosovo to
join the insurgent forces and caused fermentation among the Serbs of the
northwestern parts of Kosovo. In the Ibarski Kolasin, a wooded and
impassable area, inhabited mostly by Serbians, a movement was formed to aid
Karadjordje's campaign at the Sjenica. However, the Turks discovered their
intentions and captured the most famous leaders of Kolasin, banishing them
to exile in Egypt.5
Karadjordje's victorious campaign toward Montenegro and Kosovo was
severed by the defeat of Serbian insurgents at the battle of Kamenica near
Nis, in 1809. The army at the southwest of Serbia was forced to retreat
north; the endeavor to expand the uprising to Montenegro and the northern
regions of Kosovo came to an end.
The victories of the Serbian troops during the first years of waging
seriously imperilled the feudal privileges and estates of Albanian pashas in
Metohia and Kosovo, where the rayah was mostly Serbian. When the flame of
the uprising spread to the surrounding countries, commotion arose even among
Albanian leaders in north Albania. The Belgrade dahis and representatives of
the Turkish government in Serbia, of whom a considerable number were ethnic
Albanians, strove since 1804 to win over Albanian pashas in the neighboring
regions for the struggle against a common enemy.
Turkish forces engaged to wage Serbian troops on the southern and
southwestern battlefield were composed mainly of ethnic Albanians lead by
pashas and tribal chiefs. In 1806, the bashibazouk (irregular) troops of the
pashas of Scutari, Leskovac, Vranje, Pristina, Djakovica, Prizren and
Skoplje, a force numbering 33,800 men, assembled at the Morava, at a front
toward the Serbs. Many of them fought Serbian insurgents in the years to
follow. The Turkish army, composed of ethnic Albanians, checked the Serbs at
Prijepolje and Nova Varos. In the battles at the Sjenica and Suvodol in
1809, the decisive role in defeating the Serbs was played by troops
belonging to the pashas of Scutari and Pec. In battles waged at Rozaj, the
pasha od Djakovica was defeated. Muktar Pasha, son of the most influential
independent Albanian feudal lord, Ali Pasha Tepellena of Janina, fought
against the Serbs at Deligrad. Battling together with Albanian feudal lords
against the Serbs were influential tribal chiefs - krenas. At the battle of
Kamenica alone four standard bearers of one clan were killed at Drenica.
Mehmed Pasha Rotulovic and his army took part at the battle of Kamenica and
returned to Prizren with loads of spoil and Serbian slaves -women and
children.6
The hereditary pashas of Kosovo, Metohia and north Albania were a
constant threat to Karadjordje and his successor Knez (Prince) Milos
Obrenovic. When possibilities for resuming the struggle were discussed prior
to the 1813 fall of the Serbian Insurrection, Karadjordje counted on the
possibility of all ethnic Albanians being dispatched to Serbia. He thus
entreated Prince-Bishop Petar I of Montenegro to execute a demonstration on
the Albanian border to compel their neighbors to remain on their land. A
similar entreaty was again sent by prince Milos to the Metropolitan of
Cetinje in 1821, for fear that the uprising in Greece might be followed by a
Turkish preventive incursion on Serbia.
The number of armed men under the command of Albanian pashas displayed
the dimensions of their military capabilities, as well as deep fear [or the
possibility of the insurrection expanding to their regions. The victories of
the insurgents caused the exertion of great pressure upon the subjugated
Serbian populace under Albanian lords. Lord Malic Pasha Dzinic of the
Pristina region, moved Serbian chiflik farmers from the northern areas of
Lab, and settled ethnic Albanians to secure the boundaries of his territory
from incursions of insurgent Serbian companies. Passing in 1807 through
Pristina, estimating around 1,500 homes in it, Henri Pouqueville noted:
"From its narrow and muddy streets, poor trade, wretched people and the
bloodthirsty rule of Malic Pasha, who then commanded, a distinct aura of
terror and woe emanated. It did not seem appropriate to pay a visit to the
Albanian, a sworn mortal enemy of the Christians".7
Anarchy created through the rule of independent pashas was favorable to
the raiding parties of Albanian outlaws. They attacked passengers and
merchant caravans from their hideouts, plundered and blackmailed the
Christian rayah, assaulted and dishonored their wives and daughters. In
Gnjilane, Pouqueville saw passengers raided by outlaws and learnt that some
merchants were killed just at the entrance to the town. As a result, at
orders given by pashas, entire forests were burnt in spaces between
Pristina, Gnjilane, Novo Brdo and Kumanovo, where the outlaws
hid.8
The position of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia did not change even
when comparative peace prevailed in Serbia. Kosovo was governed by Jashar
Pasha, nephew of Malic Pasha, inviolable lord of the Pristina sanjak during
the second and third decades of the 19th century. He was engraved in the
memory of the people on account of his merciless persecution of the Serbs,
the destruction of their free estates, confiscation of church and monastic
lands, and, above all, for demolishing Serbian villages. For less than a
decade, Jashar Pasha succeeded in destroying or evacuating 32 Serbian
villages in the Pristina nahi, 22 in the Vucitrn nahi, and another 25
settlements in other parts of Kosovo. Jashar Pasha distributed a large
amount of the seized lands among newcome Albanian settlers and local Muslims
of Serbian origin, while also appropriating some himself. The newcome ethnic
Albanians, mainly herdsmen, had no experience in farming so the fertile
plains of Kosovo soon became neglected pastures.9
Faced with the terror of the Pristina pasha, the Serbs fled to the
nearby sanjaks of Vranje or Leskovac, or crossed over to Serbia under the
wing of knez Milos. Similar examples where deliberate change in the
demographic picture of certain Turkish provinces were carried out existed in
southern Albania and northwestern Greece, where the brutal Ali Pasha of
Janina mercilessly destroyed Christian villages, forcefully executed
Islamization and reduced farmers to tenant, chiflik farmers. During the
twenties of the 19th century (1821-1825), armies of feudal lords utterly
devastated vast lands from Moreja to Epirus and Thessaly while fighting
Greek insurgents.10
The reform action of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839), the introduction of
a regular army and abolition of the Janissary Corps (1826) infuriated the
independent pashas in Metohia and Kosovo. Intentions to grant certain rights
to the Christians inflamed the hatred of Muslim ethnic Albanians. Anarchy,
marking a period of unlimited power for independent pashas, suited many
outlaws. "During the reigns of these pashas, any Muhammedan could, if he
desired, murder any Serb without due consequence, only if he sought refuge
under a mosque or tekke. In those days, Prizren, Kosovo, Pec, Djakovica and
Scutari were governed by harshest oppression."11
To survive, the Serbs turned to collective mimicry. The men wore
Albanian clothes, and the women veiled their faces. Jashar Pasha attacked
Serbian churches, especially the Gracanica monastery and the Samodreza
church. He demolished four Serbian churches (in Batus, Skulanovac, Rujan and
Slovinja and the Lipljan church parvis) and built a bridge from their stone
over the Sitnica river near Lipljan. The clergy also bore the brunt of
independent pashas. In 1820, two monks from the Decani monastery were hanged
in Novi Pazar, and one in Pristina.12
As soon as imminent danger from the expansion of the Serbian, and then
Greek insurrection was past, rivalry among Albanian lords for dominion over
the surrounding territories revived. The Serbs were the greatest victims:
they were compelled to receive them for overnight stay, supply food and
provide field trains for the armies of warring provincial regents. In these
campaigns, requisition, imposition of additional taxes and the looting of
Christian villages, through which the army passed, was habitual. At the end
of the conflict, the Christians would be overwhelmed by both the rage of the
defeated and the plunder of the victorious.
In March 1827, a small provincial war began, when regent of Scutari,
Mustafa Pasha Bushatli (the so-called Shkodra Pasha), ventured to subjugate
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
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 Serbs and 20, 424
Montenegrins (Serbs from Montenegro) moved to Serbia and other regions from
1961 to 1980. After the secessionist revolt of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
and Metohia in the spring of 1981, another 38,000 Serbs and Montenegrins
moved out under duress. Their emigration has still not been stemmed.
The injuriousness of the policy of narrowing Serbia's sovereignty and
deliberately neutralizing Serbs in communist Yugoslavia is best illustrated
in the case of Kosovo and Metohia, where the Serbs, although formally in
their own state (Republic of Serbia) were forcibly reduced to a minority
with limited civil and national rights. Thanks to the organized actions of
the Province's local administration, which had backing from federal bodies,
the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia were forced in many cases to leave, owing to
the atmosphere of unsafety, fear and persecution. After almost a decade of
waiting in vain for the federal Yugoslav bodies to stop Kosovo's further
Albanization and halt the exodus from Kosovo and Metohia, a large-scale
Serbian movement erupted, aided by the ecclesiastical circles and the
Belgrade liberal intelligentsia, demanding that the 1974 Constitution be
changed and Kosovo returned to Serbian sovereignty. The movement, which
spread to encompass Serbs from all over Yugoslavia, regardless of their
ideological convictions, emerged (afterwards carefully manipulated by new
leadership in Serbia), prior to the 600th anniversary of the Battle of
Kosovo (1989), heralding, not only symbolically, the return to the eternal
foothold of Serbian national entity - the Kosovo covenant.
1 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 326-335.
2 K. Cavoski, Komunisticka partija Jugoslavije i kosovsko pitanje, in:
Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 361-375.
3 K. Cavoski, Uspostavljanje i razvoj kosovske autonomije, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 379-383
4 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, pp. 329-333; More
details in: B. Tonnes, Sonderfall Albanien - Enver Hoxhas "Einiger Weg" und
die historischen Ursprung seiner ideologic, Munchen 1980.
5 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 334-341.
6 Large documentation in: R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova.
Istorijsko-pravna studija, Beograd 1985
7 Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost, pp. 151-257. Cf. J. Reuter, Die
Albaner in Jugoslawien, Munchen 1982, pp. 43-101; S. K. Pavlowitch, The
Improbable Survivor. Yugoslavia and its Problems 1918-1988, London 1988, pp.
78-93.
8 M Misovic, Ko je trazio republiku Kosovo 1945-1985, Beograd 1987.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia
lived under extremely unfavorable circumstances. Toward the end of the 18th
century, the general position of Christian subjects in the European
provinces of the Ottoman Empire was becoming worse with authority
deteriorating in the Turkish administration. A country in which affiliation
to Islam marked the foundation of state ideology, Christians were citizens
of a lower order. The empire was overcome by refeudalization. The
timar-sipahi system was turning into the chiflik-sahibi system, thus
affecting mostly Christian farmers. Arrogation of peasant land and the
imposition of additional taxes were carried out by force. The destruction of
free peasant estates, thus constraining farmers to the position of tenant
farmers (chiflik farmers), the evacuation of entire villages and forceful
Islamization made life insufferable for the Christian people of the Balkans.
Uprisings and movements at the beginning of the century announced a struggle
for the restoration of national states on the Balkan Peninsula.1
The unique religious, ethnic and political character had made life more
difficult for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia than in other European
provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Aside to the misfortune common to all
Christians of the European parts of the empire (religious intolerance, legal
and economic unprotectedness) was an arduous struggle for physical and
national survival. The Serbs of Kosovo and Metohia had intercepted the path
leading to the biological expansion of the powerful Albanian populace living
in neighboring regions or admixed with the Serbs. The Albanians were an
ethnic element with strong tribal organization only consolidated through
Islam. Sloping the grey mountains circumscribing Kosovo and Metohia on the
south, armed Albanian herdsmen descended to the plains of Kosovo and
Metohia, routing native Serbian inhabitants to make space for the settlement
of their fellow tribesmen. Albanian settlements sprouted in Kosovo and
Metohia like freely growing weeds. Wedging themselves like pegs into compact
Serbian settlements, the armed ethnic Albanians imposed upon the unarmed
Serbs an unequal struggle over the land.
On the plane of political determination, ethnic Albanians were the most
conservative element on the Peninsula, loyal to the shenat. Headed by
illiterate and xenophobic tribal chiefs (krenas) and feudal lords, without
true national awareness, the Albanian highlander was doubly intolerant
toward the Orthodox Serbian. As Islamic believers and representatives of a
privileged class in the state, they defined themselves to the Serbs
confessionally, calling them infidels (djaurs), thus underscoring religious
intolerance and social inequality. Certain racial intolerance was older than
Islamization. ethnic Albanians of all confessions living in regions composed
of an intermingled populace, called the Slavic inhabitants derogatorily Ski,
thus emphasizing an ethnic distinction and their superiority.
In the mid-17th century, when Muslim ethnic Albanians more often occupy
the highest positions in Constantinople, the rise of their fellow tribesmen
to the high military and administrative hierarchy of the Ottoman state
began. Their influence on the policies of the Porte was wielded through the
sultan's personal guard comprised mostly of select ethnic Albanians. From
the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century,
mostly during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1878-1909), they largely
attained eminent positions in the army and administration.
Surrounded by companies of their fellow tribesmen, at times when the
authority exercised by the central government was sinking, Albanian Muslims
became autocratic, hereditary feudal lords, and often sinewy outlaws of the
Turkish authorities. During the Napoleonic wars, the rule of independent and
semi-independent pashas marked the political circumstances in the Ottoman
Empire: beginning with the Belgrade pashalik, where power was usurped by
four dahis, proceeding through Vidine and Janina, where Osman Pasha
Pasvanoglu and the famous All Pasha Tepellena ruled, ending with Syria and
Egypt; provincial governors rose to independent and insubordinate rulers.
The feudal lords of Kosovo and Metohia ruled completely independent of
the central government. Following long struggles for dominion in some
regions, several notable families that gave hereditary regents to the
provinces distinguished themselves. In Pristina and Gnjilane the Dime family
ruled until the end of the 18th century, in the Prizren sanjak the
Rotulovices, originally from Ljuma, and in Pec the powerful Mahmudbegovices,
lords of Metohia from mid-18th century. The ethnic Albanians of Muslim
faith, under the leadership of feudal lords or outlawed regents, were
considered followers of the old regime founded on the sheriat law and
liberal tribal privileges. Their rule was tolerated because they secured
Ottoman legitimacy in regions densely populated by Christian Serbian
inhabitants.2
Independent pashas were also carriers of a proselyte policy in the
central countries of the former Nemanjic state. A surge of religious
intolerance, especially from the end of the 18th century, tossed the
systematic persecution of Christians throughout the Ottoman Empire. When
they grew to heavy pogroms, a large part of the already thinned and deeply
inflamed populace in Kosovo and Metohia adopted Islam to save their bare
existence and family hearths. At the end of the 18th century and the
beginning of the 19th century almost all the Orthodox Serbs from Gora, a
zhupa near Prizren, were compelled to convert to Islam.3
Even though the Serbs always regarded conversion as a temporary and
inevitable evil, the second and third generations were already taking wives
from Muslim Albanian families. Thus Islamization became permanent. Among the
descendants who entered Albanian clans through marriage alliances, accepting
the language and gradually becoming Albanized, old family names were an
admonition of the Serbian past, a token to the glory of the cross. The
ethnic Albanians, as the Orthodox Serbs referred to them, became in time the
most extreme tyrants.4
1 The following works provide a synthetical survey on the life of
Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohia in the 19th and the beginning of the
20th century:
Kosovo nekad i sad (Kosova dikur e sot), chapter: Kosovo pod turskom
vlascu, (H, Kalesi), Beograd 1973, pp. 145-176; Istorija srpskog naroda V/1,
Beograd 1981, pp. 14-16, 133-148 (N. Rakocevic, Dj. Mikic); D. Bogdanovic,
Knjiga o Kosovu, Beograd 1983, pp. 126-195; D. Mikic, Drustveno-politicki
razvoj kosovskih Srba u XIX veku, Glasnik Muzeja Kosova, XIII-XIV (1984),
pp. 231-260. Most informative on the first half of the century is a
monography by V. Stojancevic, Juznoslovenski narodi u Osmanskom Carstvu od
Jedrenskog mira 1829 do Pariskog kongresa 1856 godine, Beograd 1971; On
economy see Dj. Mikic, Drustvene i ekonomske prilike kosovskih Srba u XIX i
pocetkom XX veka, od cifcijstva do bankarstva, Beograd 1988; on territorial
organization in the administrative apparatus see H. Kalesi - H-J. Kornrumpf,
Prizrenski vilajet, Perparimi, 1 (1967), pp. 71-124.
2 Istorija srpskog naroda, V/1, A. Urosevic, Etnicki procesi na Kosovu
tokom turske vladavine, Beograd 1987.
3 M. Lutovac, Gora i Opolje, Antropogeografska istrazivanja, Naselja i
poreklo stanovnistva, 35 (1955), pp. 230-279.
4 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, III, Beograd 1911, pp. 1162-1166; Todor P. Stankovic, Putne beleske
po Staroj Srbiji 1871-1898, Beograd 1910, pp. 111-140.
The attempts of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807) to change and modernize
the administrative system of the Ottoman Empire with reforms ended in
failure. Resistance to the reforms was exceptionally strong throughout the
empire. Reform plans to improve the position of Christians turned the
Albanian feudal lords and tribal chiefs of Kosovo against the Orthodox
Serbs - chiflik farmers on their large sipahiliks. Efforts undertaken by the
Sublime Porte to win over support from Albanian lords in Kosovo against
outlawed provincial regents had no apparent effect. Albanian pashas,
availing themselves of a favorable opportunity to greater gain by imposing
new taxes upon the rayah, took no heed to orders from
Constantinople.1
The Serbian Insurrection against the dahis in the Belgrade pashalik in
1804, under the leadership of Karadjordje (Black George), moved the Serbs in
all regions of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning as an uprising against the
dahis, the insurrection soon grew into the first national revolution of
Balkan Christians, opening the perspectives of a total national liberation.
At that moment, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia, remote from the Belgrade
pashalik, unarmed and without immediate contact with the leadership of the
insurrection, had no opportunity to rise and join the insurgents. The feudal
lords of Kosovo used the beginning of the Serbian national revolution to
consolidate and expand their power. The Porte needed their assistance both
to curbe the rebelling forces and as a warrant against any moves the Serbs
might make in regions under their control.
Chronic lawlessness, perpetual danger from possible incursions of
Albanian outlaws, religious intolerance and the unbearable clench of feudal
lords all created an impenetrable wall separating the Serbs of Kosovo and
Metohia from rebelling Serbia. Hardly any testimony remains from individual
participants of the Serbian national revolution. Nevertheless, some
documentation was preserved from the boldest among them, whose affairs took
them to Belgrade and the bordering Austrian regions, and who found
themselves in the center of events.2
An important role in preparations for the rebellion was played by
Andrija, a wealthy merchant from Prizren (father of Sima Andrejevic
Igumanov, a renown Serbian benefactor and founder of the Seminary in
Prizren), who had extensive business ties in Belgrade, Pest and Vienna. On
the eve of the uprising against the dahis, he secretly transported gunpowder
from Zemun to Belgrade. When the uprising began, Andrija continued to supply
the rebellious companies with arms and ammunition. Two of his four sons,
Kraguj and Petar, fought in the insurgent lines with several other Serbs
from Prizren, until the fall of the insurrection in 1813.3
Beside Andrija, the most prominent Serbian from Prizren to take part in
the First Serbian Insurrection was Anta Colak Simonovic, who moved to
Belgrade when he was a young man, and dealt in furs. On the eve of the
insurrection, the Belgrade dahis ordered several loads of guns from him.
Colak Anta obtained the arms in Prizren, but on his return he handed them
over to Karadjordje at Topola. When the surrounding Turkish provinces rose
together with Sumadija (regions between the Drina and Tara rivers, the
tribal regions of Drobnjak, Moraca and Albanian Kliments) in 1805, the
number of volunteers joining Karadjordje's troops from Kosovo, Metohia, Old
Raska and other regions increased.
From the beginning of the uprising, void (supreme leader) Karadjordje
aimed to raise in arms, beside the Belgrade pashalik, as many lands of
Serbia as possible. From 1806, the insurgent army penetrated toward Stari
Vlah, Bosnia and Macedonia. The following year the insurgents reached
Kursumlija, and in 1809, using their alliance with Russia, then at war with
Turkey, the insurgent companies extended to Sjenica, Nova Varos, Prijepolje
and Bijelo Polje. According to the estimates of a French travel writer,
Henri Pouqueville, who passed through Kosovo in 1807, areas around Banjska
were encompassed by the insurrection, while Gerasim, the bishop of Sabac,
left testimony on the area of upper Ibar, on the space between Josanica,
Kopaonik and Vucitrn, where battles were waged with aid from the local
Serbian populace. Historian Stojan Novakovic even believed that the whole
region was under Serbian control until the fall of the Insurrection in
1813.4
Karadjordje's endeavor to establish contact with Montenegrin tribes
through the Sjenica instigated a considerable number of Serbs from Kosovo to
join the insurgent forces and caused fermentation among the Serbs of the
northwestern parts of Kosovo. In the Ibarski Kolasin, a wooded and
impassable area, inhabited mostly by Serbians, a movement was formed to aid
Karadjordje's campaign at the Sjenica. However, the Turks discovered their
intentions and captured the most famous leaders of Kolasin, banishing them
to exile in Egypt.5
Karadjordje's victorious campaign toward Montenegro and Kosovo was
severed by the defeat of Serbian insurgents at the battle of Kamenica near
Nis, in 1809. The army at the southwest of Serbia was forced to retreat
north; the endeavor to expand the uprising to Montenegro and the northern
regions of Kosovo came to an end.
The victories of the Serbian troops during the first years of waging
seriously imperilled the feudal privileges and estates of Albanian pashas in
Metohia and Kosovo, where the rayah was mostly Serbian. When the flame of
the uprising spread to the surrounding countries, commotion arose even among
Albanian leaders in north Albania. The Belgrade dahis and representatives of
the Turkish government in Serbia, of whom a considerable number were ethnic
Albanians, strove since 1804 to win over Albanian pashas in the neighboring
regions for the struggle against a common enemy.
Turkish forces engaged to wage Serbian troops on the southern and
southwestern battlefield were composed mainly of ethnic Albanians lead by
pashas and tribal chiefs. In 1806, the bashibazouk (irregular) troops of the
pashas of Scutari, Leskovac, Vranje, Pristina, Djakovica, Prizren and
Skoplje, a force numbering 33,800 men, assembled at the Morava, at a front
toward the Serbs. Many of them fought Serbian insurgents in the years to
follow. The Turkish army, composed of ethnic Albanians, checked the Serbs at
Prijepolje and Nova Varos. In the battles at the Sjenica and Suvodol in
1809, the decisive role in defeating the Serbs was played by troops
belonging to the pashas of Scutari and Pec. In battles waged at Rozaj, the
pasha od Djakovica was defeated. Muktar Pasha, son of the most influential
independent Albanian feudal lord, Ali Pasha Tepellena of Janina, fought
against the Serbs at Deligrad. Battling together with Albanian feudal lords
against the Serbs were influential tribal chiefs - krenas. At the battle of
Kamenica alone four standard bearers of one clan were killed at Drenica.
Mehmed Pasha Rotulovic and his army took part at the battle of Kamenica and
returned to Prizren with loads of spoil and Serbian slaves -women and
children.6
The hereditary pashas of Kosovo, Metohia and north Albania were a
constant threat to Karadjordje and his successor Knez (Prince) Milos
Obrenovic. When possibilities for resuming the struggle were discussed prior
to the 1813 fall of the Serbian Insurrection, Karadjordje counted on the
possibility of all ethnic Albanians being dispatched to Serbia. He thus
entreated Prince-Bishop Petar I of Montenegro to execute a demonstration on
the Albanian border to compel their neighbors to remain on their land. A
similar entreaty was again sent by prince Milos to the Metropolitan of
Cetinje in 1821, for fear that the uprising in Greece might be followed by a
Turkish preventive incursion on Serbia.
The number of armed men under the command of Albanian pashas displayed
the dimensions of their military capabilities, as well as deep fear [or the
possibility of the insurrection expanding to their regions. The victories of
the insurgents caused the exertion of great pressure upon the subjugated
Serbian populace under Albanian lords. Lord Malic Pasha Dzinic of the
Pristina region, moved Serbian chiflik farmers from the northern areas of
Lab, and settled ethnic Albanians to secure the boundaries of his territory
from incursions of insurgent Serbian companies. Passing in 1807 through
Pristina, estimating around 1,500 homes in it, Henri Pouqueville noted:
"From its narrow and muddy streets, poor trade, wretched people and the
bloodthirsty rule of Malic Pasha, who then commanded, a distinct aura of
terror and woe emanated. It did not seem appropriate to pay a visit to the
Albanian, a sworn mortal enemy of the Christians".7
Anarchy created through the rule of independent pashas was favorable to
the raiding parties of Albanian outlaws. They attacked passengers and
merchant caravans from their hideouts, plundered and blackmailed the
Christian rayah, assaulted and dishonored their wives and daughters. In
Gnjilane, Pouqueville saw passengers raided by outlaws and learnt that some
merchants were killed just at the entrance to the town. As a result, at
orders given by pashas, entire forests were burnt in spaces between
Pristina, Gnjilane, Novo Brdo and Kumanovo, where the outlaws
hid.8
The position of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia did not change even
when comparative peace prevailed in Serbia. Kosovo was governed by Jashar
Pasha, nephew of Malic Pasha, inviolable lord of the Pristina sanjak during
the second and third decades of the 19th century. He was engraved in the
memory of the people on account of his merciless persecution of the Serbs,
the destruction of their free estates, confiscation of church and monastic
lands, and, above all, for demolishing Serbian villages. For less than a
decade, Jashar Pasha succeeded in destroying or evacuating 32 Serbian
villages in the Pristina nahi, 22 in the Vucitrn nahi, and another 25
settlements in other parts of Kosovo. Jashar Pasha distributed a large
amount of the seized lands among newcome Albanian settlers and local Muslims
of Serbian origin, while also appropriating some himself. The newcome ethnic
Albanians, mainly herdsmen, had no experience in farming so the fertile
plains of Kosovo soon became neglected pastures.9
Faced with the terror of the Pristina pasha, the Serbs fled to the
nearby sanjaks of Vranje or Leskovac, or crossed over to Serbia under the
wing of knez Milos. Similar examples where deliberate change in the
demographic picture of certain Turkish provinces were carried out existed in
southern Albania and northwestern Greece, where the brutal Ali Pasha of
Janina mercilessly destroyed Christian villages, forcefully executed
Islamization and reduced farmers to tenant, chiflik farmers. During the
twenties of the 19th century (1821-1825), armies of feudal lords utterly
devastated vast lands from Moreja to Epirus and Thessaly while fighting
Greek insurgents.10
The reform action of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839), the introduction of
a regular army and abolition of the Janissary Corps (1826) infuriated the
independent pashas in Metohia and Kosovo. Intentions to grant certain rights
to the Christians inflamed the hatred of Muslim ethnic Albanians. Anarchy,
marking a period of unlimited power for independent pashas, suited many
outlaws. "During the reigns of these pashas, any Muhammedan could, if he
desired, murder any Serb without due consequence, only if he sought refuge
under a mosque or tekke. In those days, Prizren, Kosovo, Pec, Djakovica and
Scutari were governed by harshest oppression."11
To survive, the Serbs turned to collective mimicry. The men wore
Albanian clothes, and the women veiled their faces. Jashar Pasha attacked
Serbian churches, especially the Gracanica monastery and the Samodreza
church. He demolished four Serbian churches (in Batus, Skulanovac, Rujan and
Slovinja and the Lipljan church parvis) and built a bridge from their stone
over the Sitnica river near Lipljan. The clergy also bore the brunt of
independent pashas. In 1820, two monks from the Decani monastery were hanged
in Novi Pazar, and one in Pristina.12
As soon as imminent danger from the expansion of the Serbian, and then
Greek insurrection was past, rivalry among Albanian lords for dominion over
the surrounding territories revived. The Serbs were the greatest victims:
they were compelled to receive them for overnight stay, supply food and
provide field trains for the armies of warring provincial regents. In these
campaigns, requisition, imposition of additional taxes and the looting of
Christian villages, through which the army passed, was habitual. At the end
of the conflict, the Christians would be overwhelmed by both the rage of the
defeated and the plunder of the victorious.
In March 1827, a small provincial war began, when regent of Scutari,
Mustafa Pasha Bushatli (the so-called Shkodra Pasha), ventured to subjugate