Published by PLATO, Beograd 1992.
Translated to English by Dragana Vulicevic
Ethnic Strife and the Communist Rule
The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept
in dealing with the ethnic question
The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war
(1941-1945)
Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and
Metohia
Centralism in Yugoslavia and the role of the secret police in Kosovo
and Metohia
Kosovo and Metohia in the transition from the centralist to the federal
model
The epilogue of the communist solution to the ethnic question in
Yugoslavia: the example of Kosovo
Continuity and discontinuity
The Age of Ascent
The Age of Tribulation
The Age of Migrations
The Age of Oppression
The Age of Restoration
The Age of Communism
The Serbian Insurrection and Pasha-Outlaws
Time of Reforms in Turkey
Pogroms in Metohia
Population
Political Action of Serbia
Restoration of Religious and Cultural Life
The Economy
Eastern Crisis and the Serbian-Turkish Wars
The Albanian League
Court-Martial in Pristina
Albanians Under the Sultan's Protection
Activities of the Serbian Government
Flaring of Anarchy
Religious, Educational and Economic Conditions
The Decline in Population
Serbia's Diplomatic Actions
Austria-Hungary and the Expansion of Anarchy
Failure of Reforms
Young Turk Regime
Albanian Incursions into Serbia
In World War One
Otoman Vilayets
Serbia 1804-1913
Comunist Yugoslavia: Federal Organization
Settling of Albanian Tribes
AUTHOR: Dusan T. Batakovic (born 1957) is one of the distinguished
Serbian historians. He works in Historical Institute of Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts as Research Fellow. Among dozens of articles on Serbian
and Balkan history, he had published several books: Savremenici o Kosovu i
Metohiji 1852-1912 (Contemporaries on Kosovo and Metohia 1852-1912),
Belgrade 1988; Kolubarska bitka (Battle of Kolubara), Belgrade 1989;
Decansko pitanje (The Decani Question), Belgrade 1989; Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji (Kosovo and Metohia in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989
(co-author); Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaskim odnosima (Kosovo and
Metohia in Serbo-Albanian Relations), Belgrade 1991; and edited Memoirs of
Gen. P. Draskic, Belgrade 1990 and Portraits by V. Corovic, Belgrade 1990.
This book is the collection of his articles on major topics of history
of Kosovo and Metohia and its recent political consequences.
Izdavac: Knjizara Plato, Beograd, Cika Ljubina 18-20
Za izdavaca Branislav Gojkovic
Urednik Ivan Colovic
Recenzenti: Prof. dr Radovan Samardzic i dr Milan St. Protic
Beograd, 1992.
INDEX 215 THE HISTORY CARDS OF KOSOVO CHRONICLES 219 - 222
QP- Katalogizacija u publikaciji Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Beograd
949.711.5 BATAKOVIC, Dusan T.
[Kosovo Chronicles] The Kosovo Chronicles / Dusan T. Batakovic; prevela
na engleski Dragana Vulicevic.
-Beograd: Knjizara Plato, 1992 | (Beograd: Vojna stamparija).
- 218 Str.; 20 cm.
- (Biblioteka Na tragu)
Tiraz 1000 - Registar. ISBN86-447-0006-5
a) Kosovo i Metohija - Istorija 4986380
The modern history of Serbia is indeed pregnant with controversial
questions. Probably the most complex one is the history of -- Kosovo and
Metohia. It was only in the last few years that several historiographical
works on Kosovo and Metohia had been written and published. The pioneer in
this field which deals with a particularly important segment of Serbia's
past and present is undoubtedly the author of this book.
This is trully the first serious attempt to cover two centuries of
history of Kosovo and Metohia and to present its complex historical
development in its full. In a series of articles dealing with various
problems of Kosovo and Metohia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the
author definitely succeeded to make a complete picture of Kosovo and
Metohia's troubled history. It seems appropriate, therefore, to name his
book -- The Kosovo Chronicles.
The diversity of various topics which form the collection most clearly
shows that the author is the master of the subject he chose to write about.
Mr. Batakovic presented himself as a mature historian of the Balkan history
as a whole as much as the sharp analyst of one specific aspect of it.
One cannot but to welcome this book. For two major reasons at least.
First, for its wide-angle approach to the problem. And second, for its
attempt to avoid typical black and white stereotypes.
Kosovo and Metohia undoubtedly belong to the corpus of the Serbian
history. No question about that. It was the cradle and the center of the
medieval Serbian state, it was the region won by the Serbian army from the
Turks in the First Balkan War (1912), it was incorporated in the Serbian
state territory and thus had entered into Yugoslavia in 1918. It was only
after the victory of the Communist Revolution in Yugoslavia that the
question of Kosovo emerged as a separate problem outside and even against
Serbia. That was the moment in which the political position of Kosovo and
Metohia moved away from Serbia and became a problem of Albanian national
rights in the eyes of very many foreign and Yugoslav observers. That crucial
borderline was rightfully pointed out by the author of this volume.
From the standpoint of form, this book represents a collection of
articles. It is comprised of two major parts. The first entitled, named
History and Ideology, treats the problem of Kosovo and Metohia, within the
framework of the Yugoslav unified state, during the World War Two and the
Communist rule since 1945. The second Theocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism
deals with the different aspects of the 19th century history of Kosovo and
Metohia until the Yugoslav unification of Yugoslavia.
The second part of Mr. Batakovic's book covers the period in which this
particular area belonged to the state territory of the Ottoman Empire, in
which the ethnic Serbs were subjects of constant pressures and abuses by the
Ottoman administrators and, much more, by ethnic Albanians who, under the
Turkish protection, conducted a real terror over the Serbs. The difference
between the Christian Serbs fighting for their national emancipation against
the oriental Islamic and oppressive regime of the Ottomans. As the Ottoman
system crumbled within itself, its peripheral provinces became areas of
abuse rule of the local population. The local Albanians, also Muslims for
the most part, found the best way to suppress the Serbs by putting
themselves in the service of the Turkish authorities. The author's archival
findings clearly proved what was really happening in Kosovo and Metohia
during the 19th century and what were the true origins of ethnic clashes in
that particular area.
This part of Mr. Batakovic's volume represents, in fact, a
comprehensive history of Kosovo and Metohia during the 19th century,
starting from the First Serbian Insurrection against the Turks (1804) to the
First Balkan War (1912) when, after the victory of the Serbian army, the
region of Kosovo and Metohia had been incorporated in the bulk of the
Serbian state. It is essentially a historical analysis of complex ethnic,
religious and political relations in the triangle Serbs-Turks-Albanians
based on a rather deep archival and documentary research. The author managed
to trace down the roots of these conflicts, their nature and development.
Parallel to this, he gave the historical background for the events which
occurred in the 20th century, when the problem of Kosovo and Metohia reached
its peak in both, crisis and international attention. This segment of book
should serve as a textbook of Kosovo and Metohia's history to everyone who
is interested in this particular field.
Mr. Batakovic's collection of articles contains several synthetical
pieces written on the subject of the history of Kosovo and Metohia. This
region of constant clashes needed to be defined in terms of general
categories. In an attempt to discover the real nature of those conflicts the
author searched for the answer to the following questions: what really lays
in the bottom of centuries long clashes in the history of Kosovo and
Metohia, is that the conflict of religions, nations or civilizations? One
will find the author's answers both original and inspiring. Contradictory
problems need to be thought about. And that is exactly what Mr. Batakovic
has done.
A special attention should be paid to the article entitled "The Kosovo
And Metohia Question - ethnic strife and communist rule". It stands as the
pivotal piece among all other articles in this book. It is at the same time
the most important and the most complex attempt to analyze the situation in
Kosovo in Metohia in the last fifty years, since the communists took over in
Yugoslavia.
This is the first time in Serbian and Yugoslav historiography that
someone tried to look on the Kosovo and Metohia question outside the
framework of political and ideological clich s. The article of Mr. Batakovic
represents a pioneer work in a noncommunist approach to contemporary history
of Kosovo and Metohia. Trying to see the problem in the realm of communist
regime and its policies in Yugoslavia, and in Serbia specifically, the
author found a whole new field of research and reasoning. With strong
foundations in his knowledge of Kosovo and Metohia's history, both distant
and recent, Mr. Batakovic made a successful synthesis of Serbo-Albanian
misunderstandings in Kosovo and Metohia, finding a balance between
contemporary politics and traditional differences between ethnicities living
in this region. His final conclusion that the Titoist politics had been
detrimental to the positive solution of this serious problem seems
persuasive and largely acceptable.
One should appreciate the courage of the author to tackle such a
complicated question of history and politics which touches the very essence
of the present day Serbia and Yugoslavia. Mr. Batakovic's writing should
contribute in clarifying many problems which had been heavily misinterpreted
in recent years, both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Escaping numerous traps of
Marxist historiography and reasoning, the author leads us on the road of new
and modern way of thinking about nationalism and statehood. By combining
historical analysis and archival research with original synthesis, the
author left us with a lot of vastly unknown factography and even more
conclusions and assertations which inspire further work and thoughts.
The author of this volume belongs to the new generation of Serbian
historians. To the generation whose intellectual and professional maturity
presently shows itself in full intensity. It is a general hope that these
young people will drive Serbia out of Marxist dogmas not only in their
intellectual work but also in everyday politics. The book we have before us
is one of those important steps in the direction of modern, non-ideological
view of our past and present.
In the 20th-century history of the two southern regions of Serbia --
Kosovo and Metohia -- there are two periods that are clearly separated by
ideological borders. In the first period (1912-1941), in the Kingdom of
Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, ethnic issues were mainly dealt with
in keeping with the civic standards of inter-war Europe, notwithstanding the
suffering endured during the war and latent political instability. Compared
to ethnic minorities in other countries, the ethnic Albanian minority in
Kosovo and Metohia, despite its open antagonism towards the state, was not
in an particularly unfavorable position. By Saint-Germain Treaty (1919)
minorities on Serbian territory within borders of 1913 (including Kosovo and
Metohia), were formally excluded from international protection but it was
not particularly used against interests of ethnic Albanians in
Serbia.1
In the second period, commencing with the war (1941-1945) and concluded
after the establishment of communism in Yugoslavia (1945), the question of
Kosovo and Metohia was dealt with in keeping with the Party leadership's
ideological stands regarding the ethnic question. Precisely during this
period solutions were found providing strong impetus to the old ethnic
conflict between Serbs and Albanians, causing deep rifts difficult to
surmount today. Ethnic tension in Kosovo and Metohia thus offers a
paradigmatic example of the ability of the communist rule to completely
change the demographic picture of an area by instrumentalizing existing
ethnic differences.
Kosovo and Metohia, and entire Yugoslavia for that matter, depended on
the rule of the communist leadership, which cunningly used the manipulation
of ethnic differences to consolidate and maintain power. The national policy
of the Yugoslav communists was an ideological and national negation of the
establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which the Serbs saw as their own
- the heir to the political traditions and democratic institutions of the
Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbs posed the greatest threat for Yugoslav
communists in number and political affiliation: to them, communism was a
foreign ideology viewed slightingly, as a vogue of the small-in-number
deluded youth; but recognized during the war as the gravest threat to
independence and freedom. The communists regarded the Serbs as a nation with
strong politically constructive traditions and a pronounced national
conscience who, spread through the length and breadth of Yugoslav territory,
had learned to conduct foreign policy on their own, without tangible foreign
support, a nation united by a single Orthodox Church - the bearer of an
anti-Soviet mood in the country. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY)
drafted its followers among the Serbs chiefly from the lower social strata
(especially patriarchal communities in Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia and
Vojna Krajina) unestablished in Serbian state and political traditions,
people who in the name of idealistic Yugoslavism and proletarian
internationalism rejected Serbian interests and blindly obeyed the orders of
the Titoist leadership.
The Albanians, a people whose national integration fell a whole century
behind those of the other Balkan nations, remained in communist Yugoslavia
against their will, but found a common interest with the ruling communist
party in an anti-Serbian policy via which to achieve their national goals.
Time was to pass for the backward ethnic Albanian milieu to admit its new
authorities and for the CPY to come to terms with representatives of the
ethnic Albanian minority. The question of Kosovo and Metohia was thus dealt
with in the inter-relation of three gravity centers of political forces -1.
the CPY leadership as the leading factor of might in the country; 2. the
ethnic Albanian national movement which had evident continuity despite the
ideological affiliation of its bearers; 3. Serbian communists who, though
numerically superior in the army, party and politics, as Yugoslavs and
internationalists consistently implemented the Titoist policy. The origin of
this relation can be seen in the chronological sequence of developments of
the CPY's national policy under different political and international
conditions.
1 R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova. Politicko-pravna studija, Beograd
1985, pp. 100-105.
The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept
in dealing with the ethnic question
There is evident continuity in the CPY's policy in dealing with the
position of ethnic minorities which shows that, despite individual
aberrations due to the position of communist Yugoslavia in foreign policy,
basic political principles, outlined in party programs and resolutions in
the inter-war period, were consistently implemented. The CPY coordinated its
program of solutions to the ethnic question in the multi-ethnic Kingdom of
Yugoslavia with the general stands of the Third International (Comintern),
within the framework of which it acted as a separate section, as its work
was prohibited in the country.
The Comintern was an important lever of Soviet foreign policy. The
Comintern's attitude towards the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was determined by the
Soviet policy towards the "Versailles system" of states created under
imperialistic peace accords" after World War I, in which enemies of the
Bolshevik regime - Great Britain and France - were dominant. The Fifth
Congress of the Comintern (1924) abandoned the principle of a federal
restructuring of states, created as a cordon sanitaire primarily as a
defense against the "proletariat revolution" and a struggle against the
Soviet Union, with the explanation that "western imperialists" were
preparing an assault on the "first country of socialism". The new political
platform's starting point was to break up the cordon surrounding the Soviet
Union by singling out and rendering independent the oppressed nations among
those states in the enemy camp, including the Kingdom of Yugoslavia - the
right of Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia to separation was emphasized, and a
special resolution stressed the need to aid the movements of the oppressed
nations for the formation of their independent states and "for the
liberation of the Albanians". The policy of the Yugoslav authorities had
some effect on the Comintern's stand towards Yugoslavia: the royal
authorities had failed to recognize the new Soviet state and provided
shelter to a large number of Russian emigrants and White Guard military
units in the 20s, including the troops of General Vrangel, while Russian
societies frequently greeted their patron, King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic
(related to the Romanov dynasty through his sister Jelena and his
Montenegrin aunts), as the new Slavic tsar.
The CPY, and the Comintern, advocated the stand that the state of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was an unnatural creation which cannot be
regarded as a homogeneous national state (comprising three tribes which make
up a nation) with a few ethnic minorities, but a state wherein the ruling
class of one (Serbian) nation was oppressing the other nations. The thesis
on a Greater Serbian bourgeoisie and Greater Serbian hegemony owed much to
the theses of the Austro-Hungarian public opinion prior to and during World
War I, whereby the Greater Serbian threat posed a chief obstacle to the
stabilization of political conditions in the Balkans. Similar stands, only
with a more pronounced ideological component, can be found in the works of
Austro-Marxists whence such stereotypes were taken and constructed into the
views of the Third International regarding the ethnic question in the
Balkans.1
The policy to break up Kingdom of Yugoslavia culminated in the
decisions of the CPY's Fourth Congress, held in Dresden in 1928. The
statement that about one-third of the Albanian nation had remained under the
rule of the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie, which was implementing the same
oppressive regime" against it as in Macedonia, was supplemented by the stand
that its liberation and unification with Albania can be achieved only in a
joint struggle with the CPY. With regard to this, support was extended to
the Kosovo Committee, an organization of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and
Metohia who, aided by the Albanian government and Mussolini, raided Yugoslav
territory with the aim of winning the annexation of Kosovo, Metohia and
western Macedonia to Albania. Tens of thousands of Serbian colonists -
chiefly volunteers in World War I and indigent families from Montenegro,
Vojna Krajina and Dalmatia, were sealed by the party press as servants of
the Greater Serbian policy, although the land they were allotted was not
taken from ethnic Albanians. Similar stands were reitered at the Fourth
National Conference of the CPY held in Ljubljana in 1934, which stressed the
assessment that the Yugoslav kingdom was nothing but the "occupation of
Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and
Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbian troops" and that it was thus imperative to
execute the "persecution of Serbian Chetniks from Croatia, Dalmatia,
Slovenia, Vojvodina, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo". Renouncing
these regions any Serbian character at all, the CPY believed that these
provinces should be organized as separate federal units within the frame of
a future communist Yugoslavia. The stand to break up Yugoslavia was changed
in 1935, when the Comintern established a new course of struggle of the
"national front" against the danger looming from Nazism and Fascism in
Europe.2 The CPY abandoned its decision on the annexation of
Kosovo and Metohia to Albania in 1940, at the Fifth National Conference in
Zagreb, at a time when Albania had been under Italian occupation for a year,
but even then, the "colonialist methods of the Serbian bourgeoisie" were
condemned and the need for the creation of a separate republic of Kosovo
emphasized - "the ethnic problem can be resolved by the forming of a free
labor-peasant republic of Kosovo after the Greater Serbian fascist and
imperialist regime is overthrown".3 By demonizing Serbian
domination in Yugoslavia, Yugoslav communists distinguished less and less
the bourgeoisie from the people - thus the idea to form a separate party for
Serbia was abandoned, although party organizations for the other Yugoslav
provinces were formed. Maintaining such a stand, the CPY received Nazi
Germany's attack on Yugoslavia in April, 1941.
1 K. Cavoski, KPJ i kosovsko pitanje, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj
istoriji, Beograd 1988, pp. 361-381. Cf documents in: Istorijski arhiv
Komunisticke partije Jugoslavije, Beograd 1949, vol. I-II, passim;
Komunisticka internacionala, Gornji Milanovac 1982, vol. VIII, passim.
2 K, Cavoski, op. cit., pp. 365-369.
3 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, p. 321
The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war
(1941-1945)
The Kosovo and Metohia question was raised again when the flames of war
spread on April 6,1941, throughout Yugoslavia: its army was forced to
unconditional capitulation 11 days later and its territory divided among
Hitler's allies. Owing to their loyalty to old allies France and Great
Britain, and for fomenting a putsch on March 27, 1941 (thereby practically
canceling any agreement with the Axis powers), the Serbs were punished as
the Third Reich's chief enemy in the Balkans by a division of the Serbian
territories: most of Kosovo along with Metohia, western Macedonia and
fringing areas of Montenegro were allotted to Albania, which had been under
Italian occupation for two years. Bulgaria was given a small part of Kosovo,
while its northern parts entered the composition of Serbia where a German
protectorate was established. Under a decree by King Vittorio Emmanuele,
dated August 12, 1941, Greater Albania was founded. An Albanian voluntary
militia numbering 5,000 men - Vulnetari - was set up in Kosovo and Metohia
to assist the Italian forces in maintaining order, but which carried out
surprise attacks on the Serbian population on its own.
Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia, who were declared by Italian
and communist propagandas as victims of Greater Serbian hegemony, received,
besides the right to hoist their own flag, the right to open schools in
their mother tongue. The patriarchal and tribal ethnic Albanian society in
Metohia and Kosovo, accustomed to extreme subordination and absolute
submission to the local land holders, received the new order wholeheartedly.
The destruction of the Yugoslav state, which they never took as their own,
was received with vindictive ardor. In the first few months of the
occupation, some ten thousand colonist houses were burned in night raids and
their owners and families expelled. Colonist estates were ploughed afresh in
order that every trace of Serbian presence be eradicated and in the event of
their return, to render difficult the recognition of their estates. The
destruction of colonist villages according to a plan was to help show
international commissions after the war, when new borders would be drawn,
that Serbs never lived there. An ethnic Albanian leader from Kosovo,
Ferat-bey Draga, said that the "time has come to exterminate the Serbs ...
there will be no Serbs under the Kosovo sun".1 Orthodox churches
were burnt and destroyed and graveyards desecrated. Ethnic Albanians sought
to eradicate every trace of Serbian presence in these areas. During the war,
some 100,000 colonists and indigenous Serbs fled for Serbia and Montenegro
ahead of Albanian terror, and some 10,000 were killed.2 Along
with this, under a plan of the Italian government, adopted before the
occupation of Yugoslavia, began an extensive settlement of Albanians from
Albania on the estates of the expelled colonists. Their number is roughly
estimated at 80,000-100,000; the first postwar estimate put it at about
75,000.3
The insurrection against the occupier in mid-May, 1941, was raised by
Serbian officers under the command of Colonel Draza Mihailovic, who
organized the Chetnik (guerrilla) movement throughout Yugoslavia: his
troops, organized throughout the country, were proclaimed by the government
in exile the Yugoslav army in the homeland, and he was made general and
minister of war. Two weeks after Hitler's assault on the Soviet Union,
Yugoslav communists stirred up an uprising at Moscow's call, which, under
the mask of a people's liberation struggle, was in fact a movement for a
revolutionary shift of power. After initial talks with Mihailovic's
Chetniks, Tito's Partisans set out on a long and bloody civil war. Although
there were several collaborationist regimes in the country with strong
military formations, the Partisans - the military force of the CPY, saw the
Chetniks as their arch-enemy who incorporated the state and political
continuity of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In the civil war that ensued, Kosovo and Metohia assumed a secondary
role. The Chetnik movement, organized into two Kosovo corps (about 1,500
men), operated in mountainous regions on the outskirts of Kosovo and
Metohia. Cooperation between the occupational Italian forces and the
Albanian voluntary gendarmery left no room for their stronger military
engagement and protection of the Serbian population. The persecuted Serbs
sought refuge in occupied Serbia, where they were received first by the
commissariat administration and then a special refugees commissariat under
the regime of General Milan Nedic.4
Metohia, which was settled by primarily Montenegrin colonists, had many
followers of the CPY, though at the outbreak of the war its membership
comprised a mere 270, including some two dozen ethnic Albanians. Even though
the CPY condemned in numerous declarations prior to the war the Greater
Serbian policy of the bourgeoisie and called during the war on the ethnic
Albanian population to rise together with the colonists and Serbian natives
for the creation of a "new, justice society", the response was negligible. A
party leader, Ali Shukria, tried in 1941 to justify this reaction by saying
that the mere name Yugoslavia provoked unanimous indignation among the
ethnic Albanians. Clashes between Partisan and Chetnik formations on the one
hand and the ethnic Albanian gendarmery on the other showed that ethnic
Albanians saw in both of them only Serbs, their age-old enemies.5
The number of ethnic Albanians mustered in partisan units in Kosovo and
Metohia was extremely low, numbering only several dozen. Individual units
were named after prominent ethnic Albanian communists (Zeinel Aidmi, Emin
Duraku), and then after distinguished leaders of the secessionist movement
against Serbia and Yugoslavia (Bairam Cum); agitations among the population
constantly stressed that after the war, the ethnic Albanians would win their
rights, labeling the prewar policy as fascist and maleficent. However,
winning over ethnic Albanians for the restoration of Yugoslavia under a
communist leadership was slow, since among the ethnic Albanian members of
the CPY most had hoped that Kosovo and Metohia would remain in the
composition of Albania after the war.
In the Communist Party of Albania (CPA), which was formed from various
factions on February 8, 1941, under the supervision of Yugoslav instructors
(Miladin Popovic and Dusan Mugosa), were numerous followers of a Greater
Albania under communist rule. Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha had
taken the first step towards an accord for the creation of a Greater Albania
after the war with a short-lasting agreement reached on August 2,1943, in
the village of Mukaj with representatives of the Balli Kombetar, a very
active organization in Kosovo.6 Miladin Popovic held a similar
stand, proposing that ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia be placed
under the command of the Chief Staff of Albania and that Metohia come under
the organization of the CPA.7 Such aspirations attained their
fullest expression in a declaration issued on January 2, 1944 in the village
of Bunaj (Bujan), in a conference attended by 49 political representatives
of the ethnic Albanian and Yugoslav partisan units (43 ethnic Albanians, 1
Moslem and 7 Serbs present):
"Kosovo and Metohia is an area mostly inhabited by ethnic Albanians,
who have always wished to become united with Albania. We, therefore, feel it
our duty to point to the road that is to be followed by the ethnic Albanian
people in the realization of their wishes. The only way for the Kosovo and
Metohia ethnic Albanians to unite with Albania is through a common struggle
with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against the invader and his lackeys. It
is the only way of winning freedom, when all the peoples, including ethnic
Albanians, will be able to make their options with a right to
self-determination, including secession. The guarantee for it is the
National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the National Liberation Army of
Albania, with which it is closely linked."8
The decisions reached in Bunaj, under which the name Metohia was
replaced by an Albanian term Rrafshe Dukadjini, were contrary to a
declaration by a grand communist assembly held in Jajce in late November,
1943 AVNOJ (the National Antifascist Liberation Council of Yugoslavia -
NALCY) at which it was decided that a new, communist Yugoslavia, headed by
Tito as partisan marshal, be established on a federal principle whereby "all
peoples ... will be fully free and equal", and the ethnic groups guaranteed
all the rights of an ethnic minority.9 In his instructions to the
communist leaders in Kosovo and Montenegro, Tito rejected the decisions
reached in Bunaj, believing that they raised issues which should be dealt
with after the war: he realized only too well that his movement would have
lost many followers if he had upheld the demands of the ethnic Albanians, as
he had proclaimed in principle the restoration of Yugoslavia within its
prewar borders. In conditions when the war was not yet over and the
establishment of a communist system uncertain, the decision not to touch the
borders of Yugoslavia was the only possible solution.
The hostility of ethnic Albanians towards Yugoslav partisans did not
wane, despite efforts by party activists to win over fresh adherents. The
membership of the ethnic Albanian Balli Kombetar increased and their
national solidarity proved to be stronger than ideological divisions. After
the capitulation of Italy, the German occupational authorities encouraged
aspirations towards the creation of an ethnic Albania, thus on September 19,
1943, the Second Albanian League was founded on the model of its predecessor
- the First Albanian League (1878), advocating fiercer clashes with the
Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia, and a separate SS-Division Scenderbey was set
up from the local Albanian forces.
A delegate of the partisan Supreme Command, Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo,
sent in 1943 to reorganize the partisan units in Kosovo, Metohia and
Macedonia, informed of "powerful chauvinist hatred between the ethnic
Albanians and Serbs ... The extent of the Albanian chauvinist animosity
towards the Serbs is evident from the fact that one of our [partisan] units,
comprising ethnic Albanians, was surrounded by 2,000 armed ethnic Albanian
peasants, and after several hours of fighting the latter recognized that the
unit comprised ethnic Albanians. They dispersed, leaving the Italians in the
lurch".10 Fresh partisan units, set up in September and October
1943, operated outside Kosovo and Metohia, with not more than 800 men in
five battalions. The unit was reorganized in the summer and fall of 1944,
but the number of ethnic Albanians remained the same.
A large-scale revolt of the Balli Kombetar followers and Albanian units
mustered into partisan formations (November-December, 1944), which broke out
after the retreat of the German troops and the establishment of communist
rule (the liberation of Kosovo was assisted at Tito's request by two
brigades of ethnic Albanian partisans) was thus not unexpected. The revolt
was crushed when additional troops were brought in, and military rule was
set up in Kosovo and Metohia from February to May, 1945. A leading ethnic
Albanian communist from Kosovo maintained contact with the outlaws. He was
soon discovered, but A. Rankovic, Tito's closest associate at the time,
assessed that his execution would stir up a fresh revolt, thus he was
appointed minister in the Serbian governament.11 Initial
concessions heralding a lenient attitude towards ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
and Metohia were made immediately after the new authorities were
established: the settlement of at least 75,000 colonists from Albania was
tacitly legalized, and a special decree issued on March 16, 1945, forbade
about 60,000 Serbs settled in the inter-war period from returning to their
estates.12
The conflict between the CPY and the ethnic Albanians during the war
was of ideological and state character. The CPY could not allow the fascist
forces in Kosovo to create a Greater Albania and thus disrupt the state
integrality of the newly established communist Yugoslavia. Most ethnic
Albanians continued to support the Balli Kombetar and its solution to the
ethnic question. Albanian communists on both sides had hoped that the
triumph of communism would bring quicker unification to all Albanians into a
single state; thus communist Yugoslavia was regarded as the continuation of
the Kingdom.
1 H. Bajrami, Izvestaj Konstantina Plavsica Tasi Dinicu, ministru
unutrasnjih poslova u Nedicevoj vladi oktobra 1943, o kosovsko-mitrovackom
srezu, Godisnjak arhiva Kosova XIV-XV (1978-1979), p. 313
2 S. Milosevic, Izbeglice i preseljenici na teritoriji okupirane
Jugoslavije 1941-1945, Beograd 1981, p.56-104.
3 V. Djuretic, op. cit., p. 323-325
4 Documents published in R. V. Petrovic, Zavera protiv Srba, Beograd
1990, pp. 137-175, 353-358.
5 Dj. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski odnosi kroz vekove sa posebnim
osvrtom na novije vreme, Himelstir 19832, pp. 307-336, 3437-455.
6 The agreement with the CPA was short-lived and the Balli Kombetar
(set up in 1942) entered into cooperation with the German occupational
forces after the capitulation of Italy (1943)
7 Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilackom ratu
jugoslovenskih naroda, vol. VII, t. 1, Belgrade 1952, pp. 338-339.
8 A. N. Dragnich and S. Todorovich, The Saga of Kosovo. Focus on
Serbian-Albanian Relations, Boulder Colorado 1984, pp. 143.
9 Prvo i drugo zasedanje AVNOJ-a, Beograd 1953, pp. 227-228.
10 Zbornik dokumenata, vol. X, t. 2, p. 153.
11 S. Djakovic, Sukobi na Kosovu, Beograd 1986, pp. 227-228.
12 V. Djuretic, op. cit. p.
Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and
Metohia
However, the ethnic Albanians, both nationalists and communists, failed
to properly assess the CPY's intentions. The question of Kosovo and Metohia
was an important point of support in the CPY's plan to square accounts with
Serbia. The squaring of accounts, outlined in party programs, could start
only with the achievement of full communist domination. Serbia's conduct
during the war provided additional strength to the party's stands: a country
with bourgeois traditions and small peasant landholders, devoted to
politically constructive institutions and the dynasty, leaned towards the
Chetnik movement of Draza Mihailovic. After failing in Serbia in 1941, the
small-in-number communists transferred the weight of their operations to
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and the Military Frontier (Krajina) in
Croatia, where the entire Serbian population rose against large-scale terror
wrought by the Ustashas (the authorities of fascist Croatia). Cunningly
manipulating the indigent Serbian hilly population who, void of developed
state and political traditions, cherished a devotion to the cult of "mother
Russia" and patriarchal egalitarianism, the communists managed - by calling
on the authority of Moscow - to win over many of them who had fallen in
numerous Chetnik formations after the capitulation of Italy.
The communists won the bloody civil war, in which ethnic and religious
divisions were the chief instigators of massacres, owing to crucial aid from
the Soviet troops which, in agreement with Tito, crossed over to Yugoslav
territory in the fall of 1944, and helped bring the communists to power and
defeat the Yugoslav army in the homeland - the Chetnik movement of Draza
Mihailovic. The first to be punished then was Serbia: its bourgeoisie and
peasants were exterminated in the "second stage of the revolution", i.e. in
the "squaring of accounts with the class enemy" -without trial and by
summary procedure, while its youth - conscripted into partisan units, was
decimated at the Sremski Front when it was forced to continually storm the
well-fortified German positions without sufficient weaponry and military
training. With the destruction of its potential classes for resistance - the
bourgeoisie, the wealthy peasant layer and the town youth - Serbia's back
was broken: most of its bourgeoisie and intelligentsia were abroad
(officers, politicians and diplomats), while those who remained in the
country were permanently marginated. The raison d'etre of the communist
Yugoslavia was a carefully set balance of power among the peoples and
minorities of Yugoslavia over a potential threat from Serbian predominance.
The importance which the communist authorities attached to the political and
ethnic affirmation of the ethnic Albanian minority could not be understood
if viewed otherwise.
The numerous Serbs in the party, army and police of Tito's regime were
carefully selected by the criterion of blind obedience and complete devotion
to the leader, and by their readiness to fully subject Serbian interests to
the interests of the CPY. Most of them, through a negative selection of
cadres, were recruited from patriarchal Serbian milieus in Croatia,
Herzegovina and Montenegro or lower classes in Serbia, as lacking commitment
to the national and state traditions of Serbia. Their major task during the
entire period of Tito's reign was to fight against "Serbian nationalism and
chauvinism" which, considering the Serbs were the predominant nation,
constituted the gravest threat to the regime. These Serbs thus mercilessly
destroyed everything even resembling the traditions of the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Serbia. They were forerunners in the
persecution of dignitaries and the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Under such circumstances, the communist authorities in Yugoslavia were able
to deal with the ethnic question in keeping with their designs without
fearing for their rule.
The predominance of Serbs in the military units of the new authorities
demanded, for the sake of precaution, that the question of the status of
Kosovo and Metohia be brought up prudently, as the party there - due to
stubborn ethnic-Albanian resistance - had no other followers but Serbs and
Montenegrins (i.e. Serbs who accepted the CPY's ideological precept on the
existence of a separate Montenegrin nation). The decision that Kosovo and
Metohia be annexed to Serbia was made after the abolition of military rule
on July 10,1945, perhaps under the influence of a large-scale ethnic
Albanian resistance towards the new authorities. There is evidence that
owing to mistakes made in the ethnic Albanian uprising in December, 1944,
the Regional Committee of Kosovo and Metohia was replaced after the First
Congress of the CP of Serbia in May 1945, and placed under the direct
subordination of the headquarters in Belgrade, though the decision was soon
repealed after a protest voiced by the ethnic Albanian communists. Under the
1946 Constitution, the Autonomous Region of Kosovo-Metohia within the
composition of Serbia was established, though the communists of Kosovo
worked directly under the instructions of the state leadership. Fearing an
outbreak of fresh revolts, the CPY ordered that the officials in Kosovo
suppress the followers of a unification with Albania. Enver Hoxha was
dissatisfied with the attitude of Miladin Popovic, a CPY instructor in
Albania who, upon returning to Kosovo, reneged on his promise that after the
war Kosovo and Metohia would be annexed to Albania. He was assassinated by
followers of the Balli Kombetar in March, 1945, and the assassin - who
committed suicide immediately upon executing the task - had with him a
standard with the inscription "Kosovo united with Albania".1
The reasons for deep discontent were not ideological but national in
nature: in the new, communist Yugoslavia, their aspirations for the
annexation of Kosovo, Metohia and western Macedonia to Albania were
betrayed. Nevertheless, international political ambitions called for a
special relationship towards the ethnic Albanian population: the CPY
displayed an open intent to establish domination in Albania. Beyond that
Translated to English by Dragana Vulicevic
Ethnic Strife and the Communist Rule
The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept
in dealing with the ethnic question
The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war
(1941-1945)
Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and
Metohia
Centralism in Yugoslavia and the role of the secret police in Kosovo
and Metohia
Kosovo and Metohia in the transition from the centralist to the federal
model
The epilogue of the communist solution to the ethnic question in
Yugoslavia: the example of Kosovo
Continuity and discontinuity
The Age of Ascent
The Age of Tribulation
The Age of Migrations
The Age of Oppression
The Age of Restoration
The Age of Communism
The Serbian Insurrection and Pasha-Outlaws
Time of Reforms in Turkey
Pogroms in Metohia
Population
Political Action of Serbia
Restoration of Religious and Cultural Life
The Economy
Eastern Crisis and the Serbian-Turkish Wars
The Albanian League
Court-Martial in Pristina
Albanians Under the Sultan's Protection
Activities of the Serbian Government
Flaring of Anarchy
Religious, Educational and Economic Conditions
The Decline in Population
Serbia's Diplomatic Actions
Austria-Hungary and the Expansion of Anarchy
Failure of Reforms
Young Turk Regime
Albanian Incursions into Serbia
In World War One
Otoman Vilayets
Serbia 1804-1913
Comunist Yugoslavia: Federal Organization
Settling of Albanian Tribes
AUTHOR: Dusan T. Batakovic (born 1957) is one of the distinguished
Serbian historians. He works in Historical Institute of Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts as Research Fellow. Among dozens of articles on Serbian
and Balkan history, he had published several books: Savremenici o Kosovu i
Metohiji 1852-1912 (Contemporaries on Kosovo and Metohia 1852-1912),
Belgrade 1988; Kolubarska bitka (Battle of Kolubara), Belgrade 1989;
Decansko pitanje (The Decani Question), Belgrade 1989; Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji (Kosovo and Metohia in Serbian History), Belgrade 1989
(co-author); Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaskim odnosima (Kosovo and
Metohia in Serbo-Albanian Relations), Belgrade 1991; and edited Memoirs of
Gen. P. Draskic, Belgrade 1990 and Portraits by V. Corovic, Belgrade 1990.
This book is the collection of his articles on major topics of history
of Kosovo and Metohia and its recent political consequences.
Izdavac: Knjizara Plato, Beograd, Cika Ljubina 18-20
Za izdavaca Branislav Gojkovic
Urednik Ivan Colovic
Recenzenti: Prof. dr Radovan Samardzic i dr Milan St. Protic
Beograd, 1992.
INDEX 215 THE HISTORY CARDS OF KOSOVO CHRONICLES 219 - 222
QP- Katalogizacija u publikaciji Narodna biblioteka Srbije, Beograd
949.711.5 BATAKOVIC, Dusan T.
[Kosovo Chronicles] The Kosovo Chronicles / Dusan T. Batakovic; prevela
na engleski Dragana Vulicevic.
-Beograd: Knjizara Plato, 1992 | (Beograd: Vojna stamparija).
- 218 Str.; 20 cm.
- (Biblioteka Na tragu)
Tiraz 1000 - Registar. ISBN86-447-0006-5
a) Kosovo i Metohija - Istorija 4986380
The modern history of Serbia is indeed pregnant with controversial
questions. Probably the most complex one is the history of -- Kosovo and
Metohia. It was only in the last few years that several historiographical
works on Kosovo and Metohia had been written and published. The pioneer in
this field which deals with a particularly important segment of Serbia's
past and present is undoubtedly the author of this book.
This is trully the first serious attempt to cover two centuries of
history of Kosovo and Metohia and to present its complex historical
development in its full. In a series of articles dealing with various
problems of Kosovo and Metohia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the
author definitely succeeded to make a complete picture of Kosovo and
Metohia's troubled history. It seems appropriate, therefore, to name his
book -- The Kosovo Chronicles.
The diversity of various topics which form the collection most clearly
shows that the author is the master of the subject he chose to write about.
Mr. Batakovic presented himself as a mature historian of the Balkan history
as a whole as much as the sharp analyst of one specific aspect of it.
One cannot but to welcome this book. For two major reasons at least.
First, for its wide-angle approach to the problem. And second, for its
attempt to avoid typical black and white stereotypes.
Kosovo and Metohia undoubtedly belong to the corpus of the Serbian
history. No question about that. It was the cradle and the center of the
medieval Serbian state, it was the region won by the Serbian army from the
Turks in the First Balkan War (1912), it was incorporated in the Serbian
state territory and thus had entered into Yugoslavia in 1918. It was only
after the victory of the Communist Revolution in Yugoslavia that the
question of Kosovo emerged as a separate problem outside and even against
Serbia. That was the moment in which the political position of Kosovo and
Metohia moved away from Serbia and became a problem of Albanian national
rights in the eyes of very many foreign and Yugoslav observers. That crucial
borderline was rightfully pointed out by the author of this volume.
From the standpoint of form, this book represents a collection of
articles. It is comprised of two major parts. The first entitled, named
History and Ideology, treats the problem of Kosovo and Metohia, within the
framework of the Yugoslav unified state, during the World War Two and the
Communist rule since 1945. The second Theocracy, Nationalism, Imperialism
deals with the different aspects of the 19th century history of Kosovo and
Metohia until the Yugoslav unification of Yugoslavia.
The second part of Mr. Batakovic's book covers the period in which this
particular area belonged to the state territory of the Ottoman Empire, in
which the ethnic Serbs were subjects of constant pressures and abuses by the
Ottoman administrators and, much more, by ethnic Albanians who, under the
Turkish protection, conducted a real terror over the Serbs. The difference
between the Christian Serbs fighting for their national emancipation against
the oriental Islamic and oppressive regime of the Ottomans. As the Ottoman
system crumbled within itself, its peripheral provinces became areas of
abuse rule of the local population. The local Albanians, also Muslims for
the most part, found the best way to suppress the Serbs by putting
themselves in the service of the Turkish authorities. The author's archival
findings clearly proved what was really happening in Kosovo and Metohia
during the 19th century and what were the true origins of ethnic clashes in
that particular area.
This part of Mr. Batakovic's volume represents, in fact, a
comprehensive history of Kosovo and Metohia during the 19th century,
starting from the First Serbian Insurrection against the Turks (1804) to the
First Balkan War (1912) when, after the victory of the Serbian army, the
region of Kosovo and Metohia had been incorporated in the bulk of the
Serbian state. It is essentially a historical analysis of complex ethnic,
religious and political relations in the triangle Serbs-Turks-Albanians
based on a rather deep archival and documentary research. The author managed
to trace down the roots of these conflicts, their nature and development.
Parallel to this, he gave the historical background for the events which
occurred in the 20th century, when the problem of Kosovo and Metohia reached
its peak in both, crisis and international attention. This segment of book
should serve as a textbook of Kosovo and Metohia's history to everyone who
is interested in this particular field.
Mr. Batakovic's collection of articles contains several synthetical
pieces written on the subject of the history of Kosovo and Metohia. This
region of constant clashes needed to be defined in terms of general
categories. In an attempt to discover the real nature of those conflicts the
author searched for the answer to the following questions: what really lays
in the bottom of centuries long clashes in the history of Kosovo and
Metohia, is that the conflict of religions, nations or civilizations? One
will find the author's answers both original and inspiring. Contradictory
problems need to be thought about. And that is exactly what Mr. Batakovic
has done.
A special attention should be paid to the article entitled "The Kosovo
And Metohia Question - ethnic strife and communist rule". It stands as the
pivotal piece among all other articles in this book. It is at the same time
the most important and the most complex attempt to analyze the situation in
Kosovo in Metohia in the last fifty years, since the communists took over in
Yugoslavia.
This is the first time in Serbian and Yugoslav historiography that
someone tried to look on the Kosovo and Metohia question outside the
framework of political and ideological clich s. The article of Mr. Batakovic
represents a pioneer work in a noncommunist approach to contemporary history
of Kosovo and Metohia. Trying to see the problem in the realm of communist
regime and its policies in Yugoslavia, and in Serbia specifically, the
author found a whole new field of research and reasoning. With strong
foundations in his knowledge of Kosovo and Metohia's history, both distant
and recent, Mr. Batakovic made a successful synthesis of Serbo-Albanian
misunderstandings in Kosovo and Metohia, finding a balance between
contemporary politics and traditional differences between ethnicities living
in this region. His final conclusion that the Titoist politics had been
detrimental to the positive solution of this serious problem seems
persuasive and largely acceptable.
One should appreciate the courage of the author to tackle such a
complicated question of history and politics which touches the very essence
of the present day Serbia and Yugoslavia. Mr. Batakovic's writing should
contribute in clarifying many problems which had been heavily misinterpreted
in recent years, both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Escaping numerous traps of
Marxist historiography and reasoning, the author leads us on the road of new
and modern way of thinking about nationalism and statehood. By combining
historical analysis and archival research with original synthesis, the
author left us with a lot of vastly unknown factography and even more
conclusions and assertations which inspire further work and thoughts.
The author of this volume belongs to the new generation of Serbian
historians. To the generation whose intellectual and professional maturity
presently shows itself in full intensity. It is a general hope that these
young people will drive Serbia out of Marxist dogmas not only in their
intellectual work but also in everyday politics. The book we have before us
is one of those important steps in the direction of modern, non-ideological
view of our past and present.
In the 20th-century history of the two southern regions of Serbia --
Kosovo and Metohia -- there are two periods that are clearly separated by
ideological borders. In the first period (1912-1941), in the Kingdom of
Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, ethnic issues were mainly dealt with
in keeping with the civic standards of inter-war Europe, notwithstanding the
suffering endured during the war and latent political instability. Compared
to ethnic minorities in other countries, the ethnic Albanian minority in
Kosovo and Metohia, despite its open antagonism towards the state, was not
in an particularly unfavorable position. By Saint-Germain Treaty (1919)
minorities on Serbian territory within borders of 1913 (including Kosovo and
Metohia), were formally excluded from international protection but it was
not particularly used against interests of ethnic Albanians in
Serbia.1
In the second period, commencing with the war (1941-1945) and concluded
after the establishment of communism in Yugoslavia (1945), the question of
Kosovo and Metohia was dealt with in keeping with the Party leadership's
ideological stands regarding the ethnic question. Precisely during this
period solutions were found providing strong impetus to the old ethnic
conflict between Serbs and Albanians, causing deep rifts difficult to
surmount today. Ethnic tension in Kosovo and Metohia thus offers a
paradigmatic example of the ability of the communist rule to completely
change the demographic picture of an area by instrumentalizing existing
ethnic differences.
Kosovo and Metohia, and entire Yugoslavia for that matter, depended on
the rule of the communist leadership, which cunningly used the manipulation
of ethnic differences to consolidate and maintain power. The national policy
of the Yugoslav communists was an ideological and national negation of the
establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which the Serbs saw as their own
- the heir to the political traditions and democratic institutions of the
Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbs posed the greatest threat for Yugoslav
communists in number and political affiliation: to them, communism was a
foreign ideology viewed slightingly, as a vogue of the small-in-number
deluded youth; but recognized during the war as the gravest threat to
independence and freedom. The communists regarded the Serbs as a nation with
strong politically constructive traditions and a pronounced national
conscience who, spread through the length and breadth of Yugoslav territory,
had learned to conduct foreign policy on their own, without tangible foreign
support, a nation united by a single Orthodox Church - the bearer of an
anti-Soviet mood in the country. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY)
drafted its followers among the Serbs chiefly from the lower social strata
(especially patriarchal communities in Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia and
Vojna Krajina) unestablished in Serbian state and political traditions,
people who in the name of idealistic Yugoslavism and proletarian
internationalism rejected Serbian interests and blindly obeyed the orders of
the Titoist leadership.
The Albanians, a people whose national integration fell a whole century
behind those of the other Balkan nations, remained in communist Yugoslavia
against their will, but found a common interest with the ruling communist
party in an anti-Serbian policy via which to achieve their national goals.
Time was to pass for the backward ethnic Albanian milieu to admit its new
authorities and for the CPY to come to terms with representatives of the
ethnic Albanian minority. The question of Kosovo and Metohia was thus dealt
with in the inter-relation of three gravity centers of political forces -1.
the CPY leadership as the leading factor of might in the country; 2. the
ethnic Albanian national movement which had evident continuity despite the
ideological affiliation of its bearers; 3. Serbian communists who, though
numerically superior in the army, party and politics, as Yugoslavs and
internationalists consistently implemented the Titoist policy. The origin of
this relation can be seen in the chronological sequence of developments of
the CPY's national policy under different political and international
conditions.
1 R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova. Politicko-pravna studija, Beograd
1985, pp. 100-105.
The CPY as a section of the Comintern and the realizer of its concept
in dealing with the ethnic question
There is evident continuity in the CPY's policy in dealing with the
position of ethnic minorities which shows that, despite individual
aberrations due to the position of communist Yugoslavia in foreign policy,
basic political principles, outlined in party programs and resolutions in
the inter-war period, were consistently implemented. The CPY coordinated its
program of solutions to the ethnic question in the multi-ethnic Kingdom of
Yugoslavia with the general stands of the Third International (Comintern),
within the framework of which it acted as a separate section, as its work
was prohibited in the country.
The Comintern was an important lever of Soviet foreign policy. The
Comintern's attitude towards the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was determined by the
Soviet policy towards the "Versailles system" of states created under
imperialistic peace accords" after World War I, in which enemies of the
Bolshevik regime - Great Britain and France - were dominant. The Fifth
Congress of the Comintern (1924) abandoned the principle of a federal
restructuring of states, created as a cordon sanitaire primarily as a
defense against the "proletariat revolution" and a struggle against the
Soviet Union, with the explanation that "western imperialists" were
preparing an assault on the "first country of socialism". The new political
platform's starting point was to break up the cordon surrounding the Soviet
Union by singling out and rendering independent the oppressed nations among
those states in the enemy camp, including the Kingdom of Yugoslavia - the
right of Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia to separation was emphasized, and a
special resolution stressed the need to aid the movements of the oppressed
nations for the formation of their independent states and "for the
liberation of the Albanians". The policy of the Yugoslav authorities had
some effect on the Comintern's stand towards Yugoslavia: the royal
authorities had failed to recognize the new Soviet state and provided
shelter to a large number of Russian emigrants and White Guard military
units in the 20s, including the troops of General Vrangel, while Russian
societies frequently greeted their patron, King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic
(related to the Romanov dynasty through his sister Jelena and his
Montenegrin aunts), as the new Slavic tsar.
The CPY, and the Comintern, advocated the stand that the state of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was an unnatural creation which cannot be
regarded as a homogeneous national state (comprising three tribes which make
up a nation) with a few ethnic minorities, but a state wherein the ruling
class of one (Serbian) nation was oppressing the other nations. The thesis
on a Greater Serbian bourgeoisie and Greater Serbian hegemony owed much to
the theses of the Austro-Hungarian public opinion prior to and during World
War I, whereby the Greater Serbian threat posed a chief obstacle to the
stabilization of political conditions in the Balkans. Similar stands, only
with a more pronounced ideological component, can be found in the works of
Austro-Marxists whence such stereotypes were taken and constructed into the
views of the Third International regarding the ethnic question in the
Balkans.1
The policy to break up Kingdom of Yugoslavia culminated in the
decisions of the CPY's Fourth Congress, held in Dresden in 1928. The
statement that about one-third of the Albanian nation had remained under the
rule of the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie, which was implementing the same
oppressive regime" against it as in Macedonia, was supplemented by the stand
that its liberation and unification with Albania can be achieved only in a
joint struggle with the CPY. With regard to this, support was extended to
the Kosovo Committee, an organization of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and
Metohia who, aided by the Albanian government and Mussolini, raided Yugoslav
territory with the aim of winning the annexation of Kosovo, Metohia and
western Macedonia to Albania. Tens of thousands of Serbian colonists -
chiefly volunteers in World War I and indigent families from Montenegro,
Vojna Krajina and Dalmatia, were sealed by the party press as servants of
the Greater Serbian policy, although the land they were allotted was not
taken from ethnic Albanians. Similar stands were reitered at the Fourth
National Conference of the CPY held in Ljubljana in 1934, which stressed the
assessment that the Yugoslav kingdom was nothing but the "occupation of
Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and
Bosnia-Herzegovina by Serbian troops" and that it was thus imperative to
execute the "persecution of Serbian Chetniks from Croatia, Dalmatia,
Slovenia, Vojvodina, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo". Renouncing
these regions any Serbian character at all, the CPY believed that these
provinces should be organized as separate federal units within the frame of
a future communist Yugoslavia. The stand to break up Yugoslavia was changed
in 1935, when the Comintern established a new course of struggle of the
"national front" against the danger looming from Nazism and Fascism in
Europe.2 The CPY abandoned its decision on the annexation of
Kosovo and Metohia to Albania in 1940, at the Fifth National Conference in
Zagreb, at a time when Albania had been under Italian occupation for a year,
but even then, the "colonialist methods of the Serbian bourgeoisie" were
condemned and the need for the creation of a separate republic of Kosovo
emphasized - "the ethnic problem can be resolved by the forming of a free
labor-peasant republic of Kosovo after the Greater Serbian fascist and
imperialist regime is overthrown".3 By demonizing Serbian
domination in Yugoslavia, Yugoslav communists distinguished less and less
the bourgeoisie from the people - thus the idea to form a separate party for
Serbia was abandoned, although party organizations for the other Yugoslav
provinces were formed. Maintaining such a stand, the CPY received Nazi
Germany's attack on Yugoslavia in April, 1941.
1 K. Cavoski, KPJ i kosovsko pitanje, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj
istoriji, Beograd 1988, pp. 361-381. Cf documents in: Istorijski arhiv
Komunisticke partije Jugoslavije, Beograd 1949, vol. I-II, passim;
Komunisticka internacionala, Gornji Milanovac 1982, vol. VIII, passim.
2 K, Cavoski, op. cit., pp. 365-369.
3 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, p. 321
The CPY's ethnic policy in its struggle for power in the civil war
(1941-1945)
The Kosovo and Metohia question was raised again when the flames of war
spread on April 6,1941, throughout Yugoslavia: its army was forced to
unconditional capitulation 11 days later and its territory divided among
Hitler's allies. Owing to their loyalty to old allies France and Great
Britain, and for fomenting a putsch on March 27, 1941 (thereby practically
canceling any agreement with the Axis powers), the Serbs were punished as
the Third Reich's chief enemy in the Balkans by a division of the Serbian
territories: most of Kosovo along with Metohia, western Macedonia and
fringing areas of Montenegro were allotted to Albania, which had been under
Italian occupation for two years. Bulgaria was given a small part of Kosovo,
while its northern parts entered the composition of Serbia where a German
protectorate was established. Under a decree by King Vittorio Emmanuele,
dated August 12, 1941, Greater Albania was founded. An Albanian voluntary
militia numbering 5,000 men - Vulnetari - was set up in Kosovo and Metohia
to assist the Italian forces in maintaining order, but which carried out
surprise attacks on the Serbian population on its own.
Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohia, who were declared by Italian
and communist propagandas as victims of Greater Serbian hegemony, received,
besides the right to hoist their own flag, the right to open schools in
their mother tongue. The patriarchal and tribal ethnic Albanian society in
Metohia and Kosovo, accustomed to extreme subordination and absolute
submission to the local land holders, received the new order wholeheartedly.
The destruction of the Yugoslav state, which they never took as their own,
was received with vindictive ardor. In the first few months of the
occupation, some ten thousand colonist houses were burned in night raids and
their owners and families expelled. Colonist estates were ploughed afresh in
order that every trace of Serbian presence be eradicated and in the event of
their return, to render difficult the recognition of their estates. The
destruction of colonist villages according to a plan was to help show
international commissions after the war, when new borders would be drawn,
that Serbs never lived there. An ethnic Albanian leader from Kosovo,
Ferat-bey Draga, said that the "time has come to exterminate the Serbs ...
there will be no Serbs under the Kosovo sun".1 Orthodox churches
were burnt and destroyed and graveyards desecrated. Ethnic Albanians sought
to eradicate every trace of Serbian presence in these areas. During the war,
some 100,000 colonists and indigenous Serbs fled for Serbia and Montenegro
ahead of Albanian terror, and some 10,000 were killed.2 Along
with this, under a plan of the Italian government, adopted before the
occupation of Yugoslavia, began an extensive settlement of Albanians from
Albania on the estates of the expelled colonists. Their number is roughly
estimated at 80,000-100,000; the first postwar estimate put it at about
75,000.3
The insurrection against the occupier in mid-May, 1941, was raised by
Serbian officers under the command of Colonel Draza Mihailovic, who
organized the Chetnik (guerrilla) movement throughout Yugoslavia: his
troops, organized throughout the country, were proclaimed by the government
in exile the Yugoslav army in the homeland, and he was made general and
minister of war. Two weeks after Hitler's assault on the Soviet Union,
Yugoslav communists stirred up an uprising at Moscow's call, which, under
the mask of a people's liberation struggle, was in fact a movement for a
revolutionary shift of power. After initial talks with Mihailovic's
Chetniks, Tito's Partisans set out on a long and bloody civil war. Although
there were several collaborationist regimes in the country with strong
military formations, the Partisans - the military force of the CPY, saw the
Chetniks as their arch-enemy who incorporated the state and political
continuity of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In the civil war that ensued, Kosovo and Metohia assumed a secondary
role. The Chetnik movement, organized into two Kosovo corps (about 1,500
men), operated in mountainous regions on the outskirts of Kosovo and
Metohia. Cooperation between the occupational Italian forces and the
Albanian voluntary gendarmery left no room for their stronger military
engagement and protection of the Serbian population. The persecuted Serbs
sought refuge in occupied Serbia, where they were received first by the
commissariat administration and then a special refugees commissariat under
the regime of General Milan Nedic.4
Metohia, which was settled by primarily Montenegrin colonists, had many
followers of the CPY, though at the outbreak of the war its membership
comprised a mere 270, including some two dozen ethnic Albanians. Even though
the CPY condemned in numerous declarations prior to the war the Greater
Serbian policy of the bourgeoisie and called during the war on the ethnic
Albanian population to rise together with the colonists and Serbian natives
for the creation of a "new, justice society", the response was negligible. A
party leader, Ali Shukria, tried in 1941 to justify this reaction by saying
that the mere name Yugoslavia provoked unanimous indignation among the
ethnic Albanians. Clashes between Partisan and Chetnik formations on the one
hand and the ethnic Albanian gendarmery on the other showed that ethnic
Albanians saw in both of them only Serbs, their age-old enemies.5
The number of ethnic Albanians mustered in partisan units in Kosovo and
Metohia was extremely low, numbering only several dozen. Individual units
were named after prominent ethnic Albanian communists (Zeinel Aidmi, Emin
Duraku), and then after distinguished leaders of the secessionist movement
against Serbia and Yugoslavia (Bairam Cum); agitations among the population
constantly stressed that after the war, the ethnic Albanians would win their
rights, labeling the prewar policy as fascist and maleficent. However,
winning over ethnic Albanians for the restoration of Yugoslavia under a
communist leadership was slow, since among the ethnic Albanian members of
the CPY most had hoped that Kosovo and Metohia would remain in the
composition of Albania after the war.
In the Communist Party of Albania (CPA), which was formed from various
factions on February 8, 1941, under the supervision of Yugoslav instructors
(Miladin Popovic and Dusan Mugosa), were numerous followers of a Greater
Albania under communist rule. Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha had
taken the first step towards an accord for the creation of a Greater Albania
after the war with a short-lasting agreement reached on August 2,1943, in
the village of Mukaj with representatives of the Balli Kombetar, a very
active organization in Kosovo.6 Miladin Popovic held a similar
stand, proposing that ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Metohia be placed
under the command of the Chief Staff of Albania and that Metohia come under
the organization of the CPA.7 Such aspirations attained their
fullest expression in a declaration issued on January 2, 1944 in the village
of Bunaj (Bujan), in a conference attended by 49 political representatives
of the ethnic Albanian and Yugoslav partisan units (43 ethnic Albanians, 1
Moslem and 7 Serbs present):
"Kosovo and Metohia is an area mostly inhabited by ethnic Albanians,
who have always wished to become united with Albania. We, therefore, feel it
our duty to point to the road that is to be followed by the ethnic Albanian
people in the realization of their wishes. The only way for the Kosovo and
Metohia ethnic Albanians to unite with Albania is through a common struggle
with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against the invader and his lackeys. It
is the only way of winning freedom, when all the peoples, including ethnic
Albanians, will be able to make their options with a right to
self-determination, including secession. The guarantee for it is the
National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the National Liberation Army of
Albania, with which it is closely linked."8
The decisions reached in Bunaj, under which the name Metohia was
replaced by an Albanian term Rrafshe Dukadjini, were contrary to a
declaration by a grand communist assembly held in Jajce in late November,
1943 AVNOJ (the National Antifascist Liberation Council of Yugoslavia -
NALCY) at which it was decided that a new, communist Yugoslavia, headed by
Tito as partisan marshal, be established on a federal principle whereby "all
peoples ... will be fully free and equal", and the ethnic groups guaranteed
all the rights of an ethnic minority.9 In his instructions to the
communist leaders in Kosovo and Montenegro, Tito rejected the decisions
reached in Bunaj, believing that they raised issues which should be dealt
with after the war: he realized only too well that his movement would have
lost many followers if he had upheld the demands of the ethnic Albanians, as
he had proclaimed in principle the restoration of Yugoslavia within its
prewar borders. In conditions when the war was not yet over and the
establishment of a communist system uncertain, the decision not to touch the
borders of Yugoslavia was the only possible solution.
The hostility of ethnic Albanians towards Yugoslav partisans did not
wane, despite efforts by party activists to win over fresh adherents. The
membership of the ethnic Albanian Balli Kombetar increased and their
national solidarity proved to be stronger than ideological divisions. After
the capitulation of Italy, the German occupational authorities encouraged
aspirations towards the creation of an ethnic Albania, thus on September 19,
1943, the Second Albanian League was founded on the model of its predecessor
- the First Albanian League (1878), advocating fiercer clashes with the
Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia, and a separate SS-Division Scenderbey was set
up from the local Albanian forces.
A delegate of the partisan Supreme Command, Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo,
sent in 1943 to reorganize the partisan units in Kosovo, Metohia and
Macedonia, informed of "powerful chauvinist hatred between the ethnic
Albanians and Serbs ... The extent of the Albanian chauvinist animosity
towards the Serbs is evident from the fact that one of our [partisan] units,
comprising ethnic Albanians, was surrounded by 2,000 armed ethnic Albanian
peasants, and after several hours of fighting the latter recognized that the
unit comprised ethnic Albanians. They dispersed, leaving the Italians in the
lurch".10 Fresh partisan units, set up in September and October
1943, operated outside Kosovo and Metohia, with not more than 800 men in
five battalions. The unit was reorganized in the summer and fall of 1944,
but the number of ethnic Albanians remained the same.
A large-scale revolt of the Balli Kombetar followers and Albanian units
mustered into partisan formations (November-December, 1944), which broke out
after the retreat of the German troops and the establishment of communist
rule (the liberation of Kosovo was assisted at Tito's request by two
brigades of ethnic Albanian partisans) was thus not unexpected. The revolt
was crushed when additional troops were brought in, and military rule was
set up in Kosovo and Metohia from February to May, 1945. A leading ethnic
Albanian communist from Kosovo maintained contact with the outlaws. He was
soon discovered, but A. Rankovic, Tito's closest associate at the time,
assessed that his execution would stir up a fresh revolt, thus he was
appointed minister in the Serbian governament.11 Initial
concessions heralding a lenient attitude towards ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
and Metohia were made immediately after the new authorities were
established: the settlement of at least 75,000 colonists from Albania was
tacitly legalized, and a special decree issued on March 16, 1945, forbade
about 60,000 Serbs settled in the inter-war period from returning to their
estates.12
The conflict between the CPY and the ethnic Albanians during the war
was of ideological and state character. The CPY could not allow the fascist
forces in Kosovo to create a Greater Albania and thus disrupt the state
integrality of the newly established communist Yugoslavia. Most ethnic
Albanians continued to support the Balli Kombetar and its solution to the
ethnic question. Albanian communists on both sides had hoped that the
triumph of communism would bring quicker unification to all Albanians into a
single state; thus communist Yugoslavia was regarded as the continuation of
the Kingdom.
1 H. Bajrami, Izvestaj Konstantina Plavsica Tasi Dinicu, ministru
unutrasnjih poslova u Nedicevoj vladi oktobra 1943, o kosovsko-mitrovackom
srezu, Godisnjak arhiva Kosova XIV-XV (1978-1979), p. 313
2 S. Milosevic, Izbeglice i preseljenici na teritoriji okupirane
Jugoslavije 1941-1945, Beograd 1981, p.56-104.
3 V. Djuretic, op. cit., p. 323-325
4 Documents published in R. V. Petrovic, Zavera protiv Srba, Beograd
1990, pp. 137-175, 353-358.
5 Dj. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski odnosi kroz vekove sa posebnim
osvrtom na novije vreme, Himelstir 19832, pp. 307-336, 3437-455.
6 The agreement with the CPA was short-lived and the Balli Kombetar
(set up in 1942) entered into cooperation with the German occupational
forces after the capitulation of Italy (1943)
7 Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilackom ratu
jugoslovenskih naroda, vol. VII, t. 1, Belgrade 1952, pp. 338-339.
8 A. N. Dragnich and S. Todorovich, The Saga of Kosovo. Focus on
Serbian-Albanian Relations, Boulder Colorado 1984, pp. 143.
9 Prvo i drugo zasedanje AVNOJ-a, Beograd 1953, pp. 227-228.
10 Zbornik dokumenata, vol. X, t. 2, p. 153.
11 S. Djakovic, Sukobi na Kosovu, Beograd 1986, pp. 227-228.
12 V. Djuretic, op. cit. p.
Settling accounts with Serbia and the instrumentalization of Kosovo and
Metohia
However, the ethnic Albanians, both nationalists and communists, failed
to properly assess the CPY's intentions. The question of Kosovo and Metohia
was an important point of support in the CPY's plan to square accounts with
Serbia. The squaring of accounts, outlined in party programs, could start
only with the achievement of full communist domination. Serbia's conduct
during the war provided additional strength to the party's stands: a country
with bourgeois traditions and small peasant landholders, devoted to
politically constructive institutions and the dynasty, leaned towards the
Chetnik movement of Draza Mihailovic. After failing in Serbia in 1941, the
small-in-number communists transferred the weight of their operations to
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and the Military Frontier (Krajina) in
Croatia, where the entire Serbian population rose against large-scale terror
wrought by the Ustashas (the authorities of fascist Croatia). Cunningly
manipulating the indigent Serbian hilly population who, void of developed
state and political traditions, cherished a devotion to the cult of "mother
Russia" and patriarchal egalitarianism, the communists managed - by calling
on the authority of Moscow - to win over many of them who had fallen in
numerous Chetnik formations after the capitulation of Italy.
The communists won the bloody civil war, in which ethnic and religious
divisions were the chief instigators of massacres, owing to crucial aid from
the Soviet troops which, in agreement with Tito, crossed over to Yugoslav
territory in the fall of 1944, and helped bring the communists to power and
defeat the Yugoslav army in the homeland - the Chetnik movement of Draza
Mihailovic. The first to be punished then was Serbia: its bourgeoisie and
peasants were exterminated in the "second stage of the revolution", i.e. in
the "squaring of accounts with the class enemy" -without trial and by
summary procedure, while its youth - conscripted into partisan units, was
decimated at the Sremski Front when it was forced to continually storm the
well-fortified German positions without sufficient weaponry and military
training. With the destruction of its potential classes for resistance - the
bourgeoisie, the wealthy peasant layer and the town youth - Serbia's back
was broken: most of its bourgeoisie and intelligentsia were abroad
(officers, politicians and diplomats), while those who remained in the
country were permanently marginated. The raison d'etre of the communist
Yugoslavia was a carefully set balance of power among the peoples and
minorities of Yugoslavia over a potential threat from Serbian predominance.
The importance which the communist authorities attached to the political and
ethnic affirmation of the ethnic Albanian minority could not be understood
if viewed otherwise.
The numerous Serbs in the party, army and police of Tito's regime were
carefully selected by the criterion of blind obedience and complete devotion
to the leader, and by their readiness to fully subject Serbian interests to
the interests of the CPY. Most of them, through a negative selection of
cadres, were recruited from patriarchal Serbian milieus in Croatia,
Herzegovina and Montenegro or lower classes in Serbia, as lacking commitment
to the national and state traditions of Serbia. Their major task during the
entire period of Tito's reign was to fight against "Serbian nationalism and
chauvinism" which, considering the Serbs were the predominant nation,
constituted the gravest threat to the regime. These Serbs thus mercilessly
destroyed everything even resembling the traditions of the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Serbia. They were forerunners in the
persecution of dignitaries and the clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Under such circumstances, the communist authorities in Yugoslavia were able
to deal with the ethnic question in keeping with their designs without
fearing for their rule.
The predominance of Serbs in the military units of the new authorities
demanded, for the sake of precaution, that the question of the status of
Kosovo and Metohia be brought up prudently, as the party there - due to
stubborn ethnic-Albanian resistance - had no other followers but Serbs and
Montenegrins (i.e. Serbs who accepted the CPY's ideological precept on the
existence of a separate Montenegrin nation). The decision that Kosovo and
Metohia be annexed to Serbia was made after the abolition of military rule
on July 10,1945, perhaps under the influence of a large-scale ethnic
Albanian resistance towards the new authorities. There is evidence that
owing to mistakes made in the ethnic Albanian uprising in December, 1944,
the Regional Committee of Kosovo and Metohia was replaced after the First
Congress of the CP of Serbia in May 1945, and placed under the direct
subordination of the headquarters in Belgrade, though the decision was soon
repealed after a protest voiced by the ethnic Albanian communists. Under the
1946 Constitution, the Autonomous Region of Kosovo-Metohia within the
composition of Serbia was established, though the communists of Kosovo
worked directly under the instructions of the state leadership. Fearing an
outbreak of fresh revolts, the CPY ordered that the officials in Kosovo
suppress the followers of a unification with Albania. Enver Hoxha was
dissatisfied with the attitude of Miladin Popovic, a CPY instructor in
Albania who, upon returning to Kosovo, reneged on his promise that after the
war Kosovo and Metohia would be annexed to Albania. He was assassinated by
followers of the Balli Kombetar in March, 1945, and the assassin - who
committed suicide immediately upon executing the task - had with him a
standard with the inscription "Kosovo united with Albania".1
The reasons for deep discontent were not ideological but national in
nature: in the new, communist Yugoslavia, their aspirations for the
annexation of Kosovo, Metohia and western Macedonia to Albania were
betrayed. Nevertheless, international political ambitions called for a
special relationship towards the ethnic Albanian population: the CPY
displayed an open intent to establish domination in Albania. Beyond that