Setting the Stage (fwd)

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Fri Apr 9 23:17:18 PDT 1999



> Following the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the
> Yugolsavian Communist Party was freed of restraints imposed by USSR
> need to avoid entanglement in European war. Communists became leaders
> in organizing resistance forces against Nazis. The party moved its
> organizational apparatus into Serbian mountains and began the Partisan
> campaign that changed the course of Yugoslavian history. Communists
> developed a successful policy widely recognized to have been instrumental
> in the victory over occupation forces.
>
> Communists had a difficult time persuading Albanians in Kosovo to join
> Partisan ranks because the latter were chauvinistically inclined towards
> the Serbs (whose nationalism could be a problem but who also comprised
> the majority of both crack-unit Proletarian Brigades and regular Partisan
> formations). Also, Albanian Communists supported the claims of Albania
> to Kosovo but Yugoslavian Communists refused to consider any concessions
> to Albanian nationalist sentiment in the province.
>
> The war years and their immediate aftertmath were marked by growing
> hostility between Communists (who initially took measures to ensure
> impartial treatment of minorities but later engaged in repressive
> actions) and intransigent nationalist elements in minority populations
> (of which Albanians were the most hostile). Imer Berisa, an advocate
> "Greater Albania" led an open revolt against the Partisan movement in
> 1944 that continued against the new Communist regime in 1945. Kosovo
> Albanian separatist militias eventually went underground (and were
> never completely eliminated), the Kosovo Albanian population remained
> aliented from the government, and the post-war position of the
> Communists was never secure in the region.
>
> Kosovo was designated as one of two autonomous regions in the Yugoslavian
> federal system that was formally established in the fall of 1945. It
> was not considered a homeland area for minorities but was considered a
> place of mixed nationality requiring special status because of problems
> associated with relations among different national groups. Early on, a
> group of Kosovo Albanians tried to take advantage of the break with the
> Soviet Union by provoking the police into arresting and killing innocent
> Albanians in order to turn Albanian sentiment even more against the
> Yugoslavians. Communist distrust of Kosovo Albanians (based on
> perception that they were political unreliable) increased which in turn
> heightened ethnic Albanian nationalist sentiment. The situation reached
> a state of emergency in the mid-1950s. In 1959, the Yugoslavian League
> of Communists enacted plans to improve the status of minorities and
> initiated a program of economic development for Kosovo. Despite these
> actions, there was an uprising of Kosovo Albanians in 1960 and an
> aborted coup in 1964.
>
> Following the Yugoslavian gov't's 1966 forced resignation of the country's
> vice-president (Aleksandar Rankovic, a Serb) and purge of the secret
> police accused of mistreating ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the latter
> staged violent demonstrations in late 1968 for improvement of poor
> economic conditions and unjust political arrangements. In response, the
> Yugoslavian gov't granted broad concessions allowing local economic and
> social planning and financial control. Political upgrading emboldened
> Kosovo Albanians which resulted in growing abuse of Serbs living in the
> region and a subsequent increase in Serb emigration.
>
> A number of Albanian nationalist groups were active in Kosovo in the
> 1970s. The decentralizing effect of the 1974 Constitution further
> reduced oppression of the Albanians in the province but loosening state
> control also led to increased scale and visibility of nationalist
> disturbances. Nowhere in Europe were such far-ranging concessions to
> nationalst rights granted in a region considered so potentially
> separatist. Traditional Albanian culture was practiced more openly in
> Yugoslavia than in Albania. However, Albanians were not recognized
> as a nation under the constitution because, according to the Yugoslavian
> government, their traditional homeland was outside Yugoslavia. By 1976,
> reports were released about Kosovo Serbians forced to sell real estate
> under duress and damage done to Serbian cultural and historical
> monuments and cemetaries.
>
> Despite continuing investment and other economic programs intended to
> improve Kosovo, the region remained the poorest and had the highest
> unemployment rate (also the highest birth rates). Kosovo Albanians
> again held large demonstrations to protest these conditions in 1981.
> Moreover, demonstrators complained that the Yugoslav People's Army used
> excessive force to quell the uprisings. Several factors contributed to
> growing tension and irreconcilable difference: 1) separatist Kosovar
> Albanians were receiving increasing support - including direct
> interventions - from Albania which used economic discontent in the
> region to discredit Yugoslavian economic and political innovations;
> 2) Yugoslavia's affluent republics (Slovenia for example, had little
> unemployment) were tiring of high rates of unproductive investments in
> Kosovo (despite impressive mineral and fuel reserves); 3) rising
> Albanian nationalism in Kosovo threatened to fuel similar sentiments
> elsewhere in the multinational state.
>
> Economic conditions in Kosovo worsened throughout the 1980s even as
> disproportionately high national investment in the region continued.
> Serb emigration increased again, in part, because of the economy
> (leading some Albanians to leave as well) but also because Albanians
> drove them out. Meanwhile, differences between Kosovo Albanian
> autonomists and separatists, both believing that internal security
> forces were applied against them with unwarranted severity, began to
> blur. Use of weapons and explosives against police, military personnel,
> Kosovo Serbs, and ethnic Albanian 'collaborators' increased.
>
> the stage was set...Michael Hoover



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