Setting the Stage (fwd)

[Michael Hoover]

> 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