-----Original Message----- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. <rosserjb at jmu.edu> To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Date: Thursday, May 20, 1999 5:21 PM Subject: [PEN-L:7083] L. Proyect on Albanian Kosovars
> Well since I've promised to say nothing
>demonizing about that nice charmer in Belgrade
>who undoubtedly cries at the opera, allow me to
>annoy a bunch of people on this list on another front...
> Louis Proyect has put together an account of
>the Albanians in Kosovo-Methohija that blames them
>for their troubles. They are backward, tribal, patriarchal,
>male chauvinists who are into blood feuds (and others
>have added that they only like to study about Albanian
>culture and literature rather than anything useful), and who
>have too high a birth rate.
> History starts now in World War II when they were allied
>to the Italian fascists and reportedly didn't even help Enver
>Hoxha, much less Tito's folks. The UCK/KLA has people
>descended from fighters in the Skanderberg Division (as
>well as former Maoists) and are thus "politically incoherent."
>So, I guess they deserve all that is happening to them, if
>anything is.
> Suppose such an account were to be made by an
>Afrikaaner in South Africa about local blacks to justify
>apartheid. After all, after 1990, the locally majority Albanians
>were removed from positions of authority, not just from all
>those classes on Albanian culture at the too-large University
>of Pristina.
> So, how does one justify domination of a majority by a
>minority? Well, one suggests that they are a majority because
>they have a high birth rate. That follows from their being a
>bunch of tribal male chauvinists who have blood feuds. Could
>not an Afrikaaner have said all this about South African blacks?
> Of course there are differences. There is no significant
>racial difference between the Serbs and the Albanians in
>contrast to the situation in South Africa. In South Africa, where
>most of the blacks were converted to Protestant Christianity of
>one form or another (albeit with some remnant tribal religious
>elements in some cases), religion is not a source of difference
>or conflict, in contrast with Yugoslavia. Of course the Afrikaaners
>had no "homeland" they could return to, having been in place
>for 300 years with their own locally evolved language and culture.
>Of course the Serbs claim Kosmet as their "cradle," but they
>have Serbia Proper to go to, just as the Albanians have Albania
>to go to. It is also true that there were no laws against marriages
>between the groups or overtly imposed segregation (yes, just for
>the record, I do think the whites in South Africa were more
>oppressive of the blacks than the Serbs have been of the
>Albanians in Kosmet, bottom line).
> Naturally Louis will argue that I have completely goofed this
>up by not possessing a proper class analysis. In South Africa
>presumably the ANC was socialist. After all, look at all the
>companies they have nationalized since coming to power.
>Clearly international capital had good reason to fear them....
> Now presumably the Albanians are a cat's paw for
>international capital against the virtuous vanguard of socialism
>hanging out in Belgrade. The case does get stronger when one
>looks at the demands for capitalism in Kosmet in the Rambo
>Accord. But things are kind of messy. Not only do we have
>the remnant Maoism of parts of the UCK/KLA, but we have
>the fact that Albanian Kosovars are the poorest people in all
>the former Yugoslavia. If they are not proletariat, then what are
>they, lumpenproletariat? Or just undeserving peasantry?
> This starting in World War II is also just as potched as
>starting in 1989. After all, between 1878 and 1912, there was
>a Serbia that did just fine without possessing Kosovo-Metohija.
>That zone was still a part of the Ottoman Empire and had a
>population even then in which the Serbs were a minority. Serbia
>seized the province in 1912, against the wishes of several of
>the neighboring countries and only thanks to the strong backing
>of tsarist Russia. The period from then until World War II was
>one of Serbian royalist rule and domination that at times was dictatorship
>and never was remotely socialist or progressive.
>The reaction to coming under Albanian fascist rule in WW II must
>be seen in the light of that.
> No, none of this is particularly simple. But I do not think that
>people are going to be convinced to oppose a ground invasion
>by presenting one-sided histories of what has happened there,
>especially the stuff that is essentially ethnic slander that would
>be thrown off these lists if it were applied to Indians or blacks.
>Barkley Rosser
>
>