ic estates evince
both a rise in the population and appreciable economic progress. The estates
of the Banjska monastery numbered 83 villages, and those of the Holy
Archangels numbered 77.5
Especially noteworthy is the 1330 Decani Charter, with its detailed
list of households and of chartered villages. The Decant estate was an
extensive area which encompassed parts of what is today northwestern
Albania. Historical analysis and onomastic research reveal that only three
of the 89 settlements were mentioned as being Albanian. Out of the 2,166
farming homesteads and 2,666 houses in cattle-grazing land, 44 were
registrated as Albanian (1,8%). More recent research indicates that apart
from the Slav, i.e. Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohia, the remaining
population of non-Slav origin did not account for more than 2% of the total
population in the 14th century.6
The growing political power, territorial expansion and economic wealth
of the Serbian state had a major impact on ethnic processes. Northern
Albania up to the Mati River was a part of the Serbian Kingdom, but it was
not until the conquest of Tsar Dusan that the entire Albania (with the
exception of Durazzo) entered the Serbian Empire. Fourteenth century records
mention mobile Albanian mobile cattle sheds on mountain slopes in the
imminent vicinity of Metohia, and sources in the first half of the 15th
century note their presence (albeit in smaller number) in the flatland
farming settlements.
Stefan Dusan's Empire stretched from the Danube to the Peloponnese and
from Bulgaria to the Albanian littoral. After his death it began to
disintegrate into areas controlled by powerful regional lords. Kosovo and
parts of Metohia came under the rule of King Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, the
co-ruler of the last Nemanjic, Tsar Uros. The earliest clashes with the
Turks, who edged their way into Europe at the start of the 14th century,
were noted during the reign of Stefan Dusan. The 1371 battle of the Marica,
near Crnomen in which Turkish troops rode rougshod over the huge army of the
Mrnjavcevic brothers, the feudal lords of Macedonia, Kosovo and neighboring
regions, heralded the decisive Turkish invasion of Serbian lands. King
Vukasin's successor King Marko (the legendary hero of folk poems, Kralyevich
Marko) recognized the supreme authority of the sultan and as vasal took part
in his campaigns against neighboring Christian states. The Turkish onslaught
is remembered as the apocalypse of the Serbian people, and this tradition
was cherished during the long period of Ottoman rule. During the Battle of
the Marica, a monk wrote that "the worst of all times" had come, when "the
living envied the dead".7
Unaware of the danger that were looming over their lands, the regional
lords tried to take advantage of the new situation and enlarge their
holdings. On the eve of the battle of Kosovo, the northern parts of Kosovo
where in possession of Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic, and parts of Metohia
belonged to his brother-in-law Vuk Brankovic. By quelling the resistance of
the local landed gentry, Prince Lazar eventually emerged as the most
powerful regional lord and came to dominate the lands of Moravian Serbia.
Tvrtko I Kotromanic, King of Bosnia, Prince Lazar's closest ally, aspired to
the political legacy of the saintly dynasty as descendant of the Nemanjices
and by being crowned with the "dual crown" of Bosnia and Serbia over St.
Sava grave in monastery Mileseva.8
The expected clash with the Turks took place in Kosovo polje, outside
of Pristina, on St. Vitus day, June 15 (28), 1389. The troops of Prince
Lazar, Vuk Brankovic and King Tvrtko I, confronted the army of Emir Murad I,
which included his Christian vassals. Both Prince Lazar and emir Murad were
killed in the head-on collision between the two armies (approximately 30,000
troops on both sides). Contemporaries were especially impressed by the
tidings that twelve Serbian knights (most probably led by legendary hero
Milos Obilic) broke through the tight Turkish ranks and killed the emir in
his tent.9
Military-wise no real victor emerged from the battle. Tvrtko's
emissaries told the courts of Europe that the Christian army had defeated
the infidels, although Prince Lazar's successors, exhausted by their heavy
losses, immediately sought peace and conceded to became vassals to the new
sultan. Vuk Brankovic, unjustly remembered in epic tradition as a traitor
who slipped away from the battle field, resisted them until 1392, when he
was forced to become their vassal. The Turks took Brankovic's lands and gave
them to a more loyal vassal, Prince Stefan Lazarevic, son of Prince Lazar
thereby creating a rift between their heirs. After the battle of Angora in
1402, Prince Stefan took advantage of the chaos in the Ottoman state. In
Constantinople he received the title of despot, and upon returning home,
having defeated Brankovic's relatives he took control over the lands of his
father. Despite frequent internal conflicts and his vassal obligations to
the Turks and Hungarians, despot Stefan revived and economically
consolidated the Serbian state, the center of which was gradually moving
northward. Under his rule Novo Brdo in Kosovo became the economic center of
Serbia where in he issued a Law of Mines in 1412.10
Stefan appointed as his successor his nephew despot Djuradj Brankovic,
whose rule was marked by fresh conflicts and finally the fall of Kosovo and
Metohia to the Turks. The campaign of the Christian army led by Hungarian
nobleman Janos Hunyadi ended in 1448 in heavy defeat in a clash with Murad
II's forces, again in Kosovo Polje. This was the last concertive attempt in
the Middle Ages to rout the Turks out of this part of Europe.11
After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Mehmed II the Conqueror
advanced onto Despotate of Serbia. For some time voivode Nikola Skobaljic
offered valiant resistance in Kosovo, but after a series of consecutive
campaigns and lengthy sieges in 1455, the economic center of Serbia, Novo
Brdo fell. The Turks then proceeded to conquer other towns in Kosovo and
Metohia four years before the entire Serbian Despotate collapsed with the
fall of new capital Smederevo. Turkish onslaught, marked by frequent
military raids, the plunder and devastation of entire regions, the
destruction of monasteries and churches, gradually narrowed down Serbian
state territories, triggering off a large-scale migration northwards, to
regions beyond reach to the conquerors. The biggest migration took place
from 1480-1481, when a large part of the population of northern Serbia moved
to Hungary and Transylvania, to bordering region along the Sava and Danube
rivers, where the descendants of the fleeing despots of Smederevo resisted
the Turks for several decades to come.12
1 For a more complete picture of Kosovo and Metohia's medieval past
see: D. Kojic-Kovacevic, Kosovo od sredine XII do sredine XV veka, in:
Kosovo nekad i sad (Kosova dikur e sot), (Beograd 1973), pp. 109-128; S.
Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj
istoriji, pp. 21-45 (with earlier bibliography)
2 R. Samardzic, Kosovo i Metohija: uspon i propadanje srpskog naroda,
in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 6-10; D. Bogdanovic, Rukopisno
nasledje Kosova in: Zbornik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju Kosova,
Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Naucni skupovi, vol. XLII, Belgrade
1988, pp. 73-80. For more details see: Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. I
(Belgrade 1981).
3 S. Cirkovic, Vladarski dvorci oko jezera na Kosovu, in: Zbornik
Matice srpske za likovne umetnosti, 20 (1984), pp. 72-77.
4 V. S. Jovanovic, Arheoloska istrazivanja srednjovekovnih spomenika i
nalazista na Kosovu, in: Zbomik okruglog stola o naucnom istrazivanju
Kosova, pp. 17-66.
5 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 34-39; Zaduzbine Kosova, pp.
313-358.
6 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 39-41; S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i
Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 34-36. More details in: B. Ferjancic, Les
Albanais dans les sources byzantines, in: Iliri i Albanci, Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, Naucni skupovi vol. XXXDC (Belgrade 1988), pp.
303-322; S. Cirkovic, Les Albanais la lumiere des sources historiques des
Slaves du Sud, ill: Iliri i Albanci, pp. 341-359.
7 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 75. More details in: R.
Mihaljcic, Kraj Srpskog Carstva, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
8 S. Cirkovic, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske drzave, (Beograd 1964),
pp. 133-140.
9 S. Cirkovic, Kosovo i Metohija u srednjem veku, pp. 39-41.
10 M. Purkovic, Knez i despot Stefan Lazarevic, (Beograd 1978).
11 Ibid. More details: R. Mihaljcic, Lazar Hrebeljanovic. Istorija,
kult, predanje, Boj na Kosovu II, (Belgrade 1989).
12 Istorija srpskog naroda, vol. II (Beograd 1982), pp. 260-265; D.
Bogdanovic, op. cit. p. 72.
The Age of Tribulation
For the Serbs as Christians, their loss of state independence and fall
to the Ottoman Empire's kind of theocratic state, was a terrible misfortune.
With the advent of the Turks and establishment of their rule, the lands of
Serbs were forcibly excluded from the circle of progressive European states
wherein they occupied a prominent place precisely owing to the Byzantine
civilisation, which was enhanced by local qualities and strong influences of
the neighboring Mediterranean states. Being Christians, the Serbs became
second-class citizens in Islamic state. Apart from religious discrimination,
which was evident in all spheres of everyday life, this status of rayah also
implied social dependence, as most of the Serbs were landless peasants who
paid the prescribed feudal taxes. Of the many dues paid in money, labor and
kind, the hardest for the Serbs was having their children taken as tribute
under a law that had the healthy boys, taken from their parents, converted
to Islam and trained to serve in the janissary corps of the Turkish army.
An analyse of the earliest Turkish censuses, defters, shows that the
ethnic picture of Kosovo and Metohia did not alter much during the 14th and
15th centuries. The small-in-number Turkish population consisted largely of
people from the administration and military that were essential in
maintaining order, whereas Christians continued to predominate in the rural
areas. Kosovo and parts of Metohia were registrated in 1455 under the name
Vilayeti Vlk, after Vuk Brankovic who once ruled over them. Some 75,000
inhabitants lived in 590 registrated villages. An onomastic analysis of
approximately 8,500 personal names shows that Slav and Christian names were
heavily predominant.1
Along with the Decani Charter, the register of the Brankovic region
shows a clear division between old-Serbian and old-ethnic Albanian
onomastics, allowing one to say, with some certainty which registrated
settlement was Serbian, and which ethnically mixed. Ethnic designations
(ethnic Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek) appeared repeatedly next to
the names of settlers in the region. More thorough onomastic research has
shown that from the mid-14th to the 15th centuries, individual Albanian
settlements appeared on the fringes of Metohia, in-between what had until
then been a density of Serbian villages. This was probably due to the
devastation wrought by Turks who destroyed the old landed estates, thus
allowing for the mobile among the population, including ethnic Albanian
cattlemen, to settle on the abandoned land and establish their settlements,
which were neither big nor heavily populated.2
A summary census of the houses and religious affiliations of
inhabitants in the Vucitrn district (sanjak), which encompassed the one-time
Brankovic lands, was drawn in 1487, showed that the ethnic situation had not
altered much. Christian households predominated (totalling 16,729, out of
which 412 were in Pristina and Vucitrn): there were 117 Muslim households
(94 in Pristina and 83 in rural areas). A comprehensive census of the
Scutari district offers the following picture: in Pec (Ipek) there were 33
Muslim and 121 Christian households, while in Suho Grlo, also in Metohia,
Christians alone lived in 131 households. The number of Christians (6,124)
versus Muslim (55) homes in the rural areas shows that 1% of the entire
population bowed to the faith of the conqueror. An analysis of the names
shows that those of Slav origin predominated among the Christians. In Pec,
68% of the population bore Slav names, in the Suho Grlo region 52%, in Donja
Klina region 50% and around monastery of Decani 64%.
Ethnic Albanian settlements where people had characteristic names did
not appear until one reached areas outside the borders of what is today
Metohia, i.e. west of Djakovica. According to Turkish sources, in the period
from 1520 to 1535 only 700 of the total number of 19,614 households in the
Vucitrn district were Muslim (about 3,5%), and 359 (2%)in Prizren district.
In regions extending beyond the geographic borders of Kosovo and
Metohia, in the Scutari and Dukagjin districts, Muslims accounted for 4,6%
of the population. According to an analysis of the names in the Dukagjin
district's census, ethnic Albanian settlements did not predominate until one
reached regions south of Djakovica, and the ethnic picture in the 16th
century in Prizren and the neighboring areas remained basically
unchanged.3
A look at the religious affiliation of the urban population shows a
rise in the Turkish and local Islamized population. In Prizren, Kosovo's
biggest city, Muslims accounted for 56% of the households, of which the
Islamized population accounted for 21%. The ratio was similar in Pristina,
where out of the 54% Muslim population 16% were converts. Pec also had a
Muslim majority (90%), as did Vucitrn (72%). The Christians compromised the
majority of the population in the mining centers of Novo Brdo (62%), Trepca
(77%), Donja Trepca and Belasica (85%). Among the Christians was a
smattering of Catholics. The Christian names were largely from the calendar,
and to a lesser extent Slav (Voja, Dabiziv, Cvetko, Mladen, Stojko), and
there were some that were typically ethnic Albanian (Prend, Don, Din,
Zoti).4
After the fall of Serbia in 1459, the Pec Patriarchate soon ceased to
work and the Serbian eparchies came under the jurisdiction of the Hellenic
Ochrid Archbishophoric. In the first decade following Turkish conquest, many
large endowments and wealthier churches were pillaged and destroyed, while
some turned into mosques. The Our Lady of Ljeviska Cathedral in Prizren was
probably converted into a mosque right immediately following the conquest of
the town; Banjska, one of the grandest monasteries dating from the age of
King Milutin, suffered the same fate. The Church of the Holy Archangels near
Prizren, Stefan Dusan's chief endowment was turned into ruins. Most of the
monasteries and churches were left unrenewed after being devastated, and
many village churches were abandoned. Many were not restored until after the
liberation of Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. Archeological findings have shown
that some 1,300 monasteries, churches and other monuments existed in the
Kosovo and Metohia area. The magnitude of the havoc wrought can be seen from
the earliest Turkish censuses: In the 15th and 16th centuries there were ten
to fourteen active places of Christian worship. At first the great
monasteries like Decani and Gracanica, were exempt from destruction, but
their wealthy estates were reduced to a handfull of surrounding villages.
The privileges granted the monastic brotherhoods by the sultans obliged them
to perform the service of falconry as well.5
The restoration of the Pec Patriarchate in 1557 (thanks to Mehmed-pasha
Sokolovic, a Serb by origin, at the time the third vizier at the Porte)
marked a major turn and helped revive the spiritual life of the Serbs,
especially in Kosovo and Metohia. Mehmed-pasha Sokolovic (Turkish:
Sokollu) enthroned his relative Makarije Sokolovic on the patriarchal
throne. Like the great reform movements in 16th century Europe, the
restoration of the Serbian Orthodox Church meant the rediscovery of lost
spiritual strongholds. Thanks to the Patriarchate, Kosovo and Metohia were
for the next two centuries again the spiritual and political center of the
Serbs. On an area vaster than the Nemanjic empire, high-ranking
ecclesiastical dignitaries revived old and created new eparchies endeavoring
to reinforce the Orthodox faith which had been undermined by influences
alien (particularly by Islamic Bekteshi order of dervishes) to its authentic
teachings.
Based on the tradition of the medieval Serbian state, the Pec
Patriarchate revived old and established new cults of the holy rulers,
archbishops, martyrs and warriors, lending life to the Nemanjic heritage.
The feeling of religious and ethnic solidarity was enhanced by joint
deliberation at church assemblies attended by the higher and lower clergy,
village chiefs and hajduk leaders, and by stepping up a morale on the
traditions of Saint Sava but suited to the new conditions and strong
patriarchal customs renewed after the Turkish conquest in the village
communities.
The spiritual rebirth was reflected in the restoration of deserted
churches and monasteries: some twenty new churches were built in Kosovo and
Metohia alone, inclusive of printing houses (the most important one was at
Gracanica): many old and abandoned churches were redecorated with
frescoes.6
Serbian patriarchs and bishops gradually took over the role of the
one-time rulers, endeavoring with assistance from the neighboring Christian
states of Habsburg Empire and the Venetian Republic, to incite the people to
rebel. Plans for overthrowing the Turks and re-establishing an independent
Serbian state sprang throughout the lands from the Adriatic to the Danube.
The patriarchs of Pec, often learned men and able politicians, were usually
the ones who initiated and coordinated efforts at launching popular
uprisings when the right moment came. Patriarch Jovan failed to instigate a
major rebellion against the Turks, seeking the alliance of the European
Christian powers assembled around Pope Clement VII. Patriarch Jovan was
assassinated in Constantinople in 1614. Patriarch Gavrilo Rajic lived the
same fate in 1659 after going to Russia to seek help in instigating a
revolt.
The least auspicious conditions for an uprising were actually in Kosovo
and Metohia itself. In the fertile plains, the non-Muslim masses labored
under the yoke of the local Turkish administrators, continually threatened
by marauding tribes from the Albanian highlands. The crisis that overcome
the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century further aggrovated the position
of the Serbs in Kosovo, Metohia and neighboring regions. Rebellions fomented
by cattle-raising tribes in Albania and Montenegro, and the punitive
expeditions sent to deal with them turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
terrain where Albanian tribes, kept clashing with detachments of the local
authorities, plundered Christian villages along the way. Hardened by
constant clashes with the Turks, Montenegro gradually picked up the torch of
defending Serbian Orthodoxy; meanwhile, in northern Albania, particularly in
Malesia, a reverse process was under way. Under steady pressure from the
Turkish authorities, the Islamization of ethnic Albanian tribes became more
widespread and the process assumed broader proportions when antagonistic
strivings grew within the Ottoman Empire in the late 17th and early 18th
century.7
It is not until the end of the 17th century that the colonization of
Albanian tribes in Kosovo and Metohia can be established. Reports by
contemporary Catholic visitators show that the ethnic border between the
Serbs and Albanians still followed the old dividing lines of the Black and
White Drim rivers. All reports on Kosovo and Metohia regard them as being in
Serbia: for the Catholic visitators, Prizren was still its capital city. In
Albania, the first wave of Islamization swept the feudal strata and urban
population. Special tax and political alleviations encouraged the rural
population to convert to Islam in larger number. Instead of being part of
the oppressed non-Muslim masses, the converts became a privileged class of
Ottoman society, with free access to the highest positions in the state. In
Kosovo and Metohia, where they moved to avoid heavy taxes, Catholic tribes
of Malesia converted to Islam. Conversion to Islam in a strongly Orthodox
environment rendered them the desired privileges (the property of Orthodox
and of the Catholics) and saved them from melting with Serbian Orthodox
population. It was only with the process of Islamization that the ethnic
Albanian colonisation of lands inhabited by Serbs became
expansive.8
The ethnic picture of Kosovo did not radically change in the first
centuries of Ottoman rule. Islamization encompassed part of a Serbian
population, although the first generations at least, converted as a mere
formality, to avoid heavy financial burdens and constant political pressure.
Conversion constituted the basis of Ottoman policy in the Balkans but it was
les successfull in Kosovo and Metohia, regions with the strongest religious
traditions, than in other Christian areas. The Turks' strong reaction to
rebellions throughout the Serbian lands and to the revival of Orthodoxy,
embodied in the cult of Saint Sava, the founder of the independent Serbian
church, ended in setting fire to the Mileseva monastery the burial place of
the first Serbian saint. The Turks burned his wonder working relics in
Belgrade in 1594, during a great uprising of Serbs in southern Banat. This
triggered off fresh waves of Islamization accompanied by severe reprisals
and the thwarting of any sign of rebellion.
Apart from Islamization, Kosovo and Metohia became the target of
proselytizing Catholic missionaries at the end of 17th century, especially
after the creation of the Sacra Congregazione de Propaganda Fide (1622). The
ultimate aim of the Roman Catholic propaganda was to converts the Orthodox
to Graeco-Catholicism as the initial phase in completely converting them to
the Catholic faith. The appeals of patriarchs of Pec to the Roman popes to
help the liberatory aspirations of the Serbs were met with the condition
that they renounce the Orthodox faith. In spreading the Catholicism, the
missionaries of the Roman Curia had the support of local Turkish
authorities; a considerable number of the missionaries were of Albanian
origin. Consequently, the propagators of Catholic proselytism persisted in
inciting Catholic and Muslim Albanians against the Serbs, whose loyalty to
Orthodoxy and their medieval traditions was the main obstacle to the
spreading of the Catholic faith in the central and southern regions of the
Balkans.9
Catholic propaganda attempts at separating the high clergy of the
Serbian Orthodox Church from the people prompted the Pec Patriarchate to
revive old and create a new cults with even greater vigor. In 1642 Patriarch
Pajsije, who was born in Janjevo, Kosovo, wrote The Service and The Life of
the last Nemanjic, the Holy Tsar Uros, imbuing old literary forms with new
content reflecting the contemporary moment. By introducing popular legends
(which gradually took shape),into classical hagiography Patriarch Pajsije
strove to establish a new cult of saints which would have a beneficial
impact on his compatriots in preserving their faith.
Parallel with the Orthodox Church national policy in traditionally
patriarchal societies, popular tales gradually matured into oral epic
chronicles. Nurtured through epic poetry, which was sung to the
accompaniment of the gusle, epic tales glorified national heroes and ruler,
cultivating the spirit of non-subjugation and cherishing the hope in
liberation from the Turkish yoke. Folk poems about the battle of Kosovo and
its heroes, about the tragic fate of the last Nemanjices, the heroism of
Prince Lazar and his knight Milos Obilic, and, especially, about Kraljevic
Marko (King Marko Mrnjavcevic) as the faultless and dauntless legendary
knight who was always defeating Turks and saving Serbs, were an expression
not only of the tragic sense of life in which Turkish rule was a synonymous
to evil, but a particular moral code that in time crystalized into a common
attitude towards life, defined in the first centuries of Ottoman rule. The
Serbian nation's Kosovo covenant is embodied in the choice which, according
to legend, was made by Prince Lazar on the eve of the battle of Kosovo. The
choice of freedom in the kingdom of heaven instead of humiliation in the
kingdom of earth constituted the Serbian nation's spiritual stronghold.
Prince Lazar's refusal to resign to injustice and slavery, raised to the
level of biblical drama, determined his unquenchable thirst for freedom.
Together with the cult of Saint Sava, which grew into a common
civilisational framework in everyday life, the Kosovo idea which, in time,
gained universal meaning. With its wise policy the Patriarchate of Pec
carefully built epic legend into the hagiography of old and new Serbian
saints, glorifying their works in frescoes and icons.10
1 O. Zirojevic, Prvi vekovi tudjinske vlasti, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 47-113 (with earlier bibliography).
2 Ibid
3 M. Pesikan, Zetsko-raska imena na pocetku turskog doba, II, in:
Onomatoloski prilozi, vol. IV (1983), pp. 218-243; 0. Zirojevic;, op. cit.,
pp. 90-92.
4. O. Zirojevic, op. cit., pp. 92-94.
5 Ibid, pp. 94-96.
6 R. Samardzic, Mehmed-pasa Sokolovic, (Beograd 1975); Idem, Ideje za
srpsku istoriju, (Beograd 1989), pp. 125-128; Dj. Slijepcevic, Istorija
Srpske pravoslavne crkve, I, Dusseldorf 1878, pp. 328-321.
7 R. Trickovic, U susret najtezim iskusenjima, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 119-126.
8 J. Radonic, Rimska kurija i juznoslovenske zemlje od XVI do XIX veka,
(Beograd 1950)
9 J. Radonic, op. cit., pp., 8-11; Further documentation in: M. Jacov,
Spisi Tajnog vatikanskog arhiva XVI-XL veka, (Beograd 1983)
10 R. Samardzic, Usmena narodna hronika (Novi Sad 1978).
The Age of Migrations
The Serbs stepped again onto the historical scene in the years of the
European wars that swept the continent from the forests of Ireland to the
walls of Constantinople in the late 17th century. The Turks finally withdrew
from Hungary and Transylvania when their Ottoman hordes were routed outside
Vienna in 1683. The disintegration of Ottoman rule in the southwest limbered
up the Serbs, arousing in them hope that the moment was ripe for joint
effort to break Turkish dominion in the Balkans. The neighboring Christian
powers (Austria and Venice) were the only possible allies. The arrival of
the Austrian army in Serbia after the fall of Belgrade in 1688 prompted the
Serbs to join it. Thanks to the support of Serbian insurgents, the imperial
troops penetrated deep into Serbia and in 1689 conquered Nis: a special
Serbian militia was formed as a separate corps of the imperial
troops.1
After setting fire to Skoplje (Uskub), which was raging with plague,
the commander of Austrian troops Ennea Silviae Piccolomini withdrew to
Prizren where he was greeted by 20,000 Serbian insurgents, and with whom he
reached an accord on fighting the Turks with joint forces. Shortly
afterwards, Piccollomini died of the plague, and his successors failed to
prevent their troops from marauding the surrounding regions. Disappointed by
the conduct of the Christian troops from which they had expected decisive
support, the Serbian insurgents abandoned the agreed alliance. Patriarch
Arsenije III Crnojevic tried in vain to arrive at a new agreement with the
Austrian generals. The restorer of the Ottoman Empire, Grand Vizier
Mustafa-Pasha Koporilli, an Albanian by origin, took advantage of the lull
in military operations, mustered Crimean Tatars and Islamized Albanians and
mounted a major campaign. Despite assurances of help, Catholic Albanian
tribes deserted the Austrian army on the eve of the decisive clash at
Kacanik in Kosovo, on January 1690. The Serbian militia, resisting the
Sultan's superior hordes, retreated to the west and north of the
country.2
Turkish retaliation, in which the Serbian infidels were raided and
viciously massacred lasted a three full months. The towns of Prizren, Pec,
Pristina, Vucitrn and Mitrovica were hit the worst, and Serbs from Novo Brdo
retreated from the Tatar saber. Fleeing from the brutal reprisal, the people
of Kosovo and the neighboring areas moved northwards with Patriarch Arsenije
III. The decision to end the massacre and declare an amnesty came belately
as much of the population had already fled for safer areas, moving towards
the Sava River and Belgrade. Other parts of Serbia were also targets of
ghastly reprisals. In the Belgrade pashalik alone, the number of taxpayers
dropped eightfold. Grand old monasteries were looted from Pec Patriarchate
to Gracanica, and the Albanian tribe Gashi pillaged the Decani monastery,
killing the prior and seizing the monastery's best estates.
At the invitation of emperor Leopold I, Patriarch Arsenije III led part
of the high clergy and a sizeable part of the refugees (tens of thousands of
people) to the Habsburg Empire to the territory of southern Hungary, having
received assurances that the Serbs would there be granted special political
and religious status. Many Serbs from Kosovo and Metohia followed him. The
new churches built along the Danube they named after those left in old
homeland.
The Great 1690 Migration was a important turning point in the history
of the Serbs. In Kosovo and Metohia alone, towns and some villages were
abandoned to the last inhabitant. The population was also decimated by the
plague, whatever remained after the Turkish troops. The physical
extermination along with the mass exodus, the burning of grand monasteries
and their rich treasuries and libraries, the death and murder of a large
number of monks and clergy wreaked havoc in these regions. The position of
the Pec Patriarchate was badly shaken; its highest clergy went with the
people to Austria, and the confusion wrought by the Great Migration had a
major influence on its abolition (1766).3
The hardest consequence of the Great Migration was demographic upheaval
it caused, because once the Serbs withdraw from Kosovo and Metohia,
Islamized Albanian tribes from the northern highlands started settling the
area in greater number, mostly by force, in the decade following the 1690
Great Migration of Serbs, ethnic Albanian tribes (given their incredible
powers of reproduction) was posing a grave threat to the biological survival
of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia. Colonies set up by the ethnic Albanians
in Kosovo, Metohia and the neighboring areas provoked a fresh Serbian
migration toward the north, encouraged the process of conversion and upset
the centuries-old ethnic balance in those areas. Supported (depending on
circumstances) by the Turks and the Roman Curia, ethnic Albanians, abyding
by their tribal customs and hajduk insubordination to the law, in the coming
centuries turned the entire region of Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody
battleground, marked by tribal and feudal anarchy. The period following the
Great Migration of Serbia marked the commencement of three centuries of
ethnic Albanian genocide against Serbs in their native land.
The century after the Great Migration saw a fresh exodus of the Serbs
from Kosovo and Metohia, and a growing influence of ethnic Albanians on
political circumstances. Ethnic Albanians used the support they received
from the Turkish army in fighting Serbian insurgents to seize the ravaged
land and abandoned mining centers in Kosovo and Metohia and to enter in
large numbers the Ottoman administration and military. More and more
Catholic ethnic-Albanians converted to Islam, thereby acquiring the right to
retain the estates they had seized and to apply the might-is-right principle
in their dealings with the non-Muslim Serbs. The authorities encouraged and
assisted the settlement of the newly Islamized ethnic-Albanian tribes from
the mountains to the fertile lands devastated by war. The dissipation of the
Turkish administrative system encouraged the ethnic-Albanian colonisation of
Kosovo and Metohia, since with the arrival of more of their fellow tribesmen
and compatriots, the local pashas and beys (most of whom were ethnic
Albanian) acquired strong tribal armies which in times of trouble helped
them hold on to their position and illegally pass on their power to their
descendents. The missionaries of the Roman Curia did not heed to preserve
the small ethnic Albanian Catholic population, but endeavoured instead to
inflict as much harm as possible on the Pec Patriarchate and its
dignitaries, and, with the help of bribable pashas, to undermine the
cohesive power of Serbian Orthodoxy in these areas.4
The next war between Austria and Turkey (1716-1718) marked the
beginning of a fresh persecution in Kosovo and Metohia. Austrian troops,
backed by Serbian volunteers, reached the Western Morava River where they
established a new frontier. Ethnic Albanians collectively guaranteed to the
Porte the safety of the regions in the immediate vicinity of Austria, and
were in return exempted from the heaviest taxes. Towards the end of the war
(1717), a major Serbian uprising broke out in Vucitrn and its surroundings:
it was brutally crushed and the troops sent to allay the rayah and launch an
investigation, perpetrated fresh atrocities. Excessive dues, robbery and the
threat of extermination put before the Kosovo Serbs the choices of either
converting to Islam or finding a powerful master who would protect them if
they accepted the status of serfs. Many opted for a third solution: they
moved to surrounding regions where life was more tolerable.5
The following war between Austria and Turkey (1737-1739) ended with the
routing of the imperial troops from Serbian territory. The border was
reestablished at the Sava and Danube rivers, and Serbs set out on another
migration. Patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanovic, along with the religious and
national leaders of Pec, drew up a plan for cooperation with the Austrian
forces, and contacted their commanders. A large-scale uprisings broke out
again in Kosovo and Metohia, engaging some 10.000 Serbs. They were joined by
Montenegrin tribes, and Austrian envoys even stirred up the Kliments, a
Catholic tribe from northern Albania. A Serbian militia was formed again,
but the Austrian troops and insurgenta were forced to retreat in the face of
superior Turkish power: reprisals ensued, bringing death to the insurgents
and their families. Serbs withdrew from the mining settlements around
Janjevo, Pristina, Novo Brdo and Kopaonik. In order to keep the remaining
populace on the land, the Turks declared an amnesty. After the fall of
Belgrade, Arsenije IV moved to Austria. The number of refugees from Serbia,
including Kosovo and Metohia, along with some Kliments has yet to be
accurately determined, as people were moving on all sides and the process
lasted for several months. The considerably reduced number of taxpayers in
Kosovo and Metohia and in other parts of Serbia points to a strong migratory
wave.6
Unrest in the Ottoman empire helped spread anarchy in Kosovo and
Metohia and rest of Serbia. Raids, murder, rape against the unarmed
population was largely committed by ethnic Albanian outlaws, who were now
numerically superior in many regions. Outlaw bands held controll over roads
during Turkey's war with Russia (1768-1774), when lawlessness reigned
throughout Serbia. Ethnic Albanian outlaws looted and fleeced other regions
as well, which sent local Muslims complaining to the Porte seeking
protection.
During the last Austro-Turkish war (1788-1791); a sweeping popular
movement again took shape in northern Serbia. Because of the imperial forces
swift retreat, the movement did not encompass the southern parts of Serbia:
Kosovo, Metohia and present-day northern Macedonia. The peace treaty of
Sistovo (1791) envisaged a general amnesty for the Serbs, but the ethnic
Albanians, as outlaws or soldiers in the detachments of local pashas,
continued unhindered to assault the unprotected Serbian population. The wave
of religious intolerance towards Orthodox population, which acquired greater
proportion owing to the hostilities with Russia at the end of 18th century,
effected the forced conversion to Islam of a larger number of Serbian
families. The abolition of the Pec Patriarchate (1766), whose see and rich
estates were continually sought after by local ethnic Albanian pashas and
beys, prompted the final wave of extensive Islamization in Kosovo and
Metohia.7
Those who suffered the most during these centuries of utter lawlessness
were the Serbs, unreliable subjects who would rise every time the Turks
would wage war against one of the neighboring Great Powers, and whose
patriarchs led the people to enemy land. Although initially on a small
scale, the Islamization of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia began before the
penetration of ethnic Albanians. More widespread conversion to Islam took
place in the 17th and the first half of 18th centuries, when ethnic
Albanians began to wield more influence on political events in these
regions. Many Serbs accepted Islamization as a necessary evil, waiting for
the moment when they could revert to the faith of their ancestors, but most
of them never lived to see that day. The first few generations of Islamized
Serbs preserved their language and observed their old customs (especially
slava - the family patron saint day, and the Easter holiday). But several
generations later, owing to a strong ethnic Albanian environment, they
gradually began adopting the Albanian dress to safety, and outside their
narrow family circle they spoke the Albanian language. Thus came into being
a special kind of social mimicry which enabled converts to survive.
Albanization began only when Islamized Serbs, who were void of national
feeling, married girls from ethnic Albanian tribal community. For a long
time Orthodox Serbs called their Albanized compatriots Arnautasi, until the
memory of their Serbian origin waned completely, though old customs and
legends about their ancestors were passed on from one generation to the
next.8
For a long time the Arnautasi felt neither like Turks nor ethnic
Albanians, because their customs and traditions set them apart, and yet they
did not feel like Serbs either, who considered Orthodoxy to be their prime
national trait. Many Arnautasi retained their old surnames until the turn of
the last century. In Drenica the Arnautasi bore such surnames as Dokic,
Velic, Marusic, Zonic, Racic, Gecic, which unquestionably indicated their
Serbian origin. The situation was similar in Pec and its surroundings where
many Islamized and Albanized Serbs carries typically Serbian surnames:
Stepanovic, Bojkovic, Dekic, Lekic, Stojkovic, etc. The eastern parts of
Kosovo and Metohia, with their compact Serbian settlements, were the last to
undergo Islamization. The earliest Islamization in Upper Morava and Izmornik
is pinpointed as taking place in the first decades of the 18th century, and
the latest in 1870s. Toponyms in many ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo
show that Serbs had lived there the preceding centuries, and in some places
Orthodox cemeteries were shielded against desecrators by ethnic Albanians
themselves, because they knew that the graves of their own ancestors lay
there.9
In the late 18th century, all the people of Gora, the mountain region
near Prizren were converted to Islam. However they succeeded in preserving
their language and avoiding Albanization. There were also some cases of
conversion of Serbs to Islam in the second half of 19th century, especially
during the Crimean War, again to save their lives, honor and property,
though far more pronounced at the time was the process of emigration, since
families, sometimes even entire villages, fled to Serbia or Montenegro.
Extensive anthropogeographic research indicates that about 30% of the
present-day ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia is of Serbian
origin.10
1 N. Samardzic, Savremena strana stampa o Velikoj seobi Srba,
Istorijski Casopis, vol. XXXII (1985), pp. 79-103; R. Trickovic, Velika
seoba Srba 1690. godine, in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp.
127-141.
2 N. Samardzic, op. cit., pp. 136-139.
3 R. Trickovic, Ustanci, seobe i stradanja u XVIII veku, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 149-169
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 J. Cvijic, La peninsule balkanique. Geographic humaine, (Paris 1918),
pp. 343-355.
9 A. Urosevic, Kosovo, (Beograd 1965); D. Slijepcevic, Srpsko-arbanaski
odnosi kroz vekove, pp. 95-127.
10 J. Cvijic, Osnove za geografiju i geologiju Makedonije i Stare
Srbije, I-III, (Beograd 1906-1911).
The Age of Oppression
The series of long-scale Christian national movements in the Balkans,
triggered off by 1804 Serbian revolution, decided more than in the earlier
centuries, the fate of Serbs and made ethnic Albanians (about 70% of whom
were Muslims) the main guardians of Turkish order in the European provinces
of Ottoman Empire. At a time when the Eastern question was again being
raised, particularly in the final quarter of 19th and the first decade of
20th century, Islamic Albanians were the chief instrument of Turkey's policy
in crushing the liberation movements of other Balkan states. After the
congress of Berlin (1878) an Albanian national movement flared up, and both
the Sultan and Austria-Hungary, a power whose occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina heralded its further expansion deep into the Balkans,
endeavored, with varying degrees of success, to instrumentalize this
movement. While the Porte used the ethnic Albanians as Islam's shock cutting
edge against Christians in the frontier regions towards Serbia and
Montenegro, particularly in Kosovo, Metohia and the nearby areas,
Austria-Hungary's design was to use the Albanians national movement against
the liberatory aspirations of the two Serbian states that were impeding the
German Drang nach Osten. In a rift between two only seemingly contrary
strivings, Serbia and Montenegro, although independent since 1878, were
powerless (at least until the Balkan wars 1912-1913) without the support of
Russia or other Great Power to effect the position of their compatriots
within the borders of Ottoman Empire.1
During the Serbian revolution, which ended with the creation of the
autonomous Principality of Serbia within the Ottoman empire (1830), Kosovo
and Metohia acquired special political importance. The hereditary ethnic
Albanian pashas, who had until then been mostly renegades from the central
authorities in Constantinople, feared that the flames of rebellion might
spread to regions they controlled thus they became champions for the defense
the integrity of the Turkish Empire and leaders of many military campaigns
against the Serbian insurgents, at the core of the Serbian revolution was
the Kosovo covenant, embodied in the "revenge of Kosovo", a fresh, decisive
battle against the Turkish invaders in the field of Kosovo. In 1806 the
insurgents were preparing, like Prince Lazar in his day, to come out in
Kosovo and weigh their forces against the Turks, However, detachments of
Serbian insurgents reached only the fringes of northern Kosovo. Metohia, Old
Raska (Sandzak), Kosovo and northern Macedonia remained outside the borders
of the Serbian principality. In order to highlight their importance in the
national and political ideologies of the renewed Serbian state, they were
given a new collective name. It was not by chance that Vuk Stefanovic
Karadzic, the father of modern Serbian literacy, named the central lands of
the Nemanjic state - Old Serbia.2
Fearing the renewed Serbian state, Kosovo pashas engaged in ruthless
persecution in an effort to reduce number of Serbs living in their spacious
holdings. The French travel writer F.C.H.L Pouqueville was astounded by the
utter anarchy and ferocity of the local pashas towards the Christians.
Jashar-pasha Gjinolli of Prishtina was one of the worst, destroying several
churches in Kosovo, seizing monastic lands and killing monks. In just a few
years of sweeping terror, he evicted more than seventy Serbian villages
between Vucitrn and Gnjilane, dividing up the seized land among the local
Islamized population and mountain folk that had settled there from northern
Albania. The fertile plains of Kosovo became desolate meadows as the Malisor
highlanders, unused to farming knew not to cultivate.
The revolt of the ethnic Albanian pashas against the reforms introduced
by the sultans and fierce clashes with regular Turkish troops in the
thirties and forties of the 19th century, emphasized the anarchy in Kosovo
and Metohia, causing fresh suffering among the Serbs and the further
devastation of the ancient monasteries. Since neither Serbian nor
Montenegro, two semi-independent Serbian states, were able to give any
significant help to the gravely endangered people, Serbian leaders form the
Pristina and Vucitrn regions turned to the Russian tsar in seeking
protection from their oppressors. They set out that they were forced to
choose between converting to Islam or fleeing for Serbia as the violence,
especially killings, the persecution of monks, the raping of women and
minors, had exceeded all bounds. Pogroms marked the decades to come,
especially in period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) when anti-Slav
sentiments reached their peak in the ottoman empire: ethnic Albanians and
the Cherkeses, whom the Turks had resettled in Kosovo, joined the Ottoman
troops in persecuting Orthodox Serbs.
The brotherhood of Decani and the Pec Patriarchate turned to the
authorities of Serbia for protection. Pointing to the widespread violence
and increasing banditry, and to more frequent and persisted attempts by
Catholic missionaires to compel the impoverished and spiritually discouraged
monk communities to concede to union. Prior Serafim Ristic of Decani loged
complaints with both the sultan and Russian tsar and in his book Plac Stare
Srbije (Zemun 1864) he penned hundreds of examples of violence perpetrated
by the ethnic Albanians and Turks against the Serbs, naming the
perpetrators, victims and type of crime. In Metohia alone he recorded over
one hundred cases in which the Turkish authorities, police and judiciary
tolerated and abetted robbery, bribery, murder, arson, the desecration of
churches, the seizure of property and livestock, the rape of women and
children, and the harassment of monks and priests. Both ethnic Albanians and
Turks viewed assaults against Serbs as acts pleasing to Allah acts that
punishing infidels for not believing in true God: kidnapping and Islamizing
girls were a way for true Muslims to approach Allah. Ethnic Albanian outlaws
(kayaks) became heroes among their fellow-tribesmen for fulfilling their
religious obligations in the right way and spreading the militant glory of
their clan and tribe.
Eloquent testimonies to the scope of the violence against the Serbs in
Kosovo and Metohia, ranging from blackmail and robbery to rape and murder,
come from many foreign travel-writers, from A. F. Hilferding to G. M.
McKenzie - A. P. Irby. The Russian consul in Prizren observed that ethnic
Albanians were settling the Prizren district underhidered and were trying,
with the Turks, to eradicate Christians from Kosovo and Metohia. Throughout
the 19th century there was no public safety on the roads of Metohia and
Kosovo. One could travel the roads which were controlled by tribal bands,
only with strong armed escort. The Serbian peasant had no protection in the
field where he could be assaulted and robbed by an outlaw or bandit, and if
he tried to resist, he could be killed without the perpetrator having to
face charges for the crime. Serbs, as non-Muslims, were not entitled to
carry arms. Those who possessed and used arms in self-defence afterwards had
to run for their life. Only the luckiest managed to reach the Serbian or
Montenegrin border and find permanent refuge there. They were usually
followed by large families called family cooperatives (zadruga), comprising
as many as 30-50 members, which were unable to defend themselves against the
numerous relatives of the ethnic Albanian seeking vengeance for his death in
a conflict with an elder of their clan.
Economic pressure, especially the forced reducing of free peasants to
serf, was fostered by ethnic Albanian feudal lords with a view to creating
large land-holdings. In the upheavals of war (1859, 1863) the Turkish
authorities tried to restrict enterprising Serbian merchants and craftsmen
who flourished in Pristina, Pec and Prizren, setting ablaze entire quarters
where they worked and had their shops. But it was the hardest in rural
areas, because ethnic Albanians, bond together by tight communities of blood
brotherhoods or in tribes, and relatively socially homogeneous, were able to
support their fellow tribesman without too much effort, simply by
terrorizing Serbs and seizing their property and livestock. Suppression in
driving of the Serbian peasantry, space was made for their relatives from
northern Albania to move in, whereby increased their own prestige among
other tribes. Unused to life in the plains and to hard field-work, the
settled ethnic Albanians preferred looting to farming.
Despite the hardships, the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia assembled in
religious-school communes which financed the opening of schools and the
education of children, collected donations for the restoration of churches
and monasteries and, when possible, tried to improve relations with the
Turkish authorities. In addition to monastic schools, the first Serbian
secular schools started opening in Kosovo from mid-1830s, and in 1871 a
Seminary (Bogoslovija) opened in Prizren. Unable to help politically, the
Serbia systematically aided churches and schools from the 1840s onwards,
sending teachers and encouraging the best students to continue with their
studies. The Prizren seminary the hub of activity on national affairs,
educated teachers and priests for all the Serbian lands under Turkish
dominion, and unbeknownst to authorities, established contact on a regular
basis with the government in Belgrade, wherefrom it received means and
instructions for political action.
Ethnic circumstances in Kosovo and Metohia in the early 19th century
can be reconstructed on the basis of data obtained from the books written by
foreign travel writers and ethnographers who journeyed across European
Turkey. Joseph Miller's studies show that in late 1830s, 56,200 Christians
and 80,150 Muslims lived in Metohia; 11,740 of the Muslims were Islamized
Serbs, and 2,700 of the Christians were Catholic Albanians. However, clear
picture of the ethnic structure during this period cannot be obtained until
one takes into account the fact that from 1815 to 1837 some 320 families,
numbering ten to 30 members each, fled Kosovo and Metohia ahead of ethnic
Albanian violence. According to Hilferding's figures, Pec numbered 4,000
Muslim and 800 Christian families, Pristina numbered 1,200 Muslim, 900
Orthodox and 100 Catholic families with a population of 12,000.3
Russian consul Yastrebov recorded (for a 1867-1874 period) the
following figures for 226 villages in Metohia: 4,646 Muslim ethnic Albanian
homes, 1,861 Orthodox and 3,740 Islamized Serbs and 142 homes of Catholic
Albanians. Despite the massive departure of the population for Serbia,
available data show that until Eastern crisis (1875-1878), Serbs formed the
largest ethnic group in Kosovo and Metohia, largely owing to a high birth
rate.
The biggest demographics upheaval in Kosovo and Metohia occurred during
the Eastern crisis, especially during the 1876-1878 Serbo-Turkish wars, when
the question of Old Serbia started being internationalized. The Ottoman
empire lost a good deal of territory in its wars with Russia, Serbia and
Montenegro, and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
second war with the Turks, Serbian troops liberated parts of Kosovo: their
advance guard reached Pristina via Gnjilane and at the Gracanica monastery
held a memorial service for the medieval heroes of Kosovo battle... After
Russia and Turkey called a truce, Serbian troops were forced to withdraw
from Kosovo. Serbian delegations from Old Serbia sent petitions to the
Serbian Prince, the Russian tsar and participants of the Congress of Berlin,
requesting that these lands merge with Serbia. Approximately 30,000 ethnic
Albanians retreated from the liberated areas (partly under duress), seeking
refuge in Kosovo and in Metohia, while tens of thousands of Serbs fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of unleashed bashibozouks, irregular
auxiliaries of Ottoman troops.4
On the eve of the Congress of Berlin in the summer of 1878, when the
great powers were deciding on the fate of the Balkan nations, the Albanian
League was formed in Prizren, on the periphery of ethnic Albanian living
space. The League called for the preservation of Ottoman Empire in its
entirety within the prewar boundaries and for the creation of autonomous
Albanian vilayet out of the vilayets of Kosovo, Scutari, Janina and Monster
(Bitolj), regions where ethnic Albanians accounted for 44% of overall
population. The territorial aspirations of the Albanian movement as defined
in 1878, became part of all subsequent national programs. The new sultan
Abdulhamid II (1878-1909) supported the League's pro-Ottoman and pro-Islamic
attitude. Breaking with the reformatory policy of his predecessors, sultan
adopted pan-Islamism as the ruling principle of his reign. Unsatisfied with
the decisions taken at the Congress, the League put up an armed opposition
to concession of regions of Plav and Gusinje to Montenegro, and its
detachments committed countless acts of violence against the Serbs, whose
very existence posed a permanent threat to Albanian national interests. In
1881, Turkey employed force to crush the League, whose radical wing was
striving towards an independent Albanian state to show that it was capable
of implementing the adopted reforms. Notwithstanding, under the system of
Turkish rule in the Balkans, ethnic Albanians continued to occupy the most
prominent seats in the decades to come.
The ethnic Albanians' religious and ethnic intolerance of the Serbs
took on a new, political tone. The strategic objective of their national
policy was to systematically edge the Serbs out of these regions. The
sultan's policy of forming a chain of ethnic Albanian settlements to secure
a new border towards Serbia and to let ethnic Albanians, as advocates of
Islam, crush all unrest by Serbs and other Christians in the Empire's
European provinces, turned Kosovo and Metohia into a bloody battle-ground in
which the persecution of the Serbian populace assumed almost apocalyptic
proportions. From 1876 to 1883, approximately 1,500 Serbian families fled
Kosovo and Metohia for Serbia ahead of Albanian violence.5
Surrounded by his influential guard of ethnic Albanians, the Abdulhamid
II became increasingly lenient toward Islamized Albanian tribes who used
force in quelling Christian movements: they were exempt from providing
recruits, paying the most of the regular taxes and allowed at times to
refuse the orders of local authorities. This lenient policy towards the
ethnic Albanians and tolerance for the violence committed against the
Serbian population created a feeling of superiority in the lower strata of
Albanian society. The knowledge that no matter what the offense they would
not be held responsible, encouraged ethnic Albanians to ignore all the
lesser authorities. Social stratification resulted on increasing number of
renegades who lived solely off banditry or as outlaws. The policy of failing
to punish ethnic Albanians led to total anarchy which, escaping all control,
increasingly worried the authorities in Constantinople. Anarchy received
fresh impetus at the end of the 19th century when Austria-Hungary, seeking a
way to expand towards the Bay of Salonika, encouraged ethnic Albanians to
clash with the Serbs and disobey the local authorities. Ruling circles in
Vienna saw the ethnic Albanians as a permanent wedge between the two Serbian
states and, with the collapse of the system of Turkish rule, a bridge
enabling the Dual Monarchy to extend in the Vardar valley. Thus, Kosovo and
Metohia became the hub of great power confrontation for supremacy in the
Balkans.
The only protection for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia until the end
of 1880s came from Russian diplomats, Russia being the traditional guardian
of the Orthodox and Slav population in the Ottoman Empire Russia's waning
influence in the Balkans following the Congress of Berlin had an unfavorable
impact on the Serbs in Turkey. Owing to Milan and Alexander Obrenovic's
Austrophile policy, Serbia lost valuable Russian support at the Porte in its
efforts to protect Serbian population In Kosovo and Metohia, Serbs were
regarded as a rebellious, treasonous element, every move they made was
carefully watched and any signs of rebellion were ruthlessly punished. A
military tribunal was established in Pristina in 1882 which in its five
years of work sent hundreds of national leaders to prison.
The persistent efforts of Serbian officials to reach agreement with
ethnic Albanian tribal chiefs in Kosovo and Metohia, and thus help curb the
anarchy failed to stem the tide of violence. Belgrade officials did not get
a true picture of the persecutions until a Serbian consulate was opened in
Pristina in 1889, five centuries after a battle in Kosovo. The government
was informed that ethnic Albanians were systematically mounting attacks on a
isolated Serbian villages and driving people to eriction with treats and
murders: "Go to Serbia -you can't survive here!". The assassination of the
first Serbian Consul in the streets of Pristina revealed the depth of ethnic
Albanian intolerance. Until 1905, not a single Serbian diplomat from
Pristina could visit the town of Pec or tour Metohia, the hotbed of the
anarchy. Consuls in Pristina (who included the well-known writers Branislav
Nusic and Milan M. Rakic) wrote, aside to their regular reports, indepth
descriptions of the situation in Kosovo and Metohia. Serbia's sole
diplomatic success was the election of a Serbian candidate as the
Raska-Prizren Metropolitan in 1896, following a series of anti-Serbian
orientated Greek Bishops who had been enthroned in Prizren since 1830.
Outright campaigns of terror were mounted after a Greaco-Turkish war in
1897, when it appeared that the Serbs would suffer the same fate as the
Armenians in Asia Minor whom the Kurds had wiped out with blessing from the
sultan. Serbian diplomats launched a campaign at the Porte for the
protection of their compatriots, submitting extensive documentation on four
hundred crimes of murder, blackmail, theft, rape, seizure of land, arson of
churches. They demanded that energetic measures be taken against the
perpetrators and that the investigation be carried out by a joint
Serbo-Turkish committee. But, without the support of Russia, the whole
effort came to naught. The prime minister of Serbia observed with
resignation that 60,000 people had fled Old Serbia for Serbia in the period
from 1880 to 1889. In Belgrade, a Blue Book was printed for the 1899 Peace
Conference in the Hague, containing diplomatic correspondence on acts of
violence committed by ethnic Albanians in Old Serbia, but Austria-58
Hungary prevented Serbian diplomats from raising the question before
the international public. In the ensuing years the Serbian government
attempted to secretly supply Serbs in Kosovo with arms. The first larger
caches of guns were discovered, and 190l saw another pogrom in Ibarski
Kolasin (northern Kosovo), which ended only when Russian diplomats
intervened.6
The widespread anarchy reached a critical point in 1902 when the
Serbian government with the support of Montenegrin diplomacy again raised
the issue of the protection of the Serbs in Turkey, demanding that the law
be applied equally to all subjects of Empire, and that an end be put to the
policy of indulging ethnic Albanians, that they be disarmed and that Turkish
garrisons be reinforced in areas with a mixed Serbian-ethnic Albanian
population. Russia, and then France, supported Serbia's demands. The two
most interested parties, Austria-Hungary and Russia, agreed in 1897 to
maintain the status quo in the Balkans, although they initiated a reform
plan to rearrange Turkey's European provinces. Fearing for their privileges,
ethnic Albanians launched a major uprising in 1903; it began with new
assaults against Serbs and ended with the assassination of the newly
appointed Russian consul in Mitrovica, accepted as a protector of the Serbs
in Kosovo.
The 1903 restoration of democracy in Serbia under new King Petar I
Karadjordjevic marked an end to Austrophile policy and the turning towards
Russia. In response, Austria-Hungary stepped up its propaganda efforts among
ethnic Albanians. At the request of the Dual Monarchy, Kosovo and Metohia
were exempt from the Great Powers Reform action (1903-1908). A new wave of
persecution ensued: in 1904,108 people fled for Serbia from Kosovo alone.
Out of 146 different cases of violence, 46 ended in murder; a group of
ethnic Albanians raped a seven-year-old girl. In 1905, out of 281
registrated cases of violence, 65 were murders, and at just one wedding,
ethnic Albanians killed nine wedding guests.7
The Young Turk revolution in 1908, which ended the "Age of Oppression"
(as Turkish historiography refers to the reign of Abdulhamid II), brought no
changes in relations between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. The Serbs' first
political organization was created under the auspices of the Young Turk
regime, but the ethnic Albanian revolt against the new authorities'
pan-Turkish policy triggered off a fresh wave of violence. In the second
half of 1911 alone, Old Serbia registrated 128 cases of theft, 35 acts of
arson, 41 instances of banditry, 53 cases of extortion, 30 instances of
blackmail, 19 cases of intimidation, 35 murders, 37 attempted murders, 58
armed attacks on property, 27 fights and cases of abuse, 13 attempts at
Islamization, and 18 cases of the infliction of serious bodily injury.
Approximately 400,000 people fled Old Serbia (Kosovo, Metohia, Raska,
northern and northwest Macedonia) for Serbia ahead of ethnic Albanian and
Turkish violence, and about 150,000 people fled Kosovo and Metohia, a third
of the overall Serbian population in these parts. Despite the persecution
and the steady outflow of people. Serbs still accounted for almost half the
population in Kosovo and Metohia in 1912. According to Jovan Cvijic's
findings, published in 1911, there were 14,048 Serbian homes in Kosovo, 3,
826 in Pec and its environs, and 2,400 Serbian homes with roughly 200,000
inhabitants in the Prizren region. Comparing this statistics dating from the
middle of the century, when there were approximately 400,000 Serbs living in
Kosovo and Metohia, Cvijic's estimate that by 1912 about 150,000 refugees
had fled to Serbia seems quite acceptable.8
The Serbian and Montenegrin governments aided the ethnic Albanian
rebels against Young Turks up to a point: they took in refugees and gave
them arms with a view to undermining Turkish rule in the Balkans, dispelling
Austro-Hungarian influence on their leaders and curbing the violence against
Serbs. But it was all in vain as intolerance for the Serbs ran deep in all
Albanian national movements. Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece
realized that the issue of Christian survival in Turkey had to be resolved
by arms. Since Turkey refused to guarantee the Christians the same rights it
had promised the ethnic Albanian insurgents, the Balkan allies declared war
in the fall of 1912.
1 D. T. Batakovic, Od srpske revolucije do istocne krize: 1804-1878,
in: Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 172-208.
2 D. T. Batakovic (ed.), Savremenici o Kosovu i Metohiji 1852-1912,
(Beograd 1988), Forward, pp. XVII-XXXVII.
3 Ibid
4 D. T. Batakovic, Ulazak u sferu evropskog interesovanja, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 216-231.
5 V. Bovan, Jastrebov u Prizrenu, (Pristina 1984), pp. 180-185.
6 Documents diplomatoques. Correspondence concernant les actes de
violence et de brigandage des Albanias dans la Vielle Serbie (Vilayet de
Kosovo) 1898-1899, (Belgrade MDCCCXCIX), pp. 1-145
7 List of violence, in. Zaduzbine Kosova, pp. 672-697.
8 D. T. Batakovic, Anarhija i genocid u Staroj Srbiji, in: Kosovo i
Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 271-280.
The Age of Restoration
Serbia and Montenegro, states whose national ideologies were based on
the Kosovo covenant, welcomed the war as a chance to fulfill their
centuries-old desire to avenge Kosovo. Volunteers from all the Serbian lands
rushed to join the army. Carried by the feeling that they were fulfilling a
historic mission, Serbian troops set out for Kosovo. Attempts to isolate
ethnic Albanians from the war actions failed: the leaders of their movement
had decided to defend their Ottoman homeland in arms. The Serbian army,
together with Montenegrin, liberated Kosovo without much fight, and its 3rd
army stopped in Gracanica to hold a commemoration for the heroes of 1389
Kosovo battle. Montenegrin troops marched into Pec, Decani and met Serbian
troops in Djakovica. Leaders of the ethnic Albanian movement fled to Albania
where an independent state had been pro-clamed under the auspices of the
Austro-Hungarian diplomacy. Seeking an outlet to the Adriatic sea in order
to save themselves from the over-tightening grip of Austria-Hungary, Serbian
troops entered norther Albanian ports, but under the decisions of the
Conference of Ambassadors in London (1912-1913), they were forced to
withdraw. Austria-Hungary struggled to win as big an Albanian state as
possible to counter-balance Serbia and Montenegro, but both delegations
stressed that under no conditions would they agree to let Kosovo and
Metohia, as holy lands of Serbs, remain outside their borders. Raids on
Serbian territory by armed Albanian detachments in 1913, protected by
Turkish and Austro-Hungarian services, were aimed at destabilizing the
administration in the newly liberated regions, heralding Austria-Hungary's
imminent setting of accounts with Serbia, the chief obstacle to the German
Drang nach Osten.
World War I hindered not only the stabilization of the Serbian
administration in Kosovo and Montenegrin in Metohia, but also the creation
of a union between the two Serbian states. Austria-Hungary helped the
revanchist aspirations of fugitive ethnic Albanian leaders and fanned plans
for the creation of a Greater Albania inclusive of Kosovo, Metohia and
western Macedonia. Organized by Austro-Hungarian military and diplomatic
services, detachments comprising ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo and
Macedonia were formed in Albania (where civil war was raging), with a view
to provoking an uprising in Kosovo and opening an another front toward
Serbia. In the summer of 1914, the Serbian government helped Essad-Pasha
Topfani, a supporter of the Balkan cooperation and the Entente powers, to
assume power in Albania and with him signed a treaty on military cooperation
and one on a real union. In the summer of 1915, following the letter of the
treaty, the Serbian army intervened in Albania to protect Essad-pasha's
regime and crush an uprising by supporters of the Triple Alliance. After a
joint Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian offensive against Serbia in the
fall of 1915. The initial plan had been to put up decisive resistance in
Kosovo, but the view that it was better to reach the allied forces on the
Albanian coast prevailed. Owing to hunger, disease, a bad winter and clashes
with Albanian tribes in areas not controlled by Essad-Pasha, approximately
70,000 of the 220,000 soldiers died in Albania, and only a third (about
60,000) of the 200,000 civilian refugees made it to Corfu and
Bizerte.1
After penetrating the Salonika front in the fall of 1918, the allied
troops liberated Kosovo and Metohia and turned over power to the Serbian
administration. There were sporadic revolts, especially after the founding
of the Kosovo Committee in Albania which called men to fight for the
creation of a Greater Albania. Serbian troops occupied Albanian border areas
and tried to put in power Essad-Pasha, who was at the allied camp in Athens.
Italy, having assumed the role of Albania's protector after the
collapse of Austria-Hungary, became the chief opponent of the newly
proclaimed Yugoslav-state. Owing to a dispute over supremacy along the
Adriatic littoral, Italy set up a puppet regime in Albania, encouraged its
aspirations in Kosovo, Metohia and northwestern Macedonia, with the aim of
turning Albania into a foothold for its advance and expansion into the
Balkans.
At the Peace Conference in Paris, the Yugoslav delegation upheld the
stand that Albania should be an independent state within the borders of
1913, but in the event such a solution was rejected, it demanded territorial
compensation from the Drim River to Scutari. After strong external pressure
and internal upheaval, the question of Albania's independence was resolved
at the Conference of the Great Powers ambassadors in 1921, and the border
with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was finally drawn in 1926.
Kosovo emigrants in Albania worked to expand the movement for the creation
of a Greater Albania. Guerilla detachments were infiltrated into Yugoslav
territory and, clashing with Yugoslav troops and the authorities, they
created an unsafe border area which had to be placed under a special regime.
The involvement of Yugoslav diplomacy in internal tribal, religious and
political struggles in Albania was aimed at edging out a foreign influence
and helping to establish a regime that would sever the continual subversive
activities.
Owing to new political factors within the Yugoslavia and new
international circumstances, the creation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (which in 1931 became Kingdom of Yugoslavia), lent a fresh
dimension to Serbo-Albanian relations in Kosovo and Metohia, and to state
relations between Yugoslavia and Albania (although they had been defined by
the inherited ethnic strife). The Albanian question once again became a
means of political pressure on the new state, especially against Serbs as
its driving force. With fascism and Nazism emerging, revanshist states
defeated in World War I, unsatisfied with the set borders and the
distribution of political power, rallying around Italy, tried to undermine
the foundations of Yugoslavia in its most vulnerable spots - Kosovo, Metohia
and Macedonia, lands where burden of five centuries of Ottoman rule opened
the deepest civilisational chasms.2
The new state had the difficult task of severing feudal relations in
Kosovo, Metohia and Macedonia, of carrying out the agrarian reform and of
populating the area. The settlement of Serbs from the passive regions of
Montenegro, Bosnia and Vojna Krajina in Croatia, was meant to bring about
the desirable ethnic balance in the sensitive border region. The first step
in pulling these regions out of their centuries-old backwardness was the
abolition of the feudal system in 1919, when an end was put to serfdom and
the serfs were declared owners of the lands they tilled. For the first time,
native Serbs and many poor ethnic Albanian families obtained their own land.
Colonization began in 1920 without being adequately prepared, thus the
earliest settlers were on their own, and the authorities in charge of
carrying out the task took advantage of rough edges of the reform to engage
in various forms of abuse. After the first decade, the agrarian reform and
colonization proved to suffer from major shortcomings, which were hardest on
the settlers themselves. In principle, taking land away from private owners
for the purpose of settlement was forbidden, though small lots of land were
thus obtained for the purpose of reallocating holdings, and the owners were
alloted land elsewhere. The pseudo-ownership rights of some ethnic Albanians
who could not prove their ownership of the land they had been using after
its real owners had left, created some confusion. Initially, settlers were
mostly alloted untitled land, pastures, clearings, barren or abandoned land,
forests and, to a lesser extent, lands of fugitive outlaws. Only 5% of the
total amount of land was arable. During the two waves of colonisation, from
1922-1929 and from 1933-1938, 10,877 families, some 60,000 people settled on
120,672 hectares of land (about 15, 3% of the land). Another 99,327 hectares
planned for settlement were not alloted. For the incoming settlers, 330
settlements and villages were built with 12,689 houses, 46 schools and 32
churches.3
The kacak (renegade, outlaw) movement, which posed a growe threat to
personal safety of settlers living in border areas during the 1920's was a
major obstacle to efforts at stabilizing the political situation. The kacak
movement, a remaining from the Turkish times, was mostly coordinated by
ethnic Albanian emigrants from Kosovo, as a movement for the unification of
Kosovo and Metohia with Albania. Operating separately were a number of
outlaw bands which plundered the remote and poorly protected border areas,
evading taxes and military service. The border military authorities
responded to the perpetual assaults and murders of local officials,
gendarmes, priests and teachers, to the looting of and setting fire to
isolated Serbian estates, by driving out the perpetrators, using artillery
in the worst of cases. The estates of the most dangerous outlaws were
confiscated and the homes of their accomplices set afire as a warning. The
1921 amnesty for all crimes excepting murder produced only partial results:
the outlaws surrended just before winter, but were back in the forests by
spring. From 1918 to 1923,478 kacaks surrendered, 23 were captured and 52
killed. Most of those (231) who were captured or who surrendered were sent
to military commands (they evaded regular military service), 195 were turned
over to the courts, and 75 were acquitted. The kacak movement began tapering
off in 1923 when on of the more liberal governments issued a decree on
amnesty inclusive of more serious crimes. The amnesty and good relations
with Albania helped bring an end to the kacak movement.4
The ethnic Albanian and Turkish population in Kosovo and Metohia were
reluctant to reconcile with living in a European-organized state where,
instead of the status of the absolutely privileged class they had enjoyed
during the Turkish rule, they acquired only civil equality with what had
previously been the infidel masses. In 1919 the leading ethnic Albanian beys
from Kosovo, Metohia and northwestern Macedonia founded the Dzemijet,
political party which in 1921 had 12 seats in Parliament and 14 two years
later. The Dzemijet was banned in 1925 because of its ties with kacaks and
the government in Tirana, but in continued to operate clandestinely. Besa, a
secret student organization financed by Tirana and then by the Italian
legation in Belgrade, propagated the annexation of Kosovo and Metohia to
Albania. Because of their support to the kacaks and ties with Kosovo migr
circles, ethnic Albanians were regarded with suspicion in Yugoslavia, as a
subversive element ready to revolt at a given opportunity and annex certain
regions to Albania. Under the Constitution, ethnic Albanians, as a national
minority, were guaranteed the use of their mother tongue in elementary
schools, but everything was reduced to education in religious schools. The
Yugoslav government wished to resolve the rights of minorities reciprocally,
with the Serbian minority in Albania being allowed to open its own schools
and the question of the Orthodox eparchy in Albania being resolved, but
agreement was never reached. Not even the leading beys from the Dzemijet,
who looked out solely for their own privileges, raised the question of the
schooling for their compatriots. They were satisfied with religious schools
for ethnic Albanian youth. Out of 37,685 pupils in 252 compulsory schools in
1940/1941, 11, 876 ethnic Albanian pupils attended classes in the
Serbo-Croatian language.5
Discontent with the new state among the ethnic Albanian masses stepped
up emigration to Turkey, in whose Muslim environment they felt at home. Many
openly admitted that they could not bear being ruled over by members of the
former infidel masses, Serbs, whom they pejoratively called Ski (Slavs).
Emigration started right after the Balkan wars and many refugees who had
fled to Albania to avoid conflicts with the authorities, returned to their
homes after the war and the quelling of kacak operations. By the 1930's,
thousands of ethnic Albanian and Turkish families had voluntarily moved to
Turkey, and in 1938, after lenghtly negotiations, the Yugoslav and Turkish
governments prepared a convention on the emigration of some 200,000 Muslims
(ethnic Albanians and Turks) from Kosovo-Metohia and Macedonia to Turkey.
Because the Turkish government abandoned the agreement and a lack of funds
to dispatch the emigrants, the convention was never implemented. According
to official figures, from 1927 to 1939, the number of ethnic Albanian
emigrants in Turkey numbered 19,279, and 4,322 in Albania. In comparison
with the 30,000 Serbs, Creates and Slovenes who emigrated annually for
economic reasons to the United States and other transoceanic countries,
migrations from far more backward regions to Turkey and Albania were not a
remarkable phenomenon.6
Population census covering the inter-war period shows no major
emigration of ethnic Albanians. According to the 1921 census there were 439,
657 ethnic Albanians in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (accounting for 3,67 of
the country's total population), 15,000 less than prior to the liberation in
1912, and they lived in Kosovo, Metohia and in Macedonia. The 1931 census
gives following figures: 505,259 ethnic Albanians (3,62% of the total
population), lived in three administrative units (banovina): in Zetska
banovina 150,062 (16%), in Moravska banovina 48,300 (3,36%), in Vardarska
banovina 302,901 (19,24 %). Figures from the 1939 census show that the
non-Slav population (ethnic Albanians, Turks, Gypsies, etc.) numbered
422,828 people, or 65,6%, the native Slav population accounted for 25,2% and
the settlers (mostly Serbs) for 9,2% .7
After the Yugoslav army capitulated in the April war of 1941, the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia was torn asunder: Serbia came under direct German
occupation, and its individual parts divided among the allies of the Third
Reich. During the April war, armed groups of ethnic Albanians attacked the
army, unarmed settlers and native Serbs. Because of the Trepca mines, the
district of Kosovska Mitrovica remained under German occupation, while the
eastern parts of Kosovo where given to Bulgaria, and on August 12, 1941, the
rest of Kosovo along with Macedonia and parts of Montenegro and Macedonia
were annexed to Greater Albania under Italian protectorship. Almost all
settlers houses were set afire within just a few days, their owners and
families killed or forced to leave for Montenegro and Serbia. Forced
migration is believed to have encompassed some 100,000 Serbs from Kosovo and
Metohia. From 1941 to 1944, ethnic Albanians serving the Italian and German
occupation authorities killed some 10,000 Serbs; the worst of suffer were
Serbs in Pec and Vitomirica where ethnic Albanian volunteers formations
wrought terror: before executing their victims they gouged out their eyes,
sliced off their ears and severed other parts of their bodies. Dozens of
Orthodox churches were destroyed, set afire and looted, priests and monks
were arrested and killed and many Orthodox cemeteries desecrated. Divided up
into several police and paramilitary formations, ethnic Albanians were in
the forefront of the massacres, and the German command was forced to
intervene to stop them. Ethnic Albanians used various forms of intimidation
in an effort to drive away the remaining Serbs from Kosovo. After the
collapse of Italy in 1943, Kosovo and Metohia came under German
administration, which supported the Greater Albanian ideology of national
leadership, helping the forming of the Second Albanian League at the and of
1943. The 21st SS "Scanderbey" division was formed out of ethnic Albanian
volunteers in the spring of 1944. The Balli Kombelar, Greater Albanian
organization, took the lead in ethnically purging Kosovo, warning the
Serbian population to move out of Kosovo and Metohia before it was too late.
The last migratory wave was registrated in the first months of
1944.8
Civil war in Yugoslavia (1941-1945) raged in Kosovo between the
Chetniks, regular royalist forces, led by general Dragoljub Mihailovic,
which operated mainly in northern parts of Kosovo, and partisan units of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) led by Josip Broz Tito. Both armies
dashed with the occupational troops and ethnic Albanian formation. The CPY
condemned the "the Serbian bourgeoisie's policy" in inter-war period, thus
there were a few hundred ethnic Albanians in the partisan detachments. The
policy of winning over ethnic Albanians and aid provided by CPY instructors
in the forming and developing of Communist Party in Albania did not produce
the expected results. Moreover, representatives of ethnic Albanian
communists from Yugoslavia and Albania meeting at a conference in Bunaj (on
Albanian territory), January 1-2,1944, adopted a resolution on the
annexation of Kosovo and Metohia to Albania after the end of the war. The
common ethnic Albanians saw both the partisans and Chetniks as Serbs, their
age-old enemies.9
1 D T Batakovic, Oslobodjenje Kosova i Metohije, in: Kosovo i Metohija
u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 249-280
2 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 178-182.
3 V. Djuretic, Kosovo i Metohija u Jugoslaviji, in: Kosovo i Metohija u
srpskoj istoriji, pp. 95-106; N. Gacesa, Naseljavanje Kosova i Metohije
posle Prvog svetskog rata, in: Kosovo. Proslost i sadasnjost, pp. 95-106;M.
Obradovic, Agrarna reforma i kolonizacija na Kosovu (1918-1941), Pristina
1981.
4 B. Gligorijevic, Fatalna jednostranost. Povodom knjige B. Horvata
"Kosovsko pitanje", Istorija XX veka, 1-2 (1988), pp. 179-193.
5 R. Rajovic, Autonomija Kosova. Istorijsko-pravna studija, (Beograd
1985), pp.
6 B. Gligorijevic, op. cit., pp. 185-192
7 Ibid, pp. 187-191.
8 D. Bogdanovic, Knjiga o Kosovu, pp. 199-210; V. Djuretic, op cit.,
pp. 311-318; A. Jeftic, Hronika stradanja Srba na Kosovu i Metohiji
(1941-1989), in Kosovo i Metohija u srpskoj istoriji, pp. 405-414.
9 V. Djuretic, op. cit., pp. 320-325
The Age of Communism
With the arrival of Soviet troops in Yugoslavia, partisan units,
well-armed and their ranks freshly recruited, liberated Kosovo and Metohia
in the late fall of 1944, and established their rule. Local ethnic Albanian
communists were entrusted with setting up power, and thousands of ethnic
Albanians were drafted and sent to the front (two mutinies occurred in Vrsac
and Bar). Few weeks after the establishment of communist rule major armed
revolt broke out among the newly mobilized ethnic Albanian units unsatisfied
with the solution that Kosovo will remain within the borders of Yugoslavia.
For the quelling of ethnic Albanian revolt troops had to be brought in from
other areas and in February 1945 military rule was imposed in Kosovo and
Metohia.
By decree of the new communist authorities (March 16, 1945), Serbian
and Montenegrin settlers who had been expelled during the war were banned
from returning to their abandoned estates as they were considered exponents
of the inter-war "Greater Serbian hegemonistic policy" On the other hand,
international circumstances and particularly close ties with the communist
leadership in Albania, prompted Tito to take a lenient attitude towards the
ethnic Albanian minority: ethnic Albanians settled in Kosovo by the Italians
and Germans during the war were not expelled; on the contrary, the border
was open to new immigrants from Albania until 1948. The precise number of
ethnic Albanians who settled in Kosovo during and after the war is yet
unknown: estimates range from 15,000 to 300,000, but the first figures after
the war were from 70,000-75,000. Compared with the 100,000 Serbs who had bee
forcibly moved out and forbidden to return after the war, these figures show
that acceptance of the situation created under the occupation created major
disturbance in the ethnic structure of Kosovo and Metohia.1
The evolution of Kosovo and Metohia political status in communist
Yugoslavia cannot be comprehended without some knowledge about the CPY's
national policy in the inter-war period. As a section of the Communist
International (Comintern), the CPY worked after World War I to destroy the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia as a "Versailles creation" in which "Greater Serbian
hegemony" oppressed the other nations in the state. Following Moscow's
instructions, the CPY adopted the stand in 1924 that Yugoslavia's
non-Serbian nations should be allowed to create their own separate national
states and that minorities should be allowed to join their parent states:
Albania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The policy of destroying the "Versailles
system" in Europe, as an instrument of imperialist powers -Great Britain and
France, was to be completed in the case of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the
breaking up of the Serbian lands.
When the Comintern changed its political course in 1935, deciding to
preserve the Yugoslav community with the a view to grouping together
anti-fascist forces, the CPY changed its course too, leaving the question of
settlement of position and status of the minorities for a later date.
Contrary to the prewar thesis that a strong Serbia guaranteed a strong
Yugoslavia, the communists upheld the view that the only way to establish a
stable state was by federalizing Yugoslavia and breaking the supremacy of
the Serbs. In its proclamations to the people of Kosovo and Metohia, the CPY
blamed the Serbian bourgeoisie for the mistreatment and persecution of the
ethnic Albanian population, thus indirectly shifting the blame from the
ruling structures of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to the entire Serbian
nation.2
Communist rule was thus established in 1945 with such stands regarding
the national question. After a strong ethnic Albanian revolt in the winter
of 1944/1945, representatives of the new authorities voted in July 1945 that
Kosovo and Metohia remain within Serbia. In September that same year, a
separate autonomous region called Kosmet was formed, and in northern Serbia,
the autonomous province of Vojvodina. This solution set the precedent only
in Serbia: the borders of other Yugoslav republics were drawn so as to
remedy as much as possible the "injustices" done in the inter-war period,
although their ethnic structures gave cause for creation of autonomous
units. The policy of pacifying Serbia and the Serbs as a hegemonic nation
was implemented by the CPY leadership, headed by Josip Broz Tito, with the
slogan "brotherhood and unity" of all Yugoslav nations, Serbian communists,
imbued with Yugoslavism and the proletarian internationalism, followed
Tito's political conceptions to the last without realizing its far-reaching
effects.3
The extent to which Serbian lands were of the disposal of Yugoslavia's
communist leadership is evident from conceptions about the internal borders
in the projected Balkan federation of communist countries. In negotiations
with the leader of the Albanian communists, Enver Hoxha, Tito promised to
concede Kosovo and Metohia to Albania if it entered the Balkan federation.
After Yugoslavia broke with Stalin and Cominform in 1948, Enver Hoxha's
Albania became a dangerous center of propaganda and subversive activities
against regime in Yugoslavia, ultimately aimed at annexing Kosovo, Metohia
and parts of Macedonia to Albania, where "Albanianism", embodied in the idea
of creating a Greater Ethnic Albania, entered the foundation of state
ideology.4
Established under the 1946 Constitution, the autonomy of Kosovo and
Metohia was considerably by the 1963 Constitution, and after inter-party
strife and fall of Tito's deputy and chief of the State Security Service,
party strife and fall of Tito's deputy and chief of the State Security
Service, Aleksandar Rankovic (1966), accused in Kosovo and Metohia of taking
a discriminatory attitude towards ethnic Albanians, the purging on a
large-scale of Serbian cadres in high offices in the administration and
police started. They were accused by ethnic Albanian communists of
persecution and abuse of innocent people, particularly in drives of Security
Service to confiscate weapons, although Serbs suffered from the persecutions
just as much as ethnic Albanians. The Serbian Orthodox church suffered most
of all. Church lands came under the blow of agrarian reforms, monastic
property was confiscated, priests and monks were arrested and convicted and
in 1950 in Djakovica, one of the biggest churches in Metohia was destroyed
in order that a monument for Kosovo partisan be erected.5
Mass demonstrations by ethnic Albanians (mostly students) in Kosovo and
Metohia in November 1968 (under the slogan "Down With The Serbian
Oppressors"), showed that the struggle against abuses by the state security
bodies was turning into a revanchist policy towards Serbs and Serbia, and
that at its roots lax the idea of a Greater Albania. The demonstrations were
staged during a major political upheaval over the reorganization of the
Yugoslav federation, changes resulting from the 1974 Constitution, when the
federal status of Kosovo and Metohia (renamed the Province of Kosovo, since
Metohia had a Serbian and Orthodox connotations) was legally sanctioned as a
constitutive element of the Yugoslav state. The autonomous province of
Kosovo, a political community with many elements of statehood (it was even
granted the right to a Constitution), and only formally dependent on Serbia,
served the plans of secessionists who wanted to drive the Serbian population
out of these regions and create an ethnically pure Kosovo. The policy of
ethnically purging a territory is racist, and the means to effect it are
always violent.6
The normalization of Yugoslavia's relations with Albania in 1971 and
the free exchange of ideas, teachers and school books encouraged the
Albanization of Kosovo and Metohia. In less than a decade, Kosovo's leaders
managed to impose the ethnic Albanian language as the official language in
the province and impose, though the system's legal institutions,
discriminatory attitude to the Serbian population. The extent of the
discrimination was most evident when the so-called principle of ethnic
representation was applied: job hiring and enrolment at higher institutes of
learning were done according to the size of the population. For instance,
out of five job vacancies only one Serb could be hired, regardless of the
applicant's qualifications and abilities. The same principle was applied at
the University: only one out of every five registrated students could be a
Serb. The 1981 population census showed a drastic decline in the Serbian and
Montenegrin population, but also in the Turkish, Gypsy and Islamized Slav
minorities in Kosovo and Metohia. While Serbs were leaving their native land
for northern Serbia, many members of non-Slav minorities were pressured into
declaring themselves as ethnic Albanians. Along with growing number of
emigrants from Albania, this substantially increased the total number of
ethnic Albanians in the Province and their representation in the local
administration, schooling and culture.
The majority of Serbs (with the exception of the thin layer of
high-ranking officials) were subjected to various forms of pressure, ranging
from being deprived of employment and promotion, to threats and blackmail;
in villages, as in the last century of Ottoman rule, by the usurping of
property, physical assault, the setting of fire to houses and harvests,
stealing livestock, attacks and rape of women and children, murder at one's
doorstep. The local administration gave out lands abandoned by resettled
Serbs to emigrants from Albania, and many lots were illegally taken over by
neighboring ethnic Albanian families. Since all administrative power, from
the judiciary to the police, was in hands of ethnic Albanians, they passed
verdicts in favor of their compatriots whenever deciding on
inter-nationality disputes. The injured Serbian parties had no one to
complain to because the Republic of Serbia did not have judicial
jurisdiction over Kosovo, and when they wrote to the federal bodies, their
appeals remained unanswered. Dignitaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church
were, from 1945 onwards, the most persistent in lodging complaints to the
highest state bodies aboud the stepped-up physical and psychological
pressures suffered by Serbs, citing hundreds of examples, from the
desecration of graves to the raping of nuns, but their petitions had no
impact.
The attacks culminated with the March 1981 attempt to set fire in the
Pec Patriarchate, when the large living quarters burned down, together with
the furniture and library. The arsonists were never discovered and the
investigating authorities kept claiming that the fire had broken out because
of a breakdown in the electrical installations. The handful of Serbian
communist officials who did speak out against Kosovo's overt Albanization
during the 1968-1981 period were dismissed from their posts on charges of
being chauvinists and hegemonists. The Serbs who collaborated with the
ethnic Albanian communist leadership in the Province were rewarded with high
posts in the federal bodies.7
The Albanization of Kosovo and Metohia was especially bolstered by the
Province's unhindered communication with Albania, from where professors came
to the Pristina University in the seventies, spreading Greater Albanian
propaganda. With the import of textbooks from Tirana, whole generations of
young Albanians were raised in the spirit of Greater Albanianism and in
hatred for Serbia and Yugoslavia. Political officials and scholars from
Tirana moved freely about Kosovo, spreading sentiments and calling for the
creation of a large ethnic Albania. Huge sums of money allocated by the
Yugoslav federation for Kosovo's economic growth (Serbia's was the biggest
share) were spent on building large state institutions for the local
bureaucracy which tried to set up national institutions as swiftly as
possible: the Academy of Science of Kosovo, the University, institutes for
Albanian language, history and folklore, museums, the theater, television,
radio, newspaper and publishing houses. Paradoxically the Yugoslav state
financed the secessionist movement in Kosovo and Metohia itself.
Assessing that, with the death of Josip Broz Tito (May 1980), the
Yugoslav state was on The verge of collapse, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians
staged large-scale demonstrations in March and April 1981, with the blessing
of the Province's authorities, glorifying the regime of Enver Hoxha and
demanding that Kosovo be declared a republic, since, under the Yugoslav
Constitution, only republics have the right to secede. The establishment of
Kosovo as a republic would denote a transitional phase toward full
independence and then unification with Albania.8
Ethnic Albanian national and political dominance in Kosovo and Metohia
was enhanced by a large demographic explosion, as their number tripled from
about 480,000 in 1948 to 1,227,000 in 1981. Meanwhile, from the early
sixties onwards, the number of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia steadily
declined. According to official figures, 92, 197 Serb