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Yugoslavia Kosovo
The province of Kosovo, formerly called Kosovo-Metohija,
became the locus of an important political issue during the late
1960s. Removal of the Rankovic state security system in 1966
allowed the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo to demonstrate for
improvement of very poor economic and political conditions. In
the next decade, a number of Albanian nationalist groups were
active on a small scale in Kosovo. The decentralizing effect of
the 1974 Constitution further reduced oppression of Albanians in
the province; however, loosening state control increased the
scale and visibility of nationalist disturbances in the 1970s.
Large-scale demonstrations in 1981 led to a complete purge of the
Kosovo party, a harsh security crackdown, and bitter relations
between Albania and Yugoslavia
(see Foreign Policy
, this ch.).
In the 1980s, the gravity of the Kosovo issue increased for
several reasons: Kosovo's drive for republic status or total
separation increasingly was supported by blatant Albanian
intervention; Yugoslavia's richest republics were frustrated by
federal investment requirements designed to improve Kosovo's
economic situation without any return for their money; and
uncontrollable nationalism in one part of the federation
threatened to encourage similar bursts of independence elsewhere
in the multinational state. The use of the Kosovo issue to
reinspire Serbian nationalism was especially worrisome to other
republics, while it radicalized most of Yugoslavia's Albanian
population. In 1989 Slobodan Milosevic called Kosovo "the heart
of Serbia," citing Kosovo's history as the center of the medieval
Serbian kingdom that ended in a storied defeat by the Turks in
1389
(see The Serbs and Serbia, Vojvodina, and Montenegro
, ch.
1). However, Kosovo had similar historical significance for its
largely Albanian population of the late twentieth century; this
created an ethnic political struggle that some observers compared
to the West Bank situation in the Middle East.
By 1988 intensified political demonstrations and the deadlock
of the Serbian and Albanian wings of the Kosovo party provided a
pretext for political intervention by the Serbian government in
Kosovo. A thorough Serbianization campaign begun in 1987 had
undercut local compromise efforts by removing all party officials
showing sympathy for the Kosovan nationalist cause. By one
estimate, 485,000 Kosovans were arrested between 1981 and 1987.
Civil rights increasingly were suspended. The intervention also
eliminated the influence of Azem Vlasi, an ethnic Albanian who
had been a strong, moderate spokesman for liberalization in the
Kosovo League of Communists. Vlasi and his colleagues were purged
in 1989, and their prolonged trial by the Serbian government for
counterrevolutionary activities brought strong condemnation from
Slovenia and Croatia.
The internal politics of Kosovo were dominated by severe
economic backwardness and hatred between the Albanian majority
and the Serbian minority. Conditions worsened in the 1980s
despite disproportionately high national investment in the region
(see Regional Disparities
, ch. 3). Although the Serbs claimed
that the Albanians ran an organized campaign to drive out Slavs,
economic conditions were at least as instrumental in the decline
of the Serbian population. Many Albanians also left to seek
employment elsewhere. After the purge of 1989, the Kosovo League
of Communists and assembly were puppet organizations controlled
from Belgrade--a situation that exacerbated nationalist feeling
and protests. In 1990 political control of the province still
eluded the Serbian party, which continued its polemics with the
Slovenes and Croats over Kosovo policy. An opposition group, the
Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, began a propaganda campaign
against the Serbs and the League of Communists of Kosovo that
year. In 1990 the fragmentation of the LCY at its Fourteenth
Congress provoked a new series of violent demonstrations against
Serbian oppression. The Federal Executive Council drafted a plan
to alleviate the Kosovo crisis, but factions in the Federal
Assembly delayed its passage.
Data as of December 1990
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