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Yugoslavia Albanians
Yugoslavia's ethnic Albanians lived mainly in Kosovo (about
77 percent), southeastern Serbia (14 percent), Macedonia
(officially about 20 percent, but probably much higher), and
Montenegro (about 9 percent). In recent decades, a search for
work drew ethnic Albanians to the country's larger cities as well
as to Western Europe and North America. Despite the fact that the
1.7 million ethnic Albanians counted in the 1981 census exceeded
the populations of Macedonians and Montenegrins in Yugoslavia,
Albanians were not recognized as a "nation" under the 1974
Constitution because, according to the Yugoslav government, their
traditional homeland was outside Yugoslavia. In general, Albanian
culture was practiced more openly in Yugoslavia than in Albania,
where the remains of Stalinist suppression limited many aspects
of self-expression. Thus, ironically, Yugoslavia was the only
place where some Albanian traditions were preserved.
Albanians were once a mostly Roman Catholic people. After the
Ottoman Turks conquered them in the fifteenth century, many
Albanian families gained economic and social advantages by
converting to Islam. By 1990 only about 10 percent of Kosovo's
ethnic Albanians were Catholic.
In the late eighteenth century, Albanians held important
posts in the Ottoman army, courts, and administration. Feudal
economic relations survived among the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo
and Macedonia until Serbia took those regions from the Ottoman
Empire in 1913. After World War I, the Serbian government made
repeated attempts to colonize Kosovo with the families of its
officer corps. Under Serbia, Albanians enjoyed no voice in local
administration, no schools, and no publications in their own
language in the interwar period. Serbs and Montenegrins dominated
the administration of Kosovo from 1946 to 1966, despite the
numerical superiority of the Kosovan Albanians, their postwar
recognition as a distinct nationality, and the introduction of
Albanian-language schools and publications.
In 1966 Aleksandar Rankovic, the Serbian head of the Yugoslav
secret police, fell from power, and Kosovan Albanians assumed a
dominant position in the province. After 1968 Albanians were
permitted to display the national flag of Albania in Kosovo and
adopt the official Albanian literary language, which is based on
the dialect of Albania rather than that spoken in Kosovo.
Cultural exchanges introduced teachers from Albania and textbooks
printed in Albania. Yugoslavia's 1974 Constitution gave Kosovo
virtually the same rights as the country's constituent republics;
nowhere in Europe had such far-ranging concessions to national
rights been granted in a region considered so potentially
separatist. After that time, however, the clash of extreme
Serbian and Kosovan nationalist ideologies caused a Serbian
nationalist backlash that revoked many of those concessions
(see Kosovo
, ch. 4).
For centuries, ethnic Albanian villagers in Kosovo lived in
extended families of 70 to 100 members ruled by a patriarch.
Although the traditional extended family structure eroded
steadily after World War II, in 1990 extended families of twenty
to forty members still lived within walled compounds. Blood
vengeance, arranged marriages, and polygamy were not uncommon.
Many Albanian women lived secluded in the home, subordinate to
male authority, and with little or no access to education.
In 1990 Yugoslavia's ethnic Albanians had the highest birth
rate in Europe, and more than half of Kosovo's Albanians were
under twenty years old in the late 1970s. The birth rate strained
the region's already desperate economy and depressed the
Albanians' standard of living in every area. The ethnic Albanians
also had Yugoslavia's lowest literacy rate: 68.5 percent of
individuals over age ten were able to read in 1979. In 1981 only
178,000 of 1.5 million Albanians in Kosovo were employed; one in
four of those employed held nominal bureaucratic positions.
Meanwhile, the student population of 470,000 was a constant
source of political unrest and potentially higher unemployment
upon graduation.
Data as of December 1990
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