[PEN-L:6829] Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>to what extent are the current troubles in Serbia due to Enver Hoxha's
>efforts to attack Tito (or due to antagonisms between the old Yugoslavia
>and the old Albania)?
>
>Jim Devine

>From an article by David Binder, NY Times, Apr. 19, 1981:

Outsiders sometimes forget that socialist Yugoslavia was born not only of
the war against Hitler, but also of a raging civil war that pitted
nationality against nationality and church against church, at a cost of 1.7
million lives.

The nationality problems of the Kosovo region, desperately poor despite
considerable mineral wealth, are centuries old and were exacerbated in both
world wars. Originally the home of Serbia's founding dynasty in the 12th
century, Kosovo lost most of its remaining Serbian population in the 17th
century when the Serbs, Orthodox Christians, fled northward to distance
themselves from the Ottoman Turks. Albanian tribesmen filled the vacuum;
they now constitute more than four-fifths of the province's population.

When the great powers agreed in 1913 to make Albania independent more or
less within its present borders, they ceded Kosovo to the Serbian monarchy.
It was a blow the Albanians have never forgotten, the more so because their
own independence movement had begun in the Kosovo town of Prizren in 1878.
World War II brought more upheavals when Kosovo was handed to Mussolini's
Italy by Germany and some Albanians enlisted out of gratitude on the
Italian side. Retribution came when Tito's partisans entered the area,
massacring suspected collaborators before the horrified eyes of their own
Albanian Communist comrades in arms.

Tito Partisans Once Ruled Albania

For a time, Tito's dominant forces ruled Albania and a permanent
Yugoslav-Albanian federation was even contemplated. One holdout was Enver
Hoxha, who had earlier called for a plebiscite in Kosovo. In 1948, the
reversals caused by Tito's ouster from the Cominform lofted Mr. Hoxha into
the Albanian leadership he still holds today.

For two succeeding decades, Tito's Yugoslavia held down the Albanians of
Kosovo, denying them proper schooling and arresting or killing outspoken
Albanian teachers. The repression ended in 1966 with the fall of the Serb
leader who was Tito's number two, Aleksandr Rankovic. Since then, federal
money has poured into Kosovo at a higher rate than into any other part of
the country. Pristina University has grown to become one of the country's
largest with 48,000 students. Most of the region's administrators, and its
police, are ethnic Albanians. The Kosovars are even allowed to fly the
Albanian flag, a black eagle on a red field.

Yet this ''tremendous dynamic of development,'' as Mr. Dolanc described it,
ironically has fed unrest. There were riots in 1968 and again in 1975. This
time the youths of Kosovo shouted ''We want a republic'' (their
semi-autonomous province has almost all rights of a Yugoslav republic
except the right to secede) and some even demanded annexation by Mr.
Hoxha's Albanian fatherland.


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)