[PEN-L:6839] Re: Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Louis,
    "Originally the home of Serbia's founding dynasty..."
Uh, Louis, did history begin in the 12th century?  I think
that we have been through these deep historical
exercises already.  You want to start waxing eloquent
about Kosmet as the "spiritual home" of the Serbs?
Give us a break.
     Just for the deep historical record, the ancestors
of the Albanians, the Illyrians (and the Dardanians to be
specific to Kosmet) were there long before the Serbs or
any other Slavs got anywhere near the neighborhood.
But I don't think this "deep historical" stuff should count
for too much, in spite of Milosevic's self-identification
with the long-dead Prince Lazar, the "martyr" of Kosovo
Polje in 1389.  Yuck!
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, May 14, 1999 2:44 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:6829] Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic


>>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)
>
>