Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

Preface

The period of the 1980s in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was marked by a powerless federal government in Belgrade, with all six republics exercising their autonomous politics and showing little care for the common Yugoslav interest. The ethnic non-Albanian population in the Serbian southern province of Kosovo and Metochia (KosMet, in English known only as Kosovo) found themselves in an isolated position, without real political and physical protection. We have to keep in mind that from 1974 to 1989, ethnic Albanians had total political-administrative power in the province, which, on one hand, enjoyed formal autonomous status within Serbia but, in fact, was independent from both the republican authorities of Serbia and the federal Government of Yugoslavia.

Protests by the Serbs and Montenegrins

In the everyday political practice, the Serbian authorities used to communicate directly with the local provincial officials (in fact, the Government), who ignored grievances from non-Albanians, particularly the Serb and Montenegrin ones. Attacks on Serbs and Montenegrins became ever more frequent and violent, so that the insecure people were moving out of the province at a constant rate. For instance, after many ignored complaints by the republican authorities, peasants from the Serb village of Batuse, Klina, and Kosovo Polje (not from Priština) decided to move on June 20 th, 1986, collectively from KosMet to Central Serbia in order not to be under Albanian administration. However, immediately, Adem Vlasi, who was at the time the Secretary of the ruling communist party for KosMet (Savez Komunista Jugoslavije = Union of Yugoslav Communists), that is, at no official state position, came on the spot and stopped the convoy on its way to Central Serbia. His explanation of the problem was telling even more than necessary:

At the same time, the President of the Presidency (Government) of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, Ivan Stambolić (1986‒1987) was able to do absolutely nothing except only to be informed that indignant and bitter people were returning to their “concentration camp” of the village of Batuse, Klina, and Kosovo Polje. It was sad indeed watching his helplessness in the country whose head he was. Later on, when Slobodan Milošević took power in Serbia in 1989, nobody cared to recall this paradigmatic scene as a possible explanation (if not necessarily justification) of the measures he took concerning KosMet affairs, which probably would be taken in any (Western) democratic state to protect its citizens from terror by others.

An unofficial Serbian/Montenegrin delegation came from KosMet to Belgrade and was allowed to talk to the Federal Assembly, presided over by the Macedonian Lazar Mojsov. The most touching scene occurred when a middle-aged woman stood in front of the microphone and asked, crying:

However, both the federal and Serbian republican Governments could do nothing, bound by both the Yugoslav and Serbian Constitutions. The next President of Serbia, Ivan Stambolić (1936‒2000/1986‒1987) (who promoted his best man, Slobodan Milošević, to the post of the Party secretary), went to Priština (administrative center of KosMet) to try to settle the situation down, but in vain. Massive rallies started, with KosMet Serbs and Montenegrins gathering on the green area in front of the Belgrade Municipal Assembly (Town Hall) building (just across the street from the Federal Assembly), asking for audience and help. But the Belgrade officials restricted themselves to the formal interventions to their KosMet official counterparts (in fact, the ethnic Albanians). Those futile efforts ended as expected – in a blind alley. Then something happened, something that would decide the immediate history of Yugoslavia and Serbia. Something that will prove, actually, to be fatal for both Tito's Yugoslavia and Serbia.

Slobodan Milošević in Kosovo (April 1987)

Serb inhabitants from a KosMet village of Zubin Potok (Zuba’s Brook, in English) invited top Serbia’s state authority to visit them in April 1987, so that they could complain to them directly about their situation. However, Ivan Stambolić, for some reason, chose S. Milošević instead of himself. At that time, S. Milošević had no official state position in Serbia (he was only the President of the Union of Serbia's Communists), just like Albanian Azem Vlasi was in KosMet. Probably, Ivan Stambolić was just afraid to appear personally in front of furious people to whom he would utter empty propaganda words about “brotherhood and unity” as usual in Titoist Yugoslavia. However, he knew well that angry Serbs require much more than empty political vocabulary.

Local communists arranged a closed (face-to-face) meeting in the municipal building to “discuss the issue”. Nevertheless, of course, the presence of the provincial boss, Azem Vlasi, was inevitable on the spot. A long discussion was going on when cries from the outside were heard, calling S. Milošević to come out. When he appeared before the crowd, who were eagerly awaiting the results of the meeting, he saw (ethnic Albanian) police pushing away the impatient (Serbian) people. Then somebody (Serb) shouted the fatal words: “We are beaten!”. And S. Milošević exclaimed an equally fatal sentence, which will become the landmark of his career:

The long meeting resulted in no immediate conclusions, but this incident marked the turning point of S. Milošević’s political career and destiny. If it were to be compared with a historical instance, perhaps the best point would be that from the Christian mythology, the moment when John the Baptist baptized Jesus on the Jordan River, with the Holy Ghost descending from Heaven and entering his body. According to some interpretations, particularly Gnostic ones, it was then that Jesus of Nazareth became divine, transformed from one of many preachers in/around Palestine at the time into a prophet and Messiah. Religious fantasy apart, it was well possible that Jesus became aware of his “mission on Earth” and entered his short but prolific liturgy in Galilee.¹ Nevertheless, this incident made him aware of the promising opportunity to base his political career on the KosMet issue, the real problem in real time. And he seized this opportunity wholeheartedly. For better or worse, nevertheless.

S. Milošević's policy of the unification of Serbia

His immediate aim was to lift from KosMet the cover of an untouchable province, endowed with all rights of an independent state, except the right to secede. The decision was not easy to realize, both from the practical and ideological viewpoints. It is the traditional wisdom that one never deprives somebody of the rights, privileges, etc., already possessing, without compelling reasons.² Knowing the warlike mind of the Albanian KosMet population (originally highlanders from High Albania), one could not expect much rational deal. The young, overcrowded population, unemployed and dissatisfied in every respect, brainwashed from early youth with mantras like “Serbs’ hatred”, etc., was like a wild animal to be tamed. And the dog was unleashed already, the secession movement.

The Albanian secessionist slogans like “Kosovo Republic” were already in the air (even in modest form from the first anti-Yugoslav Kosovo Albanian demonstrations in 1968). On the other hand, local non-Albanian activists were on the move. Visits to the local provincial officials were frequent, with demands for better living conditions for Serbs and all other non-Albanians in KosMet. As expected, they turned out futile, since the local and provincial Albanian leaders (being in power) knew they possessed legal rights, including those to ignore everything they dislike.

More massive movements were planned and realized, with KosMet Serbs organizing massive meetings outside the province (in Central and North Serbia, i.e., the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina), with the tacit approval and support of Belgrade Party leaders around S. Milošević. Those who criticized his political promises, characterized as “easily promised speed”, were recklessly removed from the Party (and thus political) scene of Serbia. Ivan Stambolić himself was overthrown at the 8ᵗʰ Party meeting in 1987 held in Belgrade. He resigned from his presidential position and withdrew to a banking business.³ The first Milošević's political target was Vojvodina's status as an autonomous province, the northern Serbian counterpart of Kosovo and Metochia, as a separatist territory of North Serbia. If the separatist autonomous province of KosMet was to be abolished from just a political-administrative viewpoint (not cultural-ethnolinguistic), it would hit the separatist Vojvodina for the sake of the unification of Serbia, though this multiethnic region was not a source of unrest and troubles at such extent as KosMet.⁴ Massive rally at Novi Sad in October 1988 (administrative center of Vojvodina), with KosMet Serbs gaining much of the local population's sympathies, resulted in the overthrow province Party Committee and establishing S. Milošević's decisive influence (the “Yogurt Revolution”). A similar rally was planned for Slovenia, but was forbidden by Slovenian authorities at the last moment (the Croatian authorities blocked the transit way through Croatia from Serbia to Slovenia), to the big consternation of the Serbian population, Milošević’s supporters and non-supporters alike. Finally, S. Milošević managed to pass legally through the Serbian People’s Assembly (Parliament) the abolishment of essential parts (political) of the provincial autonomies of both KosMet and Vojvodina and dismantling their Assemblies. Serbia again became a unique compact state. At least it so seemed to S. Milošević and his supporters.

Serbia in Titoist Yugoslavia

The ideological background for the reunification of Serbia by the circle around S. Milošević as the state was based on the “theory of conspiracy”, i.e., Serbophobic policy of Yugoslav authorities since the end of WWII. Nevertheless, Serbia was divided under the federal Yugoslav Constitutions (from 1945 to 1989) into three parts for the sake of being weakened, as the largest, most populated, and strongest republic in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Demagogy apart, this division was not a splendid example of political logic. By giving Vojvodina and KosMet the status of co- federal units, the federal Yugoslav Constitution left the so-called Central Serbia with a vague, not to say incredible, state. Serbia was a constituent element of the Yugoslav federation, but so were its two provinces separately. The MPs of the latter were entitled to make decisions concerning the affairs of their provinces, but also of the Republic of Serbia as a whole. At the same time, the MPs from Central Serbia could influence Central Serbia’s affairs indirectly only, but provincial ones by no means. The autonomous provinces had their own assembly. Thus, Serbia was not partitioned into three equivalent parts, but had both vertical and horizontal structure, where the hierarchy could not be established. It was mainly for this reason that the slogan of the time, “Oh, Serbia of three parts, you will again be the whole!”, gained much in popularity, not only in Milošević’s quarters.⁵ It was widely accepted, rightly or not, that such a division was a part of the other Yugoslav republics' political-national conspiracy against Serbia.

The same rationale turned out to be operative in the case of the now-famous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts (the SANU)⁶ in 1986. The principal authors were supposed to be Vasilije Krestić, Antonije Isaković, Mihailo Marković, Kosta Mihailović, with the support of Dobrica Ćosić (a writer) and several other academicians of the SANU. This Memorandum was never accepted as an official document of the SANU (it was, in fact, unfinished when revealed illegally to the public by the Yugoslav intelligence service), but has been used subsequently as the crown witness of Serbian alleged nationalism (or a conspiracy against the rest of Yugoslavia and Yugoslavs). However, in reality, the Memorandum addressed the actual state of Serbia in Yugoslavia, arguing that Serbia has been endowed with an inferior position, particularly in the economic sphere. The tacit rationale for such an attitude was the feeling that other republics felt that Serbia was too dominant and, therefore, wanted to suppress it in every respect. In a sense, this rationale was both true and understandable. (It was the quintessence, by the way, of the British stratagem regarding Continental Europe, which led to the Napoleonic wars and both WWI and WWII wars too). The slogan “Weak Serbia – Strong Yugoslavia!”, though never uttered publicly, was in the air since the first common state of the Yugoslavs was founded on December 1ˢᵗ, 1918.

The charade of the Kosovo education system

When the restrictions on the provinces' autonomy became operative, the struggle between the central Government in Belgrade (Serbia) and the provincial Government in Priština (Kosovo) gained a new impetus. One of the first measures taken by Belgrade was the suppression of pro-Greater Albania educational propaganda, which had resulted in an outright hatred that young Kosovo Albanians developed under the pro-Albanian (even imported from neighboring Albania) and anti-Serbian school programmes. The immediate response of Kosovo Albanian leaders was the withdrawal of the schools and the University of Priština from the official buildings. Lessons were held in private houses, and the whole image was intentionally suggesting the state of a foreign occupation, especially for the Western corporate media.

One affair from the time gives the flavour of the nature of the conflict. Pupils in the primary and secondary schools used to share classes in the common buildings, irrespective of their ethnicity. Since the non-Albanian kids were tiny minorities in many common schools,⁷ they felt uneasy in the Albanian immediate environments, as the latter did not mix with the rest of the pupils. Any incident easily turned into a serious one, and the Belgrade authorities decided that Albanian and non- Albanian pupils do not share the same schools at the same time. The response of the local Albanians was astonishing, indeed. They declared that the Serbian authorities plan to poison Albanian kids by depositing a deadly powder into schools (the “ethnic-discriminative poison”, as the Serbs called it ironically). Once this was announced, the Albanian pupils were collected and moved to the nearby hospitals, where the patients were evacuated for this purpose. The newspapers' journalists, TV cameras, etc., were invited to witness this onslaught on the innocent kids, who were lying in their hospital beds, almost dead. When the cameras left the hospitals, kids were ordered to get up and go home.

Many interpretations of the real aims of this and similar charades were made in the Serbian public media. Apart from the propaganda motivations, some more serious interpretations were offered. One was by an army high officer who suggested that the whole charade was in fact a dress rehearsal for the envisaged real situation of an armed rebellion and readiness of the medical institutions to accept and take care of the wounded rebels. Once the single-day disaster was over, the deadly powder suddenly lost its power, and the innocent Albanian kids returned to their classes.

The charade of the “hunger strike”

The following charade, however, was much more serious and politically dangerous. The Kosovo Albanian political leaders (Azem Vlasi first) organized a strike in the prosperous (from even a European perspective) black coal mine of “Stari Trg”,⁸ near Kosovska Mitrovica. The Albanian miners descended into their shafts and refused to get out “until Kosovo becomes the republic” (within Yugoslavia), announcing (ethno-political) ”hunger strike”. Medical teams were fast to react, journalists invited, etc., (everything necessary for the media show program, even in the international ear). Azem Vlasi, whom we met earlier (in fact, a leader of Kosovo Albanians), was quick to descend into the shafts and announce his moral support for the Kosovo Albanian patriots, etc. It lasted for several days, until the Belgrade Government sent a special police unit, which pulled the miners out from their “striking positions”. However, medical teams were ready at the exit and supplied the eye-covers for the poor miners, deprived of light and endangered by the darkness, etc. It was amazing watching miners in obviously good conditions, who were not prepared for the scenario and mainly refused to take the precautionary measures offered by the medical staff at the spot.

After this incident, the situation on the Serbian political scene was further aggravated. Serbs dissatisfied with their national position in Yugoslavia, particularly regarding KosMet, gathered in front of the Federal Yugoslav Assembly building in Belgrade, in a resolute protest. After some time, S. Milošević appeared at the entrance and addressed the people. He spoke about current KosMet affairs and the miners’ strike, promising to bring to the court all (Kosovo Albanian) politicians involved in the plot against the state of Serbia. It was a clear allusion to Azem Vlasi. Continuing along the same lines, S. Milošević made the present workers (part of the crowd) forget their original complaints and demands. In fact, what S. Milošević did in this situation was exactly the same as what Kosovo Albanian leaders did for decades - turning the real social and economic dissatisfaction of the overcrowded province into ethnical hatred, accusing Serbs and the central Government in Belgrade of all troubles in the province. The same was done in Croatia only a few years later, as for the new “democratic” authorities of Croatia, led by Dr. Franjo Tuđman and his nationalistic party of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), for all troubles in Croatia, the Serbs were guilty. However, all of these political maneuvers turned out to be successful.

The charade of the trial for “high treason”

The crucial thing was that S. Milošević fulfilled the promise to the crowd of several hundred thousand people. Kosovo Albanian political leader, Azem Vlasi, was arrested and accused of “high treason” against the territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia. He could not wish more, and from a communist party’s apparatchik became the national (Kosovo Albanian) hero. Songs about him started circulating around KosMet while he was awaiting the trial. The latter did occur after a year, at Kosovska Mitrovica in the northern part of KosMet inhabited by the majority of the Serbs. The judge was an Albanian who, after a long process, released the accused as innocent. The whole charade was a mockery from the start. The point that S. Milošević had in mind was to remove a dangerous and popular political enemy from the political scene of both KosMet and the rest of Serbia. But the outcome was, actually, counterproductive, as was expected. Azem Vlasi was made a Kosovo Albanian national martyr, persecuted by evil Serbs. The whole affair exhibited the best of S. Milošević's political incompetence, which could ultimately cost Serbia her existence. By the time of these events, the Kosovo Albanian boycott of Serbia and its institutions was already almost complete. Ordinary people, especially the youth, stopped communicating with non-Albanians, in particular with the Serbs from Central Serbia. They refused to talk to journalists from Belgrade, turned their backs on TV cameras, etc. The hatred could almost be smelled in the air. The situation became a surrealistic one, with the actual situation grossly mismatching the official, administrative one. There was an appealing need to resolve this surrealistic situation. The resolution came in two steps. The first was the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The second, the 1998‒1999 Kosovo War.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic Ex - University Professor Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies Belgrade, Serbia © Vladislav B. Sotirovic 2025 www.geostrategy.rs sotirovic1967@gmail.com