yugoslavias implosion

THE STATUS OF ALBANIANS IN THE SECOND YUGOSLAVIA
Relations were strained by the time the second Yugoslavia was
created in 1946. Kosovo had been liberated in the autumn of 1944, but
some Partisan detachments retaliated against the Albanians and an
uprising broke out in the spring of 1945. Units of the National Liberation
Army of Yugoslavia put down the uprising and imposed an
interim administration that stayed in effect until mid-year. Local
inhabitants who had fought as Partisans—mostly Serbs and Montenegrins—returned
to Kosovo and were given administrative posts.
In July 1945, the recently formed Assembly of Kosovo and Metohija
passed a resolution to incorporate Kosovo and Metohija into the
federal unit of Serbia and expressed the conviction that the “peoples
of this district will draw full support from the people’s government
of Serbia and will be wholeheartedly assisted by the people’s
government of all of Yugoslavia in their political, national, economic
and cultural advancement.” 331 The incorporation into Serbia
was approved by the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council of the
National Liberation of Yugoslavia (avnoj) on July 23, 1945, and the
People’s Assembly of Serbia passed a law on the Autonomous Province
of Kosovo-Metohija on August 3, 1945. In September, the Provisional
People’s Assembly of Democratic Federative Yugoslavia (dfy)
granted the autonomous provinces special status entitling them to
twenty-five seats (Vojvodina was allotted fifteen and Kosovo was
allotted ten) in the Assembly of Peoples—the federal chamber of the
Constituent Assembly of the dfy.
The status of Kosovo and Metohija in the second Yugoslavia was
a complex and delicate matter because of the majority Albanian population
in the province. At the beginning of January 1944, a National
Liberation Committee for Kosovo and Metohija had been established
in the village of Bujani on liberated Albanian territory. Of the forty-nine
delegates present, forty-three were Albanians. The inaugural
331 Petrit Imami, Srbi i Albanci kroz vekove, Samizdat FreeB92, Beograd, 1999, p . 317 .
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