yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 3
conference issued a resolution urging Kosovo Albanians to fight
alongside the Yugoslav peoples against the German occupiers and
promised that all the peoples living in Kosovo would be able to vote
on their future after liberation.
In the first postwar years, the federal policy of “Brotherhood
and Unity” resulted in a rapprochement between most Yugoslav peoples—but
the situation in Kosovo remained unchanged. The dissonance
was greatest between Serbs and Albanians, and later Albanians
and Macedonians. The Albanians did not believe that a unified
Yugoslavia would bring them emancipation and anticipated instead
that they would continue to be used as a symbol of Slav domination
characterized by brutal persecution and terror. Albanians were
not subject to the same level of repression as before the war, but they
continued to be treated as an unreliable element. The police textbooks
of the time stated that “national minorities, especially Albanians,
are a suspect element because their members, even those who
discharge the most responsible functions, may impart secret information
to their mother country.” 332
The cultural emancipation of Albanians was thwarted, the
recently established Institute of Albanian Studies was abolished,
Albanian folklore was suppressed and special spelling rules were
developed for Yugoslav Albanians to set them apart from everyone
else in Albania. Meanwhile, the 1938 plan to move people to Turkey
was revived; according to various sources, it was to have affected
between 120,000 and 213,000 people, mostly Albanians but also Turks
and Muslims. 333
The situation of the Albanians altered substantially only after
the Brioni Plenum in 1966, when Aleksandar Ranković was sacked
and various abuses by the police and state authorities were exposed.
332 As cited in Latinka Perović, Zatvaranje kruga –ishod rascepa
1971–72, Svijetlost, Sarajevo, 1991, p . 41 .
333 Petrit Imami, Serbs and Albanians, p . 323 .