yugoslavias implosion

THE ALBANIAN QUESTION EXACERBATES
THE YUGOSLAV CRISIS
Tension in Kosovo mounted after widespread Albanian demonstrations
in March and April 1981. At a meeting in Pristina, Fadil
Hoxha, a member of the sfry Presidency, condemned the “Kosovo
Republic” slogan of demonstrators and said “Kosovo is represented
in all the organs, organizations and institutions of the federation and
of the Socialist Republic of Serbia on an equal footing. Kosovo participates
in, and is responsible for, the formulation and realization
of the foreign policy of Yugoslavia, the life and development, the
present and the future of our socialist community.” 339 Shortly afterward,
Dragoslav Marković, the president of the Presidency of Serbia,
insisted that the constitutional status of the province was untenable
because it was acting like a republic. Interestingly enough, in 1982, the
Rand Corporation published a report on the situation in Yugoslavia
that indicated that “Moscow had somehow been involved in stirring
up the Kosovo disturbances,” while Albanian “complicity was generally
assumed.” 340 As the Albanian question attracted increasing attention,
so Serbian nationalism grew more intense and the Serbian elite
grew more eager to rearrange Yugoslavia.
Ćosić and his circle started priming the Serbs for insurgency.
Ćosić was convinced that “in October 1982, the reasons for insurgency
were greater than in 1941.” 341 The propaganda machine went into
action. The media demonized the Albanians, accusing them of terrorism
and undermining the integrity of Yugoslavia as well as of the
mass rape of Serbian women. Ćosić claimed that a counterrevolution
in Kosovo had been started by young children: in an interview, he
maintained that “the small children first started spitting and insulting
old Serbs, who restrained from beating them, or punishing them
339 Quoted after Petrit Imami, Serbija i Albanci kroz vekove, FreeB92, Beograd 1999, p . 332 .
340 According to a Ross Johnson conversation with various partners . Ibid.
341 Dobrica Cosić, Promene, 1992 .
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