A note on Kosovo and the future of Yugoslav‐Albanian relations: A Balkan perspective

AT the XII Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia-held in Belgrade in June 1982-high on most speakers' agendas, besides the country's economic and financial predicament, was the Kosovo question. The speakers' frequent references to the causes of the 1981 riots and to the panacea for the troubled province highlighted a threefold problem: first, an internal issue for Serbia-which is in the unique position of 'guardian' of two autonomous provinces; second, a national concern for the Yugoslav federation-involving other nations and nationalities; and finally, an international issue-affecting Yugoslavia's external relations, especially vis-a-vis neighbouring Albania and Bulgaria. The historical perspective throws some light on the significance of Kosovo in the wider framework of Yugoslav-Albanian relations; throughout the post-war period, the internal situation in Kosovo has usually been a sound indicator of Yugoslavia's relations with Albania. Up to 1948 the ideological bond uniting the two countries left Yugoslavia's 1945 re-annexation of Kosovo out of their respective agendas. Yugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominform that year provided Tirana with a platform from which to reactivate the 'unsettled annexation of Kosovo' issue; with Stalin's backing, the Albanian media gave extensive coverage to the 'persecution' of Albanians in Yugoslavia, and some high-ranking party members openly incited the Kosovo Albanians to rebel against Tito. The departure of Rankovic in 1966 paved the way for the resumption of the dialogue between Belgrade and Tirana, whose common perception of the threat posed by the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968 brought about reciprocal offers of assistance in the event of external military aggression. Over the next decade, Yugoslav-Albanian relations witnessed a gradual rapprochement, which was paralleled by Belgrade's devolution of powers to Kosovo. Although the demonstrations which swept across the Kosovo towns in November 1968 failed to secure the campaigners' demands for republican status, they played no small part in alerting the federal authorities to the seriousness of the situation. The government responded by increasing economic assistance to the province and by bringing about a degree of equalisation of the Albanian and Serbo-Croat languages. Rusinow2 has pointed out the symbolic but psychologically important renaming of Kosmet as Kosovo-thus dropping the Serbian term for the Western part of the province-and the significance of Kosovo's adoption of the Albanian flag. Furthermore, the 1969 constitutional amendments ushered in a new relationship between Republic and Autonomous Province:3 Amendment 18 was indicative of this change in two