Page 602 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Dušan T. Bataković
During this silent ethnic cleansing the Serb population in Kosovo and Metohija was reduced by almost half, from 23.6 percent in 1948 to 13.2 percent in 1981, notwithstand- ing their relatively high birth rate during the whole peri- od of Tito’s rule. The Montenegrin population in Kosovo dropped from 3.9 percent in 1948 to 1.7 percent in 1981. Between 1961 and 1981, 42.2 percent of all Kosovo Serbs and 63.3 percent of all Kosovo Montenegrins left the prov- ince to settle in other parts of Serbia or Montenegro. Only 15 percent of these migrations were, however, motivated by economic reasons: all others were triggered by inter- ethnic tensions, pressures and harassments by albanians which remained unpunished by the local police and judi- cial authorities.164
This ethnically motivated persecution also targeted the Serbian Orthodox Church, perceived as the pillar of Ser- bian identity in the Province: bishops, priests, monks and nuns, cemeteries and landed property. Numerous instanc- es of continuous persecution both by albanian national- ists and by albanian provincial bureaucrats were report- ed to the Holy Synod by the Raška–Prizren Diocese on 19 May 1969. Patriarch German, then the head of the Ser- bian Orthodox Church, was compelled to ask Tito, the communist dictator of Yugoslavia, for protection:
“The violence decreases somewhat only to reappear elsewhere in an even more serious form. During the last year its forms have become extreme. There not only has been destruction of crops in the fields, destruction of for- ests (monasteries of Devič, Dečani, Gorioč near Peć), des- ecration of graves (Kosovska Vitina and elsewhere), but even physical assaults on nuns (last year in the monas- teries of Binač near Kosovska Vitina and Mušutište near Prizren, and this spring, in Devič—where the prioress suf- fered serious physical injuries, a novice of the Dečani mon- astery was injured by the axe, a hieromonk of Gorioč mon- astery was hit in the head with a stone, priests around
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Kosovska Mitrovica were stoned, etc.), which has result- ed in the emigration of our faithful from those regions.”165 The Patriarch’s request, just another one in a series of similar complaints to the authorities of Serbia and other federal institutions, produced neither short-term nor long- term results. Namely, j. B. Tito promised protection and law enforcement but, in practice, no tangible results were achieved. Numerous complaints, including copious ver- batim reports by Serb citizens and believers subsequent- ly published in various church magazines, remained en- tirely ignored by the communist authorities both in Bel-
grade and Priština until the early 1980s.166
Moreover, the Kosovo albanian nomenklatura often
allotted the land of the expelled Serbs to immigrants from albania. From 1945 until Tito’s death in 1980, the num- ber of albanians in Kosovo and Metohija almost tripled, which gives a population increase of 164 percent from 1948 to 1981. The number of immigrants from albania has nev- er been exactly determined.
in the first post-war years, their settlement in Kosovo and Metohija had been aimed at facilitating the expected annexation of albania to the Yugoslav federation as the seventh republic. The second wave of albanian settlement was organized between the late 1960s and the early 1980s by the Kosovo albanian nomenklatura in order to bolster the ethnic supremacy of albanians in the Kosovo districts with mixed population and a stronger Serbian presence. The spectacular demographic growth of the Kosovo al- banian population, facilitated by the socialist welfare sys- tem and huge federal and Serbian investments into the economy of the Province, gave additional social stimulus to the hostile nationalism of new generations of Kosovo albanians, at liberty to be educated on a dangerous mix-
165 The whole letter is reproduced in Zadužbine Kosova, 833.
166 For further documentation from the archive of the Holy Syn- od in Belgrade concerning continuous persecution of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Raška–Prizren Diocese between 1945 and 1981, see Zadužbine Kosova, 793–838 Cf also Dimitrije Bogdanović, “The Serbian Church during the Kosovo Hardship” in Predrag D. Kijuk, Dušan T. Bataković and Slobodan Mileusnić, eds., The Battle of Kosovo, 1389–1989 (Belgrade: Homeland, 1989), 142–144.
THE POPULATION OF KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
Nationality
1948
1953
1961
1971
1981
albanian
498,242
524,559
646,168
916,168
1,226,736
Serb
171,911
189,869
227,016
228,264
209,497
Montenegrin
28,050
31,343
37,588
31,555
27,028
Turk
1,315
34,343
25,764
12,244
12,513
Muslim
9,679
6,241
8,026
26,357
58,562
Gypsy
11,230
11,904
3202
14,593
34,126
Others
7,393
9,642
15,787
14,512
15,978
Total
727,820
808,141
963,988
1,243,693
1,584,440
Detailed analysis based on extensive field research can be found in Ruža Petrović & Marina Blagojević, The Migration of Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo and Metohija Results of the Survey Con- ducted in 1985–1986 (Belgrade: Serbian academy of Sciences and arts, 1992).
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