Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

FATEFUL WEAKNESSES 27
republic. But there were indirect comments from the Albanian side to the effect
that republic status could already have been granted in 1945. 72 In November
1968, Albanians demonstrated in Priština and other towns, and shortly thereafter
also in the Macedonian town of Tetovo. Certainly the slogans went in part
beyond the official standpoints but, as even Serbian author Miloš Mišović had to
concede, they did not include a formal demand for a “Republic of Kosovo”. 73
The demand came to the surface, however, as a slogan in the unrest of 1981.
This demand was denounced by Albanian communists and Serbs alike, as well as
by spokespersons of the federal government, as “hostile”,
“counterrevolutionary”, and “directed against the integrity of Yugoslavia”. 74
Properly viewed, these characterizations were utterly capricious, because it is a
generally accepted principle that the constitution of every state should be
considered open to revision. From a political standpoint, moreover, it was absurd
to describe as illegal a postulate which had been a real object of debate.
The new Albanian leadership was deeply embarrassed by the demonstrations
of 1968. Tito viewed these demonstrations as an opening of the vents and did not
interpret them as dangerous or as pointing to a special relationship with Albania;
they could also open the doors to an open discussion of two decades of
repression in Kosovo. Finally, it was conceded by the Serbian side that the
“deformation” in the work of the state organs in Kosovo had been more difficult
than elsewhere. 75 Tito warned against overestimating the importance of the
demonstrations in Kosovo. 76 They were also a reminder to the communist
functionaries not to be forever congratulating themselves self-righteously that the
national questions in Yugoslavia had been solved as a result of the
“international” spirit of communist ideology and of “self-management”.
The Serbian leaders of that day did not like the new constitution, with its
federative structure and with its provision for an independent position for the two
autonomous provinces, but they did not offer any open resistance. Only two
years later, when the provinces began to assert their constitutional rights,
especially in terms of practical equality with the republics on the federal level,
did Serbia’s leaders raise their voices, collecting their demands in the so-called
“Blue Book”. But they did not get anywhere with these demands in Tito’s time. 77
As early as 1969, a new statute for Kosovo had been issued, with the complete
assent of the then-liberal leadership of Serbia; under its provisions, Kosovo
would continue to be a constituent part of Serbia, but at the same time, its
autonomy would be guaranteed and, for the first time, it would be described as “a
part of the federal structure of Yugoslavia”. The price of this compromise was
that the Albanian leadership in Kosovo, with Veli Deva as party chief, to be
replaced in 1971 by Mahmut Bakalli (hitherto city secretary for Priština), had to
hold to a middle position between the radical Albanian demands and the
insistence on the part of Serbs and Montenegrins on holding on to the old order.
The leadership accepted the Yugoslav federal system in which the Albanian
nation was entitled to its own habitat. To the direct question of whether Kosovo
should finally obtain the status of a republic, Bakalli answered in 1978 that the