Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

FATEFUL WEAKNESSES 31
difficult for many young Serbs in Kosovo in the 1970s to find a position, because
the Albanian “quota” had to be filled. The out-migration of Serbs and
Montenegrins involved some 112,600 persons between 1961 and 1981,
according to Serbian figures. 89 Of course, many Albanians also migrated from
Kosovo, some of them going to other parts of Yugoslavia, others taking
temporary employment abroad.
The demonstrations of 1981 had no tangible effect on the process of outmigration,
contrary claims by the Serbian side notwithstanding. In autumn 1984,
the magazine NIN reported that since the events of 1981 some 20,000 Serbs and
Montenegrins had left Kosovo. 90 In 1983, only 4,377 Serbs and Montenegrins
had left, according to NIN, while later the number was estimated at 3,000 per
year. Among other things, it must be taken into account that the price of land in
Kosovo was significantly higher than elsewhere in Yugoslavia. A Serb who sold
his property in Kosovo could buy significantly more land elsewhere in
Yugoslavia and in a more civilized environment. Of course, there were also
instances of indirect dislodgement. Albanians bought houses in Serbian
neighborhoods, eventually becoming the local majority. These Albanians were,
for the most part, Muslims and they had different customs. Soon there were
difficulties with the Serbian schools. The Serbian intellectuals in the cities left;
their departure left remaining Serbs feeling culturally isolated.
There were rarely real instances of violence. I tried to investigate such
instances in the vicinity of Vučitrn in July 1982. 91 It soon became obvious that
there were two kinds of Serbs in Kosovo: the long-established Serbs, who were
used to living with Albanians, and the newcomers, whose families had come to
Kosovo only after the Balkan wars of 1912–13. In the interwar period many of
the latter had been settled as “colonists” on land confiscated from Albanian
feudal families. Tito had declined to allow a general return of the colonists to
Kosovo after 1945, but many property questions from the war and the immediate
post-war period remained unsolved.
Interrogations in Serbian villages of Kosovo in all the following years elicited
more or less the same formula. First came endless tirades about rapes, robberies,
property damage, harassments, and so forth; typically, the University of Priština
was identified as the source and refuge of the trouble-makers. To the question
whether any of these things had really taken place nearby, the answer usually
came that this was not the case, but that one could not just wait until they
actually occurred. 92 There were of course troubling incidents, but there were also
myths, such as the example so often cited on Belgrade television of nuns from a
Serbian convent who allegedly needed to carry rifles in order to get around. To
that Vllasi, at the time President of the People’s Front of Kosovo, said that the
nuns could also have mentioned that the Albanians, mainly Catholics in that
region, had for generations regularly performed work for them without
remuneration.
This remained more or less the line along which the debates in and about
Kosovo developed. The Albanian cadres of socialist-Yugoslav orientation carried