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rfmcdonaldThe 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was perhaps the most prominent and the most disturbing product of 1980s Yugoslavia's "apocalypse culture". The Memorandum came from the more nationalist end of this culture, a lengthy protest by Serbia's luminaries about the way in which Yugoslavia's decaying political orthodoxies were creating a country-wide crisis while fragmenting the Serbian nation: Croatian Serbs were being assimilated, Vojvodina was being made almost into a republic against all sense, Montenegro's separate political identity was creating a separate ethnic identity, the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina were separated by an unnatural frontier.b and the separation of the Serbs of Vojvodina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro from the main body of Serbdom. Worst of all, the Memorandum's authors concluded, was Kosovo.
The Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija not only have their past, embodied in cultural and historical monuments of priceless value, but also their own spiritual, cultural, and moral values now in the present, for they are living in the cradle of the Serbs' historical existence. The acts of violence which down through the centuries have decimated the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija are here and now, in our own era, reaching their highest pitch. The exodus of the Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija in Socialist Yugoslavia exceeds in scope and character all earlier stages of this great persecution of the Serbian people. In his day, Jovan Cvijic estimated that in all the population migrations, from the mass exodus led by Arsenije Carnojevic in 1690 to the early years of the present century, more than 500,000 Serbs were uprooted; of this number, between 1876 and 1912, some 150,000 Serbs were driven from hearth and home by the savage terror of the local privileged Albanian bashi-bazouks. During World War II, more than 60,000 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo and Metohija, but it was after the war that this exodus reached its highest proportions: in the last twenty-odd years, upwards of 200,000 Serbs have been forced to leave. It is not just that the last of the remnants of the Serbian nation are leaving their homes at an unabated rate, but according to all evidence, faced with a physical, moral and psychological reign of terror, they seem to be preparing for their final exodus. Unless things change radically, in less than ten years' time there will no longer be any Serbs left in Kosovo, and an "ethnically pure" Kosovo, that unambiguously stated goal of the Greater Albanian racists, already outlined in the programmes and actions of the Prizren League of 1878-1881, will be achieved.
Leave aside the long history of first Serbian then Yugoslav ethnic cleansing of Kosovo that caused the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Albanians over five decades. Ignore the remarkable continuity claimed for Albanian nationalist organizations in Kosova/o despite two world wars and Tito's post-war crackdowns. Pointedly don't note how the authors accuse Serbia's traditional political leadership of rampant incompetence. Don't bother to note the equation of Albanian nationalism with racism and the odd failure to mention Serbian nationalism. What's particularly interesting is the Memorandum's emphasis on the spectre of an "'ethnically pure' Kosovo." It is true that Kosovar Serbs emigrated in large numbers in the quarter-century before the breakup of Yugoslavia, but as Branka Magas observed in her 1992 Verso collection The Destruction of Yugoslavia and as Allcock demonstrated in his more than competent Explaining Yugoslavia this was part of all-Yugoslav trends, with people moving from poor regions to rich regions and from outlying provinces to their titular homelands. Bosnian Serbs moved to the Serbian republic in large numbers, for instance, while Bosnian Croats went west in droves. It's hardly as if Kosovar Albanians didn't also emigrate in large numbers. Chapter 6 of John Allcock's Explaining Yugoslavia points out that although war played a role in altering the ethnic geography of the former Yugoslavia, simple natural uncontrollable drift from poorer areas to richer ones played at least as much of a role. The Albanization of Kosova/o over the Middle Ages was aided by war, true, but the poverty of the Albanians' mountainous homeland was rather more responsible.
In the modern era, the most important factor to be considered in the changing ethnic geography of Yugoslavia was the Albanians' high fertility. Their population history in the period after the Second World War deserves special attention, not least because the Albanians resisted the trend of other Yugoslav groups towards the third stage of the demographic transition, with low birth and death rates, but Yugoslavia's Albanians resisted this demographic trend simply. The isolation of the already conservative Albanians from wider Yugoslav society was largely responsible for this, as the Library of Congress' Yugoslavia country study noted, since the Albanians traditionally experienced the Yugoslavian state as an oppressive force and their homelands remained some of the most underdeveloped areas of Yugoslavia.
The high fertility of Yugoslavian Albanians was entirely understandable in secular terms. Yugoslavian Albanians were the most isolated and conservative population in one of the most traditionally conservative countries of Europe, minimally engaged with wider society and traditionally distrustful of the Yugoslav state that had persecuted their fellows in the past. If Yugoslavia had managed to survive the 1980s intact, this certainly would have changed as the autonomous government of Kosova/o steadily accumulated greater legitimacy and came to be trusted, as incomes rose through remittances from a growing labour diaspora if not through some measure of economic growth in the Albanians' homeland, and as European popular culture inevitably made its way into the most remote corners of Yugoslavia. Even now, after a decade of war and intense suffering, the Kosovar Albanians are already well into the demographic transition.
The response of the Memorandum generation of Serbian nationalists, however, was different.
The languages of constitutionalism, of law and order, of human rights are deployed in the Memorandum. That's why the wider context of the Memorandum is so disturbing. The authors conflated natural processes--the emigration of Kosovar Serbs, the retarded demographic transition of Yugoslavian Albanians--with actual political causes. Kosovar Serbs left their home province because Kosova/o was desperately poor and Yugoslavian Albanians maintained a high fertility rate because they were conservative, not because Albanians were conspiring to dominate Yugoslavia. This politicization of natural trends, not incidentally, made it quite possible to openly consider political "solutions" to these issues. The representation of Albanians as a "biological" threat, as bodies which threatened the existence of a particular nation-state, as menaces to be dealt with via all manner of political means made the Serbian-dominated police state of the 1989-1998 period and the attempt at ethnically cleansing the Kosovar Albanians in 1998-1999 possible.
This historical experience is the chief reason why I am so disturbed by William Bennett's recent speculations about how aborting African-American fetuses would reduce crime. The sort of language that reduces very complex social and cultural realities to specious biological differences which in turn can be dealt with by the state for the benefit of all has created in horrors elsewhere. We've been lucky so far in that we've lacked the technology necessary for a full implementation: ethnic cleansing is a crude technique. Mid-21st century biotechnology, on the other hand . . .
I've said time and again that Yugoslavia was a modern society, that in Yugoslavia many of the trends of the modern world were beta-tested. Did it lead the world in this trend, too? It's best to be very concerned.
The physical, political, legal, and cultural genocide of the Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohija is a worse defeat than any experienced in the liberation wars waged by Serbia from the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 to the uprising of 1941. The reasons for this defeat can primarily be laid at the door of the legacy of the Comintern which is still alive in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia's national policy and the Serbian communists' adherence to this policy, but they also lie in costly ideological and political delusions, ignorance, immaturity, or the inveterate opportunism of generations of Serbian politicians since the Second World War, who are always on the defensive and always worried more about what others think of them and their timid overtures at raising the issue of Serbia's status than about the objective facts affecting the future of the nation whom they lead.
The Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija not only have their past, embodied in cultural and historical monuments of priceless value, but also their own spiritual, cultural, and moral values now in the present, for they are living in the cradle of the Serbs' historical existence. The acts of violence which down through the centuries have decimated the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija are here and now, in our own era, reaching their highest pitch. The exodus of the Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija in Socialist Yugoslavia exceeds in scope and character all earlier stages of this great persecution of the Serbian people. In his day, Jovan Cvijic estimated that in all the population migrations, from the mass exodus led by Arsenije Carnojevic in 1690 to the early years of the present century, more than 500,000 Serbs were uprooted; of this number, between 1876 and 1912, some 150,000 Serbs were driven from hearth and home by the savage terror of the local privileged Albanian bashi-bazouks. During World War II, more than 60,000 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo and Metohija, but it was after the war that this exodus reached its highest proportions: in the last twenty-odd years, upwards of 200,000 Serbs have been forced to leave. It is not just that the last of the remnants of the Serbian nation are leaving their homes at an unabated rate, but according to all evidence, faced with a physical, moral and psychological reign of terror, they seem to be preparing for their final exodus. Unless things change radically, in less than ten years' time there will no longer be any Serbs left in Kosovo, and an "ethnically pure" Kosovo, that unambiguously stated goal of the Greater Albanian racists, already outlined in the programmes and actions of the Prizren League of 1878-1881, will be achieved.
Leave aside the long history of first Serbian then Yugoslav ethnic cleansing of Kosovo that caused the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Albanians over five decades. Ignore the remarkable continuity claimed for Albanian nationalist organizations in Kosova/o despite two world wars and Tito's post-war crackdowns. Pointedly don't note how the authors accuse Serbia's traditional political leadership of rampant incompetence. Don't bother to note the equation of Albanian nationalism with racism and the odd failure to mention Serbian nationalism. What's particularly interesting is the Memorandum's emphasis on the spectre of an "'ethnically pure' Kosovo." It is true that Kosovar Serbs emigrated in large numbers in the quarter-century before the breakup of Yugoslavia, but as Branka Magas observed in her 1992 Verso collection The Destruction of Yugoslavia and as Allcock demonstrated in his more than competent Explaining Yugoslavia this was part of all-Yugoslav trends, with people moving from poor regions to rich regions and from outlying provinces to their titular homelands. Bosnian Serbs moved to the Serbian republic in large numbers, for instance, while Bosnian Croats went west in droves. It's hardly as if Kosovar Albanians didn't also emigrate in large numbers. Chapter 6 of John Allcock's Explaining Yugoslavia points out that although war played a role in altering the ethnic geography of the former Yugoslavia, simple natural uncontrollable drift from poorer areas to richer ones played at least as much of a role. The Albanization of Kosova/o over the Middle Ages was aided by war, true, but the poverty of the Albanians' mountainous homeland was rather more responsible.
In the modern era, the most important factor to be considered in the changing ethnic geography of Yugoslavia was the Albanians' high fertility. Their population history in the period after the Second World War deserves special attention, not least because the Albanians resisted the trend of other Yugoslav groups towards the third stage of the demographic transition, with low birth and death rates, but Yugoslavia's Albanians resisted this demographic trend simply. The isolation of the already conservative Albanians from wider Yugoslav society was largely responsible for this, as the Library of Congress' Yugoslavia country study noted, since the Albanians traditionally experienced the Yugoslavian state as an oppressive force and their homelands remained some of the most underdeveloped areas of Yugoslavia.
The high fertility of Yugoslavian Albanians was entirely understandable in secular terms. Yugoslavian Albanians were the most isolated and conservative population in one of the most traditionally conservative countries of Europe, minimally engaged with wider society and traditionally distrustful of the Yugoslav state that had persecuted their fellows in the past. If Yugoslavia had managed to survive the 1980s intact, this certainly would have changed as the autonomous government of Kosova/o steadily accumulated greater legitimacy and came to be trusted, as incomes rose through remittances from a growing labour diaspora if not through some measure of economic growth in the Albanians' homeland, and as European popular culture inevitably made its way into the most remote corners of Yugoslavia. Even now, after a decade of war and intense suffering, the Kosovar Albanians are already well into the demographic transition.
The response of the Memorandum generation of Serbian nationalists, however, was different.
Kosovo's fate remains a vital question for the entire Serbian nation. If it is not resolved with the sole correct outcome of the imposed war; if genuine security and unambiguous equality for all the peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija are not established; if objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled nation are not created, then this part of the Republic of Serbia and Yugoslavia will become a European issue, with the gravest possible unforeseeable consequences. Kosovo represents one of the most important points in the central Balkans. The ethnic mixture in many Balkan lands reflects the ethnic profile of the Balkan Peninsula, and a demand for an ethnically pure Kosovo, which is being actively pursued, is not only a direct and serious threat to all the peoples who live there as minorities but, if it is achieved, will spark off a wave of expansionism which will pose a real and daily threat to all the national groups living in Yugoslavia.
The languages of constitutionalism, of law and order, of human rights are deployed in the Memorandum. That's why the wider context of the Memorandum is so disturbing. The authors conflated natural processes--the emigration of Kosovar Serbs, the retarded demographic transition of Yugoslavian Albanians--with actual political causes. Kosovar Serbs left their home province because Kosova/o was desperately poor and Yugoslavian Albanians maintained a high fertility rate because they were conservative, not because Albanians were conspiring to dominate Yugoslavia. This politicization of natural trends, not incidentally, made it quite possible to openly consider political "solutions" to these issues. The representation of Albanians as a "biological" threat, as bodies which threatened the existence of a particular nation-state, as menaces to be dealt with via all manner of political means made the Serbian-dominated police state of the 1989-1998 period and the attempt at ethnically cleansing the Kosovar Albanians in 1998-1999 possible.
This historical experience is the chief reason why I am so disturbed by William Bennett's recent speculations about how aborting African-American fetuses would reduce crime. The sort of language that reduces very complex social and cultural realities to specious biological differences which in turn can be dealt with by the state for the benefit of all has created in horrors elsewhere. We've been lucky so far in that we've lacked the technology necessary for a full implementation: ethnic cleansing is a crude technique. Mid-21st century biotechnology, on the other hand . . .
I've said time and again that Yugoslavia was a modern society, that in Yugoslavia many of the trends of the modern world were beta-tested. Did it lead the world in this trend, too? It's best to be very concerned.
