Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 29:121–140.

KRISZTIÁN CSAPLÁR-DEGOVICS

Serb–Albanian Conflict on the Territory of Present-day Kosovo

A.D. 7th century to 1914

 

Kosovo is one of the continuous and characteristic foci of conflict on the Balkans of our days, where two rival nations are facing each other in every respect. The idea that the nations living there are hostilely opposed to each other often by irrational and overheated emotions truly difficult to understand can be associated with the history of the Peninsula just as well as with the history of Eastern Europe as a whole. The Kosovo conflict, currently reaching a turning point, is just one of these confrontations with its characteristic ethnic background since the late 19th century. The two opposing sides have been using every possible argument, ideology, historical source, etc. to justify their own national objectives, hence a rather confusing image has emerged to those who are interested in the events of the world that is filled with myths and elements that cannot be linked to reality. The following essay attempts to survey some major problems of the history of Albanian–Serb coexistence with the eyes of a historian, in the light of the historiography of the two peoples, and to contribute to creating a more balanced image of Kosovo to those who are interested in it.

The first issue to be clarified is the definition of Kosovo itself. Both historiographies write about the territory (and it has spread uncritically in the domestic and international media) as if that ‘province’ had been a historical-geographical entity existing for several centuries. Whereas Kosovo, or Kosovo Polje (Rigómező in Hungarian) was only the geographical name of a smaller plain up to 1875, which became known as the remembrance of a medieval battle between Serbs and the Ottomans all over Europe. The first administrative unit called Kosovo was organised by the Ottoman Empire between 1875 and 1878, but that does not correspond to the territory of the present Kosovo, since it included today’s Central and Eastern Kosovo that is currently the north-eastern part of Macedonia with headquarters in Skopje (Üsküb); and the area became autonomous as a Vilayet from the Vilayet of Monastir. It survived with minor modifications until the fall of the Empire. Today’s Kosovo only acquired its present territory in the post-1945 Yugoslavia. Therefore one should take the historical arguments of Serb and Albanian historians speaking about centuries-old conflicts in the case of Kosovo with a grain of salt.

The second question to be clarified in advance is how the Serb and the Albanian historiography views the history of the province¹. No historical work on Kosovo has been published to this day which would have been produced jointly by the Serb and the Albanian scholarly world. It is common in both historiographies that they primarily write about their own national history: they do not only diminish the role of the other party but pay no attention to the presence of peoples that used to live on the same territory, such as the Greeks, Wallachs, Saxons, Latins (of Ragusa), the Roma, the Cherkes, etc. Historiography has been over-politicised by both parties, therefore it can be stated that two competing national historiographies are also confronted in the case of Kosovo. The logic of the historical works primarily communicating and mediating (current) political messages (i.e. not necessarily every Serb and Albanian historical writing dealing with the history of the area) can be mostly linked to the following scheme of thought: 1. we were here first; 2. we have been in majority ever since; 3. Kosovo is the price of our sufferings. An important difference, however, between the two historiographies is that there has been no Serbian historian to this day who has learned Albanian or tried to understand Albanian historical thinking, or would have sought for some value in Albanians, whereas there are examples fir this on the opposite side.

 

The Middle Ages

Serb (political) historiography suggests that the current ethnic conditions of Kosovo have emerged only during the past decades as a result of violent interferences. And this is precisely where the main issue of research of the confronting historiographies is hidden: namely how the ethnic history of the area has developed? “Who was there first? Who are in majority and since when?” (And consequently: “who has more right to live there today?”).

According to the most widespread Serb historical stand the Kosovo of today had been a central territory of medieval Serbia ever since Slav occupation, moreover, it was the cradle of Serb culture itself. Later on it was the centre of the Balkan Empire of Tsar Dušan (1331–1355) (see the headquarters of the Tsar’s Court at Prizren). It was an area of Serb (Slav) majority during the entire course of the Middle Ages and Albanians occurred only accidentally (in fact Serb historians dealing with the Middle Ages try to ignore their presence). The experience of constituting a state, however, cannot only be linked to the Nemanja dynasty for in the first part of the 15th century (up to the fall of Novo Brdo in 1455) an autonomous Serb state was also established by Vuk and Đurađ Branković (the latter one known as György Brankovics in Hungarian history).

On the other hand Albanian historiography considers the Albanians of Kosovo as descendants of the Dardan tribe of Illyrians who had even fought against Alexander the Great and see Kosovo as the successor of Dardania (see one of the banners often used by the Albanians of Kosovo). In other words, the Albanians consider themselves as autochthonous and acknowledge the presence of Serbs only from the Slav conquest on. It can be definitely stated that the descent from the Dardani is one of the key elements of the identity of the Kosovo Albanians, and getting acquainted with the history of the Dardani represents a prominent field of research for Albanian historiography as well as archaeology (to this see the Albanian historical annals entitled Gjurmime albanologjike published in Kosovo since 1966).

Today non-Serb and non-Albanian historiography accepts that Serbian presence had been continuous on the territory of today’s Kosovo since the 7th century. As far as I know, there has been no consensus (and none could be reached) among historians concerning the exact historical moment/period from which a Slav ethnic community can be regarded as Serb, Croat, Pole, etc. For the time being the only thing that we know is that the first historical source mentioning ‘Serbs’ is De administrando imperio written/collected by Constantinus Porphyrogenetus² which locates the first Serb polities (zhupas) on the territory of present-day Herzegovina, the Sandžak and Montenegro (Hum/ Zahumlje/Humska Zemlja, Trebinje/Travunia, Dioklea/Duklja, etc.) Chapter 32 of that work mentions that the border city between Serbs and Bulgarians (on the Bulgarian side) was ‘Rascia’ (Raš) to be found in today’s Western Serbia, which became the name of the Zhupanate of Raška (Rascia in Latin) formed later on (and was the core of the Medieval Orthodox Serb state)³. It can be stated, accordingly, that ever since there is a written source available on Serb history, according to our present knowledge Kosovo could not be the cradle of Serb culture.

The territory of Kosovo was acquired by the Serbian state in the wake of the weakening of the first Bulgarian Empire and the growing strength of the great Zhupan known by Hungarians as Stephen Nemanja, the lord of Raška after the battle of Pantin (northwest of Priština/Prishtina) in 1168 between the Byzantines and Serbs. From then on it was part of Serbia up to the Ottoman conquest; and from the 1200s onwards the focus of the state was truly shifted to this place since, in contrast with the first known ethnic Serb territories, there were significantly fortified (Byzantine) towns here that could even function as royal seats from 1217 on.

As to the ethnic side of the question, that much can be learned from the researches of Konstantin Jireček⁴ that the Serb ethnic core territory started to expand towards Rivers Morava and Danube from the above-mentioned first known zhupanates. It turned to southeast when the authority of the Serb rulers was increasingly approaching the borders of Byzantine Macedonia from the middle of the 13th century, but the main thrust of expansion continued to be the Danube according to Jireček. The 14th-century conquests reached their peak at the time of Tsar Dušan when the borders of the country stretched as far as the Peloponnesian Peninsula. It is important, however, to note about this empire that it was not Serb, but a Serb–Byzantine empire even on the basis of the Tsar’s titles and diplomas issued. He gave the Serb ethnic core regions up to the borders of present-day Kosovo and Macedonia to his son and heir apparent, the later Tsar Uroš I (1355–1371) for governance, while he himself reigned on the Byzantine territories annexed with the help of the majority of the Serb aristocracy and army, retaining Byzantine public administration and governance along the pattern of the ruler of Constantinople as “ in Christ, the God faithful Emperor of Greeks and Serbs”, as ”Emperor of all Serb and Greek lands and seacoasts, of Albania and of the great West” and “as the Emperor of Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Albanians” (sic!). In other words, he was heading a multinational state organised half along Serb and half along Byzantine pattern.

As far as the Albanians are concerned, there is no unambiguous proof that they are truly the descendants of Illyrians. International (non-Albanian) literature, however, does not have any better theory. It is sure that they are an Indo-European people, Romanised between the 2nd and 6th centuries A.D. and affected by Christianisation, similarly to the Serbs(!) from Rome for the first time. The first written sources about them survived from the 11th century (written by Michael Attaleiates and Anna Komnena), who reported on the existence of a principality called ‘Arbanum/Arbanon’ somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Kruja (this is where the currently used international name of Albanians comes from). The Croat historian Milan Šufflay’s views still considered as well-founded⁵ hold that Albanians started to spread out from the quadrangle of Bar–Prizren–Ohrid–Vlora at first towards the east and next to the south in the 13th–14th centuries. Based on the researches of Šufflay and Jireček it can be validated by archive sources that the Albanians were present in the western part of Kosovo from the early 13th century on (i.e. from the time when the territory came into possession of the Serbian state!), and that too in significant proportions. Archive sources support the fact that settlement in that territory could only be partly attributed to the spontaneous expansion of Albanians, because the Serb rulers themselves were interested in filling up areas left vacant by withdrawing Romanised/Graecised elements moving with the retreating Byzantine public administration. In fact Catholic as well as Orthodox Albanians also participated in the resettlements. This process lasted up to the middle of the 14th century and affected not only the territory of today’s Kosovo, but also those of present-day Macedonia and Northern Greece, in other words the spread of Albanians on the Balkans was greatly promoted by Serbian rulers in the Middle Ages. For instance, when the Saint Archangels monastery was founded by Tsar Dušan in Prizren he also founded sixty villages to cater for the monastery, six of which were Albanian⁶. At the same time it is also important to note that the Albanians living on the territory of present-day Kosovo and Macedonia were on the verge of total assimilation in the middle of the 15th century, as it is held by the Kosovo Albanian historian Hasan Kaleshi, and this tendency was reversed by the Ottoman conquest⁷.

 

The First Battle of Kosovo Polje (28 June 1389)

The first battle of Kosovo Polje between the Serb baronial coalition headed by Prince Lazar (Lazar Hrebeljanović) and the Ottoman ruler Murad I has become an event of primary significance in the Middle Ages from the angle of Serbs. The battle enormously reverberated in Serb historical memory and its impact on the development of Serbian mentality is beyond doubt. Very little is known about the battle itself, yet the Serbian tradition of Kosovo and of the Morava banks has preserved a relatively detailed history of events (a conflict among the Serb lords on the eve of the battle, the treachery of Vuk Branković on the battlefield, the successful attempt of Miloš Obilić against Murad, the martyrdom of Prince Lazar and his associates, etc.). What seems to be sure on the basis of archival sources, of Ottoman chronicles (Neşri) and Byzantine notes, etc., is that the Serb army was defeated, Murad died, and that Vuk Branković was not a traitor⁸. It is also certain that Serb statehood did not fail here in the long term but at the battle fought at the bank of River Maritsa in 1371. The lost battle of the Ottomans against Timur Lenk at Ankara in 1402, however, gave a lease of life for some decades to the Serb successor states. (It should be noted that Albanian troops also fought in the battle of Kosovo Polje on the side of Serbs.)

Why has the battle become a turning point in the history of ideology for Serbian people? In the early 13th century a curious and unique literary genre emerged in Serbia: it was the so-called “Old Serbian biographies of rulers”⁹. Originally the genre preserved historical biographies of the Nemanjids densely loaded with religious elements: the family was recorded as a dynasty, having miraculous features, chosen by God to rule over the Serbs (in this context see the Árpáds, a “clan of holy kings”). After the extinction of the dynasty (in 1371) the topoi so far applicable only to them (divine commission, charisma, creators of peace and quiet, role models of faith/ religiousness, charitable behaviour, founding churches/monasteries, armed defence of territories given in custody by God, regaining lost Serb territories, etc.) were inherited by Prince Lazar, more precisely the Serb Prince martyred was invested with these qualities by the Serb monastic communities creating the cult of Prince Lazar along the River Morava, receiving the political support of Prince Lazar’s son Stefan Latarević who nurtured all-Serb political ambitions (he is also known in Hungarian history as Stephen Lazarevich, a pillar of King Sigismund’s authority, having the young János Hunyadi as one of his pages).

The cult of Prince Saint Lazar developed after 1389 in a specific historical moment¹⁰. As a consequence of the catastrophic Serb defeat the Orthodox monks living in Serbian monasteries, learning from the history of the Jewish people of the Old Testament and from the example of Bulgarian statehood that had fallen victim of the Ottoman conquest, decided not to leave the survival of the Serb people, culture and writing to chance, but to consciously wait for dispersion (life without an autonomous state) and even prepare the people for that condition. So far only members of the Nemanja dynasty, the nobility and the monks had known about the rulers’ biographies mentioned above, since originally they were the targeted audience of that literary genre (the people as such had never been mentioned by the authors when presenting the life of different rulers), therefore its impact on shaping identity could be felt only among them. After the extinction of the dynasty and the lost battle an opportunity opened up for changing this tendency. The cult of Saint Lazar seemed to be suitable for refreshing historical consciousness among the nobles and the monks and to make it present among the people in general. In fact the respect of a holy monarch makes it possible for a society to identify with the cult figure and the projected values. The cult unfolding among the monks along River Morava could squeeze out any other competing trend; in this case the ecclesiastic communities did not only play the role of transmitting, but also of creating tradition. In addition to religious elements they preserved the ideas and norms of the monarchist Serb society at a moment, when Serbia fell and the Ottoman conquest took place. The lost battle of Ankara provided useful decades in the early 15th century to the unique development and spreading of the cult.

The monastic communities evoking the memory of Lazar did not follow the schemes of the Old Serb biographies of rulers in every respect. This time the biographers themselves were not members of the ruling dynasty, neither the monks of monasteries founded by the ruling dynasty. The new-type biographies this time were not primarily addressed to the religious and secular elite but to lay society in general. Thus they created and confirmed the bases of collective memory at the moment of dispersion. In the cult Prince Lazar, following the biographies of the Nemanjids, represented the heroes of the Old Testament in the modern age: he was Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, etc. Thus his personality became part of a mythic unity with “his people”. It is a novelty, however, that parallels from the New Testament are also added to him: he dies as a holy warrior and a martyr ruler. Similarly to Christ he sacrifices his life for the country, for Serbia; he suffers death as a human being, a man, a father, a husband, a commander, a ruler and protector. His death, however, does not mean the victory of descent but that of faith. It derives from the mythic unity between Prince Lazar and the people that the people themselves, who are just as important actors in the new cult as the Prince, are also martyred for the Christian faith. Hence the history of Serbia obtains a new sense: since everything happened according to God’s will, the history of the Serbs became a history of salvation. The Serb people became the new Israel, the chosen people and they had to endure those scourges of destiny so that they may once experience redemption in keeping with the parallels in the Old and New Testaments. This is why the battle of Kosovo Polje became important in the life of the people: remembrance and the cult of the heroic Prince helped endure and cope with the loss of the state and the Ottoman conquest, and at the same time it also offered hope as to the future. And hope had simultaneously become a political and religious expectation.

The Serb Orthodox Church itself is linked by several other threads to the territory of the present-day Kosovo besides what was mentioned above. In the heyday of the medieval state (13th–14th centuries) the centre of the sate was on that territory, the Nemanjids founded the most beautiful and largest monasteries in Dečan, Gračanica, Prizren, Pećen, etc. It was in Kosovo that the Church had acquired the highest ecclesiastic status: the Metropolitan of Peć became Patriarch in 1346. It is a less known fact, however, that it was not in a legitimate way: the appointment in fact did not come from Constantinople but from Dušan who was totally unwarranted and possessed at that time only the title of King under the name Uroš IV (originally the Serb royal crown did not come from the Byzantine capital, but from Rome in 1217, and the first coronation took place in keeping with the Latin rite). The reason was simple: the Serb monarch could only take the title of an Emperor that is of a Tsar from the hands of a Patriarch, but neither the Emperor, nor the ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was inclined to give his blessing for it. Therefore the King at first created a Patriarch and next had himself crowned as Tsar in Skopje. As a result the entire Serb Orthodox Church was excommunicated in the Byzantine capital, and a schism took place. It was terminated by the political wisdom and diplomatic skills of Prince Lazar in 1375; this is also a reason why the Serb fraternity, thankful for the withdrawal of excommunication, gladly cultivated the memory of Prince Lazar. In summary it can be stated that the transfer of the remembrance of the battle as well as of the medieval Serb statehood was undertaken by the Serb Orthodox Church which preserved it up to the creation of the nation-state in the 19th century, when the myth was somewhat transformed and obtained new vigour.

The image of the ‘Crucified Kosovo’, or the basis of the Serbian image of Kosovo that may be known from the news of today, emerged only in the second half of the 19th century. As a result of the major Eastern crisis that broke out in 1878, Serbia gained its sovereignty as a state. The new independent state had, for decades, nurtured the dream of uniting the territories inhabited by Serbs (to this see: Ilija Garašanin: Načertanije. 1844)¹¹: the most important aim within this endeavour would have been to acquire Bosnia and Herzegovina. I said ”it would have been because the Austro– Hungarian Monarchy obtained the consent of Great Powers to occupy that Ottoman province. And this led to the final confrontation between Vienna and Belgrade in the long run. Expansion in the Balkans had become a vital issue for the Serb state, because it did not want to lose in the competition of modern nationalisms unfolding on the Peninsula. Serbs outside the borders of the independent Serbia basically lived on the territory of the Monarchy and of the dying Ottoman Empire: Belgrade saw the weaker enemy in the latter one and after the ‘loss’ of Bosnia and Herzegovina its attention and interest turned towards the south, towards today’s Kosovo kept on record as ‘Old Serbia‘ and towards Macedonia.

Naturally the demand for the acquisition of Old Serbia was not entirely new, for it also figured in the above-mentioned work of Ilija Garašanin among the desired aims as part of the erstwhile Nemanjid Empire though not at all with the same weight as Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1844 the former Serb minister of home affairs did not even make it clear what he had meant under the concept of Old Serbia and he did not outline its borders. After 1878, however, that was also done and as a result of historical arguments and due to the former statehood it was not the country of the early Nemanja rulers that was taken as a basis of reference but rather the empire of Tsar Dušan¹². In 1889 an eminent opportunity offered itself for commemorating the 500th anniversary of the first battle of Kosovo Polje with a series of official celebrations (cf. with the Hungarian millenary celebrations). In addition to the historical memory of the battle religious memory linked to Kosovo Polje also gained new impetus with the support of the Church and of political will. The issue of the acquisition of the Kosovo Vilayet, organised only a few years earlier, by force became a key issue of Serbian (historical) salvation and redemption. In this issue the Belgrade government could also rely on the support of Russia, another major Orthodox power. In 1875 the Russian consul of Prizren said the following to the Serb historian Pantelija Srećković: “The Serbs lost their empire in the land of Kosovo, and the destiny of the Balkan Peninsula as well as of the Serb people will once be decided upon in a battle in Kosovo.”¹³

The government of the independent Serbia used the available decades well: several generations were brought up in the state school network built up under the spell of Kosovo Polje¹⁴. The state, the army, and the Serb society itself were deliberately preparing for the “reoccupation of the ancient Serb lands”. Eminent opportunities to this were offered by the first and second Balkan wars (1912–1913)¹⁵. It is clear on the basis of surviving archive sources and Serb soldiers’ diaries that the Serb politicians as well as every single member of the Serbian army fought through the two wars to take revenge also for the battle of Kosovo Polje¹⁶. The endpoint of this historical line was a draft memorandum left incomplete by the Serb Academy of Science and Art written in 1986 and the commemoration held on 28 June 1989 at Kosovo Polje.

 

The Early Modern Age (16th–18th Centuries)

One of the most lasting results of the Ottoman conquest was that the merger of Albanians into the Serb and Greek peoples did not only halt, but took a reverse turn. In 1455 the conquerors conducted a census of the population of the new Sanjaks formed on the former Branković estates. The defter took account of about 600–650 villages with the names of the male residents and sometimes their ethnicity. The imminent assimilation could be assumed on the basis of several thousand surviving names after some philological argumentation, moreover, historians could outline a hazy image by the arrangement of data concerning the ethnic proportions on the territory of present-day Kosovo in the 15th century¹⁷. Though Albanian and Serb historiography assess the data of the defters differently (and there had been a difference of opinion even among Albanian historians, because the pro-Turkish attitude of Kaleshi, coming from an Ottoman family did not receive unanimous acclaim), it can be stated for sure that one could see a stable Albanian presence in about eighty villages in the middle of the 15th century on the territory of the present province. Albanians living in those villages followed the Orthodox faith and based on their names (such as Đorđe Izić, a family name from the Albanian ‘i zi’ meaning ‘black [man]) they were in an advanced state of assimilation. According to Kaleshi, if the conquest was delayed by only 50–100 years, the Albanians would have totally merged into the Serb population living in that area (this logic has not been seriously accepted either by Albanian or Serbian historiography). This way, however, the situation of Albanian presence and of the language was changed, but those Albanian historical works that speak about Albanian majority in Kosovo already in the 16th century are strongly exaggerating.

The major question of the early modern age, however, should not be linked to the moment of Ottoman conquest and not even to the 16th century, but to 1690 and to 1737. During the course of the Habsburg–Ottoman wars Western Christian armies penetrated as far as to the territory of today’s Macedonia, the presence of which provoked the general uprising of Serbs. After the withdrawal of those armies Serbs fearing reprisals fled in big crowds to the territory of the Habsburg Empire according to Serb historiography, under the leadership of Patriarch Arsenije Crnojević III in 1690. The huge exodus, led by the Patriarch, is considered as the flight of several hundred thousand people (30 to 40 thousand families) (veliki seoba). It is part of the myth that crowds of Muslim Albanians from Albania moved into territories of Old Serbia thus depopulated, partly with the help of the Ottoman authorities, and kept on persecuting and harassing the Serbs who remained there. From then on the majority of Serb historical works speak about violent Islamisation and Albanisation to the detriment of Orthodox Serbs. Actually every Serb historical concept related to Kosovo is based on this assumption¹⁸.

During those two years mentioned above Habsburg armies really went deep into the heart of the Balkans and it had indeed provoked uprisings of the local Christian population. Nevertheless, Noel Malcolm has found four important counter-arguments during his archival researches to the notion of considering the years 1690 and 1737 as turning points by the views represented by Serb historiography¹⁹, namely:

– 1. There must have remained some written traces of such a huge mass of people fleeing away from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Malcolm, however only found reference to the Patriarch escaping with a handful of his followers after the withdrawal of the Habsburg army.

– 2. The Habsburg troops fighting in the heart of the Balkans were massacring on large scale the (urban) Muslim population of the area which did provoke a wave of escape of Muslims as well. The devastations of the Ottoman–Tartar repressive army arriving after the withdrawal of the Christian forces did provoke a secondary wave of flights, in other words it is not only the majority of the Christian inhabitants of the province who had fled but also the Muslims. (It should be noted that during the time of the attacks of the Western troops the Orthodox families deciding to flight did not necessarily go towards the north which was the direction of the frontline.)

– 3. It is an undisputable fact that the settlement area of the Serb ethnic group moved vigorously towards the north in the early modern age, and reached and stayed in the area of present-day Vojvodina by the first part of the 18th century. According to researches done by Malcolm, Serbs did flee in both war years but this trend was not decisive. According to the British historian we can witness an emigration and expatriation lasting for several decades in several waves which was of all-Serbian nature but not specific of Kosovo. The Orthodox population mostly fled from the territory of present Montenegro, the Sandžak and Northeastern Kosovo.

– 4. In 1690 as well as in 1737 major anti-Ottoman uprisings broke out on the territory of the present-day Kosovo and Macedonia, but they were not purely Serb ones because numerous Catholic Albanian tribes also participated in them. Already in 1689 the warriors of the big North Albanian Këlmendi tribe joined the troops of General Piccolomini, and in 1737 members of the Hoti and Gruda tribes also revolted besides the Këlmendis which were also hit by the Ottoman reprisals. After the defeat of the Habsburgs part of the revolted Catholic Albanians fled together with the Serbs towards the north. Moreover, they were also admitted and settled by the administration in Vienna at the newly created Border Guard Region and among the Serbs organised into regiments [!], more exactly in the villages of Hrtkovci, Nikinci and Jarak in Syrmia, and Albanians settling down here retained their Catholic religion²⁰.

It is almost impossible to trace the ethnic relations of the early modern age even in broader outline. The reason is that few Western sources have survived, and the Ottoman sources have not been studied by historians in this respect, at least no serious study has been done on the basis of archival sources. A further difficulty is that the terminology of Western sources (papal visitations, diaries of military officers, etc.) is rather confusing: for instance the word ‘Slav’ usually means Christian (whereas several hundreds of thousands of Muslims lived in the heart of the Balkans), the word ‘Turci’ usually means Muslim, but occasionally it denotes ethnicity, etc. A further difficulty is represented by the fact that a significant part of Albanians was so-called crypto-Christian in order to mislead the Ottoman authorities well into the middle of the 19th century (they converted to Islam only superficially and kept on exercising also the rites of the Catholic or Orthodox religion), and that a significant part of Serbs living on the territory of Kosovo wore the plis, the white cap characteristic of Albanians in order to mislead the authorities (or to avoid harassment). For this reason a foreign traveller could justly regard them as Muslims.

It seems to be sure that Albanians were continuously expanding on the territory of Kosovo since the end of the 16th century. Handling explanations with due criticism one may say on the basis of the surveys of Jovan Cvijić and the anthropo-geographic school founded by him²¹ that there had been huge waves of migration on the territory under survey in the 17th and 18th centuries. The continuity of the Serb and Albanian ethnic groups was maintained but not in the majority of individual families: the majority of the population of the region was replaced. During the course of those migrations every ethnic group (Serb, Albanian, Turkish, Aruman, Roma, etc.) and every social stratum (city-dwellers, village people, highlanders, shepherds, merchants, craftsmen, etc.) moved. Part of the migrations took place within the Monastir Vilayet, and another part was manifest in immigration and emigration. It is difficult to validate or criticise the statements of the two historiographies due to the lack of relevant sources.

The Serb statement, however, according to which Albanians arrived to the territory of Kosovo in big crowds during the 18th century, can be accepted. In fact the relative majority of Albanians (not of Muslims) did emerge by the turn of the century, but it only stabilised lastingly in the second half of the 19th century. Albanian immigration began from the tribal regions of Northern Albania and it had several reasons. The most important reason was economic: fertile plains offered better livelihood than the slowly overpopulated mountainous regions. Fear from unexpected vendettas could also be a reason of resettlements. Conquerors were also participants in altering ethnic relations who saw a political tool in resettlement for checking inhabitants engaged in robbery, for the repopulation of deserted areas or for punishing insurrections²². For instance, the part of the Këlmendis, mentioned earlier in relation to the events of 1690 and 1737, that remained in their place of residence were resettled out of reprisal. Albanians moving to the territory of Kosovo this way were not followed by the Catholic priests of the ‘old homeland’, they had become mostly Muslims by the wake of the Balkan wars though the mountainous territories in the western parts have retained their Catholic majority to this day.

There is yet another concept one should get acquainted with in relation to the early modern age and it is the meaning of ‘arnautaš’. This word appeared in Serb historical and political thinking in the late 19th century. The word arnautaš was practically used to denote Serbs who were forcefully converted to Islam and subsequently became Albanians (forced to take over the Albanian language). According to Serb scholarly life this stratum made up about 30% of the Albanians of Old Serbia (more or less the territory of the present Kosovo and Macedonia) at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries; they were regarded as potential Serbs who would gladly return to the ethnic family also after their return to the motherland²³. In fact the concept of arnautaš proved to be a good tool for face-lifting statistical tables created to support Serb historical and ethnic arguments. The prolific writer and historian Spiridion Gopčević²⁴ was a master of producing such tables besides Serb diplomacy as well as the Orthodox Church. A good example of the latter ones is the series of data collected by the Serb consulate in Priština in 1905 about the sanjaks of Priština, Prizren and Ipek²⁵. From this see its first specific categories:

The Long 19th Century

The relative Albanian majority for the time being could emerge and stabilise only towards the second part of the 19th century on the territory of the present-day Kosovo²⁶. According to an Austrian diplomat the minor population movement in the beginning of the century was followed by another one in the middle of the century from the direction of today’s Northern Albania²⁷. This, however, does not automatically mean that the northern part of the Monastir Vilayet became a Muslim-majority one as a result of the arrival of fragmentary tribes moving towards the east. In fact the population of the mountains around the line between Ipek and Prizren was solidly Catholic, and all in all Christians could remain in relative majority in these sanjaks of the Empire up to the 1870s.

Naturally, up to that historical moment the coexistence of Albanians and Serbs was not free of conflicts, but it would also be an exaggeration to say that their life consisted of a series of continuous conflicts. Nothing burdened the image created about each other that would have irreversibly confronted the two peoples up to the age of the emergence of nations in the 19th century.

As a result of the currently ongoing conflict the study and presentation of those Serb objectives that aimed at involving Albanians into the plans of a common, all-Balkan resurrection against the Ottomans in the 19th century has been pushed into the background. Data are available already from the time of the uprising led by Karađorđe early in that century (concerning the period between 1804 and 1812) according to which some of the mixed Albanian and Slav as well as purely Albanian-speaking tribes (such as those of Bjelopavlić, Piper, etc.) fought in alliance with Serb insurgents for almost a decade²⁸. It can be proved by archival sources that the rulers and politicians of autonomous Serbia and Montenegro (the Serb Prince Miloš Obilić, the Serb Minister of Home Affairs Ilija Garašanin; Petar Petrović-Njegoš I and II, Princes of Montenegro and Vladika, etc.) cultivated good relations with the Albanian elite living on the present territory of Kosovo, Macedonia and Northern Albania. The aim of keeping in touch was partly to keep up the flow of information (‘monitoring‘ and influencing events in Old Serbia²⁹) and partly to keep the idea alive of getting independent jointly. Initially the Belgrade Court established contacts only with Christians, but from the 1860s onwards it also involved the Muslim elite in the anti-Constantinople plans. The basis of negotiations was the idea of autonomy to be demanded by the Balkan people, possibly (a joint) independence to be acquired, if necessary, even by armed force. Princes Obrenović and Petrović- Njegoš even built up a minor network of agents in regions inhabited by Albanians. On this basis it can be stated that the elites of Belgrade and Cetinje/Podgorica were aware of the significance of Albanians. Russian diplomacy was also favouring rapprochement between Serbs and Albanians and the establishment of a Balkan alliance against the Ottomans. From the second half of the 1860s the Russian Embassy in Constantinople actually participated in preparing talks and supported it even financially³⁰.

In 1875 an uprising broke out in Herzegovina leading to armed conflict even on territories inhabited by Bulgarians. It set out an avalanche on the Balkan Peninsula that affected the further history of the relationship between Albanians and Serbs. Under the impact of the events in Herzegovina and Bulgaria the two Slav principalities of Serbia and Montenegro felt that the time had come for a general uprising, and the time had come for squeezing out the Ottomans from the European continent. In 1876 the Serbian army began its operations for the acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an aim desired for decades. While the majority of Serb troops were fighting in that Ottoman Vilayet, a smaller army unit was commanded to move in the southern direction to open a diversionary manoeuvre in the Niš sanjak. The sanjak was mostly inhabited by Muslims with the majority speaking a Slav language and the minority being Albanian.

The very first element of the history of conflicts in Kosovo still in progress curiously began here, outside the borders of the province. In 1876 Serbia occupied and annexed the Niš sanjak, and in keeping with the order from Belgrade it started a merciless and targeted cleansing. The attack affected about 600 villages of mixed Slav and Albanian (as well as Muslim) population and 200,000 people³¹. The Serbian army destroyed the villages and massacred the civilian population. It is difficult to assess the number of those who lost everything as refugees and left the territory of the sanjak for good. Serb historiography knows about 30 to 35 thousand people, the Albanian one speaks about 80 thousand Muslims driven away. The actual figure may be closer to the latter one though presumably the figure of Albanian historiography is exaggerated. A smaller part of the refugees fled towards the south, in the direction of the Aegean Sea, but the majority chose the newly organised Kosovo Vilayet (see p. 1). Their number could be about fifty thousand at the most, men and women, old and young people alike. Ethnically they were mostly Albanians, and a minority were Slavs. They arrived destitute, dispossessed, and their losses were never compensated by anyone. The refugees carried along the news of the massacres, the discriminating policy of the functioning Serb military administration and the panic that was provoked by the nightmare of physical destruction. Even a delegated official of Belgrade reported on the (military) policy in progress in the annexed sanjak in his book³².

Interestingly the population of Serb ethnicity, living in the eastern part of the then Kosovo Vilayet received the refugees with sympathy and solidarity. Nationalist vehemence was not characteristically present either here or on the territory of autonomous Serbia at that time. Yet, with the passage of time the wrath of refugees and the pressure for compensation turned against them. The desire to take revenge, provoked by flight was, however, only partly the reason for this a similar motivation force was the fact that as the state did not look after them they had been pushed into an impossible existential situation. Their families were famished and were destitute, no houses, land or property remained. After the Serb army drove them away their anger turned against the local Serb population totally innocent about the attack. They attacked Serb households and drove away their inhabitants after some time. The expelling of Serb peasant families did not take place directly in the war years because it continued to be characteristic also for the entire period after 1878 (up to 1912). Historians dealing with the period have given the name “minor Serb flight” to commemorate the “major Serb flight” related to the year 1690. During that event about sixty thousand people left the territory of Kosovo³³. The Ottoman army itself did not pursue the Serbs and did not control the Albanian gangs either. Thus the ethnic proportions of the province were shifted for good in the direction of Albanians and, as far as religion is concerned, in favour of Muslims.

The abject terror brought along with the Muslim refugees had a serious impact on Albanians living here as well. Actually the Serb–Ottoman war escalated with the passage of time and the Russian army also interfered in shaping the military events, in order to defend Serbia and Montenegro facing defeat. Thus the great powers of the age also became participants in the armed conflict. Ultimately the ‘final’ decision on the territorial changes and alterations of international legal regulations was made by them at the Berlin Conference of 1878. It was at that time that permission was given to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. As a consequence of Serbia and Montenegro becoming independent and the loss of Bosnia the Albanians living on the Peninsula found themselves in an entirely new situation: all regions inhabited by them became a border province of the Empire. Another major experience of the years 1876–1878 was that the state was unable to protect its territorial integrity by itself, and it could not guarantee for the regions inhabited by Albanians that they would not be occupied by the neighbouring countries. Thus, looking from a historical perspective, the military attack against Serbia and the appearance of the Monarchy troops on the territory of the sanjak coincided with the actual problems of those driven out of the Niš sanjak. The sense of being threatened, enhanced from three directions and the attacks against Serb peasant families provoked a reaction from the Albanians, otherwise divided in innumerable ways primarily the differences in language, dialect, religion, ethnography and also in social terms) which was unprecedented earlier: the Muslim Albanians joined forces with the Catholic Albanians living in Northern Albania and Western Kosovo to protect their ethnic territories. The alliance was concluded in Prizren in June 1878, this is where its historical name derives from (Prizren League). Soon the Prizren League set up an army of its own that fought together with volunteers coming from among warriors of the hill tribes as well as rural and urban ones coming from the plains of Kosovo. The Albanians unable to join forces up to that historical moment organised their own public administration and their troops successfully resisted the attacking armies of Serbia and Montenegro. Initially the Ottoman Empire supported the League with sympathy and secretly with arms and money. In 1881, however, the great powers successfully forced the Constantinople government to ultimately turn against the irregular Albanian troops fighting for imperial interests. The League was defeated; its leaders were executed or exiled.

After the fall of the League a new regime set in. The refugees of the Niš sanjak stayed on the territory of the province and had a lion’s share in the increasingly frequent internal social conflicts mostly because of existential reasons in the next decades. Their presence had made unrest permanent and contributed to keeping alive the sense of being threatened as well. In Kosovo that had become a border Vilayet, the Muslim population carefully watched the foreign political events of the next decades and reacted violently on every grievance suffered by the Empire or the Muslims (among others such an event was the Greek–Ottoman war that broke out in relation to Crete in 1897)³⁴. It is important, however, to stress once again that the followers of Islam living there suffered from a constant sense of being threatened because it was clear to them that the military power of the Empire was already insufficient to protect them and this was the reason of their unrest. It should also be noted that the violent acts becoming regular in the life of the Vilayet between 1878 and 1912 cannot be restricted to an Albanian–Serbian ethnic conflict, or a Muslim–Orthodox religious conflict. These were also existing tensions, but in addition an equal dimension of violent confrontation could be experienced between Catholics and Muslims (the majority of both were of Albanian nationality), between Muslims and Muslims (such as Albanian–Turkish, Albanian–Albanian) and between urban dwellers and rural people, between officials and subjects, etc. In other words there were innumerable cleavages. Towards the end of the 1890s the Albanian–Serb cleavage gradually emerged out of the innumerable other tensions and it also provided the most important characteristic feature of the Kosovo conflict with the passage of time³⁵.

Another consequence of the Eastern crisis of 1878 for the life of Albanians was that the Albanian national movement had set out on its way. The narrow stratum of Albanian intellectuals wanted to give an answer to the modernisation challenge manifest in the territorial claims of the neighbouring peoples, and it envisioned a future for the Muslim majority people in which they could enter into the turbulent community of those living on the Balkans as equal partners.

Thus 1878 brought about a sad change in the Albanian–Serb coexistence. The issue of ethnic affiliation politicised by Serb expansion led, in the long run, to competing Albanian and Serb claims. The 19th century actually ended in 1878 in the life of Kosovo and the ‘long 20th century’ began which has become a strange story of conflicts in the history of the province.

The first and second Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 meant the first major turning point in the history of conflicts (to that see the passage on the battle of Kosovo Polje above). Serbia waging a victorious war against the Ottoman Empire acquired authority over the territory and it was confirmed also by the peace treaties concluding World War I. With the conquest the Serbs of Kosovo were relieved of the threat by Albanians, whereas the Albanians became victims of the Serb military government and armed violence and subsequently of discriminating state policy. I have not found data about Serb civilian victims of the events of war, whereas the number of civilian victims among Albanians could be 20,000 to 25,000 based on the research done by Malcolm and myself up to September 1913³⁶. In addition tens of thousands of Muslims fled from the Serb troops towards the Aegean Sea and Albania. According to a Serb source about sixty thousand people fled³⁷ from the territory of present Kosovo and Macedonia, and this figure could be 100-200 thousand according to my own research (and the majority never returned)³⁸. It is important to note, however, that the Serb army, as contrasted to the 1878 practice of Niš, did not drive away all the Muslims or Albanians. Setting out from the earlier mentioned concepts of ‘arnautaši’ Belgrade started an experiment of assimilation in the interwar period, it wished to reshape part of the Albanians to become Serbs which, however, failed. During the last year of World War I, in 1918, the Serb army, once again entering the area, could be made responsible for the death of about 12,000 Albanian civilian inhabitants³⁹. The Serb civilian population also suffered a loss of several thousand people.

The emergence of the South Slav state placed the Albanian–Serb conflict into an entirely new context. A new period began in the life of the peoples of the Balkans between 1918 and 1921, as the place of the Ottoman Empire was taken up by new nation-states. Though the innumerable new state borders squeezed the minority issue also into altered conditions most minorities had a motherland capable of representing their interests. Albania, acknowledged even by the great powers became the focus of orientation for the Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia.

 

Lecturer, historian, ELTE University, Department of Eastern European History

1

To this see: Clewing, Conrad: Mythen und Fakten zur Ethnostruktur in Kosovo – ein geschichtlicher Überblick. In: Der Kosovo-Konflikt. Ursachen-Akteure-Verlauf. Hg. Clewing, Conrad – Peso, Edvin. München, 2000. 19–24. (Henceforward: Clewing 2000.)

2

De administrando imperio (DAI). The final variant of the work was completed between 948 and 955 A.D. In Hungarian: Bíborbanszületett Konstantin: A birodalom kormányzásáról. The Greek text was edited and translated into Hungarian by: Moravcsik, Gyula. Budapest, 1950, Közoktatásügyi Kiadó. 87–93.

3

Cf. the Hungarian words “Rácország, rácok”.

4

Jireček, Konstantin: Staat und Gesellschaft im mittelalterlichen Serbien. Teil I.: Staatsrecht und Staatsverwaltung, Bevölkerung, Der Adlige, Die Kirche, Das Heer. Wien, 1912. 24–42.

5

Šufflay, Milan: Das mittelalterliche Albanien. In: Thallóczy, Ludwig von (Hrsg.): Illyrisch-albanische Forschungen. Bd. 2. München–Leipzig, 1916, Duncker&Humblot. 283., and generally Šufflay, Milan: Städte und Burgen Albaniens. Wien, 1924, Hölder– Pichler–Tempsky.

6

Novaković, Stefan: Zakonik Stefana Dušana cara srpskog. Beograd, 1898. and the same: Zakonski spomenici. Beograd, 1912.

7

Kaleshi, Hasan: Die Albaner in Kosovo im 15. Jahrhundert. In: Akten des internationalen albanologischen Kolloquiums Innsbruck 1972 zum Gedächtnis an Norbert Jokl. Innsbruck, 1977, AMĐ. = Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. Sonderheft 41. 513–520 (Henceforward: KALESHI 1977.)

8

Reinert, Stephen W.: From Niš to Kosovo Polje. Reflections on Murad I’s final years. In: Zachariadou, Elisabeth (Ed.): The Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389). Rethymnon, 1993, Crete Univ. Press. 169–211.

9

Hafner, Stanislaus: Serbisches Mittelalter – Altserbische Herrscherbiographien. Band. 1–2. Graz–Wien–Köln, 1962, Styria.

10

To the history of the cult see: Kämpfer, Frank: Der Kult des heiligen Serbenfürsten Lazar. In: Südost-Forschungen 31. (1972) 81–139.

11

Bada, Zoltán: Ilija Garašanin: Načertanije. Az 1844. évi szerb nemzeti memorandum és hatástörténete. (The Serb National Memorandum of 1844 and the History of Its Impact) In: Limes 2005/4. 23–39.

12

Georgevitsch, Vladan: Die Albanesen und die Großmächte. Leipzig, 1913, Hirzel., and Gersin, Karl (Županić, Niko): Altserbien und die albanische Frage. Wien, 1912, Suschitzky.

13

Slijepčević, Djoko: Über die serbisch–albanischen Beziehungen im 19. Jahrhundert 1. In: Shêjzat 1973/9-12. 340.

14

To the relationship between the Serb national sentiment and Orthodoxy see in general: Stefanov, Nenad: Bildungsschichten in Serbien. Zwischen Volksaufklärung und Mythologisierung der Nation. In: JGKS – Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas 2002/3. 9–37., and Aleksov, Bojan: Die Interpretation des religiösen Bekenntniswechsels bei der Herausbildung des serbischen Nationalbewusstseins. In: JGKS 2002/3. 39–67.

15

Demeter Gábor: Kisállami törekvések és nagyhatalmi érdekek a Balkán-háborúk idején (1912–1913) (Efforts of Small States and Great Power Interests at the Time of the Balkan Wars /1912–1913/). Budapest, 2007, Hungarovox. 93–118, 303–339.

16

Such an excerpt of a diary is: Tomić, Jaša: Oslobodjeno Kosovo. In: Tomić, Jaša: Rat na Kosova i Stierig Srbiji 1912 godine. Novi Sad, 1913, Miletić. 118–127. In connection with politicians see: Österreich–Ungarns Aussenpolitik. Von der Bosnischen Krise 1908 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1914. Diplomatische Aktenstücke des österr.-ungar. Ministeriums des Äußern. Wien–Leipzig, 1930. 841. and Péter szerb király (Petar Karađorđe) kiáltványa a szerb néphez a II. Balkán-háborút követően (The Manifesto of Petar Serb, King to the Serb People after the Second Balkan War). Lončarević, Dušan: Jugoslawiens Enstehen. Zürich–Leipzig–Wien, 1929, Amalthea. 501–503.

17

See: Kaleshi 1977. 517–520.

18

Clewing 2000. 22.

19

Malcolm, Noel: Kosovo: a Short History. London, 1998, Macmillan. 158. (Henceforward: Malcolm 1998.)

20

Bartl, Peter: Albanien. München, 1995, Pustet. 71–72. (Henceforward: Bartl 1995.)

21

Cvijić, Jovan: Grundlinien der Geographie und Geologie von Mazedonien und Altserbien. In: A. Petermanns Mitteilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt: Ergänzungsheft 162. 1908.; La Péninsula balkanique: géographie humaine. 1918.; Balkansko poluostrvo. 1922.; and: Antropogeografski problemi Balkanskoga Poluostrva. In: Srpski etnografski zbornik 4.

22

Bartl 1995. 67–71.

23

About and to this: Bataković, Dušan T.: Islam na Balkanu: a arnautašima u Staroj Srbiji. In: Bataković, Dušan T.: Kosovo i Metohija. Istorija i ideologija. Beograd–Valjevo– Srbinje, 1998, Jedinstvo. 33–48.

24

In 1881 Spiridion Gopčević still felt strong commitment to the Albanians (Oberalbanien und seine Liga. Leipzig, 1881, Duncker-Humblot), whereas after the turn of the century he rather stood for Serbs and Montenegrins. (Geschichte von Montenegro und Albanien. Gotha, 1914, Perthes and Das Fürstentum Albanien. Seine Vergangenheit, ethnographische Verhältnisse, politische Lage und Aussichten für die Zukunft. Berlin, 1914, Paetel).

25

Peruničić, Branko: Svedočanstro o Kosovu 1901–1913. Beograd, 1988, Naučna knjiga. 509.

26

Đurković, Đorđe: Albanija. Crte o zemlji i narodu. Sarajevo, 1884. 81–82.

27

Müller, J.: Albanien, Rumelien und die österreichisch–montenegrinische Grenze, oder statistisch-topographische Darstellungen des Paschaliks Skutari, Prizrend, Ipek, Toli-Monastir, Jakova, Tirana, Kavaja, Elbasan und Ohrida sowie des Grenzdistrikts von Budua in Österreich-Albanien, nach eigenen Beobachtungen dargestellt. Prag, 1844.

28

Slijepčević, Djoko: Über die serbisch–albanischen Beziehungen im 19. Jahrhundert 1–2. In: Shêjzat 1973/9–12. and 1974/1–10. 1. 340. (Henceforward: Slijepčević 1973/1974)

29

Old Serbia: based on the use of the term by Serbs in that period it means approximately the territory of present Kosovo and Macedonia.

30

Slijepčević, 1973. 343–354. and 1974. 28–36.

31

Source of data related to the campaign: Clewing 2000. 46–47.

32

Miličević, M. Đ.: Kraljevina Srbija. Novi krajevi. Beograd, 1884.

33

The 60,000 refugees are Malcolm’s estimates: Malcolm 1998. 230. Regarding the Albanian settlers in see: Bataković, Dušan T.: Kosovo i Metohija u srpsko-arbanaškim odnosima. Priština, 1991, Jedinstvo. 33.

34

About the expulsion of Muslims of the Balkans see in general: McCarthy, Justin: Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821–1922. Princeton, 1995, Darwin Press and Kaser, Karl: Raum und Besiedlung. In: Südosteuropa. Ein Handbuch. Hg. Hatschikjan, Margaditsch – Troebst, Stefan. München, 1999, Beck. 53–72.

35

Currently the Albanien-Institut in Vienna (Eva Anne Frantz) has been conducting research in relation to the conflicts mentioned here. On the Serbian stand related to the Albanians (and Old Serbia) of those days see: Gersin, Karl (Županić, Niko): Altserbien und die albanische Frage. Wien, 1912, Anzengruber and Georgevitsch, Vladan: Die Albanesen und die Großmächte. Leipzig, 1913, Hirzel.

36

Malcolm 1998. 254–258. and Csaplár-Degovics Krisztián: A független Albánia létrejötte albán szemmel (1912–1913). Doktori értekezés, kézirat, (The Emergence of the Independent Albania as Seen from Albanian Perspective. PhD thesis, manuscript) 2007. 191. (Henceforward: Csaplár-Degovics 2007)

37

Hrabak, Bogumil: Arbanaški upadi i pobune na Kosovu i u Makedoniji od kraja 1912. do kraja 1915. godine. Vranje, 1988, Jedinstvo. 97 and 100.

38

Csaplár-Degovics 2007. 287.

39

Malcolm 1998. 258–262.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 29:29–41.

JÓZSEF BAYER

Different Traditions and Political Compatibility in the Balkan Region

 

The Balkans is the bad conscience of Europe, with special regard to the South Slav crisis emerging in the wake of the political system change in the entire Eastern Bloc and after the end of the Cold War, to which the European Union was unable to find any acceptable response. While the system change was surprisingly peaceful in the entire Eastern European region, the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the Balkans created an unexpected armed conflict and once again called forth phenomena of chauvinism, ethnic cleansing, terror and genocide as well as a massive flow of refugees. All this was not unknown in Europe but everyone thought that we have overcome these phenomena and they belonged to the sunken world of the period prior to World War II. In the 1990s the only politically intact and crisis-free zone, the European Union faced this unexpected resurrection of the horrors of the past helplessly. The European Community, which at that time had been limited only to Western Europe, as Austria and the North European Finland and Sweden were only admitted to the Union in 1995, had no uniform strategy, neither means whatsoever for handling such problems. It was exactly the South Slav crisis that most clearly presented the lack of European unity, particularly in the field of a common foreign and security policy. The escalating conflict was once again managed by the intervention of the United States as it had happened twice in the history of the past century. But since it had no particular interests in the region, it was satisfied with temporarily limiting and freezing seemingly unsolvable conflicts. In fact the European Community failed in this issue, and it was a major lesson with lots of consequences to the European Union. Since then it has been participating more intensively in the solution of the problems of the region, performing peace-keeping and humanitarian missions, in addition the experience of the South Slav failure has been and remains one of the engines driving the shaping of a common foreign and security policy forward. It should be stated that it has become clear by now, despite the currently halted constitution-making process, that the promotion of social and economic transformation and of political stability in the entire Southeast European region is one of the preconditions of lasting European peace and economic prosperity. The Union cannot just sit back doing nothing because its own security is also at stake; it cannot lock itself up in its own safe zone with the assumption that barbarians live beyond the limes and it has nothing to do with them. The fact that this realisation has become evident shows by itself how much European politics have changed, slowly moving towards a common European policy from the limitations of foreign policies of the nation-states.

This realisation contributed to the ‘Eastern enlargement’ of the EU being implemented in an organised way and relatively rapidly, and the experiences of enlargement obtained so far support the rightness of that policy. No doubt it was the last wave of enlargement that promised to be the most difficult and risky enterprise. In that context it is surprising that despite difficulties of adjustment, which here and there lead to populist reactions in the newly acceded countries, Eastern enlargement seems to be a real success story so far.

The 2004 and 2006 waves of the enlargement of the EU, integrating the Eastern half of Europe lying outside the former Soviet Union has been clearly one of the politically most significant developments of the post-Cold War European history. Integration is creating the possibilities of dynamic development despite difficulties, which has an immediate electrifying effect on economic growth. It can make the expansion of integration over the entire European space fruitful not only in economics but also in politics, including the Balkans. The old debate between deepening or expanding integration has been essentially decided: the Cassandra forecasts fearing expansion have not proved to be true. Nevertheless, what has emerged resembles much more the realistic concept of a ‘multi-speed Europe’ than the bright vision of the future of a united European Union. Today this is not mentioned because formal equality is an important condition of membership, yet cleavages become visible between the old and the new Member States at different levels of catching-up. Nevertheless, it is an indisputable fact that an ever expanding integration promises to be the best solution in response to the challenges of globalisation: a bigger and more uniform economic space, broader markets, cheaper labour and a promising expansion of investments open up new resources of growth for the entire area. The consequently emerging inequalities are not welcome by all but it should be accepted that the engine of growth has always rested on the utilisation of this kind of inequalities in the capitalist market economy. From now on the chances of an economy of scale may assert themselves slowly, competitiveness and exports may grow, indices of employment may improve, etc.

However, in the middle of an increasingly uniform Europe, or rather southwards from it, in the Balkans, a wide gap remains unchanged on the map of the Union. Closing it would be a much greater task promising to be a far tougher issue than the admission of the Central European states earlier, or even of Romania and Bulgaria. The decisive element is political uncertainty and the lack of consolidation. The same obstacles stood in the way of the earlier development of a nation-state: such as the political fragmentation of the area, its economic backwardness and underdeveloped infrastructure. In the wake of the disintegration of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the breaking up of earlier contacts once again a pile of disintegrated political islands, politically isolated from one another, has emerged. This is a major obstacle in the way of any kind of integration and consolidation.

For Europe the present condition of the Balkan region undoubtedly reflects its own weakness in foreign policy. The formulation of uniform geopolitical interests related to the area was missing; the management of the South Slav crisis was dominated by the traditional political prejudices of the various Member States rooted in history. This contributed to the enhancement of the crisis and to a growing bitterness of conflicts. Here it was not the future vision of a united Europe but the reflexes of the past that had been dominant, namely complexes of grievances and the great power nostalgia of some states of the past with all their grave consequences. It was once again only the resolute strategy, foreign political pragmatism and military efficiency of the United States that was able to stop the escalation of violence in that region of Europe. It was, however, not willing to do so forever, and its representatives could rightly say that the European Community also had to take responsibility. If the European Union continued to be inactive, the region was to remain the source of political unsettlement and thus a source of unrest for a long time with all its consequences. With the exception of Slovenia, which successfully escaped from under the ruins of the South Slav federal state and became a member of the European Union, the weak economic and shaky political conditions of the other successor states would remain outside the European framework for a long time. This means an enormous challenge to the European Union. The gates of the European Community remain closed for the time being to the countries of the politically fragmented region due to the lack of preconditions, while obviously the only way of future development of the area leads solely through that gate. Luckily, today the responsible decision makers of the European Union have been making serious efforts to prepare these countries for their future accession and for persuading them to cooperate. There is no other way for the lasting preservation of European peace but getting the region to catch up, no matter how difficult this task may be both politically and economically.

The source of the chronic lack of solutions in the region has been traced back to many things by many. Karl W. Deutsch, a noted theorist of the issue of nationalism compared the ethnic map of the Balkan region to a ‘colourful silk scarf pierced by holes’, referring to the adverse preconditions of the development of the nation-state. The late emergence of the nation-state was one of the consequences of several centuries of Ottoman occupation and resistance to it. Here different ethnic groups lived in a geographically extremely disintegrated area, exposed to the whims of great power politics, at the frontline of empires. It is not surprising that the formation of nation-states was accompanied by a lot of conflicts in such a power field. Ernst Gellner’s remark that only one out of ten vernaculars has the chance of becoming a national language holds true for the Balkan region, too. Friedrich Engels called ethnic groups living there “peoples without history”, a not too fortunate expression, due to the lack of autonomous traditions of a nation-state. Naturally, they also had their history, but they could not have the historical memory of a nation-state. The idea and political aim of Yugoslavism of the inter-war period also derived from this situation, and temporarily seemed to be a good solution for the entire region halted in the development of the nation-state, and offered a possible form of integration. The contradiction between federalism and state socialist etatism based on the party-state system finally led to the explosive dissolution of that state formation.

Ethnic and cultural diversity, however, was only one characteristic feature of the region, and cannot in itself explain the growing conflicts. Turbulent history had undoubtedly created several different traditions. The influence of Catholicism had always been strong in Croatia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well as traditionally along the Dalmatian seacoast and it determined both the political environment and the social and political structure. In Serbia Greek Orthodox Christianity had been the state religion; and the inclination of guarding the borders and the constant struggle for freedom against Ottoman oppression strengthened the romantic culture of heroism and strength. This was further enhanced by the successful guerrilla warfare against German occupation. The country was characterised by strong traditions of authoritative rule and the existence of a strong bureaucratic and military caste as well as weak social organisation. The political and cultural traditions of Bosnia and Herzegovina are different. The strength of the Islam tradition is well-known, primarily in cities, at the same time the province was mixed ethnically and, as far as religion is concerned, already at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Until Yugoslavism was a powerful idea and political reality, it did not cause any conflicts, but it was here that the crisis and disintegration of the Yugoslav state formation provoked the most serious conflicts. In the province of Kosovo, to the territory of which Serbs are linked by strong historical myths, the numerical superiority of the Albanian ethnic population kept on growing with the passage of time. At the same time Albanians themselves are divided by religion. In addition the integration of Albania and Kosovo in a single state is hindered not only by international politics but also by economic factors, therefore it is rather unlikely. The separate state of Macedonia is also characterised by mixed ethnicity, in addition the economy of the small area of the former province is not viable alone. It can be stated in general that each successor state of the former South Slav federal state is characterised by a mixed ethnic composition, even if to a different extent. Though relations of economic exchange had developed in the erstwhile Yugoslavia they were under the rule of a centralised economic policy. The break-up of those ties since the disintegration of the state has only further aggravated political conflicts.

Ethnic diversity and differences in economic development in themselves did not justify the growing ruthlessness of the conflicts in the Yugoslav war of secession. I consider the theories trying to find the reasons for the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation and the escalation of conflict into war in the unconquerable strength of some kind of primordial, primary ethnic-national bonds as myths. This explanation is nothing else but the projection of aspirations for a nation-state back into the distant past and also the denial of the possibility of a peaceful co-existence of groups of people of different origin and culture within the framework of one and the same state, because it is not proved at all. My impression is that an excessive historical interest and the objective of tracing back the conflicts of today to grievances of the distant past are not good starting points to the understanding of the Balkan conflict. This is the case even if the offensive ignorance of some politicians of great powers about the history and culture of these peoples did not at all help in the solution of conflicts. To me the inclusion of approaches from the side of modern social sciences, such as economics, sociology and political science in the analysis seems to be more important and productive. As contrasted to Machiavelli’s commonly known opinion that there is nothing new under the sun and historical continuity would always assert itself in politics without any hitch, only taking up new forms, it should be stated that new things do exist under the sun. New conditions and new problems may emerge during the course of history that cannot simply be deducted linearly from the past, but are rooted in a new system of the present conditions. Actually the emergence of the European Community is a novelty that cannot be neglected, which creates an entirely new and favourable starting point for European peace and development. It has made Europe, once sunken into nationalist strife, capable of integrating and consolidating the countries once in enmity within the framework of the integration of a large area.

In my view the lasting economic backwardness of the Balkan region is a much more important explanatory factor than the national-ethnic diversity and national ambitions, which is accompanied by an underdeveloped infrastructure and by social frustrations, constituting the main obstacle to modern development. First of all it was the lack of the resources of modern development that has made the region repeatedly the arena of aborted ambitions of the nation-state, unsolved conflicts and chaotic political conditions and hotbeds of war in the 20th-century history of Europe. The Balkans is not accidentally the synonym of a powder keg in international politics. It turned out about the Yugoslav federal state, which initially seemed to be a success that it could offer only a temporary framework to a certain type of peaceful coexistence and economic development, but it did not prove to be a sustainable one. Its reasons cannot be detailed here but it is sufficient to briefly refer to the high unemployment which could only be drained by a flood of Yugoslav guest workers to Western Europe, or to the fact that regional inequalities in the economy could not be eliminated. The burden of the equalising policy was borne by the more advanced provinces, a redistribution, which had been politically supported by Serbian supremacy within the federal state. The underlying state and powers bureaucracy, in its turn, consumed the major part of the developmental resources. It is not a negligible fact that the economy of the South Slav country could only be maintained with the help of continuous Western loans and aid towards the end of its history. With the end of the Cold War, however, Western powers were no longer interested in the maintenance and financing of the separate Yugoslav way. At that moment the hopelessness of economic consolidation was revealed immediately and as a result political conflicts also flared up. Under deteriorating economic conditions the tolerant, consensus-based distribution of losses and a peaceful separation based on it could not be expected in a game of negative balance either by the logic of the realist school of foreign policy or by the theoretical logic of rational choice. In this situation the forced unity policy of the nationalist leaders of the Serb state was only arrogance provoking the disintegration of the country. Unfortunately the realist politician, Henry Kissinger was right, when in 1990 he stated in an interview in response to a question about the Yugoslav crisis that he did not see how a new war could be avoided in the Balkan region.

Here I have to assume that the unfolding of the South Slav crisis and diplomatic attempts to soothe and freeze conflicts are all well-known. As a result of the Dayton Agreement these conflicts earlier escalating into armed fighting, subsided but did not end. The condition of the entire region, but first of all the internal order of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the status of Kosovo is transitory, maintained and coerced by international control to this day. Today this situation can only be solved by European integration and that too only in the longer run. Currently the only question is: what kind of economic measures are to be done by the countries involved to meet the conditions of accession to the Union? Further on, how much adjustment the European Union can demand to the creation of political compatibility indispensable to integration the criteria of which were originally set by the Copenhagen Treaty of 1993 for the acceding Central-East European Countries?

The fact that the region consists of countries of excessively colourful traditions may not mean an obstacle to integration in itself, because this holds true for Europe in general. (There is the witty motto pertaining to this that if the European Union applied for admission it could not be admitted because of unsuitability.) Though a certain level of unification is to be observed in economic conditions and differences in economic development are being moderated, the Union is extremely diverse culturally. It is not only because of the different cultures of nation-states but also in respect of religion; suffice it to remember the Southern Catholic and the Northern Protestant states. Political cultures have been different right from the beginning even if democratic statehood based on the rule of law is a requirement for all. There are centralist as well as federal states among the Member States. The traditions of local governance are also widely different even if the regional policy of the European Union has overwritten them to a certain extent. As far as the form of the state is concerned the difference between monarchies and republics may seem to be significant, though it is well-known that this plays a decreasing role from the angle of practical operation. The relationship among the branches of authority is also different, for there are parliamentary democracies as well as semi-presidential systems, though the trend increasingly points towards parliamentarism (as contrasted to the suggestions of recent theories and ideologies related to ‘presidential governance’ becoming fashionable.) There are unicameral and bicameral parliaments, in some countries there is a separate constitutional court and elsewhere there is none. Nevertheless, the norms of the state based on the rule of law are binding everywhere in the Union and if occasionally they are violated, legal remedies are available. Usually the political norms of co-existence are laid down in constitutions to which the king has to pledge him/herself in monarchies. (Recently the inclusion of the ‘historical constitution’, hitherto existing dispersed in various legal documents, into a uniform Constitutional Act has emerged even in the UK.) Multi-party pluralism is general, including systems moving towards a two-party system, and the composition of parliament and hence of the government is decided upon by free elections everywhere.

If one surveys the new state and political conditions of the West Balkan area, the question arises: what may be regarded as missing in a political sense? The assertion of the principles of the rule of law and of democracy has been prescribed as the political precondition of accession by the Copenhagen criteria. Formally it can be done in several ways, and one may even say that the democratic norms required by the Union already exist formally in every successor South Slav state even if the traditional political culture does not support them. Since the fall of Milošević the countries of the region have all become multi-party parliamentary democracies where the head of the state is elected by parliament. It is not only multi-party pluralism but that of many parties. Each new state has a democratic constitution. A variety of coalition governments have come into power in course of the subsequent free elections.

As far as the individual states are concerned the situation is most critical in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo.

Bosnia and Herzegovina of a population of 4.5 million declared its sovereignty in 1991 and its independence from the former Yugoslavia in March 1992, after a referendum boycotted by the Serb population. The ethnic composition of the country shows that the Bosnians of Muslim religion are not in majority, constituting 48% of the population, the second largest is the Serb community of 37.1% and the third is the Croat one with 14.3% of the population. (40% of the population are Muslims, 31% Serb Orthodox and 15% Catholic.)

Resistance to independence by the Serbs had led to civil war where the Bosnian Serbs were supported by the Serbian state. Their aim was to accede to the great Serb state therefore they did not recognise the Bosnian state. In 1994 the Bosnians concluded an accord with the Croats and thus the war was reduced to two fronts.

The economy of the country is the poorest together with that of Macedonia. These are small agricultural economies with poor efficiency, and imports are needed even in the field of agriculture; 30% of the population works in industry and 50% in the service sector. One quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. The private sector grows slowly and state ownership is 40%. Growth is slow, but by 2003–2004 it was 5%. The deficit of state finances and unemployment are high. The banking sector is controlled by Western banks. The country has become member of the Central European Free Trade Agreement. It receives significant subsidies of reconstruction and humanitarian aid. The per capita GDP is 5600 dollars.

The borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a new sovereign state, declared unilaterally despite the protests of Serbs (constituting more than one third of the population) and hurriedly acknowledged by several big powers unconditionally, have remained unchanged and coincide with the former borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a former Yugoslav province. The most important development of consolidation is that the Peace Agreement concluded on 21 November 1995 at Dayton terminated the war of secession lasting for three years on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Peace Agreement ruled for multi-ethnic, joint democratic governance in respect of diplomacy and monetary policy, in other respects the various ethnic communities were granted semi-sovereign rights. The Peace Agreement is made acceptable for the Bosnian Serbs by envisaging two autonomous territorial governments, the Bosnian-Croatian federation on the one hand and the Bosnian Serb self-government on the other. A High Representative’s office and the forces of IFOR observed the implementation of the peace accord. The latter one was replaced by SFOR, the NATO’s stabilization force, and in December 2004 its place was taken over by EUFOR with the aim of maintaining peace and stability in the entire country. Thus the European Union is present in the region as a direct stabilizing force.

The form of the state has become federal democratic republic with two internal governments and a district under international supervision. The position of the head of state is occupied by members of the presidium rotating every eight months. The parliament is bicameral, the lower house is the Skupstina (one third of the 42 mandates, i.e. 14 seats belong to the Serbs), and the upper house, the Dom Naroda has 15 mandates (five for each). There is a colourful party system and eventful political life. Nevertheless, practically there is a kind of international protectorate in force in the country due to international supervision ensuring that the Dayton Accord is respected. (We may assume that if such a status of protectorate of preventive nature had been organised earlier under UN supervision, the war might never have broken out.)

Croatia of a population of 4.5 million was a province of Catholic tradition integrated in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy before the way to national development opened up for it through limited autonomy, at first in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and next in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1991 it got into pitched conflict with Serbia. The eastern regions of Slavonia taken away during the war of secession were returned to Croatia only in 1998 under UN supervision. The war caused serious damages to the economy of the country. Seaside tourism as one of the main sources of income significantly dropped. Since then economic development has accelerated again, there have been reforms for market economy, but under strong state ownership and with significant territorial inequalities. Unemployment is still relatively high.

Since the death of Franjo Tudjman the former presidential system of Croatia has been transformed into democratic parliamentarism with multi-party pluralism. Initially co-operation with the International Court of Justice in The Hague went on haltingly but with the passage of time its inevitability was recognised and some military leaders accused of war crimes were extradited. The country has been struggling against economic difficulties but politically it is on the right track towards adjustment necessary to the accession to the Union. Accession talks are in an advanced state and international support of Croatia's accession is also significant.

As far as Serbia is concerned, many regard the policy of its nationalist leaders as the main cause of the South Slav war. Slobodan Milošević’s rule hastened the disintegration of the country along ethnic lines and led to war and ethnic cleansing. Therefore the remaining ’Small’ Yugoslavia was expelled from the UN in 1992. In 1995, as a result of protracted talks the leaders of the country finally signed the Dayton Agreement inspired by the Americans. That, however, did not end the process of the country’s disintegration. In 1998 an Albanian insurrection broke out in Kosovo, to which a punitive expedition of irregular Serb units was the answer. Massive massacre and the flood of several hundred thousand Albanian refugees provoked international indignation. In the spring of 1999 NATO bombing from the air space above ’Small’ Yugoslavia began in order to force the Yugoslav government to alter its policy. UN Security Council Resolution No. 1244 ordered the stationing of KFOR, an international armed force under NATO leadership in Kosovo to protect the local population. The UNMIK, UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo was set up with the task of establishing self-governing institutions and of holding democratic elections. Besides the UN Special Envoy, there had been an Interim Administrative Council. As a result of elections the Albanian governmental and local governmental institutions were set up, yet the status of Kosovo is still uncertain. The riots of 2004 again led to new international talks on the status of Kosovo. The Albanians are for the final secession of the province and for independent statehood, but the Serbs sharply oppose the sovereign statehood of the province, regarding Kosovo as part of Serbia and are inclined to guarantee provincial autonomy at the most. International diplomatic efforts for the solution of the conflict are still in progress. The Finnish Ahtisaari, the UN Special Envoy’s report and settlement proposal were rejected by both parties. The final deadline for settlement was set as of 15 December 2007 by the UN Security Council. The claims of Serbs are supported by Russia therefore the outcome of the dispute is impossible to forecast. Kosovo is not anymore what it used to be and not even a remnant of Serb supremacy can be assured in the province. Yet the Serbs insist on it as the last proof of their sovereignty. Public opinion supports the Serbian government in it. (According to a recent poll, had the independence of Kosovo been the price of EU membership, 70% would rather stay outside.)

The uncertain status of Kosovo is an obstacle in the way of economic consolidation. It is an important fact that Kosovo used to be the economically most backward region of the former Yugoslavia. There is low urbanisation; the vast majority of the population live in villages, one third of them under the poverty line. Unemployment and inflation are high. Nevertheless, economic development has begun, though from a very low level.

As far as Small Yugoslavia is concerned, Milošević fell in 2000. The democrats won the governmental majority at the parliamentary elections and Koštunica became the president of the state. In 2001 Milošević was arrested and handed over to the International Court of Justice in the Hague investigating crimes against humanity where, after custody of several years in the course of which he wanted to do his own defence, he died in jail in 2006 of an apparently natural death.

In 2001 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was re-admitted to the UN. Since 2003 Serbia and Montenegro (with a majority Serb population) formed a loose federal state up to 3 June 2006, when finally Montenegro too, based on a referendum on secession left the federal state. Serbia, declaring itself as the successor state of Yugoslavia, introduced a new constitution from 2006 on. As far as its political system is concerned, Serbia is a republic with a unicameral parliament, a multi-party system and constitutional court.

Thus formally Serbia would meet the political criteria but the political culture does not support liberal reforms. There are doubts concerning the realisation of the norms of the state based on the rule of law. There are many Serb political refugees who have come from Bosnia, Croatia or Kosovo, constituting a source of political radicalism.

The economy of the country has also suffered from the long war, and was also hit by economic sanctions for a long time. Bombings had destroyed a significant part of its infrastructure. After 2000 the country returned to the international institutions, it receives international aid for reconstruction, the Paris Club has abolished two thirds of its debt and half of the rest was written off by private creditors. The country participated in the Brussels agreement for stabilisation and association; it is member of the WTO. Yet unemployment is high. An obstacle in the way of closer cooperation with the European Union is that Karadžić and Mladić, political and military leaders of the Serbs of Kraina, considered as the main criminals of the war have not yet been extradited to The Hague Court.

As far as Montenegro is concerned, for a long time it had been an autonomous principality in its history, and it was swallowed by Serbia only after World War I. After the disintegration of Yugoslavia it constituted a federal state with Serbia. From 2006 the constitution was altered in the wake of a referendum deciding upon independence (by more than the required 55%).

The number of the population is 685.000, of which 43% are Montenegrins, 32% are Serbs, 8% are Bosnians, 5% are Albanians and 12% others. It is a unicameral parliamentary republic with lots of small parties. The per capita GDP is 3800 dollars. It has acceded to the World Bank and signed an agreement of accession partnership with the EU. Privatisation has been in progress and it attracts tourists. The rate of unemployment is 27%.

Macedonia is the smallest successor state with a population of two million. It obtained its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and has managed to keep it under international supervision. The international acknowledgement of the country was delayed because of Greek resistance concerning the name of the country, but since then a compromise was reached: in the official name of the country of Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) reference is made to formerly having been part of Yugoslavia. It is a republic; its political system is parliamentary democracy with a unicameral parliament. A colourful palette of parties characterises it with strong ethnic representation. The political elite were forced to enter into corporate bargaining by the ethnic riots of the Albanian minority: the Albanian uprising of 2001 ended in an international framework agreement on minority rights.

The main problem of Macedonia is first and foremost the missing infrastructure. Consequently, it has little capital attraction capacity, grey economy is widespread and unemployment is high. Some economic growth has begun only in the recent years.

I cannot dwell on Albania in detail; I only wish to mention that it has been trying to fit into the European structures by a consistent foreign policy since the system change. Here too the main problem is economic backwardness but significant investments have begun recently, mostly at the seacoast.

In summary, a Southeast European Cooperative Initiative was launched as early as in 1996 to promote regional cooperation, at that time upon the initiative of the United States. In 1999 the European Union concluded a Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe which directed the development of the countries in the region towards the European Union. The aim is to realise European standards in the field of the rule of law, with special regard to the independence of the judiciary, and to struggle against crime and corruption. Topics for talks went beyond the issues of democracy and human rights to include economic issues, energy policy, immigration, and questions of military and civilian security. The process of democratisation is irreversible in the region but there are still many questions pending.

In which fields could significant progress be made and where are further efforts needed? The European Union, ever since it committed itself to the consolidation of the Balkan region, projecting even the integration of its countries, has accomplished an extraordinary impact even if there are still many tasks to full accession. The most important positive result is that acts of war could be stopped and relations among those countries are beginning to be restored. Cooperation with international organisations could be achieved in most questions and the prospect of accession to the Union has led to several social, political and economic reforms. Measures strengthening trust have been taken between conflicting parties, and struggle against organised crime has begun. The economy is becoming stronger, significant investments are made particularly along the seacoast but unemployment continues to be high, and investments go to the bigger countries on the waves of privatisation. The development of the region depends on external resources, while attracting investors and the growing strength of local entrepreneurs require political stability and economic reforms as well as a functioning state based on the rule of law. Meanwhile it cannot be disregarded that economic transformation is accompanied by significant social burdens.

Political fragmentation also slows economic development of the region. Potential investors think in terms of regional dimensions. This is why agreements assuming regional cooperation are important, such as accession to the Central European Free Trade Zone, or the energy community pact with the EU Commission, the Investment Compact, the support of small enterprises and initiatives for social cohesion.

The chief promoter and safeguard of reforms is undoubtedly the prospect of accession to the EU. It should be remembered, however, that with the possible exception of Croatia the time span up to accession would not be short. Adjustment to the European expectations is of different pace and there are still a lot of tasks to be solved.

With the decline of political conflicts issues of economic and social political development are coming to the fore. For the European Union the consolidation of the Balkans is a sort of experimental laboratory also from the angle of relationships with countries at the Black Sea. It is to be avoided that the symptom of a failed state should become dominant in the middle of Europe. To achieve this, support at every level is needed from international diplomacy through forums of economic policy to the active cooperation of different foundations and civil organisations.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 28:33–42.

MIKLÓS ZÁGONI

Main Trends of the Changing European Climate

 

In order to understand the climate of the Balkans and of the Mediterranean region as well as its expected changes it is expedient at first to survey in brief the operational mechanisms of the climate of the entire northern hemisphere.

The decisive factor of the Earth’s climatic system is the tropical heat surplus. It means the surplus of incoming sunshine per unit of surface compared to the higher latitudes (mostly to the region of the poles). As it is well known, the reason for this is that the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted (23.5° away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, Figure 1).

The heat surplus developing in the tropics has to be distributed and spread in the less warm areas according to the basic rules of thermodynamics. It is the driving force originating from the surplus in the tropical regions as well as from other physical quantities (such as the impulse momentum, the rotation quantity) that serves as the ’engine’ of the functioning climatic system (Figure 2).

The hot tropical air warmed along the equator, hence expanding and rising, would set out high up towards the poles and (studying the northern hemisphere) it reaches near the 30th latitude, landing in the Sahara region, causing tremendous aridity there. Part of the air near the soil would start back towards the equator where once again it warms up and goes upward. This closed cycle is called Hadley cell or Hadley circulation (Figures 3 and 4).

It can be said that it is this heat transfer that plays as transmission mechanism the role of the driving belt in the functioning of the climatic system.

Without going into detail it should be mentioned that after the subsiding branch of the Hadley cell the air is unable to develop yet another closed cell circulation. No more closed cells are found between the subtropical and the temperate zones (more or less in the domain between latitudes 30 and 60), and here we enter the turbulent zone. As its name indicates, here the cyclones of the temperate zone are the main implementers of transporting energy, impulse and impulse momentum. It can be said that the cyclones are the driven wheels of the climatic system (Figures 5 and 6).

The characteristic track of cyclones, the location of their appearance, the duration of their existence as well as the energy carried by them are the basic, decisive factors determining the weather (cold and heat fronts, rains, rainstorms) in the temperate zone.

Therefore it is a question of fundamental importance with respect to the future of Europe’s climate whether the intensity and track of the temperate zone cyclones could change?

In this respect let me present two examples: a historical and a current one. There is a grinding stone on the frontispiece of R. S. Bradley’s book entitled Quaternary Paleoclimatology¹ which was used by an ancient culture to grind cultivated seeds. The author adds the following commentary to the picture: “A grindstone, formerly used by Neolithic people for crushing grain, is all that remains of an agricultural community that once flourished in what is today one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. In this part of the Algerian Sahara, the climate has changed radically during mid- to late-Holocene time — from at least seasonally moist, to extremely arid.”

On this basis we may infer that the downward branch of the Hadley cell got closer to the equator, it was ’narrower’ at the end of the last glacier period some 8 to 10 thousand years ago, therefore the rainy zone appeared already on the territory of present-day Algeria.

This raises the possibility that as a result of global warming a contrary process may also take place, in other words, the cell may ’widen’, and its borderline may be pushed further north. And truly, according to the most recent researches²: ^“Within the context of the long-term global warming, …, evidence is found for the intensification of the Hadley cell since 1950. The Hadley cell change is consistent, including a strengthening of westerly atmospheric flow and an intensification of midlatitude cyclones.”

The theoretical antecedents of the phenomenon have been known for long. I would mention by way of an example the university textbook written by Rudolf Czelnai, published in 1979, which says that with the warming of the poles the difference of temperature between the tropics and the poles is decreasing, as a result of which the number and migratory track of the temperate zone cyclones may be modified.

Actually any change of the cyclone tracks would radically alter the weather of Europe. The main danger of climatic change is due to this fact and not to gradual warming (Figure 7).

The consequences of change include, as it is stated in the 2007 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report 4:

1. The typical western zonal current is expected to move northwards, therefore

– Western Europe (South Germany, the Czech Republic) may get more

– Central and South-Eastern Europe may get less precipitation.

2. The subtropical and desert effects may spread to the present Mediterranean (causing summer heat and aridity), while

– the Mediterranean influence may move up to South and Central Hungary.

According to the models run on computer providing the basis of the report in question the following can be expected in the coming period:

1. Further warming, which would be significant*

– in winter in Northern and Eastern Europe,

– in summer in Southern and Central Europe.

2. The minimum and maximum temperatures would change more than the average (mean) temperature.

3. The annual quantity of precipitation would grow in Northern Europe (mostly in winter), and would be less in Southern Europe (mostly in summer).

4. The daily extremes of precipitation would grow everywhere, even in places where the total of the annual precipitation would be less. All this, however, is not only the future. The domestic consequences of the slight global warming which has been taking place in the past century up to now (0.7 to 0.8 °C) can already be sensed (Figures 8, 9 and 10).

The models run by computer give the values for temperature changes by season for Europe as seen on Figures 11, 12, 13 and 14. Changes in precipitation are less unambiguous, but even there an annually decreasing trend may be regarded as probable (Figure 15).

Finally, I would like to call the attention of historian colleagues to the fact that the topic is not at all new! For instance, a book first published in 1910, and afterwards repeatedly, Wilhelm Bölsche’s Eiszeit und Klimawechsel (Ice Age and Climate Change) deals with the same problems we are currently engaged in: how much was humanity’s carbon dioxide emission and in which year, how much is the actual carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. “The quantity of carbon gas in the atmosphere [today, in 1910] is 0.03 volumepercent. Emission was 140 million tons in 1860, 510 in 1890, 550 in 1894, 690 in 1899, 890 in 1904 and 110 million tons in 1910 [today]”

He also points out that a warming by 5 to 6 °C would bring coconut palms to Germany (Figure 16).

My conclusion is that we haven’t got another eighty years to draw conclusions!

 

1

Published by Unwin Hyman, Boston, 1985.

2

Bradley et al., 2004.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 28:61-72.

GÁBOR UDOVECZ

The Agriculture of the Balkans from the Point of View of the European Union and Hungary

 

The agriculture of the non-EU member Balkan countries resembles in many respects the agriculture of the EU–10 in the years prior to their accession. It is contradictory, to put it briefly: on the one hand, this means a rather strong agricultural potential and represents a future competitor, on the other hand, these countries can be co-operating partners promising mutual advantages in several areas. Other analogies could also be mentioned. These agricultural economies are difficult to survey, for their structures have hardly been affected by the market mechanisms of the more developed regions. The lack of market transparency is partly the consequence of unaltered property and legal frameworks and market mechanisms, and partly the product of the underdeveloped information system. When one is looking for similarities, potential risk factors cannot be disregarded either. We already have experience regarding the risks one should expect when the international capital weathered in market competition and the local, inexperienced and unprepared market actors encounter. The agriculture of the Balkans is developing, it should be promoted but it is strongly vulnerable, too. The latter possibility may be regarded as particularly dangerous because the role of agriculture in national economy is still generally large in the Balkan countries, significantly larger than the average of the EU–25, and it is almost decisive in one or two countries (such as Albania) (Figure 1).

 

The Outstanding Role of Agriculture

Agriculture employs a large proportion of the working-age population. This is an exigency caused by the shortage of capital and the backwardness of processing industries and the service sector. The unchanged character as well as rapid change may have dramatic consequences. The present situation with a proportion of 20–30 per cent (almost 60% in Albania) share of agriculture in employment is a tremendous burden on agricultural entrepreneurs, and it would be unbearable in a market competition more open than the current one (Figure 2). A rapid reduction of profit interests under pressure would result in a dramatic social explosion even in the case of developments aimed at compensation.

After this much of preliminary specification it can safely be stated that besides co-operation the potential of agriculture in the Balkans may be regarded as a considerable competitor primarily for the EU–25. The arable area in the total territory of the Balkan countries is of significantly larger proportion than in the EU (Figure 3). In contrast to the share of agricultural areas in the EU–15 (approximately 40 per cent), a proportion of 50 per cent or more is typical (in Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey and Bulgaria), but the 60 per cent value of Romania approximates the level of Hungary, a leader in this respect. The absolute value of agricultural land is even more respectable. The approximately 81 million hectares are 60 per cent of the territory of the EU–15. Turkey alone possesses almost forty million hectares, but from Hungary’s aspect and in our scale Romania and Bulgaria are also likely to become major competitors (Figure 4).

’Luckily’ this competition would unfold only gradually though we could already experience its initial signs in the past years. For the time being the factors hindering achievement are still dominant and their elimination would require major investments, a lengthy process of legislation and organisation as well as time. The fragmentation of holdings is characteristic of almost every Balkan country. With the exception of Turkey dwarf holdings dominate in agriculture. It is well known what this condition means in business talks with processing and distributing ’mammoths’. This potentially weak and vulnerable point should be regarded as a disadvantage in competition even if, obviously, there are significantly larger holdings too. (The average farm size being below 5 ha – Figure 5.)

The disadvantage manifest in the reinforcement of the production capacity of the soil could be eliminated faster and easier. In the Balkan countries even less than 50 kg of fertilizer is used per hectare on the cultivated areas, whereas the world average is around one hundred kg, and the big EU competitors (France, Germany) nurture their arable land with fertilizer doses well above two hundred kg, ’protecting’ their environment. A moderate use of chemicals is the second pillar of the European agricultural model, which may, with the passage of time, become an advantage, without being ironic, in the protection of the environment and of the landscape. At any rate, one should stand one’s ground in market competition up to then (Figure 6).

 

Competitiveness and Market

Competitiveness and chances of market access are concepts with manifold content. An essential precondition for achieving these goals, however, should be the high standard of professional work, or the natural efficiency indices reflecting it. In this respect the agriculture of the Balkans may be qualified as a ’lion asleep’ as yet due to the disadvantages described above. Usually the average yield of plant production is low, similarly to the indices of animal feed utilisation and reproduction biology. It can be illustrated by a few arbitrarily chosen examples that the land use and productivity in the agriculture of the Balkans still lag very much behind the standard of agriculture in the Union. The average yields of grain are 40–50 per cent lower than those of the EU–25. As opposed to the characteristically 2–3 t/ha wheat production, the average yield is 6–7 t/ha in the leading countries of the EU, whereas 9–10 t/ha national averages compete the 4–5 t/ha Balkans average in maize. A comparison of indicators reflecting natural efficiency offers a similar result in the case of other arable crops (Figures 7–9).

Disadvantages in competition, however, are not always fatal; they might sometimes become advantages. Abundant land, cheap labour and climatic conditions can counterbalance a great deal of the disadvantages related to market organisation and capital shortage. All this is proved by the actual competitiveness indexes manifest in the market, namely figures of foreign trade turnover:

– Bulgaria regularly exports about two million tons of wheat annually (Figure 10);

– Bulgaria and Romania also appear occasionally in external markets with maize, and Serbia and Montenegro regularly exports half a million tons of maize every year (Figure 11);

– Bulgaria and Romania are significant actors of export markets in sunflower seed (with 750 thousand tons) (Figure 12)

– Turkey was regarded as a ’big power’ in the vegetable and fruit markets even in the past years. The positive balance of its foreign trade in vegetables is around USD 400 million, and it exports goods worth 1.4–1.5 billion dollars more than it imports (Figures 13–14);

– Macedonia, Romania and mainly Bulgaria regularly dispose of their surplus of mutton and goat meat in external markets (Figure 15);

– Turkey and Croatia are in the position of exporters in poultry.

 

Co-operation, Transfer of Experiences

Naturally, data of foreign trade turnover also show signs of co-operation and interdependence (Figure 16). Turkey, for instance, fulfils its needs mostly from external markets in wheat and maize (four million tons each) as well as sunflower seed (one million tons). Similarly, Romania often has to rely on import in wheat, and ensures part of its vegetable and fruit consumption from abroad. Croatia also imports several kinds of vegetables and fruits.

It can be stated both from European and Hungarian angle that the agriculture of the Balkans would emerge as a strong competitor in the future, but in many areas co-operation seems reasonable and is recommended whereas in some others it could be inevitable.

Evidently, systematic co-operation is inevitable for the prevention and elimination of epidemics, animal and plant diseases, for guaranteeing food safety and its inspection. Common thinking is advisable for the common interest, or even jointly developing the improvement of long-term conditions of sustainable cultivation, primarily in the field of water conservancy, irrigation and afforestation. It is in our essential interest to jointly develop the logistics systems of access to more distant markets. It means primarily the development of ports and the modernisation of inland navigation.

The co-operation of the Balkans and the EU is feasible and inevitable. This statement is particularly true for the relationship between the Balkans and Hungary. Due to its geographical location and historical links the situation of competition and the exploration of opportunities of co-operation are more important for Hungary. Hungary’s agricultural trade has been dynamically growing with the Balkan countries: about 20 per cent of Hungary’s exports are oriented towards that region, and 6–8 per cent of Hungarian imports come from there (Figures 17–18).

There is another specific area that lends itself to co-operation. In fact, the countries of the Balkans are also unable to stop the globalisation process at their borders. Several food processing and trading multinational companies of solid capital are already active in the Balkan region. Hungary has abundant good and bad experience in that field. Information sharing could spare the fragile agriculture and even more the agricultural economy of the Balkans from unnecessary sacrifices.

The sharing of Hungarian experience would not be in vain particularly in respect of:

– risks of privatisation;

– market regulation;

– the necessary institutional development;

– the development of information systems;

– measures of rural development and the application and utilisation procedures of the financial resources of the EU in general.