Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 27:95–104.

GÉZA JESZENSZKY

Ethnic and State Territorial Changes in the Balkans*

We do not know exactly how the ethnographic map of Europe looked like fifteen centuries ago, but we know for certain that it was very different from what it is today. But a thousand years ago most of our continent was inhabited already by the very same peoples as today, and even their area of settlement did not differ very much from that of today. On the other hand until 1945 the borders of the various states kept changing, often radically – almost always as a result of wars. But in the ethnic composition, in the ethnic borders, in Western and Central Europe the changes were not very significant, while in South-Eastern Europe, in all areas affected by the Ottoman conquest and later by the border changes following World War I, the ethnic map, too, underwent radical alterations. Following World War II in the Balkans the state borders and the ethnic composition – unlike in the rest of Europe – continued to change, in a bloody and cruel way. This process may continue in the future.

The Eastern Roman Empire and its Successors

One thousand years ago the decisive major power of South-Eastern Europe was Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, but from the 5th century onward, as part of the great migration of peoples, the Slavs overran the whole peninsula and indeed the whole eastern half of Europe. At the same time, precisely in the almost impassable mountainous part of the Balkans, remained beside the Greek inhabitants, a partially Romanised Illyrian population, or its two variants, the Albanians and the Wallachians. Within these valleys, which hardly came into contact with one another, different dialects of the Slav language evolved and survived right up to the 20th century. Only the Bulgarians of Turkish origin established an independent state in the 8th century; before long though, they adopted the language of the majority Slavs. They were, with varying success, in a permanent state of war with Byzantium and as such the borders between the two countries changed frequently. The spread of Christianity among the Slavic peoples started from Byzantium and brought, in turn, the spread of the script created by St Cyril and St Methodius. At the time of the great schism in the Church in 1054 the eastern and southern Slavs remained Orthodox, with the exception of the Croats who established their own state in the 10th century, and after some hesitation, most likely as a result of their geographical situation, joined the Christianity of Rome. Dogmatic and related cultural differences drew a sharp dividing line between the individual peoples.

By the 13th century, largely due to the Western crusaders’ occupation of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire had cracked; numerous smaller independent Greek principalities came into being on the southernmost tip of the Balkan Peninsula; Bulgaria, strengthened by the Wallachians, occupied Dobruja for itself and in the West the Morava valley, including Niš. Further west a separate Serb state of Raška was also established to which Priština belonged; Macedonia, however, constituted a part of the Nicene Greek Empire. Croatia and the Adriatic coastal region, with the exception of the Venetian possessions of Zara (today, Zadar) and Spalato (today, Split), had at that time already been a partner country of Hungary for a century. The Wallachians who were primarily shepherds and whose language bore Latinised characteristics due to the settlers from Southern Italy arriving in the 6th century, spread northwards in search of more fertile lands, crossing the Danube in the 14th century, establishing Wallachia and Moldva, initially under loose Hungarian authority, in the lands sparsely inhabited by Turkish peoples between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. At the time of Louis the Great, the Banates of Ozora-Só, Macsó, and Szörény belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, while Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia and Moldva constituted Hungarian fiefdoms. It would have been ridiculous to lay any kind of Hungarian claim to these lands or even just to look back with a longing mixed with nostalgia to this great power of medieval Hungary, although in certain countries in the Balkans it is in fashion even today to lay claim to lands or regard them as one’s legal property, whose historic predecessors were, for no matter how short a period of time, in one’s possession. For example, the Serbs thus regarded the short-lived ’empire’ of Stefan Dušan (1344–1355) of the House of Nemanjić, which covered the greatest part of Macedonia, Albania, Epirus and Thessaly.

Over-expansion at that time led to tragedy, in the 1389 battle of Kosovo Polje (Kosovo Field) the Serb state came to an end simultaneously with the life of the ruling despot Lazar. By the end of the 15th century the entire Balkan region, including Albania, Constantinople, Bosnia, Wallachia and Moldva, had become subject to the rule of the successors to the Ottoman Sultan. Only tiny Zeta, or Montenegro, hardly accessible via sea or mountains, preserved its independence. The European parts of the Turkish Empire, on the basis of the areas’ past went under the name of Rumelia.

As far as the structure of the Church was concerned this enormous area belonged to the Greek Patriarch in Constantinople, with Slav monks living in Orthodox monasteries also using the Greek language. The Muslim Turks looked down on the ’infidel giaours’ but did not force their religion on the conquered peoples, rather accepting and rewarding conversion. This only happened to a greater extent among the Albanians and the former Bosnian Bogumil heretics who could be raised to the rank of higher dignitaries, primarily in the army.

Under the Turkish Empire

The Ottoman Turkish Empire reached its greatest dimensions in the 17th century when its northern border approached Zagreb and the Balaton uplands – Nové Zámky line extended all the way to Košice. The latter constituted the capital of Upper Hungary and at the time of Gábor Bethlen and György Rákóczi I it belonged to the principality of Transylvania which paid tax annually to the Turks. During the centuries-long Turkish occupation no larger uprisings were evidenced in the Balkans. This, however, should not be attributed to any kind of tolerant rule but much rather to the fear of reprisals and retaliation. When, at the end of the 17th century, Christian forces under the leadership of Prince Eugene of Savoy penetrated deep into Turkish territory all the way to Priština suffering defeat and retreating in the end, 300,000 Serbs fled northward under the leadership of the Peć (today part of Kosovo) Serb Patriarch to free themselves from Turkish authority. They settled in the liberated southern region of what is today Vojvodina, thereby laying the foundations for the region’s separation from Hungary, which was to come more than 200 years later. The Karlowitz Peace Treaty concluded in 1699 marked River Sava as the border between the Habsburg and Turkish Empires, leaving the Banat in Turkish hands. With the Peace Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718, ending yet another Turkish war, the Banat came into Habsburg hands along with northern Bosnia, Syrmia, the entire Northern Serbia as far as Niš and Oltenia, although the latter three areas were to be returned to the Turkish Empire in 1739. Constant war and securing the armed forces called the so-called militarised border zone (Militärgrenze) into existence, the administration of which was withdrawn from the authority of the county and placed directly under the control of the Ministry of Defence in Vienna. Within the framework of the reorganisation carried out in the 18th century, Serbs were settling down in this Slavonic region inhabited for the most part by Croats, as they fled from Turkish domination. Beside their military service, the main occupation of these Serbs was agriculture and tried to preserve their ancient farming community system.

In the Turkish regions of the Balkans ethnic relations presented a relatively colourful picture, which was understandable given the lack of borders and consequent free internal movement of peoples. Commerce and the collection of taxes were primarily in the hands of the Fanariotes, named after the Greek quarter of Constantinople. The richest merchants and landowners of Bucharest and the two Danube principalities were Greek or Greek-speaking, although the situation was similar in other Balkan towns and cities, too, while the Turkish language predominated in public administration which remained in the hands of the military. Nevertheless, on the basis of its mixed population, the outside world spoke justly of a ’Balkan Babel’ right up the end of the 19th century. This, however, only resulted in problems when the effects of the French Enlightenment and subsequently the Napoleonic Wars triggered the fashion for ’national awakening’ in the Balkans.

National Movements

The first impetus Napoleon provided was to establish in 1809 a French puppet state under the name of Illyria from the area which is today’s Carinthia, Slovenia and Dalmatia, where he introduced the civil rights and code of law known from the French Revolution. The break-up and accompanying decline of Turkish power and strengthening high-handed behaviour prevalent at the beginning of the 19th century triggered uprisings primarily among the Serbs around Belgrade, then later among the Greeks and finally the Romanians, too. The Russian Empire, which was expanding towards the Balkans with aspirations towards possessing Constantinople, partly on religious grounds (referring to their Orthodox brothers-in-faith), partly on the grounds of the proclaimed Slavic solidarity which supported these stirrings, triggered the suspicion and mistrust of the Habsburg Monarchy. Great Britain, in the interests of protecting the route leading to its Indian possessions, strengthened and extended its influence in the whole area of the Mediterranean Sea. Besides admiration for classical antiquity, this led the British to support the Greek uprising, whilst in the case of Constantinople and the straits they adhered firmly to the preservation of Turkish dominance in the face of the Russians. In the shadow of the various Great Power interests, all the peoples of the Balkans at first attained self-government or autonomy; then gradually spreading its sphere and rights Greece gained full independence in 1830, while Serbia and two Romanian principalities, united in 1859 under the name of Romania, gained their full independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, shortly after being raised to the rank of kingdom from principality. The inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria supported their demand of independence by uprisings from 1875 on, and both were granted autonomy by the Congress of Berlin, the former within the framework of occupation by Austro-Hungary as protector. The aim of the Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians alike was to recreate their former states on their largest possible territory, which obviously only succeeded in turning each against the other. A kind of race developed to annex the regions still under Turkish control, principally Macedonia and Kosovo. Knowing that the dispute was to be settled along the lines of the ethnic composition of the given area, the insurgent groups organised against the Turks clashed with one another, leading from time to time to veritable genocide, or in modern parlance ’ethnic cleansing’, in the interests of not allowing a potential future referendum to decide the regional dispute in favour of a rival ethnic group. Before this, however, they needed to rid themselves of Turkish domination and the significant Turkish minority living in the Balkans.

On Russia’s intervention the alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece was established, which, following a successful campaign in 1912, drove the Turks all the way back to Adrianople (Edirne). In spite of the preliminary agreement, Serbia was not willing to hand over the part of Macedonia it occupied in the face of Bulgarian claims, upon which Bulgaria’s soldiers, conceited from their successes against the Turks, attempted to assert their claims by armed force. This was to prove their undoing because the two remaining Allies, together with Romania who was laying claim to the southern part of Dobruja for itself, joined forces with the defeated Turks to inflict a crushing defeat on the exhausted Bulgarian army. The London Conference, which concluded the so-called Second Balkan War, left the military seizures largely in place, redrawing the map of the peninsula, but failed to grant the Serbs their dearly longed-for access to the sea, instead granting the Albanians, who were essentially standing in the way, independent statehood. Serbia, however, could take comfort from the fact that it acquired Kosovo even already at that time with an approximately 70% Albanian majority.

In spite of the considerable spatial growth, in 1913 all the Balkan states were still dissatisfied. The Greeks had not managed to realise their ’Grand Idea’: Constantinople remained in Turkish hands. Bulgaria lamented the San Stefano peace treaty which concluded the Russo-Turkish war and awarded them Macedonia, but which was nullified in Berlin, and of course they nourished an implacable resentment towards Romania, who had stabbed them in the back and stolen South Dobruja. In Romania, the appetite for Transylvania and the Tiszántúl (area beyond the River Tisza) grew. The Albanians were discontented about the fact that more than half of their people found themselves outside Albania, living rather under Serb or Montenegrin authority. In the end, Serbia, which had annexed the greatest area reckoned the time had come to acquire Bosnia, where one-third of the inhabitants were Serb, and the Banat and Bačka both of which belonged to Hungary, where 25% of the population was Serb. A good one and a half million loathed Turkish minority found themselves in the Balkan states which had sprouted up.

The Consequences of the World Wars

If the Balkans were already being called a powder keg before 1912, where a spark was enough to trigger off a war, then after the two Balkan Wars the area became a time bomb. One pistol shot on 28 June 1914 from Gavrilo Princip, an eighteen-year old terrorist trained in Belgrade, was all that it took to set the whole of Europe on fire. All the Balkan countries counted on the fact that finally their old, long-held dreams would be realised, and that they could further expand the territory of their own countries at the expense of their neighbours. As a result of the conflicts among the Great Powers all the small Balkan peoples reckoned with the support of one or more of the Great Powers in pressing their territorial claims. We are all familiar with the outcome: besides the enormous loss of human life every one of them got a taste of both defeat and victory but in the final analysis Greater Serbia and Greater Romania grew significantly in size and the former Habsburg, Turkish and Russian Empires disappeared from the stage of history. The victors, or those lucky enough to find themselves on the side of the victors, however, were incapable of exercising either generosity or commonsense. The new Greater Romania comprising a 69% Romanian majority shamelessly oppressed the Hungarian, Jewish, Ukrainian and Bulgarian minorities, making smaller gestures or concessions only to the Germans. The Southern Slavic state existed as the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in name only; the so-called Vidovdan constitution was accepted with non-Serb protests in 1921, which meant that instead of the hoped-for federation a centralised state of 48% Serbs came into being. The Sabor, the Croatian national assembly, which had been operating for centuries ceased to exist and in the areas inhabited by Albanians and Hungarians, the Serbs endeavoured to gain a majority by means of a policy of expulsions, discrimination and open colonisation. The Bulgarians rightfully complained of the conduct shown towards the Romanian and Greek Bulgarian minorities but they themselves did not treat their own one million Turkish minority in an exactly fair and just manner either. ’Ethnic cleansing’ took place in the most acceptable manner after the 1921–1922 Turkish-Greek War. The two countries agreed on an exchange of inhabitants; thus in Asia Minor the Greek presence which had existed for several thousand years came to an end, while a substantial part of the Balkan Turks relocated to the secular nation of Turkey established by Kemal Pasha. The general ethnic intolerance was coupled with religious intolerance, since in most cases the majority and minority were of different religions. Under such circumstances it was no wonder that the countries and minorities which found themselves in disadvantaged situations awaited the revisions and the changes to their borders which the 1919/1920 peace system would bring.

Between 1939 and 1945 the peoples of the Balkans were afflicted by more serious sufferings than anything they had previously experienced. Yugoslavia was crushed within two weeks by the bellum omnium contra omnes waged by Hitler, the period was characterised by a classic example of traditional warfare, guerrilla warfare, the slaughter of the civilian population and a period characterised by several million people dying or being driven out of their homeland. The territorial gains made by Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia and the Albanians under Italian occupation during the war proved to be short-lived, indeed the vengeance wreaked by the victorious parties was extremely harsh and bloody. Italy was enlarged at the expense of Fiume and Istria, while in the rebuilt Yugoslavia the communist dictator Tito, who had learned from the mistakes of his predecessors, reorganised the state along federal lines. In spite of all their efforts, though, the 80% Albanian Kosovo and the ethnic mosaic of Vojvodina were only granted autonomy within Serbia instead of the desired status of a republic. Although amidst the one-party dictatorship autonomy only prevailed to a limited extent, the language and cultural rights it did ensure meant that the Serbs could not be at peace and after the death of Tito the nationalistic communist Milošević brought the autonomy that the two provinces had enjoyed to a de facto end.

Ethnic Mix – Autonomy

In Europe and America, following the collapse of the communist system, many were afraid that old national antagonism and hostilities would flare up into a source of new conflicts. While this did not happen between the Hungarians and their neighbours or between the Czechs and the Slovaks, indeed nor among the member republics of the former Soviet Union, the Yugoslav ethnic mosaic exploded in earnest, the tragic consequences of which are familiar to us all. According to many outside observers Yugoslavia’s disintegration was both unnecessary and damaging. This opinion is very reminiscent of the view that the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was unnecessary and damaging, bringing only suffering to its entire population. We have to realise, however, that although the countries established after WWI were of multiple nationality, they both declared and behaved themselves as individual nation states, provoking their respective nemesis with their intolerant policies towards ethnic minorities.

In the case of Yugoslavia not only the Albanian, Hungarian, Muslim and other minorities but also those nationalities who declared themselves state-formers were dissatisfied with their situation and, as such, made the most of the first given opportunity to break with the laws and rights which had existed on paper for decades. In fact the conflict of war was not caused by the Slovene and Croat declarations of independence, but rather by the mixed population. The Serbs living right in the heart of Croatia, encouraged by Belgrade, did not want to break away and declared their own independence. The military forces of what was in name Yugoslavia but which in truth were under Serb control, mobilised in September 1991 to support this demand.

When, in April 1991, the majority of the inhabitants of Bosnia had similarly declared their standpoint in favour of independence, Serbs living in parts both bordering and not bordering on Serbia repeatedly refused to accept this republic, leading to the almost four-year long military campaign littered with merciless war crimes, which could only be brought to a conclusion by the intervention of NATO forces in 1995. It is therefore clearly evident that the key to peace in the Balkans is finding a solution which would ensure the harmonious co-existence of the, in many places mixed, elsewhere different ethnic and religious communities living under the oppression of an intolerant majority.

The tragic events of the recent past prove that in the Balkans, but by the same token in the world as a whole, a community’s loyalty is linked primarily not to the state but rather to their ethnic minority, their language and their religion. Whosoever wants to forge a melting pot from the Balkans’ multi-coloured ethnicity will find an explosive mixture which can blow up all too easily. The French ideal of a centralised nation state cannot be established (at the most with genocide, resettlements and, in the best case, with mass exchanges of inhabitants), but neither is the multiethnic society promoted by the Americans feasible, or at least not for the time being. The international community and the vast majority of public opinion rejected the idea of even the slightest modifications to the borders, although it is beyond doubt that, under the present circumstances, the Serbs would gladly accept the annexation of Northern Kosovo and the Eastern parts of Bosnia in exchange for abandoning their claims for the greater part of Kosovo. The alternative and seemingly more practical solution is regionalism, or the creation of cantons.

It is evident following the Croatian War, Bosnia and Kosovo that today minorities can be neither assimilated, nor expelled or slaughtered. They want to live on their ancient lands according to their own customs, sending their children to schools where they can be taught in their own mother tongue, governed by leaders they elect from amongst themselves. This established form of local democracy, of self-government is the Greek word autonomy; the main two forms and solutions thereof being the regional (canton, county or province) or personal principle where, independent of permanent residence, a community creates an organisation, for example, along the lines of church denominations. Personal or individual rights, for the observance of which no established guarantee was provided, did not satisfy the ethnic minorities who insisted on their national traditions which they rightly felt were threatened. As there was always one group who was the victim of discrimination, be it by origin or religion, the only remedy could be to protect the rights of the group.

The benefits of limited independence and internal self-determination or home rule may be demonstrated by a number of current European examples. In Western Europe, since WWII, most countries have turned to decentralisation, the vertical sharing of power, the path of shifting it to lower levels of administration. This process has significant political and economic advantages in so far as it reduces the regional, partly ethnic and partly historical, tensions and many previously disadvantaged areas have prospered economically under such internal autonomy. The Flemish region of Belgium constitutes one of the most spectacular, albeit less well-known, examples. At the time of Franco’s dictatorship, Spain’s Catalans and Basques could not even use their own languages. They were the sworn enemies of the government, but after the democratic revolution they gained their local autonomy and for the most part the old hostilities have ceased. Provinces which had until then lagged behind have evidenced unparalleled boom, thereby preserving the unity of the Hispanic state. It may be stated that these diverse self-governments at various levels have become characteristic of the western half of Europe and, as such, we can speak with justification of a Europe of regions and autonomies.

The purpose of autonomy is to bring an end to waning, decline and despair; to encourage people to remain in their native land and to promote prosperity; in other words the preservation of peace and calm. This serves the interests of majority and minority alike. I can list examples of autonomies which are working well: the Åland Islands, South Tyrol, Catalonia and most recently Scotland and Wales. There are even smaller groups concerned, less well-known cases, too, like the autonomy of the German community, a few tens of thousand people in Belgium or Denmark. The Canadian example also shows that the separation of the British and French ethnic minorities and the latter’s provincial autonomy can above all keep the country together as one. The Swiss canton system has for centuries safeguarded the peaceful co-existence of Germans, French, Italians and Rethoromans living within the Swiss confederation.

*

The Balkan situation today also proves the need for autonomy, or rather that without autonomy there will not be peace in this region, at best just the silence of the grave. Arnold Toynbee, the great historical philosopher of the previous century proved himself too good a prophet when in 1915 he said that primitive peoples will destroy, will wipe out their minorities, while civilised peoples will gather signs of the satisfaction of minorities. How did the Central and South-Eastern European countries fare according to Toynbee’s criteria?

Today European integration is no longer a utopia but rather an operating reality; sooner or later we will reach that point already realised in Central Europe 100 years ago, namely to have a common currency and transparent, hardly perceptible borders. For the ethnic mosaics, autonomy’s most secure framework is not the centralised state declared by itself as national, but rather a Europe where the borders are open, movement is free, capital flows freely but the nationalities stay steadily even if they are spread out over eight countries. For the Hungarians this seems to be the only solution but for the Albanians, Serbs, Croats and Romanians, living outside their homeland such an arrangement can also be attractive. The only question is when the homeland itself will be prepared to hand over to its own internal minorities what they are demanding for their compatriots living outside their borders.

* Geographically speaking, the Balkans denote the Dinaric Alps, the Balkan highlands and the large European peninsula lying to their south; as such, Croatia and Romania do not belong to this area but in today’s European sense of the word both are considered as parts of the concept of the Balkans. From time to time, with a certain pejorative edge, Hungary has also been included in this category. Historically speaking, close relations have existed between Hungary and the Balkans and the situation in the same today.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 27:105–119.

IVÁN ILLÉS

Transformation of the Territorial Structure in South-Eastern Europe

It is a key feature of the history of the Balkans that since the countries of the region had gained their independence, the area has become some kind of secondary clash point or conflict zone for the ambitions of the Great Powers, with the countries of the region themselves being exposed to them to a considerable extent.

Precisely as a result of this situation the countries of the Balkans built their policies to a greater extent around the respective Great Power they expected to gain support from in satisfying their ambitions and the kind of cracks and opportunities within the scope of the Great Power conflicts, which could mean the realisation of these ambitions. This is perhaps important from the perspective of regional development, from the development of the transport network to cities and an administrative system, given that this too, was determined to a great extent by adjustment to the Great Powers.

Characteristics of Territorial Development

The formation and evolution of development policy within the Balkan countries may be divided into three major periods, the first lasting from the date of the respective countries’ establishment up to World War II, the second from 1945 up to, broadly speaking, the transition, with the third comprising the period following the transition in 1990.

These political periods were widely different, but certain elements of the regional and territorial development endeavours and policies may be evidenced which – so to speak – span the whole period and have been features of the countries’ regional policies to this day. Four such elements may be singled out that are particularly characteristic of the first period, but some of their features appear also in the subsequent periods.

The first one as the main ambition was the development of capital cities into European-level metropolitans. The second one was to have access to the seas and to establish ports. The third element was the creation of the territorial and settlement conditions of an ethnically homogeneous nation state, and, finally, the fourth one was the creation of an integrated state territory within the framework created by the changing size of territory.

In the first half of the 19th century today’s Balkan capital cities were still towns of a mere ten to twenty thousand inhabitants. In the majority of cases they were not even the biggest cities in their respective countries at a time when different political ambitions determined the status of a capital city. The elites of those countries lived in these cities, hence it is not accidental that a substantial proportion of the resources available were utilised here. This feature was not unfamiliar to the events experienced in Hungarian history within the same period. For a long time after the establishment of an independent state, governments did not pay particular attention to the countryside, agriculture or rural people. Two such governments are worth mentioning in so far as they proved an exception in this respect. One was the Bulgarian government of Aleksandar Stamboliyski, the other being the Romanian government of Juliu Maniu, although the latter did not hold office long enough to exert any significant impact.

Table 1 and Figure 1 show population growth within the major cities of South-Eastern Europe. In 1800, except for Istanbul, Thessalonica constituted the biggest city in the region. At that time Athens had just 12,000 inhabitants compared to the 70,000 in Thessalonica, and furthermore it should be noted that numerous settlements in Greece were substantially bigger than Athens. At the same time Budapest could boast some 50,000 inhabitants, Bucharest 32,000 and Belgrade 25,000. In Bulgaria at least three cities could be listed, such as Varna, Sumen and Ruse, which were bigger than Sofia. In the area of modern-day Serbia Subotica remained the most populous city up to the very end of the 19th century.

It is clear that Budapest enjoyed the largest boom and population growth within the first period with the population of the other cities growing considerably more rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. By 2000 Athens had developed into by far the biggest city in the region. Bucharest also has a population in excess of Budapest, while in recent times the population of Belgrade is also approaching that of Budapest.

The second feature – striving for access to the seas and the development of ports – was a determining ambition of every country. As far as the Black Sea was concerned, the building up of ports had already started under the Turkish government, before the formation of the independent states as well as the acquisition of coastal territory. The Danube (Tuna) vilayet, which included Dobruja and Northern Bulgaria, was used by the Ottoman Empire as a sample territory to demonstrate that it was capable of launching and supporting economic growth. At that time the first railway line was built between Kustendje, today’s Constanţa, and Cernavodǎ The Romanians at that time did not have a single railway. The Turks built the lines between Varna and Ruse, in addition to the railway line between Varna and Cernavodǎ which the later national government developed further, for example from Cernavodǎ to Bucharest. These ports and access to the sea were of decisive significance in the country’s further economic growth. Prior to the acquisition of Dobruja, the decisive proportion of Romania’s foreign trade and economic links had been directed towards the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. From the birth of its access to the sea, however, the structure of Romanian foreign trade changed totally, and it exported the overwhelming proportion of its products, such as grain and others, including oil, to Great Britain. Bulgaria had similar ambitions, and during the Balkan Wars Serbia also strove to gain access to the sea across Albanian territory. Even an ideology was created to it. The Balkan countries were, in fact, ’inclined to’ regard their given territories as if the current ethnic structure had been in existence for every period of history. Numerous such works, propaganda material, etc., appeared which tried to demonstrate Romanians and Bulgarians as maritime nations since times immemorial having an ancient right to possess these territories.

The third characteristic element was constituted by efforts towards creating a homogeneous and unified nation state and it had territorial consequences. All over these countries significant national minorities lived. What is perhaps even more important is that there were significant ethnic and religious differences in the composition of urban and rural population almost everywhere. One – by no means the last – instrument of the creation of an ethnically homogeneous state was the development of capital cities. They wanted to build up cities that would embody national ambitions and where the national composition would be dominated to a significant extent by the titular nation. In other respects, too, such measures were taken which meant the squeezing out of other nationalities. Land reforms in Bulgaria and Serbia may be cited as examples of such measures. In many instances, though, more violent means such as resettlement and expulsion were employed in the Balkan countries in the interest of changing the national and ethnic composition.

The fourth common element was an effort to create a unitary state within changing borders. Namely, political relations in the Balkan Peninsula changed radically in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the early 19th century the whole area still belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The borders of the nation states gradually took shape, gaining further territory primarily from the Ottoman Empire but occasionally from one another, too. The only stretch of border, which did not change in the course of the 20th century is the long segment of the Bulgarian-Romanian borderline of the River Danube. Between the establishment of the independent states and 1938 the territory of Romania grew 2.6 times, Bulgarian territory 1.8 times, Greek territory 2.7 times and the territory of the original Serbia within the state of Yugoslavia 6.7 times. This meant fundamental territorial changes, the unification of areas that used to belong to various empires having different kinds of transport and economic orientation. This posed a serious challenge for all the countries. In this sense, the Balkan states faced the issues of regional development earlier than the West European ones. How could they solve this round of problems? Different concepts were generated, but the solution and realisation only advanced slowly and with difficulty, and has not been completed to this day.

New Era between 1945 and 1990

The second era from the perspective of regional development was the period from 1945 to 1990. All of the aims and ambitions formulated prior to the war continued to prevail in this period, too, though obviously under changing conditions. Adjustment to the Great Power constellation and the exploitation of the consequent opportunities continued. The Cold War, for instance, started with Britain handing over the obligation of supporting and keeping Greece alive to the United States in 1947, and from then on it was to a significant extent Western support provided within the framework and spirit of the Cold War that determined Greece’s future development. Yugoslavia manoeuvred with its non-aligned policy between the East and West, which produced significant profits. Somewhat later Romania tried the same tactic but with less success. Bulgaria hoped, with maximum loyalty towards the Soviet Union, to obtain additional resources and opportunities. Albania tried to improve its situation by alternating its political orientation (between Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China), until, in the end, with its rigid and doctrinaire policies it ran out of patrons by the 1980s.

The priority of developing capital cities was continued but with slower pace than in the previous period. Indeed, already towards the end of the 1950s, every country tried to enforce certain restrictions to prevent overgrowth, for example prohibited moving-in and establishing industries.

The development of access to the sea continued to enjoy priority. Homogeneous nation-state aims also continued to prevail. Resettlements and relocations did occur within this period although to a lesser extent than in Central Europe, in the Polish, Czech and German territories. Such measures, however, did affect Germans, Hungarians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Turks during this period.

At the same time new phenomena also appeared in regional development policy. One of them was the industrialisation of backward regions; another was the pursuit of territorial equalisation of the standard of development and of living conditions. The third one was – as the sole remaining independent area for politicians to politicking – a kind of regional lobbying; as such, the appearance of enforcing the interests of the different regions.

As far as industrialisation and urbanisation were concerned, unbelievable changes took place in the economic structure. Table 2 shows that in 1930 70–80–90% of the population still worked in agriculture; by 1980 – with the exception of Albania – this had usually dropped to 30–40%, which means that a change of 20–30–40% took place at the cost of the agricultural sector and to the benefit of other sectors. This meant an enormous change in the social structure in these countries.

For the most part the same may be noticed in respect of urbanisation in Table 3. Between 1949 and 1966 the annual average growth rate of the urban population in most countries stood at 4–5%. It means that within 15 years the number of city dwellers had effectively doubled. In contrast, the 1.6% growth in Hungary, which was considered to be a very dynamic urbanisation at the time, was actually a very modest pace. This comparison demonstrates the extraordinary pace of urbanisation in the Balkans.

The infrastructure found it difficult to keep pace with urbanisation on such an extraordinarily fast scale. The possibility of working and living in two distinct places emerged. In addition, what a Yugoslav researcher defined at the time as the ruralisation of cities gained significance.¹ Such people migrated into the cities who had not yet fully broken away from their rural life, and they took with them several features of their country life both to their prefab blocks of flats and to their housing estates resulting in an entirely peculiar and bizarre way of life in more than one of the Balkan countries.

On the Equalisation of Territories

The following round of questions relates to efforts towards equalisation. Equalisation actually took place among the individual countries and within individual countries as well as among regions and was nurtured by two factors. One of the factors was that in every region industry became the leading sector as a result of the extraordinary proportions and extensive nature of industrialisation. Equalisation took place in the employment structure and in the proportion of the industry sector. There was also a second factor, namely, the isolation from the Western world, autarchy, and last but by no means least, those measures the Western world introduced against the countries of Eastern and Central Europe which did not permit the import of highly developed technologies, moreover, embargoes and the COCOM list were introduced against these countries. As a result the leading regions and countries in the area gradually failed to keep up with worldwide technical and economic development, and their technical standard ’approximated’ that of the Balkan countries. Figure 2 illustrates, considering the Austrian export volume per capita as 100% every year between 1929 and 1998, how the per capita exports of the Central and South-Eastern European countries and the volume by which they participated in world economy changed. For example, Czechoslovakia could produce higher exports than Austria up to the 1950s.

Afterwards, at the end of the period in 1990 ’equalisation’ among the countries was completed but at the lowest possible level. This is true for development both among the countries as within them.

Regional lobbying was a peculiar feature of the era. Within these countries one party, to a greater or lesser extent dictatorial systems came into being, where any deviation from the main political line, especially in leading positions was inconceivable. Where could politicians indulge in their individual ambitions? Regional lobbying was the legal opportunity, which could be exploited in this sense. In some way it was necessary since every resource originated from the centre, from where the opportunities for development could be created. For the majority of politicians this was the only opportunity for individual, autonomous politicking trying to acquire the largest possible quantity of resources for their own region, city, etc.

Interestingly this peculiar feature in the Balkan countries was perhaps one of the main elements in the formation of a kind of regional identity. Actually in the earlier period some kind of identity of the rural, peasant population of the Balkans linked them at the most only to their own villages. No manner of identity was attached to the different administrative units above their immediate surroundings in the Turkish Empire (kaza, sanjak, vilayet), for them this was a totally alien foreign sphere. A kind of regional identity developed after 1945. This is especially true in Yugoslavia where several federal republics came into being, for example Macedonia, within which the national identity emerged only during this period.

From the Transition to the Present

Finally, the third age is the period stretching from the transition to the present day. In the first half of the period a general decline ensued, followed by slight growth. Up to 2003, with the exception of Greece and Albania not one single country reached the 1989 annual GDP level. Naturally, the transition difficulties varied from country to country, depending on the initial situation, and the Yugoslavian drama was unique in itself. But what was happening in Yugoslavia affected every country both economically and politically.

Figures 3 and 4 show how the GDP changed in the Balkan countries. Greece was the only one, which was not affected by the change of the system and growth was more or less unbroken. In the other countries after 1989 a decline was to be observed and a significant drop in GDP took place. Figure 3 shows data for Hungary, Bulgaria and Croatia. Croatian decline was stronger but with time it managed to catch up, exceeding Bulgaria’s total growth rate between 1989 and 2003.

Figure 4 contains data for Albania, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro as well as Macedonia. Albania significantly surpassed the 1989 level. It should, however, be added that this is not an outstanding performance since by 1989 the country had reached such a low level on account of the previous policies that overcoming it cannot be considered a great wonder.

For the most part Romania and Macedonia are at the same level today as they were in 1989. Serbia and Montenegro, however, still did not reach 50% of their 1989 GDP around 2003. This is a real tragedy in the history of a country.

A new feature of regional development in this period was the general decrease in population and at the same time in the number of urban inhabitants. The disintegration of former foreign and domestic economic relations was characteristic with its regional consequences, furthermore the dramatic growth in regional differences was also typical. Finally, the regional policy of the European Union has appeared as well as the effects thereof in one form or another.

In contrast to the extremely dynamic population growth experienced during the previous period, between 1990 and 1995, with the exception of Greece and the three Yugoslav member republics, population dropped significantly everywhere, most dramatically in Bulgaria and Romania. According to UN forecasts though, primarily due to the low natural demographic movements, the population of every country will decrease between 2005 and 2030. This is primarily a consequence of natural demographic changes, but also of migration to a significant extent. A special case in this respect is Vojvodina. Between 1991 and 2001, in every district and every region of Serbia and Montenegro the population decreased significantly. The sole exceptions were the three districts of Vojvodina, namely South-Bačka, Central-Bačka and Syrmia, where a significant growth took place in the population. At the same time the natural demographic changes were the most unfavourable here. Following the Balkan war, Vojvodina was the main area for resettlement and settlement of refugees. This assumed such proportions that it resulted in the largest population growth in the whole of Serbia and Montenegro. This process radically changed the ethnic composition of Vojvodina.

Table 4 shows the population changes in certain countries. Even in Albania, where the birth rate is generally extremely high, population decline took place between 1990 and 2005, which can be attributed primarily to migration and emigration. One may remember from television broadcasts those ships in which tens of thousands of Albanians tried to get across to Italy during this period. Growth is to be reckoned with in this field in the future, too. In Bulgaria the decrease of the population is dramatic, where from 1990 to 2005 it was reduced by one million from 8.7 million, and by 2030 the population may be expected to be a mere 6.2 million. Within this short period of time the population loss suffered by this country of 8.7 million inhabitants will be 2.5 million. It should be added that the UN forecasts try to soften the demographic and migratory processes, which may take place here. In reality an even greater population decrease is possible.

Romania’s situation is largely similar, between 1990 and 2005 the number of inhabitants decreased by more than one million from 23 million to 21.7 million. In this country a population decline of 3.5 million could take place between 1990 and 2030. Perhaps the most dramatic case, however, is Ukraine, where the number of inhabitants could drop by 17 million from 52 million to 35 million by 2030.

In contrast to the earlier, inconceivably fast growth of towns, in most places a reduction is taking place also in the more restricted administrative area of cities. The second column of Table 5 contains the highest number of inhabitants ever and their respective dates, whereas the next column shows the current population of the same administrative area. Two cities, Belgrade and Tirana do not appear in the Table. The number of inhabitants of Belgrade did not officially grow, but unofficially some 150,000 to 200,000 refugees, who have arrived from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, reside in Belgrade. The motivation lying behind the concentration of refugees in the capital city is that they feel that they can assert their interests there and put forward their demands. Given that they are not registered, the refugees obviously are not included in the official census, but in reality they do increase the number of inhabitants.

Earlier a significant proportion of the intelligentsia and the more highly qualified were resettled from Tirana for re-education – following the Chinese example – to the highland regions. Those trying to return after the change of the system found that their homes had been occupied for a long time thus those returning constructed ’buildings’ for themselves in Tirana’s public areas from sheet metal and other elements.

Economic Relations of the Southeast European Countries

Important determining factors in the countries’ situation were their external relations. In the last decade prior to the transition COMECON co-operation became fairly unipolar, reduced to relations with de Soviet Union. Those countries that had very intensive connections with COMECON were most seriously affected by their breakage. This was valid primarily in the case of Bulgaria. The effects of the financial and debt crisis were the most serious in Romania and Bulgaria. In Romania not so much after 1990 but rather before, when between 1980 and 1990 the Ceausescu regime forced the country to pay back its debts to the last penny. Running into debt is a very bad policy, but paying back one’s debts in total is even worse. In other words, Romania arrived at the threshold of transition with an economy in poor shape and ruined, and with an extremely deteriorated standard of living and circumstances of life.

The breaking up of Yugoslavia had serious commercial consequences, too. Slovenia, as Yugoslavia’s most developed part, prospered for such a long time mostly because its products were in great demand in the other republics. A small land of 2 million people had in a certain sense a monopolised market of some 22 million at its disposal. Temporarily the effects thereof were felt in Slovenia, too, but they did succeed in reorienting their trade towards a different direction. Different effects of Yugoslavia’s breaking up prevailed in Macedonia. At the time of the united Yugoslav state an extremely large proportion of the resources were allocated in there in the form of development subsidy from the more developed regions. With the then applied expression a series of ’political’ factories were established without any economic foundation, only serving to create workplaces and industry in the Macedonian area. It should be added that essentially the Macedonian Slavs got jobs and they also got state housing. The Albanians were predominantly excluded from all this. They tried to eke out an existence by undertaking work abroad. After the transition the tide turned. The political factories were closed down, the blocks of flats were in poor condition with heating not working during the period of economic crisis; while the Albanians in the family houses they had built themselves and with the income they had earned abroad could live under much more favourable conditions. This too, was one of the sources of the later ethnic conflicts.

The splitting up of Bosnia-Herzegovina also had serious consequences. Relations between the Croat-Muslim federation and the Republic of Serbia broke down for a long time, although a rather significant proportion of the industry had developed in a way that the regions producing raw materials were in the Republic of Serbia, while the processing part, for example in the aluminium industry was in the federation. The number of people employed in agriculture was much higher among the Serbs, yet the agricultural areas remained limited for them, while on the other side – the Bosnians and the Croats – were rather city dwellers forced to move to the villages and pursue agricultural activities.

The Balkan war and the embargo was accompanied by seriously adverse effects on the neighbouring countries, too, when shipments through Yugoslavia ceased and, for example, from Bulgaria it was possible to transport goods to Western Europe via a more than 2000 km detour.

A feature of regional growth in the new period has been the growth of regional inequality. When the earlier isolation disappeared and the effects of the world market prevailed much more directly, the equalisation which had taken place previously among the regions and provinces all but dissolved within one or two years. A rather significant regional differentiation started within the countries, depending on whether and to such an extent as the market economy unfolded and as international capital appeared in these regions. These phenomena initially influenced rather the Central European countries, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, but gradually emerged in the Balkan countries, too. The latter’s development in the course of this period was characterised by one or two regions becoming conspicuous carrying the economic growth of the whole.

Table 6 shows what percentage of the growth of the GDP was produced by capital city regions between 1995 and 2001. It is visible that within Hungary the Central Hungary region, i.e. Budapest and Pest County produced 58% of the entire GDP growth. In Bulgaria and Romania where this value is above 100%, it means that in these countries the generation of income of all the other regions dropped and alone the growth in the regions around the capital cities tried to counterbalance decline. In Bulgaria, the region around Sofia produced 151% of the growth, and in Romania Bucharest produced 278%.

The effects of the regional policies of the European Union have for the time being hardly affected the Balkan countries, since so far they have just had access to pre-accession aid. Yet the requirements thereof also formed a kind of regionalisation. Every country complied with the requirements for the establishment of the planning regions, but none in such a way that would simultaneously include a reform of public administration. Bulgaria is an interesting example, in so far as around 1990 it possessed such large units of public administration that would have satisfied the European Union’s requirements. Those nine greater regions, however, were refashioned into 28 smaller regions thereby distancing themselves from the Union’s requirements. During the new period between 2007 and 2013 only Romania and Bulgaria can get their share of the pre-accession funds. But from 2007 they have also been promised to become members of the European Union. Their situation is ’more unfortunate’ from the point of view that if they become members of the European Union in 2007 the support for the whole period of time was already determined for such a period when they were not members and as such could not assert their interests.

In the field of their own regional development policies they are pursuing the strategy of the poor for the time being at least. None of the Balkan countries are currently in the situation of being able to provide investment support from the state budget, therefore they are adopting the other version, namely, commitment for the future. They are promising tax and other payment reductions of contributions to companies coming in, a method that may prove to be more expensive in the long run than granting assistance in the present. Poor countries, however, hardly have any other choice.

Note

1

Kosta, M.: Regional Development Experiences and Prospects in Eastern Europe. Mouton, The Hague, 1972.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 27:145–155.

TAMÁS HARDI

The Transformation of the City Network in the Balkans*

Over the last decade and a half the Balkans has not escaped the processes of rapid change within the city network and urbanisation. Similarly, the devastation wrought by the war has affected the transformation of cities and city network just as the changes of the demographic features, migration and ethnic relations. All these factors together have strengthened the traditional features of cities but have also brought new, thus far unusual changes. Nowadays the repair of the war damage may be experienced simultaneously with the falling number of population here and there; elsewhere it is growing, while the processes of migration are accelerating. Beside the decaying districts and entire cities one can find dynamic urban renewal as well as extensive property development. Besides the war and ethnic disturbances, beyond the birth of the new states and new capital cities, changes in the socio-economic system have also shaped the Balkan city network.

Urbanisation in the History of the Balkans

The features of the city network of the south-eastern parts of Europe differ fundamentally from those of Central Europe, principally from those of the German and Czech language areas, or from those of Western Europe. The Balkan city network was sparser and usually of lower population density than those in the western part of the continent. Significant centres, principally Istanbul and Athens, evolved only around the rims; while there were simply no cities in the inner regions that would have possessed a force of attraction or alluring for the whole area. The capital cities of the states established in the 19th and 20th centuries were small provincial towns. The reasons may be discovered in the natural geographical characteristics of the Balkans, since the upland, and indeed mountainous relief of the land does not favour the development of significant population concentrations. The fact that the area belonged to the lands of the Turkish Empire also bears significance in so far as for centuries it was the imperial periphery. Thus with the exception of a few former administrative centres, Skopje for example, more significant towns and cities could not develop.

As the Turkish Empire was pushed back, the newly formed states endeavoured to develop the small capital cities they had inherited. A modernising capital city became the symbol of national pride. It happened that another settlement of potentially lesser significance was named the national capital in place of the former centre and started to develop, as was the case with, for example, Bucharest and Sofia. At that time the degree of urbanisation within these countries was extremely low with the proportion of town and city dwellers standing at around just 20%.

The decades of Socialism evidenced a substantial growth in the size of the urban population and in its proportion within the population as a whole. Two ideologies supported this urbanisation. One emphasised the leading role of the working classes within society, and as such sought to make room for settling their ranks and to expand the number of industrial towns and cities, and the number of inhabitants therein. On the other hand, the consolidation of the borders of the young nation states enabled and indeed necessitated the strengthening of the capital cities and city networks within the national areas and its adjustment to the territory of the new state. Certain countries were only able to carry out this correction in the second half of the 20th century. This time saw not only the modernisation of the capital cities but also the strengthening of regional centres, which in terms of Yugoslavia meant the administrative centres of the federal republics. As a result, towns and cities grew significantly, among them the number of so-called ’Socialist cities’, i.e. centres based on an individual industrial plant. As such, the number of towns and cities in the region grew by more than two and a half times in the second half of the 20th century; by the mid-1950s 402, by the turn of the millennium some 1098 cities were recorded.¹ Besides the increase in the sheer number of cities, growth was also evidenced in the number of city dwellers. In almost every size category growth is striking. Today three large cities exist in the area, with populations exceeding one million people, indeed the number of inhabitants in Bucharest was already over two million by the end of the 1980s. The growth in the industrial significance of the cities and their consequent force of economic attraction has grown more than the pace of growth of the community infrastructure. As a result, in a number of countries the process of rural inhabitants relocating to the cities has been restricted. Together with this the proportion of the urban population saw a marked increase during this time and has significantly transformed the image of cities. The construction of housing blocks became prevalent in some places, and with scant justification, even in small towns.

The notion of Balkan urbanisation changed fundamentally through the decades of Socialism (Figure 1). The number of cities, and the size and proportion of the urban population grew considerably, and with the exception of some countries (or member republics and provinces) they have been approaching the global and European average. This process has contributed to the fact that in the region the degree of urbanisation has risen and ’spread’, in light of which regional differences have decreased.

Features of Urbanisation at the Turn of the 20th and 21st Centuries

The changes which took place in a number of countries in the early 1990s reversed the process of streaming to the cities. The raison d’être of the socialist cities, established around a single branch of industry or around the mining industry, to a significant extent ceased to exist, given the fact that after the transition the obsolete industrial constructions went bankrupt, had come to a standstill or manufactured at a substantial loss (this gave rise to especially serious social conflicts in Romania). Residents remaining without an income could not bear the material burden of urban utility services provided increasingly at market prices, and as a result many chose rather to move to the countryside. Rural existence and self-sufficient agricultural production could ensure their survival through these times. At this time in Romania, for example, the number of people moving from the cities to the villages grew significantly as did the number of those making a living from agriculture.²

The growth in the number of urban residents came to a stop, and indeed started to fall in many countries. Two primary reasons for this can be distinguished: on the one hand, the natural demographic change, i.e. the dramatic fall in the birth rate and the changes in the direction of migration on the other. The fall in the birth rate and the rapid natural ’slimming down’ of the population was particularly characteristic of Romania and Bulgaria following the transition. The change in demographic conditions led to a reduction in the number of inhabitants across the country as a whole, in addition to which the number of city dwellers also dropped. Migration also changed directions. In a number of countries, but most particularly in Slovenia and Romania, suburbanisation processes started. The city population started to migrate to rural areas surrounding the cities and the number of city dwellers declined significantly (Figure 2). This phenomenon is evident both around Ljubljana and Bucharest, but it may also be seen around the larger provincial centres in both countries.³ This process has contributed primarily to the significant decline in the number of inhabitants of Bucharest (similarly, as is the case of Budapest). In these regions the proportion of city dwellers also started to decline in the course of the 1990s.

This decline in the number of city residents also took place in Bulgaria, but in spite of this their proportion within the total population grew. This was due to the fact that, besides the tragic Bulgarian demographic conditions – the ratio of children per woman here is perhaps the lowest in the world – the size of the reduction of urban population is smaller than in the rural settlements. Migration also hit the rural settlements, while the cities, in particular the capital Sofia, continue to be attractive migration destinations, thus migration to a certain extent served to moderate the natural population loss.⁴

The population level of Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, as well as Belgrade has likewise dropped over the past decade and a half. At the same time the proportion of urban population has increased since the urban areas have remained the chief migration destinations. In particular, the indicators of natural increase in cities inhabited by Albanians are positive. As such, the number of inhabitants is growing naturally but among the Albanians fleeing Kosovo many have found their new homes here. (For similar reasons the number of inhabitants of the Turkish majority cities in Bulgaria also evidenced a slight growth.) In Serbia, the provincial centres continue to be attractive, thus their level of population has increased and it is expected that this tendency will continue for years to come.⁵ The number and proportion of inhabitants within the Croatian cities have both seen an increase. In Serbia, the settlement of refugees has contributed to the growth in the number of city dwellers. With Yugoslavia’s break-up and as a consequence of the wars and ethnic conflicts, inhabitants of Serb nationality arrived in large numbers from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo into the central area of Serbia and Vojvodina in the course of the 1990s. The bulk of their settlement took place in the cities, further increasing the number of city inhabitants.

In the examples shown thus far, cities, even if this may also be visible from the growth in the number of inhabitants, have essentially passed the period of dynamic growth within the urbanisation process. Albania’s urbanisation tendency does, however, differ somewhat. Here we can still experience a rapid growth in the proportion of city dwellers (Figure 3). Demographic indicators, i.e. the high birth rate, and internal migration alike have brought about growth in the capital, Tirana, and the port cities of Durres and Vlora. In Albania, prior to the transition, residents were administratively prevented from moving to the cities; moving to the capital was a privilege available for a maximum of one hundred people per annum. Much of the intelligentsia, following the Chinese pattern, was settled in the countryside. After the transition such restrictions ceased to exist and the flow to the cities could begin. Due to the effect of the new economic circumstances internal migration was directed from the provincial towns and cities towards the centre and the coast to such an extent that the majority of the Albanian prefectures evidenced a negative balance of migration, while in the case of the three cities mentioned and the prefecture of Fier this balance was positive (Figure 4). A further contributing factor was that Shkodra, situated in the north and previously Albania’s biggest city, had been pushed into the background during the Socialist era, and for reasons of power and other political matters had not received the proper support to sustaining its growth. To this day it lags behind the central and coastal regions in terms of its state of development.

Problems of Urban Development

The devastation wrought by the war in the 1990s, directly or indirectly affected many towns and cities. War damage was incurred for the most part on the frontlines, primarily in the cities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, i.e. Slavonia and the coast, hit by fighting. Serbia also suffered considerable damage partly in the course of the clashes in Kosovo, and partly as a consequence of the NATO bombing of other parts of Serbia, i.e. Belgrade and Novi Sad, etc. In the final analysis the process of rebuilding after the war damage has been dragging on until the present, as at the earlier frontlines it has taken long years to jolt life back to normal again. In the cities which saw the fiercest fighting, buildings gutted and blown apart are still visible today. Repair work has been hindered by the fact that the central administration had not been reorganised for years. A lack of clarity in the conditions of ownership still poses a significant problem to this day. The former owners have fled in many cases leaving no one to reconstruct buildings which had been blown apart. Many fled (or rather were driven out or killed) the former frontline towns and cities because of ethnic affiliation, but many also left these settlements because, as a consequence of the war activities, the local economy had ceased to exist along with their financial means. Refugees fleeing from the fighting and violence on the basis of their ethnicity and those settling down in their national homelands once the new states had been established, obtained new places to live in other towns and cities. Ethnic Serb families resettled from Bosnia and Kosovo, for example, moved to towns in Vojvodina as well as to Belgrade. This situation in turn transformed ethnic relations within Vojvodina. Due to brutality and violence, ethnic Albanians moved from Kosovo in the direction of the north-west area of Macedonia, in particular to Tetovo.

At the same time this considerable population migration caused a second important problem for towns and cities, namely, that of illegal settlement. The majority of the inhabitants did not resettle officially. They did not feel the need to fulfil their duty to register with the police. As such, the data recording the number of inhabitants in the cities is vague. Settlers create deprived areas and shanty towns. This is particularly significant in Albania’s capital and its surrounding area. The settlement plans and regulations, the lack of, or weakness in inspections on the part of the relevant building authority in many places facilitated the phenomenon of construction without permission. This did not occur merely in the poorest regions of the Balkans but even in the tourist areas of Greece, too. Such new conditions, disorder and confusion have constituted a serious challenge for public services. The rapid spread of motorisation created chaotic conditions in the sphere of transport since the network had not yet been developed to fit today’s conditions.

The problem of segregation may be perceived increasingly within the transformation of cities’ inner spaces. Segregation along the lines of ethnicity and faith are traditional in Balkan towns and cities. The decades under Socialism served to relax this situation somewhat since the masses streaming into the cities and the building of housing estates in any case altered ethnic conditions. With these measures the former ethnic composition of towns and cities was transformed, as the rural population moving in was often of a different ethnicity opposed to the traditional urban residents. The decades under Socialism with efforts at equalisation gave rise to city quarters with mixed inhabitants. The ethnic strife of the 1990s, however, again reinforced segregation along the lines of ethnicity and faith. For the most part, in those towns and cities that had suffered ethnic cleansing, the spatial separation of the ethnic groups intensified. This was particularly the case in the towns and cities inhabited by Albanians and Serbs, and Albanians and Macedonians, i.e. Kosovska Mitrovica, Priština and Skopje, but exactly the same process prevailed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, too, among the Bosnian-Croat-Serb population, i.e. in Mostar and Sarajevo. It often happened that in certain towns and cities almost the entire population belonging to one of the nationalities left (for example, Vukovar). It is a feature of Skopje that it houses the world’s largest Gypsy town (quarter), with more than 30,000 inhabitants.⁶

The boom on the property market which started in the course of 2004 and 2005, and the new wave of construction reinforced property-based segregation, too.

Current property developments are not being prepared for the average Bulgarian or Albanian resident; these are just affordable for those of better means or the foreign community. Property prices are rising rapidly in the fashionable cities, i.e. in Bucharest, Sofia and Tirana, as well as on the coast. According to the January edition of the journal Tirana Times, property prices in Tirana rose by on average 40% in 2005. This dynamic growth does not simply relate to residential property but is also true for commercial office estates. Demand for property development comes in part from abroad. In Bulgaria, for example, overseas people still gladly buy seaside property in part for their own use, in part as an investment. Of the countries studied, a significant demand also arose on the part of resettled inhabitants. According to certain opinions the investments serve at the same time as a means of laundering property previously acquired illegally. Chiefly in the case of Tirana, foreign material assistance has also been channelled to a considerable extent into urban renewal projects within the city. This growth is a complicated process and only valid for certain settlements in the region.

The formation and transformation of the national and entity borders has also had a considerable impact on the city network. Within the hierarchy of towns and cities, one-time small towns have seemingly forged ahead, all of a sudden breaking out from their roles as small- and medium-sized towns to become capital cities of states or entities. Sometimes the importance of quite small towns shot up. Banja Luka, the seat of the Bosnian-Serb Republic, or Priština, the seat of Kosovo, still today have not reached the level of 200,000 inhabitants, but Sarajevo, Podgorica, Tirana and Skopje, too, may only be termed medium-sized towns and cities with less than 500,000 residents. The new borders also served to separate towns and cities which had previously worked together. An excellent example of this is Slavonski Brod and Bosanski Brod situated on the Sava coast at either side of the Croatian – Bosnia-Herzegovinian border, or the strategically important town of Brøko.⁷ At the same time the major developed towns and cities within these shrinking state territories lost their attraction. Belgrade, for example, as a big city of 1.5 million people would, in the event of the potential separation of Kosovo and Montenegro, remain the capital of a state of a mere 7 million, thereby creating a ’hydrocephalic’ effect. At the same time the new states do not possess a developed urban network with 20–40% of their urban populations living in the capital city.

Ethnic relations have also interfered in the transformation of the city network. An ’Albanian agglomeration’ is taking shape with the participation of Priština, Tetovo (Skopje) and Tirana. Between these cities, community and economic relations are becoming increasingly stronger.

*

The decades under Socialism served to ’spread’ urban growth within the region. Modern day processes indicate that the population is concentrated in the central towns and cities or their agglomerations. This is especially true for the junctions and termination points of the transport axes.⁸ The establishment of small states like Kosovo and Montenegro has practically brought ’city states’ into being, given the fact that apart from the capital city there will be no significant urban centres. The successful, developing circle of towns and cities is the following:

–The traditional capital cities, i.e. Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade and the ambitious Tirana, which are the primary targets for property investment and internal migration.

–The new capital cities of geopolitical significance supported by the international community, i.e. Priština and Sarajevo.

– The important junctions of the transport network, i.e. port cities, Skopje and Zagreb.

All these cities are growth centres within the region. It may be expected that population and capital will be concentrated in these cities to a greater extent than it is presently, or in certain cases, such as Bucharest, Zagreb and Ljubljana, in their agglomerations. Among the smaller cities, settlements have emerged as capital cities and seats. Their geopolitical weight will decide their respective future success.

As such, the Balkan urban growth did not come to a standstill with the transition and the political changes but is still continuing. The city network has adapted to the new economic and geopolitical order, as well as adjusting to the new national borders. This transformation serves to colour the ethnic picture even further, and failing to recognise this renders the processes of growth in the Balkan city network, both past and present, inexplicable.

* The examination and study tour which serves as the basis for this study is connected to the research study entitled “The transformation in the function and city region of border cities, and changing role of borders in the Carpathian Basin following the expansion of the EU (A határ menti városok funkcióinak és vonzáskörzetének átalakulása a határok szerepének megváltozása, ill. az EU-bővítés után a Kárpát-medencében)” published by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) under reference number T049065. The study tour itself was organised by the University of Pécs – Faculty of Natural Sciences (PTE TTK), Research Centre for Eastern-Mediterranean and Balkan Studies (Kelet-Mediterrán és Balkán Tanulmányok Központja).

Notes

1

Kocsis K. (ed.): South-Eastern Europe in Maps (Délkelet-Európa térképekben). Geographical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA Földrajztudományi Kutató Intézet). Kossuth Kiadó, Budapest, 2005.

2

Emsellem K.: Migration, Urbanisation and Regionalisation in Romania, in: Iano I. – Pumain D. – Racine J. B. (eds): Integrated Urban Systems and Sustainability of Urban Life, Editura Tehnicǎ, Bucharest, pp.175 – 198.

3

Sǎgeatǎ, R.: Metropolitan Zones in Romania (Zonele metropolitane în România). Manuscript, 2005.

4

Mladenov Ch.: Population Distribution in Bulgaria, in Horváth Gy. (ed.): Regional Challenges of the Transition in Bulgaria and Hungary, Discussion Papers, Special Issue, HAS (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Centre for Regional Studies (MTA RKK), Pécs, 2002, pp. 20–26.

5

Tosic, B.–Djordjevic, J.–Bursac, M.: Regional Centers and their Functional Zones in Serbia. Belgrade, SANU, Manuscript, 1999.

6

Illés I.: Central- and South-Eastern Europe at the Turn of the Millennium (Közép- és Dél-Kelet-Európa az ezredfordulón). Dialóg Campus Publishing House, Budapest-Pécs, 2003.

7

Nagy – Ljubič – Hajdú – Pap – Végh – Reményi: Bosnia-Herzegovina following the Third Balkan War. Balkan Booklet 2 (Bosznia-Hercegovina a harmadik Balkán-háború után. Balkán Füzetek 2) PTE TTK FI K-MBTK, Pécs, 2004.

8

Erdősi F.: Main Geographical Features of Transport in the Balkans (A Balkán közlekedésének főbb földrajzi jellemzői). Balkan Booklet (Balkán Füzetek), No. 3. University of Pécs – Geographic Institute of the Faculty of Natural Sciences (PTE TTKFI), Research Centre for Eastern-Mediterranean and Balkan Studies (Kelet-mediterrán és Balkán Tanulmányok Kutató Központja), Pécs, 2005.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 27:135–144.

ZOLTÁN HAJDÚ

The Formation of States and the Division of Administrative Regions within the Balkans after 1990

Historically one may distinguish a number of periods characterised by the formation of states (nation creating) both globally and within Europe, and as such on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula, too. According to different research studies in the period about the outbreak of the French revolution (1789) some 23–25 states came into being, 49 between 1790 and 1945, and between 1946 and 1990 the formation of 99 independent states can be counted. The 20th century saw this nation-creating process further broadening. A substantial majority of the states formed came into being in multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multi-lingual regions of multiple settlement structure, with one part of the new states previously having a political or central administrative regional character of some kind. The process of establishing such states in every case threw up a number of questions.

States not only came into being but also ceased to exist. The reasons for this are extremely complex, with all at once both international and domestic processes manifesting themselves. Once a particular state ceased to exist, this raised questions regarding its legal, economic and territorial successor.

In the settlement area of the Eastern Mediterranean relations between state and nation, state and religion, and between state and language presented an almost unbroken string of problems in the period following WWII. (It is sufficient just to cite the Israel–Palestine issue). An abundance of national, cultural, religious, language, economic interests, etc., provide the backdrop to Cyprus’ internal problems, and the Turkish military invasion in 1974, as a consequence of which the northern part of the country became an independent state which Turkey alone recognises. (The Cyprus situation serves well to demonstrate that even at the time of EU accession they had not managed to resolve all the aspects of this question.)

From the end of the 1980s in Europe the unfolding processes may also be considered colourful. An ethnic element appeared, stated or not, beside many historical, economic and political factors within the union of certain states (the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic) and in the division of others (the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia). Apparently the ethnic principle has taken on a greater importance in the state-forming process. At the same time we have to realise that the vast majority of some 200 states of the world are not national settlement areas but rather serve to integrate a number of nations, minorities and settlement areas. (The state-creating process may therefore accelerate remarkably in the 21st century.) In the period of globalisation certain confederations, multi-cultural federations, territorial autonomies have become unstable.

The political-central administrative partitioning of the land is unique to every state and always expresses a social or political wish of some kind, bearing, in a restricted sense, components and intentions beyond the central administrative activity. In the majority of cases, the central administrative-political division, besides political factors and national characteristics, is also driven by historical determining factors.

The Balkan Peninsula, both at the time of the Cold War and at the time of the later co-existence of the bi-polar world, “represented the whole of Europe in miniature”. Prior to the transition in 1989–1991, the Socialist world system and the system of alliances (COMECON, the Warsaw Pact) and the capitalist system with its own organisations (NATO, European Community) existed on a relatively small territory, besides the presence of non-aligned Yugoslavia and communist Albania, which shut itself off from everyone.

Within the states of the Balkan Peninsula – first and foremost in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – the unfolding processes existed, resulting partly from external and partly from internal determining factors. It was a separate question how the former political-central administrative units, the member republics as well as the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina would settle their own ambitions within this process.

The second question within the separation process was: “Who has the right to self-determination?” Within the complicated political situation the ambition manifested itself that the ’peoples’, the ’nations’, the ’majority settlement areas’ have their right to and opportunity for self-determination (including the right to break away and the right to secession). Others considered that such ambitions only related to those areas which had previously also had their own constitutional mandate (member republic level).

The collapse of the State of Yugoslavia and the formation of the new states not only affected the Southern Slavic peoples but also every state on the Balkan Peninsula. It is no accident that Greece had serious concerns over the establishment of the Republic of Macedonia since it saw the latter’s mere existence as a historical, political and national security threat. Macedonia constituted one of Greece’s own territorial central administrative regions and beyond that saw its national unity potentially jeopardised through the existence of such a new formation.

The breakup of Yugoslavia also fundamentally affected Albania and the Albanians, given that everywhere in the Yugoslav successor states the significant proportion of Albanian inhabitants and their economic and political importance grew. This manifested itself particularly in Kosovo and Macedonia. The Albanian settlement area – in part in its homogenous coverage – embraced a number of national border regions.

Yugoslavia Ceases to Exist: Dissolution on the Basis of Individual Member Republics

The question of Yugoslavia’s federal state-territory arrangement dates back to November 1943 when, amidst the anti-fascist struggle, a political decision was taken to the effect that after the war six equal states (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) would form the new federal republic. The decision regarding the names of the states betrayed a historical, political and ethnic element from the outset. (At the time of determining the concrete territory of the Member States there were already disputes, with the protagonists clashing on territorial interests).

From November 1945 Yugoslavia became a federal people’s republic, the constitution of 1946 setting out in detail the most important decisions. The state founders proceeded according to the resolution of November 1943. The 1963 constitution established the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, giving two autonomous regions within Serbia the constitutional legal status of provinces. The new constitutional structure created by Tito in 1974 served the interests of creating stability but – as it turned out later – following Tito’s death it rather contributed to the escalation of internal uncertainty.

The territory of the republics could only be modified by agreement; the territory of the autonomous provinces rather just with their own assent. The new constitution granted the member republics broader rights than anything which had gone before, and these gradually broadened the scope of their independence.

The member republics possessed the right to secede from Yugoslavia, the state incorporating this right in a desire to emphasise the ’democratic’ nature of the system. (Stalin also guaranteed this right when the Soviet constitution was being worked out.) However, they did not seriously consider the possibility of separation either in Yugoslavia, and as such they did not regulate the separation procedure.

As the crisis within domestic policy deepened (1989–1990), part of the staff within the central apparatus and an increasing number of representatives and players from the ruling elite of the member republics gradually became interested in separation. The potential new states created for many people “first rate political-central administrative status”. All at once the majority of the Serb leadership were interested in maintaining state unity and centralisation.

The disintegration of the federal state began at constitutional level, at the level of the political territorial units (member republics), but gradually ambitions towards an independent statehood emerged also at the level of settlement areas. This study will not describe the process of separation but rather how the essence of the administrative content of the existing system appeared within the territorial rearrangements and experiments; and what kind of secession ambitions developed ’below the level of republic’ within the particular republics, and how those problems pertaining to the settlement areas may be handled.

Slovenia

Slovenia was the westernmost, economically most-developed, and the most homogeneous of the Yugoslav countries in terms of ethnicity, language and faith. The Slovene proportion of the population exceeded 80% while that of the Slovenian speakers exceeded 90%. It already possessed wide-ranging economic and intellectual links with the West even in the Yugoslav period.

93.2% of the electorate participated in the referendum held on 23 December 1990, 95.6% of which supported the proclamation of the country’s independence, corresponding to 88.2% of the total citizens eligible to vote.

Slovenia declared its independence on 25 June 1991, with the country’s new democratic constitution coming into existence at the end of December 1991. Slovenia did not possess a significant Serb minority, and only a small number of Hungarian inhabitants and a higher number of Italian inhabitants were registered as native minorities. The ten-day war did not throw Slovenia into disorder; the losses both in human and in material terms were small.

In Slovenia no real secession movement appeared within either of these Hungarian and Italian settlement areas. Thus, without any internal struggle in the country, an independent state was set up on the territory of the former member republic. The new constitution granted far-ranging rights to the native minorities, ensuring their entitlement to parliamentary representation.

Slovenia did have border disputes with Croatia over smaller territories and sea access, but these disputes threatened neither then nor now to escalate into any serious conflict. At the same time we have to acknowledge that among the states of the Balkan Peninsula border disputes have always tended to be of a more long-term nature.

Croatia

In the course of the referendum on Croatian independence held on 19 May 1991, the Serb minority announced a boycott. 84.2% of all the citizens eligible to vote participated in the referendum, 94.3% of the electorate voting in favour of independence, representing some 79.4% of the enfranchised citizens.

On 25 June 1991 the Croatian parliament announced the country’s independence, (and parallel to it accepted a document entitled “Charter on the Rights of Serbs and other Nationalities in the Republic of Croatia”) which, following the three-month moratorium demanded by the EU, the parliament again confirmed with a large majority on 8 October. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany was the first to recognise the state, after which international recognition for the new Croatia followed gradually.

At the beginning of July 1991 Serb forces occupied the Baranya triangle, with intense fighting taking place in Western Slavonia, too. The Baranya, Western Syrmia and Slavonia autonomous region was established on the occupied territories, which in turn set up its own government (under the leadership of Goran Hadzić). The autonomous region formally belonged to the Republic of Serbian Krajina, with the western regional outlook referring to it as the “Eastern Sector”. From the summer of 1991 to 1998 a form of uncertainty prevailed both regarding the ruling state structure and state territory, and also on the territory inhabited by Hungarians.

The new country’s constitution was accepted at the end of December 1991. The constitution awarded autonomous self-determination status to all those communities and regions where the proportion of the particular ethnic minority within the population exceeded 50%. Thus the 11 Serb-majority Krajina districts could have adapted themselves to the new Croatian state with the possible right to self-determination.

According to the 1991 census Croatia possessed a considerable number and proportion of Serb inhabitants. The political leadership of the Serb population thought – following Croatia’s declaration of independence and the international recognition thereof – that for them the existence of an independent state could mean protection against Croat excesses. As such they proclaimed, and in part organised, the Republic of Serbian Krajina which expanded to comprise the majority Serb settlement areas. Milan Babić, a qualified dentist, became the Prime Minister of a state which considered itself independent.

The new ’state’ comprised a great part of the historical Krajina region which at the time of its foundation constituted the equivalent of some one-third of the territory of the new Croatia, and exercised its authority here. Knin became its ’capital city’, and its political and central administrative centre. On the territory of the ’republic’ neither human nor ethnic minority rights were really respected. (Babić was taken to The Hague as a war criminal where he committed suicide.)

In February 1992, on the basis of a UN Security Council (SC) resolution, the international community sent troops to the conflict zones of the former Yugoslavia, among them to the territory of the Baranya triangle.

In a bloody and drawn-out war Croatia gained its existence as an independent state covering the major part of the territory it had occupied as a former member republic, later restoring its sovereignty in the second period of the ”Patriotic War”. The Croatian state liquidated the unilaterally proclaimed political entity comprising the majority Serb settlement area with brute force (Military Operation Storm in August 1995). Croatia did not wish to see any kind of formation possessing meaningful regional autonomy on its territory at the time of its victory. (General Gotovina, in part due to the expulsion of some 150,000 – 200,000 and murder of 150 civilian Serb inhabitants was taken to The Hague). The Eastern Slavonian territory of the Republic of Serbian Krajina could be returned to full Croatian sovereignty in 1998.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

At the time of the 1991 census Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most multi-ethnic (43.7% Bosnian, 31.3% Serb, 17.3% Croat and 5.5% Yugoslav), multi-faith member republic of the then Yugoslavia. In addition, the ethnic minorities lived side by side partly in settlement area majority and partly in an intensely mixed mosaic configuration.

On October 1991 Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its sovereignty. On 24 October 1991, in response, the Bosnian Serbs established the Bosnian Serb assembly to represent their own settlement area. They held a referendum in November on their own settlement territory as to whether they wished to remain within the framework of Yugoslavia. (The central government regarded the settlement area referendum as illegitimate.) The majority of the voters were in favour of remaining within the framework of Yugoslavia. On 9 January 1992 the Bosnian Serb assembly declared the establishment of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in addition to which they attempted unilaterally to determine their own territory. They accepted an independent constitution.

After the referendum on independence organised over the entire territory of the republic (29 February–2 March 1992) – which the Serbs living within the territory boycotted – the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced its independence on 3 March. The EU recognised the independence of the new state on 6 April.

Following the decision of the central authority (which they regarded as unconstitutional), the Bosnian Serbs announced the independence of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 7 April. As an independent state they made decisions concerning themselves, but not a single international player recognised their independent statehood.

In the bloody Bosnian war triggered by these events the Serbs fought for accession to Serbia and the most complete territorial union of the Serb settlement area possible, adopting ethnic cleansing in the case of interpolated communities and territories.

Bloody military conflict also developed between Croats and Bosnians particularly in the area of Mostar (where these were almost no Serb inhabitants). The Croats also aspired to the announcement of the Herzegbosnian Croat Republic and partial establishment thereof in Bosnia-Herzegovina (which the Croat political leadership tacitly supported), so that the independent political regional formation comprising a comparatively homogeneous and closed settlement area be transformed into a state.

In the end the Croat and Bosnian political elements also bowed to pressure from the international community (March 1994) to establish a Croat-Bosnian Federation as one of the political entities of a virtually unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, but this did not completely resolve the existing tensions between them.

In the area of Bihac a power rivalry broke out also among the Bosnians, in the background of which were not ambitions enforced by ethnic and religious interests but rather by political and individual interests. Fikret Abdić attempted to build up regional power but in the end fell into Croatian captivity.

In the area of Sarajevo, the NATO air force intervened in the bloody war in defence of the Bosnian population. The intervention of international forces restricted, and later essentially settled, armed battle between the many players.

With the Dayton Peace Accords of November 1995 and the December Paris peace treaty a virtually unified Bosnia and Herzegovina came into being, but in reality power remained with the two political-central administrative entities. The greater part of the Bosnian Serb Republic came into being on the basis of ethnic homogeneity and with limited recognition of the results of battle. As such, the ethnic principle in this case “won through” as the basic principle of political-territorial organisation; on the territory of the Croat-Bosnian Federation the entity was multicultural but at lower levels the ethnic principle clearly appeared in the division of central administration.

According to the peace treaty Bosnia and Herzegovina came under international supervision; foreign peacekeeping troops were stationed in the region; the chief decision-makers were representatives of the international community who could quash every decision and law.

The complicated settlement of the strategically important position of the “Brčko area” was a separate matter.

Unity within the area bears unavoidable significance for both parties. As such, dual sovereignty or dual subordination was accepted temporarily in the interests of all parties concerned.

Macedonia

Macedonia – compared to the other member republics – split with Yugoslavia entirely peacefully, celebrating 8 September 1991 as its Independence Day. First of all the Bulgarians recognised the new country but its existence, indeed even its very name, meant concern for Greece. In 1995 Greece announced an embargo against its northern neighbour.

The country is ethnically divided; beside some 65% Macedonians, the Albanians constitute a significant 25% minority, settled territorially homogeneously. Tensions between the two communities heightened in 2001 – in part in connection with the Kososvan processes. For Macedonia the administration of the Albanian settlement area unit appeared as a necessity as well as a potential challenge for the long run.

Serbia and Montenegro:
The Remains of Yugoslavia or the Next Chapter in the Balkanisation Process

In April 1992 it became clear for the former Yugoslav and Serb political elite that the Yugoslavia created by Tito would come to an end. At the same time, they wanted to consciously maintain the existence of ”Yugoslavia”, and the two ”republics that remained together” (Serbia and Montenegro) created the ”Yugoslav Federal Republic”. From this point on the separation of the ’real’ Yugoslavia (small-, remaining, etc.) from the former Yugoslavia started to cause concern for the world at large. The ’Yugoslav’, which meant primarily, the Serb elite was active almost continuously in regaining possession (by war) of at least part of the former territories.

Until 1995 the Croatian and Bosnian conflict and the 1998–1999 Kosovo conflict stood in the foreground. Within these clashes, the relationship to the Serb ethnic rank and file and, in the context of Kosovo, the anxieties connected with the Albanians and the brutalities committed towards them manifested themselves.

The new Yugoslavia – besides its deepening internal conflicts – escaped from each conflict defeated both militarily and in part morally, too. It came face to face with key factors within the international community; in the spring of 1999 NATO bombed the country’s strategic institutions, thereby throwing the workings of the state partly into disarray. International military forces entered Kosovo, with the province coming under international, i.e. UN control and protectorate.

Following Milošević’s political downfall in October 2000 the pressure and opportunity to restart and reorganise manifested themselves. Serbia and the Serb society did not accept the establishment of the new confederation defined in the 2003 constitution easily even in spite of the political rearrangements, neither the right for Montenegro to decide on its separation by referendum after three years had elapsed. The referendum took place on 21 May 2006, and with the peculiar validity threshold of 55% defined by the European Union, the Montenegrins expressed their lack of any real interest in a quick split.

Talks have begun on the future fate of Kosovo both at bilateral level, between Serbia and Albania, and international level. The Albanian majority, both it ethnical terms and in the proportion of the settlement area, considers the full independence of the province to be the only goal and acceptable solution; while the Serb half of the country is capable of and prepared to grant all forms of provincial autonomy but does not wish to accept full independence as yet.

The Kosovo question is fascinating not just within the context of the Balkan Peninsula but also from the point of view that the final solution to this question, its method and result will set an example for all regions of a similar nature and in a similar situation, not to mention the fact that it may set processes in motion for the creation of a new state.

Vojvodina has for the most part had the territorial autonomy restored which Milošević had suspended. This is significant politically and historically; and has fewer implications for ethnic minorities as a consequence of fundamental changes in demographic relations in Vojvodina. The number of Hungarian inhabitants in Vojvodina has declined to such an extent that the community by itself is no longer capable of ’obtaining’ territorial autonomy for its entire area ’by force’, and for the most part can only consider the strengthening of territorial, cultural and central administrative autonomy for the majority of its own settlement area.

In conjunction with this, territorial autonomy may even gain strength if the Serb majority would demand the growth of their own sphere of movement from the central government, with particular regard to strengthening opportunities for accession to the European Union.

*

The national and geographic structure of the Balkan Peninsula has been fundamentally altered during the past period of more than a decade and a half. “Previously acquired rights and status” prevailed in shaping the states and state borders, but in the case of the internal division of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an entity the process of institutionalising the ”political and central administrative unit which had not previously existed” (Bosnian Serb Republic) also emerged.

As it can be seen the new national geographical ’line-up’ has neither its external nor its full internal legitimacy. Only this may serve to explain the fact that international troops and police forces are stationed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo acting as an international protectorate.

The results of the Montenegrin referendum were accepted unconditionally by all interested parties, and the fact that the arrangement of the Kosovo situation was by and large acceptable to all the parties involved may clarify the situation in the whole region, and accession to the European Union and NATO may indeed serve to handle the historically unresolved questions in a new light.

The political and central administrative ’treatment’ of the ethnic settlement area does not only constitute a fundamental concern on the Balkan Peninsula for the future, too, but inevitably – in different ways and under different circumstances – it would appear in the future development of the European Union, as well. In the ’union of minorities’ (in comparison with the whole everyone in the EU may be considered a minority) the questions regarding national majorities–minorities; the settlement area majority – the settlement area minority will remain a sensitive issue.