Student Movements for the Republic of Kosovo

1968, 1981 and 1997

Atdhe Hetemi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030549510
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030549527
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

This book analyzes the central vision of three student movements organized by different generations of Kosovo Albanian students in 1968, 1981 and 1997. By examining the dynamics of the demonstrations, the author explores the dimensions, forms and implications of student uprisings and resistance, as well as the struggles for dominance by local (Kosovo), federal (SFRY), regional (Albania and Serbia) and international actors (outside the Balkans). While these demonstrations were organized by students, the book shows that these were not necessarily academic but political, highlighting the impact that students had on society to demonstrate. It examines how the vision for "Republic" status or independence impacted the first and subsequent student movements. Moreover, due to the richness of the empirical data included, this book contributes toward further discussions on social movements, nationalism and state theories.

© The Author(s) 2020

A. HetemiStudent Movements for the Republic of KosovoPalgrave Studies in the History of Social Movementshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54952-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Atdhe Hetemi¹

(1)

Prishtina, Kosovo

Atdhe Hetemi

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

This book investigates the roles of the student movements of 1968, 1981, and 1997 in Kosovo¹ in shaping the history and political status of what is now the Republic of Kosovo. The choice of these three moments and their respective student movements is because these were three key points in the history of Kosovo, and understanding them is crucial to understanding Kosovo’s contemporary history and politics. It analyzes the motives and central visions of these three movements, each taking place within different historical and political contexts and each organized by a different generation of Kosovo Albanian students. The years 1968, 1981, and 1997 witnessed a proliferation of student mobilizations as collective responses demanding more national rights for Albanians in Kosovo. I argue that the students’ main vision in all three movements was the political independence of Kosovo. Given the complexity of the students’ goal, my analysis focuses on the influence and reactions of domestic and foreign powers vis-à-vis the University of Prishtina (hereafter UP), the students, and their movements.

Fueled by their desire for freedom from Serbian hegemony, the students played a central role in articulating, in three successive generations, the vision of “Republic” status for Kosovo. Kosova Republikë or the Republic of Kosovo (hereafter RK) status was a demand of all three student demonstrations, although in the first two, the status of the Republic was presented as being within the SFRY, while in the third, the demand was for independence.

The students’ impact on state creation has generally been underestimated by politicians and public figures. Thus, by explaining how student ideas for the “Republic” status of Kosovo traveled were inherited and were radicalized, the primary purpose of this study is to unearth the various and hitherto unknown or inadequately investigated roles of higher education—the University of Prishtina (henceforth UP) and its students—in shaping Kosovo’s contemporary history. It is important to emphasize that there were differences between what the students themselves were thinking when chanting for the “Republic of Kosovo” and what their opponents in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (hereafter SFRY) imputed to them. As compared to the demonstrations of 1997, when the entire political situation of what had become by then the FRY was transformed, the students’ demand during the demonstrations of 1968 and 1981 was for a Republic status of Kosovo within the SFRY. Yet, as Victor Friedman of the University of Chicago, who was in Yugoslavia during the events of 1981, recalls, at the time of the 1981 demonstrations, popular discourse claimed that demands for a Republic within the SFRY would open the door to secession. Strictly speaking, this was not true in terms of the SFRY Constitution. The Republics did not have a constitutional right to secede, but the circulation of such rumors at the time of the 1981 demonstrations (Friedman: December 2015) opened the doors to the regime for even more aggressive reactions against the students and Kosovo Albanian society in general. By arguing that the students’ demands were also part of a wider quest for human rights rather than merely a straightforward nationalistic matrix, this study reclaims the critical character of the 1968 and 1981 uprisings, as well as the social struggles and all-out war of the 1990s, effectively leading the country to the implementation of the political ideas of self-determination and independence. Student engagement directly served to mobilize all levels of Kosovan society to participate in social resistance actions aimed at securing independence and statehood.² This book captures a precious historical moment: People who remember and were involved in all three student movements—and the significance of 1968, 1981, and 1997 are undeniable—are all still alive.

In an effort to shed light on the student movements, this work also focuses on the historical role that institutions of higher education, particularly the UP, played in the political and national emancipation of Albanians in Kosovo from the late 1950s to the 1990s. Having evolved from a series of institutions of higher education into a university in its own right in the 1970s, the UP became an inspiration for political action, demonstrations, and the building of national consciousness. From its foundation in 1970 until 1974, the UP was an institution closely involved with initial nation-building ideas. Between 1974 and 1981, the UP was an institution of enlightenment, while during the 1980s and 1990s it became a bastion of resistance.³ It can thus be argued that the UP played an important role in the region’s political life (Koliqi 2010).

Both the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and the Republic of Albania’s leadership used the UP to channel their political interests. While the SFRY proclaimed that the political emancipation of the Albanians in Kosovo coincided with the “brotherhood and unity” platform or “Titoism,”⁴ the Republic of Albania proclaimed national emancipation among Albanians in the SFRY, trying to expand on nationalist ideas about a “perfect” Albania and “Enverism.”⁵ Given that Albanians in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and then subsequently in Yugoslavia, including the SFRY, were discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens most of the time, it is not surprising that Kosovo Albanians would come to identify with the Republic of Albania as well as because of their common language-based identity.

After analyzing Kosovo’s developments in the field of higher education, I then look at how such actors as political or state representatives and intellectuals reacted to and interacted with student actions. I also focus on how the student movements and public opinion interacted concerning the violence of the Yugoslav and, later, Serbian regimes. It is worth mentioning that the foundation of the university—one of the students’ crucial objectives during the 1968 protests—was achieved primarily due to the students’ demands. More than a decade later (and approximately ten months after the death of Tito), students once again started to ask for changes. On March 11, 1981, during lunchtime, one student, feeling humiliated by the wretched food served at the dining hall, threw his food down on the floor. More than 500 students followed his lead and began to call for “Food and Better Conditions.”⁶ As police started arresting students, thousands of student demonstrators gradually occupied the center of the city. Slogans demanding better food and better conditions changed to “While some of you are sitting in soft chairs – others of us don’t have anything to eat.” While permissible as cartoons in satiric journals in Socialist Yugoslavia—a country promoting itself as a land of equals—in the context of street demonstrations, such slogans were a slap in the face of the political elites, the “red bourgeoisie,” who were reaping the benefits of the system while keeping silent about the suffering of other social groups. Other political slogans of the 1981 demonstrations included “We are Albanians – not Yugoslavs,” “For whom is Trepça/Trepča⁷ working?,” “Republic of Kosovo,” “Unification with Albania,” etc. (Hetemi 2018).

Similar to 1968, during the 1981 and 1990s demonstrations, the Kosovar Albanian political elites publicly condemned the protests and disapproved of the people’s participation in these demonstrations, which they dubbed as “nationalist acts.” Changes in the public attitudes of intellectuals and politicians occurred only after 1990. Some politicians and professors changed their approach and started to view the demonstrations in a positive light, particularly after the October 1, 1997 demonstration, again organized by the students. This time some of the political activists and UP professors demonstrated together with their students. During the 1997 demonstrations, it was again the students who were the first to contest Ibrahim Rugova’s⁸ political concept of peaceful civil resistance. Even though Rugova did not fully support these demonstrations, after almost seven years of “peaceful”—but as the students labeled it—“inactive” resistance, no one could quell the student demonstrations (October 1, 1997) or, later, prevent the escalation of the situation into an armed conflict between the Belgrade regime, Albanian self-organized forces and, later on, NATO’s interventions (Clark 2000). The key concepts of this work revolve around the links between higher education (specifically the UP), students, and political influences in constructing a political and, later, unified national resistance of Albanians in Kosovo and the SFRY. This study takes a historical approach by examining the political dimension of the topic through empirical analysis that attempts to dissect the links among higher education, students, a divided intelligentsia, and the other actors struggling for control over the UP. With the historical approach, I do not refer only to the collection of archival and oral sources but rather to the following of the inquiries for source criticism while evaluating the qualities of the collected materials for this book. Thus, the “source criticism” method is followed as a technique while investigating this topic, especially given that the unique value of this research is in its combination of oral history and archival research. In their “Guide for Historical Method,” Garraghan and Delanglez divided source criticism into six inquiries: date of the source, location, authorship, analysis, integrity, and credibility (Garraghan and Delanglez 1946: 168). Contemporary scholars also suggest similar methods for researching social movements from historical perspectives: close attention to detail and context, skeptical and judicious questioning of sources via internal and external criticism, and the use of narrative—the roles played by later and current narrative discourse (Dill and Aminzade 2010: 272). By critically reviewing the written and oral sources of all relevant languages that this book brings together, I contribute to an understanding of the history of Kosovo that is both of value to future generations and provides testimonies that have never been recorded.

The central questions that I seek to address are: What was the impact of the UP and its students on mobilizing society to protest for a “Republic” status for Kosovo? Also, were the students “real heroes” or simply “manipulated puppets” of local, federal, regional, and international political interests struggling for dominance? By assessing the authenticity and validity of the archival sources and critiquing the interview materials, paying particular attention to the role of students, my intention is to do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Uneasy Liaison: Albanians and South Slavs in the Former Yugoslavia
• 3. Social Movements Between Demands for Social Change, Justice, and Nationalism (the 1960s)
• 4. The University of Prishtina (UP): Between Politics and Academia
• 5. Propaganda: Different Responses to the 1981 Demonstrations
• 6. The Unfolding of Kosovar Activism in the 1990s
• 7. Conclusions
• Back Matter