Surroi: Hello, here is the second part of the conversation with Dr. Milivoj Beshli, historian from Belgrade. Welcome!
We continue where we left off. We left at the end of the period between the two world wars, we are reaching the beginning of the LDB. Yugoslavia disintegrates within a week and Kosovo finds itself in a situation where the entry of the Italians is perceived as liberation and this creates a new relationship, because the Italians bring the opening of the first schools in the Albanian language. My father attended Albanian school for the first time when the Italians came, and his generation, the Albanian flag was waving and the use of the Albanian language suddenly becomes normal, and this is then reflected in the relationship with the anti-fascist war.
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Beshlin: Yes. We need to go back a little and remember what we talked about. That the discriminatory policy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia towards, mainly, the Albanian population in Kosovo, was primarily due to the fact that there was no school, that there was no opportunity to use the language.
Surroi: There was no political representation...
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How did Tito block democratic reform?
Beshlin: No political representation except for a kind of minimal and marginal representation within "Xhemijet"; that there was economic discrimination, that Albanians did not participate in the agrarian reform, namely, in fact they participated as an object because their land was taken away.
Surroi: And it was given to the settlers...
Beshlin: ...was given to the settlers, so that on the one hand, since they asked for proof of ownership, the land deeds, from the Ottoman period, and no one had them, so on the one hand, in an extremely agrarian part of Yugoslav society, the land was confiscated, and on the other hand, the pastures and meadows were also taken, so, in addition to the agricultural population, the livestock population could not survive either, so it was very difficult, on all sides, for survival, so it is no coincidence that the Italians, after the invasion of Yugoslavia, that the Italian invader, was actually welcomed as a liberator.
As for the Anti-Fascist Movement, which is of course led in Yugoslavia by the Communist Party under the leadership of Tito, which begins this whole war with very clear anti-fascist definitions, which actually date back to the mid-30s, when the party entered that phase of the popular front... last time we mentioned how it evolved in the national question from the summer of 1919 when it was unitary, when it believed that it was one nation and that it should be a unitary state until 1923, when they started talking about the fact that this was not so, that they are different peoples, and from 1924 until the mid-30s, until 1934, the party's separatist policy begins, let's call it that, striving for the independence of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and for the self-determination of the Hungarians of Vojvodina and the Albanians of Kosovo, unification with Albania, so that This changed again sometime around 1935, around the time of the year when the popular front phase entered, when it was considered that fascism was the main problem and that Yugoslavia had to survive to protect itself from fascism.
Surroi: And this is not a product of Yugoslavia, in fact it is a product of the Comintern, which emphasized that communist parties should have their own armed forces.
Beshlin: Yes, yes, and that was already the time when the Spanish Civil War began and when the anti-fascist determinations of the Soviet Union itself were very clear, which were not controversial.
But on the other side of the party, the PKJ still has something specific of its own, and that is that they also understand, when they enter that phase of the popular front and when they start advocating the preservation of Yugoslavia and its resistance to fascism, their concern remains with the national issue and the need for the state to make that national issue, which was an urgent issue in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a state which eventually fell naturally under the pressure of the invaders, they arrive at the view that federalism, the federalist solution is what will actually solve the issue. Therefore, when the war began, they were aware, we are talking about the Yugoslav communists, that not only the Albanians, but also many peoples in Yugoslavia who were oppressed, discriminated against politically, economically, in terms of identity, etc., welcomed the invaders as a kind of liberators, and for this reason, they came out with the proclamation warning that the national issue would be resolved, that attention would be given not only to national emancipation. However, of course, in Kosovo, after all those experiences, this did not have a great echo, especially since the main people of the party were in fact those of Slavic origin, Miladin Popović, Dušan Mugoša, etc., that is, Serbs, respectively Montenegrins.
Surroi: And among them are also colonists
Beshlin: Exactly, yes. So, basically, the atmosphere of the majority in Kosovo was actually collaboration. Kosovo was basically divided, most of it was in that Italian occupation zone, which was otherwise, how should I say, less repressive than the German one in the north, there in Mitrovica, it was German and the little that was inside the Bulgarian occupation zone...
Surroi: Štrpce and Eastern Kosovo. I had spoken to some people who participated in the Bujan Conference, among them, Fadil Hoxha, who was the main organizer, and their impression until the end of their lives was that Kosovo was a kind of blind spot for both Albania and Yugoslavia, for both communist movements, for both national liberation movements, and that even when I asked them how Bujan came about, they had simply heard on the radio that Jajce was being prepared and that Jajce, the great KAÇKJ, was held, and then they decided: “They didn’t invite us, we had to do it.”
And this actually served as a reflection for me on Bujan as a metaphor for a movement that is neither for Albania nor for Yugoslavia, but wants to create a kind of identity in the history that is still happening...
Beshlin: Yes, you said it well. In fact, the context of the Bujan conference itself was actually the KACKJ, we are talking about the Second Meeting of the KACKJ, which was state-forming and which had far-reaching consequences for the further development in Yugoslavia, we are talking about the partisans, the communists, first of all, who were already clear that they were moving towards the winning formula, and towards a victorious anti-fascist movement, they tried very hard to prepare the KACKJ well. When I say tried, there was unequal treatment of different parts of Yugoslavia.
It wasn't controversial, but because of the way the war provinces were formed, how the main headquarters were formed, the future federal units could not only be guessed at, but could be very clearly predicted through the formation of those war provinces. There were main military headquarters for Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, etc., all of which would be future federal states.
Surroi: And for Vojvodina…
Beshlin: Yes, that's right, Vojvodina had its own headquarters, and above all there was the Yugoslav command, the supreme headquarters headed by Tito. Also, there were provincial party committees in Serbia, Croatia, again for Vojvodina, above all there was the Central Committee of Yugoslavia and there were the main national liberation councils, that was it.
Surroi: - Civil power.
Beshlin: That's right, the civil power, that is, the representative body, because in fact the Yugoslav revolution, that is, we, along with the anti-fascist war, also have a socialist revolution where new government bodies are formed since 1941, that is, the National Liberation Councils (NLCs), the so-called temporary government bodies that will take over civil governance from the local level and above.
Through these three institutional arrangements, you already had a foreshadowing of what the new federal state would look like, it was completely clear..., just as it was no coincidence that Tito came from Zagreb to Belgrade in May 1941, when it was already clear, not only that Yugoslavia had capitulated, its army, and it was not a formal state... the government was in London, Tito later said sarcastically: "When I saw how the Croats welcomed the Germans, I came"...
Of course, that wasn't exactly the case. He was very aware of the fact that he had to come to Serbia and rely mainly on the Serbs in that resistance to the Germans, to build on the liberationist, even anti-German sentiments from World War I, and so the other key thing, apart from the liberation movement, was that he had to convince Serbia, the majority of Serbs, of the federal system.
This was very difficult in Serbia due to the fact that since the 19th century, Serbia was a homogeneous country, a unitary state, completely centralist. Throughout the existence of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the dominant Serbian political thought resisted any federalization of the state, when that federalization began with the formation of the Banovina (County) of Croatia in August 1939 with the Cvetković-Maček agreement, in Serbia there was strong resistance precisely from the Serbian Cultural Club. So, it was simply necessary for Serbia to be lured into the federation. And during the war, not spontaneously, but deliberately, institutionally, these future federal units are built within Yugoslavia. Vojvodina is included, and in 1940, Vojvodina was designated as a federal unit at the party conference, because at that time there was talk of seven federal units. Žarko Zrenjanin was still alive then, he is a strong man
at the head of the party. They still don't know then, so we're moving on to 1943 and the KACKJ, they still don't know what to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina, because, this was very important, in the KACKJ they decide to create a new federal Yugoslavia, on national principles.
And in the KACJ itself, they say: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians form the new Yugoslav state, a new federation. Before that, they didn't know what to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina, because there is no dominant nation there. Then they go with the idea of its annexation by Serbia, then its annexation by Croatia, then they understand that they will create a greater Serbia or a greater Croatia if they do that, and then they go for the possibility of autonomy associated with the federation, which would be a little asymmetrical, and in the end they decide on a solution, as I would say, very logical, that Bosnia and Herzegovina be an equal federal unit, but that its principle is not based on one national identity, but on three identities, and that the basis for its constitution as a federal state is historical. They even said, I think Hasan Brkic said it, "we dug up the medieval foundations of the Bosnian state."
Surroi: Which was actually a civic state, perhaps the first civic republic in Yugoslavia.
Beshlin: In a way, yes, simply because that legitimacy...
Surroi: Anti-fascist and citizen.
Beshlin:...that legitimacy had a threefold basis. Of course, in such a concept, there is no place for Vojvodina, which was logical, and they say this in the KACKJ: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians form the state of Yugoslavia, as such they have the right to their own federal states, but, then comes the amendment of Sulejman Filipović which states, "respectively the peoples of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, with which the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina entered the foundations of the Yugoslav federation.
In such a concept, there is no place for Vojvodina, of course, nor for Kosovo. They are not mentioned. Tito will mention Vojvodina in March 1944 when justifying the decisions of the KACKJ, when he said that the citizens of Vojvodina will decide for him. In such circumstances, of course, Kosovo was not mentioned either, Sandzak was even mentioned before the KACKJ, which means that Sandzak at one point had its own anti-fascist Council, which would later disappear...
Kosovo is not included here at all. It is not mentioned, it is not discussed within the party leadership itself. And one of the consequences of this was the Bujan Conference, at the turn of 1943/44.
Surroi: Was it thought at that time, in the Yugoslav leadership, I don't know if Tito, Kardelj or anyone else mentioned it, but they thought at that time that Kosovo would eventually be part of Albania and that this should be done through an anti-fascist war and they referred to this.
But there is no historical evidence that there was any communication between the leadership of Kosovo and the leadership of Yugoslavia. The only person who communicated was “Tempo”, who saw things in his own way. And from this side in Albania, there was no communication with the Albanian leadership.
Beshlin: Yes. And they in Bujan decide what they decide, they even promise the population, respectively it is not, even exclusively, a reaction to the KAÇKJ. It is a reaction to the capitulation of Italy, to the fact that Italy was a very important factor, that it ceased to exist in September 1944, that now a considerable number of people, the population of Kosovo, are joining the LNC and, in fact, the popular masses had to stand up for themselves.
It was not beyond the logic of the partisans in other parts of Yugoslavia, where they promised various things in order to lure the broad masses of people to join the movement. But as we know, the Bujan Conference was canceled, the decisions were canceled by the Yugoslav leadership...
Surroi: They weren't canceled, in fact they were said to be premature...
Beshlin: ...premature, yes, but in fact they rejected them...
Surroi: Or they put it ad acta... And then it was reflected in another way because there was another moment that had an important impact, and that was after the agreement between Tito and the King, in fact his Prime Minister Šubašić, there was a call to all those who were on the other side, in Croatia and Serbia, to become part of the NC Movement, then already the Army of Yugoslavia or UNC, and unite the "domobrans" in Croatia, the Chetniks in Montenegro, Serbia, and in Bosnia of course, without the Chetnik leaders.
But that's not what happens in Kosovo. That call simply never came to Kosovo, for those who fought against to be part of it. And that had a significant impact on the internal frictions among the Albanians, and one moment that is already reflected in the late 1944/45 is that there is a perception among the Albanians in Kosovo that the units of the Bokel brigade and the other brigades that enter Kosovo, are in fact a good part of them, they simply transformed from Chetniks to Partisans and came to Kosovo within a few weeks.
Beshlin: Yes, after the first agreement between Tito and Šubašić in August 1944, the Government, then in London, published the proclamation that everyone had to unite. Tito's call followed... basically there were two amnesties, they included all collaborationist units, except, for example, Lotić's units, except the Ustashi, but also the "domobrans", the Chetniks, of course, there was always that "except those who committed crimes".
As a result, in September, on September 12, 1944, King Petar II invited all the units that were nominally under his command, that took his crown as their political legitimacy, to join the liberation army of Marshal Tito, and he himself says, “those who do not do this,” he was addressing mainly the Chetniks then, “will bear the mark of treason and dare not refer to me,” etc. So, in fact, it was a very broad platform on which the NC Movement was trying to...
Otherwise, what would later be interpreted as national reconciliation in both Serbia and Croatia, i.e. later there would be talk about the need for national reconciliation even after 1990, was much talked about, and the essential “national reconciliation” was accomplished when the Partisans accepted into their ranks many of those who were members of various collaborationist units. It is not that there was a particular echo in Kosovo and among the Yugoslav partisans themselves when they came, their units, they did not have a good reception in Kosovo and the result of this was, among other things, the uprising in the winter of 1944/45, which mainly included Drenica, but also some other parts of Kosovo, which will greatly influence the fact that the new Yugoslav government will show a repressive streak there, but it is simply a fact that the war was not over yet, etc., that they were then on other fronts, and for this reason, among other things, the Military Administration was introduced, in February 1945 and a very decisive confrontation with all the insurgents who did not accept the new government. And this Military Administration practically lasts until the summer, until June 1945, when the situation will calm down when circumstances are created in a political and legal way to resolve the status of Kosovo.
They didn't really know how to do it for a long time, because the Communist Party of Serbia wasn't constituted for a long time, and the Anti-Fascist Assembly of Serbia itself wasn't, because they weren't clear about where the borders of Serbia were; and what Serbia itself would now include; is it Vojvodina, Kosovo, Sandzak...
Then the Anti-Fascist Council of Sandzak was dissolved, divided between Serbia and Montenegro, and then in the summer of 1945, they decided that, of course, Kosovo and Vojvodina would be integrated, in different capacities, within the federal state of Serbia.
And so, in July, on July 8, 1945, the Regional Anti-Fascist Assembly of Kosovo convened and there, during those two days, it was decided that, respectively, the Assembly should legitimize the factual situation existing after the suppression of the uprising, after the establishment of the new government in Kosovo, now it was necessary to give a political form to all this. The head of the Party had already decided that Vojvodina would have autonomy and that the basis of Vojvodina's autonomy would be historical, that it would be its multinational composition and its contribution to the anti-fascist war.
Since Vojvodina had a relatively strong anti-fascist movement, especially in the first year of the war, and the solution with Kosovo would be for it to be a region (oblast), a lower rank compared to Vojvodina, for it to be an autonomous region within Serbia and now, of course, through a series of declarations, decisions, etc., of that regional Assembly in July 1945, they legitimized, welcomed and supported all other decisions and of the Party leadership itself and where it was decided that Kosovo would be, be constituted, as an autonomous region and that as such in that capacity it would become part of the federal state of Serbia, which was part of federal Yugoslavia.
Surroi: There are two or three meanings here. The first meaning is that it is done, of course, after the terrible repression, the establishment of the Military Administration, it meant giving the army the opportunity to "clean the ground", as they said, and tens of thousands of people were killed in the cities, Gjilan, Ferizaj, not only in Drenica.
The second is that a new order was being established under the pressure of the gun, in fact, that area was created without asking the citizens what they thought, how it was done, but the government that has the gun does it, but the third issue, which continues for 40 or 50 years later, is the fact that in Prizren it was said: "WE HAVE decided to unite", and this is in fact an act of self-determination, because when you decide to unite, then as one of the delegates of the Kosovo Assembly said in 1989: "As we united in Serbia, so we will secede from Serbia", that is, Ruzhdi Bakalli, who had been a delegate.
It is a very low start for relations between Kosovo and Serbia.
Beshlin: Yes, when we talk about the repression, the terror that is happening and the violent suppression of the uprising, it is actually a continuation that was... so the Military Administration was....
Surroi: … after World War I
Beshlin: And during the Balkan Wars, there was a military administration and after World War I, and then there was a military administration, as I said, this clearly shows that in fact...
Surroi: ...the political idea is missing.
Beshlin: Exactly! That the political idea is missing and that it is always changed by force and essentially the entire relationship, we are talking about Serbia above all, but of course also between Yugoslavia and Kosovo, was based on violence and in the absence of a political idea.
Apart from a period that we will cover over two decades, between the Brioni plenum and the arrival of Milošević, when an attempt was made to reach some kind of political solution, and yet even that in 1981 was essentially...
Surroi: This is interesting. This period 1945-1948 goes back to the old idea of the seventh republic, Albania. - Yes. - Was this an intermediate stage for a solution? Was it intended for it?
Beshlin: It could have been. They actually wanted it. Tito's ambitions were great.
Surroi: Is this Tito's ambition?
Beshlin: Yes! You mentioned "Tempo" and its Balkan headquarters, now the idea was for Bulgaria and Albania to unite, and this is also the song: "Comrade Tito deserved that his entire Balkans become part of Europe"...
They came out with almost 800 thousand fighters, that Yugoslav Army in 1945. It is really one of the main military forces in Europe, some say it was the fourth anti-fascist army at that time. So, they keep that army mobilized mainly because of Trieste and the western borders, etc., but I mean they were arrogant, crowned with world glory as the winners of the war after all those epics. Yugoslavia seemed small to them, They had big ambitions. And Albania was kind of taken for granted there, but then they returned to Bulgaria.
Of course, Stalin stopped everything. We know that the conflict with the Soviets, among other things, started because of that idea...
Surroi: With the Bulgarians, initially, with Dimitrov.
Beshlin: Yes, with Dimitrov, but, among other things, because of the issue of whether Bulgaria and Albania would become part of the Yugoslav federation. It is an interesting concept and in fact it also concerns Kosovo and Vojvodina, and according to a similar model, there have been different explanations of what is the legitimizing factor for the constitution of the autonomy of the region or province, but actually in a certain sense of state law it is a very interesting formulation where that Assembly establishes itself in the case of Vojvodina as a province, in the case of Kosovo as the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija.
But it has a representative identity - It decides to constitute itself as a kind of autonomy and as such decides, as autonomy, to enter the composition of the federal state of Serbia. It is a very interesting formulation to which they have returned in all the major constitutional changes. And in fact, the entire constitutional system of socialist Yugoslavia and its federalism, which was very complex, cannot be observed and interpreted if we now take and extract something from the 1963 Constitution or the 1974 amendments.
Surroi: It's an evolution.
Beshlin: Exactly. It is a very complex evolution which is a corpus of documents, to which they constantly refer and which are implied, and this starts with the KNC since 1941, and this is very interesting. This is a certain act of political constitutionality, so I would say, where legally you regulate yourself but the fact is also that, after the constitution and after that decision to join Serbia, so the region of Kosovo and Metohija and the autonomy of Vojvodina, they seek approval, namely confirmation from the Yugoslav leader, the KACKJ, at the Third Meeting, in August 1945, it is held in liberated Belgrade, which is transformed into the Provisional People's Assembly, and it gives the approval.
Surroi: In fact, it is the Federal Assembly.
Beshlin: So it's not just the Serbia-Kosovo or Serbia-Vojvodina relationship, but there is also a relationship with the federal leadership, because the federal Assembly, the Yugoslav representative body, gives guarantees for this and after that, in September, the Assembly of Serbia, that is, its presidency, decides to create, on its territory, the autonomous "Oblast" of Kosovo and Metohija and the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
Which again was contrary to the fact that Vojvodina and Kosovo constitute themselves, unite, seek the approval of the federal head, the Provisional People's Assembly, i.e. the Third Meeting of the KACJ allows them to do this... all this happens in August and only in September, the People's Assembly of Serbia, i.e. its presidency, decides that on its territory...
Then the controversy arose in the subsequent constitutional debates, who constituted them and who were the bearers of these two autonomies? Do they constitute themselves? Indeed, then they do not speak of self-determination, etc. This right undoubtedly belongs to the nations, which have their own federal states, which were mentioned in the KACKJ, at the Second Meeting in 1943, but the contentious issue remains: who constituted the autonomies, whether they constituted themselves with the guarantee of the federal head, or whether the Serbian Assembly did this, with the right, that is, to dispose of those autonomies. If it established them, then it can extinguish them.
Later, the dominant view was the first, that is, that the autonomies constituted themselves with the guarantee of the federal leadership, etc., just as it is no coincidence that after Tito, when the federal leadership weakened and no longer had that political legitimacy, in fact even when Milosevic violently overthrew the autonomy of the provinces, the federal leadership remained silent.
And this was actually its defeat. It was the defeat of Yugoslavia.
Surroi: There are some controversies. The first is that this is the first time that the territory of Kosovo was actually constituted, because Kosovo has never existed as a territory. In the first Yugoslavia, there were Banovina and parts of the banovinas, and this is the first time that Kosovo has its own territory. The second, there is a parade, the VJ enters Kosovo, against the uprising, but tens of thousands of VJ soldiers also go from Kosovo to the Srem Front. And this parade reveals that nonsense, military and legal, that will drag Kosovo into a crisis for several years, in fact for several decades. Because there was an idea, immediately after the war, some of the participants who talked about this, I talked to them, the initial idea, was toying with the idea that Kosovo be divided as it was divided in Banovina, that one part would belong to Montenegro, one part to Serbia, one part to Macedonia, and that there would be some kind of solution so that Kosovo would not exist. This was the only solution that established Kosovo as a territory.
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Beshlin: Nikezic and Perovic, the first to raise the idea of Kosovo becoming a republic in Yugoslavia
Beshlin: Yes! This with the borders, the internal Yugoslav borders, and it was very interesting from the beginning, because later it seemed somewhat natural to us, because we all knew which republics and provinces were, and we even had a clear mental map in our heads, not only of what Yugoslavia looked like, but also where the borders of the republics and provinces were always shown separately on each map.
But in 1945, there was no such thing. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was divided into 9 banovinas, then in 1939 the Croatian Banovina was formed from the banovinas of Sava and Primorje, but it also included those 6 counties of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And there was no idea what the Serbian Banovina that was supposed to be formed and would be formed if it weren't for the war would look like. The Slovene Banovina was roughly assumed to mean what it would mean. These would be the historical borders of Slovenia.
But no one meant it, I'm talking about the years 1939/1940, when the Yugoslav Government, that of the Kingdom, talks about the Serbian Banovina, but no one includes Vojvodina at that time as, obviously, part of that Serbian Banovina, because it's simply Maček asked to go from Subotica downwards, so that it could be separated.
So when they formed it, even in the KACJ, when it became clear which federal states would be, they were still not sure about their borders and where they would go. In particular, the borders of Serbia were disputed: what happens to Vojvodina; Kosovo, Sandzak, etc.
Surroi: But in the meantime, this bad beginning continues with the Military Administration in Kosovo. It continues with the weapons collection action in 1953/1954; the migration of Albanians to Turkey.
It feels like the new Yugoslavia has some advantages, schools are opening, the first schools in the Albanian language, but that mentality of administration by force does not change.
Beshlin: Yes!. In the first 15 years in the new state, when it comes to Kosovo, you are right, of course there are some essential developments such as the use of the language, the press, literacy, schools in the Albanian language, etc., but basically there is still a great distrust towards Kosovo, towards the majority Albanian population in Kosovo, and repression...
Surroi: ...even to the leaders, the Albanian leaders of the National Liberation Army
Beshlin: Exactly. And the culmination of this is of course the Prizren process, its culmination in 1954-1955, which was the collection of weapons, etc., there was also displacement.
Surroi: The Prizren process should actually have captured Fadil Hoxha.
Beshlin: Exactly. And among other things, when we talk about displacement, estimates are somewhere around 240 thousand emigrated to Turkey, mainly to Turkey, not exclusively, but which was again a significantly larger number than the number that was expelled during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, when around 100 or 120 thousand Turkish and other Muslim population were expelled from Kosovo. Here, twice as many people were expelled.
It wasn't classic ethnic cleansing, as we would imagine it today, but it was incitement, and they themselves, I found it in some documents, at one point asked themselves: "Are we encouraging this displacement too much? Do these measures seem discriminatory?"
Surroi: In what documents? Party documents?
Beshlin: Yes, in party documents, but anyway, the culmination of this was the Prizren Process. In fact, we will learn about the extent of the Prizren Process, about the extent of the repression in Kosovo, which reached its peak sometime in the mid-1950s, which is quite interesting, because at that time the repression was falling in the rest of the country.
There was a wave of repression in Yugoslavia everywhere after 1945, with the establishment of the new government. The biggest was in Kosovo, we said that, but it was everywhere. The new government was still established by force and it was necessary to institutionalize a revolution.
Surroi: Then there is the Informbureau.
Beshlin: The year 1948 follows, the IB, where there is again a new wave of repression against IB members, and where the paranoia is rightly based on the fear of Soviet aggression, Stalin, etc.,
And then we have 1953, the death of Stalin, the rapprochement with the Soviets.
Surroi: Khrushchev
Beshlin: Khrushchev comes to Belgrade in 1955; "Belgrade Declaration" in 1956, "Moscow Declaration..." in a way the tension is decreasing, but at the same time in Kosovo, in fact it is not like that.
Surroi: Is it a political decision, or does it go by inertia?
Beshlin: I don't know of any political decision where anyone said that this would be the case, but we will talk about what happened later, what was rightly blamed on Aleksandar Ranković, who is nevertheless a key figure in the security apparatus and who controls the police apparatus.
Surroi: Starting with the OZNA and onwards.
Beshlin: That's right, public and state security. This is placed on him, and we talk about this at the Brioni Plenum, but it is impossible that the Party and the state leadership did not know about this.
Surroi: Tito should have known this.
Beshlin: I am convinced of this, that it absolutely had to be known and that it was not simply done... now the way in which Ranković presented this to Tito, I do not know this, I have not been able to investigate it from the documents, but that the leadership of the party and the state must have been aware of the repression... that he knew the extent, the discriminatory character only towards a part of the population in Kosovo, I do not know, but I say that we will learn the extent only after the Brioni Plenum.
In 1953/1954, something that Čubrillović had warned about in 1938/39 was recycled. Their idea was not to actually carry out classic ethnic cleansing, but in fact to spread paranoia that Albanians are disloyal elements to the state, that they are counter-revolutionaries, etc.
Surroi: And that you can only talk to them by force.
Beshlin: That things can only be resolved by force. It is possible that even the party leadership did not fully know the extent of the repression. Because the way everyone reacted when the issue was raised after the Brioni Plenum may testify to the fact that they may not have fully known, but that Kosovo was a region or unit under special supervision, there is no doubt that everyone knew and approved of this.
And then there is the Brioni Plenum.
Surroi: But before the Brioni Plenum, constitutional changes took place in 1963...
Beshlin: In fact, in 1963, the new Constitution was drafted. In the late 50s, Yugoslavia was already entering a crisis, namely, it was leaning against the wall in political and economic development.
First, they faced an economic problem because the previous model of development, which was based on state control, on the considerable enthusiasm that occurs in voluntary work actions, unpaid work of young people, is declining.
Surroi: And big mistakes like the redemption, which hit Vojvodina, Croatia...
Beshlin: Of course, this is true, to the extent that this is true, with the sanctions that were imposed in the late 50s by the main foreign trade partner, West Germany, when Yugoslavia recognized East Germany, all this caused a significant economic crisis in the country. Reforms had to be made.
First of all, economic reform had to be done. Thus began the small economic reform from 1961, which Tito would stop with the Split speech in 1962, and then serious debates began about the fact that Yugoslav federalism should also be subject to reform, that the distribution of good things within the country were not done fairly, that everyone's rights were not fulfilled, that the national issue was not resolved as believed and that it needed to evolve further.
Then the famous session of the Party Executive Committee was held in 1962, when a serious clash took place behind closed doors and when two lines began to emerge, the reformist one of Kardelj, which supports further decentralization, as Bakariq would say, “federalization of the federation”, and for further economic reforms, and the other, the conservative centralist anti-reformist of Ranković. It was already clear there. Tito offered his resignation; then there was Kardelj’s injury while hunting, and his departure to Britain for treatment, which surprisingly lasted a long time. The conflicts were serious within them.
The new Constitution of 1963 was the result of a compromise between conservative and reformist currents, as well as between centralist and federalist currents, let's call them that. It should only be taken conditionally as the personifications of Kardelj and Ranković, and according to the new Constitution, where the republics received significantly more rights and where their statehood was emphasized, among other things, Kosovo is no longer a region and is equalized, it is still called Kosovo and Metohija, it becomes an autonomous province like Vojvodina, and there their status is actually equalized.
This happened in 1963. In 1964, the 8th Congress was held, where the party leader for the first time publicly opens up the national question and says that it has not been resolved and that it must be moved... and this is in fact the beginning of the entire decade of reforms, from the early '60s to the early '70s, the decade in which segments of the state and society will be opened up one by one to changes and reforms.
The Yugoslav communists have always been characterized by the fact that, as I said, they were able to look critically at their previous work and to change their previous positions to a large extent. So, in 1964 we have the 8th Congress and the opening of the national question, now publicly... But this does not mean that the Brijuni Plenum happens for this. All these elements are... then in 1965, the Federal Assembly approves that whole very complex package of economic laws, which would later be known as the Economic Reform, the Great Economic Reform, which until then was the largest and most important, the most extensive attempt to reform the economic system in a socialist country where, in fact, an attempt was made to create a syncretism between what socialism would be and what the market would be.
They understand that they are ineffective, that they cannot take sufficient measures, that they are unproductive, that socialism will simply be unsuccessful if serious reforms of the economic system are made. And here, they try to adopt what are essentially capitalist elements: productivity, efficiency, the market, market competitiveness, but on the other hand, the socialist character of the entire economic system is preserved with social property and self-government...
Surroi: Self-government is built on this... Kardeli...
Beshlin: Yes. So it's an attempt to really syncretize different elements while preserving these key socialist characteristics.
And then came the Economic Reform, and when they began to undertake this very broad reform, they realized that for this reform to be successful, it was more comprehensive and better thought out than the one of 1961, they realized that reform had to be done in the state and the Party, and that it could not all be confined to the economy. And there they encountered the key disruptive factor, the main obstacle to further deep reforms, and that was Ranković.
In July 1966, in Brione, the federal leadership meets. Accusations of wiretapping Tito emerge.
Surroi: It sounds like it was the detonator.
Beshlin: This was because in the situation of an authoritarian and closed system, where Ranković had very great power, he was not only formally the number two man, the Vice President of the state, this function was defined by the 1963 Constitution, he was the Vice President of the state, de facto the second man; he was considered the successor of Tito, but much more than that: he was the organizational Secretary of the Party, he controls the Party in depth and is the essential controller of the Yugoslav secret services, these civilian and not military.
Surroi: So, he controls the Party and the Service, and also the UDB.
Beshlin: These are the two most important things. Under such circumstances, an ideological debate could not be held, and it could not be opened publicly, and it took a long time because they were somewhat concerned about all the mechanisms that Ranković could use.
They needed a shocking accusation, a quick party coup, so that they could finish it as quickly as possible, and a reason was found in all this. It was completely irrelevant now whether there was or wasn't, whether the cables were laid in Tito's villa, it was said yes, but they were not put into operation. All this is irrelevant.
In an authoritarian system, there was a man who had concentrated a lot of power, and in fact, some kind of reason had to be found for this and that he actually attacked Tito's authority, because basically, every conflict in Yugoslavia is always resolved on the issue of Tito's authority and his great legitimacy that comes from the war. And that was the reason.
The causes, in fact, were much deeper; the causes are already revealed in Brioni, which are the real reasons for the dismissal of Ranković, and in essence, it was the opposition to the course of reform that would then begin in the economy, in the state and decentralization, and in the Party, which is very important, it is very important that those in Brioni immediately after the dismissal of Ranković form the Commission for the Reform and Reorganization of the Party.
First, Tito feared that dismissing Ranković would have some kind of anti-Serb tone, so two Serbs would replace him in the state and in the party. Koča Popović would come as vice president, who would not stay there for long, but he did come, a man also with great authority and reputation.
Surroi: And completely different from the others: intellectual, fighter in Spain, visionary, his first language was French, until then, a very well-received Foreign Minister, especially in the USA, when Trieste happened, weapons from America arrived through Koça and people close to him...
Beshlin: So, a completely opposite political profile to that of Ranković, and in Ranković's place in the Party comes Mijalko Todorović "Plavi" (the blue one), also an intellectual, a reformist, one of those so-called Serbian federalists, as they were called, those pro-Serbian cadres oriented towards democracy, towards reforms, who had a great reputation and who, due to the great shadow of Ranković that was felt most in Serbia, there was simply no place for them in Serbia in that political nomenclature, but they were in the federal leadership.
I am mainly thinking of Koça, Mijallko Todorović and Millentije Popović, who would later become the president of the Federal Assembly where he would end his life in 1971.
In Brijuni, they formed the Commission for the Reform and Reorganization of the Party. With this, they wanted to show what the true meaning of replacing Ranković was, that the Party itself, the state, and society had changed, so the Party must change too.
That commission was headed by Mijallko Todorović.
Surroi: Whereas the Commission for Ranković was led by Krsto Crvenkovski,
Beshlin: Basically, that Commission proved that the cables had existed, but that perhaps there had been no wiretapping. That ended with abolition. At the end of that year, the Federal Assembly actually abolished Ranković and that was the end of everything.
But this commission, about which not much is actually known, because the public talked more about that commission of Krsto Crvenkovski, which essentially and deeply was not particularly important politically.
Much more important was the commission about which very little was known. This is the Commission for the Reform and Organization of the Party, because for 3 years, in fact, until the 9th Congress of the Party in 1969, it prepared documents and ideas, among other things, I know that Latinka Perović was a member of that Commission, of course there were members from all the republics and provinces, and they actually prepared a mass of very important documents.
Mainly based on those principles, the entire 9th Party Congress was prepared in March 1969. However, what were the main thrusts of that Commission in terms of ideas on how to reform the League of Communists as a monopoly party, Tito still rejected, because he said, “it’s too much, it’s meaningless and we can’t go that far.” But, still, the Commission was important because a large part of the ideas to reform the Party entered the documents of the 9th Congress, which is not without importance when we mention this Congress because then in fact the Party itself becomes federalized.
Until then, there was always the federal Congress and it defined the basic principles, the cadres, etc., and they were then implemented by the Republican Parties. For the first time in 1968 and at the end of 1968, it happened that the Republican Party congresses were held first, that they appointed the key cadres, that people with the highest authority came to key positions and then what would be the collection of their political beliefs and ideas would go to the federal Congress, which would follow after the Republican ones.
And another thing that was also very important, and we will dwell on this, is that in 1968, the Communist Leagues of Kosovo and Vojvodina were actually created, as a result, among other things, of the decentralization of the state.
But let's go back to the Brijuni Plenum. The dismissal of Ranković that took place at the federal level, in July 1966, now, let's leave aside the wiretapping argument, was done because of opposing the reform, obstructing the reforms, the attempt to decentralize the state, to reform the party, and that's where it stopped. Kosovo is not mentioned there. The Kosovo argument is not mentioned, which was, how should I say, his crime at the Yugoslav level, on the Yugoslav plane, and this was the month of July.
They went on vacation, but the Serbian communists at that time, namely the LKS, were preparing the session for the fall, that is, the end of the summer of 1966, when they should open the Serbian argument for the dismissal of Ranković, and this was Kosovo.
Thus we arrive at the famous 6th Meeting of the LKS, in September, September 15-16, 1966, where the Kosovo crime related to Aleksandar Ranković is revealed.
Surroi: And this is exactly the moment when we should stop, so that in this dramatic form we can move on to next week when we will talk about this, in fact about how the Serbian communists noticed what was happening with Ranković, what was for them, until then, Kosovo under Ranković.
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Tonight, POINTS with Veton Surroin, guest Milivoj Beshlin (II)
Beshlin: Thank you!
Translated and adapted by: Flaka Surroi
