The Rankovic-Tito agreement for the "disarmament" and deportation of Albanians

"First I informed Tito and then, in the meeting, I also informed the secretariat of the Executive Committee. Regarding the action, compliance was complete. Tito asked us why the weapons had not been collected earlier! In the military line, General Ivan Goshnjak (1909 - 1980) not only confirmed this assessment of the situation in Kosovo, but he also presented his data there (KOS data - SL). I explained the delays related to political motives, as well as the sensitivity of the Albanians, since they have never willingly dissociated themselves from arms!", testifies Aleksandar Ranković in "Shënime ditore".

Aleksandar Ranković's book, "Daily Notes", published in 2002, fragments of which are translated and used in this article, according to the publisher's evidence, are notes taken starting immediately after the Brijuni Plenum and they were written by hand in Latin script! Among other things, in the book, Aleksandar Ranković disclosed the conversation he had with Jopis Broz Tito (1892 - 1980) regarding the "Arms Collection Action" in Kosovo, stressing that, however, the decision to undertake the action was brought to the political forums of Serbia, which seems to indicate that the Yugoslav head of state was overlooked, but nevertheless, relying on accessible archival materials, the reality of subjugated Kosovo in the fifties and sixties of the XX century is a little more different from the one actually presented by the implementer of the "Arms Collection Action". 

"Regarding the action, Slobodan Peneziq-Kërcuni (1918 - 1964), Jovan Veselinovi (1906 - 1982) and Petar Stamboliqi (1912 - 2007) informed me and suggested that I inform Tito and other comrades about their decision," wrote Ranković , which is hard to believe, because in any case, as in the document of the first part of the article, he did not establish himself as the initiator of this enterprise, as will be proven later! He further wrote that Tito was informed before the action in Kosovo started. 

"First I informed Tito and then, in the meeting, I also informed the secretariat of the Executive Committee. Regarding the action, compliance was complete. Tito asked us why the weapons had not been collected earlier! In the military line, General Ivan Goshnjak (1909 - 1980) not only confirmed this assessment of the situation in Kosovo, but he also presented his data there (KOS data - SL). I explained the delays related to political motives, as well as the sensitivity of the Albanians, since they have never willingly dissociated themselves from arms! This sensitivity related to the weapons of the Albanians was rooted since the national oppression that they had experienced in the old Yugoslavia, from the time when the Serbian bourgeoisie had exercised violence on the Albanian population! Therefore, all those circumstances had to be present in the implementation of the "Arms Collection Action" and in the first place, armed enemies had to be separated from other Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin citizens. With these remarks, this action has been entrusted to the UDB, the republic (Serbia) and the province (Kosovo) with full political support and cooperation with social-political organizations," Rankovic testified. While we must remember that according to official statistics in the post-war years "the number of Albanians employed in the Internal Security Service in Kosovo was only 13,33 percent, Montenegrins 28,34 percent and Serbs 58,3 percent ". 

The "arms collection action" in Kosovo was a legal action!

In the following, Aleksandar Ranković disclosed details from the organization of the "Weapons Collection Action" in Kosovo, but that later they will appear very contradictory, especially when comparing the number of weapons collected. 

"Among the issues that tended to be initiated after the Brione Plenum in our press, the 'Action of collecting weapons in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Dukagjin' found a place," he wrote, adding that "it is a legal action that it was aimed at discovering and collecting the illegal weapons with which the citizens of this province were supplied during the war and after the liberation of the country... The initiative of what size will be the "Weapons Collection Action" in Kosovo was initiated by the government and political forums of Serbia, at the time of the large activities of hostile elements in Kosovo. At that time, many illegal organizations were discovered, which already had their political programs and statuses. Those political organizations of Albanians were not small groups that had no connection among themselves, but real organizations with unique leaders, capable of undertaking important hostile actions. These organizations very successfully maintained illegal connections with Albania, using the border crossings, as well as all the other means at their disposal. They strengthened themselves so much in the organizational and political plan, that in the deep darkness of the night they spread slogans with hostile content, then wrote slogans on the walls of various buildings, placed the Albanian national flags, made it the shelter of various activists and they approached their agents for help in crossing the Albanian border. In addition, they had planned the organization of assassinations on our people in leadership positions - Serbian, Malaysian and Albanian cadres (Ranković sometimes used the insulting expression Shiptari and sometimes Albanian - S. L). Later, armed attacks occurred very often on the state border, where members of the government, but also of the border military formations, were killed. The Albanian intelligentsia also had a hand in these actions or organizations, and among them there were family members or sons of ministers and other leaders (Kosovo S. L.). There is no doubt that these organizations and their political actions had their roots in the economic and cultural backwardness of 'our province'. However, in spite of this, the members of these organizations were recruited mainly from the ranks of the reactionary ballistic movement in which the occupiers had strong support and comprehensive cooperation in the fight against our liberation army. Thus Albania itself relies on such forces, when it makes demands for territorial claims against Yugoslavia! In the actions of the bodies of power and political forums to discover and fight these organizations, there have been numerous public but also closed judicial processes. The penalties were relatively large. In the case of the arrests and the appearance before the courts of the accused, there was a differentiated approach.
The difficult political situation imposed the undertaking of certain measures in Kosovo. Such measures in Kosovo were developed on a large scale and it is understood that they were more sensitive than in any other country". 

So, as noted in the conclusion of this part of the story, Aleksandar Ranković has tried to do the same action that the state of Serbia practices and promotes today in relation to the crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia and elsewhere, that is to equalize the victims with the perpetrators of the crimes.

The action took on large proportions, 26 weapons were collected in Kosovo

However, some details in Aleksandar Ranković's explanations, which are almost present throughout the narrative of the development of the "Arms Collection Action" in Kosovo, still prove the spirit of conspiratorial action and he tries to play the balancing role between control over the executioners of the orders of him and the possibility of complete lack of control, which in today's standards would be called a failure of the chain of command, in the specific case of UDB. 

"The action took on huge proportions, so that gradually it took on the symbolism of disarming hostile elements in the first place, encouraged by illegal groups and organizations to secure new weapons and preserve the old weapons. In these actions, the militia encountered unpredictable difficulties! I believe that in the case of the collection of weapons, there were also irregularities and haste in the implementation of these tasks, but they were conditioned by the strict resistance of the owners of the weapons who hid them. The data on the weapons collected in Kosovo can be seen in the archives, if those materials have not been burned by being assessed as 'evil or bad work' of the State Security or destroyed for other reasons. At that time I was officially informed that about 26.000 weapons of various types were found in good condition. In addition to others, among them there were light and heavy weapons, some cannons, minesweepers, many hand grenades, etc. These are facts that cannot be rejected and are automatically imposed as evaluations for the implemented action", concluded Ranković, but he requested "that no measures should be taken against the implementers of the action, since they were only executors of the decisions that they are actually approved at higher state levels!”

So, as can be seen, Ranković's testimony is fragmented and episodic, and a more complete presentation of the facts of what actually happened around the "Weapons Collection Action" in Kosovo is still expected to be illuminated only in later years, initially through the archives, but as a relief to come to the complete truth, the materials published both in the press of the time, but also in the memoirs published by various non-Albanian personalities, who at that time were part of the implementation of Aleksandar Ranković's policy, could be used. These publications were especially updated when Serbian nationalism returned to the scene, after the eighties of the 20th century, even this reformatted nationalism was even more aggressive than that of Ranković's time.

To be continued in the next issue of the Culture Supplement