Serbia’s Albanians Turn Kosovo–Crimea Parallels on Their Head, Ask Tirana to Annex Preševo Valley

Residents of Preševo, Serbia, celebrating the centenary of Albanian independence in 2012 (BBC)

Diplomacy over the Russian Federation’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula this month has swirled around the question of whether Crimea can or cannot be legitimately compared to Kosovo, the ethnic-Albanian “autonomous” province in southern Serbia which declared independence in 2008 after a 1999 bombing campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) chased Serbia’s ultranationalist government out of the area.  Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, declares that if NATO can unilaterally carve a new territory out of the Republic of Serbia, a Russian ally, citing Serbian oppression of the ethnic-Albanian minority that is a majority in Kosovo, then by the same token Russia can unilaterally separate Crimea from a newly westward-tilting Ukraine by citing Ukrainian government persecution of the ethnic-Russian minority that is a majority there.  Just as the international community has so far not recognized Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Putin himself uses Russia’s veto power as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to block the Republic of Kosovo’s membership in the U.N. General Assembly, even though it is recognized as sovereign by a (slight) majority of the world’s countries.  The United States and NATO reject Putin’s argument, among other things pointing out, quite rightly, that Serbian violations of Kosovar Albanians’ human rights in the 1990s was all too real, while the so-called “fascist” and “neo-Nazi” Ukrainian government’s persecution of ethnic Russians is a shoddy myth perpetrated in the echo chamber of Russia’s (and eastern Ukraine’s) Kremlin-controlled media.  But George W. Bush’s bald-faced lies in defense of his 2003 invasion of Iraq make it easy for Russian nationalists to smirk at such hair-splitting.

Reunification with Albania is a popular idea in Kosovo.

And so the arguments go back and forth about whether Kosovo is equivalent to Crimea.  But this week leaders from the small ethnic-Albanian minority in the non-Kosovo parts of the rump Serbia are using the analogy to equate Russia’s moral position with that of Albania and Kosovo.  To understand this, one must understand that Serbian nationalists have always accused Kosovar separatists of secretly wanting to reunify eventually with Albania in a “Greater Albania” which would also include ethnic-Albanian bits of Montenegro, Macedonia, and even Greece and Serbia.  In this, their fears have been vindicated—sort of.  The leadership in both Albania and Kosovo speak now of Albanian reunification, but only within the context of eventual membership in the European Union (E.U.), and in this view Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia could be members as well (Greece already is one)—with the free movement of peoples making all these borders irrelevant.

The municipalities of Serbia’s Preševo Valley shown in red

Jonuz Musliu, deputy mayor of Bujanovac (Bujanoc, in Albanian), a predominantly-ethnic-Albanian town in southern Serbia’s Preševo Valley, said this week, “If Moscow wants Crimea, then Tirana and Priština should unite with the region of the Preševo Valley” (referring to Tirana and Priština, capitals of Albania and Kosovo, respectively).  Bujanovac and Preševo are both municipalities of between 30,000 and 40,000 people that make up the Preševo Valley region, wedged in the extreme south of Serbia between Kosovo and Macedonia.  Ethnic Albanians make up only one-half of 1% of Serbia’s over 7 million people.  Musliu, who in addition to his municipal role also heads the Party for Democratic Prosperity (P.D.P.), an ethnic-Albanian political party which operates in both Serbia and Macedonia, referred also to a 1992 referendum in which Preševars opted for joining Kosovo.  In those days, Musliu headed something called the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa, and Bujanovac (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Preshevës, Medvegjës dhe Bujanocit, or U.Ç.P.M.B.), which aimed for three municipalities to secede from what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e., Serbia–Montenegro).  Medveđa is a much smaller Serbian municipality to the north, along the Kosovo border.

Serbian mayor, Albanian flag: Jonuz Musliu would like to redraw some borders.

The rebuke from Serbia’s cabinet minister in charge of Kosovar matters, Aleksandar Vulin, came swiftly.  Vulin called Musliu’s statements a “threat to the territorial integrity of Serbia” and “urged the international community to loudly and publicly condemn such statements and show that it is against such attitudes,” adding, “When it comes to the latest threats to the territorial integrity and wholeness of the Republic of Serbia, this time arriving from Musliu, I wish to warn that any such statement is very dangerous and could have devastating consequences in the whole territory of Serbia.”

Serbia’s minister for Kosovo affairs Aleksandar Vulin,
portrayed here by the actor Steve Buscemi, reacted angrily to Musliu’s declaration

It is unclear what kind of game Musliu is playing.  Perhaps he is engaging in political theater, voicing support for a politically impossible proposal as a way of pointing up the absurdity of the equivalency between Crimea and Kosovo made by Serbian and Russian nationalists.  Or perhaps this represents a very real Albanian nationalist shift toward making future dreams of “Greater Albania” a crisis on the ground in today’s Balkans.

A very expansive view of a Greater Albania,
based on historical borders, not current ethnic ones.

Either way, Musliu’s comments will cheer ultranationalists among the ethnic Albanians who make up about 5% of Montenegro’s population, and fully a quarter of Macedonia’s.  (In addition, there are about half a million Albanian citizens living in Greece as immigrants, dwarfing the minuscule Albanian-speaking population in the border regions.)  And they will cause pan-Slavic nationalists among the Serbian population—including the fiercely autonomist Serbs of North Kosovo—to dig in their heels.

Another rendering, this time by district/province.

Already, the idea is catching on elsewhere in the Balkans.  In Bosnia and Herzegovina—which in 1995, after a bloody war of secession from Yugoslavia, was separated into two halves—the ethnically Serb half is talking about splitting into two independent states.  Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, said on March 18th, fresh from a meeting with Russia’s ambassador to Bosnia, “Bring back to Republika Srpska the powers that it had under the Dayton agreement and it will not leave Bosnia.  If you do not bring the powers back, our conviction that we have to move on will get stronger.”  The Serb half (the other half is composed of Croats and Muslim Bosniaks) has gradually ceded many more powers to the federal government in Sarajevo since 1995.  The original Serb goal, during the Bosnian War, had been to attach that half to the Serb-dominated remainder of Yugoslavia, and Serbia–Republika Srpska reunification is a dream that many Serb nationalists have never abandoned.  The parallels with the Soviet break-up are multitudinous.

Bosnia’s internal partition today.  The “Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” half
is sometimes called the Muslim–Croat Federation.

By claiming that the Russian government has the right to intervene militarily to protect ethnic Russians anywhere, he has opened Pandora’s Box.  Now every ethnonational group with an ultranationalist streak will be dreaming of a “Greater Such-and-Such” spilling over its neighbors’ borders.  Just watch.

Kosovar and Albanian flags are both common sights in Priština.

(In other Kosovo news, the Greek government announced this week that it was prepared to grant diplomatic recognition to Kosovo, and Slovakia and Romania are apparently to follow suit.  This leaves only Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia itself as the only immediate neighbors still opposing Kosovo’s independence.  This will leave Spain and the Republic of Cyprus as the only two of the 28 E.U. members with no diplomatic ties to Kosovo.  Spain is fearful to set an example for separatists in Catalonia and the Basque Country, while Albania’s interests in Kosovo are a bit too much like Turkey’s in the puppet state of Northern Cyprus for Cyprus’s comfort.  On the whole, the Crimea crisis has been good for Kosovar recognition.  Greece, Slovakia, and Romania are surely feeling now that E.U. unity in the face of aggression is now more important than fretting about needlessly antagonizing Serbia, which had been at the source of their waffling on the Kosovo issue over the years.)

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, will be on shelves and available on Amazon in February 2015.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

“Hello? Yugoslavia? I Can’t Hear You, You’re Breaking Up ...”

“What do you mean, it’s a toll call to Gazimestan?  When did this happen?”

There are lots of explosive political issues that have arisen in the past couple decades as the Republic of Kosovo has struggled for recognition as a sovereign state—human rights, linguistic rights, ethnic animosities, the politics of memory, the scars of centuries of bloody Balkan history, and even (arising again this week) organ harvesting.  But this week the Republic of Serbia, which still claims Kosovo, turned its attention to another divisive issue: telephone-number prefixes.

The flags of Albania and Kosovo

Kosovo’s parliament on September 6th directed the government to begin the process of abandoning the +381 country code, representing Serbia, and adopt +355, which represents Albania.  (The move would also affect the mobile prefixes +377 and +386.)  Kosovo is overwhelmingly ethnically Albanian, and Serb nationalists and some others suspect that Kosovar separatism is a ploy by Albanian nationalists to build a “greater Albania,” so even minor symbolic gestures of this type set off alarm bells in Belgrade.  Serbia’s minister of trade and telecommunications, Rasim Ljajić, called Kosovo’s moves “abuse of the international agreements and standards.”  Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, responding to such complaints from the Serbian government, met with Albania’s prime minister, Sali Berisha, this week and said in a joint press conference that technical, as well as political, problems argued against the move, and promised a final determination on the matter soon.

Serbia fears plans for a “Greater Albania.”  As usual, it starts with area codes.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Language Referendum Pits Latvians against Russians

This week, eastern Europe faces two well publicized referenda, both of them pushed by ethnic minorities in new states who wish to turn back the clock to when their peoples—now minorities in recently liberated territories—had the privileges of empire.

Kosovo
First, in the Republic of Kosovo, the Serbian minority in the sliver of land abutting Serbia itself are initiating a referendum for February 14th and 15th on the question of whether they as a community recognize the Kosovar government’s authority over them and their land.  They are expected to say, resoundingly, that they reject it.  Kosovo declared independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later renamed Serbia and Montenegro) in 2008 under the protection of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Today it is recognized by only 87 of the world’s 193 recognized independent states, only 22 out of 27 European Union member states, and even only 24 of NATO’s 28 member states.  Its neighbors Serbia, Croatia, Greece, and Romania refuse to recognize it, as does Spain, which is always wary of anything that might encourage its own separatist movements.  Opposition to Kosovo’s secession by Russia and China guarantees that it will not be admitted to the United Nations in the foreseeable future.  Still, there is little enthusiasm outside Kosovo for the referendum or its implications, not even in the Republic of Serbia itself.  Serbia is trying to groom itself for eventual candidacy for E.U. membership, which requires a peaceful resolution of the Kosovo issue (though note that Cyprus was admitted despite its de facto partition).  Like the separatist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovar Serbs have been thrown under the bus by Belgrade under western pressure.  (Don’t get me wrong; I’m not precisely saying they don’t belong under the bus.)  For Serbia, the referendum is an embarrassment.  But they can take heart from the fact that it will have no effect on anything, except to heighten interethnic animosity in the region.

Latvia
This article will focus more on the second, more consequential of this week’s referenda in the former Communist east.  In the Republic of Latvia, which along with its neighboring Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania broke free in 1990 from the collapsing Soviet Union, the Russian minority has managed to put to the public a poll on whether or not to make Russian an official language alongside Latvian.  This has brought out the nationalist in many a Latvian, and it has opened many of the region’s wounds from the totalitarian era.

The Soviet Union was supposedly an internationalist workers’ paradise which transcended the idea of nation, but everyone knew that it was in fact another name for the Russian Empire.  No one knew this better than Latvians.  Part of the agenda of the government in Moscow was the Russification of regions that had the greatest potential for unrest and separatism.  Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians never regarded the Soviets as liberators when the Nazis were pushed west at the close of the Second World War, and the United Nations and the West never recognized the Soviet annexation of the republics in 1945.  The resettlement of large numbers of ethnic Russians in the Baltic States was part of an explicit internal-colonial project.


As Soviet citizens, Latvians were taught Russian as a second language during the years of Soviet rule, and Russians who lived in Latvia were able to function as citizens without learning Latvian.  Moreover, when members of other ethnic groups, such as Ukrainians and Belarussians, moved there they could use Russia as a lingua franca with Russians, Latvians, and anyone else.

Map showing the Russian share of the population in different parts of the Baltic States

In 1989, Russians made up over a third of Latvia’s population.  Today the figure is around 27.9%, out of a population of just over two million.  (Some returned to Russia, or emigrated elsewhere.)  But they tend to be more urban and blue-collar than the average Latvian.  Russians make up 42% of the population of the capital, Riga.  (The dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and the director Sergei Eisenstein were both Russians born in Riga, which was a strategic Soviet port.)  By contrast, Russians make up a quarter of Estonia’s population and only just over 5% of Lithuania’s.  Latvia has by far the largest Russian minority population in the Soviet Successor States (not counting unrecognized Transnistria).  Because of this, Latvia, after after the Baltic States regained their independence in 1991 (the West had never recognized their annexation by the Soviets), imposed stricter laws than other successor states about the use of Russian.  Families that arrived after 1940 had to reapply for citizenship (a provision directed mainly at Russians), and knowledge of Latvian was a hurdle erected to naturalization.  (These laws have been watered down since then, but there are still a lot of non-citizen Russian residents in Latvia, alongside the naturalized ones.)  Along with laws declaring Russian an official “foreign language,” these measures were designed to keep Russians out of public life, maybe even encourage some of them to go home.

Sergei Eisenstein, who was ethnically Russian but born in Riga, Latvia

On Thursday Latvia’s parliament issued a (non-binding) statement that Latvian was the country’s only official language, adding, “Latvia is the only place on the globe where the Latvian culture and language can exist and develop.  The Latvian language is the common language of all people inhabiting the country and is important to their participation in democratic processes and to the rallying of society.”


One political party, Par Cilvēka Tiesībām Vienotā Latvijā (PCTVL), meaning “For Human Rights in United Latvia,” claims to represent not only ethnic Russians but also the Latgalian minority.  Latgalia is one of the four constitutionally recognized cultural regions of Latvia, though it does not correspond to a political entity.  Unlike other regional dialects, Latgalian has its own spelling system and its speakers think of it as a separate language.  Latgalia also borders Russia, and it has the highest proportion of ethnic Russians, while also being Latvia’s most impoverished region.  Its cultural center, Dagauvpils, Latvia’s second largest city, has a Russian majority.

Latvia’s four cultural regions.  Russians dominate in Latgalia, in the east.

Latgalians can hardly claim to be an oppressed minority today, though they would like some devolution, as well as provincial boundaries that correspond more closely to cultural boundaries.  The alliance between some Latgallians and some ethnic Russians in the PCTVL is an oddity.  But, for one thing, Latgalians and Russians share a status as religious minorities in Latvia.  Latgalians are mostly Roman Catholic, and Russians are mostly either Eastern Orthodox or unchurched, in this predominantly Lutheran country.  In any case, most Latgalians vote similarly to most other ethnic-Latvian communities.  For Russians, at least, the alliance with Latgalians in the PCTVL makes some strategic sense.  Much Latvian resentment of Russians boils down to accusing Russians of being un-Latvian and of not respecting Latvian culture.  So, as the voice of ethnic Russians, PCTVL can blunt some of that criticism through an association with one of Latvia’s ancient folk cultures.  PCTVL has no seats in Latvia’s parliament, but it holds one of Latvia’s nine seats in the European Parliament and is a representative (officially, of Latvia’s Russians and Latgalians) in the European Free Alliance, a continent-wide talking club for Europe’s aspirant nations and other minorities.

Much more critical here is the Harmony Center party, a socialist–social-democratic alliance supported by ethnic Russians and, it is said, by Moscow itself.  Harmony Center has nearly a third of Latvia’s parliamentary seats and two of its nine European Parliament seats.  It is the largest party in Latvia but, with only a plurality instead of a majority, most of the rest of the political spectrum formed a coalition specifically to exclude it from executive power.  In real terms, then, a third of Latvia’s representative political spectrum is committed to ethnic-Russian interests.


It is also not irrelevant that Russian firms control nearly all of the Baltic States’ energy supplies, including 100% of Latvia’s oil and natural gas.  In the long term, many Kremlin strategists would like to see Moscow reassert control over its former empire, now politely called the “near abroad.”  The Baltics have always been important to this kind of agenda.  Though it is the largest country in the world, Russia has always had a precarious toehold on warm-water ports.  Far-flung Vladivostok, Murmansk on the Arctic, isolated Kaliningrad, and St. Petersburg’s narrow finger to the sea can only take an aspirant world naval and mercantile leader so far.  Latvians can be forgiven if they see this week’s referendum as the first salvo in a long-term bid to retake the Baltics.  The twentieth century in the Baltics was a succession of hideous, bloody invasions, and Kremlin support for ethnic Russians in Transnistria and Crimea, for Transcarpathian Ruthenians in western Ukraine, and for Abkhaz and South Ossetians in Georgia are quite explicitly proxy battles for an irredentist project.  Russia wouldn’t dare invade a NATO country, but it will probably try to push things as far as they can without rolling out tanks.  (Read here an interesting article on Moscow’s economic, political, military, and electoral agenda in the Baltics.)

Russian tanks rolling into South Ossetia in 2008.

Some Latvians see a grim analogy.

With such a large share of the population, it was only a matter of time before Russians in Latvia began asserting language rights.   To pass, the referendum needs 750,000 votes, and no one expects that threshold to be reached.  Still, battle lines have now been drawn.  Within the memory of most Latvians, they were a subject people, and it is hard for them to think of themselves as having a culture and language that are secure instead of threatened.  Ethnic and linguistic tensions have always lurked in Latvian society, but as of this week, no one can be neutral on the question anymore, and Latvia, including its Russians, will have to decide what kind of pluralist society it wishes to have.

Latgalia’s flag