The Kosovo Crisis, 1999

Abstract

In 1966 Tito granted Serbia’s autonomous provinces equal voting privileges with republics at the federal level, resulting in greater Albanian participation in Kosovo’s provincial administration. Until 1966, the province’s Albanian majority (90 percent of the inhabitants) lived under the discriminatory administrative dominance of Serbian authorities. The new Communist Albanian provincial representatives acted in a retaliatory fashion toward the resident Serbian minority, and also began calling for Kosovo’s elevation to republic status. The post-Tito Yugoslav collective federal presidency refused to accede to the Kosovar Albanians’ desires, since doing so would have violated Yugoslavia’s constitutional foundations. (Constitutionally, only Yugoslav “nationalities” could possess republics; since an Albanian nation-state already existed outside of Yugoslavia, the Kosovar Albanians technically were a Yugoslav “national minority” and so were disqualified from having a republic.)