CULTURAL POLICY IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA FROM THE END OF WORLD WAR II TO THE EARLY 1970S: KEY PROCESSES

Abstract

Yugoslav cultural policy from 1945 to the early 1950s was rooted in the party apparatus of Agitprop, modeled after the Soviet Union. During the post–World War II reconstruction of the country, Yugoslavia and Serbia, under the slogan of “brotherhood and unity,” invested significant resources into the cultural development of the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija. This was carried out through the Albanian Committee, aiming to attract the Albanian population into state and party structures. Regional newspapers were established—Jedinstvo in Serbian and Rilindja in Albanian. Literacy courses were organized, extended primary education was introduced, and publishing houses for Albanian-language publications were founded. The Seventh Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1958 encouraged the development of national cultures, and the decisions of the Brioni Plenum in 1966 spurred cultural life in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija by reducing repression from the State Security Service and advancing Yugoslav decentralization through constitutional reforms. On this wave, representatives of the Albanian national minority—who made up 73.7% of the province’s population in 1971—began promoting the Albanization of the region and establishing cultural ties with Albania, which had pursued an irredentist and anti-Yugoslav policy since 1948. Albanian was introduced into higher education, Albanian-language radio and television programming expanded, and there was uncontrolled importation of literature and educational materials from Albania, while Serbian culture in the province was neglected. Thus, the positive process of cultural liberalization—intended to demonstrate Yugoslavia’s care for the Albanian minority and pacify them—ended up creating conditions for political developments that, in later decades, contributed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the destabilization of Serbia.