After the Rain : how the West lost the East Part 11

The interaction between the Illyrians and the Slavs was a love-hate relationship and has remained so ever since. Some Illyrian groups a.s.similated, intermarried and a.s.sumed the culture of the invaders. In 300 years, between the 6th and the 8th centuries AD, all the Illyrians in today's former Yugoslav republics vanished only to re-appear as Slavs. But the Illyrians of the south (Albania, Western Macedonia) resisted this process of dilution bitterly and preserved their ident.i.ty and culture fiercely. To distinguish themselves from the "a.s.similated"

- they invented Albania. The name itself is much older. Ptolemy of Alexandria mentioned it 600 years before the Illyrians began to apply it to their dwindling polity. And another 300 years were needed - well into the 11th century AD - before the Illyrians were fully accepted their reinvention as Albanians - the successors to the Albanoi tribe, which used to occupy today's central Albania (formerly called Arberi).

Five centuries later, the Albanians themselves renamed their territory and began to call it Shqiperia. No one really knows why, not even Albanian scholars, though they like to attribute it (on flimsy etymological grounds) to Shqipe, the Albanian word for Eagle. Thus, Albania was transformed to the Land of the Eagle.

It is an irony of history that the Middle (or Dark) Ages were the best period ever in Albania's history. Powerful cities proliferated, inhabited by a cla.s.s of burghers who engaged in trading. Albanian merchant houses established outposts and branches all over the Mediterranean, from Venice to Thessalonica. Albanians were the epitome of education and cultivated the arts. They conversed only in Greek and Latin, letting the auld language die. The Byzantine Empire was divided to military provinces (themes). One thing led to another and military commanders transformed feudal lords administered serfdom to the population. Feudalism co-existed and then supplanted urbanism and the big estates became so autonomous that they ignored the Byzantine court altogether.

But Albania was never peaceful. It was conquered by Bulgarians, Normans, Italians, Venetians and Serbs in 1347. Many Albanians immigrated when the Serbs took over, led by Stefan Dusan. They went to Greece and the Aegean Islands. It was not until 1388 that Albania was invaded by the Turks. By 1430 it was Turkish. By 1443 it was Albanian.

To this incredible turn of events, the Albanian had Skanderberg to thank. A military genius (real name Gjergj Kastrioti), he drove the rising superpower of the Balkans out in a series of humiliating defeats administered by a coalition of Albanian princes. From his mountainous hideout in Kruje, he frustrated the Turkish efforts to regain Albania (they were planning to use it as staging ground for the invasion of Italy and, thereafter, Western Europe). The Italians (even the Pope, then the long arm of various shady Italian princ.i.p.ates) supported Skanderberg monetarily and militarily - but he did by far the lion's share of the work.

But it was a personality-dependent achievement. Like all great leaders, Skanderberg's fault is that he refused to admit his own mortality and to nurture the right successor. Following his death, the Turks recaptured Albania in 1506. But Skanderberg's heroic fight had two important consequences. One outcome was a considerable weakening of the Turkish drive towards the heart of Europe and its West. They will never regain the momentum again and the war was lost. The second momentous consequence was that his struggle moulded an Albanian NATION where there was none before.

From the Ottomans to the Americans

The Ottoman occupation was an unmitigated misfortune. Albania - culturally, a veritable part of Italy in the past - was cut off from it and from the Renaissance it sp.a.w.ned. The Turks brought with them their venal type of devastation, not only economic, not only physical, not only in human lives - but also cultural. A gangrenous paralysis ensued.

The lucky quarter of the population escaped to Italy. The others were left to fight it out through civil disobedience (refusal to pay taxes, to serve in the army, to surrender their weapons) and in open rebellion, time and again, indefatigably and resourcefully, often in the name of the Christian faith. To put an end to the nuisance, the Turks islamised the lot (at any rate, two thirds of the lot) during the 16th and 17th centuries. To ensure conversion, the Turks tortured, killed, raped and taxed the Christians. It worked and people crossed to the other side in droves. Now there were Catholic Albanians and Muslim Albanians. It was a replay of the old, 11th century, religious fragmentation. Albanian political leaders in the 19th century - aware of the potential of these fractures to denationalise - insisted on "Albanianism" - a subst.i.tute, unifying political "religion". The rallying cry was: "The religion of Albanians is Albanianism."

Nothing much changed in Albania since the time of feudalism. The Turks awarded local warlords with land estates to administer (timars). These warlords - the centres of real power both political and military - subverted the authority and dominion of the empire. The more the latter tried to appease them with endowments - the more potent and ambitious they became. The Bushati family, the eccentric Ali Pasa Tepelene (who also ruled Northern Greece) and others. In convulsive feats of rea.s.sertion of authority, some sultans deposed of these pashas - but this did not anything to diminish the autonomy of their estates. In 1831, Turkey abolished the timar system altogether. This bold reform backfired as the old estates fragmented even further and power devolved to even lower levels of communal organizations run by beys (in the north) and bajraktars (everywhere) - bloodthirsty, rigidly patriarchal and primitive mini rulers. Paradoxically, Albanians who emigrated (mainly to Turkey itself) rose to prominence. Turkey had 27 (!) grand viziers (=prime ministers) of Albanian extract.

It was in Kosovo that discontent, unrest and revolt coagulated into the League of Prizren in 1878. Originally, a narrow local interest northern group, it fast adopted an expansive agenda, seeking to unify the four parts of Albania in the four vilayets (Kosovo, Shkoder, Monastir, Janina) into one political unit. But it wrong to attribute to it the birth of the delirium of a Great Albania. The League sought an administrative solution - not a political one. All they wanted was to create an Albanian zone - but WITHIN the Ottoman Empire. They were more focussed on benign, less threatening things like culture, art, literature and education. In short, it was a cultural movement with administrative aspirations - not the beast of untethered expansionism it was made out to be by latter day (and rather interested) historians.

It was in Monastir (today's Bitola in Macedonia) that a national, Latin, alphabet was adopted in 1908. More convenient than Greek or Arabic - used until then - it triumphed.

History moves in quirkily agonizing twists and turns. It was the League's involvement with the Albanian language and the strong opposition by the Turks to its use (the League's activities in this respect were banned in 1881) that transformed the League from a rather local affair to a modern national movement along the Italian or German lines. The Albanian language was indeed suffused by nationalism, immersed in dreams and aspirations unfulfilled. Its reawakening signalled the reawakening of Albanianism. When the last great hope, sealed by Young Turk (broken) promises of autonomy and democracy, was lost - the Albanians rebelled and forced the Sick Man of Europe to swallow yet another dose of medicine. In 1912 Turkey granted the Albanians their wishes only to face the Greek, Serb and Montenegrin armies, which conquered Albania and divided it among them.

This trauma of division is a recurring trauma in the Albanian psyche.

How ironic that the only people who can empathize with them are the Macedonians who share the same fear of being quartered. Faced with the annihilation of Albania so soon after its birth, Albanian leaders met in Vlore, led by Ismail Kemal, a former high-ranking Ottoman official of Albanian origin. With nothing much to lose, they decelerated independence (the Vlore Proclamation) on November 28, 1912.

In December 1912, the Great Powers (the forerunners of NATO) - Britain, Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, Italy and France - met in London to divide the unexpected spoils. The conference handed an independent Albanian state to Austro-Hungary and Italy. But the price was a great diminishment in its geographical scope. Kosovo was given to Serbia, Cameria to Greece, the most luscious and productive lands and more than half of all Albanians were left out of the new independent homeland.

Such was the nature of territorial comprises at that time that it created more problems than it solved. Two news ones were born that day and hour: a Yugoslav-Albanian flaring animosity and a Greek-Albanian mutual denial. The unfortunate and tragicomic German who was appointed to administer Albania (Wilhelm zu Wied) departed soon thereafter with the outbreak of the First World War.

This first European bloodbath provoked all of Albania's neighbours into an uncontrolled binge of invasions. Austro-Hungary, France, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia - they all marched in with no plan in mind but to occupy and plunder. The country turned chaotic and it took a Woodrow Wilson in the Paris Peace Conference to avert an abolition of the Albanian independent state. It was not the first time Albania descended into chaos - nor was this to be the last time the Americans would come to the help of the Albanians. Britain, France and Italy planned to part.i.tion it, Wilson vetoed it and that was the end of the plan and the beginning of Albania.

In Lushnje, in 1920, the Albanians convened a national congress and established a government. That year, Albania was admitted to the League of Nation, sponsored by the very Britain that sought its part.i.tion only the year before. Secure in its sovereignty and international recognition, Albania inverted its attention. Society was polarized between land-owning fat cats, the beys and militant archconservative bajraktars led by Ahmed Bey Zogu from Mat in the north. These reactionaries were opposed by an uncomfortable coalition of merchants, intellectuals, progressive politicians and a.s.sorted democrats led by an improbable American-educated bishop of the Orthodox(!) church, one Fan S. Noli, middle initial and all. The conflict ended 4 years later when, in 1924 Zogu fled to Yugoslavia. But the entrenched power of the land gentry was not to be discounted so easily. Noli, now a prime minister, ruled over the Albanian equivalent of the Republic of Weimar. Radical land reform, modernization, westernisation. But he was personally unstable, he won no international recognition (he was considered a revolutionary leftist) and he had no money to buy his way with. Zogu came back, this time with a Yugoslav-backed army. He won.

From King Zog to a Brave, New World

Zog commenced his 14 years long reign first as president and then as king (Zog the first, needless to add). He ruled over a time bomb. The forces he suppressed with his foreign backed army were rather alive and well, though in an underground sort of way. In dire need of funds, after the self-inflicted destruction of his country, Zog resorted to mortgaging it to foreign powers such as Italy. Italy collected on its loans in 1939, when it invaded Albania on the way to its Balkan treasure hunt. King Zog rule of beys and bajraktars aided by a ruthless police, a Byzantine bureaucracy (a major employer) and Italian money did stabilize the country, including to the bandit and brigand-ridden highlands. Many schools were established during his reign. He even turned a blind eye to western fashions. But this stability was brittle and fake. Underneath the ornamental surface, the populace was seething.

Peasants aggrieved by the absence of land reform. Democrats opposed to a dictatorship, however benign. Liberals opposed to the police state.

Nationalists opposed to the undue influence of foreign powers. Albania imported grain to feed its impoverished population - and exported people in search of a better life. Periodic revolts interspersed with labour unrest led directly to the formation of the communist party, the standard bearer of the educated cla.s.ses.

In October 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania only to be folded back to whence they came. n.a.z.i Germany had to complete the job as it swept through Yugoslavia and Greece. In 1941, Albania was rewarded for its collaboration with the annexation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and Cameria from Greece. Having been nearly eliminated by the Allies (Britain and France) at least twice - and having been rewarded by the Axis (Austro-Hungary, Germany and Italy) numerous times throughout their history, the Albanian's loyalty was not in doubt. Though never the great ideologues - they were althesame instrumental in facilitating the wartime hegemony of Germany and Italy over the Balkans. The resistance movement was not uniform, nor was it very effective (though Albanians like to portray it differently). Finally, in 1944, the communists took over and their secretary general, Enver Hoxha, became the leader of a new People's Republic of Albania, later adding the word "Socialist" to its name (1976).

Nothing seems to have changed in Albania from the 14th century to the Hoxha days. Burdened by the malaise it contracted from the Ottoman Empire, it was plagued by poverty, banditry, illiteracy, blood feuds, disease and the slavery of women and of peasants. At first, the communist tried to tackle all these ills simultaneously. They drafted a grand plan of modernization. They vowed to liberate Albania economically and socially, now that it has been liberated politically (their reference point was, strangely enough, the bourgeoisie war of 1912). Peasants were handed tiny plots of land taken from the broken estates of the former beys in an ambitious agrarian reform. Industry, banks and all foreign property were nationalized. Agriculture was collectivised in the best Stalinist traditions, though far less swiftly (it was completed only in 1967). Hoxha subjugated the wild highlands and strove to eliminate blood feuds and other feudal habits, taking on the hitherto invincible bajraktars in the process. Women were granted legal equality with men and were encouraged to partic.i.p.ate actively in their society.

Albania was promiscuous in its foreign affairs, changing partners often and seemingly whimsically. It paired with Yugoslavia under t.i.to until 1948, then with the Soviet Union during the days of Stalin and Khrushchev (until 1961) and then with Maoist China (until 1978). It expected to receive monetary and military aid - and it did. It received enormous infusions of credits relative to its economy and it was virtually invaded by regiments of technical experts who provided a.s.sistance with the various aspects of running a modern state.

Gradually, agriculture was mechanized, industry was modernized and standards of living increased. It was a golden age and many were happy.

But Hoxha was unhappy. He accused each ally of Albania in its turn of betraying unadulterated Marxism-Leninism in favour of the wiles of the capitalistic West. His allies were as disenchanted with his growing paranoia and geopolitical sado-masochism. Isolated, paranoiac, obsessive and phobic - Hoxha promulgated an ideology of self-sufficiency, go-it-alone and the world-is-against-us. Thus, while Albania made impressive leaps of technology in draining swamps, while it unified its dialects into a uniform literary language, while it industrialized and mechanized and reformed and transformed - and it has - it did so in splendid isolation, often re-inventing the wheel. And it had a nightmare called Sigurimi.

The Sigurimi was the shadowy, quasi-criminal state security apparatus.

It was a snake raised in the warm bosom of the party. It was omnipotent. Real or imaginary rivals of the party (really of Hoxha) were publicly humiliated, dismissed from job, imprisoned in a system of hideous Gulags, or summarily executed. These bulimic purges were coupled with growing schizoid tendencies. Travel abroad was prohibited except on official business, religion (a backward, unprogressive, disuniting force) was banned.

When Hoxha died in 1985, he was succeeded by a crony, Ramiz Alia, an Albanian Gorbachev who introduced local versions of Perestroika and Glasnost even before the Soviet leader did. He legalized foreign investments and established diplomatic relations with the hitherto reviled West. But, despite his courage and relative openness, he shared the fate of other reformers, falling victim to the very forces he unleashed. In 1989, the workers, the intellectuals and the Albanian youth were all against the regime. In a spasmodic act of self-preservation, Alia granted Albanian citizens the right to travel abroad, limited the reach and powers of the Sigurimi, restored religious freedom, freedom of political a.s.sociation and adopted free market reforms. Nothing much was left of Hoxha's heritage. Several governments later, the Democratic Party, an anti-communist hodgepodge alliance of interests won the elections (1992). Berisha succeeded Alia.

The communist rule was no more.

It was the beginning of a new Albania. Facing west, it hoped, as it always has, to modernize, to reform, to belong.

But it was not meant to be.

(Article published October 18-29 - November 1-8

in "Central Europe Review" volume 1, issues 17-20)

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The Bad Blood of Kosovo

The old Montenegrins, tall as their mountains, their rocky faces ravaged by an unforgiving weather define "osveta" thus:

"Osveta, that means... a kind of spiritual fulfilment. You have killed my son, so I killed yours; I have taken revenge for that, so I now sit peacefully in my chair."

Milovan Djilas, who helped t.i.to become t.i.to and then was imprisoned for trying to be Djilas, wrote in his book "Land Without Justice"

(Harcourt, Brace 1958):

"Vengeance - this a breath of life one shares from the cradle with one's fellow clansmen, in both good fortune and bad, vengeance from eternity. Vengeance was the debt we paid for the love and sacrifice our forebears and fellow clansmen bore for us. It was the defence of our honour and good name, and the guarantee of our maidens. I t was our pride before others; our blood was not water that anyone could spill.

It was, moreover, our pastures and springs - more beautiful than anyone else's - our family feasts and births. It was the glow in our eyes, the flame in our cheeks, the pounding in our temples, the word that turned to stone in our throats on our hearing that our blood had been shed. It was the sacred task transmitted in the hour of death to those who had just been conceived in our blood. It was centuries of manly pride and heroism, survival, a mother's milk and a sister's vow, bereaved parents and children in black, joy and songs turned into silence and wailing.

It was all, all."

And this is what Margaret Durham had to say in her celebrated ethnography of Albania, a long time ago ("Some Tribal Origins of Laws and Customs of the Balkans" - Allan and Unwin, 1928):

"A certain family had long been notorious for evil-doing - robbing, shooting, and being a pest to the tribe. A gathering of all the heads condemned all the males of the family to death. Men were appointed to lay in wait for them on a certain day and pick them off; and on that day the whole seventeen of them were shot. One was but five and another but twelve years old. I protested against thus killing children who must be innocent and was told: 'It was bad blood and must not be further propagated.' Such was the belief in heredity that it was proposed to kill an unfortunate woman who was pregnant, lest she should bear a male and so renew the evil."

In the second century BC, Kosovo was populated by people with picturesque names: the Iliyrians, Thracians, the Celts. The whole area was under Roman rule and was subjected to the industriousness and meticulousness of Empire. Roads were paved, cities built, populations moved and commerce flourished. This lasted two hundreds years. Slav tribes descended from the Carpathian Mountains and ended it in orgies of blood and fire. Until this very day, serious Greek politicians invoke this primordial invasion in their effort to convince an incredulous world that the (current) Macedonians are not the (True) Macedonians. "They are the off spring of invading Slavs" - they claim, pa.s.sionately, as is the habit in the Balkans. It took another two centuries and a Byzantine brief occupation to force the reluctant Slavs to settle along the Sava River and to form the poor semblance of a civilization in the making. Roving "saints" of fervent disposition taught them a new alphabet. Cyril and Methodius were succeeded by disciples all over Central and Eastern Europe - from the period of Kliment Ohridski in today's territories of Macedonia and Bulgaria to Amos Comenius, the 17th century educator, considered in the Balkans to be their spiritual descendant in the Czech Lands.

This ability to cast their myths in paper in the vernacular, to hand the national memory down the generations, the newfound Christian religion - all coagulated into an emergently distinct culture. Come the 12th century, Kosovo was entirely Slav.

Or, to be more precise: entirely Serb. The Slavs fractured into three groups. The Croats and Slovenes, baptized by Rome, became ardent Roman Catholics. The Serbs - introduced to the faith by Byzantium - remained Eastern Orthodox. This division was to last a thousand years as the Croats and the Slovenes came under the influence and rule of the Catholic Habsburgs while the Serbs were subjected to the crumbling Ottoman chaos. Geography mirrored a tormented topography of mentalities, religious persuasions and political affiliations. The Serbs occupied today's Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia Herzegovina. The Croats and Slovenes occupied the rest of latter day Yugoslavia. The t.i.to generated unity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was but a brief and false note. It could not have lasted - and, indeed, it hasn't.

The Serbs established a princ.i.p.ality in Kosovo - the nucleus of what later came to be known as the Serbian Golden Age. It was situated in the rustic but magnificent valley of Ibar and controlled most of the Sandzak. Gradually, the whole of hitherto empty Kosovo became theirs and they felt sufficiently at home to form a Serbian Orthodox Church with its seat in Raska, just north of Kosovo. It took 19 years (1200-1219) to complete this feat of independence and all this time Kosovo was fought over by Serbs, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romans and Byzantines. Hundreds of years of strife, veiled conspiracies, invasions and rotting corpses in sun drenched battlefields.