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BASIC HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

There are two autonomous provinces within the Republic of Serbia. Vojvodina is in the north, and Kosovo-Metohija in the south. They were formed in view of the specific national, historical, cultural and other characteristics of the region.

Kosovo-Metohija covers 10.887 square kilometers. This region was inhabited already in the neolithic period. It is Illyrian tribes that lived there when Roman legions conquered the region at the beginning of the new era. With the Roman Empire’s break-up into the western part and the eastern part known as Byzantium, Kosovo-Metohija was included in the Byzantine state. At that time the Kosovo plain was inhabited by already romanised native population which spoke Latin and Greek. At the beginning of the 7th century the Slavs came to these regions and slowly merged with the existing remnants of the romanised population. Stefan Nemanja, the ruler of the first Serbian state, defeated the Byzantine army in 1170. From that time to the arrival of the Turks in these regions (15th century), Kosovo and Metohija was an integral part of the Serbian state. Kosovo area became the political and cultural center of the Serbian kingdom in the 14th century when the most important monasteries, churches and medieval castles were built in this area. According to the preserved monastery charters almost all population in the area of today’s province was Slav and only few villages are mentioned as Albanian or Vlach. At that time the Albanian ethnic tribes mostly inhabited the highlands of today’s north Albania while some of them lived with the Serbs in the vallies and accepted their language, names and ethnic identity sharing the same Orthodox Christian faith. In the mid 15th century, Kosovo came under the Ottoman Turkish rule and remained under the Turkish occupation until 1912 and the times of the Balkan wars. In the meanwhile the demographic situation in Kosovo and Metohija gradually changed and once a majority of Serbian population was slowly replaced by the ethnic Albanian majority which massively converted to Islam and settled in the area of Kosovo and Metohija. Especially in the 17th century a large number of Serbs had to leave Kosovo after the series of unsuccesful Austrian-Serb attempt to liberate Southern Serbia from the Turkish rule. Hundreds of families led by their Patriarch left Kosovo and found their refuge in Southern Hungary. The consequent Turkish retaliation practically purged some areas of Southern Serbia from the Christian Serb population. On the other side a considerable number of Albanian clans from the nothern part of today’s Albania gradually settled in the Kosovo and Metohija plain repopulating the almost empty province.

In 1912-1913 Serbian army liberated Kosovo and Metohija which became the part of the Serbian Kingdom. After the WWI the region became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later of the kingdom of Yugoslavia. Between the two wars the royal government tried to bring additional Serb population to Kosovo which faced great opposition from the Albanian side. During World War II, with the break-up of Yugoslavia, Kosovo-Metohija partly fell under German command, and partly under the rule of Albania, which sided with Germany and Italy. During the World War II thousands of Serbs were persecuted from Kosovo and Metohija and many of them were killed by the Albanian Balli Combetar units. After World War II, certain decisions by the communist authorities banned the return of the expelled population to these regions.

With the creation of Socialist Yugoslavia, the Constitution of Serbia provided for the formation of two provinces in which national minorities enjoy all the civil rights and freedoms. Kosovo-Metohija is extremely rich in economic resources. Over the past five decades, more was invested in its development than in other parts of Yugoslavia. During the period of the Albanian autonomy the large number of Serbs left Kosovo and Metohija partly under the pressure, partly in search of better economic conditions. From 1990 the autonomy of Kosovo within Serbia was seriously reduced in order to prevent the planned secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

The name of Kosovo and Metohija is of Slav, Serbian origin. Kosovo is not a geographic, but a political and administrative notion. It got its name, which is mentioned for the first time in the 12th century, after the blackbird, or "kos" in the Serbian language and it means "The field of Blackbirds:. Metohija is the biggest ravine in Yugoslavia. It is separated from Kosovo by a number of small mountains. It was named after the word "metoh", meaning monastery estate, since, in the Middle Ages, it mostly belonged to the Pec patriarchate, one of the dozens of Serb medieval monasteries in these regions. Almost 98% of all geographic names in Kosovo and Metohija are of Slav origin which shows even more the centuries long Serbian presence in this region. The Albanian forms of geographic names such as: (Serb) Kosovo- (Alb) Kosova, Srbica - Skenderaj, Vucitrn-Vushtri, Pristina - Prishtine, Pec - Peja, Djakovica - Djakova etc. are all of recent origin or at least from the Turkish period and were never mentioned as such in any of the Middle Age or earlier document. As a matter of fact there is not a single one cultural and historical monument on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija until Ottoman times which bears any clear sign of Albanian identity, while on the other side the whole province swarms with thousands of Slav and Serbian cultural monuments, detailed medieval charters and documents as well as exclusively Slavonic inscriptions from the Byzantine period onwards. Of course all this does not mean that Kosovo and Metohija belong to Serbs only but shows that this area cannot be alienated from the Serbian state without the will of its people because it is the cradle of its culture and statehood.

Without Kosovo and Metohija the Serbian people will be a people without history, without identity, lost in the wastelands of time.

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