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FROM VERSAILLES TO KOSOVO

Srdja Trifkovic

The War of Clinton’s Legacy - the tragedy unleashed by the American-controlled Western alliance on March 24^th 1999 – is the defining moment of our civilization and the test of its chances for survival in the coming century. John Laughland, writing in The Times of London on April 22 1999, was among the first Western commentators to define the fundamental issue at stake in Kosovo. He correctly described the war against Serbia as the leftist-internationalist conspiracy to destroy the nation-state, and thereby to demolish the very concept of the nation as we know it:

Among the charred corpses and smoking ruins of Kosovo there lies an unreported casualty. It is not one of the hundreds of physical victims of Nato’s bombs but instead a metaphysical one. In 1999 as in 1389, the Blackbird Field has witnessed the defeat of that spiritual body of values which in the postwar period used to be known as the West. This is because the war is being fought to destroy the very principles which constitute the West, namely the rule of law. Unlike in 1389 however, the enemy is not the Sultan but rather the leaders of the Western nations themselves. It is false to claim that Serb mistreatment of the Kosovo Albanians is the casus belli. Instead, the bombing started because Milosevic refused to allow hostile foreign troops on to Yugoslav soil. Overturning this refusal remains Nato’s overriding purpose. Yet this demand is completely incompatible with the logic of a system of sovereign states, which for the past 350 years has formed the basis of Western politics, liberalism and the rule of 1aw.

State sovereignty is not an absolute principle; it can be overriden in certain extreme cases. But the war against the Serbs was started in order to override that principle in all cases, and to remove it completely as a relevant factor in the emerging new world order. If the war is “post-national” in its aims it is also “post-national” in its implementation. NATO is an anonymous international bureaucratic apparatus, desperate to extend its shelf-life now that its raison d’etre has disappeared. The only nation involved is Serbia, whose wholesale destruction is going to be the outcome of the war, though not its stated aim.

And so, according to Laughland, this is why all the war’s main protagonists are old enemies of nationhood, NATO and the West. Bill Clinton, Mr. Blair, Herr Joschka Fischer and Señor Solana form ‘the new generation of politicians who hail from the progressive side of politics’ of which Prime Minister Blair boasts. Commentators have been wrong to chuckle at the apparent conversion of these one-time opponents of US power, for the truth is much worse: this war represents the most complete fulfillment of their deepest internationalist convictions. Like the conversion of the New Left to the market, its new warmongering should give no comfort to conservative supporters of economic liberalism or the Atlantic alliance. Instead of being systems for the protection of national liberties, both these have now been subverted into vehicles for their destruction.

The British prime minister has even compared the bomb attacks on Yugoslavia to the process by which “globalisation is opening up the world’s financial architecture for discussion, re-evaluation and improvement.” War, it seems, is now the continuation of economic integration by other means. If Clinton’s regime and NATO are allowed to prevail, in place of the old system of national legal systems creating free markets and national liberties, a chilling new world order of allegedly universal human rights will be set up. The problem, however, is that the bogus notion of human rights can never provide a basis for either the rule of law or morality. Whereas a national system of justice is a self-contained entity which grows with and defines the society in which it inheres, universal human rights are detached from any rootedness in time or place. Their application therefore inevitably flails around capriciously, according to the latest whim of outrage or the latest fad for victimhood. Human rights are, by definition, antithetical to the concept of national sovereignty. The idea that there can be such a thing as universal human rights implies that there can be a single global system of civil law with the American-controlled NATO playing the role of world government. But for its sins, mankind has been divided up into different peoples. Any attempt to behave as if this were not so is not moral: it is megalomaniac.

Prior to the beginning of the air campaign, American strategists had claimed that Belgrade might even welcome a few bombs so as to help Mr Milosevic to sell a retreat from Kosovo to the mob. When that did not work, Clinton and Blair retrospectively resorted to “morality.” Their grimly predictable daily murder of fifty or a hundred civilians in Serbia, in passenger trains, tractor convoys, commuter buses, residential areas and TV stations - disgustingly described as “collateral damage” - indicates that every Serb is a legitimate target. The warmongers plead a moral end and deny morality a role in the means. They claim theirs is a just war, and say justice is for wimps. This intolerable discrepancy cannot be allowed for long, and the spin-masters in Washington and Brussels know it. In the new division of the world between “us” and “them” they will present the available options to those as yet undecided in brutally stark terms when the moment comes.

To guess what that ultimatum will be like, and to make sense of the ruling Western establishment’s unstated agenda in the current war against Serbia, it is as yet too early to turn to The Guardian, The Weekly Standard or The New Republic, but an early indicator of the shape of things to come was given in a recent article by Jon Huer, professor of sociology and philosophy at the University of Maryland:

The bombing by Americans and human-shielding by Serbs are a dramatic illustration of the epic contrast that the two peoples and their societies represent. On one side is the high technology of ultimate sophistication, so logical and so rational, with little human involvement. […] On the other side is the total disregard of logic and rationality. The military equation in the confrontation, so clearly one-sided, is cast aside by the compulsions of the heart, bitterly carved and forged by historical memories, both conscious and subconscious.

The Serbs are meeting the losses and bearing the pains of destruction: “their reasoning is completely dominated by their heart, so full of grief and bitterness”; reason or calculation have little effect on the Serbian soul. Huer contends that this fact contrasts “two archetype societies, one future-oriented and the other past-oriented,” that are making their most dramatic confrontation in the Kosovo campaign. Americans believe in the powers of technology “and all that it implies - reason, logic, practicality, solution-finding.” Serbs believe “in the powers of their destiny-absolute, unyielding, powerful, and so human.” So, Americans continue to drop bombs while Serbs form their human shields, in the name of their ancestors and the destiny they have given them, and defy the odds:

Americans are now entering a wholly different era of society and culture, one that the world has never seen before. It is what we might call a "Post-Human Era" where all aspects of social life are streamlined and rationalized, and all shades of human relations and nuances simplified into manageable routines and procedures. In a Post-Human society, each individual is isolated from other individuals so that his or her self-calculation can be logically derived without distraction from other human beings. In this way, there is little energy or passion that is wasted in dealing with human relations in society, now mostly done as paperwork by paid specialists like lawyers and counselors and bureaucrats. It is no wonder that the Post-Human Americans can totally, utterly concentrate their energy and ingenuity in leading the world with their technological, cultural, economic, and military superiority. This Post-Human America is light years away from Serbia, which is still in the Dark Ages for all its thoughts and actions that bear no resemblance to modernity.

Who will prevail in the long run? Huer, the post-human American academic par excellence, declares his preferences, and those of his peers:

My historical hunch is that Americans are the future prototype humans, and Serbs an atavistic holdover from a bygone era. The Post-Human America will dominate the coming century, precisely for the reason that its energy and passion are wholly devoted to the singular task of expanding information technology, elaborating popular culture, dominating economics and finances, and continuing military hegemony the world over. There may be a short-term victory by one side or the other in particular confrontations. But in the long run, the world belongs to the kind that is committed to extending the technological frontiers and thinking with economic calculus, not ethnic nationalism or xenophobia. It would behoove the Serbs to recognize this inevitable development of history and join up with what will be, not what was or should be.

Back to the question Why “Kosovo” Matters? This gem of brutal honesty provides the answer. Between the “prototype rational post-humans” - epitomized by Clinton, Albright, Berger, Cohen, Blair, and Cook - and the atavistic, irrational, hopelessly “human” Serbs, each of us needs to make a choice. The purpose of this book is to facilitate that decision. There are no inevitable developments in history because there is God.

HISTORY

FROM THE MISTS OF ANTIQUITY TO THE BATTLE OF KOSOVO

Though few English and even fewer American history books tell us much about her, in the 300 years which lie between the Norman Conquest of England and the death of Edward III, Serbia was one of the strongest and most culturally and economically advanced states in the whole of Europe.

The preconditions for the creation of the Serbian nation came about in the seventh century when part of the Serbian tribes settled in the Roman province of Dalmatia, along with other groups of Slavs. The Slavs spread out widely across the Balkan peninsula and formed a large number of small principalities. Byzantine writers of the day took notice of their number, and described them with the characteristic name “Sclavinia.” The Byzantine Empire scored a great success in 870 when it baptized the Serbian rulers. Mass conversion of the Serbs to Christianity soon followed, accompanied by strong political and cultural influences from the Empire. The path to unification was opened up on the basis of a common Christian culture.

A significant role was played by the translation of biblical and liturgical texts and by the alphabets adapted to the Slavonic languages. But the triumph of the Byzantine Empire during the rule of Emmanuel Comnen (1143-1180), when Hungary and the surrounding Serbian territories were subdued, was paid for by the sapping of the empire’s strength, so that after the death of the militant emperor there was a long period of crisis.

Serbia as a nation came into its own sometime in the 11th century, in the center of the Balkan peninsula, which at that time was within the vast realm of the mighty Byzantine Empire. A lighthouse between 2 continents, Constantinople in those days was a beacon light for all sorts of wayfarers: those in submission, those in power, those in revolt, those hungry for culture, and those driven by greed. As any potentate, Constantinople at that time had no friends in the whole world. Byzantium had very little reason to cherish the Slavs in the Balkan area, Serbs or Bulgars, because they proved to be a lasting nuisance from the time of their arrival, together with or before the marauding Avars.

To Byzantium, incursions of most barbarians were basically a passing irritant, for even when they ransacked the walled cities they soon left. Slavs, on the other hand, inherently were not nomadic types. Once having arrived, they tended to settle, and by doing so they changed the ethnic character of the area.

Byzantine rulers, especially Emperor Basil II, tried to drive the Slavs out, particularly the Bulgars, but in the long run military valor gave way to political realism, which forced the beleaguered Byzantine emperors to accept Serbs and Bulgars as permanent inhabitants of the Balkans. In time they learned to deal with the Slavs on almost equal terms, partly because there were more serious problems confronting them. There were the Persians, Muslim Arabs, and Seljuk Turks, who kept the Byzantines occupied in the east for several centuries. In the west the Normans and the Venetians were sapping Byzantium's military strength. The Slavs, for their part, exploited these troubles to expand and solidify their positions. Even after Constantinople managed to restore much of its imperial prestige, it was challenged in the north by the invading Magyars, who waged four successive wars against Byzantium.

This presented the Serbian ruler of Raska, Nemanja (1168-1196) an opportunity not to be missed. Talented and determined, Nemanja took advantage of the weaknesses of the Byzantine Empire and greatly extended his authority, territorially and politically. He ruled the best part of today’s Serbia (including the state’s heartland of Kosovo) and Montenegro. He also moved quickly toward full Serbian independence. It was not an easy task, and he was not continually successful in the process. There were times when his supporters, Hungary and Venice, could not help him. Facing the angry Byzantine Emperor Manuel I alone, Nemanja was defeated and taken a prisoner to Constantinople, where he was led through the streets with a rope around his neck, to the wild rejoicing of the crowds.

Since Raska was under the overlordship of Byzantium, Manuel thought that his humiliation of an unfaithful prince would be enough and let Nemanja return to his people. In addition, Nemanja was forced to pay tribute and to provide auxiliary troops. What really may have saved Nemanja's life was the proximity of Raska (which by that time had already merged with Zeta, another Serbian principality) to the Western world. After all, at that time Christendom was seriously endangered by Islam, and the emperor badly needed the support of the West, and even of those annoying Slavs in the Balkans. In the confused evolution of developments, Nemanja sought to exploit the situation. He played the Latin world against the Greek, and in the process obtained from the West political recognition for Raska and a crown for his son Stefan.

Stefan Nemanjic (1196-1227) initially enjoyed the support of the Byzantine Empire and managed to maintain the heritage left him by Nemanja. Yet, when the situation changed after the western crusaders led by the Venetians conquered Constantinople, Stefan turned to the West. Through clever political maneuvering he managed to remove threats from Hungary, from the Latin Empire of the Crusaders, from the revived Bulgaria and from the newly independent rulers in the Byzantine provinces. In this period of turbulence and violent change, he managed to keep his own state intact. He improved its reputation and rank by receiving a royal crown from the Pope (1217), which among his descendants and heirs brought him the appellation of the “First-Crowned King” - Stefan Prvovencani.

The King’s youngest brother, Sava, sought to obtain a unified ecclesiastical framework within Serbia, torn – as it was at that time – between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy under local leadership, the king supported the Orthodox tradition of the regions in the interior in spite of his relationship to the Catholic Holy See.

Sava Nemanjic obtained agreement from the Byzantine Emperor and from the Patriarch to form a separate archbishopric. He was appointed Archbishop of Serbia in 1219 in Nicaea, and it was decided that his successors would be chosen and appointed by the Serbs themselves. This gave an impetus to the vibrant growth of the Serbian Church. New bishoprics were founded, with their sees in the monasteries where the priests were educated, and the books necessary for the life of the church were copied. Sava provided for a translation of the Byzantine code of church laws and rules for the use of the clergy, the Nomokanon.

The Serbian kingdom and its autocephalous church provided the framework for the flowering of an authentically national culture and arts. This is best evidenced in the Raska School which has given Europe some of the most notable examples of medieval architecture and painting (the monasteries of Studenica, Zica, Mileseva, Sopocani et al). Intra-dynastic disputes, bloody at times, did not stop Serbia’s growth in territorial scope, wealth, and cultural significance. Serbian medieval documents use the terms Rascian lands and Rascian king only in a few instances. Serbs nearly always referred to their territories as Serbian lands, especially in the post-Nemanja period. Merchants and diplomats from the coast city Republic of Dubrovnik, who maintained close links with Serbian authorities and courts, used Vatican nomenclature and called Serbia Slavonia, although subsequently they adopted the term Serbia. Because the two main caravan routes to Constantinople passed through Serbian territories, custom bills were due to Serbian rulers, complaints were filed, requests for protection or bailing out of jail submitted, down payments made, and court cases litigated. Thanks to all the resulting documents, filed in the Dubrovnik archives, historians have been able to reconstruct the fabric of life in medieval Serbia.

Serbian rulers, in a manner of speaking, were seeking to pursue a "non-aligned" policy. On the one hand they fought Byzantium, but could never rid themselves of its spell. Serbia was never governed directly by Byzantium - but, as the well-known Byzantinist, George Ostrogorski, says, It is impossible to separate its medieval history from Byzantium. Constantinople was the cultural capital of the world at that time. No wonder that young, emerging, neighboring states should look to it as a model. At times the Serbs were successful in their struggle against Byzantium. Tsar Dusan (1331-1355), whose formative years were spent in Constantinople during his father's exile there, conquered half of it (Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessaly), and made Serbia the strongest empire in the Balkans. Serbia's territory in Dusan's time covered the vast area from the Danube to the lower Adriatic and the Aegean. He signed his edicts Emperor and Autocrat of the Serbs, Byzantines, Bulgars, and Albanians.

Dusan did not hide his ambitions to aspire to the throne of Byzantium. In 1345, he conquered Serres, an important city in Greece on the road to Constantinople. After several vanquishing waves southward, Dusan’s authority reached from Macedonia and Albania to Epirus and Thessaly (1334-1346). He wanted the powerful Greek clergy in Byzantium to recognize him. When the patriarch at Constantinople hesitated to crown him, he summoned the Serbian and Bulgarian bishops for a council at Skoplje. The bishops raised the autocephalous Serbian archbishopric of Pec to the rank of patriarchate (1346), and in less than a month the newly elected Serbian Patriarch Joanikije II crowned Stefan Dusan emperor.

Dusan may have grown up in Constantinople, but he also sought approval in the West, notably from Venice and the papacy, suggesting that he be regarded as "Captain of Christendom." To be sure, Dusan had subjugated the center of Byzantine Christianity, Mount Athos. This oasis of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the three vows that every monk was required to take) was a beacon that attracted souls yearning for peace and education. Secular Balkan leaders at times found this place a reservoir of skillful hands and brilliant minds from which they recruited.

Dusan was great not only as a soldier and as the leader of a score of victorious campaigns, but also as a lawgiver, a builder of churches and a generous patron of art and literature. The devotion with which he inspired the Serbian nation is reflected in the famous words in which the nobles of his Court answered his appeal for military help: “Wherever thou leadest us, most glorious Tsar, we will follow thee.” But Dusan died before he was fifty, and when his strong hand was removed, rival princes quarreled among themselves, instead of uniting against the growing menace of the Turks, who now crossed over into Europe and began to extend their conquests in all directions.

KOSOVO AND MEDIEVAL SERBIA*

Kosovo is many diverse things to different living Serbs, but they all have it in their blood. They are born with it. The variety of meanings is easily explained by the symbolism and emotions that the word "Kosovo" embodies, clearly above anything that the geographic concept might imply. It is in Serbian blood because it is a transcendental phenomenon.

Serbs who have a visual memory of the Kosovo region see it as a somewhat sleepy valley with surrounding hills seeming to have overstretched in their descent. Some 4,200 square miles in size (with an additional 2,000 square miles of adjacent Metohija), this cradle of the Serbian nation is carried by 2 broad-shouldered gentle giants, somber and dark Mount Kopaonik in the north and white-capped and fair Mount Shara in the south.

In the heyday of Serbia’s medieval glory the region of Kosovo and Metohija was its very heartland. It was populated, since the early medieval times, by a homogenous Serbian population. Under the Byzantine rule, and until well after the area’s final inclusion into the Serbian House of Nemanjic (late 12the century) Kosovo and Metohija’s population was overwhelmingly Serb. This is confirmed by the many royal charters and by the recorded personal and geographic names in the area.

The old toponims, names of mountains, rivers, and many towns and villages of Kosovo and Metohija (as well as northern Albania) are predominantly of Slav origin. The very name of the region - Kosovo and Metohija - is derived from the Serbian word kos (“the field of the blackbird”) and “metoh,” a word of Greek origin which means “church estate.” Albanian nomads accounted for about two percent of the total population in the western parts of the region, in the mountains along the present border region between Serbia and Albania.

Kosovo, comparatively, is good pastureland, as well as corn, wheat, and fruit land. Yet Kosovo peasants can barely scratch out a subsistence tilling the clayish soil that is exposed to winds that dry the ground. For these peasants, Kosovo provides a lean and meager lot. To others, Kosovo is a breadbasket. To those who descended from the slopes of the mountains, or who came there from poorer regions as homesteaders, Kosovo seems a promised land. Kosovo is a bottomless ancient mining pit, rich in zinc, lead, and silver, but it is not a melting pot.

Kosovo is a plain where the Serbs bend over to work the soil, Albanians sweat in the mining shafts underground, Turks (largely spent and reminiscing about past glories) grow poppies and peppers, while the Gypsies fill the air with the sounds of life. To the Serbs, that plain of suffering, of want, and of sacrifice is holy ground. They come there to clench their fists and shout at the earth where dead Turks lie. As Rebecca West has written, Dead Christians are in Heaven, or ghosts, not scattered lifeless bones ... only Turks perish thus utterly.

The Lord Almighty, some might say, must have predestined Kosovo as a battlefield, a rendezvous for hostile earthly encounters. It is a junction that led many a nation astray, if not to a dead end. Byzantines, Bulgars, Serbs, Magyars, Austrians, Albanians, and Turks - all marched through it at certain times, but in a sense got nowhere. Kosovo can be viewed as nature's boxing ring where world ideologies (Christian, Bogomil, Muslim, and more recently Marxist) each won individual rounds, but not the fight. There must have been 6 major human slaughters in as many centuries on this peaceful stretch of land. The soil in this valley appears to have fed on human flesh and blood.

Kosovo is commemorated in that heartbreaking medieval embroidery made in 1402 in the stillness of the Serbian Monastery of Ljubostinja with the needle of the pious Serbian Princess Euphemia. She sketched her requiem in gold thread on a pall to cover the severed head of Prince Lazar:

In courage and piety did you go out to do battle against the snake Murad ... your heart could not bear to see the hosts of Ismail rule Christian lands. You were determined that if you failed you would leave this crumbling fortress of earthly power and, red in your own blood, be one with the hosts of the heavenly King ...

Kosovo is a grave, and a grave means death and dust. But it also means rebirth and a source of new life. Kosovo is therefore transcendental.

The influence of the Romanized world, on the other hand, was far from negligible, and at times a source of great tension. In the entourage of Serbian kings, Roman Catholic courtiers, German guards, and French ladies wed to Serbian knights tried to interject aspects of Latin style, fashion, and mores. The most notable application of Romanized culture in Serbia is Stefan Decanski's (1321-1331) beautiful Monastery Church of Decani, built by a Franciscan friar and Dalmatian stone masons, with fresco works by artists of the Kotor school . It is known, however, that both King Milutin and later Stefan Decanski's son, Tsar Dusan, were occasionally annoyed by the Western influence but tolerated it.

Most of Dusan's imperial time was spent in the Hellenic area of his realm. Knowing Greek, he felt quite at home there, leaving central Serbia in the care of his son Uros. Dusan replaced the Greek aristocracy with Serbian administrators, his comrades in arms, and gave them Byzantine titles. This could not have pleased the inhabitants, but Dusan was more interested in courting Venetians, who could give him the ships necessary to take Constantinople. But to the Roman Catholic West, Dusan was and remained an "Eastern schismatic" who was not to be trusted. In a sense they were right, because Dusan was seeking to shape the culture of his realm through the use of the Serbian clergy and nobility, recruited from the Serbian peasantry, anti-Western as much as anti-Eastern.

Serbia of the Nemanjic dynasty was without doubt a land of economic and cultural progress that surpassed the existing European average. Apart from the well-known monasteries and their impressive frescoes, there are smaller but masterly art objects from that era: golden cups and chalices, candlesticks and silver plates, jeweled reliquaries, delicate embroideries, book bindings, and artistic illuminations - produced by talented people in a society which gave them an opportunity to express themselves. As for the Serbian rulers, unlike those in the West, they did not build enduring castles, but each one of them felt duty-bound to build at least one monastery.

In the legal-governmental sphere, Tsar Dusan's Code of Laws (Zakonik), studiously prepared over a period of about 6 years (1349-1354), is recognized by legal scholars to be among the leading law systems of the world.

Moreover, medieval Serbia was also a part of the international community, relating on a state to state basis in matters of political, military, and cultural concern. Serbian royal courts communicated on levels of respect and honor in diplomatic relations with Venetian doges, Hungarian kings, Bulgarian tsars, and Byzantine emperors. In addition, they were connected through marital arrangements with most of them. The first wife of Stefan the First Crowned was Eudocia, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexis III. King Stefan Uros I married the French princess Helene (House of Anjou), and Stefan Dragutin married Katherine, daughter of Hungarian King Stephen V, just to name a few.

It is only natural that a society with its own alphabet, language, state, and autocephalous Church should have the urge to create its own literature and culture. A large body of Western medieval literature, such as the Old and New Testaments, liturgical books, theological treatises, dogmatic and apocryphal works, and chronicles and lives of the saints, was present either in the original or in translation. Major medieval novels, such as tales about Alexander the Great and Tristan and Isolde, were also known. But this was not enough. The need to have their own literature was strongly felt by Serbian rulers and their associates.

Among the Serbian medieval literati were ecclesiastics and lay people. Two of them were of royal blood (Nemanja's two sons, Stefan and Rastko-Sava - a rare case in history), and one was of princely heritage (Prince Lazar's son, Despot Stefan). Others were of peasant stock, educated as monks or priests. Still others were foreign-born and highly educated, having found cultural refuge in Serbian courts or monasteries. The very proximity to the great Hellenic culture almost guaranteed that many cultured men would be roaming the Balkan spaces. Monastics, courtiers, and a maze of Slavic-speaking subjects of Venice, Byzantium, Hungary, and Bulgaria swarmed around Serbian literary centers. Knowing the Serbian language was an asset in other than literary activities. Venice and Byzantium, and later the Turks, quickly discovered that interstate and other correspondence was likely to be more efficient if carried out in Serbian. One of those yearning for peace and education was the Serbian Prince Rastko (Sava), Nemanja's youngest son, mentioned above. Clandestinely, he left the court. One stormy night he banged on the heavy wooden gates of a Mount Athos monastery (Panteleimon). He was admitted and began to study theology, languages, and history. His aging father subsequently joined him and purchased an old ruin where the building of the Serbian Monastery of Hilandar was begun shortly before he fell ill and died.

The respectful son later wrote a biography of his beloved father, the founder of the dynasty and Serbian statehood. He titled it The Life of Master Simeon, a work dealing not with the secular Nemanja but with the spiritual Simeon, the monk of noble heritage. In addition to a profusion of translated church manuals, canonic and instructive texts for use by monks and priests back home, Sava also tried his hand at verse writing. Being the most traveled Serb of his time, Sava visited and personally knew several Byzantine emperors (Alexis III Angelus, Theodore I Lascaris, and John III Vatatzes), and the patriarchs of Constantinople (Athanasius) and of Nicaea (Manuel). Sava knew the frailty of men, the mighty and the weak. In a poem, entitled Word about Torment, he writes:

Dead am I even before my death,

I sentence myself even before the judge does,

Even before the ceaseless pain sets in.

I am already tortured by my own agony.

Subsequently, a new generation of Serbian authors wrote about Sava and King Stefan, particularly the monks Domentian and Theodossius (second half of the 13th century), both of the Hilandar school. There were authors who attained high ecclesiastical posts, such as Archbishop Danilo II (1324-1338), who personally knew three Serbian kings (Dragutin, Milutin, and Stefan Decanski). He wrote a historical essay on the Lives of Serbian Kings and Bishops. His poem, The Lament of Bulgarian Soldiers for Tsar Mihail is a part of every Serbian anthology. Among Serbian medieval patriarchs, the best of the literati was Danilo III who, together with Lazar's widow Milica and her children, transported the body of the beheaded prince from Pristina to the Ravanica Monastery and canonized Lazar.

Lazar's son, Despot Stefan (1389-1427), was an exceptional person. A dashing man of war, letters, and politics, he was the hero of the Battle of Angora (Asia Minor, 1402), where he fought as a Turkish vassal. Of the three Serbian vassals in Turkish ranks at the earlier Battle of Rovine (in Walachia in 1395 against Prince Mircea), Stefan was the only one who survived. The popular King Marko of Prilep and Konstantine Dejanovic of eastern Macedonia perished. Despot Stefan was a great benefactor, protector of refugees, writers, and artists. A humanist of wide culture, he was also an author in his own right. One of his poetic scripts is entitled Love Surpasses Everything, and No Wonder Because God Is Love. Another was the Ode to Prince Lazar, a beautiful text chiseled in the marble column which was placed at the spot of the Kosovo Battle. A third, An Ode to Love, was dedicated to his brother Vuk, whom he once fought at that very Kosovo Field. In Stefan's monastery, Resava, generations of monks, scribes, and artists have worked unremittingly to preserve the Serbian heritage.

A great Serbian patriot, Stefan Lazarevic had the misfortune of presiding over the declining days of his beloved country. Had he been Dusan's successor, instead of Lazar's, the history of the Serbian people might have been different. At a crucial time when Serbia had a chance to outdo Byzantium, Dusan's son Uros ruled (1355-1371). He was a weakling, lacking the necessary firmness and general leadership qualities. The respect and awe that Stefan commanded among the Turks and Tartars at Angora, when he rode at the head of 3 gallant charges against Tamerlane, in an effort to save his surrounded suzerain, speaks of the effect his presence might have had if he had inherited the throne in 1355, when Dusan died.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the situation clearly, but could King Vukasin and Despot Uglesa ever have anticipated Kosovo? Could the Hungarian kings have foreseen Mohacs? Could John VI Cantacuzenus have known what he was doing to himself, to Byzantium, and to the Christian world, by leaning on the support of his powerful but dangerous Muslim ally? And the countries of the West, could they have known what their insistence on ecclesiastical submission to Rome, as a price of aid, would lead to?

When in desperation, Byzantine Emperor Manuel II begged for assistance from the pope, the doge, and the kings of France, England, and Aragon, his plea for help in fighting against the "infidels" went unanswered. The emperor spent several years on this tragic mission to Venice, Paris, London, and other cities. Reconciliation between East and West, the Greek and the Latin worlds, Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, was a vexed question. The two sides did not attempt to do together what they were unable to achieve alone, i.e., to stop the Turks. One wonders, would there have been two sieges of Vienna (1529 and 1683) if Roman Catholic Europe had come to the aid of the Eastern Orthodox emperor (Dusan) in the 1350s?

Even the defeats at Nicopolis (a town in Bulgaria on the Danube, 1396), and Varna (1444), which wiped out all hopes for Christendom to clear the Balkans of Islam, could not bring unity. At Varna the Christian leaders did not have an opportunity to flee. King Vladislav of Hungary and Poland, and the pope's delegate, Cardinal Giulio Cesarini, fell on the field. Djuradj Brankovic, the last of the Serbian despots and a weak member of the Christian coalition, realized even before Varna that the coalition's chance for success was poor, and withdrew. This did not help, however, the despotate, which succumbed in 1459, 6 years after Constantinople fell to the Turks (1453). The black two-headed eagle of Byzantium moved to Moscow to become the symbol of the "Third Rome," nourishing the fancy of Balkan Slavs for centuries to come.

THE KOSOVO BATTLE

Of all Kosovo battles only one counts in the formation of the psyche of a Serb. It is the one that began in the early hours of Vidovdan (St. Vitus' Day, June 15, 1389, June 28 by the New Calendar). The Turks had already been on the European continent for some time, seemingly unstoppable and intoxicated by easy victories over the rival and disunited infidels.

The Battle of Kosovo took place on the part of Kosovo Plain that the Turks called Mazgit, where the rivulet Lab flows into the Sitnica River. Today's visitors learn where Sultan Murad's intestines were buried, where the Turkish standard bearer (Gazimestan) fell, where grateful Serbia erected a "memorial to the fallen heroes of Kosovo," and where a marble column once stood (placed there on the order of, and authored by, Prince Lazar's son, Despot Stefan Lazarevic), which had the following inscription:

Oh man, stranger or hailing from this soil, when you enter this Serbian land, whoever you may be ... when you come to this field called Kosovo, you will see all over it plenty of bones of the dead, and with them myself in stone nature, standing upright in the middle of the field, representing both the cross and the flag. So as not to pass by and overlook me as something unworthy and hollow, approach me, I beg you, oh my dear, and study the words I bring to your attention, which will make you understand why I am standing here ... At this place there once was a great autocrat, a world wonder and Serbian ruler by the name of Lazar, an unwavering tower of piety, a sea of reason and depth of wisdom ... who loved everything that Christ wanted ... He accepted the sacrificial wreath of struggle and heavenly glory ... The daring fighter was captured and the wrath of martyrdom he himself accepted ... the great Prince Lazar ... Everything said here took place in 1389 ... the fifteenth day of June, Tuesday, at the sixth or seventh hour, I do not know exactly, God knows.

Following World War II, a redesigned monument was erected, a 100-foot tower, together with 25 acres of the surrounding land, where the famous Kosovo poppies supposedly sprout from the blood of the Kosovo heroes. The Serbian army in 1389 was encamped along the right bank of the Lab, an area suitable for both infantry and cavalry. The right wing of the Serbian army was commanded by Vojvoda Dimitrije Vojinovic. The left wing was under Vojvoda Vlatko Vukovic, sent by Bosnian King Tvrtko. Prince Lazar kept the command of the center for himself. The reserve was under the command of Prince Lazar's son-in-law, Vojvoda Vuk Brankovic. Prince Lazar had many reasons to worry about the outcome of the forthcoming encounter. Murad gave him no time to rally his vassals and tributary lords, some of whom were conspicuously slow in marshaling their troops. Lazar's frantic effort to obtain help from allies such as the king of Hungary failed because it was difficult, if not impossible, to organize it on such short notice. Nevertheless, although ill-prepared, Lazar had no other choice but to face the enemy. Murad's advisers, a group of extremely skilled military veterans, insisted on immediate and fast action. Amassed in the area of today's Nis and Kumanovo, the Turkish generals were eager to meet the Serbs while still possessing the momentum of previously victorious campaigns.

Morale in the Serbian camp was not high. Lazar's commanders were torn apart by local rivalries, ominous jealousies, and distrust. Djuradj Stracimirovic-Balsic, a prince of Zeta and son-in-law of Lazar, and some vojvodas of the northern regions were delayed by local opposition. Historians are still trying to ascertain whether the revolts were real or simply used as excuses. Two other of Lazar's sons-in-law, according to national tradition and accepted by some historians, were bitterly divided, under the influence of their wives.

According to chroniclers, national bards, and traditional Kosovo saga, Vuk Brankovic of the old aristocracy, who married Mara, and Milos Obilic, of lesser birth, who married Vukosava, fell prey to the ongoing feud between the two sisters. To make things worse, several well-known and gallant Serbian and Bulgarian princes were at that time already in the service of the Turkish conqueror, burdened by the obligations of vassalage. At that time feudal mores required the vassal to serve his lord and not his people.

Prince Lazar could have taken some moral comfort from the fact that he and his people were defenders of Christian civilization and that the forthcoming battle would probably be the last chance for Balkan Christians to repulse the Muslims. Some historians will dispute the contention, but there are others who maintain that quite a few among the leaders in the neighboring states (from Bulgaria, the Danubian lands, and even from the area of today's Croatia) took part in the battle. It is indisputable, however, that among those who joined the Serbs were some Albanian princes. Even though no Albanian state had yet existed, Albanian tribes were close allies of the Serbs, and friendly relations between Serbian and Albanian chieftains were the natural result of their common desire to get rid of first the Byzantine and then the Turkish opponents. John Castriota (of Serbian origin), the father of the most prominent Albanian, Skanderbeg, came to Kosovo at the head of a combined Serbian-Albanian force mobilized in the area of Debar. Among auxiliary troops were the volunteers led by Palatine Nicolas Gara (Gorjanski), another one of Lazar's sons-in-law.

From the time that the Serbian notables and Church dignitaries met in the city of Skopia (Skoplje), after the fatal battle in which King Vukasin and his army perished (Marica, 1371), and chose Lazar Hrebeljanovic as their leader, he enjoyed great popularity and respect. In addition to his personal qualities, he was also the husband of Milica, the great granddaughter of Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanjic dynasty. He, therefore, had some hereditary right to the throne of Serbia. Wise, charitable, cultured, and a skillful soldier, he defeated the Turks in encounters that took place in 1381 and 1386, but it was becoming ever more evident that Lazar was winning battles but losing the war.

Lazar's Bosnian ally, Tvrtko I, defeated the Turks when they probed Bosnian territory (1386 and 1388). All this, however, made the Turks only more resolute, and as the year 1389 came, they were ready. The Eastern Christians in the Balkans were now faced not by scattered Turkish forces, but by a great army. Sultan Murad led his army straight toward Lazar's capital (Krusevac). There was a bloody Turkish assault on the fortress at Nis, which the Serbs defended heroically for 25 days. This is where Murad himself had an opportunity to evaluate the morale and effectiveness of the enemy. When Murad's scouts reported the concentration of a large Serbian army at Kosovo, he marched immediately to meet it. Thus, the Balkan Christians and the Muslims were locked in a decisive battle, a battle that the Muslims saw as an opportunity to break the backbone of Serbian resistance. According to Serbian bards and tradition, Murad sent the following message to Lazar:

Oh Lazar, thou head of the Serbians:

There was not and never can be one land in the hands of two masters.

No more can two sultans rule here ...

Come straight to meet me at Kosovo!

The sword will decide for us.

Modern historians have had understandable difficulties in trying to decipher the realities of the Battle of Kosovo. They have had to sift through a myriad of often rhapsodic and idealized, mostly apologetical, renditions of relevant decisions and events. Contemporary chroniclers, and later a lot of biographers and "history writers," as a rule, had to keep in mind the interest of their protectors and sponsors, with objectivity not always their trademark. The casual author, for instance, thought nothing of reviving King Vukasin (18 years after his death) to bring him to Kosovo as a participant, with "his 30,000 troops." Groping through all this poetic license was unavoidable. But to the credit of epic writers, many of them provided data that were later corroborated by more reliable sources.

It is certain that Prince Lazar must have held a war council with his vojvodas on the eve of the battle. Some among those present must have had apprehensions about Serbian prospects, especially in the light of the hesitancy, lukewarm enthusiasm, and even disloyalty among some Serbian warriors. Prince Lazar could easily have agreed with the evaluation which a national bard put into the mouth of Vuk Brankovic: Fight we may, but conquer we cannot. Lazar could also have believed that some of his vojvodas were seriously thinking of passing over to the camp of the sultan, among them Milos Obilic, who was seen conferring with two other commanders and inquiring about Turkish battle deployment.

On the eve of the battle, Prince Lazar, according to the Chronicle of Monk Pahomije, asked for a golden goblet of wine to be brought to him. In his toast he mentioned 3 brave and dashing vojvodas as possible traitors, who were thinking of deserting me and going over to the Turkish side. These three were Ivan Kosancic, Milan of Toplica, and Milos Obilic. Prince Lazar appealed to Milos not to betray him, and drank a toast to him: Do not be faithless, and take this golden cup from me as a memento. Milos responded with a few words of noble indignation: Oh Tsar, treachery now sits alongside your knee, an allusion that Vuk Brankovic was responsible for this lack of confidence. This scene on the eve of the battle reminds one very much of the Christian saga of the Last Supper, where Lazar emerges as a Christ-like figure, aware of treachery among humans and of his own fate. Lazar behaved as a good Christian should, and had no rancor even toward those who failed him. Milos, too, behaved as a gallant Christian: For thy goblet I thank you; for thy speech, Tsar Lazar, I thank you not ... Tomorrow, in the Battle of Kosovo, I will perish fighting for the Christian faith.

It is indeed interesting that the Romanized West never saw Lazar and Milos, and their likes of Serbian Orthodoxy, as fighters for Christianity. It is well to recall, however, that before going into battle, Lazar left the Serbian people the famous statement, which they have eternally treasured and which is the essence of the Gospel Message:

The Earthly Kingdom is short-lived, but the Heavenly One is forever.

As for the Kosovo Battle, all available information seems to confirm that Murad succeeded in surprising the Serbian army, as he had done at Marica in 1371. In accordance with the advice of his commander Evrenos Bey (of Greek origin), he launched his attack early in the morning while Lazar and his comrades were at prayers in the nearby Samodreza Church. It was there that news reached him that the enemy was already attacking his front lines. It was there, also, that he was informed that Milos and his two godbrothers, Ivan and Milan, had been seen riding out in the early dawn toward the Turkish lines. This must have strengthened his belief that the three vojvodas were indeed traitors, and that Vuk Brankovic was right when he expressed doubts about Milos.

Lazar must have thought of the summons he had sent to all Serbs before the battle, which, according to the bards’ tradition, reads:

Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin comes not to fight the Turks at Kosovo,

to him never son or daughter born, no child to heir his land or bear his name.

For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white, in his hand nothing prosper.

May he live alone, unloved, and die unmourned, alone!

As Lazar blessed his soldiers, he led them into battle, the clash that was to decide the fate of Balkan Eastern Orthodox nations for a long period to come. The Turkish historian Neshri describes the first phase of the battle in the following words:

The archers of the faithful shot their arrows from both sides. Numerous Serbians stood as if they were mountains of iron. When the rain of arrows was a little too sharp for them, they began to move, and it seemed as if the waves of the Black Sea were making noise ... Suddenly the infidels stormed against the archers of the left wing, attacked them in the front, and, having divided their ranks, pushed them back. The infidels destroyed also the regiment ... that stood behind the left wing ... Thus the Serbians pushed back the whole left wing, and when the confounding news of this disaster was spread among the Turks they became very low-spirited ... Bayazet, with the right wing, was as little moved as the mountain on the right of his position (Kopaonik). But he saw that very little was wanting to lose the sultan's whole army.

But the quick thinking and decisiveness of the sultan’s son turned the flow of the battle. Among the Turks he was known as Ildarin (Lightning). He attacked the flank of the advancing Serbian force, and succeeded in repulsing and throwing into considerable disarray the hitherto victorious Christians. At that critical moment, a Serbian corps of some twelve thousand cuirassiers was supposedly withdrawn from the battle by their commander, Vuk Brankovic. Documentary evidence is scant, but he apparently either lost his nerve or thought it inadvisable to lose all of his men in a futile battle. His name, justly or not, still lives in ignomy among the Serbs as the epitomy of treachery.

But Lazar was of a different disposition. He tried to rally his disheartened troops around him, and led them into a new attack, which failed. Inevitably, the morale of the Serbs plummeted. Wounded, Lazar was taken prisoner, and his army, rapidly falling apart, was beaten and dispersed on the early afternoon of that very day. Serbian chroniclers maintain that, as he was led to Murad’s tent, Lazar saw the wounded Vojvoda Milos there, and only then realized what heroic deed he had done. Deeply touched, Lazar gave Milos his blessing, as he realized that Milos had mortally wounded the sultan, striking him in the abdomen with a concealed dagger. Milos got access to Murad’s tent by pretending he had come to surrender and wanted to kiss the sultan’s foot.

There they were, in that tent, all the featured actors of the Kosovo drama, ready for the final Shakespearean resolution of the plot. One of Murad’s close advisers (Ali Pasha) lay dead already; he, too, a victim of Milos’ dagger. Prince Bayazet ordered Lazar and his nobles executed by the sword, in the presence of the dying sultan. The Serbian nobles asked to be beheaded first. Bayazet turned down their plea. But when one of Lazar’s vojvodas, Krajimir of Toplica, asked for permission to hold his own robe so that Lazar’s head would not fall to the bare ground, Bayazet, impressed by such loyalty, granted the request. Milos Obilic was beheaded first. As Lazar started to say a few last words to his nobles, he was abruptly stopped by the Turks. Kneeling, he could only utter: My God, receive my soul.

Murad lived long enough to see his enemies beheaded. As he died, his younger son Bayazet made sure immediately to eliminate his brother, Jacub, who had also taken part in the battle, and thus assure his ascendance to the highest position as head of the victorious Turks. Moreover, he took Lazar's daughter Olivera into his harem and led the Turks in other battles. The Serbian princess must have meant a lot to the Turk called Lightning, because when thirteen years later he was taken prisoner by the leader of the Tartars (Tamerlane), Bayazet chose poison rather than watch the jewel of his harem, Olivera, serve her new master.

As Vidovdan 1389 came to a close and the sun went down behind the mountains of Zeta (Montenegro) in the west, the night that would last five centuries began. Both in their sixties, two rulers lay dead on the plain of Kosovo, surrounded by their slain brave warriors. Murad’s body was carried by his fighters all the way to Asia Minor, to the city of Broussa. Present at the burial ceremony were two Serbian vojvodas who were ordered by Bayazet to escort the body of their enemy, and who were executed at Murad’s gravesite. Today, the visiting tourist is told that the two sarcophaguses, next to Murad’s contain the bodies of unknown decapitated Serbian nobles.

By the grace of the new Turkish sultan, the Serbs were allowed to pick up the severed head of their leader and carry it together with the body to the Church of Vaznesenje Hristovo in Pristina. Later the remains were moved to the Monastery of Ravanica. The Serbian Church proclaimed Prince Lazar a saint and holy martyr. The mutilated body of the saint prince could not, however, rest long in his native land.* For the Serbs, Kosovo became a symbol of steadfast courage and sacrifice for honor, much as the Alamo for the Americans of yesteryear - only Kosovo was the Alamo writ large, where Serbs lost their whole nation. To them, too, in the words of Sam Houston, the site of their defeat was to be remembered - and avenged.

Serbs were defending themselves and Christian Europe from the Ottoman invasion, and at Kosovo they were defeated. Prince Lazar and the cream of the Serbian nobility died heroically. Over the centuries the sacrificial courage of Prince Lazar and his army on that day in 1389 has epitomized the dictum that it was better to die heroically than to live under the alien yoke. To the Serbs the lesson of that fateful St. Vitus Day is that eternal values must be placed before earthly ones, that spiritual force is superior to the force of arms, that by moral fortitude alone we can transcend our mortal frame and step from time into Eternity. The legacy of Vidovdan teaches them that the forces of darkness are defeated in the end and that those of light and virtue ultimately triumph - even when such victory may seem impossible - because there is God. Kosovo has redefined the Serbs as an eminently, quintessentially Christian nation.

THE AFTERMATH

The battle of Kosovo was one of the most decisive events in the whole history of South Eastern Europe. It meant not merely the fall of the medieval Serbian Empire and the conquest of the whole Balkan Peninsula by a barbarous Asiatic invader, but also an important stepping stone in the struggle of Islam against Christianity.

For the next half-century the Serbs retained some fragments of their self-rule and liberty; but in 1459 their country finally became a mere province of Turkey. The nobles were completely exterminated. Not content with seizing their country, the Turks used the unhappy Serbs as the instrument of their own enslavement. One boy in every family was torn away from his home, and brought up as a Turk and a Mohammedan; and thus were formed the so-called Janissaries, the famous crack regiments which made the Turks so long the terror of Europe.

So completely were the Turks masters of Serbia, that no Christian dared ride into a town on horseback: if he failed to dismount when he met a Turk on the highroad, he risked being killed upon the spot. He was not allowed to have firearms, and was at the mercy of the Turkish soldiery when they chose to plunder. A proverb which dates from those terrible times says that grass never grows where the hoofs of the Turkish horses once tread.

In the books of travelers who passed through Serbia when she was still under the Turks it is possible to get some idea of the misery of the people, and of the cruelty of their rulers. What are now fertile and prosperous valleys, full of corn and pasture and little farmsteads, were in those days uncultivated and almost deserted lands. It was only in those districts which lay off the beaten track, where the soldiers and tax-collectors did not come so often, that the Serbs had any chance of living peaceful and settled lives.

From 1459 to 1804 Serbia ceased to exist as a state and a self-governing nation. How was it that she was able to rise again from the dead? There is hardly another instance of a nation that saved itself by its national poetry. It has been said that “every Serb is a half-poet.” When everything seemed lost, many turned into local bards to keep alive the memories of their people’s past glories by their songs, and ballads, and tales - always with an eye to the great days which would come again and console them for the miseries of the present. For centuries every village had its own singer, often a blind man, sometimes even a man gifted with the “second sight,” as the bards of the Scottish Highlands in past days. In the long winter evenings the villagers gathered round these singers and listened to them as they chanted, to the accompaniment of their primitive one-stringed fiddle (gusle), the adventures and victories of dead Serbian heroes. Many of the finest of these ballads centered round the thrilling incidents of the battle of Kosovo. They related how on its eve Tsar Lazar was deceived by the traitor Vuk Brankovic and denounced his most loyal follower Milos Obilic as himself a traitor before all the nobles of his. Though on the decisive day the Sultan also was killed in his tent by the Serbian hero Milos Obilic, the victory of the Turks was to prove complete: with the flower of its nobility dead in the field, Serbia was devoid of human resources. The Turks could retreat, regroup, and come back in force.

The battle of Kosovo was one of the most decisive events in the whole history of Europe. It meant not merely the fall of the medieval Serbian Empire and the conquest of the whole Balkan Peninsula by a barbarous Asiatic invader, but also the triumph of Islam over Christianity in the Balkans for 500 years.

For over five centuries every Serb has celebrated every year the anniversaries of the great battle, not only as a day of mourning for the lost day, but as an event to be remembered and avenged. St. Vitus Day (Vidovdan) was a proof that for the Serbian nation, as for every man and woman, death is followed by resurrection. It is difficult for us to understand, in these post-modern times, how completely the story of Kosovo was bound up with the daily life of the whole Serbian nation. Perhaps the simplest proof of it is the fact that in Montenegro - whose people are all Serbs, too - part of the national dress is a red cap with a black border. This black is a mourning band first worn for the defeat of Kosovo, and never again laid off. (Compare this with the legacy of the battle of Flodden, over which all Scotland mourned for many generations.)

The end of the Serbian Despotate in 1459 was followed by the demise of the Kingdom of Bosnia (1463). The Ottoman Empire now ruled not only over all Serbs, except those in the most inaccessible parts of Montenegro, but stretched all the way from Mesopotamia to the Danube, and westward to the Adriatic. Serbs, Greeks, Bulgars, and Albanians were subjugated, and they had no idea how long their plight would last. At the same time, some among them concluded that life would be easier if they converted to Islam. Many others decided to move out - to Hungary, or to go to the Adriatic coast, to look for a haven in Venice or in Venetian-held territories in Dalmatia. Yet others headed for the gates of Dubrovnik which - in exchange for tribute to the sultan - was allowed to retain its small territory free of Turks. Those who stayed and did not convert had one thing in common: all of them were classified as giaours, a category of despised infidels that lumped together all those who were not Muslim.

To the Turks, the Byzantine and Roman faiths were but two sides of the same coin. In real life, however, the very fact of Turkish victory belied this assumption. It took them less than a century to annihilate three Christian Orthodox realms in the Balkans, divided and never assisted by Christian Western Europe. On the other hand, Christianity was the only single bond that the subjugated peoples of the Balkans now had in common. What else was there to hold onto, until the Islamic flood should recede? Moreover, the Balkan peninsula became a two-realm society, Muslim and Christian, one privileged and the other discriminated against. It was up to each individual to decide whether he wanted to live and die as an exploited non-person – or make a compromise with his conscience and lead a more favored existence. Hard decisions had to be made.

As Islamization progressed it took root better in some areas, among certain classes and in certain environments. The process was much swifter in Albanian and Bosnian lands than in Serbia’s former medieval state. The Albanians did not have an autocephalous Church, and their Christianity - whether Byzantine or Latin - had not become as integral in Albanian life; it remained either Greek or Italian. And in Bosnia the widely spread Bogomil sect had reinterpreted the tenets of Christianity to such an extent that Islam, with its facile, black-and-white repetitive monotheism, appeared more acceptable than either Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. But to understand the implications of Islamization it may be necessary to look at the tenets of the Prophet’s peculiar creed as it is – not as the corifei of modern Western “multiculturalism” want to portray it.

CHRISTIANS UNDER ISLAMIC OCCUPATION*

Islam has been synonymous with violence and intolerance since its earliest days.  Like Bolshevism and Nazism, Islam is part religion and part ideology, and it seeks to impose uniformity of thought and feeling on the faithful, and to subjugate and ultimately to destroy its non-adherents.

The beginnings of Muhammad’s public career are little known to most Westerners. A non-Muslim reading the Koran is tempted to conclude that Muhammad’s career was marked by a long string of killings, armed robberies, and rape, interspersed by a series of inspired pronouncements of varying coherence. Outsiders - the Jews of Medinah, or Muhammad’s Arabic kinsmen who were reluctant to accept his self-proclaimed divinity - could testify to his unique concepts of justice and mercy.

When, in A.D. 626, for instance, six of Muhammad’s henchmen murdered an elderly Jew by the name of Abu Rafi in his sleep, they argued afterwards whose weapon had actually ended the victim’s life. The prophet decided that the person who owned the sword that still had traces of food on it was entitled to the credit.  Abu Rafi had just finished his dinner before falling asleep, and the fatal slash went through his stomach.

If Abu Rafi’s murder was a kind of Kristallnacht, Muhammad’s attack against the tribe of Banu-‘l-Mustaliq, later in that same year, was a decisive step towards Endloesung.  His followers slaughtered many tribesmen and looted thousands of their camels and sheep; they also kidnapped five hundred of their women. The night after the battle, Muhammad and his brigands staged an orgy of rape. As one Abu Sa’id Khudri remembered, a slight problem needed to be resolved first: In order to obtain ransom from the surviving tribesmen, the Muslims had pledged not to violate their captives.

We were lusting after women and chastity had become too hard for us, but we wanted to get the ransom money for our prisoners. So we wanted to use the Azl [coitus interruptus]. We asked the Prophet about it and he said: “You are not under any obligation not to do it like that.”

The members of the last surviving Jewish tribe in Medinah, Banu Qurayzah, were even less fortunate.  Muhammad offered the men conversion to Islam as an alternative to death; upon their refusal, all 900 were decapitated in front of their enslaved women and children. The women were subsequently raped; Muhammad chose as his concubine one Raihana Bint Amr, whose father and husband were both slaughtered before her eyes only hours earlier. This same man is explicitly upheld by all Muslims everywhere - from Los Angeles to Sarajevo, from Marseilles to Chechnya - as the paragon of godly, morally impeccable behavior, to be admired and emulated until the end of time. The prevalence of his name among Muslim men is symbolic of the covenant. His behavior, and that of his followers, was sanctioned in Muhammad’s prophetic revelation recorded in his holy book:

And all married women are forbidden unto you except those captives whom your right hand possesses.  It is a decree of Allah for you.  Lawful unto you are all beyond those mentioned, so that you seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock, not debauchery.  [Koran 4:24]

Non-Muslims who look for mercy and compassion from these quarters will search in vain.  Muhammad explicitly forbade his followers to make friends of Christians and Jews, and warned them of the sanction for disobedience:

He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. [Koran 5:51]

But as the marauders could derive no material benefit from corpses, the lives of the conquered could be spared if they agreed to pay a hefty tribute to the Muslims. In his own lifetime, Muhammad thus established the model for subsequent relations between Islamic conquerors and their Christian or Jewish subjects.

The option of conversion was always available, and to be on the right side of Allah - and of history, as it seemed for a long time - was not too demanding. God, the creator and sustainer of the world, rewarded all those who expressed their worship in prayer, almsgiving, and self-purification, and above all in unquestioning obedience to Muhammad. That “God is great, and that there is no God but God” was easily grasped by the nomadic tribes of the desert and, later, of the steppe.

Underdeveloped culturally and socially, the nomads had few theological and logical qualms about Muhammad’s claim that he was the sole spokesman for the authentic “religion of Abraham,” a religion that had been corrupted by Jews and Christian alike. Since Jerusalem was, for the time being, out of reach, Muhammad audaciously attributed to Abraham the founding of the old pagan sanctuary, the Ka’bah, which housed a piece of black meteoric rock that became the Muslims’ holy of holies. Later, non-Arab converts would translate “the crude and casual assertions of the Prophet” into a coherent teaching.

Between Muhammad’s death in A.D. 626 and the second siege of Vienna, just over a thousand years later, Islam expanded - at first rapidly, then intermittently - at the expense of everything and everyone in the way of its warriors. But Islamic models of culture and society - represented by the horsemen who swept across three continents in the decades after Muhammad’s death - were unable to induce the heirs of Christian, Middle Eastern, and Indian civilizations to attune their values and ways of life to the true faith.

There have been times when some Muslim lands were fit for a civilized man to live in. Baghdad under Harun ar-Rashid in the eighth and early ninth centuries, or Cordova under Abd ar-Rahman in the tenth, come to mind. These brief periods of civilization were based on the readiness to borrow from earlier cultures, to compile, translate, learn, and absorb - a bit like America before the closing of its mind. These cultural awakenings happened in spite of the spirit of Islam, which - unable to engender interesting ideas of its own - rejected others as a threat. But in subsequent centuries, cross-fertilization of elements from diverse regions and traditions became increasingly difficult: Islam was accepted or rejected in its entirety, regardless of local custom or tradition. An unprecedented rigidity was introduced into the relations between civilizations, reflecting the fundamental tenet of Islam - accurately restated a decade ago by Bosnia’s Western-annointed president, Alija Izetbegović, in his Islamic Declaration – that “there can be no peace between Islam and other forms of social and political organization.”

Unleashed as the crudely militant faith of a barbarian war-band, Islam turned its boundary with the outside world into a perpetual war zone. For a long time, the outcome of the onslaught was in doubt. The early attack on Christendom reached as far west as Tours, in France, and almost enabled the Koran - in Gibbon’s memorable phrase - to be “taught in the schools of Oxford” to a circumcised people. The last attempt in pre-modern times, going through the Balkans, took the sultan’s janissaries – in 1683 - more than half-way from Constantinople to Dover. On both occasions, the tide was checked, but its subsequent rolling back took decades, even centuries. But for the millions of Christians and Jews engulfed by the deluge, those were centuries of quiet desperation interrupted by the regular pangs of agony. The materially and culturally rich Christian civilization of Byzantium and its budding Slavic offspring in Serbia and Bulgaria were reduced to dhimmis, “people of the Book,” whose advantage over pagans was that their life and earthly goods were ostensibly safe for as long as they submitted to Islamic rule.

That rule rested on the two pillars of Islamic ideology and political practice - jihad and Shari’a - that provided the quasi-legal framework for institutionalized oppression of the infidels. The story of the non-Muslims’ experiences under Islamic rule is as politically incorrect to tell, and therefore as little known in today’s West, as the remarkable life and exploits of Muhammad himself. At first, the choice of the vanquished seemed to be not “Islam or death” but “Islam or super-tax,” but over time Shari’a ensured the decline of Eastern Christianity (and the remnants of Judaism, Nestorianism, Zaratustrianism…) and the sapping of the captives’ vitality and capacity for renewal.  The practice of devshirme, the annual “blood levy” of Christian boys to be trained as janissaries, and the spiking of infidels were among its more obvious consequences.

In our own times, Western anti-Orthodox bias, which James Jatras has dubbed Pravoslavophobia (in Chronicles, February 1997) rarely means antipathy for Orthodoxy as such. Most serious Protestants and Roman Catholic often have a fairly positive attitude toward Orthodox Christianity as a morally conservative and, especially, liturgically traditional bulwark within the spectrum of Christian opinion. Perhaps it has been so long since western Christians have had to physically defend themselves as Christians (as opposed to Americans, Englishmen, Germans, etc.) that they just don't understand those for whom it is a current concern.

On the other hand there are Westerners for whom antipathy is based precisely on the traditional Orthodox character of the front-line states bordering on Islam. Indeed, from this viewpoint, the desire of these countries to not only avoid Islamization but Westernization as well is a major count against them. This frame of mind is strongly reminiscent of that of the West toward the East during the last great Islamic offensive in Europe, as the dying Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serbian states faced Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. The West then was explicit: we will help you only if you renounce Orthodoxy in favor of Roman Catholicism. In today's geopolitical context, when western churchmen join in calls for military action by western governments against Orthodox countries to help Muslims, Pope John Paul's calls for ecumenical dialogue and eventual reunion - the topic of his encyclicals Ut Unam Sint and Slavorum Apostoli - look suspiciously familiar to eastern eyes. The Orthodox East is being told that unless they submit to the West’s tutelage in political, social, moral, and economic matters - the collective “religion” of the Enlightenment heritage - yet again they will be thrown to the wolves. In fact, the West will even hold them while the wolves to devour them.

The immorality, not to mention the stupidity, of this approach should be obvious. Maybe Christians will never come to agreement on doctrinal matters.  But even if, broadly speaking, East and West are never able to share a common Eucharistic chalice, does that mean they must be enemies? I submit that the survival of Christian Orthodox civilization in the East should be hardly less important to the West than to the Orthodox themselves, and that over the not-so-long term the West’s own fate may depend on its survival. The fact that the West cannot recognize this reality is part of the same inability to recognize its own internal vulnerability, with the forest of minarets going up first in Western Europe, and now in North America.

Some Christians see the Muslim influx as an opportunity for evangelization. Indeed we should never neglect to share the Gospel - the only real liberation - with Muslims, who should not, as individuals, be held responsible for the violent system into which they were born, and of which they are also victims. At the same time, in light of the growing volume of Muslim immigration, western Christians will soon find out - sooner than they think, given western birthrates - that confronting the Islamic advance has become, as it has always been for eastern Christians, a simple matter of physical survival. By that time it may be too late for both.

At the end of this millenium, post-Christian “liberal democracy” expects to neuter Islam by reducing it to yet another humanistic project in self-celebration. Foreign policy strategists in Washington pander to its geopolitical designs, throwing smaller Christian nations - Serbs and Greek Cypriots today, Bulgars and Greeks tomorrow - to the wolves, hoping to balance the books for half a century of America’s “passionate attachment” in the Middle East. They do not seem to realize that such morsels will only whet the Islamic appetite, paving the way to a major confrontation in the next century. One way to avoid this is to open the gates and give up, and Islam’s proselytizers in the West are learning how to play the game.  They act as if Islam were just another competitor in the marketplace of the secular political system, without giving up their ultimate claims and objectives.

Islam enters the new millennium with a strong hand.  For starters, it is “non-white,” non-European, and non-Christian, which makes it a natural ally of the ruling Western elites. At the same time, it has an inherent advantage over Clinton, Blair, Schröder, and Chirac, who are unable to generate an emotional response among the hoi polloi for their tepid ideology of multicultural mediocrity.

Muslim proselytizers also have an advantage over most established Christian denominations in the Western world, since the latter are no longer even “the Tory Party at Prayer” but - at best – “the Social Workers at Therapy.” Richly endowed with petro-dollars, Islam’s public relations front will use the symbols and vocabulary of the Dominant Tendency, and wait for its implosion. Islam should not be blamed for being what it is, nor should its adherents be condemned for maintaining their traditions: Luther would say that they kann nicht anders.

The remaining Christians in today’s Western world should not hate Islam, nor seek to ban it. They should, however, blame themselves for refusing to acknowledge the facts of the case, and failing to take stock of their options.  Those who have lost their own faith have little right to point a finger at those who uphold theirs. In the present state of Western decrepitude, this process may well lead further millions to the conclusion that we should all become Muslims, since our goose is cooked anyway, spiritually and demographically. Those of us who do not cherish that prospect should at least demand that our rulers present that option fairly and squarely. If we do so, we shall but follow the example of the Serbs through the centuries.

SERBS AND ALBANIANS UNDER TURKISH RULE

The Turkish occupation did not mean the same thing for all Balkan nationalities. The Greeks, for example, who had played such an important role in the Byzantine world, were viewed with the greatest respect by the invader. The Turks were good fighters and eager to participate in the spoils of war, but when it came to bureaucracy and administration in general they were sadly lacking. It was not long after the fall of Constantinople that the city's Greek, Venetian, and Jewish communities began to bustle with activity and opulence. Someone had to provide the continuity in commerce, administration, and in understanding the affairs of the Balkan mosaic. By all standards, in the reality of the period, the Greeks were the most suited for this function. When it came to choosing who would represent the Christians and to provide spiritual leadership, the choice again fell to the Greeks. Having a Greek as Eastern Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople made a substantial difference.

For the Serbs, a glimpse into the extremity of their situation in that period is given by Konstantine Mihailovic of Ostrovica. Serving for ten years as a Turkish soldier under Sultan Mehmed II he later escaped and wrote Memoirs of a Janissary. One of the events he described was the fall of the Serbian mining town of Novo Brdo into the hands of the sultan. First, the sultan ordered all gates closed except one, through which all of the inhabitants had to pass, leaving their possessions behind. So they began passing through, one by one, writes Mihailovic,

and the sultan, standing at the gate, was separating males from females ... then he ordered the leaders beheaded. He saved 320 young men and 704 women ... He distributed the women among his warriors, and the young men he took into the janissary corps, sending them to Anatolia. ... I was there, in that city of Novo Brdo, I who write this ...

The shipping of Christian boys to Turkish schools to become janissaries, or if talented, to be a part of the administrative apparatus, was common practice. It was part of the tribute the Christian raya had to pay to the Turks, but it was not always the same in all regions. It is not clear whether it was a compliment or a punishment when the Turks took more male children from one area than from another. Serbs were trying to hide their boys, but some of those who were taken away fared much better in life. Because religion, not nationality, was the fundamental factor in the Turkish concept of governing, it was possible for a raja child to become a grand vizier of the Turkish sultan.

Wealth and material position were important factors affecting the decision to convert. This contributed to the new stratification of the society under Ottoman rule, and a new power balance among national groups. The balance was shifting, and as far as the Albanians and Serbs were concerned; it was shifting drastically in favor of the Albanians, to the detriment of good relations between them. The emergence of a significant number of Islamized Albanians holding high posts at the Porte was reflected in Kosovo and Metohija. Albanians started appearing as officials and tax collectors in local administration, replacing Turks or Arabs as the pillar of Ottoman authority. Local Serbs and Albanians, being divided first by language and culture, and subsequently by religion, gradually became members of two fundamentally opposed social and political groups.

With over thirty grand viziers of Albanian descent during Ottoman rule, the top policy-making machine was indeed saturated with people of Albanian stock. As far as the process of Islamization was concerned, Albanians showed themselves much more pliable than Serbs. The weight of their Albanian tradition proved a lighter burden. Theirs is the famous saying: Ku este shpata este feja (“Your faith is where the sword is”). First-class warriors, fascinated by swords and guns, used to discipline and obeying when ruled by a strong hand, the Albanians represented a much better medium to be cast into the Turkish mold than the individualistic and unpredictable Serbs.

The Albanians’ readiness to come to terms with the conquerors gave them an upper hand. This was the beginning of a tragic division, of separate roads for them and for the Serbs. The former became the rulers and the latter the ruled. This parting of the ways is best seen in the deterioration of relations between neighboring Montenegrin and Albanian tribes. Living under similar conditions in the isolated highlands, having similar life patterns, traditions, and history, they were a world apart from the rest of the Balkans. They populated the roadless mountain areas that invaders had no particular desire to visit as long as their control was acknowledged by regular tax contributions and tributes. Their elected local leaders, together with their priests, ruled in strict observance of their traditions and customs. The Turkish judiciary never bothered the Christians unless Muslim rule or people were involved. Through common experiences and alliances in local conflicts, as well as opposition to outside influences, the binding word besa (oath, promise) often meant mutual protection.

The symbiosis that engulfed the clans of different ethnic cities was noticeable and evident until quite recently, and traces of it can be found even today. A French traveler was taken aback, when in the late years of the 18^th century he visited Herzegovina. It was the Christian holiday of St. Ilija (Elijah), but to his amazement he noticed that Muslims were going to the mosque, splendidly lit. His agitated curiosity and inquiry were given a laconic answer: It's Ilija in the morning, Alija in the evening! Even today one can still see Albanian Muslims of Kosovo, Metohija, or Macedonia, men and women and children of the same family, descending from their hills and visiting Serbian monasteries. Men, wearing their white skullcaps, in their white serge trousers braided with black lace, followed by their women, bringing their infant children or alone, waiting for the priest to admit them to the Serbian place of worship. They arrive in reverence of the Holy Mother, or a saint whose icon is in the church or, more often, of relics of some Serbian king, sanctified in the monastery and known to help where Mohammed and Esculap had failed. No wonder, a Serbian priest would comment after such visits (always on Friday), they were Christians once.*

In the 14^th and 15^th centuries the great majority of Albanians were Christians, Orthodox or Roman Catholic in the north, predominately Orthodox in the south. Members of the north Albanian tribe, Malisori, celebrated Saint Nikola's Day - their patron and protector, just as he is of the Montenegrins. Both could be heard singing their national ballads, to the accompaniment of the gusle. The Malisori would sing about King Marko and Prince Lazar; the Montenegrins would sing about Skanderbeg.

Until recently it was not unusual to see Albanians visiting with their Christian friends on Christian holidays, or participating in the dancing and feasting (albeit with wine and pork dutifully avoided), attending weddings and baptisms. Usually these were the traditional ties of friendship, a legacy from the old days when the respective families were closely knit, living through periods of harmony or quarrels, but never inimical hostility. These were the days of stable family life, when young men went abroad only to return with money saved, and then continued to live in the manner of their fathers. Old Albanians in Kosovo still remember that their fathers would never begin any project on Tuesday, the day of the Serbs’ defeat.

The Monastery of Pec, which was the seat of the Serbian patriarch (1346-1556 and 1557-1766), maintained close and friendly relations with the Albanians of the rugged area of Rugovo, which provided shelter to Patriarch Arsenius IV in 1737, when he had to hide from the pursuing Turks. The Albanians continued to provide guard service to the Patriarchate in Pec and the Decani Monastery, but in recent years with notable lack of success. But coexistence was severely strained by the zealous converts to the Prophet’s faith. Some left a bloody trail in their forceful Islamization drive against the Serbs. An old Serbian religious inscription, made in 1574, reads: This is where great Albanian violence took place, especially by Mehmud Begovic in Pec, Ivan Begovic in Skadar, Sinnan-Pashic Rotulovic in Prizren, and Slad Pashic in Djakovitsa - they massacred 2,000 Christians ... Have mercy upon us, Oh Lord. Look down from Heaven and free your flock. Probably the most notorious among the converts was Koukli Bey and his followers who used force in their attempts to Islamize the area of Pastrik, Has, and Opolje at the end of the 18^th century. Remembered as an arch-enemy of the Serbs is another Islamic convert, Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha, who ordered the remains of Saint Sava transferred from the Mileseva Monastery to Belgrade and there burned on a pyre in 1594.

The phenomenon of Islamization, and all that it meant in terms of personal welfare and social advancement, was the main cause of the estrangement between the two groups. To the Albanians, Islam was an opportunity that they could not let pass. It was a vehicle not only to get even, but, in addition, to outrank the Greeks and the Slavs. Islamization was continuous one, but its fervor and intensity were not. At certain periods, in certain areas, with certain people, the process would explode, usually triggered by some violent event. Something would happen - such as some Albanians siding with Venice in a dispute with the Porte, or the Serbs joining the Austrian army in its incursions. The aftermath would be intensified Islamization. Pressures would be applied, and on such occasions Serbs would usually show more intransigence than Albanians. The Albanians could never understand that inherent Serbian hostility toward the Turks, but then they had no Kosovo in their heritage.

The latent Serbian-Albanian conflict came into the open during the Holy League’s war against the Ottoman Empire (1683-1690). Many Serbs joined the Habsburg troops as a separate Christian militia. The Albanians - with the exception of the gallant Roman Catholic Klimenti (Kelmendi) tribe – reacted in accordance with their recently acquired Islamic identity and took the side of the sultan’s army against the Christians. Following the Habsburgs’ defeat a considerable number of local Serbs, fearing Muslim vengeance and reprisals, withdrew from Kosovo-Metohija led by their Patriarch, Arsenije III Crnojević. On their way they were joined by many people from other parts of Serbia and moved to the neighboring Habsburg Empire, to today’s Vojvodina.

Two generations later yet another Austro-Ottoman war provoked further Serb migrations (1739), led by another Patriarch, Arsenije IV Jovanović-Šakabenda. Fertile farmlands thus abandoned by the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija were gradually settled by the neighboring Muslim Albanian nomads. This settlement proceeded at a fairly slow pace at first, because the number of Orthodox Serbs who had stayed put - or who had returned after the reprisals had diminished and the situation calmed down - was still considerable. The pattern of Albanian settlement developed in uneven waves, but typically, upon the seizure of a plot of Serb-owned land, fellow tribesmen were brought in from the mountains to protect the acquisition and to help expand the considerable space needed for the herds. Thus an age-old pattern of social rivalry could be discerned: migrant herdsmen (Albanians) were in constant conflict with the settled farmers (Serbs).

This fairly familiar pattern of social conflict was enhanced by the religious dimension, however. As a Muslim, an Albanian herdsman could persecute and rob a Christian Serb peasant with complete impunity. At the same time, new wars the Ottomans waged with the Habsburg Empire during the 18^th century, and the pronounced weakening of the central authority in Constantinople, stimulated the growth of anarchy that made the position of Christians in the Balkans increasingly intolerable. In Kosovo and Metohija a process of social mimicry followed. In order to protect themselves from attacks by the growing number of Muslim squatters, many Serbs accepted the outer characteristics of the Muslim Albanian population. They were obliged to accept the national costumes and language of Muslim Albanians in public communication, while they used their own language only within their families. Less resistant Orthodox Serbs converted to Islam and afterwards, through marriages, entered Albanian clans. They were called Arnautasi. Their first and second generations secretly celebrated Christian feasts and retained their old surnames and customs, but eventually – and inevitably - they were assimilated into the new ethnic milieu.

As for the remaining Orthodox Serbs, the religious gap between them and the Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija became the defining trait of their respective identities. It fully shaped their relations in the age of nationalism in the 19^th century. The social realities were reflected at the level of religious affiliations: many Muslim Albanians considered Islam the religion of the free people, while Christianity - especially Orthodox Christianity - was the religion of slaves. The persistence of such beliefs among many Albanians was noticed by European consuls as late as the beginning of the 20th century. For many Albanians, Islam was a means for social promotion, but their ethnic identity, derived from the common tribal and patriarchal tradition, engendered far stronger loyalties and collective identities.

One must credit all Balkan people with their capacity for survival. But while some did it the hard way, others compromised and adapted to what they probably regarded as a temporary and unwelcome situation at first. The tragedy unleashed by NATO on March 24, 1999, proves that Serbs fall into the first category. The Kosovo legacy seemingly does not let them act differently. Their Albanian neighbors are survivors, too, but they assured their continuity in an easier way - such as Islamization in Turkish times, or contemporary media-sanctioned victimhood. This does not imply some form of congenital “duplicity,” but rather a pragmatic approach by an intelligent survivor.

By the early 1800s a new factor - no less critical than ethnic or religious difference – further impeded communication between the two nations. This was the disparity in political outlook and core concepts. The Serbs had a clear idea about their statehood, while the Albanians, with occasional blips of Albanianism, were for the most part Turkish-oriented. While the Serbs dreamed of their Serbian state, the Albanians tended to identify with the Ottoman Empire of which they were a part. Albanian patriot Sami Bey Frasheri, in his history of Albania written in Turkish in 1899 and later translated into German, describes the Albano-Turkish affinity in the following words:

Turks were finding devout and courageous co-fighters in Albanians, while Albanians found the Turkish kind of governing very much to their taste. In Turkish times, Albania was a wealthy and blossoming country because Albanians were riding together with Turks in war campaigns all over the world and were returning with rich booty: gold and silver, costly arms, and fine horses from Arabia, Kurdistan, and Hungary.*

By the early 1800s the Balkan peninsula looked more and more like the proverbial “powder keg,” and Serbia with its uprisings (1804 and 1815) was the fuse. The Serbs were soaring upward, carried on the wings of national liberation, and the Greeks were not far behind. The Albanians, pulled down by the weight of the aging Ottoman Empire, saw that the Serbs and Greeks could not be held down. They were undecided about their options.

For nine crucial years the Serbs battled the Turkish armies (1804-1813) and only two years later after being “pacified” they rose again. These two open insurrections sent shock waves throughout the Balkans and central Europe. In 1813 Karadjordje went into exile and Serbia’s dream seemed crushed, but in the popular mind Karadjordje came to be viewed as the avenger of the Serb's defeat at Kosovo as the courageous leader of the Serbs. His achievments paved the way for another attempt, and only two years later came the Second Uprising (1815), under Milos Obrenovic. He insisted on absolute obedience from his followers, and soon obtained considerable autonomy for the pashaluk of Belgrade (1817). A consummate politician, in his dealings with the Turks Milos combined bribes and flattery. He opened one door after another, and obtained his goals without much bloodshed.

In Milos’s time the Serbs made a clear distinction between Turks and Albanians. The former were city dwellers, landholders, or artisans, while the Albanians were a sort of Muslim proletariat. Most Turks in Serbia could not come to terms with life under increasingly independent Christian rule, and moved to Turkey, but this was not the case with the Albanians. Economically, the tables were turned against the Turks: in an increasingly open society they were losing their lands, while in the cities they no longer had the monopoly on the professions. In the words of a contemporary observer, “The Turks sat grumbling, smoking their chibuks, drinking coffee, watching Christians taking the initiative.”

Albanians, a much more aggressive segment of the Balkan Muslim world, could not just sit by and watch the Christians take over. Yet they faced with two fronts. On the one side were the Serbs, newly confident and assertive. On the other front was the Turkish "protector," who offered little protection but still imposed new restrictions and made new demands and obligations. Since Albanians were unsurprisingly unwilling to stand up to the Serbs and to Constantinople at the same time, the end of the 19^th century presented them with the urgent need to develop some form of central authority to coordinate their actions. They also needed a national ideology and a national program.

With the passage of time, relations between Serbs and Albanians, instead of becoming more conciliatory, were getting worse. As the Serbian state was growing in size and political importance in Balkan affairs, Albanian fears and animosity grew apace.

THE MODERN ERA*

Uneven levels of national integration among Serbs and Albanians in the age of nationalism, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, gave fresh impetus to the old religious rivalries. In the Kingdom of Serbia (1912-1914), during the Great War (1914-1918), in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941), and during the Axis occupation (1941-1945) those conflicts were transferred into new rivalries, this time involving a strong international component related to the changed roles. Ethnic Albanians, former bearers of the Ottoman state and its religious tradition, became a minority in 1912 that was strongly antagonistic towards the state ruled by the Serbs, their former serfs. Finally, Titoist ideological manipulation invoking the national question within communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991), along with the constantly growing social differences, came as the final coup to every attempt at establishing inter-ethnic communication that would be based on individual, instead of on collective rights.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, under the re-enthroned Karadjordjevic dynasty, Serbia took a new lease of life, and the practical proof of this was soon to be seen in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. In the first of these Serbia, in alliance with Bulgaria Greece, and Montenegro, attacked Turkey: and within one month the armies of the four Balkan allies had driven the Turks out of all their huge possessions in Europe, except little scraps of land round their capital Constantinople and round the Dardanelles. As a result all the Christians who had lived so miserably under the yoke of Turkey were set free by their own free kinsmen from across the frontiers.

Serbia needed its own port on the Adriatic coast, so that it would not have to depend on Austrian goodwill for its economic development. The natural way to this port was through Montenegro. Realizing this, Austria sought to create a political and military zone between the two Serbian states. Albanians were to play a large role in this scheme: they were to be the wall between the Montenegrins and the Serbs. This became obvious at the London Peace Conference after the Balkan War, at which the state of Albania was established.

The dawn of nationalism in the Balkans was announced by the Serbian uprising in 1804. Die Serbische Revolution as Leopold von Ranke called it, was characterized by the desire for the creation of a national state based on the small farmer's estate and on a democratic order derived from social background. By having stirred all the Balkan Christians, the Serbian revolution initiated an irreconcilable conflict with the Ottoman rule which the Balkan Muslims, primarily the Albanians and the Bosnian Muslims, were the first to defend.

The old religious conflict acquired a new explosive charge called nationalism. Kosovo and Metohija was ruled by renegade Albanian pashas who, like the conservative Muslim beys in Bosnia, wanted to preserve a status quo as a guarantee of their privileges. Both the Islamicized Albanians and the Bosnian Muslims persecuted the rebellious Orthodox Serbs. Simultaneously, they came into open conflict with the reform-oriented sultans who saw the salvation of the Ottoman Empire in its rapid “Europeanization.”

Ever since obtaining internationally recognized autonomy (1830) the Serbs slowly but surely progressed towards the establishment of an independent nation-state according to the French model. Serbian nationalism was secularized, derived from a mixture