Byzantine Blog

Carving-Up the World Anew and Rewriting History

In the interview given to Belgrade daily Glas Javnosti on February 29, Dr. Slavenko Terzic, historian of the highly regarded Serbian Academy of Science and Arts (SANU), assessed that the latest political reordering of the Balkans is very similar to the carve-up conducted in the 19th century and later by the Axis powers. Serbia is faced with revisions of the results of the two World Wars and the Balkan war, with revision of the European history and twisting of the facts about Balkans' nations.

Some elements of the contemporary projects of historical revanchism taking place in relation to the "independent Kosovo and Metohia" represent a continuity of the Third Reich ideas. For Dr. Terzic, the present-day "willful disregard of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo-Metohia between 1878-1912 and after 1945 is the revanchist stance on behalf of the political forces defeated in both World Wars."

Decades of Falsifying Facts and History

GJ: We are witnessing the consequences of the creation of a fake "state of Kosovo" these days, and especially the reactions of European factors on the international scene. As a historian, what do you see?

ST: I believe that Europe, especially southeastern Europe, is faced with revisions of the results of the First Balkan and both World Wars. We are also witnessing the revision of the European history, revision of the universally accepted facts and knowledge about the nations in this part of the continent.

GJ: Which facts have been subjected to revisions?

ST: For example, throughout the years, Western propaganda persistently repeats the fallacy that Serbs militarily took and "occupied" Kosovo and Metohia in 1912, as if that was some separate, Albanian political and territorial entity. Within the international political public at least four issues have been presented falsely. First of all, the Kosovo villaet [Ottoman governing unit] was only one among few dozens of such administrative regions within the [occupying] Ottoman Empire. This was not "an Albanian villaet" and it included Raska region, Kosovo, Metohia and the Skopje-Tetovo region.

Secondly, the Albanians did not constitute a majority in this villaet, the majority were the Serbs and other Slavs. Thirdly, in 1912 Serbia did not go to war against Arbanassi [Albanians], instead, together with other Balkan Christians, Serbia went to war to free itself from the Ottoman Empire. Fourth, alongside the Ottoman troops, Albanians have fanatically fought against Balkan Christians until the end of the war.

The Christian Europe knows that Serbs played a significant role in halting the Ottoman march towards the rest of Europe since the end of 17th century. This fact, at some point, motivated Henry Kissinger to point to the centuries of clashes between Islam and Christianity as the basis for the crisis in Kosovo-Metohia.

Using Albanians to Destroy Serbian State for the Past Two Centuries

GJ: Islamic Turkey has been, more or less, removed from the Balkans in 1912, but the processes you are speaking about have continued. What is the historical pretext for the engagement of the regional and great powers in this case?

ST: Although Turkey was pushed out of Europe by the Balkan Christians, it apparently wants to return to the Balkans. Albania and Turkey have an agreement on the military alliance since 1992. Turkey rushed to immediately recognize the self-proclaimed statelet on the territory of Serbia. The former Turkish President Ozal emphasized that the borders of the former Ottoman Empire in the Balkans belong to the Turkish sphere of interest. Some researchers point that the United States entrusted Germany and Turkey with governing the Balkans' relations.

Regarding the historical background, the Austro-Hungarian Empire took the key role in solving the Balkan and Eastern question at the Berlin Congress in 1878. Vienna's main goal was banishing the Russian influence and establishing its own control, not only over the western, but also the eastern part of the Balkans. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was, even at the cost of war, working to prevent the creation of a larger, compact, Serbian and Slavic state, but most of all against the Serbian unity. One of the leading ideologues of the Austro-Hungarian Balkan strategy was Benjamin Kalaj, Belgrade consul (1868-1875) and the occupational governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1882-1903). The accent was on creating a system of the mutually hostile small satellite statelets in the Balkans, with the smallest possible Serbian state. Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Andrássy called this strategy a "programme for the future". Already in June 1880, Vienna assessed that the Albanians could be used as a "destructive force" in the southeast, where they should play the role of "the Romanians of the southeastern Balkans".

Historian H. D. Schanderl believes that, at the start, Great Britain had the leading role in organizing the Albanian national movement. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice asserted in April 1880 that it is in the interest of Europe to create "strong Albania" which would include the Skadar, Janjina, Kosovo and Bitola villaet, under the Sultan's sovereignty. That role was later taken over by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What else does today's policy of West and USA represent, if not the policy of creating the "strong Albania" which is, in fact, the "Greater Albania"?

Connected by the Efforts to Prevent Serbian Unity

GJ: In the Yugoslav Kingdom and later republic, as we can see today, quite a few unfriendly states played the card of the Albanian minority. What is the thread that connects ideologically different states in the continuous destabilization of few Yugoslavias?

ST: They are connected by the persistent efforts to prevent Serbs from uniting and creating the Serbian national state. In accordance with the old prejudices and clichés, they consider it a struggle against Russia at the same time.

In the first place, there is an obvious manifold instrumentalization of the Albanian minority for the purpose of destroying the Yugoslav and Serbian state, and spreading of their [Western] influence. Remember that NATO bombarded Serbia to, allegedly, protect the Albanian minority, but we now see that at the core of the issue is seizure of the cornerstone of the Serbian state and cultural identity. The so-called free and democratic world is absolutely unconcerned with the means Albanian separatist movement employs in Kosovo-Metohia, from the individual crimes and ethnic cleansing, to the terrorist actions of [Albanian] kachaks between the two World Wars, or those of KLA at the end of 20th century.

The platform for solving the Albanian national question of the Albanian Academy of Science in Tirana is constructing, since October 20, 1998, among else, some kind of "historical Kosovo" which, alongside present Kosovo and Metohia, includes Vranje Valley [central Serbia] they call an "eastern Kosovo", then the Kumanovo-Skopje region [FYR Macedonia] - "south Kosovo", and parts of the northern Montenegro they refer to as the "western Kosovo". The capital of such Kosovo, which is simply invented as a region, ought to be Skopje [FYR Macedonia] since, they say, that was the capital of the ancient province of Dardania.

Austro-Hungarian Empire Manufactures Albanian "History"

GJ: What kind of "antique" is that, when it is known that Albanians, people from the shores of the Caspian sea, were brought only around 1050 A.D. to the Balkans from Sicily? Who wrote that history for them?

ST: There are three theories about the Albanian descent: that they came from the Caucasus (supported by the 19th century French consul in Janjina), that they are the mixture of the various old-Balkan peoples, and that they are descendants of the Illyrians. The last theory was chiefly fomented by the Austro-Hungarian diplomacy, even though there is a period of eight centuries between the last mentioning of the Illyirans and the first mention of the Albanians.

Towards the end of 1896, the state leadership in Vienna decided to create an autonomous Albania, under the Austro-Hungarian protectorate. Already in 1897, Lajos Thallóczy (the civilian commissar of the occupied Serbia in 1915-1916) writes the Popular Albanian History, and then their Alphabet Book [Bukvar], based on the Alphabet books Austro-Hungarian Empire wrote for elementary schools in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In 1906, along with the known [Czech] historian Jiricek, [Croat] Milan Suflaj and others, Thallóczy organized publishing of the source for the medieval history of Albanians. The first volume of Acta Albaniae was published in Vienna in 1913, and the second in 1918.

In 1916, two-volume book of Illyirian-Albanian researches, edited by Thallóczy, was published in Munich and Leipzig. Magazine "Dardania" is being published in Vienna for the past 20 years and in 1990, the infamous Wolfgang Petritsch [Austrian/Slovenian national heavily involved in anti-Serbian missions, first as an "EU special envoy for Kosovo" from Oct.1998 - Jul.1999, then as "EU Chief Negotiator" in Rambouillet and Paris in March 1999, ahead of NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia, and as the third "High Representative" for Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1999-2002] published a tendentious book titled "Kosovo-Kosova", which he co-authored with Robert Pichler and Karl Laser.

However, there are researches in Austria who have an objective approach to the Balkan situation. I would like to mention the Hannes Hofbauer's book "Balkan War. The Destruction of Yugoslavia 1991-1999" ["Balkankrieg. De Zerstoreung Yugoslavias 1991-1999"], or Malte Olsevski's "The New Serbian War for Kosovo".

Echo of the Third Reich Ideas

GJ: So, the projections of the Albanian state in the Serbian part of the Balkans have begun towards the end of the 19th century. Who are today's proponents of the Austro-Hungarian politics?

ST: Today's policy of the leading EU states and the USA toward the Serbs and the southeastern Europe largely echoes the concept of the Great Mitteleuropa of Friedrich Neumann from 1915 (the system of the "satellite states" in the Balkans, though Serbia doesn't 'deserve' to be even a satellite), and in one part it also reminds of certain ideas of the Great German Reich. A society for the southeastern Europe founded in Vienna in 1940, created elaborate work at the end of 1941 for "the Balkans' order of peace". We know all too well what their "order of peace" meant.

Doesn't this irresistibly remind of the years of persistent presenting the destruction of Yugoslavia and dismemberment of Serbia as an effort to "establish stability and peace in the Balkans"? Ahtisaari's deputy Albert Rohan, at one point an executive director in the Office of the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, exhibited the obvious revanchism toward the Serbs and Serbia. In an interview to Politika (June 21, 2006) he said: “I wouldn't want to talk abut the Serbian crimes, I would rather mention the role of Serbia in the First World War. Serbia most certainly has no right to renew its former rule over Kosovo, that must be accepted.”

Serbia was equally demonized in 1914, in 1941 and in 1991, as a factor of disorder that has to be eliminated. United States has now stepped at the helm of that kind of policy. The final goal is reducing Serbia to the borders since before 1912, and perhaps even narrower. In order to install the satellite quasi-statelets on the territory of Serbia, NATO bombarded and was cruelly destroying Serbia in 1999. One would expect that it is clear to everyone today that their aim was not "preventing the humanitarian catastrophe" and "democratization of Serbia", but mutilation of Serbia.

The Collapse of the World Built in 20th Century

GJ: Why did our past give birth to such incomprehensible series of events, e.g. the declaration of "independent Kosovo" supported by the Western powers?

ST: This is the collapse of the international law and of the system of international relations built during the 20th century. Kosovo and Metohia is the internationally recognized part of Serbia, and afterwards of the Yugoslav state, by the Ambassadors' Conference in London in 1912/13, by the Bucharest Peace Agreement in 1913, by the Versailles Peace Agreement in 1919, by the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and by the score of other international agreements. The violence over Serbia can only be compared to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier, which forced Czechoslovakia to hand its Sudet region over to Germany. At the time, Hitler declared that Germany has no other territorial desires in Europe. Today, almost all the leading Western officials are saying that Kosovo is a "unique case" and will not represent a precedent. This only serves to deceive the world public.

The Continuity of Anti-Slavic Policy

ST: Since the time of the Albanian League (1878-1881) certain influential circles in Europe and in the U.S. are exhibiting the strong anti-Slavic orientation. On the other hand, the Albanians are very skillfully presenting themselves as an obstacle to the alleged "panslavism" in the southeastern Europe. The Albanian writer Ismail Kadare claims that "Kosovo is the land where the Slavic surge has been stopped in the early mid-century. It has destroyed the panslavic dream: conquering and slavicizing of the main European peninsula."

Unlike Germany, Turkey or Austria—attitudes of which reveal revanchism toward the Serbs and Serbia—United States views the Serbian question in the wider context of its policy from Baltic to Mediterranean. The main target is Russia, and within that strategy, the Near and Mideast and Middle Asia. Aspiring to redivide the world anew, they view Balkans as important in the context of establishing complete control in the rear of the great "penetration to the East".

It is interesting that Albanians never accepted alliance with other Balkan nations in the war against Turkey. They were always an extended arm of one of the great powers which wished to dominate the Balkans. They think that now the moment has come for creation of the "Great Albania" and they are supported by the West in those plans. So, they emphasize the alleged historical and ethnic "Illyrian-Albanian identity" supposedly existing since the era of an ancient Dardania.

Already Seen

ST: The similarities between the Austro-Hungarian, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany policies from the first half of 20th century on the one side, and the policies of the leadership of the Western powers gathered around NATO and led by the United States from the end of the previous and beginning of this century, on the other, are astounding. All this involves the wider military-strategic and political-religious projects towards the southeastern Europe, Middle East and Middle Asia.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Berlin Gottfried Hohenlohe believed that "support for development and strengthening of the Albanian factor as a counterbalance to Slavs in the Balkan peninsula" is one of the "main pillars" of the Hapsburg monarchy. During the First Balkan War, in 1912, when Kosovo and Metohia were liberated, minister of the foreign affairs Leopold Berthold considered Austro-Hungarian "vital interest" was to create a strong Albania as a "counterbalance to two Serbian sister states", borders of which have to be pushed "as much as possible eastward, at the expense of the Serbs".

What Now?

ST: This is not the end, but the beginning of a very long and deep crisis in the Balkans. The Greater Albania project shatters the internationally recognized borders with Serbia, Montenegro, FYR Macedonia and Greece. Europe and United States have opened numerous questions, without solving a single one. The Serbian question is one of those which has to be resolved if there is to be any peace in the Balkans. Serbia has to, patiently and wisely, build a longterm strategy of reintegrating Kosovo and Metohia province — politically, diplomatically, economically, scientifically, culturally, militarily, always placing the interest of the state and nation above the political party and personal interests. Pusillanimity and avoiding the Kosovo-Metohia issue could represent the major obstacle, being that they are visible in most media outlets, including the official ones. Serbia must insist, at every place and on every occasion, that Kosovo and Metohia is the unalienable part of Serbia.

Recommended: Professor Slavenko Terzic's historical analysis at the site of the Serbian Academy of Science and Art, Europe and the "Order of Peace" in the Balkans: The Triumph of Historical Revanchism in Kosovo and Metohija [SANU.ac.yu, PDF format]

Cartoon by Milenko Kosanovic (Serbia)