1980/No. 6 by Dennison I. Rusinow THE OTHER : Europe [DIR-2-'80] 1979

Part I1: The Village, the Factory, and the Kosovars

The aggregate problems of watch "Sesame Street"-- in carpets had been homemade, some nationalism and irredentism, American English with Serbo- woven and some tufted, in bright, population, education, the Croatian subtitles for an Albanian- multicolored Muslim patterns. Now economy, and politics that were speaking audience!--and all of us the central carpet, filling most of the surveyed in Part of this Report (males) could cheer the 3 2 victory room, was a commercial synthetic about the Socialist Autonomous of a Yugoslav () team over fiber one of poor quality and Province of Kosovo do not occur in an East German one in a EUFA Cup atrocious off-orange color. The an abstract vacuum. They happen soccer game played in Dresden. charming narrow open Turkish in, to, and because of peasants and Then, via satellite and somehow fireplace of decorated white plaster villages, workers and managers and incongruous in this setting, we built into the wall opposite the door factories, students and politicians. watched the latest scenes in and was also gone, its function taken By the same token a resident around the occupied American over by a small, peasant-made observer's return to a corner of Embassy in Tehran and Senator Franklin stove that squatted well out "his" beat after nearly a decade's Edward Kennedy's official from another wall, which had a new absence does not consist entirely of announcement that he is a hole in it for the long zinc stovepipe. conversations and interviews with candidate for the Presidency of the Missing from the walls were the "senior Party officials" and their ilk. . sheepskin, the old pendulum clock, is too especially in and the traditional musical Kosovo beautiful, The setting, on the third story of the its people are too instruments (a five-stringed Eargija autumn, and old tower house, was the large room for and a two-stringed iftelija) that hospitable and interesting that, that had been reserved for it by a Demush Hadri, then a teen-ager even if were, itself, legitimate ceremonial occasions, as Turkish way of touching base again. enrolled at a pedagogical college, and Balkan peasant traditions had played for us with a piece of of this therefore when had first seen it in Part II Report dictate, broken razor blade. Also missing returns to the village and family 1965. The room and its uses, like was the framed photograph of and from there most other connected with where Part began, things President Tito that had hung to the factory and to a thoroughly atypical the Hadris and Kosovo in general, left of the Turkish fireplace, for a some of the Province's towns, had undergone extraordinary but although the hook was still in place. the glimpse of the ways , partial transformations since that Had it been put there, like the and , , Turks, time. photograph of a rich aunt who has form the other Kosovars live and The approach was still the same: up announced that she is coming to of and political habits work, life, two flights of rickety wooden steps call, because our 1965 visit was the attitudes that shape aggregate in near darkness, past an prearranged and we were and reality of the least developed odoriferous floor-level slit in the accompanied by a government of least visited Yugoslavia's eight outside wall that serves as a pissoir, official in Pritina? It seemed less republics and provinces. and through a smaller chamber likely, although possible, that Hadri Return to Skivjani where shoes are removed. The room political views had changed in the The wider world and its problems itself was also basically unaltered: a meantime. A Hadri elder told me, intruded into an evening in the Hadri slightly raised wooden floor privately and with every evidence of household in Skivjani only covered with overlapping carpets, a sincerity, "We love Tito, because he momentarily, and without direct low bench around three of the walls, gave us our freedom." reference to Kosovo, from the similarly covered for sitting or television screen. It had been turned sleeping, and almost no other The room was still sparsely on so that the (male) children could furniture. Then, however, all the furnished, with additions limited to 2/DIR-2-'80 the Franklin stove, a double electric described, in its American meaning, golden-leafed local tobacco for hotplate for making Turkish coffee, as a family room. rolling your own, and listened to the a typically Central and East two eldest Hadris talk about the European regal (combining closed This new use only emerged as evolution of a Kosovar Albanian cupboards for drinks, open ones to evening approached and younger family. display glassware or , and a Hadris came home. Meanwhile, stepped-down top to accommodate sitting Turkish style on the low The three new houses in the the television), and the television bench, the honored returning visitor compound (described in Part I) were itself, a large black-and-white set from America and his companion not being built merely or primarily with a 24-inch screen. One suspects from the Provincial Secretariat for because the family had grown from that the introduction of this last item Information in Pritina sipped 26 to 60 members since 1965, began the transformation of the Turkish coffee and homemade rakija although this by itself would have room's function, from traditional distilled from plums or wine, required some measures. The main ceremonial to what is best received gifts of cigarettes and reason was that younger adult Hadris, with cash incomes from jobs in Djakovica, the family trucking business, or other sources, had become increasingly reluctant to turn over their earnings to the extended family's common pool, where decisions about its use had traditionally been made by the senior Hadri or his deputy. Instead, younger Hadris now wished to control their own earnings and thus the welfare of their own nuclear families themselves. Rather than have endless squabbles, it had seemed better to break up the common household by building the additional houses and subdividing even these.

Thus even the Albanians of Kosovo, with some Montenegrin clans virtually the last people in the Balkans to cling to the extended family whose Serb form, the zadruga, is so beloved and studied by anthropologists, are abandoning it in the face of inroads by a cash economy and "modern" values. One suspects, however, that a residual allegiance to traditional values as well as obvious economic considerations are responsible for the new houses being built within the old family compound. They could, after all, have been built on Hadri agricultural land, now no longer of pre-eminent economic importance, if that were not contrary to traditional rural settlement patterns as well as too radical a break with traditional family ones. Skivjan/: The tower house of the Hadri fam/ly /n 1965. Photo credit, Mary Rusinow. DI R-2-'80/3

In 1965 the Hadris were still primarily one to teach in a secondary school. 1965, smiled deprecatingly and subsistence farmers, living off their Meanwhile, he has also acquired a changed the subject to ask who 10 hectares of land (wheat, corn, wife, three daughters, and a son would win the American presidential vegetables, and fruit) and their named Bekim, an extraordinarily race, how thought the drama of livestock (20 cows and calves). Cash attractive and bright lad of 10 the hostages in the American income was then provided by apples summers who stretched out on the Embassy in Tehran would end, and and melons-- the only farm off-orange carpet after the soccer whether the European members of products to reach the market--and match to do his arithmetic NATO would agree to upgrade their by the family mill just outside the homework from a fifth-grade nuclear arsenal to match that of the compound and the four Hadris textbook that would have taxed the Soviet bloc. working as artisans in the village. abilities of an American eighth- This, too, has changed. Only the grader. Demush, reminded of his By the time the Yugoslav team two old men who supervised the eager and talented playing of scored its first goal against the East traditional ritual of our reception are traditional musical instruments in Germans, the one-time ceremonial still engaged full time in agriculture. Even their engagement is largely indirect, they said, primarily a matter of overseeing hired labor (!) and leasing arrangements. The mill, once an important source of wealth, stands idle for lack of peasant customers, who now find it more economical to sell their grain to the cooperative and buy milled flour. In place of these sources, most family members are earning more, even in this land of staggering unemployment rates, from employment or self-employment in enterprises in Djakovica, as village middlemen, or by services performed by the Hadri trucks and limousines, resources bought by earlier family thrift. As the afternoon progressed, children and younger adults joined the group, driven by curiosity or drawn by television. Among them was Demush, who had told us in 1965 that his life's ambition was to finish pedagogical college and return to the village as a school- teacher. He had done this and had stuck to it for three years, until interrupted to do his obligatory military service. Now, instead of teaching in the village school, he is in his final year at the Faculty of Law of the new University of Pritina and is looking forward to a legal career in government or industry, in Pri,tina or in the wider world. The financial and promotion prospects and living conditions of a rural primary school- teacher were too limited, he explained, especially since the qualifications do not even entitle Skivjani: Main street. Photo credit, Mary Rusinow. 4/DI R-2-'80 room's population had grown to 13 said cheerfully, "1 suppose we can Kosovo officials are now employing children, 6 teen-agers, 5 members of all manage to eat Albanian-style if to counter the charge that more the middle generation, the 2 old we must!" developmental aid for Kosovo will simply disappear, as past help men, the guests from America and The Factory that Works the Albanian allegedly has, down an eternal Prstna, and guests' Before and after was taken to Suva who had finally been sinkhole of incompetence, driver, Reka to visit Balkan, the only factory to join the party when it misconceived megalomaniac summoned producing rubber conveyor belts in clear that it would last well into projects, and people culturally (or was Yugoslavia, several officials told me the evening. He arrived grumbling genetically?) unfit to do any better. quite frankly that many visitors to that he had been on the point of Kosovo, including Tito himself in us and driving back to The approach to from abandoning 1975, are taken there because it is a alone, but was mollified Pritina is spectacular, particularly Pritina model factory. "It is one of the he was the Montenegrin on a clear autumn day. The town when given was "and probably the Assistant Secretary for few," told, and its minarets came into view of those that are really Information's second-most-honored best few, suddenly, tucked below the western and efficient, producing place next to our hosts. profitable edge of the low north-south range goods that are well up to Yugoslav that divides Kosovo's almost All in the room were males, although and even European standards. circular intermontane tectonic basic (in a probably female child jeans Management, community relations, into two nearly equal parts. In the short as are and with hair almost as and community developments distance, some 20 miles away, rose so it was hard think it is fair to the male children's, also models. But we the great snowcapped wall of far it that to be sure) had sneaked in long show it off because is proof higher mountains, in places nearly enough to watch the final minutes industrialization and modernization reaching 3,000 meters, that separate of Sesame Street. A woman can be made to work in Kosovo Kosovo from Albania to the west so often fleetingly glimpsed tending a after all and despite what is and from Montenegro and and laundry-line in a back courtyard said in the rest of the country to the north and south. when we arrived was the only other world!" Straight ahead a single, narrow gap member of her sex we ever saw or Such statements are typical of the in this barrier marked the canyon heard. However, some of them had combination of calculatedly through which the Beli Drim river apparently been alerted that we disarming candor and less and the ancient Roman road from would not leave as soon as we had calculated defensiveness that one Constantinople make their way from said we must, since a peasant feast frequently encounters in Kosovo Kosovo to Albania and the Adriatic, appeared in due course, carried in these days. These reveal much while mild Mediterranean air flows and later cleared away by younger about the self-image of the the other direction, bringing western males and placed on a low, round Kosovars who make them, and who Kosovo a gentler climate than the table of plain, unfinished wood that are usually Albanians. They are eastern half of the province. had materialized from another room. also, however, indicative of the Between Suva Reka and the high There were pckled wet green strategy, described in Part I, that mountains, stretching away to the peppers and tomatoes and great slabs of fresh soft feta cheese, a roast chicken (legs ceremoniously presented to the guest from America and the Albanian driver), thick yogurt, and burek, a kind of cheese strudel made with heavy pastry, served piping hot in bakepans a foot in diameter. All hacked with the pocketknives everyone seemed to carry and eaten with fingers from common dishes. A younger Hadri, apparently feeling he should apologize to the foreign guest for this custom, recalled with some bitterness an occasion during his army service when someone had failed to supply the mess hall with plates and eating utensils: "A, well," the Serbian officer in charge had

Suva Reka Ba/kan's main factory. DIn-2-'80/5

modernized for the first time, using Czechoslovak equipment and technology. That same year the Yugoslav economic reform of 1965, a giant step toward a genuine market economy, began to have a countrywide impact, driving K Mitrovica uneconomic and badly managed firms to the wall but providing new opportunities for those who knew how. Kosovo had and has more

Pri,tina than its share of the former type and almost none of the latter. Balkan continued to prove the exception. Cakor- ^ Pass Further expansions, modernizations, KOSOVO and diversifications of output took place in 1970, 1972, and 1976. These were now based on West German, Uroevac British, and French rather than Czechoslovak equipment and technology. Output growth rates averaged 30 percent per annum and profitability was maintained, thanks in part to low-interest credits from the Federal Fund for Development ALBANIA MACEDONIA of Underdeveloped Regions. Today Balkan's Suva Reka complex of 4 plants employs 1,300 workers, consumes 30,000 tons of rubber, exports over 30 percent of their output (chiefly to Morocco, Algeria, north in patterns of autumnal green, growing population. The following Bulgaria, Romania, and the gold, and red, lay the fertile, well- year it occurred to its director that U.S.S.R.), and have an annual watered high plain of western rubber conveyor belts would be a turnover of 80 billion dinars (18.50 Kosovo that used to be called better idea. No one in Yugoslavia dinars US$1). Many departments Metohija. (This name is officially out was making them and placement of work in four shifts, the fourth being of fashion since 1966 because it is a output, without marketing or weekend overtime. Of the workers, Serb appellation for what is now an transport problems for a young, 200 have university or other almost exclusively Albanian- small, and inexperienced enterprise, postsecondary degrees and 400 inhabited district--as was was assured by the proximity and have other forms of postsecondary reminded by a stern rebuke from my needs of Kosovo's then only specialist training. More than 60 are host at Balkan, chief engineer significant industrial branches, the females, all of whom have Xhafer Gashi, when used the name lead and zinc mines and smelters at completed Yugoslavia's required 8 Metohija because did not know the Kosovska Mitrovica and the years of primary education (a detail seldom-used Albanian equivalent.) open-pit lignite mines around cited with pride in a community For this observer possibly the most Pritina. By 1964 Balkan had 80 whose school had only 5 female beautiful corner of many-splendored workers and 3 shifts (at that date pupils when Balkan was founded in Yugoslavia, it is a naturally rich land already an unusually high utilization 1961 ). The average monthly whose history has imposed a half- of capacity by Yugoslav standards), personal income per worker is 7,500 millennium of poverty on its early 400 tons of output, and a level of dinars--cf. Kosovo and all-Yugoslav Slav and later Albanian inhabitants. profitability high enough so that the averages of 4,084 and 5,075--with director could persuade his workers' 20,000 dinars as the top of the scale. Balkan of Suva Reka represents a council to approve 80 scholarships, The enterprise funds over 200 singularly successful if woefully one for each worker, to send Suva scholarships for postsecondary exceptional attack on that poverty. Reka youths to secondary and studies in engineering, medicine, The factory was founded in 1961 to postsecondary studies outside the law, architecture, liberal arts, and make rubber soles and to provide a commune. other fields. modest alternative to agriculture-- here primarily vineyards--as an In 1966 the plant and its output Future plans are ambitious but employer of the district's rapidly assortment were expanded and judged by past performance 6/DI R-2-'80 probably realistic. By 1983 Balkan and growing demand and no public services. The town's expects to be employing 3,000 competing domestic producer, but secondary vocational school is in workers and to have 3 branch also because it is a processing effect a company school, and factories elsewhere in Kosovo, 2 of industry and employs relatively large Balkan's clinic is the district's them in Pritina. Central to the numbers of people with skill levels leading health service center. Balkan expansion plans are two joint that could usually be achieved has also built and runs Suva Reka's ventures that are currently being quickly, even in an educationally stylish and by Kosovo standards negotiated with Western firms. One backward environment like Suva unusually efficient hotel and is with the Gates Company of Reka. Even more importantly, was restaurant (the plumbing works, Denver, which will supply complete told, it was he who insisted from the which is more than can be said for know-how, supervision, and beginning on the principle that "the the Kosovski Buur in Pritina, for marketing assistance for the most important capital is cadres" long sadly reputed to be the production of more than 10 million (as engineer Gashi quoted his province's leading hotel). special use belts and will purchase absent boss)-- meaning that the The social commitment $1.8 million worth of the output. The development of appropriate skills, encompasses the entire province: other is for the production of attitudes, and values, both in the Balkan scholarships are not limited dumper tires in collaboration with factory and in the community, is in to Seva Reka youths, although they Dunlop of Great Britain, which will the long run more important to are given priority. It is also a matter buy and market 25 percent of continuing success than the more of special pride, Gashi that Balkan's output over a 15-year said, traditional form of "capital" that has Balkan's younger university- contract period. Total investments tended to obsess Yugoslav planners educated specialists are now here are valued at $220 million. and managers. The result of this primarily graduates of the new How is one to explain this happy recognition has been a commitment University of Pri,tina, whereas older anomaly? All who were asked this to social development in Suva Reka ones had to be drawn from other question, in Suva Reka and in and Kosovo in general that has so universities (he himself, although a Pri,tina, suggested that the chief far paid off for Balkan in political as Kosovar Albanian, did source of Balkan's success has been well as economic dividends. undergraduate work at the Balkan's chief, its General Director. University of Belgrade and graduate Its earliest and most consistent Here, it seems, is a Kosovo version work at the of symbol has been Balkan's large University Zagreb). of other socialist self-management The work force at Balkan is number of postsecondary young, success stories in which most of the to the youth of scholarships for local youth, with too, corresponding credit is usually given to the top Kosovo's population: the subjects of study only sometimes average manager. The adjectives used to age, including the Director and directly related to Balkan's own describe him were the same that senior in the needs. The enterprise has also engineers calculation, have been applied to better-known is 23 years. participated, with funds, equipment, counterparts like Erik Blum of and labor, in the paving of Suva The obvious question posed by the Energoinvest in and the Reka streets, new housing, and Balkan story is how to replicate it. late Norbert Veber of the Sisak steelworks in Croatia: energetic., authoritative (or authoritarian?!), competent, willing to take risks, and outstandingly able to manipulate people and the peculiarities of the Yugoslav economic and political systems. "The workers," Gashi said, "although formally they hire and can fire him [in the Yugoslav self-management system], touch their caps to him and say 'yes, sir,' when he speaks. Discipline and respect, on which discipline is based, are equally high." It was also the General Director who had the idea of transmission belts as an ideal product, not only because there would be immediate, assured, Modern Pr/Et/na: Marsha/ T/to Street. Photo credit, Rev/ew, Yugoslav monthly magazine. DI R-2-'80/7

The answer offered by Ismet Gusija, all "social modernization" and modern auditorium at one end of Director of the Provincial Institute modern forms of entertainment and the same street is or soon will be for Social Planning in Pritina, was for which main streets almost packed for the play, the ballet, the perhaps gloomier than he meant it everywhere are usually closed to folk music, the opera, or whatever is to sound: "It is difficult to transfer vehicle traffic from 6:30 to 8:00 P.M on that evening; there is an oversize, this success story. We use Balkan as every day of the week. Up one-half active youth center with all sorts of an example of what we can do, but of the street and back down the indoor sports, dancing, and lectures; to reproduce it all of the other, individually, by couples, or plenty of caf(s and cinemas; and the environmental factors must be arm in arm in groups of one or skyline of the city bristles with reproduced, including the mixed sexes, Yugoslavs of all television antennaes. But the korso personality of the enterprise's nations and classes participate in lives, with a vengeance unknown director." Was this not a counsel of this ancient civic ritual of the elsewhere, and it can take minutes despair? Not quite, he said hastily, Mediterranean world. It is an to cross the bouleva.rd on an since there are now several occasion for greeting friends, inescapably oblique course that examples of enterprises that have indulging in solemn or frivolous ends well downstream of the finally become profitable and conversations, making or observing intended goal, as in swimming a competitive, after years of serious the making of dates, river in flood. problems and near or de facto window-shopping, girl-watching, The like the neon or painted bankruptcy. But such turnarounds voices, boy-watching, each according to on the shops and are are not easy. "An accumulation of signs offices, individual taste. Albanian but with a stratum errors and misplaced investments, largely of Serbo-Croatian. dress most of which never happened at Balkan, In Pri,tina, the capital of Kosovo, In the strollers are indistinguishable, takes time and effort to correct. the korso exceeds all others in its except for the white felt skullcaps There is so much to do so that, for intensity and vivacity. The city still worn even by many urbanized examples, batteries made in Kosovo claims a population of 197,000 plus male Albanians, from any similar can compete successfully in 37,000 university students, with the crowd anywhere in Central or , when even batteries latter (one is repeatedly told) Southern Europe. For young people made in , which did not have equalling Pri,tina's total population of both sexes and all nationalities five hundred years under the Turks, 30 years ago. On any evening, even this usually means with a cannot compete there. And just look a cold, rainy one in November, one jeans, of at conditions in British industry, and has the feeling that all of the 37,000 surprisingly large number them then imagine the magnitude of the and a third of the rest are out on the genuine American brands like hot problem here!" downtown thoroughfare that is Wranglers and Levis, which are other inevitably named for Marshal Tito, black market items in countries. There The Urban Scene promenading up and down in a Communist-ruled is a Every Yugoslav city and town has its shoulder-to-shoulder, sidewalk-to- always, however, good scattering korso, the traditional evening sidewalk mass of humanity. It is not of older men in white turbans and promenade that remarkably survives for lack of alternatives: a large, the Albanian highlander's jodhpur- cut (baggy-seated, tapered leg) trousers of white homespun cloth dramatically decorated with thick black braiding in intricate patterns. As a female counterpart, some older women in chador-like peasant dress are all but veiled--meaning a headscarf drawn over most of the face, since the veil as such has been banned by the Communist regime for over 30 years. Occasionally and incongruously such a woman will be walking hand in hand with a daughter wearing a blouse with a startling cleavage, skintight pants, and high heels; but never when father is also present. The students who sometimes seem to dominate the korso gradually filter away into caf(s and Scene from Old . Photo credit, Mary Rusinow. 8/DI R-2-'80 restaurants, which at this season are , opened in 1978 with 664 wattle and daub between the new warmer, in summer moved outdoors beds and Hilton-like lobbies, shops, center and the new outskirts, had and cooler, and in all seasons more and reception rooms; the great little by way of history or style when congenial than the grubby, smelly tower of the Bank of Kosovo and it was chosen as a regional capital, student hostels or rented rooms the equally grand one of the after the Second World War, where they live. The cafe-restaurant Albanian-language Rilindja because of its central location within Beograd is close and publishing house; the sprawling the province and at the junction of popular--contemporary in design ultramodern shopping mall with its north-south and east-west railroads and decor and doubling as an chic boutiques, rivaling any in the and highways. Better yet, putting exhibit hall for some remarkably United States and grander than its the capital where attendant original and delightful multimedia Ljubljana equivalent; an enormous expansion and modernization could abstract renderings of Kosovo multipurpose sports center, still not destroy much of value has also folk-art motifs by a local artist. under construction, for which helped to spare other towns, where Almost all at the tables are Serbo- several square blocks of old Pritina the transformation of historic urban Croatian speakers. Beer and wine have been razed; and others. Even and residential centers would really flow steadily, but few are also local authorities, while not hiding have mattered. eating, whether out of choice or their pride in all this, admit ruefully that the display is not the best penury. The food is in any case One of these last is Prizren, advertisement for a Kosovo that is better at a privately owned population 50,000, the traditional widely accused of other restaurant, down beyond the spending administrative center of the region people's money on Provincial Government building, "megalomaniac and for a time the capital of Tsar rather than sound that is almost the only place in town monuments" Du,an's fourteenth-century Serbian economic development. Meanwhile, to get good pork.., and where two Empire. In the apt description of the modern of the waiters are the only Albanians towering faade travel writer J.A. Cuddon (who new shows present. As good and much cheaper bank building already makes one of his rare mistakes by some are the little hole-in-the-wall and gaps where tiles have fallen also liking old Pri[;tina and the and the at the Grand also privately owned traditional off, plumbing Kosovski Bo}ur), "Prizren is a town an infinite short-order eateries in the old Hotel--although of brown roofs, white walls, and or up by the Technical Faculty. Each improvement on that of the old green gardens. Brown, black, and is identifiable by its open grill with Kosovski Bour--is eccentrically white are the colors of the and functions tin hood and chimney-pipe designed accordingly. costumes, with the occasional projecting out into the street and At least it would be difficult to regret streak or blob of deep mulberry red tended from inside by an old man the passing of the old Pritina that or burnt orange. It is among the and a boy who sometimes speak such megalomania has razed. The most beautiful of the Balkan towns Albanian. serve only They cevabEi#i old town, which still exists in and in the old konaks behind the or and beef lamb sausages, burek, unpaved streets and sagging houses high walls set with stout, studded fruit and yogurt, juices, sometimes of sun-baked brick or half-timbered doors and ornamental knockers, a beer but no spirits. Here a Serbo- Croatian-speaking client tends to attract curious and sometimes suspicious stares from the regulars. For elegance there is the Rugovo in one of the new apartment-and-shop complexes a little further out. There the decor and the cuisine, both excellent, are from the wild country of the Albanian clans north of Pe(; the clientele is mixed and usually seems to include several tables of senior government and Party officials. The talk of PriEtina--and of Yugoslavia when Pritina is the subject--often focuses on the many new buildings that have transformed the town's skyline. These include the Grand Hotel Scene from Old Prizren. Photo credit, Mary Rusinow. DI R-2-'80/9 traditional patriarchal way of life is King Milutin on the foundations of sacrilege that is explained when one still strong."1 The peasant market, an earlier basilica, Bogorodica realizes that the great iconostasis, one of the largest in Yugoslavia, is Ljevi,ka contains some of the finest so important to the-Gestalt of an also possibly the most colorful, fourteenth-century frescoes to be Orthodox church, is missing. especially on a Wednesday, the found anywhere in Europe, No one wanted to explain, but chief market day. Folk costumes, hideously damaged by the Turks inquiries in various places produced now rare in most Yugoslav regions, when they converted it into a the story, or at least a credible if are still common and distinguish the mosque, but now painstakingly and prejudiced version of one. The peasant sellers and shoppers by clan lovingly restored and equally iconostasis was removed for or valley as well as nationality. More venerated for its historical and restoration by the Provincial color is added by the unusually rich aesthetic importance by Christian Institute for the Preservation of assortment of vegetables, fruits, and Slavs, Muslim Albanians, and Cultural Monuments the herbs and of clay and ceramic pots Communist atheists of both nations. during restoration of the and utensils that mirror the wealth The town was also an important general church. Left until work on it had not of soil, climate, and culture in the Turkish commercial and last, been completed (or n ?) valley of the Beli Drim that used to administrative center, as noted. And begu when be called Metohija. by the river is the house, now a changes in official personnel in Kosovo, reflecting the kind of ethnic As a relic of its importance in museum surrounded by a memorial park, where the League of Prizren, "affirmative action" policy in vogue Ottoman times, Prizren contains the in the the first modern Albanian nationalist 1970s, brought a new director largest single concentration of to the an Albanian. movement of liberation, was Institute, The Kosovo's Turkish minority of 12,000. new director new it founded in 1878. had priorities, is They still dominate much of its said, and these were concerned with commercial life, and despite an As in Palestine, the Turks are long Albanian and Muslim monuments, Albanian majority, a considerable hence discounted as a temporary (if not Serb and Christian ones. Serbo-Montenegrin minority, and long-lasting!) military imposition Abandoned, with the public excuse great importance in both Albanian never backed by demographic or that there is no money for its and Serbian history, the ambiance is cultural reinforcements of moment, restoration, the iconostasis is more Turkish than elsewhere in the but what of the other two? The believed to exist in a warehouse province. This is not only a matter of Serbs and Montenegrins whose somewhere. Some say it is not as historical buildings like hans, Kosovo cradle of civilization and much a matter of priorities as of mosques, and konaks, and of national consciousness is still visible spite. Revenge, for 50 years of Serb domestic architecture. It is clear--as and alive in Prizren, at Visoki Deani cultural arrogance and worse, might it is in Pe(, Kosovo's other most and the Pe, Patriarchate to the be a more apt if scarcely less beautiful town--in the way the river, north, and on the battlefield of represensible word. Who can say? small streams, and fountains are or at Graanica A similar mystery surrounds the used to water and to add light, Monastery, both by Pritina? The curious fact that the Orthodox shadow, and music to the urban Albanians who have lived on and monasteries of Kosovo, unlike those environment, and in the way cultivated the for land three of Serbia (or even benighted charming old Turkish houses with centuries and whose of dream Bulgaria, the Soviet Union's loyalist their enclosed balconies have been individual freedom through national ally), are not permitted to let foreign sited on the hills and the independence was born here one along guests stay in their konaks, contrary streams so that no and hundred years ago? one's privacy to Balkan tradition, the monks' or "ancient lights" are interrupted. The nuns' economic interests, and their streets away from the river are The church of Gra,anica concern for the souls and comfort of narrow, dark, crowded, dirty, and Monastery, another foundation of weary and sometimes impecunious noisy; private precincts are the King Milutin's south of Pri{tina, is an travelers. Or the reasons why the opposite for each of these even monument of medieval Serbian Orthodox holiest of holies, characteristics. greater Serbian history and culture, the Pe, Patriarchate with its unique Like a symbol of Kosovo's national different but for many art historians triple church, must still be reached question, Prizren is sacred to all the peer of High De;ani. It, too, was by a formidably potholed dirt access three of the province's principal much damaged during the Ottoman road, quite impassable in bad nationalities. It was a capital of the centuries, and throughout the 1960s weather. After all, even historically Namanji dynasty of medieval the full glory of its architecture and and artistically insignificant and Serbia and site of one of their finest magnificant frescoes was obscured isolated Bulgarian monasteries (not monuments, the church of by the restorers' scaffolding. Now it to mention Serbian or Macedonian Bogordica Ljevika, just by the stands free again, inside and out, ones) have been connected to the peasant market. Begun in 1307 by and is wonderful to behold. Inside, outside world by excellent asphalt 1. J.A. Cuddon, The Companion Guide however, there is an odd feeling of roads, clearly built more for the sake to Yugoslavia (London, 1968), p. 190. emptiness and of some new form of of national pride than in the 10/DI R-2-'80 expectation of tourist Deutschmarks or francs.

The potholes of Pe, Patriarchate were smaller in 1965. Or perhaps they only seeme so because we had arrived over Cakor Pass from Montenegro, pursued up and down a narrow road of loose and poorly maintained macadam and hair-raising hairpin bends by trailer trucks loaded with lead from the mines and refinery at Kosovska Mitrovica... and by warnings from Serb friends in Belgrade (with clear ethnic prejudices!) that the pass was rife with armed Albanian brigands. But it was also then, and in the refectory of Pe, Patriarchate, that we met our first such brigand, although he was unarmed and wearing a grey flannel business suit. As narrated at the time2 in 1965 Ram K. Nik,ci was School Administrator of the Pe Agricultural Secondary School, a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia since 1948, and since 1941 the latest (and last?) of generations of Muslim Albanian vojvode-- chieftains" or guardians--of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate at Pe,. All of them, according to a tradition confirmed by a decree of the Ottoman Vizir of SkSder about 1880, have been chosen from the senior family in the senior of the 12 villages of the GraEan/ca Monastery. Kelmendi clan of Rugovo; none, But at the same time he was proud Kosovo, with almost infinite until now, has ever died of natural of the tradition, his title, and his opportunities for patronage and causes. Rame Niki, who had image as a protagonist and corruption--which his enemies say succeeded to the title and obligation preserver of the wild sword dance he is not averse to using--in a at age 14 after his father was killed for which the Rugovo clans are society where getting a job is a early in the confused Yugoslav civil internationally famous. And also of matter of utmost importance. His war of 1941 1945, and who took an his then seven-year-old son, Valdet, son Valdet, he told us, did not oath to the Communist Partisans in who wanted to become a doctor. become a doctor; his secondary March 1942, was determined that he school grades, although good, were to should be the exception. He should In 1979 it seemed appropriate not good enough to get him into the for and to also be the last of the vojvode of look Rame Niki again medical faculty at the University of discover what had become of him Pe,, since the protection of the Pritina, so he went to the faculty of and of his traditions and ambitions. monastery and Patriarchate had engineering (some confirmation, been assumed by the Institute for We found him in a new profession, incidentally, for statements heard the Protection of Historical chief of the general and legal elsewhere about comparative Monuments in the new Communist department of the Intercommunal strictness of entrance state, eliminating his responsibilities. Self-managing Community of requirements). But a 17-year-old 2. Again see D.I. Rusinow, The Other Interest (SIZ in the Serbo-Croatian daughter, never mentioned as Albanians [DIR-2-'65], AUFS Reports, acronym) for Employment in Pee. In existing in 1965, was the yoangest Southeast Europe Series, Vol. XII, No. 2, simpler terms this is the delegate to attend the Xlth 1965. employment office for northwestern Congress of the League of DIR-2-'80/11

Communists of Yugoslavia in of clippings from the Yugoslav press translator, by saying: "We cleaned Belgrade in 1978. that he produced from his desk, just up our streets for Comrade Tito's as he had done in 1965. visit, as you will have seen, but it Rame Nikgi is still ceremonial could not be hidden that our vojvoda of the Patriarchate-- As for his sworn duty to protect the Patriarchate, an article about him in infrastructure still stands on glass having, he admitted, finally agreed legs." with my 1965 remark to him that the the Belgrade weekly Ilustrovana office should be continued, like that Politika (August 9, 1978) that he of the Beefeaters who still "guard" proudly produced noted that the In this unhappy age of airplane the Tower of London, for its principal threat today comes from hijackings and international symbolic importance, here doubly those lead trucks that still thunder terrorism, most Yugoslav as well as important as a symbol of historic over the still unpaved road over other European airports display cooperation between Muslim (akor Pass, "which set the frescoes signs bearing stern warnings, similar Albanians and Orthodox Serbs. His dancing against the walls. And that in wording to those in American old hobby as a protagonist and is something that Vojvoda Ramo airports, about the penalties for teacher of the traditional Rugovo Nik,i [sic] cannot help." attempting to carry hidden weapons sword dance has borne even more or explosives beyond the ticket important fruit as Yugoslav folk- Whatever one may say about the barrier. Visitors to Kosovo leaving dancing has gained in importance potholes on the access road to the by airplane from Pritina Airport and international popularity with a Patriarchate--whose condition was (normal daily traffic: one or two worldwide and particularly Western a sign that Tito would not be flights to and from Belgrade) are fashion for such folk-arts. The coming there, as he did not--those offered what may strike them as a Rugovo folk-dance group of which of Pe, itself were being filled and significantly and perhaps even he is secretary but no longer an patched at a frenetic pace. Tito was ominously different version. active participant since a recent arriving in four days, as several Over the Pritina Airport ticket heart operation by a leading young Albanian boys attracted by counter is a sign that pictures a Yugoslav heart specialist, Professor the unseasonable presence of revolver, crossed out (like the Isidor Papo of the Belgrade Military foreigners and eager to practice cigarette on a no-smoking sign) with Clinic, has traveled widely their formidably good school English a red "X." Under the revolver the throughout Europe and is planning a promptly explained. The pungent following polite request, in tour of the United States. They smell of hot asphalt, poured from Serbo-Croatian and Albanian, would do even better, he explained, handcarts and pressed down by conjures up images of a saloon in if he did not continue to insist on singularly maneuverably the legendary Wild West: traditional purity of dance and self-propelled rollers especially costuming at a time when most adapted for narrow streets, nearly "Please register your weapons." such ensembles have "dolled up" smothered the smell of EevabEi#i their performances with ballet and grilled sausages from the grills (January 1980) routines and modern choreography in the old bazaar. to make themselves more versatile In a conversation after the and popular. Presidential visit, Kosovo Party On the day we visited Niki at the President Mahmut Bakalli--who Intercommunal SIZ for Employment will, trust, forgive one breach of in Pe,, Patriarch German of the the rule that our talk was for Serbian Orthodox Church was "background" and not direct about to arrive from Belgrade to pay quotation--began our meeting, a rare official visit to his Patriarchal after noting apologetically that we church. With President Tito also might speak in Serbo-Croatian for expected during his Kosovo tour the convenience despite protocol same week, the town was full of requirements that he should speak rumors that the two might meet at in Albanian and in English, with a the Patriarchate. Rame Niki, vojvoda since 1941, a Partisan of sorts since 1942, and a full member of the Communist Party since 1948, hoped he might be invited to stand ceremonial duties at such an encounter, in Rugovo costume and arms, as historic guardian of the Patriarchate. After all, his history is famous, as is proved by a fat album This Report concludes the series, "The Other Albania: Kosovo 1979."