Albanian Language Management and the Generation of Kosovo Albanian National Identity Since 1945
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ALBANIAN LANGUAGE MANAGEMENT AND THE GENERATION OF KOSOVO ALBANIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY SINCE 1945 JUSTIN GREGORY HAMILTON ELLIOTT University College London Doctor of Philosophy 2017 I, Justin Gregory Hamilton Elliott, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is about the development of a national identity through the means of language, both as a terrain and a vehicle. This thesis argues the modern intellectuals’ sense of moral mission in colonial nation-building was a response to exogenous modernization, and involved imagining the people as Albanians separated from Albania. This was most clearly encapsulated in the adoption of the same standard language as Albania in 1968 and the intellectuals’ subsequent management and reaction to external constraint, which was imposed in such a way as to prove counterproductive and enhance the intellectuals’ status still further. Yet, because there are limits to the way in which imagination of a society can conflict with reality, the standard language has failed to bring political or linguistic unity. In arguing this, the thesis provides a new interpretation of the development of Kosovo Albanian national identity. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 4 Chapter One How the Modern Kosovo Albanian intellectual 57 became possible Chapter Two Writing as they hear: the Standardization of 95 Albanian in the People’s Republic of Albania Chapter Three Standard Albanian and how Kosovo Albanians 145 became national Chapter Four How Kosovo became imagined as a distinct 193 Albanian territory Chapter Five “To be or not to be”: Kosovo Albanians talking 248 about language and deciding their identity Conclusion 282 Appendix One Glossary of common words 292 Appendix Two How written Albanian changed in Kosovo 293 1960-1975 Appendix Three Linguistic confusion in Kosovo 298 Abbreviations 302 Bibliography 303 4 Introduction While much has been written on the central place of nationalism and national identity in the recent history of Kosovo, very little attention has been paid to how Kosovo Albanians became nationally conscious, let alone nationalist. Events and movements in Kosovo are often treated as an extension either of those in Albania or Yugoslavia, without any appreciation of the distinctive way in which society has developed in Kosovo. This thesis will discuss the development of national identity in Kosovo by examining the question of the development of a standard language in the period since 1945. The debate around the nature and status of the Albanian language has been central to how Kosovo Albanians have understood who they are. This is the case both because this debate centres on relationships with the state of Albania and because of the social and cultural context and political activity of those most centrally involved in this argument. While this thesis focuses on language politics, it is not intended as a sociolinguistic study.1 Instead it approaches Albanian as the prime emblem and instrument of constructing and managing national identity, seeking to trace the debate over the nature and status of the language through the history of Kosovo since 1945. 1 See, for example, Janet Byron, Selection among Alternates in Language Standardization: The Case of Albanian (Paris: Mouton, 1976); Janet Byron, “An Overview of Language Planning Achievements among the Albanians of Yugoslavia,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 52 (1985), 59-92; Victor A. Friedman, “Language Planning and Status in the Republic of Macedonia and in Kosovo,” in Ranko Bugarski and Celia Hawkesworth, eds., Language Planning in Former Yugoslav Lands (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2004), pp.197-231; Rexhep Ismajli, “Në gjuhë” dhe “për gjuhë” (Rrjedhat e planifikimit të shqipes në Kosovë 1945-1968) (Peja: Dukagjini, 1998); Shkumbin Munishi, Probleme të shqipes standarde në Kosovë, (Prishtina: ZeroPrint, 2013); Fadil Raka, Historia të shqipes letrare (Prishtina: n.p., 2005); Brian Weinstein, “Language Planning as an Aid and as a Barrier to Irredentism,” in Naomi Chazan, ed., Irredentism and International Politics (Boulder, CO and London: Riener/Adamantine Press, 1991), pp.111-138. 5 Consequently, this thesis aims to explain how Kosovo Albanians developed their national identity, arguing that it came as a result of modernization from outside and developed through a series of “microadjustments” and is still in a process of flux. In doing so, the thesis aims to cover more ground than language management, although it argues that language management is central to an understanding of how national identity developed in Kosovo. In doing so, the thesis uses as source material and subjects to critique the claims of the Kosovo Albanian intelligentsia who are central to both the imagination of the nation and the process of language management. By examining the creation of Standard Albanian2 in the context of Albania as well as its adoption in Yugoslavia, this thesis shows that the standardization of the language has been a site of continual struggle under the most totalitarian conditions to a greater extent and over a longer period than accepted. In the thesis as a whole we gain from Kosovo a more nuanced understanding about the formation and maintenance of national identity. This thesis will concentrate on developments in Kosovo, but they cannot be examined in isolation from the social, political and linguistic situation in the rest of Yugoslavia. As the subject under discussion is an idiom, a symbolic code, invented in Albania for its own purposes, and as the debate before and after its adoption has been affected profoundly by developments in Albania, still less can we ignore the situation there. This thesis, then, will explore the ambiguity at the heart of Kosovo Albanian identity through its debate on language. Though it deals with national identity, the topic is inevitably transnational; all the chapters but the third pay close attention to Albania because, without Kosovo Albanian imagining of Albania and Kosovo’s place in it, there is nothing to discuss. Likewise, without understanding the way in which language both 2 Standard Albanian, or gjuha standarde shqipe, is the term by which this thesis will refer to the literary form of the language agreed at the Congress of Orthography in 1972 which has been accepted since the fall of communism. 6 shaped and reflected national and political agendas more successfully than any other symbol, the way in which Kosovo Albanians relate to Albania, to Yugoslavia and to each other cannot be properly explained. Kosovo and theories of nationalism, identity, modernity It is tempting to think of the achievement of an independent state as the “natural” consequence of what Schmitt describes as a teleological process which “logically” had to end in conflict.3 But there was nothing inevitable either about conflict in Kosovo or about its political status, its ethnic or religious composition. Kosovo has only existed in its current, contested borders since 1945 and did not even exist as a provincial name before 1877. Some have questioned the legitimacy of writing about Kosovo at all, for example in the published correspondence involving Noel Malcolm, Aleksa Djilas and others.4 For the purposes of this thesis, Kosovo existed as an administrative entity with varying degrees of autonomy from 1945.5 During that time, for the administration, and those who were employed in or governed by that system, “Kosovo” was part of their daily life. There was, however, a complex process by which Kosovo came to be established as a “given” for its inhabitants through the institutions generated by this new reality. But just as we should be wary of the dangers of teleology in thinking about how Kosovo came to be as it is, ideas about nationalism may also be prone to determinism. Primordialist theorists of nationalism view nations as being directly derived from 3 Oliver Jens Schmitt, Kosovo. Kurze Geschichte einer zentralbalkanischen Landschaft (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), p.23. 4 Aleksa Djilas, “Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion,” Foreign Affairs 77.5 (1998), 124-131; Noel Malcolm, “Is Kosovo Real? The Battle Over History Continues,” Foreign Affairs 78.1 (1999), 130-134; Aleksa Djilas, “Djilas Replies,” Foreign Affairs 78.1 (1999), 137-139. 5 This covers the whole of the period under discussion save for Chapter One. 7 existing groups with origins in kin groups, that nations are not constructions of modernity and that national identification is based on a strong belief in a shared history and common destiny.6 The contradiction between the idea of permanence and the evidence of contingency, however, presents a general problem for primordialist explanations of the nation. Constructivist theories, on the other hand, show us how the elites of societies invent traditions and inculcate nationalism into their chosen populace – “nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round.”7 Constructivist theorists of nationalism have criticized the primordialists on the grounds that they have not taken sufficient account of the multifarious nature of pre-modern people’s identification of themselves and the contingent nature of nation-states’ coming into being. This change comes with the development of modern society, distinguished from previous periods by its relentless activity and thirst for destruction for the sake of improvement.8 These bring the conditions necessary for the advent of nationalism, industrialization, high culture and mass education according to Ernest Gellner, and the development of print- capitalism as suggested by Benedict Anderson.9 But, as Etienne Balibar shows, world markets have a tendency to transcend national boundaries in search of labour and markets; there is no one form of state that can be deduced from bourgeois capitalism.10 Furthermore, Miroslav Hroch demonstrates that in Eastern Europe most national 6 Alex J. Bellamy, The Formation of Croatian National Identity: a Centuries-Old Dream? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p.10.