By Milazim Krasniqi

It would be nice and useful for those Albanian historians, political scientists and Albanologists who have glorified the figure of Josif Broz Tito and the Yugoslav communist regime to return to the studies of this field and contribute to the dismantling of false myths, to which they have contributed with their pseudoscientific work. Those who have declared Tito a friend of the Albanians and a man of the ages should repent of their mistakes. Josip Broz Tito's speech before the military in Karadjordjevo on December 29, 1979, published in the book by historian Vjenčeslav Cenqić, imposes the need for his entire attitude towards Kosovo and Albanians to be reviewed and reevaluated from the beginning, since the attitude he leaves with that speech is completely different from the one that has been considered as his attitude towards Kosovo and Albanians.

The process of reviewing and re-evaluating his figure and his attitude towards Kosovo and Albanians should be a long-term project of the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts, first and foremost, but also of the departments and institutes of history. In this short text, we are only initiating a public debate regarding Tito's political testament (always with the belief that the transcript published by Cenqiqi is authentic).

Of course, the task of researchers in the respective fields in the future will remain not only the veracity of the published transcript, but also the comparison of the theses and positions of this political testament with his previous positions on the same issues, with the conclusions and decisions of party and state bodies, to understand the causes of the eventual change of positions in his political testament and to discover the agents who have imposed such a change, if it is a change.

The positions that Josip Broz Tito presents in this political testament to the head of the Army, as he himself claims, are synthesized from the report he received from General Nikola Ljubicic, a report that was also signed by all the commanders of the Army. From this statement by Tito, the logical conclusion follows that he actually presented the report to the military, which he received from them, which means that his relationship with the head of the Army was precisely; "the most kobze heritage", as Viktor Majeri calls it in his book "The End of Yugoslavia: the blow in Kosovo".

So, he left his political will as a soldier, as Marshal and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and not as a politician or a statesman. In a word, just as he had come to power, by force of arms, so he was leaving, entrusting the state and power to his subordinates in the Army, the generals. (From here, one can more easily understand the cobwebby role that the Yugoslav Army played in the 90s in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, commanded by the Serbian lobby, to whom Tito handed over the state at the meeting of December 1979, in Karađorđevë).

Against the 1974 Constitution

Although Tito's political testament has long been published, in Kosovo, scholars pretend as if it has not been published. But the almost complete silence of historians, political scientists and Kosovo Albanian intellectuals in particular, regarding all those dramatic developments from Tito's death to the liberation of Kosovo in 1999, is incomprehensible. In fact, not only this period, but the illumination of the entire period of Slavic rule over Kosovo, and in this context also of Serbian and Yugoslav communist rule, is of great importance for the history of Kosovo and the Albanians as a whole.

The feigned amnesia, the escape from facing the past, risks producing more confusion for the present and future of our country and nation. In this text, we will focus only on some of the positions expressed by Josip Broz on Kosovo and the Albanians in his speech in Karadjorgjevo on December 29, 1979, in order to argue that it is truly necessary to make a completely new return to the study of this period, with new approaches and new scientific methods.

First, Tito, from the beginning, claims that the situation in Kosovo was bad and that he personally was against the 1974 Constitution, which had granted Kosovo greater autonomy. Tito says this decisively:

"Albanian cadres from Kosovo are thinking that if they have gained more rights and partly even citizenship with the 1974 Constitution, while I am emphasizing that I was against that Constitution, they can carry out state activities on their own initiative. It is thus impermissible for the Republic of Serbia, but also the federation, to hold state talks with Albania. They have, on their own initiative, without our knowledge, brought professors from Albania to faculties and schools to teach history with the Albanian curriculum, to teach our children and students that Kosovo is part of Greater Skanderbeg Albania, which is temporarily under Yugoslavia."

According to these statements by Josif Brozi, several hypotheses can be drawn: 1) the Albanian leadership of Kosovo, of that period, was strong enough to have worked together, on its own initiative, 2) Tito is afraid of the Army and is justifying himself to them and in fact asking them to correct the hitherto civilian policies of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, 3) the anti-Serbian separatist forces are powerful and have challenged Tito and the Army themselves with their project of decentralization and separatism.

The right, Tito later in his speech, constantly accuses Kardelj and Bakariq as the architects of that constitution and that conspiratorial decentralization, just as he considers Kosovo's autonomy as the cause of the possible crisis of the federal state, for which he says those who supported the 1974 Constitution should be held responsible. So, the clearest thing from his confession to the head of the Yugoslav Army is that he was categorically against the 1974 Constitution and especially against the expansion of Kosovo's autonomy.

And since he says it so categorically and so explicitly, then it turns out that the false myth according to which Tito granted autonomy to Kosovo must be demystified and future analyses must go in the direction of stripping this person of the false merits for the advancement and development of Kosovo, based on the 1974 Constitution. It turns out that those merits belong to Kardel and Bakariq and all those who have been supporters of their project, among them of course some of the Albanian cadres. But not to Tito, since he was categorically against it.

Tito reinforces his constant and firm stance against Kosovo's autonomy, which was offered with the 1974 Constitution, with these words: "On the occasion of the adoption of the Constitution, I told Bevci (Eduard Kardel) and Vlada (Vladimir Bakariq), as well as the entire constitutional commission, where Kardel and his like-minded people voted the most, that for 3 to 4 years, I will refute them and prove that I was right. This situation in Kosovo but also in the entire country shows that I was right."

Even the political leaders of Serbia at that time were not so categorical against Kosovo, since in the 70s the so-called "Serbian liberals" were in power, led by Marko Nikerzic and the well-known intellectual, Latinka Perovic.

Serious accusations against the leader of Kosovo

When it comes to Albanian cadres in Kosovo, Tito's most denunciatory opinion is about Mahmut Bakalli, as well as Fadil Hoxha: "I have information that informants and senior officers of the 'Security' lecture on Marxism at the University of Pristina, while I have received information that some, like Bakalli and Hoxha and others, have their own 'private' service, not only in the territory of Serbia, but also in other republics, and especially because of drug smuggling through Albanian ports. In fact, it is a public secret that in the Albanian navy, there is a special sector for drug smuggling."

This is what Tito is quoted as saying at a meeting with the head of the Yugoslav Army in Karadjordjevo on December 29, 1979, about senior Albanian leaders, one of whom, Fadil Hoxha, had once been his vice president, while Mahmut Bakalli, at the time when Tito denounced him as a drug smuggler, was the president of the League of Communists of Kosovo. From this very hostile tone of Tito towards the Albanian leaders of Kosovo, it can be understood that the Serbian lobby at the head of the Yugoslav Army had drawn up a completely different policy from the League of Communists and the federal government and was preparing to seize power, of course with the approval of its supreme commander, Josip Broz Tito.

If this hypothesis of ours were supported by other documents and evidence, it would turn out that Tito had turned into a bloodthirsty monster, who, if he had the energy, could have tried to commit an even greater massacre than what his army successors did, following his will. Since he himself was "going" as he says at one point during that speech, he was ordering the military to make the law their own way. Tito clearly tells them what they should do after he leaves the stage: "If you, our Army, will not work on the cohesion of unity, after my 'departure', my predictions will be confirmed."

Lament for Ranković

Tito then laments the fall of Ranković and swears that he was against his punishment. The punishment, according to him, came from the conspiracy of Edvard Kardel. Meanwhile, among the Albanians of Kosovo, the myth has been circulating that Tito had overthrown Ranković, “because of the oppression of Albanians”. This was simply not true at all (I have read the Minutes of the Fourth Brioni Plenum, published in the Serbian media, and if they are true, there is no mention of oppression of Albanians anywhere, nor are there any mentions of Albanians at all).

Therefore, this myth about Tito's supposedly pro-Albanian role in the Fourth Brioni Plenum must be dismantled and eliminated as untrue. Such a myth was probably produced by the military secret services, to glorify the figure of Tito among uninformed Albanians. Unfortunately, this trick was very successful, because the perception of a significant part of the Albanian people of Kosovo was that Tito removed Ranković because of his oppression of Albanians.

Warning of provocation of Albanian uprising in Kosovo?

In part of his speech to the military in Kargjorgjevo, Tito says that luxurious buildings with “silver roofs” are being built in Kosovo and demands that investigations be opened into this matter. This slander also shows that he did not have himself in control (since he had been to Kosovo several times and certainly had an idea of ​​its economic poverty), but that he was a puppet in the hands of the Serbian lobby of the Army, led by Nikola Ljubicic, who would later play a powerful role in the rise to power of Slobodan Milosevic.

Tito also warns of the Albanian "uprising": "We know little about the activities of the Albanian emigration, but look, friends, that emigration is collecting 'taxes' for the education of Albanians, who will command what is often warned of as the 'popular uprising' in Kosovo."

In the absence of documents, it is not yet known whether this "early warning" had any connection with the 1981 demonstrations, with their eventual provocation to begin the process of undoing Kosovo's autonomy. But it seems clear that the Serbian lobby in the Yugoslav Army patented a reason for intervention both in Kosovo and in emigration, where there were later liquidations of Albanian activists.

Tito's bloodthirsty nature is also testified to by his own words in his conversations with Josip Kopinić, when he claims that on one occasion he had asked Ranković to physically liquidate Eduard Kardelj, but Ranković had refused to liquidate him. The man who demands the physical liquidation of his closest collaborator, the ideologist of the party and the state, is cut exactly to the measure of Salini (there are even historians who have already claimed that Tito was more Stalinist than Salini himself).

If only because of this speech of his in Kargjorgjevo, where Tito's fierce anti-Albanian stance is revealed, Albanian historiographical studies should return to the study of his figure and the entire period of Serbian and Yugoslav communist rule over Kosovo. But now not to glorify that figure and that rule, as most historians, political scientists and even Albanian Albanian scholars of Kosovo have done. Perhaps it would be sympathetic and useful for those historians, political scientists and Albanian scholars who have glorified the figure of Tito and the Yugoslav communist regime to return to studies in this field and contribute to the dismantling of false myths to which they have also contributed with their pseudoscientific work.

Those who have declared Tito a friend of the Albanians and a man of the ages should repent of their mistakes. Now the figure of Tito and the period of Serbian-Yugoslav communist rule should be studied with genuine scientific methods, which would enable us to better understand that historical period of our past and dismantle false myths and, from there, the antics of real and potential Yugoslav nostalgics among us./