The Grass-Roots Protest of Kosovo Serbs

Abstract

The mobilization of Kosovo Serbs,1 barely noticeable from the capital initially but highly visible on the central political stage between 1986 and 1988, played an important part in the political struggles of late socialist Yugoslavia.2 The prevailing view in scholarly and popular literature on Yugoslavia is that Kosovo Serbs were little more than passive recipients of the attitudes and actions of high officials and dissident intellectuals. According to this view, Belgrade-based dissident intellectuals initiated and guided the mobilization of Kosovo Serbs with an aim to undermine the party’s approach to Yugoslavia’s national question and to initiate reassessment of the official policy on Kosovo and Serb-Albanian relations. Milošević then took over and orchestrated the actions of various groups of Kosovo Serbs in order to make the case for the removal of Kosovo’s autonomy.3 The intellectuals and Milošević have generally supported this interpretation, claiming their role in the events leading to the constitutional change of 1989–90, which included the reduction of the autonomy of Kosovo.