[tribina] In Praise of All Things Albanian

[Boba]

http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2526
14.10.2009
Pyotr ISKENDEROV
In Praise of All Things Albanian
On October 8 the relations between Russia and Albania, which used to be incredibly eventful in the XX century and essentially marked with stagnation in the XXI one, saw an unprecedented event. Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha openly engaged in fierce polemic with Russian Foreign Minister S. Lavrov, which did not happen even at the worst moments of the Kosovo crisis. The Albanian Prime Minister not only charged Lavrov with ascribing to him statements he had never made, but even said that lack of proficiency in Albanian somehow factored into the situation.
Mr. Berisha's outcry was caused by Lavrov's reaction to the statements he made during his October 6-7 visit to Kosovo. As a part of the tour, the Albanian Prime Minister, reelected in September during the parliamentary elections which, quite traditionally, left much to be desired from the standpoint of fairness and transparency, laid out his vision of the future relations between Albania and not only Kosovo but also other Albanian-populated territories. The statements showed clearly that Albania – a NATO member and a potential EU candidate – adopted the doctrine aimed at an overhaul of the Balkan borders and at the creation of the Great Albania which Albanian nationalists have been dreaming of since the second half of the XIX century. The statements were extensively cited by the Western media, and the fact alone renders any references to the difficulty of translating from Albanian into Russian meaningless.
“The nation is one and inseparable in spirit and identity” - was the key concept aired by the Albanian Prime Minister. Obviously, it is a logical continuation of his National Unity Project unveiled last August in an interview to a Kosovo TV station. At that time Mr. Berisha said that the project would serve as the guiding star for Albanian and Kosovo politicians and that he and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci would work on removing the obstacles preventing Albanians from feeling their national unity all over the territories they inhabit.
The Albanian Prime Minister's recent visit to Kosovo can be regarded as the first practical step towards removing “the obstacles”. In particular, agreements were signed on passing to the Kosovo administration the control over the Shednjin seaport and on the modernization of the railroad linking Albania and Kosovo. Mr. Berishi said upon penning the corresponding documents that Shendjin thus became Kosovo's marine outlet. An even more ambitious project is to construct an expressway from Pristina to the Durres port in Albania. Berisha said the initiatives would make it possible to merge the economic systems of Albania and Kosovo in the nearest future. He also promised that over the coming four years his government would be making serious efforts to implement infrastructural projects making the merger possible by creating new transportation links to facilitate transit and economically motivated migration.
Needless to say, the message of the statements reiterated over the past two months is absolutely clear, and it did not come as a surprise that the Russian Foreign Ministry chose to react. Russian diplomacy chief S. Lavrov must have anticipated the question concerning Berisha's statements that the time came to merge Albanian - populated territories, which was asked during the media conference after his talks with his Serbian counterpart Vuk Jeremic. Lavrov said: “We were seriously alarmed by the Albanian Prime Minister's aforementioned statement. We are convinced that due reaction to it should follow, mainly from the EU but also from NATO. We have not heard of such a reaction so far. Hopefully, the necessary work with the Albanian leadership is underway despite the absence of public statements on the side of European capitals”. The unambiguous and fully adequate response of the Russian Foreign Minister should not be attributed any problems with
 understanding Albanian.
The most alarming circumstance is that the Albanian Prime Minister's statements, atop of reflecting his individual views, replicate the Albanian nationalist agenda in its late XIX century form. From the outset, the Albanian movement's ideology was Albanism, which had a purely ethnic rather than religious basis and included the program of uniting in the framework of common statehood all the Albanian-populated territories, if necessary at the cost of expulsion or extermination of other ethnic groups residing across them.
The 1878-1881 activity of the League of Prizren constituted the first phase of the implementation of the Albanian nationalist agenda. In September, 1878 the leaders of the League of Prizren adopted a program which set as the goal the unification of all Albanian territories within an autonomous province with the Albanian as the language of administration and instruction and with a national army of its own. Shortly thereafter, a demand saw the light of day to establish a single Albanian national vilayat under formal suzerainty of the Turkish Sultan. Under the slogan of united Albania for all Albanians, Albanian guerrillas clashed with Turkish and Montenegrin forces which attempted to put into practice the resolutions of the 1878 Berlin Congress concerning the territorial rearrangement in the Balkans. When the Turkish administration turned down the Albanian leaders' most radical bids, the latter openly declared that their course would be that of armed
 struggle for the independent status of a Great Albania. As for other great powers, they – while ostensibly denying the very existence of the Albanian nation – started using the League of Prizren as an instrument of pressure on the Ottoman Empire and the Slavic Balkan countries already during and immediately after the Berlin Congress, providing covert support to the Albanian movement.
The 1910-1912 anti-Turkish rebellions were driven by the ideology of undisguised Albanism. The idea of creating a mono-ethnic Albania with a maximally extensive territory was reanimated in the fall of 1912 when the Balkan alliance led by Serbia liberated the originally Slavic lands from the Turkish domination. On November 18, 1912 the leaders of the Albanian nationalists handed over to the envoys of great powers in Istanbul the so-called Appeal of the Albanian people. It expressed the Albanians' determination to fight in the name of “guaranteeing the ethnic and political existence of the Albanian nation”. The “guarantees” meant the establishment and international recognition of Albania in its ethnic borders. Several days later, a National Assembly convened in Vlora which – on November 28, 1912 – declared a unified independent Albanian state on Albanian-populated territories with a flag of Albanian medieval hero Skanderbeg - a black two-headed
 eagle against a red background. Since the time the flag has been the national symbol of both Albanians inhabiting Albania proper and their ethnic brethren in Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, South Serbia, and Greece. The independence was not recognized at the 1912-1913 London Conference of the envoys of great powers, but some of them – mainly Austria-Hungary and Italy – made an attempt to maximally broaden the territory of the autonomous Albania they had created at the expense of Russia's allies Serbia and Montenegro.
As it follows from the above, what Sali Berisha and Hashim Thaci are currently implementing with increasing activity is the agenda formulated over a century ago. They expect quite reasonably that – in line with the historical experience - support from the West will follow. One does not need to know Albanian to realize what is going on - a brief survey of the history of the Albanian nation would elucidate the picture. Over some 130 years, the Albanian nation has gone all the way from being a group unheard of in Europe to the status of the most mobile and rapidly advancing nation well-organized along military, political, and tribal lines.
______________________ 
Dr. Petr A. Iskenderov is a historian, the senior researcher at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science, and the Vremya Novstey international politics commentator.
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