"Getting back at Tito" was a strong
motive, commensurate with Serb "the world is against us" paranoia
and siege mentality. Milosevic, visibly ill at ease, surfed this
tide of religion-tinged nationalism straight into Kosovo, the
historical heartland of Serb-ism.
Oppression breeds resistance and Serb oppression served only to
streamline the stochastic nationalist movement into a
compartmentalized, though factious, underground organization with
roots wherever Albanians resided: Germany, Switzerland, the USA,
Canada and Australia. The ideology was an improbable mix of
Stalinism (Enver Hoxha-inspired), Maoism and Albanian chauvinism.
This was before Albania opened up to reveal its decrepitude and
desolation to its Kosovar visitors. All delusions of an Albania-
backed armed rebellion evaporated in the languor of Albania proper.
Thus, the activities of the Nationalists were more innocuous than
their concocted doctrines.
They defaced government buildings, shattered gravestones in Serb
cemeteries and overturned heroic monuments. The distribution of
subversive (and fairly bromide) "literature" was rarely accompanied
by acts of terror, either in Kosovo or in Europe.
Nationalism is refuge from uncertainty. As the old Yugoslavia was
crumbling, each of its constituents developed its own brand of
escapism, replete with revenant nationalist leaders, mostly
fictional "history", a newly discovered language and a pledge to
fate to reconstitute a lost empire at its apex.
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