Political Turmoil in Yugoslavia during 1989-1990 and the Albanian Issue

Abstract

This study highlights the political events in South - East Europe and Yugoslavia during the period of 1989 – 1990. This is very important historic movement as communism was collapsing and multiparty system emerged in spite the fact that neither the nation or state institutions weren’t prepared for that radical political change. The focus of this research is dealing with the civil disobedience of Albanians in Yugoslavia. Even though Albanians constituted near 10 percent of the total population they were oppressed in all ways of life. The political autonomy of Kosovo was suspended by Yugoslav authorities and they faced financial discrimination also by federal government. Despite the police violence towards the civilians as stated in the research, ethnic Albanians living in Yugoslavia were the first to oppose the communist ruling party by all means. Regardless of oppression, killing of civilians, imprisoning of students and other innocent civilians they even more strengthened their movement and continued to protest against communist party till it broke up. Based in top secret documents of Federal Security Services of  Yugoslavia that I managed to get from National Archives from Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Macedonia reveled for the first time, we found that Secret Police of Yugoslavia was concerned of US involvement and the disobedience of Albanians.