I began my profession as a professor of psychology at the former Gjakova high school, but I became well known as a psychologist [sic] of psychology in the then Shkolla Normale, where psychology was the main subject among the most important subjects for the development of a teacher’s required profile, particularly that of the high school teacher. I worked five years in the Shkolla Normale in Prizren, then called Shkolla Normale Dimitrie Tucović, to go on later to Shkolla Normale Miladin Popović in Pristina, in which school I spent five full years. The last two years I was also the Deputy Director of the Shkolla Normale Miladin Popović.
From this post I was selected as a Director of Kosovo’s Bureau for the Improvement of Schools. I was in this post for less than two full years because I was the candidate from Kosovo, and was selected by the Executive Federation Council of former Yugoslavia as an assistant to the Chairman for Education and Culture, which translated into our current language means Deputy to the Minister of Education and Culture in Yugoslavia. Here I completed a term for four years and a few months, that is how long we were mandated for. This service was during my life in Belgrade of course. I had my family with me as well, the children, the spouse and my mother in Belgrade. So that Belgrade, for me, including the years of studying and the years of actively working, marks almost a quarter of my life spent in the environment of Belgrade. I had many friends, mainly from the professional circle, but I can say that circle of friends and women friends was very serious, and I never felt inferior in that circle where I spent time, because that circle did not give me a reason to feel that way.
I was relatively successful in my work. I always received plaudits for my professional activities and for what I achieved the most, the position of Deputy of the Council for Education and Culture of Yugoslavia [and for what] is my professional commitment to the transformation of elementary education in Yugoslavia. Until then, the elementary education was different according to the republics, somewhere it lasted four years, somewhere six, somewhere five, and after the establishment of the main concept of elementary education at a Yugoslav level, it was decided that the elementary education was to be eight years long. It was a unified standard for the developed countries in Yugoslavia, for example Slovenia and Croatia, which were far ahead of Kosovo, and for Kosovo, that was far behind in the economic, political, social and cultural development. The mandatory education in the education system of Yugoslavia at the time was eight years. After the eight-year education, the classes that successfully completed the elementary education continued their studies in various schools and levels of high school. The greatest interest was understandably for the gymnasium and less determined was the interest for professional schools of various kinds, for example, the professional schools for technical professions, for medical professions. The art schools were seen differently, because the students who were accepted and studied there had an affinity, whether for music, sculpture or painting etc., etc.
I can also say that we had few specific professional schools at the time, for example the math gymnasium, this we had organized even in Kosovo for those who had talent, had an affinity for math. And I think that these generations that came out from this gymnasium were successful mathematicians later, they got the position of professors in various faculties and in institutions where high knowledge of math was required. At the same time, when I was the director of The Bureau for the Improvement of Schools, I was accepted as a psychology lecturer in the pedagogical high school of Pristina. They made it possible for me to teach classes outside of the regular class hours. In other words, I held these hours outside of the eight work hours I completed at the office. Later, I was accepted as psychology lecturer in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Pristina. I did not give up my profession as a professor of psychology, whether [teaching] in the high school, or at the university, even when I worked in Belgrade, even when I worked in administrative bodies such as the Yugoslav Federation Executive Council. I traveled from Belgrade every week to be able to teach psychology classes, on Saturdays and Sundays, particularly on weekends, which were rest days for us.
This helped me a lot, because later I was forced to leave political institutions because in 1981, when I was the Vice President of the Executive Council of Kosovo, actually the Vice President of the Executive [branch] of Kosovo, the demonstrations of the Kosovar students broke out. The demonstrations that … I tried to protect those who participated in demonstrations at the extended meeting of the Committee of the League of Communists with some arguments that I asked to be considered when they evaluated the nature of these demonstrations. Not only did I not find support from those who knew me well, but the majority of them criticized me harshly and attacked me harshly and forced me to resign from the position of Vice President of the Kosovo Executive.
The main reason that I wasn’t taken into consideration by those who did not support me was that at the Executive Council I was not only responsible for the expansion of education, culture, science, physical education, health in Kosovo, but the scope of my work covered also Kosovo’s international relations with other countries, particularly then we had international relations mainly with Albania, with the Republic of Albania, relations that were defined in special agreements among institutions but not among governments.
For example, we had a memorandum of cooperation between the University of Pristina and the Tirana State University, which was renewed every two years. We had a memorandum of cooperation between the Academy of Science and Art of Kosovo and the Academy of Science of Albania, which as I remember was renewed every two years. But other than these, other cultural and informative institutions, for example the National Theater, also had these memoranda of cooperation. Pristina’s Regional Theater had a collaboration also with the Theater of Tirana, The National Theater of Albania. Prishtina Television had a collaboration with Television of Tirana. All of these, or for all of these, we were responsible, the Executive Council. And the main person responsible for these was I, because this issue was within the scope of my activities, as I told you.
After all the big turbulences that Kosovo was going through at the time, and after false information, not to say that information was fabricated, but some was fabricated, I lived with some kind of punishment that you could call house arrest. I was told that it was better by the leadership of Kosovo of the time, the President of the Presidency of Kosovo told me it was better if I didn’t go out and if I did, to go out at night if possible. Even at the university, they did not interrupt my work, but they stipulated that I teach only at night. So, I planned the teaching, the exercises, my empirical research, in the late evening hours of the turbulent years of the early ‘80s, ‘90s. As for psychology, in other words my profession, I have to emphasize, I never withdrew. I wrote scientific papers, scientific commentaries, articles, critiques, reviews, but mainly things that had to do with issues of psychology.
I had other positions as well, for example one of the positions where I was hit the hardest after the year 1981, was organizing the 100th anniversary of the Albanian League of Prizren. I was the chairman of the planning council, of this council. I think that we marked the one hundred year anniversary in Kosovo then with a very rich program. This rich program included an International Conference about the Albanian League of Prizren, which we organized for a week here in Pristina. It included the opening of the Memorial Center of the Albanian League of Prizren. It exists even today and dates from this time. Within the Center, we unveiled statues of the leaders of the Albanian League of Prizren, first of all Abdyl Frashëri, since he was the most important, as he was the first President of the first government of the League of Prizren at the time, and the Minister of Defense and Finance Sylejman Vokshi as well.
They were given… the research and vast information on the role of the Albanian League were given much [space] proportionally also in the everyday press of Kosovo, and in the Kosovo magazines as well. Those years were the years when the Albanian League of Prizren dominated. For those who don’t know, [the League] aimed to expel the Ottoman invaders and defend the ethnic Albanian borders. The protection of ethnic Albanian borders was first of all not in agreement with the documents of the Serbian leadership, [the leadership of] not only Serbia and of Macedonia, but also that of Montenegro. Because of this reason, we found ourselves in an inexplicable trap. Even in contemporary terms, I was neutral at the time, my goal was to present the truth about the Albanian League of Kosovo, that truth belonged to the year 1878 and not to the year 1978, but the other party handling this issue, the various ideological commissions of the Provincial Committee of Kosovo, of the Central Committee of Serbia, of Montenegro, of Macedonia, were offended by our programs that dealt with the Albanian League of Prizren this way, and they attacked the Albanian League and its leaders. But practically they couldn’t do anything to those leaders, so they attacked me, and from then on I was called a political enemy at the time. I noticed this [change] in instances when I would be told, “It is better if you don’t move from the house and you go out only when you have to, at night.”
In this regard, I can say that I experienced a relatively hard blow. Even today I am determined to tell the truth, a historical truth that belonged to me, because I was a person of science, and science does not take into consideration if someone likes something or not. It knows if something is the truth or not the truth, but the consequences of this, I would call it lynching, were difficult, not only for me, but for my family as well. We were denied, for example, I was denied the right to receive a salary, to receive wages. I received some for the very few hours, for the three hours that I worked at Faculty of Philosophy. I didn’t have any other sources of income. So in this regard, I went through a pretty bad debacle.
I did not become willingly involved in the Communist Party. I got involved with the Communist Party in 1955, when I presented the initial documents to get a job, I was asked for the documentation that I was a member of the Communist Party. Then I accepted to become a member of the Communist Party. I got the certificate and attached it to the file with the other documents, university diploma etc., etc. Only then, I got the right to become a high school professor in Kosovo high schools, specifically in Gjakova, Prizren, Pristina. In the meantime, I was a supporter of the conceptualization of the cultural, educational, and scientific development of Albanians of then Yugoslavia. No one forced me, but I myself supported the concept that was given by the leadership of the Communist League of Yugoslavia at the time. And I was one of those involved in the implementation of Albanians’ rights to their history, to their language, to their culture, to their economic development etc., etc.
It is important to emphasize that I was never part of the [political] organs of the Communist League of Kosovo. But the bodies of the Communist League of Kosovo always invited me for consultations, even more so for important consultations about educational, cultural and scientific events. I was not involved, I don’t even know the reason myself but that did not bother me at all.
Later, I heard that one of my father’s brothers who lived [in Albania] and was known in Albania as a member of Ahmet Zog’s cabinet, was a sworn Zogist and he had strictly persecuted Communists at the time, Fadil Hoxha and Xhavit Nimani and Elhami Nimani and Ymer Pula etc. etc. among them. I never knew him not only because he was separated from our family, but he was much older than I, so that I didn’t get to live that time. But my parents adored Zog’s Kingdom, the Albanian Kingdom. They were not involved with the Communist movement, not that they rejected it, as they did not have any particular affiliation, but the truth is that they preferred Ahmet Zog over Josip Broz Tito, Ahmet Zog over Fadil Hoxha.
I think that this knolwedge had an impact because they were interested in finding out about my origins, those of us who were persecuted at the time in Albania and they [found] that I belong to this family etc. etc. And I think that this was the reason that in very important meetings at the Kosovo’s level but also at the Yugoslav level, in the League of Communists, I was present without a right to vote. I debated freely, in a way that those deciding took into account also the facts that I discussed. I was involved in the so-called Socialist Alliance of Working People[4] of Kosovo of the time. It was previously called the People’s Front, of which all the adult citizens were members, and I was there at the provincial level. But this was an organization, I don’t know how to say, a massive popular organization, very similar to former and contemporary unions.
Despite all of this, I did not meet obstacles in publishing my papers, I did not meet obstacles in publishing my books. And until I resigned, I was sentenced by a special commission of the Provincial Committee of the League of Communists of the time before the expulsion from the Communist League. However, with the later developments of Milošević’s arrival, I resigned from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. My resignation went in writing to my ward, the organization of the ward where I took part as a member of that unit.
I published not only in Kosovar magazines, but also in magazines of the former republics of the Yugoslav Federation. Some of my papers were also published in foreign languages. I took part in many symposiums, roundtables, scientific conferences in Yugoslavia and abroad. But those roundtables and in those scientific gatherings had to do with the developments in education and psychology, and psychology in relation to its use for the development of schools, and the good planning of education processes. In this regard for example, I was also in Ljubljana, there was a former annual institution, the Danas University. I presented papers in Dubrovnik, in Hercegovni. I was a member of the Yugoslav delegation in a UNESCO conference in Geneva. I was a member of a special delegation for research in using educational television [programs] in the educational system of the United States of America, where I spent about three months. Also…
Anita Prapashtica: Professor, when was this, during which years?
Pajazit Nushi: No, this is much later. What I am speaking of now about the US, is when I was in Belgrade in the year 1973-1974. And later, in the year 1978, I went from Kosovo as a member and leader of the Yugoslav delegation for a study visit to the Republic of China, where we spent about three weeks visiting their cultural, educational and scientific institutions. We went to various universities, various libraries in Shanghai and other places of what was then the Republic of China, particularly central China, Beijing, according to the study program. We had a very high level reception by the Chinese leadership of the time, because Yugoslavia at the time enjoyed a type of relatively powerful authority in the circles of various countries, as well as in Asian circles, which included China, and especially South Korea. But as far as I know, North Korea, currently called the Communist Korea was… had a good relationship with former Yugoslavia. So the delegation that I led was a delegation [with members] from almost every republic and Vojvodina, the other province. We had a very important trip as observers, the only reason I am mentioning this is because of the trust that was given to me at the time to be the leader of a delegation at the level of Yugoslavia to a very well known country as was the Republic of China.
At the time, I am discussing 1977-1978, at least towards me, there were no obvious differences because I was Albanian. The Serbs, the Montenegrins, the Croats, the Slovenians had reserved attitudes? On the contrary, in the circles where I was, that was very limited. They were people with distinct humanitarian greatness, which is why I can express gratitude, for example, for their behavior then, as I can say many negative things about the behavior of the same people when I resigned from political functions in Kosovo. The same people, Albanians but especially Serbs at the Kosovo level, as well as the Yugoslav level and the levels of other republics, unfairly accused me for allowing our institutions – cultural, educational, scientific, informative – to cooperate with relevant institutions in the Republic of Albania. On the other hand, I became protective of another factor, I explained the current protests as a response to low economic development, low social development etc. etc., that we had in Kosovo. And, [I also explained] that the Albanian professors of the State University of Tirana who came one time, for one week in one month – were not the cause of the protests. They can’t be the cause, I always held this position and I do it even today. However, despite this, I didn’t suffer from heavy political repercussions, like some of my friends.
As an engaged person and primarily interested in the development of my nation, I did not see the reason to join a political party when the Kosovo political system moved on to the multi-party system. I did not consider it reasonable to do so after paying membership fees for 34 years and five months to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and now I should become a member of the Social Democratic party of Kosovo, a member of the Democratic League of Ibrahim Rugova, of the party…whichever party here. I felt that I would damage them and damage myself, for 34 years and a half I paid membership fees, but I paid to be a member of League of Communists of Yugoslavia and now…
Therefore I didn’t join any political party but I got involved in the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (CDHRF). I was a member there since the beginning, I was one of the people involved in the founding of this Council, and I never left this Council. In the meantime, I was elected Vice-Chairman, and later I was the president of the CDHRF for more than twelve years. As the years passed, and with the arrival of new generations on the scene, I did not see the reason to get involved later in this Council.
But I have to emphasize that during…after the year 2000, in support of the work I had done, the Faculty of Philosophy, the Education and Science Council of the Faculty of Philosophy, nominated me to become a member of the Kosovo Academy of Arts and Sciences. I was selected in 2008 as a corresponding member of the Kosovo Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2012 I was selected as a regular member of this Academy, where I work today as well. In the meantime, they selected me also as the Vice-Chairman of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo. Even today I perform this function.
However, I think that my experience was one of the sources or one of the criteria that did not allow me to completely leave behind some activities that have to do with the defense of human rights and freedom. In this regard, the Ministry of Defense led by the Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuçi, trusted me with the position of leader of the Kosovo delegation in talks with Serbia about the issue of the missing people from Kosovo. It is the eighth year that I lead the Kosovo delegation to find information on where these people are, where were they lost, how to hand over the remains of these people to their families, to the family members who are still alive.
Unfortunately, I also had missing people from my extended family. One of my sisters is missing two sons, one 18 years old, one 19 years old. Parts of the remains of one of them have been found and the second one is missing and his fate is unknown to this day. Even today, I am coming here from a meeting that we had, an inter-ministry commission of the Kosovo Government on the issue of missing persons, because I am working on this problem. On the other hand, the same Ministry has hired me to be a senior scientific counselor for the Institute for War Crimes in Kosovo. In this institute I currently lead two projects, the project of the missing persons and the project of sexual violence against women during the time of war operations in Kosovo. Each is more difficult than the other, each is more difficult because of the very heavy consequences, but also because of lack of sources, information.
We still don’t have information about where to look for 1740 bodies of missing Kosovars, mainly Albanians of course. We receive and find very little information, especially about the rape of women. It has been stressed by individuals and they have published various articles, even books about the rape of women, but they were individual books and not institutional books, because there were publications that in Kosovo there were, at times twenty thousand rapes, at times thirty thousand, at times twenty-five thousand. We inquired as part of this project, for example we found 49 locations in all Kosovo where rapes have happened. Let’s say fifty locations, in fifty locations, if there were fifty women raped, that makes 2500 women, but not twenty thousand raped women. Let’s suppose that one hundred women were raped in these locations, that comes to five thousand, not thirty thousand, not twenty thousand.
However, I would say that although the number is very important, even more important is the human dimension of a dirty war, a dirty war that Kosovo experienced. The very dirty dimension is observed in the fact that women were defenseless, that they did not have the physical strength to defend, to defend themselves and defend their children, they were used for the pleasure of the Serbian army, they were used for sexual pleasure by the Serbian paramilitaries here. For example their life, based on what one of these women told me, “We are alive, among the dead.” They experience their situation as dead, but they are alive.
The lives of these women are very unfortunate, but an even worse fate is that our society does not understand these processes. Many of them have gone abroad, some of them are expelled from their families, there are some who live in very great poverty, alone, in isolation etc., etc. They tried to erase this process, to hide it completely. It is not about revealing complete military and political developments, the process has to be recognized. It is difficult for the moral customs of the Albanian society to talk about the rape of women, but this has to be known because at the time the rape of women was used to subdue Albanians and their demands, this has to be known. The true proportions, it might never be known and it is difficult to know.
Regardless of that, it is enough to know that in the dirty war that developed in Kosovo, not only did people go missing, but their remains were exhumed. A part of the exhumation of their remains was transported to Serbia in unknown places. But these two dimensions of this war that was developed in Kosovo, show a very low ethical level of the war developed in Kosovo, which has been written about. But it is better that they are written by special institutions and not by individuals, because in the end they are subjective opinions of individuals, and institutions have special criteria for the verification of these events.
Having lost my job, and being left without an income after I resigned, in the meantime I applied for a job in the Office of Lexicography Miroslav Krleža in Zagreb, to work on the Yugoslav encyclopedia that was being prepared for publication at the time. I was accepted through a competition, I can say that at the time I had the support of the former Editor-in-Chief of the Albanian-Yugoslav Encyclopedia in Kosovo, the late Esat Mekuli, but I was also known by people working in educational and scientific circles in Croatia. So, I spent about ten years of my work life at this institution. The largest part, obviously, [I spent] within the editorial premises we had allocated in Pristina, but I was the youngest one among other members and almost every month I spent a week in Zagreb working on articles, translations, publications, etc., etc. for this Encyclopedia.
This service helped immensely in my intellectual development, and indeed it is a development tool that the environment [uses] to push you to become established. It is different to establish yourself and be successful in Zagreb, and it is different to be resourceful in Pristina. We don’t like [to hear] that, but such is the truth. When I put together the ten years I spent in Belgrade and the ten years I spent in Zagreb, neither more, nor less, they account for half of my professional life. I spent half of it in these cultural, educational, political centers and those helped me a lot… my stay in these cultural and scientific institutions of these two environments that were much more developed than the environment in Kosovo.
We managed to publish two volumes of the Yugoslav Encyclopedia in Albanian, we prepared the third volume. But the war broke out and I feel sorry that all that material we had collected, processed, the index cards, the translation..they burned them, they destroyed them and all that material is lost with the exception of the two volumes of the Yugoslav Encyclopedia[5] that were published. These noted objectively the process of the very special development of Albanians of Kosovo. For example, the Encyclopedia, or to call it better the encyclopedic texts of Tirana, were published a year later than the Albanian text of the Encyclopedia in Pristina. Understandably, Sami Frashëri published his encyclopedia long before us, but he also published it in Ottoman language and not in Albanian. However, it is a very important historical notation because Sami Frashëri was not Turkish, Sami Frashëri was Albanian and the development of the encyclopedia begins with his name and not with the name of Pajazit Nushi or Esat Mekuli or someone else either in Tirana or in Pristina.
I also accepted to be the chairman of the board at Iliria University at the beginning, as this university was being established. Later I was offered to be the rector of this university. I also fulfill this position, I have a set work schedule there, I go there three times a week and I work between one and three hours there. I don’t teach there, but I work on organizing the academic work and scientific research of this university. Otherwise, my place of work and my official work is the Academy of Science, my place is here, I come to work every day, we have relatively good work conditions in this Academy.
I have a few personal projects, which I offer to the Academy for publication, for example I offered the publishing of a Lexicon of Psychology for the year 2014. I am at the end of the project and I will hand it in to the Kosovo Academy of Arts and Sciences for publication. I am working on another project in psychology as well, and this project has to do with the development of the psychology of the Albanians’ national thinking and with the development of psychological scientific thinking among Albanians that was handled…how spiritual phenomenona were treated according to legends, according to gossip, according to the elderly, according to epic songs, according to lyrical songs, how these things were treated in folklore, how they were treated in scientific thinking. This theme hasn’t been researched by others, I am thinking of researching it if my life is long enough to complete this project as well.
As I mentioned earlier, I did not find it necessary to get involved in a political party of the multi-party system in Kosovo, for the reason that for the majority of my life I belonged to one party, I leave it to history to evaluate that. But I was involved from the beginning, particularly from the year, from the end of the year 1989, in the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms. My main activity during the war in Kosovo was that during the war was happening in Kosovo and during all the fighting and difficulties that we had in the ‘80s and ‘90s and in the beginning of the 2000s, I spent them in the CDHRF. Today I think that there we did a very important job in informing the world about what was happening in Kosovo. We provided information translated in English, and we forwarded them to either homologous institutions that deal with the defense of human rights and freedoms in Vienna, in London, in Tirana, either with video recordings of murders, expulsion, of injured people, of killings of the Albanian soldiers in Yugoslav army etc. etc.
We followed these every day, we managed to expand this Council with our sub-councils throughout all Kosovo municipalities. They forwarded the information to us about what was happening in the municipality. We conveyed that information to the outside world in the ways that were possible, whether by radio, or by television, or through translations, or by sending the information to renowned centers for the defense of human rights and freedoms, but also to the federal bodies of Yugoslavia. Here I can say that truly the role of this institution, not because I was there, but at the founding we were a group of intellectuals, there was Idriz Ajeti, there was Mark Krasniqi, there was Dervish Rozhaja, there was Rexhep Qosja, there was Zeqerija Cana, there was Imer Jaka, there was Bajram Kelmendi…I can’t remember the other names that founded this council. We were persecuted, we tried to defend… to defend ourselves and to defend others as much as we could. We suffered great losses in this Council, many of our activists were beaten, injured, some of them suffered the worst and were killed. For example the reason that Bajram Kelmendi was killed was exactly because of his involvement in defending human rights and freedoms. As you know, not only was he killed, but his two sons were killed as well.
The most important act that I signed on this Council was the act sent to the Court in the Hague, an act in which the group of our lawyers of the Council at the time led by Bajram Kelmendi, Hazi Bala, Lirie Osmani, Nekibe Kelmendi and some others, accused directly a very high official of Yugoslavia, then led by Milošević. All of his generals were accused, high officials of Serbia’s government at the time were also accused. To tell {addresses those present} the truth, I signed that act, but immediately when I signed it, I knew that they will arrest me or persecute me, or kill me. I tried to protect my family so that it wasn’t harmed, as for myself I had done it all. I had already retired, actually they forced me into retirement. I had achieved what I had achieved, these things that I could maybe achieve I wasn’t ever going to achieve if they had killed me. But the threat was present in this case. Thanks to my involvement with the CDHRF even now at this age, I am still involved as I told you in the Kosovo delegation for the discovery of the missing people in talks with Serbia. Thanks to my involvement in the Council, I am involved in the Institute for War Crimes where I lead two projects as I told you earlier. So that the involvement in the CDHRF has an influence also on my later activities.
How to say, I am not one of those who thinks that I could have worked differently. Even now I would take the path that I have taken. I don’t doubt at all that it was a productive road for the environment where I worked and also for my personal development. This environment established me as a high school teacher, and as a professor in college and as a lecturer, associate professor, tenured professor at the University of Pristina, Professor at University of Tetovo, correspondent member of the Academy, regular member of the Academy. This environment established me, and I feel the need to help this environment as much as I can. Although I am a bit older, I can say that my health has served me. I will always be ready to help not only in theory, but also hands on to go and see where the massive graveyards are, to go and see the remains … the institute of forensic psychiatry in Prihtina, to go to EULEX’s institutes to see the remains of our people, and how their identification can be managed.
I went to Bosnia to see the same thing etc. etc., that is why I don’t mind physical work as long as my health allows it. But intellectual work suits me better than the physical work. I have a system regarding my intellectual work, it is already established so even if I wanted to I couldn’t change it. For example, I sleep only three hours at night, I work from three o’clock after midnight till seven-eight, while the others are asleep, because then I can use the library without noise, without other disturbances. So, even if I don’t feel like working, three hours after midnight I can’t sleep, because I am used to it, [I am used] for tens of years to wake up and work. Also, today I work in the same framework, in the same system, in various intellectual work, but work that has to do directly with my profession.
[4] The Socialist Alliance of Working People (SAWP) was a parallel structure to the party/government, which included organizations of neighborhoods, workers, professionals, women, students and youth.
[5]The Encikolpedija Jugoslavije, published in 1980 as a model of collaboration among historians of different nationalities, was the first public demonstration of the ethnic conflict that was brewing in Yugoslavia. Serb members of the editorial board complained after the Encyclopedia was published in Croatia, reformulated the two entries “Albanians” and “Albanian-Yugoslav Relations,” and sent the new versions to subscribers asking them to add the new texts to the volume. The entry “Albanci. Ime” (Albanians. Name), on p. 72, is followed by page 1 of the entry “Albanci (alb. Shqiptarët). Ime,” which continues until p. 12, to be followed by p. 73. In the first entry, the Albanians are said to descend from Illyrians, in the second they are presented as a nation born in the early Middle Ages after the long process of assimilation of Illyrians and Slavs.