Igor Vukadinović, PhD
Institute for Balkan Studies SASA, Belgrade, Republic of Serbia
MIGRATION OF SERBS FROM KOSOVO AND METOHIJA DURING THE YUGOSLAV COMMUNIST REGIME 1958–1981: SCALE AND CAUSES
God. XLIV, 1/2026, str. 207–230
https://doi.org/10.29362/ist20veka.2026.1.vuk.207-230
APSTRAKT/REZIME:
The goal of this research is to establish the scale of, and reasons for, the migration of Serbs from Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija during the communist regime in SFR Yugoslavia. This study covers the period from 1958, when field reports began to systematically record Serb migration from Kosovo, to 1981, when the death of Josip Broz Tito the year before and the Albanian demonstrations in Pristina led to a fundamental shift in the approach of the Serbian and Yugoslav authorities to this phenomenon. The research is based primarily on documents from the Archives of Kosovo, the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Central State Archives of Albania, the State Archives of Serbia, as well as on the analysis of statistical data. The findings suggest that the reasons behind Serb migration from Kosovo were predominantly political and security-related, rather than purely economic. They further suggest that territorial autonomy granted to a national minority requires additional measures to protect the internal minority within the autonomous territory and that the lack of such measures in autonomous Kosovo during Tito’s regime prompted the migration of Serbs from the province.
KLJUČNE REČI: communism, ethnic migrations, Kosovo, national minorities, territorial autonomy, Yugoslavia
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