AN EXAMINATION OF SOVIET AND AMERICAN INFLUENCES ON EVENTS IN KOSOVO SUBSEQUENT TO THE DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA
This research examines Soviet and American influences on events in Kosovo Province, Serbia subsequent to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. As the Former Soviet Union (FSU) itself disintegrated in the winter of 1991-1992, successor states to the FSU, particularly Russia and Ukraine, also have influenced outcomes in Kosovo, and these influences are addressed in this research when appropriate.
Kosovo is a rugged area four-fifths the size of Connecticut. The region's population of almost two million is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, and an additional one million ethnic Albanians live in adjoining Macedonia and Montenegro and in three adjacent enclaves in Serbia proper. While the Kosovo ethnic Albanians retain a Muslim influence from five centuries of Ottoman Turkish occupation, they are not Slavs, unlike the Bosnian Muslims. They are descendants of the Illyrians of Roman times, and their language, written in the Latin alphabet, is unrelated to Serbo-Croatian.
Kosovo was an "autonomous province" attached to Yugoslavia's Serbian Republic prior to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. In 1988, Yugoslavia's collective presidency granted special powers to the federal police unit in Kosovo Province on the ground that security in the province had deteriorated seriously. Kosovo was Yugoslavia's poorest region. The majority of Kosovo's population is ethnic Albanian, and the level of conflict between the ethnic Albanians and Serbian minority in Kosovo always has been high. In 1981 the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo rioted while demanding that Kosovo be made a full republic of the Yugoslav federation. By the summer of 1988, the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo was seeking protection from the ethnic Albanians through intervention by the Serb-dominated federal government of Yugoslavia. The 10 percent ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo...