Serbian fascism in the 20th century - Continuity of a Political Mind

The recent statement by Serbian Minister Sne properana Panovovic, who stated that, if it had been in Slobodan Milosevic's place in 1998, it would have carried out the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians, it could not be considered a political pencil or an instant reaction. It is an expression of a political culture that has not yet been cut off from its past. In essence, this declaration reflects the continuation of an ideology that has seen violence, deportation and ethnic cleansing as legitimate means of realising state objectives.

To the historian, this rhetoric is no surprise. It is echoing a political tradition that has survived for over a century. At various historical times, Serbian nationalism has conceived ethnic homogenism, not as a consequence of war, but as a precondition for building the national state. It is here that the distinction between a common state policy and an ideology that transforms ethnic cleansing into an instrument of the national project.

The beginnings of this policy clearly surfaced during the eastern crisis (18771878), when, following the invasion of Sandzak Nis, Toplica, Prokupla, Vranje and Kursumlia, tens of thousands of Muslim and Turkish Albanians were expelled from their lands. British consular reports, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman reports document the burning of settlements, seizures of property and systematic expulsion of the Albanian population, testifying that violence was not episoded but part of a conscious political project.

The same philosophy was repeated after the 19121913 Balkan Wars. Massacres, deportations, and a state-organised colonization were carried out in territories occupied by the Kingdom of Serbia. European diplomatic documents, the Carnegie Commission report (1914) and Ottoman documents testify that violence against Albanians was not only a consequence of the war, but part of an organised policy to change Kosovo's ethnic structure and other Albanian areas.

In 1918,1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia institutionalised this policy through agrarian reform, Kosovo colonisation, and efforts to displace Albanians towards Turkey. State projects and Yugoslav-Turkish negotiations were aimed at removing hundreds of thousands of Albanians, while the 1938 Convention was the most concrete effort to realise this goal, even though it never went into effect.

After World War II, the Yugoslav Communist regime did not interrupt this political logic. Especially during the period of Aleksandar Rankoviq (194566), Albanians faced systematic pressure, arrests, seizures and continued pressures that sparked migration towards Turkey and Western European countries. Partial liberalisation after 1966 was the result of the Yugoslav federation's internal crises, rather than a moral revision of politics towards Albanians.

At the end of the 20th century, Slobodan Milosevic's regime restored ethnic cleansing as an instrument of state policy. During the Kosovo war (19981999), over 800,000 Albanians were forcibly expelled from their homes, and thousands of civilians were killed. This was not just a military strategy, but the ultimate attempt to violently resolve what Serbian politics, for decades, had called the Albanian “44x1>.

These developments cannot be understood without even analyzing the ideological dimension of Serbian nationalism. In this context, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts has represented, for decades, one of the most important centres for the formation of nationalist discours on the Albanian issue. The figure, like Jovan Cvijić, Ivo Andric and Vaso oubrilović, along with specific circles of the Serbian Academy, designed and promoted the idea of “resolving the Albanian issue” through the deportation of Albanians, colonising their lands and changing ethnic structures. In this sense, the academy did not remain just one scientific institution, but it became an ideological laboratory, where concepts that later materialised in state politics were articulated.

Therefore, the Serbian minister's statement should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as evidence that the shadow of the past continues to burden Serbian political opinion. Democratic societies build the future by acknowledging past crimes; nationalist ideology tries to build the future by justifying them. Since ethnic cleansing continues to be relatable or cloned by representatives of the State, the problem is not just a political declaration but the survival of a philosophy that has not yet been freed from the belief that violence can serve as an instrument of history. That is what makes the Serbian minister's statement not an individual deviation, but a disturbing reflection of the continuation of a political mind, the price of which the Balkans has paid hundreds of thousands of lives.