From Mid’hat Abdyl Frashëri
Memorie.al / The year 1928 represents for us a historical fiftieth anniversary of great importance: the beginning of the movements that would leave their deep imprint under the name of the League of Prizren – a movement that awakened and brought about the creation of the Albanian Society of Istanbul. The lack of publications in the Albanian language, as well as our not having in our hands today memoirs and notes written from that time, and also the fact that Albania was then visited and visitable by foreigners, lead us not to have the full material for reconstructing those events. For any historical study on this point, we are thus compelled to base ourselves on personal memory and on the few aids given to us by some very limited publications.
The League of Prizren was born from the Russo-Turkish War of the years 1877–78. Victorious Russia was preparing the dismemberment of Turkey, imposing its own conditions, detaching pieces of land – some directly in its own favor (in the south of the Caucasus), others for the small states of the Balkans, its clients and agents. Moreover, even while it took chunks from the body of Asiatic Turkey for itself, from the Balkans it threatened also Albanian land, for the benefit of a newly created state, and the Albanian soil alone for the three directly neighboring states.
This trap, suddenly opened under the feet of the Albanians, awakened a reaction that one might call physiological: it sounded the alarm and raised the potera [traditional armed muster], according to the vital custom of the people – a practice repeated whenever necessary, on every occasion. The League of Prizren, perhaps even at its head, was also a local manifestation against the secession of land in favor of Serbia and Bulgaria.
Here it is time to mention that by the phrase serving as the title of this article, we do not intend to indicate only the efforts made at the foot of Sharr, but also the patriotic manifestations of Janina and Shkodra. There is no doubt that the change projected in the territorial statute of Albania awakened an identical reaction, an instinctive defense, in those two other centers as well. Russia, on one hand, was bringing New Bulgaria as far as the Devoll and the Drin; on the other hand, it was gifting to Serbia Niš, Vranje, Kuršumlija, Leskovac, and to Montenegro – Podgorica, Spuž, Gusinje, Plav; likewise, foreseeing for Greece a gift from Epirus.
The three fronts of danger created three centers of resistance, from which – it is understood of itself – the two in the north would have the material supremacy, with the multitude of their population, the strategic strength of their position, and a certain relative independence vis-à-vis Turkey. But, on the other hand, the moderate and intellectual power would fall to that center which was in the south.
And indeed, while the north ignored, to a point, the maneuvers of the chess players, being far from their centers – i.e., not seeing them with their own eyes (for at that time propaganda and politics were played out in Petersburg and not in Belgrade) – Janina was a free field for Greek actions, and the aspirations of Hellenism saw no need to hide or mask themselves. Only Shkodra felt directly the pressure of Montenegro, due to the unceasing wars between the two nations.
The Russo-Turkish war came after the struggles of Germany and Italy for their national unity, according to the principles of nationality that had begun to be regarded as a preponderant element in the life of peoples and states. Thus, even Russia – which pursued a purely egoistic policy for its own growth, that Russia, we say, that took up arms more for religious principles, as a feud between the Cross and the Qur’an – at the end of the war was compelled to show national ideas, to seek the dismemberment of Turkey for the benefit of the various nationalities of Russia, in the name of humanity, of nations, of law, and not merely of force.
The new ideas were not at all unknown in Lower Albania: there, the patriotic epic of Garibaldi, the humanitarian ideas of Mazzini, had found an echo, a forum for discussion. Also in Janina, the war of 1870 had awakened a great interest, and it was natural that every movement, every new principle, would be followed with a practical curiosity in those centers where intellectualism was not lacking.
The day after the war, the arrival of the Russians at the gates of Istanbul and the imposition of their will through the Treaty of San Stefano, brought to light the danger threatening Turkey, whose survival in Rumelia was becoming very doubtful. This threat was even more specific for Albania: if the Ottoman Empire were to be eliminated as a state, the Albanian soil would be put at risk as a race, as a nation – precisely at a time when the rights of peoples and the principles of humanity were being discussed. Therefore, the Albanians, in their resistance and their complaints, had to base themselves on arguments of modern mentality.
And here we see the influence of the southern branch. In Prizren, the compact people, armed conscious of their material power and of their supremacy over the Slav element, based their hopes on the strength of numbers and the right of property. The south, less strong but more conscious of its rights as a race and as a nation, brought into balance the new principles that had overthrown old systems.
This influence of the southern delegate manifested itself also in a more definitive manner, giving the movement a common, general, pan-Albanian character, extracting it from the form of local claims for the small homeland, for the vilayet and the kaza. Now, thoughts were for all of Albania, for the motherland, for the south as well as the north, for Muslims and Christians, for every piece of the land and for every individual who spoke the Albanian language.
It was perhaps the first time that the flower of national consciousness was taking root in the crags of Albania, and it is understood of it that the new plant would develop in all its colors: from the present to the future there was but a single step to be taken. And the next day began to preoccupy the League and its branches more than the bad situation of the day: the life of the nation and the motherland had to be secured, by making this nation and this motherland have their rights recognized, respected in a manner equal to the rights of those peoples in whose favor it was sought to carve up Albanian soil.
The kushtrim [war cry] and the potera of old customs were being transformed into a diplomatic action; the simple and instinctive anxiety of the village was taking the form of a national and patriotic aspiration, with a higher and naturally more distant goal.
To many people, the League of Prizren may appear as one of those uprisings that our people has always had within itself, especially in the nineteenth century, with Ali Tepelena and the Bushatli family, as well as after them. But the difference lies in this point: in those movements, the initial impulse was the activity of a single man, relying on local tendencies necessitated by the circumstances of the day; this time, the initiative was taken by the people, and the aim was set upon the whole ethnographic Albania, upon the day of action, as well as upon the future time.
The League did not merely want the non-dismemberment of Albania; it also demanded that the Albanian land be recognized as Albania, that its rights be defined, its life respected – in a word, an autonomous region, with adapted administration and rule. It was a colossal enterprise, with innumerable difficulties, internally and externally, within the body of the people and, even more, on the part of the ruler in Istanbul. At the beginning of the movement, Turkey showed a certain satisfaction, seeing in the Albanians a defender of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
But the nationalist and autonomist aspirations of the Albanians – perhaps more than anything else, the collaboration of all Albania and of all religious elements – made Turkey see in the awakening of our mountains a greater enemy than the Russian armies or the greed of the Balkan states. And the brutal Turkish force was not slow to manifest itself in Ulcinj as well as in Kačanik.
The Turkish mentality at that time did not accept a national idea, a common aspiration, and a union of the Albanians; the Sultan’s policy was based on division and schism. The hope of rule was built upon antagonism between Tosks and Ghegs, Christians and Muslims. It accepted that our highlanders would fight for their homes and pastures, but not for a moral ethnicity called the motherland.
Undoubtedly, there will not be lacking people who do not know the course of events, or who have been swept away by the currents of interested neighbors’ statements, and who believe or have believed that the League is a creation of the Turkish government. What we have said above is an answer to such people.
Can it be said that the League’s action remained barren?
An action, an effort, is always fruitful; it is the birth and beginning of a new existence, even if it does not yield an immediate result. In this world, the striving to achieve a goal perhaps has a greater importance and value than the goal itself. A struggle today is the capital stored for the future; a living power that remains is exercised every minute and manifests itself forcefully in times of need.
And even so, the League – besides having as its fruit the delay of the boundary delimitation in Epirus in Greece’s favor, and then the salvation of that large piece of Albania – also had an even greater gain: it prepared our common destiny, gave a new meaning to the people’s aspirations.
From that day, truly, begins the hope of salvation, of a happier life, in a definite form; from then on, the idea embodied by the word Albania takes on a clear shape; aspirations for a marked goal are incubated and matured. Localism and cantonism give way to patriotism; divisive and alienating tendencies begin to weigh toward a single point; the regions and elements that had considered themselves separate and foreign to one another begin to become alike and feel solidarity. In a word, the tribes become a nation.
This incubation of spirit and desires, the creation of this new character, could not happen without a persevering and long education, based on moral and intellectual training. And a no less valuable fruit of the League of Prizren was for us the creation of the “Society for the Printing of Albanian Letters.”
Forgotten, despised as a patois, viewed not as a tool of civilization but perhaps as an obstacle to progress, the Albanian language – with the establishment of the Istanbul Society – begins to become alive and spirit-giving, to be an organ for conveying ideas and aspirations, to awaken feelings and inspire thoughts.
What we see today, what we expect from the future, what we have the right to demand from expectation, flows from the Literary Society, born from the movement of the League of Prizren. / Memorie.al
Published in the newspaper “DITURIJA”, 1928
