By Isuf B. Bajrami
Part Three
Memorie.al / Treated as an objective necessity, upon the fulfillment of which the success of the struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule and for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the homeland would depend, the idea of the political and military unity of the Albanian people was developed by our distinguished enlighteners throughout the entire National Awakening (Rilindja), was placed at the center of this era, and became an inseparable part of the political platform of the Albanian National Movement. The path of the Albanian people towards national unification and the formation of an independent state undoubtedly had its own characteristics, in comparison with other countries of the Balkans and Europe, conditioned by historical, socio-economic, and internal and external political circumstances.
Continued from the previous issue
These were progressive views and they remain ever fresh; they serve as evidence to counter both the anti-Albanian concepts of those foreign “scholars” who interpreted the division of Albanians into three religions as a division into “three groups,” for each of which religion supposedly served as a “national flag,” as well as the distortions that propaganda, by reviving medieval caliphate and patriarchal concepts, has made in our days regarding the current state of the Albanian nation.
The extraordinary efforts of the Rilindas (National Awakening activists) are credited with that political unification of the Albanian people, without distinction of religion or region, which was realized during the years of the League of Prizren (1878–1881) and was maintained throughout the entire Rilindja. The decisions of the League and all its activities, Sami Frashëri noted in 1878, “were inspired by patriotism, love of country… and were based on the principle of nationality and not on religious fanaticism.” (“Terxhumani Shark”, June 17/19, 1878, no. 81, p. 3). This unity of Albanians of all three faiths was deeply rooted in the conscience of the Albanian nation and was a truth affirmed even in contemporary foreign documentation.
In the reports that officials of the Ottoman administration in Albania sent to the Sublime Porte, they noted that between Albanian Muslims, who constituted the majority of the population, and Christians, there existed a union with ancient traditions that had stood the test of time, and that this unity would continue into the future. The Ottoman officials attributed this unity of Albanians of all three faiths to the national devotion and patriotism of the Albanians, who, as they emphasized, were so strong that changes in religion could not weaken them at all. (K. Prifti; The Albanian League of Prizren in Ottoman Documents 1878–1881, Tirana, 1978, doc. 40).
The contribution given in the fight against clerical reaction for the national unification of the Albanian people by a whole generation of patriots at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is well known, consisting of Jani Vreto, Shahin Kolonja, Fan Noli, Aleksandër Drenova, Çajupi, Aleksandër Xhuvani, Hilë Mosi, Nikollë Ivanaj, Petro Nini Luarasi, Bajram and Çerçiz Topulli, Dervish Hima, Mihal Grameno, etc., who, following the course charted by the League of Prizren and its founders, unmasked in many articles, published in the patriotic press of the time, the divisive activity of the clergy of all three faiths. In their views and activities, the fight against religious divisions, sown by the clergy, occupied as important a place as the resistance against the Ottoman rulers and other external enemies. They saw the clergy as an enemy just as dangerous as the Ottoman Empire. (“Kombi”, Boston, no. 58, October 25, 1907).
The comprehensive struggle of the Rilindas to unmask clerical reaction was an important political factor in the national movement, which bore its fruits in strengthening the unity of the Albanian people. Although the Ottoman rulers and other foreign powers created obstacles for the Albanian National Movement, in the face of the strength of Albanian unity, they did not succeed in dividing them and setting them against each other. As Pashko Vasa noted with satisfaction, between Muslim and Christian Albanians there had never been “ingrained enmity nor even centuries-old hostility,” because “religious differences have not been a cause for pressing them into division” (P. Vasa, cited work, p. 91).
It is a historically proven truth, which did not escape Sami Frashëri’s observation, that Albanians “have not known those quarrels, religious wars, great and terrible massacres that have occurred” not only in the countries of the East, but also “in the civilized countries of Europe” (Sami Frashëri; Albania…, pp. 45–46).
The absence of such religious fanaticism, which Jani Vreto in his Apology attributed to Albanians of all faiths and especially to Muslims (Jani Vreto, Selected Works, Tirana, 1973, p. 225), and their possession of national sentiment above religious sentiment, constituted for the Rilindas, and not only for them but also for the entire movement that developed afterwards, the basis for uniting all forces of the Albanian nation in the struggle for national liberation and the defense of the country’s independence.
The Declaration of Independence and the formation of the national state on November 28, 1912, constitute a landmark event that will remain unforgettable in the history of our nation, not only for the consequences it had for the future, but also for the strength of the political unity of Albanians in the face of the new and extremely dangerous Balkan invaders. It was the work of the entire Albanian people and of hundreds of patriots acting within its midst. “In the name of all the people, Muslim and Christian, in the name of all Albania and the Albanian nation, [he] declared Independence, on November 25–28, 1912, under the mouths of the rifles and cannons of the invading armies” (The Provisional Government of Vlora and its Activities, Tirana, 1963, docs. 3, 6–9, 11, 13).
The Assembly of Vlora itself, which declared independence and formed the Provisional Government, both in its composition and in the decisions it took, had a pan-Albanian character and expressed the centuries-old aspirations of the entire nation to unite in its own national state. The participation in it of delegates from all the cities of Albania, including those occupied by the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Greek armies, gave this Assembly the character of a pan-Albanian National Assembly. This was at the same time proof of the determination of all Albanians to form a unique state, in which all the lands inhabited by them would be included.
This determination was expressed by the Albanians of Kosovo, Shkup, Dibra, and other regions, led by a unique military-political nucleus composed of Hasan Prishtina, Isa Boletini, Bajram Curri, Idriz Seferi, Sali Gjuka, Ramadan Zaskoci, Isuf Xhelili, etc., not only through the delegates they sent to the Assembly of Vlora, but also through the unparalleled resistance they mounted everywhere against the Serbo-Montenegrin armies, which had surged into Albanian territories.
These were not merely local battles for the defense of the cities of Kosovo, but a resistance undertaken to preserve the integrity of the entire Albanian soil or, as the patriots expressed it in the declaration sent to the Great Powers in October 1912, “to guarantee the territorial entirety of Albania,” “to see the Albanian lands united, with one form of government and political rule” (Acts of the Rilindja…, doc. 169).
Viewed from the perspective of the contribution it gave to the national unification of the Albanian people, the government of Ismail Qemali occupies an important place in the history of our people. With its creation and that of the national state itself, Albanians secured that leading center which they had lacked for about five centuries, and which, as the patriotic press expressed it, “would unite under the flag of Albania all the Albanian people” (A. Puto, Albanian Independence and the Diplomacy of the Great Powers 1912–1914, Tirana, 1978, pp. 126–127; “Liri e Shqipërisë”, Sofia, July 22, 1913).
Although it did not have a long life, the Government of Vlora and the patriotic forces that gathered around it conducted intense activity, emerging united both domestically and internationally against the expansionist ambitions of the neighboring monarchies and the unjust decisions of the Conference of Ambassadors held in London in 1912–1913. The Provisional Government opposed the decisions of the London Conference because they clashed with the legitimate aspirations of the Albanians, who, as emphasized in the declarations of this Government, as “the most compact and most homogeneous ethnic grouping in the Balkan Peninsula,” had the right to form their own united states, because those decisions did not take into account the principle of nationality, but replaced it with “the right of war and conquest.”
In the territories occupied by the Serbian armies, the protest against the unjust decisions of the London Conference was accompanied by an uprising against the Serbo-Montenegrin yoke that broke out in Dibra in September 1913, and spread during October to Ohrid, Struga, Tetovo, the Highlands of Gjakova, Prizren, and other regions of Kosovo. In the appeals addressed to the Great Powers, on October 15, 1913, the insurgents of Dibra and Kosovo raised their voices against the crimes of the Serbo-Montenegrin army, which drowned Albanian villages in blood, turned them into crematoriums where hundreds of women and children were burned alive, and demanded from Europe, as a means of salvation, “to give them the right to live freely in their united homeland” (The Provisional Government of Vlora…, doc. 322; see also D. Tucović, Serbia and Albania, Prishtina, 1968, pp. 82–84).
The uprising of September 1913 was the first spark of that mass movement that would develop, in the years 1918–1925, in Kosovo and other territories annexed by Yugoslavia, under the leadership of the Committee “National Defense of Kosovo.” The struggle of our people for the defense of the country’s territorial integrity and for national unification has never violated the rights of other Balkan peoples. Ismail Qemali and the Albanian patriots called upon their compatriots to liberate themselves from the rule of the Ottoman Empire and to secure complete national unification.
But they could not accept that this struggle be waged to the detriment of Albanians, by hindering their national unification and severely mutilating their lands and population, by massacring and displacing hundreds of thousands of Albanians from their ancestral hearths. Such “solutions” to the national question in the Balkans, which are also defended and justified by the contemporary historiography of neighboring countries, were imposed by the “interests of the bourgeoisie” and the “dynastic interests” of the Balkan monarchies, as well as by the reactionary, imperialist bourgeoisie of Europe that “incites chauvinism and national hostility” among peoples.
It was Serbia and the other neighboring Balkan monarchies that, not satisfied with the severe mutilation of Albanian territories at the London Conference in 1913, attempted by military force and diplomatic means to liquidate the independent Albanian state in its infancy. A synthesis of the policy of Serbia and of the Yugoslavia that was subsequently created, which also fits the stance of the other Balkan monarchies, was given by the official of the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry, Ivan Vukotić, in the report sent to his government in 1939.
“We,” he wrote, “have never had sympathy for them (meaning: for the Albanians)… In our political and diplomatic combinations, as well as in our Balkan policy, we have constantly aimed to fight all Albanian demands for the creation of an independent state, simply for the reason that this state could only be established against us and against our national goals” (B. Krizman, Study by Dr. Ivo Andrić on Albania in 1939. In “Časopis za Sovremenu Povijest”, Zagreb, Godina IX, 1977, no. 2(24)).
The danger of the final dismemberment of our nation, of the disappearance of the independent Albanian state, which emerged with full force during the First World War, and especially during the proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920, could only be countered if Albanians appeared before it as a united and compact people with their own government, which would officially represent the Albanian state.
The agreement reached at this Conference, on January 13–14, 1920, by the representatives of England, France, and Italy for the partition of Albania between Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia, according to the clauses of the Treaty of London of April 26, 1915, caused great and legitimate concern throughout the Albanian people, gave a new and powerful impetus to the various social forces of the country to draw closer to one another, to strengthen political unity, and to convene the Congress of Lushnjë in January 1920.
This was a pan-Albanian assembly, as stated in its documents, the fruit of “the conclusion of a general agreement of all the regions of Albania,” which undertook the task of “strengthening the unity and brotherhood among Albanians, to secure full self-government for Albania and the unity of all Albanians” (M. Çami; *The Struggle of the Albanian People for National Liberation (collection of documents)*, Tirana, 1976, Volume II, doc. 1).
What characterized the Congress of Lushnjë and the National Government of Sulejman Delvina was the rallying around it of all the patriotic forces of the people and of the Albanian territories. “Never in its history,” declared Aqif Pashë Elbasani on that day, “has the Albanian nation been as united as it is today, with an unwavering desire to have its own government, according to the formula ‘Albania for the Albanians'” (Ibid., Volume II, doc. 89).
Simultaneously with the efforts made on the international level, before the Paris Peace Conference, against the negotiations for the partition of Albania among the three neighboring states and for the country’s full independence, the new government, established in Tirana in February 1920, consistently continued the work begun by Ismail Qemali; it united one after another the various regions of the homeland.
But Vlora with its surrounding region, which still remained under Italian occupation, also had to be liberated, and the blood of hundreds of other fighters had to be shed to accomplish the work of national unification. The war for the liberation of Vlora has entered the history of Albania as a glorious epic, in which the strength of the unity of the Albanian people for the defense of the integrity and independence of the homeland was displayed in all its grandeur. The Albanian press wrote in those days: “The War of Vlora is a common cause linked to the life of Albania” (“Populli”, Shkodër, July 17, 1919; “Drita”, Gjirokastër, June 16, 1920, and July 31, 1920).
In the bloody and unequal battles that took place in June–July 1920 against a numerous and heavily armed army, in Drashovicë, Kotë, Kaninë, Gjormë, Llogara, Tepelenë, and within Vlora itself, together with the peasants and citizens of these regions who constituted the main nucleus of the Albanian forces, an entire nation was involved, all of Albania, thousands of volunteers from all parts of the country, not only from the nearby regions of Berat and Gjirokastër, but also from Tirana, Elbasan, Korça, Peqin, Kavaja, Shijak, Kruja, Mat, Dibra, Gramsh, etc. (The Struggle of the Albanian People…, Volume II, doc. 323).
It was the compactness, the unity of action, the courage, the fiery patriotism that the Albanian people displayed in the armed struggle of Vlora, those factors that invalidated the infamous Treaty of London of April 26, 1915, as well as the anti-Albanian projects of the Peace Conference, those factors that preserved the independent Albanian state within the borders of 1913.
Although they belong to a somewhat distant period, these projects of the Albanian patriots for national unification always carry a contemporary accent. With the echo they radiated in subsequent periods, with the indelible traces they left in the political thought and practical activity of the later democratic and revolutionary movement, they constitute a valuable heritage, which passed from generation to generation as a great lesson and testament that past history left to the present and the future of our people. / Memorie.al
