"The Expulsion of Albanians"

The Author: Born in 1897, Vasa Cubrilovic was a 17-year-old member of the Serbian nationalist group that staged the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Spared execution because of his age, Cubrilovic spent World War I in prison and then returned to Belgrade to study and work in the government of what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. By the 1930s, he was a professor of history at Belgrade University, where he taught for 40 years, eventually becoming the head of his department and later the director of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences Institute for Balkan Studies. Vasa Cubrilovic was the author of vicious plans to rid Yugoslavia of the Kosovar Albanians. Cubrilovic first presented his ideas to the Serbian Cultural Club, an organization of Belgrade intellectuals. On March 7,1937, he submitted "The Expulsion of the Albanians" to the government as a secret memorandum.

The Plan: "From 1918 onwards it was the task of our present state to destroy the remainder of the Albanian triangle [Kosova]. It did not do this.The only way and the only means to cope with them is the brute force of an organized state." Cubrilovic suggested that Albania and Turkey would be the best places to ship Kosovar Albanians.

But, if Tirana objected to the deportation, "the Albanian Government should be informed that we shall stop at nothing to achieve our final solution to this question." ".to bring about the relocation of a whole population, the first prerequisite is the creation of the suitable psychosis. This can be created in many ways .including bribing and threatening the Albanian clergy, propaganda, and coercion by the state apparatus." "The law must be enforced to the letter so as to make staying intolerable for the Albanians: fines, and imprisonment, the ruthless application of all police dispositions, such as the prohibition of smuggling, cutting forests, damaging agriculture, leaving dogs unchained, compulsory labor and any other measure that an experienced police force can contrive.

From the Economic aspect: The refusal to recognize the old land deeds,... requisitioning of all state and communal pastures,... the withdrawal of permits to exercise a profession, dismissal from the state, private and communal offices, etc., will hasten the process of their removal.... When it comes to religion the Albanians are very touchy, therefore they must be harassed on this score, too. This can be achieved through ill-treatment of their clergy, the destruction of their clergy, the destruction of their cemeteries, the prohibition of polygamy, and especially the inflexible application of the law compelling girls to attend elementary schools, wherever they are .... We should distribute weapons to our colonists, as need be.... In particular, a tide of Montenegrins should be launched from the mountain pastures in order to create a large-scale conflict with the Albanians in [Kosova]. This conflict should be prepared by means of our trusted people. It should be encouraged and this can be done more easily since, in fact, Albanians have revolted, while the whole affair should be presented as a conflict between clans and, if need be, ascribed to economic reasons. Finally, local riots can be incited. These will be bloodily suppressed with the most effective means.... There remains one more means, which Serbia employed with great practical effect after 1878, that is, by secretly burning down villages and city quarters."