Serbo-Montenegrins in Albania


The Serb-Montenegrin community in Albania are one of the recognized national minorities in Albania. In the latest census, citizens had the option to declare as "Montenegrins". The population was concentrated in the region of Vraka, but largely emigrated in the 1990s. Then, estimations ranged between 2,000 according to independent monitoring and 30,000 according to the Serbian government The community is bilingual and by majority adhere to Eastern Orthodoxy, while a minority professes Islam. The majority of the Serbo-Montenegrin community came to Albania from Montenegro during the interwar Zogist period following 1926 and later from 1938 until 1948.

Terminology

The community is commonly known as Serbs-Montenegrins, "Serbs" or "Montenegrins".
It has also been called the Serbo-Montenegrin minority or simply Serbo-Montenegrins.

Demographics

In the late 19th and 20th century, of the 600-700 people of the Orthodox faith living in the city of Shkodër, some 500-600 were Serbo-Montenegrins. The area of Vraka had a population of 600-700 Orthodox Slavophones.
During the first World War occupying Austro-Hungarian forces conducted a census of parts of Albania they held. Of the area corresponding to the contemporary wider Shkodër region, settlements that listed Slavophone populations within them had the following ethnic and religious demographics:
Linguists Klaus Steinke and Xhelal Ylli consider the overall census results to be first instance of reliable information on the number of households and inhabitants as well as the ethnic and religious composition of these places. Both linguists however note that the data for Boriç and Rrash-Kullaj are somewhat unclear as the inhabitants are referred to there as both Albanians and Orthodox.
In the Albanian census of 1989, there was no accurate data about the minority population of Vraka.
In the early 1990s due to a lack of documents and data and access to archives and statistical literature about the community, scholar Slobodan Šćepanović resorted to collecting information through interviews with individual Albanian immigrants and Albanian citizens of the region that came to Yugoslavia. From that process the following information about the community was gathered by Šćepanović.
At the time in Shkodër County, the Vraka region is where most of the community lived:
The official statistics of the Albanian government placed the Montenegrin community at 100, as some Albanian government officials stated that those numbers were accurate due to 700 of them leaving Albania during the democratisation process. The Association of Montenegrins, a social-cultural organisation founded in Vraka claimed some 1,000 members that represented the interests of a community of 2,500 people located in Shkodër and the surrounding area. AM during that time urged the Albanian government to recognise the Montenegrin and Serb communities in Albania and allow certain linguistic, education, cultural and other rights. In 1999 the Helsinki Committee for Human rights in Albania conducted surveys of the Shkodër region and estimated that there were some 1800-2000 Serbian-speakers in the area. In 2000, the Albanian Helsinki Committee estimated that there were ca. 2,000 "Serb–Montenegrin" people in Albania.
In the mid 2000s, scholar Nikolai Genov estimated the minority community of Vraka to number some 2,000 people. The Morača-Rozafa Association had 4,000 members in 2009, whereas its president Pavle Brajović claimed a number closer to 30,000. The 2011 census in Albania was boycotted by the national minorities. According to the Assembly for the Diaspora, the Serb minority in Albania number ca. 30,000 people.
Smaller communities live outside northern Albania. Several hundred families live in Durrës and Tirana. There is a significant minority community of Serbs in the town of Fier and in two nearby settlements of Retli Busha and Hamir that migrated there between the early to mid 20th century. These communities of the Fier area are either Orthodox or declare as Serbs of the Muslim faith and have local cultural associations that work within the community toward Serbian language revitalization efforts.
During the early 2010s linguists Klaus Steinke and Xhelal Ylli seeking to corroborate villages cited in past literature as being Slavic speaking carried out fieldwork in settlements of the area. Of the Shkodër area exists seven villages with a Slavophone population that speak a Montenegrin dialect.

Ottoman period

Many towns with historical Serb population derive their name from the early Middle Ages when Slavs ruled Albania.
With short interruptions, the territory that later became a part of Sanjak of Scutari in the Ottoman Empire, belonged to the Slavic medieval feudal states for many centuries. The South Slavs began raiding Byzantine territories in the 520s and had conquered Durrës and most of Epirus and Macedonia in 548. According to Emperor Constantine VII the early Serbs lived in the former Roman provinces of Dalmatia, Praevalitana and Moesia. During the rule of Časlav Klonimirović, most of Albania was part of Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire. After the Byzantine annexation of Raška, the Serbian principality of Duklja succeeded as the main Serb state and it included much of the land north of Durrës, with Shkodër being an important city. Khan Samuel of Bulgaria had by 997 conquered all of Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and most of modern Albania. Jovan Vladimir ruled Duklja during the war between Byzantine Emperor Basil II and Samuel. Vladimir allegedly retreated into Koplik when Samuel invaded Duklja, and was subsequently forced to accept Bulgarian vassalage. Vladimir was later slewn by the Bulgars, and received a cult; Shingjon, which is celebrated by the Albanian Orthodox Christians. In 1018 Basil II conquered most of the Balkans and established the Archbishopric of Ohrid for the South Slavs. In the 1030s, Stefan Vojislav expelled the last strategos and defeated the Byzantines, then set up Shkodër as his capital. Constantine Bodin accepted the crusaders of the Crusade of 1101 in Shkodër. After the dynastic struggles in the 12th century, Shkodër became part of the Nemanjić Zeta province. In 1330 Stefan Uroš III appointed his son Stefan Dušan as the "Young King" and ruler of Zeta seated in Shkodër. According to the study of a Serbian chrysobull dating 1330, northern Albania was populated by Orthodox Serbs and several town names attest to a prominence of Serbs: Trebo polje, Bajbane, Luzane, Gorane, Buljane etc. During the fall of the Serbian Empire, Shkodër was taken by the Balšić family of Zeta who surrendered the city to Venice, in order to form protection zone from the Ottoman Empire. During Venetian rule the city adopted the Statutes of Scutari, a civic law written in Venetian, which also contained Albanian elements such as Besa and Gjakmarrja. Principality of Zeta, a former Ottoman vassal, lost its status as an independent state and was largely incorporated into the Sanjak of Scutari in 1499. In 1514, this territory was separated from the Sanjak of Scutari and established as a separate sanjak, under the rule of Skenderbeg Crnojević. When he died in 1528, the Sanjak of Montenegro was reincorporated into the Sanjak of Scutari as a unique administrative unit with certain degree of autonomy. The first Ottoman censuses show such substantial presence of Slavic toponyms.

Early modern

Montenegrins and Serbs began migrating to Vraka in the late 17th century. From confirmed documents, one of the first families to inhabit the area of Vraka was in 1705 were the Đurčevići from the village of Momče in Kuči. A certain Jerko Đurčević was the only one from his clan in Vraka to convert to Islam. His descendants later became known as the Jerkovići, who are found in the village of Štoj, near Ulcinj.

Modern

In 1828, a Serbian school was opened in Shkodra, which Nikola Musulin attended.
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was not certain "how far there are Serbs in Albania and Macedonia".
During the Montenegrin–Ottoman War, the Montenegrin army managed to capture certain areas and settlements along the border, and incorporated them into the state such as the town of Podgorica that had a significant Slavic Muslim population. The Muslim population of Podgorica fled and Slavic Muslims from the town migrated and resettled in Shkodër city and its environs. From 1878 onward a small Muslim Montenegrin speaking community living near Shkodër exists and are known as Podgoriçani, due to their origins from Podgorica in Montenegro.
In 1909, the Eparchy of Raška–Prizren had 15 protopresbyteriates, the last of which was Skadar, in which the parishes of:
In the late Ottoman period, the French consul of Shkodër noted the sentiments of the people of Vraka wanting to be united with Montenegro, though this was not achievable due to the distance of Vraka from the then border.
According to Jovan Cvijić apart from the areas of Vraka having Serbs, he claimed that the Elbasan and Korça regions contained Serb populated villages. Cvijić claimed that Serbs had been "Albanized" in Cermenikë, Bulqizë, Mokër and the Malësi highlands while the greatest concentration of Serbs according to him were Islamised ones located in the Gollobordë region in Albania. Cvijić stated that a student of his recorded that in one of the villages of the Kastrati tribe, Kamicë, the majority of the population were Orthodox Serbs.
In 1918, besides the Serb Orthodox in Scutari, there were communities in different neighbouring villages such as Vraka, Vramenica, Derigniat, etc., as well as several thousands of Slavic Muslims of Montenegrin and Bosnia-Herzegovina origin. With the establishment of Yugoslavia, almost all of the ethnic Serbs had been united into one state, except for those scattered in Hungary, Romania and a small number in Albania. In 1920, the following villages had Serb majority or plurality: "Brch, Basits, Vraka, Sterbets, Kadrum" and farming was the chief occupation.
According to Russian consulate Ivan Yastrebov's estimations published in 1874, there were 80.000 Catholic males, 20.000 Orthodox males, and 9.500 Muslim males in the Sanjak of Scutari. The majority of the population spoke the Albanian language. He asserted that the Orthodox, and a number of Catholics and Muslims spoke the Serbian language.
In 1939 there were ca. 4,000 Serbs west of Ohrid, and several villages were inhabited by Serbian refugees.
According to Jovan Erdeljanović, in his book "Stara Crna Gora", all descendants of Jovan Martinović, who has been mentioned since 1687, have emigrated to Vraka.
During the interwar period, relations between King Zog and Yugoslavia were less problematic and Yugoslav-Albanian borders allowed for the free movement of populations. The majority of the Serbo-Montenegrin community came to Albania from Montenegro during the interwar Zogist period following 1926 and later from 1938 until 1948. At the time Vraka contained poor land and was still an undeveloped area. Unlike the Albanian inhabitants of the area, the new population from Montenegro had skills in operating the iron plough and motor vehicles to cultivate the land.
The Serbian minority in Scutari had celebrated its liturgy in Serbian. The Serbian Metropolitan of Scutari participated in the Albanian Synod.
In 1921, Albanian government declared that the Greeks were to be registered as a minority, the Orthodox Serbs however were to register themselves as Albanians in a two-year period. In the Albanian census the Greeks numbered 15,000 while Serbs and Bulgarians numbered 200 families. During the time of 1921-1928 the Serb community in Albania was strengthened through efforts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which opened several Serbian private schools in 1923-1924 of which the school of Vrake had 72 pupils in 1930, three schools in Shkodra. An ethnic Serb football team existed in Shkodra that competed in the Albanian league. Two youth organizations existed in Shkodra. The formation of Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania weakened the Serbs and Greeks in the country. The active 14 churches and Monastery were slowly closed by the Albanian government. The Serb school in Vrake was destroyed in 1934.
Vraka is known for having been the place where poet Millosh Gjergj Nikolla became teacher on 23 April 1933, and it was in this period that he started to write prose sketches and verses.
Following the liberation of the Balkan states, Serbs from Albania began to migrate to Serbia and Montenegro. A period of migration occurred between 1925 and 1934. This wave marked the return of many Montenegrin families to Montenegro, leaving their homes in Vraka behind.

Socialist Albania (1944–1992)

As part of assimilation politics during the rule of communist regime in Albania, Serb-Montenegrins were not allowed to have Serbian names, especially family names ending with the characteristic suffix "ich". Many Serbs took simple words as surnames: Druri, Arra, Guri, Hekuri, Qershia, Dritarja.
Enver Hoxha decided to destroy the Serbian cemeteries and 2 of the Serb temples. In 1966, the state abolished religion, and in 1968 the state forced parents to name their children with contemporary and revolutionary names. The surnames were forcibly changed by the Albanian government, from Slavic into Albanian ones, as part of Albanianization.
After the 1981 student protest in Kosovo, Albanian Serbs complained on harassment and pressure to leave the country.

Contemporary

In 1990 most of the minority community of Vraka went to Montenegro. As the border opened up, many members of the community left between March-December 1991 for Montenegro and Vraka, Boriç and other nearby areas became severely depopulated. During that time with economic problems and tensions arising in areas of the former Yugoslavia, it made some 600 of them return home to Albania.The Morača-Rozafa Association was established in 1992.
During the Yugoslav Wars, there were incidents of violence against the Serb-Montenegrin minority in places like Vraka, Boriç i Vogël and Boriç i Madh, where the Albanian government tried to forcibly take land from them. There were reports that the Albanian government also attempted to forcibly resettle Serb-Montenegrins and Podgoriçani from Boriç i Vogël, Boriç i Madh, Vraka and other places.
In March 1992, as part of state policy by Serbia and Montenegro to increase the numbers of Serbs in Kosovo, nearly 3,000 people from the Serb minority in Albania emigrated to the region after accepting a government offer for employment and housing in the area. Another wave came with the Kosovo War.
In the early twenty first century, the community lives largely on trade with Montenegro and communal relations with Albanian inhabitants are regarded as good by many of its members.
As of 2004 there is an active Serbian school, which is led by Svetozar Ćiraković who came to Albania after he was sacked for refusing to teach Montenegrin to his pupils.
In recent years representatives of Serbo-Montenegrin community and independent researchers have stated the minority is still facing discrimination and Albanisation.

Notable people