Gazimestan speech

In the years leading up to the speech, Kosovo had become a central issue in Serbian politics. The province had been given extensive rights of autonomy in the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution and had been run by the province's majority-Albanian population. The reassertion of Albanian nationalism, discrimination against Serbs by the province's predominantly Albanian police force and local government, and a worsening economy led to a large number (around 100,000 between 1961–87) of Serbs and Montenegrins leaving the area by the late-1980s although there is no official, non-Serbian, data regarding that issue. Milošević had used the issue to secure the leadership of the League of Communists of Serbia in 1987, and in early 1989, he pushed through a new constitution that drastically reduced the autonomy of Kosovo and the northern autonomous province of Vojvodina. This was followed by the mass replacement of opposing communist leaders in the provinces, called the Anti-bureaucratic revolution. Many Albanians were killed in March 1989 when demonstrations against the new constitution were violently suppressed by Serbian security forces. By June 1989, Kosovo was calm but its atmosphere was tense. The speech was the climax of the commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. It followed months of commemorative events, which had been promoted by an intense media focus on the subject of Serbia's relationship with Kosovo. A variety of Serbian dramatists, painters, musicians and filmmakers had highlighted key motifs of the Kosovo legend, particularly the theme of the betrayal of Serbia. Public "Rallies for Truth" were organised by Kosovo Serbs between mid-1988 and early 1989 at which symbols of Kosovo were prominently displayed. The common theme was that Serbs outside Kosovo and outside Serbia itself should know the truth about the predicament of the Kosovo Serbs, emotionally presented as an issue of the utmost national importance. Serb-inhabited towns competed with each other to stage ever-more patriotic rallies to gain favour from the new "patriotic leadership", thus helping to further increase nationalist sentiments. ; his remains were carried in procession around Serb-inhabited territories in the months prior to the rally. The event was also invested with major religious significance. In the months preceding the Gazimestan rally, the remains of Prince Lazar of Serbia, who had fallen in the Battle of Kosovo, were carried in a heavily-publicized procession around the Serb-inhabited territories of Yugoslavia. Throngs of mourners queued for hours to see the relics and attend commemorative public rallies, vowing in speeches never to allow Serbia to be defeated again. At the end of the tour, the relics were reinterred in the Gračanica Monastery in Kosovo, near Gazimestan. The 28 June 1989 event was attended by a crowd estimated at between half-a-million and two million people (most estimates put the figure at around a million). They were overwhelmingly Serbs, many of whom had been brought to Gazimestan on hundreds of special coaches and trains organized by Milošević's League of Communists of Serbia. The attendees came from Serbia but also all of the Serb-inhabited parts of Yugoslavia and even from overseas. Around seven thousand diaspora Serbs from Australia, Canada and the United States also attended at the invitation of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The speech was attended by a variety of dignitaries from the Serbian and Yugoslav establishment. They included the entire leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church, led by German, Serbian Patriarch; the Prime Minister Ante Marković; members of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia; the leadership of the Yugoslav People's Army; and members of the rotating Presidency of Yugoslavia. The event was boycotted by the Croatian member of the Presidency, Stipe Šuvar, as well as the United States ambassador and all ambassadors from the European Community and NATO countries with the exception of Turkey (which had a direct interest in the event as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire). After being escorted through cheering crowds waving his picture alongside that of Lazar, Milošević delivered his speech on a huge stage with a backdrop containing powerful symbols of the Kosovo myth: images of peonies, a flower traditionally deemed to symbolize the blood of Lazar, and an Orthodox cross with a Cyrillic letter "S" (rendered as "С" in Cyrillic) at each of its four corners, standing for the slogan (, ). ==Content==

The message Milošević delivered in the speech was essentially one that he had already been promoting for some time. On 19 November 1988, he had told a "Brotherhood and Unity" rally in Belgrade: "None should be surprised that Serbia raised its head because of Kosovo this summer. Kosovo is the pure centre of its history, culture and memory. Every nation has one love that warms its heart. For Serbia it is Kosovo."' A similar theme characterised his speech at Gazimestan. Anthropologist Edit Petrović comments that Milošević sought to combine "history, memory and continuity", promoting "the illusion that the Serbs who fought against the Turks in Kosovo in 1389 are somehow the same as the Serbs fighting for Serbian national survival today". According to James Gow, the objective was to further Milošević's political campaign, which was "predicated on the notion of redressing this mood of victimisation and restoring the sense of Serbian pride and, most important of all, power". At the beginning of the speech, Milošević mentioned the battle and concluded that it is "through the play of history of life" that "Serbia regained its state, national, and spiritual integrity" He maintained that disunity among Serbian political leaders meant that they were "prone to compromise to the detriment of its own people, a compromise that "could not be accepted historically and ethically by any nation in the world ... here we are now at the field of Kosovo to say that this is no longer the case". After issuing a call for "unity, solidarity, and cooperation among people", Milošević delivered the speech's most controversial passage: :"Six centuries later, now, we are being again engaged in battles and are facing battles. They are not armed battles, although such things cannot be excluded yet. However, regardless of what kind of battles they are, they cannot be won without resolve, bravery, and sacrifice, without the noble qualities that were present here in the field of Kosovo in the days past. Our chief battle now concerns implementing the economic, political, cultural, and general social prosperity, finding a quicker and more successful approach to a civilization in which people will live in the 21st century." In the final paragraph, Milošević addressed the relation between Serbia and Europe. He portrayed Medieval Serbia as the defender of its own territory and of all of Europe in the fight against the Ottomans: "Six centuries ago, Serbia heroically defended itself in the field of Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. Serbia was at that time the bastion that defended the European culture, religion, and European society in general". Writer Arne Johan Vetlesen has commented that it was an appeal "to the values of Europe, meaning to Christianity, to modernity, to Civilization with a capital C, exploit[ing] Orientalist sentiments and help[ing] to amplify the Balkanism widespread in Western governments." and stressed, "In this spirit we now endeavor to build a society, rich and democratic, and thus to contribute to the prosperity of this beautiful country, this unjustly suffering country, but also to contribute to the efforts of all the progressive people of our age that they make for a better and happier world." He concluded the speech with: :"Let the memory of Kosovo heroism live forever! :Long live Serbia! :Long live Yugoslavia! :Long live peace and brotherhood among peoples!" ==Reception==

The speech was enthusiastically received by the crowds at Gazimestan, who were reported to have shouted "Kosovo is Serb". Matija Bećković, a well-known poet and academic, praised the event as "the culmination of the Serb national revolt, in Kosovo as the equator of the Serb planet.... On this six hundredth anniversary of the Kosovo battle, we must emphasise that Kosovo is Serbia; and that this is a fundamental reality, irrespective of Albanian birth rates and Serb mortality rates. There is so much Serb blood and Serb sanctity there that Kosovo will remain Serbian even if there is not a single Serb left there.... It is almost surprising that all Serbian land is not called by the name of Kosovo". Politika, a Belgrade newspaper, reprinted Milošević's speech in full in a special edition dedicated entirely to Kosovo. It asserted in an editorial, "We are once more living in the times of Kosovo, as it is in Kosovo and around Kosovo that the destiny of Yugoslavia and the destiny of socialism are being determined. They want to take away from us the Serbian and the Yugoslav Kosovo, yes, they want to, but they will not be allowed to." Milošević's claim that Serbs "liberated themselves and when they could they also helped others to liberate themselves" was seen by some as a commitment to a forcible redrawing of Yugoslavia's internal borders to create a Greater Serbia. Concerns about an underlying agenda were heightened by the presence at the event of the Serbian Orthodox bishop from Dalmatia in Croatia, who gave a keynote speech in which he compared Dalmatia to Kosovo and concluded that both had made the same vow to Milošević. British journalist Marcus Tanner, who attended Gazimestan, reported that "representatives [of Slovenia and Croatia]... looked nervous and uncomfortable" and commented that the outpouring of Serbian nationalist sentiment had "perhaps permanently destroyed any possibility of a settlement in Kosovo." The nervousness was reflected in a television news report on the speech in Slovenia that noted: :"And whatever significance the Kosovo battle may have in the national and intimate consciousness of the Serbs, the festivities at Gazimestan again confirmed that it will be more and more difficult to face Serbian conduct and wishes, for it seems that the Serbs won a significant victory in Kosovo today and they made it known that it was not the last one. The feeling of belonging, of unity, power and almost blind obedience of the million-fold crowd and all the others from this republic of Serbian or Montenegrin origin who may not have attended the gathering, are the elements in shaping a sharp and unyielding policy." International media such as the UK newspaper The Independent noted the unprecedented nature of the event and the radical departure that it represented from the anti-nationalist ideology espoused under Tito. Although the speech's advocacy of mutual respect and democracy was described as "unexpectedly conciliatory", the contrast between Milošević's rhetoric and the reality of his widely-criticized policies towards the Kosovo Albanians was also noted. Tim Judah speculated that Milošević perhaps referred to "armed battles" in a "bid to intimidate the other Yugoslav leaders, who because of protocol were forced to attend". Milan Milošević (no relation to Slobodan Milošević) commented that Slobodan "did not have in mind the later wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was thinking of Kosovo itself." Addressing his use of the phrase "armed battles", he said: :"That is an ordinary type of sentence that everybody uses today because peace has still not become a stable, secure category in the present day world, in the modern day world. And if that were not so, why do states have armies?" ==List of notable attendees==

• Serbian Patriarch German II • Metropolitan Amfilohije Radović • Momir Bulatović • Janez Drnovšek (chairman of the Yugoslav Presidency) • Milo Đukanović • Slobodan Gligorijević (speaker of the Yugoslav Assembly) • Petar Gračanin (interior minister) • Borisav Jović • Veljko Kadijević (defence minister) • Mihalj Kertes • Branko Kostić • Budimir Lončar (foreign minister) • Desanka Maksimović • Ante Marković (Prime Minister of Yugoslavia) • Naser Orić (security) • Milan Pančevski (chairman of the Central Committee of the SKJ) • Obrad Piljak • Jovica Stanišić (head of security) • Janez Stanovnik == Notes ==