From the archives.

Throughout 1999, Commonweal will be celebrating its 75th anniversary. Here from the July 17, 1992 issue is an excerpt from an article titled "The Next Explosion: Kosovo in the Wings."

The blood bath in what was Yugoslavia is, in all probability, not yet ended. Of its six former republics-Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro-three have already been internationally recognized: Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Macedonia, strategically placed between Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria, is apprehensively waiting its turn, and even the little republic of Montenegro, which earlier this year voted to stand alongside the unreformed Communist Serbia in the rump of Yugoslavia, is reconsidering its options in the wake of the appalling carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina and UN sanctions against Yugoslavia. Within Serbia itself an ethnic minefield is waiting to explode. Serbia's 2-million-strong Albanian minority boycotted the elections on May 30. These Albanians live in colonial conditions in Serbia's impoverished deep South, particularly in the province of Kosovo, where 90 percent of the population is Albanian. They also spill over into Montenegro and into adjacent Macedonia, where, numbering 700,000, they constitute about a third of the population. After Serbs and Croats, they were Yugoslavia's third largest national group, but they have never had a republic of their own.

To counter Serbian aggressive tendencies, Tito (d. 1980) granted autonomy in 1974 to two provinces within Serbia, multi-ethnic Vojvodina in the north, and Kosovo. The Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, rode to power in 1987 on the crest of an emotive campaign to protect the 10-percent Serbian minority in Kosovo. Although an implacable atheist, he exploited the concern of the Serbian Orthodox church. Serbs claimed that they were suffering genocide at the hands of the Albanians. However, in no way could the plight of the Serbs be compared with the desperation the ethnic Albanians felt. They had been suffering virtual martial-law rule since their 1981 demonstration for republican status within Yugoslavia. This, as the Reverend Gjerji Lush of Albania's 5-percent minority Catholic church points out, was the first popular movement for democracy in Europe after Solidarity in Poland....

With the collapse of communism in Albania, the avowed aim of Kosovar Albanians is now reunion. But communism reduced Albania to third-world status, and it is on the verge of total collapse. Kosovars, impoverished themselves, would have to make even greater sacrifices to unite with Albania. Yet it is a price they seem willing to pay. Moreover, Macedonia's restless Albanians also seem ready to secede.

The Balkan powder keg is ready to explode.