Judging by the news reports coming from the Gazimestan rally, the history began being falsified right there and then

The same idea dominated the news reports so that all correspondents of the Belgrade papers meticulously informed about Slobodan Milosevic's itineraryhe arrived on Gazimestan at 12.10 p.m. and took up the floor at exactly 1.19 p.m. Judging by the news reports, the history began being falsified right there and then, at least concerning the assessments pertaining to the size of the crowd. AFP reported that 300,000 attended the central event, while according to the Belgrade daily ``Politika'' the figure never dropped bellow 2 million, but the most frequently quoted number was ``about one million people.''

Masked police together with police and army armored personal carriers lurked in the undergrowth. During the Albanians demonstrations staged before that St. Vitus' Day 23 demonstrators and 2 policemen were killed. One DM sold for 8,000 Dinars on the black market which is eight times more than on the same day the previous year. It was also noted that Miroslav Solevic and Kosta Bulatovic, the most prominent figures of the Serbian resistance movement in Kosovo, betted that the Serbian President would address the crowd as ``comrades,'' which he did.

Janez Drnovsek, the President of the Federation, Ante Markovic, the Federal Prime Minister, Milan Pancevski, the President of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Veljko Kadijevic, the Federal Secretary for National Defense, and his assistant Stane Brovet had taken up their places on the platform. Obrad Piljak represented BosniaHerzegovina, Jezdislav Bogdanovski Macedonia, Ivo Latin Croatia, Janez Stanovnik, who received the loudest applause, represented Slovenia, and Branko Kostic Montenegro.

The President's speech published in the Belgrade magazine ``Politikin svet'' (``Politika's World'') was decorated with the red heart. The reaction of hundreds of thousands of Serbs drenched in sweat to the President's speech was only lukewarm. Speaking on Gazimestan Milosevic did not mention Kosovo and the Albanians even once. It was assumed, according to what he had said (Serbia has regained its state, national, and spiritual integrity), that the Kosovo problem was solved. The Serbian President was undoubtedly referring to the constitutional amendments adopted that year thanks to which ``Serbia of three parts have become whole.''

However, a lot of work was ahead for Serbia and its President in order to completely establish their rule in Kosovo. It is now clear that Gazimestan and St. Vitus' Day in 1989 represented only one stage in achieving this goal.

Several months before the St. Vitus' Day gathering, in February 1989, the miners staged a strike inside the mining shafts of Stari trg mines in Mitrovica protesting against ousting of the then leading Albanian politicians in Kosovo Azem Vlasi and Kaqusha Jashari. The crowd gathered in Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana expressed solidarity with the miners from Stari trg. Students, workers, and citizens ``spontaneously'' took to the streets and occupied the area in front of the Federal Parliament building in Belgrade after the footage of the gathering in Ljubljana was broadcast on Belgrade Television on February 2728. The crowd refused to listen to Raif Dizdarevic, the President of the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, demanding that Milosevic should address them who then promised that Vlasi would be arrested. The next day Lazar Mojsov stated that there was ``a headquarters document'' of the Albanian separatists who intended to stir up a rebellion in Kosovo (the document was never published).

The state of emergency was imposed in Kosovo according to the decision of the SFRJ Presidency. Kosovo leader Azem Vlasi, the last of the politicians with whom the Serbian politicians could negotiate, was arrested at the beginning of March. A year later Vlasi was set free after a marathon trial. On March 28, 1989, the Serbian Parliament ratified amendments to the republic constitution which deprived the provinces of all attributes of a quasistate. Festivities were organized in Belgrade to celebrate this occasion, while demonstrations broke out in Pristina, where 23 demonstrators and 2 policemen were killed. A year later, in February 1990, demonstrations were again staged in Kosovo. 55 demonstrators were killed, and another hundred injured, in the clash with the police.

The Albanian members of the Kosovo Assembly adopted a constitutional declaration on July 2, 1990, thus proclaiming Kosovo a republic. On July 7 the Serbian Parliament (supported by the recently formed and still extraparliamentary opposition) took over all official functions in Kosovo, disbanded the Kosovo Assembly and its Executive Council. On October 23, 1990, the Serbian Parliament decided that all payments to the Fund for the underdeveloped areas be suspended, and on September 28, 1990, adopted a new constitutions according to which the provinces lost the attributes of statehood and became a form of territorial autonomy.

On September 3, 1990, the Albanians again staged mass demonstrations and called a general strike, after the imposition of the socalled temporary measures that were aimed at preventing ``the Albanian obstruction of the economy.'' In the first wave 60,000 Albanians were fired on the basis of their refusal to show up at work. The Program of the Republic of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija was adopted at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990. The Program was aimed at ``repairing the overall situation in the province'' and one of the things it envisioned was to move 100,000 Serbs to Kosovo (from 1918 to the beginning of the war, i.e. over twenty years when the old Yugoslavia was implementing the same program, 60,000 Serbs moved to Kosovo).

As far as Kosovo is concerned, the Serbs and Serbia had prepared a series of programs and legal acts that practically dispelled all doubts as to ``who is in power in Kosovo.'' To get an I.D., or a passport, to report taxes or to register a business, the Albanians have to deal with the authorities, whose administrative segment is indisputably in the hands of the Republic of Serbia. But parallelism rules in all other segments of life.

According to the Albanian data, 140,000 Albanian workers have been fired from the state sector since Serbia completely took control of the Kosovo economy. Nevertheless, the Serbs say that 95 per cent of the Kosovo capital is in the hands of the Albanians. This is a rough estimate, derived by applying the methodology of ``the naked eye'' that notes that most owners of shops, cafes, and luxurious cars are Albanians. According to the unofficial, but reliable data from the Albanian sources, the private sector controlled 8.33 per cent of the total capital engaged in the Kosovo economy, and rendered 30 per cent of the total gross income and about 45 per cent of the total profits of the Kosovo economy.

Serbia has seized power in Kosovo, but, as it turned out, this doesn't solve anything. While the statistical data on the number of Serbs who left Kosovo supported the thesis of ``the untenable positions of the Serbs,'' they were published. But not any more. Investments in the flats for the returnees have been abandoned, and many people's return is doubtful. Many often return to Kosovo in order to get a flat or to benefit in one way or another, but such people by rule go back wherever they came from. Those who stayed have begun building something in Serbia. The fact that only about forty out of 1,133 Serbs and Montenegrins who crossed over from Albania to Kosovo intend to stay there is illustrative of how appealing Kosovo is to the Serbs. The people of village Milosevo, four kilometers away from Gazimestan, have announced their collective departure, and many of them have in their houses the picture of the Serbian President, whose last name, like the name of the mythical Kosovo hero, they linked with the name of their village.

The Serbs are discouraged by the amount of time the state has taken to solve the Kosovo problem and the Albanian demographic supremacy that is ever more successful in parrying the Serbian policy. The Serbs account for about 9.9 per cent of about 2 million people living in Kosovo, while 81.6 per cent are the Albanians (the Albanians did not participate in the census conducted in 1991). According to the data of Srdjan Bogosavljevic, published in the independent Belgradebased publication ``Republika,'' between the census conducted in 1953 and one in 1981 the number of the Albanians increased according to the average growth rate of 32 per cent over ten years, and the number of the Serbs according to the average rate of 6 per cent. The population growth of the Albanians is on the rise, whereas that of the Serbs is on the decline. Even if one assumes that the population growth rate will remain unchanged in the future, the Serbs will take more than one hundred, and the Albanians only twenty five years to double their population. Under the same assumption the number of Albanians and the number of the Serbs in Serbia would become equal between 2050 and 2060, Bogosavljevic concluded.