Abstract: Based on available archival records and relevant literature, this article provides an overview of the economic investments of the Yugoslav Federation and the Republic of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija, as an autonomous area, i.e. Province, from the end of the Second World War to the 1970s. Following the analysis of the competent Party and State bodies, the political influence of the leadership of the Yugoslav Federation on the adoption and implementation of long-term unsustainable and populist measures aimed at preserving peace in Kosovo and Metohija is described.
Keywords: Albanians, Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, political relations, economic investments, League of Communists of Yugoslavia
Summary
Yugoslavia emerged from the Second World War with significant material losses, forcing the new communist government to invest heavily in economic reconstruction. In the second half of the 1950s, the Yugoslav Federation (YF) and the Republic of Serbia (RS) increased their economic investments in Kosovo and Metohija (KM). During the period 1966–1970, the YF borrowed approximately 94.3 million dollars in loans from the World Bank for the development of the KM, accounting for around 21.5% of the total amount of loans taken for the progress of all underdeveloped areas. The RS also contributed money to the KM, investing 60 billion dinars from the Republic’s budget and around 30 billion dinars through bank loans between 1965 and 1970. As an autonomus province, KM was not obliged to give money in the name of any republican contribution. Even the highly tolerant YF policy towards national demands did not improve the economic situation: economic losses of the KM in 1968 increased by about 436% compared to 1967. At the end of the 1960s, Josip Broz Tito confirmed the intention of the YF to further invest in the development of KM, despite the growing dissatisfaction of developed republics, who felt that this was damaging their own progress. The formation of the League of Communists of Kosovo and changing the name of KM to Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, which were codified by hitherto unknown constitutional solutions, did not gain elementary economic sustainability of the Province. The gap in development increased year after year, regardless of all the aid that were poured into the Provincial budget from the levels of YF, RS and even other Yugoslav republics.