Economic investments in the development of Kosovo and Metohija in light of the Yugoslav Federation`s political relationship with Serbia until the 1970s

Abstract

The article provides, on the basis of available archival material and relevant literature, an overview of the economic investments made by the Yugoslav federation and the Republic of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija, as an autonomous region, and later province, from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s. Based on an analysis of the work of the relevant party and state bodies, it describes the political influence of the Yugoslav federal leadership on the adoption and implementation of long-term unsustainable and populist measures aimed at maintaining peace in Kosovo and Metohija.

Summary: Yugoslavia emerged from the Second World War with extensive material losses, and the new communist authorities were therefore forced to intensify investment in economic reconstruction. In the second half of the 1950s, economic investments by the Yugoslav federation and the Republic of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija began to increase. During the period 1966–1970, the Yugoslav federation obtained approximately $94.3 million in loans from the World Bank for the development of Kosovo and Metohija, accounting for approximately 21.5% of the total value of loans obtained for the development of all underdeveloped regions. The Republic of Serbia also provided funds, investing 60 billion dinars from the republican budget in Kosovo and Metohija between 1965 and 1970, as well as approximately 30 billion dinars through bank loans. The Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija was not required to make any contribution to the Republic. Nevertheless, even the highly accommodating state policy toward national demands did not improve the economic situation: the Province’s economic losses in 1968 were approximately 436% higher than in the previous year. At the end of the 1960s, Josip Broz Tito reaffirmed the intention of the Yugoslav federation to continue investing in the development of Kosovo and Metohija, despite growing dissatisfaction among the more developed republics, which believed that such policies were detrimental to their own progress. The establishment of the League of Communists of Kosovo and the renaming of Kosovo and Metohija as the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, codified through previously unknown arrangements in constitutional practice, did not improve the Province’s basic economic viability. The development gap continued to widen year after year, despite all the assistance flowing into the provincial budget from the Yugoslav federation, the Republic of Serbia, and the other Yugoslav republics.