Albanisation is the spread ofAlbanian culture,people, andlanguage, either by integration orassimilation. Diverse peoples were affected by Albanisation including peoples with differentethnic origins, such asTurks,Serbs,Croats,Circassians,Bosniaks,Greeks,Aromanians,Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians,Romani,Gorani, andMacedonians from all the regions of the Balkans.
In the newly attached territories to Albania of Kosovo and westernYugoslav Macedonia by the Axis powers, non-Albanians (Serbs and Macedonians) had to attend Albanian schools that taught a curriculum containing nationalism alongside fascism and were made to adopt Albanian forms for their names and surnames.[1]
The Albanian civil service tends to use albanianized versions of personal names of persons belonging to ethnic or cultural minorities without their consent.[2]
In 1975, the Albanian communist regime had issued a decree requiring everyone to assume non-religious names approved by the government.[3]
During the rule ofKing Zogu and thecommunist regime, the government encouraged Albanisation of theGreeks of Southern Albania (the territory was also called "Northern Epirus", especially among the Greeks).[4]
... minority status was limited to those who lived in 99 villages in the southern border areas, thereby excluding important concentrations of Greek settlement in Vlora (perhaps 8,000 people in 1994) and in adjoining areas along the coast, ancestral Greek towns such as Himara, and ethnic Greeks living elsewhere throughout the country. Mixed villages outside this designated zone, even those with a clear majority of ethnic Greeks, were not considered minority areas and therefore were denied any Greek-language cultural or educational provisions. In addition, many Greeks were forceably removed from the minority zones to other parts of the country as a product of communist population policy, an important and constant element of which was to preempt ethnic sources of political dissent. Greek place-names were changed to Albanian names, while use of the Greek language, prohibited everywhere outside the minority zones, was prohibited for many official purposes within them as well.[5]
In 1967 theAlbanian Party of Labour began the campaign of eradicating organised religion. Their forces damaged or destroyed many churches and mosques during this period; they banned many Greek-language books because of their religious themes or orientation. Yet, it is often impossible to distinguish between the government's ideological and ethno-cultural motivations for repression. Albania’s anti-religion campaign was merely one element in Hoxha's broader “Ideological and Cultural Revolution” begun in 1966. He had outlined its main features at the PLA’s Fourth Congress in 1961. "Under communism, pupils were taught only Albanian history and culture, even in Greek-language classes at the primary level."[4]
Also, the ethnic Greek minority complained about the government's unwillingness to recognize ethnic Greek towns outside communist-era "minority zones," to utilize Greek in official documents and on public signs in ethnic Greek areas, or to include more ethnic Greeks in public administration.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]
The 2012 USA annual report mention that the emergence of strident nationalist groups like theRed and Black Alliance (RBA) increased ethnic tensions with the Greek minority groups.[10]
As part of assimilation politics during the rule ofcommunist regime in Albania, Serb-Montenegrins were not allowed to have Serbian names, especially family names ending with the characteristic suffix "ich".[15]
After the1981 student protest in Kosovo, Albanian Serbs complained on harassment and pressure to leave the country.[16]
Former Albanian PresidentBamir Topi and prime ministerSali Berisha made suggestions in 2009 to create a government commission to replaceSlavic based toponyms in the county with Albanian language form toponyms.[17]
The Albanian parliament in April 2013 decided to reverse an order from 1973 that changed the Slavic toponyms of several villages in thePustec Municipality (formerlyLiqenas) with Albanian forms that resulted in local Pustec authorities voting to restore pre-1973 toponyms.[18]
The concept is most commonly applied toKosovo.[19][20] Duringcensuses in theformer Yugoslavia, manyBosniaks,Romani andTurks were registered asAlbanian, as they identified with MuslimAlbanian culture as opposed to the Orthodox ChristianSerbian culture.[21] Albanisation has also occurred withTorbesh people, aMuslimSlavic minority inNorth Macedonia, and theGoran people in southern Kosovo, who often have Albanised surnames.[22]
At the end of the 19th century, writerBranislav Nušić claimed that theSerbpoturice (converts to Islam) ofOrahovac began speaking Albanian and marrying Albanian women.[23] Similar claims were put forward byJovan Hadži Vasiljević (1866–1948), who claimed that when he visited Orahovac inWorld War I, he could not distinguishOrthodox fromIslamicized and Albanized Serbs; according to him, they spokeSerbian, wore the same costumes, but claimedSerbian,Albanian orTurkish ethnicity.[23] Most of the Albanianstarosedeoci (old urban families) wereSlavophone; they did not speak Albanian at home, but a Slavic dialect which they callednaš govor'our language'.[23] An Austrian named Joseph Muller, who visited the area in the 19th century, wrote that the dialect originated from the time of theFirst Serbian Uprising against the Ottomans, when Albanians from Shkodër who had resettled around Valjevo and Kraljevo in central Serbia, left after those events for Orahovac; the corpus of Bulgarian terminology in the dialect was unaccounted for by Muller.[24]
In the 1921 census, the majority of the Muslim Albanians in Orahovac were registered under the category "Serbs and Croats", based on linguistic criteria.[23]
Duijzings (2000), summarizing his own research, stated: "During my own research, some of them told me that their tongue is similar toMacedonian rather than Serbian. It is likely they are the last remnants of what is now known in Serbian sources asArnautaši, Islamicised and half-way Albanianised Slavs."[23]
In 1922, Henry Baerlein noted that the Austrians had for thirty years tried to Albanianize theJanjevo population (see alsoJanjevci).[25]
TheAshkali and Balkan Egyptians, who share culture, traditions and the Albanian language, are of Romani origin.[26] The "Ashkali" have been classed as a "new ethnic identity in the Balkans", formed in the 1990s.[27]
To define Kosovo as an Albanian area, a toponyms commission (1999) led by Kosovan Albanian academics was established to determine new or alternative names for some settlements, streets, squares and organisations with Slavic origins that underwent a process of Albanisation during this period.[28][29] Those measures have been promoted by sectors of the Kosovan Albanian academic, political, literary and media elite that caused administrative and societal confusion with multiple toponyms being used resulting in sporadic acceptance by wider Kosovan Albanian society.[29]
In 1987 Yugoslav communist officials changed the starting grade from the fourth to the first for Kosovo Serb and Albanian students being taught each other's languages with aims of bringing both ethnicities closer.[30] Kosovo Serbs opposed the measure to learn the Albanian language, claiming that it was another way of asserting Albanian dominance and viewed it as more Albanisation of the region.[30] Yugoslav educational authorities rejected the claim, stating that if Albanians also refused to learn Serbo-Croatian on the grounds that it wasSerbianisation, it would be unacceptable.[30]
In 1982 Macedonian communist officials accused Albanian nationalists (including some Muslim Albanian clergy) that they placed pressure on MacedonianRomani,Turks andMacedonian speaking Muslims (Torbeš) to declare themselves as Albanians during the census.[31][32] The Islamic Community of Yugoslavia dominated by Slavic Muslims opposed during the 1980s Albanian candidates ascending to the leadership position ofReis ul-ulema due to claims that Albanian Muslim clergy were attempting to Albanianize the Muslim Slavs of Macedonia.[33] Macedonian communist authorities concerned with growing Albanian nationalism contended that Turks and Macedonian speaking Muslims (Torbeš) were beingAlbanianised through Albanian political and cultural pressures and initiated a campaign against Albanian nationalism calleddifferentiation involving birth control, control over Muslim institutions and Albanian education, dismissal of public servants and so on.[34]
Riza Memedovski, chairman of a Muslim organisation forMacedonian Muslims inNorth Macedonia, accused the majority Albanian political party, theParty for Democratic Prosperity in 1990 of trying to assimilate people, especiallyMacedonian Muslims andTurks and create an "... Albanisation of western Macedonia."[35]
From a Macedonian perspective, theOld Bazaar of Skopje following the 1960s and over a span of twenty to thirty years underwent a demographic change of Albanisation that was reflected in the usage of the Latin alphabet and Albanian writing in shops of the area.[36] In the 2000s, the construction of aSkanderbeg statue at the entrance of the Old Bazaar has signified for some people in Macedonia that the area is undergoing a slow Albanisation.[37]
The Serbian-Montenegrin minority, during the past century, has been the subject of injustices by the state structures of that time, while institutional repressive measures led to discrimination and attempts to assimilate this minority. This repressive policy of assimilation begins with the regime of King Zog, who banished schools in Serbian language and continued with the communist regime, when the Serbiain-Montenegrin nationality was forbidden, along with the names and in particular the family names ending with the characteristic suffix "ich", as well as the right of education and the right of information in their mother tongue, the right to maintain contacts with the mother country, the right of religion etc.
Lexical cleansing
The process of Albanization has stopped, and in April 2013 the Macedonians in Albania had the opportunity to applaud the decision by Tirana to reverse a 1973 order by which several Macedonian municipalities had their names changed into Albanian names, following a decision taken by the local authorities in Pustec (located at the border with F.Y.R. Macedonia), who voted to replace the names of the following municipalities into their pre-1973 Macedonian names (MINA, 2013).