Language legislation of Kosovo and Metohija in post-socialist period: Serbian version

In the recent decades the territory of Kosovo is characterized by a strongly pronounced interethnic conflict situation. It now has an inconsistent status, for by the legislation of the Republic of Serbia Kosovo and Metohija is its autonomous region, and by laws of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo is an independent state. Besides, a number of the communities located in the north of the region and directly bordering the territory of Central Serbia are supervised neither by the authorities of the self-proclaimed state, nor by the government of Serbia. Though the sources of Kosovo crisis are caused by a number of contradictions (confessional, economic, political, etc.), one of its main reasons was the ethnic conflict between the two largest communities of the region - Albanian and Serbian. Respectively, study and analysis of language legislation (as an integral component of language policy carried out at the state level and as means of settlement and solution of interethnic contradictions in the region) have essential value for identification of problems in international relations and tracking the dynamics of their condition. In the article the legal acts of the Republic of Serbia regulating the status and aspects of use of languages and alphabets in the country as a whole and in the territory of municipalities located in the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija are considered. Documents of the municipal level are provided created by the legal canons of the Republic of Serbia, both for the communities located in the north of the region and not recognizing the government of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, and for the communities of the mainly Albanian part of the region that have alternative - Albanian and Serbian - authorities. As a whole the analysis of regulations on official use of languages stated in laws of the municipal level of Kosovo and Metohija created by the legal canons of the Republic of Serbia shows the significance of this issue for this region. Almost all the considered documents of the 1990s contained articles on the official status of languages and alphabets. In areas mostly populated by Albanians, obligatory bilingual official communication was provided. In latest documents this linguistic parity is not so consistent, which can be explained by the status of its originators, who became displaced persons (refugees) after the NATO forces entered the region. On the other hand, the equality of the Serbian and Albanian languages and alphabets as stated by most of the laws is in many respects declarative, as now Serbians and Albanians practically do not live at the same territories, and the process of creation of a new monoethnic municipalities realized by the authorities of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo in execution of recommendations of UNMIK only aggravates the observed tendencies.

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