My work will focus on the legal discipline regarding the Albanian “minority” in
Macedonia. The mere fact of talking about minority between quotations has a specific
reason that is right the key of the “Albanian question” in Macedonia. Tito’s decision of
granting Macedonians the status of nation, while classifying Albanians as nationality
(national minority), was seen as a big injustice from the Albanian point of view.
According to the theory of the ethnic state, each nation should have its own
State, so that only nations were granted a republic, while nationalities had their own
motherland outside the Yugoslav Federation.1 Moreover unlike Kosovo Albanians,
Macedonian Albanians did not even get an autonomous province.
I will argue that the crossing of the “Albanian question” with the “Macedonian
question” represents the thread of the complex relationships between Albanians and
Macedonians in Macedonia.
On the one hand, Albanians had been building their national identity since the
end of the nineteenth century, and obtained their own State in 1912. More than half of
the Albanian population remained in Kosovo, South Serbia and western Macedonia, and
the big dream to have a “Big Albania” was only temporary achieved during the Second
World War under the Italian invasion.2
On the other hand, Macedonians never had neither either their own State or a
national identity, because their land has always been ruled by different peoples during
the centuries, and since 1912 it has been shared out among Serbia, Bulgaria and
Greece.