Post-Agreement Cultural Assertion & Revival

Socialist Yugoslavia, its violent dissolution and the Dayton settlement.

1 chapter

1991 - 2001

The Yugoslav breakup and 1999 Kosovo War fractured the Preševo Valley's already fragile intercommunal balance. After NATO's intervention, the Ground Safety Zone — a demilitarized buffer along the Kosovo-Serbia border — became a corridor for the UÇPMB (Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac), which waged an insurgency from June 1999 to June 2001. Veliki Trnovac became a UÇPMB stronghold: its 11,000+ Albanian population and village mosque made it a self-governing enclave where Serbian police did not enter — an arrangement later formalized in the Končulj Agreement. NATO's 1999 bombing campaign left 161 depleted uranium projectiles in Reljan near Preševo, an environmental wound still being cleaned up with Serbian government funding. The Končulj Agreement, signed on May 20–23, 2001, in the village of Končulj (Bujanovac municipality), ended the insurgency through UÇPMB disarmament and a Serbian amnesty statement — but the conflict years suppressed public Albanian cultural expression, driving spring rituals and national celebrations underground. Roma and Serbian minority calendars were further obscured by the conflict's ethnic polarization. What you can read in the landscape today is a layer of war damage, abandoned checkpoints, and the slowly healing political architecture of the Končulj settlement.

1918 - 1990

Yugoslav state integration — first as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Bujanovac assigned to Vranje Oblast, then Vardar Banovina with Skopje as capital), then as socialist Yugoslavia — brought both institutional infrastructure and cultural pressure to the Preševo Valley. Albanian-language education existed but was constrained: the Sezai Suroi Gymnasium in Bujanovac served as the key Albanian-language secondary school, while the Dom kulture Vuk Karadžić housed the KUD Kolo folklore ensemble that organized the international folklore festival on Petrovdan (St. Peter's Day, July 12) — an event running for over two decades that brings Serbian, Albanian, and Roma performers together. Yet cultural suppression intensified: on August 25, 1981, Serbian authorities conducted a mass confiscation of Albanian-language books in Preševo, intimidating educators and banning Albanian literature — an act documented as a paradigmatic case of cultural cleansing. Village mosques and mehalleje in Veliki Trnovac and Mali Trnovac continued to serve as communal calendar-keepers for Albanian spring rituals (Dita e Verës, Shën Gjergji), but public expression of Albanian national-cultural identity was increasingly restricted. Roma Ederlezi celebrations (May 6 as Roma New Year) persisted in Bujanovac's Roma neighborhoods as a distinct ritual register alongside Albanian and Serbian spring practices.

1878 - 1918

The Serbian–Ottoman Wars of 1876–1878 and the subsequent Treaty of Berlin redrew the Preševo Valley's cultural map with brutal suddenness. As the Serbian army captured the Sanjak of Niš (Toplica, Niš, Kuršumlija), an estimated 60,000–80,000 Albanians — predominantly Muslim — were expelled southward into the Preševo Valley and Kosovo. These muhaxhirë (refugee) communities carried their own local festival traditions from the Toplica and Niš areas, which now overlay or blend with older valley-indigenous practices; families in the valley still identify as muhaxhirë descendants, and a 'traditional' spring ritual may have two possible origins — indigenous to the valley, or imported by refugees after 1878. The magnitude and framing of this displacement remain contested: Serbian historiography treats it as liberation of national territory, while Albanian sources describe it as ethnic cleansing. Simultaneously, Christian Albanians (Arnautash) in the valley faced administrative reclassification as Serbs under the new Serbian state, blurring the ritual boundary between Albanian-language Orthodox practice and Serbian krsna slava. Bujanovac became an administrative center under Serbian rule, and the valley shifted from Ottoman frontier to Serbian-Kosovo borderland — a geopolitical repositioning that still shapes festival visibility today. The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 further consolidated Serbian control, pushing the remaining Ottoman presence out of the region entirely.

1455 - 1878

Ottoman imperial expansion brought the Preševo Valley under Islamic governance by the mid-15th century — southern Serbia was incorporated into the Sanjak of Vučitrn and Sanjak of Prizren after 1455. Over the following centuries, a gradual Islamization transformed the valley's demographic and ritual landscape. Ottoman tahrir defters (tax registers) record both Slavic- and Albanian-speaking Christian communities; the registers classify by religion rather than ethnicity, which obscures exact proportions but confirms religious diversity. Many Albanian-speaking Christians converted to Islam, while others — later called Arnautash (Slavicized Christian Albanians) — maintained Orthodox practice under Serbian ecclesiastical authority, some eventually assimilating into the Serbian identity category. The Ibrahim Pasha Mosque, built in Preševo in 1805, stands as the most visible Ottoman-era monument, its complex including a medresa, fountain, and hammam. Village mosques in Veliki Trnovac and Mali Trnovac became institutional continuity vaults: the pre-Ottoman mehalleje (hamlet gathering) system merged with Islamic congregational structure, and mosques coordinated the communal calendar — scheduling spring celebrations, weddings, and pastoral transitions — preserving pre-Christian Albanian ritual practice (Dita e Verës bonfires, Shën Gjergji lamb roasts) within an Islamic framework. Serbian Orthodox families in Bujanovac town and Medveđa maintained krsna slava traditions, including Đurđevdan (St. George's feast on May 6 by Julian calendar reckoning), creating the three-community calendar convergence that defines the valley's spring festival landscape to this day.