Kosovski komitet i Kraljevina SHS u svetlu jugoslovenskih izvora 1918–1920
Kosovo Committee and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the Light of Yugoslav Sources (1918–1920)

Summary/Abstract: The work deals with forming Albanian irredentist organization Kosovo Commettee, its activities against the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as well as its influence on Yugoslav-Albanian relations in the period between 1918 and 1920. In November 1918 Albanian émigrés from Kosovo founded a new secret extremely-nationalistic organization National Defence of Kosovo in Skadar-in historiography better known as Kosovo Committee- with the aim to separate the territory of Sandzak, Kosovo, Metohia and West Macedonia from newly-formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and join it with Albania. Soon the Committee extended the original activities of sending memorandum to great powers and leading anti-Yugoslav propaganda to cooperation with Kachaks, Albanian outlaws on Yugoslav territory and the rebellions against the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Committee received a great deal of help in money, weapons and war equipment from Italians, but it also established cooperation with Bulgarian nationalists and Montenegrin émigrés gathered around former king Nikola. In January 1920 two members of the Committee were chosen for the ministers of Albanian government, which even more established the ideas the organization supported. This directly influenced weakening of confidence between Yugoslav and Albanian State. The culmination of the Committee`s influence in the period between 1918 and 1920, as well as its strongest alliance with Albanian State, was appointing Bajram Curi – one of the irredentists` leaders – the minister of Albanian Army durig the summer 1920. Curi`s war plan to expel Yugoslav Army from the territory of Albania first and then from Kosovo had success in the beginning but was not realised because of the counter-attack of the forces of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

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