The Serbian newspaper “Illustrovani List” had previously published photos of the colonization of Kosovo with Russians and Serbs.
FMimages.net for the first time brings photo-documents of the colonization of Kosovo by Serbs, Russians and Montenegrins in the year 1920. This colonization process continued until the year 1940 and spread to many parts of Kosovo, especially to those areas where the population was 100% Albanian.
The regime of King Alexander in 1920 compiled a special program for the cleansing of ethnic Albanian territories. Based on that program, the Serbian army and gendarmes burned 182 Albanian villages. The process of colonization was focused particularly on areas that were entirely Albanian-inhabited.
Transcribed:
“Colonization of Southern Serbia.
Initiated and with the assistance of the Ministry for Agrarian Reform, a large colonization of Southern Serbia is being carried out.
- Colonisation du Sud de la Serbie.
- Osazování jižního Srbska.
- Naseljenje poseljenicima Južne Srbije.
- Kolonisierung von Südserbien.
- Colonisation of Southern Serbia.
(Photos labeled with numbers 1–6 in the original layout)
a. Temporary huts of settlers in Vrelo on the Kosovo Polje, where a new village of 120 houses is being built.
(×) The chief commissioner of the Ministry for Agrarian Reform from Skopje, Mr. Malenica.
b. Colonists in Dobrevo, in Kosovo.
1. a. The temporary huts of the colonists in the village of Vrelo in the plain of Kosovo, where a village of 120 houses has been erected.
b. The colonisation in the village of Dobrevo. — 2. a. Temporary huts of settlers in the village of Vrelo on the Kosovo field, where a village of 120 houses will be founded.
b. Settlers in the village of Dobrevo. — 3. Temporary huts of settlers in the village of Vrelo on the Kosovo Polje, where a new village of 120 houses is being built.
4. a. The provisional huts of the settlers in the village of Vrelo on the Amselfeld (Kosovo), where a village of 120 houses is being erected.
b. The colonists in the village of Dobrevo. — 5. a. The temporary huts of settlers at the village of Vrelo in Kosovo Polje, where there is a village of 120 houses in the course of construction.
b. The settlers of the village of Dobrevo.”
Context of the Image
This clipping is a classic example of Yugoslav state propaganda from the 1920s. It proudly documents the settlement of Serb (and often Montenegrin or Russian White émigré) colonists in Kosovo. The “new villages” of Vrelo and Dobrevo were built on land expropriated from Albanian inhabitants under the Agrarian Reform laws. The Ministry for Agrarian Reform actively facilitated the confiscation of Albanian-owned land and its redistribution to “reliable” settlers, especially war veterans and Chetniks, as part of a deliberate demographic engineering policy to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo.
The image shows:
Left photo: Makeshift thatched huts and early settler life in Vrelo (near Kosovo Polje / Fushë Kosovë).
Right photo: A more established settler group (men, women, and children) standing in front of a completed thatched house in Dobrevo, with officials or settlers posing formally.
This fits directly into the broader pattern of Serbian/Yugoslav colonization efforts between 1920 and 1940, which targeted areas that had been overwhelmingly Albanian-populated.
Original publication details:
- Date: 13 June 2019, 09:49
- Category: KOSOVË
- No specific author listed.
