83 Gëzim Krasniqi “For Democracy — Against Violence”: A Kosovar Alternative Throughout the 1980s, Kosovo was the hotspot of the Yugoslav economic and political crisis. That volatile decade, which started with the student and popular protests in the spring of 1981, reached its peak in 1988 and 1989 with the discussions on the issue of Kosovo’s autonomy and the Serb at- tempts to abolish it. The subsequent increased state control, on the one hand, and popular protests, workers’ strikes and marches organised in defence of Kosovo’s autonomy, on the other, resulted in an ever more intense nationalist mobilisation among both Kosovo Albanians and Serbs, turning Kosovo into Yugoslavia’s “powder keg”. These events, which culminated in the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy and the subsequent violent clashes between the Albanian protesters and state police and military, had two major opposing yet interconnected effects. First, by pushing Kosovo towards an open conflict, they put in question the capa- bilities of the post-Tito Yugoslavia to solve its political disputes peacefully, weakening its internal and external legitimacy. Second, by discrediting the ineffective communist officials in Kosovo in the eyes of the local population, these events paved the way for the emergence of new elites, associations and parties that aimed to represent the interests of the Kosovo Albanians. The decision of the Kosovo Albanians to adopt the strategy of nonviolence changed the tide of the events and led to consequences which could not have been anticipated. This chapter outlines the emergence and development of a plethora of human rights groups, pro-democracy and anti-war associations and political parties that came to be known as the “Kosovar Alternative” 1 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I argue that: (a) despite many internal differences and disa- greements, these groups were united by their demands for the introduction of pluralism and democracy in Yugoslavia and in Kosovo; (b) irrespective of the increasing homogenisation of Kosovo Albanians in opposition to Serbia, 1 This is a generic term that came into use in the late 1980s and was employed by various local media to describe the first human rights groups and associations active outside of the framework of the Communist League of Kosovo. The term gained more prominence with the establishment (in Ljubljana) of a monthly magazine in Albanian that carried the same name (Alternativa) and was an organ of the Albanian Cultural Association “Migjeni”. The latter gathered Albanian university professors, writers and activists from Kosovo and Yu- goslavia, as well as some Slovenian intellectuals. See Ali Podrimja, “Si lindi ‘Alternati- va,’” Alternativa, (1990) 6, pp. 34–6.