The Peace Treaty of San Stefano was signed, the treaty that Tsarist Russia imposed on Turkey after the latter’s defeat in the Russian-Turkish war (April 24, 1877). It is named after the village of San Stefano (today Jeshilkoj), where it was signed. With it, Russia tried to gain the greatest benefits, putting the other Powers before the accomplished fact. The central point of this treaty was the creation of a large Bulgaria, whose borders also included important centers and other villages with Albanian population, such as Tetova, Kirçova, Gostivari, Dibra, Struga, Pogradec, Korça, etc. The treaty severely curtailed the Albanian lands. Montenegro tripled its territory and expanded in the direction of Albania, taking Ulqin, Tivar, and Buna, almost the entire Shkodra Lake except for the city, Hoti and Gruda, Plava, and Gucia. Serbia extended to the sandjak of Prishtina near Mitrovica. Thus, on the basis of the Peace Treaty of San Stefano, most of Northern and Eastern Albania was divided between the three Slavic states. The other Great Powers strongly opposed the treaty, which led to the meeting of the Congress of Berlin in June 1878. In Albania, it became the cause of the explosion of a wide protest movement, which gave a new impetus to the general national movement, which was crowned in June with the establishment of the Albanian League in Prizren (1878). (In the photo: Illustrative moment from the Peace Treaty of San Stefano, 1878.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 3, Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2009, page 2736.
Photo: © https://kosovapress.com/
Graphic processing: AHCF
