On the evening of April 24, 1987, in the shabby hamlet of Kosovo Polje, an obscure Balkan politician stepped between a line of policemen and a crowd of Serbs protesting their mistreatment by Kosovo's majority Albanian population. The words he spoke now ring with irony, but in 1987 they electrified all of Serbia. "No one will beat you again," Slobodan Milosevic declared.

Counting on a newsworthy confrontation, local activists had gathered several thousand Serbs outside the hall where Milosevic was scheduled to speak. They chanted slogans, pushed against a police cordon, and threw rocks that had been stockpiled for the occasion. Milosevic waded into the crowd-at a moment when journalists on the scene said they heard the unmistakable sound of AK-47s being pulled back to their firing positions-and began an extraordinary all-night performance. He called upon the Serbs to resist what they claimed was Albanian pressure to leave Kosovo. "This is your country, your homes and fields and memories are here," he cried. As he warmed to his subject, Milosevic raised the stakes. "Yugoslavia cannot exist without Kosovo. Yugoslavia and Serbia will not give up Kosovo." 

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