Mixed marriages are the exception. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Albanians are Muslims, descendants of Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians who converted to Islam during 500 years of Turkish rule. Serbs are staunchly Orthodox, following Christian traditions similar to the Greeks, the Russians and the Bulgarians. That depends on whom you ask. That percentage steadily declined, however, thanks to a high birth rate among ethnic Albanians and a steady Serb exodus from the rural province for more prosperous urban areas of Serbia.
Serb nationalists blame the communist government for the exodus.
During years when President Josip Broz Tito was courting Albania's Marxist regime, the Belgrade government settled newcomers from Albania on lands confiscated from the Serbian Orthodox Church. Serbs who fled Kosovo during World War II were for a time even banned from returning to the province as an overture to the Albanians when the two Communist governments were considering a union. Serbs were later encouraged to move to rich farmlands in northern Serbia to shore up their numbers in an area with a large Hungarian population. Fears that Serbs were being systematically eliminated from the province led to calls from Kosovo Serbs for a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists, which culminated in a government decision to take away Kosovo's autonomy in 1989. Kosovo was the heartland of the old Serb kingdom, which reached its height in the 14th Century under King Dusan.