Montenegro - People
A robust mountain people with a warrior tradition, the Montenegrins were the smallest in population of Yugoslavia's nations. In 1981 they made up 68.5 percent of Montenegro's population, 1.6 percent of Serbia's, 2.1 percent of Vojvodina's, and 1.7 percent of Kosovo's. The Montenegrins and the Serbs shared strong political and cultural ties, including the Eastern Orthodox faith, the Cyrillic alphabet, the Serbo-Croatian language (different dialects), and a history of bloody struggle against the Ottoman Turks. Many historians maintain that the Montenegrins are Serbs. Montenegro's most renowned poet and ruler, the nineteenth-century bishop-prince Petar Petrovi Njegos , considered himself a Serb; likewise, the founder of Serbia's medieval kingdom, Stefan I Nemanja, was born in Podgorica [for a while Titograd], capital of Montenegro.
For centuries Montenegrin society was composed of patrilineally related extended families organized into clans. The extended family tradition lasted well into the twentieth century. Loyalty to kin and protection of family honor were the paramount values. Civic responsibility was a foreign notion, and pragmatism a sign of weakness. Scratching out a living in the remote, rocky hills, the Montenegrins stubbornly defended their independence against incursions by the Ottoman Turks. Personal tenacity and combat skills were the most valued male virtues; women tended the fields and livestock, maintained the home, nursed the wounded, and nourished the next generation of warriors. Stories of ancestral courage and honor were passed from one generation to the next by bards who recited epic poems to the accompaniment of a gusle, a simple, single-string instrument. Practices such as bride theft and blood brotherhood were common, and blood vengeance survived late in the twentieth century.
A Montenegrin was rather proud of his local name and history, but his very pride was imbedded in his larger Serbian national sentiment. He prided himself on the fact that, among all other Serbs, he had never failed in his national duty and has sacrificed more than any other part of the nation for the common Serbian ideals. Foreigners visiting the Balkans at the time of the Greaet War were surprised to find all Jugoslavs with a very highly developed national consciousness, but the Montenegrins occupied the first rank in that regard.
Every Montenegrin was a warrior, and there was scarcely any Montenegrin family without its own historian. The historian in this case was a bard who delighted his audience (usually his own household) with the stories of the warlike achievements of his forefathers, of his clan and his nation, in which a record of his own deeds and of his living relatives is very often interwoven. This gives rise to the evergrowing ballads recited with the accompaniment of the goosle, (the national instrument,) and the great ruler of Montenegro, Bishop Rade, said: "There is no house with men in it where the goosle is not heard."
The Black Mountain produced few of the commodities of life. As late as the 19th Century commerce was a rather shameful occupation for a son of Montenegro. His life consisted of making history, of fighting, and, in his leisure time, in listening to that record of which he was an active and conscious part. For a Montenegrin, being void of any other worldly interest, past and present, merged in his vision, and for the acts of his daily life he always took example from his beloved heroes of the ballads, Marko Kralevitch or Milosh Oblilitch. To say to a Montenegrin that he is equal to Oblilitch is the greatest compliment he could conceive. And Milosh Oblilitch was that Serbian Knight who in the battle of Kossovo in 1389 slew the Turkish Sultan, Murad I.
In the battle of Kossovo the Serbian Empire was defeated, but the Serbian Nation was not subdued. After that battle many a Serbian squire, leaving the fertile plains to the Turk, fled to the Black Mountain, where for five long centuries he never ceased to fight for Serbian freedom. That fight was to him a religious duty, bequeathed by the martyrs of Kossovo, sung by the bards, preached by the Church, and strengthened by examples in every-day life. Therefore, among Serbs he wishes to be a Montenegrin, yet he would be offended if a foreigner should take him solely for a Montenegrin; he does not recognize any value in the existence of Montenegro apart from a larger Serbian life and ideals. Montenegro has been a stronghold of Serbian tradition and liberty for five centuries.
After World War I, political forces in Montenegro were deeply divided between the Greens, who supported an independent Montenegro, and the Whites, who advocated unification with Serbia. The Whites prevailed, and in censuses taken during the interwar period Montenegrins were classified as Serbs. Montenegrins played a significant role in the defense forces of the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Montenegrins enlisted in the communist Partisans in large numbers during World War II and were disproportionately represented in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and the government after the war. Although a large number of Montenegrin communists were expelled from the CPY for pro-Soviet sympathies after Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union in 1948, Montenegrins remained overrepresented in the Yugoslav bureaucratic and military services. In the early 1970s, Montenegrins made up roughly 5 percent of the population. But about 15 percent of the leaders of federal administrative bodies were Montenegrins, nearly 20 percent of the generals in the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) were Montenegrin, and their presence in the overall officer corps was also disproportionately high. The Montenegrins' postwar loyalty to the CPY yielded plentiful development funds for their republic. For this reason, Montenegrin industries developed dramatically, although often without rational distribution of resources. Much investment was inordinately capital-intensive and wasted, and the republic suffered from low prices for the raw materials it sold to other republics.
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