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Yugoslavia Montenegrins
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, now 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.
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
(see The Military and Society
, ch. 5). 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.
Data as of December 1990
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