Socialist Intercessions: The Earliest Demands for a Separate Montenegrin Language (1967–1972)

Abstract

The question of a separate Montenegrin language has been extensively debated in the last decades. Its roots, however, lie deeper, with the first demands for it appearing in the late 1960s. By analysing the contemporary sources, this paper seeks to establish how and by whom these demands were voiced, the argumentation of both sides of the debate and how were they received by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. The debate was started by a group of Montenegrin intellectuals in a climate favourable to the “political periphery” of socialist Yugoslavia and the smaller nationalisms. The group, supported by some of the high executives of the Communist Party, claimed that the rights of the Montenegrin nation were being negated by the government's refusal to allow the local language to be codified to a literary standard. The discussion sheds light on the process of nation-building in socialist-era Montenegro, revealing its actors and dynamics.

Keywords:

• Montenegro
• Socialism
• Language
• Nationalism
• Yugoslavia

Notes

The initial name for the communist-controlled Yugoslavia, between 1943 and 1945, was Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. This was changed in 1945 to Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1963, the country was renamed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since my analysis spans across all of the three periods and to avoid using different names for what was one and the same country between 1945 and 1991, throughout the paper I will use the name “socialist Yugoslavia”.

In his theory, Karl Marx never built a clear argument regarding nations and national question so that there was a lot of space to interpret his thoughts. The clearest and most authoritative definition of a nation was given by Joseph Stalin in his influential work “Marxism and the National Question” (Prosveshcheniye, March–May, 1913)—“historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture”. For more see Day and Thompson (2004).

This position was adopted by all Serbian linguists (the most notable amongst them being Pavle Ivić and Aleksandar Mladenović) and to an extent by Croatian linguists (such as Dalibor Brozović, Mate Hraste and Ljudevit Jonke), until the 1980s, although the latter claimed that even though Serbian and Croatian are functionally the same, they have so many differences in their historical development, their vocabulary and so on that they should be labelled as separate languages. Foreign experts adhered to the official conclusions that only one language existed. Although today there is a large body of literature on the differences between the four literary standards, no one denies that they have the same morphology, syntax and phonology, and that they are completely mutually intelligible. The same is reflected in practice: except for a few attempts by Croatian language purists, no books, movies or even court documents are translated from one variant/language to the other (see Bugarski and Hawkesworth 2004; Greenberg 2004; Magner 1991).

Bošnjački-hrvatski-srpski is the name used by international institutions (such as the Hague Tribunal and many universities) as a politically neutral term that still conveys the message that speakers of this trilateral language do not need translators. With Montenegro declaring crnogorski (Montenegrin) as its official language in 2009, the situation has again been complicated, and it will be interesting to see whether the international community opts to lengthen (to, for instance, the “West Balkans Language Continuum” or the “Central South Slavic”) or shorten the present name and, if it is the latter, what would it be shortened to. For these reasons, the name “Serbo-Croatian” (or “Serbian/Croatian” or “Serbian and Croatian” but treated as one), which is well established in scientific literature, continues to be used in all cases when one deals with more than one nation, especially when discussing the situation prior to 1991.

During the Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina (1878–1918), there were attempts to call the language of this province “Bosnian”, but this was shunned by both the Serb and Croat elites. Later, in interwar Yugoslavia, it was deemed that this name intended to estrange the three groups in the province, since it introduced a regional name instead of a “national” one. The perspective was, of course, that of the official view that Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are “three tribes of the same nation”. As even the three fully formed nations were encouraged to blend, there was no attention given to those who argued for Bosnian, Montenegrin, Dalmatian, Macedonian or any other regional distinctions.

On the Serb feelings in Montenegro up to 1941, many of which were that Montenegrins are “uzor Srbi” (“model Serbs”) and so on, there is a whole book of such quotations (Jovanović 1989). This is a good opportunity to point out to one distinction in terminology that will be used in this text—the distinction between Serb and Serbian. The former term is used to denote Serb by ethnicity, the latter for a Serb of Serbia. The same distinction exists in Serbo-Croatian and was until recently widely used in Montenegro as well. Thus, “a Serb writer” corresponds to the Serbo-Croatian term srpski pisac, while “a Serbian writer” would be best translated as pisac iz Srbije (“a writer from Serbia”).

To be precise, Miljanov, who had no education, wrote in the pure dialect of his native Kuči clan, Ljubiša—although he wrote in a folkloristic manner—has more layers to his language, while Njegoš combined the vernacular of his Old Montenegro with Russian and influences of “high” Serbian from south Hungary (slavenoserbski). A good overview of all three, including their language, is to be found in Skerlić (1967). A brief outline of Njegoš's language is given in Vukčević (2008, 150–151).

For practical reasons, this will henceforth be referred to as SC/CS.

For a detailed description of how it came to it and what happened afterwards, see Miller (2007, 129–139).

Arhiv Srbije i Crne Gore (AJ), CK SKJ, XI sednica IK CK SKJ, 11 April 1967, 4.

Rusinow (1977, 225) is probably correct when he calls the reaction to the declaration and the proposal “a political uproar and almost hysterical campaign against nationalism”, but reading the documents we see that if the League of Communists influenced opinion, it was the work only of its lower ranks, much to the disapproval of top-ranking party-members.

Here, we should note that the author of the report did not say “to Montenegrins or Muslims or Bosnians” but “to the peoples of these republics”, uncertain of how to denote them.

AJ, Kancelarija maršala Jugoslavije, II-4b.

AJ, Kancelarija maršala Jugoslavije, II-4b. That the idea that Montenegrins were a separate ethnic group from Serbs sounded awkward even to the people who were running the country at the time can be seen in a conversation between Tito and the Montenegrin political leadership in 1969. Commenting on the situation in Kosovo, Tito said, “It also depends a lot on the other national minorities and ‘ethnic groups’, the Serb and the Montenegrin one—it sounds like these are ethnic groups. /laughter/” (AJ, Kancelarija maršala Jugoslavije, II-2, Prijem predstavnika CK SK CG, Brioni, 17 January 1969). The phenomenon of disdain for the “belated” nations and the “ironic comments of the pioneers” was noted as common by Orvar Loefgren (Löfgren 1989, 9).

AJ, CK SKJ, XI sednica IK CK SKJ, 11 April 1967, 123 ff.

A separate republic was also intended to be “a balm for wounded pride” (see Roberts 2007, 394).

The publisher was “Grafički zavod”, led by the previously mentioned Milorad Stojović, who was highly supportive of nativist ideas.

The word Banjević uses throughout his article is narod, not nacija, with the intention of presenting the fight of the “people” for their rights, that is, their national rights. Since it is obvious that he is not speaking of any group of men and not about any language, I have translated the term as “nation”, which I hold is closer to what the author meant.

Here, Banjevi? clearly refers to the Novi Sad Agreement and any other “agreements” of philologists.

The most ardent supporters of the Montenegrin language found the means to express themselves in the magazines “Jezik” and “Kritika” in Zagreb. “Kritika” dealt with linguistics and culture, but mostly in a nationalistic manner symptomatic to Croatia between 1968 and 1972, the dates of the magazine's start and end. Rarely, there was an issue of the magazine that did not deal with some Montenegrin subject, all of which were discussed by a small number of younger and lesser-known scholars (such as Radoje and Danilo Radojević or Vojislav Nikčević).

This problem led to another debate in the same period: literary historians and historians from Belgrade and Zagreb were arguing about to whom the literature of the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) belonged.