Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  Meanwhile, the Serbian army began an annual series of expeditions into the mountains to round up the ‘rebels’. Barbarous acts multiplied. Villages were torched. Bounties of 100,000 dinars were placed on the heads of fugitives. Locals were beaten or bribed to turn informer, and prisoners faced torture and execution. The Belgrade press showed no restraint in publishing the grisly photographs. A Canadian staff officer, resident in the Balkans, gave testimony: ‘I know the case of a certain Bulatovich called “the Colonel” found in the hands of the Serbs. This unfortunate man was three times hung… At the last moment, the rope was cut so that he would not die immediately… Afterwards, they broke his arms and legs. Finally, still living, they removed his skin, like that of a beast.’71 Reports from Montenegro recorded 6,000 houses burned, and many more pillaged. Damage caused by the Serbian army exceeded that of the Austrian occupation, and was estimated at 723 million francs. More than 5,000 Montenegrin civilians were languishing in Serbian internment camps. Another Canadian, who had been running a war hospital at Dulcigno (Ulcinj), wrote to the British government in July 1920 saying that his charity could no longer do its work. ‘The Serbs have done every dirty trick they could think of,’ he wrote. ‘There are not many Montenegrins, and in another year there will be none left.’72 To cap it all, the Serbian government passed a law for ‘The Protection of the State’, permitting its security forces to use whatever means they pleased.

  Owing to continued protests, the British government called for still more inquiries. In mid-1920 further reports were commissioned from Major Temperley, and from Ronald Bryce, a professional diplomat, who were sent out to observe the elections. Neither discovered serious irregularities. Bryce concluded (a) that fresh elections had taken place satisfactorily, and (b) that the people of Montenegro were in favour of a ‘Jugo-Slav State’.73 Temperley concurred. What they failed to report was that the Serbian government had vetted all the electoral candidates, and that membership of the ‘Jugo-Slav State’ was not at issue. It was one thing to favour the formation of Yugoslavia; it was something quite different to be tricked and shackled into joining Yugoslavia with no opportunity to negotiate the terms. For its part, the government of Montenegro in exile appealed to the Supreme Allied Council for the creation of a commission of inquiry.

  By this time, despairing of their alliance with Britain and France, King Nikola and his ministers placed their last hope in the good faith of the United States; General Gvozdenović was dispatched as the royal ambassador to Washington. In January 1921, therefore, when the US administration followed the British and French lead in withdrawing recognition from Montenegro’s representatives, the reaction was understandably bitter. J. S. Plamenatz, premier and foreign minister of the royal Montenegrin government, signed a strong, not to say intemperate diplomatic protest. He reminded the Americans of ‘the annexation of Allied Montenegro by force and bloodshed’ and of President Wilson’s assurances about the Montenegrin people’s ‘right to self-determination’:

  Taking into consideration all the foregoing facts, the royal Government of Montenegro cannot believe that the government of the United States – the most civilized country in the world – would contemplate an act [leading to] the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Montenegro. Such an action would not only aid the criminal intentions of Belgrade, but would ignore all the principles of international morality and justice; the United States would be guilty of not respecting its given word and not respecting the sovereignty of Montenegro.74

  King Nikola of Montenegro died on 1 March 1921 at Antibes aged eighty, and was buried at San Remo. A terminal act of submission appeared to have been played out on the 21 October following, when Queen Milena, the king’s widow, dissolved the Montenegrin government-in-exile and released the ministers from their oath of allegiance, so detaching herself from the only focus round which the royalist cause might have coalesced. Her decision was reported in the New York Times under the headline of ‘Exit Montenegro’:

  News has reached Rome that the Montenegrin Government has ceased to exist… Queen Milena has recognised the inopportuneness of giving the name of Government to a body of ministers who no longer have any power… The handful of soldiers remaining… have agreed to disband… The act of Queen Milena… marks the passing of one of the most interesting little states of Europe, and removes from the Supreme Council and the League of Nations one of their most afflicting burdens… It is unlikely that agitation for an independent Montenegro will be continued.75

  By that time, the former kingdom was losing its very name. After incorporation into a newly centralized Serbia, Serbian officials increasingly referred to it as the Banovina Zetska, the ‘Region of the Zeta’, a formula officially adopted in 1929; the Montenegrin constitution, together with the authority of the tribes and clans, had been swept away.

  The House of Petrović-Njegoš was brought low by Nikola’s death. The heir apparent, Prince Danilo, had renounced his rights in favour of his cousin, King Aleksandar. His brother, Prince Mirko, had predeceased their father; the next in line, Prince Mirko’s son Mihailo, was a boy of thirteen. There was no hope of a quick recovery. In due course Mihailo, who had been at school at Eastbourne in England, accepted the role of pretender, and General Gvozdenović was appointed regent.

  A ‘League of Montenegrin Emigrants’ thereupon published a brochure entitled Le Plus Grand Crime de la Guerre Mondiale, ‘The Greatest Crime of the World War’. Its subtitle read: La Tentative d’escamoter un état allié, ‘The Attempt to Cause an Allied State to Vanish’. The book consisted of page after page of quotations from Allied statesmen:

  ‘Great Britain will continue to pursue the war energetically until Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro are restored.’ Herbert Asquith, 10 January 1916.

  ‘The restoration of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro.’ David Lloyd George, in response to a question from the German delegation to the Peace Conference concerning the conditions of peace, 16 April 1919.

  ‘The question of Montenegro will not be discussed at Pallanza [during Yugoslav-Italian negotiations] but at a later date by all the Powers.’ Bonar Law, British Conservative Party leader, 11 May 1920.

  ‘Montenegro’s only fault is to have participated in the war and to have believed the promises of her allies.’ C. Treves, Italian socialist.

  ‘Germany’s crime against Belgium is not so great as that committed by Serbia… against Montenegro. The first of those crimes has been repaired; the second still enjoys the support of the Powers.’ Hugo Mowinckel, Norwegian minister, August 1920.76

  The final curtain, however, had not yet fully descended. Between April and May 1922 the delegates of thirty-four countries convened at the Genoa Conference to discuss the post-war reconstruction of Eastern Europe. The conference was heading for fruitless deadlock, but one of the items on its agenda related to the work of the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission, and discussion revealed that Montenegro’s share of reparations had never been paid. Absurd though the argument sounded, the Commission had retained the $2 million collected and due to Montenegro because ‘it apparently doesn’t know to whom to pay it’.77 The occasion provided a pretext for further protests on Montenegro’s behalf. Gabriele d’Annunzio, the firebrand Italian nationalist and ‘the first duce’, made an impassioned speech; and a Dr Chotch, still described as Montenegro’s foreign minister, presented a formal appeal to each of the delegations:

  With its note of 1 November 1920 to the Supreme Allied Council and the League of Nations, the Government of Montenegro… asked for the appointment of an international commission of investigation… [into] the crimes and offences committed… against the Montenegrin people. Unfortunately, this cry of despair… did not find the response which we hoped its justice would inspire.

  The Montenegrin people and Government firmly believe that the exalted assembly of the representatives of the nations gathered at Genoa will not ignore the martyrdom of the Montenegrin people and the unheard-of barbarity of which they are the victims.

&
nbsp; Consequently, in the name of the Montenegrin Government, I have the honor to pray the International Conference to deign to inaugurate a commission of investigation charged with verification of the [said] crimes and offences…78

  ‘Montenegro’s Plea’ was accompanied by piles of documents detailing Serbian atrocities. It received no known reply, and no investigation ever materialized. The New York Times, which had pursued the story with determination, spoke the last word, publishing a long article on 16 April 1922 and recounting the events of the last four years; the headline read ‘Annihilation of a Nation’.79

  Montenegro’s friends in the outside world were now few and far between. One of them, an Englishman who had once been tutor to King Nikola’s sons, wrote a searing denunciation in 1924, which excoriates the Allied Powers no less than Serbia. It opens with a scene from the heart of London:

  On the walls of the top of the grand staircase in the Foreign Office in Whitehall a number of decorative panels have been painted in honour of our Allies in the Great War. The centre panel, entitled ‘BRITANNIA PACIFICATRIX’, depicts all the Allies and includes Montenegro as a separate state. Britannia is represented welcoming her loyal comrades in arms; some – France, Italy, America and Japan – are glorious figures; others, who suffered more bitterly – Belgium, Roumania, Serbia, Montenegro – are mournful with bleeding wounds. The official description of the panel contains the following words: ‘Serbia is clasping Montenegro in her arms.’80

  *

  For the next eighty-seven years, the former subjects of the Kingdom of Montenegro lived their lives as citizens of Yugoslavia. In the inter-war period, they were integrated into Serbia within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. During the Second World War they endured harsh occupations, first by the Italian Fascists and then by the German Nazis. In post-war, Communist-run Yugoslavia, their land was reconstituted by Tito as one of the country’s six federal republics.

  King Nikola’s legacy was not insignificant. For one thing, he left a dozen sons and daughters who, through numerous strategic marriages, played a significant role in Balkan and Orthodox politics, and he was remembered as the ‘father-in-law of Europe’. (His daughter Yelena, as Queen Elena of Italy during Mussolini’s regime, had some influence in an Axis attempt to restore a Montenegrin state.) For another, he left a considerable poetic and literary oeuvre that now forms part of the standard Serbo-Croat repertoire. Most ironically, perhaps, he had done much through his earlier writings and pronouncements to strengthen the cause of pan-Serbian nationalism, fanning the flames of romantic exclusivity without knowing what the flames might consume. His own career was ruined by the cause which he had once encouraged.

  Once Tito’s Communist regime had passed, King Nikola’s memory could again be honoured. In 1989 his body and that of Queen Milena (who had died at Cap d’Antibes only two years after her husband) were brought home from San Remo and reinterred in the Cupiro Chapel at Cetinje. The former royal palace reopened as a royal museum. Shortly after, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which Nikola had sponsored, was re-established. In 1997, the elderly Archbishop Mikhailo of Cetinje, who had worked in exile as Queen Elena of Italy’s archivist, assumed the position of the metropolitan of Montenegro, thereby challenging the hierarchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church. His rival was Archbishop Amfilohije, metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, who made headlines by denouncing Prime Minister Djukanović as the ‘Pagan King’.81 Archbishop Mikhailo gained the allegiance of perhaps 30 per cent of the faithful.82

  During the terrible Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Montenegro stood by Serbian-led Yugoslavia for longer than any other republic. No less than a third of the officers of the Yugoslav army were Montenegrins, as were large numbers of officials and Party leaders in Yugoslavia’s central administration. Montenegrin forces participated in the attacks on Croatian Dubrovnik and on the Muslim-inhabited areas of Bosnia.83 Both Slobodan Milošević and Željko Ražnatović, the paramilitary leader known as ‘Arkan’, were Serbs of Montenegrin descent.84 So, too, is Radovan Karadzicˇ, the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs.85

  Yet from 1997 onwards the Montenegrin Communist Party, which had stayed in charge throughout the wars, split into pro- and anti-Milošević factions, and the stronger anti faction gradually distanced itself from Belgrade. In its brief, last emanation, the Yugoslav Federation took a dual form, within which Serbia and Montenegro were assigned an equal voice in foreign and defence policy, adopting the sort of arrangement which King Nikola and his ministers might once have accepted.

  Montenegro’s disaffection with Serbia grew markedly in 1999 during ‘Operation Noble Anvil’, NATO’s bombing campaign launched to protect neighbouring Kosovo, then a province of Serbia (with a largely Albanian population) which, as we saw at the outset, declared its independence in 2008. Kosovan refugees poured over the frontier; NATO planners targeted Montenegrin ports and communications; and collateral casualties were caused when bombs fell on peaceful villages. Montenegro was paying heavily for a Serbian connection of rapidly decreasing benefit.

  Once Slobodan Milošević had been overthrown in Serbia in October 2000, the Montenegrin leadership talked openly of its aspirations for an agreed divorce. Preparations took time, but on 22 May 2006, after nearly ninety years’ delay, the crucial referendum was held. The motion for independence narrowly gained the required majority of votes, despite EU monitors having raised the threshold from 50 to 55 per cent; the winning margin of 0.5 per cent was more respectable than it seemed.86 Montenegro joined the United Nations and the Council of Europe. The sovereign state which had vanished in 1918 was restored.87

  In the period preceding the referendum, the government of Prime Minister Djukanović systematically promoted all the symbols of Montenegro’s separate identity. In addition to supporting the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, it renamed the country’s official language. The school curriculum replaced Serbian language classes with ‘native language classes’, and the University’s Department of Serbian Language and Literature became the ‘Department of Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian and Croat Studies’.88 In 2004 a new state anthem was introduced in reaction to Serbia’s reintroduction of the old royal anthem of the House of Karadjeordjević. Since then Montenegrins sing ‘Oj svijetla majska zoro’, ‘Oh, bright dawn of May’, which recalls the conquest of Kosovo.89

  Finally, on 12 December 2005 the prime minister unveiled a long-awaited statue in a spacious park of Podgorica. ‘Montenegro’, Djukanović said, ‘was, is and should be a friend of all nations, especially of the South Slavs. But never again [will she become] someone’s friend to her own detriment.’90 An opposition spokesman dismissed the event as ‘a dictator’s act of personal promotion’. Yet it was welcomed by Prince Nikola II Petrović (b. 1941), an architect resident in Paris and son of the late Prince Mihailo.91 The statue showed King Nikola mounted, but wearing the same national dress as he had worn on Proclamation Day in 1910.

  III

  The theory and practice of state sovereignty is a complex subject. Few would deny that the destruction of a recognized state through foreign interference is illegal. One may draw a parallel with the death of individuals. If a man or a woman dies from age or sickness, the event may be regretted, but it cannot be morally denounced. Yet if the loss of life is due to the action or inaction of others, it is automatically classed as a crime – manslaughter or murder or involuntary homicide.

  With respect to sovereign states, the wider context is crucial. Few politicians or international lawyers would oppose the idea that a supranational order exists, and that the conduct of sovereign states is subject to collective rules and sanctions. Such, after all, are the foundations of international law. The failure in Montenegro’s case, therefore, was not confined to the fact of the state’s demise through foreign fraud and violence: it was equally a failure of what would now be called the ‘international community’. Montenegro had been a member of the wartime entente, and her legal personality was still intact as the war ended. Whether or not it
was formally terminated by the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference is open to debate. For reasons that are hard to pinpoint, Montenegro’s fate completely escaped the international agenda.

  King Nikola’s kingdom sank before the legal framework of state sovereignty was strengthened by the Estrada Doctrine of 1930 and the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which expounded the principles of sovereign equality and of non-intervention. It certainly met Montevideo’s four criteria of sovereignty: namely, a permanent population, a defined territory, a recognized government, and the capacity to conduct foreign relations.92 But in 1918–21, when the Allied Powers and then the League of Nations had to deal with numerous cases of disputed sovereignty, none of these principles had been formally established. The Åland Isles, for example, objected to automatic incorporation into Finland, which had recently declared its independence. The Ålanders were 90 per cent Swedish-speaking, and claimed the right to remain in Sweden. The Swedish government sponsored their claim, and the League of Nations convened its very first commission of inquiry. In 1921, to the surprise of many, the commission’s recommendation was to leave the islands under Finnish jurisdiction, but with a firm guarantee of their autonomy. This judgment has held good ever since.93

  In Albania, another dispute was not settled so peaceably. The Serbian army launched a further advance in an attempt to pre-empt the outcome, but its offensive helped the Allied Powers to resolve their differences in precisely the opposite way to the Serbs’ intentions. In November 1921, by a decree of the Allied Conference of Ambassadors, Albanian independence was recognized and, with minor changes, the frontiers of 1913 were reconfirmed.94