Good morning! As part of our research for the Montenegrin America project, we presented the story of Mike Stepovich, a man from Risan and a Montenegrin-American who served as the Governor of Alaska and led the territory to statehood in the 1950s. With today’s historic meeting between the American and Russian presidents in Alaska, I recently reminded people of this story on Twitter. In Montenegro, no one seemed to care—but RTS hurried to adopt it and rebrand Mike as a Serb. We’ve also been contacted by BBC News in Serbian.
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Mike Stepovich, Risan native – Governor of Alaska
Last night, friends and colleagues started a discussion in a social media group. We mentioned actress Lidija Kordic, who this year will host the opening of the prestigious Sarajevo Film Festival—the most esteemed festival in the former Yugoslavia. A significant honour for a Montenegrin actress. But because it didn’t happen in Belgrade, it’s as if it never happened. I’ll never understand such an obsession with Belgrade.
I say this as someone who spent seven years in that city, which gave me a part of itself forever—and whose streets and people I will always carry in my heart. But the fixation on Belgrade, where every Montenegrin influencer dreams of getting photos at Belgrade Waterfront or appearing on Pink or Hype, is something I’ll never understand.
We in Montenegro don’t know how to see ourselves alone in a globalised world. Alone and with and our own identity. Most people, regardless of political allegiance, always need interpreters and translators—usually from Belgrade. Our political parties, including the staunchest independence-supporting ones, believed that no wisdom existed except in Belgrade. So, they were often marketed by PR wizards from Belgrade, like Beba Popovic.
We don’t care about global pop culture phenomena. We’re an isolated provincial community that has had incredible luck to become a state, supposedly independent.
Yet, so many stories exist outside Montenegro, outside Belgrade, and outside the region that connect us to many other places and the wider world.
One such story is the late Mike Stepovich—a towering figure in American politics. The famous Governor of Alaska Territory, whose name appears in photo searches alongside President Eisenhower holding a banner reading We’re In, in honour of Alaska securing statehood during his governorship.
Mike lived to a great age. His daughter Nada now lives in California. She married the famed John Stockton and is the mother of two U.S. basketball national team players, whose ancestors came to America from Risan.
And these people haven’t forgotten where they came from. They have visited Montenegro. They still remember it and feel it as their own. But we don’t know how to cherish and preserve that heritage, unless we stand to gain something, of course.
Stepovich died in 2014 at an advanced age but remained influential in the Republican Party until his passing.
Montenegro is capable of nothing. Meanwhile, Serbia is skilled. It takes every trace of Montenegrin presence in America. Yesterday, for instance—Jackson and Herceg Novi became sister cities. Jackson is recognised as a “Serbian” town in America, whose residents mainly descended from Montenegrin emigrants, and where King Nikola sent a flag that is still preserved there.
It’s nice that these two cities formed a sister-city bond, but only if it promotes Montenegro, not Herceg Novi as a Serbian town.
Our diaspora in America today is a tapestry of identities and faiths. We must learn to embrace all of them and connect. There are so few of us.
And as for what we know—there’s so much we don’t. For example, we don’t know that the Milanovic and Vujic families in Montana long kept alive the memory of their defunct independent kingdom of the Balkans after 1918. That one Milanovic, by marrying a princess of the Cahuilla Indian tribe, became chief of that tribe, and today their descendants run the reservation where the famous casino in Rancho Mirage stands.
We don’t know, but the state of Serbia does. It visits them, feeds them, and preserves Serbian identity among those people. And even if they all were Serbs, after all, that’s not Serbia’s job. It is not the motherland to most Serbs in Montenegro. Their state and homeland is Montenegro.
It wouldn’t bother us if we dealt with our diaspora—but we are our own problem. No Montenegrin ambassador in America has ever gone to Montana. Or to Miami or Bisbee. Or Jackson. Except for Nebojsa Kaludjerovic, who showed interest and met people. But the others—some of whom now measure patriotism for everyone—did nothing. They looked for ways to grab a few dollars from successful emigrants, and that’s it.
That’s all for today and for this week. See you again on Monday.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial board)
