Good morning! I read a lot about Montenegrin migration into the US these days. About the oldest one – from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. About the last of the “Mohicans” – Nikola Petanovic and Milena Gvozdenovic. About Milo Petrovic Njegos. And about how Montenegrin society and the state have been making requests from the diaspora for centuries but giving very little in return. Will that ever change?
Why are Montenegrins bad patriots?
When I started the ‘Montenegro America’ project with a team of talented and dedicated people, I could not even imagine what kind of stories we would discover. With the help of the diaspora – about the diaspora. With the support of enthusiasts, well-meaning individuals and my university in America. And I realized the painful truth: our people – farmers and warriors, often uneducated and illiterate – managed to create families and start a new life ten thousand kilometers away from their homeland.
Today, we do not know much about them. And what we know – we owe to enthusiasts like Gordan Stojovic, Dragan Perovic, young Alek Barovic and journalist Bojana Dabovic. Digging through the archives and listening to the stories of descendants, they put together the pieces of a big puzzle – a story that is still waiting to be told in its entirety.
There has never been an organized, strategic effort to connect with the diaspora. Despite dozens of diplomats, ministers and ambassadors, especially those who today make a career out of patriotism, the state has done almost nothing to systematize data on emigration. And for a country like Montenegro, it is a matter of survival.
The main goal of our project is to bring together everything that the aforementioned people and other researchers have collected and written down – and to follow in their footsteps. To collect, preserve and tell the story of those who left Montenegro a long time ago, glorified its name, while Montenegro did not even know about it.
Nikola Petanovic represents the most intriguing example. He died in misery, publishing ‘Montenegro Mirror, while the royal Yugoslav service was trying to catch him. When he died, an internal royal dispatch noted that “there were no successful or influential people around him.” That Serbian priests refused to bury him until the money for the funeral was sent by Prince Milo, so the Russian priest read the funeral service for him. That fact alone – that trace of interest – speaks volumes.
Other traces come from American scientists who, at least incidentally, dealt with Montenegro and its diaspora – as part of the wider Balkan migration. They also concluded that Montenegrins in America quickly assimilated and disappeared in the Serbian or Yugoslav context, because they were poorly educated, poorly organized and with few resources. However, the traces remained.
We need to work on them today. One should be inclusive and understanding. Many descendants of emigrants do not even know that they are from Montenegro. Many identify themselves as Serbs, because for decades the Serbian church and the Serbian community were their only gathering place. We should not resent them, nor the Serbian community. Thanks to that fact, today we can follow in their footsteps and talk. Not in order to strip them of their Serbdom, but to preserve together the memory of where they came from. Regardless of identity. This exchange and interaction can only bring good to Montenegro.
As a community, what can we concretely do?
We can start an endowment at one of the American universities, for scholarships for those who want to deal with Montenegro. Many small nations of Europe do that. Scholarships do not have to be only for Montenegrins, but for everyone – from Indonesia to America – who wants to research a specific story about a disputed identity. About the lost and found community. About Montenegrins in America.
That’s all for today. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM observer and columnist
(The opinions and views of our columnists do not necessarily reflect those of the CdM news team)
