Montenegro Quotes
Tito did a marvelous job of keeping the lid on the ethnic hatred that was always present. Where he failed however was that as soon as Tito died, the ethnic groups were literally at each others’ throats.
Tito did a remarkable job of suppressing the historical ethnic and religious strife among the nationalities and religious groups of Yugoslavia. Hatred and the thirst for “justice”, nationalism, and vengeance went back 1000 years in the Balkans. However, when Tito died, Yugoslavia collapsed in a resumption of the traditional inter-ethnic hatred and violence.
The Serbs were fighting the Muslims again and just as in the Serbian War at the end of the 20th century the Russians sided with their co-religionists against the Muslims just as they had 125 years earlier. Attitudes had not changed.
The Serbs were a minority in Kosovo, the poorest province of Yugoslavia. Many were abandoning Kosovo for economic reasons and in response to hostility be the majority Albanians. Later he would send Serbian troops into Kosovo and try to ethnically cleanse the area of Muslim Albanians by committing atrocities.
The Serbs were in a conflict with the Ottoman Muslims almost 1000 years ago. However, they have never seen that war as having ended. When the Albanian Muslims were breaking from the weakened Ottoman Empire, the Serbs not only wanted to dominate Albania, but also to extract vengeance for alleged wrongs committed by Ottoman Muslims hundreds of years earlier. This attitude existed through and after the Serbian war and the Kosovo Albanian population would not live under Serbian control given the Serb war crimes and atrocities perpetrated on Muslims—not only in the historical past but even in the Serbian War. Tucovic was one of the very few Serbs who not only argued that the Serbian policy of oppression of the Muslims was not only morally wrong but counter productive from the Serbian point of view. For many Serbs, Tucovic was considered a traitor.
Note the language “swarm of Turkish Islam” which was a classic technique of dehumanizing the enemy, especially effective when done by a humanist in poetry. The metaphor of Muslims as insects was little different from the Ottoman Islamic characterization of Christians as “spawn of the Devil” and the like. Historically, the Montenegro people fought for the independence from both the Ottomans and the Serbians who, even into the 21st century strove to have Montenegro a part of or subservient to Serbia.
