End of Montenegro

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On June 5 this year, the Republic of Montenegro, a small Balkan state with a population of no more than 650 thousand people, will become a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. All 28 NATO member states have ratified the protocol on Montenegro's accession to the alliance, and although some formalities still need to be agreed upon, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has already congratulated Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic on a "landmark event."

The political course pursued by former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and his inner circle (Dusko Markovic, President Philip Vujanovic and others), despite the resistance of a significant part of the Montenegrin people, triumphed

Irrevocably and finally? History, of course, knows examples of the withdrawal of NATO member states from the military organization of this bloc (France, Greece), but this can hardly be expected from Montenegro: it was pointed out to its place at the NATO summit on May 25.

Despite the fact that significant masses of the population of Montenegro are involved in the protests against NATO, practically the entire intelligentsia, people of various political views, from ultra-liberals to traditionalist patriots, Djukanovic's personal power regime looks very solid.

Milo Djukanovic was in power in Montenegro (prime minister of a union republic within Yugoslavia, prime minister of an independent republic, president, minister of defense, etc.) for a total of 26 years. Now, after active protests in the past two years, he has "gone into the shadows", having ceded the reins of power to his longtime comrades Markovic and Vujanovic. At the same time, Djukanovic remains the leader of the ruling party, the Democratic Union of Socialists of Montenegro. And this despite the fact that for a quarter of a century in power, Djukanovic was utterly mired in scandals. Criminal cases related to smuggling were initiated against him in neighboring Italy, the Serbian and opposition Montenegrin media directly call him one of the "godfathers" of the Balkan underworld.

What is the secret of Milo Djukanovic's unsinkability, which allowed him to lead the country towards joining NATO and the EU, despite the disapproval of this course by the majority of the population? The answer is economics.

As of 2013, the gross domestic product of Montenegro amounted to 7.4 billion euros, of which 64% of GDP came from the service sector. The "service sector" is understood primarily as tourism, the related real estate trade in the resort area, etc. The share of receipts from the tourism cluster in the budget of Montenegro is growing steadily; according to Montenegrin experts, today tourism provides more than 70% of the country's GDP. Such a single-industry economy is extremely unstable and entirely dependent on the global environment.

I remember John Court Campbell, who spent more than twenty years in the US State Department and then headed the Council on Foreign Relations. The author of half a dozen works on American foreign policy, mainly in Central and Southeastern Europe and the Middle East, Campbell wrote in 1967 a book about socialist Yugoslavia, Tito's Special Path, in which he gave a forecast that subsequently came true: Yugoslavia will be destroyed by unresolved national contradictions (first of all, between Serbs and Croats), loans (Josip Broz Tito took them wherever he could, without thinking about who and how would return them), as well as - this item sounded unexpectedly - TOURISM. "Tourism in modern Europe can become a more revolutionary force than Marxism …" - wrote Campbell.

It is these considerations about tourism as applied to modern Montenegro that interest us. Campbell points out that through tourism, the population of Dalmatia and Montenegrin Primorye is increasingly involved in contacts with the West. This leads to the penetration of Western values into the socialist state, but the "revolutionary" nature of tourism for the countries of Eastern Europe, according to Campbell, is not only and not so much in undermining the ideological monopoly of power.

Rapidly developing tourism changes the mentality of the local population involved in it, changes priorities, ideas about good and bad, useful and harmful. The native language and their own history for the groups of the population involved in tourism are becoming less and less important.

We can make only one adjustment to John Campbell's forecasts - tourism has crushed not only Montenegrin Primorye, but the whole of Montenegro in general. Industrial enterprises built during the years of socialism are mostly idle. Residents of the country's interior regions, former industrial centers - Niksic, Danilovgrad, etc., are on the brink of survival, only the tourist Primorye and the government structures existing at its expense, located in Podgorica and Cetinje, flourish. In the agricultural sector, only wine production is developing, but even then, in many respects, on imported raw materials. The quality of this wine, especially in the export version, leaves much to be desired, so the Rospotrebnadzor's ban on the import of Montenegrin wine into Russia (April 26, 2017) can only be welcomed …

Before our eyes, for twenty-five years since 1991, an entire European state, albeit not the largest, has turned into a tourist service. Here, of course, the economic sanctions imposed by the West against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992 played a role - under the sanctions regime, it is not profitable to develop heavy industry, unlike tourism. You should not discount the mentality of the Montenegrins, who themselves like to make fun of their slowness, contemplation, and sometimes just laziness. These habits perfectly fit the parasitic principle "we sit, and the money goes", according to which the tourism business in the country largely exists. In "pre-tourist" times, this slowness and contemplation were balanced by the memory of valiant ancestors, the readiness to defend their faith and original existence with arms in hand; tourism has turned the national identity of the Montenegrins into an attraction for the public.

Even the separation of Montenegro from Serbia in 2006 can be seen as a triumph of the tourist mentality over common sense. “What is the use of the Serbs for us? We share with Belgrade the income from tourism, but we could keep everything for ourselves … And the Serbs, as they traveled to us, will continue to visit us, they have nowhere to go … - this was the reasoning of those 55% of the population of Montenegro who voted FRY in 2006 Needless to say that the tourist Primorye voted mainly for the exit, and the Montenegrin hinterland, the inner regions of the country, against. The victory was won by one percent of the votes, which does not go beyond the statistical error.

It is no coincidence that at opposition rallies in the Montenegrin capital, calls are often made to "remember the glorious sons of Montenegro", "to remember the heroic times of the struggle against the Turks", "not to betray the legacy of Petr Petrovic Njegos" (the Montenegrin metropolitan and secular ruler, educator and poet). These appeals are understandable, but, unfortunately, they are not very effective - the inhabitants of the interior regions of the country remember all this anyway, and for the tourist servants from Primorye, reading currency quotes has long replaced Njegosh's poems. “Excessive” patriotism is even harmful to the tourist cluster, just as any political and economic upheavals are harmful to the tourism sector.

Actually, this is the basis of the power of Djukanovic - on representing the interests of the "tourist" part of Montenegro, on maintaining the status quo at any cost. The fact that the development of the country according to the "tourist" model ultimately leads to a complete erosion of national identity, to the transformation of the state into an appendage of hotel trusts such as "Hyatt" or "Hilton" does not matter as long as the "money goes".

The second pillar of the Djukanovic regime is the parasitic class of civil servants loyal to it, which has grown over twenty-five years. It is enough to look at the chic five-story building of the Montenegrin embassy in Paris, on Boulevard Saint-Germain, to understand why the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry will always be loyal to the "godfather" regime.

The conclusion from all this is that the change of the Djukanovic regime can occur only as a result of the breakdown of the entire system of socio-economic relations that exist today in Montenegro. And this means that corruption schemes in the field of tourism should be broken, and, more importantly, tourism should cease to serve as virtually the only source of the budget. In this case, power would have passed from Primorye to the interior regions, where the bulk of the population, the entire industry and agriculture, are concentrated. If this does not happen, then we will probably see Djukanovic leave the post of the head of the ruling party (for the West, his figure is not very convenient), but then the state and the party will simply be headed by another Djukanovic appointee. Montenegro has become a single-industry tourist state, which Djukanovic has done, has no other way than joining the EU and NATO.

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In conclusion, a few words from myself and about myself. The Montenegrin pro-government press has repeatedly accused me of facilitating a coup d'etat in this country with the aim of overthrowing Djukanovic. I officially declare: I did not participate in the preparation of the coup, I did not personally know any of the conspirators. And in general, I seriously doubt that the preparations for the so-called coup took place. All sources available today indicate that the "coup" was a staged by the Montenegrin security services. At the same time, I am an opponent of Djukanovic and what he turned Montenegro into, because I love this country and as a historian I know very well what it was just recently. The courage and proud spirit of the Montenegrin people have been praised by many Russian poets, from Pushkin to Vysotsky; It was in this capacity that the Montenegrins entered Russian culture as a proud, unshakably staunch people. It is bitter to realize that both national pride and historical memory have been taken away from the Montenegrins, and the country itself may soon be renamed Montenegro - this is better for tourism.