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Montenegro: The Divided Land
Throughout the dark days of persecution and oppression Montenegrins stubbornly refused to surrender their Christian religion or their Serbian identity, and the story of their heroic resistance is one of the brightest chapters in the history of mankind's too often futile pursuit of freedom.
- GenresHistory
177 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2002
About the author
Thomas Fleming
93 books24 followersThomas Fleming is the editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and the president of The Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2023
video review: https://youtu.be/O0s_U3O3JJI
Having recently spent a week in Montenegro, this book was an excellent complement to my present-day experience of this beautiful country. By understanding Montenegro's distant and recent history you can better understand the trajectory it is currently on. As usual, Dr. Fleming is able to synthesize various disparate sources into a coherent narrative for the casual reader, while providing sources for those who wish to go deeper.
The incoherency of Orthodoxy (where does it derive its mission and jurisdiction from), as well as the inferiority of enclosing Christianity within a state and ethnicity, was only further hammered home by this text, though I am sure the author had no such intention.
(a report to the Tsar on the Montenegrins) "The people are wild, they live in disorder, heads roll for the least offense, the clergy is grasping, the churches are deserted, and Russian assistance is distributed among the bishop's cousins." (p. 75)
"[T]he Russians have pursued their own interests, completely indifferent to the fate of their Serbian 'brothers,' and the worst of all legacies of the Russian alliance with Montenegro was the ready acceptance of communism as a 'Russian' ideology." (p. 75)
"The moral burden of revenge does not derive from an abstract code of justice but from the reality of kinship, and despite the apparent bloody-mindedness of the revenge seeker, the underlying motives have more to do with a man's intimate sense of belonging to his family or clan than with hatred of the killer." (p. 82)
"The civil war between Chetniks and Partisans was nowhere more brutal than in Montenegro, where ideological distinctions took on the coloring of a vendetta between rival clans." (p. 139)
"Tito's own deals with the Germans were either unknown or kept secret." (p. 143)
Having recently spent a week in Montenegro, this book was an excellent complement to my present-day experience of this beautiful country. By understanding Montenegro's distant and recent history you can better understand the trajectory it is currently on. As usual, Dr. Fleming is able to synthesize various disparate sources into a coherent narrative for the casual reader, while providing sources for those who wish to go deeper.
The incoherency of Orthodoxy (where does it derive its mission and jurisdiction from), as well as the inferiority of enclosing Christianity within a state and ethnicity, was only further hammered home by this text, though I am sure the author had no such intention.
(a report to the Tsar on the Montenegrins) "The people are wild, they live in disorder, heads roll for the least offense, the clergy is grasping, the churches are deserted, and Russian assistance is distributed among the bishop's cousins." (p. 75)
"[T]he Russians have pursued their own interests, completely indifferent to the fate of their Serbian 'brothers,' and the worst of all legacies of the Russian alliance with Montenegro was the ready acceptance of communism as a 'Russian' ideology." (p. 75)
"The moral burden of revenge does not derive from an abstract code of justice but from the reality of kinship, and despite the apparent bloody-mindedness of the revenge seeker, the underlying motives have more to do with a man's intimate sense of belonging to his family or clan than with hatred of the killer." (p. 82)
"The civil war between Chetniks and Partisans was nowhere more brutal than in Montenegro, where ideological distinctions took on the coloring of a vendetta between rival clans." (p. 139)
"Tito's own deals with the Germans were either unknown or kept secret." (p. 143)
June 19, 2015
Another history book that is all about war, rulers, etc. Snore.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews