Dr. Norman Berdichevsky
Unless you happened to catch the 30 second news item on May 22, 2006 on the more internationally-oriented networks such as the BBC or CNN, you probably don’t know or care that Podgorica is the capital of the newly proclaimed independent state of Montenegro. The country’s independence supporters gained a narrow 55% majority with the aid of many migrant voters returning from abroad and restored the map of the Balkans to more what it looked like in 1914.
The old “new” country currently has a total population of just over 620,000 and its independence deprived Serbia its access to the sea. At the end of the Balkan wars on the eve of World War I, the demand for a union of the Southern Slavs into one “Greater Serbia” (eventually to be called Yugoslavia) was the great cause of all those who set what came to be called “national self-determination” highest on the totem pole of human endeavor.














