Problémy interpretace dějin Černé Hory

The article is a response to the review of the historian Jan Pelikán to the book by František Šístek Dějiny Černé Hory (The History of Montenegro, Praha 2017), which was published in the second issue of the Czech Historical Review in 2018 in the section “Discussion”. The main idea of the repartee is the rejection of the opinion of the reviewer that F. Šístek provided a tendentious, romanticizing image of the history of Montenegro, which suits current Montenegrin historiography and that insufficiently explains to the Czech reader the complex process of the national emancipation of the Montenegrins. The author of the repartee first elucidates the differences between the Serbian and Montenegrin narratives of the history of Montenegro and subsequently proves that F. Šístek made one of the critical themes of his book the analysis of the process of the formation of an independent Montenegrin nation, in whose identity both components of regional Montenegrinism and components of cultural Serbism appeared in parallel over the long term in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Šístek described and explicated this problem in great detail and objectively. Some other high-quality parts of the examined monograph were also valuable, particularly its erudite interpretation of the specifics of the tribal society in Montenegro in the 15th–19th centuries and an exceptionally interesting chapter on the history of Czech-Montenegrin relations.