THE SERBIAN NATIONAL FEELING IN THE BAY OF KOTOR ON THE POPULATION CENSUSES IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

Abstract

The Bay of Kotor represents a region in today’s Montenegro, which had a different historical path and development compared to the rest of the country. Until 1918, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and most of the population was Serbian Orthodox with a strong national feeling. In the Yugoslav kingdom, it was part of the Zeta Region, then the Zeta Banovina, and was always clearly politically determined in terms of supporting the politics of Belgrade. The Bay of Kotor became part of Montenegro for the first time at the end of the Second World War, so the policy of creating the Montenegrin nation was also reflected in it. However, the strong Serbian national feeling of the Bay of Kotor could not be easily extinguished by the decrees of the communist leaders, so population censuses showed that the largest part of the small number of Serbs in Montenegro is precisely in the four the Bay of Kotor municipalities. This is precisely the information that inspired this work, with which we wanted to show the changes of the number of Serbs in the Bay of Kotor in the context of the policy that made Serbs Montenegrins.