Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, America.gov, as part of its feature “The Unfinished Work of Democracy,” is asking academics and journalists from the United States and elsewhere to comment on the challenges to democracy that still lay ahead for countries of the former Eastern Bloc. What follows are their responses – and yours are welcome as well.

Montenegro faces many challenges. In my view the most critical is the need to establish a common primary identity, without which no country can be secure from domestic upheaval and dissolution. Currently the country’s Orthodox population is fairly evenly split between “Montenegrins” and “Serbs.” This has not always been the case; nor can it afford to be in the future if Montenegro is to evolve as a cohesive polity without risking the kind of violent fissure that tore apart Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia during the decade 1991-2001.

While every case is unique, today’s Montenegro faces a choice quite similar to what the first Austrian Republic confronted when it was established in 1919. Both originated as successor states to formerly multiethnic unions in which they were obliged to choose between two competing identities. For the Austrians, the question was whether they were ethnic Germans who belonged to a greater German fatherland, or a distinct people nurtured by a centuries-long status as the center of the Habsburg empire. Similarly, Montenegrins cherished their heroic survival as an independent state in the face of Ottoman hegemony in the Balkans, but also saw themselves as Serbs.

In 1919, both rode the wave of ethnic nationalism that persuaded hefty majorities that they belonged to a greater ethnic homeland. The Montenegrins promptly chose union with Serbia, while the Austrians tried to merge with Germany, only to be denied their choice by the victorious Allies. Polls taken throughout the interwar period showed that a hefty majority of Austrians considered themselves German and sought Anschluß.

During World War II, the so-called Ostmark bore its full share of the wartime sacrifices without question and even managed to provide the Austrian-born Hitler with half of all war criminals tried at Nuremberg. A half-century later Montenegro enthusiastically supported Montenegrin expatriates Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic in the war against Croatia, best known for the bombardment of Dubrovnik and the looting of civilian homes along the way.

Yet everything changed before the war was over. Much as the Austrians rediscovered their national identity on the road back from Stalingrad, Montenegrins found theirs during the retreat from Dubrovnik. The combination of defeat and the moral burden of complicity with war crimes inspired many to reorient their identity.

After 1945 Austrian leaders successfully nurtured a separate identity through a new generation of schoolbooks and other media that exaggerated their distinctiveness as a people, while minimizing Austria’s contribution to the Holocaust. Today, fewer than ten percent of Austrians regard themselves as German. Milo Djukanovic has committed Montenegro to the same path, one which will further erode a primarily Serb self-identity in the land of the Black Mountain. In March 2002 I suggested to then Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic that Serbia had limited time to forestall or reverse this trend in Montenegro by acknowledging and dissociating itself from the war crimes of the 1990s. The continued reluctance to do so will help perpetuate current tensions between the tiny republic’s “Serbs” and “Montenegrins,” leaving open the possibility of civil war until state-sponsored media and Serbia’s continued outcast status has helped forge an insurmountable majority of “Montenegrins.” And that will make Montenegro a nation.

Learn more about Dr. Charles Ingrao.