Podgorica Assembly

On 26 November 1918 (13 November by the Julian calendar used in Montenegro) the Great National Assembly sitting in Podgorica unanimously deposed King Nicholas I and proclaimed the union of Montenegro with Serbia. The British chronology of the war records under 29 November the meeting of the Montenegrin National Assembly in Podgorica. The assembly sat from 24 to 29 November, but it adopted its most important resolution on 26 November.

The assembly was prepared by supporters of unification with the help of the Serbian army. At the end of October the so-called Adriatic Troops of Colonel Dragutin Milutinović, made up of soldiers of the Yugoslav division and Serbian volunteers from Kosovo, entered Montenegro. On 28 October a Central Executive Committee for the Unification of Serbia and Montenegro was set up in Berane. At the beginning of November the last Austro-Hungarian units left the country, and the Serbs occupied Cetinje. According to historians’ accounts, Milutinović had instructions from the regent Alexander to prevent the king’s return by every means. Nicholas I, who on 20 October had declared himself in favour of a Yugoslav confederation with Montenegro as an equal partner, was in France, and the French authorities did not allow him to return home.

On 7 November the committee in Berane announced the rules for elections to the assembly. It was to have 165 delegates, chosen indirectly by electors in districts, communes and towns. Opponents objected that the electoral law had not been passed by any Montenegrin legislative body and that it violated the constitution in force. Podgorica was chosen as the place of the sessions because the capital, Cetinje, was a stronghold of the king’s supporters. The candidates of the party of unconditional unification had their lists printed on white paper, while their opponents, supporters of union on equal terms, had theirs on green, hence the names Whites and Greens. In the elections of 19 November the Whites won a decisive majority. No vote was held in several districts, including Ulcinj.

The assembly met on 24 November in the hall of the Tobacco Monopoly in Podgorica and elected Savo Cerović as its president. On 26 November the draft resolution was read out, amid cheers and the singing of the Serbian anthem, despite protests from several delegates that there had been no debate on it. The resolution consisted of four points. It deprived Nicholas I and the whole Petrović-Njegoš dynasty of the throne. It proclaimed that Montenegro was uniting with Serbia under the sceptre of the Karađorđević dynasty and entering the common state of the “three-named people” of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It appointed a five-member executive committee to carry out the unification, and ordered that the king, the Serbian government and the Allied and neutral states be notified of it. The resolution was adopted unanimously, with three delegates absent. At its subsequent sittings, up to 29 November, the assembly elected the executive committee, sent a delegation headed by Bishop Gavrilo Dožić to Belgrade, confiscated the king’s property and barred his family from returning to the country.

A few days later, on 1 December, the regent Alexander proclaimed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Nicholas I and his government in exile declared the Podgorica resolutions illegal. At the beginning of January 1919 the Greens took up arms in the Christmas Uprising, which, however, collapsed. The dispute over the legality of the assembly lasted a whole century. In 2018, after Montenegro had regained its independence, its parliament annulled the Podgorica resolution, calling the unification a coup d’état.