Talk:Liberation of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro (1918)

Liberation of Montenegro

We have basically one paragraph specifically dedicated to it, which says the following:

"Colonel Dragutin Milutinović led a Serbian force, the "Scutari Troops" (later "Adriatic Troops"), northwest through Albania aiming to liberate Montenegro. This force arrived in Podgorica on 31 October to find Montenegro already liberated by local paramilitary forces. After a last skirmish, the Austro-Hungarian occupation force evacuated Montenegro on November 4.[4]"

The source is Balkan Anschluss by Srdja Pavlovic, page 151.

There are several problems here. To start with, whoever knows me, knows that I misstrust local authors in regard of dealing with local issues. Serbs will defend Serbs, Crpats will defend Croats, Bosniaks will oppose any pro-Serbian or pro-Croatian views, and same with Montenegrins. Even when we find cases of, exemple, Kosovar author criticizing Kosovar POV, it is usually to illustrate a different point, to criticize the policy of the party in power back then, it is rarelly an objective neutral criticism. So, having this in mind, and, dealing with an issue such as liberation of central-western Balkans in 1918, why to rely on a local author when we have so much academic studies published by neutral authors? Not as if were dealing with some obscure particular event hardly describer anywhere so we must rely on a local author which was the only one to care in deapt about it, but rather an issue that over hundred non-Yugoslav authors dedicated to WWI dealt in some way or another. Srdja Pavlovic on the other side is an author who´s main book is exactly this one: Balkan Anschluss, in which he bacisally challenges the traditional historiography and tries to claim Montenegro was "annexed" and not "liberated" by Serbia. Without getting at all into a debate wether he is right, or wrong, it clearly puts him up at the front of the challengers of what is the established view of modern historiography (I will demonstrate it right next). Bearing this in mind, using him as source, and only source, bring serios NPOV problems to the article. Whoever is the editor pushing his ideas into the articles, can hardly excuse himself claiming to be unaware Pavlovic is making exceptional claims, because Pavlovic himself in his work mentions it constantly. Adding content into en.wikipedia based on Pavlovic conclusions only, and presenting them as academic consensus, and ignoring totally the rest, is the very definition of POV-pushing.

I will next demonstrate how universal historiography doesn´t agree at all that "local paramilitary forces had liberated Montenegro before the arrival of the Serbian army." (this is clearly the claim in the paragraph added by an editor using Pavlovic as source).

1. World and Its Peoples page 1687, citation: "Serbian forces liberate Montenegro (1918), but Nicholas is not allowed to return. A Serbdominated assembly votes for ..."

2. Dictionary of the First World War by Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, page 328, citation: "Montenegro's recapture by Serbian forces in 1918 made unification a virtual certainty,..."

3. Encyclopedia Americana 1965, page 722, citation: "In 1918, Serbian troops, in cooperation with other Allied forces, liberated Serbia and Montenegro as well as South Slav regions of Austria-Hungary."

4. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies, 2011, citation: "The militaristic, centralizing Serbia that swallowed Montenegro in 1918 seems to have been reborn in the militaristic, centralizing Serbia of Slobodan Milošević."

Will go on, but this is the tendency. FkpCascais (talk) 00:45, 30 July 2019 (UTC)