Norman Stone
Mice That Roared
Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro
By Elizabeth Roberts
Hurst & Co 521pp £25 order from our bookshop
The fall of European Communism began and ended with a roaring of mice. Estonia declared ‘sovereignty’ in September 1988 and started a process that brought down the USSR. Slovenia in 1991 did much the same as far as Yugoslavia was concerned, and the whole business came to an end last year when Montenegro declared independence. Montenegro had been a part (and, as this book shows, a part more generally enthusiastic than others) of Communist Yugoslavia, and her defection had a significance out of all proportion to her size and weight.
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