Brković, Savo
Savo Brković (1906-1991) was a Montenegrin politician, a 'People's Hero' (the second highest military award in Yugoslavia awarded to individuals who distinguished themselves by extraordinary heroic deeds during the Second World War) and publicist. Brković was born to a poor family of farmers. In 1924, he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), where he undertook various activities including youth organizing, writing for party newspapers, administrative work, and participating in partisan units, where he held a number of leadership positions, during the Second World War. For his military exploits, Brković received several Yugoslav honours including the Commemorative Medal of the Partisans of 1941 and the Order of the People's Hero.
In 1945, Brković was appointed head of the Department of Peoples’ Protection (Yugoslavia’s security agency between 1944 and 1946) for Montenegro, and in April 1946 he was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs in the first government of the People’s Republic of Montenegro. He served until December 31 of that year, after which he served as Minister of Justice and then Minister of Construction. Through the end of the 1940s, he maintained various prominent political positions in Montenegro.
In the post-war period, he continued journalistic work initiated during illegal party work, and he worked at the Pobjeda [Victory] newspaper. His publicist work consisted mainly of writings about the history of Montenegro.
In 1974, Brković published the book O postanku i razvoju crnogorske nacije [On the Rise and Development of the Montenegrin Nation], in which he attempted to explain the ethnic origin of Montenegrins. This book led to suspicion that he was a Montenegrin nationalist, and afterwards he began to distance himself from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, he very much considered himself to be a communist.
In 1988, Brković published the book Etnogenezofobija (Fear of Ethnogenesis), which contained a set of theses developed from his first book, and open criticism of Greater Serbia nationalism, which at the time was being increasingly propagated by Serbian communist leaders and intellectuals. As a result, Savo Brković was expelled from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and publicly denounced for Montenegrin nationalism.
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