This dispute renewed during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and subsequent secession of Montenegro from the state union with Serbia after the 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum.
[5] Njegoš (r. 1830–1851), regarded the greatest Montenegrin poet, was a leading Serb figure and instrumental in codifying the Kosovo Myth as the central theme of the Serbian national movement.
[5] The sense of distinct statehood bred an autonomist sentiment in part of the Montenegrin population following the unification with Serbia (and dissolution of Montenegro) in 1918.
After the war, that theory was accepted and developed by Savić Marković Štedimlija, who claimed that Montenegrins were in fact a branch of Croatian people.
[6] It has been argued by some that there was no separate Montenegrin nation before 1945; they claim that the language, history, religion and culture of Montenegro were considered unquestionably Serbian.
[10] According to historian Srdja Pavlović, the Montenegrins preserved the sense of their political and cultural distinctiveness with regard to the other South Slavic groups and continuously reaffirmed it through history.
According to Pavlović, the notion of Serbdom was understood by Montenegrins to be their belonging to the Eastern Orthodox faith and to Christianity in general, as well as the larger South Slavic context.
[13][page needed][failed verification] The pro-Yugoslav (unionist) side, headed by Momir Bulatović, stressed that Serbians and Montenegrins shared the same ethnicity (as Serbs) and evoked 'the unbreakable unity of Serbia and Montenegro, of one people and one flesh and blood'.