Matica Srpska presents Oktoih journal in Niksic
At the Niksic launch, the journal's editor and secretary spoke about papers on Njegos, Vuk and language, and announced the next issue for the end of 2026.
The text about the launch of the journal Oktoih, together with a photograph, was sent to the newsroom on Friday, November 13, by Snezana R. Radulovic, who prepared it. The launch was held on November 11, 2026, in Niksic, at the premises of Matica Srpska, Society of Members in Montenegro, which also organized the event. The portal gradski.me also reported on the launch.
Oktoih is the journal of the Department of Serbian Language and Literature of Matica Srpska, Society of Members in Montenegro.
Who spoke about the journal
The speakers were Prof. Dr. Lidija Tomic, editor in chief of the journal and a lecturer in the Serbian Language and South Slavic Literatures program at the Faculty of Philology in Niksic, Prof. Dr. Draga Bojovic, secretary of the journal and a lecturer in the same program, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jelena Gazdic, head of that program.
According to the text sent to the newsroom, Tomic described the journal’s beginnings as taking place “in a time of state repercussions over the name and use of the Serbian language in Montenegro.” In her words, the journal was founded when Matica Srpska was established, and its first issue appeared in 2011. The seventeenth issue, she stressed, comes out toward the end of 2026 and will carry twenty papers.
Tomic described the meaning of the launch itself in the same address:
Launching the journal ‘Oktoih’ meant … more than a defense against political pressure and violence against the Serbian language; it meant confirming what is beyond question, and that is the truth about the existence and tradition of the Serbian language in Montenegro.
Tomic also thanked Prof. Dr. Jelica Stojanovic and the proofreader Mihailo Kostic.
International editorial board and the M24 category
The journal has an international editorial board, with members from Serbian and Slavic studies departments in Niksic, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Banja Luka, Copenhagen, Pescara, Saint Petersburg and Lviv. In 2025, Oktoih received the M24 category in the ranking of scientific journals awarded by the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia. The proposal came from the Scientific Board of Matica Srpska and Prof. Dr. Milos Kovacevic.
Every issue has sections on language and linguistic questions and on literary topics, as well as articles and reviews. The journal has also published papers marking two hundred years since the Pismenica of the Serbian Language, one hundred and fifty years since the death of Vuk Karadzic, and one hundred and seventy years since The Mountain Wreath. In the fourteenth issue, Prof. Dr. Goran Radonjic writes about the “Interpretations of Literary Texts” by Prof. Dr. Milos Vukicevic.
The last three issues and Njegos
Draga Bojovic spoke about the three most recent issues, which together contain twenty-nine scientific papers and thirteen articles and reviews. She named Njegos as the first thread connecting them:
The first and most striking line is Njegos. In all three issues, Radmilo N. Marojevic publishes textological studies on Njegos’s work, so that they form a kind of trilogy.
According to her, in the fourteenth issue Radmilo N. Marojevic examines lines 538 to 540 of The Mountain Wreath, and in the fifteenth he starts from the discovery of the original manuscript of the poem Sprovod prahu by S. Milutinovic.
