Podgorica Still Has No Street for Admiral Barovic
A year after filing the initiative, CGO and HRA want the naming council to decide on Admiral Vladimir Barovic, 35 years after his death on Vis.
Admiral Vladimir Barovic of the Yugoslav People’s Army, a Montenegrin, took his own life on September 29, 1991, on the island of Vis. Thirty-five years later, Podgorica still has no memorial bearing his name. On the anniversary of his death, the Centre for Civic Education (CGO) and Action for Human Rights (HRA) asked the capital to decide on a street and asked the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation to add his story to the curriculum. The question reaches beyond one street: it concerns how the region, Serbia included, remembers the wars of the 1990s and who gets a place in that memory.
What did Barovic do on Vis?
Vis was then the site of a Yugoslav Navy command post. According to CGO and HRA, Barovic took his own life so as not to carry out an order from the JNA supreme command to shell coastal cities in Croatia from the island. After his death, the order was abandoned.
In his farewell letter he wrote that he was doing it “because Montenegrins cannot destroy a people that has done them no wrong.” The Croatian outlet Dalmatinski Portal recalls that earlier, as commander in Pula, he had said there would be no destruction as long as he was in command, and that if he were forced to order it, he would no longer be there. Pula, with 12,000 soldiers and 79 military facilities, was handed over by the JNA almost without incident.
A year without a decision
A year ago to the day, CGO and HRA submitted an initiative to the Council for Naming Streets of the Capital City to name a Podgorica street after Barovic. They have since received confirmation that the initiative meets the requirements to move forward, but there is still no decision. In a joint statement carried by RTCG, they say:
Exactly a year ago, CGO and HRA submitted to the Council for Naming Streets of the Capital City an initiative to name one Podgorica street after Admiral Barovic. In the meantime we received confirmation that the initiative meets the conditions for further procedure. We expect the Council to decide on the initiative within a reasonable time, and that the decision will not be postponed until some future anniversary.
As a benchmark they cite Cetinje. The old royal capital took seven months, from an initiative filed in October 2024 to a decision in May 2025, to name a street in the Pod Granicom neighborhood after Krsto Djurovic, who, like Barovic, opposed the JNA attack on Dubrovnik. CGO and HRA describe him as a rear admiral, while Dalmatinski Portal calls him a captain of a battleship.
Recognition outside Montenegro
According to the statement, Barovic’s name already has a place in public memory beyond Montenegro. A memorial plaque with a quote from his farewell letter was unveiled on Vis in 2022, and in 2023 he was named an honorary citizen of Pula. Montenegro decorated him posthumously in 2016, and Dalmatinski Portal reports that the Order of Courage was awarded by then President Filip Vujanovic. He is buried in Herceg Novi.
Montenegrin writer Momir M. Markovic spoke about him at a session of the Podgorica Municipal Assembly in 1996, when he said:
The only bullet fired in this war that Montenegro can be proud of is the one fired by Admiral Barovic, commander of the Yugoslav Navy. His Montenegrin sense of honor did not allow him to give the fleet the order to bombard the coastal cities and settlements in Dalmatia when he was ordered to do so. He fired only one shot from a pistol, and that was at his own temple
Why 2028 and the textbooks come up
CGO and HRA note that in November 2025 Podgorica was named European Youth Capital for 2028, and that in doing so, as they put it, it took on an obligation to young people. They hope the decision on the street will be made before that year, so that the memory of the admiral is part of the city that will then welcome young people from across Europe.
They ask the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation to include Barovic’s act in teaching content on the wars of the 1990s, since, as they point out, he is not mentioned even in history textbooks. The organizations judge that remembering him matters also because crimes of the 1990s are still being relativized in the region’s public space, and their perpetrators presented as heroes. Their message reads:
Barovic’s example shows that even in the top ranks of the army that waged those wars there were those who refused to take part in aggression
