BELGRADE (35 page)

Slavija Square and Englezovac form part of the western end of Belgrade’s borough of Vračar. The name is first recorded in the fifteenth century and then again in Ottoman sources from the sixteenth century. It comes from the old Slavonic word
vrač
meaning a sorcerer or a soothsayer. It is thought that a man called Stephen the Lame (Stevan Hrom) who was known for such occult gifts lived in the area. The term has been applied over the centuries with a certain geographic vagueness to its precise limits, but certainly to include the level patch of ground at the top of the rise above Slavija Square from where the massive dome of the new church dedicated to St. Sava looks across the whole central district of Belgrade and indeed is visible from much of the rest of the city.

The broad Liberation Boulevard that climbs the hill was originally known as the Kragujevac Highway (Kragujevački drum) and after the Second World War as the Boulevard of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Bulevar JNA). The first sight as the road tops the brow of the hill is of Karađorđe’s Park (Karađorđev park) with its lawns and flower beds, fronted by a statue of the leader of the First Serbian Uprising. This is the plateau of Vračar where the Serbian rebel forces pitched camp when laying siege to Belgrade in 1806.

Immediately beyond here, as the road begins its descent, is another smaller park that follows the curve of the boulevard. A number of other monuments can be found at this spot. The first, erected here in 1975, is a simple block at the entrance into the grassed area marking the site of an air-raid shelter hit by a German bomb in 1941 with many lives lost. The next one is an imposing statue of a soldier from the First World War dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives to defend their country in 1914–15. Then there is a monument to the members of the International Brigades who went to fight in Spain against Franco and the fascists in 1936–39.

Close to this spot stands the only memorial here that does not refer to a war: a bust of the French writer Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) who visited Belgrade in 1833 when returning from a long trip to the Near East. He made extensive notes about his stay which give an interesting picture of the city at the time and which he published as part of his memoirs. On arriving at Belgrade, he wrote in his journal dated 2 September 1833:

We crossed the barren slopes around midday from where we at last came upon Belgrade spread at our feet. Belgrade, destroyed by shells so many times, sits on a raised bank of the Danube. The roofs of its mosques stand out; its ramparts have fallen in; those parts of the town outside its walls are deserted and covered in hovels and heaps of ruins. The town itself, like all Turkish towns, descends in narrow and crooked lanes toward the river. Zemun, the first town in Hungary, gleams from the other side of the Danube with all the magnificence of a European town; its church towers rise up facing the minarets. When we came to Belgrade, while resting in a small inn, the first we had come across in Turkey, Prince Miloš sent me a small company of his principal officers to invite me to spend a few days at the fortress where he resides a mile or two from Belgrade.

Having spent some time in and around Belgrade, listening to the stories about the Serb rebellion and fight for freedom from Ottoman rule, he writes on 25 September in a Byronic mood: “The history of this people should be sung, not written. It is a poem yet to be completed.”

Toward the bottom of the park is a large square monument topped by a cross inscribed with the date 1806. This was the first public monument to be erected in Belgrade by Knez Alexander Karađorđević in 1848 and is dedicated to the memory of the rebels who captured Belgrade from Ottoman forces in the Serbian Uprising under Karađorđe. It is surrounded by twelve gravestones of insurgents who died in the battle for the city.

The modern building on the Vračar plateau nearest the main road is the National Library of Serbia. As an institution the library was established in 1832 by Gligorije Vozarević in his bookshop near the Town Gate during the rule of Knez Miloš Obrenović. When the Second World War broke out it was situated on Kosančić Crescent and was completely destroyed during the German air-raid of 1941. After the war, the library was moved temporarily to the old hotel at the end of Knez Mihailo Street where the City Library is now to be found. The new premises were completed in 1970 and provide space not just for books and periodicals but also halls for lectures and exhibitions.

Its work as the leading state library was interrupted during the 1990s. The regime of sanctions applied to Serbia was intended to isolate the country as completely as possible, including in the fields of culture and education. Libraries abroad were forced to cut all exchange agreements and the National Library, even if it had the funds, was not allowed to purchase books. In the last few years its staff has made huge efforts to make up for this period of bibliographic deprivation.

Old St Sava’s Church with new church in background

The first church dedicated to St. Sava on the plateau was built in 1895. Later, the decision was taken to build a much larger church on the same site. The old chapel was demolished and its stones used as material to construct what is now the smaller of the two existing churches here in 1935. Work on the bigger replacement church was, like much else, interrupted by the Second World War, and at the end of the war the communist authorities refused permission for construction to continue. The site was boarded up and deserted, leaving it unclear whether it was a building that had been bombed or an abandoned building site. Negotiations opened up again in the early 1980s and permission was granted for building to resume in 1984. The basic plan for the new church remained unchanged in terms of its size and internal space but it was updated to allow for the possibilities of modern technology.

The dimensions of the building are vast for an Orthodox church, which is usually to be found on a smaller scale. The floor area is 265 by 300 feet, the central cupola has a diameter of 100 feet and a height of 230 feet, the gold-plated cross on top stands a further forty feet high and weighs about four tons. The edifice on one of Belgrade’s highest points dominates the city skyline. Opinion about the building varies from those who consider its construction an important landmark not just in a physical sense but also for its wider cultural significance as a symbol of Serbian national identity. Then there are others who regard it as too big, a sign of nationalist megalomania and an ill-fitting memorial for true religious feelings.

Mackenzie was unusual in his prolonged stay in Belgrade, although it has to be admitted that he tended to spend summers back in Scotland or London. Most foreigners visit the city for short periods and sometimes as part of a longer journey. British visitors in the twentieth century have left a record of their impressions and feelings about the city that are quite telling in their more graphic imagery.

Two such travellers arrived in Belgrade at the beginning of the twentieth century, and published their journals in London in 1907. The authors were the journalist Harry De Windt (1856–1933) whose book boasted the long title
Through Savage Europe: Being the Narrative of a Journey (Undertaken as Special Correspondent of the “Westminster Gazette”) throughout the Balkan States and European Russia
, and the writer and traveller William Le Queux (1864–1927), who chose to publish his book
An Observer
in the Near East anonymously. Both men undertook very similar routes through the Balkans, arriving by boat at Kotor and going to Montenegro first, then on to Dalmatia, Bosnia, Serbia, where they stayed in Belgrade, and finally to Bulgaria. Both had letters of introduction from London and were very well connected, giving them access to the most influential circles along their way, including Habsburg officials, senior politicians, and figures from the royal courts and palaces of Montenegro and Serbia. They discussed many and varied topics, met people both formally and informally, and moved around the cities and countryside gathering information. In short, they saw more or less the same sights and talked to the same people. Yet the two authors came to opposing conclusions about everything they witnessed, largely because they came with a set of their own predetermined ideas, which their visit was not intended to test but to confirm.

These were dangerous times in the Balkans; then as now foreign journalists tended to visit at times of international crises with negative consequences for the region. One Serbian king had recently been killed to be replaced by a rival dynasty, while the Habsburgs were attempting to extend their influence and territory in south-eastern Europe. De Windt was a supporter of Austrian influence in the Balkans, believing that Slavs generally could not be trusted to introduce civilized behaviour and modern ways. He felt that Montenegro was a little backwater overrun by quarrelsome and warring tribes. By contrast, he saw that Bosnia, with its Austrian administrators, was an example of a perfectly oiled machine. He justifies the pejorative title of his account by simply stating that “the term accurately describes the wild and lawless countries between the Adriatic and Black Seas”. For him, the Austrian presence was needed in order to tame native barbarism.

Unlike De Windt, Le Queux was opposed to Austrian influence in the Balkans. He felt that the spread of Habsburg power was the result of rapacious political greed and that its mission to bring civilization was nothing but a sham. He wrote of the political situation in the region: “All through the Balkan peninsula the weak are to-day being crushed by the strong. The Austrian eagle has over-shadowed and grasped Bosnia, she has her talons in Servia, and is casting covetous glances upon gallant little Montenegro.” He concluded that negative reports in the British press about the Serbs were the result of Habsburg propaganda, spreading “false news, being supposed to emanate from reliable sources in Belgrade”. In fact, the two men looked for and found the evidence they needed to support their more general views on the politics of the Great Powers at a time of international tension. Their interpretations of what they experienced in the Balkans had little to do with what they saw and heard, rather reflecting the political baggage they had brought with them.

De Windt, not generally considered a friend of the Serbs, made a surprising discovery on his arrival in Belgrade. He had first come to the city some thirty years earlier when the country was at war with the Ottoman Empire, at about the same time that Mackenzie arrived, and he recalled the town as if some squalid village. Remembering his first visit, he writes:

In 1876 a dilapidated Turkish fortress frowned down upon a maze of buildings little better than mud-huts and unpaved filthy streets. I had to splash my way from the river to the town through an ocean of mud carrying my own luggage, for no porters were procurable, and the halfdozen rough country-carts at the landing place were quickly pounced upon by local magnates.

His hotel was a festering hole that served black-bread and paprika stew, offering rooms that had to be shared with strangers. But years later, and De Windt’s second taste of Belgrade is incomparable:

To-day it seemed like a dream to be whirled away from the railway station in a neat fiacre, along spacious boulevards, with well-dressed crowds and electric cars, to a luxurious hotel. Here were gold-laced porters, lifts, and even a Winter Garden, where a delicious déjeûner (cooked by a Frenchman) awaited me.

It is striking that he feels duty bound to add in brackets that the meal that he enjoyed so much was not cooked by a Serb. Even so, Belgrade in 1906 was a modern and vibrant city even to a visitor evidently reluctant to be too impressed by his surroundings. He noted that hotels, private residences and shops illuminated by electric light were strung along Terazije and King Milan Street, which in the evening “becomes a fashionable promenade, and smart carriages, brilliant uniforms, and vienna toilettes add to the gaiety of the scene”.