BELGRADE Read Free Page A

Others, completely against violence, formed opposition groups against the government of the day and stood out as the “Other Belgrade” trying to maintain a sense of order and proportion in the middle of mayhem and confusion.
    The government and supporters of Slobodan Milošević formed alliances with criminals in order to keep their positions of power and to make themselves rich. It was a time of utter chaos when international sanctions closed the borders of the country, preventing communication with the outside world and leaving the opposition bereft of support from abroad and the government safe to pursue its own agenda at home. Many commentators have described the break-up of Yugoslavia, its descent into civil war, the activities of political leaders, and the human rights issues which were raised at the time. There is a selection of such works in the bibliography at the end of the book. I focus on how the majority lived through this extreme situation in the city and how their experience has been inscribed in stories told by novelists and film directors.
    One of the themes that I introduce in this book concerns the viewpoints of foreign journalists and travel writers who have come to Belgrade and left behind their impressions of the city. In Chapter Seven I look at what seem to be typical perceptions of the city. These tend to see Belgrade through romantic eyes, depicting it either as a primitive world in danger of reverting to some atavistic barbarism, or as overly modern and on the brink of losing its authentic identity. This perspective has influenced internal Serbian views of the city largely because these attitudes have been expressed by representatives from that western world to which a significant part of Belgrade aspires.
    The final chapter moves away from the central districts and crosses the River Sava to New Belgrade and Zemun. The history of the relationship between Belgrade and Zemun is important for what it tells us of the cultural position of the city on the border between East and West, the Balkans and Europe. Zemun, now part of Belgrade, used to be the last post of the Central European power of Austria-Hungary before entering the Ottoman Empire at Belgrade. It represented an image of the West just on the other bank of the river.
    New Belgrade was built after the Second World War on the marshy land between Zemun and the river. An achievement of socialist urban planning which quickly became a dormitory area, it is now one of the most desirable districts in the city. With its modern architecture, space for new mega-stores and with fewer of the traffic problems encountered in the old centre, people are now beginning to see it with different eyes. The final chapter also looks at NATO’s bombing of Belgrade in the Kosovo campaign, the political defeat of Slobodan Milošević in October 2000 and the problems faced by the democratic forces that took over.
F ROM T ITO TO M ILOšEVIĆ
     
    The capital city of Serbia, then Yugoslavia, then Serbia again, has been both praised and reproached by public and governments abroad. The murders of King Alexander Obrenović and his wife Queen Draga in 1903 caused an international outcry and the imposition of the first sanctions against the country when foreign governments withdrew their ambassadors. But a few years later in the First World War Britain and France warmly regarded their Balkan ally as “gallant Serbia”. This positive perspective dissolved when the communists came to power in 1945 and generated mistrust in the West where it was thought of as pro-Stalinist.
    The writer Lawrence Durrell served as a diplomat in Belgrade for three years from 1949 and he wrote to a friend from there: “Just a brief line to tell you we’ve arrived safely. Conditions are rather gloomy here—almost mid-war conditions, overcrowding, poverty. As for Communism—my dear Theodore, a short visit here is enough to make one decide that Capitalism is worth fighting for. Black as it may be,