BELGRADE Read Free Page B

with all its bloodstains, it is less gloomy and arid and hopeless than this inert and ghastly police state.”
    Yugoslavia’s reputation as hostile enemy changed dramatically when it became more of an ally under Tito. Standards of living were much higher than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, there was no visible sign of totalitarianism and thousands of foreign tourists holidayed on Adriatic beaches. Fitzroy Maclean’s view in his biography of Tito gives an insight into the perception of this western-friendly country, and therefore its people too. He wrote:
For Yugoslavia Tito’s death signified the end of an era, which had started four decades earlier with the epic years of Partisan resistance and continued after the war with thirty-five years of stoutly sustained independence. That Tito’s own personality and force of character played a decisive part in the events of these forty years is indisputable. But Tito could not have done what he did without the support of the Yugoslav people. A typical Yugoslav, his indomitable courage, independent spirit, steady nerves, and intense national pride found from the first a ready echo in the ordinary Yugoslav man in the street or on the hillside.
     
    The ordinary person in the West may not have been familiar with the political and historical events which lay behind this changed view, but they knew that Yugoslavia was not like other communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
    The negative image returned once more with the beginning of civil war in Yugoslavia and the break-up of the country. Belgrade was internationally isolated when the UN imposed an embargo on economic, cultural and political ties, leaving just a few road links as the only way in or out of the country. President Milošević was regarded as the political leader with most responsibility for the conflicts and violence of the 1990s. His style of criminal rule and his government’s record on human rights combined to give the country the status of international pariah. He was branded a war criminal during NATO’s military campaign directed against him and his government’s policies towards Kosovo in 1999. He was finally ousted from power in October 2000 in a largely bloodless coup in favour of the democratic opposition forces under Vojislav Koštunica. Western governments welcomed the change and Milošević was sent for trial at The Hague for his crimes, but he died while in custody before any judgment could be brought. The perspective from abroad seems favourable at the present, and Belgrade may soon be in a position to establish a place for itself in European and other world institutions.
    Such discussion concerns a metaphoric Belgrade, a synecdoche for a nation, a state, a government, for which it stands symbolically at the head. The streets, buildings and people of Belgrade are parts of many other stories and memories. I write about architectural and urban developments, influences in art and culture, the historical background to events. I present portraits of the city from the works of its writers and filmmakers. These imaginative works go beyond a picture of Belgrade and narrate the city as an experience in itself. Belgrade is more than the sum total of its buildings and inhabitants; like other large cities, it is a small world in itself. It has its own history and unique identity that set it apart from other places and even acts upon the people who live there, shaping their lives as it is shaped by them.

     
    City on Two Rivers
     

Chapter One

T HE F ORTRESS ABOVE THE T WO R IVERS : T HE C ITY’s F OUNDATIONS
     

     
K ALEMEGDAN : P OSITION AND P REHISTORY
     
    Belgrade in its Serbian form means White-city (
Beo-grad
), a name vividly evoked by the old fortress as seen from the banks of the two rivers, the Sava and the Danube, which meet below its white walls. The city and its location have often been described in flattering terms by those who have lived here and by visitors from abroad. Miloš Crnjanski, an