Academic literature on the topic 'Vreme (Belgrade, Serbia : 1940)'

Serbia’s political status after the death of Josip Broz was determined by two kinds of efforts by the state. Firstly, the Serbian leaders aimed to change its unequal status in federal Yugoslavia. Secondly, they aimed to stop fragmentation within Serbia, which grew steadily after the 1974 Constitution. Political relations between Serbian leaders on the one hand, and some political circles and leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and the autonomous provinces on the other, were strained. They worsened even more after several clashes in 1983. Despite the opposition of politicians in Bosnia, Croatia, and Vojvodina to Dragoslav Marković (who was described as a strong advocate of Serbian political unity), he was elected as chairman of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (CK SKJ) in 1983. Serbo-Croatian relationships were further damaged after the publication of the book Enigma Kopinič in Belgrade. The Croatian leaders were against this publication because it revealed – as far as the Party was concerned – undesirable information about the interwar years and the period during World War II. The major confrontation came over the interpretation of events that occurred at the funeral of Aleksandar Ranković (mainly over who was responsible for the mass gathering and the respectful attitude toward the deceased). Federal party units, as well as those from the Yugoslav republics and from Belgrade, jointly condemned those events as a political rally against the government. However, they disagreed over who was responsible for the incident and what had caused the public outcry. The CK SKJ chairmanship members from the autonomous provinces, Croatia, and Bosnia accused Serbia and the Serbian Communist Party for the display of nationalism. They also held the Belgrade City Party Committee responsible for letting the rally happen. Contrary to this, the Belgrade City Committee led by Ivan Stambolić, whom the Serbian leadership supported, felt that the uproar was caused by the overall political, economic, and social crisis, for which the Federal government was to blame.

This article is conceived as a contribution to the study and understanding of modern architecture in Serbia and Yugoslavia in the period between the two world wars. The subject of this study is the architectural practice of architect Milan Zloković, one of the most important actors of architectural modernism in the forthcoming period. The focus of research is Zloković work on the design and implementation of public buildings with emphasis on the four objects: Hotel "Žiča" in Mataruška Banja (1931-1932), Building Children's University Clinic in Belgrade (1933-1936/1940), Building Elementary School in Jagodina (1937-1940) and FIAT Automobile Building Service in Belgrade (1939-1940). This phase of Milan Zloković practise is distinguished by authentic character of the author in the study of geometric forms, proportional analysis, applied materials and construction, all in new forms of organization of space in the spirit of modern architecture postulates.

Abstract After the First World War, Serbia was facing the lack of hospitals and physicians, and organization of the health care system was a real challenge. Both problems were closely associated with dermatovenereology. Between the two world wars, a great contribution to the development of Serbian dermatovenereology as a current discipline was given by Prof. Dr. Đorđe Đorđević, who was the first director of the Clinic for Skin and Venereal Diseases in Belgrade (1922 - 1935), and by his closest associate Prof. Dr. Milan Kićevac (1892 - 1940) who was his successor at the position of the director of the Clinic (1935 - 1940). In 1922, Prof. Dr. Đorđe Đorđević was the founder of two institutions significant for Serbian dermatovenereology: Clinic for Skin and Venereal Diseases, where he also acted as a director, and the Department of Dermatovenereology at the School of Medicine in Belgrade, where he was the first teacher of dermatovenereology. In 1927, Prof. Dr. Đorđe Đorđević initiated the foundation of the Dermatovenereology Section of the Serbian Medical Society, and he and his associate and successor, Prof. Dr. Milan Kićevac were the main organizers of the Association of Dermatovenereologists of Yugoslavia. With this Association, all other regional dermatovenereology sections in the County became parts of the Pan-Slavic Dermatovenereology Association. Prof. Dr. Đorđe Đorđević and Prof. Dr. Milan Kićevac also organized the First, Second and the Third Yugoslav Dermatovenereology Congresses (1927, 1928, and 1929), and in 1931, the Second Congress of Pan-Slavic Dermatovenereology Association. Their teamwork resulted in legislation concerned with health care, eradication of venereal diseases and prostitution, and finally with setting the foundation for professional and scientific dermatovenereology in Serbia. Prof. Đ. Đorđević investigated current problems of venereal diseases and organized professional expeditions in Serbia and Montenegro studying the expansion of syphilis. However, in his experimental work, Prof. M. Kićevac investigated photo-dermatoses and the IV venereal disease, at the same time pointing to immunological phenomena in streptococcal and staphylococcal infections. Dr. Vojislav Mihailović (1879 - 1949) was a significant figure in Serbian dermatovenereology and acted as the Chief of the Department of Skin and Venereal Diseases within the General Public Hospital in Belgrade. His scientific papers and books on the history of dermatovenereology and general medicine had a great impact on the Serbian dermatovenereology. His books dealing with the history of dermatovenereology: “The History of Venereal Diseases till 1912” and “Out of the History of Sanitary Health Care in the Rebuilt Serbia from 1804 - 1860”. Associate Professor Dr. Sava Bugarski (1897 - 1945), a student of Prof. Dr. Kićevac and later the director of Clinic for Skin and Venereal Diseases in Belgrade (1940 - 1945), was engaged in the field of experimental dermatovenereology. Dr. Jovan Nenadović (1875 - 1952), one of the most eminent physicians in Novi Sad, took part in the foundation and work of the Dermatovenereology Section of the Serbian Medical Society as well as its honorary life president. In 1919, he founded the Dermatovenereology Department within the Novi Sad Hospital, as well as an Outpatient Dermatovenereology Clinic, outside the Hospital, although he was the director of both institutions. In the period between the two world wars, among the most prominent physicians of the Military Sanitary Headquarters who contributed the development of dermatovenereology were the chiefs of the Dermatovenereology Department of the General Military Hospital in Belgrade: Major, later on, Brigadier General, Dr. Božidar Janković (1874 - 1936), and the Sanitary Brigadier General, Dr. Milivoje Pantić (1885 - 1959). Dr. B. Janković wrote important professional papers, among which the following are most significant: ”Fight against Venereal Diseases in the Army” and ”Treatment of Syphilis with Silber-Salvarsan.” Distinguished physicians of the military sanitary service, such as Dr. Petar Davidović, made significant contributions to the work of civilian dermatovenereology institutions of that time. In 1921, Dr. Petar Davidović was the director of the newly founded Venereal Department of the Niš Public Hospital, which was on a high professional level.

As the 110th anniversary of the beginning of the excavations at Vinča is nearing, the question arises as to how much we really know about the role and motives of a number of British subjects who in various ways played decisive roles in the research and the international affirmation of this important Late Neolithic site. It is possible, on the basis of archives and personal correspondence of Miloje M. Vasić, to view the investigations of Vinča in the wider context of political and military relations, influencing the general situation in the Kingdom of The Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. John Lynton Myres was a professor at the universities in Oxford and Liverpool, the founder and editor of the Journal Man and the director of the British Archaeological School in Athens. During the World War I, between 1916 and 1919, he was an officer of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, first in the Navy Intelligence Service, and then in Military Control Office in Athens. The Browns, Alec and Catherine, also played an important role. Alec Brown, a left-oriented writer, translator and correspondent, arrived to Serbia as a Cambridge graduate, aiming at the post of an English language teacher in high schools. In the period from 1929 to 1931 he took part in the excavations at Vinča, taking this setting as the base for the plot of one of his books. His wife, Elsie Catherine Brown, whose life is very poorly documented, served in the British Embassy in Belgrade between the wars. Vasić dedicated the third volume of Prehistoric Vinča to her, for her devoted work in the British medical mission and the care she took of the Serbian soldiers near Thessalonica, but also for her part played in the establishment of the initial contact with Sir Charles Hyde. The life of Catherine Brown may be seen as one of the many exceptional stories about the noble British ladies, celebrated in Serbia for over a century. However, one should bear in mind that the events and characters (Myres, Hyde, the Browns) linked to the research in Vinča may be a part of a larger scene, and a consequence of other, equally important circumstances of a more direct involvement of Great Britain in the political situation in Yugoslavia between the wars. Myres, a man close to the scientific, intelligence and diplomatic circles, is the key person in the initial contact between Vasić and Catherine Brown. Since his first encounter with Vasić in 1918 in Athens, on the occasion of his return from France to Serbia, Myres himself or through Catherine Brown, worked to establish the collaboration and keep the contact with Vasić. It is possible that the Athens meeting, initiated by Myres, was a consequence not only of the scholarly interest, but also the growing British involvement in the Balkans. After the same line of reasoning, the arrival of Alec Brown in Belgrade cannot be understood solely as a consequence of the individual ambition of a young Slavic scholar, but as well as a part of the strategy of deepening the British influences over the region traditionally more inclined towards France, due to the political and cultural ties and military alliances. After the war, many Serbian linguists were posted as teachers of the language at the most prestigious British universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge, where Alec Brown earned his degree. His application to the post of English teacher in Serbia is closely preceded by the recommendation of Earl Curzon of Kedleston, British Foreign Secretary, to secure teaching English in the Yugoslav schools, and not only French, as it was previously the case. The collaboration between British and Serbian intellectuals was surely a very suitable context for the establishment of intimate contacts and spreading of cultural and political influences. As illustrated by the case of the Near East, archaeology and archaeologists are particularly useful in this respect. Their long sojourns and mobility in the field, command of the language, enabled them to gain the confidence of the locals, learn about the customs, and gain information, just like Myres the Blackbeard did, and more or less successfully Catherine and Alec Brown as well. Regardless of the real or clandestine motifs, in the case of the investigations of Vinča, this collaboration made possible the publication the four-volume work of Vasić – Prehistoric Vinča, exceptional in many respects, and the international recognition of Vinča as one of the most important Late Neolithic settlements in South-eastern Europe.

The Serbian ethnomusicologist and music pedagogue Miodrag A. Vasiljevic corresponded with colleagues from neighboring Bulgaria between 1934 and 1962. This exchange of letters went through three phases. The first phase was linked with his stay in Skopje until the breakout of World War II; during the second phase - in the course of the 1940's - he was active in the Department for Folk Music at Radio Belgrade and he founded his method of music teaching on traditional Serbian music; in the third phase (the 1950's and beginning of 1960's) Vasiljevic aimed at a closer cooperation with Bulgarian musicians. All the phases are characterized by his pronounced interest in the folk music heritage of Balkan peoples. At the beginning that interest was focused on popularizing art music that was based on folk music. Later, he enthusiastically carried out his reforms of music teaching in Serbia, as well as improvements of methods in Serbian ethnomusicology.

The paper deals with the orientation of the Yugoslav freemasonry during the existence of the Grand Lodge of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ?Jugoslavia? (GLJ), later the Grand Lodge of Yugoslavia (GLY). The state of freemasonry in Serbia on the eve of the Great War is briefly described and followed by an analysis of how the experience of the First World War influenced Serbian freemasons to establish strong ties with French freemasonry. During the 1920s the Grand Lodge ?Jugoslavia? maintained very close relations with the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Lodge of France, and this was particularly obvious when GLJ got the opportunity to organise the Masonic congress for peace in Belgrade in 1926 through its links with French Freemasonry. Grand Master Georges Weifert (1919-34) also symbolised close links of French and Serbian freemasonry. However, his deputy and later Grand Master Douchan Militchevitch (1934-39) initiated in 1936 the policy of reorientation of Yugoslav freemasonry to the United Grand Lodge of England. Although there had already been such initiatives, they could not be materialised due to the fact that it was not until 1930 that the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) recognised several continental grand lodges, including GLJ. In a special section efforts of GLJ to be recognised by UGLE are analysed. Efforts for reorientation of GLY were conducted through several persons, including Douchan Militchevitch (1869-1939), Stanoje Mihajlovic (1882-1946), Vladimir Corovic (1885-1941) and Dragan Militchevitch (1895-1942). Special attention is given to the plans of GLY?s grand master to make the Duke of York (subsequently King George VI), who was a very dedicated freemason, an honorary past master of GLY. This plan failed, and the main idea behind it was to make GLY more resistant to internal clerical attacks and also to the external pressure of Italy. Mihajlovic?s three official Masonic visits to Britain (1933-39) are analysed as well as a private visit of Corovic and Dragan Militchevitch in March 1940. In the context of the visits made in 1939-40 plans to establish an Anglo-Yugoslav lodge are also analysed. Finally, the context of the de facto ban on Yugoslav freemasonry in August 1940 is given and the subsequent fates of its pro-British actors are also described.

This work brings to life some new facts and presents the cooperation between the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the associations of librarians in Serbia, in four and a half decades, between 1931 and 1976. In the period between the two world wars, this cooperation was established and maintained by the Yugoslav Library Association (1931–1940), especially its Belgrade Section, and after the Second World War it was realized through the Serbian Library Association (1948–1976) as a part of the Association of Librarians in Yugoslavia.Yugoslavia, in the fi rst period as a kingdom, and in the second as a socialist country, represents a state-legal framework to examine the phenomena of library associations and international cooperation. The Yugoslav Library Association was the predecessor of the Serbian Library Association, but under the new conditions of socialist construction, mentioning the organization from the previous, bourgeois period was undesirable. Nine years of the activity of the fi rst professional library association in Yugoslavia were not evaluated in the right way: association that was founded later with the vast majority of former members and historians of librarianship, talked rarely about its existence, mainly for the political reasons.Considering knowledge of the development of librarianship in national frameworks the basis for building a professional identity of librarians, the authors of this paper are trying to shed light on cooperation with IFLA as essential for maturing of the professional self-awareness. Taking into account that economic opportunities and political infl uences in the past decades have made this process diffi cult, the authors are trying to oppose their shared memory, common values, the feeling of belonging and self-respect as an identity property. Moreover, nowadays in Serbia there is a strong need for re-evaluation of the role and importance of library associations in order to reposition the profession, interrelations of professionals and modalities of voluntary work.

Between the two World Wars, in Belgrade and Serbia, seven musical journals were published: ?Musical Gazette? (1922), ?Music? (1928-1929), ?Herald of the Musical Society Stankovic? (1928-1934, 1938-1941; renamed to ?Musical Herald? in january 1931), ?Sound? (1932-1936), ?Journal of The South Slav Choral Union? (1935-1936, 1938), ?Slavic Music? (1939-1941) and ?Music Review? (1940). The influence of marxism can be observed in ?Musical Herald? (in the series from 1938), ?Sound? and ?Slavic Music?. A Marxist influence is obvious through indications of determinism. Namely, some writers (Dragutin Colic) observed elements of musical art and its history as (indirect) consequences of sociopolitical and economic processes. Still, journals published articles of domestic and foreign authors who interpreted the relation between music, society and economy in a much more moderate and subtle manner (D.Cvetko, A.Schering). Editors and associates of these journals also had proscriptive ambitions - they recommended and even determined regulations for composers about what kind of music to write according to social goals and needs. According to tendencies in Marxism, there was a follow up of musical work in the Soviet Union. Editors tried not to be one-sided. There were writings about the USSR by left orientated associates as much as emigrants from that country, and articles of Soviet authors were translated. Also, there were critical tones about musical development in the first country of socialism. Serbian musical periodicals recognized the enormous threat from fascism. Also, there were articles about influence of Nazi ideology and dictatorship on musical prospects in Germany. Since Germany annexed Sudetenland in 1938, ?Musical Herald? expressed support to musicians and people of that friendly country by devoting the October and November 1938 issue to Czechoslovak music, along with an appropriate introduction by the editor, Stana Djuric-Klajn.

Cristina A. Bejan, Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania: The Criterion Association, Cham, Switzer land: Palgrave, 2019, 323 pp., €74.89 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-030-20164-7.Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector, London: I. B. Tauris, 2020, 232 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-78533-598-3.Aslı Davaz, Eşitsiz kız kardeşlik, uluslararası ve Ortadoğu kadın hareketleri, 1935 Kongresi ve Türk Kadın Birliği (Unequal sisterhood, international and Middle Eastern women’s movements, 1935 Congress and the Turkish Women’s Union), İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2014, 892 pp., with an introduction by Yıldız Ecevit, pp. xxi–xxviii; preface by the author, pp. xxix–xlix, TL 42 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-605-332-296-2.Biljana Dojčinović and Ana Kolarić, eds., Feministički časopisi u Srbiji: Teorija, aktivizam i umetničke prakse u 1990-im i 2000-im (Feminist periodicals in Serbia: Theory, activism, and artistic practice in the 1990s and 2000s), Belgrade: Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, 2018, 370 pp., price not listed (paperback), ISBN: 978-86-6153-515-4.Melanie Ilic, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 572 pp., $239 (e-book) ISBN: 978-1-137-54904-4; ISBN: 978-1-137-54905-1.Luciana M. Jinga, ed., The Other Half of Communism: Women’s Outlook, in History of Communism in Europe, vol. 8, Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2018, 348 pp., USD 40 (paperback), ISBN: 978-606-697-070-9.Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, eds., Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier, New York: Routledge, 2020, 264 pp., $140.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-367-25896-2.Jill Massino, Ambiguous Transitions: Gender, the State, and Everyday Life in Socialist and Postsocialist Romania, New York: Berghahn Books, 2019, 466 pp., USD 122 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-785-33598-3.Gergana Mircheva, (A)normalnost i dostap do publichnostta: Socialnoinstitucionalni prostranstva na biomedicinskite discursi v Bulgaria (1878–1939) ([Ab]normality and access to publicity: Social-institutional spaces of biomedicine discourses in Bulgaria [1878–1939]), Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2018, 487 pp., BGN 16 (paperback), ISBN: 978-954-07-4474-2.Milutin A. Popović, Zatvorenice, album ženskog odeljenja Požarevačkog kaznenog zavoda sa statistikom (1898) (Prisoners, the album of the women’s section of Požarevac penitentiary with statistics, 1898), edited by Svetlana Tomić, Belgrade: Laguna , 2017, 333 pp., RSD 894 (paperback), ISBN: 978-86-521-2798-6.Irena Protassewicz, A Polish Woman’s Experience in World War II: Conflict, Deportation and Exile, edited by Hubert Zawadzki, with Meg Knott, translated by Hubert Zawadzki, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, xxv pp. + 257 pp., £73.38 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-3500-7992-2.Zilka Spahić Šiljak, ed., Bosanski labirint: Kultura, rod i liderstvo (Bosnian labyrinth: Culture, gender, and leadership), Sarajevo and Zagreb: TPO Fondacija and Buybook, 2019, xii + 213 pp., no price listed (paperback), ISBN: 978-9926-422-16-5.Gonda Van Steen, Adoption, Memory and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?, University of Michigan Press, 2019, 350 pp., $85.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-472-13158-7.D imitra Vassiliadou, Ston tropiko tis grafi s: Oikogeneiakoi desmoi kai synaisthimata stin astiki Ellada (1850–1930) (The tropic of writing: Family ties and emotions in modern Greece [1850–1930]), Athens: Gutenberg, 2018, 291 pp., 16.00 € (paperback), ISBN: 978-960-01-1940-4.Radina Vučetić, Coca-Cola Socialism: Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties, English translation by John K. Cox, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018, 334 pp., €58.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-963-386-200-1.Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, xvi + 272 pp., $80 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-19880-165-8.Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger, and Irina Glushchenko, eds., Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019, xix + 373 pp., $68.41(hardback), ISBN: 978-0-253-04095-4.

Dr. Miloje Milojevic (1884-1946) was a central figure in Serbian music criticism and academic essays between the World Wars. A large part of his writings on music were dedicated to the issue of the Serbian ?national music style?, its means of expression, and the question of modernity, i. e. to what extent modernity is desirable in the ?national style?. This paper analyzes some twenty articles - reviews, essays, and writings for special occasions - published by Milojevic between 1912 and 1942 in various Serbian newspapers magazines and collections: Srpski knjizevni glasnik (The Serbian Literary Magazine, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1923, 1924, 1935), Prosvetni glasnik (The Educational Herald, 1914, 1921, 1942), Politika (The Politics, 1921, 1922 1923, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1941), Muzika (The Music, twice in 1928) Spomenica-album Udruzenja muzikanata Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1928-1930 (The Commemorative Volume - The Album of the Society of Musicians of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1928-1930, 1930), Smena (The Change, 1938), and Slavenska muzika (The Slavonic Music, 1940). In the course of those thirty years Milojevic passionately believed that the future of Serbian music lies in the ?national style?, i.e. in the artistic transformation of anonymous Serbian folk songs and melodies. In spite of the changes of styles that occurred over the years, he never gave up anticipating the appearance of an ingenious composer who would develop the ?national style? to its climax and enrich Serbian music with ?national? symphonies, operas and chamber music. Milojevic was in favour of a ?national style? mainly on principle. He rarely got into a discussion about the stylistic and technical means he considered most suitable for the ?national style?. In his text Nas muzicko umetnicki program (Our music and artistic programme), published in the Serbian Literary Magazine in 1913, and another article, Za folklornu muziku (In favour of Folk Music), published in the Belgrade daily newspaper Politics in 1921, he recommended that Serbian ?national style? composers followed the model of some representatives of the European national schools of romanticism impressionism and moderately modern music. In a special kind of manifesto Za ideju umetnosti i umetnickog nacionalizma kod nas (In favour of the idea of art and artistic nationalism in Serbia), published in 1935 in the Serbian Literary Magazine, he gave an indirect answer to the question of which means of musical expression he preferred in the ?national style?. For example, he singled out the composition Sever duva (North Wind) by Kosta P. Manojlovic (1890-1949), from his collection of choral songs Pesme zemlje Skenderbegove (The Songs from the Land of Skenderbeg, 1933), as an outstanding example of what he meant by ?national style?. This Albanian folk music was transformed into a relatively modern, but yet not avant-garde composition. Therein lies the answer as to what kind of ?national style? Milojevic preferred. An advocate of a moderately modern music language, he wished Serbian art music to use its very rich folk heritage as best as it could. He was well aware that times had changed, and that there was not much inclination towards this style and ideology in the interwar period. However, he never abandoned this idea. Basically, he never accepted more radical, expressionist treatments of folk elements as a solution to the problems of ?national style?. It is also very significant that he never mentioned the name B?la Bart?k in his writings, which is something we analyze in this paper. He was never able to give up romanticism, a style that never had time to fully develop in Serbian music. Serbian folk music was a perfect basis for composing in a romantic style. Nevertheless, due to many unfavourable circumstances in Serbian history, the Serbs became part of European music world only at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was too late to develop a modern romantic national style.

The return of the “Vsevolozhsky Writing Book” from Belgrade to Moscow (1933) is of interest not only from the point of view of studying and preserving literary heritage, but also as an important episode in the history of Russian-Serbian relations. These relations are a complex phenomenon, the evolution of which, according to Miroslav Jovanović, took course at “various levels of the historical past: in the plane of politics and diplomacy; spiritual and church, social and cultural ties; relatively frequent migrations from one environment to another; fragmented economic relations; and, finally, in the plane of individual, personal contacts, connections and impressions”. It is obvious what of the above in particular came to the fore during the period of mutual non-recognition between the USSR and Yu-goslavia (1918-1940). The correspondence between the Serbian philologist and translator Jovan Maksimović and Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich that resulted in the acquisition of the Pushkin manuscript by the Literary Museum refers to the type of informal contacts that maintained relations between Russia and Serbia even when political ties were interrupted. “Over time, cultural, spiritual, and social contacts developed into what is today called traditional in Serbian-Russian relations, and what greatly influenced the formation of collective memory, mentality, and mutual perception”. As for the Serbs, one of the peculiarities of this perception was the widespread Russophilia or the idea of “real/fictional proximity” with the Russians. Without this, Pushkin's manuscript would not have returned to Russia.