BELGRADE

  Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, was one of the first criminals to return to Belgrade. In the 1970s he operated in Western Europe, where he was wanted for armed robbery and murder. It is also said that he worked for the Yugoslav Secret Service as an assassin of political dissidents abroad. He returned in the 1980s and set up business as the owner of a pastry shop. With the outbreak of civil war in Croatia he went there at the head of his own paramilitary unit, the Tigers, with the support of senior government figures, including a deputy Serbian minister called Radovan Stojičić, nicknamed Badža (meaning Bluto from the Popeye cartoons).

  Arkan had a varied career in the 1990s: he led his own paramilitaries, was elected as a deputy representing Kosovo in the National Assembly and owned a Belgrade football club. In 1995 he married the country’s most popular “turbofolk” singer, Svetlana Veličković, otherwise known by her stage name Ceca. Their wedding was a huge media event broadcast on television. He was dressed in the uniform of an officer in the Serbian army from the First World War and the occasion was treated like a day of national celebration. Videos of the wedding were later put on sale. In the eyes of the media and the public they were the new celebrities; an Arkan calendar was even issued with a different picture of him for each month. Later indicted by the international court in The Hague for war crimes, he was shot and killed in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in January 2000.

  The fact that the gangsters did not live long did not diminish their status, and probably even enhanced it with false notions of a romantic demise. The independent radio and television station, B–92, made a documentary film about Belgrade’s criminals and their social influence called See You in the Obituary (Vidimo se u čitulji, 1995). In the programme the older criminals bemoan the disappearance of a code of honour among the city’s thieves, regarding the new arrivals as too eager to make quick money and forgetful of their place in the pecking order. Dina Iordanova in her book Cinema of Flames describes the appearance of the younger set: “Other elements of their B-movie–inspired styles include multiple gold chains and bracelets, sleeveless T-shirts, muscular bodies, expensive jogging suits, silk shirts, state-of–the-art pistols, well-shaven faces and trimmed hair, dark glasses, leather jackets and underage girlfriends.” By the time the documentary was complete, three of them had been killed, and by the end of the decade they were nearly all dead.

  An official position offered no immunity from gangland warfare. In the early hours of 11 April 1997 Radovan Stojičić was murdered in a Belgrade restaurant. He was buried in the Avenue of Honour in the New Cemetery, normally reserved for citizens whose life and work have made a positive contribution to culture and society. On 24 October 1997 Zoran Todorović was shot and killed as he arrived for work. He was director of the company Beopetrol and general-secretary of the pro-government coalition JUL (Yugoslav United Left) led by Mira Marković, the wife of President Slobodan Milošević.

  A peculiar trace of the kitsch culture spawned in these years is to be seen in the tombstones dotted around Belgrade’s cemeteries marking the graves of the fallen gangsters. Božović is immortalized in a bronze statue dressed in his military uniform. His effigy stands in front of a construction resembling a doorway decorated with two large crosses and an inscription to his “heroism” in life. Mileta Prodanović has written on these monuments in his ironically titled book An Older and More Beautiful Belgrade (Stariji i lepši Beograd). He describes Božović’s hieratic pose placed symbolically before the door on “the border of the world of the living and world of the dead”. Arkan’s tombstone features him in his favourite First World War uniform and sporting a medal, the Karađorđe Star, which he may have thought that he deserved but was never awarded. Another criminal, Zoran Šijan, is depicted by a life-size bronze statue and is dressed in a sharp suit. By his side stands a small table on which there is a bottle of Coca-Cola, a packet of cigarettes and an ash-tray, all fashioned from stone and marble. Prodanović considers that these elements of pop-art iconography added to his sepulchral monument, since they:

  embody the value system which—in the shadow of wars and the total pauperization of the population—was established in the everyday life of the most important subculture of Belgrade in the 1990s. Its essence is best articulated in the lyrics of a popular song:

  Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Suzuki,

  discotheques, guitars, bouzouki,

  that’s life, that’s not an ad,

  no one is more than us glad.

  Many of these realities of life in Belgrade are found reflected in the films and novels of the decade.

  OPPOSITION TO MILOšEVIĆ

  Sanctions were lifted at the end of 1995 when the conflict in Bosnia ended. Yet economic problems persisted, travel abroad was still difficult because of visa conditions imposed by foreign embassies, and criminals continued to live and operate openly. On 17 November 1996 local elections were held throughout Serbia in which the government’s candidates were faced by a coalition of opposition parties jointly known under the name Zajedno (Together). The opposition estimated that they easily won in all the major towns including Belgrade. However, Milošević and his allies refused to recognize these results. In reply, the opposition called on the populace to protest at such blatant gerrymandering.

  The most spectacular events unfolded in Belgrade where the demonstrators were joined by students from the university in daily marches through town that continued for three months. The streets rang to the strains of a carnival atmosphere with ever more imaginative slogans, such as “I think, therefore I walk” (Mislim, dakle šetam). One day, instead of walking, people were invited to drive into the centre of town where, mysteriously, every single car broke down at the same time and the whole city centre was blocked for the rest of the day. Every evening at 7.30 the city was filled with the noise of whistles and people banging on saucepans or whatever else came to hand for a solid half hour in order to drown out the lies broadcast on the main television news programme. The student body was particularly adept at putting its feelings across with a sense of humour bordering somewhere between farce and irony. Students took to standing by traffic lights, stepping out only when the red light appeared to warn pedestrians not to cross, and in so doing disrupted the flow of traffic. The point of their actions was to show that nothing meant what it was supposed to mean any more in Belgrade.

  The demonstrators were supported by many national institutions such as the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Orthodox Church, and by a strong chorus of voices from outside the country. In February 1997 the government finally conceded that it could not continue to defy the daily demonstrations. But rather than admit defeat, the National Assembly passed a special law to recognize the opposition’s electoral successes—as if it had not really won but that the government was giving in to outside pressure.

  This was not the end of the stand-off between Milošević and the liberal opposition in Belgrade. The ruling coalition tightened its control on the media to ensure that television stations and the main newspapers reported in their favour. Then the government decided that appointments to the directorships of public enterprises, social service institutions, all spheres of education and health, and commercial enterprises where possible, should become part of the political process. This move brought the Socialist Party two advantages: first, the opportunity to reward its supporters in other political parties; second, to reinforce control over large parts of the country’s institutional infrastructure. Milošević was particularly anxious to bring the University of Belgrade to heel and passed a law to make the deans of faculties government appointees. The measure met with fierce opposition from staff and students but the Socialist Party and their allies were determined to divide the spoils among themselves. The opposition group Together did not survive much longer, dividing into a number of factions with recriminations on all sides.

  The world that emerged from the period of hyperinflation looked a very different place from what had existed before. A country had
disappeared, but one had barely been constructed to take its place. Ordinary citizens were still reeling from the effects of sanctions, the civil wars in former Yugoslavia and the corruption of the very people who were supposed to be guardians of public order. Little actual help was coming from outside and by 1999 Belgrade was drained, disillusioned and confused.

  KNEZ MILOš STREET

  Knez Miloš Street runs from King Alexander Boulevard to the large road intersection called the Mostarska petlja (petlja corresponding in meaning to a “spaghetti junction”), or more often simply Mostar, the name of a kafana that was built hereabouts. The route was known as the Topčider Highway, or Topčiderski drum, until 1872 when it took its name from the man who became knez of Serbia twice. Between 1922 and 1946 it had the grander title of Miloš the Great Street (Ulica Miloša velikog), but the reference to the nineteenth-century knez as “the Great” was dropped after 1945—which is a pity since the origin of this wide and impressive thoroughfare was his idea. The Topčider Highway had some advantages, from his perspective, as a district to develop. It lay at a safe distance from the immediate reach of Ottoman Belgrade’s guns. The way to reach it from the city was through the newly conceived way stations on Terazije, the growth of which he was also trying to stimulate. Unaware that the street would be honoured with his name, Knez Miloš built for himself a palace here and surrounded it with barracks and other military facilities. Very little is left of these projects from the 1830s except for the 1837 Turkish bathhouse (or amam) that belonged to the palace and can still be seen in the courtyard at 12 Admiral Guépratte Street topped by a tiled roof and distinctive cupola. As he had done elsewhere, Miloš gave out free parcels of land for building. One story tells how he gave such a plot to one family, only to take it back without warning when he saw that not even so much as a fence was put up around the property. Rulers of Serbia after Miloš continued the trend of developing this particular street in both functional and aesthetic terms.

  Miloš provided his soldiers with a makeshift church, but this was replaced in 1863 with a new church at the top of Admiral Guépratte Street, the Church of the Ascension (Vaznesenska crkva), to serve also the religious needs of those living in this expanding suburb some distance from the Cathedral. A new building for the National Assembly was opened on the corner of Knez Miloš and Queen Natalija Streets in 1882. It was, alas, a squat and ugly building, rather small for the purpose of running the country, and replaced before too long. The Ministry of Defence was constructed at the crossroads with Nemanja Street, completed in 1895 but burnt down in 1941, and on the opposite corner from 1908 stood the Ministry of Finance.

  Individuals were allowed to build villas and private dwellings on the street, provided that they were of an appropriate grandeur and with the regulation line facing the street. Elsewhere in the city private villas tended to be planned with a garden in front separating family life from the street. Here, however, the city authorities deemed it important that a continuous architectural line was required behind the trees planted the length of the pavement. The street became a chic area at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Everything was neatly planned and regulated, offering a safe environment for the country’s elite. Men of importance would go from one ministry building to another, attending the meetings where they ran the country’s affairs. Industrialists, politicians, actors and public figures lived in their opulent homes, secure in their private world on one of the main roads at the edge of town. It was almost as if someone had designed the street for chaperoned walks by fashionable young men and women among the parks where small concerts were given.

  Construction of new government and army buildings in a monumental style of architecture continued in the 1920s and 1930s along Miloš the Great Street. The communists, in power after the Second World War, carried on the trend and built a new federal Ministry of Defence and General Headquarters of the Army of Yugoslavia at the crossroads with Nemanja Street. It was a centre of state activity, graced with government ministries and numerous foreign embassies. In the decades after the split with the Soviet Union, when Yugoslavia was establishing its own identity and place in the world, this long and straight stretch of imposing roadway provided a fine opportunity for prestigious processions. Foreign dignitaries could be driven down the street in a cavalcade of open-topped limousines. The broad pavement provided ample space for flag-waving crowds cheering from the side. Schoolchildren were drafted in to ensure impressive numbers by taking a morning or afternoon from the classroom.

  The last great event, however, was of an altogether different nature, marking the funeral procession of President Tito who died after an illness at the age of 87 in May 1980. His body was brought back to Belgrade for burial by rail from the hospital where he was being treated in Slovenia. His coffin was carried down Knez Miloš Street on a plain gun-carriage, watched by huge crowds mostly in tears lining the pavements, then taken up the hill to Dedinje and his final resting place behind the Museum of 25 May and next to his own villa where he had lived since the end of the war. The occasion was attended by presidents, kings and statesman from around the world in a show of respect for the man who over a remarkable career kept his country united and improved its standing in global politics.

  Knez Miloš Street was intended to be a symbol of the new country from the time of its first ruler, housing the highest offices of government and the army. It has served as the showpiece in the capital of the principality of Serbia when it still owed allegiance to the Porte; later in the Kingdom of Serbia; then in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; and most recently the Republic of Serbia.

  It has also been the scene of other, more violent, events. One of the targets for intensive German bombing in April 1941, it was where one of the war’s catastrophes occurred. A bomb shelter in the grounds of the Church of the Ascension where some 180 people were taking refuge was struck by high explosives. A small memorial in the church grounds today marks where the shelter stood. Nearly sixty years later, some of the government and military buildings on the street were deemed to be legitimate targets by NATO strategists, giving rise to huge damage in 1999. Some buildings have been restored and some are still waiting for sites to be cleared and reconstruction to begin. In 2003 the President of Serbia, Zoran Đinđić, was assassinated in the grounds of the building of the Government of Serbia on the corner with Nemanja as he was leaving to get into his official car at the back of the building. The history of Belgrade seems to demand that its landmarks bear witness equally to all the triumphs and disasters that befall the city.

  The end of the street in the nineteenth century was marked with a flourish by a handsome, cobbled square, home to the kafana Mostar. Today it is a junction sitting at the crossroads of a number of important and fast roads. It was built in 1970 to bring the motorway over the River Sava from New Belgrade via the bridge called the Gazelle (Gazela), so-called because its elegant sweep is said to represent an antelope leaping over the water. At this intersection, following from the end of Knez Miloš Street, one road goes down to join Vojvoda Mišić Boulevard, and another crosses straight over into Vojvoda Putnik Boulevard. The lower road leads to the Belgrade Fair (Sajam), which regularly hosts industrial and commercial exhibitions, an annual car show and in October the book fair attended by publishers from home and abroad. Vojvoda Mišić Boulevard then proceeds to the entrance to Ada Ciganlija, the island on the River Sava used by people in Belgrade as a welcome retreat during hot summer weather, and into the Topčider valley via the Belgrade racecourse. Vojvoda Putnik Boulevard goes straight up the hill toward the city’s most prestigious residential district of Dedinje.

  These two boulevards are named after famous generals of the Serbian army who held long and distinguished military careers. Radomir Putnik (1847–1917) initially turned back the Austrian invasion of Serbia, then in 1915 was faced with certain defeat by a combined offensive of German, Austrian and Bulgarian armies. He withdrew the
whole army across Montenegro and through the mountains of Albania to reach safety on the island of Corfu rather than surrender. Živojin Mišić (1855–1921) served in all the major wars from 1876 to 1918. Leading the Serbian offensive in northern Greece during 1918, he broke through the enemy lines and after just a month and a half brought his men to Belgrade on 1 November.

  DEDINJE

  By the side of the Mostar intersection where Knez Miloš Street joins Vojvoda Putnik Boulevard to go up the hill towards Dedinje stands the brewery originally founded by the Weifert family. After the Second World War it was nationalized and given the more anonymous name of the Belgrade Beer Industry (Beogradska industrija piva), although it has since reverted to its previous name and it is once more possible to buy Weifert beer. Further up the hill, Knez Alexander Karađorđević Boulevard is the lower marker of the elite district of Dedinje. The term is sometimes used to refer to this whole area incorporating Topčider, Košutnjak and Senjak. Strictly speaking, however, it should be confined to the area bounded by the Vojvoda Putnik Boulevard and the ridge at the top of the hill.

  The area was formerly known as Dedija or Dedina taken from the Serbian word deda, which usually means grandfather but was also applied historically to community elders and particularly heads of religious houses. It is thought that the name has its origin in the fact that, according to an Ottoman census of 1560, a Moslem order of Dervišes from Belgrade owned some land here. At the beginning of the twentieth century the area was known for its orchards, small summer-houses and vineyards kept by some of the rich families in town, who would use their property as a handy retreat from the city.