BELGRADE (34 page)

Slavija Square lies at the end of King Milan Street. When the pasha finally quit the city in 1867, this point marked the edge of Belgrade in this direction. Beyond here, going up the hill and toward where Kalenić Market (Kalenićeva pijaca) stands today, the land was marshy and well known as a good spot for hunting wild fowl. But Belgrade developed rapidly after this event, spreading up the hill toward the Vračar plateau and further. A large hotel was constructed at Slavija between 1883 and 1888 by the Czech engineer and architect František Nekvasil, who was also its first owner. There have been many changes since then, but a hotel has remained more or less in the same place as a landmark of the square.

Nekvasil came to Belgrade in the early 1880s when the railway arrived and the station was built because of the work that urban expansion promised. He was one of many who came to the city anxious to make use of their professional skills and qualifications. They numbered lawyers, doctors, architects and engineers, mainly from other Slavonic lands in Central and Eastern Europe under the rule of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty.

There was another impetus for their coming to Belgrade. These Czechs, Slovaks, Croats and Slovenes nurtured a pan-Slavonic feeling, a belief that there exists a basic unity amongst the Slavs underpinned by similarities in language and culture. At the same time, and linked to pan-Slavism, their desire for national independence grew. The organizations they joined were, of course, treated as hostile by the authorities in their home states. Belgrade was a beacon for such people hoping for freedom from foreign domination, since it was the capital city of a country of Slavs and of a sovereign state.

It is difficult to find final confirmation, but it would appear that Nekvasil, intentionally or not, actually gave the square its name. He put a statue of a female figure in a niche on the first floor of the façade of his hotel in honour of Slavija. There is no such word in Serbian, but in his native Czech Slavia was the title of a popular student organization with very strong pan-Slavonic views, to which Serbian orthography would demand the addition of “j” for the word to be adopted. Given the circumstances, it is not unreasonable to suggest that his aim was to commemorate the feelings that drove him and other East European immigrants to Belgrade. The hotel and then the square as a whole acquired the same moniker.

From its beginning Slavija Square had regular evening visitors to its famous kafanas, some of which even predated the hotel. One of these was the Three Peasants (Tri seljaka), which is mentioned in a list of similar establishments from 1860. The composer and art historian D. Gostuški recalls it from his childhood in the early twentieth century as a place that may have been in need of some repair but which was popular among the city’s intellectuals. Next to it, the Rudničanin kafana was another evening venue known for its jovial atmosphere and music. The same D. Gostuški also remembers this establishment chiefly for its regular pianist who would play for the guests and who was an Englishman “with absolutely white, shoulder-length hair”.

The merchant Vlada Mitić bought the Rudničanin in 1935, giving him a fairly large plot on the corner of King Milan and Belgrade Streets on the edge of the square. He demolished the building and cleared the site intending to redevelop it as the city’s first department store. A very ambitious businessman, he planned to build a retail outlet of fourteen storeys, 200 feet tall, which would have made it the tallest building in Belgrade before the Second World War. The aim, as reported in the press at the time, was to present the ordinary person with the opportunity to buy just about all that he could need in one shop. Architects drew up plans and Mitić deposited twenty million dinars in the National Bank toward building costs. The plan was interrupted, however, by the Second World War and never came to fruition. After the war the communist authorities accused Mitić of selling goods to the enemy—tantamount to a charge of collaboration—and he was imprisoned. Mitić’s Hole, as the site was popularly called in the city, remained empty and an eyesore for decades after. It was eventually taken over by gypsies until the decision was taken to clear the site once more, landscape it, and turn it into a small park.

On the opposite corner to Belgrade Street from the Rudničanin, the Scottish philanthropist Francis Mackenzie (1833–95) built his Hall of Peace (Sala mira) in 1889. He wanted it to serve as a community centre for the district, which it did for a while. But in 1910 it became the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia; thus began a link between Slavija Square and leftist circles that was to continue for some decades. The Socialist Workers Party was formed from a number of separate groups which met at a congress held in the Hotel Slavija in 1919. After the Second World War the communist government renamed the square after one of the country’s early socialists, Dimitrije Tucović (1881–1914). His remains were transferred here and re-interred under a small statue in the middle of the square. Despite this official act, the square continued to be called Slavija by everyone who lived in Belgrade. The Social Democratic Party left Mackenzie’s Hall of Peace, which changed yet again, becoming a kafana for a period, then after the Second World War housing the Slavija cinema.

During the 1980s it was decided that the square should be given a more harmonious appearance and function. All around it stood a jumble of small shops, a cinema, cheap places to grab a snack, bus stops, kiosks and a constant stream of cars, buses, taxis, trams and people. The first Macdonald’s restaurant, not only in Yugoslavia but in the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, was established here, adding to the colourful mix to which Slavija Square played host. It may have been hoping for too much, but the aim of the new plan was to transform the square into the centre of Belgrade’s modern financial district, with a concentration of banks and other institutions. The hotel added an annex on the opposite corner with more up-market rooms and apartments attractive to foreign businessmen and investors. Work began on the project with enthusiasm; the old Slavija cinema was demolished, as were some other of the older buildings on the north side including a pharmacy. Some people objected to the changes on the grounds that these buildings were of some architectural merit or historic interest.

Then came the crash of the 1990s. Yugoslavia collapsed and a combination of war and sanctions destroyed the Serbian economy, while the government under President Milošević was considered abroad to be entirely untrustworthy. Investment in the project dried up and at the beginning of the twenty-first century the only bank to survive from this project is housed in the ultra-modern building at the end of Nemanja Street. The old picture palace has become a car park, and the square as a whole has kept its disordered appearance, a place where all is in transit and nothing is permanent.

The main problem posed by Slavija is its function as a vital point in the city’s road network. Its significance in this respect was recognized early on, with the first horse-drawn tram service running from here to Kalemegdan, and the second service when inaugurated from Slavija Square to the railway station and the quay on the River Sava. It is a large intersection where seven roads meet bringing traffic from out of town to the city centre. It is also a vital spot in the public transport system with trams, trolleybuses and buses passing through. The national airline, JAT, has its terminus for buses running to and from the airport at the hotel. The main railway station and bus station are situated down Nemanja Street, below the intersection with Knez Miloš Street. One of the roads leading into the square, Belgrade Street, connects with King Alexander Boulevard and the residential areas of Zvezdara and the west of the city. Liberation Boulevard, opposite Belgrade Street, goes up to the Vračar plateau, the site of the National Library of Serbia (Narodna biblioteka Srbije) and the massive new church dedicated to St. Sava (Hram svetog Save), continuing out to the southern suburbs.

This is always a busy part of town and the city authorities have been trying to grapple with its congestion from the beginning of the twentieth century. Various ideas have been put forward, including reducing the number of roads entering and leaving the space, but cars and public transport would need to turn at another point in order to approach the centre of town—which would cause bottlenecks elsewhere. Plans have been drawn up for overhead walkways and a complex of pedestrian underpasses with entrances to shops in order to separate people from vehicular traffic, a difficult aim given the large numbers who change public transport here. Slavija Square requires two or three policemen directing traffic at what has become Belgrade’s biggest roundabout.

Francis Mackenzie, the founder of the Hall of Peace, was an important figure in Belgrade’s urban development. He was born into a well-to–do background; his father’s family owned a large estate in the north-west Highlands of Scotland around Gairloch, while his stepmother’s family was also wealthy. He came to Serbia in 1876 with the intention of helping the refugees fleeing the troubles in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was already acquainted with one or two influential Serbian families in Belgrade, probably through contact with the anglophile statesman Čedomilj Mijatović, and decided to buy a plot on the edge of Belgrade in 1877. He purchased land owned by Đorđe Simić, the son of Stojan Simić from whom Knez Alexander Karađorđević had bought the Old Residence on Terazije in the 1840s. Mackenzie became the owner of a piece of land roughly in the shape of a fan stretching on one side of Slavija up toward the site of the National Library, and on the other side a little way up what is now Belgrade Street, with the area in between crossing today’s Mackenzie Street, named after the Scotsman himself. He has been described in an article by Michael Palairet as “one of those quintessentially Victorian apostles of the virtues of his age”, meaning that he was a financially independent philanthropist with a strong religious streak.

Determined to do good, Mackenzie divided his sizeable estate into small parcels of land that he intended for the construction of individual homes. He sold the plots with very favourable repayment terms to poorer families but with certain conditions attached. Householders had to ensure that their houses followed the line of the street frontage; they had to promise that they would use solid building materials, provide proper drainage and a clean water supply, pave the section of the street in front of their property, and limit the number of persons in the dwelling to prevent overcrowding. In short, he adapted “various British urban improvement and low-income housing schemes of the time” that had brought some good to the working class.

His religious zeal was of a somewhat puritanical nature, however, and it prompted him to add an extra condition forbidding the sale of alcohol within the area of his estate. This last provision proved impossible to enforce and was overturned when a group of householders took the matter to the Serbian courts. Mackenzie was determined to improve life for others, firmly believing that the path to happiness was based not just on a housing programme but also on education, religion, moderation and sobriety. His Hall of Peace on Slavija Square was a centre for the whole community used for prayer meetings, literary classes for adults in the evenings, sewing classes for young women, gymnastics and fencing, while religious instruction was conducted for a while under the auspices of an Orthodox priest. Mackenzie’s stamp was set on this district when it was eventually incorporated officially into the city to the extent that it was known, out of a misguided sense of his nationality, as
Englezovac
, which might be translated something like the Englishman’s place.

The Orthodox Church was not enamoured of all Mackenzie’s efforts. He was an avid supporter of religious tolerance and defended various Christian sects against attacks on the rights of their members to worship freely. He defended in particular the Nazarenes, giving the Orthodox Church to assume—wrongly—that he was himself a member. Yet he was able to dampen the suspicions of this powerful institution and redeem something of his reputation. Part of his estate touched on the Vračar plateau where, in 1595, the Ottoman authorities under Sinan-Pasha burned the exhumed remains of St. Sava. The pasha was moved by a series of rebellions in Serbia to give a demonstration of his power and attack the self-confidence of the rebels. The cult of the Serbian patron saint was growing in influence, so Sinan-Pasha had his bones taken from the Monastery of Mileševa in the south, brought to Belgrade, and thrown on a pyre intending to subdue and humiliate the insurgents.

The Church had long wanted to build an edifice dedicated to the most exalted figure in its history on the very spot where the offending spectacle had taken place. Its desire was sharpened by the approach of the tercentenary in 1895 and Mackenzie, who owned the land hereabouts, gave a plot for this purpose. A small chapel was erected in time for the commemoration but was then superseded by a more ambitious project for a much larger church. Mackenzie apparently obliged with a plot of about two acres but he died in London before any papers could be signed. There was no written evidence of the agreement, and the Church duly approached the man who inherited Englezovac, Henry Gratten Guinness. He honoured the commitment allowing the Church to acquire the required piece of land for their new plans.

Not much remains of the original housing planned by Mackenzie in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The name Englezovac has also been lost. Nonetheless, in 1896 it was decided in memory of the Scotsman to give the name Mackenzie Street to the road that runs up the hill from Slavija Square. In 1930 the name was changed to Tsar Nicholas II Street (Ulica cara Nikole II), after the last Romanov Emperor of Russia. It was subsequently rechristened Marshal Tolbukhin Street (Ulica Maršala Tolbuhina) after the Second World War in honour of one of the Soviet commanders who helped liberate Belgrade. The original name was restored in 1997, although, truth to say, there are not many citizens today who know who Mackenzie was or why he should be remembered.