SERBIA - National review no. 6

Prologue

The unilateral proclamation of independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia and the support of the USA and the vassal countries of the EU given to the illegal act of Albanian separatists represents a total breakdown of international justice and the inauguration of violence as the superb principle of the Euro-American system. A different historical clock is ticking for the Serbian people; a different kind of time is passing. It will last from February 17th 2008 until the day of the return of the Serbian nation to Kosovo and Kosovo to Serbia. We shall wait for that day, knowing that it is worth living and dying for.

GALLERY

CONTENTS

Prologue
KOSOVO AND METOHIA, BETWEEN COSMIC JUSTICE AND GLOBAL VIOLENCE
The Time Will Come

Panorama
FAIR OF TOURISM, FEST, EVENTS

Pilgrimage
THE ”NATIONAL REVIEW” ON THE HOLY MOUNT OF ATHOS: MONASTERY HILANDAR (1)
The Divine Throne of Eternal Serbia
Hilandar is first mentioned in 1076, as an abandoned Greek monastery Helandarion in a part of the Holy Mount of Athos. However, it is probable that the endower and the founder of the original Hilandar, almost one hundred years earlier, around 985, was the monk Georgis Helandarios. In documents from 1169, among the signers of the annual act stand the name of the prior of Hilandar called Gerasim, which points to the fact that 30 years before the arrival of St. Sava and St. Simeon (1197), a brotherhood already lived in that monastery

By: Mišo Vujović

The Heart of Serbia
THE EPISCOPE OF LIPLJAN AND PRIOR OF DEČANI TEODOSIJE, IN AN EXCLUSIVE AUTHORIAL TEXT FOR THE ”NATIONAL REVIEW”, ABOUT THE ATTEMPTS OF ALBANIZATION OF SERBIAN HERITAGE IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA
Defend the Truth and Identity
Quasi-historical claims, serving as basis for the systematic attempts to rename the Serbian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija into Albanian, are so preposterous and vulgar that unmasking them is needless. However, it is very important to engage all Serbian spiritual and intellectual forces to present the Serbian cultural heritage correctly in the insufficiently informed world. The state of Serbia, through UNESCO and other international organizations, regardless of the status of the province and international reactions to that status, has the obligation to ensure an appropriate institutional and safety protection of the Serbian heritage in that area from further destructions and changes of identity

The Heart of Serbia
THROUGH KOSOVO, LENGTHWISE AND CROSSWISE (2)
Wisdom of the Sanctities Guardians
We have been there, seen almost everything, with a deep and clear feeling that we were walking upon our own country. Homeland. And? After that, one feels more dignified and more of a human. We watch the landscapes, this earth and this sky, those cities and temples, those people, sort the memories, and some unusual peacefulness fulfils us. We know that we will come back. This bashi-bazouk also knows it with its unmistakable cowardly heart. That is why they so desperately need our consent that we will never go back there again. That is why they will never get it. Two different times are before them and us. Each must live through its own. Until the time for sewing together comes

By: Branislav Matić

Destinations
MIONICA, A MUNICIPALITY READILY EXPECTING BETTER DAYS
On Good Waters
Famous for its beauties, waters, spas, fruit, cattle raising, but also for its insurrectionists and generals, its name is derived from the adjective mio (dear). Because of its tradition, it was doomed to backwardness after World War II, as ”reactionary” and ”Serbian, too Serbian”. However, in a strange turn of fate, abundantly present in Serbian history, the fact that it has no large industries and dirty technologies today turned into a great comparative advantage of Mionica, worth as pure gold

By: Luka Petrović

Road Sign
KLADOVO: INSCRIPTIONS IN TIME
Danube as Destiny
Many people have been fighting over that crossroads town, that border town, that ”town at the end of the world” for centuries. They left traces: buildings and wrecks, marks and scars. The Romans have built palaces, made a magnificent bridge, built a rod. The Serbs brought many dreams and the ”light of Orthodoxy”. The Turks have brought Islam. Life disappeared and appeared again so many times. Life won. And the town remained under the great sky and faraway clouds, which go down to the river and then scatter

By: Bela Draganić

Peaks
WINTER ON TORNIČKA BOBIJA
The Obligation to the Innocent Mountain
After World War II, this mountain beauty was not marked on ideological geographic maps of Serbia. That is why we are discovering it so late, from the far, confused and ashamed of its long betrayed beauties. When we hear that, on Orthodox New Year, fireworks from its peaks can be seen on St. Sava’s Plateau in Belgrade, we cannot believe it at first. The reporter of the ”National Review”, the great expert in this mountain and its people is a reliable guide in the discovery we are facing

Text and photographs by: Dragan Bosnić

Oasis
THE GREAT WAR ISLAND, AT THE MOUTH OF SAVA INTO DANUBE, ”ARRIVING FROM THE PAST”
An Island between Worlds
At the bottom of the Belgrade fortress, born as the creation of the big river that always grows and changes, it outlived the empires among which it was conceived. Today, it is a bird paradise, the area of secret forests, meadows and swamps in the very center of the capital, boiling in the two-million uproar. It survived all wars and every peace, even transition and privatization. It should remain so

By: Branimir Stanojević

Belvedere
THE CRADLE OF SERBIAN HYMNS
The Sound of Ardor and Loyalty
The ethics of the modern Serbian nation is the result of spiritual people and poets, artists and national workers of the Pannonian Serbiandom, Serbiandom over the Sava and over the Danube. This is the place where, after great migrations led by patriarchs, renown Serbian hymns and hymnal songs were created. ”Svetosavska” by Jovan Georgijević, Venclović’s ”Molitva za srpsku zemlju”, ”Plač Serbii” by Zaharije Orfelin and ”Vostani Serbie” by Dositej Obradović, and Djura’s ”Otadžbina”… Also originating from these parts is Jovan Djordjević, author of the song ”Bože pravde”, the unique anthem-prayer, by which the Serbs pray to God to save them if they are on the path of justice. If not, the prayer is in vain

By: Professor Dragan Nedeljković (Ph.D.)

Crowns
SERBIA — THE HOMELAND OF ROMAN EMPERORS: CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS (293- 306)
The Touch of Apollo of the Balkans
Constantius was one of the sixteen deified Roman emperors, the descendant of Claudius II Gothicus and the father of Constantine the Great, the ruler of Gaul and the tamer of rebelled Britannia. Instead of imitating Eastern pompousness and glory that his preceedors introduced to the court, Constantius kept the moderate dignity of the Roman princes. He was saying, with natural sincerity, that his goal was to wake nobility and diligence in the heart of every subject, and that it would contribute to the progress of the Empire

By: Professor Aleksandar Jovanović (Ph.D.)

Road Watchmen
SERBIAN MEDIEVAL FORTRESSES: MAGLIČ
Seven Towers in the Fog
Located on a reef above Ibar, Maglič was the master of the main road, which connected the valley of Zapadna Morava River with Kosvo, Metohia and Ras. The learned Bishop Danilo II built his residence at that very place, a church, a library and a monastic school. ”Foggy as the Avallon”, this unusual strongpoint resisted all the way to the middle of the 15th century, when it became Turkish and deserted some time later

By: Vojislav Filipović

Famous Loves
KING STEFAN OF DEČANI AND QUEEN THEODORA
Like a Knife into Milk
Into that whirlpool, she pulled everything of hers. In that whirlpool, she drowned her love, her patience, her suffering, all her modesty. Dušan was the one who came out. Her younger son. The storm of her soul. All her hidden anger in him. Pure defiance and enormous strength. Not to be ashamed of people and not to fear God. Not to take after his father. To conquer the whole world and to spread it before his feet. He was such when she gave birth to him. Made him. Mighty. Against the world and against Stefan – fearing of God, abandoned, eternally sad and always deceived, lost for everyone in this world, her husband. Now she could again try to love him. In his quiet and resolute way. Beautifully, easily and somehow by the way

By: Milena Z. Bogavac

By: Petar Branov

Reading book
JOVAN DUČIĆ DRINKING COFFEE WITH NUŠIĆ
Tapping the Sarcophagus
In one of the four bookstores of Sveta Rajković, at the beginning of Knez Mihailova Street, Nušić worked all day long. About noon, he interrupted his work for an hour and a half and dedicated that time to drinking coffee with friends in the bookstore. This is what got better reputation to the bookstore and Sveta Rajković realized that he could give a study room for free to Branislav Nušić, with a view of the theatre for which he wrote his comedies. We knew where sat Slobodan Jovanović, Bogdan Popović, Branislav Petronijević, Stanislav Vinaver, Miloš Crnjanski...

By: Milovan Vitezović

Fate and Commentaries
MILEVA MARIĆ AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC HISTORY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Love and other Discoveries
The role of the ingenious Serbian woman in the revolutionary discoveries attributed to her then husband will never be ascertained. However, it is known that he regularly erased her name from their joint works, and that he put the whole amount of the Nobel Prize he received in 1921 to her account, without an explanation. He, who left her alone, in poverty, with a seriously ill son, said for ”The Times”: ”Grand is only the life lived for others”

By: Dragana Bukumirović

Upstream
MILOŠ S. MILOJEVIĆ (1840-1897), HISTORIAN AND WARRIOR, ”THE MAN WHO SAW THROUGH THE CURTAINS”
The Truth Behind the Wall
While studying at he Imperial University in Moscow, he had an opportunity to gain insight of supreme studies of the Russian historical, ethnological and archeological sciences, which, with their discoveries, captured his deep interest for the ancient past of the Slavic nations and brought him under bitter pressure of the supporters of the Germanic historical school in Serbia. After returning to his homeland, without a true scientific partner in conversation and seized with suspicions, he steadily began serious investigations. He became the first Serbian archeologist and one of the founders of the secret Board of Education. Dressed as a bricklayer, carpenter and icon painter, he traveled through the southern Serbian lands and collected valuable historical material. His travel accounts from Kosovo and Metohija at the present defend the southern Serbian province with facts, just as he and his young fighters defended it in the war between Serbia and Turkey 1877-1878

By: Luka Petrović

Friends
THE FAMOUS RUSSIAN DIRECTOR NIKITA MIKHALKOV VISITS THE BELGRADE FACULTY OF LAW
For a World that Will Save Beauty
”I have nothing against ‘McDonalds’. One can have a good meal there, although what you eat is tasteless. However, you cannot turn the whole world into a general political, intellectual and moral ‘McDonalds’. The Serbian children from Kosovo and Metohija here did not present us the folklore and culture, but the live spirit. Real life pervaded with the spirit of Orthodox Christianity. You cannot make decisions about that spirit and that life in such an irresponsible and ignorant manner, you cannot cut into that live flesh with neither pen nor sword without being punished”

Heritage
THE SECOND CENTURY OF STUDYING THE HISTORY OF ART IN SERBIA
The Case of the First Course
On the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade more than one hundred years ago, in accordance with the actual cultural and education events, a series of lectures was organized called ”High Renaissance” (1906). It was the beginning of academic treating of history of art. Then, all the way to 1962, a seminar, a department, a group, a class was established... and the most important names of Serbian culture and science of the 20th century were connected with it

By: Milica Božić

On Air
FIFTY YEARS OF RADIO BEOGRAD 2
Elitism for All
The only radio program in Serbia completely dedicated to culture and art was radically changed three times, but was always able to achieve the highest level. Oriented towards eternal values, to the critical public and young people, even today it surpasses the quality standards expected from a public service in European countries

By: Djordje Malavrazić

Ars sacra
A SMALL ESSAY ABOUT AN ARTIST: DRAGOMIR DJEKIĆ, A SERBIAN PAINTER FROM KOSOVO, PAINTING THE LARGEST ORTHODOX TEMPLES IN NORTH AMERICA
High above Sorrow
The one who sees with his soul, sees all. Born where his homeland was born, in Kosmet, where, enticed, the homeland is lethally wounded for the nth time, the painter Djekić lies on a scaffold in the dome of the Orthodox temple in Denver. He is gazing at the calm eye of the Mother of God above him. And he knows that there, in his birth land, all that is born here, under his painting brush, is burning and vanishing. Will Our Lady of Denver really cry over Our Lady of Ljeviš, or will it be the other way round?

By: Brano Pavličić

Sky
PLANETARIUM ON KALEMEGDAN: THE SPACE THEATRE IN THE OLD FORTRESS
The Secret Life of Cosmic Towns
The Academic Astronomy Association in Belgrade was established seventy five years ago, and the planetarium was bought forty two years ago (from the German company ”Carl Zeiss” from Jena). Since then, in Kalemegdan’s Upper Town generations went on never-ending sky trips. If plans and dreams of those who care about it today come true, the Belgrade Planetarium could be as famous as the ones in Valencia and Athens

By: Slađana Ristić

Capital
BELGRADE TOPONYMS: TIME STORED IN A LANGUAGE (2)
The Growth and the Changes of the White Town
While we continue exploring the topography of the capital, the former and the present one, we slowly fill many gaps in our knowledge and our memory. Many images of birth of modern Belgrade are appearing in front of us, all the big and small, personal and general, charming and horrible storms that make part of its unique biography

By: Dragan Perić

Symbol
MORE THAN A BRAND: APROPOS AN IMPORTANT PUBLICATION ABOUT THE PLUM
The Fruit for the Soul
Its tree is the symbol of the samurai. In the Far East traditions, it represents the victory of spring over winter, virtue and courage over hardships. In our lands, it exists from the ancient times, and especially spread when the golden medieval age was replaced by the times of outlaws. History claims that the present most famous domestic sort, Požegača, was brought by Alexander of Macedonia. We drink it, we eat it, cure many things with its nobleness, we make fire, instruments and music from it. It’s about the plum, man

By: Slobodan Milatović

More than Sports
THE HUNTERS ASSOCIATION OF SERBIA CELEBRATES ITS 112TH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR
An Organization of National Significance
Founded on October 13, 1896, in the village of Brzan near Lapovo, patronized by king Milan Obrenović, the hunters’ organization today has 96.000 members, 227 associations, 321 hunting grounds and is active in a space covering 6,5 million hectares

Leaders
ENGINEER VLADAN MARKOVIĆ, THE MANAGER OF THE PUBLIC UTILITY COMPANY ”BEOGRADSKE ELEKTRANE”
With Quality into Europe
This company’s results in the quality of services, innovations, usage of most favorable technologies, of saving the unrestorable sources of energy and the protection of the environment were all verified by a range of first-class international awards and recognitions. The prestige international company Business Initiative (BID) will award a prize on March 19th in Geneva to ”Beogradske elektrane”, a prize for quality in the ”golden category”, awarded by managers of the most successful companies from 17 countries

Gastronomy
”STARA TREŠNJA” (”THE OLD CHERRY TREE”) RESTAURANT
The Specialty – the Serbian plate