Summary

NATIONAL REVIEW ”SERBIA” AND ITS UNPRUNED CANOPY
Level 100
Applying our ”magazine book” formula, we created more than 32.000 magazine pages, published about 20.000 photographs, traveled more than two million kilometers in seventeen years. From our tree, a production of representative editions about Serbian lands branched, as well as the TV show ”Golden Apple” and application-guide ”Meet Serbia”. Our editions reached very unusual libraries, such as the one belonging to Vladimir Putin or Bob Dylan. Our principles are the same as they were at the beginning, but we are not. We matured

It is neither gentlemanly nor polite to babble about oneself. Whoever you are talking to, whatever you start talking about, just you being your main and only character. It is not a feature of a master, it is personal disorder, a diagnosis. But now, climbing up to Level 100 – and on Level 104 the order was issued about the breakthrough of the Salonica front – we had to summarize a few things. Some numbers (which often surprise us as well). Remember some people and roads.
”… Aware of everything and smiling despite everything, National Review will defend us where it is most difficult: in our own eyes, before ourselves, from ourselves. It will present undoubted proof that we are living in a beautiful and important country, for us the most important one in the world. It will teach us to recognize the positive, good and beautiful in our lives and our environment. It will help us regain ‘self-respect, which is the basis of any true self-assurance’. It will not sell darkness or sweetened water. It will observe with love, but realistically. It will be serene, but not frivolous, serious but not difficult, smooth but competent. It will address all generations and all social levels. It will represent a Serbia, as a whole, the size it is, big or small, depending on the point of view. It will not divide Serbia into first and second, urban and rural, modern and traditional, young and old, right and left, national and globalist, Serbia of ‘Guča’ and Serbia of ‘Exit’. It will be a magazine about common, beautiful, our, normal Serbia. (…) All around us there is much, much more kitsch, aggression, greed, lack of taste, destruction, stupid vanity, negativity. And banal improvisation, living on tricks. However, refinement, calmness, refined taste, constructivism and positivity, although there is less of them, are much more fruitful and convincing. (...) ‘If one is a gentleman, he knows enough. If he is not a gentleman, anything he knows is bad for him.’”
That is how we wrote at the beginning, in one of the two program introductions (no. 2, 2007). We have the same principles today. But we believe that all of us, from the first to the last, are better than we were then. Both in virtue and in skill.

NUMBERS AND BRANCHING

During these seventeen years, since National Review was born, we have created more than 32.000 magazine pages in five languages (Serbian, English, Russian, German, Chinese). We published about 20.000 photographs. In four-wheeled vehicles, not counting other transportation means, we traveled more than two million kilometers. We exploited three ”Octavias”, two ”Superbs”, one ”Peugeot”, one ”Fabia”, two ”Dusters”, and one ”Nissan”, an ”Audi”, a ”Golf” and a ”Caddy”.
People say that sometimes it’s difficult to find us in Negotin or Sjenica, but we managed to test our magazine book formula at book fairs in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Moscow, Beijing, Banjaluka, Novi Sad, Herceg-Novi, Niš, Belgrade.
”It’s not only the landscapes in the eye of the traveler that change. The traveler himself changes.”
Several endeavors and activities branched from National Review, and are today living their own lives, sharing with us the same spirit, values, founders and first editors. Sharing us with us.
In the publishing area, we are specialized in monographic editions about Serbian lands, their culture and geopoetics, heritage and symbols, various devotees. Those editions and their resumes have been published in ten languages up to now: Serbia, Russian, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Chinese. From Serbia under the Sun and Geopoetic Album to Serbian Saints and Serbian Monarchs from the IX to the XX Century, to ”novels about cities”: Pirot, Zaječar, Beočin, Irig, Ruma, Vrnjačka Banja, Šabac, Belgrade… Those books, that Serbia, became part of libraries of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel and Joe Biden, Russian Patriarch Alexei II and Umberto Ecco, Bob Dylan and Louis Figo… In their languages. These books are scattered around the world, from Vancouver to Perth and Melbourn.
In television and film production, our trademark is the TV show Golden Apple, TV edition of National Review shown on RTS. Nebojša Petrović has been producing the show since the beginning, with a small team including Slađana Novaković, Dragan Bosnić, Vlada Arsić…
The works on the application Meet Serbia are in progress, another branch from National Review’s tree. ”Your reliable guide and creative traveling companion. Routes, locations, information, recommendations, reminders.”
For almost three years, we were creating, in Banjaluka and Belgrade, National Review ”Srpska” in two languages. By helping others, we (re)established several regional, diocese and other magazines (Boka, Sveviđe…). As a mission, we created several editions of the Crkva (Church) annual magazine, while it was edited by priest Savo Jović.

WE ARE DISTRACTED, BUT WE’RE SPROUTING

All these are, both symbolically and literally, both with efforts and wonders, fruits of National Review ”Serbia”. If you turn to page four, where the imprint is, you’ll see whose fruits exactly. We won’t brag here.
But, alas, not everyone is there. Many of our associates and friends of the project, friends in the deepest meaning, are no longer with us. We shall mention them here as we mention them in places where candles are flickering: Zoran Bogavac, Dragan Nedeljković, Milovan Vitezović, Aleksandar Jovanović, Momo Kapor, Radoslav Bratić, Milorad Pavić, Rajko Nogo, Nađa Tešić, Miodrag Pavlović, Nikola Mirkov, Zoran Plavšić, Željko Sinobad, Milinko Stefanović, Života Ćirić, Novica Gušić, Tanja Bulatović, Slavko Jović, Matija Koković, Milorad Ćirilović, Tijana Jovanović. Peace be upon them and eternal memory. The editorial office and publishing council are twice as bigger there than they are here.
There are Serbs, Russians, Swiss, French, Italians, Gorani, Croatians, Armenians, Bunjevci, Slavic Muslims… among authors and associates of National Review, in this truly Serbian endeavor. Have you ever noticed that we, ”notorious nationalists”, have any problems with that? Or they with us? If you have, please let us know. If you are silent, what does it tell you?
Many have been with us, perfected their knowledge and craftsmanship, and their paths of life took them further. They often tell us, when we hear from them, that they have been ”permanently marked by their experience in National Review”. Among our children and older associates, today we have one consul, one theater manager, editor of the most popular portal in Serbia, chief editor of the most influential weekly magazine, head of the explorations at one of the most important archeological sites in the Balkans, winner of the most reputable literary award in Serbia, winner of the most important photo award in Europe, winner of the international award for design, several university professors, five PhDs…
”We are distracted, but we’re sprouting.”
We can peacefully write, without convenient pathetic and ceremonial exaggeration, that real peaks of culture, not only Serbian, have found their place between these covers. Not just the most popular, most successful in the market, but truly the best. For example, Russians Mikhalkov, Vodolazkin, Prilepin. Handke and Pinter from the West.

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

We also had some different achievements, strange.
For example, we made the famous writer of the Belgrade bottom, longing to become Serbian Bukovsky, write fairytales. Chaste and beautiful, ancient Serbian. We forced one of the most egoistic people in Serbian media, obsessed with himself and his pictures in the newspapers, write about others. We made one of the greatest Serbian XX century prose writers write us a poem. Also, it’s not a small achievement, we sometimes joke, that the mayor of Pirot took us out to lunch once.
In the year 2021, saying goodbye to Željko Sinobad, our editor Branislav Matić wrote sentences that actually refer to each one of us:
”All the magic of this damn job of ‘creating newspapers’ remained written on his skin as if on a parchment. All the passion and madness, all the faith and disappointments, living on tricks and endless dedication, boyish innocence and bohemian looseness, unconditional uprightness on the outside and great internal vulnerability.
… He didn’t work for the newspapers, he lived them. He did not simply take photos, but caught emanations of genuine life, unfeigned and raw, unsweetened, all its faces. He grasped from the bottom of the barrel, from the center of the margins. It wasn’t craft, it was philosophy. By documenting such life, he collected his evidence that God exists. Refuting calculations, he depicted us that poetics is a way of survival. And he, smiling, fed that dear monster called newspapers with his blood. When it’s beautiful and fed, he was fulfilled and calm, believing that he was investing into something bigger than himself. And tomorrow? Tomorrow is already the time to work on a new issue, the monster is hungry again.
Like all those from the old school, he had the misfortune to watch the evil wizards destroy newspapers, kafanas and readers. The crisis of meaning turned into the meaninglessness of crisis. His smile retreated; sorrow inhabited his face. Sorrow deep, heavenly. All those things around us were difficult to watch.
He didn’t spend life greedily, he calmly let life spend him.
Let’s be clear: it’s not the lens. He took away our entire world in his blue eyes. Luckily, we’ll know ‘that he was here and passed on’. There is no death anyway, just migrations. We’ll meet again, master.”
Sooner or later comes the tomorrow when there is no new issue. And when we realize that the monster was us.
When this issue arrives to your hands, we will be on Level 100. One can see far from there, both ahead and back. And at least no one will be able to say that they didn’t know what they’re continuing or what they’re shutting down.

***

Companions
In this ceremonial and a bit sad moment, we are not forgetting all those who supported us all these years. Capable entrepreneurs, people in ministries representing the state, librarians, mayors, priests, officers, teachers, poets… We are not mentioning names, since we cannot mention them all. In different periods of this little history, self-aware people from ministries and departments of culture, information, tourism, energy, veterans’ and social issues, youth and sports, as well as several cities and municipalities, have been with us. Then there are MTS, EPS, PTT, RTS, RTV, TOS, TOB, TENT, ”Kolubara”…
Colleges of Hotel Management, Tourism, Business, ”Singidunum” University, ”Beograd” Student’s Resorts… ”Kosovo-Obilić”, ”NS Seme”, ”Triglav”, DDOR, ”Dunav osiguranje”… ”Merkur” from Vrnjačka Banja and ”Portal” printing company have been with us from the beginning and have a special place in this endeavor.