BELGRADE.

Belgrade, in the early twenty-first century the capital city of Serbia and Montenegro, is situated at the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers. Through the course of the twentieth century Belgrade served as the capital of Serbia (until 1918), of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918–1929), of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941), of Nazi-occupied Serbia (1941–1944), of socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991), and of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2003).

WORLD WARS

The first shots of the First World War were fired on Belgrade, which lay on the border of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia, when Austro-Hungarian troops began their fifteen-month battle against the city on 28 July 1914, a battle marked by incessant bombardment. The city fell and was occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces twice during the war—first between 2 and 15 December 1914 and the second time between 9 October 1915 and 1 November 1918. The war had wreaked extensive damage on the city center, including the destruction of government ministry buildings and important cultural institutions, such as Belgrade University, the National Museum, and the National Theater, as well as private homes and businesses. Belgrade's industries, such as the tobacco and sugar factories and the Weifert brewery, suffered severe damage and significant loss of materials, machines, and tools as a result of the bombardment and pillage of the occupying forces. Belgrade's transportation and communication networks also suffered extensive damage. The prewar population of ninety thousand dwindled to between seven and twelve thousand in October 1915, and was reported by occupying authorities to have risen to forty-eight thousand in 1916. During the war, Belgrade was the urban center in Serbia that suffered the most damage.

At the end of the First World War, Belgrade became the political, administrative, economic, and cultural center of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Its administrative government faced substantial economic and social challenges and a humanitarian crisis as it entered the postwar period, especially the problem of supplying the city with provisions and dealing with a severe housing shortage. The city not only had to contend with fact that the destruction of the war had deprived former inhabitants of their homes, but also had to accommodate an influx of members of government administration, military and economic, as well as an influx of people from the countryside.

The interwar period was one of expansion for Belgrade. Already by 1921 the population of the city had risen to 112,000 and reached 226,000 by 1929. The area of the city extended to formerly Austro-Hungarian territory across the Sava River, to include the twin city of Zemun and nearby Pan?evo. In 1923 a general plan was proposed for the renovation of the city center, which was ultimately thwarted because of excessive costs, bureaucratic delay, and the inability of the municipal and federal governments to cooperate, leading only to the completion of the Parliament (Skupština) and some government buildings. German reparations and the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment provided funds for the construction of a library. Belgrade's commercial class grew, and immigrants from across the new state and Europe swelled its ranks. Immigrants, including around thirty thousand Russians, were also key in stimulating cultural and educational development. Belgrade's rapidly growing artistic life was evident in the flourishing of publishing houses, such as Geca Kon, as well as newspapers and periodicals, the appearance of new movie theaters and the Cvijeta Zuzori? Pavilion, a free performance center for exhibits and concerts, and the emergence of a vibrant café culture where authors and artists gathered in Belgrade's seven hundred cafés, especially in the bohemian Skadarlija neighborhood.

In the Second World War, Belgrade once again found itself to be the object of enemy bombs and occupation. The Nazi Luftwaffe bombing of the Yugoslav capital on 6 and 7 April 1941 inflicted extensive physical damage, again destroying the National Library and many government facilities and cutting off all essential services. The bombing also inflicted around twenty-three hundred deaths, wounded many more, and induced a still greater number to flee the city. The invading Nazi troops conducted authorized looting of the city before taking direct control of Belgrade and essentially imposed martial law. The occupying forces imposed anti-Jewish measures and established concentration camps around the city, most notably Banjica and Sajmište, located in the western suburbs of Belgrade, which according to the new boundaries of wartime Yugoslavia was located in the Independent State of Croatia. Toward the end of the war, Belgrade was bombed by Anglo-American planes for several months. It was liberated finally by communist partisan forces and the Red Army on 20 October 1944.

POSTWAR EXPANSION AND THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

After the war, the reconstruction of the now capital of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963) proceeded apace. In 1947 the Belgrade municipal government instituted a five-year plan for the improvement of the city, and a general plan was developed in 1950. The city expanded both physically and demographically. Between 1944 and 1971 the city's population grew from 270,000 to 780,000, and reached 1.6 million by 1985. New neighborhoods and municipalities rapidly developed, most notably Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) in 1952. This municipality was the result of a massive construction project undertaken on the left bank of the Sava River in 1948, which employed work brigades composed primarily of rural workers and student volunteers in constructing large government buildings, residence halls for students of Belgrade University called Studentski grad (Student City), and complexes of urban housing known as "blocks."

By the 1980s, economic crisis had overtaken the Yugoslav capital. It had not received necessary federal funds for the development of urban infrastructure, and its population growth leveled off because of emigration. Conditions worsened after the United Nations imposed sanctions on now the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in May 1992 during the wars of Yugoslav succession, which led to severe hyperinflation in 1993 and 1994.

Throughout the 1990s, Belgrade was the site of many political demonstrations. On 9 March 1991, estimated tens of thousands of citizens flooded the city's central Republic Square to protest against the regime of Slobodan Miloševi?. Once again, in winter 1996–1997 tens of thousands of people took to the streets when Miloševi?'s regime annulled the results of local elections, which had resulted in the victory of the opposition coalition, Zajedno (Together). Among the leaders of the coalition was Zoran Djindji?, who consequently became the first democratically elected mayor of Belgrade for a brief period, and ultimately premier of Serbia in 2001, an office he held until his assassination in March 2003. In 1999 Belgrade was targeted by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombs during the Kosovo War, and several government ministries, the presidential residency, the Socialist Party of Serbia headquarters, and several television and radio broadcasting stations, especially Radio Television of Serbia, were damaged or destroyed. After the presidential elections of 2000, there were once again mass demonstrations, which succeeded this time in ousting Miloševi? from power on 5 October 2000.

Following the fall of Miloševi?, Belgrade, still a city of 1.6 million, underwent renovation and revitalization, both physically and spiritually as it aimed toward rejoining the European and international communities from which it was isolated forn early a decade. In 2005 it hosted the Euro-Basket championship of the International Basketball Federation, for which it erected a new sports center. Belgrade's vibrant café culture and nightlife especially have attracted an increasing number of foreign visitors, and the Serbian capital has been featured repeatedly in the Western press.

See alsoMiloševi?, Slobodan; Serbia; Yugoslavia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blagojevi?, Ljiljana. Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919–1941. Cambridge, Mass., 2003.

Djuri?, Dubravka, and Miško Suvakovi?, eds. Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991. Cambridge, Mass., 2003.

Howell, Anthony. Serbian Sturgeon: Journal of a Visit to Belgrade. Amsterdam, 2000.

Lampe, John. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country. New York, 1996.

Milojkovi?-Djuri?, Jelena. Tradition and Avant-Garde: The Arts in Serbian Culture between the Two World Wars. Boulder, Colo., 1984.

Jovana L. KneŽevi?