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In the period between the proclamation of royal dictatorship and the assassination of King Alexander I, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was characterised by the dynamics of competing visions of Yugoslavism. Questions concerning the identity of a Yugoslav nation-to-be, in terms of both national unity and diversity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, were held not only in political discourse, but also through architecture and the visual culture. This article explores the ideological roles of the Bridge of King Alexander I, built between 1929 and 1934 to connect Belgrade with the ex-Habsburg town of Zemun, which carried not only heavy transport but also powerful political messages. The bridge's construction prompted a widespread public controversy, representing a vivid testimony to rivalries, tensions and discontents between different ideas about the Yugoslav nation, underpinned by both political and professional agendas.

Despite criticism that has been leveled against Gabriel Millet's well-known tripartite subdivision of architecture of medieval Serbia into three distinct 'schools', its scholarly authority still remains largely unchallenged. Yet what is believed to have stemmed from Millet's ingenious research was inextricably linked with the ideological project of Serbian national emancipation during the first decades of the twentieth century. His stylistic triad of L'école de Rascie, L'école de la serbie byzantine and L'école de la Morava had an unexpectedly vivid and profound afterlife in the entirely new context of socialist Yugoslavia – in terms of both scholarship and ideological resonance. Its main proponent was Serbian architectural historian Aleksandar Deroko, whose book entitled Monumental and Decorative Architecture in Medieval Serbia apparently only reiterated the existing supervision of into 'groups'. Nevertheless, a closer look at three successive editions of the book published in 1953, 1962 and 1985 reveals a series of Deroko's encounters with the Milletian framework, suggesting that his enterprise can be seen as instrumental to the ideological re-appropriation of medieval heritage in the context of the national question in Yugoslavia.

Unlike most of the post-WWI newly established and old nation-states, the multiethnic Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) had its own ideological raison d'être in the idea of a simultaneously composite and primordial nation. The ideology of primordial Yugoslavism was a complex set of ideas referring to the multiethnic community of Yugoslavs — sharply divided not only by culture, but also by the experience in the Great War — seeking a cohesive national culture. The idea of a single, primordial nation, united by common descent and future prospects, was based on the mythologization of the people's original unity, as well as obliteration of cultural, religious and, most importantly, political differences. In this respect, the symbolic legacy of classicism had much to offer for the cultural imagination of Yugoslavism. The examples include: Roman Verhovskoj's Monument and Crypt to the Defenders of Belgrade (1931), the nearby Memorial to the Russian Soldiers fallen in the war (1934), Ivan Meštrović's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on avala near belgrade (1934-1938) and Edvard Ravnikar's Ossuary of War Victims (1937-1939) in Ljubljana.

In 1889, on the occasion of celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Kosovo Battle (Vidovdan), the local Serbian Orthodox community of Habsburg Dalmatia built a church dedicated to Saint Lazar. While the church's architectural features corresponded to local architectural tradition equally shared by the Catholics and Orthodox, its memorial function, centred around Vidovdan, was predominantly related to Serbs. When in 1935 the church's bell cote was replaced by a new, "SerboByzantine" bell tower, this was not merely an architectural manifestation of a newly invigorated, exclusively Serbian memory of Vidovdan, but also a vivid mark of a new political order in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Apart from the novelty of "Serbo-Byzantine" references, the new structure referred to an ongoing scholarly reinterpretation of local architectural heritage, employing its imagery that had been considered genuinely Croatian. The transformed architecture of the "Dalmatian Lazarica" simultaneously re-Serbianized the memory of Vidovdan and nationalized both the history and identity of Dalmatian Kosovo on the eve of its inclusion into the Banovina of Croatia in 1939.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Western European nations have been historicized through a variety of disciplinary regimes—from political and cultural history, to archaeology and architectural history. This happened simultaneously with the construction of what is widely believed to represent a common European cultural identity. The perception and interpretation of Byzantine architecture represents a particularly telling example which simultaneously enforces and questions a supposed cultural divide that still dominates the perception of European cultural borders. Namely, Byzantium remained a commonplace for imagining a non-European otherness usually associated with its cultural inheritors—be they modern-day Turks, Russians or the Orthodox nations of the Balkans. However, the same Byzantine architectural legacy was simultaneously and reversely included in Western European historical imagination, becoming integral part of national heritage and acquiring a range of ideological functions and overtly political resonance.

This article is an interdisciplinary study of the Vidovdan Temple (c. 1906-13), a sculptural-architectural whole that was Ivan Meštrović's most controversial and most widely interpreted work. I analyze visual culture and intellectual history to show how this particular artwork became highly instrumental in creating and strengthening Yugoslavism's primordialist dimension, which sharply marked the South Slavic territories' political landscape in the decade preceding the first Yugoslav state's creation. Not only did Meštrović's artwork epitomize the idea of a South Slavic primeval unity, dismissing the national distinctiveness of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, it also enunciated an emphatic message of South Slavic political unification. By analyzing the Vidovdan Temple's contemporaneous critical reception, I question its classical interpretation as a symbol of Yugoslav multicultural synthesis, arguing for a more contextsensitive and nuanced understanding of the ideology of Yugoslavism.

On the rubbles of the Yugoslav ancient regime after World War II, the new Yugoslav state was established as completely different from its predecessor in both political and ideological terms. The new multinational, federal and socialist state was governed by the Communist Party that split with the Cominform in 1948, causing the country to embark on a long-lasting process of forging its own version of socialism. To cast the image of the country and its nations capable of such laborious deeds, the regime needed a culture of representation which facilitated its ideological objectives and was able to reinforce the image of an authentic Yugoslav socialism as a progressive force. Perhaps the most conspicuous example of this elite-imposed and constructed culture, which clearly testifies to various ideological and political roles, is the New Fairground in Belgrade (1953-1957). The new Fairground complex was planned and built on a marshy terrain on the right bank of the Sava River that was considered a 'wasteland.' The transformation of the terrain by filling up the bogs with hundreds of tons of sand has undeniably had an aura of an extremely powerful effort. The technical superiority of the enterprise sounded the metaphor of conquering and taming nature, which otherwise represented one of the key instances of the ideology of Yugoslav socialism. On the other hand, the huge construction of the Fairground commenced to stage a self-indulged and calculatedly constructed image of superiority of socialist Yugoslavia and its tremendously advanced modernization. The prestressed reinforced concrete domes of the new Fairground were designed to span great distances and to show ingeniousness of Yugoslav engineers and architects capable of constructing the largest spans in the world of that time. Not only was the Fairground aimed at beating the size, but also the nature: the whole structure, however, with its sculptured forms and superb technological elements, epitomized the socialist 'triumph over history' and the oblivion of a past that has remained obscure and undesired. Furthermore, by designing and constructing buildings and complexes whose structural features surpassed those of natural forms - like in the simultaneous re-construction of a completely new city of New Belgrade - architecture and engineering of the Belgrade Fairground vividly demonstrated some of the basic ideological underpinnings of Marxism, as re-adopted and re-appropriated by Yugoslav communists in the 1950s. In the outstandingly remarkable political and ideological transition of that time, the Belgrade Fairground almost literally embodied a basic Marxian premise that not only humane Yugoslav socialism and socialist democracy, but also human liberation and development could only be achieved by the transformation of nature, representing the political utopia of Yugoslav socialist humanism as completed naturalism. ; Predmet teksta je analiza odnosa arhitekture Beogradskog sajma (1953-1957) i političke ideologije u kontekstu Jugoslavije 1950-ih godina, koji se posmatra kroz nekoliko različitih i međusobno prožetih instanci. Polazeći od konstitutivne uloge arhitekture u uspostavljanju jugoslovenske socijalističke demokratije, u tekstu se ukazuje na niz funkcija koje je arhitektonsko-graditeljski poduhvat podizanja Beogradskog sajma zadobio u javnom prostoru. Beogradski sajam ukazuje ne samo na značaj arhitekture u legitimaciji političke moći već osvetljava i neke od temeljnih ideoloških postavki na kojima je počivala konstrukcija jugoslovenskog socijalizma kao dovršenog naturalizma zasnovanog na antagonističnom odnosu emancipatorskih strategija i prirodnih granica.

When in 1929 King Alexander I Karadjordjević dissolved the parliament and abolished the constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, it was only the final act in a long lasting political drama which had started back in 1918. The country got a new name - the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and it was divided into new regional units which replaced the former historical provinces. These regions became a nucleus of a new national paradigm with huge ideological loading. Architecture played major part in this new regionalist imagination of Yugoslav identity, expressing a visual language of a newly reconceptualised nation.

The role of Russian emigration in the process of the construction of Serbian national identity during the perplexing ideological and political context of the 1920s and 1930s, is far beyond the scope of particular scholarly disciplines. The various disciplinary regimes produced and disseminated the idea of a Serbian identity as distinct from other South Slav identities at the same time with the establishment of a critical discourse regarding the Yugoslav Russian emigres, who were seen as simultaneously similar to and different from Serbs. Distinguished by the variety of likenesses and differences, the discourse has been systematically constructed by the interpretation of architecture designed by Russian emigres and spread all over the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Corresponding to the general scope of interpretation of the Russian emigres in their new Slavic home, this segment of interwar architectural culture is symptomatic of the ideological roles and functions the Russian emigres have. The architecture of the Russian emigres has further reinforced the understanding of Serbian national identity within critical contexts of national crisis (both in the 1930s and in the 1990s), establishing some of the principal resources (and also the political functions) of Serbian national identity: from triumphalism, expansionism and imperial rule, to self-martyrization, anti-Communism and pious Orthodox faith. The interpretation of architecture of Russian Emigres in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (The Kingdom of Yugoslavia) has been distinguished by a distinctly flexible and functional paradigm, based on a seemingly contradictory duality of differences and similarities between Serbian and Russian national identities. The crucial ideological dimension of such interpretational paradigm, which has many features of the process of 'longue duree', is the unification of culturally dismembered Serbian national body that constantly oscillates between an external 'neighbor' and inner 'enemies'. ; U ovom radu se analizira značaj ruske emigracije u procesu uobličavanja srpskog nacionalnog identiteta u složenom političkom i ideološkom kontekstu Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca (Kraljevine Jugoslavije). Ovakva analiza prevazilazi okvire pojedinačnih naučnih disciplina i ukazuje na zamašne ideološke dimenzije. U radu se razmatra odnos srpskog identiteta naspram identiteta drugih zajednica u Jugoslaviji posebno sličnosti i razlike sa zamišljenim, jedinstvenim korpusom ruskih emigranata i njihove kulture. O ovom zahvatu suodnošenja, u kome se prepliću bliskosti i razlike, svedoče brojni arhitektonski projekti i građevine, spomenici i reprezentativne državne palate čiji su autori bili ruski arhitekte emigrant!. Tumačenja arhitekture ruskih emigranata pomaže da se utvrde neki od karakterističnih sadržaja srpskog nacionalnog identiteta: od trijumfalizma i legitimacije ekspanzionizma i imperijalne vlasti, preko otklona od komunizma. do mučeništva i pravoslavne duhovnosti.

This article is focused on the relation between the representative architectural culture of Belgrade and the ideology of Yugoslavism between 1918 and 1941, a period that spans the life of the first Yugoslav state, and is distinguished by ideological instability and political turmoil. In an analysis of the material apparatuses of ideology and the spatialization of power, it is intended to illustrate interwar Yugoslavism as it was realized in the cityscape of Belgrade, the Serbian, ex-Yugoslav, capital. Urban and architectural examples will illustrate the ideological role of planning and building in this interwar period.

The Warrior's Home in Belgrade, for which an architectural competition was organized in the spring of 1929 and which was built two years later according to the project made by Belgrade architects Jovan Jovanović and Živojin Piperski, is not only an important architectural monument, but a significant testimony to the official Yugoslav ideology at the time of the so-called "January regime", established in 1929. However, not only the constructed edifice, but also the awarded and purchased works, as well as public assessments voiced by contemporaries, form a vivid and striking picture of the army's cultural and political role in the social life of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia. In that sense, especially indicative are the works awarded at the competition, the condensation of which led to the final architectural solution, owing primarily to the instructions of the Committee for the construction of the Home. The fact that the project of architects Bogdan Nestorović and Jovan Šnajder in the "Byzantine-Romanesque" style received an equal evaluation as did the academic solution of Jovan Jovanović and Živojin Piperski, shaped through a syntax of neo historical styles, is especially symptomatic. It attests to different visions of the suitable Yugoslav tradition lying at the very core of the ideological apparatus of the Army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia – the central institution of the Yugoslav society. Apart from architecture, this is also attested to by the developed iconographic program of the facade sculpture which was never realized. For this reason, the Warrior's Home in Belgrade can be considered as a unique example of the ideological interaction of architecture and sculpture, and a good example of the role of architecture in the shaping of perceptions of collective identity. ; Tekst govori o arhitektonskom konkursu za zgradu Ratničkog doma u Beogradu (1929-1931), o arhitekturi nagrađenih radova i izvedene građevine, sa aspekta stvaranja slike o vojsci kao centralnoj instituciji jugoslovenskog društva u vreme šestojanuarskog režima kralja Aleksandra I Karađorđevića. Arhitektonski i vizuelni identitet Ratničkog doma je jedan od upečatljivih primera konstruisanja inventovanih tradicija jugoslovenstva, a njegova ideološka aura neobično značajno svedočanstvo uloge arhitekture u stvaranju i prikazivanju ideologije integralnog jugoslovenstva.

This article examines relationships between architecture and ideology in socialist Yugoslavia by exploring the cultural interpretation and appropriation of the Balkan house in achieving modern, specifically Yugoslav architectural expression. Through the contextualization of the period's different narratives on the Ottoman vernacular and various architectural designs related to it, the aim is to demonstrate how Yugoslav architects relied on Marxism to appropriate vernacular architecture into the modernist discourses. Dialectical materialism was used as a key for the interpretation of the opposition between what was seen as the negative and positive elements of the Balkan house, which challenged banal polarization between the traditional and modern and led to a more nuanced understanding of backwardness and progress in vernacular architecture. The idea of architectural metamorphoses of vernacular to modern forms was justified by evolution and revolution, the basic concepts of the Marxist understanding of processes in society and culture. The Yugoslav interest in the Balkan house represented a living, perceivable example of how the relationships between tradition and modernity, the past and the present, as well as men and their environment, became incorporated into new architecture of 'socialism with a humane face', which stood at the heart of Yugoslav social and political experiment.