Personal attitude: Dušan Babac

Forgotten Royal Compound

We have finally got the date, and chapters will now start to open by themselves. One by one. Some of them will be easier, some a little more difficult. Many are about how and with whom we should make peace. Unfortunately, there is not one among them about what is most important for the survival of our nation – the chapter on how we should make peace with ourselves.

At the time when foreign words, primarily Anglicisms, have invaded our language to the extent that every day it is more and more difficult to recognize it, when its torchbearers are semiliterate starlets who never leave the small screen, at the time when our history has been pushed under the deepest archaeological layers, so that it can be reached only by those most aware and most persistent, when our very ethnicity is deeply affected by decades of systematic alleged genocide guilt planting and history revision that goes back hundreds of years, when our Church, as the embodiment of our faith is under attack from all sides, we are left with our culture as the last line of defence of our identity and our existence, in which we all have the opportunity to participate. All we have is our culture, the legacy of our ancestors, but today we’re not quite sure what to do with it.

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill’s Finance Minister said Britain should funding the arts to support the war effort. Churchill’s response was: “Then what are we fighting for?” It’s a great quote, although whether Churchill actually said it is disputed. At the very least, he believed culture kept up morale in wartime; he was keen to keep theatres open, and strongly opposed the idea of sending art from the National Gallery abroad, preferring to store it safely underground. The point is, even the hawkish Churchill believed it was the government’s duty to protect culture because culture is vital to the well-being of a nation, especially in a crisis. That is how great nations do it. What our situation is, we know very well. How long has the National Museum been closed, or the Museum of Contemporary Art, in what condition are other cultural institutions of national importance?

For all this time, without any notice, another museum complex, a pearl among our cultural and historical monuments, has been deteriorating – the Royal Compound in Dedinje. Although it gained the status of the protected cultural heritage by its formation, it has only recently officially received it. Just in time for the Law on restitution to exclude the possibility of its return “in natura” to the descendants of King Alexander, who had built it. I don’t even want to discuss the statutory maximum of monetary compensation, because that would be insulting. At one meeting, I was told by the then Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Law on Restitution, Bozidar Djelic, that it would be socially unacceptable to form now a new class of millionaires by restitution. When I asked him how it was socially acceptable to create a class of millionaires by transition, he had no answer. But perhaps this cultural-historical monument should remain in its integral form, the property and welfare of the state. In Europe, there are examples of both situations. The state took great care of the Royal Compound while Broz resided in it, and no less care when it was used by Milosevic. The moment when the Compound keys were handed over to Crown Prince Alexander in July 2001, the concern of the state stopped. Logical or not?

This situation changed in 2004, when the state continued to do what it did in previous years, not by its own conscience though, but at the suggestion of the World Bank. And so it did until 2008, when the then minister Brajovic asked the historical government’s opinion on whether the Royal Compound is under the Ministry of Culture’s jurisdiction or not. That opened the Pandora’s Box of countless administrative problems, and coincided with the global economic crisis. Everything stopped halfway, including the status of its residents. The son of King Peter II and the grandson of King Alexander I now has only the tenancy right at the Compound. On the other hand, the Robespierrian republicans are passionately shouting that it is unacceptable for the Republic to pay for “certain Karadjordjevics” to live in and enjoy the Palaces. This is an ordinary thesis replacement, because the budget funds are used solely for preventive care and promotion of the Royal Compound as the monument of culture. That amount today is only a quarter of the amount for the same purpose in 2007.

Meanwhile, moisture soaks the Palaces’ walls and rust destroys installations that are over 80 years old. Nevertheless, the Royal Compound is still open to visitors, although tourism organizations of the city and the Republic very shyly advertise this option in their offerings. It appears as if they are ashamed and a little embarrassed, and it seems that we are all ashamed of the descendants of the father of our nation, Karadjordje. If it hadn’t been so, their status would have been recognized long time ago, as it is in Romania and Montenegro, which is much closer to us in every way, and in 2009 passed a law on the status of their dynasty’s descendants. A nation can hardly be successfully moving into the future if it has not reconciled with its own history and has not accepted its own identity.

The author is the Privy Council member and the Royal Palace Fund director