Between Two Migrations – The Russian Empire Style on Serbian Soil

Abstract

The emergence of the Empire style in Serbian architecture does not represent a direct reflection of Western or Central European influence, as one might assume from the nature of other architectural influences on the development of Serbian architecture, but rather represents a later, indirect echo of the Russian variant of this style, which was brought to our artistic space by Russian émigré architects. Limited to the period between 1920–1940, it represents a symbolically simplified, artistic phenomenon that carries a strong layer of cultural memory related to the émigré community. Russian Empire on Serbian soil represents a strong imprint of Russian identity left in our environment by the Russian refugees between the two exodus. Largely unexplored, often identified with Central European classicism, the Russian Empire represents an artistic excess, an extraterritorial echo of a magnificent
era, a now defunct empire, from where 43.000 refugees arrived and settled in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly in Belgrade, where they made up a quarter of the population in the 1920s. Accepted and employed in all areas of public life, declassed and materially impoverished, but rich in spirit, which they transferred to all segments of our society, and remained there until a new adversity that prompted them to move on, and to seek their home far from the homeland they had now lost for the second time. Dominant during the 1920s in the works of the older generation of architects, Empire style was largely lost in the 1930s, although one of its most significant appearances was the Russian House built in 1933, and it received some of its more modern paraphrases at the end of the 1930s. The paper emphasizes that almost all the protagonists of this style left Yugoslavia during or after the end of World War II, emigrating for the second time, leaving behind buildings in the Neo-Empire style as a kind of seal of their very significant presence