Communist sites

P1030041If you have strong sympathies about the guys who had basically good idea, but on the wrong planet, then welcome to Belgrade, Comrade. Even if you are just curious about it, or you don’t care at all, you are welcome.

The remains of past times little mentioned today are in any case all around you, saying : we didn’t built these buildings to be nice, but to last. And it seems that they will, too. There were actually some attempts to tear some of them down, with little or no result at all. Famous for doing all things differently from the rest of the world, Serbs did the same with communism – towards the end of all things, when things began to fall apart, they added a touch of pure capitalism. That’s why it lasted longer here then in any other country, save China, Cuba and few more, who obviously knew some other secret ingredients. And so, as others watched and followed in anticipation, comrade Stalin among them, former Yugoslavia managed to live in some sort of surreal happy-happy virtual country. More recent civil wars and enormous foreign debt showed that this came at a great price. Now all we have left are buildings and monuments from this period to remind us of how it was, and that we should maybe learn something from it. The problem is, a great part of population who remembers these times claim that it was actually better in the «red» period, while others strongly disagree. See for yourself who is right, and if you don’t have a standpoint, better get one.

Since the bigger part of New Belgrade was built on a drained swamp ground in the period between the end of the WW2 and the beginning of the 80’s, this well may be one of the biggest areas with big, gray and ugly buildings in Europe. Of course, none of the Belgraders and not so many tourist guides will know what are the best sites with these fine examples of mans idealistic victory over mind, matter and nature all at once, and that’s why you’ll need this commie sense guide here. The reasons for non-existence of similar guides are many: people too lazy to make one, people willing to forget those times, people just being ignorant in that particular direction, people too young or too old to remember, and most of all, the chronically short-term memory-loss of the entire nation.

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