Uroš MIKETIĆ

From a “Yugoslav Siberia“
The Difficulties of the Patriarchal Monastery of Peć 1919–1929*

Summary

The Peć Monastery had gone through a difficult period of occupation in 1915–1918. Post-war inventories of the damage showed that the monastery had been damaged during the war and that the government’s intervention was necessary. The government, mostly declaratively, acknowledged the importance of the monastery, but in practice its help was much harder to achieve. The regime showed the highest level of interest in the period before the enthronement of Patriarch Dimitrij Pavlović in 1924. The reason was special, because, above all, the power and presence of the government in these parts had to be demonstrated, although in reality it was quite different. Some other government measures also benefited the monastery. In other cases, we see that the state’s policy was not based on continuity, consistency, meaningfulness or, sometimes, not even a simple desire to help the monastery overcome difficulties and thus strengthen its presence in poor and unstable Southern Serbia. That is why the post-war development of the monastery was halved by the end of 1929, and this area was justifiably considered a “Yugoslav Siberia.”