ABSTRACT: The article examines the President of the Serbian Royal Academy / Serbian Academy of Sciences, Aleksandar Belić's stances on the USSR, and his perception of this country over a forty-year period, based primarily on materials from Belić’s personal fund kept in the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts' Archives, as well as documents from other Serbian archives, literature, and press. The specified period, which lasted from the early 1920s to the late 1950s, saw many phases in Soviet-Yugoslav bilateral relations that can be traced through the eyes of this particular respective public and scientific figure by the two Yugoslav regimes.

KEYWORDS: Aleksandar Belić, Yugoslavia, USSR, Russian emigrati- on, interwar period, postwar period

SUMMARY: From 1937 to 1960, Aleksandar Belić was President of the Serbian Royal Academy / Serbian Academy of Sciences. During the interwar period, he served as chairman of the State Commission for Russian Refugees – those who fled Russia following the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. Belić openly supported and assisted members of this social group in Kingdom of SCS / Yugoslavia while criticizing the USSR. Following the end of WWII, Aleksandar Belić began praising the Soviet Union, and actively collaborating with the USSR Academy of Sciences and other organizations from this country. He was even named an honorary professor at Moscow State University, making him the first foreign academician in the USSR to gain the highest level of recognition in academic circles. However, when the Soviet-Yugoslav conflict broke out in 1948, the Serbian Academy of Sciences strongly supported its government, condemning the Cominform Resolution, and Belić began openly criticizing the USSR. After the conflict was resolved and the two academies restored contact, Belić continued to collaborate with Soviet scholars.