Nowadays, around two million people are living in Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia. Most of these people moved only one or two generations ago to the city. The connection with rural life remained strong however, even after most peasants left the countryside during (post-)communism and the civil war. This made Belgrade to a city where rural and urban identities meet, mix and clash.

Central in urban polemics about rurality stands the symbol and metaphor of the Serbian peasant (seljak). On first sight ‘peasants’ and ‘peasantry’ have some negative connotation in the Serbian day-to-day language: the ‘new Belgraders’ who come from the rural areas are sceptically welcomed by the ‘old Belgraders’, who – as self-acclaimed urban elite - dislike the traditional, patriarchal and conservative manners of ‘those peasants’.

On the other hand some pride can be found in the picture of the Serbian peasant too. Because Serbia struggles with its bad image, the pejorative picture of the peripherical peasant was used for some ‘anti-everything-propaganda’. Traditional elements of peasantry - like the meaning of religion, family-ties and a strong feeling for nature - were glorified as the ‘inner soul of the Serbian nation’. Of course, this Serbian retraditionalisation had a lot to do with the rise of neonationalism during the civil war, but the rurality of Serbia has a specific history on itself.

In 19th century, language-reformer Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic wrote about the Volkskultur of the Serbs, and concluded that the Serbian nation ‘consists of nothing but peasants’. In these days, Serbia was under the rule of Ottoman Turks. The cultural distance between Serbs and Turks was a rural-urban conflict at the same time, because most Turkish Muslims lived in the cities, while the peasant population consisted of orthodox-Christians. For that reason Vuk Karadzic didn’t count the few orthodox urban citizens as ‘real Serbians’ – because they lived together with the muslims.
The glorification of the Serbian peasantry differed from similar romaniticisms in Central-Europe, because the domestic dynasties of the Obrenovici and Karadjordjevici had – unlike a lot of other Balkan kings - their roots in the peasant class. Their armed opposition to the Turkish occupation made the Serbian peasant not only a cultural symbol, but a military as well. The reality of the peasant changed in the 20th century, during communist times. The Yugoslav dictator Tito sent all peasants to the cities where they had to live in huge blocks on the Western bank of the river Sava. A New Belgrade was founded there. Although the Serbian tradition of peasants revolts was incorporated into Tito’s military communist propaganda, there were no real peasants anymore. Only imaginary ones.

So, Serbian rurality was eliminated by Tito, but the glorification of the Serbian peasant returned in the Yugoslav nineties. Nationalist politicians like Milosevic and Karadzic used mythical stories and songs, orthodox religion and the church, folklore in costumes and habits to convince the nation of their ‘real Serbian leadership’. On the other side the war caused a new urbanisation, and – paradoxically – the hate for the city grew as fast as the city itself was expanding.