Celebration of ninety years since the establishment of the instittue

On Monday, October 7th 2024, the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA celebrated ninety years since its establishment.

Multidisciplinary research in the Balkans received its institutional form with the establishment of the Balkan Institute in April 1934. The Institute was founded on the initiative of publicist Ratko Parežanin and economist Svetislav Spanaćević. According to the testimony of Professor Dimitrije Đorđević, the historian Vladimir Ćorović also played a major role in its establishment.

The Institute was founded as a private institution that was supposed to encourage the study and promotion of the indigenous values ​​of the Balkans with the aim of contributing to overcoming the conflicts between the Balkan nations. The Institute also had the task of changing the prevailing image of the Balkans as the scene of incomprehensible ethnic and territorial conflicts by presenting the results of the research.

King Alexander made it possible for the Institute to be established when he provided the Institute with a monthly subsidy from his personal funds, which constituted its founding capital and enabled the Institute's journal, Revue internationale des Études balkaniques, to be launched. Articles in the magazine were published in French, German, Italian and English.

The Institute's scientific profile was determined by professors Milan Budimir and Petar Skok, editors of the Institute's journal, laying the foundations of comparative research in the Balkans and thus the foundations of the science of the Balkans, Balkanology. In the first issue, they determined the scientific area that the Institute will deal with as the study of the Balkan entity. On that occasion, they defined the subject of research as a comparative inter-Balkan system.

They rounded off the basic principles of science in the Balkans by defining the research method as comparative.

By decision of the German occupation authorities, the work of the Institute was banned in August 1941. Continuity in multidisciplinary studies of the Balkans was continued by the decision of the SASA Presidency on May 18th 1967, which established the SASA Institute for Balkan Studies.

The celebration ended with the words of the director Dr. Vojislav G. Pavlovic:

"I believe that the future of the Institute will be based on cooperation and continuity and that it will primarily be focused on national and European projects that will build on basic research. Regional cooperation was, and I believe must remain, a constant on which the Institute will develop.

On the website of the Institute, it is boldly written that the future vision of the Institute is to become the central institution of the future regional network of Institutes dedicated to multidisciplinary research of the common heritage and promotion of the inherent values ​​of the Balkans as a European region.

Ambition, even when it is recklessly great, is a huge incentive, and time will tell to what extent it was also effective."