Brothers on Paper

History is rarely what people later tell themselves it was. It consists of events, interests, coincidences, conflicts and sometimes genuine common ground. Only afterwards do these things become grand narratives. One of the most persistent narratives in Serbia is the belief that Serbs and Russians have a special, almost familial connection stretching across the centuries.

Look more closely, however, and you find something else. There have been historical contacts, religious similarities, migration, cultural exchange and individual political situations in which Russia genuinely supported Serbian interests. But history does not provide evidence of an uninterrupted political connection between two peoples who have supposedly regarded each other as brothers for centuries.

But let us go back to the beginning.

The phrase “Rusi i Srbi, braća zauvek”, Russians and Serbs, brothers forever, is therefore not a historical description. It is a political narrative. And that narrative is considerably younger than many people in Serbia believe.

That does not make the actual connections between Serbs and Russians any less interesting. Quite the opposite. Precisely because they were real, it is worth separating them from the myth that was later constructed from them.

One of the oldest connections is religious. The Serbian and Russian worlds belonged to Orthodox Christianity. The so called Saint Sava, the central figure of Serbian Orthodoxy, spent part of his life on Mount Athos and entered the Russian monastery of Panteleimon there. Such contacts were real and important. But they were contacts within an Orthodox world, not an early version of a Serbian Russian political alliance. It is like a car from a long vanished era whose production was discontinued sixty years ago.

Nor did subsequent history follow a straight line. The medieval Serbian state and the Russian principalities developed under entirely different political conditions. While Moscow gradually established itself as the centre of its own power structure in Russia, Serbian territory fell under Ottoman rule. These different historical developments cannot be turned into a continuous political community.

Things become more interesting in the eighteenth century. At that time, many Serbs lived within the Habsburg Monarchy. For the Orthodox population there, Russia increasingly became a kind of imagined protective power. Russian rulers appeared as powerful Orthodox monarchs who might help their fellow believers. This idea had very practical consequences.

Russian books and liturgical writings reached Serbian churches and schools. Russian teachers came south, while Serbian pupils and clergy travelled to Russia. Russian art influenced Serbian Baroque culture. Images of the Romanovs found their way into Serbian churches and representative buildings. The art historian Vladimir Simić has examined this development in detail and demonstrated just how strong Russian cultural and religious influences actually were in the eighteenth century.

But here too, it is worth looking at the other side. Russia was not simply a selfless big brother. The Russian Empire pursued its own imperial interests. The settlement of Serbian border soldiers in the territories of New Serbia and Slavo Serbia during the 1750s is a good example. Serbs came to Russia, while Russia gained a militarily useful population on its frontier. Both sides had interests. That is history. And history is usually much more sober than national myths.

Russia also played an important role during the Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire from 1804 onwards. Russia supported the Serbs financially and militarily and used diplomacy to advance their interests. Russian support was an important factor in the development of Serbian autonomy. The Treaties of Bucharest in 1812, Akkerman in 1826 and Adrianople in 1829 were important stages on this path.

That was realpolitik. And precisely for that reason, it should not be romanticised.

Russia did not support Serbia because the Russian Tsar suddenly discovered a familial relationship with the Serbian people. Russia simply had interests in the Balkans, in relation to the Ottoman Empire and within the European balance of power. Serbia was a partner, an instrument, a protected object and often an object of Russian influence, depending on the circumstances. It is historically documented that Stalin’s geopolitical assessments regarding Yugoslavia and the end of the Second World War followed a similar logic. In much the same vein, the British Crown’s temporary asylum for King Peter II of Yugoslavia (Petar II Karađorđević) was not an act of charity, but of political calculation. We must stop romanticising such gestures.

Official diplomatic relations between the Principality of Serbia and Russia were established in 1838. That too is an important historical point. But diplomatic relations are diplomatic relations. They are not a certificate of kinship.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the relationship remained correspondingly contradictory. Russia could support Serbian interests while pursuing its own strategic priorities at the same time. This became particularly clear after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Russia had its own ideas about the political order of the Balkans. Serbia was not automatically the main beneficiary of Russian Balkan policy. Bulgaria was, at times, of exceptional importance to Russia. This is a crucial point that tends to disappear from contemporary Serbian historical memory. Great powers do not have friends in the romantic sense. They have interests.

That was true of Russia then. It is true of Russia today. And it was true of Britain, France, Austria Hungary, Germany, the United States and every other great power that has ever pursued politics in the Balkans.

Anyone who wants to understand Serbian Russian relations must therefore also look at the Serbian side. Serbia was never exclusively oriented towards Russia. Serbian modernity emerged from many European influences. A figure such as Dositej Obradović is almost symbolic of this. The great Serbian Enlightenment thinker moved intellectually through Europe, living and studying, among other places, in Austria and Germany, while also travelling to Russia, France and England. For him, education, science, reason and modernisation were fundamental. His intellectual world was European, not Russian or Western in the modern geopolitical sense.

This matters because it disproves a false alternative that is frequently presented today, as though Serbia had historically always been forced to choose between Russia and the West. That is simply not true. Serbia modernised by absorbing different European influences.

Russia also supported Serbia during the First World War. Russian intervention and Russian solidarity with Serbia are, of course, part of our shared history. But here too, historical gratitude must not be confused with an eternal political obligation. After the Russian Revolution, another form of connection emerged. Thousands of Russian émigrés came to Yugoslavia after the collapse of the Tsarist Empire. Belgrade in particular became an important centre of Russian emigration. According to the Historical Archives of Belgrade, around 10,000 Russian refugees were living there by the end of the 1920s. I am also quite certain that none of them, unlike certain modern-day Russian ‘visitors’, paraded such a blatant lack of culture and education in public.

These people left a significant mark. Russian architects, artists, engineers, scientists and intellectuals shaped the cultural and architectural life of Belgrade at the time. Russian émigrés worked on churches and public buildings, influenced art and architecture and became an important part of social life in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

That too was a genuine connection. And it is culturally far more interesting than the primitive rhetoric of “brothers forever”.

Then came 1948.

Tito broke with Stalin.

Yugoslavia left the Soviet sphere of power and developed its own “socialist” path. Political and social integration with the Soviet Union was drastically reduced. Yugoslavia belonged neither to the Warsaw Pact nor to Comecon. For almost half a century, it was precisely not what people today like to portray it as in retrospect: a country that was naturally and politically tied to Moscow. This point is particularly uncomfortable for today’s culture of remembrance. Because if Serbian Russian political brotherhood really were a centuries old, deeply rooted constant, one would have to ask why Yugoslav socialist society existed outside the Soviet bloc for almost five decades after 1948. One cannot help but feel that Yugoslavia was merely discarding an old shirt; a garment that was already threadbare, soiled, and simply too constricting to wear any longer.

The Myth of Continuity

The reason for discarding this garment is simple: because this supposed political continuity did not exist. And then came the period in which these disparate historical fragments were actually turned into a modern political myth: the 1990s. Yugoslavia collapsed. Wars destroyed the country. Serbia became internationally isolated. Sanctions were imposed. Relations with numerous Western states deteriorated dramatically. For many people, the political West ceased to be a partner and became an enemy.

And suddenly Russia was rediscovered, led at the time by Yeltsin, whose loyalty lay with the bottle rather than his own populace, and who cut a deeply tragic, diminished figure in international affairs But somehow the big brother had changed overnight. This was not the Russia of 1948, nor the actual history of Serbian Russian relations. It was a Russia that could and wanted to function as the opposite image of the West.

This, in my view, is the decisive point.

The historian Nenad Stefanov described this development very aptly in Der Standard in Austria as an “invented tradition”. He draws on the concept developed by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm: traditions do not have to be entirely invented in order to be politically constructed. They can consist of genuine historical elements that are later connected in new ways and given a new meaning.

That is exactly what happened.

Orthodoxy and the perceived sense of Slavic commonality became more important. Historical Russian support from long gone periods became more important. The First World War became more important. The myth of the Russian protector became more important. At the same time, the decades during which Yugoslavia was not under Soviet influence increasingly disappeared from the emotional narrative.

History became identity.

And identity became politics.

Realpolitik Versus Romance

That is also why I find the term “brotherhood” so problematic. It sounds like something private and emotional. Like family. Like loyalty. Like an obligation that must no longer be questioned. But states are not families. States have interests.

For the past thirty years, I have dealt very intensively with geopolitical and economic developments, particularly in Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Precisely for that reason, I find the idea that international politics can be judged according to the categories of brotherhood deeply irritating. Neither markets, governments, nor certainly great powers operate on such terms.

Why should Serbia?

Friendship or brotherhood, or sisterhood, is always created on a personal level, never a political one. The problem begins when personal or cultural sympathy is turned into geopolitical dependence. And precisely that dependence is dangerous for Serbia in the long term.

A small or medium sized state can feel psychologically larger through belonging to a major power bloc than it actually is. That is human. When a country lacks a sense of its own economic, political or social strength, identification with a great power can create a kind of borrowed significance.

Then “Russia is great” gradually becomes, unconsciously, “We are great because Russia is great”.

That is political infantilism.

National identity then replaces individual achievement, and the size of another state is used to enhance one’s own emotional standing. Those who have achieved little themselves can at least identify with a great nation. And when one’s own nation has repeatedly lost, become isolated or suffered political setbacks, the idea of a powerful “big brother” becomes particularly seductive.

This is not a Serbian phenomenon alone. It is a human pattern. But Serbia has to decide whether it wants to continue following that pattern.

The world to which these old political ideas refer no longer exists. Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, China has developed over the past two decades into an economic and political power of an entirely different scale, Europe has fundamentally changed since the 1990s, and Serbia itself can no longer be viewed according to the standards of that period. Anyone still thinking in the political categories of that era is trying to explain a changed world with a map that is no longer accurate. One could even speak of an entirely new world order.

The relationship between China and Russia also demonstrates how little sense the category of “brotherhood” makes in international politics. Publicly, Beijing and Moscow demonstrate a strategic partnership. At the same time, the balance of power between the two countries has become distinctly asymmetrical. China possesses enormous economic and industrial strength and can shape its relationship with Russia according to its own interests.

I observe such changes not only through official statements, but also through financial markets. It is precisely there that one sometimes sees developments earlier, developments that I am quite happy are either not in the newspapers at that particular moment or are never published at all. The publicly demonstrated friendship between states and the actual assessment of their economic significance can be two very different things. And increasingly, “Brutus comparisons” suggest themselves in the political consciousness.

Serbia, meanwhile, has long since begun to broaden its economic relationships. China is now a central trading partner and investor. At the same time, the European Union remains by far the most important economic space for Serbia. Germany is a particularly important trading partner, while France has lost its position as a serious political force in Europe, and the UK is currently in the intensive care unit following Brexit, although with good prospects of recovery.

This demonstrates something decisive. Serbia’s actual economic future is already far more complex than the old geopolitical narrative of East versus West.

And that is precisely where the opportunity lies.

A European Future Without a Big Brother

Serbia must continue decisively along its own European path. For me, that means becoming a modern European state in which the rule of law, human rights and individual freedoms are taken for granted rather than being constantly challenged by fascistoid clerical forces, and in which internationally recognised rules are respected. Measured against its history and the development of recent decades, Serbia is actually on a good path. Much has already changed and developed. From my perspective, however, this process could and should move faster. I know that changes on the ground take time and that a country cannot transform its development overnight. But precisely because Serbia is already so much further ahead than it was several decades ago, I am convinced that it can continue along this path with confidence and determination.

That may sound banal. It is not.

A sovereign state must be able to trade with Russia without following Russia politically. It must be able to do business with China without submitting politically to Beijing. It must be able to negotiate with the European Union without becoming a supplicant. And it must define its own interests so clearly that it does not constantly need a big brother to lend it geopolitical significance.

This also means that Serbia must solve its own institutional problems. The rule of law, independent institutions, functioning courts, a modern administration, economic reform, science and education are not Western gifts. They are prerequisites for state sovereignty. They are, in effect, the DNA of a democratic state.

Serbia has a genuine opportunity in the future, but only if it emancipates itself from those clerical extremist forces that repeatedly try to drag a modern state back into long vanished historical and religious delusions.

It can implement the necessary reforms, modernise its institutions and present itself to the world as what it could be: a modern, self confident European country. Or it can sink into political irrelevance, worshipped by poorly educated old white men who walk through the city once a week, carrying various images of so called “saints” before them and mourning supposedly holy times long since gone, times in which even Prince Obilić had not yet been born. Because it is these men, and their obedient, miserable wives at their sides, who carry the invented friendship with Russia through slogans and writings like a monstrance.

I consider the first possibility the better one.

Independence, Not Brotherhood

And that is precisely why I believe it is necessary to think differently about the so called Kosovo as well. From my perspective, Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia regardless of its present demographic structure. But precisely for that reason, the Kosovo question must not become a permanent substitute for Serbian politics.

Serbia does not have to formulate its position from a position of weakness. It can negotiate the Kosovo question from a position of greater economic, institutional and geopolitical independence. The so called “Kosovo card” could then genuinely become an instrument of Serbian policy rather than a symbol of permanent defeat. Because that is what this is ultimately about: independence.

This is not about simply replacing Russia with Brussels or exchanging one big brother for another. Nor is it about abandoning one’s national identity, however each individual may define it. It is about understanding that a modern and self confident state can represent its own identity and interests itself and does not need a big brother to do so.

Serbia possesses a long and complex history marked by defeats, successes, and periods of foreign rule, alongside migration, varied cultural influences, and political mistakes.

There is no need to discard this history. One simply has to stop rewriting it as a fairy tale. Russians and Serbs do not have to be brothers. They can be friends on a personal level. Politically, they can engage in trade and cultivate cultural ties, though we can do the same with Micronesia or Ghana. They can respect one another. And, under certain historical circumstances, Russia can remain part of Serbian history without being declared Serbia’s eternal political protector.

Because perhaps that would be the greatest historical step Serbia could take in the twenty first century.

When Anna said this to me in Belgrade, I did not fully agree with her. Looking back, however, I understood what she meant. Russia has shown what can happen when a country loses too much of its intellectual and artistic elite. Serbia is not Russia, and it is not there. But Serbia must understand what happens when, as after the Yugoslav wars, a second generation of the country’s intellectual and artistic elite begins to leave. No one with their senses intact can possibly want to see that happen again.

The world is changing into a multipolar order, or has already done so, and Serbia should use this development to emancipate itself politically and establish itself as a serious geopolitical power in South Eastern Europe. It does not need a constructed brotherhood with states that were neither then nor are they today Serbia’s genuine allies.

Serbia must grow up. Then it will no longer need big brothers or sisters.

This article was curated for The Lloyds Chronicle and originally appeared in The Geopolitical Economist on September 21, 2026.

Special thanks to Abdullah Talha Kılıç for the photograph and for kindly permitting its adaptation.