Exhibition ‘Cooperative of Agricultural Labourers – Herzegovina’.
The exhibition ‘Personal Photographs of Colonists’ will open in the Small Art Gallery of the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad on 4 February at 6 p.m. The exhibition is part of the project ‘The 100th Anniversary of the Colonisation of Vojvodina (1921-1941) and the 75th Anniversary of the Colonisation (1945-1948)’, which will be implemented within the Migrations programme arch.
During the opening, Pavle Orbović will hold the online lecture ‘Causes and Nature of the Colonisation of Vojvodina 1945-1948’.
The Cultural Centre of Novi Sad will mark the two colonisation periods of Vojvodina in the 20th century (1921-1941 and 1945-1948) through different panel discussions, exhibitions, workshops, and film screenings.
During the process of colonisation in the period 1921-1941, more than 80 colonies were formed, in the area of today’s Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, which was inhabited by between 65 and 70 thousand inhabitants. Completely new settlements were formed, while some of the colonies built near the old settlements became their integral part.
The colonists were Serbian war veterans – volunteers, former Austro-Hungarian citizens, from Lika, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Boka Kotorska, Banija, Kordun and Dalmatia, Serbs from Hungary and Romania who moved to their home county and in Banat, those without a land – locals from Banat villages from around today’s Zrenjanin and Kikinda.
The settlements that were formed are natively mixed, which is the specificity of these settlements because the customs of the Serbian population from different areas are intertwined in them. In the colonist settlements, which are the youngest in Vojvodina, the memory of ancestors, pioneer creators of those settlements, is nurtured.
In the years 1921-1923, the centenary of interwar colonization was marked. The founders of the settlement had their values: distinct Serbian patriotism, great vitalism because they did not get houses, livestock, and agricultural work right after settling, but began ‘life on bare land’, fighting spirit, life energy, strong mutual solidarity, adaptability to new lifestyles, inclination, and respect for education.