N.P. Kondakov and the Kondakov Institute for Byzantology and Archeology in Belgrade (1938-1941)

The knowledge in Belgrade about the work of the Kondakov Institute for Byzantology and Archeology has been reconstructed for the most part based on personal correspondence that the members of the Institute exchanged during their stays in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. In order to understand the activity of the first academic institution in this region for studying Byzantine history and culture, the paper will first provide a brief history of the development of the Kondakov Seminar/Institute in Prague, focusing on analyzing the main reasons and influences that led to its establishment. The paper pays particular attention to the period when the seminar moved from Prague to Belgrade due to the difficult political and economic situation. Much of the scholarly activity of the seminar at its new address can reconstructed from the unpublished administrative material in public archives in Serbia. Starting from this body of evidence, one of the goals of this paper is to provide more meaningful data on the history of the Kondakov Institute in Belgrade based on new written sources.