BELGRADE, October 17. /TASS/. Belgrade will hand over to Moscow seven masterpieces by famous Russian painter Nicholas Roerich in exchange for Page 166 of the Miroslav Gospel, the oldest preserved Serbian illustrated Cyrillic manuscript, by the end of this year, Serbian Culture and Information Minister Vladan Vukosavljevic said in an interview with TASS.

The agreement will be signed during Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s upcoming visit to Belgrade on October 20.

"This process requires certain steps, we have prepared and coordinated with the Russian Foreign Ministry an agreement and I believe it is due to be signed during Medvedev’s visit on October 20. We still don’t have an exact date for this, but I believe that a deal will be inked, which is due to be ratified later by the Russian State Duma and the National Assembly [Serbia’s unicameral legislature]. This exchange, which has been almost coordinated in technical terms, may be implemented. I’m cautiously optimistic that this handover will be fulfilled by the end of this year," the minister said.

The issue of returning Page 166 from the old Cyrillic manuscript to Belgrade has been discussed for decades. The fate of seven paintings by Roerich had been unknown since 1941 and until March 2017, when a TASS correspondent discovered the masterpieces in Serbia’s National Museum in Belgrade.

"The process is inevitable, it is nearly over," the minister said, recalling that the Serbian and Russian presidents, Aleksandar Vucic and Vladimir Putin, told reporters earlier that this issue had been closed and just technical aspects needed to be ironed out. "If this is not completed by the end of this year, then definitely this will happen shortly after this," Vukosavljevic said.

According to the Russian cabinet’s press service, Medvedev is due to pay a visit to Belgrade on October 19-20. Festive events marking the 75th anniversary of Belgrade’s liberation from Nazis are due on October 20. Medvedev visited Belgrade in 2009, when he was Russian president at that time, to mark the 65th anniversary of the Serbian capital’s liberation.

Handover agreement

The minister told TASS that the process of searching for the best terms for the deal had taken a long time. Over the past years, Vukosavljevic has held several meetings with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Medinsky to discuss along with other issues arranging talks on returning Page 166 of the Miroslav Gospel, "which is a priceless treasure for the Serbian culture," he said.

He also thanked TASS for information on the lost paintings by Roerich. "We considered various options, and there were many of them, because we did not know about Roerich’s paintings, so I thank you for this work and information. We certainly rapidly established facts and found out that these paintings were stored in the National Museum, but they were either rarely displayed or had never been featured," Vukosavljevic noted.

"The paintings have been here for decades, but it would be natural to return them, given deep mutual understanding between the two peoples. Nicholas Roerich is not really famous for the Serbian public, but is much more important for Russians," according to the minister.

"I regret that we will be left without Roerich’s paintings, but on the other hand I cannot hide that I’m glad that the Serbian cultural heritage will be enriched by the missing page of the Miroslav Gospel. I want to take advantage of this opportunity and thank the colleagues from the Russian Culture Ministry and personally Minister Medinsky for the relations, which we have had over all the three years of my term of office," Vukosavljevic said.

Old Serbian manuscript

The Miroslav Gospel was written in around 1180. It is Serbia’s oldest Cyrillic manuscript, kept at the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. Since recently Serbia’s presidents have been sworn into office on a copy of the Miroslav Gospel.

Around 1845 Archimandrite Porphyrius (Uspensky) discovered the manuscript at the Halandar monastery on Mont Athos. He extracted one sheet from it and brought it to Russia. The Gospel was returned to Serbia in 1896, when King Aleksandar Obrenovic, of Serbia, visited the monastery. In a gesture of gratitude for paying the monastery’s debts King Aleksandar presented him with the oldest Serbian book.

Roerich’s paintings

The fate of the paintings by Nicholas Roerich in question, discovered in the collection of the National Museum of Serbia, remained unknown since the moment Nazi Germany attacked Yugoslavia in April 1941. The seven paintings on the list are Berendej Village (1921), Holy Guests (1923), Church Bells Tolling (1919), Burgustan on Caucasus, St. Sergius of Radonezh (1922), and two costume sketches for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera the Snow Maiden (1921). One of the paintings on the list was reportedly Roerich’s gift to the Belgrade Museum. The others had been brought there for a personal exhibition. World War II prevented the exhibits’ return to Russia.