Mali Mokri Lug - History and Administration

History and Administration

Mali Mokri Lug used to be a separate village, outside Belgrade's urban zone. As Belgade developed, with construction of a large neighborhood od Konjarnik in 1960s and 1970s and Mali Mokri Lug's rapid development as a suburb, it became part of the city's urban tissue and lost separate status after 1971, becoming local community (mesna zajednica, sub-municipal administrative unit) within Belgrade city proper (uža teritorija grada). Mali Mokri Lug continued to grow and now makes the easternmost section of Belgrade's urban proper, developing further east along Bulevar kralja Aleksandra and Smederevski put, its continuation. With this growth, it now also makes continuous built-up area with formerly separate Veliki Mokri Lug (on highway, at "Lasta" garage, at a tripoint with Kaluđerica's sub-neighborhood of Klenak at the bridge over highway and with Kaluđerica directly along Smederevski put ).

Mali Mokri Lug had its own municipality in the 1950s. It was abolished on 1 January 1957 and merged into Zvezdara. It also comprised Kaluđerica, Leštane and Vinča which were later detached and annexed to the municipality of Grocka.

From 1929 to 1944, Mali Mokri Lug hosted a Buddhist temple built by the Kalmyk refugees who had fought the Red Army and have settled in Serbia, like many other White (Russian) refugees.

This was the oldest permanent Buddhist temple in Europe outside of the Russian and British empires. Since most Kalmyks fled in fear of the advancing Red Army, Josip Broz Tito's partisans requisitioned the building, damaged in the fighting for Liberation of Belgrade, turned it into a community centre, but a few years later sold it to a machinery plant which pulled it down and built a concrete workshop in its stead.