Судбина сребра Ужичке републике

English title: Destiny of Silver from the Republic of Užice

The article examines the silver coins seized by the Partisan movement in Užice in 1941. After the liberation of the town, large amounts of money were taken from the local branch of the National Bank, part of which consisted of silver coinage. The exact amount has not been reliably established, just as the movement of the silver after the Partisan withdrawal across Zlatibor cannot be fully reconstructed.

Silver money had practical, financial and symbolic value. Under occupation, inflation, insecurity and declining trust in paper currency, coins made of precious metal again became one of the most reliable forms of value. Because of their weight and volume, silver coins were difficult to transport; part of the money was hidden, relocated, lost, stolen and later used again.

Recorded oral testimonies, although often contradictory, show that the Partisans used money from the Užice seizure until the middle of 1943. The transport, concealment, theft and search for silver coins belong to real wartime history, but in the memory of contemporaries they gradually entered the framework of traditional stories about “lost treasure”.

The article shows how a material resource from the wartime economy became an object of political dispute, local rumor and collective memory. The Užice silver is therefore not only a question of Partisan finances, but also an example of the formation of political myth in modern Serbian history.