Yugoslavia's Sunny Side
A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s)

Edited by
Hannes Grandits, Professor at the Department of History at the Humboldt-University in Berlin
Karin Taylor, historian of everyday life and popular culture in Southeast Europe and the Middle East, with recent research focusing on Southeast Europe in socialism.

Despite the central role of tourism in the political making of the Yugoslav socialist state after WWII and in everyday life, the topic has remained neglected as an object of historical research, which has tended to dwell on war and “ethnic” conflict in the past two decades. For many former citizens of Yugoslavia, however, memories of holidaymaking, as well as tourism as a means of livelihood, today evoke a sense of the “good life” people enjoyed before the economy, and subsequently the country, fell apart.

Undertakes a critical analysis of the history of domestic tourism in Yugoslavia under Commumism. The story evolved from the popularization of tourism and holidaymaking among Yugoslav citizens in the 1950s and 1960s to the consumer practices of the 1970s and 1980s. It reviews tourism as a political, economic and social project of the Yugoslav federal state, and as a crucial field of social integration. The book investigates how socialist and Yugoslav ideologies aimed to turn workers into consumers of “purposeful” leisure, and how these ideas were set against actual practices of recreation and holidaymaking.

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgments John K. Walton Preface: Some Contexts for Yugoslav Tourism History Karin Taylor & Hannes Grandits Tourism and the Making of Socialist Yugoslavia: An Introduction Part I: “Holidays on Command” Igor Duda
Workers into Tourists: Entitlements, Desires, and Realities of Social Tourism in Yugoslav Socialism Rory Yeomans From Comrades to Consumers: Holidays, Leisure Time, and Ideology in Communist Yugoslavia Igor Tchoukarine The Yugoslav Road to International Tourism: Opening, Decentralization, and Propaganda in the Early 1950s Part II: Tourism and the “Yugoslav Dream” Nevena Škrbić Alempijević & Petra Kelemen Travelling to the Birthplace of “The Greatest Son of Yugoslav Nations”: The Construction of Kumrovec As a Political Tourism Destination Karin Taylor My Own Vikendica: Holiday Cottages As Idyll and Investment Maja Mikula Highways of Desire: Cross-Border Shopping in Former Yugoslavia, 1960s–1980s Part III: Tourism Economies in Transformation Karin Taylor Fishing for Tourists: Tourism and Household Enterprise in Biograd na Moru Dragan Popović Youth Labor Action (Omladinska radna akcija, ORA) As Ideological Holidaymaking Igor Duda What To Do at the Weekend? Leisure for Happy Consumers, Refreshed Workers, and Good Citizens Kate Meehan-Pedrotty Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games Synopsis Patrick Hyder Patterson Yugoslavia As It Once Was: What Tourism and Leisure Meant for the History of the Socialist Federation Index

2010, June (Europe), August (America)
438 pages
ISBN 978-963-9776-69-2 cloth $50.00 / €37.00 / £33.00