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
"The
wars that ended Yugoslavia obscured the country's successes
during its 1945-91 existence, and few now recall that
from the 1960s through 1990, Yugoslavia was a major
destination for tourists from Western Europe. The country
also had a well-developed domestic tourist industry.
Thirteen authors cover topics ranging from broad considerations
of tourism and the making of socialist Yugoslavia through
specific analyses of youth work brigades, the political
tourist shrine created out of Tito's birthplace, cross-border
shopping in Italy by Yugoslavia tourists, and an insightful
analysis of the Sarajevo Olympics as both unifying spectacle
for Yugoslavia's people and source of contention between
the politicians of its constituent republics. The changes
in Yugoslav tourism from free vacations at "workers'
resorts" to market-driven transformation of small,
privately owned "weekend houses" into rental
cottages is also covered well. In the end, it seems
that tourism contributed to the successes of Yugoslav
socialism, but also to the increased perceptions of
Yugoslavs in the 1980s that the country was failing
to deliver on promises of the good life.
A major contribution to studies of Yugoslavia, tourism,
and cultural history. Summing Up: Highly recommended".
- Choice
2010
438 pages
ISBN 978-963-9776-69-2 cloth $50.00 / €42.95 /
£35.00
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