Foreigners with Full Wallets:
Public Opinion and Tourism in Yugoslavia in the 1950s
From the beginning of the 1950s onwards, Yugoslavia embraced political and economic reforms which saw the abandonment of collec- tivism, mass industrialization, and unitary Yugoslavism. These funda- mental changes were reflected in the cultural sphere, including tourism and leisure. As part of its identity as a socialist country outside the confines of the Soviet Bloc, but also as a country which was decidedly not part of the capitalist West either, Yugoslavia began to develop a socialist version of the consumer society. This change was not solely dictated by ideology; economic pressures also played a part. In the immediate aftermath of the split with the Soviet Union, there were few tourists coming from the Eastern Bloc; therefore, there was a pressing need to attract tourists from the West. Their interests lay not in seeing a fellow socialist homeland, but in a few weeks of sun, sea, and com- fort on the cheap.
The adoption of a western-style consumer society was driven by demography, too. As one leisure magazine pointed out in 1962, Yugo - slavia had one of the youngest populations in Europe, with half the population below the age of thirty. This meant that many emerging consumers had little memory, knowledge, or even interest in the trau- mas of the Second World War.47 The older generation might disap- prove of the emerging youth culture—its obsession with aping the
“trash” culture of America and disdain for the sacrifices made by par- ents and grandparents during the National Liberation Struggle—but they were powerless to do anything about it. It was no good the older generation repeating the same old stories about anti-Fascist heroism, as the writer Vojin Delić pointed out in an account of a journey through Yugoslavia. As the first generation to live in peace and prosperity, they desired consumer goods, the opportunity to travel, and a taste of the good life rather than political sermonizing. Even in remote regions of the country in which patriarchal peasant traditions dominated, mod- ernization was coming.48
The new cultural values of modernity, westernization, and the desire for a materially comfortable life were mirrored in the tourist industry.
One obvious change was the way in which Yugoslavia was marketed
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47A third of the population was below the age of fourteen. For the full sta- tistical data see Gugić (1962, pp. 34, 36).
48Delić (1957, pp. 391–8).
49See, for example, Saračević (1960, pp. 8–13).
50Habjanić (1962, pp. 4–6).
as a holiday destination. In place of earnest pamphlets depicting how industrious Yugoslav workers spent their holidays in workers’ colonies on the coast, the emphasis was now on how to market Yugoslavia as an exotic destination for rich western foreigners and celebrities. In advertisements for the Yugoslav tourist board, the Adriatic coast of Croatia was compared not only to the French Riviera and the Amalfi Coast, but also to Long Beach in California and the Copacabana. With its glittering nightclubs, frenetic bars, palm trees, beautiful people, and glamorous clientele—not to mention the endless miles of beaches—
the Croatian Adriatic Coast was, as one magazine profile put it, “Florida in the land of wine and olive groves.”49
Despite this, manifestations of the original ideological fervor of immediate post-war Yugoslavia lingered. Young people from around the world still came to Yugoslavia to help in the construction of rail - way lines, roads, and houses, even if the exploits of the mainly youthful volunteers by the 1960s were more commonly reported in life style mag- azines rather than the Party press.50The promotion of western values in culture, art, and fashion certainly did not mean forgetting that Yugoslav consumers were also citizens of a socialist state forged in the struggle against Fascism. On the contrary, there was increasing disquiet about the consumer values of the new society, reflected in the ambiguous depictions of tourism in the popular press.
Resistance to mass consumerism in the 1960s emerged both from ordinary citizens dissatisfied with the rising cost of living and journal- ists and commentators who sought to expose, often through humor, the limits of consumer society and its more absurd contradictions. Some commentators questioned whether Yugoslavia should be aspiring to a western model at all. Did it actually make sense in Yugoslavia? Vojin Delić thought not. For him, in comparing their standard of living and lifestyle to the developed West, Yugoslavs were making a faulty com- parison. In a society in which religious and national conflict, econom- ic collapse, and genocide were still a living memory for a significant part of the population, Yugoslavia was simply too different to be com- pared to technologically-developed western countries like Sweden or
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Switzerland. Its progress could only be measured against where it used to be and where it was heading.51
Ordinary citizens were also critical. In an attempt to attract mon- eyed foreign tourists, holiday resorts and accommodation became increas- ingly expensive and ultimately beyond the means of most Yugoslavs.
What exactly was the point of the annual paid vacation if one couldn’t actually afford to go anywhere? According to numerous newspaper articles on the subject, improvisation and making-do characterized many workers’ holidays by the late 1950s: one common solution pro- vided by trade unions for their workers involved either the adaptation of existing buildings or camping holidays. Such vacations did not require much preparation: a few things could just be thrown into the back of a car. Nor was much equipment needed to set up these kinds of camp sites: just a communal kitchen, washing and toilet facilities, and tents. Of course, a lot depended on the state of the toilet facilities and reports indicated that they were often less than satisfactory. Given the concern that some workers’ organizations were expressing about the unhealthy nature of workers’ excursions—particularly the fact that they were opting to spend their weekends away from home eating and drinking at guest houses—camping in natural surroundings appeared to be a healthier option. Still, it was hardly a taste of the good life which affluent foreign tourists seemed to be enjoying. As prices rose, the holiday experience for many ordinary citizens became one of adaptation and a vacation on the cheap, if at all.52
The trend for makeshift camping holidays, a development which expanded rapidly from the mid 1950s onwards, provoked concern among tourism experts. As early as 1954, Dragutin Alfier was warn- ing about the chaotic nature of camping in Yugoslavia which had emerged, he believed, as a response to the structural imbalances of the Yugoslav tourist industry, in which the wide availability of suitable camping venues on the Adriatic Coast was combined with a shortage of affordable accommodation during the holiday season. While Alfier welcomed the emergence of camping as a form of mass tourism which provided ordinary people with affordable holidays, it was invariably
“disorganized, uncontrolled, and undisciplined,” with camp sites lack-
51Delić (1957, pp. 397–8).
52See, for example, M.C. (1957).
ing basic hygiene standards and established without regard to the com- munal needs of tourists. More seriously, it also threatened tourist des- tinations in Western Istria, which would not receive any economic benefits from the camping. In short, it was a “cheap and dangerous experiment” in the tourist industry, unregulated by socio-economic relationships.53
It was not just the rise in domestic camping holidays which caught the attention of Yugoslav commentators. Paradoxically, given the com- parative affluence they were thought to enjoy, Yugoslavs soon realized that camping was becoming increasingly popular among western visi- tors who, while they might have had fewer economic restrictions, were choosing to holiday on the cheap, putting up their tents wherever they fancied. Clearly, by opting for camping, they were also spending less money in the local economy, a fact that did not go unnoticed. In an early expression of veiled hostility to western tourists, and the ten- dency of Yugoslav tourism to adapt itself to the needs of foreigners at the expense of domestic vacationers, I. Strahonja, writing from Opati- ja in 1955, lambasted those tourists who were camping out in tents, buying the cheapest provisions and “pitching their tents along the coast of Istria and the Croatian Primorja without any order or control.”54 Not only did they pay no tourist tax, they often caused damage to the countryside by chopping down trees and lighting fires. The fact that some tourists were also trading fish they had caught for other goods meant they were actually making money out of their holiday.
Contrary to popular opinion, which assumed that hotels, cafés, and restaurants were “full of foreigners,” most hotels still had plenty of rooms available throughout the holiday period and cafés were half full, he complained. Meanwhile, the fact that hotels in the region were patronized by foreign tourists artificially pushed prices out of the reach of ordinary Yugoslavs, especially since hotels tended to offer lower prices for foreign than for Yugoslav guests since they brought with them prized currencies. There were a large number of house owners who had rooms to rent but did not do so since they wanted to avoid paying the high tourist taxes. As a result, he argued, a means of increas-
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53Alfier (1955, pp. 24–6). See also Smokvina (1955, pp. 100–1); A.D.
(1954, pp. 23–5).
54Strahonja (1955, pp. 14–5).
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ing the supply of affordable accommodation and assisting the strug- gling domestic hotel industry had been missed. This coupled with the reduced amount of money being spent by economizing tourists meant that the living standards of the local population were unlikely to be raised.55
By the 1960s, the price of many holiday resorts had soared and there were regular complaints about their exorbitant cost by commentators in Yugoslav leisure magazines. The inflationary price rises were not only manifested on the popular Adriatic Coast, but also affected other tourist destinations such as the Plitvička jezera National Park with its stunning waterfalls. A reporter from a Zagreb magazine who visited the popular vacationing area found that the only hotel in the vicinity of the waterfalls was completely out of the price range of even the best- paid Yugoslav professionals; the only hotel within reach of the budget of an ordinary middle-class Yugoslav was not within walking distance of Plitvička jezera. As a result, many native holidaymakers were forced to rent rooms in people’s houses.56
Prices were not the only issue. In a series of articles in the summer of 1960, two undercover magazine journalists—one posing as a for- eign tourist and one as a Yugoslav—exposed the disparity in service that could be expected in hotels, restaurants, bars, and even petrol sta- tions. The results not only suggested that Yugoslav citizens were often treated as second class in their own country, but that for all the adop- tion of western values, the attitudes of many of those who worked in the tourist industry had not significantly evolved since the late 1940s.57
What made matters worse was that many of the prized foreign tourists were not even particularly impressed by the preferential treat- ment they received. They complained about the cost of accommoda- tion, food, and drink; the surliness of the waiters and barmen. There were cultural misunderstandings: one waiter refused to serve a foreign guest a carbonated mineral water, insisting that the guest drink some- thing alcoholic instead. One American journalist confessed that he did not know exactly how he would be able to spend his dollars. Where
55Ibid., p. 15.
56Zlatar (1962, pp. 4–7).
57Leue (1960, pp. 12–5).
was the entertainment, the excursions, the reviews, he asked, adding that the previous year his wife had left after three days for Italy “because she could not show off the dress ordered specially in Rome here”?
Apart from a few substandard nightclubs and bars there was really nothing to do in the evening.58For some tourists, on the other hand, the westernization of the Yugoslav resort had gone too far. One Parisian woman expressed disappointment at the lack of regional specialties on the menus of local restaurants. What was the point, she asked, in com- ing to the Adriatic Coast to eat “quasi European” food she could easily find at home? Since she earned her own money, she would be willing to pay substantially more to experience a taste of the kind of tradition- al Dalmatian cuisine she couldn’t find in France.59
This kind of criticism was a two-way street, however, and some commentators could barely conceal their disdain for this tourist inva- sion. The fact was that, whether Yugoslavs liked it or not, this influx was a direct consequence of the marketing of resorts like Opatija as Adriatic versions of the French Riviera. The tourists were not exactly an asset if you believed the commentators. Pero Zlatar, for one—if slightly tongue in cheek—lamented the absence of the Yugoslav holi- day maker with his uncouth manners and hot temper. Most of all, he missed the noise and frenetic pace of Opatija. “Where have those glo- rious times gone when drivers swore angrily because they could not find a parking space, the times when you had to reserve a room in a hotel, bed and breakfast, villa or holiday cottage three months in advance?” he wrote. Now, they had been replaced with the tourists other, more fashionable European resorts simply did not want—a high society of “foreigners with full wallets: the nouveau riche, rich heirs and heiresses, obese businessmen” who would go unnoticed in the international holiday resorts of Monte Carlo, Capri, and San Remo. In Opatija, by contrast, they could aspire to be the crème de la crème.60 Zlatar recounted, with amusement, the unreasonable demands of these arrivistes. For example, a German businessman on holiday in Opatija asked the journalist why he was being treated as “a number and not as
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58“Mala kronika dubrovačkih događaja: što se zbivalo ovoga ljeta?” Globus, 17 September 1961, pp. 12–6.
59Ibid.
60Zlatar (1961, p. 7).
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a respected gentleman.” The hotel and tourist staff in Croatia simply had no idea of how to treat important guests like him. Another Ger- man complained that he had paid 120 dinars for entry to the private beach of Slatina and yet on arrival found that there were no recreation- al facilities. He also complained that he had to pay to re-enter the beach.61In his article, Zlatar noted the complaints of various national- ities which, if nothing else, made for a fun exercise in exploring national stereotypes. The French demanded telephones in their rooms;
the Italians were angry that they could not watch television; the Ameri- cans and the Swiss expressed dismay about the lack of foreign news- papers and magazines; and the English could not understand why there were no clubs in the hotel to while away the monotony of rainy days. No wonder that many of the tourist businesses in Opatija and other resorts on the Adriatic Coast looked back with loving nostalgia at past summers filled with Yugoslav tourists. The attitude of those who worked at the sharp end of the tourism industry and the mutual incom- prehension of guest and host was encapsulated in the comments of one waiter who, when questioned about foreign visitors to Opatija, com- mented with a dismissive wave of the hand that too many guests suf- fered from delusions of grandeur: “Some of them think that for a little money we should treat them like Rockefeller and Onassis.”62
Nonetheless, even Zlatar had to agree with foreign visitors that there was not really much to do in the evening. The quest for enter- tainment on a Friday evening, for example, invariably reduced the vacationer to listening to orchestral quartets or singing groups per- forming provincial-quality music without finesse in “silk blouses and terylene skirts.” Rare were the Friday evenings, he concluded, when one could “listen to a concert, see a fashion show, or attend a public performance of a television show like ‘The Silver Dolphin’, twice postponed owing to damage to the electric relay.” In fact, the only val- ue of the entertainment on offer in Opatija was the abundant material it provided for comedians and caricaturists.63
Zlatar’s tone was mischievous, his encounters with foreign tourists playful and deceptively acerbic. On a superficial level, his travel
61Ibid., p. 8.
62Ibid., pp. 7–8.
63Ibid., pp. 5–6.
reportage could be interpreted as a criticism of the new kind of tourist who was choosing to spend their holiday in Yugoslavia following the liberalization of its travel visa requirements. Similarly, it could also be viewed as a statement highlighting the indolence of Yugoslav tourism staff, their lack of training, and the gap between Yugoslav aspirations to a version of the western good life and the reality of life in an east European socialist state. It could even be seen as a veiled attack on the vulgar consumerism of the West, represented in its demanding tourists.
But Zlatar was surely too clever for that. In essence, what Zlatar and other commentators were attempting to criticize was the negative effects of the manner in which a consumer culture had been understood and developed in Yugoslavia. Moreover, their acerbic observations were meant universally. The trends they identified in tourism were rec- ognized by writers commenting on many other aspects of Yugoslav society. Since the right to a paid vacation was one of the most basic rights of the Yugoslav citizen, the failures of consumer culture at the price of ideology were especially symbolic. The period between the 1950s and the 1960s might have been an era of liberalization, prosperi- ty, and increasing consumer confidence, but they also represented a period in which there were growing signs of social differentiation.
Ultimately, writers like Zlatar were attempting to ask exactly the same question Vojin Delić had posed in 1957. Consumerism and commer- cialism—taking the place of ideology—were meant to promote nation- al unity through prosperity. Affluence would foster brotherhood and unity. What would happen, however, if consumerism only produced prosperity for the few at the price of the many? What would happen if this social differentiation resulted in national disunity? Most impor- tantly, perhaps, could the national and political challenges of a state founded on the ashes of fratricidal conflict and genocide be addressed through a structural system of consumption more suited to Sweden and Switzerland? If not, what then?
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