debate. As a result, official discourses on tourism reflected many of the crucial political conflicts and contesting forces that marked the Yugoslav version of socialism and federalism.
14 Karin Taylor and Hannes Grandits
course of the 1950s, the Yugoslav leadership managed to ease relations step by step. Moreover, the confrontation even generated a degree of solidarity between Yugoslav society and its communist leadership (although initially the regime had used extreme repression to outdo any real or alleged internal political opposition). Substantial economic aid from the USA allowed the Yugoslav communists to overcome the threat of “re-integration” under Soviet control and to gradually posi- tion the country between the blocs of the Cold War.
In the late 1950s, Yugoslavia joined the ranks of countries with the fastest economic growth in the world, and showed annual economic growth rates of between ten and fifteen percent.37As a result of this
“successful” development, which was increasingly accompanied by optimism on the part of the majority of the population,38the commu- nist leadership turned to new challenges in its political mission. It came up with the concept of “workers’ self-management,” a new means of realizing the socialist order.39The state, which had remained centristic despite its federative form and “Stalinist” in many respects, underwent pronounced liberalization. As a further stage of development, the Party leadership increased efforts to create a Yugoslav- wide “national feeling”
in the form of “socialist Yugoslavism.”40
This attempt to form a “Yugoslav nation” was not only an ideologi- cal project imposed from above. It also had the appearance of being a movement “from below.” In the late 1950s, several social groups had a favorable view of this development. These included partners in intereth- nic or so-called mixed marriages and their children—a substantial sec- tion of the urban population41—, many young people, and certain groups that did not easily fit into the existing national identity frameworks
37Singleton (1976, pp. 142–9).
38See, for example, Grandits (2000, pp. 145–55).
39Cf. for details Höpken (1984).
40The image of the country promoted internationally also assumed this character, as illustrated by the self-portrayal of Yugoslavia at the first world exhibition after World War Two (Brussels, 1958). Cf. in detail Arhiv Jugoslavije (AJ)/56-Generalni komisarijat Jugoslovenske sekcije opšte međunarodne izložbe u Briselu 1954–1959. Fasc. 7, 21, 24.
41 By the end of the socialist era, the percentage of ethnically mixed mar- riages in larger towns had increased to almost forty percent in some cases.
This was particularly true for provinces or republics with a strong mixed
(e.g., Bosnian Muslims). Among Party members, this “advanced development” in the national question also found wide approval.
It was in this atmosphere that the idea of socialist Yugoslavism became a political project. In the second half of the 1950s, the leader- ship instructed the Party to set to work on the institutional implemen- tation of this integrative concept of nation, first and foremost in cultur - al life.42The results seemed positive. The greatest success in the eyes of the Party was the agreement by leading linguists and literature experts from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro on a common Serbo- Croatian language. This official decision was taken in Novi Sad in 1954 and a common orthography of the Serbo-Croatian (or Croato- Serbian) language was subsequently published in 1960.43Despite irri- tating “interjections” from dissident artists and intellectuals, there seemed to be sufficient social support for the new program.
However, resistance to ongoing developments began to manifest itself within the Party, although it did not necessarily have a “national”
base. On the one hand, the loosening of central control over the econo- my and increasing experimentation with the self-management system went against the grain of the opponents of liberalization. The latter began to group around the long-term Minister of the Interior and secret service chief, Alexander Ranković, at that time a potential successor to Tito. This group was increasingly worried about its future position in the Party and strove to hold on to federatively organized rule with strong centralist control. On the other hand, Party factions at the republican level voiced strong criticism of the management of the economy, trig- gered by the fact that despite huge industrial projects and a massive flow of resources to, for example, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia, the gap between the standards of living in the republics of the north and those of the south showed little sign of closing—on the contrary.44 This imbalance ultimately influenced the direction of revenues gained from the economically vital tourism sector.
Tourism and the Making of Socialist Yugoslavia 15
population, such as Vojvodina or Bosnia-Herzegovina. See Botev (2000, pp. 219–33); Donia and Fine (1997, pp. 186–7).
42Shoup (1968, 193f).
43Okuka (1998, p. 78).
44Economically, Kosovo lagged far behind all other Yugoslav regions, even those in the south. Cf. figures provided by Singleton (1976, pp.
241–59).
The subsequent turnaround of the “Yugoslav nation” policy and the Party’s renunciation of the Yugoslavism project must be seen against the background of these diverging opinions on the “right direction” of socialist policy. The abandonment of Yugoslavism was to some degree accepted as “collateral damage” in the political power games that came to the fore in the course of the 1960s.45Tito obviously saw his dominant position within the Party threatened by Ranković and the adherents of anti-liberal policy. As a result, Tito decided to back the political course anticipated by his chief ideologist Edward Kardelj, who predicted far-reaching development of the workers’ self-management system on the premise of federal decentralization.46As a consequence of this decision, Ranković was openly accused of working towards the establishment of a centralist hegemony and “Greater Serbian” unitari- anism. He was finally expelled from the Party. This internal Party con- flict was accompanied by polemics that targeted any form of “exag- gerated centralism,” also portrayed as the reason for economic diffi- culties. Yugoslavism as a national and “centralist” concept, hitherto systematically promoted by the Party, fell victim to this conflict and its accompanying anti-centralist rhetoric, although Tito in later years spoke again nostalgically of the formation of a Yugoslav nation.
The policy of decentralization was closely linked to the develop- ment of the leadership’s prestige project: workers’ self-management.
This project was affirmed in the course of the 1960s as the key feature in realizing Yugoslav socialist society and was gradually imple mented regardless of the consequences. In theory, the development of self-man- agement was to proceed to a point where the working population would have the power and competence to conduct its affairs and the state could finally “wither away.”47Various reform plans and policies “for realizing a better socialist future” were evident in Party-controlled public discourse throughout much of the 1960s. The decision to adjust the state machinery towards decentralization, in particular, opened up a topic considered closed by the majority of Yugoslavs, including the Party elites, i.e., the inner-Yugoslav distribution of power. Again, this
16 Karin Taylor and Hannes Grandits
45Grandits (2008, pp. 15–28).
46See here Jović (2003, pp. 131–54).
47On this in detail, see Jović (2003).
issue was closely bound up with the “national question.” The more the decision-making powers were delegated to the lower levels of self- management administration, the more the role of Party officials at local, regional, and republican levels was upgraded.
This was the situation when the global wave of 1968 anti-authori- tarian protests against the “system” reached Yugoslavia. Here, they grew into movements against the existing order. The most prominent was the MASPOK(masovni pokret) movement in Croatia in the early 1970s. Antagonistic and heterogeneous, the opposition and its activists were confronted with a regime that was unwilling to make concessions of any kind to claimed “democratic” freedoms and was far from ques- tioning the absolute power monopoly of the Party. However, the gov- ernment began to compensate by promising and later granting increased
“national freedoms.” Ultimately, the idea of socialist Yugoslavism was replaced by the concept of the unity of Yugoslav nations and nation- alities.
The entire process of political change finally found its conclusion in the adoption of the constitution of 1974, which to a vast extent transferred decision-making powers from central Party institutions to the Party elites of the nationally defined constituent republics. From then on, Party officials at the republican level concentrated their activ- ities more or less on “their republic” only. Consequently, they compet- ed with growing intensity for the largest possible slice of the overall state budget. This logic soon led to rhetoric occupied with “national arguments” claiming “just” national symmetries and quotas, as reflect- ed in the debates on tourism earnings and investment.
From the perspective of the population, two other policies rooted in political change had an immediate impact on daily life: the expansion of the state welfare system and (unvoiced) support of consumerism.
Both embraced growing sections of the population in the 1960s and 1970s and met with approval. Despite the economic shortcomings and shortages that marked these decades, they undoubtedly represent the
“golden years” of “Yugoslav” welfare and consumer culture.48 There Tourism and the Making of Socialist Yugoslavia 17
48Patterson (2003, p. 5). See also in more detail Patterson (2001). For an overview on the expansion of the welfare system in socialist Yugoslavia taking the example of the Croatian republic, see Grandits (2009, pp.
249–81).
18 Karin Taylor and Hannes Grandits
is considerable evidence for the argument that these developments helped to uphold “Yugoslavism” as a social identity—in complete contrast to the political course pursued by the Party at exactly the same time.