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

Yugoslavia as It Once Was What Tourism and Leisure Meant for the History of the Socialist Federation

Yugoslavia as It Once Was What Tourism and Leisure Meant for the History of the Socialist Federation Patrick Hyder Patterson Half-forgotten now in the aftermath of the harrowing wars of the 1990s is the old image of Yugoslavia: a kinder, gentler implementation of socialist rule that managed to keep its citizens tolerably content, often even happy, and to welcome, impress, and even inspire visitors from outside the communist world. That optimistic picture of the country once had considerably currency both at home and abroad, and it depended in no small part on the ability of the government to deliver to its people a Yugoslav version of the Good Life, a modest and moderated but nonetheless satisfying approximation of the consumption-driven abundance that had remade the capitalist West in the years after the Second World War. The emergent vision of a prosperous, humanized socialism, an ideal that I have termed the Yugoslav Dream, clearly had deep roots in the material, yet in ways that have not been fully recognized in the scholarly accounting of the life and death of Yugoslavia, it also depended on the reliable provision of experiential wealth.1 In the construction of this sunnier version of socialism, opportunities for travel, tourism, and leisure were essentials. Abundance, as translated and elaborated in what the communists liked to call the “specific circumstances of self-management socialism ,” meant having a reasonable facsimile of the consumption-centered Good Life without having to work too hard for it. In the public ethos that permeated Yugoslav society through the comfortable times of the 1960s and 1970s, and even up through the pinched and disap1 On the workings of consumerist abundance in Yugoslavia, see Patterson (2001). Unless otherwise noted, all translations from foreign languages in this article are my own. pointing final years of the socialist federation, the superior living standards and purchasing power of the West were understood to have been bartered away in return for reduced work hours, diminished stress, increased security, and greater worker sovereignty. To many, this seemed a good trade. Richness of experience thus enjoyed a real premium among Yugoslavs , and tourism and leisure were among the kinds of experiential wealth that counted most. These activities proved particularly important as domains in which both essential elements of the deal—enjoyable living and the freedom from burdensome work—were present at once. Indeed, the increasingly profound emphasis on tourism and leisure after the 1950s, seen in both the “high” and “popular” strata of Yugoslavia society, served to reinforce the common cultural norm that, to a great extent, enjoyable living depended on freedom from burdensome work. For ordinary Yugoslavs the payoff of their country’s distinctive socialist bargain meant the chance to consume tourism and leisure experiences at an increasingly high level of quality and service, one that had begun, in some instances at least, to approach the standards of other prime destinations that were likewise catering to the travelling populations of the developed capitalist world. What did tourism do for Yugoslavia and its citizens? We are only now beginning to grapple with that problem—indeed, only now beginning to even recognize its importance—but at this point it is safe to venture some conclusions that will, if not resolving matters entirely, at least establish productive categories of analysis and point the way toward future inquiry.2 Accordingly, my purpose in this essay is to interpret the main currents of the tourist experience in Yugoslavia in an integrative way that will suggest the most important answers to this question, answers that will be critical to the effort to dig below the tooeasy findings of limitless division and near-certain doom to unearth a richer, more complicated—and truer—picture of the Yugoslav past. 368 Patrick Hyder Patterson 2 Representative examples of an earlier wave of scholarly analysis, with rather different concerns, include the useful overview of tourism patterns and related issues found in Stanković (1979), and in subsequent editions of that work. In English, the most sustained attention to Yugoslav tourism appeared in the work of Allcock; see, e.g., his excellent summary chapter (2001). Yugoslavia as It Once Was 369 What tourism did, and might do again, is a matter of no small import for the post-Yugoslav present as well. With the violence of the past decade now remote enough in the minds of potential vacationers, the successor states of the fractured federation now seek to...