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

Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games

Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games1 Kate Meehan Pedrotty On 8 February 1984, a sellout crowd of fifty thousand spectators filled Sarajevo’s Koševo Stadium for the opening ceremony of the XIVth Winter Olympic Games, during which they were entertained by gymnasts , folk dancers, and members of the Yugoslav People’s Army band.2 On the same day, the Museum of the XIVth Winter Olympic Games officially opened at 7 Nikola Tesla in Sarajevo, in the presence of International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Juan Antonio Samaranch .3 These events marked the culmination of years of negotiation, planning, construction, and marketing on the part of local, republican, and federal officials in Yugoslavia, and both the Olympic museum and the Games themselves were intended to be at the centre of a tourist rebirth for the city and the country. For twelve days in February 1984, millions of spectators and television viewers around the world were “introduced” to Sarajevo and Yugoslavia—many of them for the first time—and the country received “an advertisement which could not be bought,” according to one American travel agent.4 1 Research and writing support for this project was made possible by a Dissertation Fellowship in East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies. I am indebted to Keith Hitchins, Diane Koenker, James Warren, Melissa Salrin, Danielle Kinsey, and Erica Fraser for their comments on and critiques of earlier versions of this chapter. 2 Schaap (1984, p. 17). 3 Final Report of the Organizing Committee of the XIVth 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games (Final Report) (1984, pp. 138–9); Catalogue: Museum of the XIV OWG (1987), University Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, RS 26/20/37, Box 5; “Sjećanje Olimpijade: Otvoren Olimpijski Muzej u Sarajevu”, Odjek 37/3–4 (1984), p. 27. 4 Kurspahić (1985). Precisely what was socialist Yugoslavia advertising in the 1980s, though, and how did the experience of hosting the Olympic Games shape and mediate this image? Yugoslav tourism suffered in the late 1970s and early 1980s along with the rest of the economy, as the country faced mounting foreign debt and a significant decline in living standards in the immediate years after Tito’s death.5 Though foreign tourists’ buying power was not directly affected by the internal economic crisis in Yugoslavia during this period, this crisis did bring about a slowdown in investment and improvement in the tourist industry, which in turn made the country less attractive to foreign tourists than other similar destinations such as Italy and Greece.6 Tourism planners in Sarajevo and Yugoslavia as a whole looked to the Olympics as a catalyst to pump life back into the tourist industry, and directed their Olympic propaganda campaigns primarily at the foreign tourists who had been Yugoslavia’s bread and butter since the mid-1960s. One of the narratives of the Sarajevo Games, then, presented the Olympics as a savior for the Yugoslav tourist industry and for the Yugoslav economy on a larger scale, especially in the area of much-needed foreign currency income to combat the mounting foreign debt. A second common narrative for the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, and one that brimmed with symbolic potential, cast Sarajevo and Yugoslavia as saviors for the embattled Olympic movement, which endured two boycotts in the 1980s along with growing concerns about issues such as doping and “amateur” status.7 This interpretation of the Sarajevo Games’ significance circulated both inside and outside Yugoslavia throughout what might be called the country’s “Olympic era” (1978–1984), with the French daily Le Matin gushing that the Sarajevo Games represented an “astonishing armistice” in a non-aligned 336 Kate Meehan Pedrotty 5 See Lampe (2000, pp. 321–7); Ramet (2006); Lydall (1989). 6 Lampe (1989, p. 329–30). Lampe explains that by the late 1980s, foreign currency earnings from tourism and other key industries were being used to pay off the national debt rather than being re-invested into the industries . In tourism, this situation meant that aging facilities were not being upgraded or replaced, which was essential to the success of the tourist industry in a very competitive European tourist market. 7 On the “crisis” in the Olympic Movement, see Barney et al. (2002); De Lange (1998); Hoberman (1986); Roche (2000); Schaffer and Smith (2000); Segrave and Chu (1988); Vinokur (1988). country, and Sarajevo Organizing Committee President, Branko Mikulić,8...