The Golden cage: Growing up in the Socialist Yugoslavia
Main Article Content
Abstract
From the mid 1950s through roughly the 1980s, some or many children and youth of the Socialist Yugoslavia, especially those of us in Belgrade, the capital, lived in a curious, almost surreal “window” in the space and time. This surreal window of space-time, offered to children and youth of Yugoslavia, unprecedented opportunities for personal development, exposure to the classic cultures and the newest events in the cultural worlds from all over the world, freedom of speech, gathering, activism and opportunities to travel and interact with a multitude of people of the world who came to Yugoslavia. Such special window in time and space sounds impossible to believe, all the more, in the light of the subsequent brutal and bloody civil wars of the 90s in which Yugoslavia perished. And yet, for many of us this window in time and space did exist! It was a product, I think, of several paradoxical tensions that may have created unprecedented loopholes in the fabric of an otherwise authoritarian and often brutal regime that had its ugly underside in suppression of any actions and words which would be critical of the ruling regime and its leaders.
One could arguably say, that, when I talk about this curious, surreal time, I talk from a point of view that can only belong to the children of the privileged: children of the high officers of the Communist party, of the Belgrade political, intellectual, cultural and economic elite. Of course, in many ways, I cannot escape, some of the privileged vistas of my own background – as no one can entirely escape the bent of their own lives. However, my privileged view comes from being among the intellectual elite of Belgrade, rather than the political elite. But my views were also based on the experiences of “ordinary” others which I shared in the everyday ways of life in which I was not segregated from everyone else: my neighbors, school mates, people I met in various other gathering places.
In this auto-ethnographic essay, I explore a uniqueness of my Socialist Yugoslav childhood, where a lot of children and youth lived as if in a golden cage. This golden cage had an internal reality that was in many ways protective of our wellbeing. In this reality we experienced freedoms, stood for justice, had many opportunities to participate in cultural clubs, art studios, musical bands, poetic societies, sports clubs, summer and winter camps, etc. At the same time, the world that surrounded us, and even in many ways created our childhoods, was harsh, often brutal and did not hold any of the high ethical principles and values that we believed and lived in.
Article Details
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
References
Abrams, L. (2016). Oral history theory: Routledge.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (M. Holquist & C. Emerson, Trans. 1st ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1991). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1994). Aesthetic Visualizing of Time/Space: The Chronotope. In P. Morris (Ed.), The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov (pp. 180-186): Arnold.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1999). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics (Vol. 8). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Beljanski-Ristić, L. (1983). Školigrica: program studija stvaralačkog vaspitanja i estetskog obrazovanja za decu predškolskog uzrasta pri Centru za kulturu "Stari Grad" u Beogradu ["Play-School" -- A Program of Creative and Aesthetic Education for Preschool Children at the Cultural Centre "Stari Grad" i Beograd. Predškolsko Dete [Pre-School Child], 1-2(1983).
Cvetković, S. (2011). Žrtve komunističkog revolucionarnog terora u Srbiji posle 12. septembra 1944.(Istraživanja Državne komisije za tajne grobnice). HERETICUS-Časopis za preispitivanje prošlosti(01+ 02), 9-36.
Despot, Z. (2008, June 25, 2008). Tito, 1968.: Hapsite, ja ne pregovaram [Tito in 1968: Arrest them, I won't negotiate]. Večernji list. Retrieved from http://www.vecernji.hr/hrvatska/tito-1968-hapsite-ja-ne-pregovaram-841553
Dobrivojević, I., Duda, I., Mihelj, S., & Panić, A. (2014). They Never Had It Better? Modernization of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia.
Erdei, I. (2006). “The Happy Child” As an Icon of Socialist Transformation: Yugoslavia’s Pioneer Organization. In J. R. Lampe & M. Mazower (Eds.), Ideologies and national identities: the case of twentieth-century Southeastern Europe (pp. 154-179 ). Budapest; new York: Central European University Press.
Jojkic, M. (2015). Mickova sećanja [Micko's memories]. Retrieved from http://jakljan.pbworks.com/w/page/8349742/Mickova%20se%C4%87anja
Kotek, J., & Rigoulot, P. (2000). Le siècle des camps: Détention, concentration, extermination, cent ans de mal radical. Paris: Lattès.
Lampe, J. R., Prickett, R. O., & Adamović, L. S. (1990). Yugoslav-American Economic Relations Since World War II: Duke University Press.
Lotman, Y. (1988). Text within text. Soviet Psychology, 24(3), 32-41.
Marjanovic-Shane, A., & Pesic, M. (2011, September). Significant educational concepts and themes developed by the Belgrade School of Creativity, "Belgrade School of Studies on Creativity, Play and Art in Learning and Development". Paper presented at the Third Conference of ISCAR (International Society for Culture and Activity Research), September 5 -10, 2011, Rome, Italy.
Matusov, E., & Brobst, J. (2013). Radical experiment in dialogic pedagogy in higher education and its centaur failure: Chronotopic analysis. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Matusov, E., Marjanovic-Shane, A., & Gradovski, M. (2018 in preparation). Dialogic Pedagogy and Polyphonic Research: Bakhtin by and for Educators: Palgrave Macmillan.
Matusov, E., & von Duyke, K. (2010). Bakhtin’s notion of the Internally Persuasive Discourse in education: Internal to what? (A case of discussion of issues of foul language in teacher education). In K. Junefelt & P. Nordin (Eds.), Proceedings from the Second International Interdisciplinary Conference on perspectives and limits of dialogism in Mikhail Bakhtin Stockholm University, Sweden June 3-5, 2009 (pp. 174-199). Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Ngunjiri, F. W., Hernandez, K.-A. C., & Chang, H. (2010). Living autoethnography: Connecting life and research. Journal of research practice, 6(1), 1.
Popov, N. (2008). Robespjer pod lipama [Robespierre under the linden trees]. Večernje Novosti Online. Retrieved from http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/090.shtml
Popović, V. (2008, June 3, 2008). Belo usijanje crvenog univerziteta [The white heat of the red university], Report. Večernje Novosti. Retrieved from http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno.293.html:216610-Belo-usijanje-crvenog-univerziteta
Savich, C. (2007). Yugoslav Dissidents during the Cold War. Retrieved from http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/090.shtml
Shachtman, M. (1948). Stalinism on the Decline: Tito versus Stalin, The Beginning of the End of the Russian Empire. New International, 14(6), 172-178.
Spaskovska, L. (2017). The Last Yugoslav Generation: The Rethinking of Youth Politics and Cultures in Late Socialism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.