Between Utopia

and Pragmatism
Vagaries of consumerisms

Dubravka Sekulić [Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht]

“Socialist society is actually per definitionem a consumer society, because it has to meet the basic needs
of the broad working masses and to provide more of the results of material and spiritual culture.” [ 1 ]
This is how Stipe Šuvar, leading Yugoslav sociologist and politician explained the relationship between
socialist and consumer society in 1970, twelve years after they had been revealed as a pair inseparable
for the development of a [happy] socialist society for the first time in the Program of the League of Com-
munists of Yugoslavia, accepted at the Seventh Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
held in Ljubljana in 1958. This program was the most important document articulating the directions of
development of the Yugoslav socialist society on its road to becoming a communist society. This program
stated that “the main task of socialist economic policy” should be “the constant improvement of the
material and cultural conditions of life and work of working people” [ 2 ] It was noted that “only with a
permanent increase in the production of material goods is it possible to ensure and steadily improve the
living conditions of working people, which in turn is an essential element and requirement to encour-
age development of productive forces and an increase in labour productivity.” [ 3 ] and that increase of
production would inevitably lead to “better supply of consumers with goods” To put it in plain words.
Not only did it become accepted to aspire to material possessions and consumer goods, but it became
desirable. This shift from the austerity of postwar reconstruction and modernisation to modernisation
through consuming was picked up fast by popular culture and just six months after this program was
defined, at the first “Yugoslav broadcasting festival” in Opatija the winning song “Mala devojčica” [Little
Girl] sung by Ivo Robić and 13 year old Zdenka Vučković was an ode to consumerism.

“Daddy buy my a car, bicycle and scooter,

buy me bear and bunny, Yugovynil cart,
daddy buy me cookies, sweeties and oranges two,
at least one small dolly, and I am telling you that is all” [4]

This de facto meant that the good proletarian, worker had to become a good consumer for the society to
develop further and that worker needed to want more in order to work more. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
This shift toward consumerism was not sudden, and in fact the economic organisation of Yugoslavia
supported it. Centred around the concept of the withering away of the state, the Yugoslav take on how

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[ 1 ] Šuvar, Stipe, Sociološki presjek jugoslavenskog društva. Školska knjiga,
Zagreb 1970. p110-111. [as quoted in Duda, Igor, U potrazi za blagostanjem.
Srednja Evropa, Zagreb 2005. p 59]
[ 2 ] Program Saveza komunista Jugoslavije. Prihvaćen na Sedmom kongresu
Saveza komunista Jugoslavije [22-26. travnja 1958. u Ljubljani, GRO Joža Rožanković,
Sisak 1984. p 190 [as quoted in Duda, Igor, U potrazi za blagostanjem.
Srednja Evropa, Zagreb 2005. p 47]
[ 3 ] Ibid, p 185
[ 4 ] “Tata kupi mi auto, bicikl i romobil,
kupi mi medu i zeku, kolica Jugovinil,
tata kupi mi kolača, bombona i naranče dv’je,
bar jednu malenu bebu, i velim ti da je to sve”
lyrics by: Vandekar, performed by Zdenka Vuković i Ivo Robić, Opatija 1958
state socialism should function, defined since the split with the Soviet Union in 1948, was a mixture of
planned and market economy with the self-managing worker as the owner of the means of production
and driving force of the system. The work day was divided into three parts: eight hours of sleep, eight
hours of work and eight hours of free time. It was believed that the more productive the leisure time was,
the more productive the worker would be. Much as the organisation of economic system that supported
this type of consumer driven socialism is interesting, what interests us more here is to see how this was
manifested in space?
In numerous towns of ex Yugoslavia urbanisation came after the Second World War. These towns, al-
though developed on top of different urban matrices and urban histories, were given similar features
during modernisation. A walk through the centres reveals the common thread that connects all the towns
developed in this period. Three buildings placed on the main square or in its vicinity. A house of culture,
department store and hotel – three points on a line along which the socialist construction of everyday
life and leisure time unfolded.
After the initial phases of postwar reconstruction and construction of the basic infrastructure, mostly
done by voluntary work, for example half a million youthful voluntary workers participated in the con-
struction of the “Brotherhood and Unity” highway, from the second half of fifties it was time to build an
infrastructure that would support the creation and development of new socialist everyday life and culture.
Construction of house of culture, department store and hotel, in this sequence in time, in the centre of
the town became a driving force for this culture to appear, develop and to be contested.
Houses of culture came first. Besides disseminating “high” culture, the main purpose of the house
of culture was to organise permanent education and to include all people not solely as consumers of
culture but also as producers.
Yugoslavia was an economic miracle in the 1960s with a growth rate much higher than most European
countries. The increase in production led to a rapid increase in the living standard and this brought
about new shopping habits and consumerism. Department stores, although not an unknown typology
in Yugoslavia, started flourishing in the second half on 1960s when some of the most important chains
[Beograd, Nišpromet, NAMA] were formed. The concept of the department store was not changed for
socialist Yugoslavia, for at its core it was still a democratization of luxury in a sense that even just admir-
ing the goods on display indicated the appreciation of modern society and that ability to browse, explore
and dream of potential ownership was a good stimulus for workers to increase their productivity, thus
their position on the socialist ladder and their buying power. Department stores played multiple roles, on
the one hand revealing that even in socialism there was inequality, but on the other, they were the place
where the changing position of women in society was the most visible. Women were the main employees
in the department stores and they were models of how the new woman should look and behave. Women
were also the most present customers, as the number of women who were working and earning salaries
independently of their spouses was increasing steadily.
In this sequence, hotels were created the last, as sort of palace for citizens, so everybody could enjoy
their luxury. The hotels were the pride of each town, a way to show how prosperous the town and its
area were. There was a social network to back up the existence of a hotel in any town, so no matter
how small it was, it could provide for a support infrastructure for all sorts of cultural events, festivals,
student excursions etc. Its service part [restaurant, swimming pool, discotheque…] was not just made
for the guests but also for local people, as a sort of all-in-one package to provide the much-needed
infrastructure for the towns. The local administrations tended to make the hotels as grand as they could
so they could provide more to their citizens. So if you wanted if you wanted to have bigger restaurants
you had to have more rooms, to retain the proportion between the number of rooms and the size of the
restaurant, and once you had a lot of rooms, a swimming pool came naturally. This is how Jagodina, a
town of 80,000 people, ended up with a hotel featuring 350 beds.
These are just some of the aspects to be addressed during this research. But in addition, attention will
be paid to the processes surrounding decisions and policies related to these structures, their relation
to the urban environment in which they were constructed and the urban environment they provoked
around them, the impact they had on the development of the towns and on their decline after the 1990s,
and these interests will be mapped through 8 case studies from different parts of Yugoslavia. With the
use of these examples, the thesis of Boris Groys that “socialism was possible only with dreams about
capitalism and the free market” will be tested out and what happened after the emancipatory aspect of
consumerism left town will also be questioned.

----------- Dubravka Sekulić [1980] is an architect focusing on the topics of transformation of the public
domain in contemporary cities. At the moment she is working on the book “Don’t Stare so Romantically!”
in which she is using roof extensions in Belgrade as a case study for analysing the relationship between
the law, spatial policies and informal development. Her other work focuses on the topic of standardisa-
tion of television in Europe and its relation with the Eurovision Song Contest, through which she tries
to tell the political story of Europe after World War II. Also, together with Žiga Testen, Pietro Bianchi and
Gal Kirn she is working on the book and conference “Surfing the Black” about the Yugoslav Black Wave
cinema. Together with Branko Belaćević, Marko Miletić, Jelena Stefanović and Srđan Prodanović she
recently completed the research project “Fifth Park: Struggle for Everyday” about possibilities of sharing
knowledge of the urban struggle. She was an East European Exchange Network fellow at Akademie Schloss
Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. Currently she is a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht,
The Netherlands. On this project she will collaborate with Jelena Stefanović, sociologist from Belgrade,
Serbia.

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/ UM / 41 /