Acknowledgments Preface 1. Tourism and the Making of Socialist Yugoslavia: an Introduction PART 1: Holidays on CommandA" 2. Workers into Tourists. Entitlements, Wishes and Realities of Social Tourism in Yugoslav Socialism 3. From Comrades to Consumers: Holidays, Leisure Time and Ideology in Communist Yugoslavia 4. The Yugoslav Road towards International Tourism: Opening, Decentralization and Propaganda in the Early 1950s PART 2: Tourism and the Yugoslav DreamA" 5. Travelling to the Birthplace of "The Greatest Son of Yugoslav Nations". The Construction of Kumrovec as a Political Tourism Destination 6. My Own Vikendica - Holiday Cottages as Idyll and Investment 7. Highways of Desire: Cross-Border Shopping in Former Yugoslavia, 1960s-1980s PART 3: Tourism Economies in Transformation 8. Fishing for Tourists - Tourism and Household Enterprise in Biograd na Moru 9. Youth Labour Action (Omladinska radna akcija) as Ideological Holidaymaking 10. What to Do at the Weekend? Leisure for Happy Consumers, Refreshed Workers and Good Citizens 11. Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games Synopsis 12. What Tourism and Leisure Meant for the History of the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia Bibliography Index
Hannes Grandits is a senior associate at the History Institute of Karl-Franzens-University, Graz, Austria, and is visiting professor at the Institute for Eastern and Southeast European History of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich, Germany. Karin Taylor is researcher at the Institute of History, University of Graz, Austria, and works for the International Channel of the Croatian Radio.
"The wars that ended Yugoslavia obscured the country's successes
during its 1945-91 existence, and few now recall that from the
1960s through 1990, Yugoslavia was a major destination for tourists
from Western Europe. The country also had a well-developed domestic
tourist industry. Thirteen authors cover topics ranging from broad
considerations of tourism and the making of socialist Yugoslavia
through specific analyses of youth work brigades, the political
tourist shrine created out of Tito's birthplace, cross-border
shopping in Italy by Yugoslavia tourists, and an insightful
analysis of the Sarajevo Olympics as both unifying spectacle for
Yugoslavia's people and source of contention between the
politicians of its constituent republics. The changes in Yugoslav
tourism from free vacations at "workers' resorts" to market-driven
transformation of small, privately owned "weekend houses" into
rental cottages is also covered well. In the end, it seems that
tourism contributed to the successes of Yugoslav socialism, but
also to the increased perceptions of Yugoslavs in the 1980s that
the country was failing to deliver on promises of the good life. A
major contribution to studies of Yugoslavia, tourism, and cultural
history. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
*Choice*
"This work not only provides a comprehensive account of tourism
under the four-and-a-half decades of communist rule in Yugoslavia,
but goes further to assert its crucial role in the establishment
and complex evolution of the fragile postwar federation....
Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side is strongly interdisciplinary,
incorporating scholars of anthropology, ethnology, and history.
Despite this diverse collection of voices, the book achieves
admirable resonance and harmony. In an array of different contexts,
the authors consistently demonstrate not only the importance of
tourism to the country economically, but more significantly its
inherent contradictions that threatened to undermine the “project”
of postwar Yugoslavia.... Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side, then, is a fine
example of contemporary tourism scholarship. It advances our
understanding of tourism’s political and social significance, and
sheds new light on the ways in which Yugoslavia’s distinctive
openness to Western outsiders both sustained and threatened the
always-fragile federation. It will be of significant value to
readers interested not only in tourism history, but also in the
historical evolution, and ultimate disintegration, of the postwar
Yugoslavian vision."
*East Central Europe*
"In general, Yugoslavia's Sunny Side deconstructs the monolithic
imaginings of state socialism, complex ideologies, and power
relations. It provides rich historical records and empirical
materials for understanding the processes of proletarization; the
social and cultural meanings of class; different forms of
Balkanism, Orientalism, and Western cultural hegemony; economies of
shortage; parallel economies; and the unstable, shifting, and fluid
loyalties under Yugoslavian socialism."
*Slavic and East European Journal*
"Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side is multidisciplinary in approach. At the
same time, through three thematic sections, it retains a historical
arch that encourages the reader to see the individual essays as
speaking to larger shifts. Each authored piece, however long or
short, is followed by a full list of references. On the other hand,
this detailed approach does mean that the book functions as an
effective resource for both research and teaching. Postwar
realities largely dashed hopes for the unifying power of
communism—of both the Bloc and Yugoslav variety. One of those
realities was consumerism; another was nationalism, to which
Yugoslavia was particularly vulnerable. The editors aim to provide
a history that will counter the recent nationalism-dominated
narratives, but what these essays reveal is that holiday-making,
like so much else in 'sunny' Yugoslavia, was ultimately rife with
contradiction."
*Slavic Review*
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