TO GROW IS TO TRANSFORM… TO STAND STILL IS TO DIE
I took two days off work this week to lounge around the house and it was much needed.
KEEPING THINGS WHOLE
The great achievement of Yugoslavia was its success in keeping collectivism and individualism in some kind of balance. Self-management was far from perfect—it was political, but still, it developed a progressive society with disposable incomes with access to consumer goods. With dueling ideologies trying to penetrate the daily life of every citizen, what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object? Such is the case with the architecture of the old nation.
To understand the architecture we need to understand the country. Established after the Second World War, The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was born when, in 1948, the leader of the newly founded communist country wanted to break away from the soviet foundation. Josip Broz Tito broke away from Joseph Stalin and started to shape the country without centralized state authority, allowing for what some would call market socialism or what Tito would refer to as worker self-management. Self-management meant granting a certain amount of power to worker collectives—not just in the factories but in any enterprise, even their architectural practices. It may have been a one-party state, but it was the most sustained effort yet to achieve popular self-governance.
Bearing that Yugoslavia had been an undeveloped, predominantly agricultural economy before the war, the task of rebuilding and modernizing was not just physical but mental. One could only rely on the workers to self-manage by educating them. And so one of the key strands of the rebuilding effort was schools, from kindergartens to worker universities. By 1959, there were a hundred and twenty-nine such universities, the finest of which was in New Zagreb, the Croatian capital. New monuments were also being erected in the Yugoslav countryside – memorials to commemorate the country's defeat of fascism. These monuments, abstract and boldly expressive, were the start of a new design language – spomenik. It was a shining example of modernist style. But, more than that, it bore flexible spaces with fluid circulation—there was nothing rigid or dogmatic about them. Tito was so sufficiently impressed that, in 1963, once tensions with the USSR had eased a little, he brought Nikita Khrushchev there to show off the achievements of his non-Soviet socialism. The Russian was impervious:
The workers should stay at the factory bench.
Early on, and especially after Yugoslavia’s expulsion from Cominform in 1948, authorities had rejected the socialist realism espoused in the USSR as unfit to represent a progressive society. The current of European and American modernism ran deep, and Yugoslavian architects, many of whom were trained in the West, proved that they could make an original contribution to that discourse. What is now the Croatian coastline was also the place where the Venn diagram of East and West overlapped—on the beach. As Life magazine put it, in 1966,
Long the political maverick of the Communist world, Yugoslavia has plunged into competitive western-style tourism on a scale that is positively heretical.
That year, it expected three million tourists, including a hundred thousand Americans. The social approach to the new hotels and resorts being built marked them as the expression of political philosophy. Resorts were designed to be open and free-flowing, to encourage inclusivity and participation—far from the “exclusive” havens of today’s tourism. Even at the high-end Haludovo Hotel complex on the island of Krk, designed by Boris Magaš, locals could mingle with international celebrities. No other planned economic country at this time was operating in this way.
Yugoslav architecture has only recently come back into vogue and perhaps the reason it has taken so long to be recognized is due to its inability to be categorized. There is no overriding style. Modernism was arguably a useful device for gelling Yugoslavia, a federation of six republics and two autonomous provinces, together. But the approaches were wonderfully diverse. Heavily influenced by the International Style and, later, Brutalism, the local inflections were relatively unique. There was also a strong sense of regionalism. It was up to each architect to plan and design however they saw fit. Some drew on existing architectural design as an ode to the past while others chose to embrace contemporary design.
WHEN I WALK I PART THE AIR AND ALWAYS THE AIR MOVES IN TO FILL THE SPACES WHERE MY BODY’S BEEN
These are just a small selection of the monuments that were erected during this time. You can visit this website to view all of them.
Hrib Svobode
Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia
A monument dedicated to the fighters of the 4th Yugoslavian Army who liberated this area during WWII. The remains of 284 of these soldiers who died during this fight are interred in a mass tomb beneath the monument. In addition, this monument also honors the Partisan Prekomorski (Over-seas) brigades who battled and fought in foreign lands.
Kameni Cvijet
Jasenovac, Croatia
A memorial to the hundreds of thousands of victims who were executed during World War II at the Jasenovac forced labor and extermination camp which was set up and run at this location, on the banks of the Sava River, by the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and administered by the fascist Ustaše forces.
Spomenik ustanku naroda Banije i Korduna
Petrova Gora National Park, Croatia
Dedicated to the deaths of ethnic-Serb peasants who died fighting against the Ustaše militia in the Petrova Gora mountains, most notably during 1941 and 1942.
Споменик „Илинден“
Gumenja Hill in Kruševo, North Macedonia
This spomenik commemorates the resistance fighters who took part in the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 against the Ottoman Empire, while also remembering the Partisan fighters of People's Liberation Struggle (WWII).
Spomenik i kosturnica boraca Prvog splitskog partizanskog odreda
Ruduša forest, Sinj, Croatia
This spomenik at Sinj commemorates the 24 executed fighters of the 1st Split Partisan Detachment who were executed on this spot by Ustaše forces after they were captured in the process of rebelling against Axis occupation.
WHY DON’T YOU FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF
If you ever want to discuss anything featured in these dispatches, please email me hello@tylerhasagun.com
Nice piece on our background.