The ‘Yugoslav Dream’ is the novel
concept this book centres on, with the snappy by-line of ‘Living and losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia’
competently underscoring how the story is to unfold. A country believed to have
been definitively behind the Iron Curtain, might make many people baulk at the initial
idea that a socialist country run by a Communist Party could in any way have possessed
a consumerist ‘Dream’, when these ‘Dreams’ are the by-product of capitalism.
Patrick Patterson’s narrative evades choosing either a simple chronology, or an
analysis by theme. Instead, by a combination of both, and through elevating key
actors, processes or events, he traces the main points in the development and
practice of consumerism in Socialist Yugoslavia.
Patterson initially details the material
strife many Yugoslavs had to endure in the immediate post-war period. And from
the comfort of 2019 you could think this a bleak description reserved only for
this part of the world. But one needs to recall that not all was good in the
West either. We in the UK did not come out of the war as a consumer society of
abundance, rationing being the order of the day. And we suffered less damage to our infrastructure than Yugoslavia during the occupation, civil war, and then retreat.
During this immediate post-war period, the
initiation and growth of the theory and practice of advertising and consumerism
emerged; primarily from Western influences in the post World War Two era, with
little, if any of it, having come from the small, domestic sector prior to the
war. However, there had to have been favourable economic, social and political
circumstances for it to take hold, resist suppression, and grow in Socialist Yugoslavia.
The move in the 1950s away from Stalinist economic orthodoxy to a novel
Yugoslav ‘self-management’ structure, allowed for more freedom to produce goods and saw
the emergence of a ‘market’ mechanism to Yugoslavia. This was the key economic move.
Advertisers emerged out of ‘in-house’
advertising departments of large, mostly industrial, businesses into ‘bureaus’
themselves, and kept pushing, ever so softly, at the outer parameters of
appropriate behaviour and acceptability. The profession had perennially been
viewed suspiciously by the regime, to greater or lesser extent over the period.
How consumerism presented itself also evolved too, for example magazines
departing from hard news to lifestyle content. Furthermore, Gastarbeiters, and those living close to Italy and Austria, were already experiencing consumerism, just not in Yugoslavia. Advertisers saw and filled the domestic void when the opportunity arose.
Different ideological arguments over
consumerism emerged over the period of Socialist Yugoslavia, both critical and
supportive; and Patterson describes how officials, agencies, or the consumers
themselves, stood by or participated as consumerism grew. One example he
provides is that advertisers decided to make their profession ‘rational’ and
‘scientific’ in its practice, so that it fit into Marxist philosophy. Initially, this was through the content of adverts by providing basic facts about products and from where they
could be bought. But opponents argued that adverts played on a ‘false need’, a
new ‘opium of the masses’ as Patterson asserts. Even he concludes that the content
of the adverts were not socialist. But they were advertising in socialism. Thus it was the
environment in which they operated that had an impact on its functioning, its content,
and it being ‘socialist’.
But why did the regime just not ban
advertising? Especially if it was deemed to have emanated from capitalist
practices. Tito’s concern was how people earned money, not how they spent it.
With no opportunities to invest, Yugoslavs spent it on goods instead – either
in the country or on shopping trips to Italy or Austria. Opposition from
orthodox Marxist, ‘Praxis’ theorists wanted a return to Stalinist economics,
and blamed the regime for wanting to impose market mechanisms, with the
by-product being consumerism and (in their view) a more individualistic
society. Instead, the regime saw this as an attack on its delivery of the
uniquely Yugoslav self-management economy. Hence orthodoxy was suppressed,
not consumerism. Fundamentally, Patterson believes that the regime wanted the
positive political capital that it received from consumers enjoying the good
life.
And from this good life emerged a New
Class, one not highlighting ethnic differences, but a genuinely Yugoslav
experience. Instead, it was a cultural class, defined by the ambition for the
good life and material goods. Yet, if it was a cultural class, Patterson does
not delve into the social side that consumerism and the need for material goods
also created. Only passing references are made to shopping, but they are devoid
of a more anthropological observation of how people spent their time shopping,
and for goods other than mechanical for the home. Were people convinced to
buy good foods, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, clothes; and what about
entertainment venues, such as restaurants, cinemas and theatres? The sites
where one consumes these goods are outside of the house, and would have
benefitted from the extra income people had to spend. This would make for
intriguing reading, but inevitably may only be an observation seen in urban
settings.
But the good life did not, ultimately,
last. And neither did Yugoslavia as a state. Failings in the self-management
system, with bonuses being awarded and not kept for investment; republican
squabbling about the allocation of incomes and their distribution; and a
borrowing binge used to fund a spending binge; as well as other factors – all
contributed to the good life being constrained then reversed. But beyond the
wars, Yugoslav consumerism lives in the culture of the people in the successor
states, possessed in the persistent Yugo-nostalgia that is still evident. It remains
in the minds of those who experienced the ‘good life’, members of the cultural
‘New Class’, now lamenting for it; and has emerged in the generation born since
the recent wars free from the ‘lived’ experience of communism.
I would suggest this book to those who
want to get a deeper understanding of how consumerism grew, as a by-product of
self-management. It is a complex read, and at points you feel you have to
‘wade’ through it. But it does open up the possibility that Yugoslavia was in
fact different to other Iron Curtain countries, and that a good life could to
be had.
