Chapter Eighteen

Another Try

Politics versus Culture: The Second Yugoslavia

That the second Yugoslavia survived its expulsion from the Cominform is a matter of wonder. Tito’s stance faced opposition not just from Stalin, but also from within. He stamped it out ruthlessly, and this may have taken the steam out of Stalin’s anti-Tito propaganda campaigns and dashed any hopes that the Yugoslav experiment might be brought to a swift close.1 In the post-Stalin era, Yugoslavia pursued a separate path, committing to a ‘self-governing’ model of socialism that attempted to reinvest in Lenin- ist principles.2 But prior to that, and of necessity, Tito had engaged in extensive dialogues with the capitalist powers, and especially with the US, for whom this crack in the Communist edifice presented obvious strate- gic advantages.3 In due course Communist Yugoslavia found its historical roles first as a mediator between the two blocs, and later as a player in the international non-aligned movement. Nationality was the bugbear. The official line of the administration was to recognise individual national cultures within a supranational state, a position at variance with the Yugoslavism of the inter-war state, and in theory at least one that facilitated the building of bridges to neighbour- ing states.4 But the ‘brotherhood and unity’ of Communist Yugoslavia was inherently unstable. There was from the start a conflict of interests between the anti-statist socialism favoured in the poorer republics and the statism associated with Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia; ironically, in the later stages of the state, to declare as a ‘Yugoslav’ came to signify the last refuge of either the dissident or the disadvantaged. This conflict of interests was reflected in the leadership. As Dejan Jović has argued, the victory of

1 Across the rest of the Soviet bloc, there was a vitriolic and well orchestrated anti-Tito campaign, including cartoon depictions of him as a poodle led by the US. 2 Benson 2001, 101–3. 3 Campbell 1967. 4 Katherine Verdery remarks, admittedly of another part of the region, that ‘precisely because the Soviet regime had destroyed all other bases for political organization while constitutionally enshrining the national basis, national sentiment emerged to overwhelm federal politics’. See Verdery 1996, 86. another try 469

Edvard Kardelj’s decentralising agenda over Titoism served in the end only to strengthen the statist tendencies of the three stronger republics.5 It was at this political level that the future of Yugoslavia was decided. But the same tension existed in the arena of cultural politics and educa- tion. Andrew Baruch Wachtel shows that despite centralised programmes of education, the teaching of history, literature and language in the sepa- rate republics followed distinctive patterns, and allowed for the expres- sion of individual national qualities.6 On one hand there were unifying supranational tendencies, embodied in the process Wachtel describes as ‘recanonising the classics’, while on the other hand (and increasingly) there were powerful centripetal forces, witnessed by the different reading lists of the school programmes and the separatist tendencies of language teaching. It is interesting to look at music and musical life in light of these del- icately poised political and cultural forces. As to the structures of pro- fessional music and community music-making, Communist Yugoslavia traced a pattern of institutionalisation similar to that found elsewhere in the bloc. Indeed precisely because of its federal structure, it was closer to the Soviet Union in this respect than the other client states. The aim was to disseminate high culture across all the republics, and ideally across all parts of the republics, and to this end a centralised policy was subject to local implementation and allowed for a high degree of local autonomy. Each republic had its composers’ association (even, belatedly, Montene- gro), and although linked in a confederation, they were encouraged to develop their own ‘national’ cultures. Croatia, for example, developed its active musical life well beyond the capital. Osijek was targeted, and devel- oped an innovatory policy at the opera house in particular. And there was cultural investment in the principal towns of the littoral. Both Split and Rijeka saw a renaissance of musical life in the post-war years. There was a similar story in Serbia. Opera was cultivated at the National Theatre in Novi Sad, at Subotica, and for a time at Niš. In the poorer republics the base line for these democratising exercises was low. Macedonia in particular had been underdeveloped culturally even during the first Yugoslavia, and it was only really in the post-‘liberation’ years that an adequate infrastructure was put in place for music and music-making. The job was tackled with the conscientiousness typical

5 Jović 2004. 6 Wachtel 1998.