Emancipating Rural Women in Interwar Yugoslavia: Analysis of Discourses on Rural Women in Two 1930s Women‟s Periodicals By Isidora Grubaĉki Submitted to Central European University Department of History In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Comparative History Supervisor: Professor Balázs Trencsényi Second reader: Professor Francisca de Haan Budapest, Hungary 2017 CEU eTD Collection Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This thesis explores the ideas and, to a limited extent, practices of emancipation of rural women in the interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia that preceded the radical empowerment of women that took place with the establishment with socialist Yugoslavia in 1946. The thesis is a comparative discourse analysis of the ways two different periodicals edited and published by women constructed the desirable roles of rural women in the 1930s. The periodicals in question are: Seljanka: list za prosvećivanje žena na selu (1933-1935) [Peasant Woman: Periodical for Enlightenment of Women in the Countryside], the only periodical in interwar Yugoslavia published specifically for rural women, and Žena danas (1936-1940) [Woman Today], a periodical that had a strong feminist, pacifist and antifascist stand with a hidden communist agenda. By constructing the desirable image of rural women in the public sphere, the discourses I analyze shaped the ideas of how and in which ways the changes in the lives of rural women in Yugoslavia should occur. As this thesis argues, these discourses of emancipation of rural women were influenced by different political and social ideologies of the period, usually perceived as conflicting, such as eugenics, nationalism and traditionalism, communism/socialism and feminism, and different approaches to Yugoslav nation-building, integral and federal. By looking at these two periodicals, I show how the approach of the educated, elite women towards „the rural woman question‟ became more inclusive and more radical as World War II was approaching and as „the woman question‟ got increasingly involved with socialist ideology. CEU eTD Collection ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor Balázs Trencsényi for guidance, extremely helpful comments and care he showed during the year and especially during the thesis writing process. I especially want to thank him for being patient with all my confused questions and initial insecurities about my work and my ideas. I also want to thank my second supervisor Francisca de Haan for encouraging me and supporting me in many ways, and for reading my texts carefully and with interest. I owe much gratitude to Zsófia Lóránd, Elissa Helms, Tolga Esmer and Marsha Siefert for their support at the time when I was the most confused with my work. To Borbála Faragó – thank you for encouragement and useful talks about my writing and writing in general. I especially want to thank Ana Kolarić, Stanislava Barać and Dejan Ilić for, in many precious ways, helping me get to where I stand now. To all my colleagues who listened to my ideas and contributed to this thesis by recommending literature and saying that it will all be fine – thank you. Finally – to Igor, thank you for being there, always. CEU eTD Collection iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................ iii Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1 I.1. The Sources ........................................................................................................................................ 6 I.1.1. Seljanka: list za prosvećivanje žena na selu (1933-1935) [Peasant Woman: Periodical for Enlightenment of Women in the Countryside] ..................................................................................... 8 I.1.2. Žena danas (1936-1940) [The Woman Today] ......................................................................... 10 I.2. Methodology and Framework of Analysis ....................................................................................... 13 I.3. Outline of the Thesis ......................................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 1 - Searching for the Context ........................................................................................................ 24 1.1. Feminism, Nationalism and Socialism: A short overview of women‟s organizations and discourses of emancipation in Serbia and Yugoslavia before and after WWI ......................................................... 25 1.2. The Rural Context: Reconstructing the Problems and the Solutions of the Everyday Life of Rural Women .................................................................................................................................................... 32 1.2.1. Transformations in the Family Life in Yugoslav Rural Areas .................................................. 32 1.2.2. Seljanka: Housewife, Wife, Mother – and Agricultural Worker .............................................. 35 1.2.3. The Representations of Rural Women in Žena danas............................................................... 41 1.2.4. Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 2 - Rural Women‟s Education in Seljanka and Žena danas .......................................................... 47 2.1. Seljanka: Informal Education of Rural Women in Interwar Yugoslavia ......................................... 48 2.1.1. Laza Marković and Eugenics in Vojvodina between 1904 and 1935 ....................................... 50 2.1.2. Informal Education and Eugenics: Constructing a Desirable Role of Rural Women ............... 56 2.2. The Discussion about Education and Pegagogy in Žena danas ....................................................... 63 2.2.1. Educating rural women: Nikica Blagojević, Angela Vode and Vera Stein Erlich .................... 64 2.2.2. Exchanging knowledge: Education for Community and Women‟s Rights .............................. 71 2.3. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 77 Chapter 3 – Constructing “Sisterhood” in Seljanka and Žena danas: Yugoslav nation-building and CEU eTD Collection International Networks ................................................................................................................................ 79 3.1. Seljanka and the Construction of Yugoslav Peasant Sisterhood ...................................................... 80 3.2. Layers of Sisterhood in Žena danas ................................................................................................. 92 3.3. Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 105 iv Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 107 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 114 CEU eTD Collection v Introduction In 2012, the exhibition Yugoslavia: From the Beginning to the End was opened in the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade. The exhibition was a major event as it gathered a group of curators, sociologists and historians to propose a concept, content and organization of a new permanent exhibition of the Museum of Yugoslav History.1 The stated aim of the exhibition was to, “in a modern, attractive and objective way,” present “one of the most interesting and most controversial state-building experiments in the 20th century.”2 Although the exhibition was a genuine attempt to overcome the nationalist narratives and ask questions about the history of the Yugoslav country, I found the depiction of Yugoslavia as a “controversial state-building experiment” less objective than it was claimed. I was particularly struck by the representation of women‟s emancipation in Yugoslavia. This – indeed very marginal - segment reproduced the popular stereotypes about the history of women‟s emancipation in the socialist period, saying that the women‟s emancipation in Yugoslavia began only after World War II, as well as that even though after the war women got the right to vote and had more rights to work – nothing had really changed.3 1 The authors of the exhibition were curator Ana Panić, sociologist Jovo Bakić and historians SrĊan Cvetković, Ivana Dobrivojević, Hrvoje Klasić and Vladimir Petrović. 2 “Yugoslavia: From the Beginning to the End,” accessed