Soviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender Policies

Ivan Simic

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319943817
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319943824
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

© The Author(s) 2018

Ivan SimicSoviet Influences on Postwar Yugoslav Gender PoliciesGenders and Sexualities in Historyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94382-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Ivan Simic¹

(1)

Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Ivan Simic

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

When Ivka Dugorepac, a textile worker in Zagreb, decided to work on sixteen machines simultaneously and break the Yugoslav record in productivity, her actions were based on Soviet textile workers as role models. A comrade from her factory had just returned from the Soviet Union and told Ivka about Soviet workers’ efforts to work on ever more machines. Ivka wanted to follow their example, and with Soviet workers in mind, Ivka succeeded. She increased the factory’s production norms, invented new methods of work, and educated other workers. Ivka became a multiple shock-worker. ¹ Newspapers described her mastery over sixteen machines using military metaphors, describing it as a battle in which she had won a remarkable victory. Over a short period, an experienced textile worker from a low-income family background became a Yugoslav heroine of labour, even receiving the most prestigious state medal for her work. She became a celebrity featuring in newspapers and magazines; the Communist Party’s political organisations and Unions invited her to talk at conferences and meetings; and other textile workers visited her factory to learn from her technique. As an exemplary worker, she became a member of the Communist Party. Receiving monetary rewards thanks to her status as a shock-worker, Ivka Dugorepac lived a socialist dream. ²

The Soviet model played a crucial role in this case. The career path of Ivka Dugorepac was all too familiar to the Soviet textile shock-workers of the 1930s. Mariya Volkova (Mapия Mиxaйлoвна Bо́лкoвa), her comrades from a textile factory, and many other Soviet heroines of labour were known of in postwar Yugoslavia. ³ For years, Yugoslav newspapers and magazines published articles on notable Soviet workers and peasants, who had broken world records in productivity. In such texts, Soviet women were not only fantastic workers, but they were loved by the people as they were elected to important political posts. Yet they remained humble and worked ever harder. ⁴ Translations of texts about the Soviet heroes served as a model in shaping the new Yugoslav society. Model in this sense means the set of ideas, meanings, and representations framed within one, more or less, coherent narrative. The complexity of that narrative depended on the information that Yugoslav communists possessed regarding Soviet practices, and their own interpretation of that information. Therefore, the Soviet model did not necessarily correspond with Soviet practices per se, but rather with the representations and understandings of these practices. Yugoslav workers had to resemble the Soviet shock-workers; Yugoslav peasants had to be as successful as Soviet collective farmers, whilst gender relations amongst all of them had to follow the imagined Soviet model.

When the Yugoslav-Soviet conflict erupted over Yugoslav foreign policy in 1948, it caused disbelief, disillusionment, and fear amongst many communists. ⁵ After decades of looking towards the Soviet Union as a socialist paradise which provided hope, inspiration, and a model for every sphere of society, Yugoslav leadership had to find their own way. Making such a leap was achieved more quickly in the realms of politics and the economy , rather than in changing the fundamental principles upon which society was organised. Even after texts that glorified the Soviet Union had vanished from the Yugoslav press in mid-1949, Yugoslav leadership continued to use Soviet patterns in framing gender policies. Notably, Ivka Dugorepac became a socialist celebrity following the conflict of 1948. Attempts to intervene into gender relations in the countryside based on Soviet ideas were in full swing, whilst the Soviet ideals for youth’s sexual abstinence dominated the Party’s youth forums. The shift from Stalinism ⁶ to a unique Yugoslav path was neither sharp nor straightforward. On the contrary, distancing society from Stalinism was a slow process, and often not genuinely carried out. Aiming to explain Yugoslav gender policies, this book tackles a series of questions: Why did Yugoslav communists rely on Soviet models, and how did they interpret these models? How did Yugoslav communists imagine gender equality? What kind of policies did they apply in order to construct such a socialist utopia? How gender came to signify power relations in Yugoslav society? How did Soviet ideas mutate so as to fit Yugoslav context? More intriguing still: what happened to Soviet models after the conflict with the Soviet Union? How genuine was Yugoslav communists’ detachment from Stalinism, and how was this detachment reflected in gender policies? Finally, what were the long-term consequences of the Yugoslav gender experiment?

Taking as its focus policies that were conceived with the intention of altering gender norms in early Yugoslav socialism, this book reveals a compelling story of a struggle to change society on communist terms. Gender featured in many of the major social interventions, being the crucial contested point. By uncovering how Soviet ideas about gender were understood and transformed, as well as popular resistance to changes, this work offers insights into the mechanics of transfer of gender policies, contributes to debates over Stalinism in Eastern European periphery, and brings new understandings into the origins and dynamics of Yugoslav gender policies.

Research Scope and Methods

The focus of this book is on Yugoslav gender policies during the first decade after the Second World War. This periodisation requires further explanation as several chapters consider the wartime interval and go even further back in the past. The year 1945 was a breakpoint in Yugoslav history: The Communist Party, which led the Partisan resistance, liberated Yugoslavia aided by the Soviet army, obliterated all the remaining political opposition, abolished the monarchy, and initiated a series of policies aimed at radically changing society. However, it is crucial to trace the origins of the models used in the Communist Party’s policies. As I argue throughout this book, Soviet ideas about gender were well established before the war amongst the Yugoslav communist leaders. Second World War allowed them to test some of these ideas in practice, with some major changes initiated during the war already. For instance, the Party organised its local governing institutions called the People’s Councils ⁷ in the liberated areas, where men and women voted and could be elected equally. The importance of the Partisan war experience, where women fought alongside men, cannot be overemphasised. Consequently, this book turns to the interwar and war periods in conducting an analysis of the origins of ideas, whilst only considering the postwar period when analysing policies and their implementation in practice.

The book ends with a discussion of events in 1955, but in several places, it explores processes which took place in later years as well. Scholars of early Yugoslav socialism typically end their studies in 1953, the year when Stalin died. However, numerous policies initiated before that year were not abandoned. Policies were changed and adapted, as for example in the case of collective farming, where a longer periodisation permits an examination of how these policies affected gender relations. Similarly, a 1945–1953 periodisation does not adequately capture changes in dominant views regarding youth sexuality. On the contrary, I propose that a large conference held in Zagreb in November 1955 is to be seen as the critical point when Stalinist notions of youth sexuality and family planning were challenged. This was not an abrupt discontinuity with the earlier cultural processes, but many cultural policies, the attitude towards social intervention, and the issues that dominated the public sphere started to differ more as compared to the initial postwar time. This book also has its own sub-periodisation, sketching two periods of early Yugoslav socialism: 1944–1950, and 1950–1955. I see the first period as a revolutionary period of Yugoslav socialism that was followed with a more moderate, institutionalised period focused on socialist state-building. In the second period, for example, regular schools replaced the massive crash-courses, federal curricula were developed for all levels of schooling, more state institutions emerged, and the so-called economic self-management replaced Soviet-style industrialisation. However, this does not mean that the ‘second period’ was not revolutionary and violent—veils were removed from public space after an aggressive veil lifting campaign, collectivisation was still ongoing, whilst the Party’s Youth Organisation sought to police youth sexuality. However, there was a change in tone regarding the further evolution of Yugoslav socialism, which affected gender policies as well.

As part of the research for this book, I have explored primary sources from several archives in the former Yugoslavia, and library archives in the UK and the US. My sources include meeting minutes, reports, directives, laws, the internal correspondence of state and Party institutions, pamphlets, booklets, magazines, newspapers, posters, films, Yugoslav translations of Soviet documents. The majority of these sources were retrieved from the Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. The centralised nature of the early Yugoslav postwar state resulted in all state and Party institutions being based in Belgrade, whilst local branches regularly reported to the centre. The Archives of Yugoslavia collected a vast amount of documents from all of them. To have full insight, I have also explored the Croatian State Archive in Zagreb, which confirmed that even local topics from remote parts of socialist Croatia found their way to the federal collections of the Archives of Yugoslavia. The same archive offered insights into the Russian-language documents from the Soviet Union that Yugoslav communists collected, analysed, and used. In addition, collections from the University College London and Yale libraries provided important contributions, consisting of foreign press coverage and statistical data.

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia—namely its officials and activists—produced the majority of the documents used in this work. Depending on the document purpose, I have applied different methodologies as regards content analysis. For example, posters, magazines, and newspapers are particularly useful in analysing how communists represented ideal gender relations, norms, and behaviours. Translations of Soviet pamphlets, documents, and newspaper articles provide essential information regarding the understanding of the Soviet model. Internal reports, meeting minutes, and directives expose methods and struggles undertaken to impose those imagined standards. I have dismissed no source as irrelevant, even those that ost...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Transfer of Soviet Models
• 3. Framing Gender Policies
• 4. ‘Equal but…’—The Impact of Gender on Labour Policies
• 5. The Impact of Collectivisation on Yugoslav Gender Relations
• 6. The Veil Lifting Campaign
• 7. Gender Policies Towards Youth: From Stalinism to the Yugoslav Dilemma
• 8. Conclusions
• Back Matter