Designing Tito's Capital

Normand, Brigitte Le

doi:10.2307/j.ctt7zwb9j

“…42 In this way, the stadium was in keeping with the broader objectives of planning in Belgrade, which sought only those solutions that were strictly necessary and which made the best use of resources. 43 Those resources were difficult to come by, with a shortage of building materials be inappropriate by the architects. 45 Despite the fact that these difficulties delayed its completion, the stadium opened its gates in the winter of 1949, as Belgrade's inhabitants braved the surrounding building site to witness a World Cup qualifier against France [ Figure 4].…”

Section: The First Revolutionary Wavementioning

confidence: 99%

Laying the Foundations of Physical Culture: The Stadium Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia

Mills¹

2018

Sport in Socialist Yugoslavia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

After liberation, the incipient socialist Yugoslavia engaged its citizens in an indefatigable process of reconstruction. An enormous wave of volunteers threw themselves into regenerating stricken cities and shattered infrastructure. A bastion of the revolution, physical culture was no exception: interwar venues were repaired and hundreds of new ones were built. These included flagship stadiums, as well as more modest undertakings: athletics grounds on Croatian islands, mountaineering hunts in Kosovo, and Bosnian bowling alleys among them. Major projects received public funding, but others relied on self-initiative, causing friction between the authorities and zealous locals. As the 'stadium revolution' evolved, professional companies worked on vast football grounds. At its zenith, expensive undertakings like Split's Poljud [built for the 1979 Mediterranean Games] were highly prestigious for the communist authorities. These venues constitute a mixed socialist legacy, but many continue to serve the needs of successor states. Using archival documents and photographs, this essay explores a stadium revolution that unfolded in parallel with the revolution at large. It examines the dynamics that shaped Yugoslav sport and society. Yugoslavia's experience, while unique, did not occur in a vacuum; the case provides a new perspective on the development of sporting infrastructure in revolutionary environments in general.In the spring of 1978, President Josip Broz Tito visited the construction site of the Poljud sports complex in Split. Rising beside the shores of the Dalmatian coast, it was a vast project with a state-of-the-art stadium and swimming arena at its heart. As the aging revolutionary sat in the middle of the site, surveying a scale model that depicted a bright future, hundreds of builders crowded round to gauge his reaction. The sweeping steel roof structure was only just taking shape, but Tito was reassured that the project, which would be 'one of the most beautiful and cheapest of its kind in Europe', would be completed in time to host the Eighth Mediterranean Games. 1 Eighteen months later, the leader of socialist Yugoslavia proudly opened the Games before a packed crowd.Yet, within a year, Tito would be dead and the state that he had done so much to establish would begin to unravel. The Mediterranean Games were the biggest sporting event that Yugoslavia had hosted until that point. Its facilities were the pinnacle of a long and fruitful relationship between the communist authorities and sporting infrastructure projects [ Figure 1]. Figure 1 here

show abstract

“…42 In this way, the stadium was in keeping with the broader objectives of planning in Belgrade, which sought only those solutions that were strictly necessary and which made the best use of resources. 43 Those resources were difficult to come by, with a shortage of building materials Agreements over parcels in private ownership, or in the possession of the state, were reached without too much difficulty. By contrast:…”

Section: The First Revolutionary Wavementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Between 1956 and 1964 the population of the Yugoslav capital rose dramatically, with an annual increase of 24,000 inhabitants. 62 Apart from the JNA, the capital's stadiums were incapable of quenching the thirst of the growing football public.…”

Section: Keeping Costs Down: the 1950s And 1960smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He had particularly high hopes for the historic Kalemegdan Fortress, the upper part of which perches on a steep cliff overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. While colossal buildings of Balkan-wide importance would be built on the upper fortressincluding the national assembly, a pantheon and a museum commemorating the partisan victorya grand sports stadium which could also host mass rallies was to be built into the cliff on the site of the lower fortifications 34. This enormously ambitious and highly symbolic project provides a sense of the importance afforded to physical culture in the immediate postwar years.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Laying the Foundations of Physical Culture: The Stadium Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia

Mills

¹

2017

The International Journal of the History of Sport

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

After liberation, the incipient socialist Yugoslavia engaged its citizens in an indefatigable process of reconstruction. An enormous wave of volunteers threw themselves into regenerating stricken cities and shattered infrastructure. A bastion of the revolution, physical culture was no exception: interwar venues were repaired and hundreds of new ones were built. These included flagship stadiums, as well as more modest undertakings: athletics grounds on Croatian islands, mountaineering hunts in Kosovo, and Bosnian bowling alleys among them. Major projects received public funding, but others relied on self-initiative, causing friction between the authorities and zealous locals. As the ‘stadium revolution’ evolved, professional companies worked on vast football grounds. At its zenith, expensive undertakings like Split’s Poljud [built for the 1979 Mediterranean Games] were highly prestigious for the communist authorities. These venues constitute a mixed socialist legacy, but many continue to serve the needs of successor states. Using archival documents and photographs, this essay explores a stadium revolution that unfolded in parallel with the revolution at large. It examines the dynamics that shaped Yugoslav sport and society. Yugoslavia’s experience, while unique, did not occur in a vacuum; the case provides a new perspective on the development of sporting infrastructure in revolutionary environments in general

show abstract

“…19 The market-oriented reforms of the mid-1960s in Socialist Yugoslavia are one of the more evident indicators of the individualising turn in socialist urban development after the Second World War. 20 In this article, I take a closer look at local decision-making processes behind the shifting private-social configurations in a peripheral medium-sized city in Socialist Yugoslavia.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Private and Social in Socialist Cities: The Individualizing Turn in Housing in a Medium-Sized City in Socialist Yugoslavia

Troch

¹

2019

Journal of Urban History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article contributes to research on reconfiguration of social and private in socialist cities. It presents the case study of Mitrovica, a smaller and peripheral city in Socialist Yugoslavia, to compensate for the focus on big capital cities and socialist new towns in the literature. The article explores local decision-making processes leading to the upgrading of informal private housing and the parallel downgrading of social-sector housing between the 1960s and 1980s. It demonstrates the open-ended nature of socialist urban development as the processual outcome of negotiations between local actors involved in urban planning and housing strategies of individual residents within the structural framework of central-level housing policies and under-urbanization. The article argues that the individualizing discourse of urban modernity was integral to post-Second World War socialist urban development.

show abstract

Designing Tito's Capital

Cited by 39 publications

References 0 publications

Laying the Foundations of Physical Culture: The Stadium Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia

Laying the Foundations of Physical Culture: The Stadium Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia

Laying the Foundations of Physical Culture: The Stadium Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia

Of Private and Social in Socialist Cities: The Individualizing Turn in Housing in a Medium-Sized City in Socialist Yugoslavia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About