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Framing Olympic Sarajevo as a Truly Yugoslav City

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A Cultural History of the 1984 Winter Olympics

Part of the book series: Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ((MOMEIDSEE))

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Abstract

The chapter deals with the nationality dimension of the 1984 Winter Olympics, exploring the linkage between the event and Sarajevo’s pronounced Yugoslavness. It looks closer into the processes of re-identifying of Yugoslav society through the invention of a common Yugo-Sarajevan Olympic tradition and the ways Yugoslavness was exhibited and performed at the Olympics. In the context of the economic crisis and the rising national rivalries in 1980s Yugoslavia Olympic Sarajevo appeared as an exception, due to the city being framed in front of global audience as a truly and completely Yugoslav city. Meanwhile, the infrastructural works and investments in the city postponed the otherwise omnipresent sense of economic crisis that was dismantling previously unquestioned common narrative of Yugoslav unity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This argument was central in the 1990s in among others works of Branka Magaš, The Destruction of Yugoslavia. Tracking the Break-up 1980–92 (London-New York: Verso, 1993), Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy. Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC, 1995) or John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History. Twice there was a country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), as well as more recently in Patrick Hyder Patterson’s analysis focusing on the rise of consumer culture and the Yugoslav consumerist dream as the central integrative factor in Yugoslav society (Patrick Hyder Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011)). Meanwhile, Jake Lowinger has explicated in his work how the austerity measures and the economic reforms sponsored by the IMF were linked to the popular upheaval and the rise of ethnonationalism in Yugoslavia (Jake Lowinger, Economic Reform and the “double movement” in Yugoslavia: An analysis of Labor unrest and ethno-nationalism in the 1980s (Charleston South Carolina, EEUU, ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, 2011)). The argument on the linkage between the economic crisis, mass unemployment and austerity measures to the rise of ethnonationalism in the mid- and late 1980s is also central in several of the articles in Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (eds. Rory Archer, Igor Duda & Paul Stubbs (Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2016)), as well as in hopefully soon to be translated from Croatian to English, Sven Cvek, Jasna Račić i Snježana Ivčić, Borovo u štrajku: rad u tranziciji 1987–1991. (BRID, Zagreb 2019).

  2. 2.

    Without giving it too much weight, this is the precise phrasing used by Stephan E. Sachs in Sarajevo: A Crossroads in History, 1994.

  3. 3.

    See ‘Table 1. Mean level analysis–agreement with the statement “The preservation and progress of all republics depends on the preservation and progress of Yugoslavia as whole”’ (Rudi Klanjšek & Sergej Flere, ‘Exit Yugoslavia: longing for mononational states or entrepreneurial manipulation?’ Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity Vol. 39: 5, 2011, 799).

  4. 4.

    Zoran Kurtović, ‘Cilj prije starta’, Oslobođenje Nedjelja 4.2.1984, 5.

  5. 5.

    ‘Strana sredstva informisanja o pripremama Sarajeva za ZOI: Ponos spaja razlike’, Oslobođenje 15.1.1984, 2.

  6. 6.

    Senad Avdić, ‘Jugosloven(c)i,’ Naši dani 736, 5.2.1982, 3.

  7. 7.

    Senad Avdić, ‘Jugosloven(c)i,’ Naši dani 736, 5.2.1982, 3.

  8. 8.

    M. Arapovich & Z.O. Milanović, ‘Novi prilozi za biografiju ZOI 84. Jurek, pa onda Burek!’, Naši dani 804, 18.2.1984. 8–9.

  9. 9.

    ‘Jure Franku prvo “plavo” srebro’, Sport 15.2.1984, 8–9.

  10. 10.

    Vladimir Dedić, ‘Popevke i kolo pred Skenderijom’, Politika 16.2.1984, 12.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    On this issue see Gregor Starc, ‘Skiing memories in the Slovenian national mnemonic scheme: An anthropological perspective’, Anthropological Notebooks, 12 (2) 2006, 5–22; and Vlado Kotnik, ‘Sport and nation in anthropological perspective: Slovenia as land of skiing nationhood’, Antropologija (7) 2009, 56–78.

  13. 13.

    Juso Prelo & Radmilo Milanović, ‘To ti kažem: Tone Vogrinc. Smučanje je slovenački plebiscit’, Naši dani 912, 27.3.1987, 8–9.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Aleksandar Trumić, ‘Majstori ostaju nepoznati,’ Oslobođenje —kulturni dodatak ‘KulturaUmjetnostNauka’ 22, 7.11.1981, 1–2.

  16. 16.

    As cited in M. Arapović, ‘Postolimpijske misli i … Lov biznisa,’ Naši dani 805, 24.2.1984, 10.

  17. 17.

    (Kemal Kurspahić, Alija Resulović, Boro Radosavljević, Tanjug et al.), ‘Olimpijski dnevnik. Ime na karti svijeta’, Oslobođenje 19.2.1980, 15.

  18. 18.

    Enver Demirović, ‘Svijet je vidio šta možemo’, Nedeljna Borba 25–26.2. 1984, 3.

  19. 19.

    Zoran Kurtović, ‘Cilj prije starta’, Oslobođenje Nedjelja 4.2.1984, 5.

  20. 20.

    Husein Hujić, ‘Proljeće marketinga (The Spring of Marketing)’, Olimpijski informator 11 (March 1982).

  21. 21.

    Enver Demirović, ‘Svijet je vidio šta možemo’, Nedeljna Borba 25–26.2. 1984, 3.

  22. 22.

    Smail Festić, ‘Dobra Ulaznica’, Nedeljna Borba 25–26.2. 1984, 3.

  23. 23.

    Enver Demirović, ‘Svijet je vidio šta možemo’, Nedeljna Borba 25–26.2. 1984, 3.

  24. 24.

    Veso Đorem, ‘Nađi mi babo strenžera!’, Naši dani 805, 24.2.1984, 11.

  25. 25.

    Zoran Simić, ‘Poletov bob dvosjed u Sarajevu’, Polet 251, 9.2.1984, 13.

  26. 26.

    ‘Gori vatra od Jahorine do Bjelašnice’, Sport 8.2.1984, 8.

  27. 27.

    Zagreb experienced growth of 8.6%, followed by the Macedonian capital of Skopje, which in the slightly longer period of 1981–1994 grew 7.9% (the 1991 census of population was not completed in Macedonia due to an Albanian boycott; hence the full census only took place three years later). Ljubljana, Novi Sad and Belgrade experienced growth of 5.9%, 5.8% and 5.7% respectively, while Slovenia’s second city and one of Yugoslavia’s major industrial centres, Maribor, grew less than 1%. (All figures computed on the basis of the last two Yugoslav censuses in 1981 and 1991.)

  28. 28.

    Milomir Marić, ‘Pred početak olimpijade. Sneško belić u bosanskom loncu’, Duga , 28.1.1984, 22–23.

  29. 29.

    Zoran Simić, ‘Poletov bob dvosjed u Sarajevu’, Polet 251, 9.2.1984, 13.

  30. 30.

    Z. Odić, ‘Jezik olimpijske zakletve’, Oslobođenje 26.1.1984, 11.

  31. 31.

    Computed on the basis of the censuses in 1971 and 1981.

  32. 32.

    On this topic see for instance Jovanovic (2014, 30 et seq.).

  33. 33.

    In fact, the geographical centre of Yugoslavia was commonly assumed to be in the village of Rakovica in Sarajevo’s vicinity (less than 20 km west of the city).

  34. 34.

    Zoran Mandžuka, ‘Oaza mira’, Borba 21.2.1984, 2.

  35. 35.

    V. Kočović, ‘Za svačiji merak,’ Sport , 2.2.1984, 10.

  36. 36.

    Radomir Vuković, ‘Simbol i znak. Otvoren za sve strane svijeta’, Oslobođenje —kulturni dodatak ‘KulturaUmjetnostNauka’ 50, 29.5.1982, 1.

  37. 37.

    Divna Pervan, ‘Jezik svih naroda’, Oslobođenje —kulturni dodatak ‘KulturaUmjetnostNauka’ 8.2.1984, 7.

  38. 38.

    Branka Miličević-Mašić, ‘Svijetla obraza svijetu (Olimpijada zajedništva)’, Oslobođenje Nedjelja 7.1.1984, 9.

  39. 39.

    On this issue see Dejan Djokić, ‘Introduction: Histories, Myths, Concepts,’ in Yugoslavism . History of a Failed Idea. Ed. Djokić, Dejan. (London: Hurst and Company, 2003).

  40. 40.

    Branka Miličević-Mašić, ‘Svijetla obraza svijetu (Olimpijada zajedništva)’, Oslobođenje Nedjelja 7.1.1984, 9.

  41. 41.

    G. Logar, ‘Sarajevski meni za “džet-set” društvo’, Borba 19.1.1984, 10.

  42. 42.

    E. Isaković, ‘I ručak uz muziku’, Oslobođenje 21.4.1982, 9. NB: Zagorje is a cultural region in northern Croatia, not far from the capital Zagreb.

  43. 43.

    The name Merlin alludes to Marilyn Monroe, as Merlin stands for the Serbo-Croatian transliteration of the actress’s name. This is expressed on the cover of Merlin’s debut album, which juxtaposed a picture of Marilyn Monroe and the first half of the title, It is Difficult with You, on the front and the picture of young female Partisan hero Marija Bursać and the second half of the title, but Even More So without You, on the back.

  44. 44.

    Hence, for instance, while elsewhere in Yugoslavia the fandom in especially football became more and more closely interconnected with nationalism in the late 1980s, in Sarajevo the members of ‘Horde Zla’ (The Evil Hordes), supporters of FC Sarajevo, still as late as in December 1990 proudly emphasised their Yugoslavness and their Yugoslav orientation (Neven Anđelić, ‘Iz drugog ugla: “Horde zla” - “Furamo se na jugoslovenstvo”’, Ven, December 1990).

  45. 45.

    Hajrudin Redžović, ‘Sarajevski Omladinski radio: pogled iz bliza. Mujo kuje mali megaherz’, Polet 413, 29.9.1989, 20.

  46. 46.

    For more on the movement see Steven L. Burg & Paul S. Shoup, ‘The Descent into War’ in The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic conflict and international intervention (M.E. Sharpe, London 2000), 62–127.

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  1. The Many Roads in Modernity, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Zlatko Jovanovic

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Jovanovic, Z. (2021). Framing Olympic Sarajevo as a Truly Yugoslav City. In: A Cultural History of the 1984 Winter Olympics. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76598-9_6

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