Realist Socialism

Two books and a catalogue published this year shed light from various perspectives on urban society in what was once Yugoslavia and on developments in the former capital city of Belgrade, while an exhibition on the same theme is on view in Maribor. The modernist project was first a construction site, then a ruin. Now that the socialist state has self-destructed, taking with it a society widely involved in the Yugoslavian project, and NATO bombs have finished off the rest, the old agenda can no longer function.
The research group led by Maroje Mrduljaš and Vladimir Kulić survey in a broad panorama the unfinished project of modernization in Yugoslavia, while Milica Topalović’s Studio Basel undertakes the complementary task of investigating the current viability of the in/formal uses of the ruins leftover from that project. »Unfinished Modernisation« asks at least implicitly, based on the archives, how modernist remains are being developed today for further use, uncovering a socialist vein behind current efforts. »Belgrade. Formal Informal« for its part takes a sober look back over archived pre-history. Both projects are enormously rich in materials, images and plans, using them to present activatable archives and activated history.

The project of modernization
Debuting in Maribor’s year as European Capital of Culture, the exhibition »Unfinished Modernisation – Between Utopia and Pragmatism« spans the period from the Communist founding of Yugoslavia in 1945 to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic in 1991. Now, 21 years later, the first attempt is made to review 46 years of the modernization of urban society based on buildings and urban planning and to activate the specific pragmatism (non-alignment, self-administration, the Third Way) of the Yugoslav model within today’s largely utopia-free European framework.
Under the direction of the Zagreb architecture theorist Maroje Mrduljaš and the architectural historian Vladimir Kulić, a professor at Florida Atlantic University, a research network was put together over a period of two years, made up of young urbanists and architects who were socialized during the upheavals of fragmented statehood. One senses the urgency behind the clever and material-rich exhibition that meanders through all the rooms of the Umetnostna Galerija for Contemporary Art.

Land of the permanent revolution
Yugoslavia’s partisans gained victory over fascism all on their own. The alliance with Stalinism came to an abrupt end in 1948. In the interim period, however, ownership structures had already been converted, the national boundaries plowed under and society in the fascist-occupied realm attuned to Communism. By allowing self-administration of factories, society and cities, the federal state sought a »Third Way« between government by the Central Committee and capitalist liberalization.
In 1961, the year the Berlin Wall cemented the barrier between East and West, Yugoslavia opened itself up to the Global South. Tito, the roving head of state, sought to maintain a balanced distance from the two blocs of the First and Second Worlds, while turning toward the Third World by establishing the Non-Aligned Movement. The political, military and economic partners in this melting pot – for the most part decolonized state and liberation movements such as the PLO, FLN and ANC – wielded considerable joint power for at least a decade.
The country itself was economically and culturally divided from north to south. What was formerly a predominantly rural landscape was rapidly transformed into an industrially fueled welfare state, thus becoming an exemplary »developing country« in its own right.¹ Yugoslav modernism did not divorce aesthetics from ethics like so many other modernist movements whose styles spread far and wide in the postwar period. While the country’s architecture schools all subscribed to the modernism that was making its way around the globe, they also looked to local, or what were increasingly defined as »national,« features for inspiration.
Belgrade was situated at the edge of marshlands that had long formed a buffer between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. In 1947, 200,000 members of the youth brigades reclaimed the swamplands for Novi Beograd.² When the Moscow-loyal course and decentralization were replaced by a move toward self-government, the plan for one central government seat became obsolete. New Belgrade became a »socialist bedroom community,« because Yugoslavia’s metamorphosis from a peasant society to an industrial and bureaucratic proletariat made creating housing a permanent task. Building was a national project both constituting and prolonging state power.
In the 1960s and 70s, some 80,000 residential units were built for a quarter of a million people – a major achievement, at least by European standards. Housing was made available especially to the socialist middle class, but also to the Roma ethnic group. In every apartment building, housing councils applied the idea of self-administration to everyday life. »Neighborhood units« in turn represented each building on the block level. Belgrade was to be self-governed, from house to overall city.
Yugoslavia’s construction sector rapidly developed into a powerful and competent industry. The openness of a non-aligned modernism lent itself to export as a training field for the globalization of Yugoslavia. Regular congresses and popular building exhibitions anchored the profession and presence of modernization.
The Belgrade architect Dubravka Sekulić has examined Yugoslavia’s non-aligned trade relations based on the example of the corporate giant Energoprom, which managed projects in over 80 countries. In the 1980s, the sun never set on Energoprom’s realm. The company was responsible for building the Lagos trade fair, a congress center in Harare, and dams and power plants worldwide. In the wake of Tito’s tireless »travel for peace and friendship,« major Yugoslav companies also brought hard currency into the country. Already operating globally, the businesses learned locally, on a long leash, how to »muddle through,« which has stood them in good stead today both in the informalized home markets as well as in the Global South.
The Yugoslav project was embedded in a multitude of international relations and collaborations.³ The architect Vjenceslav Richter played a role in shaping Yugoslavia’s image in the outside world with buildings for the Brussels World Exposition in 1958 and the Triennale in Milan in 1963. In the latter year, a devastating earthquake in Skopje prompted worldwide relief efforts, including architectural gifts from various countries, as well as a UN-driven reconstruction plan. UN studies on how to promote sustainable coastal tourism called in experts from both East and West. Vacation-makers from both blocs met up on the sunny Adriatic coast. Modernism was rehearsed in the elaborately decorated resort complexes of the »Yugoslav Arcadia,« which were furnished with contemporary artifacts.⁴

Exhibiting
In the exhibition co-curated by Simona Vidmar, information is conveyed mainly by means of models, placards, films and photographs. One intriguing find on view in the show is a promotional clip for the Hotel Libertas in Dubrovnik, whose comprehensive 24-hour luxury offerings were pitched to Western guests by the charming movie actor Relja Bašić. Juxtaposed with the video, the current state of Socialist Modernism is shown by Austrian photographer Wolfgang Thaler, unfortunately only with small-format images. New works can also be found interspersed throughout the show, such as Nika Grahar’s video essay »V+II Points on Architecture and Ideology,« featuring the US/British architectural theorist Kenneth Frampton and the Slovenian philosopher Rado Riha. The achievements of modernist construction are read in parallel with social progress.
The »media activism« Ivan Čižmek pursued in his private time is investigated by Marko Sančanin. The busy Zagreb architect for example regularly gave self-critical interviews in local newspapers and recorded his building activities in Zagreb-Dugave with collage-like diaries in which he basically corrected the official news with accounts of the actual reality, in order to breathe freer.
The sober present day is only marginally the focus of the project on unfinished modernization. Taking its cue from societal self-administration, the activist Pulska Group takes a stand against the exclusively private use of former military coastal zones in the south Istrian city of Pula and proclaims its »right to be a city.« The contribution by the Stealth Group pursues the idea of seizing that right in a different form. It asks whether »Kaluderica is the peak or the nadir of the philosophy and practice of proclaimed self-administration.« After all, the 30,000 buildings of the »largest wild area of development in the Balkans,« situated on the outskirts of Belgrade, are not so easy to ignore »in the shadow of modernization.«
This is also the issue addressed by the research project »Belgrade. Formal Informal« by Studio Basel, based at the Swiss Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Their publication, full of copper-hued photo spreads and enriched with archival material, gives us a glimpse of what Belgrade is like today. Due to the wartime embargo, whole sectors of production, commerce and the public realm are missing. Collective urban society and the State have lost control of the building stock at breakneck speed. At the same time, innumerable stakeholders are involved individually and informally in the production of the city. »Instability of the formal/ stability of the informal« is the paradoxical working formula. One can observe on the one hand the »flagging [...] momentum [...] of the project of the modern city« and simultaneously the »almost ›biological [...],‹ rampant [...] growth of an informal city.« The »master plan of reality« is painful for urban-planning-minded architects to witness.

Turbo architecture
Over 60 percent of Serbian residential buildings standing today were built informally, a stark contrast considering that in 1960 »zero tolerance« still prevailed. The boom in single-family homes carpeting the landscape has risen ten-fold since 1990.⁵ At the height of the economic crisis of the 1990s, 10,000 homes were self-built each year, a number matched only during the building wave of the 1960s and 70s. Rural and war-motivated flight to Belgrade as well as capital flight into real estate, or better said bricks, are the engines of development. One in eight residents of the city with its population of 1.75 million lives today in a »wild,« or unplanned, home; after the UN imposed a trade embargo in 1992, half of Belgrade’s residents evidently built illegally, operated informal public transport, traded in fuel and transformed the streets into rows of shops.
In contrast to the states in the decaying East that are now part of »EUrope,« the country is not being overrun by international investors or structural adjustment programs; domestic colonization is taking place instead like in an anthill, from the inside out. The «turbo architecture« of the masses and the stucco villas of the »wild rich« stand in sharp contrast to the concrete blocks of the white-and-gray modernism of the welfare state. But one can also read this process, as Topalović does, as »informal social policy,« comparable with the gecekondu homes in Istanbul, the legalization and extension of which yielded profits without a dedicated welfare state first having to be established: »Belgrade’s wild rich live next door to peasants and the poor in a relaxed community – informal urbanism realized as a social project.«⁶
»The Wild Rich« is likewise how Marcel Meili Padina describes the southeastern part of Belgrade, where wealth, taste and security needs are openly put on display. This is the kind of solidity otherwise exhibited by the informal sector only in the Global South. Instead of a slum, what is emerging here is an operetta ghetto of the elites.⁷ Only the temporary settlements of Roma who have immigrated here to escape war and crisis zones can be described as precarious. The informal sector serves as a »shock absorber« in times of crisis. »Belgrade has thus become the missing link between the developed informal sector of the ›south‹ and the advanced liberalization in the cities of the ›north‹.«

Para-sites
Informality fills gaps in supply where the social net of the socialist city burst, and at the same time tears holes in the net of the social city. Shortcomings only become evident on second glance: the houses are unfinished and sidewalks, road markings and parking spaces are missing. Infrastructure has only rarely been rebuilt; people prefer to rely on what is already there.
The program of self-administration no longer holds the shattered society together; public administration and civic-mindedness now look into a void. »Investor-driven urban planning« (Topalović) takes advantage of the capitulation of the bureaucracy, which no longer controls, but merely observes. In the 1990s there was a push toward general profit maximization, while now efforts are being made to bring »order to the chaos« that resulted. The public administration is working primarily on trying to map the actual state of affairs with «ex-post-facto construction licenses. «
Like parasites, the new developments latched onto the infrastructure of the modern city – schools, shopping, recreational offerings. It’s no longer the architects who are the inventive ones, but rather the huge flock of tricksters trying to outwit and overpower the public administration. Since 1992, the majority of tenants have been able to purchase their apartments as part of a move toward neo-liberal privatization, resulting in the relative stability of the housing developments. Now, however only the most assertive residents are able to ensure that the buildings and their surroundings continue to be properly maintained.

The city as arable land
The house number »72p« on a wild-looking sign testifies to the informal parceling up of arable land and the autonomous assigning of addresses. The »city’s building stock is traded like a landscape [...] like a field whose use and development are subject to the prevailing technical and economic conditions of the existing stock,« says Roger Diener, referring to the sea of red gabled roofs, the concrete skeletons robbed of their bricks and plaster, the added stories and repurposed buildings, the kiosks, replacement structures and extensions, the postmodern/neoclassical product range from the home improvement store. Some of the larger housing developments look like they are drifting, anchorless, across the marshland. The spaces of modernity are simply being filled. Roofs, green spaces, even the water, are now being indiscriminately developed.
»A revolution that does not bring forth any new space has not yet fully exhausted its potential; it has failed to change life itself,« wrote Henri Lefebvre. The French urbanist was called in shortly before his death to launch a revision of the socialist New Belgrade, as the artist duo Sabine Bitter and Weber recently documented. But this project, too, remained unfinished. Most of the built results are still in use today, and a demolition of large housing estates in Belgrade, even if dubbed »dismantling,« is unthinkable. »Unfinished modernization« harbors within it the potential of a self-administered carrying on as before, just as socialism as project is meant to lead to Communism as goal. One hope for the future lies precisely in this pragmatic approach that might be called realist socialism.

Unfinished Modernisation – Between Utopia and Pragmatism, Umetnostna galerija Maribor, 10 February to 22 April 2012.
Simona Vidmar/Maroje Mrduljaš/Vladimir Kulić (eds.), Unfinished Modernisation – Between Utopia and Pragmatism. Umetnostna galerija, Maribor 2012.
Maroje Mrduljaš/Vladimir Kulić (eds.), Modernism In-Between – The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia. Photos: Wolfgang Thaler. Berlin 2012.
ETH Studio Basel/Institut Stadt der Gegenwart (eds.), Belgrade. Formal Informal – Eine Studie über Städtebau und urbane Transformation. Zurich 2012.
Sabine Bitter/Jeff Derksen/Helmut Weber (eds.), Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade. Berlin 2009.