Soviet in content - people’s in form: The building of Farming Cooperative Centres and the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute, 1948-1950

Abstract

It was not until 1948, when the Cominform conflict escalated, that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia began a thorough implementation of the Soviet model in Yugoslav agriculture - due to the Soviet criticism, the CPY made immediate legislative changes and started a class struggle in Yugoslav villages. Simultaneously, and just a few months before the Fifth Congress, Josip Broz Tito initiated a competition for building 4,000 Farming Cooperative Centres throughout Yugoslavia - they were built in accordance with the social-realist “national in form - socialist in content” slogan. Once the building started, in his Congress speech, Radovan Zogović, a leader of the Serbian Agitprop department, offered the first official proclamation of Socialist Realism in the post-war period by a political authority. This article analyses the process of planning, designing and building of the Farming Cooperative Centres; discusses their political, ideological and formal implications; and inquires into the specific role of architecture, joined with the theory of Socialist Realism, in building Yugoslav socialism.

Keywords

• the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute
• the Five-year plan
• Farming Cooperative Centres
• Socialist Realism
• national in form