Between class and nation: Working class communities in 1980s Serbia and Montenegro

Over 20 years since the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, a great volume of diverse scholarly works treat the Yugoslav state and its demise from various disciplinary and thematic perspectives. Of this rich body of literature however, few studies keep the role of the working class at the core of analysis. The paucity of studies engaging with the Yugoslav working class is all the more curious when we consider firstly that the working class represented a constitutionally enshrined source of legitimacy for Yugoslavia who wielded symbolic capital and increasing political power with the escalation in strikes of the 1980s; and secondly, that numerous scholars have claimed that Serbian and Montenegrin industrial workers were particularly receptive to nationalism as a political strategy, representing a key demographic of support for the politics of Slobodan Miloševic. The study of working class communities in the years of political and economic crises preceding Yugoslavias dissolution can be thus deemed to be a worthwhile endeavour for Southeast European historiography by informing upon an under-researched theme (organised labour and social class) but also generating new insights on interactions between social class and ethno-nationalism more generally. Two research questions structure the project. How was the gap between official Yugoslav self- management ideology and social reality mediated by the working class during the 1980s? How did national(ist) and social demands intersect inside working class milieus? To answer these questions the project relies on four case studies of working class communities in late 1980s Serbia and Montenegro. Perspectives and methods from history and social sciences are operationalised to offer productive frames to explore the social and political dimensions of late socialist Yugoslavia and the states demise. The varied case studies include an industrial suburb of Belgrade, two provincial Serbian towns and an industrial centre in Montenegro. A focus is made on three interconnected levels of analysis: the home; the workplace; and interventions in public space, from which empirical date is generated. Through a micro-level focus the project seeks insight into macro processes of social and political change in 1980s Yugoslavia. The project is attentive to the ways in which ordinary people industrial workers and their families negotiated, subverted, shaped (and were themselves shaped by) broader policies and processes in everyday practice. Through focusing on linkages between micro and macro levels, between the particular working class communities and the broader political and socio- economic structures of power, the project seeks to advance the state-of-the-art with regard to organised labour and everyday life in late Yugoslav socialism.

Over a quarter of a century since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a great volume of scholarly works treat the state and its demise from various disciplinary and thematic perspectives. Until rather recently however, few studies have paid attention to the role of the working class. This is in spite of claims made by scholars that workers were a key demographic supporting the political rise of Slobodan Miloševic and helped bring Serbian nationalism into the mainstream. The main goal of the project has thus been to account for the ways that workers navigated the tumultuous 1980s in Serbia and Montenegro, in particular the crisis of socialist modernity and the rise of nationalism. Between class and nation has been structured by two questions. The first explores how the gap between official Yugoslav self-management ideology and social reality was mediated by the working class during the 1980s. The second, investigates how national(ist) and social demands intersected inside working class communities. To address these questions empirically, the project has relied on four case studies of working class communities in Serbia and Montenegro. Perspectives and methods from history and social sciences were used to offer productive frames to explore the social and political dimensions of late socialist Yugoslavia immediately prior to the states demise. The selected case studies included an industrial suburb of Belgrade, two provincial Serbian towns and an industrial centre in Montenegro. In each case the project explored three levels of analysis: the home; the workplace; and interventions in public space. Through a micro-level focus the project gained qualitative insight into macro-level processes of social and political change in 1980s Yugoslavia. The case studies demonstrate that the abstract notion of unity whether of different national groups or the working class was a constant theme among Yugoslav communists. However by the late 1980s, the new Serbian leadership exploited discursive compatibilities between nationalism and socialism by placing Serbia in the role of the exploited victim of bureaucratic machinations. The Serbian nation as a whole was assigned with attributes once reserved for the proletariat. The working class were not simply converted to Serbian nationalists overnight by a charismatic leader rather, their symbolic capital was used to legitimise that leader. Both in Serbia as in other Yugoslav republics, it became increasingly difficult to criticize Milosevic without discrediting the working class more broadly. The ultimate triumph of the nationalist elites in Serbia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia is shown to have been contingent and dependent on the integration a number of local grievances, the inherited socialist language of class antagonism and anti-elitist sentiments.