Filozofija i drustvo 2012 Volume 23, Issue 3, Pages: 313-332
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1203313B
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Socialism and culture: Do we remember it at all?
Bošković Dušan (Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, Beograd)
The immediate motive for organizing the Belgrade symposium “Socialism and
Culture” held in late 1969 were prohibitions. After June 1968 there were
about forty political interventions in Serbia (while there had been none in
the previous twenty years), considerably more than in other Yugoslav
republics. The conclusion that was reached was that cultural life was
provincialized and underdeveloped. The author in this paper extends the topic
to a more global level since the intentions of the dialogue allowed for that.
Data on Goli Otok, provided by Milovan Đilas, fit well with these facts. The
Otok was the most drastic and dramatic prohibition in the entire history of
the Second Yugoslavia. From both contemporary and presentday perspectives,
the symposium may be interpreted as a cry for freedom. In this conversation,
the members of the Belgrade wing of the Praxis group played a crucial role.
Some of these same people would later participate in the events infamously
marking the 1990s, above all the civil and religious wars. The Zagreb
“headquarters” of Praxis was, on the contrary, never affected by the
nationalist virus. Finally, arguments are proposed about Dobrica Ćosić as the
Serbian Faust, and the thesis of this writer being the Father of the Nation
is contested.
Keywords: society, culture, socialism, League of Communists of Yugoslavia, LCY Program, Praxis, dialog, prohibitions, Goli otok