For those of you not in the know, which is probably most of you other than my children, Why Come to Slaka? is a book by Malcolm Bradbury. Learned heads have suggested that it was a pastiche of Communist Romania or Bulgaria. Personally, I always felt it was more like Yugoslavia, as it lacks Romania's cult of Ceaușescu and Bulgaria's brutal secret police, which were defining characteristics for the people living in those countries.
Anyway, as a result of reading that, "Slakan" has become the code-word Alison and I have for some of the more external elements of European Communism – covering Socialist Realist art, Brutalist architecture, excessive and overblown industrialisation, crazy and inefficient economic techniques, appalling living accommodation and poor living standards. Anything that defines the East under Communism relative to the West. One of the reasons for spending so much time in the Balkans is to get to see as much of Slaka as possible.
So we went to the Belgrade modern art museum. I don't generally like art museums of the twentieth century that much, but I am an absolute sucker for Slakan art. I went happily, expecting pictures of happy workers, resolute farmers and staunch women in simple Socialist Realist forms. It turns out that the artists of Yugoslavia were basically completely in line with Western Europe and there wasn't any sign of the stodgy Communist art I had expected.
Some of it astounded me. Pieces that would have sent an artist to the Gulag within minutes if produced in any other country in the Eastern Bloc.
It seems that Tito's very early falling out with Stalin meant that Yugoslavia never experienced anything remotely resembling Stalinist methods. Tito was still a dictator, and the economic system wasn't Capitalist, but the Yogoslavs didn't suffer anything like the same repression as the Soviet bloc. Art was not constrained to ideological straitjackets, religions were allowed to operate and there was freedom of movement.
However, all was not lost on the hunt for things Slakan. It turns out that our last day in Belgrade was Tito's birthday, 25 May. It seems it was his "birthday" in the same way the Queen luckily has a birthday on Queen's Birthday. Anyway, it is the day they celebrate him. So we trucked along to his tomb – fortunately he wasn't embalmed in the Lenin manner, but instead has a sarcophagus in one of his former residences.
Some people obviously miss the old man, and were there in their red caps and scarves, to pay their respects. Not that many, and almost all quite old, but certainly in the hundreds. We avoided paying our respects at the sarcophagus itself, and tried to keep our amusement quiet in the circumstances, but it was definitely a good day to visit the museum.
(For the record, although Tito certainly still has his fans, we saw no other sign that Belgrade and Serbia had ever been Communist. Some of the statues and monuments from that era remain, but all hint at their meaning has been removed from view. There's a statue downtown to Gavrilo Princip, the fool that shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started WWI, but we saw not a single one to any political figure from 1945 to 1990.)
However, while Yugoslavia was spared the worst horrors of political Communism, it most certainly was not spared the architecture. Huge concrete tower blocks, most often in groups of three, dotted the skylines of Belgrade. The new suburb of Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) is a delight in that regard – for a certain meaning of delight.
Whole blocks, with imaginative names like Block 42, Block 43A and Akademika, are built entirely in a single style of concrete apartment building. Most not aging particularly well, it has to be said.
To be fair, some of the public buildings from this era are remarkably successful, despite their Brutalist concrete techniques. The Modern Art Museum building is fantastic, and the Military Hospital is quite striking. Some of the others would be fine if they were maintained better.
We made a bit of a pilgrimage to the most famous of all the buildings from that era, the Eastern Gate. It's hard to judge really whether it is successful or not, being very much of its time, but it sure is quintessentially Slakan.
So, Belgrade was fun for us fans of Brutalist architecture.
I might get round to describing the modern city that the rest of you might visit. But probably not.
Anyway, as a result of reading that, "Slakan" has become the code-word Alison and I have for some of the more external elements of European Communism – covering Socialist Realist art, Brutalist architecture, excessive and overblown industrialisation, crazy and inefficient economic techniques, appalling living accommodation and poor living standards. Anything that defines the East under Communism relative to the West. One of the reasons for spending so much time in the Balkans is to get to see as much of Slaka as possible.
So we went to the Belgrade modern art museum. I don't generally like art museums of the twentieth century that much, but I am an absolute sucker for Slakan art. I went happily, expecting pictures of happy workers, resolute farmers and staunch women in simple Socialist Realist forms. It turns out that the artists of Yugoslavia were basically completely in line with Western Europe and there wasn't any sign of the stodgy Communist art I had expected.
Some of it astounded me. Pieces that would have sent an artist to the Gulag within minutes if produced in any other country in the Eastern Bloc.
Comrade Tito, White Violet, Our Youth Loves You
It seems that Tito's very early falling out with Stalin meant that Yugoslavia never experienced anything remotely resembling Stalinist methods. Tito was still a dictator, and the economic system wasn't Capitalist, but the Yogoslavs didn't suffer anything like the same repression as the Soviet bloc. Art was not constrained to ideological straitjackets, religions were allowed to operate and there was freedom of movement.
However, all was not lost on the hunt for things Slakan. It turns out that our last day in Belgrade was Tito's birthday, 25 May. It seems it was his "birthday" in the same way the Queen luckily has a birthday on Queen's Birthday. Anyway, it is the day they celebrate him. So we trucked along to his tomb – fortunately he wasn't embalmed in the Lenin manner, but instead has a sarcophagus in one of his former residences.
Some people obviously miss the old man, and were there in their red caps and scarves, to pay their respects. Not that many, and almost all quite old, but certainly in the hundreds. We avoided paying our respects at the sarcophagus itself, and tried to keep our amusement quiet in the circumstances, but it was definitely a good day to visit the museum.
Tito fans. Not young.
(For the record, although Tito certainly still has his fans, we saw no other sign that Belgrade and Serbia had ever been Communist. Some of the statues and monuments from that era remain, but all hint at their meaning has been removed from view. There's a statue downtown to Gavrilo Princip, the fool that shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started WWI, but we saw not a single one to any political figure from 1945 to 1990.)
However, while Yugoslavia was spared the worst horrors of political Communism, it most certainly was not spared the architecture. Huge concrete tower blocks, most often in groups of three, dotted the skylines of Belgrade. The new suburb of Novi Beograd (New Belgrade) is a delight in that regard – for a certain meaning of delight.
Whole blocks, with imaginative names like Block 42, Block 43A and Akademika, are built entirely in a single style of concrete apartment building. Most not aging particularly well, it has to be said.
Block 33A. There seemed like half a kilometre of this style building, over several blocks.
To be fair, some of the public buildings from this era are remarkably successful, despite their Brutalist concrete techniques. The Modern Art Museum building is fantastic, and the Military Hospital is quite striking. Some of the others would be fine if they were maintained better.
We made a bit of a pilgrimage to the most famous of all the buildings from that era, the Eastern Gate. It's hard to judge really whether it is successful or not, being very much of its time, but it sure is quintessentially Slakan.
The Eastern Gate. The left half is residential, the right half is business (currently largely empty)
So, Belgrade was fun for us fans of Brutalist architecture.
I might get round to describing the modern city that the rest of you might visit. But probably not.
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