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Adriana Zaharijević1
Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Univerzitet u Beogradu
Beograd
Originalni naučni rad
UDK 141.72(497.11)(091)
Received: 19.10.2014.
DOI: 10.2298/SOC1501072Z
FUSNOTA U GLOBALNOJ ISTORIJI:
KAKO SE MOŽE ČITATI ISTORIJA
JUGOSLOVENSKOG FEMINIZMA?
Footnote in a Global History:
On Histories of Feminisms
APSTRAKT Tekst nastoji da pruži alternativno čitanje istorije jugoslovenskog
feminizma, usredsređujući se na godine njegovog razvoja u socijalizmu i na period
koji je usledio neposredno po raspadu zajedničke države. Kakve je putanje imao
feminizam koji je ponikao u socijalističkoj državi? I kako se razvijao kada su i
socijalizam i država prestali da postoje? Pojmovni okvir unutar kojeg se izvodi
ovo čitanje oslanja se na koncept režima državljanstva, koji treba da ponudi
složeniju sliku od onih koje se uobičajno koriste u preispitivanju postjugoslovenskog
feminizma. U tekstu se utoliko pokazuje da je okvir koji počiva na poređenju
feminizma i nacionalizma nedostatan, ali se takođe kritičkim čitanjem uticajnog
teksta Nensi Frejzer „Feminizam, kapitalizam i lukavstvo istorije“ pokazuje da je
u lokalnom kontekstu neophodno iskoračiti izvan okvira koji počiva na poređenju
razvoja feminizma i kapitalizma. Tekst utoliko poziva na pažljivo čitanje paradoksa
lokalne istorije feminizma.
KLJUČNE REČI feminizam, Jugoslavija, režim državljanstva, socijalizam, rat
ABSTRACT The paper attempts to offer an alternative reading of the history
of Yugoslav feminism. It focuses on birth and development of feminism during
socialism, and its aftermath in times of war and disintegration of the common
state. What were the trajectories of feminism that emerged in a socialist state?
What were its chosen paths when both socialism and the state ceased to exist? The
conceptual framework the paper uses draws upon the notion of citizenship regime,
which offers a more intricate picture then those customarily used in elaborations of
(post-)Yugoslav feminism – either those that compare feminism and nationalism,
or those that rely on the wider comparison of feminism and capitalism. In the light
of the latter remark, Nancy Fraser’s article ‘Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning
of History’ proved to be valuable for the argument on the complexities of (post-)
Yugoslav feminism. Thus, the paper calls for a meticulous reading of the paradoxes
of the local history of feminism.
KEY WORDS feminism, Yugoslavia, citizenship regime, socialism, war
1
adriana.zaharijevic@gmail.com
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Konteksti feminizma2
U tekstu „Feminizam, kapitalizam i lukavstvo istorije“ koji je imao izrazito
dobar prijem u postjugoslovenskim levim feminističkim krugovima, postoji
naizgled nevažna fusnota koja čitaoce obaveštava o jednom propustu. „Ja ću“,
kaže Nensi Frejzer (Nancy Fraser), „slediti konvencionalniji pristup, te ću iz
prvog dela svog izlaganja isključiti ovaj region [komunistički blok], delom zbog
toga što se tek posle 1989. godine javlja drugi talas feminizma kao politička sila
u bivšim komunističkim zemljama“ (Fraser, 2011: 3, ft. 3). Ali, da li je zbilja
bilo tako? Očiglednu potvrdu da je feminizma bilo u socijalizmu i pre njegovog
raspada, nudi konferencija Drug-ca žena: Žensko pitanje – novi pristup? održana
u Beogradu 1978. godine, prva takve vrste ne samo u Jugoslaviji nego i u čitavoj
Istočnoj Evropi. Ako Nensi Frejzer hoće da sagleda drugi talas feminizma kao
„epohalnu društvenu pojavu u njenoj celini“ (isto: 1), kako da razumemo ovaj
propust? Verujem da je na to pitanje neophodno pružiti nekakav odgovor, i
to ne u polemičke svrhe, niti zbog pukog dijagnostifikovanja omaški u inače
značajnim teorijskim doprinosima. Odgovor na to pitanje trebalo bi da osvetli
značenje fraze „politička sila“ i nužnost kontekstualizacije javljanja nečega što
potencijalno ima političku moć.
Frejzer svoju istorijsko-kritičku analizu temelji na tri tačke: prva tretira
feminizam sedamdesetih godina XX veka kao „radikalni izazov preovlađujućem
androcentrizmu državno regulisanih kapitalističkih društava“ nastalim posle
Drugog svetskog rata (isto). Druga se tačka poklapa s devedesetim godinama
u kojima feminizam, prema njoj, nelagodno srasta s postfordističkim,
internacionalnim, neoliberalnim kapitalizmom. Treća i poslednja faza najavljuje
se u vreme kada je tekst pisan, u začetku svetske ekonomske krize, koja bi, tvdi
Frejzer, trebalo da pokrene neki novi oblik feminizma, takav da poniče upravo iz
privredne krize i političke nestabilnosti. Kako iz rečenog proizlazi, Nensi Frejzer
za središnju tačku svoje analize uzima odnos feminizma i kapitalizma.
Tretirajući, protivno struji, drugi talas feminizma koji je nastao u
Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama kao jednoobličan, singularan fenomen koji
traje i danas (zanemarujući na taj način potonje „talase“), kao pokret koji, dakle,
nije intrinsično pluralan već samo na različite načine prilagođen okolnostima
i zahtevima globalnog kapitalizma, Frejzer odmiče od uobičajenih klasifikacija
metapolitičkih okvira feminizma (Jaggar, 1972). Zanemarujući druge moguće
kontekste, ovim se drugi talas američkog feminizma takoreći identifikuje s
feminizmom kao takvim. Poistovećivanje globalnog i američkog feminizma,
koji se često nekritički prisvaja i aplicira na okolnosti u koje se ponekad smešta
prilično nahereno (Ghodsee, 2010), posebno je problematično u kontekstima
u kojima se osnovni okvir poređenja koji Frejzer bira ne može nedvosmisleno
2
Ovaj tekst je nastao na temelju istraživanja sprovedenog u okviru projekta „The
Europeanisation of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia“ (CITSEE)
Univerziteta u Edinburgu (European Research Council, grant no. 230239). On se utoliko
oslanja na određene materijale sakupljene u radnom članku (working paper) (Zaharijević
2013). Na izvanredno pronicljivim kritičkim komentarima na prvu verziju ovog teksta,
zahvaljujem se Marjanu Ivkoviću.
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SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LVII (2015), N° 1
primeniti. Feminizam se u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama uistinu može
propitivati na razne načine: ili, kako predlaže Frejzer, u duhu promena kulturne
klime, promena u radu institucija, kao i u odnosu na promene koje su se odigrale
u načinu funkcionisanja kapitalizma. Ključno je pitanje da li je to jedini pogled
na istoriju feminizma drugog talasa. Da li je previd koji se ističe naznačenom
fusnotom, previd koji pored ostalog pristaje samo na jedan, univerzalan i
jedini važeći model feminizma, nešto što bi moglo da otvori i drugačije putanje
feminizma u nekim drugim delovima sveta? Konačno, može li drugačije
tumačenje istorije drugog talasa da opravda odbacivanje nekritičkog prisvajanja
analize kakvu je ponudila Frejzer u svom vrlo uticajnom tekstu?
Ostavljajući po strani različita mesta koja mogu podleći problematizaciji, od
kojih je na mnoga, ispravno ili ne, već ukazala Nanet Fank (Nanette Funk, 2013),
u ovom tekstu ću pratiti samo ovaj naizgled nenametljivi propust koji je Frejzer
načinila. Razmatraću feminizam u onom delu sveta u kojem ga je bilo, premda
ga „konvencionalni pristup“ ne prepoznaje. Iako svakako ostaje upitno tvrditi
da je feminizam posle 1989. godine postao politička sila, u postkomunističkim
zemljama ili na nekom drugom delu planete, mene će u ovom tekstu zanimati
konteksti u kojima nešto uopšte može biti prepoznato kao politički relevantan
fenomen, a samim tim i konteksti u kojima se razvija njegova politička silovitost.
Kakav bi, dakle, bio feminizam koji nije ponikao iz konteksta državnog
kapitalizma i vestfalskog okvira države blagostanja, konteksta od kojeg polazi
Frejzer i koji se uglavnom podrazumeva kada se govori o feminizmu uopšte
uzev? Kakve je putanje imao feminizam koji je ponikao u jednoj socijalističkoj
državi? I kako se razvijao kada su i socijalizam i država prestali da postoje? Da bi
se napisala kratka istorija feminizma na prostoru koji je nekada bio Jugoslavija,
čak i ukoliko se zadrži trodelna struktura kakvu je uvela Frejzer, neophodno
je iskoračiti izvan paralelnog razvoja feminizma i kapitalizma. Za razliku od
drugih realsocijalističkih zemalja u kojima se feminizam zbilja pojavljuje kao
učinak pada socijalizma (Funk i Mueller, 1993; Ghodsee, 2010), u Jugoslaviji
oni imaju donekle paralelan razvoj. Uprkos tome, teško se može tvrditi da je
„relativni uspeh pokreta u promeni kulture izravno srazmeran njegovom
relativnom neuspehu u promeni institucija“ (Fraser, 2011: 2). Stoga se čini da
je za analizu (post)jugoslovenskog feminizma potreban temeljno drugačiji okvir
od onog koji se često misli kao globalni okvir. Taj okvir mora biti specifičniji
i od onog koji uzima u obzir razlike takozvanog postsocijalističkog dela sveta,
budući da okolnosti rata na ovim prostorima otežavaju jednostrana poređenja.
Namera mi je, dakle, da ponudim višeslojnu analizu koja feminizam ne ukršta
samo s kapitalizmom, niti pak njegove početke smešta u devedesete godine
kada su zemlje socijalističkog bloka već prestale da postoje, niti feminizam
posmatra isključivo u kontekstu nacije/nacionalizma, što je okvir koji je do sada
preovlađivao u analizi postjugoslovenskog prostora.
Predlažem da se za okvir analize uzme paradigma režima državljanstva
(citizenship regime), koja je široko postavljena i obuhvatnija od navedenih. Pojam
režima državljanstva obuhvata četiri dimenzije: odgovornost države prema vlastitim
građanima, stečena prava i obaveze građana, različite oblike upravljanja, i pitanja
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koja se mogu grupisati pod široko određenu sferu doživljaja pripadnosti (Šo i
Štiks, 2012: 16). U tekstu „Laboratorija državljanstva: Koncepcije državljanstva u
Jugoslaviji i postjugoslovenskim državama“, Igor Štiks pokazuje kako je državljanstvo
na ovim prostorima poslužilo kao oruđe za uspostavljanje i kidanje veza između
pravnog statusa i političkog pripadanja (Štiks, 2012). Uvede li se u ovu jednačinu i
rod, može se pokazati da se neujednačena istorija (post)jugoslovenskog feminizma
možda najbolje da razumeti ukoliko se postavi u ovaj okvir.
Jugoslavija, pre 1989. godine
Prvi deo teksta razmatra feminizam u socijalističkom režimu državljanstva.
Od četiri navedene dimenzije režima državljanstva u ovom kontekstu
najznačajnija je ona koja se odnosi na prava i obaveze građana i građanki, i ona
koju Džo Šo (Jo Shaw) i Igor Štiks određuju kao aranžman upravljanja, koji je u
ovom razdoblju bio socijalistički. Socijalistička revolucija je institucionalizovala
jednakost: ona je omogućila ženama pristup redefinisanoj javnoj areni uz
ustavno obećanje potpune emancipacije. Prvi posleratni ustav jemčio je pravo
glasa svim građanima „bez razlike pola“ (Ustav, 1946: čl. 23). Žene su, u skladu s
tim, proglašene jednakima u svim domenima državnog, privrednog i društvenopolitičkog života, dok je njihov položaj u procesu proizvodnje bio posebno
zaštićen (čl. 24). Na tragu vlastitih ideoloških uverenja, među partizanima je već
tokom rata prihvaćena puna jednakost muškaraca i žena (Pantelić, 2011: 37).
Stoga, kada je, kako se izlaže u programu NOB-a, jednakost dostignuta, osnovni
zadatak svakoga ko se zalagao za ideale Narodnooslobodilačke borbe morao je
biti dalje konsolidovanje te jednakosti i ostvarenje punog učešća žena u svim
oblastima političkog i društvenog života (Ramet, 1999: 95). Tome je posebno
trebalo da doprinese udaljavanje od staljinističkog modela socijalizma i uvođenje
specifično jugoslovenskog samoupravnog sistema.
No, uz značajne promene koje su se potonjih decenija odigrale u sferi
ekonomije, spoljne politike i unutrašnjih institucionalnih aranžmana, menjala
se i politička subjektivnost građana. Prema Ustavu iz 1946. godine sva vlast
je proizlazila iz politizovanog entiteta „naroda“. Samo tri decenije kasnije, u
poslednjem jugoslovenskom Ustavu iz 1974, vlast je pripadala „radničkoj klasi
i svim radnim ljudima“ (Ustav, 1974: čl. 88). Ta promena ostavila je traga i na
političkoj subjektivnosti socijalističkih građanki, osobito ukoliko se posmatra
u sprezi s jednim od državotvornih mitova prema kojem je nova uloga žene
bila osvojena u ratu. Partizanka koja je vlastitu emancipaciju osvojila u borbi,
u postpartizanskom socijalizmu postaje majka koja privređuje. Titovim rečima,
pošto je revolucionarna borba u kojoj su žene učestvovale u neverovatnom broju
završena, „komunisti treba da prednjače u borbi za još veću društvenu i političku
aktivizaciju žena i afirmaciju“ njihove jedinstvene i društveno odgovorne uloge
majki i radnica (Tito, 1979: 2).
Pretvaranju borkinje u majku kojoj treba pomoći da bude više proizvođač
i samoupravljač, jamačno je doprinelo „samoukidanje“ Antifašističkog fronta
žena, organizacije koja će imati najveći značaj za posleratnu emancipaciju žena
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širom Jugoslavije: do 1953. godine, jednakost žena imala je sopstveni status,
koliko god da je bio parcijalan i nestabilan, koji se posle toga sve temeljitije
pretvara u „zajedničko društveno pitanje... pitanje opšte borbe snaga socijalizma
koje predvodi Savez komunista i Socijalistički savez radnog naroda, nosilac
socijalističkog vaspitanja masa“ (nav. u Pantelić, 2011: 127).3
„Žensko pitanje“ je stoga relativno kratko posedovalo singularan i samostalan
status, nastao u duhu specifično socijalističkog aranžmana upravljanja. No, upravo
će u okvirima tog istog uređenja, i to u trenutku kada socijalistički aranžman postaje
samosvesno zasnovan na još temeljnijoj jednakosti u samoupravljanju, samostalnost
ženskog pitanja biti i ukinuta. Ono od tada počinje da se tretira kao integralni
deo klasnog pitanja, koje se predočava kao ključno društveno pitanje na koje se
sva ostala mogu redukovati. „Polazeći od marksističkog stava da se oslobođenje
žene može ostvariti jedino na putu realizacije ‘asocijacije slobodnih proizvođača’,
žensko pitanje je sastavni dio klasnog pitanja“ (Koprivnjak, 1980: 10). A kako se u
Jugoslaviji klasno pitanje smatralo rešenim, s lakoćom se moglo utvrditi „da je žena
danas i stvarno i formalno ravnopravna u našem društvu“ (isto).
Feminizam u socijalizmu
Ustavno podvedene pod „radničku klasu i sve radne ljude“, žene Jugoslavije
su imale jemstvo pune ravnopravnosti kao građanke, obećanje emancipacije
kroz proces rada kao radni ljudi, i zaštićeni status kao majke. Prava koja su
u zapadnom delu sveta bila pogon drugog talasa feminizma, poput prava
na jednake plate za jednak rad i prava na abortus, uzimala su se kao datost u
socijalističkom režimu državljanstva. Kada se pojavio sedamdesetih godina
XX veka, jugoslovenski feminizam stoga nije bio ekvivalentan „zapadnom“
feminizmu. Jugoslovenske feministkinje nisu morale da polaze od pretpostavke
da „prevazilaženje potčinjenosti žena zahteva radikalnu promenu dubinskih
struktura društvenog totaliteta“ (Fraser, 2011: 4), koji se odražava u spoju
kapitalizma i patrijarhata. Za pojavu jugoslovenskog drugog talasa bila je
karakteristična drugačija istorija osvajanja prava glasa, kao i bitno drugačiji
politički, društveni i ekonomski kontekst iz kojeg je ponikao. To, primera radi,
pokazuje analiza članaka italijanskih feministkinja posle konferencije Drugca žena, koju je sprovela Kjara Bonfiljoli (Chiara Bonfiglioli). Nerazumevanje
zapadnih feministkinja i njihovih istočnih domaćica obeležilo je skup pošto,
prema gošćama, Jugoslovenke nisu želele da prigrle politiku oslobođenja i da
napuste „staru priču o emancipaciji: o radu, zakonima, društvenoj integraciji i
načinu na koji je konstruisan socijalizam“ (Bonfiglioli, 2011: 119).
3
Navedeni tekst citiran je iz Rezolucije o stvaranju Saveza ženskih društava Jugoslavije, kišobran
organizacije koja je trebalo da zameni ekscesivno politički i emancipatorski AFŽ. Neda
Božinović, nekadašnja partizanka koja će tokom poslednjih godina svog života postati istaknuta
mirovna aktivistkinja, napisala je u Ženskom pitanju u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku da je „zaključke o
ukidanju AFŽ-a, odnosno o osnivanju Saveza ženskih društava, veliki broj delegatkinja doživeo
kao degradiranje ženskih organizacija i samih žena. A mnoge aktivistkinje organizacija AFŽ-a
reagovale su tako što su prestale da rade“ (Božinović, 1996: 174).
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Socijalističko uređenje je bilo značajno za pozicioniranje jugoslovenskih
feministkinja. Blaženka Despot uznosi socijalističko samoupravljanje kao
alternativni model kako buržoaskom, tako i etatističkom načinu proizvodnje,
jer se njime stvara kvalitativno novi socijalizam utemeljen na neautoritarnim
odnosima (Despot, 1987: 43). Ima li se upravo to u vidu, autoritarne odnose je u
samoupravnom društvu neophodno stalno preispitivati, te se zbog toga žensko
pitanje ne može podvoditi pod klasni problem proletarijata (Despot, 1981: 112).
Njihova relativna autonomija je važna, pošto, uprkos tome što je klasno pitanje
rešeno, uprkos tome što su dubinske strukture društvenog totaliteta promenjene,
žensko pitanje zahteva osobenu budnost i tretman koji je bar u izvesnom smislu
zaseban. Razlozi za to su istorijski, s obzirom na istorijski primat reifikacije i
podređenosti žena (Ler-Sofronić, 1981: 74); oni su, potom, relevantni za način
funkcionisanja samog socijalizma, jer trajna emancipacija radničke klase u
socijalističkom samoupravljanju ne može biti moguća bez održivog rešenja
za žensko pitanje (Despot, 1987: 44); a u dubokoj su vezi i s budućnošću
progresivnog kretanja: na taj način treba razumeti razliku koju uvodi Vesna Pusić
između ravnopravnosti – koja je jugoslovenskim ženama „dostupna i poznata“ –
i emancipacije koju je tek potrebno osvojiti (Pusić, 1980: 167–168).
Ukrštanje socijalističkog aranžmana upravljanja i feminističkih zahteva
za proširenje opsega emancipacije uglavnom se uzimalo kao datost. „Posebno
bavljenje ženskim pitanjem ni na koji način ne znači odvajanje od fronta
socijalističkih snaga – nego baš suprotno, [ono je] doprinos borbi za socijalističku
transformaciju društva u cjelini, doprinos iz jedne specifično ženske perspektive“
(Drakulić, 1984: 178). Samo posredstvom ženskog pitanja „ostvarenje totaliteta
revolucionarnog pokreta“ postaje istorijski moguće, što opravdava njegov
strateški značaj za „usmerenje revolucionarnog radničkog i komunističkog
pokreta“ (Milić, 1981: 11). Suprotstavljajući se domaćim kritičarima i liberalnim
verzijama feminizma iz „inostranstva“, neke feministkinje, poput Nadežde
Čačinovič, insistirale su na tome da „teorijska relevantnost suvremenog
feminizma principijelno nije odvojiva od marksizma: nije reč o marksističkom
‘prerađivanju’ određenih teza ili feminističkim ‘dopunama’ marksizmu nego o
tomu da se problematika suvremenog feminizma može radikalno promišljati
samo marksistički“ (Čačinovič-Puhovski, 1976: 127). Iako feminizam nije puki
suplement, već nešto što treba da proishodi iz samog modela postojeće promene
društvenog totaliteta, on je neophodan kao korektiv za uočenu asimetriju
između ravnopravnosti i emancipacije, kojom se „zapostavlja ‘ženska polovina
stvarnosti’“ (Papić, 1987: 29).4
4
Poslednji citat je važan zbog toga što se njime naglašava da feminizam u socijalizmu nije bio
sasvim lagodno užljebljen. Ne treba nipošto potceniti disidentski status ovakvih iskaza: oni
su se izravno suprotstavljali dominantnoj perspektivi koja je žensko pitanje smatrala odavno
rešenim. Kako bilo da bilo, u ovom tekstu želim da istaknem unutrašnju vezu feminizma i
socijalizma koji ga je iznedrio, budući da se ona daleko ređe ističe kao važna. U tom smislu,
zanimljivo je navesti reči ključnih protagonistkinja koje se osvrću na dato vreme danas:
„Socijalizam je bio i ime sustava u kojemu smo živjeli ali i ime za bolju budućnost, u mnogome
različitu od sadašnjice... Ipak, raskorak između principa i ozbiljenja jasno se uočavao, kao
što su bile vidljive i dobre posljedice ravnopravnog školovanja, normalnoga očekivanja više-
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O opsegu i obliku emancipacije nije bilo jednodušnog stava. Ovdašnji i strani
tumači prilika su kasnije, posle 1989. godine, ukazivali na to da emancipacija žena
u socijalizmu nije proizvodila ravnopravne građane, nego puke majke-radnice
(Einhorn, 1993: 40). Rečima Vlaste Jalušič, emancipacija koja je ženu bez ostatka
svodila na radnika nikada joj nije omogućila da se odmakne od arentijanskog
animal laborans-a, odnosno da je preobrazi u političko biće, u građanku (Jalušič,
1999: 112). No, u doba samog socijalističkog režima državljanstva, pojmovi
građanina, majke i radnika nisu bili sporni. Ako je za feministkinje bilo ičega
kontroverznog u tome što se žene prevashodno tretiraju kao majke-radnice,
onda je srž te kontroverze bila u činjenici da muškarci, sa svoje strane, nisu bili
percipirani kao radnici i očevi (Einhorn, 1993: 5). Građanstvo muškaraca se,
naime, na sličan način definisalo njihovom pozicijom u procesu proizvodnje, ali
se njihova roditeljska uloga po pravilu izostavljala kako iz definicije građanina,
tako i iz razumevanja njihove emancipacije. Jugoslovenski feminizam je upravo u
toj tački – u načinu na koji je ženama „trebalo pomoći da budu više proizvođači
i samoupravljači“ (Tito, 1979: 2), iako su kao radni ljudi i emancipovane i
ravnopravne – pronašao vlastitu nišu.
„Socijalistička revolucija nije uvek bila u stanju da prekorači prag porodice“
(Morokvasić, 1986: 127). Ovaj oprezni iskaz upućuje da je privatno bilo u
središtu feminističkog promišljanja i delovanja. Samoupravnom socijalizmu
uprkos, mikro-borbe za emancipaciju nisu dovršene iako je klasno pitanje
rešeno, a prostori privatnosti u kojima se one i dalje moraju voditi nalaze se „u
tramvaju, na ulici, u kavani, na radnom mjestu, u školi, u obitelji“ (Drakulić,
1984: 178). „‘Privatni sektor’ života nije bio dotaknut ekonomskom analizom“
(Iveković, 1987: 22), a taj sektor, naša „obiteljska svakodnevnica... i te kako utječe
na opće odnose samoupravnoga društva izvan obitelji“ (Rihtman-Auguštin,
1980: 85). Budući da prostor privatnosti zapravo nije nestao, niti je pak dubinski
transformisan, privatno bi trebalo da postane zadatak, kako je tvrdila Rada
Iveković, ženskih studija i ženskog pokreta (Iveković, 1987: 22).
U jednom od svojih tekstova o feminizmu u Jugoslaviji, Sabrina Ramet
(Sabrina Ramet) tvrdi da jugoslovenski feminizam nije govorio o „svrgnuću
socijalizma, ali je govorio o potrebi da se svrgne patrijarhat i o neuspehu
socijalizma da to učini“ (Ramet, 1995: 226). Za razliku od „zapadnih“
feministkinja koje su zahtevale „participativno-demokratsku državu koja
osnažuje svoje građane“ i u stanju je da integriše rodno određenu pravdu (Fraser,
2011: 5),5 jugoslovenske feministkinje su delovale u samoupravnom društvu
5
manje jednake radne biografije za žene kao i za muškarce“ (Čačinovič, 2012: 8). Ili, „u real
socijalističkim društvima teško da je moglo doći do nekog masovnijeg i osvešćenijeg, tj.
feminističkog sagledavanja vlastite situacije. Tek s nadolaskom snažnijih kriznih dešavanja u
jugoslovenskom društvu javlja se ponovo iskra feminizma koji je socijalistički sistem na svaki
način gušio u prethodnim periodima. Pri tom nosioci ovog trećeg talasa feminizma postaju
žene rođene i odrasle u okviru socijalističkog sistema, ali obrazovane na intelektualnim
tradicijama i marksizma i feminizma“ (Milić, 2012: 43).
Pod rodno određenom pravdom (gender justice) misli se na pravdu koja neće biti uslovljena
polom/rodom osobe koja pravdu zahteva. To shvatanje počiva na pretpostavci da pravda
sama po sebi nije univerzalna i egalitarna, i da postoje oblici nepravde koji se ne događaju
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koje je bilo konstruisano kao temeljno participativno i demokratsko, i u koje
je rodna pravda već integrisana. Bilo da su ovaj stav uzimale doslovno ili s
zapitanošću, feministkinje nisu dovodile u pitanje aranžman upravljanja koji je
ženama omogućio i prava i državu koja je institucionalizovala ravnopravnost.
Socijalistički sistem je, s druge strane, obećavao delovanje u pravcu totalne
emancipacije čoveka, što je bilo sasvim u skladu s feminističkim razumevanjem
emancipacije žena. Stoga, ako je patrijarhata negde bilo, on nije počivao ni u
državi ni u njenoj socijalističkoj strukturi. Ono što se u kasnijim tekstovima –
više (Duhaček, 1993; Kesić, 2001) ili manje ambivalentno (Papić, 1992; Bollobás,
1993; Miroiu, 2007) – označava kao „socijalistički patrijarhat“, u Jugoslaviji
nije postojalo pod tim imenom pre 1989. godine. Pre toga, građani nisu bili,
po definiciji, maskulinizovani (Jones, 1997: 2), nego se verovalo da je ženama –
budući da su ravnopravan deo ravnopravnog društva – bilo moguće obezbediti
polno ravnopravniju emancipaciju. Država će postati patrijarhalna, i patrijarhat
će postati instrinsičan društvenoj i političkoj strukturi socijalističkog režima
državljanstva, ali tek u retrospektivi, tek kada socijalistički sistemi budu prestali
da postoje.
Posle 1989. godine, posle Jugoslavije
Moglo bi se spekulisati o tome kakva bi bila budućnost jugoslovenskog
feminizma u državi koja bi, posle 1989. godine, prestala da bude socijalistička, ali
bi ostala federativna (ili, što je možda i teže zamisliti, koja bi ostala socijalistička
izvan jugoslovenskog federalnog okvira). Međutim, preobražaj postojeće države
u skup nezavisnih država, uz ukidanje socijalističkog aranžmana upravljanja,
u potpunosti menja okvir feminizma koji je uspostavljen u prethodne dve
decenije. Jugoslovenski scenario kolapsa neće navesti feministkinje samo na
to da socijalizam proglase patrijarhalnim, pošto se njihovo osvajanje nove
pozicije građanke (Jalušič, 1999) preklapalo s ratovima i nastankom političke
subjektivnosti koja je bila patrijarhalna na do tada nezamislive načine.
Usled temeljne smene režima državljanstava početkom devesedetih godina,
postjugoslovenski feminizam prestaje da bude oblikovan razradom prava žena u
datom aranžmanu upravljanja. Umesto toga, njega će u bitnom smislu definisati
odnos prema državi, i to posebno pitanje odgovornosti države (u ratu i izvan
njega) i teško odredivo pitanje pripadanja.
Pitanja građanstva postaju naglašeno prisutna u procesu prelaska iz
socijalističkog u liberalno-demokratski aranžman upravljanja. Međutim, u
kontekstu rata koji prati raspad multinacionalne socijalističke federacije, gde
se građani iz radnika i samoupravljača rapidno preobražavaju u Srbe, Hrvate,
Crrnogorce, Slovence itd., smisao državljanstva dobija višestruke nove sadržaje.
U periodu ustavnog nacionalizma (Hayden, 1992) i pokušaja uspostavljanja
apsolutne kongruencije između države i nacionalne zajednice, odigrava se smena
u načinu na koji su se tretirala ključna pitanja u odnosu na koja se definiše režim
slučajno ovim ili onim pojedincima već su nekom njihovom odlikom, kao što je rod, bitno
uslovljeni (v. Gheaus, 2012).
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državljanstva: prema kojim je građanima država (i koja država?) odgovorna, i
ko je, konsekventno tome, poželjan građanin? Kakva su prava koja građani i
građanke imaju u svojim državama i koja prava imaju prioritet? Kako meriti
pripadnost zajednici, i kojoj zajednici? I, na koji su način državne institucionalne
politike korišćene da bi se proizveo novi tip etnonacionalnih građana, koji će
zameniti „radničku klasu i sve radne ljude“?
Ovde je neophodno uvesti jednu značajnu distinkciju. Kolaps realnog
socijalizma posle pada Berlinskog zida sam bi po sebi proizveo ogromne promene
u režimu državljanstva – što se i dogodilo u drugim delovima postsocijalističke
Evrope posle 1989. godine. Insistiranje na građanskim i političkim pravima
umanjilo je značaj postojećih socijalnih prava, što će ih u narednoj deceniji
veoma ugroziti; odgovornost države prema građanima se postepeno redukovala;
struktura upravljanja se u potpunosti menja; a pitanje pripadnosti takođe dobija
nove dimenzije onoga časa kada se socijalističke države počnu da se preobražavaju
u (liberalno-demokratske) nacionalne države. Međutim, u prvih nekoliko godina
posle 1989, u Jugoslaviji svi ti procesi ostaju u senci neposrednih učinaka rata.
Svi oni će jamačno uslediti, postavši integralni deo procesa tranzicije koji je pre
ili kasnije zahvatio sve države koje su formirane na tlu Jugoslavije. Smatram da
je ovu razliku u načinu na koji su oblikovani režimi državljanstva posle 1989.
godine neophodno imati na umu kada se raspravlja i o feminizmu. Rečima
Renate Jambrešić-Kirin, „okrutno je i pojednostavljeno poistovetiti položaj civila
u ratu s pozicijom liberalnih pojedinaca u slobodnom društvu“ (2000: 289),
te stoga predlažem da se feministički aktivizam posmatra kao bitno drugačije
oblikovan okolnostima koje je proizveo specifično postjugoslovenski režim
izgradnje nacija, i okolnostima tranzicijskog režima državljanstva.6
Prema tome, feminizam koji se razvija devedesetih godina i gradi na
tekovinama feminizma u Jugoslaviji, zapravo je obeležen dubokim prekidom
koji se ne inicira iz samog feminizma, naprasno otsečenog od vlastitih korena,
ni iz njegovog „perverznog, podzemnog“ afiniteta prema neoliberalnom
kapitalizmu (Fraser, 2011: 6). Ne samo da je izravno pogrešno tvrditi da je
postjugoslovenski feminizam „cvetao u novim uslovima“, da je postao „široka,
masovna društvena pojava“ (ako je to uopšte i moguće tvrditi za feminizam bilo
gde u svetu devedesetih godina), ili da su „ideje feminizma pronašle svoj put do
svakog kutka društvenog života (every nook and cranny of social life) i promenile
samorazumevanje svih onih sa kojima su došle u dodir“ (isto), već se time sasvim
6
Uslovno rečeno, režim državljanstva koji se definiše procesom izgradnje nacija vremenski
se odnosi na deceniju sukoba različitih intenziteta u svim delovima ranijeg jugoslovenskog
prostora, dok se drugi, tranzicijski, odnosi na režim uspostavljen posle 2000. godine u
postsocijalističkim i postkonfliktnim državama koje su nasledile Jugoslaviju. Ovaj model
ima svoje nedostatke, pre svega zbog različitog teritorijalizovanja nasilja i različitih dinamika
razvoja ranijih jugoslovenskih republika, što je uticalo na različita „započinjanja“ tranzicije,
kao i na njen tok i svršetak. Međutim, taj se model može opravdati i bitno drugačijim
diskurzivnim uobličenjima tema koje su bile društveno i političke značajne, kao i dubokim
razlikama u delovanju „civilnog društva“ u ratnim i neposredno posleratnim okolnostima,
i u potonjim okolnostima postkonfliktne tranzicije (Stubbs, 2007; Stubbs, 2012). O
specifičnostima feminizma u poslednjoj deceniji, odnosno u kontekstu tranzicijskog režima
državljanstva v. Zaharijević 2013.
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zanemaruje kontekst u kojem feminizam postaje ako ne politička sila, ono bar
fenomen koji ima specifičan politički sadržaj. Za sadašnje potrebe taj ću kontekst
predstaviti, svakako pojednostavljeno, evocirajući način na koji je u okolnostima
novog režima državljanstva ponovo izmenjena politička subjektivnost građana
i građanki, da bi se pokazalo kakav je politički sadržaj feminizam kao fenomen
devedesetih imao u državama koje su nasledile Jugoslaviju.
Diskurzivno anticipiranje demokratije već je krajem osamdesetih godina
počelo da istiskuje „radničku klasu“ u korist „naroda“ (Mimica i Vučetić, 2008),
iako taj narod prestaje da bude uporediv s političkim entitetom koji definiše
prvi jugoslovenski ustav. U ovom razdoblju, narod se iscrpljuje u pojmu nacije.
Etnonacionalna unutardržavna organizacija nije bila u potpunosti nova: narodi
su i u socijalističkom režimu državljanstva bili teritorijalizovani, s upadljivim
izuzetkom Bosne i Hercegovine, kao konstitutivni narodi socijalističkih
republika. Međutim, način na koji se to preklapalo sa zazivanom pluralnošću
koju je trebalo da proizvede vladavina narodā, pretvara narod u instrument
ustanovljenja specifično nacionalnog oblika zajednice. Otuda politička
subjektivnost naroda od sada postaje jemstvo kongruencije između nacionalnih
i republičkih zajednica, na temelju koje se definiše nepodeljena pripadnost
zajednici, ali i pripadnost određenom državljanstvu. Slom socijalističkog režima
državljanstva, uvođenje demokratije koja je mogla biti – i bila je – korišćena i
kao idealni okvir vladavine naroda i kao oruđe fragmentacije, te raspirivanje
nacionalnih animoziteta, deo su okvira koji omogućava jugoslovenske ratove.
Promena političke subjektivnosti ostavila je dubokog traga na percepciju
i konstrukciju uloge i statusa građanki. Gal i Kligman u tim procesima
prepoznaju depolitizovanje ili instrumentalizovanje žena (Gal i Kligman, 2000),
a primeri koji bi se mogli navesti u prilog njihovoj tezi odnose se na politiku
ženske reproduktivnosti, zajedničku ranim postsocijalističkim društvima, i na
političku upotrebu silovanja u jugoslovenskim ratovima. Pre nego što pređem na
feminizam koji se razvija kao odgovor na režim državljanstva obeležen ratovima
i izgradnjom nacija, želim da, razrađujući ukratko ova dva primera, ukažem na
dubinu prekida između feminizma kao političkog fenomena u socijalizmu i onog
koji se, vremenski posmatrano, samo naslonio na njega.
Žene su u socijalizmu konstruisane kao majke-radnice, kao naglašeno
prirodna i društvena bića. Odgovornost države prema ženama odnosila se pre
svega na zaštitu njihove reproduktivne/ prirodne uloge i na podsticanje njihove
društvenosti različitim institucionalnim merama. Procesi izgradnje nacija su, s
druge strane, počivali na skrajnuću društvene (žene kao radnice ili kao građanke)
i isticanju prirodne dimenzije (žene kao majke), koja se pojavljivala kao sama
suština ženske društvenosti. Sasvim suprotno (zapadnom) trendu napuštanja
ideologije „porodične plate“ i uvođenju „nove“ norme porodice s dva dohotka,
o kojem govori Frejzer (Fraser, 2011: 7), u Istočnoj Evropi se obnavlja model
buržoaske porodice u kojoj otac privređuje, a majka ostaje u domaćinstvu,
koji svoju potvrdu nalazi i u ustavnim okvirima, primera radi, slovenačkom i
hrvatskom, u kojima punopravni subjekt postaje porodica (Antić, 1992: 168).
Najčešće suprotno življenim okolnostima, žene se predstavljaju kao majke koje
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ne rade, odnosno kao isključivo prirodna, polno i reproduktivno određena bića,
što u novoj konstrukciji političke subjektivnosti naroda kao nacije ima svoj
nedvosmisleno politički sadržaj. Takvo političko veličanje materinstva imalo
je više funkcija: njime se denunciralo pogrešno socijalističko obezvređivanje
uloge majke i podsticanje emancipacije žena (Verdery, 1996; Heinen, 2006), ali
se podsticao i razvoj diskursa o neophodnosti (pre)oblikovanja nacije u svetlu
željenih i neželjenih građana (Zajović, 1995a; Krasniqi, 2011).
U postsocijalističkoj „konzervativnoj, tradicionalističkoj, nacionalističkoj
i praznoglavoj“ demokratiji (Papić, 1992: 101), žene su neretko politički
percipirane kao puko sredstvo za reprodukciju nacije. U tom kontekstu treba
razumeti demografsku tranziciju iz socijalističkog u režim izgradnje nacija. Kao
pasivna sredstva u tom procesu, žene su mogle biti puka personifikacija nacije
kojoj bi slučajno pripadale. U kontekstu svoje reproduktivnosti, one su mogle biti
sprovodnici ka većoj ili manjoj naciji, te su zbog toga pitanja abortusa, niskog ili
visokog priraštaja, ali i silovanja u ratu, kao krajnjeg oblika opredmećenja žena,
postala relevantna za određenje nove političke subjektivnosti građanki. Prema
Žarani Papić, reproduktivne politike i silovanje u ratu morale su se razumeti
kao međuzavisni oblici nasilja nad („našim“ i „njihovim“) ženama (Papić, 2002).
Ratovi su, dakle, omogućili da tela žena budu više od bojnog polja: ona postaju
utrobe za proizvodnju etnički kalupljenih budućih građana.
Feminizam među nacijama
Nensi Frejzer je tvrdila da su feministkinje drugog talasa, iako su imale
kritički odnos prema vestafalskim okvirima nacionalnih država, države u
kojima su delovale ipak posmatrale „kao prave adresate sopstvenih zahteva“
(Fraser, 2011: 5). U Jugoslaviji koja je u svojoj socijalističkoj strukturi imala
državne organizacije koje su se direktno bavile ženskim pitanjem – od Saveza
ženskih društava, koji nasleđuje AFŽ 1953. godine, do Konferencije za društveni
položaj žene i porodice, koja se gasi 1990. – feministkinjama država nije bila
glavni adresat. Naslanjajući se na ovu donekle disidentsku tradiciju feminizma
u socijalizmu, feministkinje su i početkom devedesetih bile ambivalentne
u pogledu instance kojoj upućuju svoje zahteve.7 Pošto nisu jednodušno
prihvatile liberalnodemokratsku viziju državljanstva, budući da je zbog svojih
nacionalističkih dimenzija ono često percipirano kao konzervativno i nazadno,
feministkinje su zadržavale izvesnu distancu prema državnim strukturama. No,
7
„Minimalni program ženskih zahteva“, koji je 1990. godine sastavio Beogradski ženski
lobi, grupa u kojoj su bile okupljene mnoge istaknute aktivistkinje, mogao bi se uzeti kao
ilustrativan primer. Tekst „minimalnog“ programa počinje zahtevom Lobija, upućenog
„strankama, partijama i pokretima“, da u sve svoje programe uključe ženske zahteve i žensku
perspektivu. Pod te zahteve spadaju fer politika zapošljavanja, kraći radni dan, neseksističko
obrazovanje i vaspitanje, reproduktivna prava, imenovanje činova nasilja i njihovo
kriminalizovanje, otvaranje zdravstvenih centara za žene i slobodna kontracepcija, itd.
(Ćetković, 1998: 19–23). Način na koji su ti zahtevi artikulisani jasno pokazuje da oni nisu
upućeni nijednom određenom adresatu. Jasna i opredeljena saradnja s državom u zemljama
naslednicama počinje tek posle 2000. godine.
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novi demokratski okvir omogućio im je da govore o ženskim pitanjima bez
ograničenja (odnosno, i izvan klasnog pitanja), i da insistiraju na tome da se
u demokratski otvorenoj raspravi to pitanje ne može redukovati ni na jedno
drugo. Nastanak brojnih inicijativa koje su pokrivale izrazito širok dijapazon
aktivnosti (Blagojević, 1998), ukazuje na to da su feministkinje u ovom razdoblju
prepoznale priliku za razvoj pluralnih formi građanstva žena – priliku za aktivno
kultivisanje političke subjektivnosti i unapređenje ravnopravnog prisustva u
javnom prostoru i procesima odlučivanja.
Raspad zajedničke države proizveo je, međutim, temeljnu promenu u
samopercepciji feminističkog aktivizma. Tokom prve konferencije Mreže
jugoslovenskih feministkinja 1987. godine doneta je odluka da feministkinje
ne pristaju na veštački stvorene, muške granice, „da su ujedinjene u sestrinstvu
i da iskustva koja dele kao žene nadilaze muške brige oko teritorijalnih prava
i geografskih granica“ (Batinić, 2001: 6). Dakle, i pre no što je rat postao
življena stvarnost, odnos prema potencijalno novim granicama i pitanje
pripadanja potencijalno novim državama morali su se nametnuti kao središnji
za transformaciju jugoslovenskog feminističkog aktivizma. Umesto da se poput
„zapadnog“ feminizma, kako ga (ispravno ili ne) opisuje Frejzer, devedesetih
godina preobražava u međunarodni, višeslojni, postvestfalski feminizam
globalnog civilnog društva (Fraser, 2011: 9), postjugoslovenski feminizam
zapravo ne može ne biti zaokupljen državom unutar koje se organizuje. Štaviše,
središnja pitanja za feminizam tada postaju ona koja su neposredno vezana za
probleme smene režima državljanstva: čija je (naša) država bila (gde su bile
njene granice i kako su one uspostavljane), ko je pripadao, a ko nije i zbog čega,
i kakva je bila cena bezrezervne lojalnosti novim nacionalnim državama koja se
očekivala od građana i građanki?
Postavši teritorijalizovane državama koje ratom nasleđuju Jugoslaviju,
uz reorganizaciju svih pitanja koja definišu određeni režim državljanstva,
feministkinje će pre svega organizovati vlastite aktivnosti kao odgovor na rat i
na mogućnost održanja sestrinstva uprkos uspostavljenim granicama. Tačka u
kojoj pitanje pravedne raspodele ustupa mesto pitanju priznanja, u kojoj, drugim
rečima, izvestan oblik politike identiteta postaje važan za feministkinje, duboko
je povezan s ukidanjem socijalističkog aranžmana upravljanja i s kritičkim
odnosom prema poistovećivanju državljanstva i nacionalnosti. Naime, prestavši
da budu jugoslovenske feministkinje, mnoge su feministkinje birale da budu
samo feministkinje, kao da je feminizam po sebi mogao da omogući nekakav
odvojeni prostor građanstva. Iako on nije počivao na zahtevima za pravednom
raspodelom sredstava, on svakako jeste počivao na zahtevima za pravdom.
Kontekst u kojem se takav zahtev formuliše jeste kontekst rata, kontekst u kojem
su sva elementarna prava ugrožena, i kontekst hrabrog i (u datim okolnostima
uvek potencijalno izdajničkog) dovođenja u pitanje nametnute pripadnosti.
U snažnom manifestu feminističke nelojalnosti, Staša Zajović je izložila
načela feminističkog odricanja od nacije, države i otadžbine koje obeležava
kontekst ranih devedesetih. Neprihvatanje nametnutog nacionalno definisanog
građanstva podrazumevalo je institiranje na pravu na samoodređenje i
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autonomiju žene, pravu da govori i dela u vlastito ime. Njime se takođe odbacivala
militaristička ideologija koja je počivala na logici prema kojoj država može biti
ili žrtva ili agresor, logici koja poništava bilo kakvu moć delovanja građanki i
građana. Konačno, feministička nelojalnost podrazumevala je odbacivanje
politike koja deli žene prema njihovoj nacionalnosti i zatečenosti unutar novih
državnih granica, odričući im mogućnost da budu solidarne kao aktivistkinje,
kao feministkinje, kao žene, a ne kao Srpkinje, Hrvatice, itd. (Zajović, 1995b:
51).
Ovaj aspekt je važan i da bi se razumele mikropolitičke dimenzije identiteta
koji se iz datih okolnosti pojavljuje, takoreći, i pre samog zahteva za njegovo
priznanje. Politički nalog kojim se žene, i to posebno one koje su bile žrtve rata
na neposredan način, pretvaraju u puki instrument u procesu konsolidovanja
granica, proizveo je specifično feministički oblik delovanja kroz nepripadanje
(Kašić, 1995: 126). Nešto poetičnije, ovo bi se takođe moglo označiti i kao
bezdomnost u novom domu (Jambrešić-Kirin, 2000; Šeleva, 2004; Petrović,
2009), bezdomnost koja se mogla nadići samo nepopustljivim ulaganjem glasa
protiv jednostranog pristajanja na depolitizaciju. Biti feministkinja devedesetih
godina podrazumevalo je svestan izbor kojim se vlastiti identitet građanke
politizovao na specifičan način: dominantni nacionalni identitet zamenjivao se
apstraktnim, aktivističkim (bezdomnim) javnim sopstvom.8
Da li su konteksti važni?
Vratimo se sada analizi Nensi Frejzer. Pretpostavi li se da je Frejzer 2009.
godine tvrdila da je neoliberalni kapitalizam uspeo da kooptira određene
feminističke ideale, da preobrazi i iskoristi određene težnje i ideje ranih generacija
američkog drugog talasa, čemu je bez sumnje, između ostalog, doprineo i
završetak Hladnog rata, onda se toj tezi malo šta može zameriti. Istočnoevropska
i posebno postjugoslovenska perspektiva tranzicije mogla bi tome takođe da
posvedoči. Međutim, ono što njen tekst čini tako provokativnim i problematičnim
istovremeno, nije dijagnoza koja ukazuje na to da je feminizam u krizi i da je
žarište te krize njegova „zavedenost“ neoliberalnim kapitalizmom koja započinje
devedesetih godina. U zaključku želim da naglasim tri tačke koje se na izvestan
način spore s pretpostavkom koja provejava tekstom prema kojoj između
(globalnog) feminizma i (globalnog) neoliberalizma postoji jeretički afinitet.
Prva tačka se odnosi na nejasno pozicioniran rani drugi talas koji se najavljuje
kao izvesno „doba nevinosti“, doba pre no što je nastupilo „zabrinjavajuće
približavanje“ feminizma i kapitalizma (Fraser, 2011: 1). Istorijski posmatrano,
nije sasvim irelevantna činjenica da feministkinje anglosaksonskog govornog
područja, feministkinje koje su proizvele ne samo najznačajnije i najmasovnije
pokrete, nego su najčešće i promišljale o tome šta pokret jeste i treba da bude, po
8
Rečenica koju ovde parafraziram preuzeta je iz uvodnog teksta Ketlin Džons (Kathleen
Jones) za temat o građanstvu u feminizmu koji je objavjen u časopisu Hypatia. Ta rečenica
izvorno glasi: „Postati građanin znači zameniti vlastiti pojedinačni identitet apstraktnim,
javnim sopstvom“ (Jones, 1997: 2).
�Adriana Zaharijević: Fusnota u globalnoj istoriji: kako se može čitati istorija jugoslovenskog...
85
pravilu nisu bile socijalističke orijentacije kako se tekstom implicira. Zavedenost
feministkinja neoliberalizmom devedesetih godina, ili pak „perverzni, podzemni“
afinitet, za šta i sama Frejzer kaže da predstavlja pravu feminističku jeres (Fraser,
2011: 6), može se opravdati samo ukoliko se, suprotno teorijskoj i aktivističkoj
istoriji drugog talasa u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama, tvrdi da je feminizam
do tada iznad svega radio na podrivanju kapitalističkih struktura. Međutim,
kako, tvrdila bih ispravno, naglašava Nanet Fank, „dominantan oblik feminizma
drugog talasa sredinom veka bio je liberalni feminizam koji je kritikovao državu,
usredsređen na promenu institucionalnih politika i zakona, i na modifikovanje,
a ne na temeljnu kritiku, kapitalizma“ (Funk, 2013: 181). Drugo je pitanje da li se
ovim iskazom potvrđuju slutnje prema kojima feminizam, kako se smatralo već
od kraja 19. veka (Zaharijević, 2014), ne može ne biti buržoaska stvar (što mu se
pak zameralo i u jugoslovenskom kontekstu). Međutim, dug je put između sasvim
ispravne teze da je feminizam drugog talasa – u SAD nedvosmisleno otprilike od
osamdesetih, u Jugoslaviji pak, od devedesetih – „bio deo šireg emancipatorskog
projekta, gde su borbe protiv rodne nepravde bile nužno povezane sa borbom
protiv rasizma, imperijalizma, homofobije i klasizma“ (Fraser, 2011: 6), s jedne
strane, i da ga je, s druge, upravo to činilo socijalističkim (čak i kada je svesno
bio suprotstavljen logici kapitalizma).9
Druga tačka nas vraća na propust koji se obznanjuje jednom uzgrednom
fusnotom. Iako je uopštavanje koje čitav rani drugi talas preobražava u
socijalistički feminizam po mnogo čemu neprecizno, pojedinačni slučajevi koji
isklizavaju iz „epohalne“ slike obrađenog fenomena jednako su neprecizno
izostavljeni iz razmatranja. Konvencionalni pristup ne prepoznaje feminizam u
socijalizmu, te se otuda u mimohodu preskače atipični, ponešto paradoksalni
feminizam u jednoj socijalističkoj zemlji pre 1989. godine. Premda bi tvrdnja
prema kojoj se ovaj feminizam tretira kao politička sila dakako bila prenaglašena,
njegovo političko – pa bilo ono i mikro-političko – prisustvo ne može se
osporiti. Način na koji je on oblikovan poziva na promišljanje odnosa feminizma
i socijalizma u specifičnom okviru u kojem su oba postojala u isto vreme, i u
kojem je feminizam iznutra bio prožet određenim postulatima socijalizma na
kojima je počivalo društvo koje ga je iznedrilo.
Najzad, pojmovni okvir koji je u obzir uzimao kompleksnu ideju režima
državljanstva trebalo je da unekoliko usložni okvir koji počiva na vezi globalnog
kapitalizma i globalnog feminizma. Time se valjanost i potreba za takvim
okvirom ne dovodi u pitanje, niti se na taj način poništava teza Nensi Frejzer,
i mnogih drugih, da su politike priznanja – politike identiteta – u velikoj meri
oslabile i depolitizovale feminizam. Uvođenjem i razmatranjem smene ovdašnjih
režima državljanstva, namera mi je bila da ukažem na drugačije kontekste u
kojima se iz politike pravedne preraspodele ulazi u politike priznanja ili, šire
postavljeno, na bitno drugačije putanje feminizma.
Već je odavno postalo truizam tvrditi da feminizam nije singularan fenomen.
Cilj mi nije bio da se upuštam u raspravu oko tačnosti te teze. Postoje globalni
9
Nanet Fank nemilosrdno kritikuje tačke uopštavanja manjinske socijalističke pozicije
nekolicine teoretičarki u politički stav drugog talasa kao takvog (Funk, 2013: 181–182).
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trendovi, a neoliberalni kapitalizam je među njima danas svakako vodeći,
koji dubinski utiču na sve političke fenomene, pa i na feminizam. Međutim,
uvažavanje okolnosti nastanka određenih političkih fenomena i razvoja njihovog
sadržaja, nije nužno samo iz teorijskih razloga: ono je neophodno da bi se mogla
anticipirati njihova budućnost i da bi se praksi mogao dati određeni pravac koji
počiva na uvažavanju lokalnih specifičnosti, a ne na njihovom brisanju. Kada
se kritike koje Nensi Frejzer upućuje feminizmu (kao globalnom feminizmu)
u periodu kada se „doba nevinosti“ završilo, bez ostatka prenesu na lokalni
kontekst, onda se iz vida gube i specifičnosti razvoja jugoslovenskog feminizma
u socijalizmu, i specifičnosti razvoja feminizma u ratu. Te specifičnosti
nisu marginalne, niti se mogu lako uklopiti u tezu o zavedenosti ili „fatalnoj
privlačnosti“ između feminizma i neoliberalizma. One nas, unutar širokog
okvira poređenja koji je Frejzer ponudila, pozivaju da usmerimo pažnju na one
impulse, okolnosti i motive koji političke fenomene oblikuju lokalno – da ne
dopustimo da vlastitu istoriju čitamo kao pogrešnu fusnotu.
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Tekst nastoji da pruži alternativno čitanje istorije jugoslovenskog feminizma, usredsređujući se na godine njegovog razvoja u socijalizmu i na periodkoji je usledio neposredno po raspadu zajedničke države. Kakve je putanje imao feminizam koji je ponikao u socijalističkoj državi? I kako se razvijao kada su isocijalizam i država prestali da postoje? Pojmovni okvir unutar kojeg se izvodiovo čitanje oslanja se na koncept režima državljanstva, koji treba da ponudisloženiju sliku od onih koje se uobičajno koriste u preispitivanju postjugoslovenskog feminizma. U tekstu se utoliko pokazuje da je okvir koji počiva na poređenju feminizma i nacionalizma nedostatan, ali se takođe kritičkim čitanjem uticajnogteksta Nensi Frejzer „Feminizam, kapitalizam i lukavstvo istorije“ pokazuje da jeu lokalnom kontekstu neophodno iskoračiti izvan okvira koji počiva na poređenjurazvoja feminizma i kapitalizma. Tekst utoliko poziva na pažljivo čitanje paradoksalokalne istorije feminizma.
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Adrijana Zaharijević
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https://www.academia.edu/14801374/Fusnota_u_globalnoj_istoriji._Kako_se_mo%C5%BEe_%C4%8Ditati_istorija_jugoslovenskog_feminizma
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SOCIOLOGIJA, Vol. LVII (2015), N° 1
Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost Crvena
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2015.
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Adrijana Zaharijević
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Srpski
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18 str.
Adrijana Zaharijević
feminizam
Jugoslavija
rat
režim državljanstva
socijalizam
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/e7c5d4999bc16d723b04a7f9e618533a.pdf
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Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of
Women in Yugoslav Cinema
Marijana Stojčić - Nađa Duhaček
Savez antifašista Srbije
Serbia
UDK: 305-055.2 : 791.43(497.1)
Prethodno priopćenje/Preliminary paper
Primljeno/Received: 06.07.2017.
Prihvaćeno/Accepted: 11.09.2017.
This paper will analyse ways in which representation of women
changed from partisans as revolutionary subjects to housewives and
consumers in the late 1960’s. This transformation is linked with sociopolitical changes in the Yugoslav context and the abandonment of women’s
emancipation as it was framed and adopted initially during and after
WWII. Namely, the partisan struggle for the liberation from Nazi
occupation, as well as the socialist revolution were two foundational myths
of Socialist Yugoslavia. Women played an active role in this struggle, both
as fighters and through their work behind the lines (as logistical support,
spying, nursing, etc.). Likewise, equality between men and women was an
important part the country’s official ideology. These narratives were later
memorialized through literature, cinema, music as well as comic books.
In our work, we will explore five tropes of femininity in Yugoslav
cinema: (1) the role of the partisan, (2) woman in the background, (3)
collaborator, (4) worker and (5) housewife, in order to map out ways in
which the representation of women between 1947 and the late 1960’s
corresponds to official emancipatory politics of the time and how these
tropes related with everyday life in this period. Finally, this will lead to an
analysis of cinema as a collection of stories Yugoslav women and men told
themselves (and others) about themselves.1 This approach has the potential
to indicate the antagonisms within the social context in which these films
were produced, by highlighting the unattained ideals of freedom and
emancipation. Simultaneously, the goal of this analysis is not to merely
open up another space for a more complex exploration of the past, but also
to reconsider the emancipatory potential this exploration offers us today.
1 Even though cinematography was considered a powerful tool of propaganda, which was most common during
the first decade following the end of the Second World War, storytelling was not relieved of state intervention.
This was done either through the removal of films that were considered to transgress from socialist moral or
through financing the filming of films that were considered to contribute to the upbringing of “new socialist man.”
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
Keywords: woman, gender, socialism, Yugoslavia, film, representation
Introduction
In this text, the ways in which representation of woman in Yugoslav
film up until the end of 1960s corresponds with, on the one side, ideological
frames of socialist Yugoslavia and its politics of emancipation; and on the other
side with social reality and social practices of Yugoslav society and its changes
in different time periods, will be analysed. In theory it relies on the tradition of
women studies and cultural studies. Cultural studies consider representations2
as a place on which, through interaction with the audience which adds its own
interpretation to the discourse, social relations, including gender relations are
established, regulated and normalized. In such way the existing social relations
in a specific social context start to become self-understanding and “natural”,
which leads to blurring of their connections with the social structure, and
the division of power inside the society. Gender regime is a fundamental part
of the structure of every society.3 It also implies certain ideal model types of
“manhood” and “womanhood” which are perceived as normal, natural and
desirable and in relation to which members of society interpret their own
gender experience. Gender regimes are not simply relations between men
and women, but systems of power, expectations, roles, behaviour, attitudes
and displays of gender differences between which a hierarchy is inscribed. It
regulates relations between men and women, forms individual expectations
and behaviours which are in unison with the social context. Gender is
produced, practiced and affirmed on the level of everyday life. Patriarchy as
well, as is defined by British sociologist Sylvia Walby, represents a system of
social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit
women, whereby Walby emphasizes that patriarchy must be conceptualized
via different levels of abstraction. On the most abstract level, patriarchy exists
as a system of social relations, while on a less abstract level it encompasses
six basic dimensions regarding the way of production, paid work, state, male
violence, sexuality and cultural institutions.4 Cultural forms of patriarchy
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
and gender (in)equality also refer to their representation in media texts.
Construction of gender representations in a society most often reflects gender
structure of that society, at the same time constituting and reproducing gender
(in)equalities. Gender asymmetry in a patriarchal society, as a rule, positions
women in a place of passive subjects whose social role is covered by biological,
“natural” role. And representations of her are most often stereotypic images
of women, conveyed to her social status (repressed, accentuation of sexual
attractiveness, secondary position and role, motherhood, dependent position,
emotionality, frivolity). As Gofman notices, although representations are often
experienced as natural (which is why he uses the syntagm “doctrine of natural
expression”), the substance is that not only that they reflect gender differences,
but also constitute them through the very ability of persons to interpret, learn
and adopt those representations of masculinity and femininity.5 As films
are created in concrete social frameworks and are exposed to different social
influences, the assumption is that dominant social tendencies will inevitably,
more or less (un)consciously and (un)intentionally, diffract through film. In
that sense, films will be approached as forms of myths of contemporary society
who deal with “telling tales”, and are at the same time being “more than the
tales they tell”. 6 They represent symbolic constructions which offer a compass
for the social world and contain claims which people create about themselves
and others, about the ways in which they imagine themselves and others, the
ways they think and feel.7 At the same time, as Ana Banić Grubišić states,
in contemporary films are “key cultural contradictions being expressed, or
imaginary solutions to socio-cultural tensions being offered’”.8
The films that were chosen, as a starting point for the research, were the
films that were awarded in different categories at the Pula Film Festival. At the
beginning, the films that were not dealing with socialist present in Yugoslavia
or The Peoples’ Liberation Struggle (Narodno-oslobodilačka borba - NOB) were
excluded from the sample. More incisive film examples, such as illustration of
observed tendentious regularities were chosen as part of the second step with
conscious awareness that it carries a certain level of reduction. The illustrations
had to fulfill at least one of the two criteria (best if both were fulfilled): that the
film had received a social recognition and/or had high ratings. The analysis, in
the third step, was focused on the certain existing representations in the films
which corresponded with contradictions and changes that the society was
experiencing at the time. The focus of this analysis will be the ways in which
specific forms of film representation of gender correspond with the social
(ideological, political, cultural) context of socialist Yugoslavia in periods from
2 About representations as forms of selection and construction of meaning, see: Stuart HALL,
”,Representation, meaning, and language”, In: Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices, (ed.) Stuart HALL, London: Sage Publications, 1997, 13-75.
3 Here, term gender regime is used in a sense of relatively structured relations between men and women, in
institutional and non-institutional environment, on the level of discourse and on the level of practices which
are materialized in different gender roles, different identities and different gender representations (including
different gender performance). Marina BLAGOJEVIĆ, “Žene i muškarci u Srbiji 1990-2000. Urodnjavanje cene
haosa”, in Srbija krajem milenijuma, razaranje društva, promene i svakodnevni život, (eds.) Silvano BOLČIĆ,
Anđelka MILIĆ, Beograd: Institut za sociološka istraživanja Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu, 2002, 311.
4 Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, 20. This author also differentiates
between two basic forms of patriarchy, private and public, where the first refers to work in household and
is characterized by patriarchal strategy of exclusion and direct control, while the second form refers to the
domain of paid work and state, and is characterized by segregation and oppression. Ibid, 24, 178.
5 Erving GOFFMAN, Gender Advertisements, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1979, 8.
6 Hortense POWDERMAKER, Hollywood: The Dream Factory. An Anthropologist Looksat the Movie
Makers. London: Secker & Warburg, 1951, 3.
7 Louise KRASNIEWICZ, “Round up the Usual Suspects”: Anthropology goes to the Movies. Expedition
48 (1)/ 2006, 10.
8 Ana BANIĆ GRUBIŠIĆ, “Antropološki pristup medijima – kratak pregled (sa posebnim osvrtom na igrani
film)”, Antropologija 13 (2)/ 2013, 143.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
1945 to 1952 and from 1952 to 1965. Darko Suvin names the 1945-1965 period
les vingt glorieuses (twenty glorious years) of Yugoslav history, during which
Yugoslavia records great progress from undeveloped agricultural to middle
developed industrial society, good international reputation and important step
toward the economic welfare of wide social strata, but also progress in direction
of achieving social justice and human emancipation.9 At the same time, this
is a period of considerable influence and great popularity of film, after which,
from the mid-1960s, that place is gradually taken over by television. Films
used as the basis of the analysis are those which deal with WWII in Yugoslavia
or the socialist present. It needs to be said that this analysis does not intend
to be comprehensive in its presentation of different levels, dimensions and
complexities of social processes (and interactions) which deal with the way in
which representations of women in Yugoslav film correspond with the changes
in socio-cultural context of Yugoslavia. It represents setting out of basis for
critical thinking on Yugoslav film heritage, which is today necessary not only
to establish a more complex look on the past but also because of emancipatory
potential which that rethinking can have.
One day it shall be wonderful...
War, Revolution, Restructuring and Reconstructing
It is important to keep in mind the complexity of a creation such as
Yugoslavia, which went through significant changes from its inception and
throughout its socialist history depending on social, political and economic
processes which did not merely take place within the Yugoslav context, but also
internationally. The founding myths of the new state were the war of liberation
from fascist occupiers and the socialist revolution. The socialist order, as it
was established after WWII, was based on equality, as well as brotherhood and
unity of the Yugoslav peoples10. The basis of the identity and the legitimacy of
the New Yugoslavia were sought in the kinship of the south Slavic peoples on
the one hand and the more-or-less autochthonous national movement for the
liberation of the country on the other. For Yugoslav communists, The Peoples’
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
Liberation Struggle (Narodno-oslobodilačka borba - NOB) legitimized and
provided a basis for the socialist revolution, while the Peoples’ Liberation Army
(Narodno-oslobodilačka vojska - NOV) and the Partisan Units of Yugoslavia
(Partizanski odredi Jugoslavije -POJ), were institutions which embodied the
ideal of brotherhood and unity.11 In addition to being the political leader
of NOB, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, also played an active and
decisive role in shaping a new consciousness about the state, its character
and its historical significance. The identity of the new state was not only
promoted through official historiography and its “operationalized” version in
the form history textbooks, but also through popular culture. The dominant
narrative in post-war Yugoslavia brought the idea that the national (peoples’)
liberation war was fought by the partisan movement, which included men
and women of all nationalities (ethnic groups). The cohesion factor was the
heroic guerilla struggle against a more powerful occupiers from German,
Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria together with their local collaborators. Cinema
played an important role in this process from the very beginning, because of
its potential for communication and propaganda. Soon after liberation, each
republic founded a central film studio. This period from 1945 to 1950, also
known as the administrative period of centralized Soviet-style governance, was
marked by the founding of state-owned production company “Zvezda” (which
grew out of the propaganda department of the High Command of NOV, of
the Federative National Republic of Yugoslavia - FNRY, as it was called at
the time). During this period, a monumental film studio “Košutnjak” was
built in Belgrade, while the “Avala film” production company was founded
in Belgrade as well as “Jadran film” in Zagreb, “Triglav film” in Ljubljana,
“Vardar film” in Skopje and “Bosna film” in Sarajevo and “Lovćen film” in
Budva.12 The mission of these state-owned cinema production companies
was to document war-time destruction, crimes and trials against the enemy,
reconstruction of the country and feature films. During this stage, the studios
were staffed by personnel from NOB, while the cameras and other technology
came from reparations and the executives were high-ranking military or party
9 Darko Suvin, SAMO JEDNOM SE LJUBI. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije, 1945.-72. Uz hipoteze o početku,
kraju i suštini, Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2014, 319.
10 According to Dejan Jović, the constitutive concept known as brotherhood and unity establishes the new
Yugoslav identity and bases it on two elements - ethnic kinship of South Slavic nations and the socialist social
order. Jović names a total of four different constitutive concepts which define different periods starting from
initial unification in 1918, until the definitive collapse in 1992: 1) The concept of national unity(narodno
jedinstvo); 2) The concept of contractual Yugoslavhood (sporazumsko jugoslovenstvo); 3) The concept of
brotherhood and unity (bratstvo i jedinstvo) and 4) The concept of unity of Yugoslav nations and nationalities
((zajedništvo jugoslovenskih naroda i narodnosti). The first two concepts belong to interwar Yugoslavia;
while the second two constitute social relations in socialist Yugoslavia. Based on this understanding, we can
make a distinction between the Third and the Fourth Yugoslavia. The Fourth refers to the period from 1974,
until the dissolution of the Alliance of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije) in 1992. See
more, Dejan JOVIĆ, Jugoslavija- država koja je odumrla. Uspon, kriza i pad Četvrte Jugoslavije, Zagreb:
Prometej i Beograd: Samizdat B92, 2003, 103-154.
11 Mari-Žanin ČALIĆ, Istorija Jugoslavije u 20. veku, Beograd: Clio, 2013, 205-209.
12 Richard TAYLOR at al., The BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema, London:
British Film Institute, 2008, 268. The development of Yugoslav cinema is most often described in relation to
production models, ie ways of financing films; administrative period (1947-1951), period of free film workers
(1952-1956), producer’s period (1957-1962), and finally a cinema that included the first works of the directors
of the so-called Black wave movement, followed by the works of the members of the so-called Czech film
school. On the other hand, Tomislav Šakić states that, regardless of the changes in production models, the
period from 1945 to the beginning of the 1960s in the poetic and aesthetic sense should have been considered
as a unique period which he calls “the classic period”, ie “the period of predominantly narrative style”. See:
Tomislav ŠAKIĆ, „Hrvatski film klasičnoga razdoblja: Ideologizirani filmski diskurz i modeli otklona“,
Hrvatski filmski ljetopis 38/ 2004, 6–34. According to Šakić’s changes in the aesthetic sense only started
taking place after 1961, when the first modernistic performances such as Dance in the Rain/ Ples v dežju
(Boštjan Hladnik, 1961), And Love Has Vanished / Dvoje (Aleksandar Saša Petrovic, 1961) or omnibus Drops,
Water, Warriors / Kapi, vode, ratnici appeared in the Yugoslav film (Marko Babac, Živojin Žika Pavlović,
Vojislav Kokan Rakonjac, 1962). See: Tomislav ŠAKIĆ, „Filmski svijet Veljka Bulajića: poprište susreta
kolektivnog i privatnog“, Hrvatski filmski ljetopis 57-58/ 2009, 14-16.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
officials.13 These early films were technically modest and lacking in terms of
cinematic craft. The directors were war veterans, partisans, such as Vjekoslav
Afrić, Vojislav Voja Nanović, Vatroslav Mimica, Žorž Skrigin, Nikola Popović,
Radoš Novaković, Vicko Raspor and Stole Janković. Cinema historians Mira
and Antonjin Lim vividly described this phase of Yugoslav cinema “from
mountains to film studios.”14 Andrew Horton succinctly said that Yugoslav
national identity was similarly tied to war and cinema, while partisan films
(red western) as a genre played a similar role to western movies in American
cinema.15 Early partisan films share an essential characteristic with their (early)
western counterparts: narratives of national genesis. They served to “take a
group of settlers of various nationalities, languages, religions and ethics [...]
and create an integrated society, a new nation, a new order.”16 Yugoslav cinema
was a dominant part of the cultural production which supported and affirmed
the narrative of Yugoslavhood as a supranational phenomenon, achievable in a
new social order seeking to establish a classless society, communism. Women’s’
active role in this struggle, both as fighters and through their work behind the
lines (as logistical support, spying, nursing, etc.), was an important part of that
rhetoric, while, equality between men and women represented an important
part the country’s official ideology. As such, these narratives had their place in
Yugoslav cinema.
The context in which the Kingdom of Yugoslavia finds itself at the
beginning of WWII is best described as an industrially weak capitalist country
with an overwhelmingly agrarian economic structure. For example, in 1931,
76% of all economically active persons worked in agriculture, forestry or
fishing, while only 11% were involved in industrial or craft jobs.17 According
to the same census, 44,6 % of the population was illiterate, while this rate
was 56,4% among women over the age of 10, compared to 32% of illiterate
men.18 Most women live in rural areas where physical labour is combined with
reproductive work and various forms of violence.19 Although women’s lives were
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
vastly different depending on their ethnicity, religion and country in which they
lived prior to the creation of the new state, they shared a position of subjugation
in a legal20 and social21 sense. According to Jelena Petrović, this economic and
political inequality could be seen through “deprived political and civil rights
(the right to vote, to own property, to inherit, etc.), limited choice of profession
( teachers, lower ranking clerks in civil service - typists, telephone operators,
cashiers - professions which were available to only a small number of women,
or textile workers, workers in the tobacco industry and, of course, housewives),
exploitation (significantly lower wages compared to men doing the same jobs, as
well as the worst jobs, while simultaneously performing all the household work,
and difficult seasonal work in rural areas), ownership of women (ownership of
the father, then husband, especially in rural areas where 76% of population lives
according to the 1931 census), cultural and public exclusion of women (with
few exceptions, whose “femininity” in public space was tolerated as a handicap),
etc.”22 In spite of all of this, a number of women’s organizations and magazines
was active during the interwar period, ranging in ideological conviction, form
socialist to clero-fascist, and, for the most part, they worked legally.23
Women’s organizations stopped their work when WWII started, but
a significant number of women joined and actively participated in the armed
resistance, and through providing support behind the lines.24 Women’s Antifascist
Front (Antifašistički Front Žena - AFŽ) grew out of a network of women’s
organizations which were formed in most of the liberated territories and was
officially formed in 1942. Josip Broz Tito attended the first Congress of AFŽ
(from 5. to 7. of December), which is symbolically significant. He remarked
on the historical importance of the even for women’s struggle for equality and
emphasized women’s contribution to the liberation struggle: “ Everything that
is done by our army today is 90% the achievement of our heroic women of
Yugoslavia.” Also, he spoke of the goals of AFŽ, beyond winning against the
13 This is period of emphasized ideological control over film making. in Yugoslavia, official censorship
was introduced immediately after WWII, in 1945. The Official Gazette of (then) Democratic Federative
Yugoslavia (DFY) published a “Directive on censorship of cinematographic films.” Commissions were made
of party and state officials, and military and police officers. See more on this topic at Goran MILORADOVIĆ,
“Lica u tami. Društveni profil filmskih cenzora u Jugoslaviji 1945-1955”, Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju, XI
(2-3)/2004, 101-122. Also see, Goran MILORADOVIĆ, Lepota pod nadzorom : sovjetski kulturni uticaji u
Jugoslaviji : 1945-1955, Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2012.
14 Antonjin LIM i Mira LIM, Najvažnija umetnost: Istočnoevropski film u dvadesetom veku, Beograd:
CLIO, 2006, 124.
15 Andrew Horton in Stephanie BARIC, „Yugoslav War Cinema: Shooting a Nation that No Longer Exists“,
MA thesis, Concordia University, Montreal, 2001, 33. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/1507/1/MQ64011.
pdf (20.5.2017).
16 Hrvoje TURKOVIĆ, Filmska opredjeljenja, Zagreb: Meandar, 1985, 140.
17 О privrednoj aktivnost žепа Jugoslavije od 1918. do 1953. according to Lydia SKELVICKY, Konji, žene,
ratovi, Zagreb: Druga - Ženska infoteka, 1996, 93.
18 For a detailed overview of population structure in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, see Ibid, 93-96 i 103-107.
19 Regarding the position of women in the interwar period, see more, Vera ST. ERLICH, Jugoslavenska
porodica u transformaciji, studija u tristotine sela, Zagreb: Liber, 1971.
20 Kingdom of Yugoslavia throughout its existence never had a unified Civic code, there were six different
legal areas strongly influenced by official religious organizations instead, and those were, amongst other
things, determining laws regarding marriage, divorce and annulment of marriage. Women were given no
rights in any of these legal system, they were not recognized as legal subjects at all. The only exception was
criminal law, where it was recognized that women are capable of committing crimes and that they can be held
legally responsible for those same way the men could. SKELVICKY, Konji, žene, ratovi, 88, 90.
21 On status of women in the lands that entered Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (that became
Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929), see more, Neda BOŽINOVIĆ, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku,
Beograd: Devedesetčetvrta: Žene u crnom, 1996, 91- 103.
22 Jelena PETROVIĆ, „Društveno-političke paradigme prvog talasa jugoslovenskih feminizama“,
ProFemina, 2/ 2011, 63.
23 Ibid, str. 59-80. Regarding the history of women organizing between the wars in Yugoslavia, also see,
BOŽINOVIć, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, 104-133; SKELVICKY, Konji, žene, ratovi, 79-81.
24 Quoting Jere Vodušek-Starič, Mari Žanin Čalić claims that PLA has 800 000 men and women under
arms. ČALIĆ, Istorija Jugoslavije u 20. veku, 207. During the war 305 000 fighters lost their lives, with
another 425 000 wounded. Ibid, 209. It has been estimated that there were over 100 000 female fighters in
Yugoslavia during WWII, 25 000 of whom got killed, 40 000 wounded, and 3 000 survived with some sort
of heavy disability. 90 women have been awarded with People’s Hero medal. Žena u privredi i društvu SFR
Jugoslavije, osnovni pokazatelji, Beograd: Savezni zavod za statistiku, 1975, 3.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
occupiers, but as a struggle for the final liberation of women.25 Considering the
role of AFŽ, Lydia Sklevicky maintains that there were two large interconnected
groups of tasks. The first involved the people’s liberation movement in general,
such as providing aid to the army (gathering food, material goods, charity work,
etc.) and organizing life behind the lines, ensuring that normal life continued in
liberated territories, including social policies (such as care for the children, the
sick and the ill). The second group of tasks of AFŽ encompassed political and
cultural emancipation of women and their equal inclusion into the liberation
struggle and the reconstruction of postwar society.26 Even during the Fifth State
Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Komunistička partija Jugoslavije
- KPJ) in 1940, two women were voted as members of the Central Committee,
Spasenija Babović and Vida Tomšič, who later went on to serve as presidents of
AFŽ. As Tomšič demanded in her speech, “all party organizations need to devote
utmost attention to working with women”, and these efforts should actively
include men.27 She repeated previous demands of women’s civil and workers’
movements, which had not been accomplished by this point, and added them
to the Communist Party program, “protection of motherhood, elimination
of duplicitous morality in public and private life, economic equality and the
right to vote.”28 Education was a particularly important condition for achieving
equality. According to Sklevicky “AFŽ directed many of their activities in that
direction, and we can see multiple levels at which this task was accomplished.
The basic level consisted of literacy courses and general education, which later
continued into political education - as upbringing for politics, while writing
for women’s magazines and propaganda to read it, signified a call to create a
new activist identity for women.29 AFŽ press played an important role in this
process. According to Gordana Stojaković, around 30 women’s magazines were
published from time to time between 1942 and 1945 within AFŽ and KPJ, in
parts of Yugoslavia where the people’s liberation movement (NOP) was active.30
25 „Drug Tito nama i o nama“, Žena danas, 31/ 1943. br. 3 according BOŽINOVIĆ, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji
u XIX i XX veku, 147.
26 SKELVICKY, Žene, konji, ratovi, 25-28.
27 Ljubinka ČIRIĆ-BOGETIĆ, „Odluke Pete zemaljske konferencije KPJ o radu među ženama i njihova realizacija u
periodu 1940-1941. godine“, in Peta zemaljska konferencija KPJ: zbornik radova, (eds.) Zlatko ČEPO, Ivan JELIĆ, Zagreb:
Institut za historiju radničkog pokreta Hrvatske: Školska knjiga, 1972, 94. http://www.znaci.net/00003/661.pdf (19. 5. 2017)
28 PETROVIĆ, „Društveno-političke paradigme prvog talasa jugoslovenskih feminizama”, 76.
29 SKELVICKY, Konji, žene, ratovi, 30.
30 Gordana STOJAKOVIĆ, Rodna perspektiva novina Antifašističkog fronta žena (1945-1953), Novi Sad: Zavod
za ravnopravnost polova, 2012, str. 37- 38. System of AFŽ press was based on the kind of hierarchy in which Žena
danas (Woman today) was a monthly issue which transmitted the axiomatic messages to the leaders of the middle and
lower class AFŽ boards, and all other papers would then, as per the matrix thus created, convey their vision of reality
on both macro (political plan) as well as micro (everyday life) level. At the same time, they were creating a whole
new reality based on those new roles that women were supposed to take on. Women being portrayed as active actors
in the transformation of social and political context in factories, on the fields, farmers unions but also in Peoples
Liberation Boards (narodno-oslobodilački odbori - NOO) where they partake in government is highly characteristic
for the post-war papers in 1946-1950 period. At the same time, role of women in care and nutrition economy, as well
as the role of a mother (whether it be to its own or adopted, war orphaned children) is still very important. Ibid, 169173. See also, Ksenija VIDMAR-HORVAT, Imaginarna majka – Rod i nacionalizam u kulturi 20. stoljeća, Zagreb:
Sandorf i Ljubljana: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, 2017, 45-58.
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Women’s Antifascist Front provided a channel for women to articulate their
demands for equality with men across all segments of society. For many women,
participation in antifascist resistance and the movement to liberate their country,
as well as participation in “organs of people’s government” („organi narodne
vlasti“) (where they had the right to vote and to be voted for, even during the
war) signaled they started to be politicized and to become political subjects.
In addition to the numerous tasks AFŽ took on in the post- war
rebuilding and construction of the state, their focus was on legislation which
would embody and ensure equality between women and men. Yugoslav women
took part in the election for a Constitutional parliament for the first time in
1945. Turnout for women was exceptionally high, which can be seen from
the report at the Third Congress of Yugoslav AFŽ, which stated that 88%
of women voted.31 The Constitution from 1946 affirmed equality between
women and men in spheres of social and political life. It is important to note
that this Constitution did not introduce a practice of equality between men
and women regarding voting rights, rather, these Constitutional principles
came out of a previously established practice. All the legislation that followed
strictly adhered to this principle.32 It was promoted as one of the central
principles on which the new state was to be based, and it reflected the radical
revolutionary attitudes that all inequalities based on class, nationality and
gender should be abolished. In addition to education, women’s economic
independence was seen as a key prerequisite for women’s emancipation.
Women and men were becoming equal, first and foremost, as members of
the working class. As Gordana Stojaković states, “Socialist ideology did not
consider women’s emancipation outside of its (working)class framework which
dictated the measure of women’s emancipation in relation to the sphere of
labor.33 Immediately after the war, due to the urgent need for construction and
rapid modernization, ingrained attitudes regarding women’s inferiority came
to be treated as a measure of political and social backwardness. This in turn
meant made the issue of women’s equality a political question whose solution
became necessary if society was going to transform in the new revolutionary
direction. At the same time, the so-called women’s issue, although insecure and
partial, possessed a singular and autonomous status through AFŽ . In this
31 “Politika”, 28. oktobar 1950. prema Vera GUDAC – DODIĆ, „Položaj žene u Srbiji (1945–2000)“, in Žene
i deca - Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XIX i XX veka, (ed.) Latinka Perović, Beograd: Helsinški odbor
za ljudska prava u Srbiji, 2006, 35.
32 Through marriage law (1946) position of women and men in marriage has been made equal, and the family
law legislation introduced in 1947 made rights of children born out of wedlock the same as those of legitimate
children. Insurance against all risks has been introduced through legislation on social security, which included
paid maternity leave as well as pension rights which are same for both men and women (although women
would retire earlier). Law introduced in 1951 guaranteed the right to abortion. 1974 Constitution made sure
women are guaranteed a full right to free birth, and since 1977 there were no limitations on abortions within
first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Ibid, 33; BOŽINOVIĆ, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, 161-163.
33 Gordana STOJAKOVIĆ, „Antifašistički front žena Jugoslavije (AFŽ) 1946–1953: pogled kroz AFŽ
štampu“, u Rod i levica, (ed.) Lidija VASILJEVIĆ, Beograd: Ženski informaciono-dokumentacioni trening
centar (ŽINDOK), 2012, 13.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
organization, women took charge of their own emancipation as active subjects
playing their part in building the new socialist society.
Films that were produced immediately after the war featured a
prototypical revolutionary female subjectivity whose key references were
women’s active participation in the armed struggle and their work behind
the lines. A good example can be found in the film Živjeće ovaj narod/ This
people Shall Live written by Branko Ćopić ad directed by Nikola Popović made
in 1947.34 The above mentioned revolutionary female subjectivity is clearly
located as exclusively proletarian and rural, while gender and class are also
closely intertwined. The story takes place in Bosanska krajina, under the
mountain Grmeč during an early uprising against German occupiers and the
Ustaša in 1941. Jagoda (Vera Ilić) , who happens to be a young Serbian peasant
women, falls in love with Ivan (Siniša Ravasi), a Croatian young partisan
Commissar and specialist in mining railways, who comes from a nearby town.
The opening of the film shows Jagoda speaking to a soldier of the Yugoslav
army which just capitulated, in order to hint to the audience that there is
still resistance. As she gives him water, she inquires why he is still carrying
rifles if the army capitulated, and his response is “Who else will defend you?
We will wage war again”. [“A ko će vas braniti? Mi ćemo tek ratovati.“] The
film follows the process of preparing for the uprising. which involves most
of the other peasants. A dialogue between Jagoda and her grandfather Ilija
(Fran Novaković) in which she asks “Grandpa, how does one overthrow the
state?”[„Đede, kako se ruši država?“] and he responds “Oh no, since when
do you care for the state?” [„Zar i ti vodiš brigu o državi, jadan sam ti ja?”]
early in the film indicates that she does not accept limitations based on gender
which would keep women out of politics and major historical events such as
the war. Similarly, in the scene where her grandfather asks her about dressing
up nicely, Jagoda replies “I am going to the Committee. I will drive food
to the army” [„Idem do odbora. Voziću hranu vojsci.“] and Ilija maintains
“You? What is woman doing with the army?” [„Ama, zar ti? Šta ima žensko s
vojskom?“]. The grandmother (Milica-Carka Jovanović) who is baking bread,
joins the conversation, “Oh, my crazy granddaughter, they’re shooting there.
You might pay with your life” [„E, moja luda unuko, pa tamo se puca. Možeš
glavom platiti“] and adds that it would be better if her younger brother (a boy)
went than “her, lass!” [„nego ona, curetina!“]. Another way in which Jagoda
steps out of her traditional patriarchal role is her thirst for knowledge. After
she finds out that the recently liberated older men is a university professor and
scholar, she asks him to teach her to read. In return, she offers to mend and
wash his clothes, which allows her to establish a relationship based on equality
and exchange, rather than a relation in which she is begging for charity. Later
in the film, the teacher gives a speech on the occasion of the end of the literacy
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
34 For more detailed analysis of this film, see, Nebojša JOVANOVIĆ, „Gender and Sexuality in the Classical
Yugoslav Cinema, 1947-1962“, PhD dissertation, Central European University Department of Gender Studies
Budapest, 2014, 94-99.
course, and we see an audience full of women with joy on their faces. There is a
wide range of female characters, from more traditional women (usually older)
to younger women who are becoming emancipated and politicized through
their involvement in the struggle. Jagoda is the symbolic representation of
women’s emancipation as a herald of the present and the future. Another
reason why we chose this film (instead of for example, Slavica by Vjekoslav
Afrić, made in the same year) is the representation of women as a collective,
peasant women as a revolutionary force, whose capacity for enacting change
comes from their oppressed position in a rural patriarchal context. Women
are the ones who cross ethnic boundaries. During a village meeting, one of
the peasants (man) expresses doubts that Ivan is probably ustaša, but Jagoda,
who is already falling in love with him, is not the only one to defend him.
Other women rebel against this assumption, and they do so as a group. Their
involvement and contribution to the whole struggle is more heart-felt that men,
who let their habitual ethnic distrust and dispiritedness guide their doubts.
Women’s massive involvement in the rebellion can be seen in a series of scenes,
in which the peasant organize to transport wheat to the partisans. A village
meeting where peasants (men and women) discuss this, precedes these scenes.
The men, both peasants and the partisans in the mountains, express doubt
about the feasibility of this endeavour, because there is a blizzard and “neither
the sled, nor the horses can pass across the mountain” [“ni saonice, ni konji ne
mogu prijeći preko planine”]. Jagoda is the first to react: “Neither the sled, nor
the horses, but a person can! We will break through to Drvar!” [“Ni saonice,
ni konji, ali može čovjek! Mi ćemo se probiti do Drvara!”]. She is immediately
joined by other women. And what follows is a memorable scene. A long scene
depicting the blizzard, in which we see dark skirts in the wind against the
backdrop of the white snow in the storm, as the women walk in line and carry
the wheat. The other memorable scene is the battle against Germans. Peasants
join the partisans in battle, and women are on the frontlines again, at first with
agricultural tools, and then, as they progress, they take weapons from dead
soldiers. These images combine the representation of the nation in rebellion
and the revolutionary femininity. It is abundantly clear after the battle, that
victory was not possible without the women.
Later films very rarely depict women as a collective revolutionary
subject, but still, the trope of the individual partisan/female fighter persists
in the representation of women in NOB. At this point, it is important to
differentiate between the first phase of partisan films (1947-1960), which is
dominated by narratives about the beginning of the revolution and relatively
modest tasks. While the second phase (1960-1990) of partisan films already
represents a genre in its own right, and the narratives are larger-than-life
mythologies about spectacular battles and impressive action scenes. Women
remain in these narratives, as partisans and fighters, which later contributes
as a factor of their emancipation. This kind of adventurous crossing of
boundaries only serves to further show social mobility and a release from
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
patriarchal shekels.35 This trope is most clearly seen in films depicting
military offensives, which is a sub-genre of partisan films. In other words, “the
seven largest military operations of the German army and its collaborators
against Yugoslav partisans during World War II”36 were made into epic films
which took a significant place in the official ideological discourse of Yugoslav
socialism. Also, these were state projects which took up considerable material
and human resources.37 According to Nemanja Zvijer, over time, narrating
the seven offensives38 became a “significant place of memory and one of the
important segments through which the complexity of WWII in Yugoslavia
could be reduced and simplified.”39
In this text, we are briefly going to consider the character of Danica
(Sylvia Koscina) from the partisan spectacle Battle on the Neretva / Bitka na
Neretvi (1969), directed by Veljko Bulajić, which according to Zvijer, can be
seen as “an blatant example of film-making practice of war spectacle in socialist
Yugoslavia.”40 The movie portrays a series of military operations aimed at
destroying partisan forces which were undertaken by German, Italian, Ustaša
and Četnik armed forces in the beginning of 1943 throughout the territory
of today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. Socialist historiography named this The
Fourth Enemy Offensive or The Battle for the Wounded because the partisan
army retreated with around 4000 wounded and sick (mainly from typhoid).
As in many other films (especially filmed offensives), the main character is
the collective, in other words, the partisan army. Various fictional characters
and their personal dramatic stories are combined into a mosaic which serves
to paint the true hero, the multiethnic multitude which is fighting for their
freedom and their future. The partisan army, which includes the typhoid
sufferers and refugees, actually constitutes the image of “nation in rebellion.”
This army is made up of both men and women. In the film, one can see women
in traditional roles, as peasant-women carrying their children as they flee,
also as nurses and doctors, but more importantly in new roles as uniformed
and armed fighters, taking an active role in the struggle. This comes across
most expressively in one of the first images in the beginning of the film,
when Danica is taking a picture with her brothers Novak (Ljubiša Samardžić)
and Vuk (Radko Polič). All three of them are wearing uniforms. Another
memorable scene takes place during a particularly strong attack from German,
35 Comp. Renata JAMBREŠIĆ KIRIN, ”Moderne vestalke u kulturi pamćenja Drugog svjetskog rata”, in
Dom i svijet, (ed.) Sandra PRLENDA, Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2008, 27.
36 Nemanja ZVIJER, „Koncept neprijatelja u filmovanim ofanzivama – Prilog sociološkoj analizi filma”,
Sociološki pregled, XLIV (3)/ 2010, 419.
37 Ibid, 421.
38 The offensives were made into films in the following order: Kozara (1962), Raid on Drvar / Desant na
Drvar (1963), The Battle on the Neretva / Bitka na Neretvi (1969), Sutjeska (1973), The Republic of Užice /
Užička Republika (1974), The Fall of Italy / Pad Italije (1981) and The March on Igman / Igmanski marš (1983).
39 ZVIJER, „Koncept neprijatelja u filmovanim ofanzivama”, 421 i dalje;
40 Nemanja ZVIJER, „Ideologija i vrednosti u jugoslovenskom ratnom spektaklu: prilog sociološkoj analizi
filma na primeru Bitke na Neretvi Veljka Bulajića“, in Hrvatski filmski ljetopis 57-58/ 2009, 27. For more
detailed analysis of this film, Ibid, 27-40.
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Italian, Ustaša and Četnik forces. The sound of the song “Fall, oh force and
injustice” [Padaj silo i nepravdo] is mixed with the sound of artillery canon
fire and the sound of Church bells, until the sounds become indistinguishable.
With this sound, we see images of partisans and wounded, intertwined with
fight scenes against an overwhelmingly more powerful enemy. Danica is on
the front line in the battle. We want to draw attention to her face, and to the
tears running down her cheeks as she shoots from the machine gun. A second
later, we see her charge into battle and shout “Charge!” Having in mind that
tears are traditionally associated with weakness which is a constitutive part of
stereotypical femininity, it is possible to read this scene as a hint at overcoming
the traditional hierarchical male/female and strength/weakness dichotomy.
Although there are multiple ways to read this, cinematic representations
of femininity in WWII offer a contrast the partisan woman as an embodiment
of the female revolutionary subject on the one hand, and the decadent femininity
which is often directly linked with female collaborators.41 In this context gender
is closely linked to class. The film Abeceda straha / Alphabet of Fear (1961),
directed by Fadil Hadžić is a good example. It follows one episode in the life of
partisan undercover operative Vera (Vesna Bojanić), who poses as Katica and
gets a job as maid in the household of the banker Molnar (Josip Zappalorto),
a high ranking sympathizer of the Ustaša government in Zagreb in 1943.
Vera/Katica’s job is to get a list of planted Ustaša informants. Alphabet of fear
continues a trend of urban guerrilla movies, which begin with Don’t Look Back,
My Son / Ne okreći se sine (1956), directed by Branko Bauer. As a character, Vera
represents an emancipated young woman who participates in planning and
carrying out actions equally with her male comrades. This film is interesting
because the number of female and male characters is almost equal (thirteen male
compared to ten female characters). Additionally, the (“bourgeois”) women are
portrayed more negatively than Molnar, even though he is an Ustaša officer
who actively collaborates with the Ustaša for ten years, as the movie reveals.
Molnar lives with his wife and two daughters, the younger one being fifteen.
Throughout the whole film, a clear contrast is drawn between Vera and the
other female characters, and it is constituted on (at least) two levels: concerning
gender and concerning class. The world of the bourgeois wife is delineated by
marriage as a business agreement. She organizes social occasions that can help
her husband’s career, she chooses dresses, spends time with other wives, in trivial
conversation (usually about other men) and gossip. The representation of the
bourgeois woman corresponds with the traditional negative female stereotypes.
This representation includes superficiality, selfishness, focus on fulfilling their
own desires, lack of political consciousness and moral considerations and an
inability to understand a larger picture.42 In this sense, their collaboration can
be understood as a consequence of a lack of intellectual and moral capacity. An
41 See more JOVANOVIĆ, „Gender and Sexuality in the Classical Yugoslav Cinema, 1947-1962“,100- 108.
42 At one point, Molnar describes his wife by saying the way “she gossips is a form of political work” [„da
se bavi tračem kao jedinim političkim radom“].
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
example of this can be seen in Mrs. Molnar’s (Nada Kasapić) tea party, which
she organizes for the wives of the other Ustaša officers. One of the guests asks
about news, and then begins by her own “You should see the Jewish set that I
have received” [„Imaš li šta novo? Da vidiš kakvu sam ja židovsku garnituru
dobila“] and then continues with a mixture of gossip about sexual adventures
of one of the husbands, mocking, discussing servants and information about
an absent friends who is “higher up now”[“sada visoko odskočila”] because
“her Victor just burned fifty villages and became an important person over
night”[“njen Viktor je zapalio pedeset sela i preko noći postao velika ličnost”].
This does not imply anything about the nature of femininity, but rather only
about socially constructed pressures of bourgeois society in which these women
were socialized. The best example for this is the representation of Saša (Jasenka
Kodrnja), Molnar’s younger daughter. Unlike Elza (Tatjana Beljakova), the
elder daughter, whom we see in an Ustaša uniform as she is getting ready for
work one morning, Saša is still young, spoiled and has not had a chance to
be corrupted. As she speaks to Katica/Vera, she mentions she would like to
meet partisans, because “there are young women among them” [“kažu da ima
i devojaka među njima”]. Although her daydreams revolve around love and
young men, she shows a curiosity about the world and issues outside the narrow
life of her family, her social circle and a fate that is intended for her.
Here it should be kept in mind that the idea of woman´s economic
independence, as the primary condition of her emancipation, is in the basis
of the socialist ideology of women’s emancipation; therefore the question of
change of women´s position was primarily linked with the women´s already
implemented right to work. After the war, this did not simply emanate from
the ideology of the newly established government, but also from the need to
engage as many people as possible in the restoration of the war-torn country,
and later from the ambitious demands of the five-year plan´s realization.
Hence the state´s and AFŽ´s efforts to employ as many women as possible and
integrate them into different economic activities, including those in which, in
pre-war Yugoslavia, only or mainly men had been employed. The time period
immediately after the war is defined by intense social restructuring and the
struggle for the meanings of the new social (and gender) order, whereas the war
heroism was replaced by work heroism. Socialism needed to be stabilized and
a destroyed country rebuilt. Almost 400 000 people were left homeless and
the damage was measured to around 2,3 billion US dollars. The first period
which in economic terms represented a period of centralized administrative
government (1945-1952), was marked by a complex system of savings measures
(coupons for consumption rationing) and planned production (first five year
plan 1947-1951). Right after the war, UN and the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) donated 416 million worth of
goods (mainly food) to Yugoslavia.43 For women in the first decade of post-
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
war restoration of society the place among workers-udarniks/shock workers
was reserved, and they needed to participate on the same level as men in every
form of collective activity. On the one hand poverty and rationing additionally
motivated women to compete for the status of udarnik/shock worker in order
to secure additional food, clothes and textile coupons44; on the other hand the
intense agitation of AFŽ, primarily through the press, worked on construing a
woman-worker as a key protagonist in the successful realization of the socialist
project. The struggle did not only signify the struggle for emancipation but
also the struggle for implementation of the five year plan (from 1947 to 1951).
Women were mobilized on several levels: through work actions, analphabetic
courses, as well as tailoring and sewing courses, as workers and udarniks, but
were all the while also expected to take care of the household. State politics
used the New woman as a symbolic bearer of modernization45, and women’s
visibility in socio-cultural sphere of the new state should have marked the
accomplished progress in this new reality. As Ksenija Vidmar-Horvat states,
for understanding complex socialist gender politics and the definition of
woman´s role in socialism three basic fields of establishment of woman´s
position are important: work domain, marital-family life, and in relation to
children. And the socialist project called for a radical shift from bourgeois
oppression of women on all three fields.46 Vladimir Pogačić´s film “Priča o
fabrici” (The Factory Story) shows that this was not a simple task.47 The story
is set in a textile factory in Zagreb shortly after the liberation of the country.
The problems which the factory faces include not only deficiency, difficulties
in production, work with the machines and procurement of materials, but
also the plan of its former pre-war owner Gartner (Tito Stroci) to sabotage the
factory. Two parallel strands shape the narrative. One follows the dilemmas
of the engineer Branimir Vrtar (Strahinja Petrović) whom Gartner plans to
draw in in his sabotage plans, which meets the approval of Vrtar´s wife who
cannot reconcile with their losing of pre-war privileges. The protagonist of
the other strand of the story is Marija Mlinarić (Marija Crnobori), a textile
worker, who wants to solve the production problems by showing that one
female worker can work on six machines simultaneously. The one thing in
common is the unhappy marriages of the two protagonists. Vrtar´s wife,
a glamorous beauty, cannot find a way to make peace with losing pre-war
privileges and therefore pressures Branimir to take part in the sabotage of
43 Igor DUDA, ”Uhodavanje socijalizma”,Refleksije vremena 1945. – 1955. 10–40. Zagreb: Galerija
Klovićevi dvori, 2013, 25.
44 Coupons r1 and r2 for workers and coupon 0 for all others, while peasants had no right to coupons. Also,
r1 coupons could have been used in different stores in relation to r2 coupons. Renata JAMBREŠIĆ KIRIN,
”Žene u formativnom socijalizmu”, Refleksije vremena 1945. – 1955. (ed.) Jasmina Bavoljak, Zagreb: Galerija
Klovićevi dvori, 2012, 193.
45 Comp. JAMBREŠIČ-KIRIN, ”Moderne vestalke u kulturi pamćenja Drugog svjetskog rata”, 19-54.
46 VIDMAR HORVAT, Imaginarna majka – Rod i nacionalizam u kulturi 20. stoljeća, 46. On the politics
of representation of motherhood in socialism, see: ibid, 46-67 . On the politics of motherhood, see: Rada
DREZGIĆ, “Bela kuga“ među “Srbima“. O naciji, rodu i rađanju na prelazu vekova, Beograd: Albatros Plus:
Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, 2010, 17-51.
47 For a more detailed anayisis, see: JOVANOVIĆ, “Gender and Sexuality in the Classical Yugoslav
Cinema, 1947-1962“, 138-141.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
the factory. On the other side, Marija’s marital problems are in connection to
the refusal of her husband Ferd (Branko Pleša), a model worker himself, to
accept Marija’s dedication to work. During her testimony at the Gartner´s and
his accomplices´ trial about the circumstances which preceded the sabotage,
she starts to talk about Ferd’s behaviour. On the reaction of one of the jurors
that Marija is disclosing details of her personal life “which have nothing to do
with the subject of the trial” [koji nemaju veze sa predmetom rasprave] Marija
replies: “Private life? Do you really think that life can be divided?“ [“Privatni
život? Zar vi zbilja mislite da se život može dijeliti?”]. In one of the scenes we
are shown how Ferd accuses her of neglecting the marriage in order to work.
While she is doing the laundry, in his complaints the anger (“I’ve had enough
of your conferences, your jobs outside the house. Do I have a wife?...Is this
a home? Is this a marriage?” [“Meni je već preko glave tvojih konferencija,
tvojih poslova izvan kuće. Imam li ja ženu? ... Zar je ovo kuća? Zar je ovo
brak?”]) and pleas (”Am I a bad worker? But who can demand from me to
renounce everything? Listen, for my love, you are going to leave those damned
six machines” [“Zar sam ja loš radnik? Ali tko može od mene zahtjevati da
se odreknem baš svega? Slušaj, meni za ljubav, ti ćeš ostaviti tih prokletih šest
strojeva”]) take turns. We are here able to see directly the conflict between
revolutionary emancipation and patriarchal woman’s gender role. Through the
expectation that woman’s primary responsibility lies in the private domain,
marriage and family, patriarchy survives the revolution. Woman’s exit from
the private domain (which traditionally belongs to women) into the public
domain, the possibility to work and economic independence are not enough
for a complete transformation of woman’s position – the patriarchal order
continues to live in the private and family domain.48
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broke traditional stereotypes of how woman should look and behave with
their endeavours in industry and restoration of the country.49On the other
side, the split-up with Soviet Union, made the management of the country
turn for help (loans and commerce) to their ideological counterparts – the
capitalist West.50An adequate model, which was far enough from the countries
of the so called real socialism but also not threatening for the reputation in
international workers movement, was needed. The new identity of the state
was developing on the idea of diversity, the search for the “third way” in regard
to SSSR and the Soviet bloc, and to pre-war Yugoslavia and liberal democracy
in general (where liberal democracy and capitalism were used as synonyms).
On the international plane, the specifics of that Yugoslav “third way” built
in conditions of bloc division, were manifested through the Non-Aligned
Movement51, on the interior plane it was manifested through the invention of
socialist self-management (as a counterpoint to state planned economy of the
countries of the East, but also to the free market of the West).52At the beginning
of the 1950 the government had already tested the first self-managing units in
production, and in the summer of the same year came the first confirmation of
the foreign help. It seemed as the situation had normalized. Mass mobilizations
were switched for the gradual introduction of self-management units from the
start of the 1950s.53The state started the process of decentralization on all
levels, first in the economy, and then in the whole society. Companies were
managed by workers councils, although in practice in the most part, especially
in the beginning, only notionally. The main decisions on companies business
conduct were still made by the state.54Parallel with the growing independence
of economic organizations as the bearers of economic growth, the autonomy
48 Although it factually marks the end of her marriage, Marija chooses work. The end of the film is also very
interesting. Instead of exhausted from work and sadness as we see her in the most part of the film, Marija is
represented in a new dress and exudes freshness and optimism. To be without a man does not automatically
mean to be miserable.
49 GUDAC-DODIĆ, “Položaj žene u Srbiji (1945–2000)“, 60.
50 About the relations with the USA and the Soviet Union in 1948-1963 period, see: Tvrtko JAKOVINA,
Socijalizam na američkoj pšenici: (1948-1963), Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2002.
51 During the meeting of Tito, Egyptian president Nasser and India’s prime-minister Nehru in Brioni in
1956, the draft was made of what is to become the official declaration of the Non-Aligned Movement after the
Belgrade conference in 1961. The declaration states: condemnation of the bloc division of the world, complete
removal of the causes of wars, support for the disarmament, need for nuclear energy used for peaceful
purposes, economic help for underdeveloped countries and mutual cooperation. Ibid, 121-124.
52 Todor Kuljić has succinctly formulated in an interview: “The whole Yugoslav ideology of selfmanagement was a sort of a “third way“, which Yugoslav socialist officials always highlighted. It wasn’t
planned socialism, but also not capitalism. We are somewhere in-between these opposites; we do not represent
the extremes; we are the real self-managing democracy. Exactly this ideology of the “third way“ enabled very
flexible foreign policy, which was useful to the eastern and the western bloc.“ Todor KULJIĆ, “Jugoslovensko
radničko samoupravljanje”, 2003, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0805/kuljic/sr (30.05. 2017).
53 First, in June 1950 with the enactment of the “Basic law on the management of the state companies and
higher business associations by the working collectives“, which was later confirmed by the “Constitutional
law on the basis of social and political organization of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia and
federal authorities“ from January 1953. In his speech in the Parliament on the occasion of the enactment
of the “Self-management law“, Josip Broz Tito highlighted three key moments in future development of
Yugoslavia: process of “withering away of the state“, distancing of the Party (KPJ) from the state apparatus
and transformation of state into social property, which will be governed by the direct manufacturers. Dušan
BILANDŽIĆ, Hrvatska moderna povijest, Zagreb: Golden marketing, 1999, 321-334.
54 The “Law on planned managment of national economy“ was adopted already in 1951. Ibid, 327.
84
85
Do you really think that life can be divided?…
The Big Turn Over
The event which, in the long run, has set the course of development of
Yugoslavia and announced a radical transformation of all spheres of Yugoslav
society is the conflict with the Cominform in 1948. It was one of the hardest
periods in the socialist history of Yugoslavia. Economic blockade in the East,
strong political pressure from the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist
bloc, the danger of the occupation of Yugoslavia, made the government reach
for mass mobilizations and employment of all available hands. This kind
of government initiative was supported by the official press, which in that
period especially highlighted the role of female udarniks and women who
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
of the local authorities as the bearers of social growth was strengthened.55
Socialist democracy was in the case of Yugoslavia first of all understood
as economic democracy based on national equality and social parity. The
personal contribution to the development of the country, the ability to govern
the process of production, and thereby the process of social modernization
meant to be an actor, autonomous subject of your own development. The
role of the worker was central to the construction of the “cosmopolitan,
international, modern and supranational identity of the citizen of Yugoslavia
in the time of socialism”56.When it comes to women’s socialist ideology, it did
not contemplate emancipation of the women outside the work system (working
class). As Ksenija Vidmar-Horvat states, as “friends” they were an integral
part of the proletariat and it was considered that they have no other special
rights which would be separate from the rights and demands of the working
class. Gender discourse in SFRY was mainly focused on the role of women
in national industry, while in the aspect of private and family life (marriage,
motherhood, and gender roles) the traditional model was considerably kept.
In the socialist model an attempt was made on harmonization and integration
of working functions and functions which women perform in the private
domain, with the emphasis on motherhood. Although the state had introduced
measures which should have facilitated women in connecting public (the
domain of work and political engagement) and private (primarily linked to
motherhood, like paid maternal leave, almost free kindergarten, hot meals for
children in school etc.57) domains, the attitude that women as a social group
were not different from men prevailed.58 “Self-cancellation” of the Women’s
Antifascist Front in 195359 also marks the abolition of the independence of the
55 Regarding this the most important was “The Law on people’s committee’s“, which was adopted in 1952.
Ibid, 334-339.
56 Tanja PETROVIĆ, Yuropa – Jugoslovensko nasleđe i politike budućnosti u postjugoslovenskim
društvima, Beograd: Fabrika knjiga, 2012, 158 (u fusnoti).
57 According to the Regulation on the protection of employed pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers,
the 90 day maternal leave was predicted, and in some cases shorter, four hour work day was provided, until the
child was three years of age. For the employed breastfeeding mothers interruption of work in every three hours
was provided, due to feeding of the child, and that right was available until sixth month after the birth. During
the maternal leave full cash compensation was provided. Mothers (single parent or those whose children
needed additional care) who worked shorter, four hours shifts after the cessation of that leave, had a right to
monthly pay in amount of 75% of the income. In later stages of social development, in Yugoslavia the duration
of paid maternal leave was extended on several occasions, until the child was one year old. GUDAC-DODIĆ,
“Položaj žene u Srbiji (1945-2000)“, 37.
58 VIDMAR HORVAT, Imaginarna majka – Rod i nacionalizam u kulturi 20. stoljeća, 47-49.
59 Women’s Antifascist Front (AFŽ), as a separate women’s organisation was abolished on the IV congress
in 1953. Different organisations and associations which dealt with the questions of interest to women united
in the Alliance of women’s associations of Yugoslavia, from which the Conference for social activity of
women of Yugoslavia arose (established in Zagreb in 1961.). It acted within SSRNJ – Alliance of socialist
working people of Yugoslavia (Savez socijalističkog radnog naroda Jugoslavije). Neda Božinović, former
partisan (bearer of the Commemorative Medal of the Partisans of 1941.) and active member of AFŽ after
the war, states that “conclusion on abolition of AFŽ, and on the establishment of Alliance of women’s
associations, was experienced as degradation of women’s organisations and women themselves by a great
number of delegates. And many AFŽ activists stopped working as a response“. BOŽINOVIĆ, Žensko pitanje
u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, 174.
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so called women’s question, the way to the gradual return of the women to the
household, political passivation for a great number of women60 and an end to
the intense interest for the change of gender relations in the family and society.
The women’s question from that point on is treated as integral part of the class
question, which is presented as a key social problem on which all others can be
reduced to. Somewhat simplified, starting from the viewpoint that the essence
of the social injustice is in the unfair economic distribution (and its typical
example is class inequality), the solution to the class question is simultaneously
the solution to the “women’s question.” A little differently formulated: “Starting
from the Marxist standpoint that women’s liberation can be achieved only on
the realization of the ‘association of the free manufacturers’, women’s question
is a component of the class question”. As the class question in Yugoslavia had
been considered as solved, it was possible to claim “that the woman today is
actually and formally equal in our society”.61
In general, the period from the year 1950 to the year 1970 is the period
of economic prosperity and growth of the standard of living in SFRY; and
from the 1960s the period of opening of the borders and total liberalization
of the society. Specifics of the Yugoslav “third way” after the conflict with
Stalin in 1948, in first line partial democracy (institutionalised in the form
of “self-managing socialism”), a relatively wide space for creative freedom in
arts and sciences62 and relative openness of the country to the West (which
secured continual circulation of goods, people and ideas), painted one
peculiar landscape. The period from 1953 and especially from 1957 to 1961
was marked by high rate of industrial and agricultural production and the
rise of the number of people employed, with strong transfer of people from
agricultural to non-agricultural sector and mass migrations to the cities.
Not equally fast, but in those years the standard of living also rises, first of
all because of significantly larger total production, the rise of the national
income, larger employment and productivity of work, the rise of net personal
incomes in the social economic sector, real purchasing power of the population
and available consumer goods. A significant change in structure of personal
consumption occurred, in food, clothing, habitation, education, satisfaction of
cultural and health needs, improvement of social security and others. Changes
were moving in the direction of a reduction of costs of nutrition, and a rise
of costs of industrial consumer goods and other services. Lowering of the
60 Participation of women in the decision-making bodies constantly diminished from the end of the war. In
the year 1949/50 in elections for national committees there were two thirds more women than in the elections
two years later. Already in 1963 in the Federal Parliament percentage of women was only 15,2. Six years later
the number fell to 6,3%. Žena u privredi i društvu SFR Jugoslavije, osnovni pokazatelji, 4; BOŽINOVIĆ,
Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u 19 i 20 veku, 249.
61 Vjekoslav KOPRIVNJAK, “Uvodnik u temat“, Žena, 4–5/ 1980, 10.
62 Under the assumption that some central system and ideological categories are not to be questioned,
like: general historically progressive character of socialism in relation to capitalism, personality and work
of Josip Broz Tito, one party system and absolutely positive role of the partisan movement during the
Second World War. Mladen LAZIĆ, Promenei otpori - Srbija u transformacijskim procesima, Beograd:
Filip Višnjić, 2005, 66-70.
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
nutrition costs is the basic reason for the raising of costs for other purposes
which are the characteristics of the structure of personal consumption of a
higher standard.63Because of the economic model of self-management which
in itself contained elements of capitalism (autonomy of the company) and
of ethatism (centralized planning), Yugoslavia did not only get out of the
crisis but also entered the most prosperous period of its existence. The 1950s
were also a period of intensive social transformation from the imperative of
production towards the imperative of consumption64, and the transformation
of Yugoslavia to a consumerist society with the elements of a market economy.
Social values in Yugoslavia became increasingly determined by purchasing
power and material property, and new and modern became the goals to strive
for. The trend of growth of citizens’ purchasing power from the 1950s on,
and with it of total quality of life was followed by a growing belief that it is
a need of the modern times, but also a human’s right.65Except for opening to
the economic influences from the West, the split-up with Stalin and the East
bloc lead to the increasing openness to the cultural influences and products of
western popular culture (like film, magazines, literature, music and fashion)
which often promoted values different from those of the socialism. Janjetović
visually describes this change as jumping “out of Stalin’s overcoat into Elvis’s
jacket“ [“iz Staljinovog šinjela u Elvisovu jaknu”], and explains: “The split
with the Soviet Union and a gradual closeness to the West, in connection
with the economic success during the 1950s, finally made conditions for
popular culture to not only develop but gradually gain its independence as
an autonomous cultural segment which, as time passed by, had less and less
in common with the official cultural politic and more with the free market of
entertainment – still remaining in one part tied to the social system and its
values“.66 According to the same author, a big role in spreading the influence
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From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
of popular culture was (in particular) by the entertainment press whose
content looked increasingly like the content of the western press.67 From the
early 1950s comic books with American heroes are being published, while
in the 1960s titles from popular literature, like westerns, love, crime and
detective novels had huge circulation.68. Practically everything from the US
literal and fine art scene, including works of top contemporary authors and
artists were also available for the people of Yugoslavia. During the 1950s so
called popular music is being developed, and jazz, not long ago considered “a
product of degeneration of USA bourgeois culture” and according to Maksim
Gorki “music of the greasy and fat capitalists”, also arrives.69 And at the end
of the decade also rock’n’roll.70 Radio broadcasts of western music (from
the beginning of the 1960s also rock’n’roll), and the production of records
grows, and gramophone houses like RTB and Jugoton are publishing foreign
musicians’ hits (singers and bands). A domestic music scene is being developed,
first through the covers of foreign hits and later through original works. The
development of television71 in the 1960s, when due to weak technical and
insufficient personnel the lack of content was compensated with live Italian
programs and transmission of entertainment and revue TV shows (like San
Remo music festival), introduced pictures of abundance and glamour in
growing number of homes across the country and served for copying of music
and fashion styles. Frames of new consumerist ambient, and new consumerist
imaginarium, are drawn by openings of supermarkets, organizations of fairs
in which goods of wide consumption were being presented (wash machines,
refrigerators, TVs, electrical stoves…), and by the end of the 1960s products of
brands such as Coca cola, Nestle, Dr. Oetker, Nivea, Dior, Helena Rubinsein and
others have long been available. The number of foreign tourists rapidly grows.
And the interest for learning English language grows year after year. The
1960s are also the time of total domination, and great popularity of foreign,
63 BILANDŽIĆ, Hrvatska moderna povijest, 383-396; Takođe, Ibrahim LATIFIĆ, JUGOSLAVIJA 19451990 (razvoj privrede i društvenih djelatnosti), 22-23. http://www.znaci.net/00001/120.htm (15. 05. 2017).
64 As Jambrešić Kirin and Blagaić formulate, one macro social change when it comes to the turn from “the
world of production“ to “the world of consumption“. Renata JAMBREŠIĆ KIRIN, Marina Blagaić, “The
Ambivalence of Socialist Working Women’s Heritage: a Case Study of the Jugoplastika Factory“, Narodna
umjetnost 50/ 2013, 59.
65 “New economic policy which would be more oriented toward consumption“ and that it is time for a
generation that carried out the revolution to “enjoy life“ and to improve its “quality of life“, was announced
by Josip Broz Tito in 1955:“Today’s generation invested much effort into rebuilding of the country, now
it deserves to live better and some tasks need to be given to future generations“. According to: Ivana
DOBRIVOJEVIĆ, “Industrijalizacija“, in Nikad im bolje nije bilo? Modernizacija svakodnevnog života u
socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji, (ed.) Ana PANIĆ, Beograd: MIJ, 2015, 35. Igor Duda states that Program of the
League of Communists of Yugoslavia from 1958 foresees “more comfortable life“, property “over various
products of consumption“, achieving “better servicing of consumers with goods“ and care for their “everyday
needs and supply, for their relaxation and entertainment“. Igor DUDA, Pronađeno blagostanje: Svakodnevni
život i potrošačka kultura u Hrvatskoj 70-ih i 80-ih, Zagreb: Srednja Evropa, 2010, 18.
66 Zoran JANJETOVIĆ, Od ,,Internacionale“ do komercijale: Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji 1945–
1991, Beograd: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2011, 17. This process as the process of americanisation of
Yugoslav society in detail analyses Radina Vučetić in her book Koka-kola socijalizam. Amerikanizacija
jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina XX veka.Videti: Radina VUČETIĆ, Koka-kola socijalizam.
Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina XX veka, Beograd: Službeni glasnik, 2012.
67 Ibid, 77-84. It needs to be said that this didn’t go without resistance. Intellectual public and official
instances often labelled these contents as worthless, decadent, but also justified it by commercial reasons,
as the ground for the survival of journalist-publishing houses. More: Reana SENJKOVIĆ, Izgubljeno u
prijenosu: pop iskustvo soc kulture, Zagreb: institut za etnologiju i fokloristiku, 2008, 51-82.
68 For example, crime and detective novels were printed in millions. Predrag Marković states that only daily
newspaper Politika published around 150 of such titles yearly, during the mid-1960s. Predrag MARKOVIĆ,
Beograd između Istoka i Zapada, 1948-1965, Beograd: Službeni list SRJ, 1996, 483.
69 VUČETIĆ, Koka-kola socijalizam. Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina
XX veka, 166. See also JANJETOVIĆ, Od ,,Internacionale“ do komercijale: Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji
1945–1991, 112-137.
70 In regard to Elvis Presley, it is interesting that he becomes popular already in the 1950s, and in 1956
Borba prints an article about him. In the same year Ivo Robić tries himself in the new genre. VUČETIĆ,
Koka-kola socijalizam. Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina XX veka, 187188 i 194-195. Se also, JANJETOVIĆ, Od ,,Internacionale“ do komercijale: Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji
1945–1991, 138–171.
71 On development of television in Yugoslavia, see: Ildiko ERDEI, “Novi život na “malom ekranu“ i oko
njega: počeci televizije u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji (1955–1970)“, in Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology,
10 (2)/ 2015, http://www.anthroserbia.org/Content/PDF/Articles/93969b31c0d740bf96f851e5aca9ecea.pdf.
(12. 05. 2017.)
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most of all US TV shows and films, Disney characters, cowboys, and Indians,
of stories and pictures which played a big part in acceptance of new values
and views on life of all generations of Yugoslav society, by daily introduction
of Yugoslav citizens to the American dream. In particular a large role in the
reception of those influences, without a doubt, was film.
As it was already mentioned, almost right after the war central movie
studios were being established, so that in 1951 in each of six republics there
was one film centre, and the number of movie theatres doubled to up to
around 920.72 Watching movies was a favourite entertainment after the war
and the number of movie goers has continuously rose – from 31 520 000 in
1946 to almost double - 67 926 000 at the end of 1950.73After a conflict with
Cominform (Information Department of Communist and Working Parties)
in 1948 instead of Soviet films which dominated by then, importation of
movies from the West starts, enabled by the financial aid from the USA.74
Introduction of socialist self-management for the young film industry meant
dissolution of the Committee for Cinematography which was built after the
war and establishment of Association of Film Workers of Yugoslavia. Since
then the production groups of the Association had, in theory, the ability to
establish their own financial means through distribution contracts, renting
and leasing, income from co-production and alike. Even though due to a lack
of development in the film industry that did not come to life up to 1956 when
Basic Law on Film was adopted, which changed state subventions with tax
on cinema tickets (17-20%)75 that also influenced the larger commerciality
of domestic film production. The taste of the audience and the marketability
of the movies either filmed or imported became an increasingly important
factor. One of the most symbolic milestones when it comes to film, represents
the screening of the American musical “Bathing Beauty“ in 1950. “Bathing
Beauty“, from 1944, by the director George Sidney with Esther Williams in
the main role, was for Yugoslavs the representation of opulence and material
wealth which was a far cry from the life in general destitution in which the
people still lived. With this film, its pretty girls in bathing suits and jazz
music, first pictures of western consumerist world entered Yugoslav everyday
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From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
life. The film had enormous popularity. People waited in lines for a movie
ticket and many have seen it multiple times. It can be assumed that for the
most of the viewers it represented, even for a short while, an escape from
the dreaded reality of the post-war poverty and memories of war that were
still fresh. Evaluating the reasons of the popularity of this film in Belgrade,
Bogdan Tirnanić says: “(....) in that heroic time during which only one colour
existed, when everything was uniformed, poor, without softness, time of epic
greyness, ’Bathing Beauty’ introduced the element that was just devastating.
The first strike of that film, which was some kind of spirit atomic bomb that
absolutely devastated everything “.76 Along with the large viewership of the
movies imported from the west77, with Vesna by František Čap in 1953 as one
of the first films of “easy genre”, the production of domestic movies whose
primary goal was to entertain the audience also starts.
Hider Petterson, speaks of Yugoslavia, from the end of the 1950s, as
unique among “communist” countries in the time of the Cold War and its
openness to mix cultural elements of socialism and capitalism. He highlights
the meaning of liberal visa arrangements, travel and Yugoslavs leaving to work
temporarily into western countries, but also the significance of western media
in creating a consumer society, and evaluates the 1960s and 1970s as its golden
era, when the economic miracle happened, though, at the expense of large debt
and loans by the country, for the purpose of sustaining the living standard.78That
economic miracle had its other face. The introduction of self-management
demanded profitability from the companies, and the companies had to rely on
income, from the subventions and from the market sales.79After tax deduction,
the income stayed within the company, without interference from the state
(except from abiding by the rule on minimal personal income according to
level of education), but with strong participation from the municipalities.80
During the other half of the 1950s comes a change in payment politics, so after
1955 a system of centralized salary determination is left behind, and in 1958 a
system of payment according to performance was introduced, and the level of
salaries of individual workers became dependant on the “success of the working
place at the market“ and incitement for competition among self-managers was
provided „not only inside, but between working positions“.81In the beginning
72 Dejvid A. KUK, Istorija filma II, Beograd: Clio, 2007, 526.
73 Ibid.
74 Ljubodrag DIMIĆ, Agitprop kultura. Agitpropovska faza kulturne politike u Srbiji 1945-1952, Beograd:
Rad, 1988, 179.
75 Ibid, 527; Even though the workers in the film industry had a legal freelance status from the fifties, hence
the directors had to always look for new projects and were responsible for the economic success of the film,
they were not completely left to the market. They used social infrastructure of the studio and laboratories,
institutions funded art movies, not only entertainment. Some movie directors have established independent
film companies during the sixties, which provided them with economic independence (for example Neoplanta)
and became source of income, so we can talk about the establishment of some king of public-private
partnership that produces and distributed films across Yugoslavia. Gal KIRN, “Crni talas kao umjetnički
izraz ‘Praxisa’?“, in Praxis : društvena kritika i humanistički socijalizam : zbornik radova sa Međunarodne
konferencije o jugoslavenskoj ljevici: Praxis-filozofija i Korčulanska ljetna škola (1963-1974), (eds.) Dragomir
Olujić Oluja, Krunoslav Stojaković, Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2012, 252-253.
76 According to DIMIĆ, Agitprop kultura. Agitpropovska faza kulturne politike u Srbiji 1945-1952, 179.
77 See more in VUČETIĆ, Koka-kola socijalizam. Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih
godina XX veka, 79-144. Radina Vučetić cites another and not meaningless information: defined in numbers,
American movie was four to five cheaper than Soviet, and brought about twenty times more profit. Ibid, 103-104;
Videti i JANJETOVIĆ, Od ,,Internacionale“ do komercijale: Popularna kultura u Jugoslaviji 1945–1991, 172.–218.
78 Patrick Hyder PATTERSON, Brought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia,
Ithaca, United States: Cornell University Press, 2011, 134.
79 Darko SUVIN, SAMO JEDNOM SE LJUBI. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije, 1945.-72. Uz hipoteze o
početku, kraju i suštini, Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2014, 231.
80 Ibid, 232.
81 Vladimir UNKOVSKI- KORICA, “Jugoslovensko samoupravljanje: upravljanje radništva ili upravljanje
radništvom?“, in E-zbornik: Nasleđe jugoslavenskog socijalizma. Promišljanje. Razgovor. Rasprava. Kritika,
(eds.) Marijana STOJČIĆ, Dragomir OLUJIĆ, Beograd: Forum za primenjenu istoriju, 2014. no longer available.
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of the 1960s, after a decade of continuous economic growth, there was a
crisis.82 The solution was sought in the economic reforms in 1963 and 1965
in the direction of further weakening of the state’s role, its decentralization
and liberation of the market.83 Gal Kirn cites that socialist companies entered
into fierce competition which reflected increasing inter-regional differences.
Yugoslavia faces, among other things, increasing dependence on foreign loans,
a significant rise of social differences and increasing inequalities in society, an
enormous rise of unemployment and from the middle of the 1960s occurrence
of “workers temporarily working abroad” (i.e.Gastarbeiter).84According to
Suvin, unemployment, if counting the number of workers abroad and persons
looking for job, from 1960 when it was 10%, up to 1969, has risen to 13.5 %.
Considering that the Yugoslav community was imagined as the community
bound by work, unemployment meant exclusion from the full membership and
social right, moral and material marginalization. The work force encompassed
two large groups of workers: those who had a steady job and “those who from
then on we started recognizing as ‘precariat?’”: “people trapped for a long time
between unemployment and staying at home from one side and from the other
trapped by the insecure and unsteady jobs, paid poorly and poorly supervised,
hence the places of the more cruel exploitation”.85
Socio-economic, political and cultural processes through which the
Yugoslav society went through inevitably reflected on the position of women.
As mentioned previously, paid work and education for women (followed by
very advanced legal regulation) were seen as the most important factors of
women’s emancipation. Yugoslav legislature gave guarantees of gender equality
and within it were built all international conventions which regarded the
position of women, and after WWII the number of women who were entering
the work market constantly rose.86 Mass penetration of women into the
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economy of socialist Yugoslavia brought with it a new situation, where women
were active in regular jobs, as socio-political workers and active at home. On
the other side, social and political engagement of women started to decrease
already from the 1950s. Already then activists of the AFŽ started to record
an increase in attitudes about how “we developed socialism in such great
measure that woman can go back home and raise children”87, and weakening
of ideological enthusiasm in combating patriarchal attitudes which were
earlier harshly judged as backwards and counter-revolutionary.88According
to Stojaković’s opinion, some of the reasons could be found in the lack of
need for major work force engagement. Also, with the introduction of selfmanagement, pressure on companies to show positive results influenced a
reduction of subventions for social standard institutions (kindergartens and
nurseries)and a discharge of the work force with lower qualifications (which
were dominated by women).89Along with that, mass migrations into the cities
were not followed by adequate measures which would make women from
the rural places employable in urban areas90, which made them structurally
excluded from the public domain, and left them without a possibility to
acquire economic independence and burdened with children care. While until
then realized social care for children and mothers91 becomes too expensive,
leaving work for one part of women also meant liberation from double burden
– in the work place and in household. Although some attempts were made on
socializing of jobs which are done at home through opening of services for
women, their services were used by a very low number of women.92A similar
situation was with the restaurants of social nutrition which were mainly used
by single men.93 In a survey conducted by the magazine “Practical woman”
(Praktična žena) in June 1956 one of the questioned women describes the
situation like this: “You say that my work day lasts 13 hours. Thank you a
lot! For me it lasts almost 18. I’m exaggerating? I would like you were in my
place… First, I’m on my feet for 8 hours, on the counter. Then there’s cooking,
washing, darning, cleaning. Double shifts, four times going to work and back.
And my husband won’t even take the laundry to wash or to go to the market
when he has time”. Another statement is also very illustrative: “I often listen
82 Videti više, SUVIN, SAMO JEDNOM SE LJUBI. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije, 1945.-72. Uz hipoteze o
početku, kraju i suštini, 235-238.
83 Market reform of 1965 included so called 4D policy: decentralisation, removal of state control
(“deetatizacija”), depolitisation and democratization. See, Gal KIRN, “Klasne borbe u socijalističkoj
Jugoslaviji“, http://tclinija.net/klasne-borbe-u-socijalistickoj-jugoslaviji/ (17. 05. 2017). On goals of Economic
Reform, see also MILENKOVICH in GANSCHOW, Thomas, BERTSCH, Gary (eds.), Comparative
Communism: The Soviet, Yugoslav, and Chinese Models, San Francisko, CA: Freeman, 1976, 352-362. Also,
SUVIN, SAMO JEDNOM SE LJUBI...,238-239.
84 See more: Gal KIRN, “Klasne borbe u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji“, http://tclinija.net/klasne-borbe-usocijalistickoj-jugoslaviji/ (17. 05. 2017). On phenomenon of Gastarbeiter see: Boris BUDEN, ”Gastarbajteri,
glasnici budućnosti”, http://www.slobodnifilozofski.com/2012/08/boris-buden-gastarbajteri-glasnici.html (10.
05. 2017). On educational structure of migrant workers in that period see SUVIN, Samo jednom se ljubi, 293.
85 Ibid, 294.
86 From the mid-1950s, the average rate of women employment growth was higher than the average rate of
employment growth of all people. The percentage of women participating in total employment in Yugoslavia in 1954
was 24,8%, in 1964 it was 29,2% ad in 1974 – 33,9%. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the highest percentage of women
employed were of a lower education, followed by middle level education, and as a third category women with higher
education. At the beginning of the 1970s this category grew the fastest. Total employment rate in former Yugoslavia
from the 1950s to 1990s increased 4,5 times. However, participation of women in total number of employed people
is very diverse when different parts of the country are considered. The biggest percentage of women employed was in
Slovenia (45,7%), while the lowest was in Kosovo (22,9). GUDAC-DODIĆ, “Položaj žene u Srbiji (1945–2000)“, 66.
87 Ibid, 64.
88 Karl KAZER, Porodica i srodstvo na Balkanu, Analiza jedne kulture koja nestaje, Beograd: Udruženje
za društvenu istoriju, 2002, 441.
89 STOJAKOVIĆ, Rodna perspektiva novina Antifašističkog fronta žena (1945-1953), 69.
90 Anđelka MILIĆ, , “Preobražaj srodničkog sastava porodice i položaj članova“, in Domaćinstvo porodica
i brak u Jugoslaviji: društveno-kulturni, ekonomski i demografski aspekti promene porodične organizacije,
Anđelka MILIĆ, Eva BERKOVIĆ, Ruža PETROVIĆ (eds.), Beograd: Institut za sociološka istraživanja
Filozofskog fakulteta, 1981,, 157.
91 Videti: Sanja PETROVIĆ-TODOSIJEVIĆ, “Analiza rada ustanova za brigu o majkama i deci na primeru
rada jaslica u FNRJ”, in Žene i deca - Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XIX i XX veka, (ed.) Latinka
Perović, Beograd: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, 2006, 176-187.
92 Vera GUDAC DODIĆ, Žena u socijalizmu - Položaj žene u Srbiji u drugoj polovini XX veka, Beograd:
Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2006, 107.
93 Ibid, 108.
92
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to a customer on the counter but I don’t hear them… I wasn’t on a syndicate
meeting for four years. I am approximately on the same level (or even lower) on
which I was when my first child was born…” For many of them the exit was
going back home to the place which “naturally” belongs to them. Or in one
of the survey’s participant’s words: “Now it’s like this: if she wants to be good
at work she needs to neglect her family; If she does a good job at home than
she’s not good at work. Therefore it is better for her to go back to the family.
Or that we men take over that duty. But we are really not good at that. Just
to be clear! I am not generalizing, but in my case it will be exactly like that.
Though she does protest, but I doubt that it will help her.”94 Mitra Mitrović,
among other, a pre-war communist and one of the prominent members of
later abolished AFŽ, writes about this with exasperation: “And maybe as in
no other question – suddenly one great span: from full civilization to full
discrimination. Nothing unusual. Like from great fortune to total misery, or
from completely developed country to total backwardness. But it seems like
here, regarding this problem, almost more than in the racial and class issue,
enslaving is more obvious, more complex, because it doesn’t depend only on
the powerful, it doesn’t depend on distant and foreign, rich or white, but also
on those closest, man, individual, father and brother, even son, who themselves
cannot brake the chains of prejudices and attitudes, which are imposed on
them too, understandably sometimes long ago, but which became an integral
part of life and customs and house rules”.95
Already from the 1950s the occurrence of a trend different from
one during and after the war can also be identified in the press. While the
subjects of magazines during and after the war were mainly in connection to
the people’s liberation struggle, political situation, but also to a new role and
equal contribution of women first in the war, and then in the restoration of
the country, from the 1950s the cult of femininity and beauty, the culture of
dressing and fashion, rejected after the war, are starting to revive. Domestic
illustrated and fashion magazines, which share images and news from the
fashion world, are starting to be published, imitating their foreign role
models.96 Daily newspapers gradually introduce their women pages, women
columns which contain mainly advices for managing household, hygiene,
and fashion and care. Representation of women as subjects, young and old,
from the cities and villages, educated and just newly literate who with their
personal effort do something for themselves in the domain of women’s rights
and common good (whether they are in active women roles or roles from
economy of care) which was dominant after the war, is changed with gradual
reaffirmation of traditional women roles. Basic subjects of the women’s press
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From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
in the late 1950s are home as a paradigm of bliss and body as a paradigm of
a more open sexuality and more direct seduction.97 This process can also be
followed through the representation of women on film, especially in films that
were made for wide audiences. Exactly because they interpreted contemporary
reality in an easy and unpretentious way with the main goal to entertain, they
simultaneously illustrated and followed the changes of Yugoslav society and
changes in its orientation and values. Nebojša Jovanović notes that already in
the early 1950s the figure of proletarian woman is gradually being changed
with the figure of a housewife. As he states, that change is announced by the
film “Lake” (Jezero, 1950) from the author Radivoj “Lola” Đukić. This film
has a specific narrative which varies in future films98. For the purpose of this
text, we will simplyfie this narrative thus: male protagonist is a social-realist
hero who through devoted work gives his contribution to the restoration of
the country and its bright future. In most cases he comes from the city to the
village or to another backward part of the state which was not yet touched
by the blessing of industrialization and socialist modernization. That mission
requests sacrifices which his partner (wife or girlfriend) does not understand
and/or is resisting them. Contrast between him and her (devoted only to
realization of her own demands and trivial wishes, without a conscience and
responsibility to the society, often spoiled, “hysterical” and demanding), are
the base of this pattern. Image of women/housewives completely relying on
men was no longer reserved for “bourgeois” women, but spreads on women
in general. Image of marriage is in the spirit of conservative, monogamous
model: man remains a worker and a provider for the family, and woman can
be happy only with her man – she is no longer put in relation to work. She is
a housewife with the entire burden that this stereotype traditionally bares.99
From the mid-1950s, image of a woman is ever more similar to western
consumerist representation of femininity in which the level of beauty and
attractiveness plays dominant role. From that standpoint is the analysis of the
film “Love and Fashion” (Ljubav i moda, 1960) from the author Ljubomir
Radičević very interesting.100 Heroine of the film is Sonja Ilić (Beba Lončar) a
modern student from a big city whom we see in the introductory scenes of the
94 For all cited statements from the survey “Kako da se pomogne zaposlenoj ženi“ (Praktična žena, jun,
1956) we owe our gratitude to Jelena Tešija who turned our attention to them.
95 Mitra MITROVIĆ, Položaj žene u savremenom svetu, Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1960, 8.
96 VUČETIĆ, Koka-kola socijalizam. Amerikanizacija jugoslovenske popularne kulture šezdesetih godina
XX veka, 32-40.
97 Neda TODOROVIĆ-UZELAC, Ženska štampa i kultura ženstvenosti, Beograd: Naučna knjiga,
1987, 113-133.
98 Like films “Zenica” (Zenica) from 1957 from the authors Miloš Stefanović and Jovan Živanović, “It Was
Not in Vain” (Nije bilo uzalud, 1957) from the author Nikola Tanhofer, “Only People” (Samo ljudi, 1957) from
the author Branko Bauer and “On That Night” (Te noći, 1958) from the author Jovan Živanović.
99 For more, see: Nebojša JOVANOVIĆ, “Gender and Sexuality in the Classical Yugoslav Cinema, 19471962“, Chapter 4: “How the love was tempered: Labour, romance, and gender asymmetry in the construction
cycle 1948-1958“, 131-179.
100 Here only a short review of this film will be made, first of all because of cult status which it almost
immediately acquired. For a more detailed analysis, see: Maša MALEŠEVIĆ, “Iskušenja socijalističkog
raja – refleksije konzumerističkog društva u jugoslovenskom filmu 60-ih godina XX veka”, Glasnik
Etnografskoginstituta SANU 57(2)/ 2012114-115; Takođe, Branko Dimitrijević, Potrošeni socijalizam
– Kultura, konzumerizam i društvena imaginacija u Jugoslaviji (1950-1974), Beograd: Fabrika knjiga:
Peščanik, 2017, 104-113.
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film as she drives her Vespa through Belgrade’s downtown in her pepito dress
with a petticoat. In this film, Belgrade looks like any other western metropolis
as presented in tourist promotional videos. Displays of wide streets with a
picture of airport from which Belgraders fly to Rome and other destinations,
young people dressed in the latest fashion and pictures of Kalemegdan terrace
on which dances are being organized take turns. It is a modern carefree city
of joy, music and glamour. The story has two narrative streamlines. First one
describes Sonja’s and her friends’ efforts to get money for summer vacation,
because aero club to which they belong cannot provide it for them. Second
narrative line follows the effort of Belgrade fashion house Jugošik to organize in
a short time a fashion show before their completion - fashion house Jugomoda
which has betrayed their agreement on working together. Chief designer of
Jugošik, Bora (Rade Bulajić) has a creative block. Inspired by his love for Sonja,
he manages to design models for the show. And due to the web of circumstances,
Jugošik is going to hire a group of young people from the aero club to present
fashion collection to the audience instead of fashion models who did not arrive
from Italy. In the final of the film we see a spectacular fashion show on the
ship, with fireworks and contemporary top stars of Yugoslav popular music.
As Maša Malešević states: “The subject of the film itself – fashion, as one of
the most explicit products of consumer culture, and practically everything
else, from the competition of two companies, or market business, to the
complete omission of any reference to political organization of the country
and its symbols (only indication is addressing with “friend” (“druže” and
“drugarice”)), clearly shows to which measure has the idea of consumer society
in socialist conditions become acceptable and affirmed practically without
restraint”.101When we think about representation/s of women, the question
which should be asked is: what is the place of women in the world whose
image this film offers? In this framework, the world of work is a man’s world.
Although, through the film, we find out that the girls are studying, the fields
in which they study are, at least colloquially, connected to aesthetics, like
architecture or art history. Studying in this context is not in the function of
work, but in “getting a degree”. (Or how young men in the film formulate it:
“Oh, come on, please don’t, Žizabel! Like it’s a real science – art history.” “I’m
telling you a tale. Frescoes, monasteries, Sponza [gothic-renaissance palace
in Dubrovnik (comment by M. S.)]… and a degree” [“Ma, nemoj, molim te,
Žizabel! K’o da je to sad neka nauka - istorija umetnosti.“ “Pričam ti priču.
Freske, manastiri, Sponza [gotičko-renesansna palača u Dubrovniku prim.
M.S.]... i diploma“]). If a stewardess and a secretary were excluded, whose
vocations are in big part a continuation of traditional woman gender role from
the private domain, there are no female characters in the movie who are in
a relation to work. The secretary, whom we only see in the work place, is
presented in situations where she technically assists men in their work, paints
her nails, is making herself pretty or takes out food. Main female character,
Sonja, is beautiful, young and nourished, dressed by the latest fashion, object
of male desire, inspiration and a muse. Her world is framed by her romance
with Bora, her hobby and social events. She is a personification of a woman of
the new age and very fast becomes a model to strive to.
It should be mentioned again that this process of reaffirmation of
traditional gender stereotypes has developed gradually and it is not singular
in its meaning. It is characterized by various contradictions and oscillations
between efforts for women emancipation and perpetuating of gender
essentialism and it reflected ambivalence of Yugoslav socialism when it comes
to women’s position. Due to circumstances, entering the Second World War,
and after that the participation in rebuilding the country for significant number
of women represented the path of politicization and political subjectivization.
Their participation was necessary for those activities. The official stance during
all the time of the existence of Yugoslav Socialism was that women right to
work and to participate in political life is non-questionable attainment of war
and revolution. At the same time, representation of the woman’s double role as
worker and mother, as the one who is primarily responsible for reproduction and
family, was never actually questioned. That inevitably led to double burden for
women. With the development of “market socialism”102 and consumer society,
one of the results of these processes in the 1960s is that we can talk about two
parallel representations of woman being sustained and connected – a woman
as a “socialist working human” in public domain, i.e. official discourse with
western consumerist representation of femininity in private domain. Dominant
ideology of the everyday life is consumerist. Woman-role model is the one who
successfully balances between caring mother, homemaker, wife and working
woman, at the same time not questioning her own beauty, sexual attraction
and femininity. Deep conflicts between the demand for equality of men and
women in theory and implicitly encouraged deep gender asymmetries, can be
recognized in popular culture of that time. Interesting illustration of this in
film can be found in an unpretentious comedy, “Men – yesterday, today and…”,
directed by Milo Đukanović in 1963 which deals with marital life and malefemale relations. Mira (Olivera Marković) is a medical doctor who struggles
with constant balancing between her job and household care, her addle-headed
husband Žika (Slobodan Perović) and their four children. Outlines of the life
of one “average Yugoslav family” can already be seen in opening credits which
lead us into the place of events. It is a big, modern residential building on whose
terraces we see women shaking carpets, spreading laundry, washing windows
and taking children away from the fence. While she’s getting ready for work,
Mira simultaneously prepares breakfast, tries to prepare two youngest kids for
the kindergarten, makes beds and assists Žika in his preparations. While she’s
taking the kids to the kindergarten, Žika notices that she has no make-up and
101 Maša MALEŠEVIĆ, “Iskušenja socijalističkog raja...”, 115.
102 About „market socialism“, see more: Gal KIRN, „Klasne borbe u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji“, http://
tclinija.net/klasne-borbe-u-socijalistickoj-jugoslaviji/ (17. 05. 2017)
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no nail polish and adds that it wasn’t like that when “they got married” [“kad
su se uzeli”], that she used to “sleep on the mirror” [“spavala na ogledalu”] in
those days. Mira’s response is that she “didn’t have four children” [“nije imala
četvoro dece”] when they got married. She takes her kids to the kindergarten
where we see other women too giving their children to the kindergarten
teacher (who is also a woman). In her office, after an exam she yawns weary.
Žika’s work place is an office in which we see secretaries diligently typing and
managers who are, without exception, all men. On her way home, Mira goes
to pick up her children and to the groceries store. While she’s preparing lunch,
she simultaneously explains to her boss that she is certain that “the records
remained in the chamber” [“snimci ostali u komori”] because, unfortunately,
she had to hurry home to “make lunch” [“spremi ručak”]. After the lunch
with which Žika is not satisfied, Mira vacuums the apartment while Žika
reads the papers. Under the excuse that he needs to go to a meeting, in the
evening Žika goes to a pub with his colleagues who are all men. On his way
back, tipsy Žika hugs his wife who is already asleep in their bed, and says that
he would like another kid which Mira refuses with the words: “Žika, please,
leave me alone, I am sleepy and tired” [“Žiko, pusti me, molim te. Spava mi
se, umorna sam”]. Rest of the film develops in the same direction. Among
other things, with the humorous miniatures like the one where Žika tries to
explain to his son the difference between his mother and a maid, when the
boy notices that his mother does all the tasks which usually does the maid.
Or through the dialogue: “How can’t you make a lunch when you’ve eaten so
many times?” “I don’t know.” “But how does mom know?””She’s a woman”
[“Kako ne znaš da spremiš ručak, a toliko puta si jeo?“ “Ne znam“ “A kako
mama zna?“ “Ona je žena”].These humorous dialogues outline the horizon of
the world in which household care is a “natural” woman’s responsibility. After
a failed attempt to hire a maid and a quarrel (in which Mira explains to Žika
that she is dead-tired, and he complains that she is acting like a “martyr”),
Žika makes a suggestion that he takes a month off on sick leave and take
care of the house and children. Shortly after this event the tables turn: Žika
is no longer interested in nights out because he is too tired in the evening,
he spends his time exclusively with the neighbours with whom he exchanges
advices concerning household and marital life, and Mira completely overtakes
his earlier (”male”) behaviour.103After many complications in which we see a
marital crisis and a social pressure on Žika to behave as “a man should” [“kako
se ponaša muškarac”] (a ridicule of the neighbours, threats of being fired,
because he “will ruin them all” [“sve će ih upropastiti”]104), the denouement
which film gives is very interesting. The solution is not in going back, but in a
different division of tasks where work in a household will be a responsibility of
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
men and women. In the final of the movie, colleagues from the beginning of
the film can be seen as they wash dishes or make desserts, and on the buildings
terraces man and women working together.
Regarding the position of women in Yugoslavia it is important to
understand that the chasm between centre and the periphery is one of the key
matters for understanding their position. Position of a woman in Yugoslavia
varied considerably in relation to, not only their education and ability to travel,
but also on the part of Yugoslavia in which they lived in and was it an urban
centre or not. Simultaneously there were significant differences in the level
of development of different Yugoslav republics, in possibilities and quality
of life in developed and undeveloped, rural and urban areas of the country.
Representation of a Yugoslav woman as “emancipated” and “westernized”
illustrates the experience only of middle and higher middle class women from
urban centres. Experience of most of the people (men and women) from rural
and people living between rural and urban areas, as a rule, did not find its
place in mythologized image of social progress in socialist Yugoslavia. Image
of people on the margins of Yugoslav socialism was introduced in a significant
measure by directors of the New Yugoslav Film (so called Black Wave).105. While
on the one hand, Black Wave expanded the repertoire of male characters and
the ways in which they were presented, there is an impression106 that in the
representation of women stereotypical characters of women-victims dominated.
Even when female characters are presented through various radical strategies
in relation to representation of female body and sex, they do not go too far
from stereotype displays of femininity, remaining in the frames of patriarchal
pattern where female attempts on resistance are punished with violence, death
and insanity. In a sense, anticipating the decades which were to come.
Summary and concluding remarks
The purpose of this essay was the analyses of the ways in which change
in film representation of women from partisan as a revolutionary subject into
house keepers and consumerists at the end of the 60s, related to changes in the
socio-political context of socialist Yugoslavia and to abandonment of the issue
of the emancipation of women as a social and political issue. It started from
the simple assumptions that films occur in a certain socio-political context
and that some value orientations are necessarily transcoded107into specific
103 Which can be interpreted as a sort of acknowledgement that male and female roles (as expected
behaviour) are closely connected to, in this case, gender division of labour.
104 Colleague Rade (Bata Živojinović) warns Žika to get himself streight: “If our wives see this, we are
bound to wear an apron“ [“Ako ovo vide naše žene, ne ginu nam kecelje“].
105 New Yugoslav Film (for which later the name Black Wave was established) is regarding films created from
1961 to 1972. As an expression of rebellion against unachieved ideals of Yugoslav socialism it points to the cracks
in an idealized image of socialist system: drawing attention to unemployment, juvenile delinquency, prostitution,
economic poverty, marginalization of different social groups and similar. For a short review, see: KUK, Istorija filma
II, 530-537.Videti više na primer: Greg DE CUIR, Jugoslovenski crni talas, Beograd: Filmski centar Srbije, 2011.
106 Any real conclusion demands deeper research.
107 Here the expression transcoding is used as determined by Douglas Kellner as processes and ways of
transmitting social discourses into media texts. Daglas KELNER, Medijska kultura, Beograd: Clio, 2004, 95.
98
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films. From that perspective, film representations of women also provide the
space for evaluating success but also the limits of the emancipatory politics of
the socialist Yugoslavia when it comes to achieving full equality between men
and women. At the same time, in the limited domains of female emancipation
during socialism, the weaknesses of the Yugoslavian emancipatory project in
general are being interloped.
An important part of the socialist project of modernization whose
goal should have been freeing the work and the man and society based on
solidarity, the value of work itself and autonomy of individual and society
on the whole, was the liberation of women. Accomplishing gender equality
in all segments of social life on one side, should have been the confirmation
of surpassing traditional (patriarchal) society and the successful overcoming
of all the barriers on the road to modernization of Yugoslavian society; on
the other side, the evidence of the righteousness of the Yugoslav road into
socialism. Mass participation of women in the war and in the revolution and
ideological framework of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia created a political
environment where formal and legal equality of women became part of the
general principles of the party state. Paid labour and education of women
(followed by very advanced legal regulations) were seen as the most important
factors of women´s emancipation and it should have continued to be developed
and to encompass all aspects of the social life. At the same time, women’s
primary responsibility for reproduction and care for the family and household
was never questioned. In the situation where most women worked outside the
home as well, that resulted in double burden for women and consequently
their passivity, as well focusing on lesser paid positions with small social power.
Abolishing Women Anti Fascistic Front (AFŽ) and making the issue of female
equality into a “common social issue... the issue of a general fight, the strength
of socialism which is led by the Communist Association and Social Association
of the Working People, the bearer of the socialist education of masses“108,is
coinciding with times of the introduction of market elements into the Yugoslav
economy, sharper competition between companies and gradual development
of the consumer society. The already achieved level of what was imagined
as the “infrastructure of female liberation”(nurseries, kindergartens, public
kitchens, cheap self-serving restaurants and alike) becomes too expensive. In
the decades to come we witness the process of reaffirmation of patriarchal
women gender stereotypes, accompanying roles and the area of social life.
The primary domain of a woman is the sphere of private, family and home,
house work, care for children, the old and weak. Her character is sexualized or
transformed into a home angel who seeks its self-fulfilment in love, marriage
and a perfectly equipped home. A homemaker is again discovered as a repressed
subject whose unrecognized and unpaid (physical and affective) work enables
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
family functioning, but also the functioning of society as a whole. Already
in the middle of the sixties we can locate the beginning of the period which
Darko Suvinnames names as les vingtminablesand finally even as déshonorantes
(twenty inglorious and finally even despicable years).109According to him, in
this period, the turn toward the market without planning and toward party
territorially divided polyarchy represents a basic withdrawal from building
a society based on justice, solidarity and human emancipation.110 Instead,
already in the seventies, turning toward traditional sentiments, from national
to cultural traditionalism, in short, turning toward conservative cultural values
and their political expression, nationalism, is visible.111
In that sense, in spite of huge steps that were made during the socialist
Yugoslavia when it comes to improvement of women’s rights, very early
withdrawal from achieving full equality and equity between men and women,
can be treated as anticipation of the giving up that came later. Inclusion into
the fight to free the country as a fighter and worker in the background, then
into building the country after the Second World War was for a lot of women
a process of politicization and political subjectivation. Apart from realizing
their own oppression, part of that process was realizing that for a change of
their own position it was necessary to fight not only against occupiers, but
often against the prejudices of comrades and their own friends (during and
after the war). Transformation of the relatively autonomous AFŽ into mere
transmission of the party’s will and then its abolishment in 1953 is the sign of
what remained the constant for the duration of the existence of the socialist
Yugoslavia – lack of readiness of the paternalistic state-party structures to truly
submit levers of control over society and incite more intensive development of
the democracy from below in which the women would be the actors of their
own freedom. The control of the women’s organized activities and defining its
activities from the party and state, has basically led to depoliticisation of women
and so called women issues. Consequently, nominal social egalitarianism and
patriarchal conscious which is built on hierarchies could co-exist without
interference. Repressing the issue of equality and equity as second class in
relation to the class issue, represented a lack of understanding that existence of
appropriate institutional and normative framework and appropriate politics is
necessary but not enough. Possibilities of creating a society based on equality
and solidarity are in direct relation with the change of cultural patterns and
108 From the Resolution on creation of Yugoslav Women Association, umbrella organisation which was
to replace AFŽ, quoted according to Ivana PANTELIĆ, Partizanke kao građanke. Društvena emancipacija
partizanki u Srbiji 1945–1953, Beograd: ISI and Evoluta, 2011, 127.
109 Darko SUVIN, SAMO JEDNOM SE LJUBI. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije, 1945.-72. Uz hipoteze o
početku, kraju i suštini, 319.
110 Ibid. Todor Kuljić thought that inside Yugoslavia decentralization and removal of state control and
transmitting jurisdiction to republics instead of socializing of the state (“podruštvljavanje države”) has led
to essential strengthening of the republic bureaucracies which represent themselves as the protectors of the
republic, and in time, of the national interests. In the decades to come the republic borders become ethnical,
and the first carriers of these processes are the republic party oligarchies. Todor KULJIĆ, “TITO-sociološko
istorijska studija“, Zrenjanin: Gradska narodna biblioteka “Žarko Zrenjanin”, 2004, 108-126.
111 See more: Boris BUDEN, Želimir ŽILNIK, Uvod u prošlost, Novi Sad: kuda.org, 2013, 103-111. http://
www.kuda.org/sites/default/files/Uvod%20u%20proslost_web.pdf (12.05.2017).
100
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Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
values whose basis is the belief in hierarchy between human beings of unequal
characteristics and unequal possibilities for access to social power. Power
inequality between men and women is the first relationship of domination
and exclusion with which the persons during socialisation encounter. In that
sense, it is a model for accepting as “natural” other systems of domination and
diverse hierarchies of power112 which share the same cultural basis – belief that
superiors should control the inferiors.
Re-examining the socialist project of women’s emancipation and its
reach offers important lessons for rethinking today’s emancipatory projects.
The issue of social justice is more relevant than ever. Every re-examination
of possible alternatives demands the need to analyse the ways in which social
structures reproduce the relationships between domination and exploitation,
limiting the life chances of whole categories of people and keeping them in
a repressed position. In addition, no less important, cultural patterns and
narratives which justify such relationships, strengthen them and reproduce
them continuously. Such re-examination would have to include various levels
on which the structures of privilege and oppression are being reproduced,
because they are complementary and inter-dependant.It is important to
recognize the complexity of how class, gender, nation and lack of agreement to
choose between injustices are interloped. Only then it is possible to open the
space for political projects which aim for radical society change, revolutionary
political movements that will transform the whole society which is not crossed
with lines of class but also gender, racial and heterosexual and every other
form of repression and exploitation. Only when approaching phenomena
in their whole complexity, recognizing the ways the oppression is built into
institutional and social structures, as well as the aspects of culture that make it
possible and acceptable, the alternatives to hegemonic model based on the logic
of profit, capital and nation, become possible – with the understanding that
without creating a society of active citizens, who take and carry responsibility
for political processes and solving social issues, that will just stay another
unfulfilled promise.
Marijana STOJČIĆ - Nađa DUHAČEK
From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of Women in Yugoslav Cinema
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FILMOGRAPHY
Živjeće ovaj narod / This people Shall Live
1947, Jadran Film (Zagreb)
D. Nikola Popović, s. Branko Ćopić. Cast: Vera Ilić-Djukić, Fran Novaković,
Milica-Carka Jovanović, Siniša Ravasi, Nikola Popović, etc. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=jya4VQQPRCc (03.05. 2017)
Priča o fabrici / Story of a Factory
1949, Zvezda Film (Belgrade). D/c. Vladimir Pogačić. Cast: Marija Crnobori,
Strahinja Petrović, Ljubisa Jovanović, Tito Strozzi, Ksenija Jovanovic, etc.
Ljubav i moda / Love and Fashion
1960, Avala Film (Belgrade). D. Ljubomir Radičević, s. Nenad Jovičić, Ljubomir
Radičević. Cast: Beba Lončar, Dušan Bulajić, Mija Aleksić, Miodrag PetrovićČkalja, etc.
Abeceda straha / Alphabet of Fear
1961, Jadran Film (Zagreb). D. Fadil Hadžić, s. Fadil Hadžić, Fedor Vidas. Cast: Vesna
Bojanić, Josip Zappalorto, Nada Kasapić, Tatjana Beljakova, Tatjana Beljakova, Maks
Furijan, Jasenka Kodrnja, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD6yHKILHgE
(12. 04. 2017)
Muškarci: juče, danas i... / Men – yesterday, today and…
1963, Lovćen Film (Budva). D. Milo Đukanović, s. Miroslav Milovanović,
Julija Najman. Cast: Olivera Marković, Slobodan Perović, Mija Aleksić, Jelena
Žigon, Velimir Bata Živojinović, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlve_
ln1tl8&t=462s (03. 05. 2017)
Bitka na Neretvi / The Battle of Neretva
1969, Bosna Film (Sarajevo), Jadran Film (Zagreb), Eichberg Film (Munich),
Commonwealth United Entertainment (London – New York), etc. D. Veljko Bulajić,
s. Stevan Bulajić, Ratko Djurović. Cast: Lojze Rozman, Sylva Kosćina, Ljubiša
Samardžić, Velimir ‘Bata’ Živojinović, Milena Dravić, etc. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=WDyNOLU7Yuc (11. 05. 2017).
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Sažetak
OD PARTIZANKI DO DOMAĆICA: PREDSTAVLJANJE ŽENA U
JUGOSLAVENSKOM FILMU
Marijana STOJČIĆ – Nađa DUHAČEK
Ovaj rad analizira načine na koje se predstavljanje žena promijenilo
od partizanki kao revolucionarnih tema, do kućanica i potrošačica u kasnim
60tim godinama. Ova je promjena vezana uz društveno-političke promjene
u jugoslavenskom kontekstu i uz napuštanje ideje ženske emancipacije koja
je osmišljena i prihvaćena tijekom i nakon rata. Naime, partizanska borba za
oslobađanje od nacističke okupacije te socijalistička revolucija dva su temeljna
mita Socijalističke Jugoslavije. Žene su igrale aktivne uloge u toj borbi, kao
borci ali i daleko od borbenih linija (logistička podrška, špijuniranje, liječenje
i dr.). Također, jednakost između muškaraca i žena je bio važan segment
službene ideologije države. Ovi su se narativi kasnije i zabilježili u kolektivnoj
memoriji kroz književnost, film, glazbu i stripove.
U našem radu istražujemo pet načina prikazivanja ženstvenosti u
jugoslavenskom filmu: (1) partizanka, (2) žena u pozadini, (3) suradnica, (4)
radnica i (5) domaćica, kako bi prikazali načine na koje predstavljanje žena
između 1947. i kasnih 60tih korespondira službenoj politici emancipacije te
na koji način ovi prikazi korespondiraju svakodnevici tog vremena. Nadalje,
ovo predstavlja analizu filma sagledanog kao skup priča koje su jugoslavenski
muškarci i žene sami iznosili o sebi. Ovakav pristup ima potencijal ukazati na
antagonizme unutar društvenog konteksta u kojem su ovi filmovi nastajali,
tako što naglašava nedostižne ideala slobode i emancipacije. Istovremeno, cilj
ove analize nije samo otvoriti još jedan vid istraživanja prošlosti, već također
ponovno razmotriti emacipacijski potencijal kojeg ovakvo istraživanja pruža
danas.
108
�
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Istraživački radovi
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Dublin Core
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From Partisans to Housewives: Representation of
Women in Yugoslav Cinema - Marijana Stojčić, Nađa Duhaček
Creator
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Marijana Stojčić, Nađa Duhaček
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https://www.academia.edu/38370100/FROM_PARTISANS_TO_HOUSEWIVES_REPRESENTATION_OF_WOMEN_IN_YUGOSLAV_CINEMA?email_work_card=title
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Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost Crvena
Časopis za povijest Zapadne Hrvatske
Date
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2016.
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Časopis za povijest Zapadne Hrvatske, XI./11., 2016.
Revolutions and revolutionaries: from the gender perspective
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PDF
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English
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21 - IR
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40 pages
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An account of the resource
Ovaj rad analizira načine na koje se predstavljanje žena promijenilo od partizanki kao revolucionarnih tema, do kućanica i potrošačica u kasnim 60tim godinama. Ova je promjena vezana uz društveno-političke promjene u jugoslavenskom kontekstu i uz napuštanje ideje ženske emancipacije koja je osmišljena i prihvaćena tijekom i nakon rata. Naime, partizanska borba za oslobađanje od nacističke okupacije te socijalistička revolucija dva su temeljna mita Socijalističke Jugoslavije. Žene su igrale aktivne uloge u toj borbi, kao borci ali i daleko od borbenih linija (logistička podrška, špijuniranje, liječenje i dr.). Također, jednakost između muškaraca i žena je bio važan segment službene ideologije države. Ovi su se narativi kasnije i zabilježili u kolektivnoj memoriji kroz književnost, film, glazbu i stripove. U našem radu istražujemo pet načina prikazivanja ženstvenosti u jugoslavenskom filmu: (1) partizanka, (2) žena u pozadini, (3) suradnica, (4) radnica i (5) domaćica, kako bi prikazali načine na koje predstavljanje žena između 1947. i kasnih 60tih korespondira službenoj politici emancipacije te na koji način ovi prikazi korespondiraju svakodnevici tog vremena. Nadalje, ovo predstavlja analizu filma sagledanog kao skup priča koje su jugoslavenski
muškarci i žene sami iznosili o sebi. Ovakav pristup ima potencijal ukazati na antagonizme unutar društvenog konteksta u kojem su ovi filmovi nastajali, tako što naglašava nedostižne ideala slobode i emancipacije. Istovremeno, cilj ove analize nije samo otvoriti još jedan vid istraživanja prošlosti, već također ponovno razmotriti emacipacijski potencijal kojeg ovakvo istraživanja pruža danas.
film
Gender
representation
socialism
woman
Yugoslavia
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/797b342eee10ea788255f9439840f070.pdf
5e8972fd79c08471ec8ed5a4e22e6459
PDF Text
Text
�Impressum
THE LOST REVOLUTION – WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
Original title: IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA: AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA (2016)
Year of publishing: 2018
Published by: Association for Culture and Art CRVENA
www.crvena.ba
www.afzarhiv.org
On behalf of the publisher: Danijela Dugandžić
Edited by: Andreja Dugandžić and Tijana Okić
Ilustrations edited by: Adela Jušić
Ilustrations by: Adela Jušić, Aleksandra Nina Knežević, Kasja Jerlagić, Sunita Fišić,
Nardina Zubanović
Translated by: Emin Eminagić, Mirza Purić and Tijana Okić
Proofreading by: John Heath
Visual identity, Graphic Design, Layout by: Leila Čmajčanin
Translation is made possible by the grant from Mediterranean Women’s Fund. We would like to
thank them for their continued and generous support of the Online archive of Antifascist struggle of
women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia
Free copy not for commercial use.
�Chiara Bonfiglioli
Ajla Demiragić
Andreja Dugandžić
Adela Jušić
Danijela Majstorović
Boriša Mraović
Tijana Okić
SARAJEVO, 2018
�Contents
4
Introduction
10
About the Illustrations
16
Chiara Bonfiglioli
AFŽ activists’ biographies:
an intersectional reading of women’s agency
42
Nardina Zubanović
Illustrations
50
Ajla Demiragić
Roses are red, violets are blue, me luvly teacher, i believe in you: The role
and the position of the People’s (progressive) teacher in the crucial years
for the construction of a new socialist society in Bosnia and Herzegovina
82
Aleksandra Nina Knežević
Illustrations
88
Danijela Majstorović
The creation of the new Yugoslav woman – emancipatory elements of
media discourse from the end of World War II
121
Kasja Jerlagić
Illustrations
126
Boriša Mraović
Heroism of Labor
The Women’s Antifascist Front and the Socialist Dispositive 1945–1953
152
Sunita Fišić
Illustrations
156
Tijana Okić
From Revolutionary to Productive Subject:
An Alternative History of the Women’s Antifascist Front
200
Adela Jušić
Illustrations
206
Biografije
210
Glossary, Acronyms and Periodicals
�INTRODUCTION
A WORD FROM
THE EDITORS
ANDREJA
DUGANDŽIĆ
TIJANA
OKIĆ
�4
ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
INTRODUCTION
A WORD FROM THE EDITORS
The volume we present to the public is one of the results of many years of work
by the comrades of the Crvena Arts and Culture Association on the digitisation
of documents to create an Archive of the Antifascist Struggle of the Women of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia (http://afzarhiv.org). The idea of the archive was born in 2010, when we started to research the history of the Women’s
Antifascist Front (AFŽ), under the aegis of the project, “What has our struggle
given us?”. Realising that the history of the largest women’s organisation in our
part of the world was by and large unknown to us, we partly turned our efforts to
make the archive public into an exploration of a facet of history which has always
been, and remains, relegated to the margins. The archive, in its present form, is
limited to the materials collected in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but our idea from
the very outset was to create a Yugoslav archive – an idea based on the realisation that only collective work can open new areas of research and enrich knowledge. In this sense, the archive is ours, it belongs to no one in particular, and
therefore it belongs to everyone. It is in process, becoming, and this is precisely
what manifests its basic purpose: to publicly and critically think our own past.
We would like to extend an open invitation to everyone to contribute materials,
editorial work, and otherwise, and get involved in the collective project of making a more comprehensive archive. At present, the archive comprises a part of
the archives of the AFŽ, books and periodicals, stenographic notes, minutes and
reports, as well as other materials, and it also contains works of oral history,
interviews with surviving members of the AFŽ, a history which Yugoslav historiography failed to record.
Archives are usually seen as repositories of objective truth, or spaces of authenticity where history speaks to us. The archive also legitimates professional history
as a scientific discipline, concerned with the past “as it really happened” (Ranke),
and founded on the critical scrutiny of sources (Quellenkritik). For Derrida, there
is no ‘authentic’ beginning of any archive, since any beginning, is always already
determined by political or scientific authority.1 All archives constitute assemblages of spoken or written words, images and documents, precisely as ‘historical
sources’. Access to these sources is restricted, while the state employs scribes
or clerks to furnish narratives of state order, legitimacy and continuity. It is not
simply that an act of pre-selection precedes the formation of the archive; often
it is the wholesale removal of ‘irrelevant’ materials, as in the ‘rubbish dumps’
of discarded ancient papyri, that upon subsequent discovery forms the basis of
archival knowledge of the past.
1
Derrida, Jacques Mal d’Archive Paris: Editions Galilée, 2008
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
5
The origins of this particular archive are no different. The decision to establish a
central Yugoslav AFŽ archive, and archives in each of the federal republics, can
be found in the archive itself. On 20 February 1950, the Central Committee of
the Women’s Antifascist Front (CK AFŽ) took the decision the decision to establish a commission for the archiving of documents.2 Republic committees were
instructed to start working on “the collection and sorting of historical materials
from the history of the progressive Yugoslav women’s movement – dating from
before, during and after the war.” The available archival material is incomplete
and covers the period from 1942 to 1951, that is to say, from the founding of the
AFŽ to two years before its dissolution. The material covering the period of the
People’s Liberation Struggle (henceforth NOB) is limited, while the immediate
aftermath of the war is covered much more extensively. After its dissolution, the
archives of the AFŽ formed part of the Institute for the History of the Worker’s
Movement, and were eventually taken over by the Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In spite of several attempts, we have not been able to ascertain if the
material was lost or destroyed during the siege of Sarajevo. What we do know
is that a process of archiving took place, in the sense of a committal to the archives, of filing and forgetting, whereby the archive was consigned, in Marx’s
words, to the “gnawing criticism of mice”.
The filing away was indeed thorough. Thus, as early as 1955, with the publication of the first volume of “The Women of Croatia in NOB”, the AFŽ was replaced
by a new subject – “women in NOB”. This marked the beginning of the practice
of writing the history of women, focusing on their role in the liberation war by
republic or region, but not on the antifascist movement of Yugoslav women, i.e.
on the AFŽ.3 Similar publications pertaining to other republics only appeared
several decades later.4 “The Women of Serbia in NOB” was published on the
thirtieth anniversary of victory over fascism, whilst the Bosnian-Herzegovinian
edition appeared in 1977 and was not related to any anniversary. Unlike the Serbian and Croatian editions, it was edited not by the former leaders of the AFŽ,
but by (male) employees of the History Institute, Sarajevo (successor to the Institute for the History of the Workers Movement).
2
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Dopis Centralnog odbora AFŽ-a Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru
AFŽ-a BiH od 3. marta 1950. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 317/50, 1950. str. 2.
3
The thirtieth anniversary of the AFŽ finally saw the publication of the synthesis, “The struggle
of Yugoslav women in the war”); see Dušanka Kovačević, Dana Begić, et al. Borbeni put žena
Jugoslavije (Belgrade: Leksikografski zavod Sveznanje, 1972).
4
The Montenegrin edition appeared in 1969, the Slovenian in 1970, the Macedonian in 1976.
�6
ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
INTRODUCTION
A WORD FROM THE EDITORS
No comprehensive history of the mass antifascist movement of Yugoslav women
was ever written in socialist Yugoslavia. The history of the AFŽ was by and large
dissolved into the history of the NOB, into that of women tout court, and finally into
the figure of the female partizanka. The AFŽ thus died two deaths. The first when
it was dissolved in 1953, the second in the official memory of the past, where it
remained as a spectral trace, the presence of an absence (Derrida), giving way
to a new foundational state narrative, which omitted even the People’s Liberation
Movement (NOP).5
All historical and scientific enquiry is led by a logic of question and answer, of
problematics and the questions that they generate. Such enquiry is itself historically and politically determined. This volume draws on studies of the work
and activity of the AFŽ in particular and women in Yugoslavia in general by Lydia
Sklevicky, Svetlana Slapšak, Renata Jambrešić-Kirin, Gordana Stojaković and
Ivana Pantelić. Its aim is to open a new discussion and to keep this important
heritage alive. Reappropriation of this heritage is an important step in arming a
new liberation movement in the struggle against patriarchal, fascist and capitalist tyranny.
***
What is the significance of an archive that once formed part of the archives of
a people’s state, which then disintegrated into separate nation states? What
does the archive mean to us today? Thinking one’s own history is the basic
precondition and imperative of any critical relation towards the past which
pretends to understand the past as something more than and different to its
mere remembrance. Those who remember the past by monumentalising it are
condemned to forget it and learn nothing from it, while those who remember by
forgetting are doomed to repeat it. By rejecting the history of the AFŽ, we risk
marginalising the whole of its experience and failing to draw the lessons it may
offer us today.
1989 represents a turning point and a line of demarcation – democracy begins
only where communism ends. This view comes to characterise the entire recent
past of this region, in the course of which a “state of immaturity”, in the literal,
Kantian sense, has been imposed upon the post-Yugoslav countries and the rest
5
Hoare, Marko Attila, The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
7
of Eastern Europe. Boris Buden has described this state of immaturity as a “democracy in nappies”6 which requires tutors who, being adult and knowing the
rules of proper behaviour, maintain the political status quo by discharging the
ideological function of masters of permissible speech and behaviour. The rise of
historical revisionism after 1989 deprived us of the ability to understand by ourselves the turning points of our own history. Thus the struggle of the Yugoslav
communists, the men and women who fought in the Partisan army, as well as
the afežeovke (members of the AFŽ), is today in part - the “totalitarian” part – inscribed in an history of defeat, and hence of totalitarianism, whilst an unchained
historical revisionism is recorded in the victorious annals, the mythological
state-building narratives of new, free, democratic and progressive societies.
What appears as a remainder in this picture is antifascism. Antifascism is one
of the few legacies of the Yugoslav past that one is “allowed” to discuss publicly.
At the same time, it has been completely emptied of its political charge and
content, separated from the actual, lived historical experience, depoliticised
and individualised, reduced to the experience of victory over fascism, with the
obligatory erasure of Yugoslavism and communism as its constitutive elements,
without which there would have been no victory, either in Yugoslavia or in Europe.
What, then, might it mean to return to the heritage of the AFŽ seventy-odd years
later, after another bloody war which has left Bosnia and Herzegovina ravaged,
plundered and divided? This volume is an attempt to consider this question. It
does not pretend to offer final and definite answers, and its intent is ostensibly
quite simple – to initiate and open a debate, which is why it does not present
an ideologically one-sided representation of the AFŽ. Instead, going beyond the
simple patriarchy thesis and the revisionist concept of totalitarianism, it seeks
to contribute to the collective knowledge of a movement which still inspires awe.
We might say, paraphrasing Nanni Balestrini and Primo Moroni, that this volume was conceived as a research tool, a compass to help us navigate through the
labyrinth of archive materials, but also as an attempt to illuminate the contradictions inherent in the archive, contradictions which are the outcome of historic
events but at the same time their driving force.7
6
Buden, Boris, Zona prelaska. O kraju postkomunizma. Belgrade: Fabrika knjiga, 2012.
7
In the introduction to their collection of primary sources on the revolutionary movements
in Italy after 1968, Nanni Balestrini and Primo Moroni discuss precisely the problem of presenting
archives and oral history, and how one might conceivably represent the complexity of research that
is simultaneously within and without the period covered by the book. See: L’orda d’oro 1968-1977. La
grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2015).
�8
ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
INTRODUCTION
A WORD FROM THE EDITORS
In their different ways, the essays seek to examine on the one hand, revolutionary ruptures and, on the other, the contradictions of a moment which marked a
historical turning point for women in our region. They question the episodes of a
struggle that we must constantly start and accomplish anew. The experience of
victory and defeat, past and present, both the AFŽ’s and our own, is a reminder
that our new and future struggles and fronts, the battles yet to be won, stand
open before us and and testify to the creation of the possible even where everything seemed impossible. The revolution took place. Let’s start another one!
Tijana Okić & Andreja Dugandžić
�ABOUT THE
ILLUSTRATIONS
ADELA
JUŠIĆ
�10
ADELA JUŠIĆ
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATIONS
“To render women visible is the first step towards questioning the customary
relations between the general and the particular in the hierarchy of relevance
in the writing of history.”1
Not only is there precious little material on the political activities of women,
what little we have has been neglected and is on the verge of disappearing
completely. One of the ways of trying to save history from oblivion is to engage
with it through art.
The art produced in the Yugoslav lands in the second half of the last century is full
of painterly and sculptural depictions of scenes from World War II. The scenes
predominately depict soldiers in decisive battles. In addition to the depictions
celebrating the triumph over fascism, we often see artistic compositions
celebrating the socialist man rebuilding the war-torn country. Depictions of
men predominate; women, although often present on the canvass or relief,
are rarely protagonists. When it comes to People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB)
monuments, they rarely depict women exclusively. Rarer still are those depicting
female historical figures. Women are usually personifications of liberty, victory,
revolution, etc. “Women are depicted as bearers of tradition even as they fight
shoulder to shoulder with their brothers in arms and colleagues, gun or hoe in
hand, child tugging at their skirts.”2
Due to the lack of depictions of the heroic struggle and labour of women who
contributed to the defence and development of socialist Yugoslavia, we reached
for the stories available in the online Archive of the Antifascist Struggle of
Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, the documents which testify
to the political activities of women in this period. For this volume we decided
to produce illustrations which would deal with the key topics of the Archive:
women in the struggle, labour heroism, resistance, etc. Together with artists
Sunita Fišić, Nardina Zubanović, Aleksandra Nina Knežević and Kasja Jerlagić
we selected documents, articles and stories we thought we should try to
immortalise in art.
As an artist and feminist, I have examined the topic of the participation of women
in the NOB and Women’s Antifascist Front in many works produced over the last
five years. The topics I engage with in my work as an artist include the represen1
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene, ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996, p.14.
2
Knežević, Saša. ‘Sjećanje i mjesta sjećanja. Rodna perspektiva spomenika iz NOB-a’, p. 9.
(WAF Archive, accessed on 9 December 2016, available at: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/
show/355).
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
11
tation of women in the NOB, women’s narratives and oral histories, as well as
other “sub-topics” related to women’s history in this important period. As I did in
some of my previous works, here, too, I am dealing with the topic of the woman
in the struggle. For one of my illustrations I used a map from the book Sutjeska
1943-733 as the background. It’s a facsimile of a sketch outlining the operations
of German, Italian and Bulgarian troops in the canyons or the rivers Piva and
Sutjeska. On the map showing the operations of the enemy forces I repeatedly
show several female silhouettes in a combat position, prone with a gun.
Another contribution of mine, in a textual form, describes a woman in combat,
a soldier, prone, her gun pointing away from the enemy. She is not shooting, but
sleeping. Also, she is not an abstract figure, like in the abovementioned illustration, but an actual historical personage – Mitra Mitrović, a prominent anti-fascist
and participant in the NOB, an important political figure in the post-war period.
Instead of showing her sleeping likeness, I wrote down her frontline memories:
“Cannons roaring, rifles cracking, chaos all around me, and I’m sleepy… And so
I get some sleep, freshen up, and press on. That’s how I survived.”
The reproductive role of the woman is another topic I deal with. In one of the
illustrations, I foreground a realistically drawn woman with three children,
whilst in the background we see the great steel construction of the freshly
inaugurated bridge over the river Sava and the sign which reads “FIVE-YEAR
PLAN – A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR OUR PEOPLES”. I am connecting the FiveYear Plan with the post-war policies affecting mothers and women. I am trying
to point out that economic progress and the future of the country in general
were closely connected with the issue of reproduction.
Sunita Fišić’s work was inspired by a document from the Archive of Bosnia and
Herzegovina – a memorandum by the county committee of the AFŽ Bijeljina
about the heroic work of women of this county engaged in the construction
of agricultural co-operative halls and lists the example of 56-year-old Blerta
Hodžić, who, “[has been] working with the brick layers from day one, nimbly
climbing up and down the scaffolding, fetching brick and mortar.”4 The artist
uses the ink wash technique to repeat the same female silhouette working on
the construction of the co-operative hall. This highlights the physical strength
3
Belgrade: Monos, 1973.
4
Central Committee of the WAF BiH, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽa u Bijeljini Glavnom odboru AFŽa – o
radu žena Janje na izgradnji zadružnih domova’, Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Sarajevo, Box 4, 1370/2, 1948.
�12
ADELA JUŠIĆ
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATIONS
and endurance of the woman working heroically on the scaffold and carrying
heavy construction material, which is usually considered a man’s job.
Kasja Jerlagić also illustrates the heroism of labour. Her allegorical drawing
with five figures carrying a large, heavy log, represents rural women who built
the country stone by stone, log by log. The artist here is not inspired by only one
specific document, article or testimony; instead, she is trying to illustrate the
truth: in the post-war years, women put in an enormous number of (wo)man
hours of all kinds of voluntary work, from tillage to the construction of roads
and bridges, shoulder to shoulder with men, playing a key role in the building of
a new Yugoslavia.
Another subject Kasja Jerlagić deals with, in a very realistic pencil drawing, is
resistance. Her illustration on this topic was inspired by Olga Marasović’s article
titled “Stanodavka jedne ilegalke” (A Resistance Fighter’s Landlady). Olga
describes the courage which the Bašagić sisters showed when the police came to
their house: “Talking to the police, the Bašagić sisters displayed the experience
of seasoned resisters, members of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOP).”5
Thanks to their fearlessness, the police did not spot anything suspicious, and
left their home in a short while. In the illustration we see two police officers at
the house door, opened by one of the sisters who gesticulates with her whole
body communicating that there is nothing hidden in the house and that all their
suspicions are baseless. The work points out the boldness of the rural women
who played important roles in a dangerous time and selflessly risked their lives,
and the lives of the members of their households, in order to help the resistance
movement forces which at the time operated underground, preparing to form
military fronts and liberate the country from the fascist occupiers.
Nardina Zubanović’s expressive illustrations were inspired by an event which
took place in the city of Mostar early in December 1941. The main protagonists of
a mass protest called “Operation Viktorija” were Mostar women who gathered
en masse at Tepa, the city market, to protest against famine and privation,
demanding to be given turnip of a variety known as Viktorija. Incensed, they
went to the mayor’s home to call him to account and demand food. The protest
continued and turned into looting and vandalising of the purchasing offices, after
which the women uprooted vegetables from the farmers’ gardens in order to
5
Jasmina Musabegović et al., Žene Bosne i Hercegovine u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi
1941-1945. godine: sjećanja učesnika. Sarajevo: History Institute, 1977. Available from: WAF
Archive, accessed on 9 December 2016, http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/105, see: Olga
Marasović, Stanodavka jedne ilegalke, p. 9.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
13
conceal the fact that the protest was in fact a deeply political action against the
occupiers and collaborationists. The protest was finally broken up by the police.
Aleksandra Nina Knežević uses the digital drawing technique to treat the topic
of International Women’s Day, or more specifically the official slogans used to
celebrate this holiday. The slogans greet the women of China and express support to their struggle against fascism, celebrates the unity of the democratic
women’s movement, affirm the role of people’s teachers in the upbringing of
the new socialist man, as well as the role of rural women in the improvement of
the economy, consolidation of the existing co-operatives and the establishment
of new ones. The slogans tell us something about what women in the post-war
Yugoslavia were preoccupied with on their holiday.
Through the illustrations featured in this volume, we deal with the Archive’s
key topics: the heroism of labour, resistance, women in the struggle, personal
narratives and memories. This gesture of post-factum illustration of never
before illustrated events, performed through the subjective experience of the
artists who are trying to fill the blank pages of the female side of history, is
above all a token of gratitude to all the heroines known and unknown.
The stories we recount here are stories of an era, of a struggle, of a heroic age.
Thus, these illustrations do not only reflect the spirit of the age or depict specific
events, they do so in the present moment, from today’s perspective, not only as
an historical depiction of the past, but as a contemporary political act.
Adela Jušić
��AFŽ ACTIVISTS’
BIOGRAPHIES: AN
INTERSECTIONAL
READING OF
WOMEN’S AGENCY
CHIARA
BONFIGLIOLI
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CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
Introduction
The experience of entering an archive is always an affective experience, an
encounter. As Antoinette Burton notes, “history is not merely a project of factretrieval (…) but also a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and
even creative invention – processes set in motion by, among other things, one’s
personal encounter with the archive, the history of the archive itself, and the
pressure of the contemporary moment on one’s reading of what is to be found
there”.1 The process of history writing is always mediated by our assumptions,
partiality and position. Faced with the vast array of material contained in the
Women’s Antifascist Front (henceforth AFŽ) archive in Sarajevo, I chose to start
from the published memoirs, photographs and oral history interviews, in order
to establish a possible connection through personal stories, visual objects and
sound, which could complement the research on digitalized documents – mainly
organizational papers testifying the widespread, capillary work of the AFŽ after
WW2. The richness of this archive allows for an affective connection with the
stories of the women who were part of the AFŽ, while being aware that the
encounter with their voices – or the voices of those close to them - has much to
do with our own selection, interpretation and invention, or, in other words, with
our own location.2
A figure that emerges prominently is the one of Vahida Maglajlić, the only Bosnian Muslim national heroine, who is remembered by her friends, family and
comrades as an extraordinarily generous, lively and free-spirited comrade, a
portrait confirmed by her beautiful short-haired photographs circulating on the
web. The interview with her youngest brother Alija, in particular, made clear
how much of her personality contributed to her activist choices, and also how
much she did and how much more she could have done for other women, if she
didn’t lose her life in the Resistance.3 It is very uncanny that we can still talk
to those who lived Second World War. But we are not going to be able to talk
to the people who witnessed the war and the Resistance indefinitely. And so I
think that this archive is particularly significant, as a project that is still in the
making and that is not closed, as a living archive of one of the most significant
1
Antoinette M. Burton, Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history. Durham, nc: Duke
University Press, 2005, 7-8.
2
Chiara Bonfiglioli, “Nomadic Theory as an Epistemology for Transnational Feminist History” in Iris
van der Tuin and Bolette Blagaard, eds., The Subject of Rosi Braidotti London. Bloomsbury, 2014.
3
Andreja Duganžić i Adela Jušić, “Intervju sa Alijom Maglajlićem,” Archive of antifascist struggle
of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, accessed on October 6th, 2016.,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/16
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grassroots antifascist Resistance movements in Europe during World War Two,
whose legacy has been increasingly marginalized and made invisible with the
end of socialist Yugoslavia and with the growing hegemony of revisionist nationalist historiographies.
What is also not close – and will never be - is the issue of women’s emancipation,
and of feminism, through time and space, and in the post-Yugoslav region more
specifically. Through the archive we can find snippets and glimpses of women’s
agency and of their long-lasting quest for social justice, freedom and equality
during and after World War Two, as in the case of women from the Sreski odbor
in Teslić, who asked in 1947 to be included in the reports of the AFŽ magazine
Nova Žena published in Sarajevo, after repeatedly sending articles. They also
specifically demanded more knitting models and advice on childcare, because
that’s what local women felt was most useful.4 Within the dominant interpretative framework of women’s history during socialism, this report, as well as others, could be read solely as an as immediate proof of patriarchal consciousness,
and as socialism’s failure to undermine prescribed gender roles.5 As I argue
4
“In our opinion, at least one of the issues to be dealt with in the section dedicated to our village
should relate to the interests of our comrades living in villages: housekeeping, generally on women
mothers and children, washing, cooking possibilities feasible for them. From the conversation
with our comrades we found out it would be desirable that the Nova Žena publishes various sewing
patterns and other things useful for it. (…) Comrades like when the children are being written about.
One mother says: impatiently I look forward to each new Nova Žena because there are very useful
advices about children. Following the advice from Nova Žena, I liberated my children from gilt, so
harmful for their gentle organism. Our comrades wonder, how i sit that much is written on other
counties, but nothing on Teslić, nothing, as if we were sleeping. We sent few articles for the New
Žena, but untill today nothing about us came out“ Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Sreski odbor Teslić
Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – povjerenstvo za štampu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija
3, f. 1178/1, 1947.
5
In anthropological terms, patriarchy defines societies based on the domination of men over women
and children, in terms of authority, property and labour. Historically, families in the Balkans are
patrilineal and based on male authority over the extended household. In more recent times, the term
patriarchy has been strongly re-associated to Balkan societies after the emergence of new nationalist
regimes and after the gendered violence occurred during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Socialist
regimes in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, in turn, have often been defined by local feminist scholars
as a form of “state patriarchy”, in which the state exercised control over women’s productive labour,
while being unable to transform men’s control over women’s bodies and labour in the private sphere
(see notably the works of Žarana Papić and of Mihaela Miroiu on Romania). Such critiques, however,
were also often read by Western scholars through pre-existing Cold War stereotypes, and gradually
crystallized in what Kristen Ghodsee and Kateřina Lišková define as “common knowledge”, namely
a range of simplified, dominant claims that are reinstated almost ritually when dealing with women
in state socialism and state socialist women’s organizations in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern
Europe. Such claims had the result of denying the possibility of women’s agency under the regime
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
in this essay, however, it is important to look beyond, and to resist reading the
complexity of women’s lives in the WW2 and immediate post-war era through
simplified narratives about the success or failure of socialist emancipation, or
through the presence of absence of authentic agency.6
Through the archive, we can, instead, understand in depth the ambivalence and
complexity of that time. It is hard to imagine today the degree of poverty and
exploitation experienced by most women across Yugoslavia in the mid-1940s,
and how powerful and appealing must have been the newly emerging gendered
imaginaries, which associated women’s emancipation to peace, freedom from
foreign occupation, literacy, work, and a clean, healthy home. As AFŽ activists
quickly learned, however, centuries-old patriarchy could not be easily undone,
and was intimately tied to women’s deprivation, such as in the case of a Muslim
woman in Visoko in 1947, who said she would have been happy to leave the
full face-veil, but had nothing else to wear for the time being.7 Similar details
can give a measure of women’s lives and struggles in that time, and help us
to understand the contradictions of women’s history in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
a history that has been less prominent within the literature on women’s and
feminist movements in the post-Yugoslav space, which has itself been in the
making during the last two decades.8 By engaging with the AFŽ archive, we get
of allegedly homogeneous state patriarchy. See Kristen Ghodsee and Kateřina Lišková, “Bumbling
Idiots or Evil Masterminds? Challenging Cold War Stereotypes about Women, Sexuality and State
Socialism”, Filozofija i društvo XXVII (3), 2016, 489-503.
6
On this discussion about the (im)possibility of women’s agency under state socialism, see Nanette
Funk, “A Very Tangled Knot: Official State Socialist Women’s Organizations, Women’s Agency and
Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, no. 4
(2014): 344–360. Kristen Ghodsee, “Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk,” European
Journal of Women’s Studies 22, no. 2 (2015): 248–252. Francisca De Haan, et. al. (2016), “Forum: Ten
Years After, Communism and Feminism Revisited”, Aspasia, 10.
7
“In relation to taking off the veil the situation in our conty is not exactly perfect. There are comrades
who took it off and those who want to do it, but cannot for now, since they have nothing to wear. They
do not have money to buy it immediately, but they will try to get something. They are saying that they
want to look with their own eyes” Republican Committee of the AFŽ BiH, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ Visoko
Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – mjesečni izvještaj za oktobar i novembar’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1290/1, 1947. Similar cases of women bringing up the lack of other garments are
mentioned for other locations, which makes us wonder if women found class-based reasons to avoid
the changes, seen that the opposition to such measures was also strong among women themselves,
see later in this essay.
8
Fabio Giomi, “Introduction” in Aida Spahić et al. Women Documented. Women and Public Life in Bosnia
and Herzegovina in the 20th century. Sarajevo: Sarajevo Open Center, 2014. Gorana Mlinarević and
Lamija Kosović (2011) Women’s Movements and Gender Studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aspasia,
Vol. 5, p. 128-38.
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to know the complex, fragmented and uneven history of women’s engagement,
and we encounter women who were often the bravest of that generation, or
simply those who happened to find themselves in a certain intolerable situation,
and tried to do something about social injustice, the persecution of others, and
their own survival. Our engagement with their engagement is a way to counter
the invisibility of the antifascist legacy, and of its impact on women’s lives.9
In this article, I am reading the experience of the AFŽ through the lenses of intersectionality, that is, through a feminist research methodology that considers
gender relations in intersection with other relevant factors of social differentiation such as class, geographical location, ethnicity, age, nationality and sexual
orientation.10 I analyse women’s biographical differences within the organization,
and the ways in which the AFŽ functioned in fact as a bridge between women of
different geographical locations, educational backgrounds, ethnicities, classes
and political experiences, promoting new forms of solidarity and new life opportunities against patriarchal oppression, but also reproducing new hierarchies
and forms of control over prescribed women’s roles, for instance in the case of
veiled Muslim women. Throughout the article, on the basis of different material (archives, oral history interviews, and published sources), I consider how
women’s individual stories were tied to the collective framework of gendered
“modernity” and “backwardness” promoted by the organization, and how differences among women had a role in the articulation of AFŽ practices dedicated to
the construction of modern and emancipated femininities after 1945.
The hierarchical difference between a minority of urban, educated, politicized
AFŽ leaders and the peasant and working class women who constituted the
rank-and-file base of this organization is characteristic of wartime and postwar women’s mass activism in Yugoslavia. Differences among women are also
a key to understand the organization of AFŽ archives across the post-Yugoslav
space. As Zagreb historian Lydia Sklevicky has shown in her seminal work, antifascist women’s organizations were hierarchically structured, in a pyramidal
way.11 A fundamental distinction existed between the politicized women who
9
On the concept of engagement, see Adriana Zaharijević, Pawning and Challenging in Concert:
Engagement as a Field of Study, Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (2), 2016.
10
Texts on intersectionality are numerous, but for an introduction, see Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa
Herrera Vivar and Linda Supik (eds)., Framing intersectionality: debates on a multi-faceted concept
in gender studies. Burlington: Ashgate, 2011.
11
Lydia Sklevicky, “Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the case of postrevolutionary Yugoslavia” In: Angerman, A., Binnema, G., Keunen, A., Poels, V. & Zirkzee, J. (eds.)
Current Issues in Women’s History. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
constituted the avant-garde of women’s organizations (the “emancipated” or
“enlightened”) and the (peasant, working class or uneducated) “feminine masses”. The organization itself was functioning through village or city committees
composed of ordinary members, who would then elect delegates to the county
and regional committees, which were in turn united under the republican and
federal committees. Archival sources are reflecting such organization: next to
the representative, agit-prop documents (programmatic statements, speeches
given during mass meetings and public occasions, or the press), we find the
more reflexive, internal debates, such as transcriptions of central committees
and internal reports produced by the local and intermediate cadres of the organizations, who are reconstructing the conditions and problems of a specific
area.12 The local, republican and federal AFŽ cadres, therefore, were waging
a battle against what they defined as “backward” conceptions of the position
of women, encountering fierce resistance from men and party authorities at
the local level, but also from women themselves, since very different femininities co-existed and conflicted in Yugoslavia during World War Two and in the
immediate post-war period.13 In the next sections, I will explore a number of
women’s individual biographies, in relation to gendered imaginaries of tradition
and modernity, and in relation to women’s factors of social differentiation within
the organization.
Women’s agency between “progressiveness” and “backwardness”
Several biographical collections on the lives of female partisans and activists
were published during the socialist era, strongly emphasizing women’s bravery,
party loyalty and sacrifice for the liberation of the country. In turn, the scholarly
works published after 1989 generally dealt with women’s experiences from a
gendered perspective, on the basis of the new feminist paradigm of women’s
history. While U.S. historian Barbara Jancar-Webster interviewed former partisans for her monograph on women in the Yugoslav resistance, Zagreb scholar
Lydia Sklevicky conducted in depth archival research on the AFŽ during World
War Two and in the post-1945 era. The general interpretative framework of
these work tends to emphasize communist party and state control over women’s mobilizations, documenting in particular antifascist women’s gradual loss
12
On this, see also Lydia Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi, Zagreb: Ženska Infoteka, 1996.
13
Chiara Bonfiglioli (2014), Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era: The
Case of Yugoslavia, Aspasia, The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern
European Women’s and Gender History, vol. 8, pp. 1-25.
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of autonomy during the consolidation of the socialist regime.14 The dissolution
of the AFŽ in 1953 is read as the ultimate proof of such process.15 While feminist
critiques of patriarchal structures during the socialist era are very valuable,
the tendency to see women’s interests as inevitably opposed to state and party
interests has the result of undermining the subjective break in traditional gender roles represented by women’s participation to the partisan struggle and by
their activism within the AFŽ. This dominant narrative also tends to undermine
and dismiss women’s agency, especially when it comes to AFŽ leaders. JancarWebster writes, for instance, that:
“For a while, women communists experienced the power and responsibility
that derived from creating and turning the AFZ into an effective service
and procurement organization in the rear. When they were called to
account and told to turn the organization into a communist-style mass
organization, they did as they were told. The women who sacrificed their
lives to defeat the invaders and protect their homes were in a very real
sense victims of the Party that called them to its standard.”16
In the rest of the passage, the author associates women’s lack of autonomy in the
AFŽ to women’s powerlessness in socialist Yugoslavia, and to gender violence
during the Yugoslav wars, framing Yugoslav women’s lives in terms of constant
victimization, from World War Two until the present. In her recent and thoroughly researched monograph, Jelena Batinić has similarly argued that partisan authorities skillfully managed to adapt their language to the daily needs of peasant and illiterate women, while at the same time considering women a reserve
army in the antifascist mobilization, and while being unable to dispel traditional
gender roles in combat units and in the organization of the mass resistance. Ultimately, her monograph does not challenge existing interpretations of women’s
14
Barbara Jancar-Webster, Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 Denver Colo: Arden Press,
1998. See also from the same author, “Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement” in
Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.) Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society in Yugoslavia
and the Yugoslav Successor States, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
Lydia Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi. See also from the same author “Emancipated integration or
integrated emancipation: the case of post-revolutionary Yugoslavia” in A. Angerman, G. Binnema,
A. Keunen, V. Poels and J. Zirkzee, eds. Current Issues in Women’s History, London and New York,
Routledge 1989.
15
For a critical discussion of this narrative, see Jelena Tešija, “The End of the AFŽ – The End of
Meaningful Women’s Activism? Rethinking the History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 –
1961”, Master thesis, Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 2014.
16
Jančar-Webster, Barbara “Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement”, 85.
Emphasis added.
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
participation to the Resistance and of women’s activism in the AFŽ.17 As a result of such interpretations, AFŽ militants’ biographies, agency and subjective
processes of politicization remain under-researched, notably when it comes to
leaders and intermediate cadres, who were invested with leadership tasks during World War Two and in its aftermath. Lydia Sklevicky, for instance, explicitly
rejected oral history with former participants, who were still retaining public
authority at that time: “Most of the women participants, usually the ones who
were the high-ranking members of the organisation and still held considerable
positions of power afterwards, are eager to present their own experiences, visions
and memories as the only true version.”18
While these interpretations have the merit of cautioning us against an excessively romantic image of the AFŽ experience, they also ultimately undermine
women’s roles as organizational and political leaders, and their different degrees of agency in promoting new gender imaginaries that attempted to establish a “universalizing” discourse of women’s equality across classes, geographical locations and ethnicities. They also conceal that new possibilities for
political engagement, education and labour emerged after World War Two, allowing masses of women to undertake different choices, and making possible
an unprecedented generational break in women’s self-determination as citizens
and workers. As I have shown in my dissertation, new political discourses and
practices of women’s activism in the Cold War era had a transnational character
and went beyond Cold War borders.19
Patriarchy, or, in other words, male domination within public structures and in the
private sphere, certainly did not cease to exist despite the official socialist politics
of women’s emancipation. Discourses and practices of women’s emancipation
had uneven effects, primarily due to the pre-existing strong household patriarchal traditions and unevenness of women’s lives across the region, but also due
to the creation of new forms of social differentiation.20 As different documentary
movies have shown, beside the traditional and widespread double burden, women’s experiences of gender (in)equality and social mobility during socialism were
17
Batinić, Jelena, Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
18
Sklevicky, “Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation”. Emphasis added.
19
Chiara Bonfiglioli, Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy
and Yugoslavia (1945-1953), PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht, 2012.
20
Rory Archer, Igor Duda, Igor and Paul Stubbs, eds., Social inequalities and discontent in Yugoslav
Socialism, Farnham: Ashgate, 2016.
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very much influenced by their biographical trajectory, and particularly by their
education, class and family politics. 21 Despite the ideal of Yugoslavia as a classless society, different forms of capital (political, social, economic and cultural)
shaped the extent to which women could take advantage of the new possibilities
opened to them in the field of education and labour. Moreover, a “wrong” political
or religious background could compromise such advancements, while educated
women in key positions risked incurring into harsh political repression at times
of turmoil, as it happened after the Soviet-Yugoslav split.22
What I am arguing here, therefore, is for a more nuanced assessment of women’s participation within the AFŽ, one that takes into account intersecting factors
of social differentiation and their constant fluidity, rather than assuming an immediate opposition between “women” and “the state”, particularly in a context
of highly fragmented and decentralized state power. A biographical and intersectional approach also allows us to map the continuities between women’s engagement within feminist organizations and cultural associations in the interwar
period, and their leadership within the AFŽ during wartimes and in the post-war
era, avoiding a paradigm of absolute discontinuity between «feminist» and «proletarian» women’s movements.23 Another element of continuity, is the interpretative framework of modernity vs. backwardness which read gender relations in
rural areas, and particularly among Muslim communities, as an ultimate sign of
backwardness and as a result of feudal Ottoman oppression. This framework existed already in the interwar era, and became particularly strong throughout the
AFŽ existence in the post-war period.24 Female activists, therefore, found themselves at the crossroads of these contradictions, between different conditions of
political engagement, and between different injunctions related to modern vs.
backward ways of living. Women’s individual aspirations to education, work and
marriage intersected with new forms of collective organising and new utopian
gendered imaginaries. Poverty and social justice were also strong elements of
motivation when it cames to paths of engagement. In the rest of this section,
21
See notably Sanja Iveković’s documentary Borovi i jele (2002), as well as Želimir Žilnik’s Jedna Žena,
Jedan Vek (2012) and, earlier, Vera i Eržika (1981).
22
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata Dom i svijet: o ženskoj kulturi pamćenja. Zagreb: Centar za Ženske Studije,
2008.
23
Emmert, Thomas A. “Ženski Pokret: The Feminist Movement in Serbia in the 1920s” in Sabrina
P. Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the
Yugoslav Successor States. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
24
Ibidem. See also Pamela Ballinger and Kristen Ghodsee, “Socialist Secularism. Religion, Modernity,
and Muslim Women’s Emancipation in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1945-1991”, Aspasia 5 (2011): 6-27.
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
therefore, I will provide some biographical material that illustrate the complex
political trajectories of female activists, particularly for women of Muslim background. I will also provide two examples in which education and class were an
important gateway to political engagement, to illustrate how different factors
of social differentiation played a role in women’s mobilization. These examples
are not meant to be representative of the whole situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina or in the rest of Yugoslavia, also since the available published and archival
sources are privileging the pespectives of female leaders rather than the ones of
rank-and-file members. Rather, through these case studies I aim to suggest that
intersectional and biographical approaches might be productive for new fresh
prespectives and interpretations of the AFŽ archival legacy.
When looking at AFŽ activists’ aspirations towards personal freedom and
equality, Vahida Maglajlić (1907-1943) deserves to be recalled25. The eldest of
ten siblings, born in Banja Luka in a respected Muslim family, whose father was
the local kadija, or judge, Vahida expressed a strong, lively personality since
her youth, when she was first a tomboy and then a highly skilled weaver and
tailor. After finishing a girls’ only vocational school, she dreamt of continuing
her studies at the teachers’ high school in Zagreb. Her father, however, did not
allow her to study further, while her brothers were all studying and specializing
in different professions. Her activist brother Efrem, however, started to bring
her clandestine left-wing literature, which she would read avidly, secretly from
her father, gradually becoming a communist activist. Due to her free-spirited
attitude, Vahida quickly abandoned the full face-veil (zar) and even cut her hair
short to the dismay of her parents, following the fashion of the times. She had
a strong influence on other Muslim women and girls, whom she frequently encouraged to pursue an education, and with whom she organised a number of
excursions through cultural associations such as Gajret. Shortly before the war,
she became the secretary and then the president of Ženski Pokret, the women’s
association in which young left-wing women organized before engaging in clandestine partisan work. The kadija house in Banja Luka became a core site of
antifascist activities under Ustasha occupation. Vahida Maglajlić, together with
other notable comrades such as Dušanka Kovačević and Rada Vranješević, frequently used the full veil as a device for hiding and for secret meetings with other
clandestine fighters. Vahida was eventually arrested and tortured, but managed
25
See notably Mila Beoković, Žene heroji. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1967. For other biographical accounts
on Vahida Maglajlić, see Himka Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Zapisi o Vahidi Maglajlić. Banja Luka:
Glas, 1973. and from the same author Rođena za burno doba: životni put narodnog heroja Vahide
Maglajlić. Kragujevac: Dečje Novine, 1977.
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25
to escape from the local prison into the liberated territory.26 Before being killed
by German troops in April 1943, Vahida was especially engaged with Muslim
women in the area of Cazin, mobilizing them in support of the partisan movement. She was elected as part of the The Central Committee of the AFŽ during
its first conference in the liberated area of Bosanski Petrovac in December 1942.
The position of Muslim women became particularly sensitive in the post-war
era, also due to the complex political position of Muslim citizens during World
War Two.27 In the late 1940s, the AFŽ engaged in the campaign against the zar
or feredža, a garment which covered face and body, equivalent to today’s burqa,
which culminated in several laws against the full face-veil across Yugoslavia in
1950 and 1951, at a time in which «the simultaneous harnessing of religion and
liberation of women became a potent symbol of progress and modernity». 28 The
veil was strongly Orientalised and negatively associated with the historical legacy of the Ottoman empire.29 A biography that fully showcases the ambivalences
of women’s emancipation in the post-war era is the one of Didara Dukazdjini, a
seventeen-year-old ethnic Albanian girl raised in a wealthy family in the town of
Prizren, who was told by her father that she had to abandon her feredža/ferexhe,
the full Islamic veil that covered her head and face when she ventured outside
the house. 30 The local communist authorities had invited the most important
families in town to set the example, in order to establish the new socialist values
in the traditional and underdeveloped region of Kosovo.
In 1947 a Party directive arrived, about convincing the most influential
people in the city of the necessity for women to take off their veils (…) My
father was present in the first of those meetings, and immediately made
a decision: his daughter was going to take off the veil. Of course, he did
not ask my opinion. My father’s decision seemed to me the most horrible
punishment. I was shocked, stunned, with no force to oppose him when
he told me that he had given his word to the local Party committee. I cried
all night. I was seventeen. I wanted to get married and I did not want to be
different from other girls of my age.31
26
Žene Heroji, 216-218.
27
Hoare, Marko Attila, The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History. London: Hurst & Co
Publishers Ltd, 2013.
28
Socialist Secularism, 12.
29
For a discussion of Islamic veiling in Bosnia-Herzegovina in a long-term historical perspective,
see Andrea Mesarič, “Wearing Hijab in Sarajevo. Dress Practices and the Islamic Revival in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 22(2), 2013: 12-34.
30
Malešević, Miroslava, Didara. Životna priča jedne Prizrenke. Beograd: Srpski genealoški centar, 2004.
31
Didara, 39.
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
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Didara was shocked by her father’s decision. She thought she could not survive
the shame of going out “naked” in the streets. Upon deciding that she had to take
off the veil, her father also decided that she would enroll in a teacher training
course. Three months later, Didara obtained employment as a teacher, since for
the literacy campaign, literate workers who could teach in the different villages
of Kosovo were in great demand. Two years later, at age nineteen, Didara fell in
love with Toša, a Serbian communist militant, who proposed to her: “Communist from head to toe, he did not care at all about the difference in our national
backgrounds”.32. In order to marry the man she loved, and in order to avoid an
arranged marriage with an Albanian man, Didara had to escape from her father’s house, severing relations with her parents for several years to come. She
later became a member of the AFŽ, and as “living example” of women’s emancipation, she was sent to different villages to recruit other Albanian women for
the activities of the Popular Front. While the case of Didara is exceptional, it is
also an illustration of the extraordinary social and political transformations that
took place in Yugoslavia in the immediate post-war period, and of the implications they had for women.
The AFŽ archives from Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also from other former Yugoslav republics, indeed testifies of the strong interest for education and improvement in living standards expressed by women of different ethnicities, also as a
result of the new opportunities available to them, and as a result of the efforts
placed by the AFŽ in grassroots literacy programs, sanitation campaigns and
attempts to reduce infant mortality in rural areas. At the same time, campaigns
such as the one against the full veil were received with mixed feelings, since they
subverted traditional communal ways of life. The fact that women’s illiteracy
was widespread in former Ottoman territories such as Bosnia, Macedonia and
Kosovo, enhanced the connection between “backwardess, religion (especially,
but not only, Islam) and female oppression” in the eyes of AFŽ leaders.33 The
laws against the veil, therefore, was often read by Muslim women themselves
as specific threat against their community, reinforcing the separation between
Muslim women and AFŽ activists of different ethnic origin. Similar perceptions,
for instance, are documented for Muslim women in the Sandjak province of Serbia, who openly described their shame at having to abandon the veil in public.34
In one of the few autobiographies from the region that was translated into English, Sanđak-born scientist Munevera Hadžišehović (born 1933) recalls similarly
32
33
34
Didara, 47.
Socialist secularism, 16.
http://sandzakpress.net/ispovijesti-sandzackih-zena-nakon-prisilnog-skidanja-zara-i-feredze1951-godine
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feelings of discrimination and isolation as a result of her Muslim background,
while also noting the support received by the socialist state, first as a promising
student, then as a scientist employed by a public research institute in Belgrade,
and finally as a single mother in the 1970s and 1980s.35
These biographical accounts of upper class women of Muslim background provide a glimpse of the contradictions and ambivalences that were at stake in the
rapid process of social modernization which affected women in socialist Yugoslavia from 1945 onwards, and also allow us to see that a variety of intersecting social factors were affecting individual life trajectories. Two other important factors that led to political engagement were education and class. Young
students were highly represented in the antifascist movements, as highlighted
by the biographies of other women heroes from Bosnia-Herzegovina, such as
students Dragica Pravica (1919-1943) and Radojka Lakić (1917-1941), and student and clerk (for lack of possibility of becoming a teacher) Rada Vranješević
(1914-1944). An interesting figure in this group is Sida Marjanovic (born 1921 in
Bosanski Alexandrovac near Banja Luka), a former student of the gymnasium in
Mostar and of the conservatory in Banja Luka, member of the communist youth
and member of the resistance. She worked first as nurse, then as a political
worker, and finally she was in charge of radio programs and publications until
the Bosanski Petrovac conference of 1942. Afterwards, she was engaged in establishing AFŽ sections on the Kozara mountain in both liberated and occupied
territory. During the struggle, she witnessed the death of Vahida Maglajlić and
other comrades in April 1943 and gave birth to a daughter in October 1943.36 After the war she was vice-president of the Republican Committee and the secretary of the AFŽ in the city of Banja Luka. She continued to work in the media and
became the director of Bosnafilm, authoring several engaged documentaries
and successively writing the script for the well-known partisan movie The Battle
of Neretva, a battle she had herself witnessed.37 She later became a diplomat
specialized in cultural exchanges, and was the first president of the Association
of Film-Makers of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
35
Hadžišehović, Munevera, A Muslim Woman in Tito’s Yugoslavia. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 2003.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavija Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH – biografije
narodnih odbornica, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 7, 2526/5, 1949. Her short
biography is contained in a list of women activists in people’s committees from December. I could
only find the date of birth and a few indications on her life online. I am also collecting biographical
information from the following books: Himka Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Rođena za burno doba:
životni put narodnog heroja Vahide Maglajlić. Kragujevac: Decje Novine, 1977. Dragoje Lukić, Rat i
djeca Kozare, Narodna Knjiga 1984.
37
Sida Marjanović, Na Neretvi… Sarajevo: 1950.
36
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
Beside teachers and students, the antifascist movement was also joined by
women who became politicized through working class circles and trade unions.
Due to women’s concentration in the garment sector, textile workers were especially active in the antifascist movement in the interwar period, and were at
the head of several strikes.38 A prominent figure in this sense was Judita Alargić
(Novi Sad 1917), who got radicalized as a textile worker in the interwar period
and was successively occupying important political tasks within the party and
the AFŽ during and after the war. She was the only female representative from
Vojvodina at the Bosanski Petrovac conference where she became part of the
AFŽ Central Committee.39 She continued to be active in socialist women’s organizations, The Union of Women’s Association of Yugoslavia (SŽD) and Conference for the Social Activities of Women of Yugoslavia (KDAŽ), after 1953. Despite her high political position, she kept being interested in the fate of female
workers, as proven by her intervention during a 1954 SŽD leaders’ meeting, in
which she lamented that women in the garment industry were working in terrible conditions for miserable wages, with no one to take care of their children:
“in any other system these workers would strike, but this is a socialist country and
people understand the situation. We are however indebted to help them as much as
we can”.40
This last quote points at the contradictions of the socialist system when it
came to addressing class and gender inequalities, something of which female
activists were deeply aware. In the next section, I will consider how ethnic and
class differences among women were tackled by the Women’s Antifascist Front
in the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially when dealing with women living in
rural areas. I will also look at the differences between socialist ideals and social
reality, namely at the tension between the idealised model of the new socialist
woman (literate, working, politically active) and women’s widespread illiteracy
and political passivity. Again, I am interested here in an intersectional reading
of women’s agency, and at the ways in which differences in class, ethnicity and
education shaped the discourses and practices of the AFŽ.
38
Lagator Špiro and Čukić Milorad, Partizanke Prve proleterske. Beograd, Export-press, 1978.
Kecman, Jovanka Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941.
Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1978.
39
See the biographical portraits collected by Gordana Stojaković http://www.zenskestudije.org.
rs/01_o_nama/gordana_stojakovic/AFZ/afz_licnosti.pdf
40
“In any other system these workers would go on strike, but this is a socialist country and people
understand the situation, and it is our duty to help them as much as one can.” Beograd, Arhiv
Jugoslavije, fund 354: kutija 1: Zapisnici i stenografske sa sastanaka upravnog odbora i
sekretariata SZDJ i sa savetovanja SZDJ 1954-1961. Zapisnik 6.3.1954, p. X/3.
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Socialist ideals and social reality:
AFŽ activists’ work on the ground
In the post-war era, antifascist female activists were still motivated by the
strong militant ethos that emerged during the antifascist Resistance. The values of constant activism and self-sacrifice for the liberation of the country had
led to the partisans’ victory, also largely thanks to women’s political participation. Mass mobilization, therefore, continued to be seen as a necessary tool to
reconstruct a devastated country and to strengthen the so-called gains of the
revolution, namely the radical transformation of class and property relations
against political and class enemies. After 1945, following the Soviet model, Yugoslav leaders were increasingly radical when it came to the propagation of
class struggle on a national and international level, and this eventually led to
contrasts with the Soviet leadership. The Soviet-Yugoslav split of June 1948 enhanced this radical stance, at least in its immediate aftermath, when Yugoslavia
found itself isolated internationally, and in need to mobilize the population in
support of its authorities. The late 1940s and early 1950s, therefore, were times
in which a high degree of political mobilization and social control was promoted
by the authorities, with “passivity” figuring as one of the greatest sins when
it came to the political realm. Politicized female leaders, generally raised in
urban areas and more educated than the vast majority of the female population, with a long experience of militancy since the interwar period, carried on
the ethos of self-sacrifice and constant political mobilization, and were keen to
propagate their values among “the female masses”.
So, what was the idealized image of the socialist “new woman” propagated by
the AFŽ and how was it enforced on the ground? What were the activists’ expectations and how did they meet with the reality of women’s lives across the country, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina? The women’s press, with its agit-prop
character, can give us an idea here of such projections and imaginaries. One
significant editorial by Bogomir Brajković, published in Nova Žena shortly before
the liberation, appealed to the Croatian women of Bosnia-Hercegovina, stating
that many of them had already joined the partisan struggle, while another part
of the Croatian community had trouble to follow the right political path. The
editorial explicitly stated that Croatian and Muslim women were on the same
level of backwardness than Serbian women in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but
that Serbian women has managed to elevate themselves in the course of the
partisan struggle. Serbian women were characteristically more prominent in
the struggle in Bosnia, also due to their harsh persecution under the collabo-
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
rationist regime of the Independent State of Croatia of which Bosnia was part.41
Croatian women from BiH were invited to join the struggle in order to elevate
themselves as well, following the example of Croatian women from Croatia, who
strongly contributed to the Resistance in Istria, Lika, Slavonia and Dalmatia.
Croatian women were explicitly invited to establish a sisterhood with Muslim
and Serbian women, in the name of the common victimization suffered at the
hands of a common enemy (the occupying Axis forces and the local collaborationist forces).42 On the one hand, the AFŽ magazine was attempting to alleviate
ethnic conflicts among women, and to act, as Jelena Batinić writes, as a “transethnic mediator”43, promoting what will be officially defined as the doctrine of
“brotherhood and unity”. On the other hand, ethnic divides had to be taken into
account when designing strategies for women’s interethnic mass mobilization.
Differences among women, however, were not only shaped by ethnicity, but also,
more importantly, by their degree of political awareness, which also often overlapped with ethnic belonging, as in the case of Croatian and Serbian women
mentioned above. In a Nova Žena editorial from 1946, the writer reflected on the
fact that women had become a true political force. Still, many of them could not
be considered antifascists, to the distress of the most engaged activists who
attempted to mobilize them. The author argued that depoliticized women had to
be approached with understanding and care, since even those who were passive or behaving in an oppositional way had also been victimized by fascism.
Their stance was mainly due to ignorance or to the negative influence of family
members, especially in the case of peasant or working class women. Only a few
women were to be considered authentic “enemies” (neprijatelji), and these were
collaborationist women of loose morals, or class enemies, mainly women who
had lived off the work of others in old Yugoslavia, and wanted to turn back time
to pre-war conditions. The article also summoned antifascist women to show
less “sectarianism”, especially when it came to Serbian female activists, who
showed mistrust towards Muslim or Croatian women who had acquired political
responsibility.44 Class struggle was supposed to supersede existing ethnic ha41
See: Jancar-Webster, Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, and Batinić, Women and Yugoslav partisans.
42
“Serbian woman, whose immeasurable sufferings were recorded by the great Croatian poet
Vladimir Nazor in his poem “Orthodox mother”, is giving her hand to Croatian and Muslim
woman and wnats them to mutually cure the wounds afflicted by the common enemy. And
patriotic consciouss Croatian women looks at the Serbian and Muslim women as her sisters.
This siterhood, consecrated by the innocent blood of numerous victims, all Bosnian-Herzegovinian
women must guard as sanctity.”Nova Žena, br.2, 5, «Hrvatice Bosne i Hercegovine».
43
Batinić, op.cit., 218.
44
Nova Žena br.6, p.15, «Pitanja, u koja treba da se udubimo».
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tred and divisions, with women being invited to jointly mobilize for the common
good. At the same time, political awareness had to be shared among women of
different political orientations, in the attempt to gain the sympathy of female
citizens who had been at the margins of public life.
The late 1940s witnessed a truly capillary effort on the part of the AFŽ to create
the preconditions for women’s activism through mass literacy campaigns, as
well as through massive recruitment in voluntary labour brigades and in the
new industrial labour force. AFŽ members were also engaged in the creation of
welfare structures for orphans, maternity clinics, and in the opening of crèches
for female workers and their children. By sharing cultural, economic and political
capital among so-called backward women, AFŽ leaders aimed to expand the
socialist regime’s legitimacy among women, and to make use of women’s work
for purposes of reconstruction and mobilization. Yet, the weakness of political
“cadres” at the local level was very often apparent, and so was the fact that the
organization could not reach and involve all women – especially women in rural
areas – across the country. Despite their socialist ideals, which strongly emerge
in propaganda material such as the women’s press, AFŽ leaders were deeply
aware of the difficulties in changing women’s position. During a plenum of the
AFŽ’s Republican Committee of BiH held in March 1948, prominent Bosnian
leader Dušanka Kovačević lamented that the organization had not managed
to reach all women, especially in villages, due to the gap between urban and
rural realities. Kovačević explicitly stated that the organization had to take into
account, and make use of, peasant women’s agency:
Comrades, what I notice in this meeting is the relation towards the peasant
woman, some comrades said that peasant women are illiterate, that they
are not skilled, and so on. We cannot talk like this, comrades. We cannot
talk about the inability of peasant women, we cannot and won’t listen to
that, it’s not possible to always put the issue in terms of ‘if we would have
more urban women, more teachers, it would be easier’. See instead what
we should do. We want to make political cadres out of peasant women.
The peasant woman showed during war what she was able to do, she gave
a lot during the war, she is a big patriot of our country, and she needs
knowledge. This is our debt towards that woman and we can help her. We
should struggle to raise more village cadres.45
45
“Comrades, for me this meeting revealed something, relation towards peasant-woman, when some
comrades talked about the peasant women as illiterate, incapable…etc..We, comrades, cannot
speak this way. We cannot talk about the peasant-woman’s incapability, we cannot and will not
always listen about it, and we cannot always put things like this: if only we had more citizens,
teachers, etc…it would be easy. Then you would see what we could do! What we want comrades is
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
This speech testifies that AFŽ leaders were aware of the potential of peasant
women’s agency. Creating cadres in villages, however, appeared extremely difficult, since the most talented activists often moved from AFŽ cells to local institutions, preferring to work for the People’s Liberation Front than among women
(an issue also analyzed in depth by Sklevicky)46. Oftentimes, notable male party
members resisted the wives’ participation in the work of the organization, and
opposed the work of the AFŽ at the local level.47 The reports from the town of
Vareš, for instance, well exemplify similar phenomena.48 Generally, local peasant AFŽ members were village housewives, with three or four years of education, who had become politicized during the war, due to war losses and involvement of family members. Their political level, however, did not always appear
satisfactory, particularly when it came to leadership skills. In a list of biographical sketches of AFŽ members who attended a political course in Sarajevo, many
students were described as inadequate to take up a cadre position (rukovodilac).
Inadequacies most often stemmed from lack of education, or limitations due to
personal character, which made leadership difficult (“tiha”, “šutljiva”, “voli intrigirati”, “ne voli da diskutuje”, “nedisciplinovana”, “nije dovoljno bistra”, “prilično zaostala, skoro je skinula zar”). Women who were too young, too old, or in bad health
to turn the peasant into the director, head. She [peasant women] has shown what she can do during
the war, she gave a lot in the war, she is a big patriot of our contry and needs education. She is our
comarde, and we have to help her. We need to work harder to educate and equip more peasant
women directors” Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Zapisnik IV Plenuma Glavnog Odbora AFŽ-a održanog u
Sarajevu, 13 marta 1948. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2912/32, 1948.
46
Sklevicky, Konji, Žene,Ratovi, 120-121; 137.
47
Bonfiglioli, Women’s Political and Social Activism.
48
“In the regional organisation in Vareš, one big mistake is related to the fact that the comrade who is
also a head of a Committee lives the Party life in the local organisation, where she dedicates all her
time, and because of it her work in our Regional AFŽ section is neglected (..) In Vareš, the wife of the
member of the SNO refuses to work in the AFŽ and she is happy to point that out everywhere“ Glavni
Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Zapisnik 1 October 1950’, ”. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4288/?,
1950. The situation in Vareš was described as organizationally very weak in another report, which
lamented that wives of party members and notable personalities were avoiding work, and that their
husbands justified it. The influence of the Catholic Church, moreover, was said to be most important
for local women than any conference by the AFŽ or Popular Front. The wife of a local secretary,
for instance, constantly attended Catholic masses and stayed away from AFŽ meetings due to some
personal antipathy with a local activist, even if they were both partisans during the war. Muslim
party members were also not allowing their wives to take off the veil. Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Sreski
odbor AFŽ Vareš Oblasnom odboru AFŽ-godišnji izvještaj o radu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 91/1, 1949.
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were also considered unable to direct the local section, and so were those with
unconventional morals (“nesređen porodični život”). Many candidates showed potential for political work, but needed help and further learning and studying.
Generally, but not always, there was a correlation between years of schooling,
willingness to learn and the possibility of being selected as a local leader. The
ideal new female village cadre, thus, had to be outspoken, disciplined, hardworking, willing to learn and willing to help others. 49
Seen these difficulties in creating local cadres, and in order to bridge the gap
between urban and rural realities, AFŽ leaders placed a great attention towards
education and transformations in overall living standards, seeing an immediate
connection between women’s emancipation and social development in village
communities. A speech by AFŽ president Vida Tomšič sent by the Central Committe (Centralni Odbor) in Belgrade to the Republican Committee (Glavni Odbor)
of BiH in September 1948, for instance, stated that women’s backwardness was
a legacy of old Yugoslavia, and that’s what made work among women so important. Talking in her name and in the name of other AFŽ leaders, she stated:
We should teach women to hate their inequality (neravnopravnost), which
today still for many thousands of women is practically hidden under the veil
and under other less visible habits. We should liberate our female masses
from superstition, different stereotypes and so on. This is a long and tiring
work. Similarly, through the work of our organizations, we should clean,
paint and rearrange our homes, get rid of old fireplaces, bring in beds, teach
how to keep cleanliness and decent health standards. (…) We cannot think of
building socialism without simultaneously raising the living standards, and
specifically without considering the emerging aspirations for a better living
of our working masses, especially at the village level.50
49
Some of the less successful students, for instance, were described as follows: “D.B., Bos. Dubica,
born in 1923, has 4 years of elementary education, vice-president of the County AFŽ Committee.
Though she is young and has all the conditions to develop, she did not show particular interest for
studying. She does not feel responsible and is not disciplined in work. If she is to be named head,
she would have to be familiarised with these mistakes. Thus far, she was not politically elevated and
needs to read and learn more.” Successful students were described along these lines: “N.D., Mostar,
born 1918, has 4 years of elementary education. She has all the preconditions to be independent
director, head, she is familliar wit the AFŽ work, and is eager to know more about it. Disciplined
and shows the will for studying harder. She takes the correct attitude in relation to political events.
Has comradely relation to other comrades and is willing to help them. ” The County Committee
of the AFŽ Sarajevo, ‘Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH Oblasnom odboru AFŽ BiH – karakteristike polaznica
političkih kurseva’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 9, 352/6, 1950.
50
“We have to teach our woman to hate her inequality, still hidden in thousands of cases behind the
feredža and other, though less visible habits, we have to liberate the masses ouf our women from
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AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
The need to promote women’s education, as well as hygienic norms, was also
related to the very high rates of infant mortality across the country, and to the
socialist state’s aspiration to provide its citizens, and especially women, children
and war invalids, with social protection and assistance. A great part of AFŽ work,
therefore, consisted in educational activities that had the aim to propagate new
daily habits and to raise the living standards of the population. The faith placed by
prominent AFŽ activists into peasant women’s agency and ability to improve their
daily lives is perhaps best illustrated by the biography of another notable figure
active in the organization, namely Rajka Borojević. A teacher and partisan from
Herzegovina, she took shelter with her husband and two children in rural Serbia
during the war, and felt indebted to the local peasant population. After founding
the Vitaminka food processing factory in Banja Luka, together with her husband,
she moved to the village of Donji Dubac in the early 1950s, and started her first
workshops with peasant women in 1954. Later she founded the Dragačevo
weavers’ cooperative, which employed 420 women in the early 1960s. 51
A member of the plenum of the Central Committee of the AFŽ in the late 1940s,
Rajka Borojević had already led cultural-political courses for peasant women
in Banja Luka. During the plenum in Sarajevo mentioned earlier, she reported
on such courses, describing the program designed for female villagers. The
women attended conferences, visited children’s homes, a home for invalids as
well as many factories, where they met “many female shock-workers about
whom they had heard previously, but without believing their stories when they
were told at conferences”. The villagers also saw how books and newspapers
were printed, and were taken to the theatre, the cinema and various political
events. They were also “placed in the different homes of the best activists, so
that they could see how to cook, how to raise children, something that is lacking
the superstition, various predjudices and so on..Equally, through the work ouf our organisation we
need to clean, paint, wash our houses, throw out the midleage customs, put the beds inside the
houses, teach women how to keep the place clean and maintain the basic hygiene conditions (...)
we cannot imagine the construction of socialism without, at the same time, raising the aspirations
to improve the life of our working masses, in particular those in villages” Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH,
‘Centralni Odbor Beograd Glavnom Odboru AFŽ Bosne i Herzegovine›, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2051/1, 1950.
51
Rajka Borojević, Iz Dubca u svet (Beograd: Etnografski muzej, 2006), first edition 1964. See also
Natalja Herbst, ‘Women in Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s. The Example of Rajka Borojević and
the Dragačevo Women’s Cooperative’, in Roswita Kersten-Pejanić, Simone Rajilić, and Christian
Voß, (eds.), Doing Gender-Doing the Balkans. München, Berlin, Washington D.C.: Verlag Otto
Sagner, 2012. See also the recent artistic project on Rajka Borojević curated by her granddaughter
Ana Džokić, Taking Common Matter into Your Own Hands (last accessed 19.10.2016).
http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/25_taking.common.matter.into.your.own.hands.html
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in the villages”.52 Borojević also discussed issues of schooling and the situation
in the orphanages, which she invited AFŽ activists to visit in order to provide war
orphans with the love and warmth they missed, since their parents had sacrificed
themselves for the liberation of the country. A similar combination of pedagogy,
ethics of care and solidarity is present in Borojević’s later biographical account
of her work in Donji Dubac in the mid-1950s, where she recalls the difficulties
she faced when starting the first workshops with local peasant women in the
Serbian countryside.
The author recalls her feelings when she arrived for the first time in the village
after the war:
I am especially glad because once again, like during the war, I feel closeness
with these people. I’m thinking of how I could help them. This idea is not
new. I have it since the war days. I brought it here - as a promise to myself.
I am the closest to women. They are increasingly coming to see me. Coated,
dressed up as during a holiday. They entrust me with their difficulties. I
advise how best I can. I show them household tasks, I talk about the care
and upbringing of children. I realize it all happens in bits and pieces.53
The rest of the diary retells Borojević’s encounter with local customs and superstitions, detailing her daily struggle against peasant women’s lack of hygienic
norms when it comes to childbirth, childrearing and daily living. It took Rajka
Borojević a long time to convince local husbands that they course would be beneficial for their wives. The activist even publicly denounced one of the husbands
who had beaten up his wife for taking part in the course, through an article
in the Belgrade daily Politika (she, however, omitted his name, threatening him
that she would have revealed it if he would do it again). Her classes in Donji
Dubac included a theoretical part (hygiene of the home, women’s hygiene and
52
“They saw many firms and factories, they saw many women udarnice that they earlier only heard
about, but did not believe when they were mentioned at the Conference. They saw how books and
newspapers are printed. They went to theaters, cinema, manifestations, reading groups, teaparties, etc… They were put into the houses of our most advanced activists and were thus able to
see how to cook, raise and educate their children, and to learn everything that our village still
lacks.” Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH , ‘Zapisnik IV Plenuma Glavnog Odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu,
13 marta 1948 Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8 5, document number missing/7, 1948.
53
“I am very pleased to feel closeness with this people, just like during the war. I ma thinking how to
help them. This idea was did not come yesterday. I have been thinking about it since the war. I took
it from here/ as a promise to myself. I am closest to women. They arrive more and more. Coated,
wearing make up, all ready, like for some fest. They confide their miseries to me. I advise them, as
much as I can. I show them things related to household, about raising and educating their children.
I understand — all this is really only partial and not much.” Rajka Borojević, Iz Dubca u svet, 7.
�36
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
sexual education, first aid, childcare, alcoholism, food, etiquette) and a practical part (cooking, serving, preparing preserves, making soap, dying textiles,
knitting and sewing, collecting aromatic and medical plants, beekeeping, cultivation of raspberry, handwork, singing).54 Women walked several miles from
various surrounding villages to attend. From the village, they were even taken
to study visits in Belgrade, where they went to the cinema for the first time in
their lives, and later to Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Kumrovec (Tito’s birthplace) and
Zagreb. In the early 1960s, the Dragačevo weaving cooperative was launched,
to increase women’s economic independence in the community. Women’s position in the village gradually improved, and in 1967, the newly founded House of
Culture even hosted the finals of the “best husband” competition, during which
women openly assessed the most respectable prospective mate, as shown in
the original documentary from that time.55 The building itself had been funded
with self-organised “best husband” parties in the surrounding villages.56
Rajka Borojević’s activism, which started within the AFŽ and continued well
beyond the demise of the organization in 1953, well exemplifies the combination
of utopian imaginaries, collective values and individual aspirations which
animated left-wing leaders in their attempt to emancipate women – especially
village women – across Yugoslavia. A number of women who had come out
of the partisan experience embraced socialist values and strived to improve
women’s position, particularly from a social and economic perspective, in line
with the idea that overall social progress had to be achieved also through the
improvement in women’s conditions. While elements of social control and topdown emancipation were present, AFŽ activists were also aware of the situation
on the ground, and of the gap between socialist ideals and reality, which they
tried to bridge as best as they could, sharing social, economic and cultural
capital with other women.
54
Rajka Borojević, Iz Dubca u svet, 39.
55
https://vimeo.com/134070626
56
http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/25_taking.common.matter.into.your.own.hands.html
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
37
Conclusion
This essay provided an intersectional reading of women’s position within the
AFŽ, arguing for the need to further explore women’s social differences in order to understand the complexity of women’s positions within the organization.
The paper strives to overcome dominant interpretations of AFŽ organizational
dynamics, which mainly focus on the opposition between women’s and state’s
interests, and discusses instead the individual biographies of some key activist figures (Vahida Maglajlić, Didara Dukazdjini, Sida Marjanović, Judita Alargić
and Rajka Borojević), in order to show the importance of women’s subjective
aspirations to equality, freedom and social justice, and the ways in which they
were translated into collective political engagement. As I argue in the paper, the
AFŽ was not only an instrument of political mobilisation and social control, but
also a mean to exercise solidarity and care, by sharing cultural, political and
social capital among women. AFŽ leaders, who were generally educated, politically experienced and whose engagement was embedded in the revolutionary
ethos of the partisan Resistance, strived to promote their values among illiterate, apolitical women, and to bridge the gap between urban and rural words.
Hierarchies between politically active and passive women were established,
especially when it came to Muslim women, who were specifically singled out
as backward and forced to abandon their veils. Nonetheless, because of peasant women’s contribution to the antifascist struggle, their social and political
agency was recognized, while ethnic and religious identities were not seen as
fixed, but as something that could be gradually transformed through education, knowledge and political engagement. AFŽ activists themselves had experienced these transformations, and were keen to provide similar opportunities
to other women.
Among AFŽ members, therefore, there were fundamental differences in terms
of ethnicity, class, political background and education, as well as different degrees of political and social agency. Yet, the organization encouraged women
to cross boundaries, from the city to the countryside and back, across national
groups and across class differences. AFŽ activists propagated the socialist ideal
of women’s equality and emancipation against all odds, through alphabetization
courses, courses about hygiene, voluntary work brigades, and various means
of local mobilization. The AFŽ archive testifies of the richness of such capillary
activities, since the reports from the ground are extremely detailed and precise, providing a precious source for women’s history. The archive material can
help us reconstructing differences between communes, regions and republics,
so that in fact the AFŽ archives can be used to compare women’s conditions
�38
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
across the unevenly developed Yugoslav federation. The archive also allows us
to study how federal directives on women’s emancipation were translated and
negotiated at the local level. Women’s individual life paths and stories, as shown
in this essay, are another crucial theme that deserves to be explored further,
through a combination of archive material, oral history, memoirs and secondary
literature published during the socialist era. While the memoirs, biographies
and compilations of stories on female partisans that were written during socialism are generally dismissed as ideologically biased and hagiographic, they can
nonetheless provide useful historical information on the dominant values and
imaginaries of that time. I will conclude this essay with a last passage from Rajka Borojević’s autobiography, which makes clear the value of memoirs for historical research, and highlights the utopian values that animated AFŽ leaders:
The Belgrade – Bar railway will also connect these villages to bigger centers. The highway Belgrade – Titovo Užice will be half shorter than the
one going through Kragujevac. Roads, railways, houses, schools, power
lines...they go further and further, deeper into the hills and in the former
remote areas. The time will come when a stranger will wonder if Dubac
really was a remote village. The villages are changing faster and faster.
These ones as well. The eletrification already changed them so much. And
in the villages, inevitably, what is new is replacing the old. It’s now possible to reach Busenjači by walk, only with half an hour walk, that’s right.
I sing and I remember those very, very had travels and the hard work.
There were way many. That is the destiny of pioneers. But the fight for the
new, and for the better, is beautiful! New women are really blossoming,
and that’s why I am happy.57
57
“Pruga Beograd—Bar primaknuće i ova sela većim centrima. Auto-put Beograd—Titovo Užice
biće upola kraći od onog preko Kragujevca. Putevi, pruge, domovi, škole, dalekovodi. .. prodiru sve
dalje, sve dublje u brda. U nekadašnje zabačene krajeve. Doći će vreme kada će se došljak čuditi:
zar je Dubac bio zabačeno selo? Sela se menjaju sve bržim tempom. I ova. Koliko ih je već izmenila
elektrifikacija. I u selima, neminovno, staro u-stupa mesto novom.Pešačim lrema Busenjači. Tačno
je tako — samo pola sata pješačenja. Pevam i sećam se onih vrlo, vrlo teških putovanja i teškoća
u radu. Bilo ih je mno-o-o-go. To je sudbina pionira. Ali —lepa je borba za novo, za bolje! Zaista niču
nove žene. I zato sam vesela.” Borojević, Iz Dubca u svet, p. 223.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
39
Archival Materials:
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘ Sreski odbor Teslić Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – povjerenstvo za
štampu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 3, f. 1178/1, 1947.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘ Sreski odbor AFŽ Visoko Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – mjesečni
izvještaj za oktobar i novembar’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 3,
1290/1, 1947.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavija Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH
– biografije narodnih odbornica, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 7,
2526/5, 1949.
Arhiv Jugoslavije, Beograd, fond 354: kutija 1: Zapisnici i stenografske sa sastanaka
upravnog odbora i sekretariata SZDJ i sa savetovanja SZDJ 1954-1961. Zapisnik
6.3.1954, p. X/3.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Zapisnik IV Plenuma Glavnog Odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu,
13 marta 1948. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovina, Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2912/32, 1948
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Zapisnik 1 October 1950’, ” Arhiv of Bosne i Hercegovina, Sarajevo,
Box 8, 4288/?, 1950
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ Vareš Oblasnom odboru AFŽ-godišnji izvještaj
o radu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 91/1, 1949
Oblasni Odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, ‘Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH Oblasnom odboru AFŽ BiH –
karakteristike polaznica političkih kurseva’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo,
Box 9, 352/6, 1950
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Centralni Odbor Beograd Glavnom Odboru AFŽ Bosne i
Herzegovine’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2051/1, 1950
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH , ‘Zapisnik IV Plenuma Glavnog Odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu,
13 marta 1948, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 5, document number
missing/7, 1948
Bibliography:
Archer, Rory, Duda, Igor and Paul Stubbs, eds., Social inequalities and discontent in
Yugoslav Socialism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016).
Ballinger, Pamela, and Kristen Ghodsee, “Socialist Secularism. Religion, Modernity, and
Muslim Women’s Emancipation in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1945-1991”, Aspasia,
5, 2011.
Batinić, Jelena, Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance (New
York, Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Beoković, Mila, Žene heroji (Sarajevo, Svjetlost, 1967).
Bonfiglioli, Chiara, Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold
War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1953), PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht, 2012.
�40
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AFŽ ACTIVISTS’ BIOGRAPHIES:
AN INTERSECTIONAL READING OF WOMEN’S AGENCY
Bonfiglioli, Chiara “Nomadic Theory as an Epistemology for Transnational Feminist
History” in Iris van der Tuin and Bolette Blagaard, eds., The Subject of Rosi Braidotti
(London, Bloomsbury, 2014).
Bonfiglioli, Chiara, “Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era: The
Case of Yugoslavia”, Aspasia, 8, 2014.
Borojević, Rajka, Iz Dubca u svet, (Zadružna knjiga, 1964).
Burton, Antoinette M., Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2005).
De Haan, Francisca, et. al. “Forum: Ten Years After, Communism and Feminism Revisited”,
Aspasia, 10, 2016.
Emmert, Thomas A., “Ženski Pokret: The Feminist Movement in Serbia in the 1920s” in
Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society
in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1999).
Funk, Nanette, “A Very Tangled Knot: Official State Socialist Women’s Organizations,
Women’s Agency and Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism,” European
Journal of Women’s Studies 21 (4), 2014.
Ghodsee, Kristen, and Kateřina Lišková, “Bumbling Idiots or Evil Masterminds?
Challenging Cold War Stereotypes about Women, Sexuality and State Socialism”,
Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (3), 2016.
Ghodsee, Kristen, “Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk,” European Journal
of Women’s Studies 22 (2), 2015.
Giomi, Fabio, “Introduction” in Aida Spahić et al. Women Documented. Women and Public
Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th century (Sarajevo: Sarajevo Open Center,
2014).
Hadžišehović, Munevera, A Muslim Woman in Tito’s Yugoslavia (College Station, Texas A&M
University Press, 2003).
Herbst, Natalja, ‘Women in Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s. The Example of Rajka
Borojević and the Dragačevo Women’s Cooperative’, in Roswita Kersten-Pejanić,
Simone Rajilić, and Christian Voß, (eds.), Doing Gender-Doing the Balkans (München,
Berlin, Washington D.C.: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2012).
Hoare, Marko Attila, The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History. (London:
Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2013).
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata, Dom i svijet: o ženskoj kulturi pamćenja (Zagreb: Centar za Ženske
Studije, 2008).
Jancar-Webster, Barbara, Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945 (Denver, Colo.,
Arden Press, 1998).
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
41
Jancar-Webster, Barbara, “Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement” in
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in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States (University Park: Pennsylvania State
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Kecman, Jovanka, Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941
(Beograd, Narodna knjiga, 1978).
Lagator, Špiro Lagator and Milorad Čukić, Partizanke Prve proleterske (Beograd, Exportpress, 1978).
Lukić, Dragoje, Rat i djeca Kozare (Beograd, Narodna Knjiga, 1984).
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debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies (Burlington, Ashgate, 2011).
Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Himka, Zapisi o Vahidi Maglajlić (Banjaluka, Glas, 1973)
Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Himka, Rođena za burno doba: životni put narodnog heroja Vahide
Maglajlić (Kragujevac, Decje Novine, 1977).
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centar, 2004).
Marjanovic, Sida, Na Neretvi… (Sarajevo, 1950).
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Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 22(2), 2013: 12-34.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Aspasia, Vol. 5, 2011.
Sklevicky, Lydia, “Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the case of postrevolutionary Yugoslavia” In: Angerman, A., Binnema, G., Keunen, A., Poels,
V. & Zirkzee, J. (eds.) Current Issues in Women’s History. (London and New York,
Routledge, 1989).
Sklevicky, Lydia, Konji, Žene, Ratovi, (Zagreb, Ženska Infoteka, 1996).
Tesija, Jelena, The End of the AFŽ – The End of Meaningful Women’s Activism? Rethinking the
History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 – 1961, Master thesis, Department
of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 2014.
Zaharijević, Adriana, “Pawning and Challenging in Concert: Engagement as a Field of
Study”, Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (2), 2016.
Stojaković, Gordana, Mapa AFŽ-a Vojvodine 1942-1953 (Novi Sad, 2007),
http://www.zenskestudije.org.rs/01_o_nama/gordana_stojakovic/AFZ/afz_
licnosti.pdf
�NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ
Technical pen drawings
����Thieves!
�We want bread!
��ROSES ARE RED,
VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY
TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU1:
THE ROLE AND THE
POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S
(PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER
IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS FOR
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A
NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
1
Letter by a girl named Vojka Beaković. This short letter by a
war orphan who was transported from BiH to Slovenia for respite
over the winter, testifies, amongst other things, to the ability of
teachers to organise instruction successfully even in wartime, and
to build rapport with their pupils. Here I quote it in its entirety:
“Hello comrade teacher, first of all one should ask if you’ve started
teaching year three. Me dear teacher, please let me know who has
made it into year three, and who hasn’t. Have Milanka and Dana
passed, they were doing quite well while I was there. I haven’t
started over here yet, they say we’ll start this winter, and in summer
I’m coming over again for you to teach me. Roses are red, violets are
blue, me luvly teacher I believe in you. Dear teacher are you almost
married yet? Because there is no time to waste, I beg of this letter
to make haste. On a wooden bench I’m sat, in me right hand I’ve
got a pen, in me left a kerchief white, I’m shedding tears as these
words I write. Dear teacher reach out your hand to shake my own
before the break of dawn, blossom ye roses, sprout tiny seed, do you
teacher still remember me. I would give anything to be a bird on the
wing and fly over to you. Long live comrades Tito and Stalin.” The
letter was published in the section titled “Letters from the Children
in Slovenia” in the magazine Nova žena 8 (1945), 12. The same issue
features a detailed account of the departure of the first group of
orphans for wintering in Slovenia. I thank Danijela Majstorović for
bringing this letter to my attention.
AJLA
DEMIRAGIĆ
�50
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
1. Introduction
Early debates on the invisibility of women in Yugoslav history were initiated as late
as the mid-1980s,2 and the greatest contribution to the promotion and strengthening of feminist historical research of autonomous women’s organisations and
associations was made by the late Lydia Sklevicky, the feminist theorist who left
us too soon.3 In her work4 she consistently criticised the traditional approach to
the ‘grand topics’ of political, military and diplomatic history, and stood up for
the research and analysis of historical change in everyday life, the relationship
between sex and gender, and the writing of a (new social) history of women.5
Although the second half of the 1980s was marked by feminist-orientated works6
and a renewed interest in women’s issues,7 this positive trend in research was
brought to a halt by wartime8 as well as post-war socio-political developments
This research was preceded by philosophical debates aiming to shed light on the position of women
in socialism. Cf. Nadežda Čačinovič-Puhovski, „Ravnopravnost ili oslobođenje. Teze o teorijskoj
relevantnosti suvremenog feminizma“, Žena 3 (1976): 125–128; Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, „Moć žene u
patrijarhalnoj i suvremenoj kulturi“, Žena 4–5 (1980); Blaženka Despot, „Žena i samoupravljanje“,
Delo 4 (1981): 112–116; Nada Ler-Sofronić, „Subordinacija žene – sadašnjost i prošlost“, Marksistička
misao 4 (1981): 73–80. In addition to these works, one of the first feminist-orientated studies, authored
by the sociologist Vjeran Katunarić, should also be mentioned; it also points to the problem of reducing
‘the Woman Question’ to the status of a general social issue, which avoids active opposition to those
who maintain domination’. Cf. Vjeran Katunarić, Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984),
239. Also, a matter of exceptional importance is the international conference “Drugarica žena. Žensko
pitanje-novi pristup?” organised in Belgrade in 1978, where the inequality of women in socialism in
different social and political spheres was publicly discussed for the first time.
3
Died in a traffic accident in 1990, aged 39.
2
Sklevicky, Lydia. “Karakteristike organiziranog djelovanja žena u Jugoslaviji u razdoblju do drugog
svjetskog rata”, Polja 308 (1984); and “Žene i moć – povijesna geneza jednog interesa”, Polja 309
(1984). Here I reference the versions from the posthumous volume of Lydia Sklevicky’s works titled
Konji, žene i ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996., edited by Dunja Rihtman Auguštin.
5
Cf. Sklevicky, Konji, žene, op. cit. p. 15.
4
6
Cf. edited book Žena i društvo. Kultiviranje dijaloga, Zagreb: Sociološko društvo, 1987, featuring papers
by distinguished feminist theorists of the day: Rada Iveković, Žarana Papić, Blaženka Despot, Lydia
Sklevicky, Andrea Feldman, Vesna Pusić, Željka Šporer, Gordana Cerjan-Letica, Vera Tadić, Vjeran
Katunarića, Đurđa Milanović, Jelena Zuppa, Ingrid Šafranek, Slavenka Drakulić.
7
Senija Milišić made a pioneering contribution to Bosnian-Herzegovinian historiography of the day by
researching the processes of emancipation of Muslim women in BiH. Cf. Senija Milišić „Emancipacija
muslimanske žene u Bosni i Hercegovini nakon oslobođenja 1947 – 1952 (Poseban osvrt na skidanje
zara i feredže)”. Master’s thesis, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, 1986.
8
According to Ines Prica, war yet again “postponed the tasks and the closing of planned gaps which
certain periods leave behind in scholarly records or scholarly conscience, for times of peace.” Ines
Prica, “ETNOLOGIJA POSTSOCIJALIZMA I PRIJE. ili: Dvanaest godina nakon „Etnologije socijalizma
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
51
and cultural and educational policies. The questions of the Women’s Antifascist
Front’s (henceforth AFŽ) legacy and/or the emancipation of women in the People’s Liberation Struggle (henceforth NOB) and during the socialist period were
considered anew from a feminist point of view as late as the beginning of the new
millennium.9 In this regard, a phenomenon of particular import is the emergence
of a new generation of women scholars, in the region and beyond, who have explored, for their master’s and doctoral theses, certain aspects of women’s engagement in the NOB and the AFŽ.10
Although Bosnian-Herzegovinian historiography still does not indicate that an
institutional framework for the systematic study of the modern history of women will be established in the foreseeable future,11 it should be pointed out that
i poslije”, in: Lada Feldman Čale and Ines Prica, eds. Devijacije i promašaji. Etnografija domaćeg
socijalizma, Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006, p. 21.
9
See, among other things: Slapšak,Svetlana, Ženske ikone XX veka, Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek
– Čigoja Štampa, 2001.; Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. Dom i svijet. O ženskoj kulturi pamćenja, Zagreb:
Centar za ženske studije, 2008.; Bosanac, Gordana. Visoko čelo: ogled o humanističkim perspektivama
feminizma, Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2010; Jambrešić Kirin, Renata and Senjković, Reana,
Aspasia: International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender
History, 4, 2010; 71–96; Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke, Beograd: Institut za savremenu
istoriju – Evoluta, 2011. ; Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. „Žena u formativnom socijalizmu“, in: Refleksije
vremena 1945-1955 Zagreb: Galerija Klovićevi dvori, 2013.
10
Cf. Batinić, Jelena. “Proud to have trod in men’s footsteps: Mobilizing Peasant Women into the
Yugoslav Partisan Army in World War II”, (MA thesis, Ohio State University, 2001), and idem, “Gender,
Revolution, War: The Mobilization of Women in the Yugoslav Partisan movement in World War II”
(PhD thesis, Stanford University 2009); Stojaković, Gordana. „Rodna perspektiva u novinama
Antifašističkog fronta žena u periodu 1945-1953”, (PhD thesis, University of Novi Sad, 2011),
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy and
Yugoslavia (1945-1957) (PhD thesis, Utrecht University, 2012), and Jelušić, Iva. Founding Narratives
on the Participation of Women in the People’NOB in Yugoslavia (MA thesis, Central European University,
2015). Some of these research papers were based on the first studies of the participation of women
in the NOB conducted at American universities. Cf. Reed, Mary Elizabeth. Croatian women in the
Yugoslav Partisan resistance, 1941–1945 (PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.) and
Webster, Barbara Jancar. Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945, Denver: Arden Press, 1990.
Most of these works were subsequently published as monographs.
11
Studies about women in the post-war period are more often sponsored by NGOs and civic
associations then by official institutions or history departments. Cases in point would be the books
by Tanja Lazić, Ljubinka Vukašinović and Radmila Žigić, Žene u istoriji Semberije Bijeljina: Organizacija
žena Lara, 2012, and by Aida Spahić et al., Zabilježene – Žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20.
vijeku, Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE, 2014. For instance, only one BA thesis
of that kind was defended at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo: Emira Muhić, Žena u socijalizmu
u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1945. do 1971. godine prema časopisu ‘Nova žena.’ (BA thesis, Faculty of
Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, 2012.)
�52
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
the establishment of the online Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia12 has been a significant step forward in
the archiving of materials13 pertaining to the engagement of women in the NOB
and the AFŽ,14 if nothing else. The archive makes it possible for new generations
of female scholars and researchers as well as artists and cultural operators to
conduct research15 and offer new answers to questions related to the unfinished
processes of emancipation and participation of women in the political, cultural
and educational life of the community.
Thanks to the invitation extended to me to participate in the production of a publication which aims, among other things, to affirm the Online Archive, I received
the opportunity to explore, to an extent at least, a prominent revolutionary figure – the progressive people’s teacher, or more precisely, her role and tasks in
the revolutionary activities and the establishment and construction of the new
social order. Despite the fact that people’s teachers garnered enormous respect
and admiration in BH society, they mostly remained timeless heroines, symbolical figures, “anonymous accomplices, fellow travellers, fellow fighters, associates”, most of whom have yet to go down in history “with their full names and
surnames, with their roles, functions, thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears”.16
12
The archive was created in the course of the activities of the association for culture and the arts
“Crvena”, Sarajevo. More about the archive and the project at http://www.afzarhiv.org/o-nama
13
For more details on the state of archivalia on WWII, the incompleteness of the fonds and the
collections, see: Kujović, Mina. “Stanje arhivske građe o Drugom svjetskom ratu u Bosni i
Hercegovini” in: Šezdeset godina od završetka Drugog svjetskog rata: kako se sjećati 1945. godine.
Proceedings, Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2006, pp. 217–235.
As early as 1953, the first systematic triennial gathering of archivalia or records on women’s
wartime was started. For more on the launching of this archive and its scope in its initial phase see:
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. Dom i svijet, pp. 31–33.
15
With due awareness of the numerous difficulties in creating female history through archivalia, press
clippings, recorded accounts and oral sources. For more on certain challenges facing research see:
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. “Povratak u Beograd 1978. godine: Istraživanje feminističkog sjećanja” in:
Glasom do feminističkih promjena, eds. R. J. Kirin and S. Prlenda, Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije,
2009, pp. 120–131.
14
16
Milić, Anđelka. “Patrijarhalni poredak, revolucija i saznanje o položaju žene, Srbija u modernizacijskim
procesima 19. i 20. veka”, Položaj žene kao merilo modernizacije: naučni skup, Belgrade: Institut za
noviju istoriju Srbije, 1998. Quoted in: Petrović, Jelena. “Društveno-političke paradigme prvog
talasa jugoslavenskih feminizama”, ProFemina special issue (2011): 59–81, 62–3. The author
explains that the purpose of female history is not to fill the gaps in the existing historiographical
canon, but to transmit the knowledge based on the female historical experience and everything
that had been systematically left out. This approach makes it possible finally to break “the endless
circle of discovering and forgetting female history, emancipation and resubjugation, from the infinite
renewal of the patriarchal order of values and relations which returns with a vengeance with every
new historical episode.” Ibid.
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53
To demand that they be recorded in history, together with all the other forgotten,
neglected or erased figures of women workers and revolutionaries from BiH, is
the only way to break the “endless circle of discovering and forgetting women’s
history, emancipation and oppression, from the endless restoration of the patriarchal order of values and relations which becomes more and more ruthless in
every subsequent historical episode.”17
1.1. The Framework and the Aim of the Paper
Even though many researchers18 in our historiography have explored the topic of
the historical development of BiH school system from the Ottoman period to the
end of WWII, relatively little19 has been written about the characteristics of the
teachers’ professional activities and their contribution to the social and cultural
development of the community. Although there had been trained teachers in BiH
as early as the end of the 18 century, and even though they left a deep mark on the
development of culture as such, Mitar Papić notes that “this was written about
only sporadically […] and we still do not have a single synthesis which would show
17
Milić, in: Petrović, “Socio-Political Paradigms”, op. cit. 63.
18
Including: Pejanović, Đorđe, Historija srednjih i stručnih škola u BiH, Sarajevo, 1953.; Esad Peco,
Osnovno školstvo u Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918., Sarajevo 1971; Mitar Papić, Školstvo u Bosni
i Hercegovini za vrijeme austrougarske okupacije (1878-1918), Sarajevo, 1972, Istorija srpskih škola
u Bosni i Hercegovini do 1918. godine, Sarajevo 1978.; Hrvatsko školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini do 1918.
godine, Sarajevo 1982., Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini (1918 – 1941), Sarajevo, 1984., Hajrudin Ćurić,
Muslimansko školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini do 1918. Godine (Muslim Education in Bosnia and
Herzegovina until 1918), Sarajevo, 1983, and Azem Kožar, “Osnovno školstvo u toku Drugog svjetskog
rata (1941-1945)” and : Osnovno školstvo u Tuzli (istorijski pregled) Tuzla, 1988.
19
In addition to the works which appeared in publications such as “Zbornik sjećanja treće poslijeratne
generacije učiteljske škole u Derventi juni 1951. godine” or “Zbornik radova 100 godina učiteljstva u
Bosni i Hercegovini” and the papers presented at a symposium organised in Sarajevo in 1987 to
mark the centennial of the first school of education in the country, the role of the teacher was
examined in more detail by Mitar Papić in his books Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1941. do 1955.
godine, Sarajevo, 1981, and Učitelji u kulturnoj i političkoj istoriji BiH, Sarajevo (Svjetlost, 1987) and, to
an extent, by Mato Zaninović in his study titled Kulturno-prosvjetni rad u NOB-u (1941 – 1945), Sarajevo,
1968, and Snježana Šušnjara, “Učiteljstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme Austro-Ugarske”, Anali
za povijest odgoja 12 (2013): 55–74. An MA thesis was defended at the Faculty of Philosophy in
Sarajevo in 2014, titled „Uloga učitelja u prosvjetnim, političkim i kulturnim promjenama u BiH od 1945.
do 1951. godine”. The author Ademir Jerković examines the material conditions of teaching during
and after the war and looks at teachers’ contribution to the general cultural and educational
progress in BiH; a BA thesis on the position of teachers during the Austro-Hungarian occupation
was also defended. See: Anđa Bandić, Društveni položaj učitelja u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme
Austro-Ugarske (BA thesis, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, 2011.)
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FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
that we have never had a profession in BiH whose contribution could bear comparison to that of the teaching profession”.20
However, none of these sporadic notes written before the 1990s specifically examined the status and the social role of female teachers or their contribution to
the development of the school system in BiH. Moreover, although it was precisely
the teachers who championed the establishment of professional associations (as
early as 1896, Marija Jambrišak and Jagoda Truhelka called on teachers to unite
along class lines, which was realised with the formation of the Teachers’ Club
in the reading room of the Croatian Teachers’ Hall in Zagreb in 190021), Jovanka
Kecman, in a study devoted to working and professional women’s associations,
deals with the status of progressive teachers in the 1930s by examining their
activities solely as part of the progressive teachers’ movement and the activities of the Communist Party.22 That is to say, the information on specific aspects
of the teachers’ activities remained rather fragmentary, and was mentioned in
passing in papers which treated the broader topic of education, or the teachers’
movement. The trend continued after the 1990s war, with only a handful of papers
dealing to an extent with the education of women in the BiH school system or with
prominent female educators and cultural figures from the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century.23
20
Papić, Mitar. Učitelji u kulturnoj i političkoj istoriji Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987, p. 3.
21
Quoted in: Suzana Jagić, “Jer kad žene budu žene prave: Uloga i položaj žena u obrazovnoj politici
Banske Hrvatske na prijelazu u XX. stoljeće”, Povijest u nastavi 11 (2008): 77–100, 83–4.
22
The author justifies this bias by citing the fact that progressive female teachers in the interwar
period did not form separate professional associations. Cf. Jovanka Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije u
radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941, Belgrade, 1978, p. 373.
23
Cf. Kujović, Mina. Muslimanska osnovna i viša djevojačka škola sa produženim tečajem (1894-1925)
– prilog historiji muslimanskog školstva u Bosni i Hercegovini”, Novi Muallim 41 (2010): 72–79; and
idem, “Hasnija Berberović – zaboravljena učiteljica – prilog historiji muslimanskog školstva u Bosni
i Hercegovini”, Novi Muallim 40 (2009): 114–118; Šušnjara, Snježana. “Jagoda Truhelka”, Hrvatski
narodni godišnjak 53 (2006): 239–256.; idem, “Jelica Belović Bernadrikowska”, Hrvatski narodni
godišnjak 54 (2006): 66–76., idem, “Školovanje ženske djece u BiH u vrijeme osmanske okupacije
1463.-1878, Školski vjesnik 4. (2011); and idem, “Školovanje ženske djece u Bosni i Hercegovini u
doba Austro-Ugarske (1878.-1918.), Napredak 155 (4) (2014): 453–466. In her comprehensive study
on the position of women in society in 19th- and 20th-century Serbia, Neda Božinović also offers a
general overview of the social status of teachers in the lands which made up the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, as well as a short overview of the circumstances
in BiH during the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule. Cf. Neda Božinović, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji: u
XIX i XX veku, (Belgrade: “Devedesetčetvrta” and “Žene u crnom”, 1996). It should be pointed out
that most of these works do not engage critically with the traditional historiography and move
towards filling the gaps in the existing historical models (markedly ethno-national in character after
the last war). The focus is on the effort to fit distinguished female figures into the existing canon,
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55
Like most topics related to the socialist heritage, the topic of the progressive
teachers’ movement is either neglected or mentioned only in passing in general
overviews of the development of the teaching profession in BiH, and not a single
monograph on progressive women teachers has been published hitherto. But, as
I attempt to demonstrate in this paper, it is precisely in the figure of the woman
teacher that all the contradictions of becoming the new working woman in socialism are inscribed. At the same time, having become the possessor of an aversive
excess of memory24 of socialism and anti-fascist struggle in the aftermath of the
war in BiH, the figure of the (progressive) people’s teacher can also point to possible alternative models of thinking the present moment, marked by processes of
faux emancipation and aggressive repatriarchisation of women.
The paper examines the role and position of the (progressive) people’s teacher
from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, considering this to have been a crucial
period of comprehensive transformation of the state-operated system of mass
primary education in which the new type of teacher was constructed. The figure
of the woman teacher is especially indicative in this regard. The process of the
formation of a new type of teacher builds on the effort to completely change the
social position of women 25 and create a new type of woman26 in BiH27 first via Party edicts during the NOB, and subsequently via constitutional and legal solutions.
and there is almost no discussion of how and why one of the most popular female professions
remained historically unrepresented, and no discussion of the still-pressing issues of educational
systems and education of girls and women. More on the concept of gender as a “societal organisation
of sexual difference” in historical research in: Joan W. Scott, Rod i politika povijesti (Gender and the
Politics of History), Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1988, 2003, and Feminism and History, Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1996.
24
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata. “Politike sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat u doba medijske reprodukcije
socijalističke kulture”, Lada Feldman Čale and Ines Prica eds., Devijacije i promašaji. Etnografija
domaćeg socijalizma, Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006. p. 157.
25
Cf. Katz, Vera. “O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.”, Prilozi 40 (2011):
135–155.
26
In her speech at the Second Session of ZAVNOBiH, Danica Perović pointed out that the new figure of
the woman was “was a female combatant who has grown and matured politically during the
struggle, emancipated herself and is able to lead and make decisions on every issue pertaining to
the struggle and the life of the people.” Cf. Govor Danice Perović na Drugom zasjedanju ZAVNOBiH-a
u Dokumenti 1943–1944, Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1968, p. 200.
27
These changes affected all of Yugoslavia, yet several papers point out the substantial differences
between the previous economic and socio-cultural circumstances in different parts of this former
state. The countries which comprised the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and subsequently
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, had somewhat different social orders, and substantially different
demographic make-ups. This necessarily meant substantial differences and specificities regarding
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FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Assuming that the educational system can be seen as a tangle of discourses,
knowledge, legal and institutional arrangements of the ruling regimes and social
structures that for a long time had ensured and legitimised first the exclusion,
then the discrimination of women in education and teaching, this period is
interesting because it was precisely during those twenty years that the number of
primary school women teachers soared. At the same time, female teachers were
officially made equal to their male colleagues; the new government provided
equal living and working conditions and – nominally, at least – strove to improve
the traditionally unfavourable financial circumstances of teachers.
The intention behind this paper is to outline the numerous social duties of the
teachers during the NOB, first and foremost in spreading literacy and educating
women to meet the needs of the general mobilisation during the NOB, and their
selfless, committed work on raising and educating children and spreading literacy
among adults over the first few years following the liberation of the country as
part of the five-year reconstruction plan. The main goal of the paper is to trace
the trajectory of the progressive teacher from a revolutionary figure forged in
the struggle for a new, more equitable social order to a figure that is gradually
depoliticised and rendered passive, as part of a wider process of feminisation of
the teaching profession.
2. Material Conditions of Work and the Administrative and Legal
status of Female Teachers During the Austro-Hungarian
Occupation and the Interwar Period
Ever since the beginning of the development of a (state-operated) school system
in BiH,28 which dates from the early days of Austro-Hungarian rule in this country,
female teachers, as civil servants, had to work in accordance with markedly
discriminatory public service laws and by-laws which greatly contributed to
the deterioration of the working conditions and advancement opportunities for
female teachers.
the position of women in these countries – from marital status and access to education to the right
to act in the public sphere. Examining this question in a separate Bosnian-Herzegovinian context
seems justified precisely because of those differences and specificities.
28
During the Ottoman rule in BiH, education was private and religious only. After the annexation of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austro-Hungarian authorities opened more and more state schools, the
so-called “People’s Primaries”, which operated alongside the existing private religious schools,
and their curricula, textbooks and reading lists were mandated by the state. At the beginning of the
Austro-Hungarian occupation of BiH, 535 so-called sybian-mekteb schools were active in the
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In spite of the increase, compared to the Ottoman period,29 in the number of female primary schools, as well as female teacher training schools,30 the AustroHungarian authorities did not actually strengthen the processes of female emancipation, nor did they think it was in their interests to increase the number of
women in public service. As Suzana Jagić writes, in the Austro-Hungarian period,
alleged bodily and spiritual differences between the sexes were used as a pretext
for different approaches to the education31 of women and men, and for their difcountry (this is to be taken with a grain of salt; a paper by Snježana Šušnjara claims that in 1876
there were 917 mektebs), 54 Catholic schools and 56 Serb Orthodox schools; towards the end of the
Austro-Hungarian rule in BiH, in the school year 1912/13, there were 331 state schools in addition to
the religious schools. Taken from: Mitar Papić, Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme austrougarske
okupacije 1878-1918, Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša. 1972.
29
The first girls’ school in the Ottoman period was opened in Sarajevo, as late as the school year
1857/58, thanks to the tenacity, selflessness and dedication of the teacher Staka Skenderova, the
first woman in Bosnia and Herzegovina to write a book (Ljetopis Bosne 1825—1856.). The second girls’
primary was established in 1866 by the Protestant suffragette Miss Adelina Paulina Irby. Both schools
were boarding schools, and both were attended by girls of all faiths. Seeing that some of the pupils
became teachers after graduation, we may treat these schools as the first girls’ schools of education
in BiH. Five years after Miss Irby opened her school, nuns from Zagreb opened the first Catholic girls’
school in Sarajevo. The Sisters of Charity of St Vincent De Paul soon opened schools in Mostar (1872),
Dolac near Travnik (1872), Banja Luka and Livno (1874). Muslim girls, as a rule, attended religious
schools (mektebs). The data on the schools comes from the studies by Mitar Papić, Istorija srpskih
škola u BiH (A History of Serb Schools in BiH), Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978; and Snježana Šušnjara
“Školovanje ženske djece u Bosni i Hercegovini u doba Austro-Ugarske”, op. cit.
30
In 1884, alongside a separate department of Miss Irby’s Institute for Teacher Education, the
congregation of the Daughters of Divine Charity was given the permit to start a private school for
female teachers in a monastery in Sarajevo which would use Austro-Hungarian curricula. Only
towards the end of the Austro-Hungarian administration, in 1913, did the primary and secondary
school for Muslim girls in Sarajevo launch a three-year teacher education course for Muslim
secondary girls’ school graduates. In 1914, the Serb secondary school for girls obtained the status
of a public school, but it closed that same year when WWI broke out. From 1911 onwards, in addition
to the religious schools, teacher education was also provided at the state-run school for female
teachers in Sarajevo, known as the female preparandija (Germ. Präparandenschule). In addition to
Sarajevo, secondary schools for girls were established in Mostar (1893) and Banja Luka (1898), but
in spite of the increase in the number of female primaries the number of pupils stayed very low,
which is best illustrated by the fact that in BiH in 1910, 88.05% of the population was illiterate –
83.86% of Croat women, 95% of Serb Women and 99.68% of Muslim women. Data taken from Papić,
Mitar, Školstvo u Bosni (Education in Bosnia), and Božinović, Neda, Žensko pitanje, op. cit.
31
As Dinko Župan relates, pedagogical discourse in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy supported sex
policies by producing knowledge on different traits exhibited by sexes on which gender roles were
based. It was precisely in the secondary schools that the desirable female identities were shaped.
Župan writes: “The main traits the female students were to develop at the secondary school for girls
were piousness, sincerity, chastity, meekness, shyness, modesty and taciturnity.” A female identity
developed along these lines was represented as natural and immutable. But this identity was only
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ferent positioning in society.32 Thus in this markedly patriarchal society,33 women,
as “lesser beings”, were not only assigned different roles and tasks, but their
freedom to operate in the public sphere was limited too. The public service, as
a potential arena for the engagement of women, did not approve of the hiring of
women, as it was considered that women belonged in the private realm of the
home where their chief roles included those of homemakers, wives and mothers. Thus women were hired as public servants almost exclusively in the field of
education.
Although the number of female teachers was constantly rising, Austro-Hungarian
authorities did nothing to create a legal framework which would ensure the
improvement of the professional and material conditions for women teachers.
On the contrary, the Act on the Rights and Relations in the Teaching Profession
subjected women teachers to multiple discrimination. In addition to their salaries
being lower than those of their male colleagues, and their advancement made
more difficult by the so-called pay grades, they were not allowed to marry; that is,
if they did marry, they would be permanently banned from teaching. An exception
was made for marriages to male teachers, in which case the female teacher’s
salary would be halved and she would lose the right to paid accommodation and
other employment benefits.34
All female teachers graduated from teacher training schools before they turned
seventeen, but many would start working as teaching assistants at fifteen or sixteen. As a rule, after graduation, they would be posted to female primaries. They
were allowed to work at male primaries only if there was a shortage of male
teachers, and could only teach junior years. They would win the right to teach
at secondary schools only in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As for advancement
seemingly universal, because the female identity was criss-crossed by a web of other identities
(class, religious, ethnic). Thus, for instance, every class had a unique way of implementing the
universal determinants of womanhood. The desirable behaviour of a mother, wife and a homemaker varied across classes. Cf. Župan, Dinko. “Viša djevojačka škola u Osijeku (1882-1900)”,
Scrinia slavonica 5 (2005), 366–383.
32
Cf. Jagić, “Jer kad žene”, p. 80. The author points out that women were educated with the sole
purpose of becoming good wives and mothers, because only an educated mother and wife was able
to “lay the religious and moral groundwork for the kind of upbringing on which the well-being of the
homeland would depend.” Ibid.
Given that patriarchy can be thought in various ways today, and that it is not a self-explanatory
system, I am taking my cue from Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, who lists “the domination of men in the
workplace, decision-making and property relations [...] as well as the separation of women from the
public sphere and their subordination” as the basic features of patriarchy. Rihtman-Auguštin,
Dunja. Etnologija naše svakodnevice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1988. p. 193.
34
Cf. Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje, op. cit. p. 80.
33
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and pay grades, the process was very slow, and women would, at best, reach
pay grade three towards the end of their careers. Thus, for instance, teacher
Hasnija Berberović took her first teachers’ oath in 1909, and her last in 1934.
She spent 29 years teaching, and was retired in 1939 for health reasons, but, as
Mina Kujović points out, it is questionable whether this hard-working teacher
was able to enjoy her well-deserved pension of 1475 dinars, seeing that she was
committed to a mental hospital, and her pension was deposited with the court.35
Even after the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the formation of
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), there was no significant improvement in the financial circumstances
and working conditions of women teachers. The problems faced by teachers remained the same in the newly-formed kingdom; teachers still lived in financial
hardship, which is best illustrated by their excessive debts due to extremely low
salaries36 recorded in some banates, as well as a large number of resolutions on
the issue adopted all over the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.37
Teachers who championed the cause of progressive education38 and were active in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia,39 or openly supported the Party were
35
Cf. Kujović, “Hasnija Berberović – zaboravljena”, p. 116.
36
While other civil servants had salaries ranging from 2,900 to 7,500 dinars, teachers were paid 705 to
2,500 dinars. Reč istine br. 1 (1940), 6. Quoted in: Rade Vuković, Napredni učiteljski pokret između dva
rata Beograd: Pedagoški muzej, 1968, p. 109.
37
The resolutions regularly demanded matching remuneration to the prices of essential items,
matching the salaries of married female teachers to those of male teachers (“equal pay for equal
work”), abolishing the III price grade, the rejection of group V just as with other civil servants, etc.
Cf. Vuković, Napredni učiteljski, p. 93.
38
Progressive schooling is understood as schooling based on socialist ideas. As early as 1873,
Serbian teachers in Zemun launched the socialist teachers’ Učitelj which gathered progressive
teachers from the Vojvodina region; in Serbia proper, a social democratic teachers’ club was
established in 1907 and it stood for free compulsory universal education at all schools, i.e. for
the idea that the state should build and maintain people’s schools. Cf. Vuković, Napredni učiteljski,
10. As early as 1908, the pedagogic book series Budućnost served as a platform for progressive
pedagogy and had an increasingly strong influence on the teaching profession. However, whereas a
certain percentage of the teaching cadre in Serbia and Croatia belonged to various socialdemocratic organisations, teachers from BiH, as a rule, did not enter political life openly during the
Austro-Hungarian rule, and were therefore less in touch with revolutionary pedagogic ideas. It was
only after 1920, and the Congress of Teachers of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that the
number of progressive teachers in BiH rose. Mitar Trifunović Učo especially distinguished himself
as one of the first active members of the workers’ movement and a Communist Party of Yugoslavia
MP. Cf. Papić, Učitelji, pp. 45, 46.
39
After the Protection of Security and Social Order Act was passed and the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia banned (by a decree known as “Obznana”) in 1921, the party went underground. The
decree also banned the Communist Teachers’ Club, as well as the party and union press. The 6
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FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
at best transferred to other banates or subjected to frequent controls, arrests
and protracted trials; some spent years in prison, including a number of female
teachers. For instance, teacher Lepa Perović, a distinguished Party activist, was
arrested for revolutionary activities and transferred from Bosnia to Serbia, only
to be fired from public service in 1937. Teacher Draginja Savković spent three
months in remand before she was arraigned and charged with spreading communist ideas and propaganda, but the charge was dropped due to a lack of evidence. After the trial she remained under constant police surveillance, and was
transferred to another county.40 Persecution and arrests continued during World
War II. Ilinka Obrenović-Milošević, known as the Red Teacher, was pregnant when
she was arrested for collecting food and clothes for Partisan fighters and deported to the Banjica concentration camp. A similar fate befell the progressive
teacher Živka Vujinović-Bula, who spent eleven months in the Banjica camp, and
was fired from her post upon release.41
In addition to the legally mandated rights and obligations, the profession faced
specific problems in the teaching process itself as well as in extracurricular
activities in the community, especially where the population was largely illiterate.
This was usually the case in rural areas. Working in the country was much
more difficult because rural school buildings often did not meet the most basic
of requirements for work, and instruction was, as a rule, organised in a single
classroom. Jovanka Kecman notes that female teachers were mostly employed
in the country after they graduated from teacher training schools. In addition
to their work at school, they had the obligation to participate in the activities of
all cultural organisations and charities operating in their counties, as well as to
organise literacy courses and housekeeping courses which educated women on
the importance of hygiene, a healthy diet and household economy. In spite of their
much greater workload, female teachers were underpaid – in some cases their
salaries were up to 50% lower than those of their male colleagues.42
January Dictatorship abolished permanent employment for teachers and put them under police
surveillance, while it continued to persecute, fire and imprison them. More in: Vuković, Napredni
učiteljski, 14, 15.
40
In: Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op. cit. pp. 381, 82.
41
Quoted in: Radisav S. Nedović, Čačanski kraj u NOB 1941-1945: žene borci i saradnici, Čačak:
Okružni odbor SUBNOR-a, 2010., pp. 59–63.
42
In: Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op. cit. 373.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
61
3. The Development of the Progressive People’s Teacher on the Eve of
World War II and During the People’NOB
On account of their social engagement in the country, women teachers enjoyed
a good reputation among the villagers and were influential in the community, all
the more so because they respected local customs, lived by the village rules and
were therefore treated as full members of the community. For this reason, the
Communist Party, having strengthened and massified the progressive teachers’
movement, would lay particular stress on training female teachers for so-called
political work in the rural areas.43 Since young teachers received their first posts
in villages and towns as a rule, the political mission of the progressive teachers’
movement focused almost exclusively on these rural areas.
Seeing that the CPY operated illegally from 1921 to 1936, their legal activities
among teachers took the form of starting culture and publishing collectives. The
progressive teachers of BiH started their own “Petar Kočić” collective as late as
August 1939, at the Teachers’ Congress 44 held in Banja Luka, having previously operated through the “Vuk Karadžić” and “Ivan Filipović” collectives. These
collectives organised gatherings of teachers, where the so-called Pedagogy
Weeks, organised during winter holidays between 1938 and 1941, were especially important, as political and ideological lectures were held and discussions
on important issues and problems of the profession.45 From 1936 onwards, the
activities of these collectives, and their work with progressive female teachers
were especially intensified.46 In addition to these gatherings, progressive teach43
Ibid. p. 375.
44
At this congress, i.e. at the Nineteenth Annual Supreme Session, the representatives of political
groups submitted three candidate lists for the executive, steering and other committees and
organs of the Yugoslav Teachers’ Association. Three political groups were active within this
umbrella organisation – the Yugoslav Radical Union (YRU) or the New Teachers’ Movement, a group
built round the so-called class line of bourgeois democrats, and a group gathered round the
Učiteljska straža journal including the teachers’ co-operative “Vuk Karadžić”, which gathered
communists and other progressive teachers, male and female. At the congress, the communists
submitted a list which represented the interests of the third group of teachers. Seeing that it was
third in succession, this group was subsequently called Treća učiteljska grupa (Teachers’ Group
Three). More in: Rade Vuković, Napredni učitelji, pp. 74–88. The congress was notable for gathering
female teachers from all over the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in a separate meeting, to discuss the
legal and financial status of female teachers. On that occasion the female teachers motioned again
to create female departments within regional teachers’ association. Cf. Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije,
n.dj., p. 381.
45
Cf. Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op.cit. p. 375.
46
Ibid. p. 374.
�62
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
ers developed their political, cultural and educational activities through people’s libraries and reading rooms.47 Of the several magazines they published,
Učiteljska straža (Teachers’ Guard) was of particular note.
Since progressive teachers were mostly assigned to villages, they became the
core membership of the Communist Party in rural areas; more specifically, in
Bosnia, we are talking about villages in Bosanska Krajina, areas around Sarajevo, Mt Romanija, Semberija, and East Herzegovina. It was in these areas that
most teacher-WW2 volunteers, recipients of the 1941 Partisan Commemorative Medal, lived and worked.48 Whilst the authorities in the territories of Bosnia
and Herzegovina administrated by the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) were
committed to creating a new state-run education system, Croatian in character,
by endeavouring to “[…] breathe into its first laws the ‘ustasha spirit and the
Croatian national spirit’ […] in the spirit of anti-Semitic policies accompanied
by racial laws”,49 the leadership of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOP) endeavoured to implement the CPY programme and the NOP Platform from the
very beginning of the uprising, and worked on developing and improving popular
enlightenment schemes by running literacy programmes on a massive scale
and renewing and developing the regular education system in the aforementioned (free) territories.50
According to a report by the teacher Mica Krpić, organised work in education
commenced as early as April 1942 in villages around the town of Drvar, where
the first cultural and educational committees were established along with literacy courses with classes three times a week.51 Cultural and educational work
spread over Mt Kozara and the villages of the Podgrmeč region, where literacy
47
An article titled Vrijeme zrenja published in a volume of testimonies about the engagement of women
of Mostar in the pre-war period describes various activities of women which took place at the library
and reading room. More in: Mahmud Konjhodžić, Mostarke, fragmenti o revolucionarnoj djelatnosti
i patriotskoj opredjeljenosti žena Mostara, o njihovoj borbi za slobodu i socijalizam, Mostar: Opštinski
odbor SUBNOR-a, 1981., pp. 36–38.
48
Cf. Papić, Učitelji u kulturnoj, 67. Teacher recipients of the 1941 Commemorative Medal are: Vera
Babić, Mila Bajalica, Jela Bićanić, Milka Čaldarović, Dušanka Ilić, Milica Krpić, Danica Pavić, Jela
Perović, Lepa Perović, Nada Prica, Mica Vrhovac and Zaga Umićević. Ibid, p. 82.
49
Gladanac, Sanja. “Uspostava državnog školstva na području Velike župe Vrhbosna”, Husnija
Kamberović ed., Bosna i Hercegovina 1941: Novi pogledi. Zbornik radova. Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju
u Sarajevu, 2012: 67–97, 74, 75.
50
Cf. Kožar, Azem. “O nekim aspektima obrazovno-odgojne politike Narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta na
području Bosne i Hercegovine 1941-1945”, Šezdeset godina od završetka Drugog svjetskog rata: kako
se sjećati 1945. godine. Zbornik radova, Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2006, pp. 235–248, 236 and 237.
51
Zaninović, Kulturno posvjetni rad, p. 20.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
63
courses were led by, among others, teachers Mica Vrhovec, Ivanka Čanković,
Jela Perović and Anka Kulenović.52 After that, educational departments were
established to organise courses preparing young people for work in schools and
literacy courses. In addition, teachers Nijaz Alikadić and Cecilija Čebo wrote the
first textbook for pupils, the Primer of Livno (Livanjski bukvar).53
After the First Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation
of Yugoslavia (Antifašističko vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije – AVNOJ)
which took place in Bihać in late November 1942, the Educational Department of
the Executive Committee of the AVNOJ was tasked with organising educational
activities in the liberated territories. The Department adopted a series of regulations, including the Instruction on Primary School Work, along with a number
of requests and instructions to Narodno-oslobodilački odbori (NOO) to open new
primary schools and literacy courses, as well as syllabi for primary schools,
courses and the people’s university.54 Kožar argues that these documents of the
Educational Department are “an historically significant clue for the reform of
education in the spirit of the ideology of the NOP’s forces. They mark a new era
in the development of schools”.55
From late 1942 onwards, conditions for organising literacy courses in the free
territories as well as in the Partisan units were improving, largely thanks to the
empowerment of the AFŽ as a mass political organisation.56 In addition to the
courses for literacy course leaders, the AFŽ also organised political education
courses for women, regionally and nation-wide. Lectures were given by, among
others, Mara Radić, Nata Hadžić-Todorović (in the region of Bosanska Krajina)
and Radmila Begović and Milka Čaldarević (in Eastern Bosnia). The AFŽ also
set up culture groups comprising poetry recitation sections, event organisation
sections, and sections for reading radio news and Partisan press.
52
Zaninović, op. cit. p. 21.
This textbook had only 44 pages and was a cross between a primer and an exercise book. It is
notable because, among other things, it represents an historical document which features, for
the first time, content promoting different educational, pedagogic and ideological values. Cf. Mihailo
Ogrizović (1962). Quoted in Papić, Učitelji u kulturnoj, p. 74.
54
In: Kožar, “O nekim aspektima”, op. cit.
55
Kožar, “O nekim aspektima”, op. cit.
53
56
The first national conference of the AFŽ Yugoslavia was held from 6–8 December 1942 in Bosanski
Petrovac. The tasks defined during the conference preparations were agreed upon, and two basic
sets of tasks which the AFŽ was to carry out during the war were confirmed: assisting the armed
forces and ensuring the normalisation of life in the liberated territories, and achieving political and
cultural emancipation of women and their integration as equals into the NOB and the fight for a new
society. Cf. Sklevicky, Konji, žene, op. cit. pp. 25–26.
�64
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
In November 1943, the AFŽ organised the First Educators’ Conference in the
free territories on the topic of literacy courses and drafting a comprehensive
primary school primer.57 Zaninović notes that a new groundwork was laid for the
organisation of literacy courses with the liberation of large tracts of territory,
while from 1944 onward it was compulsory for the courses to last 30 days with
classes four times a week.58 The end of 1944 saw the beginning of a large-scale
process of setting up new schools in the liberated territories.
However, the spreading of the network of primary schools and the rise of other
forms of educational activities put the issue of staffing on the agenda. Just before the war, there were 1043 primary schools in BiH employing 2,321 teachers instructing 150,783 pupils, that is, 65 pupils per teacher.59 At the end of the
1944/45 school year there were 577 schools with 82,705 pupils, 359 male teachers and 741 female teachers.60 Given that, according to incomplete data, 173
male teachers and 80 female teachers were killed during the war,61 it is clear
why restaffing was to become one of the key challenges of the new educational
policies.
As a temporary solution, the decision was made to start training temporary
teaching staff while the war was still on, to have them fully trained after the war.
Teaching courses were set up and all young people who had completed at least
two years of secondary school were invited to enrol. The first course was carried out in Sanski Most in May 1943. Another was then held in Lipnik, and by the
end of the war courses with the same syllabus were organised in several other
towns in BiH. Most attendees graduated from teaching schools and universities
after the war and became the vanguard of new educational policies in BiH.62 It
should be pointed out that seminars were organised for new teachers and those
who joined the movement and the NOB at a later stage, in which they were acquainted with the goals of the NOB and the educational policies implemented
by the People’s liberation committees, as well as with the basic ideas of the
progressive teachers’ movement.63
57
In: Papić, Učitelji u, pp. 78, 79.
58
Zaninović, Kulturno posvjetni rad, 158, 159.
59
In: Papić, Mitar. Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini 1941-1945, pp. 4–11.
60
Zaninović, op. cit. p. 176.
61
Ibid. pp. 187, 190.
62
For more on these courses see: Zaninović, Kulturno prosvjetni, n. dj., pp. 124, 180–184.
63
Zaninović, op. cit, p. 185.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
65
Thus, in addition to the progressive female teachers who started their revolutionary struggle in the interwar period and became prominent political and revolutionary figures,64 another type of people’s teacher emerged during the war:
a young woman who had completed a few years of secondary school and had
voluntarily joined the struggle, or had become a fellow traveller. These women
were trained for teaching in courses started during the war. As a rule, they went
on to graduate from teacher training colleges and continued to work in education until retirement.
3.1. Five Year Reconstruction Plan:
New Challenges and Old Burdens for the Teachers
Educational policies of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia led to an illiteracy rate of
around 75% in BiH in 1941. This undesirable situation was exacerbated by terrifying material and human losses, and thus after the war BiH faced enormous
illiteracy rates, especially among women,65 as well as a lack of professionals,
especially in education, and a large number of destroyed or damaged school
buildings.66 This slowed down the planned tempo of the reconstruction of the
64
A good example is the career of Rada Miljković, who started out as a progressive teacher, became a
successful agitator and finally a soldier killed in action in 1942 near Bugojno; in 1953 she was post
humously awarded the Order of the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia. A detailed account of her revolutionary path is available here: http://www.savezboraca.autentik.net/licnosti_rada_ miljkovic.php
65
In her article titled Narodno prosvjećivanje (The People’s Enlightenment), Danica Pavić points out
that the new people’s government, unlike the previous unpopular one, set the enlightenment of the
masses as a priority. Referring to the data gathered by the educational arm of the G.N.O. (People’s
City Committee) she states that 13,591 illiterate persons were recorded in Sarajevo after liberation,
10,765 of them women, mostly Muslims (9,072) and homemakers (9,563), and argues that women
were obviously the greatest victims of a lack of education. With great enthusiasm, she relates how
118 literacy courses were launched in Sarajevo, and how women, many of them over 50 years of
age, “impress with their eagerness and thirst for knowledge”, in spite of the material hardship. In
her opinion, the extent to which women were excluded from public and cultural life in the pre-war
Sarajevo is best illustrated by the fact that many of them, although born and raised in Sarajevo, went
to the cinema for the first time as part of their literacy courses and saw two films (Days and Nights
and PE Parade in Moscow) which left such a deep impression on them that they discussed them on
several occasions during the course. In the last part of her article, the author makes an assessment
of the AFŽ courses, and thinks that the course teachers, mostly regular teachers from Sarajevan
primary schools, organisationally assisted by the AFŽ and youth, successfully realised the course
activities, and that “during this winter campaign alone, the people’s government managed to teach
more people to read and write than the previous unpopular regime managed in decades.” In: Nova
žena: list Antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine, Year 2, issue 13 (1946), 9.
66
Just after the war, there were 684 primary schools in BiH, 1,288 teaching staff, and 97,116 pupils.
Quoted in: Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, Socijalistička Republika Bosna i Hercegovina, separat uz II
izdanje Zagreb, LZ, 1983., p. 230.
�66
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
country set down in the Five-Year Plan,67 which is why the improvement of education was one of the priorities of the new Yugoslav and Bosnian-Herzegovinian
government. It was necessary to reconstruct damaged schools and build new
ones, as well as educate new teachers.
At the same time, the newly-formed socialist state and the CPY had specific
expectations from teachers.68 Among other things, in the first years after the
war, the process of construction or reconstruction of institutions of culture went
in parallel with the construction and reconstruction of schools. Libraries and
reading halls were opened, along with co-operative halls and culture halls. All
these institutions were mainly managed by teachers, often without any kind of
compensation. All of this made the teacher’s job extremely difficult in the first
post-war years. However, in this period primary schools were in the focus of the
state and socio-political organisations, which fired the teachers’ enthusiasm.69
I will now make use of the testimonials quoted below to try to roughly sketch the
extremely difficult working conditions the people’s teachers were facing, but also
their unquestionable enthusiasm.
First, one should mention the literacy courses, that is, one of the most important, most massified social actions of the day – the so-called literacy campaign. In five popular enlightenment actions carried out from 1945 to 1 October
1950, 42,196 literacy courses were organised and 670,874 people were taught
67
The 1947–1951 five-year plan provided for the development of new industrial branches, restauration
of old companies, mechanisation of mining, improvement of agricultural production, construction
of new roads, extension of the network of cultural and educational institutions and development of
healthcare and social care institutions.
68
Cvijetin Mijatović, minister of education in the first post-war government of the People’s Republic
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, pointed out when he opened a course for teacher trainers: “The basic
task of a teacher at our school is upbringing, not in a general sense, but in the spirit of the NOB.
[…] Instruction and appropriate relations with schoolchildren should be abuzz with the spirit of the
new instruction, and the glorious past of our peoples, their desires and goals they sought to attain
[…] We want free, bald, energetic people, not minions.” In the countryside, “a teacher is not the
teacher of children alone. In a situation where he is the only intellectual in his village, he has to bear
the brunt of socially committed work, strive primarily to elevate the area in which he resides. A
village teacher, who works in difficult conditions, must not separate himself from the village, but he
also must not accept the backwardness; instead, he should drive the village forward. Tasks outside
of school in which teachers should participate are work in village co-operatives, literacy courses
and reading rooms, and other tasks related to cultural elevation.” Cf. Cvijetin Mijatović, “Govor na
otvaranju kursa za prosvjetne instruktore održanog u Sarajevu u ljeto 1946”, Prosvjetni radnik 7
(1946), 6.
69
Cf. Papić, Učitelji u, n. dj. 88.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
67
to read and write.70 The people’s teachers’ contribution was enormous,71 since
the courses ran under their supervision. Teachers taught 3,099 courses along
with regular monthly or fortnightly counselling with course leaders to ensure
highest-quality work. As Papić stresses, “enormous effort and overtime work
were woven into [this undertaking], because every teacher taught, in addition to
the courses, one or two classes at a regular school. The work started early in
the morning and finished at night.”72 This is how teacher Slavica Bureković from
Sarajevo, who served in the village of Pokrajčići near Travnik, described her
experience of organising and leading literacy courses:
Teachers were tasked with spreading literacy, that was one of the biggest
steps society was to take. There were very many illiterate people indeed,
among them great numbers of young men and women. We teachers organised literacy courses even at come-togethers. The instruction usually
took place late at night, when the teachers were free, after their classes
at the regular school. I brought many women to literacy, I reckon seventy
per-cent of attendees were women. I organised these courses not only in
my home, but also in hamlets. On a few occasions I was remunerated for
my work.73
Krunoslava Lovrenović, a teacher from the village of Ričice near Zenica, recounted that the courses were organised in winter months, from late October to late
March or early April. They were mostly
organised late at night, because we teachers worked with regular pupils
during the day. At times we didn’t have enough paraffin [for the lamps]
and we had to be extremely economical, watch the consumption. I’ve had a
mother and daughter or a father and son sharing a desk. An exam had to be
sat at the end of the course. Our attitude was clear – ignorance is our arch
nemesis, the sooner we vanquish it the sooner we will get out of poverty.74
70
Quoted in: Jerković, Uloga učitelja u prosvjetnim, p. 20.
71
However, this does not necessarily mean that the support of female teachers was unconditional
and that there were no obstructions to the many tasks. Thus, for instance, the monthly report of
the Sarajevo County Committee of the AFŽ, no.1/48, relates that female teachers at first agreed to
organise lectures and a general knowledge course, but, when it was launched, they sent word that
they were too busy and unable to teach the course. Sreski odbor AFŽ-a za srez Sarajevski, ‘Izvještaj
o stanju radu organizacije za decembar 1947, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 4, folder
5, 1948.
72
Papić, Učitelji u, 88.
73
Statement made by Slavica Bureković to Ademir Jerković. Cf. Jerković, “Uloga učitelja u”, op. cit. p. 21.
74
Jerković, “Uloga učitelja u prosvjetnim”, op. cit. 28.
�68
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Working in rural areas after the war remained the most demanding form of
teacher engagement, just as it was before the war, and the new state continued
the practice of assigning young female teachers to the country. The hardness
of the teachers’ work was reflected by the fact that they were burdened with
extracurricular activities and they had to perform several functions at the same
time. In rural schools, teachers also managed and administrated their schools
and had to submit performance reports on a regular basis. At the same time
they were saddled with great teaching loads and had to work in crammed classrooms.
Pupils attended combined classes. In rural schools, teachers often had to work
with over a hundred pupils at the same time.75 In addition, the material conditions
of work and life in rural schools were exceedingly difficult. Village teachers
were entitled to free lodging and heating fuel.76 However, as most villages could
not provide these entitlements, teachers either had no place to stay, or were
given one to two rooms in the school itself, mostly in disrepair, without running
water and sanitation. There are many eloquent testimonials from the day. When
in 1951 teacher Krunoslava Lovrenović came to the village of Mošćanica near
Zenica, she found the school in dire condition. This is how she describes it:
The school had two classrooms and a hall, and we also had a school
kitchen. I don’t know if it even had bread at the time. There was a stove
in the middle of the classroom. Both Muslim and Orthodox children went
to my class together. When teacher Ljepša Džamonja and I first arrived,
there weren’t even any locks on the doors. We taught so-called combined
classes. First and third grade, or second and fourth, all together in one
classroom in which instruction took place. First you teach one grade, then
the other. As you work with the group you have to talk to, you assign the
other group to draw something, to keep them still. The children were nice,
well-behaved and tidy. Orthodox girls wore blouses with long black skirts
and always plaited their hair, while Muslim girls wore Turkish trousers
and blouses. Each wore whatever footwear they had – woollen socks, hide
shoes or galoshes. There were shelves in the hall for coats. In winter, they
would come to school wading through deep snow […]. Nobody provided
firewood for the school, each child would bring a split log in the morning.77
75
Teacher Slavica Bureković taught combined classes at the school in the village of Pokrajčići near
Bila attended by 110 pupils, while teacher Olga Kurilić from Vrbljani worked with 220 children at
her school and successfully managed fourteen courses. In: Jerković, “Uloga učitelja u”, pp. 28–29.
76
Cf. Uredba o pravu na besplatan stan i ogrjev, 56/46–626 – Uredba o pravu na besplatan stan i ogrjev
učitelja narodnih osnovnih škola u selima, 46/48, 488.
77
In: Jerković, “Uloga učitelja u”, p. 35.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
69
Seeing that literacy courses in the country were organised in winter, teachers
were often unable to exercise their right to holidays, and they worked hard during the school winter break. Yet, in spite of the exceedingly difficult material
conditions of work, it seems that teachers, as a rule, carried out their tasks
enthusiastically. This can be seen from the many testimonies and recorded interviews with teachers. Thus, for instance, in the Nova žena magazine, teacher
Mileva Grubač from Višegrad went into raptures about working with women in
her literacy course in the village of Dušća. She first relates how she was asked
by the women from that village to “come and teach them, too” and promised to
come on Sundays, as she was busy working at school or at the literacy courses
in Višegrad. This is how she describes her first visit to the village, and the first
class:
On Sunday, they sent a boy to fetch me lest I got lost and wandered about
trying to find the village. I went up the Drina, thinking about that wonderful
river, celebrated in song, bloodied. She flows quiet and blue, as though she
remembers no evil. Steep hills tower above her banks, and on the patches
of flatlands traces of aerial bombs can be seen. Here and there, the steel
frame of a building juts out from the ground, loomed over by a factory chimney. These are the remnants of “Varda”, the erstwhile saw mill. I finally arrive in the village. I am welcomed by women with primers and writing tablets. Merry was our first class, when our grow-up pupils, with great patience
and determination, began to write their first letters in unsteady strokes.78
With their enormous enthusiasm and engagement, progressive people’s teachers laid an important cornerstone for the building of a new state. Together with
their colleagues, female teachers organised schools across the country and
created new educational policies. In their struggle for new schools they not only
changed the curricula, but also established completely new relations with their
pupils. Rigid classroom hierarchy was abolished, and new learning and work
practices were introduced, based on mutual trust and respect. The teachers
were often full of parental concern for their pupils. Instead of corporal punishment they reasoned with pupils, nurtured a competitive spirit and camaraderie.79 This earned teachers a reputation, as well as the recognition and respect
of the whole community, especially children and their parents. In addition, they
organised cultural events in the areas where they served, and often worked at
cultural institutions, from libraries and public reading rooms to amateur theatres and athletics societies.
78
Nova žena: list Antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine, year 2, no. 13, 1946, p. 20.
79
Cf. Zaninović, Kulturno prosvjetni, op. cit. p. 186.
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THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
One such exemplary teaching career is that of people’s teacher Nasiha Porobić.80
She was born in 1928 in Derventa. When the Partisans were in Derventa for a day
in 1944, she joined the movement as a sixth-former. She was wholly unprepared
when she joined the Partisans; at first she served as a nurse in Teslić, then she
was elected to act as a delegate at a congress in Sarajevo, and after the war she
went to the village of Korače, where she taught 146 pupils. First she completed
a teacher training course in Banja Luka, and went on to study to be a teacher of
Serbo-Croat. She worked during her studies. She organised all extracurricular
activities at school, took part in all competitions for pupils and organised events.
She stressed that she loved her calling and her pupils more than anything, and
that she even neglected her family, two children and husband because of work.
She received several awards and honours, including the Order of People’s Merit
With a Silver Star.
I repeatedly listened to the recording of the interview with Nasiha Porobić, attempting to work out what it is in her voice and the way in which she answered
the questions that has an unsettling effect, why her answers rouse a vague feeling of unease. No, her account is not a testimony of the futility of the struggle
which, in her own words, gave her what she was able to receive. Her life was
not without purpose, and there is no remorse. Nasiha claims that, if she could
do it all again, she would not change anything, but this time she would join the
struggle “with a bit more caution and better preparation. I’d take at least two
changes of clothes. I wouldn’t just plunge headlong into it.”
What is unsettling is not the resignation in her voice, or her conciliatory tone –
these are probably just the distance that comes with old age, or perhaps even
a wisdom with which we assess our own decisions at the end of our lives. What
is disturbing is the passive voice in the narration which suggests that Nasiha
accomplished so much in her rich, fulfilling life, but had too little time actually
to live this rich life. What is unsettling is the fact that she, like most women who
participated in revolutionary struggle, uncritically agreed to support the myth of
the woman who gladly gives up her life in favour of building the state and society
of the future.81
However, that is one side of the coin. It is important to keep in mind that, in spite
of the fact that great masses of women accepted the role of self-sacrificing her80
Interview with Nasiha Porobić conducted by Elvira Jahić in January 2016. The interview is stored in
the Audio Collection of the Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Yugoslavia, http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/415.
81
Cf. Jambrešić-Kirin, Dom i svijet, 27.
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oines, modern-day Iphigenias, there existed systemic gaps, or conscious strategies of dealing with women, in this case people’s teachers, strategies that saw
to it that the process of transformation from the oppressed to the progressive
teacher remained unfinished.
3.2. Between the Emancipation and the
Feminisation of the Teaching Profession
If we are talking about the specificities of female socio-political organising in
WWII, the massive scale of association, as well as the participation of large numbers of rural women and women of all social and ethnic backgrounds, are brought
up as a rule.82 Ivana Pantelić83 argues that the mass mobilisation of women and
their decision to join the Partisans was influenced by the mass arrival of female
teachers to rural areas after 1918. In various ways, these teachers worked towards the emancipation and empowerment of women.
Although people’s teachers, along with nurses and female fighters, were distinguished activists of the anti-fascist movement and the NOB, they were not
invited to participate in the executive bodies of the government and the highest
bodies of the party during and after the war.84 On the contrary, the emancipatory
figure of the teacher-fighter from the NOB gradually transformed into the figure
of the great selfless mother who is supposed to raise a new generation through
the process of compulsory primary education.
As noted by Amila Ždralović, the mass participation of women in combat units
during the war
82
Cf. Dušanka Kovačević et al. Borbeni put žena Jugoslavije, Belgrade: Leksikografski zavod Sveznanje,
1972, pp. 209–210. Available at http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/71
83
Pantelić, Ivana. “Yugoslav female partisans in World War II”, Cahiers balkaniques 41 (2013), 3.
Available at: http://www.afzarhiv.org/files/original/f47c848c2d081c22905ba11a9d869fd3.pdf
84
This was the case not only with people’s teachers, but with all women who participated in the
revolution. Although women’s accomplishments in the NOB were much spoken of, their service was
not adequately rewarded, that is, when the new government was formed, women were not given an
opportunity to participate in its legislative and executive bodies. In her comparative analysis of data
on women on the battlefield and women as delegates to ZAVNOBiH and AVNOJ, Vera Katz shows
that the representation of women in political bodies was not commensurate with their participation
in the NOB. For instance, there were no women ministers in the first post-war government of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cf. Katz, “O društvenom položaju”, pp. 139, 141. This trend continued in
the post-war period; thus, for instance, there were only 4.7% of women at the Constituent Assembly
of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1948, as well as on the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
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FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
also meant the beginning of struggle against the traditional notions of
the woman’s role and place in society, in their families as well as in the
units they were joining. From the stories about female partisans it may be
concluded that in their units many of them were in charge of patriarchally
defined female tasks, such as cooking and sewing. However, at the same
time they do tasks patriarchally defined as male, and they often volunteer
for the most difficult assignments. In this way they helped break traditional
notions and stereotypes of the woman’s place and role in society.85
Thus was popularised the figure of the woman-mother, oppressed and kept in
a state of ignorance by the patriarchal bourgeois order, who not only manages
to bring herself to literacy in the revolutionary struggle by attending a literacy
course, but also enters the educational process from the anonymity of the private sphere and teaches others. In Mi se borimo i učimo (We Fight and We Learn),
a regular section in the AFŽ magazine Žena kroz borbu (Fighting Woman), one
such transformation of a woman was described in an article about a celebration
organised by the 16th Muslim Brigade in June 1944 at which distinguished fighters were decorated:
A mere year ago, Zumreta was hauling heavy ewers of water, scrubbing
cobbles in courtyards, labouring in other people’s houses, far from books
and any semblance of cultural life and work. Today she is being honoured
as the best educator and cultural worker in her brigade […] Zumreta has
acquired so much knowledge that she has been able to lead and teach
others.86
However, from the mid-1950s onward, it was precisely these attempts by women to ensure equality and new positions and social roles through selfless commitment, caring for others, volunteering and doing the hardest jobs that led to
the loss of their hard-earn positions, after they had borne the brunt of the effort
to rebuild the country which lay in ruins.87 In other words, they returned (more
precisely: they were returned) to the confines of the traditional patriarchal
roles. Thus, as Vjeran Katunarić puts it, the new socialist woman slipped from
the heroic figure of the woman-fighter to the figure of the tame homemaker and
‘fashion-conscious’ woman:
85
Ždralović, Amila, “Drugi svjetski rat i iskustva bosanskohercegovačkih žena”, Zabilježene, 76.
86
Žena kroz borbu: list Antifašističkog fronta žena istočne Bosne, year 2, no. 3/ 8, 1945.
87
According to Ivana Pantelić, from the mid-fifties onwards, lay-offs of women workers in the
industrial and state sectors were on the rise. Cf. Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao, op. cit. 124–25.
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Immediately after the war, [the figure of the woman-fighter] was supplanted by the woman from the socialist poster, the woman-builder in the
factory, at the construction site, at sporting events, etc. That figure reflected the revolutionary zeal of the young people of both sexes, as well
as the spontaneous assimilation of women into male activities. A strong
flash of light gradually faded from culture and was overwhelmed by the
evolution of standard patriarchal culture. Women were pushed into the
private sphere, and as the living standard of the family rose, the patterns
of petty bourgeois life were renewed […]. The tabloid press exploded in the
1960s as a consequence of the strengthening of the role of the market in
the Yugoslav economy. The female press, focused on fashion and makeup, faithfully copies the Western model of the female body, the female
inner life and sentimentality. Jacqueline Onasis and similar characters
overshadowed the emancipating figures of female social-realist culture,
female fighters, workers and athletes.88
In the post-revolutionary period, the figure of the progressive teacher follows
the same path of transformation previously taken by all revolutionary female
figures. Thus the people’s teacher, on the wings of the ideals of labour, first
became a shock worker who, working more and more to meet the needs of her
great metaphoric89 family, only to gradually put on (or be thrown into) the chains
of patriarchy and tradition of the previous regimes. Her performing of the traditional and ‘natural’ female roles of the nanny of the nation, the caring mother of
all pupils and their mostly illiterate parents, left the people’s teacher, like other
working women in socialism, with less and less “time for self-management”.
Not having time meant “being outside of time, outside of history, being left with
your biological nature”90 permanently stuck in the state of becoming91 a progressive teacher.
88
Katunarić, Vjeran, Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984, pp. 236, 237
89
According to L. Sklevicky, during the revolution and the construction of the new woman, the proper
family was perceived as contradictory, given that it was necessary on the one hand, but represented
an obstacle for the new social roles of women. As a solution, she offers something she calls the
“metaphorical family”, in which the attributes of a true community of humans are ascribed to the
movement and the NOB. Cf. Sklevicky, Konji, žene, 48.
90
Despot, Blaženka, “Žena i samoupravljanje”, Delo 4 (1981): 112–117, p. 115; see more in: Blaženka
Despot, ‘Žensko pitanje’ u socijalističkom samoupravljanju in: Lydia Sklevicky, ed., Žena i društvo.
Kultiviranje dijaloga. Zagreb: Sociološko društvo, 1987; and idem, Žensko pitanje i socijalističko
samoupravljanje, Zagreb: Cekode, 1987.
91
Tatjana Jukić thinks it is “indicative that communism shows structural affinity for women in places
where for Deleuze the woman is also a platform for becoming, the devenir femme, where for Deleuze
the woman signifies the logic and the dynamics of becoming which lies in the background of every
subsequent identity and identification. Such a woman, a devenir-femme, much like the spectre from
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THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
However, it would be false to suggest that the struggle of the progressive teacher for full emancipation, independence, better material conditions of work and
appropriate remuneration92 was left unfinished93 just because teachers obediently agreed to play the imposed roles and operate under unfavourable circumstances. We are dealing with a different, more complex phenomenon. Relying
on Bloch’s claim about the women’s movement being obsolete or supplanted
or delayed, and his hypothesis that after revolution it is the movement’s turn
as a self-realisation of femininity, Nadežda Čačinović94 examines the quality of
being delayed as a new element within the classical doctrine of the workers’
movement, and, among other things, she notes that the possibility of a different
self-realisation of femininity in post-revolutionary societies is still delayed, and
that femininity reappears as an old greatness.95 Čačinović explains that the very
effort to include everyone in the work process, especially in the division of managing duties, is considered positive progress. In principle, it is acknowledged
that ‘the New Woman’ is human and capable of superior achievements whilst
performing all the traditional female roles (consoler, feeder, healer). However,
she concludes, “the inner unsustainability of that role is acknowledged as ‘overburdening’, a euphemism which conceals the draining of women and a complete
lack of improvement regarding the male role”.96
the opening line of the Communist Manifesto, haunts then everything which subsequently develops
as the gender politics of socialism. By the same token, this would mean that the gender politics
of socialism is always and a priori inadequate, because it necessarily fails to grasp that structural
affinity between the woman and communism”. See: Jukić, Tatjana. “Žena kao revolucija: od Garbo
do Tita.” ProFemina Special Issue (2011): 33–39, p. 34.
92
Renata Jambrešić-Kirin talks about the conflicting simultaneity and stratification of female roles
“which produced the triply burdened ‘super-woman’: a worker, a mother/homemaker and a publicspirited citizen who sought role models in at least three different ideospheres”. Renata JambrešićKirin, “O konfliktnoj komplementarnosti ženskog pamćenja: Između moralne revizije i feminističke
intervencije” ProFemina Special Issue (2011): 39–53, p. 47.
93
In her new critical reading of the position of the working woman in socialism, Vlasta Jalušič argues
that the newly attained emancipation which reduced the woman to a worker actually prevented
women from transforming into a complete political being. Cf. Jalušič, Vlasta, “Women in PostSocialist Slovenia: Socially Adapted, Politically Marginalized”, Sabrina Ramet ed., Gender Politics in
the Western Balkans. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1999, p. 112.
94
Nadežda Čačinović, “Odgovor na pitanje: kakva je sudbina ženstvenosti s obzirom na emancipaciju”
was originally published in the magazine Žena in 1978. Cit. Čačinović, Nadežda, U ženskom ključu:
ogledi u teoriji kulture, Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2000.
95
Ibid. pp. 14–15.
96
Ibid. 15.
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This process, from the emancipation to the feminisation of the teaching profession, should first and foremost be seen from a wider ideological level of operation within which the hijacking and the abuse of traditional values in a new
context takes place.97 Thus, even during the preparations for the mass agitation
of women and the broad masses and their inclusion in the NOB, the leadership
of the movement and its chief ideologues concluded that the existing tradition
should not be openly questioned, because “respecting the tradition is a better/
more expedient form of propaganda and a way to expand the movement”.98 As
Lydia Sklevicky shows, neither the Central Committee of the Communist Party
(CCCP) nor any other governing body of the NOP was trying to change traditional
values; instead, the focus was on trying to modify them to suit the new historical
moment. Therefore, “traditional ‘female values’ are not questioned or integrated
into some new value system, but their emancipatory charge is reflected by their
utility in spreading and strengthening the NOP.”99
In the case of the progressive teachers’ movement and the position of the progressive female teacher in the NOB, emancipatory values were insisted on only
to the extent that this insistence was conducive to the successful achievement
of the general goals of the struggle. This is why, Sklevicky explains, a pragmatic
approach to traditional cultural values was developed, especially patriarchal
‘female’ values of reverence, selflessness, honour and honesty,100 the values
which had become the cornerstone of all the social functions women had in the
war. Thus it was believed that motherhood and its socialising role helps lay the
groundwork for, among other things, brotherhood and unity.101 Hence the figure
of the progressive teacher was modelled on the figure of the caring mother who
raises generations of pupils – children – in the new spirit of the times.
97
Pointing out the fact that normative and operative ideology formulate the essential values of a
political system differently, and that they diverge the most in the spheres of culture and nation,
Siniša Malešević; in a case study of post-war Yugoslavia, analyses dominant ideologies, their form,
content and the ways in which they attain legitimacy, and shows that it is possible to spot significant
differences in the articulation of the new ‘socialist consciousness’ within these two types of ideology.
“Whereas normative ideology poses [the socialist consciousness] in the context of universal
liberation and the emancipation of human beings from tradition, authority and exploitation, operative
ideology uses and appeals to familiar images of the morally superior and purified community,
images derived from the popularly well-known and recognisable religious tradition”. Malešević,
Siniša, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State. London: Routledge, 2002, p. 142.
Sklevicky, Konji, žene, p. 46. Through an analysis of particular narratives Sklevicky shows that
propaganda used folk literature formulas, even liturgical language. Ibid.
99
Ibid. 47.
100
Ibid. 56.
101
Ibid. 43.
98
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FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
However, this trend continued during the post-war construction of a new socialist society. Although the authorities, in principle, made it possible for women to
realise their political rights, the right to work, education and the protection of
motherhood, and publicly promoted the idea of gender equality in all the spheres
of activity, in the words of Renata Jambrešić-Kirin
Yugoslav ideologues did not practise a radical break with the cultural forms
of pre-revolutionary society based on the idea of gender differences and
compatibility […] Yugoslav politicians eagerly resorted to the traditional
repertoire of gender roles and symbols.102
The process of feminisation103 of the teaching profession and the degradation
of its social status (and, therefore the disempowering of women) began with
the insistence on the figure of the teacher as a caring mother who sacrifices
herself for the good of the community as a whole, and the claims that women
manage to get things done and are better at teaching, which is ‘merely’ an extension of their ‘natural’ roles and a honing of their ‘innate capabilities’. As some
feminist research104 has shown, gender stereotypes and gendered professional
structures largely came about thanks to the rhetoric of a ‘proper/natural female
profession’ which showed teachers as objects of knowledge, not active agents/
subjects. Similarly, their professional activities and their work as educators
were not seen as the practising professional skills based on their education,
which led to the gradual abandonment of progressive ideas about permanently
honing pedagogical methods and improving classroom activities. Thus the concept of feminisation of the teaching profession meant not only an increase in the
number of female teachers, but also low status and inadequate remuneration,
which necessarily led to the profession’s loss of social significance and a radical
reduction of its power.
102
Jambrešić-Kirin, Žene i dom, op. cit. pp. 20, 21.
103
The feminisation of the teaching profession has been a global phenomenon since the 1960s; many
sociologists argue that the drastic increase in the number of women among teaching staff in
primary schools indicates that the role of the mother and homemaker extends into paid professional
posts. Cf. Šime Pilić, Knjiga o nastavnicima. Split: Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu, 2008.
104
Inter alia: M. Grumet, “Pedagogy for patriarchy: the feminization of teaching”, Interchange, 12
(2–3) 1981, pp. 165–184; Acker, ed. Teachers, Gender and Careers, Philadelphia: Falmer Press, 1989;
P. Munro, Subject to fiction: Women teacher’s life history narratives and the cultural politics of
resistance. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1989.
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4. In Lieu of a Conclusion
The initial premise of this paper is that the figure of the progressive teacher reflects the limits of the professional emancipation of women as well as the consequences of the incompleteness of the process of construction and/or transformation of the woman as a new, independent, liberated and equal subject in a
better, more humane society.
As the paper points out, in spite of the fact that women have made up the bulk
of the teaching cadre since the end of WWII, research has so far paid little attention to the gender dimension of teaching. From 1918 to the beginning of WWII
there was a rise in rural education and an increase in the number of young professional female teachers who joined the progressive teachers’ movement. Because female teachers were still in an exceptionally unfavourable financial position at the time and were subject to a law which discriminated against them by
stipulating that they were to be paid less than men and by prohibiting marriage,
except to other teachers, progressive female teachers fought for equal working
conditions, equal rights and equal pay.
New socio-cultural revolutionary policies which were promoted and spread
during the war led to radical changes in the status of female teachers. Many
progressive female teachers, especially in the countryside and in the free territories in BiH, actively participated in these changes as well as in the implementation of educational reforms and the introduction of a new social order.
Although the figure of the peoples’ progressive teacher was constructed as a
distinguished female revolutionary figure by the new government and the new
official ideology, after the war they were less and less politically active and intellectually committed to further empowerment and professional independence.
Such development of the figure of the female teacher and the practice of female
teaching is partly the result of the fact that the professional skills were treated
as innate rather than acquired skills that required additional learning and honing. The teachers’ profession was increasingly feminised until the 1980s, when
what was left of the teachers’ revolutionary efforts was a limited amount of
cultural capital and a symbolic role.
Thus the transformation of the figure of the people’s progressive teacher could
be ironically and succinctly represented in three images: from a teacher with
a gun in one hand and a primer in the other, to a teacher with a red carnation
tucked in her lapel, to a mid-eighties teacher who expected her pupils to give
her a #16 lipstick on International Women’s Day.
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, ME LUVLY TEACHER, I BELIEVE IN YOU
THE ROLE AND THE POSITION OF THE PEOPLE’S (PROGRESSIVE) TEACHER IN THE CRUCIAL YEARS
FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Unfortunately, in the tumultuous post-war years of transition to a market economy, female teachers have lost even this symbolical importance and standing.
In the tempestuous sea of educational reforms and the continued reorganisation of primary education, the female teacher is no longer seen as a strong figure who shapes new generations and inculcates positive values in them. The
teaching profession is further marginalised and devalued, and the rights and
freedoms teachers enjoy in their work with pupils are limited and checked.
Thus, it seems to me, one should advocate the establishment and empowering
of a professional organisation of female teachers which would find a way to act
and formulate new progressive teaching policies, in spite of all the imposed divisions and segregation in the BiH education system.105 Feminism teaches us that
for any kind of female professional association we need to find authentic figures
from the past, predecessors we can rely on and build a more just, more responsible society. In that regard, this paper also pleads for research of the teaching
profession and the status of female teachers conducted from a feminist and
historical standpoint, research that would take a gender perspective and draw
attention to the history of the development of this profession in BiH, in order to
identify the structures which have continually oppressed female teachers and
still keep them in an unfavourable position.
Translated by Mirza Purić
105
More on this issue in: Dvije škole pod jednim krovom. Studija o segregaciji u obrazovanju. Sarajevo:
Centar za ljudska prava i ACIPS, 2012. Study available at: http://www.shl.ba/images/brosure/
Dvije_skole_pod_jednim_krovom.pdf
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Katunarić, Vjeran. Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti. Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984.
Katz, Vera. „O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.” Prilozi 40
(2011): 135-155.
Kecman, Jovanka. Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 19181941. Belgrade, 1978., 373.
Konjhodžić, Mahmud. Mostarke, fragmenti o revolucionarnoj djelatnosti i patriotskoj opredjeljenosti žena Mostara, o njihovoj borbi za slobodu i socijalizam. Mostar: Opštinski
odbor SUBNOR-, 1981., 36-38.
Kožar, Azem. „O nekim aspektima obrazovno-odgojne politike Narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta na području Bosne i Hercegovine (1941-1945),” Šezdeset godina od završetka
Drugog svjetskog rata: kako se sjećati 1945. godine. Zbornik radova. Sarajevo: Institut
za istoriju, 2006., 235-248.
Kujović, Mina. “Hasnija Berberović – zaboravljena učiteljica – prilog historiji muslimanskog
školstva u Bosni i Hercegovini.” Novi Muallim 40 (2009): 114-118.
Malešević, Siniša. Ideologija, legitimnost i nova država. Trans. Slobodanka Glišić. Zagreb,
Beograd; Jesenskii Turk i Edicija Reč, 2004.
Mijatović, Cvijetin. “Govor na otvaranju kursa za prosvjetne instruktore održanog u Sarajevu
u ljeto 1946.” Prosvjetni radnik 7 (1946).
Milišić, Senija. “Emancipacija muslimanske žene u Bosni i Hercegovini nakon oslobođenja
1947 – 1952 (Poseban osvrt na skidanje zara i feredže)” Magistarski rad, Filozofski
fakultet u Sarajevu, 1986.
Nedović, Radisav S. Čačanski kraj u NOB 1941–1945: žene borci i saradnici.” Čačak: Okružni
odbor SUBNOR-a, 2010.
Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke. Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju – Evoluta,
2011.
“Yugoslav female partisans in World War II,” Cahiersbalkaniques 41(2013.)
http://www.afzarhiv.org/files/original/f47c848c2d081c22905ba11a9d869fd3.pdf
Papić, Mitar. Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme Austrougarske okupacije 1878-1918.
Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1972.
Istorija srpskih škola u BiH. (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978.)
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Učitelji u kulturnoj i političkoj istoriji Bosne i Hercegovine. (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987.).
Petrović, Jelena. “Društveno-političke paradigme prvog talasa jugoslavenskih feminizama”
ProFemina Specijalni broj, (2011):59-81.
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Pilić, Šime. Knjiga o nastavnicima. Split: Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu, 2008.
Prica, Ines. “Etnologija postsocijalizma i prije ili dvanaest godina nakon” Etnologije socijalizma i poslije,” in: Lada Feldman Čale and Ines Prica, eds., Devijacije i promašaji.
Etnografija domaćeg socijalizma. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006.
Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. Etnologija naše svakodnevice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1988.
Scott, Joan W. Rod i politika povijesti. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1988 i 2003.
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene i ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996.
Slapšak, Svetlana. Ženske ikone XX veka. Belgrade, Biblioteka XX vek – Čigoja Štampa,
2001.
Šušnjara, Snježana. “Školovanje ženske djece u Bosni i Hercegovini u doba Austro-Ugarske
(1878. – 1918.).” Napredak 155 (4) (2014) : 453 – 466.
Vuković, Rade. Napredni učiteljski pokret između dva rata. Belgrade, Pedagoški muzej, 1968.
Zaninović, Mato. Kulturno-prosvjetni rad u NOB-u (1941–1945) Sarajevo, 1968
Ždralović, Amila. “Drugi svjetski rat i iskustva bosanskohercegovačkih žena.” in: Aida
Spahić et al., Zabilježene – Žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku. Sarajevo:
Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE, 2014.
Župan, Dinko. “Viša djevojačka škola u Osijeku (188.-1900.)” Scrinia slavonica 5 (2005.),
366-383.
�ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ
Digital illustrations
Working women, let us conquer knowledge and learning. Let us become masters of our trades. Let
us become shock workers, innovators and rationalisers. Let us develop socialist labour competition.
Red salute to women shock workers whose efforts help speed up the realisation of the plan – building
socialism in our country!
Long live 8th March, international day of solidarity of women in the struggle against warmongers!
�Long live the unity of the democratic movement of women – a strong factor at the peace front!
Women of Yugoslavia reject the defamation of our beloved country, our Central Committee and
Comrade Tito, under whose leadership we are building socialism!
People’s teachers – live up to your name and help raise the new socialist man!
AFŽ
��Peasant women, let us strive to improve our economy, let us strengthen the existing co-operatives
and start new ones. Let us fight for greater yields. Long live the socialist transformation of the village!
�Red salute to the women of China, who stand together with their people on the brink of the final
victory over the enemy in their struggle for freedom and independence and for new social relations.
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The end of WWII is the period of construction of the new Yugoslav woman who
actively participates in the war, educates herself and enters the world of work,
whilst the emancipation of women from the shackles of patriarchal culture was
one of the “undisputable tasks of the Women’s Antifascist Front (henceforth
AFŽ)”.1 In that period, which saw an historical breakaway from predominantly
agrarian economics and a society in which education was mostly reserved for
women from the upper social strata, the conditions were met for the education
of women on a scale never seen before, and for the launching of a process of
modernisation, which could not have taken place without a serious disruption of
patriarchal culture.2
This emancipation did not put an end to patriarchy, far from it; but if we look at
the women’s media from that period (Naša žena, Glas, Žena u borbi), we see that
women are represented and equal subjects: they are combatants, nurses, workers, People’s Heroes (narodni heroji), etc., rather than passive on-lookers. A Yugoslav woman was to be modern and educated, dedicated and determined, “neither a Serb, nor Croat, nor a Muslim,” but rather all three, a Yugoslav. The aim
of this chapter is to look at the issues of the magazine Nova žena from 1945–1946
available in the AFŽ archive, and describe the main emancipatory discourses
addressing women, outline the argumentative and rhetorical strategies, metaphors and lexical and grammatical elements used to constitute this new Yugoslav woman, as well as to establish links between these historiographic insights
and today’s so-called post-socialist moment in history.
1. Entering the Archive
In Yugoslav post-socialism, after all the wars, the plundering of the commons,
the ethnic cleansing, rape and the associated historical revisionism, the regime
of gender inequality still contests the affixation of feminine suffixes to words
denoting occupations, for instance, fighter–fighteress.3 By way of response, the
Banja Luka poet Dragan Studen titled his collection of poems Borkinje (Fighteresses), as early as 1982. In the opening poem he speaks through a woman, a
fighter, warrior who is addressing us in the future:
1
Sklevicky, Lydija. Konji, žene, ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996. pp. 25.
2
Ibid. pp. 135.
3
http://www.blic.rs/kultura/kako-reci-zena-borac-ili-borkinja/k7r6r7e
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We shall write it down in coal
We shall fan the fire
And be remembered
If we step into the picture
Hanging on the wall
Only ourselves we will resemble
We shall never stop
Tossing the soil out of the trench
Lest it smother us
Thickened time
We shall slice into slices
And the hopeless knife
Shall burn in the core
If we step into the picture hanging on the wall
We will remain there
Forever and for evermore
Writing about the experience of women in WWII, some forty years after the fact,
he reminds us that “in harm’s way […] is our way out […] in our doom is our survival”, hinting that in the decisive moments of world history people went to fight
and die to be able to live. This collection is part of a larger archive on women in
the Narodno-oslobodilačka borba (henceforth NOB), and it inspired me to write
about the AFŽ archive today, on the semi-periphery of Europe in late-stage capitalism, in post-war, post-socialist countries like today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Thanks for the great step forward made by women – peasants and workers, first
and foremost – are owed to female organising under the auspices of the AFŽ.
The AFŽ was active from 1943 to 1953, first in the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
(DFJ) and subsequently in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ)
and it made possible a wide participation of women in all spheres of People’s
liberation struggle. Although the AFŽ initially was not focused on female issues,
but rather on harnessing the volunteer energy of millions of women to ensure
victory in the struggle against fascism4, it was an organisation which, during WWII
and the Yugoslav socialist revolution, undoubtedly influenced the modernising
change that women fought for and won.
4
Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941–1945. Denver: Arden Press,
1990. pp. 122.
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If the point of archival research is to find a lived experience in the past in order
to demonstrate that what we know and the way we speak and act have not been
around since the beginning of time and will not be around till the end of time,
and are therefore subject to change, then the archive is not the sum of all the
documents it preserves, but an historical framework for the conditions of a
statement.5 A reactivation of past statements may offer guidelines on how to set
ourselves free from our own archive, “impossible for us to describe”,6 to be able
to think and act differently today. The intention is not to “try to restore what has
been thought, wished, aimed at, experienced, desired by men in the very moment
at which they expressed it in discourse” but to “join [analysed discourse] in its
identity” by understanding it through “a rewriting […] a regulated transformation
of what has already been written.”7
The meeting of female struggles from two different historical moments, the
present one and that from seventy-odd years ago, is necessary not only for the
fight against historical revisionism, but also for thinking of a new kind of political
action aimed towards achieving equality for all. The crisis in which we live resembles the one from the 1930s and 1940s, given that the processes of the restauration and rehabilitation of these crises are yet again connecting capitalism,
fascism and rising inequality. As we learn from the report by Cana Babović presented at the First State Anti-Fascist Conference of the AFŽ held on 8 December
1942, it was precisely the anti-fascist struggle during the Spanish Civil War, and
the position of women in the USSR, where women enjoyed “full equality” and
“participation in the economic and political life of the country” that inspired Yugoslav anti-fascist women to start publishing as early as the 1930s:
During the bloody events in Spain in 1936, when our women began their
struggle against war and fascism, we saw the emergence of “Žena danas”,
a gazette of young anti-fascist women, in Belgrade. The journal had an
enormous role to play in the gathering and organising of women. It reached
every corner of our country, showed women what fascism had in store for
them, raised their political awareness, deepened their hatred of fascism
and gave them strength in their struggle for equality. The same role was
played by the gazette of Croatian anti-fascist women “Ženski svijet”.8
5
Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. 1972. pp. 128–129
6
Ibid., 130.
7
Ibid., 152.
8
Babović, Cana. “Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ” report presented at the First State Conference of the
AFŽ, 8 December 1942, Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Yugoslavia, http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/231, accessed on 20 September 2016.
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Although I relied on all kinds of documents available in the digital AFŽ archive,
the basis of this research is formed by the journal Nova žena9 as the first gazette
of the AFŽ BiH, the first issue of which was published in February 1945, and the
last issue available in the archive, issue 20, in November 1946. As a propaganda
tool of the AFŽ and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), in addition to the
subscriptions and membership fees, it was financed through the “selling of collected rags to the ironworks.”10 11 The journal was distributed to women in villages and towns to help bring them to literacy and attract them to the tasks and
the work of the organisation. In early 1946, the journal had a circulation of 10,000
copies, and by July 1947 it had reached 22,000.12
Although it focuses on a short period of time at the very end of the war or the beginning of peacetime, the analysis presented in this chapter examines the fifteen
issues of the magazine published in the period 1945–1946, describes how this
“new” Yugoslav woman was constituted through media discourse and establishes
links between such historical insights and today’s life in the so-called “desert of
post-socialism.”13 I was primarily interested in the emancipatory elements of media discourse promised to women by the new socialist era in which the new woman was made. I see these elements, in the broadest possible sense, as the largest
scale inclusion of women in the social and political life of the new Yugoslavia and
BiH, entering the world of work, gaining rights, learning to read and write, etc.14
What is the relationship between modernisation, emancipation and patriarchy
in this context? Modernisation was brought to BiH precisely by socialism after
1945,15 through the largest scale education of everyone, especially women, as its
precondition. Nova žena unabashedly addresses women as equal subjects and
9
The magazine Nova žena was mostly published in Sarajevo, but several issues were published in
Belgrade. The first issue was set and printed in Cyrillic, whilst the subsequent issues used both
Cyrillic and Latin alphabet. It was the official gazette of anti-fascist women of BiH. Issues 7, 11, 15,
16 and 19 are unavailable and were not included in the analysis.
10
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Okružni Odbor AFŽ Sarajevo Zemaljskom Odboru AFŽ-a – Zapisnik sa
sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945” Arhiv BiH, Sarajevo, Kutija
1, 13/6, 1945.
11
What was probably meant is “scrap iron” (translator).
12
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, ‘Materijali sa Drugog Kongresa AFŽ-a BiH održanog 12 – 13 jula 1947’,
Arhiv BiH, Kutija 3, 1543/109, 1947.
13
Horvat Srećko and Štiks Igor, Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism. London: Verso, 2015.
14
Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke: društvena emancipacija partizanki u Srbiji, 1945-1953,
Belgrade: Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011.
15
Sklevicky, Lidija. Konji, žene, ratovi, Zagreb: Ženska infoteka. 1996. pp. 134.
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represents them as such: they are fighters, nurses, workers, people’s heroes,
etc., not passive onlookers. The entry of women to the labour market because of
the demands of urbanisation, industrialisation, reconstruction and construction
itself meant a serious disruption to patriarchal culture,16 and one can talk about
women’s emancipation from the shackles of patriarchy in BiH and Yugoslavia only
in the context of the socialist state.
As for the relationship between the emancipatory and modernising on the one
hand and the patriarchal on the other, I see the Balkan patriarchy as a complex
of hierarchical values engraved into the social structure of pre-modern, agrarian, pastoral economies and culturally traditional, religious societies in which the
dominant role is played by men while women are subjugated in the context of the
protective family and household.17 In the early days of the NOB, women started to
fill “vacant positions of power” through their participation in the fight, the work
of the CPY and the People’s Front (Narodni front, henceforth NF), and through
organised work in the AFŽ in the rear.18 In this sense, we can tentatively talk about
temporary depatriarchalisation or depatriarchalising potential as a temporary
loosening of patriarchal regimentation brought about by a mass organisation of
women ready to fight and ready for change, free education, access to the world of
work19 and social mobility within a generation for all, especially for women.
With all this in mind, based on the Nova žena corpus available in the archive, I
analyse the role of the AFŽ under the following aspects:
a. The role of the AFŽ in an international context
b. The role of the AFŽ in the struggle against fascism and the struggle for
equality (depatriarchalising potential)
c. The role of the AFŽ in the creation of the new Yugoslav woman through joint
struggle and sisterhood of Croat, Muslim and Serb women, and
d. The role of the AFŽ in the process of the largest-scale literacy drive in the
history of BiH
16
Ibid., 135.
17
Halpern, Joes, Kaser Karl, and Wagner, A.Richard. “Patriarchy in the Balkans: Temporal and
Cross-Cultural Approaches” in: Household and the Family in the Balkans, ed. Karl Kaser. Graz:
University of Gratz Lit Verlag, 2012, pp. 49.
18
Dugandžić, Andreja and Jušić, Adela “Intervju sa Stanom Nastić,” Archive of the Anti-Fascist
Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia, accessed on 21 November 2016,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/285.
19
This was the case with my parents, who were born in BiH in the early 1950s in rural poverty, but
were able to study in Novi Sad and Sarajevo, find appropriate jobs in Bihać and become middle
class in Yugoslav socialism.
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and in reference to the present moment in the underdeveloped and impoverished post-Dayton BiH, possibly the largest “desert of post-socialism” in which
the possibility of social change is hardly discernible, excepting the short-lived
protests of February 2014. This can be seen from:
1. The peripheral status of BiH society in relation to the EU countries, and
the lack of internationalisation which affects the comparability and visibility of the social demands and struggles in the centre and on the periphery
2. Insufficient collective mobilisation of women in the new post-socialist state,
in spite of the proliferation of identity politics and gender mainstreaming
which promotes liberal ideas of female human rights, individualism and
entrepreneurship and disregards, for instance, the rights of women workers and the unemployed.
3. The lack of a definite relation to fascistoid policies due to the nationalisms
enshrined in the Dayton constitution stoked by anti-Yugoslav and anticommunist sentiments which mask the relations of inequality contingent
on authoritarian capitalism of the new post-socialist state and are “natural
allies” of the Balkan patriarchy (post-socialist repatriarchisation)
4. The rise of illiteracy, inaccessibility of education for the broad masses, and
generally bad and corrupt education in the country.
2. Why the Archive? Some Theoretical and Methodological Insights
The Discourse-Historical Approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) is politically committed to social change,20 and it sees identities as contextually
contingent and dynamic moments which are constructed, perpetuated and deconstructed within a discourse, and therefore assume different forms.21 Considering the historical and political context, as well as the earlier research on
the AFŽ, I approached the texts via an analysis of the topics as hierarchicalised
semantic textual macrostructures,22 topoi as basic argumentative structures of
discourse,23 as well as standard tropes such as metaphors and similes. In addi20
Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. London: Longman, 1989
21
Wodak, Ruth, De Cillia, Rudolph, Reisigl Martin and Liebhart, Karl. The Discursive Construction of
National Identity. Edinburgh: EUP, 1999, pp. 3–4.
22
Van Dijk, Teun. Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage, 1993, pp. 33.
Žagar, Igor. “Topoi in critical discourse analysis”. Školsko polje Vol. 20 (5/6) (2009), 47–75.
23
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tion, I attempted to establish the relevance of the emancipatory potential of the
day for the present moment in BiH through an analysis of these problems and
the discourses attached to them.
In a methodological sense, I see Discourse-Historical Analysis (DHA)24 as a way
to show how a reinvented tradition and past are doctored to fit the present moment: the AFŽ propaganda from 1945–1946 responded to the actual needs of
women, but that could not have been discerned by reading Nova žena only, it was
necessary to read archived minutes of AFŽ meetings too. Our present persistently appeals to tradition, but the AFŽ is omitted from that tradition. Useful in
that regard is the cultural-materialist insight that tradition is an element which
makes possible the continuity of past and present, but also an
intentionally selective version of a shaping past and a pre-shaped present,
which is then powerfully operative in the process of social cultural definition
and identification. […] From a whole possible area of past and present, in a
particular culture, certain meanings and practices are selected for emphasis
and certain other meanings and practices are neglected or excluded.25
In researching women’s discourse and discourse about women at a given historical moment, another particularly useful insight is provided by Gadamer’s26
observation that the more complicated the content we need to understand, the
more individual elements become relevant, which in turn necessarily makes our
horizon of understanding richer and broader. Entering an archive from WWII is
important for gaining transgenerational insights into the past of Bosnian-Herzegovinian and Yugoslav women from that period, as well as for examining its
interpretative productivity in relation to the problems women in BiH are facing
today. Only then can we (tentatively) speak of a fusion of these horizons (Horizontsverschmelzung) which makes possible the actualisation of Benjaminesque
The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) tries to minimise the risk of excessive subjectivity on the
part of the researcher. This subjectivity is also subject to inclusion or exclusion, and to act through
triangulation, its fundamental constitutive principle, on the basis of the widest possible variety
of information, methods, theories, background information, etc. In this regard, DHA attempts
to “integrate much available knowledge about the historical sources and the background of the
social and political fields in which discursive “events” are embedded” (Wodak 2011, 65) in order
to “denaturalize the role discourses play in the (re)production of noninclusive and nonegalitarian
structures under certain social circumstances” (Wodak 2015, 2). In doing so, this Critical
Discourse Analysis or Critical Discourse Studies method sees discourse as connected with other
semiotic structures and material institutions which jointly reproduce society through semiosis as
the process of signification.
25
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. pp. 115.
26
Gadamer, Hans, Georg. Istina i metoda. Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978.
24
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historiography of the oppressed where, acting in the light of “experience with
the past”, a “battling, oppressed class” is the “subject of historical cognition.”27
It is precisely this oppression that remains constant when it comes to thinking
and acting after experiencing war and its aftermath, which brought loss, poverty
and peripherality, nationalism, unemployment and precarity, and illiteracy, all
of which survive to this day. All this together makes it more difficult for women,
but also for men, to organise and change their social position, by contributing to
the creation of such an oppressed class which loses its combativeness due to its
inability to articulate its own position as the subordinated class. In this regard,
knowledge about the AFŽ is crucial for a transhistoric fusion of the horizons because it carries the potential to imagine struggle and a different world, precisely
because they articulated this position and tried to solve the problems in an organised manner. I attempt to show this through critical analysis of the elements
I have recognised as having been emancipatory at the time, and to address them
in relation to the present moment.
The task of the historical materialist is to constructively attempt to (re)articulate the historiographic form without returning nostalgically to a past story,
recognising it instead as “a mark, a trace.”28 Only in a rupture, “[w]here thinking suddenly halts in a constellation overflowing with tensions, [and] yields a
shock” lies “a revolutionary chance in the struggle for the suppressed past.”29
In addition, archival research is never just “the question of a concept dealing
with the past which might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an
archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of
the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow” because the meta-archive and the original of any text exist
only “in the times to come.” If we wish to find out what the archive means, “we
will only know in the times to come. Perhaps. Not tomorrow but in the times to
come, later on or perhaps never.”30 At any rate, the first step is the interpretation
of archivalia which “illuminate[s], read[s], interpret[s], establish[es] its object,
namely a given inheritance, by inscribing itself in it, that is to say by opening it
and by enriching it enough to have a rightful place in it.”31
27
Benjamin, Walter. On the Concept of History.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm
Chowdhury, Aniruddha. “Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin’s History”. Telos: Critical
Theory of the Contemporary 2008 (143), 36.
29
Benjamin, op.cit.
28
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1996. pp. 27.
31
Ibid., 67.
30
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3. The AFŽ and the New Woman
3.1. The AFŽ and the International Context
The peripheral status of BiH society in relation to Europe is the consequence of
internal strife in BiH itself, a country in which the only manifestation of internationalism is geopolitical loyalty to Russia, Croatia or Turkey. This is exacerbated
by exclusivist, sometimes fascist political practices of Western Europe and North
America, such as the control of the increasing numbers of migrants and workers
from BiH and other peripheral countries, the rigorous visa policy, the volatility of
the conditions for EU accession and the treatment of the Balkans and BiH as a
“case”. Today there are virtually no forums in which women from the so-called
first and the third world participate and make decisions on an equal footing, whilst
the Europeanisation in BiH, conducted via the Office of the High Representative
(OHR) and the EU Special Representative (EUSR) is nothing but colonisation of
an underdeveloped Other via the introduction of liberal democracy, privatisation
of public companies, the so-called free market, economic reforms and austerity.
This Europeanisation is negotiated with ethnonational political elites only.32
Nova žena in the period 1945–1946 was characterised by a strong internationalist
spirit brought to bear on the issues regarding the “East” as well as the “West”.
There was quite casual talk of the “brotherhood of Bulgarian people and our
people”33 and the “role played by the women of Albania in the struggle for the
freedom of their homeland” (Nova žena 8: 17–18, 1945). In May 1946 we learn that
3,000 apprentices from all over Yugoslavia, “[of whom] 150 [were] from BiH” were
accepted for apprenticeships in “the brotherly Czechoslovakia” in order to receive
their vocational training over three to four years (Nova žena 14:12, 1946). Many
issues featured social-realist narratives, mostly from the Soviet context, which
described work enthusiasm, shockworkership and the self-sacrificing nature of
the “fair-complected” Russian woman as an embodiment of the partisan promise
of post-war life.34 In the August issue (Nova žena 5:6, 1945), we read about the visit
of a delegation of Soviet women to Sarajevo referred to as “the joy and happiness
we dreamed of for years”:
32
Majstorović, Danijela, Vučkovac, Zoran and Pepić, Anđela, “From Dayton to Brussels via
Tuzla: Post-2014 Economic Restructuring as Europeanization Discourse/Practice in Bosnia and
Herzegovina”. Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 15(4) (2015), 661–682.
Nova žena, Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Yugoslavia, 8: 5, 1945., http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/c130e1fc9258a352e2e949767c6990e9.pdf
Note – due to the large number of citations from the Nova Žena magazine, they are integrated in the
running text and contain issue number, page number and the year of publication. The issues of Nova
žena referred to here are available online at www.afzarhiv.org in the category Periodicals.
34
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., pp. 119.
33
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The raptures peaked when Evgeniya “Zhenya” Zhigulenko – a pilot and
Hero of the Soviet Union who flew the aeroplane the delegation arrived
on showed up on the balcony. She is an approachable and agreeable
woman whom we met a long time ago through Polina Osipenko, Valentina
Grizodubova and other brave women pilots we read about and admired
even as they were just training for the great feats they were to accomplish
in the war of people’s liberation. Zhenya greeted us on behalf of the Red
Army fighters, on behalf of the women who are now returning from the
army to work in fields and factories, to carry out the task of reconstructing
the country with as much success as they had in fighting fascism.
Although the purpose of such reporting was to raise international antifascist
consciousness and boost morale, such pieces valorised courage, female togetherness and solidarity. Homage to the heroism of a woman who fought in
the war and flew an aeroplane to Sarajevo, even though she had to “return from
the army to work in fields and factories”, is not something that can be found in
today’s media. If she is mentioned at all, it is as a pilot of an airline, not a Red
Army pilot. This Stakhanovitesque promise of social mobility achieved by going
from a peasant to a kolkhoz leader or a state official, and social care provided to
pregnant workers whereby “the future mother feels the care of the collective”
is not recognised as newsworthy by today’s media. Joint international mobilisation is present in humanitarian efforts, such as cancer prevention or domestic
violence prevention, but joint antifascist fight is and remains a blind spot of today’s media. Work, partnership and motherhood are treated in an individualist,
consumerist manner, with frequent appeals to the topos of the “super woman”35
36
who is always dolled up, has a fantastic job and education, three kids and a
husband, and is able to do (and buy) anything.
When it comes to the participation of Bosnian-Herzegovinian women in international female organisations, we see that they were zealously preparing for
the First International Congress of Women, convened on 26 November 1945 on
the motion by “comrade Cotton”, the founder and president of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF). The WIDF and Eugénie Cotton are
to a great extent absent from Western feminist historiography,37 although the
35
Majstorović, Danijela and Mandić, Maja. “What It Means to Be a Bosnian Woman: Analyzing
Women’s Talk Between Patriarchy and Emancipation” in Living With Patriarchy—Discursive
Constructions of Gendered Subjects Across Public Spheres, ed. Danijela Majstorović i Inger Lassen
(Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011), 97.
36
Majstorović, Danijela. “(Un)Doing Feminism in Post-Yugoslav Media Spaces”. Feminist Media
Studies 16(6) (2016), 1093–1108.
37
De Hahn, Francisca “The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF): History, Main
Agenda, and Contributions, 1945–1991.” http://wasi.alexanderstreet.com/help/view/the_womens_
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WIDF was the biggest and most influential international female organisation after 1945. From its beginnings the WIDF developed a profile of a leftist and feminist organisation which gathered communist women but also progressive noncommunists from all over the world, including the US, Soviet Union and China.38
When we entered Palais de la mutualite on 2 November, many of us saw the
trappings of a great international conference for the first time: long desks at
which delegations sat and went through documents and notes, on every desk
plates with inscriptions such as China, India, Latin America, the USSR, Yugoslavia, Romania – the names of forty countries, forty nations that want the
eradication of fascism, democracy and peace; then there are loudspeakers,
spotlights, interpreters who make announcements in three different languages; above the podium a great emblem of the Congress – a dove with an
olive branch and a globe. Just before the opening, the hall was echoing with
nervous hubbub in several dozen different languages. (Nova žena 12:5, 1946)
The Bosnian-Herzegovinian delegates participated in these congresses on equal
footing and reported about them, which further points to a strong internationalist drive of female organisations and movements with a wider political agenda,
female organisations from the so-called Third World, as well as those with a socialist, socialist-feminist or pro-communist orientation. As cold war attacks on
the WIDF had a “negative impact on the state and location of, and access to, the
WIDF archive and the possibility of gathering materials through oral histories”,
the accomplishments of this organisation were not inscribed in the collective
feminist memory. Because a searchable, digitalised AFŽ archive was not available until recently, the organisation, being part of a socialist state structure, saw
its feminist potential denied by Western feminists,39 while historians and anthropologists who recognised feminism in female socialist organisations in Eastern
and South-eastern Europe were labelled revisionists.40 41 Thus Lepa Perović reinternational_democratic_federation_widf_history_main_agenda_and_contributions_19451991,
accessed on 20 September 2016.
38
Writing about some of the reasons for such exclusion, de Haan lists the accusations of pro-Soviet
activities made by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1949, when the
influence of the WIDF started to weaken, and the focus of Western feminist historiography shifted
mostly to liberal feminism and gender (author).
39
Funk, Nanette. “A Very Tangled Knot: Official State Socialist Women’s Organizations, Women’s
Agency and Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism”. European Journal of Women’s Studies
21(4) (2014), 344–360.
40
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. “Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War
Italy and Yugoslavia (1945–1957)”, PhD thesis, University of Utrecht, 2012).
41
Ghodsee, Kristen. “Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk”. European Journal of
Women’s Studies 22, no. 2 (2015), 248–252.
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lates that the preparatory committee of the Congress “included delegates from
England, America, Soviet Union, China, France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Hungerry
[sic], Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Portugal, Australia, Catalobia [sic], Belgium, Greece, Czechoslovakia and Sweden” and that it decided to “include delegates from the countries which are still not represented” and that “colonies, too,
may have their representatives who will be completely independent” (Nova žena
8:5–6, 1945).
3.2. The Fight against Fascism and Attaining Equality
The goals of the Paris congress of women were to achieve co-operation of women
worldwide on the following, rather progressive programme, which outlines the
same issues the AFŽ insisted on during and after the war:
1. Destroy fascism and ensure democracy
2. Prepare a bright future for new generations
3. Give women the rights listed in the International Charter of Women.
As mothers: the right to bear children in a world free from horrors, poverty and
war, in which every government will provide them with necessary social
and health protection and appropriate housing.
As workers: the right to work in all branches of industry and practise all professions, to receive equal pay for equal work, the right to access vocational
education on an equal footing with men, the right to be appointed to responsible positions; the ending of exploitation of women as a cheap labour
force and the improvement of working conditions.
As citizens: equality with men before the law and full democratic freedom of
expression, the right to vote and sit on judicial councils and participate in
government and international institutions (Nova žena 8: 5–6, 1945).
Anti-fascist struggle and the attainment of equality such as suffrage were among
the goals in Yugoslavia even before the congress, thanks to the influence of the
anti-fascist struggle in Spain and the attainment of equality by Soviet women.
According to Cana Babović, who spoke at the State Conference of the AFŽ on 8
December 1942, these two demands represented a key difference between bourgeois feminists and Yugoslav anti-fascists who were jointly active in the “female
movement” of the day even before the war broke out in 1941, and eventually led
to a schism:
Progressive women of Yugoslavia, that is, anti-fascists, thought that the
struggle of women against fascism and war was best lead by gathering
and connecting women in a single organisation. Anti-fascists joined exist-
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ing feminist organisations and started the work of all women of Yugoslavia against war and fascism. Among the actions taken by women in their
struggle for equality, the most notable was the drive for suffrage which
was organised in the entire country, led by anti-fascists and had at the
time, in 1939, a distinct anti-war and anti-fascist character. […] The leadership of the bourgeois feminist organisations disgracefully betrayed the
women’s struggle, renouncing their own anti-war programme so that they
would not have to fight fascism too, the two being inseparable. During the
great struggle for the right to vote, they were not only passive, they also
sabotaged the struggle of the anti-fascists.42
War was close at hand and great numbers of women were left unorganised, so
the CPY needed to “mobilise women through the AFŽ to ensure victory in the war
as well as to convince women that the victory of the Partisans will mean a brighter future for them.”43 In that regard, the AFŽ was “the most fascinating example
of a relatively small group of communists working meticulously on the ground,
in wartime conditions, and quickly succeeding in convincing great masses of
women to help in partisan warfare in exchange for new rights after the war.”44
Still, the relation of equality between men and women was ambivalent the whole
time. On the one hand, it was undeniable that the top echelons of the Party were
male-dominated and steeped in patriarchal tradition, as female partisans were
wont to say that they “were sent” and “allowed” to do things.45 Such “male politics” were connected with the strict military and political discipline necessary to
win the war, which is corroborated by the fact that, in spite of the lip service paid
to the equality of women to men in political life and all areas of social activity, at
the First Session of the Country Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation
of BiH (henceforth ZAVNOBiH) there were only four women out of 247 delegates:
Mevla Jakupović, a worker from Tuzla, Zora Nikolić, a worker from Sarajevo, captain Danica Perović from Banja Luka, head of the XI Division hospital and Rada
Vranješević, a student and member of the Central Committee of the AFŽ.46
On the other hand, according to Milka Kufrin, “equality of men and women existed only at the platoon level”,47 which was confirmed in earlier interviews by
the few surviving female Partisans in BiH, Stana Nastić from Sarajevo and Milica
42
Babović, “Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ”.
43
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., pp. 114–116.
44
Katz, Vera. “O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.” Prilozi 40 (2011), 138.
45
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., p. 106.
46
ZAVNOBiH, dokumenti 1943-1944, vol. I, (Sarajevo: IP Veselin Masleša, 1968), 58–63.
47
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., p. 99.
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Stanarević from Banja Luka. By fighting alongside men in the anti-fascist struggle, women won freedom they never knew before and started to actively work on
their enlightenment and the improvement of their social position. “Those who
quietly put up with all the hardship before the war”, “have been elevated to the
rank of valiant freedom fighters (Nova žena 1:6, 1945)” determined to never go
back “to the old ways”. It is precisely the relation between “the old ways” and
“the new” which was changed during the anti-fascist struggle that makes up the
dominant topos in Nova žena, whereby it is observed of the old ways:
Let us remember the old ways. In our peasant households it was important
for a woman to be strong and obedient. We had to do the hardest work, without any recognition. […] We were illiterate, we had no idea what was happening in the world and what was upon us. They said it was not a woman’s
business. It is no wonder then that we are so firmly attached to the struggle.
[…] That is why we are all united in our struggle for the old ways to never
return. (Soja Ćopić, Nova žena 1:7, 1945).
When it comes to family rights – the “new ways” that were sweeping through
social and political life – as early as 1942 the Regulations of Foča (“Fočanski propisi”) were drafted as the first legal act of socialist Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav
woman won the right to vote and run for office, civil marriage and divorce were
introduced, as well as equality before the law, recognition of the rights of children
born out of wedlock, equal pay for equal work, and access to hospitals and kindergartens, all typical socialist demands. It is precisely in Nova žena 1946 9 and
1946 10 1–3 that we read that “children born out of wedlock [had] equal rights
as the children born in wedlock”, which had previously been unimaginable, as if
“marriage and family, in comrade Kardelj’s words, were too serious institutions
for the state to leave them to some other organisations”, and the state organised
kindergartens for mothers to be able to work.
The state of female workers’ rights where few women make their living in nonagrarian economy in a country which had just emerged from a war is best illustrated by the 1931 census data. According to the Census, BiH had 1,138,515 women (around 46 percent) and 1,185,040 men, while “84.1 percent of the population
[was] made up of peasants living from agriculture, forestry and fishing”.48 On the
other hand, Dobrojević49 claims that “in 1951, according to the official statistics,
48
Brkljača, Seka. “Bosna i Hercegovina u prvim godinama Drugog svjetskog rata od 1939. do 1941.
godine,” in: Bosna i Hercegovina 1941: novi pogledi : zbornik radova, ed. Husnija Kamberović
(Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2012), 16.
49
Ivana Dobrivojević, “Od ruralnog ka urbanom: modernizacija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine
u FNRJ 1945–1955” in: Identitet Bosne i Hercegovine kroz historiju: zbornik radova, ed. Husnija
Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2011), 19.
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the number of female workers was 90 percent higher than in 1939”, while “the
most dramatic rise was recorded in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the number
of women in work increased two and a half times.” The post-revolutionary period
represented an historical break with the agrarian economy and capitalism of “the
old Yugoslavia” and created jobs for everyone, especially women, but it was not
without its contradictions. Still, this shift in valorisation of work carried the promise of a new way life never before seen. This is what Vida Tomšić, the first chairwoman of the AFŽ, in her report titled “O radu i zadacima žena na socijalnom
staranju” (“On the Work and the Tasks of Women in Social Care”):
As we are trying to build a strong Yugoslavia that could stand on its own feet
economically we are facing the great task of creating better life conditions
for the broadest working masses […] This is not just about renewing the old
Yugoslavia, we are aiming higher. We are trying to create a way of life that
never existed in Yugoslavia before. (Nova žena, 5:4, 1945).
Although the emancipation of women in socialist Yugoslavia did not mean the
end of patriarchy or jobs for all women, it did have an enormous positive impact
on the attainment of equality and made it possible for masses of women to enter
the world of work50 by “aligning the interests of women with the interests of the
proletariat”51 during WW II. In addition, the combativeness, anti-fascism, internationalism and political enlightenment working in conjunction helped women
organised in the AFŽ, especially in its early years, until 1947, “to think like statesmen first and foremost”, which essentially laid the groundwork for the realisation
of all the equal rights won in battle.52
3.3. Common Struggle: National Sisterhood and Unity
In her two poems titled “Uz mangal” (“By the Hot Coal Pan”) and “Žena s transparentom” (“The Woman With a Protest Sign”) (Nova žena 12:27, 1946) Razija
Handžić talks about “Muslim women old and new”. Describing the way they move,
in the former poem she says: “In grim garbs and black veils as though in a dream
they glide away, like blinded birds, like vestals accurs’d, on they glide on a sunny
day”, and in the latter: “to reach the women at the congress, swaying like heavy
seas, the one in the veil holding a sign would wade through blood, it seems”.
50
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., p. 2.
51
Ibid., 122.
52
Ibid. 117.
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Revolutionary ardour, struggle, unity and literacy drives were highlighted through
“the new”, while the valorisation of individual suffering and sacrifice in the struggle against fascism was transformed into a matter of national importance.53 Of
national importance for the new Yugoslavia were also “equality and co-operation
between all the nations and Croat-Serb sisterhood”, while “for the tradition-bound
Muslim women […] joining and working for the AFŽ meant a new life.”54 Still, an
analysis of Nova žena indicates that it was upper-class Muslim women like Vahida
Maglajlić, “the only Muslim (Bosniak) People’s Hero”, her mother Ćamila (kadi’s
wife) and her whole family in Banja Luka who led the way in spreading the ideas
of the NOB and the AFŽ among women of all faiths.55 The interpellation into the
modern and educated “Yugoslav” woman was conducted through the ZAVNOBiH
ideology, according to which she was “neither a Serb, nor a Croat, nor a Muslim”
but all three at the same time as a Yugoslav, and all three groups were fighting
fascism together. Zealous work on building the unity of women in BiH regardless
of their ethnic and religious affiliation during the NOB was necessary to massify
the AFŽ to two million members not only through discourse but through unified
anti-fascist praxis as well.
Through the prism of today’s ethnically divided BiH, this simultaneous interpellation of Serb, Croat and Bosniak (Muslim) women seems nothing short of
incredible, as do the words of Dušanka Kovačević, who legitimised this unity by
invoking their joint struggle for freedom:
For the lives of our children, for the peace of our homes, to make sure killing
and slaughtering should never return, we joined hands. The unity of Serb,
Muslim and Croat women shall explain to the world where our strength to
fight and our belief in triumph comes from. At the Congress, Serb, Muslim
and Croat women will talk about their children who are liberating the country together, about the work they do together. About Serb women who collected seed for a burnt Muslim village, about Muslim women who brought
gifts to hospitals and died for freedom in concentration camps. Our unity
will be the women’s most beautiful gift to the Congress, to our young country, her happiness and future (Nova žena, 1:6, 1945).
In the same issue, a piece by Jela Bićanić “Muslimanke u borbi” (“Muslim Women
in the Struggle”) touchingly describes the suffering of Mrs Maglajlić, the kadi’s
53
54
55
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., pp. 117.
Ibid., 116.
Duganžić, Andreja and Jušić, Adela. “Intervju sa Alijom Maglajlićem,” Arhiv antifašističke borbe
žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, accessed on 21 November 2016., http://www.afzarhiv.org/
items/show/16.
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wife and the mother of the people’s heroine Vahida Maglajlić, whom “they locked
up, furious about being unable to catch her son. But nothing could break this
mother whose three children fell in combat, and the fourth is now in a concentration camp. She is still cheerful and believes in our victory. ‘When we come to
Banja Luka, I shall lead the celebratory kolo’, she often says, ‘and I’ll be wearing
three red stars by my heart!’”
“During the first autumn of our people’s struggle Ajša Karabegović left her
hometown. In the free territories she displayed exemplary commitment in
nursing our fighters at the hospital in Jošavac. Chetnik criminals have cut
her wonderful spirited life short.”
“At the same time, a mass action to help the Partisans was underway. Raifa
Čorbegović smuggled hand grenades in a pram, under her baby.”
“The mother of the Sarač sisters had to see her daughters shackled by the
fascist, yet she kept smuggling leaflets and ammunition in and out of Banja
Luka.”
In these quotes we see the rise of a new Muslim woman who subverts patriarchal
culture by smuggling leaflets under her veil56 or grenades in her pram in order
to build a new BiH in Yugoslavia. Just like her neighbours, she proudly sent her
children to war, relishing the newly-forged brotherhood and unity of our peoples.
The topos of sacrifice and courage is intertwined with love, which serves as a
justification of the sacrifice:
“As long as we love one another so!” [Mrs Maglajlić] said directly. “That
is why we have no regrets. Five of my children are fighting. Three of my
fighters have fallen. And I am not crying. Mothers of heroes do not cry.”
In the article “One su pale za slobodu” (They Fell for Freedom) in the same issue
it is stated that Vahida Maglajlić “gathers women, brings Muslim, Serb and
Croat women together in a common struggle. Vahida’s sincere and proven love
of people opens up the hearts of bereaved Serb mothers, who accept her as one
of their own.”(Nova žena 1:14, 1945). Anti-fascism, both professed and lived, has
always been averse to nationalisms, which now employ historical revisionism
to rehabilitate former fascists and collaborationists in the cultural and political
mainstream after the wars of the 1990s:57 58 at the Congress of Serbian Women
56
Rada Vranješević also used a veil to smuggle illegal post although she was not a Muslim.
57
Radanović, Milan. Kazna i zločin: snage kolaboracije u Srbiji: odgovornost za ratne zločine (1941-1944) i
vojni gubici (1944-1945) (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2015).
58
Čović, Bartul. “Povijest pišu gubitnici”. Novosti,
http://www.portalnovosti.com/povijest-pisugubitnici, accessed on 10 September 2016.
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alone, these women “indicted those who, in the name of ‘Serbness’, have killed
tens of thousands of Serbs in concentration camps and dungeons”, who “have
killed the finest sons of Serbia or turned them over to Germans” and “stoked
hatred and killing among the fraternal peoples of Yugoslavia” (Nova žena 1:14,
1945). By condemning these practices in the strongest possible terms, Nova
žena purposely created an ideological matrix for building a new unity on the
experience of suffering on all sides:
The women of Bosnia and Herzegovina have put in great effort and made
great sacrifices. The enemy spared no one. […] Ustašas slaughtered Serb
children, chetniks found their “revenge” in the blood and screams of Croat
and Muslim civilians. (Nova žena 1:6, 1945)
At the first county conference of the AFŽ held in the county of Bihać it was said
that “after the presentations, many women, old and young, Muslims, Serbs and
Croats, talked about their labour, their struggle, their suffering, about the crimes
of the occupiers, of ustashas and chetniks”, that they were “meeting freely for
the first time in [their] lives to decide their own fate” and that they were “happy to
participate in the political life of their people.” (Nova žena 1:19, 1945)
Joint labour also strengthened the unity of women of different ethnic backgrounds:
The property of A. Mešić, the enemy of the people, has been planted with
maize for our poor. A hundred acres of land is to be hoed and moulded!
Serb, Muslim and Croat women are stepping up one by one, old and young,
peasants and city women. (Nova žena 5:13, 1945)
The strengthening of the unity of people, as the new political Yugoslavness, on the
wings of the struggle against fascism, went hand in hand with the recognition of
all ethnic and religious particularities through which unity was built on the basis
of the pain and horrors of the war in which women, too, participated actively. The
article “Hrvatice Bosne i Hercegovine” (Croat Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
(Nova žena 1945 2:3–4) states that “Croat women must realise that the NOB is
the fulfilment of the centuries-old aspirations of Croats” and draws a parallel between the struggle of Matija Gubec, “the immortal leader of Croat peasantry”,
against the nobility in the Peasants Uprising of 1573 and the NOB, as both conflicts
had elements of class struggle. In this strategy of recontextualising or equating
the struggles of the Croatian people in the last five centuries with the NOB, the
NOB becomes a reflection of “the centuries-old aspirations of Croats”, something
“the finest Croat patriots have given their lives for throughout the glorious Croatian history” (Nova žena 1945 2:3). Thus the Croatian goals are equated with the Yu-
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goslav goals, as opposed to the ISC (Independent State of Croatia) ones, because
the ISC is “a monstrous criminal creation.” The biblical metaphor of a blind man in
the dark whom Jesus bade see, quite easy for the broadest masses to understand,
was used to say that the (Croatian) people “has been blind so far”, meaning in the
ISC period, but “has come to see now” through the NOB (ibid.).
Yet, such reports of unity were actually addressing the lingering problem of nationalism, about which we can find out more not so much from the magazine
itself, but rather from the minutes of meetings of the AFŽ’s Sarajevo and Banja
Luka county-regional (sreski, regionalni) committees. Nova žena wrote, in cushioned language, about priests “openly hostile to the NOB” who nonetheless had
“great influence” on women as one of the reasons why many Croat men and
women remained outside of the NOB (Nova žena 1945 2:3-4). But from the minutes of the AFŽ meetings we learn that the situation on the ground was far more
severe and that the magazine served as a tool of propaganda that responded
directly to the problem of nationalism and religious divisions. From the minutes
of the Okružni Odbor of the AFŽ Sarajevo held on 25 November 1945 we find out
that the influence of the clergy among Croats was extremely strong, that “nuns
rip down Narodni Front’s posters” and that “in the Croat village of Čajdaš, many
balls were cast into the blind box” which the priests refer to as “the faith box”. We
also learn that “few Serb women in the municipality of Zaborac turn out for meetings” and that they “do not want to mingle with Muslims at all, especially those
from across the Drina”, but also that “chetniks obstruct the women’s work” – just
before the elections they “distributed flyers and opened fire, so that women are
afraid to engage in work.” From the minutes of meetings of the Okružni Odbor
of the AFŽ Banja Luka we also learn about chetniks threatening to “cut off the
hair of women who go to vote”, and that “this is what happened in the districts of
Piskavica, Prnjavor and Srbac.”59
It was clear that 1945 was a crucial year; these articles were published in February, when the war was yet to end officially, but it was obvious enough that the
Narodni Front with Josip Broz at its helm would emerge the victor. Because
there is no research from 1945 about it, it is thankless work speculating about
how common people felt at the time and whether they sidelined their ethnic
background and affiliation in favour of the new Yugoslavness. Yet, in these articles we glean significant ideological interpellation of common people into Yugoslavness, buttressed by the common experience of suffering under fascists,
and by the desire to build a new, better life.
59
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Banja Luka - Izvještaj o radu Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a
Banja Luka od 26.11.1945.’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 118/1, 1945.
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3.4. Mass Literacy Campaigns
When it comes to features that distinguished BiH from other republics of the
SFRY, it must be said that BiH had the highest rate of female illiteracy at the
time, second only to that of Kosovo and Macedonia. Due to the customs and traditions of the Ottoman Empire, women in BiH, especially Muslims, but also rural
Christians, were much more isolated from public life, including education.60 61
A wide range of rights and the visibility of female fighters may have played the
most important role in the mobilisation of young, educated women and workers. Still, they cannot take all the credit for the movement’s massive two-million
membership. According to Mitra Mitrović,62 “for the first time in their lives, peasant women were appreciated for their everyday work – stitching, cooking, planting, grinding the grain for more people than just their family.” With this cohort,
which comprised the majority of women at the time, education and literacy drives
played a major role in their mobilisation.
The People’s Liberation Movement (NOP) created a new figure of a woman in
BiH, bold, combative and determined. Those who quietly put up with all the
hardship before the war, have been elevated to the rank of valiant freedom
fighters. The doors of people’s government, schools and courses have been
opened to women. Thirsty for knowledge, they have started to learn (Nova
žena 1:6, 1945)
In a society in which education was reserved for women from higher social strata,
conditions were met for mass education of women as a precondition for modernisation.
“We should launch a proper campaign against illiteracy”, said comrade Olga
Kovačić. “Not a single child in our villages, towns and cities, not a single
woman shall remain illiterate.” (Nova žena 5:5, 1945)
On page 20 of the first issue of Nova žena, just before the masthead which reveals
that the issue was printed in Sanski Most, there is an editor’s note: “Dear comrade, you are holding the first issue of the gazette of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Broad masses of our women wish to learn, to become enlightened. They
demand the press, they demand answers to the many questions which interest
them.” Here – and in subsequent issues, too – we see insistence on mass literacy,
especially female literacy, which followed other emancipatory efforts.
60
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., pp. 27–31.
Popov Momčinović, Zlatiborka, Giomi, Fabio and Delić, Zlatan. “Uvod: period austrougarske
uprave” u Zabilježene – žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku, ed. Jasmina Čaušević.
Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar and Fondacija Cure, 2014., pp. 24–26.
62
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., pp. 142.
61
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The second issue is dominated by an article titled “Bosna i Hercegovina neće
ostati nepismena” (“Bosnia and Herzegovina Will Not Remain Illiterate”) (Nova
žena 2:7, 1945) from which we find out that the occupation found the country in
a state of great backwardness, to which people were “until recently, mostly resigned.” In the same issue it is stated that “according to 1931 data, the state of
literacy was as follows: in Bosnia, 31 percent are literate, and 69 percent illiterate. In Herzegovina, 34 percent are literate, 66 percent illiterate. The illiteracy
rate is disproportionately higher among womenfolk. In Bosnia, 39 percent of
men are literate, in Herzegovina 55 percent, whilst in Bosnia and Herzegovina
only 15 percent of women are literate.” (Nova žena 2:7, 1945). It is also stated that
12,500 adults learnt to read and write behind the front lines during the struggle. The magazine writes about this enthusiasm and the idea of progress for all
walks of life using lyrical yet folksy language:
The force of the uprising filled the masses with an enthusiasm for culture.
Until recently mostly resigned to their backwardness, the young and old,
women and children all wished to learn to read and write. Pen and paper
have become part of our fighters’ combat kit. […] A girl knits socks, sings
songs of struggle straining to embroider letters on a towel, kerchief and
socks. A little shepherd tends to his flock, engraves his first letters into a
spindle and a water bottle, asks every fighter he meets for a pen and paper, to teach himself to write. Girls and women keep their favourite book
of songs and stories of struggle in their bosom. Literacy becomes mandatory, at the front and in the rear. An illiterate nurse, writing her first letters, shouts: “I thought this was much harder, I thought I was never going
to learn …” A woman from Podgrmeč teaches herself to write using her
son’s tablet. Even old women in the region of Podgrmeč are wont to say:
“It is a sin to remain illiterate in this day and age.”
The credit for spreading literacy primarily goes to the popular movement which
“took illiterate Serb, Muslim and Croat women to a literacy course, so that together they may learn to read and write.” (ibid.) The alarming illiteracy rates
necessitated that those who were able to read and write teach those who were
unable. Bringing people to literacy was a volunteering effort, and every woman
shockworker engaged in reconstruction was expected to “find a comrade who
will devote her free time, strength and love to introduce her to books.” (Nova žena
5:13, 1945). In the same article, young members of the AFŽ and Young Communist League say that “we must learn if we want to teach,” because “pen and paper
will teach us to appreciate the rights we have won and help us understand our
freedom and equality, to learn the duties of a free, upstanding citizen” and also
“put us at liberty, as new mothers, to raise our children for a rich, happy life in
a new, born-again Yugoslavia.” (Nova žena, 5:13, 1945). From the minutes of the
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first meeting of the educational arm of the Central Committee of the AFŽ, held
on 23 November 1945, we learn that in the interest of effectiveness four subsections were formed: a sub-section for the liquidation of illiteracy, a sub-section
for political education, a sub-section for general education and a sub-section for
courses.
“Illiteracy” is a metaphorical enemy, and as such needs to be “liquidated”, a
“campaign should be launched” against it (ibid.), and we need to “arm ourselves
with knowledge”. Literacy courses and press readings were organised at gettogethers in each hamlet and village where “the press is read in groups”, “the
radio is listened to collectively”, and there were “mobile libraries” as well as
“NF reading groups”.63 In addition to the AFŽ’s social affairs section, in charge of
children’s homes and homes for the disabled, a propaganda section in charge of
campaigns, radio and press, as well as an education section in charge of bringing youth and adults to literacy were growing stronger in BiH, which made literacy a precondition for the construction of the “new” woman:
Then the 60-year-old Zlata Halić signed up for the course and sent a
message to other women: “Shame on all the young women who aren’t
signing up. I’ll be the first to go, though I’ve got one foot in the grave, I
want to die literate.” Darinka Tasić from the village of Bijela […] learnt all
the letters in eight days. This is a wonderful example which show how new
free women amaze with their work, just as they amazed with their heroism
in battle. (Nova žena 5:13, 1945).
4. The Significance of the AFŽ Today:
Ethno-Capitalism, Repatriarchisation, Illiteracy
Although subjective, as becomes a qualitative analysis, what has been crucial
for me is reading the archive as an exercise in critical literacy. It is important
especially because of the generations for whom historical revisionism by ethnonational-capitalist elites has literally blocked all socialist and anti-fascist
horizons. After the destruction of the SFRY and the emergence of new nationstates, the knowledge and experiences of the Yugoslav NOB, in spite of their
contradictions, have been completely neglected and revised through neoliberal,
anti-communist narratives. I will try to unpack these claims by describing their
interaction.
63
Glavni Odbor of the AFŽ BiH, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a - zapisnik
sa sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945’, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/nedostaje broj stranice, 1945.
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In spite of the proliferation of identity politics and twenty years of so-called gender mainstreaming, which promoted liberal ideas of women’s human rights,64
individualism and entrepreneurship, today there is very little “basis for collective
mobilisation of women”,65 unlike in the period of creation of the new Yugoslav
woman. In spite of all the limitations and stages of Yugoslav modernity, it must
be said that patriarchy survived in the SFRY, especially in the private sphere66
where, for instance, domestic violence remained a taboo into the 1980s.67 This
was never completely solved, in spite of the efforts undertaken by feminists in the
1970s,68 and the representation of women in Yugoslav film in the late 1980s was
such that it recontextualised the women’s demand for the benefits of socialist
modernity, such as employment, as insufficient motherhood.69 “Killing the actual
woman was preferable to letting the traditional ideal of the woman as a mother
die”,70 and Badema, the “bad mother” from Ademir Kenović’s film Kuduz was ultimately killed by an ethnically conscious man who kills “for our cause”, who is “a
hero, not a criminal”, which, according to Jovanović, foreshadows the 1990s wars
that brought ethnic homogenisation and spelt the end of socialism, for which
they needed repatriarchisation.
The post-socialist period saw a stricter division between two “seemingly separate, but in reality networked and interdependent spheres of productive and re64
Helms, Elissa. Innocence and Victimhood: Gender, Nation, and Women’s Activism in Postwar BosniaHerzegovina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.
65
Kaneva, Nadia. “Mediating Post-socialist Femininities: Contested Histories and visibilities”. Feminist
Media Studies 15 (1) (2015), 12.
66
Dunja Rihtman Auguštin, Etnologija naše svakodnevnice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1998.
67
Majstorović, “(Un)Doing Feminism in Post-Yugoslav Media Spaces”, 1096.
68
In the 1970s, Yugoslavia saw the arrival of the second wave of feminism, encouraged by the student
protests of 1968. In 1978, the international conference “Drug-ca – Žensko pitanje. Novi pristup?”.
(Tovarish/Tovarka – the Woman Question: New Approach?) The conference was the first tumultuous
appearance of feminists on the public scene in the socialist Yugoslavia. The focus on the woman
question and the problem of the sexual division of labour was highlighted by the prominent slogan
of the confederation: “Proleteri svih zemalja – ko vam pere čarape?” (Workers of the world – who
washes your socks?). The topics included patriarchy, the intersection of feminism and Marxism,
feminism and psychoanalysis, as well as identity, sexuality, language and the invisibility of women
in culture and scholarship. Also discussed were the everyday lives of women, discrimination in the
public and private sphere, women’s double burden, violence and the survival of traditional
patriarchal roles. (Čaušević 2014)
69
Nebojša, Jovanović, “Bosanski psiho: Kuduz, rat spolova i kraj socijalizma”. Sarajevske sveske: Da li
je Balkan muškog roda” 39/40 (2013), 156–175.
70
Ibid., 167.
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productive labour” which have been “hierarchically reorganised.”71 Reproductive
work was naturalised through repatriarchisation as exclusively women’s, whilst
ethno-nationalism and the Dayton division of the country as desirable affiliations in the new capitalist society further galvanised these relations. According
to Močnik:72
In tightening the control and discipline, whatever tools are at hand will do:
religious ideology, ethnic loyalty, traditional values, the renewal of the patriarchal family, the resurrection of traditional patterns, “retraditionalisation” – all of these are new modes of socialness coerced by contemporary
capitalism.
The contemporary capitalism which we have in BiH today as a species of the
so-called authoritarian capitalism73 typical of all ex-Yugoslav countries whose
captains are mostly profiteers of the 1992–1995 war ensured the division of
assets through ethnic cleansing and subsequent privatisation. It ensured the
return of patriarchy, which established continuity with the legacy of the colonial,
agrarian, pre-socialist era. As was the case before WWII, the collusion of
institutionalised religion and ruling elites in the new post-socialist era in which
power is evenly distributed between the clergy and ethno-capitalists, society
has been retraditionalised74 75 and gender roles and relations repatriarchised,
which goes hand in hand with the rising poverty and unemployment.
I base the repatriarchisation hypothesis on the depatriarchising potential of the
socialist period, which is at odds with the present rise of misogyny, discrimination, exploitation and violence76 as integral parts of the process of restauration of
capitalist relations. Within these relations, social reproductive labour is “classi71
Burcar, Lilijana “Iz socijalizma natrag u kapitalizam: repatrijarhalizacija društva i redomestifikacija žena”. Dva desetljeća poslije kraja socijalizma. Zagreb: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung,
2014, pp. 114.
72
Močnik, Rastko. “Dvije vrste fašistoidnih politika”. Novosti, no. 677 (2012). http://arhiva.
portalnovosti.com/2012/12/dvije-vrste-fasistoidnih-politika1/, accessed on 20 August 2016.
73
Dolenec, Danijela. “Prema reartikulaciji otpora ekonomskom liberalizmu”.
http://slobodnifilozofski.com/2016/09/prema-reartikulaciji-otpora-ekonomskom-liberalizmu.html
(2016), accessed on 10 October 2016.
74
Popov-Momčinović, Zlatiborka. Ženski pokret u Bosni i Hercegovini: artikulacija jedne
kontrakulture. Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE and Centar za empirijska
istraživanja religije u BiH, 2013.
75
Leinert Novosel, Smiljana. Žena na pragu 21.stoljeća – između majčinstva i profesije
(Zagreb: Ženska grupa TOD, EDAC, 1999), 18.
76
Marina Blagojević, “Mizoginija: nevidljivi uzroci, bolne posledice” in Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji:
diskursi i prakse, drugo izdanje, ed. Marina Blagojević (Belgrade: AŽIN, 2002), 31–55.
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fied as non-labour, not worth a mention”,77 which endangers women’s economic
self-sufficiency and puts them “in a position of complete or partial dependence
on their families […] reducing them to the level of socially and politically disenfranchised subjects, that is, second class citizens”,78 which says something about
intergenerational solidarity as opposed to state intervention in the field of care.
Today, it is precisely this type of unpaid labour that the feminist critique of the socalled care economy79 sees as further facilitating the exploitation and devaluation
through the hidden “sexual contract”80 of patriarchal capitalism.
“Anti-communist revisionism has become the dominant way of remembering
socialist Yugoslavia”, which in turn “conveniently coincides with the neoliberal
economic measures of the new political elites.81 Theorists today speak about the
so-called post-fascism of the elites in contemporary practices of the new liberal capitalist states reflected in racism, homophobia, the abolition of workers’
rights, media manipulations, bureaucratic apparatuses which crush dissent
within institutions and hate-mongering campaigns against dissident groups and
individuals. In such a world, a woman solves problems by “buying the product”,
while unpaid domestic labour and motherhood, ideologised as “natural”, in fact
create invisible surplus value for capitalism. While class inequality within all
groups deepens, especially among women, an organisational effort is missing
because the left cannot articulate these contradictions and the struggles attached to them.
Discourse after the 1992–1995 war in BiH has permanently broken up the former
sense of togetherness among women by producing solely Bosniak, Serb and
Croat victims, and there has been little effort to turn the experience of war into
a common experience of suffering on all sides. This wartime suffering has been
exacerbated by post-war suffering embodied in the experience of transition and
the precariousness of life in what used to be a common economic and political
space, and is now two entities and a district in BiH. Except for the handful of leftleaning feminists with a class consciousness, who do not merely follow the liberal agendas of the numerous women’s and human rights organisations, we do
Burcar, “Iz socijalizma natrag u kapitalizam: repatrijarhalizacija društva i re-domestifikacija žena”,
114.
78
Ibid., 115.
77
Folbre, Nancy. Who Cares? A Feminist Critique of the Care Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg
Stiftung, 2014.
80
Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
79
81
Krašovec, Primož. “Svi anti-komunisti su tigrovi od papira”. http://slobodnifilozofski.com/2010/06/
primoz-krasovec-svi-antikomunisti-su.html, accessed on 20 September 2016.
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not have a single political voice attempting to gain the trust of masses of women
by simultaneously calling on Serb, Bosniak and Croat women to stand up for their
rights as enemies of the rising ethnonationalist fascism. Such interpellations inherent in referring to all women in BiH, Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, as Bosnian
and Herzegovinian (just as they were once referred to as new Yugoslavs), remain,
unfortunately, marginal and unorganised. Seeing that they are not articulated in
the programme of any political party, they remain outside of discursive practice,
as their introduction is considered too risky for the ruling Dayton order.
Last but not least, when it comes to education, the results of the 2013 census
indicate that, 70 years after WWII, not only has illiteracy in BiH not been eradicated, at 2.82 percent it is also highest in the region, compared to 1.9 percent in
Serbia and 0.8 in Croatia82. Of the 89,794 illiterate persons in our country, 77,557
are women. The living experience of the Dayton order, which has been furthering ethnic exclusion and isolation for over twenty years (this is also shown by the
census results – both entities are to a great extent ethnically homogeneous),83
renders impossible any large-scale effort to organise women that would work
towards a state-sanctioned policy of promoting literacy and education for women, especially those from rural areas, and those of advanced age.84
With all of this in mind, we see that the changes and efforts made by the AFŽ
during WWII were emancipatory, especially for the women who had previously
never enjoyed any kind of privileges – peasants, workers, youth. Whilst most
of this legacy has been completely destroyed, some remnants of it can still be
barely discerned, smothered under the wave of robbery and privatisation. In a
patriarchal ethno-capitalist hegemony that is today’s BiH, led by nationalist parties as the main political actors backed by EU agencies, tradition cherry-picks a
past to match the manufactured present, in order to create a sense of continuity.
Rada Vranješević and Vahida Maglajlić do not figure in this past, especially not
at the same time. The AFŽ Archive represents, if nothing, a counter-hegemony
82
Arnautović, Marija. “Popis u BiH: Nacionalnost važnija od pismenosti”, 30 June 2016.
http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/popis-bih-nacionalnost-vaznija-od-pismenosti/27831061.html,
accessed on 13 September 2016.
83
As for the ethnic structure by entity, there are 74 percent of Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH,
22.4 percent of Croats and 3.60 percent of Serbs. In the Republika Srpska there are 81.51 percent
of Serbs, 2.41 percent of Croats and 13. 99 percent of Bosniaks. In Brčko District there are 42.36
percent of Bosniaks, , 20.66 of Croats and 34. 58 percent of Serbs (Arnautović 2016). More at:
http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/popisni-rezultatinakon-25-godina-u-federaciji-vecina-bosnjaciu-rs-srbi/27830387.html.
84
http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/u-bih-gotovo-90000-nepismenih
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in response to these regimes by introducing into discourse powerful actors,
women of all social and ethno-national backgrounds, who organise, charge at
the enemy, work and build and change the existing social relations.
5. For Some Future “Grand Times”
How to “write down in charcoal” to “fan the fire”, to remember these struggles
not as a “picture hanging on the wall” in which we are stuck “forever and forevermore”, but as fuel for the active mobilisation of today’s women, now that most
female veterans and fronties (AFŽ members) are deceased, and the knowledge
of the struggles is absent from the public sphere, as well as everyday life. Insights into transgenerational, suppressed knowledge shed light on the battles
won by the women of the day riding on a wave of revolution, but these discourses
need to be reactivated by placing them in “a homogenous and empty time” into a
time “which is fulfilled by the here-and-now”, otherwise “not even the dead will
be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious.”85
Writing about the great organisation and movement that is the AFŽ requires
great effort, first and foremost because of the unavailability of the main actors and archives, as well as because of the complexity of the relations within
and around it. The AFŽ’s influence was greatly weakened, especially after the
directive of the Central Committee of CPY from January 1944 when the CPY dissolved its internal hierarchy.86 In the article titled “Za čvršću povezanost među
odborima AFŽ-a” (“For a Closer Connection Between the AFŽ’s Committees”)
(Nova žena 6:9-10, 1945) we see a trend of abolishing the organisations internal
hierarchical structure and submitting to the Narodni Front, that is, people’s liberation committees joined by the so-called “progressive women”.87 The article
begins with a generalisation that it is “natural that every organisation made up
of living beings should expand and develop”, heralding the end of the AFŽ and
its marginalisation in relation to the NF.88 89 The decision is legitimised in the
article via claims that the “strict submission of the lower-level [AFŽ] committee
to the higher-level one has started to separate women from the people’s movement as a whole” and that the organisation had become “too cramped to receive
new female anti-fascists” so “instead of closed, cliquish AFŽ committees, broad
people’s committees (NO) are being created now.”
85
Benjamin, op. cit.
Jancar-Webster, op. cit., p. 148.
Sklevicky, op. cit., p. 120.
88
Ibid.
89
Jancar-Webster, op. cit.
86
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It was precisely Sklevicky90 who wrote in most detail about the vertical mobility of
women, the ambiguity of the AFŽ’s tasks in relation to the NF and the phasing out
of direct work with women; in the latter two she saw the end of this organisation
in 1953, after which the AFŽ remained “at the margins of the text of history.”91
With the women’s organisation evidently lacking “autonomy of the goal” and the
“latent fear” of “feminist deviations” in parts of the Party ranks, it was clear that
the revolutionary zeal of the AFŽ and its depatriarchalising potential,92 discernible
from Nova žena, would not last long enough to carry out total depatriarchisation of
either Bosnian-Herzegovinian or Yugoslav society, both of which, in fact, needed
“more socialism.”
Today there is no broad-based participation of women in everyday political, social
and economic life in BiH, and nobody articulates why female engagement would
be necessary in the first place. We see similar observations in the closing speech
given at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the AFŽ Croatia by the chairwoman Cana Babović, who said “that we have got nothing in particular, nothing
specific, some issue to fight for as women, is a different matter.”93
Women fighters recognised the meaning of Yugoslav national unity forged in the
anti-fascist struggle. They had won the battles for literacy, education and equal
pay, putting socialist and feminist ideals in practice as much as they could. The
Yugoslav woman, who had won her emancipation, equality and access to the
world of work by fighting Nazi Germany and traitors shoulder to shoulder with
her comrades-in-arms, knew that she was the backbone of the struggle, and that
she must be the backbone of the new society forged in battle:
So Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Dalmatian, Macedonian,
Voivodinian and Serbian women parted ways, each went to her homeland
overcome by the joy of living in such grand times, working on the large
part of the effort to build a new life. And in each of their souls a decision
was solidifying, unshakeable as a vow: we, women, have been the backbone of the NOB, the backbone of the superhuman effort of our peoples
to free their motherland, but from now on we will be the backbone of her
magnificent reconstruction, of her happy future. (Nova žena 5:5, 1945)
90
91
Sklevicky, op. cit., 121
Ibid., 113.
Although they had rights, women in the SFRY started to exercise them only in the 1960s. Katz (2011,
154) argues that “the equality of men and women […] rested more on the laws than on some crucial
change of relations in everyday life. The Bosnian-Herzegovinian woman started to exercise her
rights won in the 1940s only in the 1960s, when society started to achieve more substantial economic
progress.” In this regard we may also talk of some thirty years of depatriarchalising potential.
93
Sklevicky, op. cit., pp. 122.
92
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This cache of the AFŽ media texts from the end of WWII reveals a promise of a
socialist revolution with a profusion of emancipatory opportunities for women
of all classes, ages and ethnic backgrounds, especially for the great majority of
unemployed, poor women who can only be further exploited by capitalism. To
write about that which cannot be suppressed in the AFŽ’s experience is to reclaim it through contemporary socialist and feminist political practices as the
Blochian principle of hope in which social utopia creates awareness of and abolishes human and female misery. It is to reject and resist the status quo in which
feigned nationalism laced with patriarchy has been masking mass exploitation
under ethno-capitalists for two decades now by producing kids for war and unpaid labour. To “fuse the horizons” from an historical distance is to repoliticise
the status quo by providing a “meeting point” for some future grand times where
we will able to organise for struggle. The knowledge about these horizons represents an alternative history crucial for understanding future social struggles for
a more egalitarian society, for resisting not only the capitalist mode of production
but also the production of “kids for war” which reverberates in the verses of the
contemporary Sarajevan poet Dijala Hasanbegović:94
I’m not giving you kids
for war:
I’m telling you with my palms facing upwards
palms sticky from the acrid yellow cords
which the cutthroats shall never cut.
Translated by Mirza Purić
94
Dijala Hasanbegović, “Djeca za rat”, http://darkocvijetic.blogspot.ba/2014/01/veliki-odmordijalahasanbegovic.html, accessed on 10 September 2016.
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Archival Materials:
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ – Zapisnik
sa sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945.’ Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/6, 1945.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Materijali Drugog kongresa AFŽa BiH održanog 12 – 13. Jula 1947’,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1543/109, 1947.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Banja Luka - Izvještaj o radu Okružnog
odbora AFŽ-a Banja Luka od 26.11.1945.’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo,
Kutija 1, 118/1, 1945.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a - zapisnik
sa sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945’, Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/nedostaje broj stranice, 1945.
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�KASJA JERLAGIĆ
Pencil drawings
����Heroism of Labor
The Women’s Antifascist
Front and the Socialist
Dispositive 1945–1953
BORIŠA
MRAOVIĆ
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1. Introduction
Any attempt to understand and valorize the rise and decline of the Women’s
Antifascist Front in Yugoslavia (AFŽ) today is faced with the question of how to
read and comprehend the organization’s archive. The problem is broader, however, and has to do not only with the AFŽ archive, but also with the archive as an
institution that enables contemporaneity through a critical view into the past,
as it appears precisely in the archives (where they exist) that constitute history as such.1 The AFŽ was formed in 1942 during the Second World War [and
is the result of long-term attempts to mobilize and organize women within the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), when the leaders of the people and the
nascent state were faced with difficult and urgent organizational and political
questions. The AFŽ integrated itself into the tradition of the international socialist movement, which, from the 1930s onwards, developed the idea of a Popular
front as a response to the fascist mobilization and rise to power. Tremendous
physical effort is imbued into the AFŽ’s history, first and foremost in organizing
the resistance against the local collaborators and the foreign occupation forces, followed by the post-war reconstruction of the country and the formation of
the state structures. The history of the AFŽ, however, bears witness to the dynamic convergence between strong social organizations and ideas and masses
of ‘common’ and ‘small’ women, who together with their male comrades created Yugoslav history. Though this history continues to live as a memory of the
few, the reconstruction of such a convergence is made rather difficult by the
intricate historical developments, the mutation of our political glossary and the
abandonment of previous socio-political formations.
Some of the basic insights of the more recent critical and feminist insights into
the women’s history (especially those relating to the questions of patriarchy’s
historic character and the effect of such a construct on the writing of history)
can help with the reconstruction. The pioneering return to this unwritten history
undertaken by Lydia Sklevicky is based precisely on this perspective insisting on
the fundamental importance of the content of the women’s question.2 Analysing
different understandings of the idea of continuity within historiography and history, anthropologist Svetlana Slapšak notes that the idea of “continuity which in
historiography does not have a very good position given that it is often used as
Parikka, Jussi. „Archival Media Theory An Introduction to Wolfgang Ernst’s Media Archaeology“ in
Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive, ed. Jussi Parikka, Minneapolis/London: University
of Minnesota Press, 2013., p. 7.
2
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene, ratovi, ed. Dunja Rihtman Auguštin. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996.
1
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a tool of nationalist imaginaries, in women’s history means something else. It is
inscribed into a socio-cultural formation which we known for a long time now,
whose real origins are almost unknown, and which still cannot be classified as
the past – the patriarchy“. The present and the AFŽ are thus related precisely
by this particular continuity, given that “it has no connection to ethnic mapping,
it cannot be aligned with a religious conglomerate or an ideology”.3 From this
perspective, the AFŽ’s organizational history, its internal relations as well as relations toward other elements of the nascent society can be reconstructed as a
reconstitution of patriarchal culture. This leaves us with the question of how to
understand the history of the abovementioned continuity despite the AFŽ.
More recent debates on the AFŽ analyze the way and the extent to which the
traditions of socialism and feminism collide and are expressed and combined in
the history of the organization. Maca Gržetić, in her speech at the first Congress
of the AFŽ Croatia in July of 1945, emphasized that women were “doubly unfree
and as twice as oppressed until the victory of the People’s Liberation Movement
(NOP) in our country”. Although it is hard to pinpoint what exactly she was referring to, we can assume that she had important questions regarding the two
traditions in mind. Unfortunately, the idea of double unfreedom, as a criterion
that could serve as an indicator of the real freedom of women, was never examined seriously, hence there was no plan for a double liberation.4 After the war,
the AFŽ is strongly integrated into the new order led by the Party as the ruling
societal power which considers the woman question as subordinate to the general goals of the Party.5 Thus the Party, at least in principle, considered that the
woman question would be solved through a progressive realization of the popular socialist rule. Given that even the AFŽ, almost without exception, advocated
this position, the important question arises as to how one of the two constituent
intellectual traditions embodied in the movement was eliminated and whether
the archive can tell us something about that.
On the other hand, if we leave this question aside for now, we can say that the
AFŽ was undoubtedly an exceptional organizational societal formation which, as
Adrijana Zaharijević notes, gave the woman question “a singular and autono3
Slapšak, Svetlana. “Balkanske žene: rod, epistemologija i istorijska antropologija“, ed.
Babić-Avdispahić, Jasminka, Bakšić-Muftić, Jasna, and Vlaisavljević, Ugo. Sarajevo: Centar za
interdisciplinarne postdiplomske studije, 2009. p. 63.
4
Sklevicky, 98, 107-108.
5
Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941 – 1945, Denver: Arden Press,
1990. p. 20.
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mous status that emerged in the spirit of a specifically socialist arrangement of
governance”.6 Over a relatively unique and long historical period, the AFŽ was
ensuring, in a most direct way, the social and economic reproduction of society
and the new social order through constant reproductive work and unpaid public
work on a massive scale. This leads us to the second, fundamental question:
what is to be gained from returning to this organization and its epoch today when
our participation in society is reduced more and more to individual labor on the
market valorized in monetary terms only, while patriarchal oppression remains
deeply structured in hybrid physical, transitional and digitally mediated spaces?
Can it point us to some significant questions and can it teach us anything? In
order to at least touch upon some of these questions, in this paper I focus on the
post-war period until the abolition of the AFŽ (1953). My ambition is to at least
partially reconstruct the dynamics of the creation of the heroic figure. My thesis
(and my hope) here is that a return to this path – a return to the female in constructing the heroic – can outline a new heroic figure that could intervene into the
present as an emancipatory figure. Something of this “figure that is coming” can
be discovered through an open, critical and creative return to collective action,
which has already been exemplified in our history.
There are three basic theoretical concepts I rely on here. The first is Foucault’s
concept of the dispositive. I understand the dispositive as a wide institutional and
conceptual framework and circuit which directs societal activity in general. It is
within this framework that the figure (relatively productive in symbolic terms)
that intrigues me most is constituted, i.e. the heroic figure. In this sense, the
second important theoretical concept I lean on is related to the reflections of
Alain Badiou, who seeks to point out the theoretical and political path towards
the reconstitution of the heroic as a figure that could extricate humanity from
the quagmire of the present.7 Last but not least, I rely on the concept of anthro6
Zaharijević, Adriana. “Fusnota u globalnoj istoriji: Kako se može čitati istorija jugoslovenskog
feminizma?” Sociologija 57:1 (2015), 76. However, Zaharijević adds: “Yet it was within that same
order, in the moment when the socialist arrangement based itself self-consciously on an even
more fundamental equality in self-management, that the independence of the woman question
was abolished. From that moment onwards it was treated as an integral part of the class question,
which is a key issue of society, an issue that all other issues could be reduced to.” See the debate
initiated by Nanette Funk’s text: ‘A very tangled knot: Official state socialist women’s organizations,
women’s agency and feminism in Eastern European state socialism’, European Journal of Women’s
Studies, 21, No. 4 (2014): 344-360; and the response to this text in Aspasia, The International
Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History: Is ‘Communist
Feminism’ a Contradictio in Terminis? 1 (2007); Ten Years After: Communism and Feminism
Revisited, 10, 2016.
7
Badiou, Alain. Philosophy for Militants, New York/London: Verso, 2012., p. 42 – 47.
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potechnology – a historically constructed set of basic epistemological assumptions about the technological construction of society through “proper upbringing” – which Ugo Vlaisavljević suggested as one of the imperative tools for the
analysis of Yugoslav socialism.8 When about it comes to the AFŽ itself, my basic
theoretical and empirical reference is the work of Lydia Sklevicky, to whom we
owe not only the renewed interest in the AFŽ, but also some important methodological and theoretical insights. The primary materials I use for illustrating
the dynamics of the construction and articulation of the heroic are the materials
from the Archive of the Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia.9
2. The Socialist Dispositive, Heroism and the Education of Society
The dispositive is a useful analytical tool as it enables us to have an all-encompassing view of the set of social and political relations that play a constitutive
role in the formation of a society. In a general sense we can understand it as a
strategic formation that responds to small or large scale needs. Foucault defines the dispositive as a “heterogeneous collection consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic attitudes,
in short that which is said as well as that which is left unsaid […] the dispositive
is a system of relations that can be established among these elements.”10 Relying on Foucault’s definition, Giorgio Agamben defines the dispositive as “a set of
practices and mechanisms (both linguistic and non-linguistic, juridical, technical and military) aiming to face an urgent need and to obtain an effect that is
more or less immediate”.11 The dispositive thus at the same time encompasses
a set of practices and a set of institutions and their respective discourses as
8
Vlaisavljević, Ugo. Lepoglava i univerzitet – Ogledi iz političke epistemologije, Sarajevo: Centar za
interdisciplinarne postdiplomske studije, 2003.
9
The Archival corpus is part of the Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. The Archive was
digitized between 2013 and 2015 by Crvena, while part of the archive was made available at:
www.afzarhiv.org.
10
We can find this “definition” in the translator’s note in the Serbian edition of Michel Foucalt’s The
Will to Knowledge – History of Sexuality (Mišel Fuko, Volja za znanjem – Istorija seksualnosti I).
Transl. Jelena Stakić: Karpos, 2006, p30. Also see: Jefferey Bussolini, “What is a Dispositive?
Foucault Studies 10, 2010, pp. 85-107.
11
Agamben, Giorgio. What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2009, p.8. For a critical review see: Pasquinelli, Matteo, “What an Apparatus is Not: On the
Archeology of the Norm in Foucault, Cangulihem and Goldstein, “Parrhesia Journal 22, 2015: 7989. Available at: www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia22/parrhesia22_pasquinelli.pdf
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well as their linkages that structure the relations within each individual sphere
of action. It includes biological and bodily, conceptual, material and institutional
efforts to construct a socialist world as a new world, which in practice are realized as the work of organizations and institutions committed to structuring
the relations of material construction of society, and its conceptual foundation.
Thus we can interpret the project of creating socialist Yugoslavia as a dynamic
construction of the socialist dispositive whose task it is to organize the newly
established labor, political, and production relations. It is within this strategic
space that the AFŽ is developed as a distinct element that, in a given historical moment, articulates itself as a response to a specific and urgent need for
the creation of a new society. The general process of dispositive construction
operates, from its very beginning, with one significant figure around which it
seeks to organize societal energy: the figure of the hero. Historically, the figure of the hero was usually associated with the imaginary and praxis of war,
although some traditions developed on somewhat different principles. Up until
the French Revolution, the figure of the hero as an individual “warrior” predominated, but was replaced by the democratic and collective figure of the soldier
in the revolution.12 Badiou believes that “our task is to find a new heroic figure,
which is neither the return of the old figure of religious or national sacrifice, nor
the nihilistic figure of the last man” which should be a “paradigm of heroism
from beyond war, a figure that would be neither that of the warrior nor that of
the soldier.”13 All socialist projects, to a lesser or greater degree, were attempts
to connect the figure of the hero with labor as a process, and thus establish
heroism of labor as the most important societal value.
Yugoslavia’s history, especially the early years of the second Yugoslavia, is a history of one such attempt. During this period, a demand was repeatedly made for
heroism as a unifying signifier that should directed the efforts to create a new
society. It was an important element of “anthropotechnology”, the general task
of which is to educate in a predefined manner. The economic model was simple:
“electrification and industrialization”, however, Vlaisavljević claims that things
were much subtler. According to him, the basic element of the transformation
upon which a new society was built was in fact an epistemological revolution that
was realized as a “technological revolution which in its ‘real essence’ was an
industrial revolution”, and even though it was realized “with power-lines and columns reaching to the remotest villages”, in another sense it was actualized as
a discourse “that described a new human and technological reality, while having
12
Badiou, Alain. Philosophy for Militants, New York/London: Verso, 2012
13
Ibid.
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an educational effect”.14 Anthropotechnology, as the knowledge of “technology of
liberation”, as a technological solution to societal labor as the basic mechanism
of the production of people, in a general sense includes material construction of
the human world, as well as the processes of proper upbringing of humans. Here
one must seek an explanation for the relatively quick abandonment of mass-organizational forms – especially in the case of women’s organizing – which then
determined the general character of the political and economic development of
the new state in a period of tumultuous post-war consolidation.
3. A Society of the People
How was the dispositive established immediately after the war? In the public political dictionary, words and phrases such as “socialism”, “communism”,
the “dictatorship of the proletariat” or the “socialist state” were mostly omitted. The figure of the people constructed in the Narodno-oslobodilački rat (NOR)
emerged victorious from the war, hence the political discourse is dominated by
the peoples’ democratic terminology: “the peoples’ rule”, “the peoples’ democracy”, “the rule of the working people”, “the peoples’ state”, etc. The Constitution of 1946 does not mention the word “socialism” but rather formulates “the
principle of the rule of the people through their representative bodies – peoples’
councils and peoples’ assemblies”.15 The state-crafting ideology was the continuation of the People’s Liberation War (NOR) tradition, the core cadre of which
consisted of frontmen within the CPY. In August 1945, the People’s Front of Yugoslavia (Narodni front, henceforth NF/NFJ) was established as a coalition of different groups and political parties lead by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.16
Even though it initially consisted of a number of weak political organizations, the
NF was quickly homogenized by “assimilation of bourgeois groups, that adopted
the program and lost their earlier individuality, or by the departure of the groups
that could not keep up with the development inspired by the CPY”.17 The forces
outside of the NF submitted to the political pressure and were removed.18 The
14
Vlaisavljević, p. 50.
15
Babić, Nikola. Na putevima revolucije. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1972., p. 125.
16
Bilandžić, Dušan. Historija Socijalističke Federativne Republiike Jugoslavije – Glavni procesi 1918. –
1985., Zagreb: Školska knjiga 1985. P. 110.
17
In Tito’s opinion, as noted by Bilandžić, the opposition “did not put forth a single idea that would
be better than what we put forth in the program of the Narodni Front. They [the opposition] have no
program at all. It is that old camp of enemies of the people pulling the wheel of history back, while
the wheel spins them around itself and will, of course, eventually crush them.” Bilandžić, History, 103.
18
Petranović notes: “Narodni Front Jugoslavije (NFJ) also comprised bourgeois parties that
approached it at the end of the war. Formally speaking, the NFJ’s principles provided for a multi-
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main force of the NF consisted of “mass organizations” – the United Alliance of
Anti-Fascist Youth, the AFŽ, United Trade Unions of Workers and Employees of
Yugoslavia. The Party’s ideas and its political platform “found their formal and
public expression in the programs of the mass organizations it created”19, while
the real control of decision-making posts in the newly formed bodies enabled
the Party to dominate all levels of social organization. Thus, as early as 1947, the
NF, through progressive industrialization, became “an apparatus for the execution of specific state tasks and economic operation, losing its markers as a political organization”.20
Building up on the foundations of the heroic popular armed resistance, the mass
inclusion of the people in work during the reconstruction project, was constructed as an important social value and duty, and this task was given to mass organizations. The Fifth Congress of the CPY emphasized the mobilization of the masses “in the struggle for socialism” and highlights the problem of bureaucratization
as a large obstacle to attracting the masses. Political work with the masses was
defined as the Party’s main task, whereas the NF was tasked with “explaining
the tasks and paths of our socialist development, the fight against the remnants
of the reaction, the interpretation of concrete measures of the popular government in the construction of socialism”, while developing “new relations between
party structure that would maintain party particularities within the organization and its steering
bodies – which was an expression of internationalist tendencies and aspirations to involve all
patriotic and democratically inclined citizens in the program of further revolutionary-democratic
development – but the significance of such multi-party structure was diminished by other
provisions. First and foremost, the existing parties had to accept the NFJ’s program, while their
members had to join the NFJ’s local councils. There were some minor elements of coalition, with
some exceptions, in the governing structures of the NFJ. The real existing political relations were
far more important than the formal aspects of this issue. Ever since its founding, the NFJ built
itself as a unique organization of masses that accepted and acknowledged the CPY’s rule. The
existing bourgeois groups could not endanger the political solidity of the organization without an
external intervention, as they were small and weak. The path toward democratic development,
according to the NFJ, did not lead through a multi-party organization, but rather its negation.“
Cf. Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918.–1988.: Treća knjiga: Socijalistička Jugoslavija
1945.–1988., Belgrade: Nolit, 1988, 43. Mass organizations made an effort to isolate the “noncommunist” aspects of their own traditions such as “old trade-unionism” among workers or
“feminist deviations” in the AFŽ. The election preparations during the summer and fall of 1945
included “political cleansing” during which “those opposing revolutionary measures were out,
and those who would implement these measures more consistently entered government bodies.”
Bilandžić, op. cit. p. 104.
19
Skleivcky, op. cit. p.108; Čupulo Dalibor. “Razvoj političkog i pravnog sistema Jugoslavije u
poslijeratnom periodu, 1945.–1968. – Pristup istraživanju i litetatura” PP 7, 1988: 203-204.
20
Petranović, op. cit. p.57.
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the working class and the working masses towards labor in organizing socialist
competition and elevate shock work” was a separate task.21
Through the NF, the people issued a general demand to the people to take up
work on a voluntary basis and to push themselves to the limit. Here it is important
to point to the ambiguous position of the Narodni Front of Yugoslavia and the AFŽ,
which, according to Lydia Sklevicky, unites the positions of the order in whose
name it acts. Organizational discourse was deeply integrated into the regime’s
narrative structures, and at the same time it discovered their clash with the
social reality of the position of women, which articulated itself through the real
connections inherent in movements, especially those movements whose main
aim is massification. This dual position points to a very specific configuration of
power and control. It consists of societal forces that consolidated the leading
role of the Party and the real political experience of countrywide mobilization of
the movement. The Party eliminated the basic political question of the structure
of governance and took on the task of directing general social development as
economic, while removing the question of power from the equation of the new
social contract.22 Although the history of Yugoslavia would still be marked by
various articulations of the national and workers’ question, the “economic base”
remained the main focus of the efforts to create social and political structures.
In 1946, general competition was introduced, that was transformed into a “mass
movement, comprising 60% of workers and civil servants”.23 Although today it
is difficult to understand the scope and character of such a mass mobilization,
it represented a turning point in the creation of Yugoslav society. The majority of the population was rural, while workers made up a much smaller portion
of the population. The country received limited influx of funds and donations in
goods; however “in a devastated country, facing general shortages and extinguished foreign trade – the mobilization of the masses [was] the only means of
reconstruction”.24 An important example is the mass mobilization of youth. The
21
Resolution of the Fifth Congress of the CPY on the basic upcoming organizational tasks of the CPY.
Available at: http://www.znaci.net/00001/138_77.pdf
22
Bilandžić, p. 111.
23
Petranović, p. 79.
24
Bilandžić writes: “The formation of the modern working class mainly from the ranks of peasantry
had actually just begun. Due to its fewness, youth and inadequate involvement in the armed
revolution, the great turn of the tide was the direct accomplishment of the working class, but of
the Communist Party – its political leadership. However, the working class recognized in this a
new revolutionary step that would prevent it from being reduced to a tool of economic power and
the political rule of the bureaucratic and technocratic class, which is the direction the revolution
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youth movement emerged from the war with a vast legacy of direct participation
in combat, and thanks to this a considerable number of leadership positions were
occupied by young people. Continuity was established between fighting in the war
and the reconstruction of the country; the reconstruction was “an essential […]
part of the great fight on the battlefield where tens of thousands of young men
and women lost their lives”. With the formal post-war establishment of the youth
movement at the First Congress of the United Alliance of the Anti-Fascist Youth
of Bosnia and Herzegovina held in Sarajevo from April 6-9 1945 the youth joined
the competition.
The peak of mass mobilization of youth were the Youth Work Actions that existed
as a movement and an organization until 1988 – although their impact was significant only in the late 1940s.25 Data shows that until 1947, almost 85% of the
youth participated in the labor actions. By 1948, the model of mass voluntary
engagement of the youth typical of the first post-war years points towards a productive convergence of impulses emitted by the social order, staged through a
mass organization with the sense that the only possible way was forward. During
this period, Petranović claims, “volunteering not only made up for the missing
financial resources and machinery, but expressed a new attitude toward labor”26,
which is clearly illustrated by the phenomenon of work actions. These actions,
however, were not mere labor drives, but also an anthropotechnological element
of the new regime. They had a particular political and educational character as
they “forged and hardened new people with a new understanding of labor. A new
working collective is formed that is proud of its labor, of that which its members
create with their own hands.”27
would have necessarily taken had it remained based on the old, received ideas and theories.”
Bilandžić, p. 207.; Petranović notes: “For ‘selfless work’, one would receive the title of a shock
worker. In 1946, labor competition turned into a mass movement that included 60% of workers
and civil servants. The press popularized the Stakhanovite movement in the USSR, which in
Yugoslavia will bring about heroes of labor such as Alija Sirotanović and his successors. Masses
of workers, peasants and especially youth gave breadth to voluntary labor and infused it with
enthusiasm.” Petranović, p. 207.
Vejzagić, Saša. The Importance of Youth Labour Actions in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1948-1950: The
Case study of the Motorway “Brotherhood-Unity”. Master’s Thesis (Budapest: Central European
University, 2013). 4. The fact is that almost 60 years of this organization (1941-1988) still remains
under-researched. See also: Muhamed Nametak “Uloga omladinskih radnih akcija u stvaranju
socijalističkoga društva u Bosni i Hercegovini 1945. – 1952. godine”, Časopis za Savremenu
Povijest3 [2014]: 437-452.
26
Petranović, op. cit. p. 81, my italic.
25
27
Erak, Zoran, ed. Tito i mladi, Belgrade: Mladost 1980., p. 19. Actions also function as immediate
spaces of education and upbringing, even in the most literal sense: during only two actions,
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Soon, however, voluntary mass labor was gradually replaced by paid industrial
labor, for technical reasons and in accordance with “the technological” paradigm
upon which the new regime rested. By 1948, the mass model of social engagement became symbolically less effective and started to lose its real mobilizing
power. However, as late as 1949, the Party leadership maintained its position that
only the broad masses can be the bearers of the revolution. Edvard Kardelj, a
long-standing high-ranking official of the CPY said
Socialism can only grow out of the initiative of the million-strong masses,
with the adequate role of the proletarian party, that is, the most advanced
socialist forces. Therefore, the development of socialism cannot follow any
path other than that of constant deepening of socialist democracy in the
sense of ever-greater self-management of the masses, and drawing them
to the state apparatus – from the lowest bodies to the highest, in the sense
of participating in the managing of every single company, institution, etc.28
Here we can still see a very firmly articulated idea of mass socialism, as well as
hints of something we may call the idea of the mass state along with a somewhat
limited role of the Party. The developments, however, took a different direction:
after the transformation of 1950, when the economy was organized on more and
more original and newly-established principles, mass organization started to
fade as the basic element of social development.
4. The Paradigm of Production
The dispositive is never a homogenous field, but is rather constructed at the intersection of societal forces that affirm and question it. This is particularly visible in Yugoslavia after the Second World War where Chetnik and Ustasha forces
were still operational, individual’s participation in the war was being checked and
verified, the figure of the people was strengthened and the basic institutional
structure of the new state was built. The flipside of this process were the objective circumstances in which an attempt was made to realize certain material
and symbolic goals. The construction of Yugoslav socialism, until June 1948, was
based on close practical and theoretical relations with the USSR headed by Stalin. Thus the early post-war period mainly consisted of practical activities aimed
at establishing a Soviet model with two basic aspects: state-ownership and cenBrčko-Banovići railroad and Šamac-Sarajevo railroad, in 1946 and 1947 respectively, almost
22.000 young people were brought to literacy. Nametak, op. cit. p. 446.
28
Kardelj, Edvard. Quoted from Vladimir Barakić’s speech at a commemoration in February 1979 in
Josip Arnautović et al. ed. Edvard Kardelj, 1910-1979, Belgrade: News Agency Tanjug, 1979, p. 29.
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tral planning, which was to be effected by a range of economic and administrative
measures such as price control, limitations on free trade, fixed rent and wages,
organized supply system, etc.
As a follow-up, in 1945, gradual nationalization was introduced, starting with the
redistribution of large landowners’ agricultural resources and the estates of collaborators. In 1946, private capital in mining, industry, banking, wholesale, and
transport was nationalized, followed by the nationalization of retail and service
industries. Planning was codified with the adoption of the 1946 Constitution,
and as early as the following year a basic planning apparatus was established.
In 1947, the first five-year plan was elevated to “the level of a national patriotic
goal”.29 By eliminating the influence of private capital and transitioning to stateownership, the new order succeeded in establishing what was considered the
basis of the socialist project. The initial results were very good. In 1947, with
great effort, the pre-war production levels were reached. Through the growth of
investment and a large number of new jobs, mass urbanization and industrialization were accelerated and promoted.30
The Cominform Bureau Resolution of June 28 1948, thoroughly shook up the
ideological identification of the Yugoslav communist leadership and considerably influenced the transformation of the socio-economic model. Soon after the
Resolution was passed, the CPY leadership at its fifth congress, although still
confused, maintained its allegiance to the Soviet line and decides to answer the
Soviet accusations by accelerating and widening collectivization and nationalization efforts.31 Economic consequences were felt soon after. Agreements with
the USSR and other countries of the Eastern Bloc were terminated, loans were
terminated as well, and economic boycott ensued, forcing Yugoslavia to establish new import and export relations. Under such conditions, mass mobilization became an essential political and economic strategy. In December 1948,
the state introduced a system of special acknowledgements, “moral stimula29
Vera Katz, Social and Economic Development of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1945-1953. Sarajevo:
Institute for History, 2011, p. 14. On the goals of the five-year plan also see: Babić, p. 131.
30
For investment, cf. Branko Horvat, Privredni sistem i ekonomska politika Jugoslavije, Belgrade:
Institute for Economics, 1970, p. 34; In terms of employment, in 1945 there were 461.000 workers;
in 1946, 721.000, that is, 260.000 new workers; in 1947, 1.167.000, i.e. 446.000 new workers; in
1958, 1.1517.000, i.e. 350.000 new workers, and in 1949 1.990.000, i.e. 473.000 new workers and
civil servants.
31
Dedijer, Vladimir. Izgubljena bitka Josifa Visarionoviča Staljina, Belgrade: Rad, 1978, p. 186.
Collectivization slowed down only at the end of 1949, following the decisions passed at the CPY
Plenum on December 29 and 30 of the same year.
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tions”, and emphasized the symbolic figure of the shock worker, the champion
and the hero of labor, as well as a range of other particularly valuable forms of
labor in agriculture, which was supposed to stimulate zealous labor.32 Heroism
of labor was thus institutionalized as an officially recognized status incentive.
Despite these efforts, morale began to dwindle. In 1950, the country was hit by
a severe draught, which drastically reduced the revenue from agriculture. That
same year, the enormous growth in employment also started to lose momentum, with just a little over 15,000 new workers being employed in the following
three years.33
As a response to the ideological clash and economic deadlock, a critique of bureaucratization and the fundamental Soviet ideas about the relation between
ownership and management was developed. The notion that “socialist social relations cannot be actualized on the basis of state-ownership and state management of the economy, as this leads to the bureaucratization of the entire political
system”34, soon became prevalent and was adopted as the programmatic stance
of the Party. In this we find the basis of the revolution within the revolution that
would actualize itself through an original model of management of economic activity. In 1950, the groundwork for self-management was laid with the adoption
32
Bilandžić notes: “To ensure greater commitment of workers and civil servants in the workplace,
it was decided to pass federal regulations in order to try to introduce norms for all labor, therefore
the regulations laid down the amount of remuneration in proportion with the norm. Federal
regulations also instituted a system of moral stimulation. The Law on Honorary Titles for Toilers
from December 8, 1948, introduces the following honorary titles: shock worker, champion
of socialist labor, meritorious agricultural worker, distinguished cooperating agricultural
worker; and for worker collectives: shock collective, champion collective of socialist labor; for
cooperatives: cooperative striving for high yields, meritorious cooperative, champion cooperative
of the people’s republic, champion cooperative of the FNRJ (People’s Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia).” Bilandžić, op. cit. p. 123. The Law on Decorations and Distinctions (November
14, 1955) classified the Order of the Hero of Socialist Labor as a decoration for distinguished
service by a citizen, ranked second, after the Medal of the Great Star of Yugoslavia and before the
Order of People’s Liberation. According to this law, the Order of the Hero of Socialist Labor was
awarded to: “…individuals, military units, institutions, economic and social organizations that
achieve exceptional work achievements or results, thus earning special credit for the economic,
social, scientific or cultural development of the country”. The content and scope of the formal
acknowledgements were amended several times by 1976, after which they remained unchanged;
see: http://www.hrvatskanumizmatika.net/
33
In the first three years of the five-year plan 1.269.000 new workers were employed. The following
year registers a considerable decrease. Between 1950 and 1954, only 15.000 new workers were
employed, while between 1964 and 1967 the number of employed drops from 3.608.000 in 1964 to
3.561.000 in 1967. Bilandžić, p.114; Horvat, Privredni sistem, p. 27.
34
Babić, op. cit. p. 134; Bilandžić, op. cit. p. 208.
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of the Basic Law on Managing State-Owned Companies and Higher-Level Economic Associations by Worker Collectives. The following year, the first five-year
plan was extended by a year, but its goals were never accomplished, nor was a
final report on it ever published. Soon, “the economic system was completely
changed, and by the end of 1951 centrally planned economy became a thing of
the past”.35
5. The AFŽ, the Great Turn of the Tide and the Woman Question
What was happening with the organization of women during these turbulent
times? After its foundation in 1942, the AFŽ focused on organizing women activists, whose tasks mainly had to do with war-related activities. The AFŽ “sprang
up from the people’s anti-fascist movement organized and led by the CPY”;. its
edifying work “in the spirit of the Anti-Fascist Front’s program“ put “thousands
and thousands of women in the vanguard of the fight against fascism”.36 As of
1944, the organization focused on recruiting new members on a mass scale,
abandoning its original activist orientation. Thus the AFŽ, along with other large
voluntary associations, joined the mass voluntary movement to reconstruct postwar Yugoslavia and puts in thousands of hours of voluntary labor.
The activities and directions of the AFŽ are deeply integrated in the NF. In her
closing address to the First Congress of the AFŽ of Croatia, in July 1945, Kata
Pejnović summarized the basic tasks of this organization (in: Sklevicky): 1)
strengthening brotherhood and unity, cleansing the country from the remnants
of fascism, 2) strengthening the people’s rule, 3) reconstruction of the homeland
through the development of a broad initiative, through discovery of new forms
of shock work, the change of relationships towards labor, 4) edification of the
young, caring for children, assisting medical services and the Yugoslav army and
5) combating illiteracy.37
35
Horvat, op. cit. p. 11. The new economic system was established in 1952, by replacing central
planning with planning of the so-called “basic proportions” (e.g. accumulation rate and
distribution of investments), the devaluation of the Dinar, introduction of the market mechanism
as the price regulator in most production and commerce spheres, and giving some companies
independence, which meant the creation of conditions for the decentralization of the economy.
After that, until 1956, work was based on annual plans.
36
Centralni Odbor of the AFŽ “Postavke o AFŽ-u”, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8,
63/4, 1949.
37
Sklevicky, op.cit. p. 97.
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Lydia Sklevicky places the first three into the category of “frontline goals”,
whereas the other two she labels as specifically women’s tasks, as they consist
of “the socialization of [women’s] reproductive labor”.38 However, one must not
overlook the fact that the general goals, in the long-term, were only achievable
if the specifically women’s goals were achieved. How else could one secure the
intergenerational transmission of the changed attitude towards labor and the
lesson of brotherhood and unity – which was supposed to secure the people’s
rule? Here we see the complexity of the women’s task. New shock work was to
complete difficult specific tasks, care for a large population of children, bring
society to literacy, but also mobilize the masses without losing sight of the basic
edification goals.
5.1. The Woman Question and the Question of the Heroic
In 1944, Vladimir Nazor stated: “The woman question, as far as we are concerned, has been resolved”. His historical metaphor of this resolution was illustratively built into the title of his “From Amazon to Partisan” lecture, which
outlined the heroic history of women as fighters, politicians and rulers, and resolved it in the figure of the female partisan. In her discourse analysis of the
AFŽ Conference in Sinj in 1944, Lydia Sklevicky notes: “Only the phrase ‘comrades, women fighters’ acknowledges the identity of women commensurate
with their own achievements”39, or: the heroic ability of the woman was proven
in war, which rendered the women’s question resolved. The resolution, however
leaves the “patriarchal prefix of traditional culture untouched by doubt”, and
instead of trying to “change the traditional values”, they are “modified according to the new context/historical moment”, which creates the framework within
which the “emancipatory charge” is used for the “widening and strengthening of
the Narodno-oslobodilački pokret (NOP)”.40
Although the CPY felt, as a matter of principle, that the woman question was resolved, the Party leadership considered the organization of women necessary.
In the fall of 1945, the CPY ordered “the Party’s managing bodies to pay closer
attention to the development and advancement of the AFŽ’s work”.41 The specifIbid. 97. On reproductive work in general and on some of its contemporary characteristics and
linkages to international processes of capital circulation and the restructuration of labor relations
see: Frederici, Silvia. Revolution at the Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist
Struggle. Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
39
Sklevicky, op.cit. p. 50.
40
Ibid. pp. 47-51.
41
Petranović, op.cit. p. 53.
38
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ically female part of the task of creating a new society was not laid down beforehand, but was to be defined “when the gunfire dies down, when the ruins are
cleaned up, when the new home is built”.42 However, before the specific tasks
were defined, within the AFŽ itself an open call for shock work was issued. In
a letter by the Central Committee of the AFŽY to the Republican Committee of
the AFŽBiH (June 4 1945), a call was issued to women stating that they should
apply themselves to “shock work in their everyday tasks” during the preparations of the First Congress and “take on new obligations before the congress”.43
There was no time for organizing competition, but it was “precisely because
of this [that] it is necessary to intensify women’s activity in all organizations,
everywhere, in all lines of work, and this must continue after the congress”.44
At the AFŽ BiH’s second congress, Tito referred to women comrades who “distinguished themselves during the war, but now, in peacetime, they do not participate in public life, or in the political or creative work in the community.” In
this way they “become alienated from the vast majority of our women who have
understood their duties and the spirit of the new Yugoslavia.” What was that
spirit like, and what were the duties? Tito answered these questions quite succinctly, on the same occasion, making a remark that falls under the domain of
work ethic: “No one can ever claim that they have given enough of themselves
to society if they are still capable of physical and mental labor”.45 There it is, a
direct call to heroic engagement that gives to society the greatest possible gift,
the gift of heroism, the gift of life. It establishes a paradigm that needs to be
infused with different content, one that transcends its origin in the heroic war
sacrifice and establishes something different.
Heroic labor was to be actualized as part of the general efforts of society as
a whole, and in April 1947, it was cast in the form of a five-year economic development plan. The general goals of this plan were: 1) Overcoming economic
and technological backwardness, 2) strengthening the country’s economic and
military might, 3) strengthening and developing a socialist economic sector, 4)
increasing the general well-being of the population. Although this plan did not
contain specifically women’s tasks, the AFŽ used it as a measure of its own gen42
Sklevicky, op. cit. p. 55.
43
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a “Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH”. Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 1/12, 1945.
44
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a “Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH”
45
II kongres Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije: održan u Beogradu 25, 26, 27 januara 1948.
Sarajevo: Glavni odbor AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine, 1948, Kutija 6;
available at: http://www.
afzarhiv.org/files/original/00d53e25cc67684ddcbf27af4ff8d839.pdf
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eral contribution to society. A “battle” was fought over the plan and it “places
the task of mobilizing the women’s workforce with the organization”.46 A part
of the AFŽ Archive contains a multitude of reports on women comrades who
“completed” the goals of the five-year plan, and on many who did not, as well
as on the necessity to always to more. The effort to realize the plan becomes
the framework within which it is possible to work heroically. This, in accordance
with the inclusion paradigm and the basic interpretative framework, meant volunteering a certain amount of work hours thus “saving the state money”. After
the adoption of the plan, tasks were discovered that were described and understood as explicitly heroic:
Our women will set out as a tight-knit army of labor comprising fraternal
Serb, Muslim, and Croat women into the fray for the triumph of the reconstruction and rebuilding of our country. By working to elevate the masses
culturally and intellectually, helping to realize the economic plan, and by
investing the utmost enthusiasm into our work, we will create a new form of
heroism, the HEROISM OF LABOR […]47
Determined to do the best they can, women created a “new form of heroism”. It
was a heroism that was not like a “rank” that could have been awarded to one
woman or one man who could carry it like a medal. It was an effort for the community, a collective heroism built on a mass effort of voluntary labor that worked
thousands of bodies to exhaustion before it faced the fact that the set goals were
unattainable precisely because they were of heroic proportions, because they implied that one could always work more, harder. Only in a mass effort was it possible to produce the super-human, the heroic – as only the heroic was worthy of
the heroically fallen heroes. Here we find the basic lesson of the dispositive as
the technology of the social: labor will transform society, and in order to truly
transform it, we need to work heroically.
The construction of the heroic past, that is, the continuity of the heroic, started
immediately after the war. In 1945, an instruction to “gather materials, specific
data, photographs, etc.” was distributed. This testifies to the attempt to record
the baseline for unification and take stock of women’s immediate engagement
in warfare up to that point, which included the heroic wartime sacrifices, but
46
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a Bosne i
Hercegovine – o vođenju evidencije raspoložive ženske radne snage’. Arhiv Bosne I Hercegovine,
Sarajevo, Kutija 2 711/1, 1947.
47
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, ‘Referat- Plenarni sastanak Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bosanski Brod’, Arhiv
Bosne I Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1554/4, 1947.
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also the “traditional victims” of the atrocities committed “against women and
children by the enemy” or “mothers who have lost their sons in combat” who
“distinguish themselves with their bravery”.48 Such activities would continue,
but the focus would shift somewhat. For example, in a letter from February
1949, the Central Committee of the AFŽ of Yugoslavia, as part of the preparations for a March 8 exhibition, asked the Republican Committee of the AFŽ Bosnia and Herzegovina to gather data including “various documents on women’s
labor before the war/strikes, photographs of strikes, manifestos, resolutions
of the Party on women’s labor[…]” and other documents illustrating the life of
women in cooperatives and other areas of activity at the time.49 In her address
to the Second Congress of the AFŽY, Mitra Mitrović-Đilas points out that the set
of female characteristics defined in the war, “now must be further edified and
nurtured in a spirit of a conscious relationship toward labor […] in the spirit of
work discipline and responsibility, in the spirit of readiness for new efforts and
overcoming of all obstacles”. The motive of the heroic had a deep presence and
the transition from the wartime heroic to its new form was obvious: “Let the new
figure of the woman who builds socialism, like the figure of women war heroes,
grow out from these characteristics. Let the nurturing these characteristics
be our task […]”50 In this example we see how the relationship with the wartime
heroic is maintained as constitutive, making heroes and heroic names the guarantors of socialization of children and adults alike.51
5.2. The AFŽ in Transition
How was the AFŽ affected by the wider socio-economic transformation that
started with the conflict with the Soviet Union and the opening towards the West
that would later considerably influence the foreign policy position as well as the
position within the international economic relations52? In the internal CPY discussions on the AFŽ (during 1947/48), the opinion that a unique women’s organi48
Centralni Odbor AFŽ, “Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH”, 1945.
49
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, “Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH – povodom
organizacije 8. martovske izložbe” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 6, 137/1, 1949.
50
II Congress of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia: Belgrade, January 25–27, 1948, 15.
51
On the socialization of adults see: Ugo Vlaisavljević, Rat kao najveći kulturni događaj: ka semiotici
etnonacionalizma, Sarajevo: Meuna-fe Publishing, 2007, pp. 35-50.
52
For a historical analysis of these processes and their consequences today see: Živković, Andreja.
“From the Market… to the Market: The Debt Economy After Yugoslavia” in Welcome to the Desert of
Post-Socialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia, eds. Horvat, Srećko, Štiks, Igor. London/New York:
Verso. 2015. pp. 45-64.
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zation was needed prevailed, but the question of “how and through which organizational forms [to] connect the revolutionary power of women with the power
of the working class and the people as a whole, with the aim of their complete
liberation”53 was also raised. The CPY defined the NF as the main political power,
transferring the woman question to the NF, while within the CPY committees
for work with women were abolished. In practice, the NF was, for the most part,
never too concerned with the woman question, which created an open space for
the political work of the AFŽ.
The AFŽ, along with other organizations, entered the general social competition
for the reconstruction of the country early on, but toward the end of the 1940s,
the physical and practical limits of shock work started to show. The AFŽ’s organizational structure underwent several changes, which ultimately sapped the
strength of its organizational structures.54 At an AFŽ meeting in March 1949 in
Sarajevo, it was concluded that “not all tasks of the NF are our tasks”, but that
“the most important task during the elections is to bring out all women to the
polls”. The basic task was to bring 100% of women to the elections.55 There were
still signs that the tasks of this organization were being internally redefined and
that there was still dissatisfaction among active women from time to time with
the fact that there were almost no women in governmental bodies.56 Previous
work was critically evaluated: “We have degraded the woman activists to the
level of an errand girl, when we should have elevated her to the role of a political leader”.57 And there we have it, a yardstick of the organization’s success: a
woman as a political leader.
53
Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX I XX veku, Belgrade: Pinkpress, 1996, p. 161.
54
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Bosanska Gradiška Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a –
izvještaj o radu organizacije žena za mjesec august’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 2,
838/1, 1947. “When the Narodni Odbori were being fused together, we failed to fuse the local AFŽ
committees, so our organization dispersed considerably…”
55
Oblasni Odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevska oblast – najava takmičenja u čast
izbora za Narodne izbore,, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4/1, 1949.
56
In a letter from September 1947, the County Committee of the AFŽ Doboj, notes that the NF did
not help with the larger political engagement of women and mentions the dissatisfaction of the
female comrades which they expressed thus “if we can labor voluntarily shoulder to shoulder
with our male comrades, then we can also be appointed to the councils.” Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a,
“Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Doboj Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – izvještaj o radu organizacije za mjesec
august”. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Box 2, 842/1, 1947.
57
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja rukovodioca reonskih odbora AFŽ-a grada
Sarajeva – 30.- 31. mart, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 6, 776/6, 1949.
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The third Congress of the AFŽ Yugoslavia was held in October 1950. According
to the conclusions of the congress, the AFŽ was integrated into the NF, which
from that moment on was in charge of the AFŽ’s political and educational work.
The focus of the AFŽ shifts towards more particular women’s issues, mother and
child protection, maintenance of children’s institutions, etc.58 The AFŽ archive
holds hundreds of reports that testify to the work of the “mother and child”
division and the almost complete cessation of political work. It was insisted on
employment as the main condition for equality. On the other hand, the majority of
women still lived in the rural areas, and only a few were employed in the cities;
the conservative stance towards the inclusion of women in industrial relations
still had a firm hold over society.59 However, even before these points of view were
articulated, the scope of action was considerably narrowed. At the first plenum of
the Sarajevo region in February 1950, there were only two items on the agenda: 1)
the question of the elections for the Assembly of the FNRJ; and 2) the AFŽ’s work
on youth education. Both items were accepted unanimously.60
These examples of organizational speech suggest a decisive effect of societal
change on the AFŽ’s work. Steps towards decentralization, in the cessation of
collectivization efforts after the unrest in 1950 and the general course of action
in the fight against bureaucratization inevitably pressured the work and the
structure of the women’s organization. All socio-political organizations redefined
their own identity and form, after the Party did so in November of 1952 at the Sixth
Congress, when it changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia,
breaking away from the Soviet model of a classic centralized party. During the
congress, “the new concept of the CPY was more clearly defined, rejecting the
path to state socialism, and accepting the struggle for the construction of a selfmanaging society in Yugoslavia”. At the time, there was still insistence on working
toward women’s emancipation. Tito espoused this viewpoint and emphasized
the need to leave the old views on the societal role of women. In January of the
following year, the NF changed its name to the Socialist Alliance of the Working
People, thus the socialist workers pushed the people to the end of the line of
representation.61
58
Božinović, op. cit. p. 154.
59
Ibid. p. 154.
60
Oblasni Odbor AFŽ-a, ‘I Plenum AFŽ-a Sarajevske oblasti održan 22.02.1950. godine – zapisnik’
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 422/1, 1950.
61
Božinović, op. cit. pp. 166-167. In other words, well before the Constitution of 1974, the people
were replaced with the working man, the only real subject of the socialist project; cf. Zaharijević,
op. cit. p. 75.
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The critique here is much more pronounced. The NF believed that “the AFŽ did
not change their content and methodology fast enough, working people grew
into builders of socialism much faster”; as a result “separate political work with
women either became superfluous, or required substantial changes”.62 The NF
did not ask for the AFŽ to be abolished, but believed that, in keeping with the
socio-economic changes, the AFŽ also had to take measures towards decentralization. At the AFŽ’s Fourth Congress, Milovan Đilas, then a member of the
Politburo of the CCCPY, advocated that – due to the change of circumstances
– the existence of this organization had become undesirable. On that note, even
the AFŽ leadership believed that the AFŽ “became an obstacle for work among
women” and that “changes are necessary in the organization of women themselves, and in the forms of political work among them”. Accordingly, a resolution
declared that a separate organization would “separate women from the common
effort to solve societal problems, encourage the false thinking that the question
of women’s position is somehow a separate one and not a question that concerns
our entire society, all fighters for socialism.”63
On the basis of these resolutions, the AFŽ was formally abolished and transformed into the Alliance of Women Associations. There was a substantial change
in the semantic content: the words front and anti-fascism were removed – the
symbols of women’s participation in the people’s revolution. Although socialism
was “formally introduced” into the name of the basic social organization, there
was no place for it in the name of the organization that formally succeeded the
AFŽ. It was the real and the symbolic end of that which the AFŽ represented.64
The AFŽ, like central planning a few years prior, was consigned to history, marking the end of an era. How did the base react? There are few sources that can tell
us about this. Neda Božinović notes that, long after the abolition of the AFŽ’s,
women, especially in rural areas, often asked leading women in the organization
“why did you abolish our AFŽ”, as this rearranged the relationship with the male
part of the population, who “gloated”, telling women: “enough of your shenani62
Božinović, op. cit. p. 165.
63
Ibid.
64
Vera Katz summarizes the evolution of the organization’s work as: “a relatively small group of
communists managed, through meticulous work on the ground, in wartime conditions and in
a very short period of time, to convince large masses of women to aid the partisan war, so they
could attain new rights after the war. The program succeeded completely, so much so that the
women’s political organizing became a danger to communists soon after the war and the AFŽ was
abolished. After that, the ideological turn would survive a peculiar combination of a consumeristpatriarchal model imposed on women, while a majority of the promised rights survived.” See: Vera
Katz, “O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.” Prilozi 40 (2011), p. 138.
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gans”; or “it’s over, it’s over!”; or “no more!” Men had “their bars, football and
even the Narodni Front”, while an initiative that gathered women “eager to hear
and talk about their female things” disappeared.65
This points to the character of the loss the end of this organization represented.
It is a known fact that the bulk of the AFŽ’s work was directed towards rural
areas, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which remained predominantly rural long after the war. In rural areas, the AFŽ undoubtedly presented an avantgarde platform that offered for the first time in the (women’s) history of this
region a possibility to imagine something like a collective women’s political subject formed through “gathering” and talking about “[women’s]” things. Once this
platform, the space for gathering and opening up possibilities’ to speak about
creative possibilities of self-definition and collective action was lost as well.
6. Labor, Heroism, and the Woman
Question a Thousand Years Later
The problems of practical and technical organizational structures of the selfmanaged production and consumption system would become a lasting challenge of the Yugoslav socialist project. The dispositive was supposed to receive
its definitive legal expression when the Yugoslav socialist project’s avant-garde
process saw its culmination in the introduction of the Law on Associated Labor. During this period, many “honestly believed that the transformation towards self-management would lead to a ‘Republic of associated labor’”.66 Ivan
Stojanović believes that such a narrative was a mythologization that saw in the
legislation related to self-management “programs of the epoch and the future,
not laws needed to regulate the behavior of social subjects and economic operators of today” which in turn made it possible for “hyper-normativism” and
“hyperinstitutionalization” to eliminate the basis of self-management, the “selfinitiative and self-organizing of people and their work collectives.”67
Thus the form that women’s organizing took after the war should be viewed as
an attempt to answer the urgent call to organize society by reformulating labor
and gender relations in a specific historical moment. In the earliest stages of
65
Božinović, op. cit. p. 170.
66
Petranović, op. cit. p. 468.
67
Stojanović, Ivan. Kuda i kako dalje? Zapisi o odnosima i protivrečnostima ekonomije i politike,
Belgrade: Ekonomika, 1989, pp. 15-16.
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the effort to build socialism, the AFŽ, along with other organizations that were
part of the NOM, was established as an element of a broad, general struggle
headed by the CPY. In the post-war period, its edifying role came to the fore.
Faced with a demand for heroism, the women’s organization took on the general
educational and edifying role, as well as the general task of organizing work with
women, on the ground of the mass social mobilization. Some materials point to
a particular dimension of autonomy that did not belong to the organization as a
structure made up of committees, but rather to the women who, with the help
of the organization, created a space that made possible at least a fragile path
towards emancipation, if not true emancipation itself. This is certainly one of the
farthest-reaching consequences of the organization’s dissolution, as it led to the
disappearance of an open space for women’s political organizing that contained
the possibility of a double liberation. The dissolution also led to the disappearance of the only possible arena and the only possible form of women’s activity. A
partial insight into this historical era of the women’s movement can help us better understand the convoluted web of instructions that contain today’s labor and
gender policies.
The Heroic remained an important signifier of socialism for a long time. It would
be necessary to trace its construction even after 1953 and describe the transition, completely expected from the point of view of socialism’s technological
paradigm and the theoretical evolution of its bearers and leaders, from massheroism to the next form of the heroic, in which the collective effort of the masses is substituted with biotechnological labor of self-managed companies and
corporations.68 It should be determined if the connection with the original heroic
acts was maintained, and if so, how. The practice of naming factories and institutions after people’s heroes indicates that it was, and that there was an effort
to homogenize the material progress and transition are within the same horizon. It can be assumed that heroism was supposed to act as binding tissue connecting the heroic of the (woman) soldier, the heroic of the masses, and modern
industrial collectives. The question remains how effective this binding was, and
for how long. It points to the fact that socialism in the second Yugoslavia failed
to emancipate the heroic from the soldier-warrior figure. The heroic figure that
witnessed the dissolution of Yugoslavia was already spent. In a certain sense,
when it comes to industrial heroism, worthy of the heroic were ultimately only
68
In addition to this highest honor, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor was instituted late in 1968,
and was awarded to 245 collectives by the end of 1980. These collectives included teaching, learning and research institutions, as well as self-managed industrial enterprises as well as construction companies. See: Heroji rada Jugoslavije, Belgrade: Zavod za informacione sisteme, 1981, p. 4.
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those self-managed collectives that “employ and do good business”. Here we
find ourselves faced with a completely transfigured picture of individual heroes
whose acts and deeds are no longer in their hands. Instead, the heroic intention
must adapt to the powers of the market, successes and failures in the market
competition.
Today, this figure, too, is a thing of the past; successful companies are respected,
but not as collective projects of hundreds of thousands of workers, but rather as
manifestations of the entrepreneurial vision of owners and managers. Heroes
constructed after the bloody and complicated dissolution of Yugoslavia are again
exclusively heroes of war, heroes of defeats and victories on the battlefield, not
heroes of agriculture or industry. The end of Yugoslavia brought about total privatization of labor and production relations, the privatization of ownership and management, executed as the adoption and institutionalization of the Western model,
and the process is still ongoing. This transformation was (and still is) accompanied by a discursive superstructure that reinterprets labor as a means for producing a society into labor as a disciplinary technique of bodies, a mechanism transforming us individually into capital, forcing us to adopt the changed conditions and
means of labor, supply and demand, as well as organizational innovations.
Is it then possible, under such conditions, at least roughly to outline some new
heroic figure? What kind of heroic labor would it entail? Work collectives are less
and less sources of pride, and dynamic elements of one’s identity, and are increasingly seen as despised places of everyday exploitation (unless they are former giant state-owned companies that were destroyed or split up leaving behind
not only misery and decay, but also complex identity-related consequences which
are yet to be analyzed). There is no doubt that the heroic, that which can respond
to the urgent challenges of today that threaten to consume not only human life,
but also the conditions for it, must be created through a collective effort – for
which we lack a name and a format. This reveals the difficulty of the task faced by
all who dream of liberation. Undoubtedly, liberation must include the liberation
of women, which may be the only thing that can make possible for us to name and
initiate a project of universal liberation. The name and description of such a project, along with the outlines of a new heroic figure can only come from the future,
to paraphrase Marx’s famous words, but a collective effort of the future can only
be launched as an act of facing up to the forces of the present.
Translated by Emin Eminagić
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Archival Materials:
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a “Postavke o AFŽ-u”, Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo,
Box 8, 63/4, 1949.
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH “Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ
BiH”. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 1/12, 1945.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, “Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ
BiH”, 1945.
II Congress of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgrade,
January 25-27 1948, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 6; available at: http://www.
afzarchive.org/files/original/00d53e25cc6768ddcbf27af4ff8d839.pdf
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ Bosne i
Hercegovine – o vođenju evidencije raspoložive ženske radne snage’. Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 2 711/1, 1947.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a ‘Referat- Plenarni sastanak Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bosanski Brod’,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1554/4, 1947.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, “Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH –
povodom organizacije 8. martovske izložbe” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo,
Kutija 6, 137/1, 1949.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Bosanska Gradiška Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a
– izvještaj o radu organizacije žena za mjesec august’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 838/1, 1947.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevska oblast – najava takmičenja u
čast izbora za Narodne izbore,, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4/1,
1949.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, “Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Doboj Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – izvještaj
o radu organizacije za mjesec august”. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija
2, 842/1, 1947.
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja rukovodioca reonskih odbora AFŽ-a
grada Sarajeva – 30.–31. mart, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 6, 776/6, 1949.
Sreski Odbor AFŽ-a, ‘I Plenum AFŽ-a Sarajevske oblasti održan 22.02.1950. godine –
zapisnik’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 422/1, 1950.
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��SUNITA FIŠIĆ
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TIJANA
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But you, when the time comes
Where man can help his fellow man
Remember us
With forbearance.
Brecht
1. Introduction, or Beginning After the End of History –
Thinking the Women’s Antifascist Front Again and Anew
Thinking the Women’s Antifascist Front (henceforth AFŽ) today, 74 years after its
formation and 63 years after its “dissolution”, requires a lot more than merely
knowing the (archival) facts. Although the facts cannot and should not be neglected, it is our duty to put them in their, and then in our, historical context. But
what is the relation between these two contexts and should we persevere with
this problem, insisting on political continuities? And which and what kind of continuities would these be? Is it not precisely the alleged closure of the revolutionary
horizon, a rupture in historical memory expressed in various ideologies of “transition” and the “end of history”, which separates our time from that of the AFŽ? In
such a balance of forces, thinking the AFŽ would mean using the old language in
new circumstances to rewrite and imagine anew the possibility of action, a space
where, to begin with, we could, by ourselves, once again think our own history.
This is exactly why we will proceed from the question posed by Daniel Bensaïd:
“What conceivable politics is there without history…and what imaginable history
without a political invention of the possible”1 If there is no politics without history,
then neither is there any history without politics, and standing between them is
precisely the space of the possible. How to rise up and endure after the experience of defeat, which the alleged end of history proclaims as the beginning and
the end of every thought of possible utopias and/or strategies? Contemporary
historiography, in the wake of a wave of historical revisionism lasting already
more than fifty years, routinely minimizes and negates any experience that offers
even a shred of political resistance to the dominant revisionist image of the age.
This is where problem areas appear and this is what I want to consider here in
relation to the history of the AFŽ in Yugoslavia and today. In other words, to avoid
the monumental and antiquarian2 portrayal of our own history, we need to think
1
Bensaïd, Daniel. Éloge de la politique profane. Paris: Albin Michel, 2008. p. 355
2
Nietzsche, Friedrich. O koristi i šteti istorije za život. Belgrade: Grafos, 1977.
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Yugoslavia critically, which means that, as feminists, we must speak of the first
and the second death of the AFŽ. Writing about these two deaths does not mean
facing up to the past, as the revisionists of today demand – nor does it mean imprisoning oneself in the past, since our relation to the past is always anchored in
place, time and, in Foucauldian terms, the body from which we write: thus it is
mediated by both accumulated experience and interpretations of the past, and
equally by the burden of the present. Writing about the two deaths of the AFŽ
simply means reading the past not from the resignation of the present moment the misery and despair of a transition where the desire to see a better tomorrow,
in the midst of today’s poverty, is read back into the past – but from tomorrow’s
future. To read the AFŽ’s past in this manner means not denying its emancipatory
character or doing away with its utopian impulse. It means to recognize it, embrace it, and precisely to act from a present that gazes towards the future.
Eppur si muove - despite repression, hopelessness, and poverty. I write the following pages in the belief that the only trace worth following is precisely the “principle of hope”. To paraphrase Ernst Bloch, I would like read the AFŽ archive as
the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous (die Ungleichzeitigkeit). However, this
sort of reading entails certain consequences. Namely, it must necessarily proceed from an analysis of the contradictions inherent to the Yugoslav conception
of the ‘woman question’ if it is ever to arrive at the problems and contradictions
of today. In this sense, the specter haunting this work is the specter of Marxism. All of our analyses on the post-Yugoslavia left/lefts have failed miserably
in the attempt to apply basic Marxist categories of production and reproduction
to Yugoslavia, while at the same time we are taught to list all the institutions of
the Yugoslav welfare state, as if they represented the socialisation of family and
everyday life, without making clear that we are not dealing with the same things.
More importantly, we do not emphasize that social services were paid for on the
basis of value produced on the market, and paid twice over: by male and female
workers who serviced the market. That is why the dissolution of the AFŽ should
be seen as Yugoslavia’s failure to establish a socialist-communist social order,
despite proclaiming socialism as the ruling and foundational idea of society. The
first death of the AFŽ already occurred in Yugoslavia, not only with its formal
“self-abolition” in 1953, but also much earlier, in 1944, as Lydia Sklevicky suggests. The second death occurred after 1989, drowned by a wave of historical
revisionism in which women’s history could only be rewritten/erased through an
“invention of tradition”, where there was and is no place either for the figure of
the afežeovka (member and activist of the AFŽ) or that of the partizanka (women Partisan soldiers). For these reasons, the left should not take the assumptions imposed by historical revisionism as the starting point of its own historical
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understanding. It should not be a mirror image of revisionism. Enzo Traverso
states that we must resist “the temptation…of certain communists, historians,
and political scientists [specifically, Domenico Losurdo] who turn [Ernst] Nolte’s
revisionist scheme on its head and represent Stalinism as a product of a grave
fascist threat: exaggerated and pitiable, criminal in its final outcome, but nevertheless derivative and reactive”.3 In this sense, Daniel Bensaïd warns us to reject
the juridical (“tribunalisation”) function of history, without renouncing historical
judgment.4
This essay is greatly inspired by Darko Suvin’s last book, Splendour, Misery and
Possibilities, An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia, but with two important additions: the
first being that it continues exactly where Suvin left off – from the problem of the
organisation and position of women. I share Suvin’s opinion that “there existed
a strong emancipatory sense…although always threatened and later betrayed“.5
The second is that I date this betrayal to a somewhat earlier period than Suvin.
Additionally, but no less importantly, I would like to emphasize that I rely on the
pioneering studies of the work and activities of the AFŽ written by Lydia Sklevicky,
Gordana Stojaković, and Renata Jambrešić-Kirin, women responsible for some
of the most important steps in this field, and this work is a contribution to the
critique they commenced. It is impossible to fully acknowledge the profound impact of their work on mine. Reading them, I have come to the conclusion that
history of the AFŽ sections of the different federal republics can be taken pars pro
toto. Hence, I focus on other elements, which, through their work, opened up the
space for mine. I refer the reader to their work should they wish to learn something of their own (women’s) history.
There are three important issues in understanding the history and then the dissolution, i.e. the so-called self-abolition of the AFŽ: a) the historical forgetting of
some political continuities, especially on the left; b) the relations the public and
private in postwar Yugoslavia; c) the issue of market reform and the relationship
between production, subsistence, and reproduction in relation to the family and
household. When it comes to the family, my views on patriarchy are to an extent
influenced by Göran Therborn6 and his understanding of the dynamics of family
Traverso, Enzo, De l’anticommunisme. L’histoire du xxe siecle relue par Nolte, Furet et Courtois,
L’Homme et la société, 2001/2: 169–194, p.189.
4
Bensaïd, Daniel, Qui est le juge? Pour en finir avec le tribunal de l’Histoire. Paris: Fayard, 1999, p. 127
3
Suvin, Darko, Samo jednom se ljubi. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije. Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung,
2014, p. 23. (English edition: Splendour, Misery, and Potentialities: An X-Ray of Socialist Yugoslavia.
Leiden: Brill, 2016, p11).
6
Therborn, Göran, Between Sex and Power, Family in the World 1900–2000. London: Routledge, 2004.
5
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relations. Namely, he shows that the family in and of itself does not have any internal dynamic of change until it is influenced by external factors. These external
factors are the subject of this text.
2. On the Prehistory of the AFŽ
Attempts to think the AFŽ historically are often characterized precisely by a lack
of historical consciousness. The AFŽ is mostly portrayed, especially on the left, as
an organisation that came into existence without any prior influences, as something sui generis. Such a view is part of a general historical forgetting – present in
an especially questionable form on the post-Yugoslav left – where we remember
the past either selectively or reactively. Historical amnesia has disastrous consequences. One of the most disastrous is an ahistorical understanding of what
became of ‘the woman question’ and the position of women in the first, and then
in the second Yugoslavia. Bearing in mind that the AFŽ was a unique and unprecedented organisation, but by no means the first women’s revolutionary movement in Yugoslavia, it is necessary to recall forgotten and forbidden models. A
minimum of historical consciousness and intellectual honesty demands that we
do not forget the activities of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) between
the two world wars, or the activities of the women’s civic associations and movements preceding the AFŽ. This is necessary if we are not to “read our own history
as a mistaken footnote”7. Not reading our “own history as a mistaken footnote”
in the case of AFŽ means talking about some continuities in women’s organising.
Precisely for this reason, I would like to offer one possible historical analogy, fully
aware of the dangers of reasoning by analogy. By way of analogy, to the extent
that it allows, I will follow the development of the AFŽ in section 2.3, indicating
some important differences in comparison with the Soviet Zhenotdel, and thus, if
nothing else, open a space for future thought and research.
The aim of the following section is precisely, in opposition to historical forgetting,
to establish a theoretical framework which considers the formation of the AFŽ as
the final outcome of at least three sources, currents, and tendencies preceding
it. We are referring primarily to women’s organising within the Socialist and subsequently Communist Party of Yugoslavia, to women’s and feminist movements
between the two world wars, to the youth sections of the women’s movements
which played a crucial role in the subsequent front politics of the CPY, and finally,
to the Zhenotdel as a forbidden model.
7
Adriana Zaharijević, Fusnota u globalnoj istoriji: kako se može čitati istorija jugoslovenskog
feminizma. “Sociologija” Vol. LVII: 72-89, 2015. p. 86
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2.1. Women’s Organisation within the Workers’ Movement
The women’s sections of the communist movement, the methods and goals of
their work, are the direct heritage of the Second International (the Socialist International, 1889–1916) and particularly of the decisive role of Clara Zetkin in imposing the practice of the women’s organisation of the Social Democratic Party
of Germany on the entire International. Clara Zetkin is responsible for two fundamental innovations.8 The first is related not only to questions of politics but also
to those of the organisation: the woman question cannot be separated from the
question of class. The second is even more important: the idea that women, although exploited as workers, are subjected to a specific type of oppression which
implies specific, historically conditioned methods of organisation and political
activity of women and women workers. Following the resolutions of the Second
International, every socialist (then known as social-democratic) party was obliged
to incorporate women’s sections and committees in its work, and publish magazines covering women and women’s issues. Thus, in years preceding the formal
establishment of the AFŽ, the activity of the pre-World War I socialist movement
in the region, and thus that of the later CPY, was directed towards organising
women workers and founding women’s sections and committees. Although few
in number, women socialists (and communists) organised activities within their
ranks. Thus, to take one of many examples, in March 1919 the Regional Secretariat of Women Socialists of Bosnia and Herzegovina organised literacy and other
classes for women.9 In April of that same year, the Unification Congress of the
Socialist Workers’ Party of Yugoslavia (Communists) was held in Belgrade, where
a Central Secretariat of Women Socialists (Communists) was elected. Its statute
states that the Secretariat “considers itself a part of the Party whole…rules out
any separate women’s organisation, and considers itself a technical-executive
committee for agitation and organising women”.10 The relationship between the
women’s secretariat and the Central Party Council was such that “according to
instructions issued by the Central Party Council of the Socialist Workers’ Party of
Yugoslavia, the Central Secretariat of Women Socialists (Communists) issues directives for women’s activities in general”11. The “Theses on methods and forms
8
What follows is my reading of Zetkin’s articles collected in the edited volume Clara Zetkin, Selected
Writings, New York: International Publishers. Ed. Philip S. Foner, foreword by Angela Davis. I would
like to thank Ajla Demiragić for this book.
9
Kecman, Jovanka, Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941. Belgrade:
Modern History Institute, 1978, p. 93.
Historijski Arhiv KPJ, Vol. 2, Kongresi i Zemaljske konferencije 1919-1937. Belgrade: History
department of the CPY, 1949, pp. 24–26.
11
Ibid., p. 25.
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of work of the Communist Parties among women” adopted in 1921 at the Third
Congress of the Comintern (the Communist International, 1919–1943), later also
adopted by the CPY, arguably did not represent a significant innovation in existing
socialist practice other than in the fact of demanding, in more explicit terms, the
involvement of women as equal members in the work of communist parties and
other proletarian organisations. This continuity was embodied by Clara Zetkin,
the former Secretary of the International Women’s Bureau of the Second International, who in 1920 became Secretary of the International Women’s Secretariat of
the Communist International.
The second part of the Statute of Women Socialists (Communists), adopted at
the Belgrade Unification Congress in 1919, states that work with youth is one of
the special tasks of the women’s movement: “because women are, by nature,
the most suited for and competent in this work […] and it should be carried out
according to contemporary pedagogical principles and, from a purely practical
point of view, lead to an overall education”.12 The purpose of the work was to
prepare the youth to be “loyal members of the proletarian movement”.13 In those
days, rarely did any socialist movement question the fundamental and primary
social role of women, that is, the role of women as mothers and primary carers
responsible for the education and upbringing of new generations. Later on we
will see that Tito, like Stalin, insisted that the primary task of the “new woman”
was bound up with her specific biological function as mother, but we will also see
how Alexandra Kollontai, and the avant-garde of the Bolshevik Revolution, maintained that the socialist revolution had to grow over into a sexual one. Thinking
the AFŽ historically enables us to once again question different models of women’s emancipation on the left, bearing in mind its importance for us today. On the
one hand, we have the model of economic emancipation which follows the argument that economic independence will necessarily, by mathematical progression, result in the emancipation of women through wage-labour. On the other
hand, there is the model of Alexandra Kollontai and the Zhenotdel, for whom the
socialisation of care work is not merely the first prerequisite for women’s entry
into wage-labour, but is considered an end in itself, one of the objectives of communism as the self-management of the direct producers.
While CPY leaders, from Tito to Vida Tomšić, Mitra Mitrović, and Cana Babović,
also affirmed a certain continuity of work among women as the foundation for
the later activity of the AFŽ, from an historical point of view it is also important to
insist on specific ruptures. It is necessary to differentiate periods of activity and
12
Ibid. p. 26.
13
Ibid. p. 26
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the political perspectives that conditioned them. In the so-called “revolutionary
period”, i.e. the period of the painful birth of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes, characterized by strikes, peasant uprisings, and nationalist guerilla
resistance to Belgrade, the women’s work of the Party came down to organising
working women. Following the so-called “Proclamation” of 30 December 1920,
the CPY was formally proscribed, but operated under various semi-legal fronts,
and work with women was transferred to the trade unions. From the 30s onwards, there was a tendency to extend the influence of the CPY to mass organisations like the women’s movements. In 1935, with the definitive imposition of
the Comintern policy of the Popular Front in the struggle against fascism, the
final rupture occurred.14 From that point onwards, participation and entrism in
bourgeois women’s organisations, in order to form special (front) organisations,
became the starting point and model for creating an all-class women’s alliance
in a progressive struggle for the equality of women, against war and fascism.
This approach represents a break with the model of Clara Zetkin, who refused
any kind of cooperation between the labour movement and “bourgeois feminists”
(Frauenrechtlerinnen or ‘women’s righters’), for example in the struggle for female suffrage, or civil rights and equality, as well as with her opposition to the
creation of separate non-party women’s organisations. This example shows us
how the Yugoslav communist movement reshaped itself according to Stalinist
models in the direction of limiting the struggle for the emancipation of women
to a democratic phase whose key task was defeating fascism and defending the
Soviet Union. From the beginning of the Second World War, the struggle to realise
the democratic perspective of national liberation and women’s equality collided
with a political problem, i.e. a barrier: the alliance between Stalin and the Allies.
Although we cannot discuss this policy in detail here, it is important to emphasize that Yugoslavia and China were the only states in which the revolutionary
and democratic forces managed to overcome these barriers, unite the people in
antifascist struggle against the ancien régime, and open up the horizon of social
revolution. From revolutionary Spain to the French Popular Front, to the Italian
and Greek resistance movements, blind obedience to Stalin’s dictate meant the
downfall of the revolution. Historically, we would also have to take into consideration the presence of a paradoxical and creative synthesis and enrichment of
bourgeois feminism and Yugoslav communism, the organisational, moral, and
political precondition for one of the biggest mass movements of women ever
seen in Europe: the AFŽ.
14
Sklevicky, Lydia, Organizirana djelatnost žena Hrvatske za vrijeme NOB-e 1941-1945.
Available at: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/158396
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2.2. “Elective Affinities”: the Women’s Movement
and Communism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The feminist and women’s civic associations of Yugoslavia initiated some of the
first campaigns for women’s literacy, gave literacy classes, worked on raising
consciousness of the woman question and women’s rights, and engaged in propaganda work by publishing newspapers. From the 1920s right up to the end of
the 1930s, one of the most important of these was the Feminist Alliance, which
in 1926 changed its name to the Alliance of Women’s Movements. In Notes on the
feminist history of the city of Zagreb, 1919–1940, Gordana Stojaković lists the longforgotten names of all the important representatives of the feminist and women’s
movements of the day, whose personal commitment and agitation represented
first steps enabling women to come out of the invisibility of the private sphere
into the public realm.15 Although these were all women from rich families, literate, often university educated, their demands aimed at the equality of all women.
In her history, The Woman Question in Serbia in the 19th and 20th Centuries, written
more than half a century after the dissolution of the AFŽ and in the teeth of the
bloody collapse of the second Yugoslavia, Neda Božinović, a former activist in
the Serbian section of the AFŽ, goes out of her way to underline and reaffirm the
legacy of the pre-1945 women’s movement in which she was formed:
[…] already from the time - before the Second World War – I became involved
in the women’s movement, I was impressed by the women who founded
and developed it. I have no less regard for the women of my generation
who, especially during the war, did not spare themselves, but laid down their
lives, giving their all to realise the fundamental preconditions for women’s
liberation. It is my profound belief that women of all generations, in their
own times, with all its and their own limitations, did all that could be done.
This work is […] an attempt to present in one place the history of the women’s movement in Serbia, to point out the efforts and the resolve of women
themselves to contribute to change, to transform their status, and both the
support and resistance they encountered. For they are largely forgotten –
history has hardly anything to say about them.16
For this reason, it is not enough to simply say that we need to take into consideration the historical context, and all the limitations and obstacles that feminists
encountered, to grasp just how progressive their demands were. In fact, a revolu15
The text is available at: http://pravonarad.info/?p-350
16
Ženski pokret, January/February, 1937, pp. 5–6. I am thankful to Gordana Stojaković for forwarding
me these two issues of the review.
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tion and a further 20 years were needed for these demands to be met, and even
then only partially! Neda Božinović confirms that the feminist programs of the
interwar period were not only adopted by socialist Yugoslavia, but also served as
the basis for its laws and legislative practice all the way up to the mid-1960s.17
It is worth underlining the two most important contributions (innovations) of the
feminist and women’s movement, which were of paramount importance for the
later development of the woman question. One of the most important demands
was for the reform of civil law and the unification of all the legal codes valid in the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In fact, it is often forgotten today that there was no uniform legal system in the
Kingdom. According to the Alliance magazine Ženski pokret (Women’s Movement),
there were six legal territories with six different codes of civil law.18 But one
thing they all shared: women were in a legally subordinate position, completely
dependent, both physically and materially, on male family members. The Alliance put forward two highly important reforms to civil law: a) the jurisdiction of
secular, civil courts in all matters, the abolition of the father’s and husband’s authority, b) the recognition of the equal rights of women to dispose of themselves
and their property, introducing the concept of acquired property and equal right to
inheritance. The second element refers to social legislation where the Alliance
offered the following solutions:
[that] employers strictly enforce the ban on night shifts for women, on women working before and after childbirth, make sure to provide children’s shelters according to their legal obligations, where children would be looked
after by trained female personnel, to ensure hygienic conditions at work,
especially proper ventilation, setting up kitchens, separate wash rooms for
men and women, changing rooms etc.; with a view to establishing the most
effective maternity protection for women employed in industry, crafts, the
home and in agriculture, we propose: that the Employee Insurance Act be
extended to cover the agricultural workforce; that the 1922 Employee Insurance Act be amended to regulate the insurance period for obtaining the
right to maternity allowance, the duration of maternity leave, the right to
maternity support, child accessories and breastfeeding support [...]19
The Alliance of Women’s Movements also called for the introduction of female
labour inspectors to enforce the implementation of both the above demands and
17
Božinović, Neda, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, Beograd: Žene u crnom, 1996. p. 262.
18
Ženski pokret, op.cit.
19
Ibid.
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already existing laws. The same demands are to be found in the socialist women’s journal Equality (Die Gleichheit, 1892–1923), founded and edited by Clara
Zetkin. The claim of the historian Lidia Sklevicky that the AFŽ “was and remains
the only legitimate heir of this movement”20 concurs with that of the former AFŽ
militant Neda Božinović.
Although the majority of histories present narrative accounts of the women’s
movement, or concern themselves with prominent figures, conference resolutions, or descriptions of organisations, thus far not a single comprehensive social
history of women in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia has been written. In the absence
of such a history, I would like to emphasize a few important elements. The emergence and proliferation of prominent and important women’s movements, from
the left-leaning to the religious and charitable, is the result of what, in Bloch’s
terms, we could call the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, or more simply,
in Lenin’s words, uneven development. Whilst from a legal perspective, women
basically remained minors, immature, and subordinated principally to the authority of elder men, and secondarily to their sons, while every second woman
was illiterate, the inter-war period was nevertheless, according to the anthropologist Vera Erlich, “a time of crisis […] of general unrest and conflict in the
family”.21 The traditional forms of the patriarchal family (the extended family,
zadruga, and multigenerational households) began to disintegrate – but not in
Macedonia or among Muslim populations – with the further penetration of the
money economy into subsistence agriculture. Fathers could no longer command
in the old way, and the relations between young men and women became freer.
Losing the real protection of partriarchal custom, peasant women found themselves caught between, on the one hand, the patriarchal legal order, and on the
other, the freedom of unlimited exploitation in the market.
Women’s employment trends, often meaning in reality the replacement of male
workers by women and children, were conditioned not only by male deaths in
the First World War, but also by the sharp demographic changes that followed.
For example, in 1921, 40% of the population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was
under the age of 14.22 In addition, the fragmentation of landholdings continued in
the already impoverished countryside, increasingly forcing the rural population
to seek additional sources of income. The rising class of worker-peasants, and of
20
Sklevicky, p. 81.
21
Erlich, Vera S. “Das Erschutternd Gleichgewicht in der Familie, aus eine Jugoslawischen Studie”.
Quoted in: Holm Sundhaussen, Historija Srbije od 19. do 21. veka, p. 296. Belgrade: Clio, 2009.
22
Čalić, Žanin-Mari. Socijalna istorija Srbije 1815.-1941. Belgrade: Clio, 2004, pp. 253–254.
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female and child labour, represented a reserve army of the unemployed, enabling
employers to reduce both the cost of labour and wages.
The new era of total war, with its erasure of boundaries between front and rear,
also called into question the gendered boundaries between the private and the
public. Thus, it was during the First World War that, due to the absence of men,
women were able to occupy important social functions, which they managed to
keep (at least in the cities) even after demobilisation.23 In the cities, under the
influence of Western trends, women attended schools, universities and fought
for greater political rights. Around 20% of the overall university population were
women, who under the strong influence of liberal and socialist ideas of gender
equality turned against sexual double standards. It was not simply a question of
rejecting of outmoded customs, but also, according to the Youth Section of the
Women’s Movement of Serbia, of the fact that the “dictatorship and its reactionary forces [...] had implemented their regressive measures against women and
threatened them with taking away the few rights they have acquired.”24
The above processes were decisive as they conditioned and enabled the formation
of a CPY core and AFŽ cadre on the very eve of war. The cadre mostly consisted of
a young group of female village school teachers and workers who, having acquired
education or work experience in the cities, brought back liberal and progressive
ideas to the countryside, and university-educated, young bourgeois women, who
under the influence of communist ideals, in a Turgenevian drama of mothers and
daughters, clashed with the “ladies” from the feminist movement. By the mid1930s a new generation of young women, female students and female workers
joined the existing women’s and feminist organisations. Faced with the menacing
shadows of war and fascism, the youth sections of the women’s movement strove,
under communist influence, to unite the feminist with the antifascist movements.
For example, in the struggle for the right to vote in 1939 in Serbia, “for the first time
a broad social movement accepted the idea that freedom and democracy could be
applied to the oppressed half of society – women”.25 In 1941, following the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, former members of youth sections of the women’s movement,
members of the Movement of University-Educated Women and other women’s organisations all participated in preparations for an armed uprising, and spontaneously founded women’s antifascist committees – the forerunners of the AFŽ.
23
Čalić, Žanin-Mari. Historija Jugoslavije u XX veku. Belgrade: Clio, 2013, p. 123.
24
Bilten “Ženski pokret kroz omladinsku sekciju”, izveštaj br. 2. Januar 1940, in: Bosa Cvetić (ed.),
Žene Srbije u NOB-i, pp. 56-9.
25
Božinović, Neda, Položaj Žene u Srbiji u XiX i XX veku, Belgrade: Žene u crnom, 1996, p. 260.
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A national pre-congress conference of the CPY held in May 1939, on the eve of
war, debated the incorporation of women as equal members in the activities of
the Party and other labour organisations, an issue that had been on the party
agenda since its very foundation two decades before. Fearing that mobilisation
and repression would decimate the party leadership, Tito now saw women as potential leading cadre that was “unknown to the class enemy”. This was precisely
the source of the idea that “there must not be a single forum without female
members. If the majority of members have thus far underestimated the importance of involving women in the CP – they must now realise that forming female
Party cadre is our most important organisational task”.26 If the chronic habit of
male comrades to consider work with women as women’s work was roundly criticised then, in the wake of the moral collapse of the leadership of the women’s
movement in the face war and repression, feminism was the greater danger. As
Vida Tomšič argued in 1940, in a speech delivered to the party congress: “Feminism presents the common demands of women of all classes separate from the
demands of working people. By emphasizing the common demands of women, in
opposition to and in struggle against men, feminism hides the class basis of the
woman question, and in so doing, deflects the female masses from fighting capitalism and class society in general.”27 This could have been said, and with equal
justice, by Clara Zetkin circa 1890. But the party, under the auspices of the Popular Front, was itself separating general democratic questions from the struggle
against capital: it was the hour of the democratic antifascist alliance.
2.3. The AFŽ as a Revolutionary Movement
According to official figures, some two million women participated in the People’s Liberation Struggle (henceforth NOB), certainly one of the largest organised
movements of women anywhere during the Second World War. 100,000 women
fought as partizanke, while 2000 achieved officer’s rank. 25,000 partizanke were
killed and over 40,000 were wounded in battle. If we remember the all-embracing
conditions of fascist terror and genocide, inter-communal massacres orchestrated by collaborationist forces, and the total collapse of social and economic
life, then the achievement of the AFŽ, the organised, multinational, mass antifascist movement of peasant women, is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
26
See: Proleter, no. 1–2, January/February, 1940, p. 6.
27
Vida Tomšić, quoted in: Šolja Marija (ed.), Žene Hrvatske u NOB-u, Vol. I, pp. 1–8.
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From the very beginning of the uprising, with the establishment of the People’s
Liberation Army (NOV) and expansion of liberated territories, elections were
held to the new organs of revolutionary struggle, the People’s Liberation Committees (henceforth NOO), in which all citizens over the age of 18, regardless of
religion, gender or nationality, could vote. Women’s suffrage was born of their
participation in the struggle for a new constituent power, the People’s Liberation Movement (NOP). The AFŽ mobilised women to vote in the first elections
based on universal suffrage in the Yugoslav lands and encouraged them to put
themselves forward as candidates for election. By the end of the war, 3000
women had been elected to village and municipal NOOs in Bosnia alone. However, as in the CPY, far fewer women were elected to higher bodies. Five women
were elected to the revolutionary government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
State Antifascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(ZAVNOBIH), four times fewer than to the equivalent State Antifascist Council
for the People’s Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH), where the AFŽ section was by
far the strongest. There was only one woman delegate to the historic first session of the Antifascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ)
in Jajce, where the NOOs declared themselves the legitimate and sovereign
government of Yugoslavia – Kata Pejnović, President of the Central Committee
of the AFŽ, who was elected to the Presidency of AVNOJ. At the second session
of AVNOJ in Bihać, female delegates made up only 4% of the total, and only two
women were elected to the Presidency, Spasenija Babović and Maca Gržetić,
both members of the Central Committee of the AFŽ.
One of the first founding documents of the AFŽ, in which the objectives and
methods of the organisation are outlined, is Circular Letter number 4 of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia of 1941. The letter speaks
of the formation of the AFŽ and its role in ““activating and connecting the broad
layers of women and involving them in the People’s Liberation Struggle”; it was
to include “all women...regardless of their political, national, or religious affiliation.” The AFŽ’s future organisational structure was first sketched here. Like
the Party, it too was territorial and electoral, rising from a series of neighbourhood, city, county and regional groups up to the Republican Committee; and centralised, with lower committees being subordinated to higher ones. The AFŽ’s
primary task was to ensure support for the Partisan units, and the AFŽ itself
became a component of the People’s Front (Narodni Front, henceforth NF).28
The struggle for equality between the sexes appears in a list of further political
tasks. It was to become the second core concern of the AFŽ. 29
28
29
Bakarić-Šoljan, Marija (ed.), Žene Hrvatske u NOB-u, Vol I, str. 57.
Ibid., p. 57.
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At the First Congress of the AFŽ in Bosananski Petrovac in 1942, the organisational continuity of the AFŽ was confirmed by Tito himself: “and finally I would also
like to say that the AFŽ, which exists for some time now, and has finally obtained
its organisational form, is truly one of the organisations that have sprung up from
below”.30 Two other important documents from the First Congress attest to the
fact that the AFŽ is a women’s organisation but not separate from other organisations of the NOB. These are the reports given by Cana Babović and Mitra Mitrović,
who was the Secretary of the Youth section of the Women’s Movement of Serbia
and one of the leading women in the Party.31 They give an overview of the prewar
work of the organisation and confirm that its formation was the result of many
years of activity and struggle by the women of Yugoslavia for a more just world.
Both should be read as programmatic, especially given the fact the AFŽ adopted
its statutes much later, but also because the CPY is presented as the bearer of the
struggle against fascism and for the equality of all. The emphasis on the importance of the CPY represents a subtle shift from the politics of the Popular Front,
which once again confirms the aforementioned fact that the CPY at the same time
followed but also deviated from the hard line of the Popular Front.
From the very beginning, the CPY understood that (to paraphrase Mitra Mitrović)
it was waging a struggle and war in which the distinction between front and rear
had been erased. It was no longer possible to consider the front as male and the
rear as female domains. Hence, without the support of women and total mobilisation the popular uprising could not have grown over into a nation-wide struggle
and insurrection. Women had to be mobilised for the struggle, but more importantly for the work in the rear, vital for supplying the army and the NF, for relaying messages, and facilitating communication between higher- and lower-level
committees of the Party, as well as between the AFŽ committees. The peasantry
represented a major problem in this regard. Since peasants made up the majority of the population, the course of the struggle depended on the degree of
their mobilisation into Partisan ranks. Just as important was the proclamation
of equality between men and women, the promise of a better future and social
justice on which the entire revolutionary undertaking rested: destroying the old
and creating the new.
30
‘Tito to Women of Yugoslavia, available at: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/92
31
Cana Babović, Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ-a, available at http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/231
Mitra Mitrović, Antifašistički pokret žena u okviru Narodno-oslobodilačke-borbe, available at:
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/232
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The struggle of the Partisans drew upon guerilla strategies, but also on the
local traditions of peasant rebels, the uskoks and the hajduks, the First and the
Second Serbian Uprisings (1804–1817), the 19th century peasant revolts against
the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Women’s Revolutionary
Army Committees of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO)
which participated in the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, the women guerilla fighters
of the Montenegrin resistance to Austro-Hungarian occupation from 1916 to
1918, as well as other insurgencies against earlier occupiers. In his memoirs,
Milovan Djilas recalls that the Party consciously used „ancient traditions and
myths“ in order to present the NOB as the continuation of „the centuries-old
struggle of our freedom-loving peoples”.32 Jelena Batinić33 shows how the
CPY constructed the figure of a new woman, linking it to epic figures of South
Slav folklore. Partisan femininity rested on two pillars: the noble heroine who
proves her honor and worth (i.e. equality) in battle, and the mother demanding
that her dead children be avenged. The embodiment of the latter was Kata
Pejnović, known among the people as “Mother Kata”, who called for revenge at
the First National Congress of the AFŽ. The first figure is comparable to the role
of young peasant women as fighters and nurses, and the second with the role of
older peasant women, mothers who carried out traditional women’s jobs in the
rear. Together, they had an enormous mobilising potential among the peasantry
since they contained elements of tradition that aroused patriotic feelings and
prompted people to join the fight.
These figures of the new woman were united on front cover of the very first issue
of Žena u Borbi (Woman in Struggle), the journal of the AFŽ Croatia, in the image
of a woman, babe in arm, gun in hand. Fusing the traditional with the new and
modern, the CPY took an entirely legitimate step, creating the conditions for a
possibility of a revolutionary overthrow. Although neither Chetniks nor Ustashas
underestimated the importance of women, in their propaganda women remained
inferior and were tied to church, home, and children.34 Clearly differentiating itself on this issue, the CPY gained a strategic advantage over the forces of occupation and collaboration.
32
Đilas, Milovan, Wartime. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977, p. 227.
33
Batinić, Jelena, Women and Yugoslav Partisans. A history of World War II Resistance. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
34
On women and the Ustashas, see: Bitunjac, Martina, Le donne e il movimento ustascia. Rome:
Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2013; Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata and Senjković, Reana, Puno puta bi vas bili...,
Narodna umjetnost, 42/2, 2005, pp. 109–126.
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In her Report on the Organisational Question, Cana Babović emphasised that the
struggle the AFŽ was leading was the struggle of the CPY, hence the main task
that lay before the movement was “total support for our army”. She fiercely attacked “bourgeois” feminist movements to drive home the point that the goal of
equality was subordinate to the general aims of the NOB.
The second important task was publishing magazines to help mobilise women
and thus also assist the army. The magazines were supposed to promote the
political education of women, which was also stated as one of the aims of the organisation itself. Internal party and archive documents repeatedly complain that
women, even many AFŽ activists, were ignorant not only of their role in the NOB,
but even that this struggle was being fought for their own rights. Only through the
political education of women was it possible to ensure that all women understood
the importance of the struggle and the necessity of uniting all women antifascists
(regardless of class, religion, and nationality) for the struggle against fascism.
But in order to “raise [political] consciousness”, the overwhelming illiteracy of
peasant women first had to be eradicated, and so literacy classes, covering also
hygiene, housekeeping, and the political objectives of the NOB were organised on
liberated territories by the Party cadres that led the AFŽ.
The third important element was activities in the liberated territories aimed at
strengthening the people’s government and supporting the People’s Committees. Mitra Mitrović posed the aim of equality within these broader objectives,
stating in her report that “orphanages and kindergardens are being built in the
liberated territories”. One of the points of interest of her speech is the description of the way women transformed themselves in struggle and through struggle, taking on the same positions as men. Women proudly pointed out how they
took over men’s roles and proved their “heroism, courage, and competence” in
the struggle. And while one of the most important contributions was undoubtedly that, in a moment of crisis, women - as Partisans - through a transgression
of traditional gender roles - were at all allowed to enter the political arena, this
act of joining the struggle for a more just society never in essence questioned
gender relations and norms, but rather repeated and perpetuated them (which
is also confirmed by both congress reports).
Although CPY strategy largely depended on successfully mobilising women into
the movement and struggle, the mobilisation of women into the AFŽ coexisted
with traditional attitudes, and the women who contributed to the Partisan cause
did so, as a rule, by performing traditional women’s tasks and chores: cleaning,
washing, looking after and caring for others. Thus, from the outset, the work of
the AFŽ was conceived strictly as women’s work, largely resting on the tradi-
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tional model of “feminine” nature and “female” qualities. And while this strategic
concession brought the Partisans a significant advantage during the war and enabled women to also affirm themselves as revolutionary subjects, in the postwar
period the contradictions of gender roles took on a different trajectory.
Problems in the work of the AFŽ already arose in its initial phase. Although
Lydia Sklevicky 35 speaks of the initial phase as the phase of autonomy, basing
herself on Mitra Mitrović’s report to the First Congress of the AFŽ, I do not find
any evidence of it there. It is more likely that she confused the reports of Cana
Babović and Mitra Mitrović, because the former explicitly states that the “Central Committee of the AFŽ will strive to make our organisations independent
over time”. On the basis of the available archival evidence, I conclude that these
strivings remained on paper. The AFŽ never was nor did it ever become an autonomous organisation. From the outset, the work of the AFŽ was subordinated
to the NF, and the latter was directly subordinated to the CPY. Although the AFŽ
had limited operational autonomy, it never had full organisational autonomy.
Operational autonomy was more prevalent in the occupied territories; since the
flow of the information from the CC CPY and the NF to the committees of the
AFŽ was much more difficult, it meant that AFŽ committee members had to find
a way to act on their own. Therefore, I consider the repeated claims on the left
concerning the autonomy of the AFŽ to be completely unjustified, as is demonstrated by numerous archive documents. To attribute the AFŽ the autonomy it
never had means not to historicise but rather to mythologize it. The main aim
of the autonomy myth is to legitimise the liberal or second wave feminist thesis that the women’s movement should be politically and organisationally independent of the left. From this follows a metaphysical dualism, first posited
in the work of Sklevicky, between a largely heroic phase of the AFŽ and a diabolic phase of increasing subordination to the Party, culminating in dissolution
in 1953. But, even if this were true, it would not explain the limits to women’s
emancipation either during or after the war. The autonomy thesis evacuates the
central political stakes, that is, the question of political strategy in relation to
the general goals of the revolution and to the meaning of emancipation: the conflict noted above between the model of economic emancipation and that of the
abolition and withering away of the family, classes and the state in communism,
which will be dealt with later.
The Central Committee of the CPY’s letter of January 1944 represents the first
step towards an even greater centralisation of the AFŽ, is confirmed as policy
35
Sklevicky, Organizirana djelatnost žena Hrvatske za vrijeme NOB-e 1941-1945, p. 108.
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at the Fifth Congress of the CPY when a second redistribution of tasks between
the NF and the AFŽ occurred, and the AFŽ becomes an administrative organ of
the NF and is no longer concerned with the political education of women. The
archives also testify to problems that surfaced after the war. Internal reports repeatedly mention that wives of the officials and members of the People’s Front
did not participate at all in the work of the AFŽ.36 This presented a problem for
many women, and some took it as a sign that they too should not participate in
the work of the committees. The reports also state that male comrades did not
allow female comrades to attend courses or that the wives of officials “proudly
stated” that they did not want to work in the organisation.37 It would not be wrong
to say that in the midst of the revolution the very idea that women were equal to
men was revolutionary. The very idea had already met with resistance from the
outset, and it was precisely because of this that women had to find ways to prove
they were not backward and ignorant. All this affected the AFŽ’s work. Thirty
years later, Dušanka Kovačević, one of the leading members of the AFŽ of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, described it thus:
by turning their back on tradition, which weighed them down, women became […] morally, physically, and psychologically different, not in the sense
that they acquired male traits as it is often thought, but that they were becoming what was necessary for the freedom of the people and the revolution. Women and girls found their place in the revolution, which is more important than the personal destiny written in the history of women, but they
instinctively sought to escape the fate of their mothers and grandmothers.
Perhaps for the first time in history, women were creating their own ideal
of womanhood, regardless of what men wanted. That ideal was built on the
standard of revolution and triumph over the enemy. Values such as loyalty
to the people, courage, knowledge, and initiative suppressed the age-old
standards that required women be obedient, not interfere in the affairs of
men, to stay at home, etc. Men changed less. Many of them accepted this new
woman, a comrade, as a necessary, but also temporary feature of the war, part
of the harsh realities of war.38
36
Republican Committee of the AFŽ Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dopis sreskog odbor AFŽ-a Velika
Kladuša, Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
37
For instance: Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik plenarnog sastanka Sreskog odbora AFŽ- održan
26.9.1948. godine” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 84/48, 1948. Oblasni Odbor, “Zapisnik
Plenarnog sastanka AFŽ-a u Bihaću održanog u prostorijama u vjećnici G.N.O dana 9.2.1950.
godine”, p. 2. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 1061/5, 1950. Oblasni Odbor AFŽ-a, “Zapisnik sa
sastanka sekretarijata Oblasnog odbora za oblast sarajevsku koji se održaje 10.1.1950. godine”,
Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, 1053/4, 1950.
38
Žene BiH u NOB-u, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1977, pp. 38–38, my emphasis.
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However, in the existing archive documents the struggle of the CPY is nowhere
bound up with the struggle against capitalism, which is a function of the aforementioned question of revolutionary strategy and greatly conditioned the reaction that in turn largely shaped the later policy of the CPY. The fact that from 1935
onwards the program of the CPY balanced between an independent revolutionary policy and the politics of the Popular Front, produced two significant results:
on the one hand, the revolutionary policy secured the opening of the revolutionary field and created conditions for the possibility of revolution; but on the other,
pursuing the politics of the Popular Front prevented the CPY from relating the
struggle against fascism, which was its number one goal, to the struggle against
capital and capitalism. This is especially important for understanding the position of women in Yugoslavia and the relationship between production and reproduction, as well as the form this relation took in the 1950s, as can be seen in the
archive documents.
2.4. Of what is “Zhenotdel” [not] the name?
I have stated above that I will try to examine the limits of a possible historical analogy. In the AFŽ archive, in later female Partisan biographies, and in most of the
works of Yugoslav historiography dealing with “the woman question”, one sees
something that for the purposes of this paper I will call a symptomatic absence.
Namely, the literature on the Yugoslav communist movement and the AFŽ does
not even mention the Soviet Zhenotdel (Женотдел), or its main protagonists Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Konkordiya Samoilova,
and Klavdiia Nikolayeva. Even a random Google search barely provides any results in Serbo-Croatian, and the few positive results are connected solely with
the name of Alexandra Kollontai. The fact that there is barely any mention of the
Zhenotdel is surely the result of the erasure of its history – firstly from Soviet,
and then necessarily from all the other Eastern Bloc historiographies, including
the Yugoslav. This absence necessarily gives rise to the following questions: at
the time of the formal establishment of AFŽ was it forbidden to speak in Yugoslavia of the Zhenotdel, which by then had ceased to exist? Was the model of the
Zhenotdel one that had to be forgotten and was not to be referred to or remembered? And finally, the main question: what is the difference between the AFŽ and
the Zhenotdel? The structure of the AFŽ greatly – but not entirely – imitated that
of the Zhenotdel.39 This alone is enough to talk about the Zhenotdel as an absent
model, and – in the period of the AFŽ’s formal establishment – also as a forbid39
See: Stites, Richard, Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917-1930, Russian History, Vol.
3, no. 2, p. 182.
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den model, since Yugoslavia at that time entirely followed Stalin’s politics of the
Popular Front.40
Today, it is a commonplace in Soviet historiography that the October Revolution
introduced one of the most progressive bodies of legislation ever to be enacted.
It is a well-known fact that the February Revolution of 1917 – led by women demanding an end to a war that deprived them of the most basic necessities – was
a catalyst and a trigger for later revolutionary events. Shortly after February, and
after a great deal of pressure and demonstrations led by women and supported
by Bolshevik and bourgeois feminist agitation, the Provisional government granted universal suffrage. Following the establishment of the first Soviet government
in December 1917, divorce was legalised, marriages and civil partnerships were
made equal in the eyes of the law, thereby recognising the rights of children
regardless of whether born in or out of wedlock. In November 1920, abortion
was legalised for the first time in history, while backstreet abortions now carried heavy sentences. This was followed (on 30 December 1922) by the New Land
Code, which represented the most profound and systematic legislative attempt to
break traditional patriarchal, cultural and legal-property relations and norms.
The attempt to change traditional patriarchal relations, affecting the greatest part
of the population, was obliged to grasp the problem at its root and hence caused
the most resistance. This law made possible the equality of men and women in
the Dvor [the peasant homestead]; the management of the household became
equally the affair and obligation of both partners, and women were granted equal
inheritance rights to the property of the Dvor.41 All the above laws were the outcome of the drive and determination of Alexandra Kollontai, who after the revolution became People’s Commissar for Social Welfare.42 The abolition of the family,
40
Supplementary evidence that Soviet models were never far from the minds of the leaders of the AFŽ
may be seen in the frequent use of Soviet jargon, for example the significant reference to besprizorniki,
that is, the millions of orphans of the Civil War whose care and accommodation were given over to
the Zhenotdel. See: Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 2, 149–147, as well
as “Zapisnik sa održanog savjetovanja žena iz grada i sreza Zenice po pitanju formiranja raznih
društava a u vezi zaključka sjednice Izvršnog odbora C.O. AFŽ-a”
41
On the laws of the early post-revolutionary period, as well as later Stalinist counter-revolutionary
measures see: Schlesinger, Rudolf (ed.), The Family in the U.S.S.R., Documents and Readings,
Routledge, 2000.
42
While historians disagree as to the precise contribution of Alexandra Kollontai to drafting Soviet
family law and the formation of the Zhenotdel, Carol Eubanks Hayden is convinced that without
her individual efforts many things would have remained on paper. See her doctoral dissertation:
Feminism and Bolshevism: The Zhenotdel and the Politics of Women’s Emancipation in Russia 1917–
1930. University of California, Berkeley, 1979.
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inconceivable without a complete and radical overturning of gender and patriarchal norms, was one of the key characteristics of Bolshevik revolutionary theory
which drew “upon accepted Marxist theory (Engels, Bebel) and on the work of
native Russian Marxists, such as Kollontai and Krupskaya”.43
The conception of gender roles as fluid and fluctuating is one of the basic ideas
behind the idea of communal living, the attempts (only partially successful) to
fulfill the utopian dream of creating institutions for the socialisation of housework, the sharing of household chores and obligations, and the “withering away”
of the family as a unit of social reproduction, together with the state and classes.44 The ideas that guided the leaders of the October Revolution represent the
only attempt thus far to realise communism not only in the ownership of the
means of production but also in the abolition of the family, which they considered
no less a part of the revolutionary transformation of society. By deconstructing
and overturning the rigidity of gender markers and categories, which had held
women in a subordinate position for centuries and bound them to housework
- which, in the words of Lenin, “dulls, stultifies and enslaves”45 - they strove to
realise these ideals. That is precisely why, as early as 1905 and 1909 respectively,
Kollontai and Krupskaya voiced the importance and necessity of organising proletarian and peasant women through special groups, committees, or sections.
However, the idea of founding a separate women’s organisation within the party
remained unrealised until 1917. In that year, the prewar Bolshevik newspaper
for women workers, Rabotnica,46 was revived, serving as one of the main propaganda tools for agitation and work amongst women. The story of the Zhenotdel
is a story of how a specifically women’s organisation was formed despite internal Party resistance. The diversity of positions amongst the Bolsheviks during
the October Revolution is perhaps best portrayed by the fact that both male and
female party members opposed its foundation. On this basis a conflict arose between Alexandra Kollontai and Klaudia Nikolaeva47 during the First Conference
43
Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Bolshevik Party, Russian History, Vol, no. 2, 1976,
pp.150–173.
44
Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution,
Oxford University Press, 1989. It is interesting that Stites dates these aspirations to the period from
1917 to 1930, which coincides with the establishment and the activities of the Zhenotdel.
45
Lenin gave unreserved support to the work and activities of the Zhenotdel and spoke on several
occassions at women’s congresses organised by the Zhenotdel. See: Stites, 1989, op. cit.; Hayden,
1976 op. cit.
See Hayden, 1976, op. cit.; Stites, 1976, op. cit. It is important to note that Rabotnica was launched
following the International Socialist Women’s Congresses held concurrently with the conferences of
the Second International in Stuttgart in 1907 and Copenhagen in 1910.
47
Nikolaevna would later become the director of the Zhenotdel.
46
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of Petrograd Women Workers held on 6 November 1917, where Nikolaeva along
with Konkordiya Samoilova opposed the formation of a women’s section within
the Party.48 At the Seventh All-Russian Congress of Bolsheviks held in April 1917,
Alexandra Kollontai motioned that a meeting of female delegates be held to form
a women’s department within the Bolshevik Party. In September that same year
a women’s section was established, but it would only obtain the status of a Party
department (otdel) in 1919 after considerable political pressure and mobilisation.
The decisive event was the First All-Russian Congress of Working Women organised by Kollontai and Armand in November 1918 with the help of workers,
peasants and other delegates from all over Russia who came to Moscow in the
teeth of the perils and hardships of the civil war. Carol E. Hayden points out that
the organisation of women in a separate department (Zhen-otdel) in the midst
of civil war was all the more significant because it was necessary to defend and
consolidate the revolutionary government to enable the enactment of its laws
and decrees. The Bolsheviks thus found themselves in the contradictory position
of having to “appeal to women as a separate group in order to convince them that
they were not a separate group”.49 In its work, the Party was acutely aware of
both the inadequacy of formal legal equality and the pressing need to strengthen
and enforce the law.
Armand and Kollontai worked to the limits of endurance, traveling all over the
country, organising women factory workers and peasants, involving them in the
work of the Zhenotdel and the revolutionary wave in general. They agitated not only
among women factory workers and peasants, but also the unemployed, wives of
military personnel, etc. It is in this particular context that Carol E. Hayden talks
about an important principle of the Zhenotdel, “agitation by deeds, not words”,
while Richard Stites points out that the true context of the Zhenotdel is that the
“formal, legislative program of emancipation (the only one usually noted by historians) had to be given meaning in the social revolution from below”.50 One of the
main mechanisms for accomplishing “agitation by deeds” was the system of delegates (delegatki). The essence of this system was that the women workers and
peasants elected delegates who would spend three to six months as apprentices
(praktikantki) at Zhenotdel headquarters, visit and acquaint themselves with the
work of courts, Party departments, hospitals, and other institutions, getting to
know their rights in order to be able to expose irregularities in the application of
48
Hayden, 1976, op. cit.
49
Ibid.
50
Stites, 1976, op. cit., p. 176.
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laws and regulations in their factories, homes, and villages. According to Stites,
the delegatki“as a rule, saw much, and reported honestly”. The goal was clear:
training female personnel to achieve more thorough and comprehensive changes
in everyday life and the socialisation of housework. Wendy Zeva Goldman remarks that membership in the Zhenotdel forever changed the lives of thousands
of women workers, peasants, housewives, and domestic servants who gained
experience through the apprenticeship system and passed it on to others.51 In
spite of its enormous influence, and importance for the daily lives of hundreds
of thousands of women, the work of the Zhenotdel was from the start weighed
down with prejudice and problems. Male and female party members of all ranks
opposed the establishment and work of the Zhenotdel, accusing it of feminist
deviations, forcing its female members to constantly justify themselves and explain that their work had nothing to do with such deviations. Conflicts broke out,
with presidents of provincial committees in Central Asia committing acts of violence against women involved in the work of the Zhenotdel, and there was even
a case of a Zhenotdel office being burned down, as well as cases of domestic
violence where husbands beat their wives for daring to go to “women’s” meetings.52 In a letter from 1920, Konkordiya Samoilova wrote that their colleagues
gave them sexist nicknames such as ‘granny center’ (Tsentro-baba) or ‘commissariat of grannies’ (bab-kom). Many high-ranking female members of the Party
refused to work in the Zhenotdel, considering it inferior and unbecoming, and
sought recognition in the affairs of men.53 Enormous problems arose in the work
of the Zhenotdel in the aftermath of the Civil War, with the demobilisation of the
Red Army and the introduction of the market mechanisms of the New Economic
Policy. Soviet enterprises were obliged to adhere to profit criteria and women
bore the brunt of the resulting wave of layoffs. In 1922, although representing approximately a quarter of the labour force women accounted for some 60% of the
unemployed. There was less and less money in the budget for the Zhenotdel and
its tasks while the mass unemployment of men and women merely exacerbated
the financial squeeze on the organisation.
After the death of Inessa Armand, the first director of the Zhenotdel, and the
removal of Alexandra Kollontai (who joined the Workers’ Opposition against the
51
Goldman, Wendy Zeva, Women, the State and Revolution, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life
1917–1936. Cambridge University Press, 1993. On the changes the Zhenotdel brought about, see
also: Stites, Richard: Did the Bolshevik Revolution Improve the Lives of Soviet Women – available at:
http://faculty.sfhs.com/lesleymuller/ap_euro/Debates/debate_soviet_women.pdf
52
Hayden, 1976, op. cit., p. 161.
53
Clements, Evans, Barbara, The Bolshevik Women, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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emerging one-party state), there followed a series of female directors whose
work became more and more difficult under the glare of the Stalinist apparatus. From 1924 and the doctrine of “socialism in one country”, little by little the
Stalinist counterrevolution began to hollow out the heritage of the October Revolution. In 1930 the Zhenotdel was abolished by Party decree under the pretext
that equality between men and women had been achieved, “that women had
been ‘advanced’ to the level of men”,54 and the activities of the Zhenotdel were
transferred to the AgitProp section of the Secretariat of the Central Committee
of the CPSU. In 1936, the counterrevolution was finally able to deliver the coup
de grâce to the cultural gains of the revolution, reinstating tsarist laws against
abortion and homosexuality, and making divorce practically impossible through
various legal impediments. In this way the emancipatory potential of the October
Revolution was erased, and the idea of the abolition (withering away) of the family and the elimination of patriarchal and gender roles and norms was forever
thrown into the dustbin of history.
We have seen that the Zhenotdel arose from the previous revolutionary mobilisation of women in order to defend the Soviet government and the achievements
of the revolution from counterrevolutionary attack during the Civil War, while
the AFŽ, even before the fascist invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia, was conceived as an organisation for mobilising women for a war of national liberation,
based on alliances with both the Yugoslav Government in Exile and the Allies.
If we compare the Zhenotdel and the AFŽ as women’s organisations in countries where revolutionary overthrows took place, one of the most important differences lies in the fact that in the case of the Zhenotdel the function of political mobilisation became more important over time, while in the case of the AFŽ
less so. The AFŽ focused less and less on political mobilisation and more on the
distribution of goods, the work of the mother-child section and social issues in
general. These two organisations faced similar, if not exactly the same, difficulties, ones necessarily faced by any attempt to change centuries-old relations,
traditions and beliefs. Both the Zhenotdel and the AFŽ radically changed the lives
54
Wood, Elizabeth A., The Baba and the Comrade. Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Although Elizabeth Wood’s research is extraordinary,
I disagree with her (revisionist) assessment that women were “the reserve army of the revolution, a
group to be drawn to the labour pool and into the political struggle when needed and to be dismissed
when no longer needed”. It is precisely the Zhenotdel, the subject of her book, that embodies the
attempt to make the struggle universal, because without the joint efforts of both women and men
there could be no material realisation of revolutionary principles. For the same reasons, I disagree
with the analysis of Jelena Batinić, which follows Wood and sees Soviet politics as undifferentiated
top-down emancipation.
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of the women who participated in their work. However, the fact remains that different means were used for different ends. Namely, the Bolsheviks, and therewith also the Zhenotdel, fought against capitalism from the outset, and therefore
against the bourgeois form of the family. In the case of the CPY and the AFŽ, the
struggle against capitalism, for communism, was not a constituent part of the
struggle, but was presented as the real objective only after the CPY assumed
power. Because of this, the Yugoslav revolution never declared, even for a moment, the abolition of the family. Today the aspirations of the Zhenotdel exist only
in a specialised historical literature, and no longer have a name or a place. The
abolition of the family, the specter announced in the Communist Manifesto, no
longer haunts anyone or anything.55
3. From Revolutionary Subjects to the Productive Subject
By the 30s, the Soviet model of women’s emancipation came down, as Barbara
Clements wittily puts it, to the „emancipated worker and the happy homemaker.”56
For Stalin, they formed the two pillars of the female productive subject: “women
make up half the population of our country […] they constitute a great army of
labour and are fit to raise our children”.57 In theory, the economic independence
of women in a socialist economy would lead to their full emancipation. Eric
Hobsbawm notes:
For while major changes, such as the massive entry of married women into
the labour market might be expected to produce concomitant or consequential changes, they need not do so - as witness the USSR where (after
the initial utopian-revolutionary aspirations of the 1920s had been abandoned) married women generally found themselves carrying the double
load of old household responsibilities and new wage earning responsibilities without any change in relations between the sexes or in the public or
private spheres.58
In all economies based on free wage-labour, the status of the “emancipated female worker” is subordinate to her social function of mother. Such a vision of
55
Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich, Manifest komunističke partije (Manifesto of the Communist Party),
available at: http://staro.rifin.com/root/tekstovi/casopis_pdf/ek_ec_586.pdf
56
Clements, E. Barbara, A History of Women in Russia, from the Earliest Times to the Present,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012, p. 429.
57
Cited in: Filipova, Jelena, Iz USSR, Šta je dala ženi velika Oktobarska socijalistička revolucija, in
Nova žena, year 2, no. 20, November, 1946, p. 20.
58
Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, London: Abacus, p.313
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the new woman was also present in Yugoslav practice. At the Third Congress
of the AFŽ in 1950, Tito declared: “I think, comrades, that you should primarily
carry out, with all your strength and enthusiasm, duties proper to your specific
obligations, such as, for example, caring for women, mothers, caring for children’s hygiene and for children in general, health, and the education of women in
Yugoslavia”.59 We find no evidence in the archives that the idea of abolishing the
family ever existed in Yugoslavia, as we saw by contrast in the case of the Russian
revolution.
No such steps were ever taken in Yugoslavia. During the war, the AFŽ journal,
Žena u Borbi (Woman in Struggle), proselytised the Soviet formula of wage-labour
and motherhood, introducing its readers to a new productive subject, “the free
and equal citizen of a socialist country”, whose achievements as tractor driver,
shock worker and chemist were commended as models to be emulated. Hence
we should not be surprised that the first constitution of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1946) was almost identical to that of the USSR of 1936. For
example, abortion continued to be illegal under the new constitution, it was only
later (in the early 60s) that it was liberalised, and made legal by the Constitution
of 1974. Where Yugoslav and Soviet practice were to differ was in the degree to
which the new woman depended on mechanisms of state or market accumulation for her reproduction.
All revolutions may be essentially defined by their approach to women. In form,
they can be modernising-emancipatory or patriarchal. The difference is that the
former aim at the emancipation of women, emphasizing equality, while the latter
bind women to the family and emphasize sex (therefore also gender) differences.60 All great revolutions proclaimed a new type of woman. Yugoslavia, as we
have seen, was no exception. If we know that “the position of women in any society depends on how that society organzies basic human functions, such as reproduction, subsistence and production”,61 then it is important to examine all the
contradictions present from the outset in the manner in which the organisation
of these basic functions is approached. Here, when we address the Yugoslav past
and future, we must discuss the mutual interpenetration of the modernising59
From Tito’s speech at the Third Congress of the Women’s Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia, 1950.,
available at: http://afzarhiv.org/items/show/481
60
Mogadham, Valentine M., Gender and Revolutionary Transformation, Iran 1979 and Eastern Central
Europe 1989, Gender & Society, June 1995, pp. 328–356.
61
Woodward, Susan L., The Rights of Women: Ideology, Policy and Social Change in Yugoslavia, in:
Susan L. Wolchik and Alfred G. Mayer (eds.), Women, State and Party in Eastern Europe, Duke
University Press, Durham. 1985, pp. 576–636.
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emancipatory and the patriarchal conceptions of the position and role of women
in revolution, or more precisely in the post-revolutionary period. To talk about
this interpenetration is precisely to remain true to the AFŽ, i.e. to understand the
historical trajectory of its development and dissolution as deeply antagonistic.
Only in this way can we understand the fundamental antagonism that existed and
exists when it comes to the position of women in society.
While in the context of postwar Yugoslavia the creation of a new woman was,
on the one hand, rhetorically emphasized as one of the main goals and tasks of
the new government, on the other hand, we can observe how the reality became
divorced from the militant ideals in which women had confirmed themselves
as subjects of revolutionary struggle. The end of the war meant a fresh start
in building a new country and new society. The old order was demolished and
the new one was on the agenda, which required the unification of all available
forces and resources for the renovation and reconstruction of the country, but
also the introduction of a whole series of political-legal acts and new mobilising
strategies.
Maxine Molyneux62 points out that one of the main tasks of every post-revolutionary government in Third World countries or those ruled by an ancien régime
is the progressive replacement of the old by the new, for the sake of accelerated
economic development and social change. This entails “creating a centralised,
secular, and more egalitarian social order”. Creating such an order depends on
implementing laws that are also valid in rural areas where customary law predominates. Following the adoption of the 1946 Constitution, a gradual enactment
of new, standardized legal regulations followed.63 One of the most important
achievements for women was the abolition of legal differences existing in the six
legal territories of the former Kingdom. For instance, Susan Woodward64 points
out that the authority of fathers in Yugoslavia was substituted by the authority of
the state, which did indeed displace the predominantly patriarchal and patrilocal structure of society. With the 1946 Constitution,65 the CPY took the first step
in creating the conditions for bettering the lot of women. Subsequently, uniform
legislation and civil court jurisdiction were introduced in matters of marital, famMolyneux, Maxine, Socialist Societies Old and New: Progress Towards Women’s Emancipation,
Feminist Review, Summer 1981, pp. 1–34.
63
Božinović, 1996, op- cit., pp. 157–158.
64
Woodward, 1985, op. cit.
62
65
The AFŽ was mobilised in discussing the issues of the Constitution, as seen in for example:
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavije, Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH, 10. Decembar 1945, and Glavni Odbor
AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, Kutija, , 1/ 135, 1945.
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ily, labour and criminal law, thus fulfilling the demands of the women’s movement from the 1930s. In this way, what women had achieved by force of arms was
given formal legal sanction.
But what had they achieved by force of arms? Equality or equality of rights, to
use Marx’s distinction? Already in the first (wartime) phase of the AFŽ’s activities, there was mostly talk of “equal civil and social rights”, but not of equality. If equality was mentioned, it was in the context of equality with men, which
once again brings back to equal rights and making men’s and women’s rights
equal. The unquestionable, enormous, and indescribable historical merit of the
CPY remains that, for the first time in history, women in Yugoslavia became, legally speaking, persons. That is, as Ivana Pantelić66 splendidly observes, women
became citizens – which the archival documents confirm. Women fought for and
won the right to vote, to education, employment, and equal pay for equal work
(at least nominally); there was a public healthcare system, maternity and child
protection, maternity leave, etc. This overturning of a patriarchal legal order of
rule by fathers shook social relations from top to bottom and ensured a greater
degree of autonomy and independence for women. Even today, exposed as we are
to ever more powerful and violent assaults by conservative and neoliberal policies, we stand on the ground and heritage of these victories.
Many feminists and theorists67 have already pointed out that the Yugoslav political project ran into problems as early as the late 1940s and early 1950s. All
these writers recognise that the revolutionary heroine, the new woman, had to
remain her old self, i.e. the question of general social emancipation (and with it
the emancipation of women) was increasingly seen as secondary. Since Yugoslav
politics was conditioned by both internal and external factors, which in turn determined the trajectory of social and economic relations, this primarily affected
the aforementioned organisation of production, reproduction, and subsistence.
What interests me here is, taking Marxist and feminist analyses into consideration and following the archival evidence, to show how these conditions affected
the position of women.
To understand this it is first necessary to grasp the incommensurability of the
concepts of modernity and of revolution – revolution as the destruction of a state
order and the establishment of a new one. These concepts are not identical
although they both imply a radical rupture with the past, the idea of historical
66
Pantelić, Ivana, Partizanke, građanke, Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011.
67
For instance: Lydia Sklevicky, Gordana Stojaković, Renata Jambrešić-Kirin, Susan Woodward, and
Svetlana Slapšak. See bibliography below.
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progress, and a vision of the future as open horizon. Moreover they are radically
opposed to one another. As Perry Anderson reminds us, each has a distinct temporality: “The characteristic time of ‘modernity’ is continuous, and all encompassing, like the process of industrialisation itself: at its most extended, nothing
less than the totality of the epoch itself. The time of revolution is discontinuous,
and delimited: a finite rupture in the reproduction of the established order, by
definition starting at one conjuncture and ending at another.”68 Modernity is characterized by Benjamin’s empty, linear time “in which each moment is perpetually
different from every other by virtue of being next, but – by the same token – is also
the same, as an interchangeable unit in a process of indefinite recurrence.”69 The
time of capitalist reproduction is a time that finds its purest ideological expression in the teleological concept of modernisation. By contrast, the act of revolution is broken, discontinuous, a moment of condensed political transformations
that opens up a revolutionary space. But this also necessarily means opening a
new, different temporality, which cannot be reduced to the linear time and linear
unfolding of events characteristic of the capitalist mode of production, i.e. the
endless production of commodity relations.
Socialist revolutions entail three discontinuous and contradictory conjugations of
the revolutionary event and processes in time: a sudden transition from democratic to social revolution, a prolonged transition from political revolution (transformation of the legal-political order) to cultural revolution (transformation of
customs), and finally a transition from national to world revolution.70 Thus, we
have here discontinuities, broken and differential temporalities and rhythms of
class struggle, i.e. revolution and counterrevolution, economic experiment, cultural revolution, and social emancipation, in which neither events nor processes
in time proceed in a straight line; we cannot know them in advance, nor can we be
sure of the outcome. It is precisely for this reason that Antonio Gramsci emphasized that we should not confuse “the explosion of political passions […] with cultural transformations which are slow and gradual” because “changes in ways of
thinking do not occur through fast, simultaneous, and generalised explosions”.71
Thus we see the defeat of the utopian and fragmented temporality opened up by
the Russian Revolution, the defeat of the time of the Zhenotdel, of the revolution
68
Anderson, Perry, A Zone of Engagement, London: Verso, 1992. pp. 46–47.
69
Ibid., p. 30.
70
Bensaïd, Daniel, Le pari mélancolique, Paris: Fayard, 1997. p. 73.
71
Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderno 24, Giornalismo, §3, in: Quaderni del carcere, Vol III, Torino: Einaudi,
1975, p.2269; cited in: Anderson, 1992, op., cit.
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in everyday life (byt) and the abolition of the family, and their replacement by the
temporality of the “Soviet new class”, “socialism in one country”, “Thermidor
in the family”, and the formation of the modern, nuclear family. And I think it is
precisely here that we should look for the reasons and causes of the slowing
down of the emancipation process in Yugoslavia. If patriarchy is more than just
a set of social values but also has something to do with the mode of production,
then we can say that in the Yugoslav case modernisation as the reproduction
of market relations is precisely the key element bridging the reproduction of
patriarchy. The moment a gradual self-limitation set in there also appeared an
apologetics that denied the existence of relations of domination and subordination, their systemic causes, and the fact that – precisely because they are systemic – they reproduce themselves automatically over time. The reproduction
of patriarchy takes the form of modernity through the legal and political division
between the private and the public and is best seen in the distinction between
equality of rights and equality.
Therefore, following the young Marx, we will distinguish between equality of
rights and equality.72 From the perspective of the Marxist theory of emancipation
as disalienation, and of demands for (radical) equality, these concepts should
not be reduced to one another. As the young Marx already demonstrated, equality of rights does not imply equality, other than in the formal sense. Formal, i.e.
juridical equality presents real social relations in a mystified form, concealing
the real material inequalities existing between formally free and equal citizens.
At the same time, the separation of economic from political power represents
their production as two separate spheres, the “economic” and the “political”, i.e.,
the sphere of civil society as a sphere of free, private contracts between ownerspossessors, and the sphere of the political as one in which we, as citizens, enjoy
universal legal-political rights. As G.M.Tamás reminds us, the very production of
the private-public distinction means precisely that the sphere of free exchange
between free owners of labour-power is also the sphere of limitless domination
and exploitation of wage-labour. The freedom peculiar to free labour also tells
us something about the formal equality of gendered labour. Within the modern,
nuclear family there is no exchange of values, and men and women enter into
contract as free and equal in order to reproduce their own labour-power and the
labour-power of future generations.
Since the woman is responsible for social reproduction, her free choice to enter
into family relations is an expression of the fact that owners of labour-power
72
Marx, Karl, Prilog kritici Hegelove filozofije prava, Beograd: Kultura, 1957.
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can access the means of subsistence only through the market. Given that the
market continues to value private labour as socially necessary labour, the
formal equality of the male and the female worker is the precondition for the
division of the bourgeois subject into bourgeois and citizen, male and female
genders, the private and the public, the economic and the political, and all other
possible separations and alienations characteristic of commodity fetishism.
Thus we can also apply Marx’s critique of formal equality to the contradictions
which, immediately after the war, led to the first difficulties in realising socialist ideals in Yugoslavia. From subjects of revolution and revolutionary subjects,
women became citizen-owners (of their own labour-power). With this, the revolution was effectively stopped, processes of general social emancipation slowed
down, and the question of the emancipation of women was postponed to some
distant future time.
The majority of documents in the archives from this period testify to the emancipation of women being increasingly understood exclusively as an economic category, to an insistence on the greater usage of female labour (with the constant
problem of a lack of institutions that would socialise the burden of reproduction, especially conspicuous in less developed areas/republics), thereby reducing
emancipation to the contractual, wage-labour form.
In the archives we find testimonies to the new progressive measures whose goal
was to increase the participation of women in public life, production processes,
and economic activities, but we also find field reports that tell a somewhat different story. It is logical to ask why and how was it possible that after the revolution,
despite legal equality and exceptionally progressive laws, women still remained
unequal. The answer is offered by the aforementioned distinction between the
private and the public, based on the Marxian category of free wage-labour. According to Maxine Molyneux, it is often overlooked, although it is of the utmost
importance, that the formal equality (equal of rights) obtained by women only after revolution, and the fact that women sometimes perform “non-female” work,
in no way contradict a persistent sexual-gender division of labour, and the failure
to diminish or eradicate the burden of housework and responsibility between the
sexes.73 In what follows, relying on documentary evidence, I will try to demonstrate how these contradictions were manifested in the Socialist Federal Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SRBiH), but also in Yugoslavia as a whole.
73
Molyneux, 1981, op. cit.
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In the first postwar years, the AFŽ entered a phase oriented, in the words of Gordana Stojaković,74 toward “consolidation, renovation, and reconstruction”. In addition, it was important that other structures, like the NF, continue their work
unhindered. Hamdija Čemerlić, representing the NF, stated at the Congress of
the AFŽ of Bosnia and Herzegovina (AFŽBIH) on 8 June 1945:
Through their efforts and accomplishments, our women have forever earned
their political rights and forever become equal to our men. There is no sowing and no harvest without the great efforts of our women. Caring for invalids, tending our wounded soldiers, looking after orphans – these are all
your achievements. This is what you have done until now, and this is what you
will continue to do.75
This example illustrates the tendency to expect women to accept the “biological
and natural” roles they had played throughout history, but now under new circumstances – as equals enjoying all rights attached to the status of formal-legal
equality. In this phase, the AFŽ’s work was organised through the work of sections: mother-child, cultural-educational, and social-health. The archives contain detailed information about the extent of women’s involvement in the renovation and reconstruction of the country; in organising and preparing elections,
constructing infrastructure and new buildings, painting walls, running literacy
courses in villages and hamlets, running lectures on domestic science, housekeeping, hygiene, prevention of infectious diseases, approved methods of childcare and upkeep of the home, superstition, and midwifery courses, etc.76 They
74
Gordana Stojaković argues that there were three phases of AFŽ activity. Although her focus is the
AFŽ of Vojvodina, the same argument can be applied to the AFŽBiH. The first phase of supporting
the NOB lasted from 1942–1945; the second phase, in which the remit was expanded to postwar consolidation, renovation and reconstruction, lasted from 1946–1949; and the third phase of
dissolution, involving a shift to the provision of social services and care work, lasted from 1949–
1953. See: Partizanke, žene u narodno-oslobodilačkoj borbi, in: Duško Milinović and Zoran Petakov
(eds.), Partizanke, žene u narodno-oslobodilačkoj borbi, Novi Sad: Cenzura, 2010, p. 13.
75
Welcoming speech of dr. Hamdije Čemerlića at the First Congress of the AFŽ BiH on June 8, 1945,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, 1945, Kutija 1, available at:
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/272
76
For instance: Glavni Odbor AFŽBiH, Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Sreski izvještaj AFŽ-a za srez
sarajevski Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH (elections, building a children’s summer camp, national
education, literacy courses), Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 4, 1137/48, 1948. Glavni odbor AFŽ-a
BiH, “Dopis Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Doboj Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a za BiH, 7.2.1947. godine” (report
on the work of the health section, literacy courses) Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 2, 199/47,
1947. Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Sreski Odbor AFŽ-a Bijeljina, Zapisnik sa sastanka Sekretarijata
Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a BiH (organising women for construction of the Bijeljina-Rača railway).
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 1182, 1948.
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prove that the tasks assigned to AFŽ members were nearly always related to
their biological perception as women, mothers, sisters, and comrades, who were
expected to fulfil all norms and requirements inherent in their “natural” roles.
The plenary session of the Republican Committee of the AFŽBiH in 1946 reaffirmed these tasks, as well as the importance of voting.77 However, it quickly
become clear that the AFŽ’s work in the second phase was linked to modernisation – mass shock working, construction and industrialisation – together with
all the other obligations arising from the gender division of labour and its perpetuation. After political work was transferred to the NF, the AFŽ became an
organisation with exclusively social functions, in cooperation with the Front and
the ministries.
The year 1948 was a turning point: the break with Stalin and conflict with the
Cominform, the turn toward market mechanisms, and accordingly, with the introduction of self-management, the first economic reforms. Fearing attack and
invasion, the state initially mobilised the masses for labour and non-stop production. After 1949 and Yugoslavia’s admission to the UN Security Council the threat
of war receded. Yugoslavia turned to self-management, which was, in its first
phase, supposed to increase profitability in investments and production, thus
accelerating the accumulation of capital. Under the logic of production, women
became the first “suspects”. In the words of Vida Tomšić, the first postwar president of the AFŽ, “they were regarded as unprofitable labour due to maternity”.78
However her argument nevertheless assumes that women, as free and autonomous wage-labourers, were in reality labour-power that produced value and
surplus value.
Field reports preserved in the archives illustrate how the country turned to the
market and how this affected women and the AFŽ’s work. This period would
prove to be paradigmatic since it conditioned the later approach toward women
and the system of social production, reproduction, and subsistence. With the
coming to power and gradual demobilisation of the mass antifascist movement,
the AFŽ became less and less a revolutionary organisation, and more and more
an administrative body of the NF. The AFŽ performed background functions related to the social preconditions for the mass entry of peasant women into the
77
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH,“Zapisnik sa plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a BiH održanog 05. i 06.06.1946.”
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo, 116/46, 1946. Available at:
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/332
78
Quoted in: Stojaković, Gordana: “Vida Tomšič – zašto je ukinut AFŽ”, 2014b;
available at: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/353
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industrial workforce, while at the time of (failed) collectivization one of its tasks
was to organise the entry of women into the cooperatives. We find numerous
reports describing the organisation of 8th March Women’s Day celebrations,
which always culminated in competitions between women workers from different counties to see who could fulfil production norms “more closely, better,
faster” and produce more goods.
Although cooperatives and agro-industrial combines were introduced after 1945,
the state never fully carried through the formal expropriation of landed property,
so the category of rural private ownership never disappeared. Susan Woodward79
argues that the progressive laws explicitly relating to the protection of women,
children, and family, taken separately, are merely logical means to an end. However, as she notes with such brilliance, we only see the real picture when all
these laws are taken as a whole:
in fact the new policies prepared what was a compromise between the commitment to prohibit wholesale all those customs and laws seen to demean
women on the one hand, and the need for families to take responsibility for
tasks the government was not ready to assume, on the other, with a vision of
relations between men and women as equal, nurturing, voluntary, and free
(that is “private”).80
In other words, Susan Woodward observes the same thing in Yugoslavia as does
G. M. Tamás in the case of the Soviet Bloc, namely that the distinction characteristic of market society between the private and the public persists despite the
fact that the East Bloc countries were indeed more egalitarian. Tamás emphasises that truly socialist societies are societies in transition to a social order without wage-labour, the production of commodities, money, a strict gender division
of labour, material, social and cultural inequalities, without a state in the sense
of superiority, institutions of the repressive state apparatus like the army, the
police, prisons, camps, churches, compulsory doctrines, and oppressions of all
kinds.81 Taking into account the discontinuous and unequal temporality of revolutionary change noted above, this is the measure of Yugoslav and any other possible and imaginable socialism (let alone communism) – this, and not the greater
equality that existed in Yugoslavia and other Eastern Bloc societies.
79
Woodward speaks of the feminisation of agricultural labour, one of the consequences of introducing
market mechanisms. See Woodward, 1985, op. cit.
80
Ibid., p.430–431.
81
G. M. Tamás, Normative orders; available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZyKxnPUrVo
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Tamás’s analysis is outstanding because it shows that what is posited by classical liberal philosophy – labour as a private act entered into of one’s own (private,
autonomous) will, which therefore does not belong to the public, political sphere
– also survived in really-existing socialism. Therefore, in ‘really-existing socialism’ (and this also applies to Yugoslav socialism), labour is in its essence free
wage-labour which, regardless of the institutions of workers’ self-management
and associated labour, falls within the rule of exchange value. Given that the nature of labour remained private, so remained the reproduction of systemic exploitation and domination, i.e. market exchange motivated by profit, leading to
what we find in the archives from 1950 onwards: mass lay-offs of women workers, pregnant women, and female labour in general (despite legal prohibitions
and extremely progressive measures protecting mothers and children82). In other
words, the moment when respecting the law became too expensive, and profit had to be made, women were the first to suffer. Thus, reports from the field
contradicted the laws adopted the year before and AFŽ members were evidently
deeply disorientated. In a memo to the Information Department of the Central
Committee of the CPBiH, the Republican Committee of the AFŽ wrote,83: “credits worth 1,700,000 dinars were earmarked for the construction of a kindergarten in Brezničani, but nothing so far has been done about this […] out of a total
of 75 workers, the enterprises have sacked 50 women, some of whom are on sick
82
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Izvještaj Centralnog odbora Beograd sa sastanka socijalno-zdravstvenog
saveta pri Komitetu za socijalno staranje pri Vladi FNRJ Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Kutija 3, no. 1124-47, 1947: A set of laws and directives on the protection of pregnant
women and mothers with newborn babies was adopted, giving women in employment the right
to maternal leave six weeks prior to and six weeks after childbirth. These laws entitled them to take
breaks from work in order to breastfeed every three hours during the first six months after childbirth.
In 1949 these directives were amended to include additional relief for mothers and came as the
result of more favorable economic conditions in the country as a whole. The new amendments
granted shorter working hours to pregnant women and mothers who lived far from their place
of work. For these women, the working day was 4 hours long during the first six months after
childbirth, and this particular arrangement could be prolonged for up to three years if there was
valid reason. During that time, the mother received 75% of her salary for six months, 50% after that.
Women were entitled to a vacation after three months of maternity leave. The directives prohibited
assigning pregnant woman tasks that required overtime work, night shifts, and provided for the
transfer of women to easier jobs. The directive on establishing crèches and kindergartens obliged
every company with over 200 female employees (there were over 100 such companies in the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia) to open a crèche with their own funds to provide working mothers with a place for their
children. In the journal Ženski pokret (Women’s Movement) from 1937 we read almost identical
proposals for the protection of pregnant women and maternity rights as were to become law in
socialist Yugoslavia. See: Ženski pokret, 1937, op. cit., pp. 10–11.
83
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, “Dopis glavnog odbora AFŽ CK KP BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine”,
Kutija 9, 497/50, 1950.
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leave and some pregnant”. With the introduction of self-management, reports
come back with a mass of information regarding layoffs of women, budget cuts, a
lack of crèches and nurseries, and hence the impossibility for women to advance
themselves politically because they had no one to whom they could leave their
children. All this hit women in more ways than one, so that the decisions adopted by a consultation meeting of leaders of county and regional branches of the
AFŽBiH84 state as one of the main tasks of the organisation: “In addition to carrying out agitation for the involvement of women in the economy, our organisation
has to provide housing for women, oversee the living and working conditions of
women in the economy. To make sure that firms do not reduce the number of workers at the expense of pregnant women and women with children”.
If we place this in a wider perspective, it becomes clearer that the emancipation
of women was increasingly thought of as the “emancipation from the constraints
of the traditional social order, rather than the broader meaning of liberation from
all forms of oppression”.85 Consequently, the 1950s generally represent a regression in relation to the proclaimed equality. The dominant role of women was increasingly bound up with motherhood, a virtually Fordist model of the nuclear
family was promoted, together with monogamous relationships and the consolidation of the gender division of labour in both the home and industry. Women’s
employment now began to decline, the trend continuing in the following decades.
Barbara Jančar-Webster points out that the process of industrialisation already
entailed the feminisation of certain sectors and professions in the inter-war period, and the same trend persisted in the second Yugoslavia.86 In the Kingdom,
industry (textile, tobacco, services) employed approximately 200,000 women
84
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zaključci sa savjetovanja rukovodilaca sreskih i oblasnih organizacija
AFŽ-a Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, 422/50; Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik plenuma oblasnog odbora
AFŽ-a za Mostarsku oblast održanog 18.5.1950. godine, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, 1071/6, 1950.
The information in this document also points to the same trend. In a meeting between activists from
Sarajevo and Mostar, Ševala Tanović, a committee member from Gacko, stated: “The entire work of
our organisation relies on full-timers. Women are opposed to kindergartens. Three heavily pregnant
comrades were fired a month ago. The Secretariat of the AFŽ asked for them to be rehired, pointing
to the improper attitude toward pregnant women. The effort to have them rehired failed. When an
explanation was requested as to why they were not fit for work, the following was stated of one of
the female comrades: she has three children, and is about to have a fourth. We do not need that kind of
employee, and in her place we will hire a man.” (My emphasis.) The mass layoffs of the 50s are also
documented by Ivana Pantelić: see, Pantelić, 2011, op. cit.
85
Molyneux, Maxine, Family Reform in Socialist States: a Hidden Agenda, Feminist Review, 1985, 47–
64, p. 52.
86
Jančar-Webster, Barbara, Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945. Arden Press: Colorado,
1990, p. 17, 165.
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workers, while in 1939 domestic servants comprised the largest group of workers outside agriculture. In the second Yugoslavia, women also constituted a less
skilled workforce: they were employed in industrial sectors with lower pay, were
generally more likely to be unemployed and represented a reserve army of labour. In my opinion, Susan Woodward has successfully exploded the myths of
women’s equality in Yugoslavia, which have today attained the status of legend:
the pressures on women to enter the labour force that are familiar in the
rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were never present in Yugoslavia. The share of women in the social sector labour force actually declined
during the 1950s and has grown only gradually since 1957 to reach, by the
late 1970s, those levels associated with Western European averages (about
33 percent), rather than those of high participation countries of Scandinavia
or Eastern Europe. On the other hand, women have been disproportionately
subject to unemployment since the government began gathering unemployment data in the early 1950s.87
Only on the basis of uneven market development can we understand the astonishing data presented by Tea Petrin and Jane Humphries: „the share of women
workers in the total active labour force and the gross female labour force participation rate are little different in the post-war period as compared with the 1920s
and 1930s. Especially egregious is the fact that in 1931 women represented 33.5%
of the total labour force, and the number barely rose to 36% in 1971”.88 From the
1950s, documents in the archives display what in later years and decades would
become and remain a chronic problem for Bosnia and Herzegovina, only worsening over time due to increasing inequality between the federal republics. Thus we
read that, “the budget did not approve the building of day care centers”;89 while a
woman from the Ukrina enterprise stated that, “the company needs a daycare facility, but there is no building to house one. Women with young children are sent
home to feed them, while other women leave their children with their neighbors
because there is nowhere else to leave them”.90
Self-management gave enterprises and economic actors greater freedom to decide about their work, while the consequences of market-based decision-making
Woodward, 1985, op.cit., p. 549. See also: Tea Petrin and Jane Humphries, Women in the SelfManaged Economy of Yugoslavia, Economic Analyses and Workers’ Managment, 1, XIV, 1980, p. 77.
88
Petrin and Humphries, 1980, op. cit., pp. 71–73.
87
89
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja s rukovodiocima srezova održanog 24. i 25. januara
1950.” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, str. 2 Kutija 8, no. of document unknown 1950.
90
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, „Zapisnik sa OOAFŽ-a održanog u Tuzli 14.2.1950.” Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 276, 1949-1950
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only exacerbated the position of women as a whole. All the problems observed in
the capitalist West at the time were also present in Yugoslavia: the feminisation
of certain industries and professions, which is to say that women always worked
in low pay sectors, there was a gender pay gap, almost no women in managerial
positions, whilst in the Yugoslav case the gender pay gap in the poorer republics stood out even more due to structural differences. The end result for poorer
parts of the country, like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, could only be even
greater inequalities in development. Thus, from 1959 to 1979 the coverage (of
children up to seven years of age) of nurseries and kindergartens rose from 2.4%
to 10% in Yugoslavia as a whole. Of course, they were mostly children of skilled
and semi-skilled workers, with a large number of middle class children as well.
This followed the same trend as in the West: middle class parents benefited most
from the institutions of the welfare state. However, in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
between 1959 and 1979 the number of crèches, kindergartens and nurseries
reached 137, but only 3.2% of children found places. If we compare this to Slovenia, the most developed republic, where 616 such institutions were established in
the same period, covering 27.7% of children, the consequences of unequal market development are crystal clear.91
4. After the End, a Beginning instead of a Conclusion
It was my intention in this work to reconstruct a historical event and through
such a reconstruction trace the history of the AFŽ. The AFŽ was formally dissolved in 1953 and its then President, Vida Tomšić, gave the reason that, “we have
fulfilled one of our tasks to a considerable degree, if such a thing can be said of a
country […] in a certain sense, in some parts of our country, and especially in the
cities, we have achieved equality”.92 In this, she was merely repeating what was
said in the Soviet Union when the Zhenotdel was dissolved in 1930. But the fact
that in Serbia, for instance, a law on equal inheritance was only adopted in 195593
is sufficient proof that her claim was plainly false. At the point of the dissolution
91
Milić, Anđelka, Berković, Eva and Petrović Ruža, Domaćinstvo, porodica i brak u Jugoslaviji.
Belgrade: Institute for Sociological Research of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, 1981, p.
102. The data contained in this work confirms that the same trends existed in Yugoslavia as in
the Western countries at the time, and, more importantly, that since the 1950s we can observe
greater inequalities between poorer and richer republics and their consequences for the structure
of education, healthcare, and society in general.
92
Cited in: Stojaković, 2014b, op. cit.
93
Gudac-Dodić, Vera, Under the Aegis of Family, Women in Serbia, The Journal of International Social
Research, Vol. 3 no. 13, 2010. p. 112.
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of the AFŽ, many laws that were gradually implemented in the 1960s and 1970s
had not yet been adopted, so we cannot even speak of equal civil rights. Already
by the mid-1950s, the narrative of the AFŽ disintegrated and was dissolved into
that of the NOB, which became the centerpiece and the ideological pillar of the
state apparatus. The AFŽ collective was supplanted by individual heroines who
had their very own names and surnames, words and deeds. Thus was the history of the AFŽ first revised and the division between the private and the public
institutionalised. If Svetlana Slapšak94, in her analysis of the film Slavica (1947),
talked of the death of the figure of the partizanka, perhaps we should say that it
was preceded by the death of the afežeovka, even though the AFŽ was only officially dissolved five years later. In death, the partizanka lives on and recedes
into a glorious past, becoming a symbol of postwar socialist Yugoslavia. She is
the subject of officially sanctioned historical memory as promoted by state commemorations, historiography, and memorials. She becomes part of the glorious
past, while female citizens as productive subjects become figures of the present
and the future.
The fact that there is no historical overview of the engagement of Yugoslav women as a whole in the AFŽ, while there exist many histories of women’s participation in the NOB, suggests that the AFŽ started to disappear from public memory
as early as the mid-1950s when the first, Croatian work on the role of women
in the NOB was published. It would take three whole decades after the end of the
war for the first Bosnian work to appear. In that time much had changed. The
memories of the AFŽ survivors, the very nature of the revolution, the country
and its laws – all were changed. But, one thing remained the same. Women were
still unequal and did not enjoy equal rights. That is why Lydia Sklevicky’s gender analysis of school textbooks is timeless. Women became or remained invisible citizens, while references to horses and men continued to govern the dominant historical and educational narratives95. It is impossible to see Vida Tomšić’s
statement that women “turned to fashion and antiquated modes of behaviour
[…] as witnessed in the daily newspapers”, as anything other than moralising
because it completely disregards the class differences which started to appear
in Yugoslav society, not just between classes, but also within the working class.
They started to appear due to the denial of the simple fact that the division between the public and the private, the economic and the political, still existed.
Women still produced labour-power, yet the burden of reproduction remained in
94
Slapšak, Svetlana. Ženske ikone XX veka. Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek, 2001.
95
Sklevicky shows that references to horses (and men) far supercede references to women in school
textbooks. See: Konji, žene, ratovi (Horses, women, wars), op.cit.
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the private sphere. The peculiarity of labour-power is that it not only produces
value but is also the only commodity that is not produced in the direct process
of production. Since the private reproduction of labour-power in the family does
not produce value, i.e. it produces it only indirectly, it has as such no exchange
value. Hence female labour-power has less value on the market because it is
considered, more or less, as a temporary supplement to family income. Such was
also the case in Yugoslavia. The progressive measures implemented by the state
in fact shifted responsibilities from traditionally male preserves and professions,
so that from the outset a growing burden of private and privatised reproduction
fell to women. That is precisely why women oscillated between “profitable” and
“non-profitable” labour-power – and that is why the end of the AFŽ initiates the
forgetting of the fact that without the socialisation of the burden of reproduction
there can be no socialist society. Today, when formal rights and freedoms – won
through hard struggle – collapse like a house of cards under the onslaught of
political reaction and its economic assaults, the domination of the market (and
fathers, priests, and leaders) becomes increasingly without limit. The entire burden of social reproduction is transferred to the working class in general and to
women in particular.
What then would the AFŽ mean today? What political lessons can we draw? First
and foremost, the left’s response to contemporary historical revisionism cannot and must not be revisionist. The second lesson has already been indicated:
Marx and Fourier’s claim that the position of women is the measure of humanity’s progress, meaning here that the defeat of women’s emancipation was at the
same time necessarily the defeat of the revolution. As Lenin used to say, the longevity of a revolution depends on the extent to which women are actively involved.
The third, but no less important lesson is that the halting of the revolution does
not mean it is impossible. On the contrary, the AFŽ demonstrates that although
we cannot repeat the past we can learn from it that only through joint political
struggle – which is also always a struggle for (but not only for) rights – can we
emancipate ourselves and the conditions in which we live. Emancipation can only
come from collective efforts, which, paraphrasing Bensaïd, must never abandon
itself to the idea that revolution is impossible. That is the final and most important lesson of the history of the AFŽ and of Yugoslavia.
Translated by: Tijana Okić
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Archival Materials:
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Dopis sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Velika Kladuša, Arhiv BiH, Kutija 2,
901/47, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Izvještaj Centralnog odbora Beograd sa sastanka socijalnozdravstvenog saveta pri Komitetu za socijalno staranje pri Vladi FNRJ Glavnom
odboru AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Kutija 3, br. 1124-47, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja predsjednica i sekretara sreskih odbora
AFŽ održan u Sarajevu 20.1.1949. godine, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, ” Kutija 7a,? 1949.,
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik s plenuma za oblast Bihać,? Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, br.
dokumenta nepoznat, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik plenarnog sastanka Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a održan
26.9.1948. godine, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 84/48, 1948.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik Plenarnog sastanka AFŽ-a u Bihaću održanog u prostorijama
u vjećnici G.N.O dana 9.2.1950. godine, str. 2. Arhiv Bosne i Hrecegovine, Kutija 9,
1061/5, 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik sa sastanka sekretarijata Oblasnog odbora za
oblast sarajevsku koji se održaje 10.1.1950. godine, 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 1082/4, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH, Pozdravna riječ dr. Hamdije Čemerlića sa Prvog kongresa AFŽ-a
BiH od 08.06.1945, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, 1945, Kutija 1, 1945.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Sreski izvještaj AFŽ-a za srez sarajevski Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a
BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 4, 1137/48, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Dopis Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Doboj Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a za
BiH, 7.2.1947. godine (izvještaj o radu zdravstvene sekcije, analfabetski tečajevi),
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 2, 199/47, 1947.,
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa sastanka Sekretarijata sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bijeljina
Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a BiH (organiziranje žena za rad na izgradnji pruge
Bijeljina-Rača), 1948. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 1182, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik sa plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a BiH održanog 05. i 06.06.
1946., Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 116/46., 1946. Plenum je
održan u Napretkovoj čitaonici, a pored članica AFŽ ispred NF-a bio je prisutan
Ljubo Babić. dostupan na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/332
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Dopis glavnog odbora AFŽ CK KP BiH, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 497/50, 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Zaključci sa savjetovanja iz rukovodilaca sreskih i oblasnih
organizacija AFŽ-a Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, 422/50
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik s plenuma oblasnog odbora AFŽ-a za Mostarsku
oblast održan 18.5.1950.
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Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja sa rukovodiocima srezova koji se održaje
24. i 25. januara 1950. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, str. 2 Kutija 8, ? 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Zapisnik sa OOAFŽ-a održan u Tuzli dana 14.2.1950., Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 9, br. 276. 1949-1950
Časopis Alijanse ženskih pokreta, Ženski pokret, br. 1-2, 1937. godina.
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TIJANA OKIĆ
FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO PRODUCTIVE SUBJECT: AN
ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
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(When you would be kicked out the door, you›d climb back through the window: Rewriting women’s war histories in Croatia) Narodna umjetnost 42/2, 2005: 109-126.
Jančar-Webster, Barbara. Women&Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945. Colorado: Arden
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BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
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��ADELA JUŠIĆ
Combined technique
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
Combined technique
Cannons roaring, rifles cracking, chaos all around me, and I’m sleepy … And so I get some sleep,
freshen up, and press on. That’s how I survived.
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
Pencil drawing
��BIOS
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ
DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
TIJANA OKIĆ
NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ
ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ
SUNITA FIŠIĆ
KASJA JERLAGIĆ
ADELA JUŠIĆ
�206
BIOS
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI currently works as a EURIAS Junior Fellow at the
Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and also works with the Centre for
Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism in Pula on the NEWFELPRO
programme. She graduated in political science in Bologna and completed
her postgraduate and doctoral studies in Gender Studies at the Culture and
History Institute in Utrecht. From 2012 to 2014 she worked at the University
of Edinburgh as a post-doc and associate at the CITSEE project. In her thesis
she examined women’s social and political engagement in Italy and Yugoslavia
(1945–1957). She has published a number of papers on the history of women
in a European context. In recent years she has been researching the effects
of post-socialist transition and deindustrialisation on gender relations in the
former Yugoslavia, with a focus on textile workers.
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University
of Sarajevo. At the Department of Comparative Literature and Librarianship
she teaches Introduction to the Study of Literature, Introduction to Narratology,
and Feminist Literary Theories. She has also worked as an associate at the
Interdisciplinary Post-Graduate Gender Studies Programme at the University
of Sarajevo. She received her PhD from the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo;
the topic of her thesis was Prikaz rata u tekstovima bosanskohercegovačkih
spisateljica: žensko ratno pismo 1992.-1995. (Representation of War in Texts
by Bosnian-Herzegovinian Women Writers: Women Writing War 1992–1995.) Her
research focuses on feminist theories, theories of narration and literarytheoretical research on war literature.
DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ is a reader in English linguistics and cultural studies
at the Faculty of Philology, University of Banja Luka. She has published over
thirty articles on representation, ethnicity, gender, discourse analysis, media
and film, as well as three monographs: Diskurs, moć i međunarodna zajednica
(Discourse, Power and the International Community) (2007, Filozofski fakultet,
Banja Luka), Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Social
Science Approaches (2013, Palgrave, London) and Diskursi periferije (Discourses
of the Periphery) (2013, Biblioteka XX vek, Belgrade). She has edited three
conference proceedings: Living with Patriarchy: Discursive Constructions of
Gendered Subjects Across Cultures (2011, John Benjamins, Amsterdam), U
okrilju nacije: konstruisanje nacionalnog i državnog identiteta kod mladih u Bosni i
Hercegovini (Under the Wing of the Nation: the Construction of National and State
Identity in Bosnian-Herzegovinian Youth) (2011, CKSP, Banja Luka), and Kritičke
kulturološke studije u post-jugoslovenskom prostoru (Critical Cultural Studies in
a Post-Yugoslav Space) (2012, Filološki fakultet, Banja Luka). She has produced
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
207
and directed two documentary films: Kontrapunkt za nju (Counterpoint for Her)
(2004) and Posao snova (Dream Job) (2006). She has taught at and visited many
institutions of higher education at home and abroad, co-founded the BASOC
(Banja Luka Social Centre) and as an activist she fights against nationalism
and historical revisionism, for social justice and workers’ issues. She tries to
live her life and raise her son in line with the principles of feminism.
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ is a researcher, editor and a member of the operations team
at the Association for the Arts and Culture “Crvena”, where he researches
the political economy of the urban question, management of urban resources,
and urban mobilisation. He is currently preparing extensive research on rave
culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1996–2006. He has published articles in
international journals and proceedings, and has edited the volume Šta da
napišem na zidu? (What Shall I Write on the Wall) published by “Crvena”. He
has won the Open Society Fund Research Fellowship (2013–2014), the ERSTE
Fundation Social Research Fellowship (2015–2016), and in September and
October 2013 he was guest researcher at the Centre for Democracy Studies in
Aarau, Switzerland. He has worked with a number of local and international
organisations and academic institutions researching migration, electoral
systems, local governance and political theory.
TIJANA OKIĆ was born in Sarajevo in 1986. She read philosophy and sociology
and obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy in Sarajevo, where she subsequently worked as an assistant lecturer-instructor. Since 2015 she is enrolled
in PhD programme in philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa,
Italy. She has published several philosophical texts. Tijana organised and participated in the Plenums after the 2014 riots in Sarajevo. She is a contributing
editor of the Viewpoint magazine. She translates from several languages, enjoys poetry and fiction. She currently lives between Sarajevo and Pisa.
NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ was born in Sarajevo in 1987. In 2014 she graduated
from the Department of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, where
she is currently pursuing post-graduate studies. She uses different media,
from sculpture to spatial intervention/installation, performance, photography
and video. In 2009 she established the informal cultural organisation “Kolektiv
Kreaktiva”, which has produced over 30 art events (exhibitions, workshops,
concerts and performances) and has co-operated with over 100 cultural workers from all over the world. In addition to co-ordinating and programming for
“Kolektiv Kreaktiva”, Nardina Zubanović has curated and participated at numerous solo and group exhibitions and art workshops in the region and be-
�208
BIOS
yond, in co-operation with institutions and associations such as the Historical
Museum of BiH, (Exhibition ZID 2015), The National Gallery of BiH, (Sara Art
Fair, 2015), The Seventh Art Club, (Bahanalije), Sarajevo, BiH, 2014, La Kultur
Centre, (Dani otvorenog ateljea), Sarajevo BiH, 2015 and 2016, Land Art Colony,
Javorwood Festival, Jahorina, BiH, 2016, Factory of Memories, Tirana, Albanija
and Sarajevo, BiH, 2015, Actopolis, Crvena, Sarajevo, BiH, 2016, etc.
ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ was born in Sarajevo in 1973. She graduated
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cetinje, Montenegro, Department of Graphic
Design. Her playful typography and illustration work is marked by a pure,
modern idea, and it communicates easily in an international visual language.
She has received numerous international prizes and honours, and her work has
been featured in many specialised art and design magazines (Communication
Arts, Luezers Archive, Print, Typo, Fontmagazine …). In 2010 she featured in
the Lürzer’ s Archive 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide 09–10 list. In the period
between 2006 and 2010 she was Head of the Association of Applied Artists
and Designers BiH (ULUPUBiH). She works as a freelance designer and inhouse designer and illustrator at the publishing house Buybook in Sarajevo.
Her project Sarajevo Dingbats won the 2014 annual prize of the Collegium
Artisticum group.
SUNITA FIŠIĆ was born in Livno in 1989. She lives and works in Sarajevo,
where she studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. Besides other artistic media,
she is works with forms such as illustration, painting and street art. She has
participated in numerous exhibitions around the world, including: Wall Painting, LAB-1, Eindhoven, Hollang, 2016; Painting workshop, Grassroots project,
Kolektiv Kreaktiva, LA Kultur, Sarajevo, BiH, 2015; Split 3D Street Art Festival,
Split, Croatia, 2015; Beton IV Festival 3D street art, Sarajevo, BiH, 2015; Mostar Street Art Festival, decorating the walls in the city of Mostar, BiH, 2015;
Individual Exhibition and Wall Painting, LAB 1, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven,
Holland 2014; Pecha Kucha art presentation, SOS Design Festival, Kriterion,
Sarajevo, 2014; Individual exhibition of digital works, Bitola Open City Festival,
Macedonia, 2014; Wall painting workshop, entrance of the Zetra Olympic Hall,
Kids festival, Sarajevo, 2014; Mostar Street Art Festival, decorating the walls in
the city of Mostar, 2014; Collective exhibition Inicijacija, Yage, Collegium Artisticum, 2014, etc.
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
209
KASJA JERLAGIĆ was born in Sarajevo in 1996, where she lives and works. She
studies at the Printmaking Department, Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo. She
has just begun her career as an artist, and has so far participated in only one
collective exhibition – Kupujmo domaće at the Duplex100m2 gallery in Sarajevo
in 2016. She volunteers at Duplex100m2 and the 11/07/95 gallery, and works
at the Charlama gallery in Sarajevo, led by the artist Jusuf Hadžifejzović.
ADELA JUŠIĆ (1982) was born in Sarajevo, where she lives and works. She
took a Master’s degree in printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Sarajevo, in 2007, and holds another Master’s degree in human rights
and democracy at the University of Sarajevo and the University of Bologna.
She co-founded the Association for Culture and the Arts “Crvena”, where she
has worked since 2010. Adela Jušić has exhibited at nearly 100 international
exhibitions, including the Manifesta 8 biennial, Murcia, Španija; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Image Counter Image, Haus der Kunst, Munich,
Germany; Balkan Inisight, Pompidou Center, Paris, France, etc. She has participated in several residential programmes for artists umjetnike/ce (ISCP, New
York; Kulturkontakt, Vienna; i.a.a.b. Basel, etc). She won the 2010 Young Visual
Artist Award for the best young Bosnian artist, Henkel Young Artist Prize CEE
2011, and the special prize of the October Salon, Belgrade, 2013. She has participated in a number of panels, workshops and conferences (London School
of Economics, Royal College of Art, London, UK, etc.).
�210
GLOSSARY, ACRONYMS AND PERIODICALS
Glossary, Acronyms and Periodicals
AVNOJ
AFŽ
afežeovke
CC CPY
chetniks
DFJ
feredža
FNRJ
hajduci
kadija
kadinica
CPBiH
CPH
CPY
CPSU
NDH
NF
NOB
NOF
NOO
NO
NOP
NOR
NOV
partizanke
Anti-Fascist Council of People’s Liberation of
Yugoslavia
Women’s Antifascist Front
members and activists of the Women’s Antifascist
Front
Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia
Serb-nationalist rebels, in particular members of
Draža Mihailović’s ‘Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland’
Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
burka, a veil covering the face and body worn by
Muslim women
Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia
Christian anti-Ottoman rebel or outlaw
judge in the Ottoman period
wife of the judge in the Ottoman period
Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Communist Party of Croatia
Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Independent State of Croatia, Axis puppet-state
established in Occupied Croatia and BosniaHercegovina in April 1941
People’s Front
People’s Liberation Struggle
People’s Liberation Front
People’s Liberation Committees
People’s Committees
People’s Liberation Movement
People’s Liberation War
People’s Liberation Army
Female Partisan soldiers
�THE LOST REVOLUTION:
WOMEN’S ANTIFASCIST FRONT
BETWEEN MYTH AND FORGETTING
SFRJ
SKOJ
udarnice
ustasha
uskoci
WIDF
ZAVNOBiH
ZAVNOH
211
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY
League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, the CPY’s
youth organisation
female shock workers
‘Insurgent’, a Croat fascist
Croatian anti-Ottoman naval irregulars or pirate
Women’s International Democratic Federation
State Anti-fascist Council for the People’s Liberation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina
State Anti-fascist Council for the People’s Liberation
of Croatia
Organisational Structure of the AWF/AFŽ 1:
Centralni Odbor AFŽ-a
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a
Mjesni Odbor AFŽ-a
Okružni Odbor AFŽ-a
Regionalni Odbor AFŽ-a
Sreski Odbor AFŽ-a
Zemaljski Odbor AFŽ-a
Central Committee of the AFŽ of Yugoslavia
Republican Committee of AFŽ (each of the
republican organisations of the AFŽ was led by a
Republican Committee)
Local Committee of the AFŽ
District Committee of the AFŽ
Regional Committee of the AFŽ
County Committee of the AFŽ
Country Committee of the AFŽ
List of Periodicals and Newspapers
Ženski pokret
Nova Žena
Žena u borbi
Naša žena
Glas
1
As the word ‘councils’ is normally used in English translations of AVNOJ, ZAVNOBiH and ZAVNOH,
we have rendered the ‘odbori’ of the AFŽ as ‘committees’. The structure of AFŽ Committees was
hierarchical, that is they were organised on the top-down principle.
�Acknowledgments: We would like to thank everyone,
from Burma to Beijing, from Sweden to Texas, who contributed to the crowdfunding campaign which raised the
initial funds for the digitisation of archival materials as
part of the Šta je nama naša borba dala? (What Has Our
Struggle Given Us?) project. We also wish to thank the
staff of the Historical Museum and the Archive of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, without whose help the Archive of the
Anti-Fascist Struggle of Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina would not be possible. Also, we wish to thank the
numerous organisations and persons who have supported our work and enriched the Archive: the Museum
of the Second Session of the AVNOJ, UABNOR Centre
Sarajevo, the Association of Anti-Fascists and Veterans of the National Liberation War of Tuzla canton, the
Mediterranean Women’s Fund, Eve Ensler, Nina Karač,
Feđa Kulenović, Boro Jurišić, Elvira Jahić, Stana Nastić,
Lucija Mravić, Šemsa Galijašević, Alija Maglajlić, Nasiha
Porobić, Milka Jakšić, Miholjka Reljić, Jelena Lazić, Ankica Đurić, members of “CRVENA” and many others.
���
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Istraživački radovi
Knjiga
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The lost revolution – Women’s Antifascist Front between myth and forgetting
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Edited by: Andreja Dugandžić and Tijana Okić
Illustrations edited by: Adela Jušić
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www.afzarhiv.org
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2018.
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Association for Culture and Art CRVENA
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211 pages
Adela Jušić
Ajla Demiragić
Aleksandra Nina Knežević
Andreja Dugandžić
Boriša Mraović
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Danijela Majstorović
Kasja Jerlagić
Nardina Zubanović
revolution
Sunita Fišić
Tijana Okić
women's activism
women's emancipation
Women’s Antifascist Front
World War II
Yugoslavia (History)
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/071b37df7c63079e10b4c786aafb9f3d.pdf
dddd876ec2c76df76bdc6aebcc0b3a0c
PDF Text
Text
Александра Ђорђевић
УДК329.75-055.2(497.1)”1945/1950”
Другарице и (не)пријатељице – учешће
Антифашистичког фронта жена Југославије
у раду Међународне демократске федерације
жена 1945–1950.
АПСТРАКТУМ: Чланак истражује претпоставке Xладног рата
које су обликовале политичке околности у којима су женске организације успеле да формирају једну светску женску организацију
која је окупљала жене, претежно левичарке, из оба блока. У тој
организацији истакнуто место нашле су и Југословенке. Разматра се на који начин су чланице Антифашистичког фронта жена
Југославије учествовале у оснивању и активностима Међународне демократске федерације жена као и разлози који су довели до
избацивање АФЖЈ из Федерације. У изради рада коришћени су
часопис Жена данас, главно гласило АФЖЈ, као и архивска грађа
доступна у Архиву Југославије.
КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ: АФЖЈ, Међународна демократска федерација
жена, Хладни рат, жене, женско питање, женска сарадња, Жена данас
Увод
Стварањем Краљевине СХС положај жене у друштву је добио потпуно
нову димензију. До тада су се у Србији женске организације бавиле искључиво социјалним темама и хуманитарним радом, али је Први светски рат у
Краљевини СХС изнедрио и једну од главних карактеристика првог таласа
феминизма а то је питање права гласа за жене. Оснивањем Женске странке
1927. године али и преко бројних организација жене су стално упућивале захтеве држави за право гласа и изједначавање са мушкарцима у погледу радног
и породичног права.1 Комунистичка партија Југославије се у овим захтевима
издвајала по идеолошком основу који је, једини у том периоду, видео жене
као равноправне са мушкарцима. У оквиру Партије жене су имале право да
бирају и да буду биране на функције, а након доношења Обзнане имале су и
1
Ивана Пантелић, „Неки аспекти положаја жена у Краљевини Југославији“, Књиженство, часопис за студије књижевности, рода и културе, 2011. http://www.knjizenstvo.
rs/magazine.php? text=17 (приступљено 5. 10. 2017).
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задатак да шире комунистичку идеологију у легалним оквирима преко сарадње са Женским покретом.2
Коренита промена положаја жена на овим просторима почела је завршетком Другог светског рата и то пре свега њиховог правног положаја, а затим и друштвеног у складу са новом државном политиком. Услед формирања
партизанске војске дошло је до наглог пораста учешћа жена у рату, што је
и довело до њиховог даљег политичког организовања. То организовање је
добило коначан облик на конференцији у Босанском Петровцу када је формиран Антифашистички фронт жена Југославије као јединствена женска организација, која је наставила деловање и у послератном периоду.3 Идеолошки
рад Антифашистичког фронта жена Југославије (АФЖЈ)4 био је ослоњен на
темељна опредељења КПЈ да жене морају бити равноправне са мушкарцима
у свим сегментима живота и рада тако да отпора укључивању жена у рад готово да није ни било. Први послератни Устав женама је гарантовао и право
гласа које им је раније било ускраћено.5 Тада су у оквиру нове државне идеологије женама прво потврђена изборна права, која су већ уживале у оквиру
КПЈ; убрзо су добиле и једнака законска права у односу на мушкарце у свим
осталим сегментима живота и рада. Социјалистичка идеологија није посматрала еманципацију жена ван система радништва (радничке класе) и зато се
мера женске еманципације, пре свега, одређивала у односу на права из области рада.6 Пишући о активностима чланица АФЖЈ желели смо, између осталог, и да истакнемо да је еманципација жена од стега патријархалне културе
била један од задатака АФЖЈ.7
2
3
4
5
6
7
Stanislava Barać, „Pacifistički i antipacifistički diskurs u časopisu Žena danas (1936–1941)“,
u: Zbornik radova s Desničinih susreta, urednik Drago Rosandić, Zagreb 2011, 221.
Neda Božinović, „Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku“, (Beograd: Žene u crnom, Devedesetčetvrta, 1996), 141.
АФЖ Југославије je представљао организацију Народноослободилачког покрета Југославије насталу са циљем да окупи жене у борби против фашиста под окриљем КПЈ.
Основан је на Првој земаљској конференцији одржаној у Босанском Петровцу 6. децембра 1942. После Другог светског рата и ослобођења Југославије, АФЖ је и даље радио
на политичкој мобилизацији жена као и у свим облицима друштвене делатности. Први
конгрес АФЖЈ одржан је јуна 1945, а други јануара 1948, оба у Београду. Трећи конгрес
АФЖЈ одржан је у Загребу 1950. године, а четврти 1953. у Београду. На том конгресу
укинут је АФЖ као посебна и јединствена организација након чега је основан Савез
женских друштава, који се превасходно бавио питањима из области социјалног рада.
Вера Гудац Додић, „Положај жене у Србији (1945–2000)“, у: Србија у модернизацијским процесима 19. и 20. века: Жене и деца, бр. 4, уредница Латинка Перовић (Београд:
Хелсиншки одбор за људска права, 2006), 34.
Gordana Stojaković, „AFŽ 1945–1953: pregled kroz AFŽ štampu“, u: Rod i levica, zbornik
(Beograd: Ženski informaciono-dokumеntacioni trening centar, 2012), 13.
Lydija Sklevicky, Konji, žene, ratovi (Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996), 25.
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У предвечерје Другог светског рата комунисткиње из Југославије су
одржавале контакте са феминисткињама из света, активно писале о борби жена Азије за слободу и учествовале у Шпанском грађанском рату, извештавале
о конгресима и конференцијама посвећеним женама из западног света итд.
На тај начин су, пре свега преко Комунистичке партије Југославије, дошле
у контакт са антифашисткињама из целога света, а у послератном раздобљу
ступиле су и на међународну политичку сцену. Представнице Антифашистичког фронта Југославије учествовале су у великом подухвату да се након рата
формира једна међународна организација жена која ће се, за њих, на „прави“
односно левичарски начин бавити женским питањима.
Иако је Међународна демократска федерација жена основана у Паризу
–са супротне стране гвоздене завесе иза које је била комунистичка Југославија, и оне се у својој кореспонденцији називају пријатељицама8 а не другарицама – јасно је из пописа организација које су учествовале у раду Федерације
да су то листом женске левичарске организације из оба блока. Стога овај рад
има за циљ да покаже како су се Југословенке снашле у том хладноратовском
вакуму односно како су из њега успеле да изађу и наставе своју борбу у измењеним политичким околностима, пратећи линију Комунистичке партије
Југославије.
Формирање Међународне демократске федерације жена
Из извештаја чланица АФЖЈ видљиво је да су се жене у целом свету након Другог светског рата налазиле пред решавањем скоро идентичних
проблема и задатака. Та истоветност задатака дала је повода госпођи Котон,
председници Савеза француских жена, да домаћим и страним делегаткињама које су биле гошће Конгреса француских жена предложи да се удруже и
створе Интернационални иницијативни одбор за припрему и организацију
међународног конгреса жена, а све у циљу координације активности жена
из целог света.9 У Иницијативни одбор за одржавање конференције, који је
бројао 15 чланица, ушла је и др Олга Милошевић као делегаткиња АФЖ Југославије док је, осим ње, Конгресу присуствовала и Јана Бичанић. Основна
програмска концепција будућег конгреса МДФЖ свела се на четири тачке:
„уништити фашизам и осигурати демократију у свим земљама, припремити
8
9
У доступној кореспонденцији уочљиво је да се чланице АФЖЈ и МДФЖ ословљавају
са драге пријатељице. АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-5; АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-14-23; итд. У првих неколико писама чланице АФЖЈ обраћале су се руководству МДФЖ и са другарице, али је та
пракса ишчезнула у каснијој комуникацији. АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-38.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-3, Интернационални иницијални одбор за припрему и организовање
међународне конференције жена.
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срећну будућност новим покољењима, дати женама права изражена у Интернационалној повељи жена.“10
Секретаријат Иницијативног одбора, поверен француској секцији, настојао је да од почетка рада заинтересује што више демократских женских
друштава из целог света слањем депеша, радио порука и држањем митинга.
Штампан је и месечни билтен о раду Одбора, чији је први број изашао у септембру 1945. До Конгреса Иницијативни одбор је успео да успостави контакт
са организацијама, углавном левичарским и комунистичким, из готово свих
земаља Европе, Азије али и из САД.
Други састанак Иницијативног одбора одржан је у Паризу 5–6. септембра 1945. На њему су делегаткиње представиле дотадашњи рад и бавиле се
питањима организационих припрема за Међународни конгрес жена. Југославију је поново представљала др Олга Милошевић и она је у име АФЖ-а Југославије, у коме су уједињене жене свих националности, прихватила програм
Иницијативног одбора. После реферата свих делегаткиња Иницијативни одбор је закључио да се Конгрес одржи новембра исте године.11 Одлучено је
које ће делегације изложити своје реферате, док ће остале делегаткиње имати
могућност да учествују у дискусији. Реферат о теми „Проблем деце и васпитања“ добила је југословенска делегација, тако да је од малих земаља једино Југославија имала реферат на Конгресу.12 На састанку је одлучено да се оснује
Извршни одбор у који су ушле делегаткиње из 25 земаља од присутних 40, а
једна од њих била је и Митра Митровић.13 У периоду до Конгреса, пријатељице су одржавале живу комуникацију и кореспонденцију; чак су преко АФЖЈ
слале писма женским организацијама Балкана са циљем да се и оне укључе
у рад МДФЖ.14
Први Међународни конгрес жена, којем је присуствовало 850 делегаткиња из преко 40 земаља, одржан је од 27. новембра до 1. децембра у Паризу.15 Број делегаткиња је одређен према броју становника.16 То су биле жене
10
Исто.
11
Исто.
12
Исто.
13
14
15
16
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-651 (1–31).
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-38.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-85, Статут Међународне демократске федерације жена.
У употреби су била четири језика: енглески, француски, руски и шпански. Број делегаткиња је одређен у складу са бројем становника: земље од 5 милиона становника имале
су право на 5 делегата, од 15 милиона – 10, од 30 милиона – 15 делегата итд. За делегаткиње из многољудних земаља као што је Кина нема података о бројности делегације,
а чланица Иницијативног одбора из Кине била је Ли Хсиен Минг. Жене из колонија су
позване да присуствују Конгресу независно од својих метропола. Оне су имале права
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различитих година, занимања и организација, чланице различитих политичких партија, али су све биле левичарских опредељења. На конгресу је званично основана Међународна демократска федерација жена (МДФЖ) у којој је
АФЖЈ активно сарађивао, како у њеном оснивању тако и у даљем раду.
Првом заседању Конгреса председавала је Ежени Котон, научница и
председница Савеза француских жена. У свом говору она је одала почаст и
изразила захвалност свим херојским женама света које су својим пожртвовањем допринеле победи над непријатељем и слободи. Изложила је радни
програм Конгреса који је обухватао будућу улогу жена у коначном уништењу
фашизма, у међународном развоју демократског друштва и остваривању права жена. Радно представништво Конгреса17 израдило је и прихватило Статут
који утврђује циљеве и програм организације, њен састав и пријем у чланство, као и обавезе и права њених чланова.18 Рад прве конференције се завршио 1. децембра великим митингом који је приређен на Зимском аеродрому
и полагањем заклетве МДФЖ. Говорило је више делегата, међу којима и Ла
Пасионарија.
Конгресу су као делегаткиње АФЖ Југославије присуствовале: Митра
Митровић,19 Анка Берус, Милева Родић, Олга Хумо, Ката Пејиновић, др Олга
17
18
19
на исти број делегаткиња као и независне земље. Видети: „Са међународног конгреса
жена“, Жена данас, бр. 37 (1945), 9–10.
Радно представништво чиниле су: Попова (СССР), Анка Берус (Југославија), Долорес
Ибарури – Ла Пасионарија (Шпанија), Котон и Вермеш (Француска), Хоракова (Чехословачка). Видети: „Са међународног конгреса жена“, Жена данас, бр. 37, (1945),
9–10.
Федерацијом управља Извршни одбор који чини 31 чланица из 17 земаља, а на чијем
челу је госпођа Котон. У савез су ушле све организације представљене на Конгресу и
72 организације из 7 земаља које нису могле да присуствују Конгресу. Видети: „Са међународног конгреса жена“, Жена данас, бр. 37, децембар 1945, 9–10.
Митра Митровић (Ужичка Пожега, 1912 – Београд, 2001), зaвршила је Филозофски факултет, одсек за словенску филологију и књижевност Универзитета у Београду. Чланица КПЈ је постала у међуратном периоду када се ангажовала у илегалном раду. Године
1935. основала је и Омладинску секцију у оквиру Женског покрета како би илегални
пропагандни рад Партије могао бити настављен у некаквим легалним оквирима. Наредне године је основан часопис Жена данас, који ће касније постати централно гласило АФЖЈ и организација које су проистекле из њега. Почетком рата прикључује се
партизанској борби и ради у ПК КПЈ за Србију. За заслуге у рату додељено јој је више
одликовања. Након рата била је посланица и прва министарка просвете, а налазила се
и на челу Агитпропа за Србију. Била је једина чланица Политбироа ЦK КПЈ Србије, уз
Спасенију Цану Бабовић. Као истакнута чланица АФЖЈ узела је учешћа у раду МДФЖ
где је на заседању Извршног одбора изабрана за делегаткињу. Из Партије је искључена
1956. када је подржала тада већ бившег супруга Милована Ђиласа. Своја сећања на
Други светски рат преточила је у књигу Ратно путовање објављену 1962. Детаљније:
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Милошевић, Веселинска Малинска, Ана Хефнер, Милица Станишић, Евгенија Селић, Нада Сремац и Криста Ђорђевић.20 Као делегаткиње на Конгресу, у
име југословенске делегације, подједнако су биле заступљене чланице руководства АФЖЈ и чланице осталих секција као и образоване и мање образовне
жене, јер су на тај начин желеле превазићи евентуалне разлике али и истаћи
колико је било важни показати солидарност и бригу кроз заједничко суделовање у културном, политичком и друштвеном животу.21 У име југословенске
делегације Митра Митровић је поздравила француске жене, изложила борбу
југословенских жена против фашистичких освајача и нагласила: „У име југословенских жена, а на основу њиховог искуства, тврдимо да без потпуног
уништења фашизма и њихове реакције у свету не може бити мира, онога мира које толико желе све жене у свету. Исто тако нема без тога правих гаранција за женска права. Ми ћемо наставити заједно са женама целог света борбу
за одбрану мира и демократије“.22 Централни одбор АФЖЈ је издао значку у
част Међународног конгреса жена.
Конгрес је био велика манифестација јединства жена читавог света, без
обзира на њихову расну, верску или националну припадност, у борби за мир
и демократију. Истинска равноправност жене, како је истакнуто, представља
једну од основних одлика праве демократије. У Резолуцији, констатујући да у
већини земаља „жене имају положај подређен власти мушкараца“, Конгрес је
тражио да све женске организације у сарадњи са синдикатима поведу борбу
за остваривање следећих захтева жена: право на рад, на приступ свим службама, једнаку плату за једнак рад, право на социјално, једнако наследно право,
право да бира и буде бирана. Главно питање Конгреса је било како да жене
читавог света помогну што бржем и сигурнијем обезбеђивању мира у свету.
Због тога је Конгрес настојао да добије место саветодавног члана при УН и
залагао се за стављање атомске бомбе под контролу УН, ради постизања општег мира.23
Стварањем МДФЖ родиле су се и многе дужности и обавезе жена широм света. Чланице су се обавезале и на више резолуција, између осталог и :
Резолуција о задацима жена свих демократских земаља у борби за коначно
20
21
22
23
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-13-17, Митра Митровић (Велимира) – Ђилас; Жене Србије у НОБ...,
уред. Б. Цветић, 56; Ivana Pantеlić, Partizankе kao građankе (Bеograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011), 131–133.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-7.
Chiara Bonfiglioli, „Biografije aktivistкinja AFŽ-a: Intersekcionalna analiza ženskog delovanja“, u: Izgubljena revolucija: AFŽ između mita i zaborava, zbornik, ured. Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić (Sarajevo: Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost Crvena, 2016), 35.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-378.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-4.
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уништење фашизма, за сталан и трајан мир и за демократију,24 Резолуција
о проблемима детињства и васпитања,25 Резолуција Међународног конгреса
жена о економском, правном и социјалном положају жене.26 У њима је закључено да су се жене свих земаља херојски понеле у рату, да су саме поднеле велики део ратних страхота, као и да су целом свету показале како су способне
да буду мајке, болничарке и боркиње. У миру, како је констатовано, положај
жене је сличан ономе пре рата: жене су у већини земаља и даље подређене
мушкарцима. Учешћем у борби против фашизма жене су доказале да могу
бити равноправне са мушкарцима у свакодневној борби. У извештају са Конгреса чланице АФЖЈ истичу да не може бити демократије ни пуне слободе у
земљама где жене чине више од половине становништва а не уживају једнака
социјална права и где не учествују у културном и политичком животу.27
Извршни одбор, који је координирао радом МДФЖ, одржао је седницу
наредне године, од 27. до 29. јуна 1946. Присуство великог броја чланица,
које су дошле из удаљених делова света представља одраз дубоке посвећености и оданости националних секција програму Савеза, закључила је госпођа
Котон.28
Ширење организације и међународне мисије МДФЖ
У периоду између два конгреса МДФЖ је своје активности развијао и
координирао преко Пленума и Извршног одбора. У Прагу је Пленум заседао
од 21. фебруара до 1. марта 1947. године.29 На заседању су биле присутне 73
представнице из 44 земље, а примљене су и нове чланице.30 Том приликом су
поједине делегаткиње говориле о активностима у својим земљама. Наредни
састанак Извршног одбора је одржан 1–6. септембра 1947. у Стокхолму. Као
велики успеси, у периоду од Прага до Стокхолма, представљени су: слање
међународне комисије правника у Шпанију ради анкете о терору над заробљеницима; анкета о начину суђења и третману политичких затвореника у
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-311-318, Резолуција о задацима жена свих демократских земаља у
борби за коначно уништење фашизма, за сталан и трајан мир и за демократију.
АЈ, АФЖ, 141-17-303-310.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-298-301, Резолуција Међународног конгреса жена о економском
правном и социјалном положају жене.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-57.
Извршни одбор је одржао пет заседања: прво, 27–29. јуна 1946. у Паризу; друго, 10–15.
октобар 1945. у Москви; треће, 1–6. септембар 1947. у Стокхолму; четврто, 15–19. мај
1948. у Риму; пето, 7. април 1949. у Паризу.
Одржана су два пленума МДФЖ-а; први 21. фебруар – 1. март 1947, други у Москви
17–22. новембра 1949.
Новопримљене националне организације су из Мексика, Монголије, Северне Кореје,
Бразилије, Вијетнама, Палестине, Холандије, Јужне Африке и Јулијанске крајине.
�А. Ђорђевић, Другарице и (не)пријатељице – учешће АФЖЈ у раду МДФ
153
затворима; анкета у Западној Немачкој о денацификацији и демократизацији.
Делегаткиње АФЖ Југославије су активно учествовале у раду Извршног одбора и биле део разних делегација. Ванда Новосел је била чланица делегације која је посетила француску и совјетску зону у Немачкој, о чему је написала
извештај где је истакла предности совјетске управе у односу на француску у
окупационим зонама.31
МДФЖ и оснивање других женских организација
Оснивање сличних међународних организација, које додуше нису биле
левичарских опредељења, чланице МДФЖ су оштро санкционисале у својим гласилима и међусобној преписци. Тако Жена данас доноси текст под насловом „Неуспјели покушај разбијања Међународне демократске федерације
жена“.32 Постојање међународних организација које се баве сличном проблематиком чланице МДФЖ су сматрале директним покушајем разбијања њихове организације, о чему сведочи и следећи цитат: „После стварања МДФЖ
крајем прошле године у Паризу постало је јасно да мимо и поред ње нема
места другим међународним женским организацијама чији би се програм у
целини или делимично поклапао са програмом Федерације. Па ипак дошло
је до више таквих појава...“.33 Оцењено је да реакција, да би спречила окупљање демократских жена на платформи МДФЖ, настоји да обнови некадашње
организације као и да оснива нове.
Чланицама МДФЖ је нарочито засметала Међународна алијанса жена, коју је водила Маргарет Корбет Ешби, али и сазив Интернационалне скупштине жена октобра 1946. у САД. Како се у тексту каже: „У том позиву на
скупштину се ниједном речју не спомиње МДФЖ, чије је оснивање одјекнуло
широм света, а у чији састав је ушло осам организација из САД“, разумљиво
не и оне које су биле чланице МДФЖ. Федерација је „активна организација
која има подршку и ужива углед својих националних организација и самим
тим сваки покушај разбијања организације унапред је осуђен на пропаст“.
Нарочито су се обрушиле на организацију коју је водила Корбетова: „ То је
феминистичка организација основана 1904. која до данас има непромењен
програм, остваривање грађанске и друштвене једнакости жена са мушкарцима и њене економске равноправности... Постављамо питање – зашто се сад
оживљава таква организација када су се у животу жене после рата догодиле
тако крупне промене, феминисткиње као да су преспавале и овај рат или све31
32
33
„Комисија Демократске федерације жена у Немачкој – Изјава наше делегаткиње Ванде
Новосел“, Жена данас, бр. 49, (1947), 45.
„Неуспјели покушаји разбијања међународне демократске федерације жена“, Жена данас, бр. 46, (1946), 6.
Исто.
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сно затварају очи пред дубоким социјалним и друштвеним променама које је
рат донио... Колби сматра да Федерација може да учини велике услуге ослобођеним женама средње и југоисточне Европе, које су по њеном мишљењу
толико некултурне и заостале да им нова демократија, што по њеним речима
значи „комунистичка тиранија“, у садашњем тренутку одговара. Насупрот
тим земљама она ставља земље са боље развијеним демократским системом
– Шведску, Швајцарску, САД. Другим речима, интереси жена „западне демократије“ из темеља се разликују од интереса „новоослобођених жена“ у
земљама средње и југоисточне Европе и према томе нема ни заједничке базе
за изградњу међународне солидарности жена“.34
Разлог за такву острашћеност лежи у томе што ове организације нису
биле левичарских опредељења, а што МДФЖ у својој суштини јесте била,
нарочито ако узмемо у обзир политичку припадност врха њеног руководства.
На конгресима МДФЖ су учествовале и жене из земаља које нису биле део
комунистичког блока, али су оне припадале левичарским, комунистичким
или лабуристичким партијама. Ипак, могуће је закључити да је МДФЖ имао
комунистичку идеологију односно да је то био разлог за овакво оштро иступање чланица.35
Жена данас је 1948. године поново објавила текстове о организацијама које су радиле на рушењу МДФЖ. Сада је разбијање стављено у задатак
десној социјалисткињи, како се каже у тексту: „већ познатој по издајничкој
раду“, Габријели Профт. Профтова је сазвала неколико конференција, на којима је основала Међународну женску социјалистичку организацију.36 Како преноси Жена данас, десне социјалисткиње су покушале да расцепе национални
женски покрет у низу земаља. Тако су у Аустрији на иницијативу Габријеле
Профт социјалисткиње иступиле под изговором да је МДФЖ тобоже „замаскирана комунистичка женска организација“. Ипак, ове акције нису довеле
до већег расипања чланства и биле су концентрисане на активности Профтове у Аустрији, где је било седиште њене организације.
Други конгрес Међународне демократске федерације жена
У време сукоба Југославије са Информбироом у Будимпешти је од 1. до
6. децембра 1948. одржан Други конгрес МДФЖ. Из доступне грађе се може
закључити да су припреме за Конгрес протекле глатко и без икаквих индиција да је сукоб Тита и Стаљина имао последице по учешће АФЖЈ у једној светској организацији. У записнику са припремног састанка поводом Конгреса
34
Исто.
35
36
I. Pantеlić, Partizankе kao građankе, 90.
„Разбијачки подухвати десних социјалисткиња“, Жена данас, бр. 53, (1948), 29.
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155
наводи се да АФЖЈ има одређених проблема са делегацијама из света али не
и са МДФЖ: „...али ма колико они буду настојали да нас и даље ометају, они
неће успети да жене Југославије изолују од светског демократског покрета
жена, јер ми се нећемо дати скренути са пута по којем нас води наша Партија
и друг Тито“.37
Делегацију АФЖЈ на конгресу у Будимпешти су чиниле: Митра Митровић, Ванда Новосел, Олга Милошевић, Неда Стефановић, Душанка Ковачевић, Гоја Ђурић, Бранка Савић, Божидарка Илијева, Милада Рајтер, Босиљка
Ђуровић, Зима Вршчај, Блаженка Мимица и Милица Дедијер.38 Централне
теме су биле расправе о политичким и економским правима жена, али су представљени и предлози о унапређењу демократског положаја жена у земљама
Азије и Африке.39 Митра Митровић је у име југословенске делегације истакла пожртвованост југословенских жена у обнови земље, а затим је говорила
о активностима АФЖЈ у изградњи обданишта и о збрињавању ратне сирочади. Жене Југославије су веома срећне што су победу у рату извојевале под
руководством Јосипа Броза Тита и што с њим на челу сада граде нову земљу,
закључила је Митра Митровић.40
Ипак, у својим извештајима оне истичу да су се као чланице југословенске делегације осећале дискриминисано. Међу заставама чланица МДФЖ
недостајала је само југословенска, али је након протеста код Президијума
застава постављена.41 Током рада су уследиле оштре провокације, нарочито
од Демократског савеза мађарских жена које су искористиле прилику да нападају југословенско политичко руководство.42 Дељен је и лист француске
Комунистичке партије Imаnitе (L’Humаnitе)43 који је негативно приказивао
догађаје у Југославији после 1948. године. Руководство МДФЖ, и поред уложених жалби, није спречило провокације.44 Нарочито су оштро замериле што
руководство МДФЖ није реаговало на чланак Женет Вермеш у коме се криво
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-469.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-455.
„Пред Други конгрес Међународне демократске конференције жена“, Жена данас, бр.
55, (1948), 27–28.
I. Pantеlić, Partizankе kao građankе, 103.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-461, Изјава југословенске делегације на Извршном одбору МДФЖ.
„Извештај о раду АФЖ на Другом конгресу Међународне демократске федерације жена – Извршни одбор АФЖ Југославије осудио је покушаје вређања наше делегације и
наше земље“, Жена данас, бр. 63, (1949), 16.
I. Pantеlić, Partizankе kao građankе, 103.
„Извештај о раду АФЖ на Другом конгресу Међународне демократске федерације жена – Извршни одбор АФЖ Југославије осудио је покушаје вређања наше делегације и
наше земље“, Жена данас, бр. 63, (1949), 16.
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приказује борба жена ФНРЈ у току НОП-а и изградње социјализма.45 Оцењено је да такви поступци доприносе слабљењу Федерације, али „...само захваљујући држању наше делегације, у интересу јединства, упркос вређању наше
социјалистичке земље, народа који се борио и који се бори, ми смо сваки дан
прелазили преко тих гестова према нама и покушавали да спречимо то одвраћање пажње са најважнијих питања борбе против нових империјалистичких
потпаљивача рата и угњетавања“.46
Само два месеца након завршетка Конгреса, у фебруару 1949, Комунистичка партија Француске је преко свог гласила Imаnitе објавила писмо
у којем тражи искључење АФЖЈ из МДФЖ. Биро француских жена је том
приликом истакао да је за њих „немогуће седети поред жена које претендују
да представљају жене Југославије“.47 АФЖЈ је у новембру 1949. штампао публикацију Жене Југославије у изграђивању социјализма на енглеском, француском и руском језику, као одговор на појачану пропаганду у информбировској
штампи која је тежила да умањи значај југословенских жена у рату и да их
сврста на страну фашиста. Негативна кампања ће се наставити, са обе стране,
и после искључења АФЖ-а.
Избацивање АФЖ из МДФЖ
Дешавања с краја 1949. године, односно избацивање АФЖ из МДФЖ,
могла су се наслутити већ на састанку Пленума одржаном у Паризу почетком
1949. године. Тада је МДФЖ дефинисао свој став према Југословенкама односно АФЖЈ: „Ви Југословени сте се борили и част вам је за то, али рат је завршен и сада се ради на учвршћивању и изградњи демократије у свету. То је
сада посао великих народа, а ви сте мала и заостала балканска земља, и ваш
би се удео разликовао од вашег удела у рату“.48
Делегаткиње АФЖ-а у Извршном одбору добиле су у септембру 1949.
писмо од Секретаријата МДФЖ у коме их он обавештава да на захтев неких
националних секција повлачи позив за долазак на Пленум заказан за 15. новембар 1949. у Москви. Секретаријат се одлучио на тај потез само месец дана
након упућивања позива за присуствовање Конгресу. У писму се понављају
негодовања на рачун политике Југославије односно познате информбировске
фразе: „... да је ствар издао Тито прешавши отворено у табор империјали-
45
46
47
48
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-461, Изјава југословенске делегације на Извршном одбору МДФЖ.
Исто.
„Информбировска клика у МДФЖ разбијач међународног јединства демократских жена и МДФЖ“, Жена данас, бр. 64, (1949), 4–5.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-7-16.
�А. Ђорђевић, Другарице и (не)пријатељице – учешће АФЖЈ у раду МДФ
157
зма“.49 Митра Митровић, Ванда Новосел, Олга Милошевић и Вида Томшич
– како је оцењено – не могу се више сматрати истинским представницама демократских жена Југославије и одлучено је да им се повуче позив за учешће
на следећем заседању Пленума МДФЖ који треба да се одржи у Москви.50
У депеши пријатељице, како се ословљавају у међусобној кореспонденцији,
пишу: „Ми смо уверене да ове жене, жена Ђиласова десне руке Тита она подржава и одобрава у свему Титове акте, не говори у име милиона жена Југославије... оних дивних жена које смо ми виделе на Првом оснивачком конгресу
МДФЖ“.51 На првом конгресу била је и Митра Митровић као једна од истакнутијих чланица делегације, а коју оне сад називају само „жена Ђиласова“
због истакнутог места који је Милован Ђилас имао у сукобу са Стаљином.
Секретаријат је констатовао да „политика југословенских чланова Пленума
МДФЖ који подржавају Тита ни мало не изражава интересе и тежње демократских жена Југославије, већ да она иде против циљева демократије и мира
МДФЖ“.52 И југословенске жене сигурно осећају велику захвалност према
Совјетском Савезу „који их је ослободио и који се бори за мир“ – констатује
се на крају писма.53
На повлачење позива АФЖЈ је одговорио Меморандумом у коме је изложио своје ставове зашто стоји на позицији Тита односно Југославије. Затражено је и присуствовање Конгресу, не би ли се одбиле оптужбе, или барем
прочитао Меморандум.54 Избацивање чланица Конгреса, како је констатовано, супротно је Статуту МДФЖ.55 Амбасадор ФНРЈ у Москви известио је
руководство АФЖЈ да није било могућности да се Конгресу доставе захтеви
који су му послати. Руководство АФЖ је затим наложило југословенском амбасадору да прати Конгрес и да пошаље извештај, што је и учињено.56 Негативна кампања против Југославије није се зауставила на избацивању АФЖ.
И током наредних година се могао наћи по неки чланак у информбировској
штампи о актуелним догађајима у земљи где је руководство представљано
као фашистичко односно реакционарно.
АФЖЈ је искористио своја гласила – главно, републичка и мањинска
како би обавестио жене Југославије о догађањима у вези са МДФЖ.57 Тако је
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-94.
Исто.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-400.
Исто.
Исто.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-397.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-510.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-96.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-156, Жене Југославије су се упознале са одлукама Извршног одбора
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Жена данас, преко текстова из пера чланица АФЖЈ које су биле директно прозване, обавестила југословенску јавност о дешавањима унутар МДФЖ. Већ
сами наслови говоре о томе како је АФЖ видео сукоб, односно како се сукоб
Југославије и Информбироа пренео на једну међународну организацију. То
су текстови: Информбировска клика у МДФЖ разбијач јединства демократских жена и МДФЖ;58 Женама Југославије нико не може одузети место које
им припада у редовима демократских снага света;59 Цео демократски покрет са гнушањем ће пратити разбијање Демократске федерације жена60
и тако даље.
Руководство АФЖЈ је настојало да обавести и међународну јавност о
стању у МДФЖ. Министарству иностраних дела је упућена молба да се текстови говора Митре Митровић и Спасеније Цане Бабовић доставе амбасадама ФНРЈ у Лондону и Паризу као и посланству у Риму, са циљем да их они
проследе подружним организацијама МДФЖ у тим земљама, али и другим
напредним организацијама.61 Такође, у Архиву Југославије се могу наћи писма и поруке подршке АФЖЈ из целе земље. Жена данас је објавила извештаје са митинга против одлуке МДФЖ који су организовале чланице АФЖЈ у
читавој земљи, као и телеграме подршке које је Централни одбор добијао од
својих чланица.
У Београду је 18. новембра 1949. одржан централни митинг на којем је
главна говорница била Спасенија Цана Бабовић као потпредседница АФЖЈ.
Совјетски Савез, по њеним речима, користи многе међународне организације, међу њима и МДФЖ, за спровођење политике против Југославије. Рад
АФЖЈ се није променио, напротив, променила се политика МДФЖ, истакла
је С. Бабовић.62 На пленуму МДФЖ у Москви одржаном у новембру 1949,
којем Југословенке нису присуствовале, Долорес Ибарури ла Пасионарија је
обавестила присутне да је једногласно донета одлука о избацивању АФЖЈ из
МДФЖ. Поводом избацивања из Федерације Митра Митровић је у чланку
објављеном у Жени данас поновила став да нема граница у искоришћавању
МДФЖ за спровођење мутних циљева СССР против наше земље.63
58
59
60
61
62
63
Међународне демократске федерације жена.
„Информбировска клика у МДФЖ разбијач међународног јединства демократских жена и МДФЖ“, Жена данас, бр. 64, (1949), 4–5.
„Женама Југославије нико не може одузети место које има припада у демократским
снагама света“, Жена данас, бр. 65, (1949), 8.
„Цео демократски покрет ће с гнушањем пратити разбијање Демократске федерације
жена“, Жена данас, бр. 65, (1949), 7–9.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-95.
Исто.
„Међународни покрет треба бранити од оних који га вуку назад“, Жена данас, бр. 66,
�А. Ђорђевић, Другарице и (не)пријатељице – учешће АФЖЈ у раду МДФ
159
Питање МДФЖ-а је било актуелно и на наредном састанку ЦО АФЖ,
када је Митра Митровић поновила да стоји чињеница да је руководство Федерације напросто постало информбировска филијала. На страницама Жене
данас ће се повремено наћи и изводи из информбировске штампе где су се
уреднице врло критички освртале на активност Долорес Ибарури, познатије као Ла Пасионарија. У претходном периоду она је била врло цењена од
стране АФЖЈ али и уредништва; њени говори и поздрави Титу и народима
Југославије радо су преношени на страницама часописа. Како ће у каснијем
периоду доћи до попуштања политичких стега, односно како ће југословенска политика оријентације према земљама Трећег света добијати све већи значај, тако ће доћи до обнављања контаката између Ла Пасионарије и женских
организација које су наследиле АФЖЈ.64
Током 1950. скупу напредних жена у Паризу обратила се и др Олга
Милошевић. Том приликом покушана је опструкција од стране Савеза француских жена, који је и даље подржавао Информбиро и чак штампао билтен
МДФЖ у коме се Олга Милошевић оптужује да је „Титов агент који има задатак да разбије међународно јединство демократских снага“.65 Ипак, она је
успела да одржи говор и истакне следећи став: „Проблем заштите деце значајан је и по томе што не може бити равноправности жене тамо где тај проблем
није решен, тамо где материнство није заштићено“.66 Она је покушала да истакне значај социјалне заштите и укаже на бројне нерегуларности у заштити
жене и деце у колонијама, Шпанији, Грчкој и осталим напредним земљама
у којима делују организације МДФЖ, а које су раније осудиле и избациле
Југославију из свог чланства. Вероватно је то и разлог због којег је др Олга
Милошевић доживела опструкцију на скупу у Паризу.
Последњи текст у Жени данас о сукобу АФЖЈ и МДФЖ објављен је
фебруара 1950. и говори о обележавању петогодишњице оснивања МДФЖ. У
ту част је штампан билтен у којем је изложен историјат организације, али се у
њему не спомиње искључење АФЖЈ Југославије. Овим текстом АФЖЈ је преко свог гласила Жене данас заокружио своју причу са Међународном демократском федерацијом жена и није је више спомињао на страницама листа.
64
65
66
(1949), 7.
Др Саша Божовић је своју рано преминулу ћерку назвала Долорес управо по Ла Пасионарији; о томе је писала у својој ратној аутобиографији. Saša Božović, Tebi moja Dolores, (Beograd: 4 juli, 1981), XI.
„Ми немамо чега да се бојимо“, Жена данас, бр. 75, (1950), 13.
АЈ, АФЖЈ, 141-18-254.
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После свега
На пленуму Партије одржаном у фебруару 1950. донета је одлука да се
већа пажња посвети заштити мајке и детета, да се ради на оспособљавању
мреже установа за заштиту мајки и деце и да се укаже помоћ радној жени.
Пленум је у Резолуцији поводом искључења АФЖЈ из МДФЖ у Москви оценио да је искључење последица потчињавања ове организације циљевима Информбироа.67
Након разлаза са МДФЖ, управа АФЖЈ је своје међународне активности преоријентисала на проблеме мајки и деце, учествујући на скуповима који
су били посвећени задругама и жени на радном месту.68 Разлоге за то можемо
потражити у новој спољној политици Југославије окренутој земљама Трећег
света. Тако Жена данас доноси бројне прилоге у којима се истиче значај посета угледних жена и пише о утисцима које су оне понеле из Југославије.69
Почев од 1950. теме мајки и деце се све више појављују у гласилима
АФЖЈ, нарочито у Жени данас. Текстови у Жени данас и доступна архивска
грађа поткрепљују тврдњу коју је изнела Гордана Стојаковић у својој дисертацији, а то је да постоје два доминантна периода у историји организације
АФЖЈ: период доминације активних женских улога и успињања запослених
жена на друштвеној лествици (1945–1950) и период доминације улога из економије неге и бриге (1950–1953).70 Гашењем АФЖ Југославије постало је јасно да законска права нису довољна и да је потребно појачати друштвени рад,
јер је најтежи део процеса еманципације друштва ипак био процес трансформације мишљења мушкараца и жена.71
Међународна демократска федерација жена је наставила рад у истом
правцу као и АФЖЈ, преоријентишући се на социјалне теме. Потребно је,
ипак, нагласити да је МДФЖ подржавала, изузимајући југословенски пример
који је био условљен политичким околностима, жене из „првог“, „другог“
или „трећег света“ као и угледне жене које нису себе сматрале комунисткињама.72
67
Мирјана Станишић, Друштвени положај жене у Србији (1944–1955), необјaвљена магистарска теза, Филозофски факултет Универзитета у Београду, 2003, 138.
68
„Наша делегација на конгресу женске задружне гилде“, Жена данас, бр 73, (1950), 12.
69
„Против клевета и дезинформација, сведоци о нашој земљи“, Жена данас, бр. 70,
(1950), 14.
70
Гордана Стојаковић, Родна перспектива новина АФЖ у Војводини 1942–1953, (Нови
Сад, Завод за равноправност полова: 2012), 7.
71
А. Ђорђевић, „Главно гласило АФЖЈ Жена данас (1943–1953)“, дипломски рад, Филозофски факултет, 2013, 120.
72
Franciska De Haan, „Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transna-
�А. Ђорђевић, Другарице и (не)пријатељице – учешће АФЖЈ у раду МДФ
161
Повратак социјалним темама од стране АФЖЈ и МДФЖ поклопио се
са повлачењем жена из политичког живота које је наступило почетком 50-их
година. У томе није било разлике између источног и западног блока, јер је
мали вакум који је омогућио женама активније учешће на политичкој мапи
света за време и непосредно након Другог светског рата управо нестајао како
се сукоб Истока и Запада распламсавао.
Закључак
Антифашистички фронт жена Југославије је током посматраног периода био свестан сложеног политичког тренутка у којем се нашла Југославија. Заоштрени међународни односи и клима Хладнога рата су непосредно
утицали на готово све међународне организације у којима је комунистичка
Југославија узимала учешћа, односно пријем националних организација у међународне организације зависио је од блоковске припадности поједине државе. Остајући изван блокова, АФЖЈ није више тражио пријем ни у једну међународну женску организацију која је била јасно политички оријентисана, већ
се до краја свог постојања 1953. године концентрисао на сарадњу са ОУН-ом,
задругама и гилдама, Трећим светом, а све у циљу побољшању услова живота жене и деце.
Иако раздвојена вишим политичким разлозима у годинама које су уследиле, Међународна демократска федерација жена се на исти начин преоријентисала и бавила социјалним темама. У једном од последњих писама из
доступне кореспонденције, АФЖЈ истиче како треба одбацити политичке
флоскуле и показати солидарност са женама света без обзира на њихово политичко опредељење: „Зато смо ми то овде изнеле, да би Федерација, њено руководство, помогла – на линији јачања борбе против империјализма и остварења програма Федерације – да јединство међу женама не буде натруњено
никаквим увредама, јер је то у интересу борбе демократских снага света“.73
Нажалост, то јединство другарице нису показале једне према другима, као
што се готово никада нису тако називале иако су имале лева опредељења ,али
зато јесу непријатељство, које је било изнуђено политичким околностима, иако су све до последњег писма остале пријатељице.
73
tional Women’s Organizations : the case of Women’s International Democratic Federation
(WIDF)“, u: Woman’s History Review, (2010), 564.
AJ, АФЖЈ, 141-17-461, Изјава југословенске делегације на Извршном одбору МДФЖ.
�162
Архив, часопис Архива Југославије, 1–2, 2017
Извори и литература
Архивски фондови
Архив Југославије, Антифашистички фронт жена Југославије (АФЖЈ), фонд
141
Периодика
Жена данас, главно гласило АФЖЈ, 1945–1953.
Литература
Bоnfigliоli, Chiаrа, Biоgrаfijе аktivistinjа AFŽ-а: Intеrsеkciоnаlаnа аnаlizа
žеnskоg dеlоvаnjа. Izgubljеnа rеvоlucijа: AFŽ izmеđu mitа i zаbоrаvа, zbоrnik.
Urеd. Andrеjа Dugаndžić i Tijаnа Okić. Sаrаjеvо: Udružеnjе zа kulturu i umjеtnоst
Crvеnа, 2016.
Bоžinоvić, Nеdа, Žеnskо pitаnjе u Srbiji u XIX i XX vеku. Bеоgrаd: Žеnе u crnоm,
Dеvеdеsеtčеtvrtа, 1996.
Bаrаć, Stаnislаvа, „Pаcifistički i аntifаšistički diskurs u listu Žеnа dаnаs (1936–
1941)“. U: Intеlеktuаlci i rаt 1939–1947. Urеdnik Drаgо Rоsаndić. Filоzоfski
fаkultеt Zаgrеb 2011.
Bоžоvić, Sаšа, Tеbi mоjа Dоlоrеs. Bеоgrаd: 4. juli, 1981.
Гудац, Додић, Вера. „Положај жене у Србији (1945–2000)“. У: Србија у модернизацијским процесима 19. и 20. века: Жене и деца, бр. 4. Уредница Латинка
Перовић. Београд: Хелсиншки одбор за људска права, 2006.
Dе Hааn, Frаnciskа, „Cоntinuing Cоld Wаr Pаrаdigms in Wеstеrn Histоriоgrаphy
оf Trаnsnаtiоnаl Wоmеn’s Orgаnizаtiоns : thе cаsе оf Wоmеn’s Intеrnаtiоnаl
Dеmоcrаtic Fеdеrаtiоn (WIDF) “, u: Wоmаn’s Histоry Rеviеw, 2010.
Ђорђевић, Александра, „Главно гласило АФЖЈ Жена данас (1943–1953)“. Дипломски рад, Филозофски факултет, 2013.
Pаntеlić, Ivаnа, Pаrtizаnkе kао grаđаnkе. Bеоgrаd: Institut zа sаvrеmеnu istоriju,
Evоlutа, 2011.
Sklеvicky, Lydijа, Kоnji, žеnе, rаtоvi. Zаgrеb: Žеnskа infоtеkа, 1996.
Stоjаkоvić, Gоrdаnа, AFŽ 1945–1953 : prеglеd krоz AFŽ štаmpu, u: Rоd i lеvicа,
zbоrnik. Bеоgrаd: Žеnski infоrmаciоnо-dоkumеntаciоni trеning cеntаr, 2012.
Stоjаkоvić, Gоrdаnа, Rоdnа pеrspеktivа nоvinа Antifаšističkоg frоntа žеnа u
pеriоdu 1945–1953. Nоvi Sаd: Zаvоd zа rаvnоprаvnоst pоlоvа, 2012.
Интернет извори
http://www.knjizеnstvо.rs/mаgаzinе.php?tеxt=17 (приступљено 5. 10. 2017)
�
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15 str.
AFŽ Jugoslavije
Aleksandra Đorđević
Hladni rat
MDFŽ
Međunarodna demokratska federacija žena
Žena danas
žene
ženske organizacije
žensko pitanje
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/6ea21b684a3b6c483b9dacc9900bb616.pdf
1ff9403a8faacf74f60c5234966bb69e
PDF Text
Text
The End of the AFŽ – The End of Meaningful Women’s Activism?
Rethinking the History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 – 1961
By
Jelena Tesija
Submitted to
Central European University
Department of Gender Studies
In partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in Gender Studies.
Supervisor: Professor Francisca de Haan
Budapest, Hungary
2014
�Abstract
This thesis, as part of emerging scholarly work on rethinking the complex relations between
feminism and socialism, explores the Savez ženskih društava Hrvatske (Union of Women’s
Societies of Croatia, SŽDH), the women's organization that existed in Yugoslavia from 1953
to 1961. The SŽDH was the successor of the Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s
Front, AFŽ), and while there is ample literature about the activities of the AFŽ, the activities
of its successor organizations are hardly researched. This thesis examines the case of the
SŽDH in order to understand better what was happening in a forgotten period of Yugoslav
women’s history. I first discuss second-wave feminist historians’ perspectives on the AFŽ,
and in particular the fact that that most historians who have written about the AFŽ claim that
its dissolution in 1953, as an autonomous organization, was detrimental for meaningful work
on women’s problems in Yugoslavia. Second, I look at archival documents of the SŽDH. I
approach the material from a bottom-up perspective, which goes against the hegemonic
narrative on communist women’s organizations as being simply obedient “Party tools”. I
research the activities and goals of the SŽDH, the discussions and debates within the
organization as well as the problems that the SŽDH women were facing in their practical
work. I focus on the SŽDH women’s own perspective and the terms which they used
themselves when discussing and explaining their work. Using a bottom-up approach and
avoiding to apply the second-wave feminist “autonomy principle” for a state socialist
women’s organization, this analysis shows that the SŽDH was not simply a “Party tool”. This
research proves that the SŽDH women had their voices and opinions; that they had a wellthought-out strategy and ideas on how to enhance women’s position in the context they lived
in; and that they extensively discussed the SŽDH’s position in the new circumstances of selfmanagement in Yugoslavia.
i
�Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor Francisca de Haan for guidance, extremely helpful
comments and ideas and encouragement during this thesis process. I would also like to thank
my second supervisor Elissa Helms for her support.
My parents were always there for me during my education. I want to thank to mom and dad
for their unconditional emotional and financial support.
I am grateful to Ivana for her assistance from home and to Jelena for technical and emotional
support. I also want to thank Aisuluu for being a friend.
Thanks to Cemre for everything.
ii
�Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... i
Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................................. ii
List of abbreviations.............................................................................................................................. v
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Sources and Methods........................................................................................................................... 2
Theoretical framework ........................................................................................................................ 4
Women and socialism ..................................................................................................................... 4
Totalitarian model vs. bottom-up approach..................................................................................... 9
Second-wave feminism and the “autonomy principle” ................................................................. 11
How to apply this to Yugoslavia? ..................................................................................................... 16
1. A short history of Yugoslavia ......................................................................................................... 19
1.1. The KPJ, Tito and Yugoslavia in WW2 ..................................................................................... 19
1.2. The Yugoslav specific form of socialism ................................................................................... 22
1.3. Women's position in Yugoslavia ................................................................................................ 25
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 27
2. History and historiography of the AFŽ ......................................................................................... 28
2.1. The women’s movement in Yugoslavia before the AFŽ ........................................................... 29
2.2. The AFŽ (1942-1953) – organizational structure, goals and activities ...................................... 30
2.3. Historians' evaluation of the AFŽ's activities and the changes in its organizational structure ... 34
2.4. Historians’ interpretation of the dissolution of the AFŽ ............................................................ 36
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 41
3. The SŽDH (1953-1961): position, activities, goals and discussions ............................................. 43
3.1. The SŽDH’s structure and activities .......................................................................................... 44
3.2. How should women be organized?............................................................................................. 50
3.3. Polemics over the main goal of the organization ....................................................................... 57
iii
�3.4. Which problems were the SŽDH women facing in their practical work? .................................. 62
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 65
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 68
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 72
iv
�List of abbreviations
AFŽ - Antifašistički front žena / Antifascist Women’s Front
AFŽH - Antifašistički front žena Hrvatske / Antifascist Women’s Front of Croatia
AFŽJ - Antifašistički front žena Jugoslavije / Antifascist Women’s Front of Yugoslavia
AVNOJ - Antifašističko vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije / Anti-Fascist Council of
the Peoples' Liberation of Yugoslavia
DFJ - Demokratska federativna Jugoslavija / Democratic Federal Yugoslavia
FNRJ - Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija / People’s Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia
GO - Glavni odbor / Main Committee
HR-HDA - Hrvatska-Hrvatski državni arhiv / Croatia-Croatian State Archives
KDAŽ - Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena / Conference for the Social activity of
Women
KDAŽH - Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena Hrvatske / Conference for the Social
Activity of Women of Croatia
KPJ - Komunistička partija Jugoslavije / Communist Party of Yugoslavia
NF - Narodni front / People’s Front
NO - Narodni odbori / People’s Committees
NOF - Narodnooslobodilački front / People’s Liberation Front
NRH - Narodna Republika Hrvatska / People’s Republic of Croatia
v
�SKJ - Savez komunista Jugoslavije / League of Communists of Yugoslavia
SSRN - Socijalistički savez radnog naroda / Socialist Alliance of Working People
SSRNH - Socijalistički savez radnog naroda Hrvatske / Socialist Alliance of Working People
of Croatia
SSRNJ - Socijalistički savez radnog naroda Jugoslavije / Socialist Alliance of Working
People of Yugoslavia
SŽD - Savez ženskih društava / Union of Women’s Societies
SŽDH - Savez ženskih društava Hrvatske / Union of Women’s Societies of Croatia
SŽDJ - Savez ženskih društava Jugoslavije / Union of Women’s Societies of Yugoslavia
vi
�“How was it possible that a tradition of struggle, of commitment with the highest personal
costs, and which could have energized generations of women, had been simply wiped out of
my generation's historical consciousness?”1
Introduction
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Yugoslav feminist historian Lydia Sklevicky2 started to
search for the lost and forgotten history of Yugoslav women and their treatment in the
historiography. She found out from another study (Polić, 1986) that in 1986 in the Yugoslav
educational material women almost did not exist - there were more horses than women in
history schoolbooks from the fifth to eight grades of primary school (1989b: 70). Sklevicky
was the first author who wrote thoroughly about the Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist
Women’s Front, AFŽ), the women’s organization which was formed in the Second World
War in Yugoslavia and which fought actively for women’s liberation. Several historians
followed Sklevicky’s approach to write about the AFŽ’s goals, its activities and the changes
in its organizational structure.
I do not remember, during my education in Croatia in the 1990s and 2000s, that we
were learning about the AFŽ, nothing but the fact that the organization existed. However, at
1
Lydia Sklevicky, 1989b: 68
2
Lydia Sklevicky (1952-1990) was a feminist historian, theoretician, activist and author of the first feminist
academic articles in several disciplines (sociology, ethnology and history) in Yugoslavia. She graduated in
sociology and ethnology at University of Zagreb in 1976 and became an assistant at the Institute for the History
of the Workers’ Movement in Croatia. Sklevicky was dedicated to exploring women's history in Yugoslavia,
especially the history of the the Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ), the official women’s
organization that existed in Yugoslavia from 1942 to 1953. She published several articles on the AFŽ, but she
didn’t finish her doctoral dissertation on the same topic, because she died in car accident on January 21, 1990.
The thesis was published posthumously in 1996, edited by her supervisor Dunja Rihtman Auguštin and titled
Konji, žene, ratovi (Horses, Women, Wars), and is still the most thorough study on the AFŽ. Sklevicky was part
of the second-wave feminist movement in Yugoslavia in the 1970s, one of the founders of the feminist group
“Women and Society” in Zagreb in 1979 and an internationally active scholar, participating in many academic
conferences and other events (see Kašić, 2006: 517-520).
1
�least the historiography on the AFŽ started to flourish then. Historians, following Sklevicky,
were discussing the AFŽ and tried to figure out what happened regarding the extremely
complex issue of the dissolution of the organization in 1953. But in their work, the AFŽ’s
successor organizations existed only as a note that there was something after the AFŽ. These
organizations have been almost completely neglected in the historiography of the women’s
movement in Yugoslavia. I was puzzled about this and one of the aims of my thesis is to try to
understand why this happened. But first and foremost I will search for information about one
of the AFŽ’s successors in Croatia, the Savez ženskih društava Hrvatske (Union of Women’s
Societies of Croatia, SŽDH), and try to integrate the forgotten voices of the SŽDH’s women
into the Yugoslav historiography.
The SŽDH was the women’s organization that existed in the People’s Republic of
Croatia (part of Yugoslavia) from 1953 to 1961. The SŽDH was the successor of the
Antifašistički front žena Hrvatske (Antifascist Women’s Front of Croatia, AFŽH), and, as I
already pointed out, while there is literature about the activities of the AFŽH, the activities of
its successor organizations are hardly researched. In this thesis I will first discuss historians’
perspectives on the AFŽ, and in particular the fact that that most historians who have written
about the AFŽ(H) claim that its dissolution in 1953 was detrimental for meaningful work on
women’s problems in Yugoslavia (Sklevicky 1996; Stojaković, 2012, etc.). Subsequently, I
will research the activities and goals of the SŽDH, the discussions and debates within the
organization as well as the problems that the SŽDH women were facing in their work.
Sources and Methods
Historians have done several primary researches on the AFŽ. Lydia Sklevicky made a
thorough analysis of the archival documents of the AFŽ on the level of People's Republic of
Croatia (1996), historian and feminist activist Neda Božinović researched the AFŽ in Serbia
2
�(1996), and feminist historian Gordana Stojaković studied the AFŽ’s magazine in Vojvodina
(2012). However, the only primary research on the Savez ženskih društava (Union of
Women’s Societies, SŽD), that I found, has been done by Božinović. She has done research
based on the archival documents of the SŽD of Serbia and the research is presented in several
pages of her book about the women's movement in Serbia in the 19th and 20th century (1996:
171-184). Even though the history and historiography of the AFŽ is an integral part of my
thesis, my primary focus is on the activities of the SŽDH. Since I’m interested in the activities
of women’s organizations in Croatia after 1953, specifically the SŽDH (1953-1961), the main
data for my research are the archival documents of the Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost
žena Hrvatske (Conference for the Social Activity of Women of Croatia, KDAŽH), which
includes activities of the SŽDH. These materials are available in the Croatian State Archives
in Zagreb. I am mostly focused on the documents from the Founding Assembly of the
SŽDH’s, held on February 27-18, 1957, the First Plenary Session held on January 27-28,
1958, and the Second Plenary Session held on December 6-7, 1960.
I use textual analysis, more precisely the close reading technique, to analyze
discussions and debates which were going on during these meetings and to detect the
organization’s main goals and activities. Close reading is “the mindful, disciplined reading of
an object with a view to deeper understanding of its meanings” (Brummett, 2010: 3) and one
of the main goals of the close reading is “a better understanding of the rhetoric of what we
read” (Brummett, 2010: 4). I have tried to apply this when reading the archival documents,
especially to get a better and deeper understanding of the language and concepts the SŽDH
women used themselves when describing their goals and activities.
3
�Theoretical framework
I’m framing my topic within three major theoretical fields. First, I’m dealing with the
general issue of women and socialism and different elements within it. I focus on the
unresolved ambiguous relationship between communism and feminism; part of which is that
socialist feminists opposed to what they call bourgeois feminism, which they found limited.
At the same time, I demonstrate that there was a strong support for women’s liberation as
something vital in socialist thought. Second, I discuss and challenge the general top-down
approach (or totalitarian paradigm) to communism, in which women’s organizations in state
socialist countries are seen as the state’s tool, which results in denying the agency of the
women in that era. Finally, I look to the other side of the complex issue of socialism and
feminism: the second-wave feminists and their disappointment with the socialist state and the
submission of gender to class. They advocated for women being separate and autonomous in
the gender struggle and, as historian Chiara Bonfiglioli recently argued, this notion was
projected on the past, which again resulted in an erasure of the agency of socialist women,
who were fighting against patriarchy at that time.
Women and socialism
There were different approaches to women's emancipation within state socialism and
different ideas about how to achieve it. First, I will discuss Marxism/communism and the
women’s question on the ideological level in terms of the theorizing by Marx, Engels, Bebel,
Lenin, Kollontai and Armand (Buckley, 1989: 18-27). Then, I will ask more concrete
questions about the main field of dispute in the communist thought and practice: whether a
separate women’s organization was necessary and justified or not, with a few examples from
different contexts to demonstrate how this problem was not specific only to the Yugoslav case
and how it remained unresolved.
4
�Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels claimed that socialism was the only system in
which women’s liberation would be possible, which could be seen in their claim that “it is
self-evident, that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the
abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both
public and private” (1950: 36). Sovietologist and political scientist Alfred G. Meyer, in his
discussion of Marxism and the women’s movement before the First World War, claims that
Marx and Engels analyzed everything through the lens of the class struggle, meaning that
women’s oppression too “was to be understood in its functional relationship to the class
structure and the class struggle” (1977: 89). Political philosopher Sonia Kruks, anthropologist
Rayna Rapp and historian Marilyn B. Young, in their introduction to Promissory Notes:
Women in the transition to Socialism, argue that Marxism as a theory proposed to solve so
called Woman Question and all others social issues by introducing socialism (1989: 8).
Therefore, they claim that for the early socialist thinkers “women as category had nothing to
contribute to the theory of socialism” (1989: 8).
Working-class socialist August Bebel in 1879 published the book Die Frau und der
Sozialismus (Woman and socialism), in which he criticized the bourgeois feminist idea that
the liberation of women would be achieved through a battle for civil equality of men and
women. Bebel saw marriage as slavery for women and claimed that freedom for women was
impossible without abolishment the capitalist system (1988: 500-501). He emphasized that
only the Socialist Party advocated gender equality and said that the woman question
“coincides with that other question: In what manner should society be organized to abolish
oppression, exploitation, misery and need, and to bring about the physical and mental welfare
of individuals and of society as a whole?” (1988: 498). Even though he was aware of
woman’s special position, he still claimed that the solution for women’s question was the
same as solution for the social question (1988: 502). Bebel supposed that in the socialist state,
5
�in which there would be no private property, women would be free because “nurses, teachers,
women friends, the rising female generation, all these will stand by her when she is in need of
assistance” (1988: 504). Finally, Bebel said that “in the new society woman will be entirely
independent, both socially and economically” (1988: 502).
Lenin developed Marxist theory further and brought it on a more practical level,
according to Mary Buckley, a British historian who works on the Soviet Union (1989: 25).
Even though he advocated for drawing women into the socialist struggle and for raising their
political consciousness, before the 1917 Russian Revolution he rejected the idea of women’s
separate organization to achieve this goal (Buckley, 1989: 25). Nevertheless, after the
Revolution, Lenin was more ready to accept the idea of special work among women, even
though he was striving to separate this idea from so-called “bourgeois feminism”, as can be
seen from his conversation with the German socialist feminist Klara Zetkin on the women’s
question in 1920. While advocating for a strong international communist women’s movement,
Lenin again rejected the idea of having a separate women’s organization, but on the other
side, he claimed that “we must not close our eyes to the fact that the Party must have bodies,
working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose particular
duty it is to arouse the masses of women’s workers, to bring them into contact with the Party,
and to keep them under its influence”, which “involves systematic work among them” (1950:
99). Additionally, he advocated for “special methods of agitation and forms of organization”,
while also insisting that “that is not feminism, that is practical, revolutionary expediency”
(1950: 99). Lenin offered some practical solutions for women’s problems in the Soviet Union,
in terms of two tasks: to get rid of bourgeois legislation and to socialize housework in order to
liberate women from the burden of household duties (Buckley, 1989: 26).
Along similar lines, two important socialist thinkers, Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa
Armand, were opposing the feminist movement, because they believed that women’s
6
�liberation could be achieved only in a socialist system (Buckley, 1989: 33). Just to briefly
introduce them, Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) was one of the most important women in
the Soviet Union. She was a writer, political activist, the director of the women’s organization
Zhenotdel from 1920 to 1922, and the first female ambassador in the world (she was a Soviet
diplomat in Norway from 1923 to 1925 and from 1927 to 1930) (Gafizova, 2006: 253-257).
Inessa Armand (1874-1920) was the first director of the Zhenotdel, a socialist feminist activist
in the Soviet Union and internationally, and a prominent member of the Communist Party
(Pushkareva, 2006: 33-36). Kollontai argued that bourgeois feminists’ demands “go no further
than demands for political equality” and that “they are fighting for their female prerogatives
without striving to achieve the abolition of all existing prerogatives and privileges…” (1984:
31). But these socialist women were also aware that, as Buckley claims, “liberation would not
automatically ‘happen’ or even ‘be guaranteed’ by a change in the economic substructure or
through legislation” (1989: 44). That is why in 1918 they advocated strongly for women-only
organizations and, according to Buckley, they managed to frame their demands in a
acceptable way, while claiming that “since revolution had successfully triumphed, these
organizations would serve the revolution, not bourgeois feminism, because they existed in a
socialist state pursuing socialist goals” (1989: 55). Buckley concludes that “although the core
of Bolshevik ideology resisted special groups for women, the practical need to confront the
low level of women’s involvement led to support for special women’s organizations, so long
as they were not separated from the Party” (1989: 57).
Changes in state socialist women’s organizations happened for several reasons:
ideological, practical, or because of different interests and power struggles. There is no one
answer, neither on a theoretical nor on the historical level, to why this happened. Not only on
the national, but also on the international level, there was discussion about how to organize
socialist women after the Bolshevik Revolution. As I said above, in his conversation with
7
�Zetkin, Lenin was advocating for a strong Communist Women’s Movement, which was
formed within the Third International, at a conference in Moscow in June 1920 (Waters,
1989: 29). This Movement was a successor of women’s movement within the First and the
Second International, during which two women’s conferences took place: one in Stuttgart in
1907 and the second one in Copenhagen in 1910 (Waters, 1989: 30). Along similar lines, it
was clear from the Theses on the Communist Women’s Movement, presented during the
Moscow conference in 1920, that the delegates at the conference thought that the only
effective way for struggling for the Woman Question was within the communist society and
movement, and that at the same time “without the conscious and active participation of the
mass of women who sympathize with communism… a fundamental and far-reaching
transformation of the economic basis of society and all its institutions and all its cultural life is
impossible” (quoted in Waters, 1989: 31). In organizational terms, the Theses stated that
movement would be organized through Communist parties’ “women’s agitational
commissions” from local to national level with adequate women’s representation in parties’
committees (Waters, 1989: 37). What is interesting is that in one section of the Theses the
Second International was praised for making “a clear demarcation between the socialist and
bourgeois women’s movement” (quoted in Waters, 1989: 38). Waters argues that in the late
1920s there were attempts for isolation of women’s sections from national parties, but they
were unsuccessful and in the early 1930s these sections developed closer relationships with
the parties (1989: 44). One example, mentioned in Waters’ article, is especially important to
show how discussions on this topic were extremely lively and how even the most prominent
socialist women were sometimes going against general Communist Parties’ lines. Namely,
Waters explains how exactly Klara Zetkin was advocating for women’s organizations to be
separate from the Parties in the early 1920s in order to “spread the communist message
8
�beyond the small band of the faithful and bring together women from diverse social
backgrounds and with a range of political allegiances” (1989: 44).
In her book chapter about women’s organizations in the Soviet Union in the 1920s,
Mary Buckley presents and discusses the ideological justification for the women’s
organization’s existence; the organizational structure and different forms of these
organizations as well as the content, relevance and efficacy of their work. She also describes
the obstacles that women’s organizations were facing and the different forces that were
against separate work among women (1989: 60-107). Buckley says that after the 1917
Revolution in the Soviet Union, the Party needed women to be active, so separate women’s
organizations were temporarily allowed and ideologically justified as necessary to raise
political consciousness among women (see Lenin’s words above). In order to achieve this
goal and to organize and supervise work among women, the Zhenotdel, the Women’s
Department of the Central Committee Secretariat, was formed in 1919 (1989: 65). Buckley
emphasizes some structural obstacles in implementing changes on behalf of women during
the existence of the Zhenotdel (1919-1930), such as the Civil War in the country, high
unemployment and the lack of interest of Party leaders in changes in family life (1989: 61).
She also mentions the power struggle within the Party and the subordination of the Zhenotdel,
as well as strong opposition from conservative Bolshevik men, fear of separation of the
women’s question from the joint class struggle, and resistance among some women to accept
new roles or to obey policies that were seen as ordered ‘from above’ as problems that the
Zhenotdel’s activists were facing (1989: 62).
Totalitarian model vs. bottom-up approach
Another way in which I discuss the women's question in state socialism is through
challenging the totalitarian paradigm according to which emancipation was imposed on
9
�women for the sake of the Communist Party. The “totalitarian-model scholarship”, which
Sheila Fitzpatrick explained on the example of the Soviet Union, meant that historians viewed
the Soviet Union through the lens of a top-down approach, according to which the Soviet
Union was a monolith system in which “the destruction of autonomous association and the
atomization of bonds between people produced a powerless, passive society that was purely
an object of regime control and manipulation” (2007: 80). This approach was developed
mostly by political scientists, who were, according to Fitzpatrick often funded by different US
government’s agencies (2007: 80). In the 1970s and 1980s the model was challenged by socalled “revisionists”, who developed a bottom-up approach to the history of the Soviet Union.
Unlike the totalitarians, the revisionists were mostly social historians who supposed that
“society had to be more than a simple object of regime control” (Fitzpatrick, 2007: 81), and
who accordingly shed new light on Soviet Union history. According to Fitzpatrick, the
revisionist paradigm prevailed in the mid-1980s within the discipline of Soviet history, but
did not change the public picture of the Soviet Union in Western countries (2007: 79).
In terms of women’s emancipation, the totalitarian paradigm assumed that the
emancipation was a Party project imposed on women from above with different goals than
women’s interests, as for example Romanian feminist political theorist Mihaela Miroiu claims
(2007: 199). Following the totalitarian paradigm, Miroiu compares communism to fascism
and argues that women’s emancipation and political participation through a system of quota
aimed to make it certain for the Party to have docile supporters and “barely had to do with the
political presentation of women’s interests” (2007: 199). Above all, while acknowledging
possible positive consequences for mothers, she evaluates negatively the introduction of state
kindergartens and crèches by labelling them as a means of “control over the entire
population” (2007: 199).
10
�There are, of course, historians who approach the history of state socialism and of
women in state socialist countries from a different perspective: the bottom-up approach. The
Polish-American social and cultural historian Malgorzata (Gosia) Fidelis, for example,
criticizes “the totalitarian paradigm” and claims that because of this approach “it is rare to
find works that give voice to women as active and diverse historical agents” (2014: 167).
Fidelis also emphasizes that the “conviction that ‘equality’ was given by the regime” actually
“distorts agency from below and contributes to misconceptions about how communism
worked in everyday life” (2014: 170). In her book on women and industrialization in Poland
after the Second World War, Fidelis concluded that during women’s protests in female
dominated industries, members of the Communist Party “often abandoned their official
agenda to spread the state ideology among women and pursued their own notions of social
justice” (2010: 97). Along similar lines, while claiming that historians can’t easily draw
conclusions about the non-existence of women’s activism in state socialist countries because
of the lack of research in this field, historian Francisca de Haan argues that some new
evidence suggests that “there was large-scale activism of socialist women on behalf of
women” (2014: 178). Similarly, Jill Massino, a historian who works on state socialist
Romania, says that some of the socialist women, members of the National Women’s Council,
the only legitimate women’s organization in Romania, were educated about feminism and
were really dedicated to the achievement of gender equality (2014: 179).
Second-wave feminism and the “autonomy principle”
The third theoretical field I will frame my research in is the feminist critique of
Marxism and state socialism. Particularly, I will position my analysis in relation with and in
contrast to the second-wave feminists’ use of the notion of the autonomy in evaluating
women’s activities in state socialist countries. As I already pointed out in explaining socialist
solutions for “woman question” in terms of separate or integrated women’s organizations,
11
�Marxism and feminism had/have a complex and difficult relationship. It was like this from the
beginning, when Marxist thinkers put themselves in opposition to so called bourgeois
feminism. But second-wave feminist critique towards state socialism and Marxism is equally
important for this thesis because in this period Yugoslav feminist historians (such as Lydia
Sklevicky) started to write about women’s organizations in Yugoslavia and to evaluate
socialist women’s activities, as well as their connections with the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia (KPJ). First, I will explain the relationship between Marxism and feminism from
the feminist side, then I will present an overview of the discussion among historians today on
feminism, state socialism and women’s organizations during state socialism, and finally I will
provide basic facts about the feminist movement in Yugoslavia in the 1970s.
According to Sonia Kruks, Rayna Rapp and Marilyn B. Young, many Western
socialist feminists in the 1970s and 1980s were criticizing Marxist theory for “its inability to
sufficiently analyze and incorporate the centrality of the gender division of labour” as well as
for “its lack of concerns with sexuality and reproduction” (1989: 8). For example, on a
theoretical level, while acknowledging the importance of Marxist analytical power, feminist
economist Heidi Hartmann framed the relationship between Marxism and feminism as an
“unhappy marriage” and said that Marxist analysis saw women only as part of the working
class and in that way “consistently subsume[d] women’s relation to men under workers’
relation to capital” (1981: 98). She said that Marxist categories were sex blind and couldn’t
answer the question why women are subordinated to men in family relations. Hartmann
claimed that Marxism never actually attacked patriarchy, which she defines as “a set of social
relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish
or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women“
(1981: 101). She further wrote that some of the key elements of patriarchy that women
experience were: heterosexual marriage, childrearing and housework and economic
12
�dependence on men (1981: 104). Hartman says that in patriarchy “men exercise their control
in receiving personal service work from women, in not having to do housework or rear
children, in having access to women’s bodies for sex, and in feeling powerful and being
powerful” (1981: 104).
In the 2007 Aspasia Forum “Is ‘Communist Feminism’ a Contradiction in Terminis”,
historians mostly discuss women’s autonomy on the individual, personal level and its relation
to communism, but some of them also discuss the autonomy of women’s organizations and
the importance of autonomy in socialist thought in general (2007). Mihaela Miroiu takes
women’s autonomy as a regulative concept for feminism (2007: 197). Her conclusion on
communist’s success in solving the women’s question was that “communism has indeed
produced a relative economic independence of women from men, but this was not a road to
female autonomy” (2007: 200). Other historians in the same Forum were opposing to some
extent Miroiu’s insistence on the autonomy principle in evaluating women’s activities and the
state socialist approaches to women’s emancipation. Marilyn J. Boxer, while claiming that
socialism was “a contest against individualism” (2007: 242), argues that “once the concept of
personal autonomy, or any form of individualism, becomes a definitional criterion, then the
whole history of European socialism, and of a good many feminisms, stand in the dock”
(2007: 242).
Apart from personal autonomy, which Miroiu and Boxer discuss, there is still the huge
discussion among historian about a different kind of autonomy: the organizational autonomy
of women’s organizations in state socialist countries. Croatian historian Renata Jambrešić
Kirin applies the “autonomy principle” on the case of the Yugoslav women’s organization and
argues that with loss of organizational autonomy, women’s organizations also lost an
important dimension of women’s activism: at the same time to work for the sake of the
society, but also for themselves (2014: 180). Moreover, she argues that the AFŽ’s successors
13
�were just “fatefully following the Communist Party line” (2014: 180) on whose agenda the
political emancipation of women didn’t exist anymore (2014: 181).
Chiara Bonfiglioli, who has researched women’s activism in Yugoslavia and Italy
during the Cold War, criticizes the application of the “autonomy principle” to women’s
organizations in state-socialist countries (2014). She argues that second-wave feminism
contributed to the interpretation of women’s activism during the Cold War as being irrelevant
or even absent by applying the notion of “autonomy” as the measure for successful work on
women’s issues (2012: 22). In her study on women’s organizations in Yugoslavia and Italy
during the Cold War, she tries to prove that because of their local and international
significance, the “lack of political autonomy” of these organizations “cannot be equated to a
lack of political agency” (2012: 280). She claims that when “the principle of women’s
collective and individual autonomy from political institutions is taken as a prerequisite for
women’s political and social agency, our historical understanding is necessarily limited”
because the narrative of autonomy “erases the complexity, ambivalences, and nuances of
women’s activism after 1945” (2014: 4). Instead of being focused on the “autonomy
principle”, she suggests to take a look at forms of women’s agency that were present “within
the framework of existing political movements and institutions” (2014: 4). Along similar
lines, Fidelis criticizes the post-1989 approach to the socialist era and “the rejection of the
communist era as a black hole in the history of feminism” (2014:170). Russian historian
Natalia Novikova calls for contextualization in historiography. She emphasizes that is always
necessary to pay attention to “the contexts in which concepts and opinions have been
expressed, rather than simply interpreting them arrogantly in terms of what we might believe”
(2007: 203).
The “autonomy principle” was very important for the young Yugoslav feminist
scholars who worked in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s in Yugoslavia, in order to fight
14
�against patriarchy, women started to organize themselves outside of the Communist Party and
in opposition to the Conference for the Social Activity of Women (KDAŽ), the official
women’s organization that was successor of the SŽD, the organization that I am interested in.
These new ideas about women’s emancipation apart from the socialist organizations appeared
among young intellectuals born after WW2, who started to gather and held their first public
meeting in Belgrade on October 27–November 2, 1978. The conference was called “The
Woman’s question: a new approach”, and was also attended by feminists from other European
countries (Papić, 1994: 20). After the meeting, the group “Women and Society” was formed
in Zagreb in 1979 (one of the founders was historian Lydia Sklevicky, whose work on the
AFŽ I am dwelling on) and similar groups were also founded in Ljubljana and Belgrade
(Božinović, 1994: 18). The key problems feminists in Yugoslavia emphasized were: “gender
role stereotypes; social, economic and political inequality; the myth of female weakness; and
the relationship of false history to ideology” (Ramet, 1991: 205).
Žarana Papić, a Yugoslav feminist sociologist and anthropologist who was part of this
1970s movement, claims that feminist efforts were possible in Yugoslavia because of the
system which was more open (Yugoslavia was not aligned with either of the Power blocs
during the Cold War; the self-management economy allowed some kind of private
enterprises) and because of the ideology that wasn’t as strong as in other Eastern Europe
socialist countries (1994: 20). On the other hand, Papić explains that 1978 conference was
criticized by the socialist women’s organization for being a “sex-war conference” (1994: 21).
Along similar lines, Božinović wrote that the co-operation of the feminists groups in Zagreb,
Ljubljana and Belgrade and their solidarity with each other was “not kindly looked upon by
the governmental structures” (1994: 18).
In her next point, Papić presents perfectly what could be seen as a general evaluation
of socialism by feminists in Yugoslavia, when she says that “in orthodox socialist ideology,
15
�not only that the women’s question is quite simply and automatically solved by the so-called
workers’ question, but also any different approach to this women’s question is very, very bad,
or very bourgeois or very sex-warish. One of the aims of this conference was the beginning of
the critique of the socialist patriarchy and the critique of the socialist concept of women’s
destiny” (1994: 21). As could be concluded from Papić’s claim, the Yugoslav feminists didn’t
“speak of overthrowing socialism” but about “the need to overthrow patriarchy and of the
failure of socialism to do so” (Ramet, 1991: 204). The young feminists acknowledged the
progressiveness of the Yugoslav legislation on equality, but they criticized the bad
implementation of the laws, the strong influence of patriarchy in private and public life, as
well as the “condemnation of feminism” by the state but also by women’s organizations and
the older, anti-fascist generation of women activists (Bonfiglioli, 2014: 3-4). One of the
feminists whom historian Sabrina P. Ramet interviewed in Belgrade said that the “official
women’s organization is really a joke. They are doing nothing useful but they are very, very
afraid of the feminist organizations because we are doing their job for nothing, and they are
afraid that soon people will see that their organization is unnecessary” (quoted in Ramet,
1991: 204). Lydia Sklevicky, who started to research women’s history, was an active
participant of this second-wave feminist movement in Yugoslavia.
How to apply this to Yugoslavia?
This thesis, which deals with the specific case of Yugoslavia, could be seen as part of
the emerging scholarship on rethinking the relations of socialism and feminism. Both the
history and historiography of the women’s movement in Yugoslavia are extremely interesting
research fields. First, in Yugoslavia was a strong presence of women’s organizing, as I will
demonstrate further in my thesis. Second, because of the different kind of socialism,
Yugoslavia was an exception among state socialist countries in Europe for having a developed
second-wave feminist movement, as I demonstrated above and will elaborate more in the
16
�chapter about the AFŽ. Actually, in this thesis I try to question the main historiographical
narrative about the AFŽ and its dissolution in 1953. The hegemonic narrative, which was
formed in the 1980s under the influence of second-wave feminism, presents the AFŽ’s
dissolution as a turning point in organized women’s movement in Yugoslavia. According to
this narrative, the dissolution of the AFŽ, a unique, autonomous and uniform women’s
organization, meant the end for meaningful work on women’s issues in Yugoslavia.
I’m questioning the hegemonic narrative on the AFŽ narrative, not in order to
completely reject it, but in order to understand where it comes from and how it works. In
other words, I discuss the influence of second-wave feminism on writing women’s history and
ask questions about the AFŽ’s successor organization without applying the second-wave
feminist lenses that lead to denying women’s agency. I approach the SŽDH from the bottomup perspective, trying to figure out how the SŽDH women saw themselves, how they
negotiated their position within the Yugoslav socialist system, and in which ways they
struggled with the patriarchal society they were living in. I try to demonstrate that the SŽDH
women weren’t simply docile Party followers and that they had their own ideas about how to
organize women within the new system they found themselves in. I locate the changes within
the official women’s organization in the context of self-management and decentralization of
Yugoslavia and strive to demonstrate the complexity of the issue of women’s organizing in
state socialist countries on the specific SŽDH case. I situate the discussions within the SŽDH
within the broader question whether to have separate women’s organizations (that would
separate women from the joint struggle for socialism) or not. I already showed that this was
and still is a huge debate within the socialist movement and I put the Yugoslav case and
discussions that were going on forming the SŽDH in this perspective.
In the first chapter of this thesis I will provide basic facts about Yugoslavia in order to
situate the women’s organization which I research. I will explain the role of Yugoslavia,
17
�particularly, role of communists and their leader Josip Broz Tito, in the Second World War.
Then I will explain the specific form of socialism in Yugoslavia, so called self-management
socialism, and finally, I will provide some statistics and facts about women’s position in
Yugoslavia until the 1960s. In the second chapter I will focus on the history and
historiography of the AFŽ. Firstly, I will briefly introduce the women’s movement in
Yugoslavia before WW2; secondly I will present the goals, activities and the organizational
structure of the AFŽ (1942-1953); thirdly, I will discuss historians’ evaluation of the AFŽ’s
activities and the changes that happened within the organization. Finally, I will discuss
historians’ interpretation of the dissolution of the AFŽ.
In the third chapter I will present my analysis of the archival documents of the SŽDH,
through which I discuss its goals and activities and the debates that were going on within the
organization. I will first provide basic information on the SŽDH’s structure and activities, and
then will analyze the discussions that were going on within the SŽDH around the complex
issue of women’s organizing in Yugoslavia. Thirdly, I will explore the SŽDH women’s
debates about the main goals of their organization. Finally, I will look at the problems the
SŽDH women were facing on the ground and explain how they were trying to solve those
issues.
18
�1. A short history of Yugoslavia
In this chapter I will provide a short history of Yugoslavia until 1961 in order to be
able to explain better and position properly the women’s organization SŽD that I research,
which existed from 1953 to 1961. First, I will present the most important facts about the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), the role of the communist leader Josip Broz Tito in
the Liberation War as well as his relationship with the Soviet Union and the international
communist movement. Then I will explain the specific form of socialism, so called selfmanagement socialism, that was introduced in 1950 in Yugoslavia to some extent as a
consequence of Tito’s relations with Stalin and the Soviet Union. This was followed by a
structural reorganization of Yugoslavia and Tito’s new position in international relations as
one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. Finally, I will briefly elaborate on
women’s position in early Yugoslavia in terms of the law, labour and women’s literacy rate.
1.1. The KPJ, Tito and Yugoslavia in WW2
After the First World War, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed in
1918 and this is where I start to describe the history of Yugoslavia. In April 1941, the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia (the name was changed in 1929) was attacked by Axis powers and
collapsed very quickly, with its territory being divided into several occupied areas (Prout,
1985: 1). One of the most powerful groups in resisting the occupiers in the National
Liberation War was the antifascist group Partisans, led by the Secretary-General of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), Josip Broz Tito (Prout, 1985: 1). The KPJ was formed
in 1919, but was banned under the 1921 Law on the Protection of the State, and it was still
banned when Yugoslavia collapsed in WW2 (Jović, 2009: 55). Tito was a communist who
was in close relationship with the Soviet Union and since the KPJ was part of the Comintern
(The Third International), Tito arranged a meeting of the Antifašističko vijeće narodnog
19
�oslobođenja Jugoslavije (Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples' Liberation of Yugoslavia,
AVNOJ) on November 26-27, 1942 in Bihać, after consultation with Moscow (Swain, 2011:
49). Earlier that year, Soviet leader Stalin already gave Tito advice about how to organize a
governmental body which would not insult the Western allies. Stalin said that Tito “should
strive to organize a national committee of support for the Yugoslav people’s struggle for
liberation” and that “this committee should promote, in the country and abroad, the political
platform of the people’s liberation partisan army” (quoted in Swain, 2011: 49). The resolution
adopted during the meeting set up the AVNOJ as “representative body of the liberation
movement“ (Pavlowitch, 2008: 131) and a new system of committees, in which lower
committees had to follow higher committees’ decisions, was established (Swain, 2011: 50). In
December of the same year, the women’s organization AFŽ was formed.
The second meeting of the AVNOJ was held in Jajce in November 1943, where a
decision was made about the federal character of the Yugoslav state (Pavlowitch, 2008: 210).
During this session, the AVNOJ was proclaimed as the legislative body, and a new kind of
provisional government (National Committee of Liberation, with five communists out of nine
members) was formed with Tito as president of that government (Pavlowitch, 2008: 210).
This was an important moment in creating the new state, because Tito actually denied any
right to the exiled government, which could be seen as problematic for the Western allies who
supported the Yugoslav King Petar II and his exiled government. Stalin was afraid that the
AVNOJ’s decision would cause problems with his allies, but in the end that did not happen:
the Western Allies accepted Tito’s movement as the only resistance movement in Yugoslavia
(Pavlowitch, 2008: 211-212).
In October 1944, the Red Army entered Yugoslavia, after Tito signed an agreement
with the Soviet Union about temporary help in some parts of the country. On March 7, 1945,
in Belgrade, Tito set up the new government of Demokratska federativna Jugoslavija
20
�(Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, DFJ) and the AVNOJ turn itself into a provisional
parliament during its last session in August 1945 in Belgrade (Pavlowitch, 2008: 297-298).
The provisional Assembly called for elections, while giving the right to vote to every man and
woman older than eighteen. Just before these elections the Narodni front (People’s Front, NF)
was formed. The People’s Front was the successor of the Narodnooslobodilački front
(People’s Liberation Front, NOF) and consisted of several partisan groups, as well as of some
non-communist groups, but with the KPJ leading the Front. The People’s Front won 90% of
the votes in the November 11 elections, and several days later, the Constituent Assembly
abolished the monarchy and declared the Federativna Narodna Republika Jugoslavija
(People’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FNRJ). Soon after, in January 1946, a new
Constitution, based on the 1936 Soviet Union Constitution, was adopted (Pavlowitch, 2008:
268-269).
The People’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro - and two
autonomous provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo. In the period between 1948 and 1950, the
Yugoslav government was organized as a hierarchical chain of “state-Party joint” committees
on the federal, republic and local level, and on each level it was difficult to distinguish the
state from the Party (McFarlane, 1988: 45). At the same time, power was concentrated mostly
at the federal level (Prout, 1985: 1). Apart from committees, mass organizations such as the
youth organization, unions and the women’s organization (the AFŽ) were the main forces
within the People’s Front (Sklevicky, 1996: 109). Pre-war Yugoslavia was a “class society
based on agrarian relations” and economically dependent on Europe and this is what
communists wanted to change when they came to power (McFarlane, 1988: 11). In order to
transform the social structure, the KPJ decided to transform the economic system from
21
�agrarian to industrial, with a rapid industrialization based on the Soviet model from the 1930s
(McFarlane, 1988: 12).
1.2. The Yugoslav specific form of socialism
Yugoslavia’s specific form of socialism (self-management socialism) was introduced
in the 1950s, a decision highly influenced by Tito’s international relations. Historian Stevan
Pavlowitch argues that Tito “was a political leader and organizer” who “tied a popular
resistance movement to the cause of world communism led by the Soviet Union under Stalin”
(2008: 280). Yugoslavia, as I said above, used the Soviet model for its organizational
structure and it also introduced the Soviet model of socialism. But in 1948 the Tito-Stalin
break up happened, which was a turning point in the Yugoslav political and economic system.
There were several economic and political reasons for this split: Stalin wanted a greater
control over Yugoslavia and he opposed the idea of a Balkan Federation (a federation of
Balkan communist countries, which would make Yugoslavia and her allies much more
powerful). On the other hand, Tito was not satisfied with the introduction of joint-stock
companies that would favor the Soviet economy, not the Yugoslav, because he saw this as a
part of unfair economic relations between two countries (McFarlane, 1988: 13-14). The final
split happened when Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform (the international alliance
of the Communist parties formed in 1947) in June 1948, followed by a complete economic
blockade imposed on Yugoslavia at the end of year (McFarlane, 1988: 15). Tito was in a very
difficult situation in which he and the Party had to come up with a new approach in
organizing the country in order to adjust to the new circumstances: having lost their great ally
and the economic support it provided, and being isolated in the international community. This
was when the idea of a new reading of Marx and the introduction of new form of socialism
was adopted (Jović, 2009: 60), as well as the necessity for decentralization of the highly
centralized country.
22
�Self-management was a system in which “the economy, local communities and public
administration” were organized in such a way as to prevent high bureaucratization and to
restrict state control and influence (Šmidovnik, 1991: 31). In this economic system, the state
was not the owner of the enterprises anymore and self-management of working councils was
introduced, or, in other words, in this system “productive property [was] managed by nonstate bodies, collectives or ‘groups of associated labour” (McFarlane, 1988: 148) in which
emphasis was put on a greater productivity of the enterprises. This change started in 1950
with the passing of the Law on Workers’ Control (McFarlane, 1988: 32), and despite
difficulties in implementing these changes, Yugoslavia experienced economic growth during
the 1950s.
As political scientist Bruce McFarlane writes, “forms of economic organization
conditioned forms of social organization and political institution” (1988: 45), which is why
administrative decentralization followed. Re-reading Marxist theory, the Yugoslav
communists decided to give greater autonomy to the republics of Yugoslavia (McFarlane
1988: 17) and also decided that each republic could decide on its own governmental structure,
according to its context and needs (McFarlane 1988: 45). The role of the central state was
weakened by the Law of Constitution from 1953, since only five state ministries continued to
exist on the federal level, while the ministries for Economy, Budget, Home Affairs and
Administration were put on the republic level (McFarlane 1988: 33). Several other steps were
taken in order to show the KPJ’s commitment to decentralization: in 1952 the Party changed
its name to the Savez komunista Jugoslavije (League of Communists of Yugoslavia, SKJ), and
in 1953 the People’s Front was reorganized into the Socijalistički savez radnog naroda
(Socialist Alliance of Working People, SSRN) (McFarlane 1988: 17). These changes
influenced all levels of the Yugoslav political, social and economic structure and it was during
23
�this process of change that the AFŽ was abolished (in 1953) and the SŽD, as a new,
decentralized women’s organization, was formed.
In addition to the republics being more politically and economically free, a system of
communes was introduced by law in 1955 (Šmidovnik, 1991: 25). Edvard Kardelj, the most
important communist ideologist in Yugoslavia, defined the commune as “an integrated social
and economic community of all the inhabitants and organizations (including enterprises) in its
territory” (quoted in Šmidovnik, 1991: 25), according to the example of the Paris commune of
1871 (Šmidovnik, 1991: 26). Actually, the commune was meant to be the basic unit of
society, with all other “forms of state” (federation, republics and regions) being grounded on
it (Šmidovnik, 1991: 25). The commune was supposed to work on the principle of selfmanagement, and communes on the local level, also called Narodni odbori (People’s
Committees, NO), were supposed to take over the role of local governments (McFarlane
1988: 49).
Even though Yugoslavia experienced huge economic growth during the first phase of
decentralization in the 1950s and the second Five Year Plan (1957-1961) was implemented
successfully, a second phase of decentralization and de-bureaucratization started in 1961
(Prout, 1985: 23-24). With the new 1963 Constitution (which had been debated since the end
of 1960), the republics gained more political and economic autonomy (McFarlane, 1988: 3435) and all of this, of course, influenced the Yugoslav mass organizations. The SŽD was
reconstructed in order to achieve greater decentralization and in 1961 changed its name to
Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena (Conference for the Social Activity of Women,
KDAŽ). It was during this period that Tito’s new foreign policy was introduced. Already in
1960 he established that the Yugoslav foreign policy would be focused on demilitarization,
world peace and anti-colonialism and in 1961, at the meeting in Belgrade, he became one of
the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement – a group of countries which were not in alliance
24
�or contra the two major blocs (the Eastern and the Western block) in the Cold War
(McFarlane, 1988: 180-181).
Finally, I would like to briefly explain the abbreviations I use. The Socialist Alliance
of Working People (SSRN), as every other organization in Yugoslavia, had its federal,
republic and local (district, county) level. I use SSRN when I refer in general to the Socialist
Alliance of Working people; SSRNJ, when I’m referring to the federal (Yugoslav) level and
SSRNH when I’m talking about the republic level of Croatia (Hrvatska). The same applies to
the organizations that I will be discussing: the Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s
Front, AFŽ) and the Savez ženskih društava (Union of Women’s Societies, SŽD).
1.3. Women's position in Yugoslavia
Historians agree that the Yugoslav authorities accepted the Soviet model of women’s
equality in the first three years after the Second World War (Jancar-Webster, 1990;
Bonfiglioli 2014). The Soviet model included “women’s equality in the public sphere” and
“‘social motherhood’ in the private sphere” (Bonfiglioli, 2014: 8). Summarizing Vida
Tomšič’s (later one of the AFŽ’s leaders) essay from 1940, historian Lydia Sklevicky says
that in the newly formed Yugoslavia, the women’s question was supposed to be solved similar
to the Soviet Union model: “political equality – protection of a woman’s reproductive
function – socialization of child rearing – education – labour” (1996: 51).
Following the Soviet model of women’s equality and the Soviet Constitution from
1936, the Yugoslav authorities included articles on gender equality in the Yugoslav 1946
Constitution. Many changes happened in women’s lives in Yugoslavia after the Second World
War in many fields, including the law, education and paid labour. Before the Second World
War, women didn’t have the active or passive right to vote. They obtained the right to vote in
Yugoslavia in 1945, while the war was still going on, with later confirmation of the right to
25
�vote in the 1946 Yugoslav Constitution (Jancar-Webster, 1990: 163). The 1946 Constitution
guaranteed equality in Article 24, with the statement that “women have equal rights with men
in all fields of state, economic and social-political life. Women have the right to the same pay
as that received by men for the same work, and as workers or employees they enjoy special
protection. The state especially protects the interests of mothers and children by the
establishment of maternity hospitals, children’s homes and day nurseries, and by the right of
mothers to a leave with pay before and after childbirth” (quoted in Bonfiglioli, 2014: 8).
Additionally, the 1946 Constitution guaranteed universal access to education, health
and child care (Jancar-Webster, 1990: 163). In 1931, the illiteracy rate for women in
Yugoslavia was huge: 54,4% of women was illiterate (Tomšič, 1980: 18, quoted in Ramet,
1999: 95-96); in 1961 this percentage had been decreased to 28,8% (Đurić and Dragičević,
1975: 10, quoted in Ramet, 1999: 96).
In general, there were two reasons for the inclusion of women into the paid labour
force in all state-socialist countries: gender equality was a part of socialism as an ideology but
also the systems needed women for the huge projects of industrialization (de Haan, 2012: 89).
According to Vida Tomšič, who was a war heroine, partisan and one of the leaders of the
AFŽ, about 27% of the industrial labour force in 1939 in Yugoslavia were women, and
between 1945 and 1948 this percentage increased to 47% (quoted in Jancar-Webster, 1990:
164). In 1950 the percentage of women workers in the overall Yugoslav labour force was
23.2%, and in 1960 the percentage increased to 27% (de Haan, 2012: 89). Just to briefly
compare with Western countries, de Haan explains how the level of participation reached in
East Europe in 1960s and 1970s was reached in the West only twenty to thirty years later
(2012: 95)
26
�Even though abortion was prohibited in 1951, very soon, in 1952, a new law legalized
abortion if it was carried out for medical reasons (Božinović, 1996: 158). But the practice was
different and there were many obstacles in implementing the 1952 law in some parts of the
country. In 1963, this was changed, when the practice was standardized and the abortion
procedure was liberalized, and in 1977 abortion was permitted without any restriction until
the tenth week of pregnancy (Božinović, 1996: 158).
Conclusion
In this chapter I strived to contextualize the organization that I research and to provide
a short historical background for it. This is important for a better understanding of the changes
within the women’s organizations in Yugoslavia in the 1940s and 1950s, since both the AFŽ
and later the SŽD and the KDAŽ experienced changes in their organizational structure,
activities and goals, according to changes that were happening in the overall Yugoslav
economic, political and social structure. I found it relevant to mention the role of communists
in the National Liberation War and Tito’s foreign policies and contacts with the Soviet Union,
because both influenced the Yugoslav state, and accordingly the women’s organization. I
explained the meaning of self-management and decentralization for the Yugoslav system,
because this is where and when the abolition of the AFŽ and the formation of the SŽD,
organization whose documents I analyze, were situated. In the end I briefly explained
women’s position in the Yugoslav society and changes in women’s lives after the Second
World War; changes to which women themselves and women’s organization contributed to a
great extent, which will be elaborated in the next chapter on the AFŽ, as well as in the
analytical chapter on the meaning of the SŽDH, its activities, goals and discussions that were
going on within the organization.
27
�2. History and historiography of the AFŽ
In this chapter I will explore and discuss how historians have written about the
women’s organization Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ) that existed
in Yugoslavia from 1942 to 1953. Namely, I will be focused on books and articles about the
AFŽ and will present historians’ evaluations of the AFŽ’s activities and their ideas about the
meaning of the dissolution of the AFŽ for women’s activism in Yugoslavia. The main
historiographical question of this chapter, discussed through the most relevant literature about
the AFŽ is: How have historians written about the AFŽ and how have they explained the role
of the AFŽ and the meaning of its dissolution in 1953 for women’s organization in
Yugoslavia?
Trying to answer this question, I will first provide basic historical facts about the
women’s movement in Yugoslavia before the establishment of the AFŽ. Secondly, I will
explain how, when and in which circumstances the AFŽ was founded, what kind of activities
it carried out, what changes in organizational structure and regarding its position within the
People’s Liberation Front the organization was going through, and how and in which specific
context it was dissolved. Thirdly, I will demonstrate historians’ evaluation of the AFŽ’s
activities and the changes in its organizational structure. Finally, I will discuss key arguments
and claims about the meaning of the AFŽ and its dissolution in 1953 for meaningful work on
women’s problems in Yugoslavia given by several historians who have written about the
AFŽ. Following historian Chiara Bonfiglioli, I will locate these historiographical
interpretations of the AFŽ in the time in which they emerged and discuss how these narratives
were part of the contemporary scholarly and political (feminist or otherwise) framework.
28
�2.1. The women’s movement in Yugoslavia before the AFŽ
According to feminist historian Lydia Sklevicky (1952-1990), the Antifašistički front
žena was a successor of two different, often competing, traditions in the women’s movement
in Yugoslavia between the First and Second World War: the bourgeois women’s movement
and the socialist women’s movement (1996: 79-107). The women’s movement in Southern
Slavic countries emerged at the end of the 19th century, when women’s autonomous
organizations carried out activities related to traditional women’s role (such as care work), but
in the beginning of the 20th century these bourgeois organizations redirected their activities
towards the political sphere, demanding women’s right to vote and equality before the law
(Sklevicky, 1996: 79). These women were active participants in the First World War (mostly
as nurses on battlefields), and after WW1 continued with their activities within bourgeois
women’s organizations. Even though these bourgeois women’s organizations’ activities were
separated from the activities of women in the labour movement in the interwar period,
Sklevicky emphasizes that the shared fear of fascism provided common ground for the two
movements and that in the 1930s they were cooperating to some extent (1996: 80).
In 1919, the women’s section within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) was
established; i.e. the same year when the KPJ was established (Ramet, 1999: 93). At their first
conference, the socialist women accepted the KPJ’s program, which stated that the KPJ
“demands full and unrestricted equality for all men and all women, regardless of religion,
nationality or occupation, as well as the universal, equal and secret right to vote for all
citizens of eighteen years and above” (Božinović, 1996: 102). But Sklevicky claims that only
during the 1930s women in the KPJ started to be more organized and that the above
mentioned cooperation with the bourgeois movement was useful for the “creation of a new
self-consciousness of the female Party members about women’s ‘double oppression’ – being
29
�subordinated to capital, but also being in a subordinated position [to men] within the labour
movement” (1996: 86).
The bourgeois feminist movement dissolved itself at the end of 1940 because of the
war, but Sklevicky argues that the AFŽ, which appeared two years later, was a successor of
this tradition, as well as a successor of the women’s movement within the labour movement
(1996: 81), which continued to exist and work on mobilizing women for the revolutionary
movement (Božinović, 1996: 127).
2.2. The AFŽ (1942-1953) – organizational structure, goals and activities
The Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ) was created in
December 1942 and dissolved in 1953, with several organizational and program changes
during its existence. Women were active participants in the anti-fascist People’s Liberation
Front during the Second World War in Yugoslavia, and historian Neda Božinović claims that
from the very beginning they were supposed to help the army but also to work on women’s
political and cultural education (1996: 135). The KPJ issued a directive in November 1942 to
create AFŽ groups in every city or village, with explicit emphasis on the idea that the AFŽ
was to be part of the People’s Liberation Front (Bonfiglioli, 2014: 5). The delegates from
already formed women’s groups met at the conference in Bosanski Petrovac on December 7,
1942 to decide on the program and the structure of the women’s organization - and that is
where and how the AFŽ was formed (Božinović, 1996: 142-143).
In this short overview of the AFŽ’s history, I will mostly dwell on Sklevicky’s work
on the AFŽ, which was supposed to be part of her doctoral dissertation and was published
posthumously in 1996, because hers is still the most thorough analysis of the AFŽ. Sklevicky
distinguishes four phases in the organization’s life in terms of organizational structure, main
goals and the activities that were carried out by the organization: (1) The AFŽ in the war
30
�period
(1942-1945);
(2)
Educational
model
of
the
AFŽ
(1945-1947);
(3)
Commanding/Directive model (1948-1949) and (4) Dualistic model of the transitional phase
(1950-1953). Sklevicky describes and discusses these phases in detail (1996: 63-138).
During the war, the AFŽ had two main tasks: to help the army by performing
voluntary labour (help in food supplies, gathering clothes, etc.) and generally to organize life
in the liberated areas, and secondly to work on women’s political and cultural emancipation
(Sklevicky, 1996: 25). Sklevicky claims that during the Educational phase (1945-1947), right
after the war, the AFŽ was supposed to perform reconstruction work and to organize
functional everyday life, which included providing assistance to working mothers, taking care
of the wounded and the orphans, etc. (1996: 117). At the same time, the AFŽ had the most
important role in raising the consciousness and social status of women (through improving
their literacy rate and organizing different educational courses), as well as in the political
socialist education and efforts to gain women’s support (women in Yugoslavia obtained the
right to vote in 1945) for the new Communist authorities (Sklevicky, 1996: 118). Sklevicky
argues that in this period, the AFŽ was an organization with a pyramidal structure (with a
wide rank-and-file membership, county, district and regional committees, and at the top the
main committee and the central committee) and a certain level of organizational autonomy
(1996: 119). Sklevicky further states that in this period the KPJ’s aim was not to subordinate
the AFŽ to the People’s Front, but to demand help from the AFŽ for the Front (1996: 117).
She also emphasizes that this model of the AFŽ was the most efficient for mobilizing women
through an “instrumentalization of traditional women’s roles” (1996: 122). In other words,
women in the AFŽ were participating mostly in social and care work.
The next AFŽ’s phase was that of the Commanding/Directive model (1948-1949),
during which the KPJ had positioned itself as a leader of all mass organizations that
participated in the People’s Front. Thus, the KPJ was giving commands and directions,
31
�according to which the mass organizations were shaping their activities (Sklevicky, 1996:
131-132). Accordingly, there were changes in the AFŽ’s relation with the KPJ and the
People’s Front. Sklevicky claims that the AFŽ leaders changed the definition of the
organization. The AFŽ accepted the program of the KPJ and defined itself as the one KPJ’s
organizational form for work among women (1996: 132). The AFŽ created its goals in
accordance with the demands of the first Five-Year Plan and redirected its activities. The
main AFŽ’s task in this period was to bring women into the labour force and, in order to do
that, to take care of working mothers and their children (Sklevicky, 1996: 125-127). This
corresponds to what happened in the Soviet Union after the introduction of the First Five Year
Plan (1928-1932), according to Mary Buckley. She claims that women’s liberation, until then
understood to be achieved through education, joining the labour force etc., at this point started
to be seen through “participation in plan fulfilment” (1989: 77).
The final, Dualistic model of the transitional phase (1950-1953), Sklevicky explains as
a phase during which the AFŽ went through a lot of (self) criticism for being too formal,
bureaucratized and professionalized. This criticism, according to Sklevicky, was a
consequence of the ideas of “democratization, decentralization and debureaucratization”,
incorporated in the political discourse after the introduction of self-management socialism in
1950 in Yugoslavia (1996: 135). Sklevicky says that the AFŽ had a specific role in this period
to organize its work according to the KPJ’s priorities, for example, to put special emphasis on
the work among peasant women and on socializing and rearing pre-school children (1996:
137). According to Božinović, however, after the Third Congress of the AFŽ in 1950, the
organization especially focused on the problems of illiteracy and educating peasant women
about household and child rearing (hygiene, healthy nutrition, etc.) (1996: 154). According to
Sklevicky’s analysis of the AFŽ, there were changes in the organizational structure in this
period, which became more complex. Namely, after the Third Congress of the AFŽ in 1950
32
�two new assistive organizational forms were introduced within the AFŽ: sekretarijati
(secretariats) and aktivi (‘actives’). Secretariats were special bodies that managed and
coordinated the work of the AFŽ, while ‘actives’ were basic units that “intended to be forms
of direct democracy from the ground” in order to “trigger the ‘self-initiative’ of the masses”
(1996: 128).
Sklevicky didn’t finish her work on this phase of the AFŽ’s structure and activities,
but Božinović explains how during the Fourth Congress of the People’s Front in January
1953, a decision was made about forming special commissions for work among women
within the Socijalistički savez radnog naroda (the People’s Front changed its name into
Socijalistički savez radnog naroda or Socialist Alliance of the Working People, SSRN, during
that congress) (1996: 165-167). The organizational structure of the AFŽ was also discussed at
the People’s Front’s Fourth Congress and the conclusion was that the AFŽ could continue to
exist simultaneously with the planned women’s commissions, but had to go through changes
that would result in the AFŽ becoming “not a uniform and single organization, but more an
alliance of several autonomous women’s organizations” (Božinović, 1996: 167).
Nevertheless, at the Fourth Congress of the AFŽ later that year, the organization was
dissolved and a new organization, the Savez ženskih društava (Union of Women’s Societies,
SŽD) was formed. The Resolution on forming the SŽD emphasized that the existence of a
single and uniform organization would “separate women from joint efforts in solving social
problems, support the wrong idea about women’s position in the society being some kind of
separate women’s issue and not an issue of the entire society, an issue of all socialist fighters”
(quoted in Božinović, 1996: 169). It is still unknown why the AFŽ women decided to dissolve
the organization, despite the January 1953 decision to keep the AFŽ.
33
�2.3. Historians' evaluation of the AFŽ's activities and the changes in its
organizational structure
Lydia Sklevicky, whose work on the AFŽ is the most detailed (1996), Neda
Božinović, who explains thoroughly the AFŽ’s work (1996), and other historians who have
written about the meaning of the AFŽ for women’s emancipation and have provided their
evaluation of its activities, all give a general positive evaluation of the AFŽ’s early years.
Neda Božinović (1917-2001), who was an active member of the AFŽ and a feminist activist
in Serbia, claims that Yugoslav women were actively fighting for all rights that they received
in the socialist Yugoslav state and that the AFŽ was the organization through which they
articulated their needs and demands (1994: 15). Božinović further writes that the AFŽ,
besides its role in helping the army during the Second World War, since it was created was
fighting against women’s oppression, and after the war started to fight against patriarchal
customs in Yugoslavia (1994: 15). American political scientist Barbara Jancar-Webster, who
has written about women and revolution in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, argues
that even though the AFŽ “was not a spontaneous organization of women” (1990: 157), it was
an excellent example of what could happen when women who were organized under the
Communist Party’s sponsorship “inject their own needs and goals into operation” (1999: 78).
Even though Jancar-Webster (without substantive evidence) claims that the AFŽ was
never meant to be an organization in which women would represent women, but an
organization with an hierarchical top-down structure and the KPJ’s “tool to educate and
mobilize women for its side of the conflict” (1999: 82), historians argue that the organization
made a difference in women’s lives. Sklevicky, Božinović, Ramet, and Stojaković agree on
the positive influence of the AFŽ on women’s position in the political and social spheres. For
example, Sklevicky, who raised questions about the reasons for the invisibility and lack of
34
�historians’ research on the AFŽ, and while herself providing the first serious historical work
on the AFŽ, claims that the AFŽ was the only organization in the post-war period that was a
successor of women’s hundred years long efforts to become part of the public sphere and to
achieve equality in all aspects of social life (1996: 62). Similarly, in her evaluation of the
AFŽ’s impact on women’s everyday life, Božinović writes that the AFŽ gave women
opportunities to be active on the local level and to change their communities (1994: 15). She
also emphasizes that AFŽ’s activists were in direct contact with many women and that
because of this “they uncovered the specific problems that the women from various social
backgrounds were facing, brought them to public attention, and sought for ways to solve
them” (1996: 262).
While analyzing the meaning of the changes in the AFŽ’s organizational structure and
while criticizing the gradual loss of the AFŽ’s autonomy, Sklevicky acknowledges that the
AFŽ (and through the AFŽ - women themselves) played a role in achieving positive changes
in women’s lives until 1949, such as increased literacy rate, entrance in the labour force,
better health care, and socialized childrearing through the opening of kindergartens and
crèches (1996: 134). Along similar lines, Sabrina Ramet, a US scholar who has focused on
East and South-East European affairs, emphasizes that the AFŽ played a very important role
for women in many spheres, such as health care and in opening facilities such as restaurants,
collective laundries and many others (1999: 93).
Gordana Stojaković, a feminist historian who has been doing research about the AFŽ
in Vojvodina for many years, argues that the AFŽ women were working on the reconstruction
of the country in the key years after the Second World War and that the AFŽ was the
organization through which the idea of a new life for women in socialist society was
introduced (quoted in Marčetić, 2013). In her work on the journals of the AFŽ, Stojaković
analyses what kind of messages were sent through the journals Glas žena (The voice of
35
�women) and Zora (The Dawn), how these messages were received and how much influence
they had on women’s everyday life (2012: 14). She claims that through the AFŽ, women had
an opportunity to express themselves and to discuss different issues, and that through the
AFŽ’s journals opinions about and ideas for solutions to women’s problems were available to
a large number of women in Yugoslavia (2012: 38).
However, historians have evaluated negatively the changes in the AFŽ’s
organizational structure after 1948. Sklevicky interprets negatively the changes that happened
during the Directive model (1948/1949), specifically, the KPJ positioning itself as a leader of
all mass organizations and issuing directives towards them, according to which the AFŽ
defined itself as the organizational form of the KPJ's work among women and fulfilled its
directives (1996: 132). Sklevicky evaluates these changes as loosening the vertical
hierarchical structure of the AFŽ and lowering the level of the organizational autonomy
(1989a: 101). She also criticizes the changes that happened in 1950, when the AFŽ introduced
a new organizational form, called ‘actives’. Sklevicky explains this change as detrimental for
the AFŽ, because the organization lost its own vertical lines, ‘actives’ were “mutually
unrelated” and “integrated into the PF [People’s Front] on respective hierarchical level”
(1989a: 103).
2.4. Historians’ interpretation of the dissolution of the AFŽ
After the above mentioned changes in the AFŽ’s organizational structure, goals and
activities (Sklevicky, 1996; Božinović, 1996), the AFŽ was finally dissolved in 1953 and
replaced by the Savez ženskih društava (SŽD), which was integrated in the SSRN. Sklevicky,
who started to research the AFŽ in the context of the late 1970s, when the first feminist
groups appeared in Zagreb, presented the changes in the AFŽ’s organizational structure as
gradual loss of the organization’s autonomy, which transformed the AFŽ into an organization
36
�that “was obediently fulfilling the Party’s directives” (1996: 132). Sklevicky has a very clear
position on the changes in the AFŽ’s organizational structure and relations with the KPJ and
People’s Front. She claims that the AFŽ could have provided the institutional space for the
struggle against women’s discrimination and for the fight against patriarchal society, if only it
had insisted on being an “independent mass political organization” (1996: 36).
Other historians have followed Sklevicky’s approach. Barbara Jancar-Webster, for
example, in her book about women and revolution in Yugoslavia (1990), relies mostly upon
Sklevicky’s earlier work on the AFŽ.3 Jancar-Webster’s narrative about the AFŽ is also a
narrative of gradual loss of autonomy until the final subjugation of the AFŽ to the KPJ (1990:
163-167). Even the name of the chapter in which she explains the end of the AFŽ (“The
Reassertion of Patriarchy and the End of the AFŽ”) suggests clearly her interpretation of the
AFŽ’s dissolution. Jancar-Webster emphasizes that the AFŽ lost its autonomy in 1950, when
the organization became just “a transmission belt” of the KPJ (1990: 166). She evaluates the
disappearance of women’s separate organizations in 1953 as detrimental, because it “deprived
women of an independent organizational base from which to develop a women’s position and
to make claims as women upon government and society” (1990: 174).
Along similar lines, Božinović argues that the final shift of women’s issues to the
SSRN and the abolishment of the AFŽ in 1953 was “the beginning of the end of organized
women’s work in which they defined their own problems and found their own solutions”
3
Lydia Sklevicky died in 1990, and her unfinished doctoral disertation on the AFŽ was published posthumuosly
in 1996. But she wrote several articles on women's movement in Yugoslavia, especially on the AFŽ, that were
published in 1980s and were avaliable for other historians.
Sklevicky, Lydia. 1989a. “Emancipated Integration or Integrated Emancipation: The Case of Post-revolutionary
Yugoslavia” in Arina Angerman et al., ed. Current Issues in Women’s History. pp. 93-108. London and New York:
Routledge.
Sklevicky, Lydia. 1989b. “More Horses than Women: On the Difficulties of Founding Women’s History in
Yugoslavia”, Gender & History 1(1): 68–73.
37
�(1994: 16). While framing the dissolution of the AFŽ as a result of patriarchal backlash and
claiming that patriarchal society welcomed the abolishment of the AFŽ (1996: 170),
Božinović emphasizes that the main problem with this dissolution and the redistribution of
responsibilities was that the SSRN was now responsible for conducting activities for women’s
conscience raising. She argues that the Socialist Alliance didn’t pay much attention to these
duties “since the most rigid, patriarchal concepts regarding the woman held on obstinately
among the members and leadership, and they had no motive whatsoever to renounce their
privileged position in the family and in the society” (1996: 263).
Gordana Stojaković explains how women’s political engagement and the importance
of the AFŽ started to decrease after the introduction of self-management and decentralization
in 1950 in Yugoslavia, when the previously established social standards (kindergartens,
crèches) became an expensive project for the state (Stojaković, 2012: 18). Stojaković also
claims that the idea of a strong fight against patriarchy, which was very present during the war
and during the post-war reconstruction of the country, started to disappear in the 1950s
Yugoslav state (2012: 18). Very similar to Sklevicky, she concludes that with the dissolution
of the AFŽ, women “lost the space for collecting experiences and discussing problems and
successes on their way towards women’s emancipation” (2012: 38).
What I found equally interesting in Božinović’s work on the AFŽ, however, is her
remark about contradictions in one essay that was read during the Fourth (last) Congress of
the AFŽ in 1953. Božinović points out that the decision was made that work among peasant
women would be focused on enlightenment, without any political characteristics, but Bosa
Cvetić’s essay (who was one of the AFŽ leaders and later one of the SŽD leaders) concluded
that “women have to be educated to be fighters for achieving full equality for themselves, the
equality that is already recognized by our revolutionary laws” (quoted in Božinović, 1996:
169). Unfortunately, Božinović only briefly mentions this point and doesn’t develop it clearly,
38
�but what I found extremely important here - in order to evaluate the dissolution of the AFŽ, as
well as the work of its successor organizations - is to ask questions about the boundaries
between and meanings of “enlightenment” and “political work” in this context. In other
words, we could ask what the idea (and the decision) that the women’s organizations should
cease with political work among women actually meant, when we can read in the same essay
about the necessity for women to be educated enough to be able to fight for their rights. I
think that finding this kind of contradictions could complicate the narrative about the AFŽ’s
dissolution as the end of successful work on women’s position in Yugoslavia, because it
raises the question about the extent to which the AFŽ’s successors continued and followed the
AFŽ’s work and can offer directions for understanding this history in possibly more nuanced
ways.
Indeed, recently there is a new approach in historicizing women’s activism in the Cold
War era. Young historian Chiara Bonfiglioli, born in 1983, in her doctoral dissertation
explores women’s activism in Yugoslavia and Italy during the Cold War and challenges the
idea that during this period women’s activism didn’t exist (2012: 22). As I explained in the
Introduction of this thesis, Bonfiglioli criticizes second-wave feminist historians for applying
the “autonomy principle” while evaluating activities of women’s organizations during the
Cold War (2014: 4).
Through this lens, Bonfiglioli is criticizing second-wave feminist historians in
Yugoslavia and strives to contextualize their work into the political situation of the time in
which they emerged. Particularly, she explains Lydia Sklevicky’s work on the AFŽ and says
that Sklevicky started to write about the AFŽ in the context of late 1970s, when the first
feminist groups appeared in Yugoslavia (2014: 3). As I mentioned in Introduction, Sklevicky
was researching women’s history that was erased from the Yugoslav schoolbooks. She
claimed that this erasure of women from the official history corresponded to the general
39
�opinion on women’s position in Yugoslavia, which stated that women’s liberation came as a
consequence of the revolution, not as a consequence of women’s struggle for their
emancipation (Bonfiglioli, 2014: 3). Bonfiglioli argues that Sklevicky wanted to confront this
version of history, but, in the end, by insisting on explaining the dissolution of the AFŽ as a
sign of patriarchal backlash, fell in the trap of a new tradition - one that claims the nonexistence of women’s activism during the Cold War (2014: 4).
Bonfiglioli’s approach demands a questioning of the main narrative about the AFŽ and
the idea that its dissolution meant the end of meaningful activities of women’s organization in
Yugoslavia. Instead of being focused on the “autonomy principle”, as I already pointed out in
the Introduction of this thesis, she suggests to search for different forms of women’s agency
that existed within the political, economic and social context of the time (2014: 4). Bonfiglioli
criticizes the narrative in which the AFŽ was dissolved as a result of patriarchal backlash, the
AFŽ leaders’ loyalty to the KPJ and fear of feminism, and advocates for a better
understanding of the social and political circumstances that led to the dissolution of the
organization (2012: 210-211).
Based on her analysis of documents from the Fourth Congress of the AFŽ, Bonfiglioli
claims that its leaders dismissed the organization in order to adjust work on women’s issues to
the new self-management model of socialism (2012: 216). Bonfiglioli emphasizes that the
AFŽ’s leaders were aware of the difference between the official KPJ’s discourse on women’s
equality and the real conditions on the ground, where local Party leaders didn’t support
women’s liberation, and that exactly because of this the AFŽ’s leaders considered the AFŽ’s
dissolution as the best option in that moment (2012: 213). They explained that a separate
women’s organization was not useful anymore and that work on women’s issues should be
done by political authorities in a more systematic way (Bonfiglioli, 2012: 214). In short,
Bonfiglioli claims that “the fear of being labeled feminist and that a separate women’s
40
�organization could foster critique of the socialist authorities certainly played a role, but so did
the AFŽ leaders’ faith in the possibility to “‘mainstream’ the issue of equality within the
institutions of socialist self-management, and the fear that a separate women’s organization
would isolate female activists from universal party politics” (2012: 216).
Nevertheless, Bonfiglioli is clear in her evaluation of the meaning of the dissolution of
the AFŽ for women's everyday life, which corresponds to some extent to earlier analyses of
the AFŽ’s dissolution. Namely, Bonfiglioli argues that the dissolution of the separate
women's organization didn't mean much in the more developed parts of Yugoslavia (Slovenia,
Croatia), where women were already integrated in political life, but the separate organization
meant a lot for women in the less developed parts of the country (BiH for example) and its
dissolution left them without state support in the fight against patriarchal local structures
(2012: 217). In addition, Bonfiglioli advocates for thorough research on the AFŽ's successor
organizations (the Union of Women’s Societies and the Conference for the Social Activity of
Women), which are hardly researched (2012; 2014), and insists on her criticism of the
second-wave feminist historians for their a-historical application of the “autonomy principle”
in the evaluation of women's organizations during the Cold War.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have analyzed books and articles about the Antifašistički front žena
(Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ), published since the 1980s. I first provided basic historical
facts about the women’s movement in Yugoslavia before the AFŽ and then provided
information on the AFŽ’s goals, activities and the changes in its organizational structure.
Thirdly, I presented historians’ evaluations of the AFŽ’s activities and changes in the level of
autonomy of the organization and finally, I discussed their ideas about the meaning of the
dissolution of the AFŽ in 1953 for meaningful work on women’s problems in Yugoslavia.
41
�The AFŽ was a women’s organization formed in 1942 and dismissed and replaced in
1953 with the Savež ženskih društava (Union of Women’s Societies, SŽD), which was
integrated in the SSRN. As I presented above, most historians who have written about the
AFŽ claim that its dissolution in 1953 was the end of meaningful work among women in
Yugoslavia. Acknowledging the importance of the AFŽ for women’s emancipation, historians
generally evaluate the AFŽ’s early years positively and claim that the organization enhanced
women's position in the Yugoslav society.
But the assumption of most historians has been that the dissolution of the AFŽ and the
end of women’s autonomous organization had a detrimental effect on the work for women’s
rights and enhancing their position in the society. While researching women’s activism in the
Cold War era, historian Chiara Bonfiglioli challenges the dominant idea that during this
period women’s activism was irrelevant or didn’t exist. She claims that second-wave feminist
historians contributed to this interpretation of women’s activism during the Cold War by
applying the “autonomy principle” as a measure for meaningful work on women’s issues
(2014). Bonfiglioli discusses what the notion of autonomy means, and whether it is applicable
when we talk about women’s organizations in Yugoslavia (2014). By accepting Bonfiglioli’s
approach to historicize and contextualize women’s agency, I think that historians could open a
space for researching the activities of the AFŽ’s successor organizations - that are still hardly
researched (several pages in Božinović, 1996) - and evaluate those activities in more nuanced
and complex ways. This is why I decided to follow her approach and to research the SŽD, but
without using the term or searching for “women’s activism” as such. I will be focused on the
SŽDH women’s own perspective and I will discuss their activities in the terms which they
used themselves when explaining their work.
42
�3. The SŽDH (1953-1961): position, activities, goals and
discussions
In chapter 2, I presented the AFŽ in general and I discussed historians’ perspectives on
the AFŽ and its dissolution in the 1953. In this chapter I move towards the Savez ženskih
društava (Union of Women’s Societies, SŽD) (1953-1961), the AFŽ’s successor organization
that is hardly researched. I approach this organization on the level of the Narodna Republika
Hrvatska (People’s Republic of Croatia, NRH) so I analyze documents of the Savez ženskih
društava Hrvatske (Union of Women’s Societies of Croatia, SŽDH). My research is based on
the material from the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH’s, held on February 27-18, 1957, the
First Plenary Session held on January 27-28, 1958, and the Second Plenary Session held on
December 6-7, 1960, through which I discuss several topics.
Since there is barely any information on the SŽD in the Yugoslav historiography, I
will first provide basic facts about the SŽD in general and the SŽDH in particular: how it was
organized, which activities it carried out and when it was dissolved. Secondly, there are
different questions and approaches to women's emancipation within state socialism and
different ideas about how to achieve it, as well as how to evaluate socialist women’s
activities, discussed in the introduction of this thesis. In this chapter I will discuss the main
field of dispute in the communist thought and practice – whether separate women’s
organizations were necessary and justified or not – on the example of the discussions and
debates, that were going on within the women’s organization the SŽDH. Thirdly, I will
analyze the debates about the characteristics of the SŽDH’s activities and about the main goal
of the SŽDH’s work, from the perspective of the SŽDH’s leaders and rank-and-file members.
I’m interested in how those women evaluated themselves and their work and which terms
they used in describing their activities. Finally, I will present problems the SŽDH women
43
�were facing in their work. I will ask to what extent these problems and the SŽDH’s
approaches to them can clarify what kind of activism was possible, suitable and preferred at
the time, and how we can evaluate the engagement of the SŽDH women in dealing with the
patriarchal society. The bigger issue I aim to answer with this analysis is whether secondwave feminist historians’ perception of the AFŽ’s dissolution in 1953 as the end of
meaningful work on women’s issues is justified or not.
3.1. The SŽDH’s structure and activities
The Savez ženskih društava (Union of Women’s Societies, SŽD) was the women’s
organization that existed in Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1961. It was the successor of the
Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ). Briefly, at the Fourth Congress of
the AFŽ in 1953, the organization was dissolved and the new organization, SŽD, was formed.
As I already explained in chapter 2 of this thesis, at the Founding Congress of the SŽD (the
last Congress of the AFŽ) it was emphasized that women’s organizing should be done
differently in order to prevent an understanding of women’s issues being only women’s
concerns and in order to act upon the idea that women’s position in society was the
responsibility of the entire society.4 That is why the SŽD was supposed to exist and work
simultaneously with the newly formed Komisije za rad među ženama (Commissions for work
among women) within the Socijalistički savez radnog naroda (Socialist Alliance of the
Working People, SSRN). However, according to the decisions of the Fourth Congress of the
SSRNJ in 1953 and of the Fourth Congress of the AFŽJ later that year, the SŽD would be
responsible for women’s enlightenment and the SSRN’s women’s commissions for the
political work among women.5 Like the AFŽ, the SŽD had its federal (SŽDJ), republic, and
several local levels, but unlike the AFŽ (which was one unique organization), the SŽD was an
4
5
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-1, 1.1., GO SŽDH, February 19, 1957, p.1-7
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-1, 1.1., GO SŽDH, February 19, 1957, p.1
44
�alliance of a number of organizations, that were searching for solutions for different concrete
problems related to women’s position within the Yugoslav communist society, such as
prosvjećivanje (enlightenment), opening child rearing facilities, improving the household etc.6
In this thesis I focus on the Savez ženskih društava Hrvatske (SŽDH), the SŽD organization
on the level of the People’s Republic of Croatia.
Since there were no strict rules in terms of organization and activities of the SŽD on
the republic and lower levels, each organization could choose its own preferences in work
“according to the problems and issues of each city and village”.7 In Croatia, the Founding
Assembly of the SŽDH was held on February 27-18, 1957, more than three years after the
SŽDJ was formed at the federal level. One of the reasons for this delay was precisely this lack
of directions and rules for organizing, which I will discuss in the second part of this chapter.
The Founding Assembly was attended by delegates from the lower committees, who were
supposed to choose new members of the Glavni odbor (Main Committee, GO) of the SŽDH,
but representatives from other organizations and committees within the SSRN were also
invited to attend the meeting.8 At the Founding Assembly, the main assignment was to decide
on the role and tasks of the Main Committee of the SŽDH. The decision was made that the
main tasks of the GO SŽDH should be: to assist working families and to solve the problems
of household work in order to help women workers (Krajačić, 1957: 25-27). The GO SŽDH
was seen as the body whose role would be, first of all, to initiate and launch different kind of
social actions, according to specific contexts in which local SŽD’s committees were operating
(Berus, 1957: 63).
Even though there were discussions on how to organize work among peasant women
(Krajačić, 1957: 33; Jančić, 1957: 51-53), village and peasant women’s problems were not in
6
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-1, 1.1., GO SŽDH, February 19, 1957, p.1
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-1, 1.1., GO SŽDH, February 19, 1957, p.1
8
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 2, 1956
7
45
�the focus of the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH, which was clear from the very title of the
published book of essays that had been read during the Founding Assembly: Pomoć radnoj
porodici i radnoj ženi – naš osnovni zadatak (Assistance to the working family and to the
working woman – our main task). Soka Krajačić, a member of the Presidency of the Main
Committee of the SSRNH and also a president of the GO of the SŽDH, in her evaluation of
the SŽD’s past work, claimed that one of the major problems was that most of the women’s
societies were formed in the cities, whereas the villages were neglected (1957: 23).
The SŽDH was helping working women and working families in several ways:
through organizing crèches and kindergartens; through advocating and taking steps towards
socializing household work in order to ease the burden of working mothers, but also through
providing courses for better dealing with the household work, which was contested within the
organization, as I will discuss in the third part of this chapter (Krajačić, 1957). In her essay,
Soka Krajačić presented mostly similar tasks and achievements of the SŽD on the local
levels: taking care of nutrition, schools’ restaurants and restaurants within the commune or
enterprise and organizing household courses (1957: 21-22).
At the Plenary Session one year later, on 27-28 January, 1958, similar topics as at the
Founding Assembly in 1957, were discussed, with slightly more emphasis on the duties of the
commune (discussed in Chapter 1) in solving working women’s problems, in accordance with
the general idea of including the entire society in solving women’s problems (discussed in
Chapter 2 and further in the second section of this chapter). More attention was paid to
villages and women’s role in collective farming.9 Jela Jančić, one of the leaders of the
Women’s section within the cooperatives, in her essay “Referat o problemima žena-seljanki i
Sekciji žena-zadrugarki” (“Essay on the problems of women peasants’ and the women’s
section within cooperatives”), explained how the Women’s section within the so called
9
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958
46
�zadruge (cooperatives) was the best suitable organizational form of the SŽD for work among
and for peasant women. Jančić emphasized how the main task of the Women’s section was to
draw women into cooperatives through advocating for the opening of services that could
make it easier for them to enter the cooperatives.10 Basically, the Sections were conducting
very similar activities as the other SŽD’s organizations, but in accordance with the new rules
of adapting to the needs of women in specific contexts, they found this form being most
suitable for the work among peasant women.
Apart from the essay on peasant women, the majority of the essays were discussing
how to help working women and working families through including the entire commune in
solving a number of issues. One of the members of the GO of the SŽDH, Milka Planinc (later
the prime minister of Yugoslavia, 1982-1986), explained how this idea came from the Fifth
Plenary Session of the SSRNJ held in 1957, where it was discussed how to enhance women’s
position by including the entire society in solving a number of social and economic issues.11
Approaches and ideas given during the SŽDH’s Plenary Session in 1958 were actually similar
to those proposed at the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH a year earlier: together with other
social factors (local people’s committees of the SSRN, enterprises) to take care of children
and child rearing facilities, as well as to maintain already existing services and open new
services for socializing household work.12
What was specific for the SŽDH was its unusually good relationship with the
women’s section within the Unions. Historian Neda Božinović points out in her book on the
women’s movement in Yugoslavia that the SŽD in general didn’t pay much attention to
women workers, since this was supposed to be an Union’s duty. But, unlike the SŽD in other
Yugoslav republics, the SŽDH was giving strong support to women’s sections within the
10
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 2.day, morning, p. 17-24
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, morning, p. 1
12
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, morning, p. 14-44
11
47
�Unions, and these sections were very successful in solving women’s workers problems within
the self-management enterprises (1996: 175). As I already explained, it was clear from the
discussions and essays, both in Founding Assembly in 1957 and Plenary Session in 1958, that
easing the burden of women workers was the main activity of the SŽDH, but apart from that,
the SŽDH cooperated successfully with the women’s section within the Main Committee of
Unions. The member of that section, Ružica Turković, praised the SŽDH during the Plenary
Session in 1958 for the good cooperation and the support in advocating for more services,
better qualification courses for female workers, etc.13
As discussed in chapter 1, Yugoslavia experienced economic growth during the 1950s,
which resulted in fulfilling the Five-Year Plan (1957-1961) one year before its official end.
The next plan was supposed to start already in 1961, and that is why the next (and according
to documents last) SŽDH’s Plenary Sessions on December 6-7, 1960 was mostly focused on
it. The SŽDH women discussed how to integrate solutions for a number of problems women
were dealing into the next Five-Year Plan (1961-1965). Again, a book with essays from the
Plenary Session was published with, entitled Što petogodišnji plan donosi porodici i kakve
perspektive otvara ženama (What the Five-Year Plan brings to the family and which
perspectives it opens for women). Irena Bijelić, member of the GO of the SŽDH and president
of the Council for Social Security of the NRH, in her essay (with the title the same as the
book’s title) emphasized two main issues to deal with: how to help the family and how to
make it possible for women to enter manufacturing and social activities in high numbers
(1960: 11). The problems Bijelić emphasized did not differ much from the problems
discussed at the SŽDH’s Founding Assembly in 1957 and in First Plenary Session in 1958. At
all three SŽDH’s meetings that I analyze, the problems to deal with and the solution provided
were similar, but this time the Plenary Session was all about emphasizing all these issues in
13
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.30-33
48
�order to make them an official part of the Five-Year Plan. Bijelić articulated “constantly
present issue of women’s position in society” and said that the main problems which should
be addressed in the Five-Year Plan were: women’s segregation in female dominated
industries, the low qualification of the female labour force, the inadequate school system
which put female students in a disadvantaged position, and the bad attitude of cooperatives
towards women producers (1960: 22).
At the same Plenary Session in 1960, it was clear that new changes in the women’s
organizations would be introduced. I will say more about the discussions on this topic in the
next part of this chapter, but here it is important to state that changes in the work among
women were debated at the Fifth Congress of the SSRNJ in April 1960. Soka Krajačić
informed her drugarice (female comrades) at the Plenary Session of the SŽDH in December
1960 about those possible changes.14 She said that the name of the SSRN’s Women’s
commission for work among women had been changed into Commission for the social
activity of women and that, according to the new rules, neither the SSRN’s commissions; nor
the SŽD’s committees should be vertically connected.15 In other words, hierarchical vertical
structure, in which lower committees communicate and receive directions from the higher
committees, shouldn’t exist. Krajačić said that all the changes were made in order to achieve a
higher decentralization and to put emphasis on solving the problems of families and women at
the level of the commune, according to each local context.16
Krajačić also mentioned that, during the Fifth Congress of the SSRNJ, it was proposed
to dissolve the SŽD, but the decision was left to the next Congress of the SŽDJ.17 Among the
SŽDH’s documents I couldn’t find information on that following Congress of the SŽD of
14
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.183a-198
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.190-193
16
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.185
17
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.194
15
49
�Yugoslavia, but, according to historian Božinović, it never happened (1996: 184). Instead, the
Assembly of SŽDJ was held in April 1961, where the decision was taken to abolish the SŽD
and to form the Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena (Conference for the Social Activity
of Women, KDAŽ), which continued to exist, with several changes in its name, until 1990
(Božinović, 1996: 184).
3.2. How should women be organized?
The Yugoslav socialist state (federal level) was searching for an answer to the
complex question of how best to deal with enhancing women’s position in society. Should
that be done through separate women’s organizations or not? This question was also
ubiquitous on the republic and district level and occupied lots of space in the archival
documents from the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH, held on February 27-18, 1957. Even
though the SŽDJ was officially formed in 1953, it took three years for the Founding
Assembly of the organization on the republic (Croatian) level to happen. Some of the issues
discussed during the Founding Assembly, which I will present in this part, were: Why is
important to have women’s organizations? Is it necessary and if so, why? If we decide to have
them, which type of structure should we introduce? Should it be an uniform and autonomous
organization or an alliance of different organizations/associations which will be dealing with
specific women’s issues in each district, while leaving the political work among women to the
SSRN?. These discussions continued at the Plenary Sessions in 1958 and 1960.
At the Founding Assembly in 1957, the leaders of the SŽDH discussed these issues
several times. In her essay “Naš rad je društvena aktivnost – u izgradnji socijalističkog
društva i pomoći radnoj ženi” (“Our work is social activity – in the construction of the
socialist community and in assistance to the female worker”), Soka Krajačić, president of the
Main Committee of the SŽDH, explained that this was the first assembly of the women’s
50
�organization in Croatia (republic level) after the last Fourth Congress of the AFŽH in 1949.
She presented what the AFŽH did until the dissolution of the AFŽ on the federal level in
1953. While emphasizing its main activities: the enlightenment of women, literacy courses,
assistance to female workers, but also political work among women, Krajačić said (similar to
the conclusion of the AFŽJ last Congress in 1953) that:
“[…] a series of these problems, which the women’s organization was solving, were
treated as specifically women’s and not as societal issues. Thus, searching for the
solution of these problems didn’t have the full support from the overall society. Within
this process, the AFŽ - which was active as a part of the People’s Front at the time and
worked on women’s political education and elevation and many other practical issues
related particularly to women’s position – was actually separating itself from the
framework of the general social fight for women’s rights. The AFŽ secluded itself in
this struggle” (1957: 18).
Additionally, Krajačić emphasized that the AFŽ had to be dissolved. Despite its excellent
success in the work among women, the organization became too “narrow” and was unable to
deal with all activities that were necessary for solving women’s many problems (1957: 19).
Women from the lower SŽDH’s committees expressed the same opinion. A document
from the Founding Assembly of one District Committee of the SŽDH in Hrvatsko zagorje (a
region in the north of Croatia), for example clearly said that “women’s social activity has
surpassed the narrow frames of specific women's organizations and today women are
participating, in almost all social activities and there is no topic that our women would not be
interested in”.18 Additionally, the document explained that the SŽD, as a new type of
organization, was “not as sturdy as the AFŽ, but adjusted to the needs of women of some
18
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 1, 1956
51
�particular region. The SŽD consists of many associations which are dealing with particular
questions”.19
Soka Krajačić, president of the Main Committee of the SŽDH, also explained the
somewhat extraordinary fact that the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH was held three years
after the Founding Assembly of the SŽD on the federal level. She explained how the GO of
the SŽDH didn’t want to insist on forming associations just to have them, but instead wanted
women to gather around certain activities and then form associations according to the specific
issues they were struggling with (1957: 20). Members of the GO of the SŽDH were thinking
that, if the GO insisted on forming societies, women could be directed to form separate
women’s organizations, which would reduce their participation in political organizations,
where they worked to solve many problems related to women’s position (1957: 20).
The statements presented above could be seen as support for historian Chiara
Bonfiglioli’s claims about the dissolution of the AFŽ, which go against usual the
interpretation of the dissolution of the AFŽ, discussed in chapter 2. While analyzing
documents from the Fourth Congress of the AFŽ, Bonfiglioli claims that it is evident that its
leaders dismissed the organization in order to adjust work on women’s issues to the new selfmanagement model of socialism (2012: 216).
But although all SŽDH leaders argued against a uniform and separate women’s
organization like the AFŽ was, at one point they were justifying their own existence as an
alliance of women’s associations within the SSRN, hence still in a way a separate women’s
organization. Anka Berus, member of the GO of the SŽDH and member of the Executive
Council of the NRH’s Parliament, started her essay “Treba se boriti za radnu kvalifikaciju
žena“ (“We have to fight for women’s professional qualifications”), with the question whether
19
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 1, 1956
52
�Croatia needed specific women’s associations, since women had all rights and participated in
political life. She explained that according to data, women’s associations justified their
existence since in every place where they were formed around specific problems that women
had, women were participating in high numbers (1957: 48). She concluded that through
women’s societies, many problems could be solved much faster and easier than through other
organizations (1957: 48).
Along similar lines, in the material from the Founding Assembly of one District
Committee of the SŽDH in Hrvatsko zagorje, leaders of the District explained that there
always was the question of whether it was necessary or not to have women’s associations,
since women had already attained all rights, but the practice actually showed that women’s
societies could be very helpful in finding solutions for women’s specific problems in
particular counties.20 Additionally, the document said that the women’s organization was
necessary because the situation on the ground was difficult for women and in practice they
were not equal to men. Many problems prevented women from participating in social and
political life and the biggest problem was the overload of domestic labour.21
Similarly, a separate document from the Plenary Session in 1958, also stated that there
were lots of discussions about how to approach women’s organization. It said that “there were
opinions that all [women’s] problems are problems of the entire society”, which was why
some people asked, “why then to have a women’s organization, since it can’t solve those
problems”.22 The question was “why not to solve all problems related to women’s role and
position within the socialist society through the SSRN”. However, the answer provided in the
next paragraph was that in the districts, where discussions were not going on and the SŽD had
20
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 1, 1956
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 1, 1956
22
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, p.1
21
53
�begun to work, “the initial work justified the organization’s existence through the SŽD’s good
results and its cooperation with the local people’s committees and other social institutions”.23
Soka Krajačić justified the existence of the SŽDH towards the end of her essay by
claiming that in practice, there were often no other organizations that would deal with
problems of women’s position in society. Still, she said that there were no reasons why this
should stay only in the framework of women’s organizations, since these were the problems
of the entire society (1957: 23). The whole necessity for the justification of the SŽDH’s
existence was actually related to the idea that there were no specific women’s issues, only
issues of the entire society and that the entire society had to help women workers and working
families to solve the everyday problems, such as better nutrition, childcare or socializing
domestic labour (Krajačić, 1957: 23). The SŽDH leaders kept inviting other organizations to
join in finding solutions for social (not only women’s) problems that the SŽD was dealing
with (Krajačić, 1957: 23), but these organizations often didn’t perform their tasks, but often in
vain.
Bosa Cvetić, president of the Central committee of the SŽD of Yugoslavia (SŽDJ), in
her essay “Društva žena nisu se odvojila od općedruštvenih zadataka” (“Women’s societies
are not detached from general social activities”) explained debates that were going on in the
period between the last Congress of the AFŽ in 1953 and the Founding Assembly of the
SŽDH in 1957 and said that all the time the question was, “is our work useful or not” and
“whether is it enough for women just to join to the SSRN, engage there to the full extent and
try to find solutions for women’s problems from those positions” (1957: 56). She argued that
a scenario in which a separate women’s organization would result in smaller participation of
women within the SSRN and isolate them didn’t happen. Instead, “women didn’t leave other
political and social organizations, they still work there” and the biggest success of the SŽD
23
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, p.1
54
�was that it managed to draw new women activists into the political and social sphere (1957:
56). She was actually arguing for a double strategy: for simultaneously organizing both in the
regular SSRN’s institutions and in separate women’s organizations.
Anka Berus was explaining a similar thing, when she criticized the SŽD’s activists
who were complaining about comrades’ behavior towards them (see below). According to
Berus, sentences such as “comrades didn’t give us, comrades promised us” were unacceptable
since at least half of women present on that Plenary Session (1958) “worked in some of the
people’s committees” and there were “no one who, apart from being active in the SŽD, was
not also active in some other form of social management”.24 That was why women were
supposed to work on all issues within these institutions, and within communes. In other words
they had to, according to Berus, work on enhancing women’s position in the society, not to
beg comrades for anything.25
At the Plenary Session in 1960 other SŽD’s leaders and rank-and file members
expressed almost same opinions. Irena Bijelić, member of the GO of the SŽDH, concluded
that women, apart being active in the SŽD and discussing problems within the women’s
organization, “should discuss these issues in all positions, which our society created for
debates and adoptions of collective proposals and conclusions, therefore at union’s meetings,
working councils, institutions of League of Communists…” (1960: 27). Activist from lower
committees also recognized this need. Jelica Radojčević from Koprivnica (a small city in the
north of Croatia) said that it would be excellent if, as a result of conclusions of that Plenary
Session, all institutions would help in solving different kind of problems. It would be
especially good, Radojčević said, if it would be possible to mobilize “women who work in the
municipal people’s committees, the councils of the municipal people’s committees, and in
24
25
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.39
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.30-33
55
�management positions in other socio-political organizations” in solving all those issues (1960:
94). While emphasizing that the conclusions of the Plenary Sessions should be used as
directions for solving problems within the communes, Milka Planinc explained that the Main
Committee of the SŽDH invited “other [female] comrades to put these issues [the problems of
working families and female workers and the problem of people’s living standard] on the
agenda of all political organizations, first of all on the agenda of the SSRN” (1960: 127).
As is obvious from the quotes above, the SŽDH women at the Plenary Session in 1960
continued to advocate for a double strategy in women’s organizing. But as already mentioned
in the first part of this chapter, just before this SŽDH’s 1960 Plenary Session, the Fifth
Congress of the SSRNJ was held, during which women’s organizing was discussed further in
accordance with a greater decentralization of the country and putting emphasis on solving
every problem on the level of the commune.26 Soka Krajačić emphasized that during 1960
discussions over the role of the SŽD, which started in 1953, continued 27 and that the SSRNJ
suggested the dissolution of the SŽD.28 This final decision was left to the next Congress of the
SŽD, and Krajačić was clear in explaining the SŽDH’s leaders’ position. They obviously
wanted to continue with the double strategy of organizing women, both in separate
organizations and within the SSRN, because they saw the need for a separate women’s
organization. According to Krajačić, the SŽDH leaders were clear in their position that “in
our Republic there is no need for orders to dissolve districts’ committees of the SŽD, because
this has to be decided in each and every committee in every district, according to practical
needs”.29
26
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.185
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.184
28
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.194
29
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.5., GO SŽDH, December 6-7, 1960, p.194
27
56
�3.3. Polemics over the main goal of the organization
Here, I will first analyse discussions that took place during the Founding Assembly of
the SŽDH’s and First Plenary Session held on January 1958 about the importance of the
“political work” among women, in order to see how the SŽDH’s leaders and members saw
their own work and what was important for them to emphasize about that work. Thus, I will
try to give answers to several questions: Which terms were the SŽDH women using in
describing their goals and activities? What can we conclude from the fact that the SŽDH
women were discussing very thoroughly their own position and that they were searching for a
new solution of women’s organizing in the new system of self-management socialism and
decentralization of Yugoslavia? What does the insistence on labelling the SŽDH’s work as
“political” - even though, in the division of labour between the SSRN’s commissions and the
SŽDH, “political work” was supposed to be the SSRN commissions’ activity - by the SŽDH
leaders, tell us about how they saw themselves, and how did they evaluate the organization’s
activities and goals?
The president of the Main Committee of SŽDH, Soka Krajačić, reminded her
drugarice of the conclusion of the last AFŽ Congress that the political work among women
should be performed in the framework of the SSRN. She claimed that the idea behind this
decision was to prevent an isolation of women in separate organization and to move the
“political work” among women to the SSRN “where overall political activity is going on”,
while at the same time to encourage the forming of different women’s associations in order to
solve specific women’s problems of each district (1957: 19).
Krajačić several times emphasized that the main goal of the SŽDH’s activities was to
enable women’s participation in the political and social life of Croatia. For example, while
evaluating the activities of the Main Committee of the SŽDH, she insisted that it “was
approaching all issues with the idea of providing assistance to the women workers, which
57
�aimed to enable women’s higher participation in the political and social spheres” (1957: 30).
What is visible from Soka Krajačić’s remarks is the struggle of the SŽDH’s leadership to
position itself in the new system and to figure out what was the SŽDH’s status within it. Even
though officially the SŽDH was not supposed to conduct “political work” among women for
the above mentioned reasons, I think it was really important for Soka Krajačić to explain that
the SŽDH’s activities still could be labeled as political activities. This is the most evident
when she criticized the SŽDH’s work on providing household courses for women and at the
same time defended the organization (1957: 32-33). As I explained above, apart from
providing facilities and services for the working family, the SŽDH was also teaching women
how to better deal with all domestic labour through household courses for women. Krajačić
said that this could be seen as one of the reasons for the backlash in understanding women’s
position in society – as a mother and housewife (1957: 32-33). She said that because of the
household courses, “it seems that our only goal is to teach women how to cook, to tidy
apartments and to take care of children”, but she insisted that the SŽDH was conducting this
activity also “in order to make it possible for women to participate more in the political and
social life” (1957: 33). At the end of her essay, Krajačić again explained that everything they
did was “in order to help women in overcoming obstacles for their greater participation in the
political and social life” (1957: 34).
Mika Špiljak, a (male) member of the Presidency of the Main Committee of SSRNH,
who was participating in the discussion during the Founding Assembly, explicitly claimed in
his essay “Aktivnost društva žena je društveno-politička aktivnost” (“The activities of the
women’s societies are socio-political activities”) that the SŽDH was conducting “political
activities” (1957: 63). I found his essay extremely important because of his remarks on the
meaning of the socio-political work in the new moment for the Yugoslav state. Even though
the Resolution on forming the SŽD in 1953 stated that political work among women should
58
�be removed to SSRN’s special committees for work among women, Špiljak asked in his
introduction “Where do these ideas about the SŽD not conducting political activities come
from?” (1957: 63). He argued that in the new circumstances the SŽD’s activities were for sure
socio-political activities and he blamed some political actors for not to being able to see sociopolitical character of the SŽD’s work, saying that they failed to see how political work meant
something else than it meant during the war (1957: 63). Špiljak tried to explain that the
political work during WW2, such as the “fight against chetniks, ustashas or the fight for
independence” was not relevant or important anymore and that “there [were] completely
different problems in our society at the moment” (1957: 63).
Maybe the best comparison between what was seen as important during WW2 and
what was seen as urgent in the 1950s and 1960s in Yugoslavia was made several years later,
at the Plenary Session of the SŽDH in 1960. SŽDH member Nada Sremec strived to explain
what the main task of all women should be. In her words, all of them should “learn, learn,
learn” because “just as during the war one had to fight”, today’s task is to study in every field:
from ideological education, to general, professional and political education” (1960: 104).
Bosa Cvetić, president of the Central committee of the SŽD of Yugoslavia (SŽDJ),
claimed that “it seems from the outside that we narrowed the scope of our work” (1957: 55),
and “that we are preoccupied with irrelevant problems” (1957: 56) compared to the political
work of the AFŽ, but actually the SŽD’s work was “widespread and diverse” (1957: 55).
Similar to Mika Špiljak’s remarks about the different nature of the political work, Cvetić
argued that “in these conditions, if an organization doesn’t have political program, it doesn’t
have to mean that it is apolitical”, because in the overall work of the SŽD “there was no
activity that wouldn’t be in line with the general struggle for building our socialist society”
(1957: 59). In other words, everything that the SŽDH was doing was in order to build
socialism.
59
�The notes for a book of essays from the SŽDH Founding Assembly’s clearly stated
that the overall conclusion on the role of the SŽDH was that its goal was women’s
participation in political life. It was stated in the document that “the first Assembly of the
SŽDH produced rich material and gave orientation for further work with women in solving a
series of questions and problems in order to help them in their efforts to enter all sectors of the
social life and in their struggle for full political and social affirmation”.30
During the Plenary Session of the SŽDH on January 27-28, 1958, several leaders
referred to this issue as well. Anka Berus, while advocating for the cooperation of the SŽDH
with other social factors and while claiming that all women’s specific problems could and had
to be solved within the commune, she emphasized that this approach would “contribute to
enormous women’s political enlightenment and their participation in social activities”.31
When she spoke about kindergartens, Irena Bijelić emphasized that one of the purposes of
opening kindergartens was to “enable parents to enter political and social life”.32 While
analyzing the overall work of the SŽD, Marija Šoljan, member of the GO of the SŽDH, said
that they “couldn’t be satisfied, but also they couldn’t be unsatisfied” because there were
improvements in women’s political participation and women had been elected to the district
and local committees of the SSRN in higher numbers in 1953 than in the elections in 1950.33
It is clear that she thought that the SŽD’s work helped women to enter the political life and
that the SŽD should continue to take care of women’s political participation. At the same
Plenary Session, it was several times emphasized that the session was held intentionally just
before the elections for the People’s Assembly and the Parliament of the NRH. Šoljan
concluded that it was necessary to organize meetings with women on the ground to enhance
30
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, February, 1957
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.43
32
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, morning, p.14
33
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 2.day, p.33
31
60
�their participation in elections, because “experience from last elections showed that very good
results were achieved in places where separate meetings with women were held”.34
Šoljan also stressed another issue, which can be illustrative for the position of the
SŽDH leaders on the women’s question in Yugoslavia. Apart from the next elections, the
second most important topic at the Plenary Session in 1958 was the preparation for the next
International Women’s Day on March 8. When women from lower SŽDH’s committees gave
reports on the preparations in their committees, Šoljan warned them about the content of the
celebration. She said that “in recent years March 8 started to have characteristics of Mother’s
Day”, which she highly disapproved of.35 Šoljan emphasized that the GO of the SŽDH
already “gave guidelines that March 8 should be celebrated differently, that it should be a
socio-political manifestation for all women, not only for mothers”, because “women achieved
so many results in our socialist community” and March 8 should be celebrated accordingly. 36
In contrast to the Founding Assembly and the First Plenary Session, at the Second
Plenary Session 1960, which focused on the new Five-Year Plan and on manufacture,
“political work” was barely mentioned. Irena Bijelić explained that she did not mention
women’s political participation in her essay “not because they [the SŽDH] consider it an
irrelevant question, but because this question is directly related to the first one [women’s
participation in manufacture]” (1960: 23). She argued that “women’s greater participation in
skilled jobs and the presence in manufacture” would lead to “women’s greater participation in
authority and management bodies” (1960: 23).
34
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 2.day, p.35
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 2.day, p.35
36
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 2.day, p.35
35
61
�3.4. Which problems were the SŽDH women facing in their practical work?
Here, I will present problems the SŽDH women were facing in their work. What were
the biggest problems women were dealing with? What can we conclude from these problems
and the SŽDH’s reaction towards them about the society they lived in and about what kind of
activism was possible and suitable at the time? How can we evaluate the SŽDH engagement
in dealing with the patriarchal society?
The consequence of these debates and of a looser structure of the organization,
compared to the AFŽ’s, was a temporary paralysis in the women’s activities in some districts.
An indicative example is one from the above mentioned Hrvatsko zagorje, where during the
forming of the District committee of the SŽDH women emphasized that “there are no strict
directives or rules for our work, because every district or region has its own specific issues”.
They evaluated these changes as being helpful because “strict directives could maybe prevent
work on the ground”. On the other hand, they referred to the period of three years after the
dissolution of the AFŽ and before forming this committee of the SŽDH in their district and
said that “we have to be careful not to transform this liberty in organizing and acting into a
complete neglecting of the work among women, which happened in the region before”.37
The problem of the “political work” among women was not solely a problem on the
level of the SŽDH’s leadership discussions. Problems related to this “political work” were the
biggest problems that the SŽDH’s members were facing on the ground. It is evident from
several essays form the SŽDH Founding Assembly in 1957 that the ‘comrades’ from the
SSRNH’s Commissions for work among women weren’t doing their job, that is, they often
neglected their tasks on raising women’s political consciousness and providing political
education for women.
37
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.2.1., GO SŽDH, October 1, 1956
62
�Maybe the most direct critique towards the SSRN came from Soka Krajačić when she
asked “why there are not more women in leadership positions within the SSRN” (1957: 32),
although women were very active in all social organizations. She argued that one of the
reasons must be that “the SSRN doesn’t take care of political work among women; neither
does it keep track of women’s participation in the social life” (1957: 32). Moreover, she
briefly repeated that the decision of the Fourth Plenary Session of the SSRNJ (and also of the
Fourth Congress of the AFŽJ) was that the political work with women had to be conducted
within the SSRN, but then she stated that “SSRN’s organizations don’t know much about
women’s activities” or about the “problems that women are dealing with” and how this really
“makes it difficult to work on enlightenment and an intensive raising of women’s political
consciousness” (1957: 32). Krajačić concluded that there was a backlash in understanding
women’s position in the Yugoslav society and that the lack or the non-existence of political
work among women was one of the reasons for that backlash (1957: 32).
Other leaders also criticized the SSRN for not fulfilling its duties and suggested to the
SŽD to perform those duties. Anka Berus, for example, said that the SŽDH should put
pressure on the SSRN and maybe conduct activities that should be performed by the SSRN.
She emphasized that women’s societies “should ask the SSRN to solve some special issues if
the SSRN doesn’t take it in its own hands” because “in politics, everybody can knock on
everybody’s door and has right to ask questions and raise issues that one thinks have to be
solved” (1957: 50).
The SŽDH not only had a problem with the political work among women not being
conducted by those responsible for it. In addition, organizations that were supposed to work
with them on solving the problems of female workers and working families didn’t do their
jobs either. For example, while explaining that the role of the SŽDH Main Committee was to
help working families by opening kindergartens together with other responsible organizations,
63
�Soka Krajačić was worried about the condition of the kindergartens and their future because
the SŽDH “found omissions and irresponsibility even among those social factors that are
legally obliged to take care of kindergartens” (1957: 26).
Krajačić’s and Berus’s critique could be seen in light of feminist historian and activist
Neda Božinović’s critique of the transfer of political work among women to the SSRN,
almost 40 years after. She interpreted the dissolution of the AFŽ as the result of a patriarchal
backlash (1996: 170), which I discussed in the chapter on the AFŽ. But, as I also already
mentioned, Božinović points out that the redistribution of responsibilities between the SSRN
and the SŽD caused serious problems on the ground, since the SSRN simply didn’t take its
duties seriously (1996: 263). From archival documents that I analyzed above, the same
conclusion can be drawn.
Maybe the most illustrative examples of what kind of problems women from the SŽD
were facing and how they struggled with them are those of SŽDH’s member Nevia Zakinja
from Pula (a town in Istria), given during the Plenary Session in January 1958. She thought
that the biggest achievement of the SŽD in her district was that problems which bothered
women were now finally discussed during the meetings of the District committees of the
SSRN. But she was also complaining about the comrades’ reaction towards the SŽD
members’ demands: they often said there was no money for solving a certain issue in order to
help women from the community.38 That is why women from the SŽD were very “resolute”
and tried to fight for what they wanted. She gave the example of crèches in Istria and said that
the comrades wanted to close some crèches because of a lack of money, but women from the
SŽD visited the comrades and explained them that the SŽD wouldn’t let this happen.39
38
39
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.1-2
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.5
64
�Nevia Zakinja explained that she was saying this “to show how often and easily
comrades and authorities made decisions on closing facilities for childcare”. The SŽD’s
activists managed to prevent the authorities form doing that, but the communication between
the SŽD and the people’s committees was in general poor. Zakinja said that the SŽD women
called presidents of working councils or managers of enterprises for a meeting to include
them in solving women’s workers problems, but they didn’t have success in this undertaking.
Most of the time, she said, women had to go and try to convince comrades from Union’s
councils or the local SSRN’s committees of taking them seriously. In the end of her speech
Zakinja concluded that “the biggest problem is that we have to go there and struggle to
persuade them that we are talking about real problems”.40
Similar problems were pointed out by other women at the SŽDH’s Plenary Session in
1958. Jelka Marković from the SŽD in Virovitica (a city in the north of Croatia) explained
how women were struggling while organizing the SŽD in their district. Women gave their
best to organize women’s societies according to the specific problems in their community, but
“the comrades tricked them [the SŽD women]” by saying that women can “rely on the SSRN,
which will bear the costs [of organizing]”.41 In but in the end the SSRN was not helpful at all
and everything that women got from their comrades was only “one corner of the table, where
already three comrades were working”.42
Conclusion
In this chapter I provided basic facts about the SŽDH, presented discussions which
were going on within the SŽDH in the 1950s around the complex issue of women’s
organizing in Yugoslavia, explained what was the main dispute over the SŽDH’s goals,
40
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.6
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.21
42
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.21
41
65
�provided an example of the SŽDH’s approach to women’s position in society and summarized
problems the SŽDH women were facing in their work.
I analyzed archival material from the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH’s, held on
February 27-18, 1957, the First Plenary Session held on January 27-28, 1958, and the Second
Plenary Session held on December 6-7, 1960. I approached these documents from a bottomup perspective, striving to show the SŽDH women’s agency. I tried to demonstrate how these
women saw themselves, what was important for them and which language they used to
describe their activities and position in the Yugoslav communist society. The SŽDH leaders
discussed the position of their organization within the new circumstances of self-management
socialism and decentralization in Yugoslavia in the 1950s. It was important for them to
explain why the AFŽ had to be dissolved and to emphasize how, in the new context, the entire
society had to work on solving the problems of women’s position in the community.
Although, the SŽDH’s leaders and rank-and-file members agreed with the dissolution of the
AFŽ, they justified the existence of a somewhat separate women’s organization, because they
regarded this as the only way to solve specific women’s issues in particular districts, cities or
villages. Apart from justifying the existence of the SŽDH, some leaders strongly advocated
for a form of double organizing: to fight for women’s liberation both in a separate
organization and within the SSRN. It seems that the SŽDH women really believed this was
the right approach to women’s liberation.
The SŽDH’s leaders were trying to position themselves and to figure it out what was
their role in the new circumstances in Yugoslavia. They often emphasized that, although this
was supposed to be the SSRN’s task, the SŽDH’s work could be labelled as “political work”.
It was extremely important for the SŽDH women to prove that they were not just explaining
women how to do housework, but that all the SŽDH’s activities were performed in order to
enhance women’s position in the political and social sphere. It was obvious from the problems
66
�that the SŽDH women were facing on the ground that they didn’t receive much help from
other institutions, as they were supposed to. Often, the biggest obstacle in their work was
exactly the disparaging behaviour from comrades from the SSRN. Therefore, I would agree
with the historian Chiara Bonfiglioli’s opinion that the AFŽ’s leaders (which later became the
SŽD’s leaders) decided to dissolve the AFŽ in order to try to find a solution for achieving
women’s equality within the self-management institutions, where all political activities were
going on (2012: 216). But, what is obvious from the documents that I analyzed, this idea was
not implemented well enough, primarily because of the lack of cooperation from the SSRN.
Nevertheless, I believe that the SŽDH’s work shouldn’t be judged as not meaningful, as
several historians who evaluated the end of the AFŽ as the end of meaningful work on
enhancing women’s position in Yugoslavia did, just because in the SŽDH women had
problems with the implementation of the new structure. As I demonstrated in the last part of
the chapter, those women on the ground were fighting for what they considered as important,
and the leaders (such as Soka Krajačić) were openly and publicly criticizing the SSRN for not
fulfilling its duties.
As mentioned in the Introduction of this thesis, the mainstream paradigm in the
scholarly literature about the official women’s organizations in state socialist countries still
disparages them as “Party tools”. By contrast, my analysis of archival documents of the
SŽDH showed that the SŽDH women had their own voices and opinions; that they strived to
enhance women’s position in society in a way they found the most suitable for the context
they lived in; and that they discussed at large the SŽDH’s position in the circumstances of
self-management and tried to find solutions for the problems they were facing on the ground.
Therefore, I argue that the SŽDH can’t be labelled as “Party tool” and that the SŽDH
women’s work should not be erased from the historiography on the Yugoslav women’s
movement.
67
�Conclusion
“Comrades, we are proceeding with our meeting. [...] It has been exactly 15 years
since the first Antifascist Women's Front conference was held in Bosanski Petrovac on
December 6-7, 1942. [...] This year we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of that great and
important date”.43 These were the words of SŽDH Main Committee Marija Šoljan at the
SŽDH Plenary Session in 1958. The SŽDH women celebrated the establishment of the
women’s antifascist organization, and it is evident that they were proud of everything the
Antifascist Women's Front (AFŽ) had done for women in Yugoslavia. After analyzing
archival documents, I believe the SŽDH women considered the SŽDH as a successor of the
AFŽ, which continued the AFŽ’s efforts, but in a different way. The SŽDH women saw
themselves as part of continuum, but while historians have written about the AFŽ, their
contributions were erased from women’s history in Yugoslavia. This continuum is not visible
in scholarly works on Yugoslav women’s history. Historical overviews usually start with the
AFŽ and continue with the feminist movement in the 1970s, suggesting that after the
dissolution of the AFŽ in 1953 there was nothing noteworthy for women’s history until the
1970s. The AFŽ’s successor organizations remained almost completely unresearched.
In a broader sense, this thesis could be seen as part of emerging scholarly work on
rethinking the complex relations between feminism and socialism. I examined the case of one
of the AFŽ’s successor organizations in order to understand better what was happening in a
forgotten period of Yugoslav women’s history. I looked at the Savez ženskih društava
Hrvatske (Union of Women’s Societies of Croatia, SŽDH), the organization that existed from
1953 to 1961 in the People’s Republic of Croatia. First, I wanted to explore what the SŽDH
women did, in order to be able to rethink second-wave feminist historians’ perception of the
43
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4.4., GO SŽDH, January 27-28, 1958, 1.day, afternoon, p.23
68
�AFŽ’s dissolution in 1953 as the end of meaningful work on women’s issues. Second, I
wanted to find out whether historians’ negative evaluation of the SŽDH as “Party tool” which is the general scholarly narrative about official women’s organization in state socialist
countries - was justified in this case.
I first provided basic facts about Yugoslavia in Chapter 1 in order to locate the
organization that I research in the specific context of self-management socialism and
decentralization of Yugoslavia in the 1950s. In Chapter 2 I dealt with the complex history and
historiography of the AFŽ. I explained the AFŽ’s goals, activities and the changes in its
organizational structures, as well as historians’ evaluation of all of this. Above all, I focused
on the historians’ interpretation of the AFŽ’s dissolution, according to which, the dissolution
of the autonomous and unique organization was detrimental for meaningful work on women’s
position in society. Following the historian Chiara Bonfiglioli, I decided not to apply the
second-wave feminist “autonomy principle” when evaluating the activities of the SŽDH, in
order to be able to examine what the SŽDH women did and interpret their work in a new way.
In Chapter 3 I looked at archival documents of the SŽDH without second-wave
feminist lenses and I approached the material from a bottom-up perspective, which goes
against hegemonic narrative on communist women’s organizations being simply obedient
“Party tools”. I presented the SŽDH’s goals, activities and discussions that were going on
within the organization. Above all, I wanted to find out how the SŽDH women perceived
themselves, how they negotiated their position within the Yugoslav society, which words they
used in describing the SŽDH’s activities and goals, and how they fought against the
patriarchal structures they encountered. I showed that the SŽDH leaders discussed their
position and sought for the best way of organizing women in the new circumstances of selfmanagement in Yugoslavia. I demonstrated that it was important for the SŽDH women to
emphasize that they were fighting for enhancing women’s position in the social and public
69
�sphere and to keep their position as a somewhat separate organization, but at the same time to
include the entire society in solving specific women’s issues, what I referred to as their double
strategy. In the end, I showed that SŽDH’s leaders and rank-and-file members were not afraid
to criticize the Socijalistički savez radnog naroda (Socialist Alliance of the Working People,
SSRN) openly and in public. I believe that I managed to prove that the SŽDH was not simply
a “Party tool” and that the SŽDH women had a well-thought-out strategy and ideas on how to
enhance women’s position in community.
While analyzing documents and doing my research I encountered two problems. First,
I dealt with the extremely difficult, challenging and sometimes ambiguous language of the
SŽDH women, often loaded with meanings specific for the context in which it emerged,
which made it difficult to analyze and then translate into clear English. Second, because of the
lack of scholarly work on this topic, and because of the lack of documents in the archive, I
couldn’t answer all the questions I would have like to address, for example, why and how the
SŽDH was abolished.
I believe my research can serve as a starting point for further study on the extremely
complex and almost completely unexplored field of women’s organizations in Yugoslavia
after the AFŽ. This thesis deals with the SŽDH, the organization on the republic level, but it
would be excellent if further researchers could use this research while studying the SŽD on
the federal level. Moreover, this research can be a helpful starting point for researching the
SŽD’s successor organization, the Konferencija za društvenu aktivnost žena (Conference for
the Social Activity of Women, KDAŽ), which has been equally erased from Yugoslav
women’s history. I think this is important in order not to deprive future generations of
knowledge on the extraordinary rich and empowering women’s movement in Yugoslavia. Or
in historian Lydia Sklevicky’s words:
70
�“Whether the need for approaching this kind of history which is able to integrate many
dimensions and voices, among them women's perspective, will be met in the near future is
hard to predict. But, it would be worth a try, since it is notorious fact that women in Yugoslav
society make up the slightly bigger half of population, and since they have always
significantly outnumbered the horses”.44
44
Sklevicky, 1989b: 73
71
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�Primary sources:
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HR-HAD-KDAŽH-1234-2, 2.2. Skupštine, 2.2.1. Osnivačka skupština SŽD Hrvatske, 19561957, GO SŽDH, February 27-18, 1957. Pomoć radnoj porodici i radnoj ženi – naš osnovni
zadatak. 1957. [Assistance to the working family and to the working woman – our main task],
published book of essays from the Founding Assembly of the SŽDH held on February 27-18,
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women’s professional qualifications”]. p. 48-51.
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[“Women’s societies are not detached from general social activities”]. p. 55-63.
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have to become accountable factor in cooperatives”]. p. 51-55.
Krajačić, Soka. 1957. “Naš rad je društvena aktivnost – u izgradnji socijalističkog
društva i pomoći radnoj ženi” [“Our work is social activity – in the construction of the
socialist community and in assistance to the female worker”]. p. 18-35.
Špiljak, Mika. 1957. “Aktivnost društva žena je društveno-politička aktivnost” [“The
activities of the women’s societies are socio-political activities”]. p. 63-65.
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4. Plenumi, 2.4.4. Plenum SŽDH 1958, GO SŽDH, January 2728, 1958, 1. day, morning.
HR-HDA-KDAŽH 1234-2, 2.4. Plenumi, 2.4.4. Plenum SŽDH 1958, GO SŽDH, January 2728, 1958, 1. day, afternoon.
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Jančić, Jela. 1958. “Referat o problemima žena-seljanki i Sekciji žena-zadrugarki”
[“Essay on the problems of women peasants’ and the women’s section within cooperatives”].
2.day, morning, p. 1-25.
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6-7, 1960. Što petogodišnji plan donosi porodici i kakve perspektive otvara ženama. 1960.
[What the Five-Year Plan brings to the family and which perspectives it opens for women],
75
�published book of essays from the Plenary Session held on December 6-7, 1960. Zagreb:
Tisak.
Bijelić, Irena. 1960. “Što petogodišnji plan donosi porodici i kakve perspektive otvara
ženama” [“What the Five-Year Plan brings to the family and which perspectives it opens for
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6-7, 1960., p. 183a-198.
76
�
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The End of the AFŽ – The End of Meaningful Women’s Activism? Rethinking the History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 – 1961 - Jelena Tešija
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This thesis, as part of emerging scholarly work on rethinking the complex relations between feminism and socialism, explores the Savez ženskih društava Hrvatske (Union of Women’s Societies of Croatia, SŽDH), the women's organization that existed in Yugoslavia from 1953 to 1961. The SŽDH was the successor of the Antifašistički front žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ), and while there is ample literature about the activities of the AFŽ, the activities of its successor organizations are hardly researched. This thesis examines the case of the SŽDH in order to understand better what was happening in a forgotten period of Yugoslav women’s history. I first discuss second-wave feminist historians’ perspectives on the AFŽ, and in particular the fact that that most historians who have written about the AFŽ claim that its dissolution in 1953, as an autonomous organization, was detrimental for meaningful work on women’s problems in Yugoslavia. Second, I look at archival documents of the SŽDH. I approach the material from a bottom-up perspective, which goes against the hegemonic narrative on communist women’s organizations as being simply obedient “Party tools”. I research the activities and goals of the SŽDH, the discussions and debates within the organization as well as the problems that the SŽDH women were facing in their practical work. I focus on the SŽDH women’s own perspective and the terms which they used themselves when discussing and explaining their work. Using a bottom-up approach and avoiding to apply the second-wave feminist “autonomy principle” for a state socialist women’s organization, this analysis shows that the SŽDH was not simply a “Party tool”. This research proves that the SŽDH women had their voices and opinions; that they had a well-thought-out strategy and ideas on how to enhance women’s position in the context they lived in; and that they extensively discussed the SŽDH’s position in the new circumstances of self-management in Yugoslavia.
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83 pages
Antifascist Front of Women
Croatia
Jelena Tešija
Union of Women’s Societies of Croatia
women's emancipation
Women's Oorganisations
Women’s Activism
Yugoslavia
-
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Home » CITSEE Story
Becoming citizens: the politics of women’s
emancipation in socialist Yugoslavia
Chiara Bonfiglioli
In 1947 Didara Dukagjini, a seventeen-year-old ethnic Albanian girl raised in a wealthy family in the
town of Prizren, was told by her father that she had to abandon her feredža/ferexhe, the full Islamic veil
that covered her head and face when she ventured outside the house. The local communist authorities had
invited the most important families in town to set the example, in order to establish the new socialist
values in the traditional and underdeveloped region of Kosovo. Didara was shocked by her father’s
decision. She thought she could not survive the shame of going out “naked” in the streets. Upon deciding
that she had to take off the veil, her father also decided that she would enrol in a teacher training course.
Three months later, Didara obtained employment as a teacher, since for the literacy campaign, literate
workers who could teach in the different villages of Kosovo were in great demand.
Two years later, at age nineteen, Didara fell in love with Toša, a Serbian communist militant, who
proposed to her: “Communist from head to toe, he did not care at all about the difference in our national
backgrounds” (Malešević 2004: 47). In order to marry the man she loved, and in order to avoid an
arranged marriage with an Albanian man, Didara had to escape from her father’s house, severing relations
with her parents for several years to come. She later became a member of the Antifascist Women’s Front
of Yugoslavia (AFŽ), an organization founded during the Resistance to involve women in politics. As a
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of Yugoslavia (AFŽ), an organization founded during the Resistance to involve women in politics. As a
“living example” of women’s emancipation, she was sent to different villages to recruit other Albanian
women for the activities of the Popular Front. While the case of Didara is exceptional, it is also an
illustration of the extraordinary social and political transformations that took place in Yugoslavia in the
immediate post-war period, and of the implications they had for women.
Citizens, workers, mothers: framing equality and difference
In 1946, for the first time, women’s rights as political, social and economic beings were inscribed in the
new Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a result of women’s participation in
the antifascist Resistance during World War Two. The provisions dedicated to women’s equality were
modelled on the 1936 Soviet Constitution, and thus reflected a radical revolutionary stance on previous
class, gender and national inequalities. The main concern of Yugoslav legislators was to come to terms
with the different family law provisions that subsisted in different regions of old Yugoslavia. From the
point of view of family law, the old kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) was divided into six different
juridical areas. In certain parts the Austrian civil code from 1811 was applied, in others the Serbian civil
code of 1844, while in predominantly Muslim areas religious law ruled. The new legislation hence aimed
to unify family law and to overcome discriminatory provisions, notably the discriminatory treatment of
woman in relation to economic rights, inheritance, custody of children and the birth of ’illegitimate‘
offspring. Article 24 of the Yugoslav Constitution inscribed women’s equality in the Constitution, stating
that: “[w]omen have equal rights with men in all fields of state, economic and social-political life.”
At the same time, women’s difference as mothers was inscribed in the very same article, which continued:
“Women have the right to the same pay as that received by men for the same work, and as workers or
employees they enjoy special protection. The state especially protects the interests of mothers and
children by the establishment of maternity hospitals, children’s homes and day nurseries and by the right
of mothers to a leave with pay before and after childbirth.” The idea of women’s social motherhood –
modelled after the same idea in the Soviet Union – was very important in Yugoslavia in the immediate
post-war period. According to this idea, women contributed to society not only in their equal engagement
in the public sphere, but also in their contribution to the reproduction of society because of their ability to
give birth. The state, therefore, had to recognize that motherhood constituted a social contribution, and
accordingly had to provide adequate welfare measures for mothers and children.
Women’s emancipation as a feature of socialist modernization
While during the Second World War the AFŽ was created in order to involve women in politics and to
support the partisan struggle, in the late 1940s the AFŽ was in charge of implementing socialist politics of
women’s emancipation, targeting in particular the most backward, rural areas of Yugoslavia. Despite the
fact that women’s juridical, economic and social rights had been inscribed in the new Yugoslav
Constitution, AFŽ militants were immediately confronted with the gap that existed between these rights
and women’s everyday lives. The reports written by AFŽ local sections in the late 1940s and early 1950s
testify to the extent and the degree of patriarchal domination, physical exploitation and lack of education
in which the majority of women lived, notably in the countryside, and to the scarcity of resources of
which the organization disposed in its fight against these phenomena. AFŽ activists describe the majority
of women as exploited in their domestic, agricultural and industrial work.
In the late 1940s the organization targeted in particular “the most backward and passive masses of
women”, and saw itself as the institutional body in charge of the modernization of women’s lives, notably
in rural areas, which constituted the majority of households in the Yugoslav Federation. In fact, in a
number of speeches, AFŽ leader Vida Tomšić[i] reasserted the idea proposed by Fourier, and popularized
by Marx, according to which the condition of women in a society gives the measure of the development
and civilization of that same society. The persistence of patriarchal and “backward” households in rural
areas, and particularly in the southern regions of Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Metohija,
was seen as an obstacle to the modernization of the country and to its socialist achievements.
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From darkness to enlightenment: the campaign against feredže
Already in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the interwar period, Serbian, Croatian and Slovene elites
perceived the regions which had for a long time been dominated by the Ottoman Empire – the republics
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the regions of Kosovo and Metohija – as the most backward and
underdeveloped areas, notably because of the diffusion of Islam. The existence of a consistent Slavic
speaking population who had converted to Islam was seen as an unwanted legacy of the Ottoman
occupation. Orientalist conceptions about Islam were interiorized by communist elites, who also doubted
the political loyalty of these populations. Since the Slavic-speaking Muslim population of Bosnia and the
Albanian-speaking population of Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro participated only marginally in the
antifascist Resistance, moreover, the mark of civic backwardness was coupled with a mark of political
backwardness.
The campaign against the full veil or feredža/ferexhe, which covered the whole body and face, ran from
1946 until the early 1950s, when the different republics approved a number of laws forbidding the full
veil. This wasn’t a new idea: Serbian and Croatian feminist women’s organizations had already written
about the need to “liberate” their Muslim sisters from the slavery of the veil in the first half of the
twentieth century. The campaign against the feredža/ferexhe was marked by a far-reaching faith in
humanism and historical progress, and by a strong ideal of socialist modernization, of which women’s
emancipation was seen as an intrinsic component.
A report published in the journal Žena Danas in March 1951, recounts the journey of 400 Muslim men
and women from Macedonia to Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and the coast. The article is significantly
titled “The first excursion of unveiled faces.” For many participants, this was their first departure from
their native village, and among them were many women who have abandoned their veil. Marija Marinčić
writes in particular about a young Turkish woman, Azbija, who had taken off the veil and had learned her
first words in Macedonian: “The veil, I took off the veil.” Marinčić continues, describing Azbija: “She
[Azbija] looked at me. In that moment I felt that all that was old in her had died, that she felt as free as I
did. In her gaze there was warmth and a great joy: – I used to live like a beast (životinja), now I know that
I am a human being (čovek).”
An unfinished revolution: women’s citizenship in post-Yugoslav states
In the 1970s, thirty years after the inscription of women’s rights in the Yugoslav Constitution, the country
had undergone a rapid process of modernization and urbanization. Women’s literacy and access to the
labour market had reached unprecedented levels; inequalities in women’s rights had been reduced
enormously compared to the interwar years.[ii]
Yet, women’s full equality was far from realized. In the 1970s and 1980s feminist activists throughout
Yugoslavia denounced the failure of the egalitarian policies implemented by socialist authorities, who
claimed to have solved the “women’s question” once and for all. Second wave feminists exposed the gap
between the formal rhetoric of socialist equality and the gendered discrimination which persisted at the
material and symbolic level, notably in the less developed republics of the Federation (Meznarić 1985).
They denounced the sexist imagery of the press, as well as the widespread diffusion of domestic violence
throughout the country.
Nonetheless, socialist politics appeared progressive in comparison to the process of “retraditionalisation”
of gender relations which took place in the 1990s. As pointed out by feminist activists in the region, the
egalitarian discourse promoted by socialist authorities was suddenly replaced during the break-up of
Yugoslavia by the overtly sexist discourse of nationalist regimes, which portrayed women’s emancipation
as an “unnatural” effect of the socialist system. Women were represented in essentialist ways, as
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biological reproducers of the nation, while gendered and sexualised metaphors were used to construct
essentialist national and ethnic identities (Iveković and Mostov 2002).
The war rapes perpetrated during the Yugoslav conflict, moreover, showed that women’s bodies had
become a terrain of political, social and ethnic warfare (Žarkov 2007). It became clear that gender
inequalities and violence against women increased in times of political and social conflict (NikolićRistanović 2000), and that women’s political, social and economic rights could be easily threatened by
processes of political “transition”, with devastating effects (Papić 1999).
Women’s everyday lives in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia have undergone profound
political, economic and social changes as a result of the post-socialist, post-conflict transition, and as a
consequence of processes of Europeanization and globalization affecting the region. Women’s citizenship
rights remain a contested terrain in post Yugoslav states, twenty years after the end of socialism and the
beginning of the Yugoslav wars.
Sources
Erlich, Vera Stein 1966. Family in transition; a study of 300 Yugoslav villages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press.
Iveković, Rada, and Julie Mostov. 2002. From gender to nation. Ravenna: Longo.
Jeraj, Mateja. 2006. Vida Tomšić. In Biographical dictionary of women's movements and feminisms in
Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe : 19th and 20th centuries, edited by F. d. Haan, K.
Daskalova and A. Loutfi. Budapest ; New York: CEU Press/Central European University Press.
Malešević, Miroslava. 2004. Didara. Životna prica jedne Prizrenke. Beograd: Srpski genealoski centar.
Meznarić, Silva. 1985. Theory and Reality: The Status of Employed Women in Yugoslavia. In Women,
State and Party in Eastern Europe, edited by S. L. Wolchik and A. G. Meyer. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Nikolić-Ristanović, Vesna, ed. 2000. Women, violence and war: wartime victimization of refugees in the
Balkans. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Papić, Zarana. 1999. Women in Serbia: Post-Communism, War and Nationalist Mutations. In Gender
politics in the Western Balkans: women and society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav successor states,
edited by S. P. Ramet. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Žarkov, Dubravka. 2007. The Body of War. Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-up of Yugoslavia.
Durham and London: Duke University Press.
[i] Vida Tomšić (1913-1998, born Bernot), became an antifascist activist in the interwar period, when she
was a law student at the University of Ljubljana. In 1934 she joined the Communist Party, whose Central
Committee she entered in 1940. She was arrested and tortured by the occupation forces during the war,
and her husband Tone Tomšić was executed. After the war she held key positions in the Slovenian and
Federal government, simultaneously acting as a leader of the AFŽ. She contributed to the revision of the
1974 Constitution, promoting women’s rights, family planning, and the rights to contraception and
abortion. Tomšić also advocated women’s rights in international settings, such as the United Nations. For
an extensive biography of Vida Tomšić, see Jeraj (2006).
[ii] For an overview of patriarchal relations in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, see Erlich (1966).
-----------------Photo 1: Post-war Sarajevo. Courtesy of NŠK - Narodna in študijska knjižnica (Slovene National and
Study Library), Trieste.
Photo 2: Didara Dukagjini with her husband in Dragaš/Sharr, Kosovo (1949). Courtesy of Miroslava
Malešević
CITSEE Story Bosnia-Herzegovina
Slovenia Citizenship Emancipation
Updated on: 24 October 2012
Croatia Kosovo Macedonia
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Becoming citizens: the politics of women's emancipation in socialist Yugoslavia - Chiara Bonfiglioli
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5 pages
Chiara Bonfiglioli
citizens
women's activism
women's emancipation
Yugoslavia
-
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4
COLD WAR INTERNATIONALISMS,
NATIONALISMS AND THE
YUGOSLAV–SOVIET SPLIT
The Union of Italian Women and the
Antifascist Women’s Front of Yugoslavia
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Introduction
In the Italian and in the Yugoslav context, similarly to other European contexts,1 the
geography and timing of women’s political movements after 1945 had deep connections
to the geographies, temporalities and utopian imaginaries of the antifascist Resistance,
of communist internationalism, of working-class and New Left movements.2 These
radical geographies and imaginaries, however, were also extraordinarily ambivalent
when it came to gender.3 After the partial disruption of the gender order provoked
by women’s participation in the Resistance, the beginning of the Cold War implied
the ‘exclusion of radical possibilities’ and a return to the consensual signifiers of home
and family, ‘suturing an idealised domesticity to the threatened security of the nation
and its way of life’.4 In two countries divided by a major Cold War fault line and by a
contested border between ‘West’ and ‘East’, gendered bodies and allegorical female
figures served as key discursive devices to re-signify ideological and ethnic boundaries.5
At the same time, as Helen Laville points out in her Cold War Women, ‘however
important this use of women as symbols [ … ] it should not elide the actual
contribution of women to international relations as active participants’.6
My current research project consists of a transnational and diachronic study of
encounters and connections between Italian and Yugoslav women active in antifascist
and left-wing politics in the early Cold War period (1945–57). I am interested mainly
in two internationalist women’s organisations, the Unione Donne Italiane (Union of
ˇ
Italian Women, UDI) and the Antifašisticki Front Žena (Antifascist Women’s Front of
Yugoslavia, AFŽ), and in their role in fostering women’s rights before the emergence
of second-wave feminist groups after 1968. I explore the ambivalent linkages
between women’s history and Cold War political history, in an attempt to locate
women’s agency not outside but within changing geopolitical and historical settings.
Scholars have pointed to the scarcity of transnational comparisons when it comes to
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60 Transnational women’s activism
the ‘transitional years’ that followed the Second World War.7 Studies of women’s
political activism during the Cold War are now in the making, and are starting to
address women’s international organisations as well as the interactions between
international and national women’s movements.8
Writing on the history of the Women’s International Democratic Federation
(WIDF), Francisca de Haan has singled out ‘one of the most tenacious Cold War
assumptions’ about left-wing internationalist women’s mobilisations, namely the idea
that Communist women ‘were merely using the notion of women’s rights for reasons
of Communist political propaganda’.9 Struggles for women’s rights were perceived as
impossible behind ‘the Iron Curtain’. This metaphor revived a pre-existing Orientalist framework, indicating a separation between an enlightened West, the ‘Eastern
Bloc’, and ‘the Rest’.10 In the Italian context, the persistence of the ethnicised label
of ‘Slavo-communists’ best exemplifies the entanglement of ideological and racist
labelling during the twentieth century and beyond.11 My aim, therefore, is not only
to overcome Cold War assumptions about ‘communist’ women’s lack of agency, but
also to challenge the negative coupling of ‘communism’ with the non-European,
non-Western Other. Communists existed in Western Europe, too: ‘In Italy, a few
years ago, more than one third of the citizens declared themselves as such. Now most
of them are silent, their past is erased in the [collective] memory.’12
In addition, my research seeks to explore the effects of the way in which new
geopolitical configurations were grafted upon previous political and historical legacies
originating from Fascism, antifascism and the Second World War as a civil war.13 In
the Italian and Yugoslav cases, in fact, the usage of ‘communism’ as a disparaging
label not only is a lasting effect of Cold War legacies, but also is connected to the
long-lasting legacies of fascism and imperialism, legacies that have resurfaced after
1989 within revisionist historiography.14
In the following sections I focus on transnational encounters between antifascist
Italian and Yugoslav women who were leaders of the UDI and of the AFŽ between
1945 and 1957, in three different political phases and constellations.15 While focusing
on transnational encounters, I also refer to the way in which geopolitical changes
affected women’s organising in the multi-ethnic Italian–Yugoslav border area.
The formation of the AFŽ and UDI during the antifascist
Resistance (1941–45)
Both the AFŽ and the UDI were founded in the midst of the Second World War to
mobilise women in the struggle against Nazi-Fascism. The two organisations were
open to all women of antifascist belief, and were created mainly as part of the strategy
of ‘national fronts’ developed by the Yugoslav and the Italian communist parties
under the directives of the Soviet Union.16 As a result of women’s wide participation
in the conflict, Italian and Yugoslav women obtained the right to vote and to be
elected one year after the end of the war, in 1946.17
The Yugoslav AFŽ was founded in 1942 as part of the National Liberation Movement.
Its basic goal was to provide clothing, shoes and food supplies to the army. The first
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 61
national conference of the AFŽ took place in Bosanski Petrovac in December 1942,
and in November 1943, 243,000 women were reportedly members of the AFŽ in Croatia
alone. Officially, 2 million women had joined the organisation by the end of the war and
100,000 fought as partisans in the Liberation Front.18 In the immediate aftermath of
the Liberation, the AFŽ became very important, organising women’s reconstruction
work in a country left in ruins by four years of Nazi-fascist occupation and civil war.
The country was mainly rural, with great differences in wealth between the northwestern and south-eastern republics as well as between urban and rural areas. The
AFŽ councils ran hospitals, orphanages, schools, nursing and first-aid courses, and a
great number of alphabetisation courses for illiterate women in the rural areas.19
Women who had become politicised in the interwar period constituted the core of
the AFŽ leadership.20 This first generation of leaders (mostly in their thirties and
forties at the end of the war) was composed of outstanding women from all over
Yugoslavia, generally highly educated, mainly with an urban background, and born
within families that had a tradition of leftist engagement. They took part in illegal
communist activities in the 1930s, during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and often
joined legal women and youth organisations in the pre-war period. Many of these
women fought as partisans, and often had been imprisoned or tortured, or had
suffered terrible personal losses during the Second World War.21
Without having the same widespread character as in Yugoslavia, women’s participation in the struggle in northern Italy was nonetheless significant. According to
sources of the National Association of Italian Partisans, there were 35,000 female
partisans enrolled in the partisan brigades; 20,000 ‘patriots’, with auxiliary functions;
and 70,000 women organised by the Gruppi di difesa della Donna e per l’assistenza ai
Combattenti della Libertà (Groups for the defence of women and for the assistance to
freedom fighters, GDD). The GDD was created in November 1943 in Milan at the
initiative of the Communist Party, but also included women from other political
currents (Liberal, Socialist, Christian-Democrat and Action party).22
On 12 September 1944, in liberated Rome, women leaders belonging to different
political parties (Communist, Socialist, Christian-left) met under the form of a temporary
steering committee and launched an appeal for the creation of a unitary association of
women, the UDI, with the idea of unifying antifascist women of different political
backgrounds, as well as antifascist women in northern and southern Italy. Later, and
not without some resistance, the northern GDD merged with the UDI, which
became a nationwide organisation. The UDI had 400,000 members in 1945, and
grew to approximately 1 million members in the late 1940s.23
The UDI leadership included two generations of militants in 1945: one was the
generation of older communist women, who had experienced antifascism, clandestine
activities and exile in France or the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s; the other was
the generation of younger antifascists who had joined the Resistance after 1943. As
for the ‘base’ of local militants, it included many women who had suffered extreme
social injustice as workers and peasants and political repression under Fascism, as well
as personal losses as wives and mothers during the war. They found a way to express
their discontent and to organise through the GDD and UDI. From 1945 onwards,
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62 Transnational women’s activism
UDI women were engaged in the urgent tasks of reconstruction, assistance to destitute children and war orphans, fighting for equal salaries for female workers and
peasants, and organising welfare provision for working mothers and housewives. UDI
leaders also played an important role in getting the Constituent Assembly to pass
women’s equal right to vote and to be elected.24
The AFŽ, UDI and the ‘Yugoslav example’ (1945–48)
In 1945, immediately after the Liberation, both the UDI and the AFŽ had their
founding Congresses. In late November–early December 1945, the UDI and AFŽ
took part in the Paris founding meeting of the Women’s International Democratic
Federation. Already in 1945, however, it was evident that the geopolitical situation in
Italy and Yugoslavia was very different, and that the destiny of left-wing forces was
deeply tied to their respective geopolitical positions within the new West/East
spheres of influence. While the Yugoslav Communist Party managed to liberate the
country with very limited external support, and to seize power with little opposition
from the side of the Allies, the Italian Communist Party belonged to an antifascist
national unity government, and had to take into account the large-scale presence of
Anglo-American troops on Italian soil, which made any revolutionary effort too
risky, even potentially leading to civil war, as in Greece.25
The situation was particularly complicated in the border area between Italy and
Yugoslavia, affected by old and new ideological and national divisions. This area, and
particularly the city of Trieste, previously under Fascist occupation, was liberated in
May 1945 by the Yugoslav Army, and placed since June 1945 under the Allied
Military Government (AMG).26 The territories of Istria and Dalmatia, annexed by
Italy in 1919, were liberated from Nazi-fascist occupation by the Yugoslav Army, and
definitively assigned to socialist Yugoslavia by the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947.
Between 200,000 and 350,000 ethnic Italians – as well as Slovenes and Croats – left
Istria for fear of reprisals by Yugoslav partisans, in what came to be known in Italy as
the Istrian exodus.27 The pro-Italian and conservative press opposed the Slavic rule of
formerly Italian lands, emphasised the cruelty of Partisans’ retaliations, and strove to
portray Trieste as ‘a bulwark of democracy and of Western civilisation’ in the
Mediterranean.28 On the other hand, working-class Slovenes, Croats and Italians
welcomed the Yugoslavs as liberators, and favoured the idea of Trieste becoming the
‘seventh’ Yugoslav Socialist Republic, following the Yugoslav government’s claim
over the city. Pro-Yugoslav associations spoke of Italo-Yugoslav brotherhood and
emphasised the joint effort of all antifascists in the area. They included the Unione
ˇ
Donne Anti-fasciste Italo Slovene/Slovensko-italijanske antifašisticne ženske zveze (Union of
Antifascist Italian and Slovenian Women, UDAIS/SIAŽZ),29 created in August 1945,
which affiliated the Italian Donne Antifasciste Triestine (Antifascist Women of Trieste, DAT)
ˇ
and the Slovene Antifašisticki Front Žena (Antifascist Women’s Front, AFŽ) of Trieste.
However, the leadership of the Italian Communist Party resented post-war Yugoslav
hegemony over the Triestine leftist movement, as well as Yugoslav’s leaders’ plan to
annex Trieste. Other conflicting issues were the presence of Italian war prisoners still
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 63
detained in Yugoslavia, as well as the protection the Italian government and Allied
troops offered to Italian Fascist and local collaborators who had committed war
crimes during the occupation of the Balkans. The internationalist engagements of the
Yugoslav and Italian communist parties, therefore, were at odds with reciprocal
national interests, and with the attempt of each communist party to legitimate itself
not only in internationalist but also in patriotic terms.30
The first post-war encounters between Italian and Yugoslav women must be
placed within this complex framework of antifascist solidarity and internationalism,
and potential national and ethnic conflicts due to the historical legacies of Fascism and
the Second World War. A delegation of four Italian women from the UDI attended
the first national AFŽ congress in June 1945 in Belgrade. Jole Lombardi, an UDI
member from the socialist party, assured the Yugoslav comrades ‘that the Italian
people and the Italian women are sincerely antifascist’.31 During the first national
UDI congress, held in Florence in October 1945, a representative of the UDAIS of
Trieste32 reminded her audience that Slovene and Italian women faced the gallows
together, and helped fighters of all nationalities as mothers, spouses and sisters. She
also stressed the positive aspects of the Yugoslav liberation of Trieste, against the
allegations of the pro-Italian press, which described the presence of the Yugoslav
Army as a fate worse than the German occupation.33
The theme of motherhood as a basis for antifascist solidarity and struggle for peace
would be a constant of WIDF campaigns in the early Cold War years, coexisting
with images of women as Resistance fighters and heroes, bravely facing enemy trials
and torture. When looking at the names and biographies of women who were
sentenced by the Fascist Tribunale Speciale, it is evident that many came from the
multi-ethnic areas of Trieste, Fiume and Pola. For Slovenian and Croatian women,
antifascist resistance coincided with the patriotic struggle for national recognition, against
twenty years of Fascist domination of Slavic national minorities in the border area.34
Even before official encounters between UDI and AFŽ women, the echo of
Resistance struggles in Yugoslavia and within the Italian–Yugoslav border area had
reached Italian antifascists. Marisa Rodano, UDI leader and antifascist militant in
Nazi-occupied Rome during her youth, for example, recalled an encounter with a
group of Slovene girls while in prison, and in particular her sense of ‘unconditional
admiration: they, they were the real revolutionaries, they ran the risk of the death penalty
and had done important things for the cause’.35 The ‘Yugoslav example’ thus had a strong
influence on Italian antifascists – including women – in the immediate years after the
conflict.36 The Yugoslav partisans started to fight much earlier, and had managed to
successfully liberate the country and to establish a revolutionary socialist government
afterwards. Moreover, the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement – differently
from the Italian Resistance groups – was keen to glorify its female partisan heroes,
and to emphasise that the fight for liberation had brought women’s full equality.37
Along these lines, a letter sent by Pina Palumbo, from the UDI National Directive
Committee, to the AFŽ Central Committee in February 1946 after a visit to Yugoslavia
stated: ‘We, Italian women, have a lot to learn from you since, despite the great
sacrifices of our glorious partisan struggle, fascism, internal capitalism and American
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64 Transnational women’s activism
imperialism still dominate in our country; so with your example we must work and
strenuously fight in order to end this forever.’38 The idea that the revolutionary Slovene
women could be an example for their Italian sisters was also present in 1945 UDAIS
documents from Trieste and Monfalcone, which portrayed Slovene women as more
‘mature and more experienced in the struggle’, and closer to the emancipated Soviet
women.39 The ideal of fratellanza Italo-Slovena, Italo-Slovene brotherhood, moreover, was
supposed to overcome ethnic and national tensions that persisted on the ground.40
The strength of the Yugoslav ‘example’ is also proved by some plans for summer
trips to Yugoslavia made by the UDI in summer 1948. Around ninety UDI members
were to be selected for the travel, and the leadership asked each UDI section to
choose the right representatives: ‘representatives of a factory, or of an agricultural
firm, and anyway [ … ] worthy of the highest trust from all the workers, for their
morality and their merits’. The reason was that the ‘Yugoslav friends have the desire
to receive mainly female workers from the basis (factory workers, peasants, teachers,
clerks), the most interested in [women’s] labour rights in Yugoslavia’.41 On their side,
as their texts show, the AFŽ leaders were keen to present themselves as successful
followers of Soviet-style emancipation.42
But these summer trips to Yugoslavia never took place: on 28 June 1948, the
Cominform – the Communist Information Bureau founded in September 1947 and
affiliating the communist parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania,
Italy, France and Yugoslavia under the direction of the Soviet Union – published its
infamous ‘Resolution’ against the Yugoslav Communist Party, and Yugoslavia was
expelled from the Socialist Bloc.43
After the Cominform Resolution (1949–54)
Recent studies on the basis of Soviet archives have substantially confirmed the main
motives behind the Cominform Resolution of June 1948, which marked the beginning
of the Soviet–Yugoslav conflict and had a number of consequences in the rest of the
Soviet satellite states: Stalin could barely tolerate the Yugoslavs’ attempt to annex
Trieste and their open support of communist forces in the Greek Civil War, and felt
challenged by Tito’s plan to create an independent Balkan Federation, together with
Albania and Bulgaria.44 The split with the Soviet Union has been the key factor
determining Yugoslavia’s unique geopolitical position between the two blocs, and its
subsequent foreign politics of Non-Alignment with either side.
Following the Second Cominform Resolution of November 1949, which definitively
excluded the Yugoslav Communist Party from the socialist bloc, the Antifascist
Women’s Front of Yugoslavia was expelled from the W IDF, which was aligned by
then on Soviet foreign politics.45 One astonishing example of how previous internationalist discourses could be reversed is Spanish Pasionaria Dolores Ibarruri’s speech
at the WIDF Moscow Council of November 1949:
Those who were included as representatives of Yugoslav women no longer
participate in [the Council’s] work. If they are gone, it’s because under their
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 65
mask of antifascists they were hiding their true face of deceitful, vile spies and
creatures of fascist leaders. Even in the era of the Yugoslav people’s liberation
´
war against the Nazi invaders, these ‘representatives’, Mitra Mitrovic and Vida
´
Tomšic, were agents of the Gestapo and of the Italian police.46
The Cominform declarations, in fact, did not target the Yugoslav people as a whole,
but instead appealed to the ‘masses’ (occasionally to ‘women’) and incited them to
overthrow their illegitimate representatives.47
The split reverberated most strongly within the Yugoslav Federation, where a
number of antifascist militants and leaders sided with the Soviet Union. The pro-Soviet
attempts to overthrow the Yugoslav leader general Tito did not succeed, however,
but were followed within Yugoslavia by a violent wave of political repression, often
indiscriminate, against alleged ‘IBeovci’ – followers of the Cominform (Inform Bureau,
IB). Thousands of party members and former partisans, men and women, were
arrested and sent to prison camps, notably to the infamous island of Goli Otok.48
Many Italian workers and militants residing in zone B and in Yugoslavia, faithful to
the Soviet Union, were incarcerated as well, and so were many women identified as
wives, sisters and mothers of the ‘enemy’.49 On the other side of the border, the
Italian Communist Party (PCI) broke its relations with the Yugoslav party and
diffused Cominform propaganda against ‘Tito-fascism’ – albeit in a less violent form
than other European communist parties.50 In 1951 the PCI expelled two prominent
leaders from Emilia-Romagna – Valdo Magnani and Aldo Cucchi – and accused
them of being ‘Titoist traitors’.51
The polarisation was particularly fierce in the border area, where ideological
tensions overlapped with pre-existing national and political ones, and where proCominform, anti-Tito activities often coincided with patriotic agendas, and with the
goal to maintain Trieste within Italian borders.52 In the Free Territory of Trieste53
´
the communist forces were divided between pro-Tito forces led by Branko Babic,
and pro-Cominform forces led by Vittorio Vidali (both groups included Italian and
Slovene militants).
Although we don’t have enough research yet, there are hints that women’s
organisations were an active component of these struggles, and that, in turn, these
ideological struggles deeply affected the lives of women who were engaged in politics,
particularly in the Italo-Yugoslav border area.54 Similarly to what was happening
among Triestine communists, after the Cominform Resolution the UDAIS was divided
between a pro-Tito UDAIS, which retained the old name, and a pro-Cominform
Unione Donne Democratiche (Union of Democratic Women, UDD). The two rival
organisations tried to gather support from worker and peasant families through, for
example, competing over social work activities such as the organisation of summer
colonies or the distribution of presents to children for Christmas.55
The AFŽ was also clearly ‘embedded’ in the struggle against Cominform supporters
on the Yugoslav territory: a 1949 Resolution by the AFŽ Central Committee
instructed militants on the necessity to ‘actively unmask those among women who
are kulak, war-kulak and Inform Bureau spokespersons’.56 The AFŽ leadership also
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66 Transnational women’s activism
promoted numerous ‘popularising’ meetings across the country in which women were
instructed about the WIDF’s unjust behaviour towards Yugoslavia, and encouraged
to send letters of protests. Conversely, UDI leaders followed the WIDF decision, and
as a national branch of the Federation broke off their relations with Yugoslav representatives. Similarly to the AFŽ leadership, UDI and PCI leaders also expressed
concern about the presence of possible dissidents within their organisations.57
At the same time, AFŽ and UDI reports on the Cominform controversy suggest
that most of the local militants (peasant women, factory workers and housewives) were
scarcely interested in ideological debates, or did not seem to understand the core of
the dispute. The main reason for this ‘lack of interest’, particularly in Yugoslavia, was
probably the fear of political repression, and of being imprisoned for having said
´
something ‘wrong’.58 Dissident and former prisoner Eva Grlic reported in her memoirs that politicised teachers, journalists, party officers and factory workers were
detained in the female section of the prison island of Goli Otok, but also some simple
peasants who had no notion of politics whatsoever.59
AFŽ and UDI leaders’ concern with geopolitical conflicts and with the application
of the correct party line, against the ‘lack of interest’ or ‘passivity’ of the militants
from the base, seems to indicate that a separation between ‘women’ and ‘communist’
agendas, or the vision of ‘communist women’ as manipulated, is misleading. Instead,
we need more studies on women’s different political loyalties, and on the different
roles they played within Cold War ideological conflicts, notably when they occupied
leadership positions.
De-Stalinization and reconciliation efforts (1955–57)
After the death of Stalin in March 1953, and the London Memorandum between
Italy and Yugoslavia in 1954 (assigning Trieste to Italy), tensions started to ease
between the Italian Communist Party and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.
But it was only after the first sign of Soviet–Yugoslav reconciliation (manifested
through Khrushchev’s trip to Belgrade in June 1955) that contacts between the Italian
and the Yugoslav communist parties were re-established. They increased after the
epochal Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which
Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s crimes and introduced his new line of ‘peaceful coexistence’ between the socialist and the capitalist bloc, as well as the idea that different
forms of transitions to socialism were possible. The infamous Cominform was also
dissolved in 1956. PCI secretary Palmiro Togliatti and communist MP and member
of party leadership Luigi Longo visited Yugoslavia during 1956, apologised for past
errors and praised the Yugoslav way to socialism, in order to argue for a similarly
autonomous strategy in the Italian context.60 From 1957 onwards, the Italian and
Yugoslav communist parties had regular bilateral relations and exchanged delegations
(of political leaders, trade unions, and communist youth).61
Women’s organisations were also fast in re-establishing connections: in April 1956
two Yugoslav delegates attended the Fifth UDI Congress; in that same month, during
the WIDF Council in Beijing, WIDF president Madame Eugénie Cotton proposed
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 67
to readmit the Yugoslav women’s organisation.62 The UDI delegation present at the
WIDF Beijing Council supported this proposal, noting that the UDI already had
‘friendly relations’ with the Yugoslavs and aimed at further collaboration in the
future. The representatives from Yugoslavia, however, declined the offer to re-enter
the WIDF. Nonetheless, they accepted to participate in further congresses as observers,
and to cooperate on specific issues of common interest.63 In line with Tito’s foreign
politics of non-alignment, Yugoslav women were keen to establish a number of
bilateral relations with European, Asian and African organisations, and to foster the
line of autonomous ‘national ways to socialism’ within international organisations
such as the WIDF.
From 13 to 15 September 1957, an UDI delegation travelled to Ljubljana, capital
of the Republic of Slovenia. The delegation members’ high positions make evident
that this encounter was supposed to seal a new epoch of bilateral relations: UDI
President Marisa Rodano, secretary-general Rosetta Longo, national secretary Giuliana
Nenni and WIDF vice-president Maria Maddalena Rossi were part of the group.
WIDF secretary general Carmen Zanti was supposed to be present but in the end did
not attend the meeting. Note the presence of women involved at high levels in the
WIDF, and of both socialist and communist women.64 The Yugoslav delegation
was equally composed of the highest representatives, belonging to the Directive
Committee of the Savez Ženskih Drustava (Union of Women’s Societies, SŽD),
which had replaced the AFŽ since 1953, and other important organisations. Included
´
were Vida Tomšic, member of the SŽD Directive Committee, federal deputy,
member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
(LCY) and secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Communists (LC) of
Slovenia; Mara Naceva, SŽD vice-president, federal deputy and secretary of the
Control Commission of the Central Committee of the LCY; Milka Kufrin, member
of the SŽD Secretariat, federal deputy and president of the Association of Yugoslav
cooperatives; Blaženka Mimica, member of the secretariat of the Association for the
Protection of Childhood of Yugoslavia; Dr Aleksandra Janda Ðuranovic, secretary of
´
the Association of Women Graduates; Marija Šoljan-Bakaric, secretary of SŽD
Croatia; Angelca Ocepek, president of SŽD Slovenia, deputy of Slovenia, member of
´
the Central Committee of the Slovene LC; Olga Vrabic, federal deputy, member
´
of the Executive Committee (government) of Slovenia; Ada Krivic, president of the
Association of the Friends of Childhood, deputy and member of the Slovene
Executive Committee; Meta Košir, member of the Directive Committee of SŽD
Slovenia and director of the magazine Nasa Žena (Our Woman); Majda Gaspari,
¸
secretary for the Commission of work among women in the Alliance of the Working
´
People (ASPL) of Slovenia; Jelica Maric, member of the SŽD secretariat.65
Despite the reconciliation, however, women’s transnational and inter-ethnic cooperation was not always easy. The situation in the border area, in particular, remained tense.
As mentioned earlier, the Cominform Resolution had split left-wing organisations in
the Italo-Yugoslav border area. In 1955, after years of violent rivalries with the
Titoists, many Triestine communists – including the leaders of the UDD – were not
ready to accept the reconciliation between Yugoslavia and the rest of the socialist
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68 Transnational women’s activism
bloc. Many Triestine communists had welcomed the Cominform Resolution. The
Soviet denunciation of Yugoslav leaders as ‘nationalists’, in fact, was in conformity
with their everyday experience of Yugoslav hegemony over the leftist forces in the
border area. For many Italian militants living in Trieste, in particular, the Resolution
brought an end to Yugoslav hegemony and a return to the strategic line promoted by
PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti.66
Now the new Soviet line disowned the 1948 excommunication of Yugoslavia as a
Stalinist machination (plotted by the chief of the Soviet secret police, Beria), and
redeemed Tito and his collaborators. With an unprecedented gesture of insubordination against the PCI party line, the chief of Triestine communists Vittorio Vidali
made public in a local newspaper that he disagreed with Khrushchev’s declarations,
since ‘we supported that Resolution [ … ] with our documents, our sufferings, our
experiences, without the intervention of Beria or imperialist agents’.67 All Trieste
party leaders were asked to travel to Rome for a PCI Direction meeting, in which
they were harshly reprimanded for this gesture, and forced to publicly apologise.68
These shifts in the official ‘Truth’ promoted by the Soviet Union and by the
Italian Communist Party were also strongly resented by Triestine communist leader
Laura Weiss (1933–89). Laura Weiss was part of the local Jewish bourgeoisie, and had
been persecuted with her family since the Italian Fascist Race Laws of 1938. After the
war she was involved in the Trieste communist party and in trade unionism, together
with her father Ernesto, a natural scientist and teacher. Trained as a medical doctor,
Laura Weiss strongly engaged in social work and in struggles for women’s emancipation and antiracism. In 1949 she was elected as communist party representative for
the local council, and became a prominent figure in foreign politics, representing the
Partito Comunista del Territorio Libero di Trieste (Communist Party of the Free Territory
of Trieste, PCTLT) at different international meetings. She was also part of UDAIS,
and in 1949 was elected in the WIDF Council.69 Close to party boss Vittorio Vidali,
she became his partner, and after his death she was curator of his personal archive.70
In 1955 and in the following years, Laura Weiss could not come to terms with the
de-Stalinization process, nor with the new Soviet line about Yugoslavia. In 1956
she wrote to Vittorio Vidali that perhaps it was time for her to leave the party, since
‘[i]t is for me inconceivable that in the USSR there was a situation of such terror that
leaders can be exempted from responsibility of having accepted direction methods
that contrasted with our principles for 20 years [from 1936 till 1956], and that no one
raised his voice [ … ]. I am not satisfied with a way of acting that seems to say: now
that Stalin is dead [ … ] everything will be all right.’ She continued that the idea of a
‘politically useful’ truth – which included the new rehabilitation of Tito – had
become ‘unbearable’ for her, and that therefore she might leave the communist
party.71 In the end she stayed, but was somehow marginalised over the years, due to
her critical position towards the national PCI leadership based in Rome.
In 1960, Laura Weiss did resign from her position as UDD director, since she was
against the entry of a group of former ‘Titoist’ Slovene women – part of the feminine
section of the Unione Socialista Indipendente (Independent Socialist Union, USI) –
within the organisation.72 Already in 1960, Jole Deferri, representative of the UDD
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 69
in Trieste, wrote to the UDI leaders in Rome about the difficult reconciliation
between UDD and USI women, difficulties related to nationalist feelings.73 These
episodes indicate that despite the official reconciliation between Yugoslav and Italian
women’s organisations in the mid-1950s, specific national and ideological tensions
persisted in the border area of Trieste in the following years.
Conclusion
This article focuses on the relations between Italian and Yugoslav antifascist women’s
organisations from the immediate post-war period until 1957, thus providing a
reconstruction of the entangled history of women’s antifascism and internationalism
across Italo-Yugoslav borders. Challenging the negative, Orientalist coupling of
‘communism’ with the non-European, non-Western Other, it has retraced a common
European history of antifascism and internationalism, at the crossroads between East
and West. The transnational circulation of radical utopias and imaginaries across
Cold War borders was retold from the perspective of Italian and Yugoslav women’s
organisations.
During the Second World War and in the early Cold War period, a great number
of women in Italy and Yugoslavia engaged in discourses and practices of antifascism
and internationalism. By showing women’s political and strategic engagements at the
transnational, national and local levels, this study has demonstrated that left-wing
women’s organisations played an active role in Cold War geopolitical and ideological
struggles. Against the assumption that ‘communist’ women were deprived of agency,
the essay explored the ambivalent linkages between women’s history and Cold War
history, locating women’s agency within changing geopolitical and historical settings.
The transnational dimension of this study further showed that women’s international, national and local organising was entangled with multiple political loyalties.
Leaders of the Italian and Yugoslav women’s organisations played a crucial role in
negotiating between these multiple loyalties. Further research on women’s political
agency during the Cold War years, in my view, needs to investigate differences
between women, notably between those who acted as representatives of political
organisations, and the ‘masses’ of women who were represented (in the political and
in the symbolic sense). As I have tried to make clear, women’s internationalist organisations were not at all marginal, but rather crucial in the enactment of the multiple
alliances and divisions that were part of everyday Cold War politics.
Notes
1 G. Eley, ‘From welfare politics to welfare states. Women and the socialist question’, in
H. Gruber and P.M. Graves (ed.), Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women: Europe
between the Two World Wars, New York: Berghahn Books, 1998, p. 519.
2 For a similar historicization, see R. Jambrešic-Kirin, Dom I Svijet: O Zenskoj Kulturi
Pametnja [Home and the World: On Women’s Cultural Memory], Zagreb: Centar za ženske
studije, 2008, p. 213.
3 For a recent discussion of the ambivalent relation between socialism and feminism, see
the Forum in Aspasia, 1, 2007, 197–201.
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70 Transnational women’s activism
4 Eley, ‘From welfare politics to welfare states’, p. 542. See also N. Yuval-Davis, Gender &
Nation, London: Sage, 1997; G. Scott-Smith and H. Krabbendam (eds), The Cultural
Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, London: Frank Cass, 2003; P. Major and
R. Mitter (eds), Across the Blocs: Cold War Cultural and Social History, Portland: Frank
Cass, 2003; F. Gori and S. Pons, The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53,
New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996.
5 G. Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo–Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and
Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe, Albany: State University of New York Press,
2001, p. 1; C. Duchen and I. Bandhauer-Schöffmann (eds), When the War Was Over:
Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940–1956, London and New York: Leicester University
Press, 2000, p. 3.
6 H. Laville, Cold War Women: The International Activities of American Women’s Organisations,
Manchester, UK and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002, p. 5.
7 Duchen and Bandhauer-Schoffmann (eds), When the War Was Over, p. 1.
8 Laville, Cold War Women; K. Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the
Making of Women’s Liberation, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
9 F. de Haan, ‘Continuing Cold War paradigms in western historiography of transnational
women’s organisations: the case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation
(WIDF)’, Women’s History Review, 19(4), 2010, 547–73, p. 556.
10 Ibid.; see also L. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the
Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
11 For a discussion of post-1989 examples, see J. Pirjevec, Foibe: Una Storia D’Italia [Foibe:
An Italian History], Torino: G. Einaudi, 2009; P. Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and
Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003; see also
E. Collotti, ‘Sul Razzismo Antislavo [‘On anti-Slavic racism’]’ in A. Burgio (ed.), Nel
Nome Della Razza: Il Razzismo Nella Storia d’Italia 1870–1945 [In the Name of the Race:
Racism in the History of Italy, 1870–1945], Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999.
12 V. Foa, M. Mafai and A. Reichlin, Il Silenzio Dei Comunisti [The Silence of Communists],
Torino: Einaudi, 2002, p. 3.
13 C. Pavone, Una Guerra Civile. Saggio Storico Sulla Moralità Nella Resistenza [A Civil War.
A Historical Essay on Morality during the Resistance], Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2006.
About World War II as an ‘international ideological civil war’, see E. Hobsbawm, The
Age of Extremes, London: Michael Joseph, 1994, p. 144.
14 For an overview of the persistence of World War II’s divided memories in Europe after
1989, see J. W. Müller, Memory and Power in Post-war Europe. Studies in the Presence of the
Past, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. In Italy, right-wing revisionist discourses are entangled with previous forms of anti-Slavic racism or ‘frontier Orientalism’
that belong to the Italian nationalist and Fascist tradition. See again Ballinger, History in
Exile; Sluga, The Problem of Trieste; and S. Mihelj, ‘Drawing the east–west border: narratives of modernity and identity in the Julian region (1947–54)’, in T. Lindenberger,
M. Payk, B. Stover and A. Vowinckel (eds), European Cold War Cultures: Societies, Media,
and Cold War Experiences in East and West, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009.
15 All translations from Italian, Serbo-Croatian and French are mine. In this chapter I
cannot include the original quotations for reasons of space. The research is based on
original archival research in Italy and former Yugoslavia, notably: UDI Central Archive
and Gramsci Institute in Rome; Livio Saranz Institute and Slovenian National Library in
Trieste; the Archives of Yugoslavia in Belgrade; the Croatian National Archives in
Zagreb; and the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia in Ljubljana. It also includes semistructured oral history interviews and analysis of memoirs and official publications of
former AFŽ and UDI members.
16 For that strategy, see J. Barth Urban, Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: From
Togliatti to Berlinguer, London: I.B. Tauris, 1986, p. 156.
17 See A. Rossi-Doria, Diventare Cittadine: Il Voto Delle Donne in Italia [Becoming Citizens:
Women’s Vote in Italy], Firenze: Giunti, 1996; and I. Pantelic, Partizanke Kao Gradanke:
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Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 71
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Drustvena Emancipacija Partizanki U Srbiji, 1945–1953 [Female Partisans as Citizens: The Social
Emancipation of Partisans in Serbia, 1945–53], Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2011.
B. Jancar-Webster, Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945, Denver, CO: Arden
Press, 1990, pp. 143–44.
L. Sklevicky, ‘Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the case of post-revolutionary Yugoslavia’, in A. Angerman, G. Binnema, A. Keunen, V. Poels and J. Zirkzee
(eds), Current Issues in Women’s History, London and New York: Routledge, 1989. See also
L. Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi [Horses, Women, Wars], Zagreb: Ženska Infoteka, 1996.
Jancar-Webster, Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia, p. 48.
F. de Haan, K. Daskalova and A. Loutfi (eds), A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s
Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries,
´
Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2006; L. Perovic, Snaga
ˇ
licne odgovornosti [The Power of Personal Responsibility], Beograd: Helsinski odbor za ljudska
prava u Srbij, 2008.
See the website of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani Italiani, www.anpi.it/donnee-uomini; J. Slaughter, Women and the Italian Resistance, 1943–1945, Denver, CO: Arden
Press, 1997.
M. Rodano, Memorie di Una Che C’era: Una Storia dell’Udi [Memories of Someone Who
Was There: A History of UDI], Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2010, p. 20; M. Michetti,
M. Repetto and L. Viviani, Udi, Laboratorio di Politica Delle Donne: Idee e Materiali Per Una
Storia [UDI, Laboratory of Women’s Politics: Ideas and Materials for a History], Roma:
Cooperativa libera stampa, 1994.
F. Pieroni Bortolotti, ‘Introduction’, in Donne e Resistenza in Emilia Romagna: Atti Del
Convegno Tenuto a Bologna Il 13–14–15 Maggio 1977 [Women and the Resistance in EmiliaRomagna: Proceedings of the conference held in Bologna 13–14–15 May 1977], Vol. 1, Milano:
Vangelista, 1978. See also M. Casalini, Le Donne Della Sinistra: 1944–1948 [Women of the
Left: 1944–48], Roma: Carocci, 2005. About the post-war activities of the UDI, see W.
Pojmann, ‘“Join Us in Rebuilding Italy”: Women’s Associations, 1946–1963’, Journal of
Women’s History, 20(4), 82–104.
E.R. Terzuolo, Red Adriatic: The Communist Parties of Italy and Yugoslavia, Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1985.
In 1947, under the Italian–Yugoslav peace treaty, the Free Territory of Trieste (TLT)
was established. The AMG took over the administration of zone A of the TLT, including
the city of Trieste, while zone B was under Yugoslav military administration. In 1954 the
border between zone A and B became the border between Italy and Yugoslavia. See also
B.C. Novak, Trieste, 1941–1954: The Ethnic, Political, and Ideological Struggle, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 2.
Stuparich, quoted in Mihelj, ‘Drawing the east–west border’, p. 281.
UDAIS stands for the Italian name of the organisation, while SIAŽZ stands for its Slovenian
name. In this chapter I refer to the organisation using the Italian acronym, UDAIS.
See Terzuolo, Red Adriatic.
Jole Lombardi, 1 June 1945, I AFŽ Congress. Roma, Archivio Centrale (hereafter AC)
UDI, fondo DnM, 45.3 A.
Her name has been transcribed in the archive as ‘Marta Vemecic’, but probably this
should be Marija Bernetic, the late 1940s UDAIS leader. Intervention by ‘Marta
Vemecic’ [Marija Bernetic] at the First UDI Congress, 20–23 October 1945. Roma, AC
UDI, UDI Cronologico, B7, file 69. The Yugoslav delegation had been denied visas for
this UDI conference; women from UDAIS, that is, Slovene and Italian women from
zone A of the FTT, could participate.
See Sluga, The Problem of Trieste, p. 162.
See www.anpi.it/donne-davanti-al-tribunale-speciale
M. Rodano, Del Mutare Dei Tempi [On the Changing of Times], Vol. 1, Roma: Memori,
2008, p. 191.
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72 Transnational women’s activism
36 Yet the Yugoslav ‘example’ also contained an implicit reproach towards Italian
communists; see Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, p. 221.
´
37 For a reflection on the gendered imaginary of the Yugoslav Resistance, see R. Jambrešic
´
Kirin and R. Senjkovic, ‘Legacies of the Second World War in Croatian cultural
memory. Women as seen through the media’, Aspasia, 4, 2010, 71–96. For a comparable
reflection on the Italian case, see Casalini, Le donne della sinistra.
38 Pina Palumbo, comitato direttivo nazionale UDI, facsimile no. 9, page 96, in Le Front
Antifasciste des Femmes de Yougoslavie au sein du Mouvement International des Femmes, 1951,
IISG archive, Amsterdam.
39 Relazione del DAT del 25 agosto 1945, Arhiv Republike Slovenije (hereafter ARS),
ˇ
Ljubljana: Glavni odbor Slovansko-italijanske antifašisticne ženske zveze (Main Board of the
Slavic-Italian Anti-fascist Women’s Association), AS 1576, k. 2B.
40 UDAIS documents from 1945 to 1948 include references to everyday political and
national tensions (referred to as ‘sectarism’ or ‘sciovinism’) between Italian and Slovene
women engaged in the organisation; Ibid.
41 Letter of June 1948 by Baldina di Vittorio, Roma, AC UDI, fondo DnM 48. 3, file 6.
42 ‘Zapisnik sa sastanka CO AFŽ sa rukovodiocima propagandne sekcije i kulturno prosvjetnih otseka
Glavnih Odbora AFŽ’, 10 June 1948. Zagreb, Državni Arhiv – Fund AFŽ-KDAŽ – HR
HDA 1234–35-k. 58 – ‘Sjednice, Plenumi, Sastanci, 1946–59’, pp. 4–5.
43 See R. H. Bass and E. Marbury, The Soviet–Yugoslav Controversy, 1948–58: A Documentary
Record, New York: Prospect Books, 1959.
´
44 J. Perovic, ‘The Tito–Stalin split. A reassessment in light of new evidence’, Journal of Cold
War Studies, 9(2), 2007, 32–63.
45 Until spring 1949, the Soviet–Yugoslav rift seemed solvable, and Yugoslav leaders were
hoping to be readmitted into the socialist bloc. Only after the Second Cominform
Resolution of November 1949, defining the Yugoslav leaders as a gang of fascist assassins
and spies, was the split considered definitive.
46 ‘Conseil de la Fédération Démocratique Internationale des Femmes, Moscou 17–22
novembre 1949’, supplement de la revue La Femme Soviétique [Soviet Woman] no 6, 1949,
´
12. For a short biography of Vida Tomšic in English, see De Haan, Daskalova, Loutfi
(eds), A Biographical Dictionary, pp. 575–79.
47 See Bass and Marbury, The Soviet–Yugoslav Controversy.
48 I. Banac, With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988.
´
49 Jambrešic-Kirin, Dom i Svijet; G. Scotti, Goli Otok: Italiani Nel Gulag di Tito [Goli Otok:
Italians in Tito’s Gulag], Trieste: LINT, 1997.
50 According to Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, pp. 122–25, the PCI was slow and hesitant in
starting the campaign against Yugoslavia, perhaps because in July 1948 Togliatti himself
was seriously injured in an assassination attempt.
51 Ibid., pp. 139–43.
52 Ibid., pp.155–58. See also N. Troha, Chi avrà Trieste? Sloveni e italiani tra due Stati [Who
will get Trieste? Slovenes and Italians between two States), Trieste: IRLSM Friuli Venezia
Giulia, 2009.
53 See note 26.
54 Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, rarely mentions women’s organisations. About women’s mobilisations in relation to the Allied Military Government in Trieste, see Sluga, The Problem of
Trieste, pp. 111–32.
ˇ
55 ARS, Ljubljana: Glavni odbor Slovensko–italijanske antifašisticne ženske zveze, AS 1576,
k. 3, 2d.
ˇ
ˇ
56 Resolucija o Narodnim Zadacima Treceg Plenuma CO AFŽ Jugoslavije Održanog 4 i 5 Juna
1949 u Beogradu. Zagreb, Državni Arhiv – Fund AFŽ-KDAZ – HR HDA 1234–35-k.
58-’Sjednice, Plenumi, Sastanci, 1946–59.
57 See, for example, Verbale della riunione della commissione femminile del 26–27 gennaio 1950,
Fondo Mosca, busta 233 fascicolo 17 – sezione femminile 1949–50, Istituto Gramsci, Roma.
�Template: Royal A, Font: ,
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Dir: //integrafs1/KCG/2-Pagination/TandF/WNAM/ApplicationFiles/9780415535755.3d
Cold war internationalisms and nationalisms 73
58 For a brilliant illustration, see Emir Kusturica’s movie When Father Was Away on Business
(1985), based on an autobiographical scenario of Abdulah Sidran, whose father had been
deported to Goli Otok.
´
59 E. Grlic, Memorie da un Paese perduto. Budapest. Sarajevo. Zagabria [Memories from a lost
land. Budapest. Sarajevo. Zagreb], Milano: Scheiwiller, 2005. The original edition in
´
Croatian, Sjecanja [Remembrances], is from 1997.
60 Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, pp. 181–90.
61 Ibid., pp. 165–203.
62 Quoted in Women of the Whole World (journal of the WIDF), no. 7, 1956, 10–11 (IISG
collection, Amsterdam).
63 Ibid., no. 12, 1956, 14.
64 Giuliana Nenni and Rosetta Longo were part of the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian
Socialist Party, PSI). On the meaning of this, see further Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, p. 199.
65 Correspondence AFŽ-UDI of July–August 1957. Roma, AC UDI, fondo DnM, 53.3–22,
f. 9, 1957.
66 See Terzuolo, Red Adriatic, pp. 146–47. About the different strategies of the Italian and
Yugoslav communist parties after 1945, and about their clash in Trieste, see P. Karlsen,
Frontiera Rossa. Il PCI, il Confine Orientale e il Contesto Internazionale 1941–1955 [Red
Frontier: The PCI, the Oriental Border, and the International Context, 1941–55], Gorizia:
Editrice Goriziana, 2010.
67 Vittorio Vidali, ‘Le dichiarazioni del compagno Kruscev ed i comunisti triestini’, Il
Lavoratore, 30 May 1955; see also Longo’s reply in L’Unità, 1 June 1955.
68 PCI Secretariat meetings of 7 and 8 June 1955. Fondo Mosca, Verbali Segreteria 1944–48,
MF194, Istituto Gramsci, Roma.
69 A. Andri, T. Catalan, S. Urso and A. Verrocchio, Le Carte dei Weiss. Una Famiglia tra
Ebraismo e Impegno Politico [The Weiss Papers. A Family between Jewishness and Political
Engagement], Trieste: Istituto Livio Saranz/La Mongolfiera Libri, 2007.
70 M. Passi, Vittorio Vidali, Pordenone: Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1991, pp. 90–91.
71 Quoted in Andri et al., Le Carte dei Weiss, pp. 117, 147. The original letter is deposited at
the Laura Weiss fund, f44, d961, Istituto Livio Saranz, Trieste.
72 Letters reproduced in Andri et al, Le Carte dei Weiss, pp. 148–50.
73 Jole Deferri (Unione Donne Democratiche/Zveza Demokraticnih Zena) to Comitato di Presidenza
UDI, 6/5/1960. Roma, AC UDI, fondo DnM, 60-3-27, f. 9.
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�
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Cold War Internationalisms, Nationalisms and the Yugoslav-Soviet Split: The Union of Italian Women and the Antifascist Women's Front of Yugoslavia - The Union of Italian Women and the Antifascist Women's Front of Yugoslavia - Chiara Bonfiglioli
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Women’s Activism brings together twelve innovative contributions from feminist historians from around the world to look at how women have always found ways to challenge or fight inequalities and hierarchies as individuals, in international women’s organizations, as political leaders, and in global forums such as the United Nations.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one, brings together four essays about organized women’s activism across borders. The chapters in part two focus on the variety of women’s activism and explore women’s activism in different national and political contexts. And part three explores the changing relationships and inequalities among women.
This book addresses women’s internationalism and struggle for their rights in the international arena; it deals with racism and colonialism in Australia, India and Europe; women’s movements and political activism in South Africa, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh), the United Kingdom, Japan and France. Essential reading for anyone interested in women’s history and the history of activism more generally
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Chiara Bonfiglioli
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Women's Activism Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present Edited by Francisca de Haan, Margaret Allen, June Purvis, Krassimira Daskalova, www.academia.edu
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Routledge
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2013.
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Routledge, Chiara Bonfiglioli
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English
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12-IR
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pages 69-73
Antifascist Front of Women
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Cold war
Internationalism
Nationalism
The Union of Italian Women
Union of Italian Women
Womens' Front
Yugoslav-Soviet Split
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/d192ff602882df6645a8bb15398f1ddb.pdf
9514dfa26f1fdb9d8f98f6d818c364d5
PDF Text
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�The Hungarian Historical Review
New Series of Acta Historica
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
Volume 5
No. 4
2016
1956 and Resistance in East Central Europe
Péter Apor, Sándor Horváth
Special Editors of the Thematic Issue
Contents
Articles
Árpád von Klimó
1956 and the Collapse of Stalinist Politics of History:
Forgetting and Remembering the 1942 Újvidék/
Novi Sad Massacre and the 1944/45 Partisan
Retaliations in Hungary and Yugoslavia (1950s–1960s)
739
Jan C. Behrends
Rokossowski Coming Home: The Making and Breaking
of an (Inter-)national Hero in Stalinist Poland
(1949–1956)
767
Gábor Danyi
Phantom Voices from the Past: Memory of the 1956
Revolution and Hungarian Audiences
of Radio Free Europe
790
In the Pull of the West: Resistance, Concessions and
Showing off from the Stalinist Practice
in Hungarian Culture after 1956
814
Unspectacular Destalinization: the Case
of Slovak Writers after 1956
834
“Mainstreaming” and “Disengagement”:
The Possibilities for Resistance,
Critical Opposition and Dissent
854
Róbert Takács
Juraj Marušiak
http://www.hunghist.org
HHR2016_4.indb 1
2016.11.29. 15:41:55
�Contents
Book Reviews
Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a Comparative Context. By Cameron Sutt.
Reviewed by János M. Bak
882
Koldulórendi konfraternitások a középkori Magyarországon (1270 k. – 1530 k.)
[Mendicant confraternities in medieval Hungary (ca. 1270 – ca. 1530)].
By Marie Madeleine de Cevins. Reviewed by Beatrix F. Romhányi
885
[The Teutonic Order in Prussia: Changes in population and settlement pattern].
Reviewed by Benjámin Borbás
888
Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Resolution.
Edited by Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey. Reviewed by Emese Muntán
892
Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul.
By E. Natalie Rothman. Reviewed by Tamás Kiss
895
Setting the Precedent. By Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla.
Reviewed by Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
898
By Robert Nemes. Reviewed by Bálint Varga
902
Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State since
Zionists in Interwar Czechoslovakia: Minority Nationalism and the Politics
The Invisible Jewish Budapest: Metropolitan Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle.
Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler.
By Stefan Ihrig. Reviewed by Péter Pál Kránitz
HHR2016_4.indb 2
916
2016.11.29. 15:41:55
�Contents
Szálasi Ferenc: Politikai életrajz [Ferenc Szálasi: A political biography].
The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust:
The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union.
By Diana Dumitru. Reviewed by Vladimir Solonari
924
By Marcin Zaremba. Reviewed by Markus Krzoska
929
HHR2016_4.indb 3
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�Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 4 (2016): 854–881
Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism between
“Mainstreaming” and “Disengagement”: The Possibilities
for Resistance, Critical Opposition and Dissent1
Through a focus on early publications by feminist intellectuals in Yugoslavia during the
practice of women’s emancipation in the context of a state socialist (in this case selfmanaging socialist) country in East Central Europe. After a brief overview of feminist
organizing in Yugoslavia until the late 1980s, this paper looks at conferences and journal
publications, which also provides the opportunity to better understand the workings of
the Yugoslav public space and publishing processes. The text, written with a conceptual
and intellectual historical focus, analyzes the discursive interventions and reformulations
of matters related to women’s emancipation. The new Yugoslav feminist approaches
feminism in North America and Western Europe, feminists in Yugoslavia searched for
in its own context.
“Criticism of the family and marriage […] is already the criticism of the
2
This sentence reveals the essential
role of feminism in post-Second World War East Europea[n socialist states,
which, however, was an underrepresented discourse amid the variety of dissent,
dissidence and countercultural criticism. The close reading of the work of
feminists during the 1970s and 1980s in Yugoslavia, where feminism reappeared
in a semi-organized form and with a wide range of activities—from intellectual
discussion through artwork to explicit political activism—tells us a lot about the
History of Feminism in Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s,” submitted and defended at the Central
European University in 2015. I also rely extensively on my articles “‘Nem osztálykérdés, nem biológiai
meghatározottság.’ A feminista ellenzék elméleti keretei a Tito alatti Jugoszláviában” and another one
entitled “New Feminist Identity and Politics through Conceptual Transfers and Activist Inspirations in
Yugoslavia in the 1970–80s” in the collective volume edited by Joachim Haeberlen and Mark Szajbel Keck
(to be published in 2017).
854
HHR2016_4.indb 854
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
is relevant for the region of state-socialist Eastern Europe, while it also allows us
on the early, mostly academic, publications by feminists in Yugoslavia in order
to show some of the possibilities and actual meanings of feminist opposition
in the context of a socialist state. I argue that their activity is somewhere in
policies and self-organizing critical, external discourses and actions.3
My approach comes from intellectual and conceptual history. While
conceptual history focuses on the meanings of the texts through a contextual
reading, for feminist historiography, there is always an explicit political stake
in recovering events of the past. In my reading, the two support each other in
the sense that it is in the interest of feminist historiography to have meanings
of concepts central to certain recovered ideologies, while the contextualism
of intellectual history implicitly and often even explicitly subscribes to the
importance of the personal within the political. The strategies behind feminist
movements always necessarily involve an intervention with language and a
struggle for meanings, the reconstruction of which is the primary aim of
conceptual and intellectual history—which at the very same time respects the
importance of the role of the personal and the individual as well.
published (articles in newspapers, magazines, journals, as well as books) and
unpublished (primarily archival documentation of activist work), artworks and
videos, and also oral history interviews with the participants of the feminist groups.
I base my analysis on the work and discourse of the members of feminist groups
called
[Woman and Society] and their allies. I call the phenomenon
in focus new Yugoslav feminism. Some publications and some members of the
use the term “neofeminizam,” that is “new feminism”—a name that
not all participants, however, acknowledged. “New feminism” is also a general
name widely used to describe that version of feminism, which in its diversity
emerges in the 1960s in Western Europe and North America. This is what is
concepts of “ethical civil society” and “political society.” In that framework, which was applied to Central
European dissent by Alan Renwick, new Yugoslav feminism would be closer to political society in which
Problems
of Democratic Transition; Renwick, “Anti-Political or Just Anti-Communist?,” 287.
855
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�Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 4 (2016): 854–881
mostly known today as the “second wave,” another problematic term I will try
to avoid using, because it blends an at least 100-year-long complex history of
feminist movements and discourses into one “wave.”4 However, for the Yugoslav
feminists of the 1970s, the designation “new” refers to the pre-Second World
War feminist history of the country, and this conscious admittance of continuity
is important to highlight. The women and few men active in and around the
group throughout the almost 20 years in focus in this paper. The individual
stakes and life trajectories, the different intellectual approaches, the inherent
differences within the local scenes intellectually and in the actual infrastructures
make this a loose network, connected, however, by the shared fascination of a
The Return of Feminism
and a few university professors. As we can see from the interviews and from their
biographies, these women came from a rather homogeneous social background
and, with two exceptions, were from the same generation. This generation was
and were themselves very often active participants of the partisan movement.
Unlike their mothers, they were puzzled by the contradiction between the
promise of the regime and their own experience of their own emancipation.
5
about “what is happening to American women.”6 The interest, of course, was
not only in women in the United States: Europe and the “Third World” were on
the radar too, especially Italy, England, France, Germany and India.
4 Davis, Moving the Mountain, 27–28, and Hewitt, “Introduction,” 1–2.
5 Cf. Sharon Zukin about Praxis: “For several older members of this group, the collective odyssey in
dissent began in an unlikely way, in teenage heroism with the Partisans during World War II. […] They
Dissent and Nondissent in Yugoslavia,” 131.
856
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
The new feminists in Yugoslavia could explore the possibilities of a
They started with meetings in each other’s homes, which later moved
to the student centers and research institutes until they formed their own semiinstitutions with the foundation of the SOS helplines and the shelters. There
is a difference between the activities in the three major cities in which the
groups were organized. University seminars or talks took place
were
7
the
[Students’ Cultural and Art Center], was
countercultural and political groups, such the punk and green movements. The
straight or still closeted lesbian women worked together in the same group from
the beginning. In the mid-1980s, the lesbian members played an increasingly
new feminism was the SKC, the Students’ Cultural Center, where the director
of the Gallery of the SKC, later the director of the whole institution, was
conference in Yugoslavia took place in 1978. Many women joined the feminist
circles after attending this conference called
[Comradeess Woman: a New Approach].
This famous and canonical conference, however, was preceded by many
publications (already in 1972)8 and a lot of brainstorming, even feminist
presentations at the conferences organized by the state women’s organization, the
[Conference for the Social Participation of
9
In Belgrade, the SKC offered
a series of discussions, the tribine. The conferences (the 1978 international one
7 Even though most literature does not refer to Yugoslav self-managing socialism as “state socialism,” I
use the term to differentiate the political regimes in post-Second World War Eastern Europe from socialist
relevant for the entire region.
for feminist or proto-feminist discussions, though these were not related to the work of the new Yugoslav
and Dobos, “The Women’s Movement in Yugoslavia.”
857
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�Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 4 (2016): 854–881
in Belgrade, and then the Yugoslav feminist conferences in 1987, 1988, 1989
and 1990) and the summer schools at the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik
beginning in 1987 were attracting the largest audiences and opened up to
women who would otherwise not have attended the feminist meetings. After
1985, the small group meetings returned: these were a space in which personal
experiences were emphasized (very similar to the consciousness-raising groups
elsewhere) and the training groups for the SOS helplines for abused women
because of the SOS helpline and the activities around it, the feminists reached
a much wider audience, which could have even served as a basis for a wider
grassroots movement had the war not broken out. The women and few men in
the three cities cooperated very closely in the creation of these helplines, sharing
knowledge and experience.
During the early phase that is the focus of this paper, journal publications
and men could participate in the conferences and editorial work of the journal
[Woman]. As we shall see and as research shows, some of the women
indeed were dedicated to the betterment of women’s position in society, to such
an extent that they were willing to give space to the feminist ideas of young
women—ideas with which they themselves did not agree. This makes
an
interesting case study of inter-generational and inter-ideological encounters.
Meanwhile, the array of journals accepting feminist articles was extended
such as Pitanja [Questions],
[Our topics], Argumenti [Arguments], Ideje
[Ideas], Socijalizam u svetu [Socialism in the World], Republika [Republic], etc., and
in the 1980s Problemi [Problems] in Slovenia. The student journals Mladina in
Student and Vidici [Views] in Belgrade also provided important
forums for new feminist discussions, which is not by accident: the youth
organizations enjoyed relative freedom from state control in their activities.10
With time, the feminist articles reached a wider audience through newspapers and
weeklies, such as Danas [Today] and Start, as well as women’s magazines, such as
11
Bazar published in Belgrade, Svijet [World] in Zagreb and Jana
10 The reasons and explanations behind this widely repeated statement are explored in detail in the work
of Zubak, “The Yugoslav Youth Press (1968–1980).”
were: Svijet (published in Zagreb from 1953 to 1992);
(Belgrade, 1956 to 1993); Bazar
858
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
on the spectrum between the more serious
, which still followed the party
of which, such as Bazar and Svijet, occasionally did publish feminist articles). The
full picture of the feminist discussions, however, includes art, literature, as well
as literary and art theory, besides the academic discussions and the activist work.
Because of the curators at the SKC, art and literature were extensively present
among others.
The history of the new Yugoslav feminism has its own periodization, while it
was running parallel with the new or second wave feminisms in the “West” after
the beginnings in the early 1970s, which was characterised by private (kitchen
table) conversations and academic publishing, there was a turn around the years
1985–86, called a “second wave” by many, when group members wanted a
change in the work of the groups that would serve to focus more on activism
and consciousness-raising in small, women-only groups. The next phase in their
story started around 1990, when more and more new and much more diverse
groups were born out of the
circles and went in different directions.
These directions ranged from political and anti-war activism through a more
of feminist knowledge through the creation of women’s studies or gender
studies centers and departments at universities or parallel to them.12
is hard to compare to any other form of opposition in the region at the time.
While there is a temptation to attribute the phenomenon to the exceptionality
of Yugoslav self-managing socialism,13 the situation is more complex than that.
as the journals and magazines (those in various constellations) were working
under the umbrella of the SSRNJ [
–
(Belgrade, 1964 to 1990); Nada (Belgrade, 1975 to 1993 and re-launched in 2001); and Una (Sarajevo, 1974
, 78.
12 With regard to wartime, cf. eg.: Mladjenovic and Hughes, “Feminist Resistance to War and Violence
The Body of War
We Were Gasping for Air
Resisting the Evil;
Helms, Innocence and Victimhood; Miškovska-Kajevska, Taking a Stand in Times of Violent Societal Changes.
13 From the abundant literature on Yugoslav self-management, cf. Pavlowitch, Yugoslavia (esp. from p.
175); Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia; Mezei, et al. Samoupravni socijalizam.
859
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�Hungarian Historical Review 5, no. 4 (2016): 854–881
Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia].14 This, as I explain later
in this paper was, however, far from a complete freedom of the press, but
there were just enough cracks in the wall that a wide selection ideas, including
feminist ones, could reach the public. In addition to the legal and infrastructural
circumstances, there is a crucial source of historical inspiration that is also
part of the explanation: the large numbers of women involved in the partisan
movement,15
the basis this gave to the extensive emancipation of women after the Second
World War, which indeed did entail substantial societal change.16 (Although it
is beyond the scope of this paper, there is important current research on the
state violence exerted against women in Yugoslavia in addition to the literature
on women’s emancipation.)17 Besides these two factors, I would emphasize the
importance of contingency: that these women in the
groups met,
decided to like each other, decided to focus on feminism, decided to organize
the women-only discussion forums and made smaller- and larger-scale decisions
liberalism, deconstruction, Marxist revisionism, nationalism, to mention a few
despite the prevailing censorship, despite the lack of a partisan tradition and
despite the closed borders.18
Dissent, Resistance, Mainstreaming and Disengagement
The new Yugoslav feminists held a position vis-à-vis the state that was between
world’ and ‘second world’,” thus ignoring the ethical and aesthetic complexities
14 Thompson, Forging War, 13.
15 Wiesinger, Partisaninnen; Jancar-Webster, Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941–1945
and Yugoslav Partisans.
Women
.
Jugoslovenski feminizma.
Dom i svijet.
Political Thought and Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence.
860
HHR2016_4.indb 860
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
of socialist life.19 For various reasons, new Yugoslav feminism is a case par
excellence of the productive encounter of discourses. Engaging in a dialogue
feminists do not directly oppose the Yugoslav state, but see the place of women
there as constant opposition. The disappointment of this new generation of
young women is similar to the experience of the feminists in the United States
and Western Europe and this aspect should be constantly kept in mind when
we discuss the difference between the so-called East and the so-called West.
Despite the differences in the economic and political systems, the new feminist
movement and ideology was born out of a disappointment with the promises
of left politics, that is, with the socialist regime in Yugoslavia and the new left,
the civil rights movements and the anti-war movements in Western Europe and
North America.20
The new Yugoslav feminists learned about the situation of women in the West
and the criticism of existing democracies through the inner, feminist dissidence,21
thus they were inspired and critical of Western capitalist democracies at the same
time, unlike, for example, the liberal dissident groups in Central Europe. The
new Yugoslav feminism, as we shall see, voiced strict criticism through pointing
out the systemic nature of the oppression of women, thematizing women’s
women endure without the intervention of the system. Their claim is that the
state did not change the status quo, one of their conclusions being that once the
regime was built on patriarchy it became ideologically impossible for women to
I call the new feminist discourse in Yugoslavia a critical one, more similar
in its attempt to engage the state in a dialogue than refusing it per se as most
dissidence does. In the meantime, it makes sense to look at this new feminism
in light of dissenting discourses because of the dissenting status of feminism
elsewhere and because of the windows the dissidents themselves offer for
this.22 The new feminists in Yugoslavia did not publish in samizdat nor were
they imprisoned for their writings. However, they were in search of critical
19 Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, 9.
20 Cf. e.g., Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” and Sargent, ed., Women
and Revolution
i feminizma.”
21 Sparks, “Dissident Citizenship”; Graycar, ed., Dissenting Opinions. Also, cf. Crow, The Rise of the Sixties.
22 The political scientist Tihomir Cipek and the historian Katarina Spehnjak provide a list of all the
non-researched possible forms of “opposition,” “dissent,” “antipolitics” and “resistance” in the former
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or oppositional positions within the state’s mainstream. They created a micro
space in which nonconformist ideas could be discussed and critical thoughts
done despite the resistance of the institutions.
Sharon Zukin, looking at “possibilities of dissent” in Yugoslavia, argues
that “[i]n states that claim to operate on the basis of a Marxist ideology, there
is an enormous vulnerability to dissent because of the gap between theory and
practice. In capitalist states, dissent arises in more limited institutional contexts,
notably over the excesses of administrative agencies or the dishonesty of
executive authorities.”23 Zukin claims that due to the framework, the activity of
to East European dissidence. In the meantime, she also debates the “liberalism”
of the Yugoslav state, suggesting rather discussing different strategies of control,
such as creating a controlled space within the state: “neither self-management
nor market socialism is as central to Yugoslav development as the relatively
non-coercive strategies of labor mobilization and capital accumulation that the
leadership established in response to internal and external pressures beginning
in 1947 and 1948. And it is wrong to characterize these strategies as liberalism.”24
Even for critical intellectual positions, a publication in a scholarly journal or
25
Editors of journals
could also be dismissed by the “publisher” of the journal, i.e., the associations,
companies, social, political, educational and other specialized professional
institutions26 that were working under the umbrella of the SSRNJ.27
Besides the organizational aspect, according to the data provided by
Pedro (Sabrina) Ramet, 80 per cent of journalists were party members and the
regarding “freedom of criticism in various Yugoslav elites,” journalists tend to
Yugoslav member state of Croatia, and in their categorization, new Yugoslav feminism belongs under these
labels. Cipek and Spehnjak, “Croatia.”
23 Zukin, “Sources of Dissent and Nondissent,” 119.
24 Ibid., 120.
25 Cf. the dismissal of the Praxis professors, and in 1971, during the era of the so-called liberalization,
Saviours of the Nation; Miller, The
Nonconformists; and Gállos, Szlovéniai változások.
26 Zukin, “Sources of Dissent and Nondissent,” 122.
27 Thompson, Forging War, 13.
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be less critical than other groups of the Yugoslav decision-making élite.28 Part
of the explanation for this tendency lies in the highly political process of their
selection. Furthermore, there were annual reviews of the media products and
the supervising body, like the publisher’s councils under the authority of the
SSRNJ, which could issue warnings, impose penalties on editors, or even dismiss
them and the journalists who wrote articles the council found unacceptable. In
In the case of those newspapers, journals or magazines that were funded by the
SKJ or the SSRNJ, the end of funding meant the end of the medium as well, the
most famous example being the journal Praxis.29
The new Yugoslav feminists, therefore, did not face the same level of
persecution that the dissidents of Central European countries or the Soviet
Union did.30 On the other hand, there is barely any talk about the situation
of women in the work of dissidence in Central Europe and the Soviet Union:
they overlook the shortcomings of state socialism in this regard, which largely
East Central Europe have been raised by many authors.31 In countries that offer
a rich and compelling discussion of human rights, freedom of speech and social
justice, the violation of women in the private sphere and exclusion of women
from the public gets little attention, an issue that, with few exceptions, has not
been examined by existing scholarship until very recently. The new Yugoslav
feminist criticism of the state, although it was not a dissident group per se, but
something between cooperation and dissidence, helps us to understand what
would have been the opportunities in other East European countries to develop
a feminist dissidence. The case of new Yugoslav feminism explains to us how
the ambivalent emancipation offered by the state socialist regimes made it
impossible for dissidents who by the 1980s almost entirely gave up on Marxism
28 Robinson, Tito’s Maverick Media, 125.
29 Ramet, “The Yugoslav Press in Flux,” 110.
30 Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence; Csizmadia, A magyar demokratikus ellenzék; Ost, Solidarity and the Politics
of Anti-Politics; Pollack and Wielgohs, eds., Dissent and Opposition in Communist Eastern Europe; Skilling,
Samizdat and an Independent Society; Satterwhite, Varieties of Marxist Humanism; Shore, Caviar and Ashes.
We All Fought for
Freedom and Penn, Solidarity’s Secret.
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to relate to a feminism that had to at least partly acknowledge some of the
improvements in the situation of women in socialist countries.32
Investigating Possibilities of a Feminist Critique of Marxian Thought and
Yugoslav Socialism
Through their textual interventions, the new Yugoslav feminists not only
opposed the state, they also stretched the boundaries of the ways academia
thinks of itself and the ways the state presents the position of women in
Yugoslavia. Through the reading of new feminist texts from the United States
and Western Europe as well as critical Marxist texts from different schools of
thought and sometimes even through philosophy from India, the new feminist
discourse in Yugoslavia attributes new meanings to the concept of feminism
itself. Their political action in academic discussions is rather a discursive one:
balancing between disengagement and mainstreaming,33 they try to create a new
language to talk about women’s emancipation and the relations between men
feminism means, but also
the reconceptualization of consciousness, women’s universal experience, patriarchy, family,
work, “homosexuality,”34 the relationship between the private and the public as well
as the introduction of the concept of gender.
The theme of the relations between the communists and the women’s
movement is paradigmatic for the focus of the discourse, inasmuch that
leftist, Marxist and socialist feminisms from all over the world prevail in the
new Yugoslav feminist intertexts. This always linked the feminist discussions
to the broader frame of Yugoslav state socialist ideology. Both the context and
the audience, i.e., the community of the text’s implied readers (including the
fellow authors in this very issue of the journal Dometi [Throw], mostly from
32
About Marxism and what happens to it, cf. Miller, “Where Was the Serbian Havel”; Judt, “The
33
Briskin, “Feminist Practice,” 26, 29.
Probably no one even dreamed that the movement of people with a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/
name. In the research material, the most advanced texts make mention of gej [gay] and lezbejka [lesbian]
people, although the most common is homoseksualci [homosexuals]. Since the current position of the
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
the
group), support this interpretation. There is a debate about a
new approach (novi pristup
) in Yugoslavia,
which for the protagonists of my text is more or less explicitly the new feminism,
neofeminizam. In several introductions of journal special issues, the editors openly
it the negative examples that teach about paths not to be taken. Therefore, it is
Student in 1976
(cf. below), but also several articles in
and other journals, such as Argumenti
(publishing a documentation of the legendary 1978
conference)
Dometi “that
even today, in all societies to a smaller or greater extent, women are ‘second rate
citizens.’”35
pitanje), investigations of the ideas of the new feminism bring along a conceptual
replacement of the former with the latter. Texts started to emerge only in the
early 1970s: reports on the new feminist movement in the United States and
various countries of Western Europe, from time to time even South America and
emancipation in Yugoslavia, there are at least two parallel stories about feminisms
“elsewhere” with emphasis on the “new feminism.” Telling the story of new
feminisms in the world involves evaluation and therefore reveals the opinion of
the authors, in the manner of which these can be read as manifestos on behalf
of the authors. Especially in case of those Yugoslav new feminists who, either as
competing ideology for which the innocent-looking informative introductions to
the currents of “new feminism” in other countries proved to be a good strategy.
In exploring the different strategies aimed at gaining a place in the discourse
review on Italian feminism as an implicit programmatic text for the new
endeavors to understand the new feminist phenomena, the time being mature
36
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feminism is presented through the history of the Italian communists, which
bears many similarities to the history of Yugoslav communists. What makes
the text programmatic is the way the author makes an attempt to reconcile the
relationship between the women’s movement and the communists – in Italy.
the relationship of feminism and the communist party should take shape in
Yugoslavia. It does tell the story without explicitly pointing out the similarities,
though these similarities nevertheless stand out.
The article begins with the emphasis on the proletarian roots of the women’s
movement, which outweigh the traditions of the civil-rights-based bourgeois
Party of Italy (SPI), which in 1911 severed the ties with the bourgeois women’s
was otherwise also supported by the revolutionary feminists. The SPI’s argument
was that this issue did not concern either the class struggle or the working class
and thus the paths of the communists and the women’s movement parted for
along the recognition that there was need for a separate proletarian women’s
movement, because the working class is ruled by conservative prejudice against
women. However, not much changed in the interwar period, when the major
issue was the struggle against fascism and women’s emancipation was present
only as a remnant from the previous century (“instead of the swing of the
After the overview of the changes after the Second World War, including
the laws having been changed “in bourgeois society,” the patriarchal mentality
prevailed, proving to be the main barrier to women’s liberation (37). This
conclusion is followed by a positive evaluation of the appearance of neofeminizam
in Italy in the years 1968–69, which stemmed from the new left movements and
student protests, from the experience that even within the student movement
women face the same marginalization and discrimination. Feminism in Italy,
oppositional movement in relation to the
existing social order” as “masses of women, mostly young ones, cannot identify
with a single existing political party, not even in the left” (39, emphasis mine).
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�Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism
in other texts I analyze below, addressing the juxtaposition of “good” and “bad”
feminisms.
neofeminizam in Italy lay in highlighting
various topics, which repeatedly return as central concepts of the new Yugoslav
feminist discourse: women’s creativity in the arts and the humanities, the debates
about sexuality (in Italy mostly with regard to the right to contraception and
abortion), consciousness-raising – and through this, the relations between the
public and the private, domestic violence and sexual violence. The article ends
with the optimistic conclusion: “It is encouraging [to see] that all women with a
leftist orientation in Italy are in accord in their struggle, regardless of whether
they belong or do not belong to regular parties. Because they all belong to the
women’s movement in a broad sense. This way, today even communist women
with the closure about the success of the feminists, makes the reader think of
this as a path to follow.
The implied conclusions for the new Yugoslav feminism are manifold. The
argument that the roots of the women’s movement, both in the late nineteenth
in the worker’s movement and the in the political left in general addresses both
the state establishment and those who want to join the new groups and share
the ideas. Further elements of the analysis, which can be directly translated into
the current Yugoslav context, are those of the relations between the SPI and
the women’s movements in the interwar period and during the Second World
War, highlighting the parallel between the NOB (
–
[Alliance of the
Women’s Movements] and the feminist examination of the reasons for which
terms women’s movement and feminism throughout the article, here she makes a
distinction. To her, the two concepts are synonymous—women’s movements
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new feminism
along themes and concepts that are recurrently present in the Yugoslav case as
well.
The recognition of different women’s movements and, therefore, feminisms
leads to the description of the different currents of feminism through opposing
pairs in the early Yugoslav publications. These texts categorize feminism
according to the distinction between radical revolutionary women’s movements
(Marxist) and bourgeois movements, on the one hand, and extremist (radical,
hyper-feminist) movements as opposed to the moderate (socialist, Marxist)
movements on the other hand. The two oppositions are clearly contradict one
another and represent a certain socialist conservatism when it comes to selfexpression.
who lived both
joined the feminist group
, initiated a series of articles introducing
American feminism. The “series” ended after two articles and feminism as a
topic returns on the pages of
only in 1975 with the United Nations’ “Year
of Women” in 1975, which was followed by the “Decade of Women”, lasting
Happening to the American Woman?”37 Her claim is that she wants to demystify
the way this “socially-ideationally relevant phenomenon” (57) had been presented
in the media up to then. She emphasizes that new feminism is not only relevant
in the society in which it originates, alluding to the Yugoslav situation, and adds
that her aim is not to judge, rather to represent based on the work of other
researchers. Using analyses from economics and sociology, the author shows the
economic and social problems American women face, including employment
communist and capitalist modernized societies legitimizes feminist claims.
women in which the new Yugoslav feminists participated, Gordana Cerjanto information about new feminism in Yugoslavia. To her, this is the reason for
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feminist movement.”38 In this other publication from the same year, Cerjanin feminism.39 Summarizing the past ten years of American new feminism, she
politicize “the most human and most hidden spheres of human life–such as the
family, marriage, sexuality”(8).
Other authors approached American radical feminists with much more
caution. A selection of texts by the members of the
group was
published in a 1978 issue of Pitanja entitled “Women, or about Freedom.” The
issue claims to be about the
and not feminism, while most of the
provoking new theoretical-methodological framework based on a critical reading
Yugoslavia. The selection of authors is colorful and while she is dismissive
of Shulamith Firestone for her “extremeness,” “overvaluation of women’s
characteristics” and for overemphasizing “women’s nature,”40 she is appreciative
of Betty Friedan. Whereas Friedan is often criticized by left-wing feminists
feminist Firestone more problematic: authors like Firestone are “mistakenly”
called “radical,” reclaiming “radicalism” as a synonym for “revolutionary” (21).
Jasna Tkalec also welcomed “radical legislative change,” in this case in
France. She embraced the French “new feminism” born in the aftermath of May
sexual morals for men and women, loudly seeking rehabilitation from a Freudian
position of women’s erotica, the sexuality of children and adolescents and even
of homosexuality.”41 This text, inspired by Edgar Morin’s essay in the volume La
Femme majeure42 interprets the new French feminism as a human-rights movement
(1162), whereas it realizes that, despite the similarities between the feminist
discourse and those of Marxism and “decolonialism,” women cannot be treated
39
Idem, “Feminizam – na tragu radikalizma,” 6–8.
La Femme majeure.
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either as a class or as an ethnic group. Tkalec suggests looking at women as a
“bio-social class” and valorizes the potential of the radical demands within the
revolution to the West (1167). The radical demand of the new feminism involves
“a reanalysis of the entire social system with regard to the past and future as well.
and rephrases them in a completely new way” (1167).
A colorful image of feminism unfolds from this range of highly different
texts. Revolution in feminism has the appreciation of the authors, while
radicalism is already ambiguous. The attributed meanings vary from positive,
for example in the sense of “revolutionary,” to problematic as much as it is
“bourgeois.” Bourgeois feminism is unanimously criticized by all authors.
Another characteristic of the early steps the new feminists in Yugoslavia took
is the strategy of suggesting that at the new manifestations of feminism be
regarded as relevant due to the “universal experience” of women from the
perspective of the ideas presented and from the perspective of “our still
patriarchal environment.”43 Universality is useful not only as a “disguise” of the
dissenting ideas, but as a category countering the idea that the solution to the
One of the early examples appears in an issue of Student
presented in translation). It includes texts from Robin Morgan’s edited volume
Sisterhood is Powerful by Zoe Moss and Pat Mainardi (from the Redstockings group,
La Nouvelle Critique, one text by Marie-Thérèse Baudrillard from Politique Hebdo
and an excerpt from Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. What they state in
the introduction may not look extremely complicated:
“problem” of women, her speech (govor), agency (delanje) and living (
), and
this through a mosaic of broad elements, from analytical-theoretical approaches
to personal statements. Though here it is seemingly only about “foreign
experience,” a lot of this experience of women is universal.44
44
Ibid.
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The introduction does not identify the selection of texts as feminist, but it
also avoids the term
through use of “the ‘problem’ of women,”
who consider women a “problem.” The terms agency and speech point toward
the language of the new feminism as does the selection from the more avantgarde or radical texts, which, by other authors in the Yugoslav publications,
are dismissed for various reasons. The reasons for this can be well organized
around the evaluation of and reservation to a stream of feminism as radical,
revolutionary or extremist on the one hand, and reactionary-bourgeois on the
rather divergent and needs to be treated in the “revolutionary Yugoslav” context.
stream of American feminism as well as of the more theoretical, but rather
Western feminists and thus legitimate the introduction of these ideas into the
local context prevails in the Yugoslav new feminist context, however, in this
case there is also an attempt to reconcile the complex theoretical approach of
Irigaray (and elsewhere, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva) with an expectation
that writing about society serves the revolutionary change in that very society.
The cross-reading of radical feminism with French post-structuralism is an
“invention” of the Yugoslav feminists and here is made explicit by the choice
of an interview with Irigaray, conducted by Catherine Clément, instead of an
excerpt from her Speculum de l’autre femme45 with regard to which the interview
was made.46 For discussing the social use of theories, writings and artworks,
Clément returns to the concept of struggle (borba in Serbo-Croatian and lutte/
combat in French). Clément’s choice of the word has a new relevance in the
managing socialism.
Clément contextualizes Irigaray within 1968 as a movement: “Where, what
all the more important since your book was not a book which we would usually
45
46
Irigaray, Speculum de l’autre femme.
Irigaray’s texts are later also published in translation, in thematic journal issues, accompanied by
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call as one designed for struggles?”47 Irigaray explains her position, which she
begins with the assertion that to her, all philosophical discussions have political
implications:
Maybe we should go that far that we say there is no “politics” of women
that does not take shape either in the form of apolitical statements
or disavowal of the political, this is already a demand (zahtjev) which
struggle (borba) is simply to get to the steering wheel of power, then
women wanted what they don’t [want] to be subordinated to the phallic
order. […] However, we need to be constantly and without mistakes
alert. Phallocracy most probably still has not exhausted all its resources.
(
)? It is important for them to be able to keep the initiative
within the[ir] discourse.48
What Irigaray does in her Speculum is political and radical. Her radicalism is
read into a Yugoslav context in which radicalism is read as revolutionary struggle.
Through this reading in Student, Irigaray is brought into a dialogue with American
second-wave radicalism (even though radicalism assumes different meanings in
the need for radical (down to the roots) change in the discourse conveying power
relations. Getting positions in the existing phallic [phallogocentric] order does
not change the discourse and the place of women within that discourse. The
into the existing order; Irigaray does not spell it out here, however—her train
of thought reminds of the dichotomy between the use of the concept of the
of the patriarchal context, it means taking the initiative and means intervention
into the discourse.
change of meanings in translation.
translation because my interest lays in the language (in the sense of discourse) the Yugoslav readers were
presented with.
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Radicalism, and in relation to that, revolution and the revolutionary nature
of an ideology or movement, is a recurrent theme in the new Yugoslav feminist
writings of the 1970s and early 1980s and is a crucial factor in their selfpositioning within the Yugoslav discursive space, simultaneously adjusting to
of Italian feminism as progressive and points it out as exemplary; however, she
refrains from calling it “radical.” One of the articles in the hereby analyzed issue
of Student, from Sisterhood is Powerful by Pat Mainardi, discusses the “politics of
housework,” which is not only relevant from the point of the relations between
liberation movement” as “revolution.”49
distinction between radical revolutionary women’s movements and bourgeois
women’s movements, on the one hand, and extremist (radical) ones as opposed
to the moderate (socialist) ones on the other.
Clément and Irigaray agree on the need for a radical change of discourse and
Irigaray points out that this is exactly the reason for which radical change is
around and suggests that class be translated into “men and women” and then
adds: “Or, we should admit that today’s praxis of Marxism is not willing to
acknowledge this difference and this exploitation of women.”50 This takes us
Year of Women, when the problems women faced were thematized, or the
, which treat the work
of Marx, Engels and the early Marxists as not very detailed, but in principle
the
back to the realization of
.
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not hold the same place as 1978, looking at the documentation of the debate we
51
At
conference. Members of the editorial board apparently had to explain themselves
for the appearance of the
at the meeting, offering a variety
of understandings of what feminism is: “it is important to differentiate between
against the male sex and the […] progressive movement of women who search
for a way for their own action […] for the political, economic, cultural and other
forms of development in their own country.”52 The introduction, however,
emphasizes the importance of the Marxist stakes in the issue of women and the
family, especially the contributions of Vranicki and Šoljan to the conference. So
one hand, many of the demands of the Western feminists have been provided
to women in Yugoslavia and, on the other hand, that if feminists want to achieve
their goals, they have to return to Marx.53 This happens only to a certain extent:
there is a left-wing, most often Marxist, inclination in the feminist theories
written by the new Yugoslav feminists, but they almost unanimously refuse to
feminist participants, they claim the legitimacy of new feminism. Sklevický, in
highlighting the importance of the “history of forgotten sisters,” describes the
transition from the “old” feminism to the new wave, which realizes that basic
gender roles through various actions.54 The English-language new or secondargued for the alignment of feminism with socialism: “the goal of a nonrepressive civilization is there within all heterogeneous left-wing movements,”
54
Sklevický, “Od borbe za prava do prave borbe.”
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while refusing to treat women as a class.55 This, in her reading, makes feminism
explosive—it may even be accused of theoretical incoherence; “however, if we
approach it as a manifestation of one broad, global theory, we will much more
easily get the dimension of the universality it contains. In other words, even if
it is not a theory in itself, it presents a manifestation and is integral part of one
broad theory of social change and dialectical development of society.”56
By the time the 1978 conference took place in Belgrade, the new Yugoslav
feminists became more and more conscious of radical feminism being closer to
their own vision of feminism, revaluation what “radical” and “military” means,
with reference to the revolutionary partisan tradition as a source of legitimacy.
Start is to compare the
feminist movement to the workers’ movement. The comparison is triggered
epitheton ornans of all feminisms in all
times, also present in the state representatives’ discussion of feminism. While
here is a “re-vindication of one’s rights.”57 Clearly, a political system supporting
the workers in all places to stand up for their rights and heralding the workers
cannot afford labelling women voicing the exact same “militant” demands. In
challenges of feminism “as a revolutionary movement.”58
even reclaims “radical” for those revolutionary leftist ideas she agrees with: due
to its essentialism, she suggests that Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex
from 1970 is incorrectly categorized as “radical” and that it is rather “extreme”
feminism.59
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Conclusion
ideas for change—slow and transitional or radical change—in the position of
women in Yugoslavia lies behind the early intellectual endeavors of the new
Yugoslav feminists. Whether looking at Italian feminism in historical perspective
or investigating recent feminist theories and movements, the aim is always to
see the relevance of these for the Yugoslav case. The theoretical criticisms shed
light on the contradictions within the emancipation project promised by the
socialist state and its implementation. It is, however, this promise on behalf of
the state that makes the relationship with the feminist groups multi-layered and
instead of being dissident (which many radical feminist groups become in other
countries),60 the position of the new Yugoslav feminists vis-à-vis the state is
Yugoslav regime as much as the access to institutions and publication possibilities
is concerned. The systematic reading of theories, especially their discussion and
their publication, was made possible at least in part by these infrastructures and
the discursive practices and linguistic interventions paved the way for activism.
group could. Thus they reformulated the relevance of feminism in the region
and by challenging the policies and institutions introduced by the socialist
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Socialist-Era New Yugoslav Feminism between “Mainstreaming” and “Disengagement”: The Possibilities for Resistance, Critical Opposition and Dissent - Zsofia Lorand
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Through a focus on early publications by feminist intellectuals in Yugoslavia in the 1970s, this paper aims at showing ways of feminist critiques of the theory and practice of women’s emancipation in the context of a state socialist (in this case, self-managing socialist) country in East Central Europe. After a brief overview of feminist organising in YU till the late 1980s, the paper looks at conferences and journal publications, which also gives a chance to understand a bit better the workings of the Yugoslav public space and publishing processes. The text, written with a conceptual and intellectual historical focus, analyses the discursive interventions and reformulations of matters related to women’s emancipation. The new Yugoslav feminist approaches rethink and reformulate the “women’s question”. Reading the recent currents of feminisms in North America and Western Europe, the feminists in Yugoslavia are in a search for ways to reframe this question into a critique that is constructive as well as innovative in their own context.
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Zsofia Lorand
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The Hungarian Historical Review
New Series of Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
Volume 5 No. 4 2016
1956 and Resistance in East Central Europe
Péter Apor, Sándor Horváth Special Editors of the Thematic Issue
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2016.
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pages 854-881
Central and Eastern Europe
dissent
Eastern European Studies
Feminism
Feminist political theory
Gender
History of Political Thought
Marxism
sisterhood
socialism
women’s question
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (History)
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0c690235272ad23a504bbdfdd4c4f696
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Text
1972.
�Jambrešić
Kirin,
Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
�J
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
232
U spomen na Ženi Lebl (1927.- 2009.)
a sam stalno ponavljala, jer je meni bilo vrlo važno da njima utuvim da su one izdajnici. Da ih
nateram da misle na tu svoju izdaju. Zbog toga
sam im stalno ponavljala: vi ste izdajnici Partije,
vi ste Partiju izdale, vi ste je izdale kad joj je najteže bilo, vi ste Partiju izdale onda kad je trebalo
da joj pomognete (Simić i Trifunović 1990:229; iskaz
upraviteljice Marije Zelić).
Kad je 1948. godine jugoslavenska revolucija počela jesti svoju djecu nije poštedjela kćeri, sestre, supruge i
majke zatočenih “kontrarevolucionara” te je time zatrla
samu ideju revolucije idućih nekoliko generacija. Ova
kratka totalitarna epizoda represivne destaljinizacije
(1948.-1953./56.), nakon raskola Tito-Staljin, u maniri
boljševičkog “administriranja” unutarpartijskih sukoba
za koje nije predviđen građanski sudski postupak, nikad
nije dobila svoj kaznenopravni epilog, a njezine žrtve
političku rehabilitaciju. Umjesto velikih montiranih
procesa tog doba – kakve nalazimo u Pragu, Budimpešti
i Bukureštu – u kućnim pritvorima i istražnim zatvorima Udbe odigravaju se zakulisni, palanački kafkijanski
procesi u kojima se prepliću žestina predratnih frakcionaških partijskih obračuna, bešćutnost karijerizma i
osobni animoziteti s rodovskim mentalitetom, ratnim
traumama, antifeminizmom, šovinizmom, pa čak i antisemitizmom. Umjesto naizgled jednostavne podjele
na one koji su podržali Tita i one koji su optirali za Staljina, zamašnjak partijskog “stroja odlučivanja i razlučivanja” nastavit će s proizvodnjom “narodnih neprijatelja”
kojima treba predočiti “u čemu se sastoje, za njih nevidljivi, prijestupi” (Beganović 2007:274). Na taj će način
ovaj unutarpartijski obračun uspostaviti biopolitički temelj nove političke zajednice prema kojem suverena
moć (a ne državljanska pravila i ustav) određuje kriterije
uključenja i isključenja u komunističku “rajsku obitelj”,
a time i opseg političkih sloboda (usp. Agamben,
2006:160). Tvrdnju slovenskog etnologa Božidara Jezernika da Goli otok leži u samim temeljima Titove Jugoslavije: “Dok se o njemu šutjelo, bio je tvrdi kamen na
kojem je počivala država. Kad se počelo o njemu govoriti
i država se počela raspadati” (1994:686), možemo nadopuniti i reći da tek prekidom traumatskog pakta šutnje
golootočkih zatočenica dobivamo potpunu sliku režima
čija je biopolitička realnost započinjala “tamo gdje zavr-
�šava država i njezina terminologija” (Bosanac, 2005:267).
Činjenica da je gotovo polovica zatočenika na Golom otoku01 pripadala staroj “boljševičkoj gardi”, španjolskim borcima, istaknutim komunistima s iskustvom zatvora i (nacističkih i staljinističkih) logora,
značila je da autohtoni jugoslavenski kazamat mora postići nemoguće – ocrniti “revolucionarne svece”, slomiti
nesalomljive, one koji milost ne traže niti ju daju, one
koji dijele ista uvjerenja sa svojim “preodgajateljima”.
Umjesto prijekih sudova i masovnih likvidacija namijenjenih kvislinzima i poraženim ratnim neprijateljima,
jugoslavenski je represivni aparat iznova posegnuo za
shemom izdaje (Nancy, 2004:8), za purifikacijom partijskog kadra i prividom (pravne procedure i prosvjetiteljske ortopedagogije) da bi zadovoljio svoju “strast za realnim” (Badiou, 2008:55).02 Takozvanim političkim delinkventima oduzeta je budućnost, ali i uporište realnog
u prošlosti pa je najteži dio kazne bilo ništenje vlastite
biografije, preispisivanje uzorne (revolucionarne) biografije kao automortografije kojom upravlja strategija zaborava03, to jest gubitak prava na svjedočenje. Nemogućnost artikulacije vlastite životne priče (izvan zadanog ideološkog modela) poništava osnovnu ideju komunističke emancipacije prema kojoj će “potlačeni ljudi, proleteri, prvi put početi upravljati vlastitim vremenom” (Badiou, 2008:122). Poena insularis (koju pučka
imaginacija vidi kao heterotopiju devijacije i užitka i cinički naziva Bahami, Titovi Havaji), ukida teleološki pojam vremena. Bivšim internircima iskustvo otoka oduzet će kako herojsku povijest tako i svaku nadu da će njihove “besmislene” patnje dobiti smisao u dominantnom režimu istine.
Titova navodna izjava Naša revolucija ne jede svoju
djecu. Djeca ove revolucije su poštena (usp. Banac, 1990:232)
i njegova preporuka da informbirovcima treba po glavi, a
ne glave (usp. Jezernik, 1994:13), dakle slomiti ih, a ne
ubiti, jasno naznačuju autokratsku, ali i patrijarhalnu logiku kažnjavanja nepodobnih. Kao cinička gesta revolucionarnog milosrđa ova je poruka “prosvijećenog despota” interpretirana shodno prirodi modernog totalitarnog policijskog aparata čiji agenti mogu provizorno
nastupiti kao suvereni u prostorima izvanrednog stanja
gdje prestaje razlikovanje iznimke i pravila, dopuštenog
i nedopuštenog. Međutim, u društvu u kojem vlada
opće nepovjerenje u slovo zakona, gdje je “uništavanje
prava osobe uzdignuto u ‘narodni običaj’” (Podoroga,
233
2007:5), gdje je svaki zatvorenik zločinac, a svaka politička zatvorenica po policijskoj definiciji kriminalka ili
prostitutka, kolektivistički i vojnički logorski univerzum postaje socijalno prihvatljiviji od prosvjetiteljske
zatvorske forme panoptikuma. A neke od njegovih inovacija, poput zatvoreničke samouprave i pisanja partijskih karakteristika, brzo se šire kroz sve pore društva.
Slijedeći naputak H. Arendt (1976[1951]), C. Leforta (2000) i G. Agambena (2006) o važnosti proučavanja
suspenzije zakonodavne prakse u “zatvorskom komunizmu”, istražit ćemo međuuvjetovanost prvog jugoslavenskog izvanrednog stanja i iznevjeravanja emancipacijske rodne politike. Pritom nas neće zanimati glavni
akteri ove historijske političke drame, nego iskustva političkih zatvorenica koje su najdulje čuvale najbolje čuvanu tajnu jugoslavenskog “juridičkog nesvjesnog”.04
Val nasilja koji je nakon ljeta 1948. preplavio zemlju
imao je “klasična” totalitarna obilježja: uništavao je
građanska prava pojedinca, moralnu osobu u čovjeku i
svaku individualnost (Arendt 1976[1951]), ali i niz specifičnosti koje su svojstvene samo penalnom režimu u
ženskom logoru na Golom (prvotna, privremena lokacija) i sv. Grguru (vjerojatno od 1950.).05 Jedna od posebnosti biopolitičke paradigme upravljanja ovim logorima
jest da su članovi uprave kažnjenicama dali do znanja
kako je napad na njihovo reproduktivno zdravlje (intervencija u “formu života”) ciljana mjera logorskog šikaniranja i zlostavljanja. Druga je bilo sustavno onemogućavanje solidarnosti, brižnosti, empatije i sućuti koje
balkanska i zapadna kultura cijene kao formativne osobine ženskog bića. Osvrnut ćemo se stoga na socijalnu
strukturu ženskog logora i inovativne prakse logorskog
“samoupravljanja” koje su podrazumijevale stalno
međusobno kažnjavanje i isljeđivanje zatočenica, prisilni rad, “kulturne aktivnosti”, ceremonije degradacije te
rituale javnog ispovijedanja i prisilnog pisanja zapisnika
o krivnji. Dubina traumatskih ozljeda izazvana takvom
nasilnom, socijalno destruktivnom i mizoginom biopolitikom proizvodnje golog života, koja isključuje spolnu
specifičnost kažnjenica iz “slova zakona” na način da ju
višestruko uključuje u “pismo torture”, rezultirala je dugogodišnjom šutnjom bivših internirki o iskustvu “golokausta” (Lebl, 2009:143).06
Broj žena koje su odslužile kaznu “društveno-korisnog rada” (u nekoliko radilišta-logora) zanemariv je u
usporedbi s ukupnim brojem političkih zatvorenika07,
01 Goli otok bio je najveći kažnjenički logor za političke zatvorenike (od 1949. do 1956. kad prestaje biti zatvor isključivo za političke zatvorenike), ali i metafora stradanja svih “politički
nepoćudnih pojedinaca i skupina” (Leksikon, 1996 sv. I: 392)
koji su 1950-ih izdržavali kaznu
u zatvorima poput Stare Gradiške, Glavnjače, Požarevca i Bileće, a unutar Hrvatske u Sisku,
u Lonjskom polju, na Rabu,
Ugljanu, Visu, Korčuli i Jasenovcu (Banac, 1990:232). Naziv
Arhipelag Goli, što ga ponekad
susrećemo u muškoj memoaristici po analogiji sa Solženjicinovim Arhipelagom Gulag
(1975), označava jedinstvenu topografiju koordiniranih metoda
izoliranja, brutalnog isljeđivanja i kažnjavanja koje su se razlikovale od staljinističkih čistki,
ali su s njima dijelile agambenovsko “stanje izuzimanja” ovih
logora iz državno-pravnog prostora u ne-mjesto gdje ne vrijedi
pozitivno pravo. Prema jugoslavenskom epistemološkom režimu, Goli otok bio je koncentracijski logor. Naime, definicija
“koncentracionog logora” iz
Opće enciklopedije JAZU-a navodi: “Za razliku od zatvora, u
koje osuđeni dolaze na temelju
sudskih presuda i na određeno
vrijeme, uz zakonom propisan
postupak, u koncentracione logore smještaju se zatočenici
uglavnom na temelju ovlaštenja
policijskih, vojnih i drugih izvršnih organa vlasti, na neodređeno vrijeme” (1978 sv. 4:501).
Osim masovnosti – evidentirano je 55 663 “kominformovaca”
ili 12% ukupnog članstva KPJ od
čega je oko 17 000 odslužilo kaznu na Golom otoku (Leksikon,
1996, sv. I:392; Marković,
1990:24) – važnija je struktura
zatočenih koja pokazuje kako su
zatočeni bili “elitna skupina, gotovo 40% njih bili su ratni veterani” (Banac, 1990:150).
02 “Strast za realnim nužno je i sumnja. Ništa ne može potvrditi
to da je realno doista realno, ništa osim sistema fikcija u kome
će ono glumiti ulogu realnog.
Sve subjektivne kategorije revo-
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
UP&UNDERGROUND
Proljeće 2010.
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04
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lucionarne ili apsolutne politike, poput ‘uvjerenja’, ‘lojalnosti’, ‘vrline’, ‘klasne pozicije,
‘pokoravanja Partiji’, ‘revolucionarne poslušnosti’, okaljane su
sumnjom da je njihova pretpostavljena realna točka u biti privid. Stoga je uvijek potrebno
javno pročistiti (épurer) korelaciju neke kategorije i njezina referenta, što znači pročistiti subjekte koji se pozivaju na datu
kategoriju, pročistiti sam revolucionarni kadar” (Badiou,
2008:55).
“Za razliku od ‘običnoga’ ubojstva u kojemu se uništava život,
ali ne i tragovi njegove prijašnje
egzistencije koji ostaju kao izvor tugovanja onima koji su bili
blisko povezani s žrtvom, ubojstvo u logoru cilja potpunome
uništenju, anonimizaciji smrti
koja, na kraju, rezultira razaranjem identiteta, zaboravom”
(Beganović, 2007:272).
Za Shoshanu Felman juridičko
nesvjesno označava sklonost sudionika sudskih procesa da nesvjesno ponavljaju strukturu
traume s kojom se suočavaju:
“kad se sud suočava s traumom
u sudnici često mu je nametnuto svojevrsno juridičko sljepilo
što nehotice reflektira i duplicira konstitutivnu sljepoću kulture i javne svijesti naspram traume” (2002:5). Juridičko nesvjesno obuhvaća i preplitanje kolektivnih trauma s poviješću kaznenog zakona, sve neuspjehe
potonjeg da povijesnu traumu
obuhvati, racionalizira i sanira.
Tipično za osobna svjedočenja i
prisjećanja jest i to da se faktografske i iskustvene činjenice
ne podudaraju sasvim. Tako u
različitim izvorima postoje različiti podaci o preseljenju ženskog logora iz Uvale Senjska na
sv. Grgur između 1949. i 1951.
godine.
Poput Ženi Lebl i Danilo Kiš je
smatrao da Goli otok spaja neke
osobitosti nacističkih i staljinističkih koncentracijskih logora:
“Moje je mišljenje da je Goli
otok bio jugoslovenski Auschwitz i Kolima. Isto tako im je
pošlo za rukom da ga sakriju
pred očima sveta, kao i Nemci-
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ali je tehnologija njihove penalne “autokorekcije” imala
dugoročne posljedice na (manjinski) status žena u politici i društvenom životu. Vrlo oskudni i nepotpuni podaci govore da je između 1948. i 1956. godine administrativnom kaznom “društveno-korisnog rada” kažnjeno oko 860 žena nasuprot 17 000 muških političkih zatvorenika (od ukupno 55 600 procesuiranih informbirovaca – Banac, 1990:150; Hrvatski leksikon, 1996, sv.1:392).
Etički obvezujući osobni iskazi i zapisi posljednjih preživjelih logoraša staljinističkih logora jedini nam mogu
pomoći razumjeti ne gole činjenice nego “pervertiranu
tragičnost” komunizma kao “emancipatorskog projekta
koji je pošao naopako (…) za razliku od nacizma kao anti-emancipatorskog pothvata koji je i predobro uspio”
(Žižek, 2005:74).
Logor za srodnice “izdajica domovine”
Poput žrtava staljinističkih čistki i kominformovci
su proglašeni “izdajicama domovine”08, a njihove su žene, sestre, majke i kćeri smatrane “srodnicama izdajica
domovine” i ucijenjene zatvorom i oduzimanjem
građanskih prava ako ne potpišu razvod braka, ne odreknu se svojih bližnjih i dodatno ih optuže ili “denunciraju”. Komunistički je moral bio nadređen građanskom
moralu, ali je s njim dijelio patrijarhalni svjetonazor i
autoritet “zakona oca”. Unutar komunističkog revolucionarnog svjetonazora privatni i politički život pojedinca preklapali su se bez ostatka. To je nailazilo na dobar
odjek “u bazi” kad se veličalo “kršćansko” bratstvo i samoprijegor komunista09, ali u slučaju frakcionaških raskola i odbacivanja “nepodobnih” članova obitelji pripovijesti o partijskom sukobu poprimale su elemente
rodoskrvnuća i krvne osvete. O bliskosti mentaliteta patrijarhalne obitelji i komunističke partije najbolje svjedoče predratna konspirativna kodna imena: ćaća (Centralni komitet), djed (Kominterna), familija (partija),
svadba (partijski kongres). Nekritički veličana, udvornička ljubav prema Sovjetskom Savezu preko noći je
prerasla u simboličko svrgnuće i karikaturalno negiranje velikog brata, službena je ideologija tog “biblijskog
raskola” penetrirala u osobnu psihologiju gdje je dijelila
bračne krevete i kopala “po majčinoj utrobi, po braći, sestrama” (Dragović-Gašpar, 1990:189).10 Jednopartijska
vlast, cijepljena na nepotističku mrežu bliskih suradnika i srodnika, obiteljsku je primarnu scenu socijalizacije,
kroćenja nagona, ekonomije krivnje i nagrade, prijetnje
odbacivanjem i izopćenjem, inkorporirala u kažnjeničku koloniju u kojoj se nisu poštovali principi ni revolucionarnog ni univerzalnog morala.
Ono što povezuje iskustva žena iz sovjetskih gulaga (Vilensky, 1999; Adler, 2005) i bugarskih logora za
“društveno koristan rad” i preodgoj (Todorov, 1999), te
grčkih otočnih logora za komuniste (Voglis, 2002), otkriva nam ruski naziv za jednu vrstu ženskih logora –
ČSIR (člyen sem'i izmennika Rodini), Logor za srodnice izdajica Domovine – koji sugerira metaforičko stapanje obiteljske i patriotske časti za pripadnice političke zajednice. Novinu u staljinističkoj ratnoj propagandi, koju su
preuzeli i jugoslavenski Agitpropovci, predstavljao je poziv ženama da po cijenu života brane “ono što im je najsvetije” – vlastitu čast kao patriotsku dužnost i obrnuto,
obvezu da se žrtvuju za domovinu u ime obrane vlastite
časti (usp. Sklevicky, 1996:44).
Cijena koju je tek stasala politička građanka trebala platiti za svoje oslobođenje iz okova patrijarhalne podređenosti i diskriminacije bilo je prinošenje (krvne)
žrtve – izdaja supruga, oca ili brata – novom ideološkom
panteonu koji i sam reproducira patrijarhalnu shemu
raspodjele moći i uloga unutar (inter)nacionalne “komunističke obitelji”. Despotsko poigravanje s pravom
na razvod braka – prvi put omogućen Osnovnim zakonom o braku iz 1946. godine – baš kao i drugim novostečenim građanskim pravima, pokazuje da su ova prava
ženama “dodijeljena” ne u ime korektnog poštivanja rodne ravnopravnosti, nego iz ideoloških razloga, s ciljem
učvršćivanja i međunarodnog legitimiranja nove vlasti.
O tome svjedoči i poruka javnosti Josipa Broza, prije važnih izbora za Saveznu skupštinu 1950. godine, kako
očekuje da bi žene svojim masovnim izlaskom na birališta i glasanjem za Partiju “u potpunosti izvršile svoju
ulogu” (cit. pr. Spehnjak, 2002:138).
Činjenica da se policijska aktivnost lažiranja dokaza o “protudržavnoj djelatnosti” uglednih drugova s posebnom agilnošću obrušila na njihov moralni i obiteljski život te seksualnu orijentaciju, čini feminističku postavku o tome kako je obitelj “istodobno temelj države i
njezin neprijatelj” (C. Pateman) posebice primjenjivom
na totalitarnu državu. Zatvaranje i kažnjavanje supruga
istaknutih komunista bio je uobičajen oblik pritiska,
ucjene i uvećanja kazne suparnicima u androcentričnom svijetu partijske “visoke politike”. Tako je optužnica protiv Olge Hebrang, supruge najozbiljnijeg Titovog
�suparnika koji je optirao za Staljina, doslovno citirala
vokabular staljinističkih čistki s kraja 1930-ih kad su
uhićene Pelagija Belousova (Polka), prva supruga Josipa
Broza, i kao što pokazuju novootkriveni dokumenti Kominterne, njegova druga supruga Anna Koenig (Lucija
Bauer Elza), članica Kominterne koja je strijeljana 1937.,
nakon nepune godine braka s Friedrichom F. Walterom
(Josipom Brozom). Obje su žene optužene kao “doušnice Gestapoa” i “imperijalistički špijuni”, a Olga Hebrang
za špijunažu i suradnju s ustašama tijekom zatočenja u
jasenovačkom logoru. Broz je, prema dokumentima Kominterne, 27. rujna 1938. napisao Dimitrovu i Manuilskom “da se ne osjeća krivim što zbog nedostatka budnosti nije primijetio izdajničke postupke svojih supruga” (Ridley, 2000:151).11
“Specijalni tretman” koji su podnosile kažnjenice
uhićene po Zakonu o kršenju javnog reda i mira, baš poput prostitutki i drugih socijalnih “izgrednica”, govori
mnogo o proturječjima postrevolucionarne ideologije
koja je stubokom mijenjala institucije, ali ne i ponašanje
i svijest ljudi. Na Golom otoku nalazio se i takozvani
profilaktorij za “preodgoj prostitutki” kao izoliran zatvorski odjel pod neposrednim nadzorom (to jest prepušten samovolji) milicije (Draško Aćimović, u: Jezernik, 1994:129). Policijska inkriminacija javnog političkog
djelovanja žena na temelju stigmatizacije njihovoga privatnog života, težnji i ambicija i moralnog sumnjičenja,
te posljedična degradacija povratnica s Golog i sv. Grgura u radnim i društvenim organizacijama, označila je
prekid s herojskim tradicijom afežeovske borbe za ženska prava i ponovno učinila žene nesamostalnim i ranjivim političkim subjektima. Za razliku od muških zatočenika žene su teže podnosile gubitak netom stečenih
građanskih prava (poput prava na razvod, nasljeđivanje,
jednako plaćen posao), a imputirana “moralna ljaga” i
pounutrenje krivnje udaljili su ih od društvenog i javnog života. Krajnje nekonzistentan i dvoličan odnos
prema ženama kao ravnopravnim političkim građankama dokaz je Lefortove teze da je (i rani jugoslavenski)
socijalizam proizvod međupovezanosti heterogenih
elemenata koje silom guši u ime totalitarne fantazme o
homogenosti, jedinstvu, bratstvu i ravnopravnosti.
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Dometak muškom logoru ili izvorno mjesto
političkog zabrana za žene
“Nasuprot pravu koje u ‘odluci’ utvrđenoj prema
mjestu i vremenu priznaje metafizičku kategoriju
(…) policijska sila je bezoblična, kao i njezina neuhvatljiva, sveprisutna sablasna pojava u životu civiliziranih država” (Benjamin, 1971[1921]:13).
Čini se da jugoslavenska epizoda preklapanja
pravno-administrativne sfere i sistemskog nasilja nije
bila iznimka “u doba u kojem je zakon temeljno kulturno oruđe nasilja, u totalitarnom svijetu nirnberškog
prava i moskovskih procesa” (Felman, 2002:20). Prema
mišljenju povjesničara Johna Allcocka, jugoslavenski je
režim slijedio modernu europsku praksu na način da “se
legitimno nasilje počelo smatrati jednim od brojnih područja stručne ekspertize – policije i profesionalnih vojnih službi” (2000:384). I povjesničari i teoretičari socijalizma slažu se oko “čiste modernosti komunističkog
iskustva” i specifičnosti totalitarnih učinaka “različitih
od prijašnjih oblika diktature” (Courtois, 1999:13), a u
masovnom kršenju građanskih prava vide neugodni
podsjetnik “na ideološku povezanost Jugoslavije i zemalja sovjetskog bloka” (Banac, 1990:253). Postoji konsenzus oko pravnog i sociopsihološkog značenja staljinističkih čistki, no etičke i političke posljedice ovog
“iracionalnog” partijskog nasilja na jugoslavensko društvo u cjelini i dalje predstavljaju izazov za interpretaciju.
Slavoj Žižek smatra da su čistke izraz “radikalne samoproturječnosti režima”, pervertirani oblik autokorekcije
kojim sam sustav kažnjava svoje aktante za izdaju izvornog događaja revolucije. Za nj su čistke svojevrsno “vraćanje potisnutog”, zazornog sadržaja revolucionarnih
promjena koje su podsjećale na “radikalnu negativnost”
i na “iracionalnost” u samom srcu režima (2006:9). Međutim, iz feminističke se perspektive ovo “iracionalno”
partijsko nasilje otkriva kao rodno i kulturalno profilirano, a radikalnu samoproturječnost režima uvelike su
uvjetovale prešutne patrijarhalne norme inkorporirane
u socijalistički društveni ugovor o ravnopravnosti spolova. O tome govori postavka sociologinje Vedrane Spajić-Vrkaš da je “socijalizam u osnovi zadržao autoritarne
obrasce moći patrijarhalnog nasljeđa i proširio tradicionalnu diobu obiteljskih uloga na društvo” (1995:28), to
jest teza Carole Pateman (2000) prema kojoj je zazor od
07
08
09
10
ma i Rusima. No na kraju se, naravno, ispostavilo da je nemoguće sakriti tako nešto: laži će
izbiti na svetlost dana”
(1989:353).
Ni jedan od povijesnih izvora ne
donosi pouzdan podatak o broju
kažnjenih žena. Prema svjedočenju Marije Zelić, prve upravnice ženskog logora na Golom, a
zatim na Grguru, od 1949. do
1951. u logoru je bilo petstotinjak žena (Simić i Trifunović
1990: 221-243). Dragan Marković
navodi službeni podatak ondašnjih vlasti: “do 1952. bilo je 828
žena, tri su u međuvremenu
umrle” (1990:407).
Jugoslavenska službena retorika
opisivala je Informbiraše kao “šačicu odmetnika, ambicioznih i
nemoralnih elemenata“, “kolebljivaca i karijerista“, “starih
oportunista, likvidatora i kukavica”, “trockista”, “beskičmenjaka”, “špijuna”, “izolirane
bande s dugom historijom neprijateljske aktivnosti” (Banac,
1988:145-46).
Kao što nas podsjeća Lynn
Hunt, imaginiranje je obiteljskih odnosa i sveza pomoglo u
razumijevanju političkog iskustva francuske revolucije: “revolucionari i kontrarevolucionari
su se morali suočiti s pitanjima
očinskog autoriteta, sudjelovanja žena i bratske solidarnosti.
Morali su ispripovijedati kako je
došlo do republike i što ona znači, a te pripovijesti uvijek sadrže
element obiteljskog sukoba i raspleta” (1992:xv). O familijarizmu pripadnika partijske ćelije
svjedoči i jedan britanski komunist, Eric Hobsbawm: “Imati
ozbiljnu vezu s nekim tko nije
bio u Partiji ili joj se nije kanio
priključiti (ili se u nju vratiti)
bilo je nezamislivo. (…) Partija
nam je bila smisao života. Dali
smo joj sve. Od nje smo zauzvrat dobili sigurnost da ćemo
pobijediti i iskustvo bratstva.
Naš je život prije svega pripadao
Partiji (... ) ili, točnije rečeno,
zbiljski je pripadao samo njoj”
(2009:120).
Kusturičin Otac na službenom
putu (1985.) i Vrdoljakova serija
Duga mračna noć (2004.), koja
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
UP&UNDERGROUND
Proljeće 2010.
�tek djelomice problematizira
unutarpartijske čistke nakon
1948., svoju dramaturšku okosnicu uspostavljaju na motivu
tragičnih raskida najužih rodbinskih veza tijekom lova na
“informbirovske vještice”.
Jedna od zatvorenica, predratna
komunistkinja, u svojim supatnicama prepoznaje tek pripadnice pojedinih revolucionarnih obitelji: “U tom zatvoru je
bila Petričevićeva žena, sestra
od strica Ćosićeva, doktorka,
Danica Ćosić, baba Lepa, to je
sestra Ljube Radovanovića, čuvenog komuniste, ona ga je krila, tada je imala blizu 80 godina i
neka Manuška i dve devojčice….” (Simić i Trifunović,
1990:120, Ljubica).
11 Olga Hebrang, majka troje malodobne djece, nakon trogodišnjeg kućnog pritvora i stalne
torture u svrhu iznuđivanja dokaza protiv supruga, osuđena je
1951. godine na 12 godina strogog zatvora (gdje je provela
ukupno 8 i pol godina). Nakon
dugog istražnog zatvora Pelagija
Belousova protjerana je u Sibir
gdje je provela desetak godina, a
Broz je njihovog četrnaestogodišnjeg sina Žarka smjestio u
internat kod Harkova. Broz se u
to doba intenzivno borio za opstanak, ali i za poziciju generalnog sekretara KPJ-a na koju je
imenovan 5. siječnja 1939. Ridley je preuzeo ovaj navod iz
knjige Hotel Lux (1993) Arkadija
Vaksberga.
12 Za razliku od grčkih komunista
koji u svojim uspomenama na
dugogodišnje političko uzništvo
(poneki i dvadesetčetiri godine,
usp. Voglis, 2002) ističu zajedništvo, solidarnost i brižnost zatočenika te razne oblike samoorganiziranja, golootočki su memoari puni gorkog razočarenja
u komunističke ideale i moralne
postulate.
13 S obzirom da se nalazio “izvan
žice”, ovaj su prostor provizorne
pozornice na Golom otoku koristili i zatvorenici i zatvorenice:
“(…) tu se spektakularno kažnjavaju najteži prekršaji pred
cijelim logorom (oko 3000 kažnjenika). Tu i inače prisustvu-
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“ženskog nereda” tipičan za moderno građansko društva koje žene ne tretira kao zrele političke individue,
nego kao predmet društvenog ugovora, kao objekt političkih projekcija i manipulacija.
I premda psihofizička tortura (prema političkim
zatvorenicama) nije uključivala seksualno nasilje, dominantni oblik torture u suvremenom dobu, njezin je rezultat oskvrnuće osobe koja biva traumatizirana ne samo
pretrpljenim ozljedama nego i odbijanjem zajednice da
prepozna i sankcionira zločin. Cilj neopravdano brutalnog nasilja kroz stegovno-kaznenu proceduru nije bio
samo “namjerno, sistematsko ili nemilosrdno zadavanje
fizičke i mentalne patnje” s namjerom “da se kreira opći
strah, uguši opozicija” (Popović, 1999:23), nego dugotrajna socijalna i politička stigmatizacija bivših kažnjenica,
posebice onih koje su smatrane najboljim poratnim partijskim kadrom. Bivše logorašice, poput Eve Grlić (1997) i
Ženi Lebl (1990), priznaju da su se nakon izlaska na slobodu njihova životna očekivanja smanjila, njihova osobnost izmijenila, a strah od uhodničkog praćenja prerastao je u paranoju i shizoidan doživljaj stvarnosti.
Uvođenje samoupravne tehnologije kažnjavanja
gdje žrtva “kolaborira s egzekutorima” izazivajući “totalni moralni kolaps” (Felman, 2002:20), golootočki režim pretvara u samosvojan lagerski eksperiment. Za razliku od drugih primjera iznuđene suradnje manjeg
(povlaštenog ili kriminalnog) dijela logorske populacije
s upravom, ovaj je sustav gotovo u potpunosti isključio
čuvare i upravu logora iz žicom ograđenog prostora logora (Banac, 1990:235).12 Prisilno sudjelovanje zatvorenika u ritualima međusobnog zlostavljanja imalo je za cilj
ravnomjernu podjelu odgovornosti za zločine unutar
logora i trajno inkriminiranje “političkih delikvenata”.
Brutalnost i perverzna “intimnost” takvog nametnutog
nasilja među nekoć bliskim prijateljima, suborcima i suradnicima ispunila je novim povijesnim značenjem pojam sive zone koju je Primo Levi, na temelju svog iskustva iz Auschwitza, opisao kao zonu ambigviteta u kojoj
se događaju moralno nepodnošljive, “perverzne transformacije” međuljudskih odnosa koje nije moguće
prosuđivati standardnim etičkim mjerilima. Rosa Dragović-Gašpar, jedina žena oficir u tadašnjoj upravi Narodne milicije, presudom vojnog suda osuđena je na kaznu “društveno-korisnog rada” u trajanju od pet godina,
a odslužila je četiri (od 1951. do 1955.) u Glavnjači, Svetom Grguru i Stocu. Kao viša policajka s uvidom u orga-
nizaciju rada tadašnjeg stegovnog aparata, dobro opisuje što je motiviralo povlašteniju grupu zatvorenica “aktivistkinja” na zlostavljanje svojih krajnje degradiranih
kolegica (“bande” i “teške bande”):
“Svaka aktivistkinja svoju bandu je imala. Da svoju
bandu slomi, svaka je sebe zadužila. (…) Način da se
to postigne, teškim ili lakšim kamenom, batinama,
izvođenjem pred stroj, pljuvanjem ili zastrašivanjem,
noćnim stajanjem ispod sijalice, ili bdijenjem u ćošku
pored kible (…) dogovaran je na sastancima aktiva,
dirigovano iz Centra, a Centru iz Uprave. Isljednici su
tražili da se zapisnici dopune. Aktivisti su znali da im
od broja dopuna, otkrića, sloboda zavisi. A, do slobode lakši život na Otoku” (1990:151).
Kako je stegovno prakticiranje ćudoređa uvijek
odraz općeg moralnog osjećaja u društvu, u inkriminiranju “moralnog lika” politički aktivnih žena možemo
iščitati barem tri kulturna elementa postrevolucionarne
patrijarhalne anksioznosti. Unatoč službenoj politici rodne ravnopravnosti, novu je vlast karakterizirao: a) politički strah od ambicioznih žena,“kvalitetnih kadrova”;
b) ideološki strah od čuvarica tradicijskih i religijskih
uporišta identiteta; c) kulturalno nepovjerenje prema
ženi koja s lakoćom prelazi obiteljske, socijalne i etničke
granice. Iskazi “političkih delikventica” pokazuju i da su
postojali otpori politici rodne emancipacije odozgo i
odozdo te da je autonoman politički angažman žena izvan partijske linije bio strogo kažnjavan.
Samouprava “unutar žice” bila je nametnuta unutarnjom diferencijacijom zatvorenika i zatvorenica prema “kategorijama” – aktivisti (revidirci), pasivci i bojkotirani (teška banda) – a njihov je status pratio različit stupanj
opterećenja iscrpljujućim i (često nesvrhovitim) radom,
različiti tipovi tjelesnih kazni i različite doze svakodnevne psihofizičke patnje. Nejednake “kvote krivnje”
(Levi, 1989:33) koje su pripisivane zatvorenicama, simbolički su predstavljene izgledom “uniformi” i rasporedom sjedenja u improviziranom amfiteatru (DragovićGašpar, 1990:154) koji je služio za jutarnje postrojavanje,
za večernja grupna “raskritikavanja”, javna očitovanja
krivnje i povremeni kulturni program (skečevi na račun
“bande”, nastupi folklorne sekcije) te projekcije filmova
koje su omogućile rijetke trenutke katarze traumatiziranim ženama.13 Ako je za Agambena logor kulturna for-
�ma golog života, onda je kažnjenički logor na Golom otoku visoko razvijena forma lagerske kulture “estetiziranog nasilja”; on je teatralno mučilište i estetizirani purgatorij sa svojim pogrdnim pjesmama i sloganima, ceremonijama ispovijedanja, “uprizorenjem krivnje”, kao i
logorska imitacija društvenog života s “privrednom”
bazom i “kulturnom” nadgradnjom (kino, folklorne i
dramske sekcije). 14
Strast za realnim, koju Badiou vidi kao okosnicu
modernih ideologija 20. stoljeća, u komunistički je logor
uvela (propagandnu) umjetnost kao sistem fikcija i performativa koji je i u vanjskom svijetu uspješno proizvodio realni optimizam trudbenika, realno blagostanje i realnu jednodušnost u otporu Staljinovoj vojnoj prijetnji.
Izvedbene forme poput dramske slike i skeča (koji ismijava apolitičnu biografiju kažnjenice) širile su iskustveni prostor psihofizičkog nasilja i zamućivale granicu između kulturno-pedagoških i korektivnih dispozitiva
moći u narodno-frontovskom društvu. Činjenica da se
Eva Nahir Panić i Ženi Lebl, koje Danilu Kišu kazuju
svoje “uzničke uspomene” u dokumentarcu Goli život
(1990), i nakon četrdeset godina sjećaju svih stihova i
tekstova ovih rugalačkih dramskih slika potvrđuju tezu
Augusta Boaloa da forum-kazalište, to jest niz dramskih
igara i teatralnih uprizorenja koje kreiraju članovi jedne
zajednice, ima ritualnu moć suočavanja grupe s društvenim problemima koji fiksiraju njen identitet potlačenog kolektiviteta. No za razliku od emancipacijske
funkcije teatra potlačenih, golootočki je teatar okrutnosti imao za cilj potlačivanje, nametanje odnosa pokornost-korisnost slobodoumnim i ponosnim ljudima te
imputiranje krivnje onima koji su do jučer predstavljali
moralnu savjest zajednice. Uloga korporalnih praksi
(uvježbavanje, kontrola pokreta, neverbalna komunikacija, ritmično kretanje u taktu glazbe) bila je presudna
za ritualnu homogenizaciju grupe – kao grupe “preobraćenika” – i za posljedično traumatsko pamćenje ozljeda tjelesnog integriteta.
Ženski logor nije bio tek inačica, dometak, supplément muškom logoru, nego izvorno mjesto prakticiranja foucaultovske anatomo-politike slamanja i stegovnog discipliniranja tijela. Uz zajedničke metode torture:
batinjanje pri dolasku (špalir), nošenje kamenja, tjelesne kazne, prisilni (često beskorisni) rad, nemogućnost
kontakta s vanjskim svijetom, kažnjenice su bile izložene i psihotorturi osvještavanja svog “prirodno” submi-
237
sivnog ženstva, a slijepa poslušnost i denunciranje je
nagrađivano je čistom odjećom i pravom na osobnu higijenu.15 Logorska je uprava namjerno izazivala izostanak menstruacije posebnim dodacima hrani (arsen,
brom, crna alva) i susprezala svaku manifestaciju spolnog nagona kako uskraćivanjem drugih osnovnih životnih potreba i fizički iscrpljujućim radom tako i otvorenim napadom na spolni identitet internirki.
Seksualnost predstavlja vječnu inspiraciju za kreatore psihičke i fizičke torture jer pojedinci svoje dostojanstvo i samosvijest uvelike utemeljuju na spolnom
identitetu (Jezernik, 1994:123-130). Nasilno izdvajanje iz
poznate društvene i emocionalne okoline u surovo “nemjesto” i kontekst jednospolne zajednice, pojačavalo je
osjećaj ugroženosti i straha od gubitka (spolnog) identiteta. Kako je u patrijarhalnoj kulturi optužba za “devijantno”, “animalno” seksualno ponašanje – lezbijstvo i
homoseksualnost – predstavljala tešku povredu osobnosti, logorska je uprava svoj “perverzni užitak” nalazila
u izlaganju optuženih za homoseksualnost na “zid srama”. Pripadnice uprave se gotovo se nisu razlikovale od
internirki kad su demonstrirale agresivnost spram navodnih “lezbijki” (usp. Dragović-Gašpar, 1990:212).
Glavne karakteristike svake reakcionarne političke kulture moralne su insinuacije, politika sramoćenja i
“ceremonije degradacije”16. Logorska je uprava rado i često koristila tradicijske obrasce posramljivanja žena koristeći stid kao “najemotivniji ton” svake osobnosti
(Agamben, 2005)17 i kao osnovno sredstvo patrijarhalnog obezvređivanja žena čija je pretpostavka da “životi
žena ne vrijede mnogo i da postoji neki ženski stid koji
traje od pamtivijeka” (Perrot, 2009). Kreatori kažnjeničkog režima nastojali su imitirati “prirodno” žensko stanje opresije i nasilja u kojem same žene (isljednice i zatvorenice) najučinkovitije rekreiraju obrasce patrijarhalnog ponašanja: ponižavanje, agresivnost, stigmatizaciju, cinizam moći i nedostatak solidarnosti.
Tako će Novka Vuksanović, koja je preživjela logore na Banjici, Auschwitzu i Ravensbrücku, te svjedočila
u procesu protiv Rudolfa Hessa, četrdeset godina nakon
odslužene trogodišnje kazne na Grguru i Golom, nedostatak solidarnosti među zatočenicama izdvojiti kao
osnovnu razliku logorskog režima na Golom otoku naspram nacističkih logora:
jemo otprilike dvaput mjesečno
priredbama folklorne i pjevačke
sekcije, da se ne bi reklo da smo
baš sasvim bez duše, mi ili oni
koji su nas poslali ovamo” (Horvat, 1996:242). U razgovoru sa
zatočenikom kinooperaterom
I.C. (rođ. 1921 u Trogiru) 27. travnja 2004. saznala sam da su njegovim dolaskom na Goli otok
1951. započele filmske projekcije
i to zasebno za upravu i miliciju,
zatim za bolnicu, za muški i za
ženski logor. Po njegovom mišljenju repertoar filmova odgovarao je onom “civilnom”, uobičajenom za to doba, a filmove
(američke, ruske i francuske)
dobivao je u kutijama iz Jadran
filma. On je bio jedan od rijetkih
zatvorenika koji su imali pristup u ženski logor. Sjeća se i da
su žene emotivnije reagirale na
filmove, bilo je suza i uzdaha, ali
zbog mraka (i umora) nije mogao pozorno pratiti reakcije
publike.
14 “Zatvori u kojima se nalaze osuđenici nijesu nikakvi logori
smrti kao što su to pisali u mnogim zemljama koje nas klevetaju, već su to radilišta socijalističke izgradnje, gdje je zatvorenicima, pored korisnog fizičkog
rada, omogućen i kulturno-prosvjetni život. Naš je postupak
human, ali istovremeno i strog
prema svakome tko se ogriješi o
zakone i interese naroda i zemlje”. Ovo je dio referata “Za
dalje jačanje pravosuđa i zakonitosti” A. Rankovića održanog
na IV. plenumu CKKPJ, a objavljenog u Borbi od 4. lipnja 1951.
Ranković je citiran prema pisanom svjedočenju Marina Zaostroškina Ispovijest (74 str. tiposkripta), u posjedu autorice.
15 Giacomo Scotti u svom zaključku o ženskom logoru ističe da su
žene obavljale iste poslove kao i
muškarci “dinamitom su razbijale stijene, prenosile kamenje,
gradile puteve u kamenjaru” i
da su bile u strogoj izolaciji od
muškog logora: “Jedina razlika u
odnosu na muški logor je bila u
tome što su se žene morale/
smjele kupati, čistiti spavaonice, prati svoju jadnu odjeću“ što
nije vrijedilo za “bojkotirane”
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
UP&UNDERGROUND
Proljeće 2010.
�zatvorenice. I Scotti pridonosi
mitu o tome kako žensko iskustvo logora zapravo predstavlja
traumatski višak po kojem su
određeni doživljaji neiskazivi i
nepredstavljivi onima koji ih nisu doživjeli: “'Ali i druge su se
strašne stvari događale’ – kaže
jedna preživjela – ‘stvari koje se
ne mogu reći, zbog kojih proklinjemo dan kad smo rođene’”
(2002:204).
16 Etnometodolog Harold Garfinkel prvi je definirao “ceremonije degradacije” kao čin javne komunikacije čija je namjera prokazati, stigmatizirati pojedinca
kao nevrijednog privilegija njegove dotadašnje uloge u društvu ili instituciji. On smatra da
ih možemo naći samo u društvima koja nisu “sasvim demoralizirana i dezorijentirana”
(1956:420) i koja dijele isti sustav
vrijednosti. Važno obilježje ove
ceremonije jest pokušaj performativnog “skidanja maske” i otkrivanja “prave”, “sramne”
osobnosti degradirane osobe
pred svjedocima. Retorička formula kojom se to čini otprilike
glasi “pozivam sve ljude kao svjedoke da on [degradirani] nije
onakav kakvim se čini” (1956:
421).
17 “Kod stida, subjekt, dakle ne
posjeduje drugi sadržaj osim
vlastite desubjektivacije, postaje svjedokom vlastitog poremećenja, vlastitog gubljenja kao
subjekta. To dvosmjerno kretanje, istovremene subjektivacije
i desubjektivacije, jest stid. (..)
On predstavlja upravo onaj temeljni osjećaj opstojnosti kao
subjekta, u dva – barem naoko –
proturječna značenja tog pojma:
biti podčinjen i biti suveren”
(Agamben, 2005:21-22).
18 Jugoslavenska je službena i popularna kultura bila zasićena
dokumentarnim i fantazmatskim slikama fašističkog nasilja
što je uzrokovalo i nepovjerenje
prema preživjelim logorašima:
“Pokušali su da zaborave logor,
da nađu svoj mir u općem miru,
bez rata, i da se uklope u sva
strujanja novog života. A nailazili su na otpor, po onom uvezenom shvatanju: ‘Kad su preživ-
238
“Ja sam prošla od Jablanice preko čuvenog logora u
Nišu, Banjice, Specijalne, Aušvica,…preko Ravensbrika, ali sve je to bio raj, da tako kažem, u odnosu
prema Golom otoku.… A ovde na Golom… sređeno je
da svaka gleda kako će da te udari!” (Simić i Trifunović, 1990: 213, Novka).
Niz kaznenih postupaka s elementima sramoćenja ukazuje na traumatsko obnavljanje fantazmatskih
slika nasilja iz nacističkih logora18: šišanje do kože, grupno skidanje do gola i dezinfekcija, višekratno postrojavanje na prozivku, lažna strijeljanja, vezivanje bodljikavom žicom, robijaška odjeća i obuća neprimjerene veličine, udaranje mokrim konopcem po stražnjici, nošenje
pogrdnih natpisa na tijelu, čišćenje wc-a i kanalizacije,
tjeranje na plač i moljakanje za milost. Poput prisilne
sterilizacije u nacističkim logorima (posebice Romkinja), namjerno ugrožavanje reproduktivnih sposobnosti kažnjenica u logorima na Golom otoku i sv. Grguru,
to jest totalna biopolitička regulacija njihovog života,
ostavilo je najdublje posljedice na njihov kasniji život.19
Koordinirani sustav ponižavanja, mučenja, “pranja
mozga” i zastrašivanja, svodio je internirke, logikom
jedne obrnute logorske resocijalizacije, na de-profesionalizirana, de-familijarizirana i de-personalizirana bića
koja su s određenom sigurnošću mogla računati ne na
smrt nego na arbitrarno dodjeljivanu i obezvrijeđenu
slobodu; slobodu od ali ne i slobodu za.20
Goli otok za goli život ∞ prisila pisanja i muk traume
“U tamnicama trule Jugoslavije bilo je papira i za prevode, pa čak i za Kapital, za pisanje pesama, za slikanje, ako baš nisi hteo da slikaš na platnu. (…) U naročito teškim uslovima upotrebljavali su robijaši toaletpapir da bi na njemu pisali, pa su to krijumčarili kad
su im dolazile ‘vizite’. (…) Na društveno-korisnom
radu... nema čak ni novinskog papira. (…) Kad se spolja uđe u baraku oseća se grozan zadah, smrad” (Lebl,
1990:102).
Da bismo razumjeli učinkovitost metoda paternalističkog slamanja i ucjene pobunjenog dijela nove političke elite moramo pomno promotriti ritualizirane oblike javnog ispovijedanja vlastite krivnje koji su se u blažoj formi “samokritike” primjenjivali i u ostatku dru-
štva (u pionirskim, omladinskim i partijskim ćelijama).
Važnost teatralnih ispovijedi čija je svrha jačanje kolektivnog duha i negiranje privatnosti te (samo)kontrola i
(auto)cenzura svakog pojedinca, uočila je i Hannah
Arendt koja kaže: “Ispovijedi su specijalnost boljševičke
propagande kao što je kuriozna pedanterija legaliziranja
zločina retrospektivnom i retroaktivnom legislativom
bila specijalnost nacističke propagande” (1976:353). Bitna podudarnost kršćanskog rituala javnog ispovijedanja (publicatio sui) i golootočkih raskritikavanja (ispovijedanja “partijskog grijeha”) jest u ceremonijalnom
uprizorenju teatralne, a ne nominalne kazne za heretika
(političkog neistomišljenika). Dakle, način na koji se
netko kažnjava neodvojiv je od načina na koji se on sam
raz-otkriva jer su, prema Foucaultovu mišljenju, u kršćanskoj tradiciji “samokažnjavanje i dobrovoljno ispovijedanje međusobno povezani” (1997:244). Prema mišljenju Petera Brooksa, partijski isljednici inzistiraju na
javnom priznanju osobne krivice jer vjeruju da time kazna prestaje biti samo tjelesna, a priznanje osigurava
“spas duše” od heretičkih misli i djela te obnavlja autoritet Partije:
“Poput inkvizicije partija treba priznanje krivice ne
samo da bi legitimirala kazne, već i da bi javno potvrdila, s usana optuženih, da je ono što smatra krivnjom ili herezom, shvaćeno kao takvo od strane okrivljene osobe. Ako heretik priznaje da je njegovo vjerovanje heretičko, neispravno, pogrešno, tada njegova kazna postaje tek pročišćenje, reafirmacija istinskog vjerovanja. (…) riječ je o razgolićenju i žrtvi, za
veću slavu Boga ili Partije.” (Brooks, prema Beganović, 2007:253).
Pored trajnog istražnog postupka (koji nije okončan ni izlaskom na slobodu) i forsiranja teatralnog samooptuživanja, Goli otok jedinstven je po još jednoj
metodi zloporabe modernog zapadnog “oblikovanja jastva”: pisanju zapisnika o vlastitoj krivnji. Ako je pisanje
o sebi u zapadnoj kulturi povezano s intimnim samopreispitivanjem i kontemplacijom, onda je gotovo svakodnevno logorsko pisanje zapisnika o vlastitoj krivnji
pokušaj represivnog aparata da sasvim osvoji, izmijeni i
“reprogramira” nečiju osobnost, pamćenje i način mišljenja. Isljednici koriste pisano priznanje da bi zadovoljili juridički privid utvrđivanja istine o učinjenom pri-
�jestupu i da bi isljedničku torturu ispitivanja režirali kao
moralnu dramu samopreispitivanja. Čini se da prijelaz s
oralne ispovijesti na pismenu formu priznanja (koja se
ovjerovljuje potpisom) postaje središnje mjesto “alkemijskog pretvaranja ispovijesti u priznanje” (Beganović,
2007:254). Literarnost fabriciranog priznanja što obiluje
proturječjima i pretjerivanjima nije prepreka, nego dodatno sredstvo stalnog isljedničkog sumnjičenja kažnjenika da još nije priznao svoju krivnju, i još neoprostivije, da se ne želi odreći svoje “male individualne istine u jednom totalnome sustavu” koji predstavlja “apsolutnu istinu” (Beganović, 2007:258). Apsurdno pretjerivanje i beskrajno prekrajanje golootočkih ispovijedi o
krivnji predstavlja naličje publicističke prakse uljepšavanja životopisa istaknutih jugoslavenskih revolucionara i političara. Udbino insistiranje na pisanim priznanjima i detaljnim osobnim dosjeima (koje je koristio i
NKVD i istočnonjemačka tajna policija Staasi) otkriva
neuralgičnu točku sustava u kojem naredbodavci nisu
ostavili pisanog traga o svojim naredbama, a biografi i
memoaristi gotovo su nadomjestili arhiv kao temeljnu
instituciju moderne.21
Premda je golootočko diskurzivno (samo)proizvođenje “korigiranih” subjekata s novom socijalističkom dušom odraz modernističke orijentacije društva na
prakse individuacije, iz cijelog je procesa te penalne ortopedagogije izbačena etička dimenzija. Upravo ona koja
za Foucaulta čini razliku između vjerski dogmatskog samoodricanja i moderne konstitucije “nove, pozitivne”
subjektivnosti. Izbacivanje etičke dimenzije iz disciplinarnih praksi preodgoja znakom je dubokih unutrašnjih
konflikata u društvu u kojem se centralizirana suverena
moć počinje raspršivati u (stegovne, djelatne i simboličke) prakse koje proizvode politički “korektne” subjekte,
a humanistički ideali uzmiču pred birokratskim mentalitetom. Zanemarivanje etičke dimenzije čak i kod filozofa praksisovaca, ustrajnih kritičara staljinističkog partijskog mentaliteta, ostalo je trajnim nedostatkom (ideološkog i filozofskog) glorificiranja prakse kao uvjeta samoproizvođenja istinskog socijalističkog čovjeka i njegova svijeta (usp. Mikulić, 2007).
Poput srednjovjekovnih crkvenih autoriteta i komunistički su isljednici kombinirali fizičku bol s “hermeneutičkom” potragom za istinom. Pokora kao “lijek
za dušu” ni za njih nije bila tek “ishitrena metafora, nego oblik organiziranja pokajničke prakse u kojoj tjelesna
239
bol biva povezana s potragom za istinom – istovremeno
doslovnom i metafizičkom” (Assad, 1983:305). U tom
smislu, prosvjetiteljske ideje o smislu kazne i humanističko-pedagoški utemeljenog preodgoja – ne više
usmjerenog “na poricanje nego konstituciju pozitivnog,
novog sebe” (Foucault, 1997:249) – nisu bitno utjecale na
golootočku praksu torture koja i nekoć i danas, u svakom dijelu svijeta, slijedi svoju hermeneutiku prema
kojoj je ekstremna bol pretpostavka svakog iskušavanja,
ispitivanja i uspostavljanja istine o mučenome. Svaki se
“sofisticiraniji” čin torture nadaje kao novo testiranje
individualnog praga slamanja osobe na kojem počinje
trajni poremećaj osobnosti i “ludilo”.22
“Tortura ispitivanja” i višegodišnje pisanje zapisnika o vlastitoj krivnji ostavili su dublje posljedice na
psihu zatočenih žena kojima je doslovno “konfisciran”
jezik političke subjektivacije. Za one koje su bile izložene policijskoj “skripto-torturi”, pisanje o vlastitim ozljedama i apsurdnom nesrazmjeru “zločina” i kazne nije
moglo biti temelj psihoterapije. Za razliku od muških
supatnika koji su se već od kraja 1950-ih kroz hibridne
književno-dokumentarne žanrove izborili za pravo na
priču o Golom otoku kao relevantnom povijesnom
iskustvu (usp. Jambrešić Kirin, 2004) političke zatvorenice nisu imale ni društvenu potporu, ni uzor ni okvir
za naraciju o vlastitom “disidentskom” djelovanju. Gubitak samopouzdanja i brojni posttraumatski simptomi
rezultirali su povlačenjem iz javnog života23, no opća
društvena klima koja nije puno marila za preživjele kako nacističkih tako ni staljinističkih logora, pomogla je
postupnom samoiscjeljivanju o kojem piše i književnik
Imre Kertész. On smatra da su forsirana jednoobraznost
i nehaj socijalističkog društva prema pojedinačnom
stradanju i traumi bili presudni da on sam nije podlegao
“zovu samosažaljenja” ni osjećaju “istinske uzvišenosti”
žrtve koja očekuje javnu ispriku i rehabilitaciju (2008:
246).
Početkom 1990-ih, u predvečerje novog rata, ženska su svjedočenja o Golom otoku i sv. Grguru nakratko
bila u fokusu jugoslavenske javnosti. Ubrzo nakon emitiranja izuzetno gledane dokumentarne serije Goli život Danila Kiša i Aleksandra Mandića u proljeće 1990.,
uslijedilo je objavljivanje nekoliko knjiga ženskih logorskih uspomena i zbornika svjedočenja (Dragović-Gašpar, 1990; Lebl, 1990; Simić i Trifunović 1990; Grlić,
1997) te niz novinskih polemika i intervjua s bivšim po-
19
20
21
22
jeli, morali su fašistima učiniti
određene usluge, a ko zna kakve!’ To nije bilo proklamovano
kao pravilo, ali se tako postupalo” (Arhiv JU.SPJ, 1985, cit. prema Karge, 2006:85).
“Sećam se da su nas u decembru, kada je duvao jak burin, naterali da peremo ćebad u moru, i
u tom trenutku dolazi general
Jova Kapičić koji nam se ironično nasmejao i rekao: ‘Eto, vidite
što vam sad mogu Rusi? Neka
dođu da vas spasu. Mi možemo
da vas držimo ceo dan u moru, i
koja će od vas da rodi dete posle
toga?’ Retke su bile žene koje su
rodile posle Golog otoka, to su
bile srećne žene” (Olivera Stakić-Nedeljković, časopis Ten,
1990:22). Svjedokinja Jelka tvrdi:
“Što smo izgubile muževe, brakove, stanove, to uopšte ne govorim. Ja bih bila rodila vanbračno, ali većina nije rodila.
Malo je žena rodilo posle Golog
otoka” (Simić i Trifunović,
1990:154, Jelka).
Bivši logoraši zauvijek će ostati
građani drugog reda, dežurni
krivci, sumnjivci i potencijalni
teroristi koje će lokalne vlasti
zatvarati prilikom posjete važnih političara. Nekoć istaknuti
pojedinci (političari, generali,
intelektualci) ostat će ljudi neostvarenih potencijala i urušenih
života.
“[Tito je] zazirao od pisane riječi, od svog rukopisa, kao da će se
riječi nekako okrenuti protiv
njega. I svoju je biografiju diktirao, a kasnije u sedamdesetima
samo je u TV intervjuima davao
nadopune. Tito, svjedok stoljeća, odrastao u Monarhiji, borio
se u oba svjetska rata, vidio je
moskovske čistke, osobno je poznavao velike diktatore našeg
stoljeća. Churchill je dobio Nobelovu nagradu za svoje memoare, Tito iza sebe nije ostavio ništa. (…) Što je to mogao znati o
slovima, kad ih se toliko bojao?”
(Zilahy, 2004:54-55).
Vlaisavljević podsjeća na Titovu
konstataciju o “moralnoj patnji”
i “ludilu” kao najvećoj opasnosti
kojoj su bili izloženi komunisti
robijaši u starojugoslavenskim
zatvorima: “Režim bi volio da
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
UP&UNDERGROUND
Proljeće 2010.
�svi komunisti polude, zato se
toliko i trudi da drugovima čim
više zagorča život, bilo moralnim ili fizičkim patnjama”
(2003:22). On smatra da je “podsticanje ili proizvodnja ludila”
kao način modernog “normiranja” pojedinaca, političkih zatvorenika, u puno većoj mjeri
bila specijalnost Golog otoka.
23 Eva Grlić opisuje svoje inhibicije i strahove nakon zatočenja:
“(…) poslije golootočkog iskustva izgubila sam upravo samopouzdanje. Bila sam preplašena.
Bojala sam se glasno i necenzurirano izreći svoju misao živeći
u uvjerenju da će svaka moja riječ biti dojavljena tamo gdje ne
treba. Još i sada imam fiksnu
ideju da se sve što govorim, uvijek i svugdje prisluškuje…Strah
međutim više i nije nešto svjesno, on se vremenom uvlači u
podsvijest i postaje teško izbrisiv. (…) Takav strah međutim
može biti i izgovor za bilo koji
smjeliji i ljudskiji postupak”
(1997:275).
24 Dok je muški (memoarski i publicistički) diskurs bio zaokupljen pitanjima broja osuđenih i
njihove nacionalne pripadnosti,
identitetom ubijenih, logorskim usporednicama, značenjem Golog otoka za političku
sudbinu SFRJ, žene su i ovaj put
pribjegle etički zahtjevnijem
problematiziranju međuljudskih odnosa u “sivoj zoni” logora gdje se stapaju “struje čovječnog i nečovječnog”. Bivše internirke bile su spremnije priznati
da “nevinih nema, svi smo mi
bili i žrtve i dželati – Titove i Staljinove vojske podjednako”
(Dragović-Gašpar, 1990:251) te
preuzeti svoj dio povijesne odgovornosti za iznevjerenu komunističku utopiju o društvu
po mjeri čovjeka. One su češće
propitivale etičko-političku granicu između hrabrosti i “fanatizma”, osobnog integriteta i
poriva preživljavanja te tragale
za novim pojmovima i kompleksnijim psihološkim kategorijama da bi nam približile izuzetnost stanja “pred-političke životinje” u koje su bile
dovedene.
240
litičkim zatvorenicama. No ovaj kratkotrajan, emotivan,
medijski posredovan i kontroliran rad ženskog pamćenja, nacionalističke političke elite (s velikim brojem komunista-konvertita) iskoristile su za povijesni revizionizam te medijsku promociju antikomunizma i viktimoloških naracija.24 Senzacionalistička potraga za primjerima ženske okrutnosti i slučajevima seksualnog
nasilja u komunističkim kazamatima25 odrazom je zakašnjele – bolje rečeno, anticipacijske - “fascinacije fašizmom” koja je zahvatila popularnu zapadnu kulturu
još 1970-ih. Ako prihvatimo postavku Susan Sontag iz
istoimenog eseja26 kako je “nacizam bio ‘seksipilniji’ od
komunizma” ne zaslugom nacista nego uslijed aseksualnog imaginarija ljevičarskih pokreta, onda je kolektivna fascinacija medijskim slikama “erotiziranog” crvenog terora bila najava novog fratricida. Na taj način bolne uspomene apolitičnih svjedokinja nisu pridonijele
razumijevanju jednog povijesnog razdoblja, nego su poslužile prebacivanju krivnje – na staljiniste među komunistima, na komuniste među postkomunistima (Badurina, 2006:66). One su, nažalost, otvorile i Pandorinu
kutiju prizora logorske torture koji će u ratovima na području bivše Jugoslavije od 1991. do 1999. biti ponovno
viđeni, traumatski odjelotvoreni u genocidnim politikama koje su preko “nacionaliziranih” ženskih tijela
ostvarile sadističko komadanje jugoslavenskog
kolektiva.
Kako komemorirati mjesta crvenog terora?
Da je Goli otok poput Atlantide moderne hrvatske
političke mitologije svjedoči i nedostatak konsenzusa
oko njegova imenovanja, historijske ekspertize i spomeničke zaštite kojom bi se na primjeren način obilježilo ovo mjesto sjećanja na poratni crveni teror. Riječ je o
nedostatku relevantnog odgovora na pitanje treba li komunističkoj ideji u srcu socijalističke modernizacije jugoslavenskog društva zahvaliti za rapidnu industrijalizaciju, urbanizaciju i sekularizaciju relativno egalitarnog društva, ili u njoj treba tražiti krivca za (ne)očekivani kolaps ovog jedinstvenog društvenog projekta na brdovitom Balkanu. Ukratko, treba li naraciju o jugoslavenskoj prošlosti usmjeriti na topografiju komunističkog političkog terora ili pak na heterotopije užitka u
“stranoj zemlji prošlosti” nastanjenoj mitskim mjestima, simbolima i fetišima profitabilne Titostalgije (usp.
Velikonja, 2010).
U slučaju negativnih, odnosno pozitivnih reminiscencija na jugoslavensku prošlost, prijeti opasnost da
se komparativni pogled na socijalističku prošlost zamijeni onim što Mitja Velikonja prepoznaje kao “opsjednutost sobom”, mišljenjem da je jugoslavensko iskustvo uvijek i po svemu bila nešto posebno, jedinstveno i
nedjeljivo. Tako se u vezi s arhitekturom zatvorskog
kompleksa na Golom otoku pojavljuje mišljenje da je riječ o logoru specifične organizacije koja ga razlikuje i od
staljinističkih i od fašističkih logora27, a ne istražuje se
njegovo mjesto u “biopolitičkoj paradigmi današnjeg
Zapada” (Agamben, 2006), to jest njegova genealogija
od austrougarskog logora za ruske vojnike na Golom
otoku, preko fašističkog logora Kampor na Rabu do
splitske Lore.
Neriješena sudbina devastiranog zatvorskog kompleksa na Golom otoku samo potvrđuje tezu kako sustavan rad na nacionalnom pamćenju prethodi svakoj pojedinačnoj gesti memorizacije i obilježavanju mjesta kolektivnog sjećanja. Udruga bivših političkih zatvorenika
na Golom otoku “Ante Zemljar” uputila je 2004. godine
Saboru zahtjev za spomeničkom zaštitom jednog dijela
otoka no ona ne odlučuje o tome koja bi trebala biti spomenička funkcija ovog mjesta niti koja bi značenja o
prošlosti on trebao posredovati. Međutim, pored službene politike pamćenja u svakom društvu postoje i protumemorije “zajednica onih koji se sjećaju” i onih koji
kao sekundarni svjedoci prihvaćaju obvezu suočavanja s
(nacionalnom) prošlošću. U slučaju Golog otoka to znači borbu protiv onog što Eco naziva ars oblivinalis, protiv
umijeća zaboravljanja koje se koristi nadomjesnom poviješću, fabrikacijom paralelnih i pojednostavljenih povijesnih priča, pa recimo, ne briše ustaške, nacističke i
ine zločine nego ih prekriva (medijski eksponiranijim)
naracijama o komunističkim zločinima.
Regionalne i državne vlasti oglušile su se i na
građansku inicijativu za zaštitom i “revitalizacijom otoka” koju u Rijeci od 2000. godine predvodi grupa umjetnika s kustosom Brankom Cerovcem na čelu, a koja se
zove “Goli otok – novi hrvatski turizam” (Cerovac,
2009). Unatoč imenu, ovdje nije riječ o pokušaju da se
hrvatski poena insularis pretvori u Alcatraz, u atraktivno
odredište komodificiranog spomeničkog turizma koji
spaja opći interes za teme političkog terora i potencijal
za avanturistički turizam kojeg su već otkrili poduzetni
vlasnici brodica, zasad jedini organizatori (turističkog)
�obilaska Golog otoka. Kao što ističu politički angažirani
umjetnici, 21. stoljeće zahtijeva od nas da tražimo nove
oblike suočavanja s traumatskom prošlošću i da mjesta
dehumanizacije pokušamo učiniti mjestima proizvodnje kritičkog mišljenja, tolerancije i povijesnih znanja.
U tom smislu članovi Multimedijalnog centra “Goli
otok – novi hrvatski turizam” kritički se i kreativno nose s opasnošću mimetičkog slavljenja monumentalne
povijesti te pružaju otpor dominantnim praksama komemoriranja mjesta (masovnog) stradanja u Hrvatskoj.
Jedan od predstojećih zadataka za istraživače/ice
uloge zatvorskog iskustva žena u procesu njihovog oblikovanja kao modernih političkih subjekata jest usporedba svjedočenja jugoslavenskih političkih zatvorenica
i svjedočenja žena internirki u grčkim otočkim logorima za partizanke i komunistkinje nakon završetka grčkog građanskog rata 1949., usporedba iskaza žena žrtava
represije vojnih hunti u Čileu i Argentini i drugdje s kazivanjima brojnih drugih zatočenica (u kućnim, redovnim i tajnim zatvorima) diljem suvremenog svijeta kojima se ne priznaje status političkih zatvorenica. Cvetan
Todorov (2000) dobro je formulirao epistemološko žarište i etički prioritet ove humanističke “logorologije” koju pišu nepovjesničari. Umjesto interesa za posljedice
radikalnog zla i dehumanizaciju mjerenu gubitkom tipičnih “muških” vrijednosti – čast, hrabrost, principijelnost – istraživači i istraživačice trebali bi se pozabaviti
analizom “ženskih” napora preživljavanja i održavanja
minimalne, prividne normalnosti u logorskom univerzumu. U središtu tih napora leži borba za očuvanjem
“ženskih” vrijednosti (izdržljivost, suosjećanje, potreba
povjeravanja) koje čine “banalnost dobra” i u logorskim
uvjetima (Todorov, 2000:291). A sve moralne vrijednosti, baš kao i svako kršenje ljudskih prava, imaju svoje
svakodnevno (“banalno”) i svoje ekstremno lice.
U rivalstvu smrtnog svjedoka i transformirajućeg
arhiva (muzeja), kako to primjećuje Derrida u knjizi Mal
d'Archive (1995), svjedok ne samo da zaslužuje prednost i
podršku intelektualne javnosti, već i zahtjevniju razinu
teorijske rasprave. One rasprave koja će dati prednost
etičkom uvidu, a osjećaj odgovornosti za interpretaciju
osobnih kazivanja nadrediti sposobnosti empatijskog
uživljavanja u priču o traumatskom iskustvu. Traumatska pripovijest nije izvor spoznaja o prirodi međuljudskih odnosa (u okruženju u kojem je sloboda izbora i
moralnog djelovanja krajnje sužena), ali nam može pru-
241
žiti dragocjene uvide u snagu ljudskog duha, u postojanost osobnih uvjerenja i moć samoiscjeljenja. Tako
Evgenija S. Ginzburg (1971), koja je u sibirskim gulazima
provela dvadeset godina, Rosa Dragović-Gašpar (1990) i
Eva Grlić (1997), zatvorenice s Golog otoka, pripovijedaju da su nakon logora postale humanija bića, odane komunističkim idealima, a ne dogmatskim principima komunističkog revolucionarnog djelovanja koje “teži da
oslobodi sve ljude tako što će ih, privremeno, porobiti”
(Camus, 1951). Golootočka je dionica ženske povijesti
socijalističke emancipacije najbolji dokaz međupovezanosti visoko postavljenih ideala i brojnosti njihovog iznevjeravanja i opovrgavanja, dokaz imanentnog protuslovlja ideologije koja je ženama obećala punu ravnopravnost, ali je vječno odlagala priznati im političku
punoljetnost za samostalno djelovanje.
25 Veselin Popović, bivši major
Udbe i upravitelj ženskih logora
u Ramskom ritu i Zabeli, koji
1950. bježi u Rumunjsku i tamo
provodi 16 godina kao politički
emigrant, odgovara u intervjuu
časopisu Ten na učestale optužbe o seksualnom nasilju (što je
novinar metaforično “pojasnio”): “Optužuju vas da ste bili
‘sultan u haremu'?. V.P.: Slušajte,
Danilo Kiš je veliki književnik,
ali nitko ne treba da zaboravi da
je bio zakleti antikomunista i da
je iz dubine duše mrzeo sve što
je imalo neke veze s komunizmom. Kiš hoće da poistoveti sve
komuniste sa monstrumima
komunizma. (…) Postoji bezbroj
stvari u kojima serija ‘Goli život’
gubi svoju vrednost, osim priče
o mukama tih žena, o stradanjima, patnjama i metodama u logoru. Kiš toliko mrzi te žene, jer
one su za Sovjete, one su IB-ovke, one predstavljaju najveće
neprijatelje čovječanstva, i tada
im posljednji put napakosti izjavom da su sve bile bludnice, i to
onog koji im je sve vreme pomagao, Veselina Popovića” (Ten,
god. 7, br. 69, str. 6).
26 Esej “Fascinating Fascism”
objavljen je u časopisu New
York Review of Books 1975. godine, a dostupan je na: http://
www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/
marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/
SontagFascinFascism75.htm.
Bogdanović spominje nekoliko
novinskih primjera onodobne
fascinacije “pornografijom nasilja”: “krvave glave….koje se valjaju po podu, leševi usnulih vojnika, tela silovanih devojaka i žena –
reči koje su se nedavno mogle
čuti u Predstavništvu gradskog
komiteta neposredno pred istorijski plenum” (1988:45).
27 Tako arhitekt Vlado Bralić ne
vodi računa o sličnim povlasticama kapoa u nacističkom logoru i sobnog starješine na Golom
otoku, nego naglašava samo razliku po kojoj je sobni starješina
imao vlastitu minijaturnu sobicu unutar zatvoreničkog paviljona (“Jedinstvena arhitektura
zloglasnog logora”, razgovarala
N. V. Ogurlić, Novi list, 03. 01.
2010., god. 15, br. 748, str. 2-3.
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata
Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda:
političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
UP&UNDERGROUND
Proljeće 2010.
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društvena pitanja, 35/368, str. 362-364.
— Lebl, Ženi. 1990. Ljubičica bela: vic dug dve i po godine.
Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine. (2. izd. 2009,
Beograd: Čigoja štampa)
— Lefort, Claude 2000. Prijepor o komunizmu. Zagreb:
Politička kultura, prevela Radmila Zdjelar, pogovor
Rade Kalanj.
— Leksikon 1996. Hrvatski leksikon, gl. urednik Antun
Vujić. 2 sv. Zagreb: Naklada leksikon.
— Levi, Primo. 1989. The Drowned and the Saved.
London: Abacus.
— Marković, Dragan. 1990. Josip Broz i Goli otok.
Beograd: Beseda.
— Mikulić, Borislav. 2007. “Revolucija i intervencija. O
utopijskom efektu ‘praxis’”.
— http://deenes.ffzg.hr/%7Ebmikulic/Homepage/
Efekt_praxis.htm.
— Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2004. Dva ogleda: Razdjelovljena
zajednica; O singularnom pluralnom bitku. Zagreb:
Multimedijalni institut; Arkzin, preveo Tomislav
Medak.
— Pateman, Carole. 1998. Ženski nered: demokracija,
feminizam i politička teorija. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka,
prevela M. Paić Jurinić.
— Perrot, Michelle. 2009. Moja povijest žena. Zagreb:
Ibis grafika, prevela V. Čaušević Kreho.
— Podoroga, Valerij. 2007. “Gulag u umu: skice i
razmišljanja”. III program HR, 19. 08. 2007, preveo
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— Popović, Sabina. 1999. Tortura, posljedice i
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— Ridley, Jasper G. 2000. Tito: biografija. Zagreb:
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islednice. Beograd: ABC product.
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Ženska infoteka (odabrala i priredila Dunja
Rihtman-Auguštin).
— Spehnjak, Katarina. 2002. Javnost i propaganda:
Narodna fronta u politici i kulturi Hrvatske: 1945.-1952.
Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest – Dom i svijet.
— Todorov, Tzvetan. 2000 [1991]. Facing the Extreme:
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— Todorov, Tzvetan. 1999. Voices from the Gulag: Life
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— Velikonja, Mitja. 2010. Titostalgija. Beograd:
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— Vilensky, Simeon. 1999. Till my tale is told: women's
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— Zilahy, Péter. 2004. Od abecede do žirafe: posljednji
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Prosvjeta.
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http://www.mi2.hr/radioActive/past/txt/03.06.
zizek.kadpartijadigne.rtf
�Prešarana spomen ploča, Split
243
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Izdajice su uvijek ženskog roda: političke zatvorenice u arhipelagu Goli
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Renata Jambrešić Kirin
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Školska knjiga d.d.
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14 str.
Goli otok
Josip Broz Tito
KPJ
logor
nasilje
Renata Jambrešić Kirin
Staljin
-
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/6ddd554425a4e713c4adb37d4d8b78dc.pdf
ee5a8f3356335064e57832138e2b2704
PDF Text
Text
�Impressum
Naslov publikacije: IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA: AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
Godina izdanja: 2016.
Izdavač: Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost CRVENA
Sarajevo
www.crvena.ba
Za izdavača: Danijela Dugandžić
Urednice: Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić
Urednica ilustracija: Adela Jušić
Ilustracije: Sunita Fišić, Aleksandra Nina Knežević, Kasja Jerlagić, Adela Jušić, Nardina
Zubanović
Prijevod teksta Chiare Bonfiglioli sa engleskog jezika: Selma Asotić
Lektura: Mirjana Evtov
Grafičko oblikovanje i priprema za štampu: Leila Čmajčanin
Tiraž: 300
Štampa: Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo
ISBN: 978-9926-8131-0-9
CIP - Katalogizacija u publikaciji
Nacionalna i univerzitetska biblioteka
Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo
329.7-055.2(497.1)”1942/1953”(082)
316.66-055.2(497.1)(082)
“Supported by Rosa Luxemburg
Stiftung Southeast Europe
with funds of the German
Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development”
Sadržaj zbornika isključiva je
odgovornost izdavača.
Free copy not for commercial use.
IZGUBLJENA revolucija : AFŽ između mita i zaborava /
Chiara Bonfiglioli ... [et al.]. - Sarajevo : Udruženje za
kulturu i umjetnost Crvena, 2016. - 199 str. : ilustr. ;
24 cm
Biografije: str. 196-199. - Bibliografija: str. 186-189 ;
bibliografske i druge bilješke uz tekst.
ISBN 978-9926-8131-0-9
1. Bonfiglioli, Chiara
COBISS.BH-ID 23574534
�Chiara Bonfiglioli
Ajla Demiragić
Andreja Dugandžić
Adela Jušić
Danijela Majstorović
Boriša Mraović
Tijana Okić
SARAJEVO, 2016.
�Sadržaj
4
Uvodna riječ
10
O ilustracijama
16
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Biografije aktivistkinja AFŽ-a:
intersekcionalna analiza ženskog djelovanja
40
Nardina Zubanović
Ilustracije
48
Ajla Demiragić
Šećer sladak a bombone ljute, ja se draga učiteljice pouzdavam u te:
uloga i položaj narodne (napredne) učiteljice u prijelomnim godinama
izgradnje novog socijalističkog bosanskohercegovačkog društva
78
Aleksandra Nina Knežević
Ilustracije
84
Danijela Majstorović
Stvaranje ‘nove’ jugoslovenske žene:
emancipatorski elementi medijskog diskursa s kraja II svjetskog rata
116
Kasja Jerlagić
Ilustracije
120
Boriša Mraović
Heroizam rada:
Antifašistički front žena i socijalistički dispozitiv 1942.-1953.
144
Sunita Fišić
Ilustracije
148
Tijana Okić
Od revolucionarnog do proizvodnog subjekta:
alternativna historija AFŽ-a
190
Adela Jušić
Ilustracije
196
Biografije
�UVODNA
RIJEČ
ANDREJA
DUGANDŽIĆ
TIJANA
OKIĆ
�ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
4
UVODNA RIJEČ
Zbornik koji predstavljamo javnosti jedan je od rezultata dugogodišnjeg
rada trudbenica Udruženja za kulturu i umjetnost Crvena ka digitalizaciji
dokumenata za Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije (http://www.afzarhiv.org/). Ideja za kreiranje Arhiva rodila se još
2010. godine, kada smo u okviru projekta “Šta je nama naša borba dala?”
počele istraživati historijat Antifašističkog fronta žena (AFŽ). Uvidjevši da
nam je historija najveće ženske organizacije na našim prostorima u velikoj
mjeri nepoznata, naši napori da Arhiv učinimo javnim dijelom su i potraga za
onom stranom historije koja je uvijek bila i ostala na marginama. Arhiv je u
svojoj trenutnoj formi ograničen na građu prikupljenu u Bosni i Hercegovini,
ali je naša ideja od početka bila stvaranje jugoslovenskog arhiva – ideja koja
počiva na svijesti da se samo kolektivnim radom mogu otvarati nova polja
istraživanja i obogaćivati kolektivno znanje. U tom smislu, Arhiv je naš, ničiji
pojedinačno, i baš zato, svačiji. On je u procesu, u nastajanju i upravo se
tu očituje njegova osnovna namjera: javno i kritički misliti vlastitu prošlost.
Upućujemo zato i otvoreni poziv svima da doprinesu građom, obradom i prilozima i tako se uključe u kolektivni projekat izrade jednog sveobuhvatnijeg
arhiva. Trenutno, sadržaj arhiva obuhvata dio arhivske građe, periodiku i
knjige, stenografske zabilješke, zapisnike i izvještaje kao i druge materijale,
a sadrži i elemente usmene historije preživjelih i živućih aefžeovki, historije
koju je jugoslavenska historiografija propustila zabilježiti.
Arhive najčešće zamišljamo kao repozitorije objektivne istine, mitske autentične prostore iz kojih nam progovara sâma historija. Arhivi legitimiraju historiju kao profesionalnu disciplinu koja se bavi prošlošću onakvom
“kakva je doista bila” (Ranke) i koja je zasnovana na kritičkom ispitivanju
izvora (quellenkritik). Jacques Derrida1 tvrdi da ne postoji “autentični”
početak arhiva budući da je svaki početak već unaprijed (pred)određen
političkim ili znanstvenim autoritetom. Pristup arhivima kao historijskoj
građi je zaštićen, a država upošljava činovnike (učenjake, historičare)
koji proizvode narative o državnom poretku, legitimnosti i kontinuitetima.
Arhiv zbog toga nije naprosto neka unaprijed dana ili određena selekcija
dokumenata, nego naprotiv, rezultat namjernog odbacivanja materijala
kao što je primjerice bio slučaj sa odbacivanjem antičkih papirusa koji su,
nakon što su otkriveni, postali izvor (arhivskog) znanja o antici.
1
Jacques Derrida, Mal d’Archive (Paris: Editions Galilée, 2008).
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
Porijeklo arhiva o kojem je ovdje riječ nije ništa drugačije. Odluka da se
formira Arhiv AFŽ-a Jugoslavije i svake republike zasebno nalazi se već
u samom Arhivu. Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavije 20. 2. 1950. donosi
odluku o formiranju Komisije za rad na arhiviranju dokumenata2. Odluka
nalaže republičkim odborima AFŽ-a da počnu raditi na “prikupljanju i obradi historijskog materijala iz istorije naprednog pokreta žena Jugoslavije
– kroz period predratni, ratni i posleratni”. Raspoloživa arhivska građa je
nepotpuna i odnosi se na period 1942.-1951. godine, što će reći na period od
osnivanja AFŽ-a do dvije godine prije njegove disolucije. Građa koja pokriva
period NOB-a je ograničena, dok je period neposredno poslije rata pokriven
u znatno većem obimu. Nakon disolucije Arhiv AFŽ-a BiH bio je dio građe
Instituta za historiju radničkog pokreta, da bi ga konačno preuzeo Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine. Unatoč pokušajima, nismo saznale da li je materijal
izgubljen ili uništen za vrijeme opsade Sarajeva. Ono što znamo jeste da se
dogodio proces arhiviranja kao pohranjivanja, pospremanja i zaboravljanja
u kojem je Arhiv, Marxovim riječima, prepušten “glodarskoj kritici miševa”.
Pospremanje je bilo vrlo temeljito pa je već 1955. godine, objavljivanjem
prvog toma Žene Srbije u NOB-u, AFŽ zamijenjen novim subjektom: “ženama
u Narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi”. Tu počinje ispisivanje historije žena koje
se bavi ulogom žena u oslobodilačkom ratu po republikama i regijama, ali
ne i ulogom AFŽ-a Jugoslavije.3 Druga republička izdanja pojavila su se tek
decenijama poslije.4 Kolekcija Žene Srbije u NOB-u objavljena je na 30-u
godišnjicu pobjede nad fašizmom, dok se bosanskohercegovačko izdanje
pojavilo tek 1977. godine i nije bilo vezano ni za kakvu godišnjicu. Za razliku
od hrvatskog i srpskog izdanja, bh izdanje su uređivali članovi Instituta za
istoriju.
Za vrijeme postojanja SFRJ nikada nije napisana sveobuhvatna historija
AFŽ-a Jugoslavije, čija masovnost za nas danas predstavlja nedostižnu
tlapnju, sablast koja nas iz prošlosti gura u budućnost borbe, pa se ona
2
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Dopis Centralnog odbora AFŽ-a Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru
AFŽ-a BiH od 3. marta 1950. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 317/50, 1950. str. 2.
3
Na tridesetu godišnjicu osnivanja AFŽ-a konačno je objavljena historija “Borbeni put žena
Jugoslavije”, više u: Dušanka Kovačević, Dana Begić et al. Borbeni put žena Jugoslavije
(Beograd: Leksikografski zavod Sveznanje, 1972.).
4
Crnogorsko izdanje pojavilo se 1969. godine, slovensko 1970. godine, makedonsko 1976.
godine.
5
�ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
6
UVODNA RIJEČ
uveliko utopila u historiju NOB-a, historiju žena tout court i u figuru partizanke. AFŽ je tako umro dva puta. Prvi puta disolucijom 1953. godine, a
potom i u službenom sjećanju na prošlost, gdje je ostao kao sablasni trag
ili prisutnost odsutnosti (Derrida), ustuknuvši pred novim narativom SFRJ,
iz kojeg je isključen čak i Narodnooslobodilački pokret5.
Svako je historijsko i znanstveno istraživanje historijski i politički određeno:
ono se vodi logikom pitanja i odgovora, teorijskih problema i pitanja koja iz
njih slijede. Ovaj se zbornik naslanja na studije o radu i djelovanju AFŽ-a
i žena u Jugoslaviji uopće – Lydije Sklevicky, Svetlane Slapšak, Renate
Jambrešić-Kirin, Gordane Stojaković, Ivane Pantelić – i nastoji pokrenuti
novu diskusiju i održati ovo važno naslijeđe živim. Reaproprijacija ovog
naslijeđa bitan je korak u naoružavanju novog oslobodilačkog pokreta u
borbi protiv patrijarhalne, fašističke i kapitalističke tiranije.
***
Šta uopće znači Arhiv koji je dio arhiva države naroda, nakon čijeg raspada
su se stvorile nacionalne države? Šta znači Arhiv za nas danas? Misliti
vlastitu historiju: pretpostavka je to i imperativ svakog kritičkog odnosa
prema prošlosti koji pretendira da prošlost shvati kao nešto više i drugačije
od pukog sjećanja na nju. Oni koji se prošlosti sjećaju monumentalizirajući
je, osuđeni su na to da je zaborave i da iz nje ne nauče ništa, a oni koji je se
sjećaju zaboravljajući - osuđeni su na to da je ponove. Odbacujući historiju
AFŽ-a, riskiramo to da marginaliziramo ovo cjelokupno iskustvo AFŽ-a i
propustimo lekcije koje može imati za nas danas.
1989. godina predstavlja prelomnu tačku kada se povlači linija demarkacije: demokracija počinje samo tamo gdje završava komunizam. Ovaj stav
će obilježiti svu skoriju prošlost ovih prostora, tokom koje je postjugoslavenskom prostoru, kao uostalom i ostatku Istočne Europe, u doslovnom
– kantovskom – značenju, “nametnuto stanje nezrelosti” o kojem je Boris
Buden govorio kao o “demokraciji u pelenama”6, koja zahtjeva tutore koji,
5
Marko Attila, Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014).
6
Boris Buden, Zona prelaska. O kraju postkomunizma, prev. Hana Ćopić (Beograd: Fabrika
knjiga, 2012).
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
kao odrasli, kao oni koji znaju pravila ispravnog ponašanja, održavaju politički status quo, vršeći ideološku funkciju gospodara dopuštenog govora
i djelovanja. Uspon historijskog revizionizma nakon 1989. oduzeo nam je
mogućnost da sami razumijemo prelomne tačke naše vlastite historije.
Tako se borba jugoslavenskih komunista, partizanki i partizana, ali i
afežeovki, jednim svojim dijelom – onim “totalitarnim” – upisuje u historiju
poraza, pa time i totalitarizma, dok se oslobođeni historijski revizionizam
pobjednički upisuje u mitološke državotvorne narative o novim, slobodnim,
demokratskim i progresivnim društvima.
Ono što se u ovakvoj slici pojavljuje kao ostatak jeste antifašizam. Antifašizam je jedno od rijetkih naslijeđa jugoslavenske prošlosti o kojem je
danas “dopušteno” javno govoriti. Istovremeno, potpuno je ispražnjen od
političkog sadržaja i naboja, odvojen od realnog, življenog historijskog iskustva, depolitiziran i individualiziran, reduciran na iskustvo pobjede nad
fašizmom, dakako, uz obavezno brisanje jugoslavenstva i komunizma kao
njegovih konstitutivnih elemenata, bez kojih, ni u Jugoslaviji, a ni u Evropi,
ne bi bilo pobjede nad fašizmom.
Šta onda može značiti povratak naslijeđu AFŽ-a BiH nakon 70 i nešto godina
i drugog krvavog rata koji je Bosnu i Hercegovinu ostavio opljačkanom,
opustošenom, osiromašenom i podijeljenom? Zbornik koji predstavljamo
javnosti pokušaj je da se razmišlja o ovom pitanju. Bez pretenzije da ponudi
definitivne i konačne odgovore, namjera je ovog zbornika naizgled sasvim
jednostavna – pokrenuti i otvoriti raspravu. Zbog toga zbornik ne ispisuje
ideološki jednostranu reprezentaciju AFŽ-a, nego, s onu stranu patrijarhata
i revizionističke ideje totalitarizma, nastoji doprinijeti kolektivnom znanju
o pokretu koji još uvijek izaziva strahopoštovanje. Parafrazirajući Nannija
Balestrinija i Prima Morona, mogle bismo kazati da je zbornik zamišljen kao
instrument rada, kao kompas koji nam pomaže da se krećemo u labirintu
arhivske građe, ali i kao pokušaj da se osvijetle kontradikcije sadržane u
samom arhivu, kontradikcije koje su ishod historijskih događaja, ali istovremeno i njihov ključni motor 7.
7
U svojoj dokumentarističkoj kolekciji o revolucionarnim pokretima u Italiji između 1968.1977. Nanni Balestrini i Primo Moroni u uvodu raspravljaju upravo o tome kako predstaviti
arhive, usmenu historiju i kako uopće predstavljati svu kompleksnost istraživanja koje je
istovremeno unutar i izvan vremena na koje se knjiga odnosi. U: Nanni Balestrini i Primo
Moroni, L’orda d’oro 1968-1977. La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed
esistenziale (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2015).
7
�8
ANDREJA DUGANDŽIĆ, TIJANA OKIĆ
UVODNA RIJEČ
Tekstovi na različite načine nastoje istražiti revolucionarne lomove s jedne,
i kontradikcije historijskog trenutka, koji je za žene na našim prostorima
označio historijski preokret, s druge strane. Ispituju epizode borbe koju
nam uvijek iznova valja otpočinjati i dovršavati. Iskustvo pobjede i poraza,
afežeovsko i naše, prošlo i sadašnje, podsjetnik je da naše nove i buduće
borbe i frontovi, bitke koje trebamo izvojevati, stoje otvoreni i svjedoče o
stvaranju mogućeg tamo gdje je sve izgledalo nemoguće. Revolucija se
dogodila. Započnimo još jednu!
Urednice
�O ILUSTRACIJAMA
ADELA
JUŠIĆ
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
10
O ILUSTRACIJAMA
“Učiniti žene vidljivima prvi је korak kojim se stavlja u pitanje uobičajen
odnos općeg i posebnog u hijerarhiji relevantnosti pisanja povijesti.”1
Pored toga što je u našoj istoriji jako malo materijala koji govori o političkoj
djelatnosti žena, ono malo što imamo, zapostavljeno je i prijeti da bude
potpuno izgubljeno. Jedan od načina da od zaborava pokušamo spasiti
istoriju je da se njome bavimo kroz umjetnost.
Umjetnost jugoslovenskog prostora iz druge polovine prošlog stoljeća obiluje
slikarskim i skulptorskim predstavama scena iz Drugog svjetskog rata. To
su uglavnom predstave vojnika u odlučujućim bitkama. Pored predstava koje
slave pobjedu nad fašizmom, česte su umjetničke kompozicije koje veličaju socijalističkog čovjeka u izgradnji ratom razorene zemlje. Predstave
muškaraca preovladavaju, a žene, iako počesto prisutne na platnu ili npr.
reljefu, rijetko su protagonistkinje. Kada je riječ o spomenicima NOB-u,
rijetki su oni koji prikazuju isključivo žene, a još rjeđi među njima su oni
koji prikazuju određene istorijske ličnosti. Ženska figura uglavnom je
personifikacija slobode, pobjede, revolucije i slično. “Žene su prikazane
kao nositeljice tradicije i kada se rame uz rame bore sa svojim kolegama
suborcima i radnicima. U jednoj ruci puška/motika, a za skutom dijete.“2
U nedostatku scena herojske borbe i rada žena koje su doprinijele odbrani
i razvoju socijalističke Jugoslavije, posegnule smo za pričama koje su dostupne na online Arhivu antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i
Jugoslavije, za dokumentima koji govore o ženskim političkim aktivnostima
ovog perioda. Za ovaj zbornik odlučile smo producirati ilustracije koje će
se baviti ključnim temama Arhiva: žena u borbi, heroizam rada, ilegalni
rad i slično. Zajedno sa umjetnicama Sunitom Fišić, Nardinom Zubanović,
Aleksandrom Ninom Knežević i Kasjom Jerlagić odabrale smo dokumente,
tekstove i priče za koje smatramo da zaslužuju da ih kroz umjetnički rad
pokušamo ovjekovječiti.
Kao umjetnica i feministkinja proteklih sam pet godina temu učešća žena
u NOB-u i AFŽ-u tretirala kroz mnoge svoje radove. Reprezentacija žena
1
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene, ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996. str. 14.
2
Knežević, Saša. ‘Sjećanje i mjesta sjećanja. Rodna perspektiva spomenika iz NOB-a’. str.
9. (AFŽ Arhiva, pristupljeno 9. prosinca 2016., dostupno na:
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/355.).
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AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
u NOB-u, ženski narativi i oralna historija, jednako kao i druge “podteme”
ženske istorije ovog, za nas važnog perioda, teme su koje zaokupljaju moj
umjetnički rad. Kao i u nekim od svojih prethodnih radova, i ovdje se bavim
temom žene u borbi. Kao podlogu za jednu od ilustracija koristim mapu iz
knjige “Sutjeska 1943-73”3. Radi se o faksimilu skice dejstava njemačkih,
italijanskih i bugarskih trupa u kanjonu Pive i Sutjeske. Na mapi koja
pokazuje djelovanje neprijateljskih sila ponavljam nekoliko ženskih silueta
koje su prikazane u borbenoj poziciji, sa puškama, u ležećem stavu.
Moj drugi prilog zborniku, u formi teksta, opisuje ženu u borbi, vojnikinju
u ležećem položaju, čija puška nije uperena u neprijatelja. Žena ovdje ne
puca, već spava. Takođe, ona više nije apstraktna figura kao na prethodnoj
ilustraciji, već istorijska ličnost - Mitra Mitrović, istaknuta antifašistkinja
i učesnica NOB-a, važna politička akterka u periodu nakon rata. Umjesto
predstave Mitre Mitrović koja spava, ispisujem njena sjećanja sa fronta:
“Grme topovi, puške, oko mene haos, a meni se spava... I ja ti odspavam,
osvježim se i poslije dalje. Zato sam i preživjela.”
Reproduktivna uloga žene moja je druga tema. Na jednoj od ilustracija
u prvom planu predstavljam realistično iscrtanu ženu sa troje djece, dok
se iza, skoro prijeteći, ukazuje velika željezna konstrukcija tek otvorenog
mosta na rijeci Savi na kojem se nalazi natpis: “PETOGODIŠNJI PLAN SRETNIJA BUDUĆNOST NAŠIH NARODA”. Povezujem Petogodišnji plan i
politike prema ženi i majki koje su sprovođene u tom poratnom periodu.
Ovom ilustracijom želim ukazati na to da su ekonomski napredak i budućnost zemlje uopšte, bili usko povezani s pitanjem reprodukcije.
Rad Sunite Fišić inspirisan je dokumentom iz Arhiva Bosne i Hercegovine
- dopisom sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bijeljina u kojem se govori o udarničkom
radu žena ovog sreza na izgradnji zadružnih domova, te se navodi primjer
56-ogodišnje Blerte Hodžić koja “od prvog dana svakodnevno radi zajedno
sa zidarima, žustro se penje na skele i donosi malter i ciglu.”4 Umjetnica
u tehnici laviranog tuša i crteža perom i tušem više puta ponavlja istu
žensku figuru u radu na izgradnji zadružnog doma. Time naglašava njenu
3
Beograd: Monos, 1973.
4
Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽa u Bijeljini Glavnom odboru AFŽa - o radu žena
Janje na izgradnji zadružnih domova’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 4, 1370/2,
1948.
11
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
12
O ILUSTRACIJAMA
fizičku snagu i izdržljivost u udarničkom radu, radu na skelama, zidanju
i prenošenju teških zidarskih materijala, koji se, nerijetko, shvaća kao
isključivo muški rad.
Kasja Jerlagić također se bavi ilustriranjem heroizma rada. Njen alegorijski
crtež sa pet figura koje nose preveliki i preteški balvan, predstavlja žene
iz ruralnih područja, koje su gradile zemlju kamen po kamen, balvan po
balvan. Umjetnica u ovom radu nije inspirisana samo jednim specifičnim
dokumentom, tekstom ili svjedočenjem, već nastoji ilustrirati istinu:
žene su u poratnim godinama kroz dobrovoljni rad, kroz ogroman broj
sati provedenih na najrazličitijim poslovima, od obrade poljoprivrednog
zemljišta, do izgradnje puteva i mostova, rame uz rame s muškarcima,
odigrale ključnu ulogu u izgradnji nove Jugoslavije.
Druga tema koju Kasja Jerlagić obrađuje kroz vrlo realističan crtež
olovkom je tema ilegalnog rada. Ilustracija Kasje Jerlagić na ovu temu
inspirisana je tekstom Olge Marasović “Stanodavke jedne ilegalke”. Olga
opisuje sa kakvom su hrabrošću sestre Bašagić reagovale na dolazak
istražnih organa u njihovu kuću: “U razgovoru sa policijom sestre Bašagić
pokazale su iskustvo već oprobanih ilegalaca, pripadnika NOP-a.“5 Upravo
zbog njihovog hrabrog držanja, policija nije zapazila ništa sumnjivo, te
se, nedugo zatim, udaljila od kuće. Na ilustraciji vidimo dva policijska
službenika na vratima kuće koja im otvara jedna od sestara, gestikulirajući
cijelim svojim tijelom da se u toj kući ništa ne skriva, te da su sve njihove
sumnje neutemeljene. Ovaj rad ukazuje na odvažnost seoskih žena koje
su u tim opasnim vremenima imale važne uloge i nesebično rizikovale svoj
i život svojih ukućana kako bi pomogle snagama otpora, koje su tada još
uvijek djelovale samo u ilegali, spremajući se na trenutak izlaska na vojne
frontove na kojima će osloboditi zemlju od fašističkog okupatora.
Ekspresivne ilustracije Nardine Zubanović inspirisane su događajem sa
početka decembra 1941. godine u Mostaru. Glavne akterke masovnog
protesta nazvanog “Operacija Viktorija” bile su mostarske žene koje su
se u velikom broju okupile na Tepi, tj. gradskoj pijaci, protestirajući protiv
5
Jasmina Musabegović et al, “Žene Bosne i Hercegovine u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi 19411945. godine: sjećanja učesnika. Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 1977. dostupno na: AFŽ Arhiva,
pristupljeno 9. prosinca 2016., http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/105., vidi priču Olge
Marasović, Stanodavke jedne ilegalke. str. 9.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
gladi i oskudice, tražeći repu zvanu Viktorija. Razljućene su se uputile
prema kući načelnika, pozivajući ga na odgovornost i tražeći artikle za
prehranu. Protest se nastavio pljačkom i vandaliziranjem ekonomata, nakon čega su žene iz bašči poljoprivrednika čupale povrće, kako bi prikrile
da je ovdje, zapravo, bila riječ o duboko političkoj akciji protiv okupatora i
kolaboracionista. Protesti su zaustavljeni intervencijom policijskih snaga.
Aleksandra Nina Knežević se u tehnici digitalnog crteža bavi temom
Osmog marta, konkretnije službenim parolama za proslavu ovog praznika.
Parolama se: pozdravljaju žene Kine i daje im se podrška u borbi protiv
fašizma, slavi jedinstvo demokratskog pokreta žena, afirmira uloga narodnih učiteljica u vaspitanju novog socijalističkog čovjeka, uloga seljanki u
unaprijeđivanju privrede, učvršćivanju postojećih zadruga i stvaranju novih.
Ove parole govore nam kojim su se temama žene u poratnoj Jugoslaviji
bavile na svoj praznik - Osmi mart.
Kroz ilustracije u ovom zborniku dotičemo se ključnih tema Arhiva: heroizma rada, ilegalnog rada, političkog rada, žene u borbi, ličnih narativa
i sjećanja. Ova gesta naknadnog ilustriranja nikad ilustriranih događaja,
performirana kroz subjektivne doživljaje umjetnica koje pokušavaju dopuniti praznine ženske strane istorije, gesta je, prije svega, zahvalnosti
svim znanim i neznanim herojkama.
Priče koje ovdje prenosimo, priče su jednog vremena, jedne borbe i jednog
herojskog doba. Ove ilustracije stoga, ne samo da odražavaju duh tog
vremena ili oslikavaju neke događaje, nego se tim vremenom i tim događajima bave iz sadašnjosti, iz današnje perspektive, ne samo kao istorijski
prikaz prošlosti, nego kao politički čin današnjice.
Adela Jušić
13
��BIOGRAFIJE
AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA
ANALIZA ŽENSKOG
DJELOVANJA
CHIARA
BONFIGLIOLI
�16
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
1. Uvod
Ulazak u arhiv je uvijek uzbudljivo iskustvo i emotivan susret. Riječima Antoinette
Burton „historija nije samo otkrivanje činjenica (…) već podrazumijeva i niz složenih procesa odabira, tumačenja, pa čak i invencije, a sve ih pokreće, između
ostalog, osobni susret sa arhivom, historija samog arhiva, te pritisak sadašnjeg
trenutka koji uvjetuje naše čitanje arhivske građe”1. Pisanje historije uvijek je
uvjetovano našim pretpostavkama, pristrasnošću i gledištima. Pronašavši u
Arhivu antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije iznimno
raznovrsnu građu, odlučila sam krenuti od objavljenih memoara, fotografija i
usmene historije (intervjua), ne bih li kroz lične priče, vizuelne predmete i zvučne
zapise ustanovila eventualnu vezu koja upotpunjava istraživanje digitaliziranog
materijala – uglavnom organizacijskih dokumenata koji svjedoče o široko rasprostranjenom, kapilarnom radu Antifašističkog fronta žena nakon Drugog svjetskog
rata. Bogatstvo ovog arhiva omogućava emotivno povezivanje sa sudbinama
članica AFŽ-a, imajući pri tom na umu da je susret sa njihovim glasovima – ili
glasovima njima bliskih ljudi – uvjetovan činom odabira, tumačenja i invencije,
drugim riječima, našom vlastitom pozicijom.2
Figura koja se osobito ističe jest Vahida Maglajlić, jedina narodna heroina iz reda
bosanskih muslimanki, koju prijatelji i prijateljice, porodica i saborci i saborkinje,
opisuju kao nevjerovatno plemenitu, energičnu i nezavisnu drugaricu. Njihove
opise upotpunjavaju fotografije prelijepe, kratko ošišane Vahide Maglajlić, koje
se mogu pronaći na Internetu. Možda je Vahidin najmlađi brat Alija u jednom
intervjuu ponajbolje objasnio koliko je karakter Vahide Maglajlić utjecao na njen
aktivizam, koliko toga je postigla, i koliko je još mogla postići da nije izgubila život
u narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi.3 Fascinantno je da još uvijek možemo razgovarati
sa ljudima koji su preživjeli Drugi svjetski rat. Ali nećemo vječno imati mogućnost
direktnog kontakta sa svjedocima Drugog svjetskog rata i pokreta otpora. Stoga
ovaj Arhiv smatram izvanredno značajnim, budući se radi o projektu koji je još
u uvijek u izradi, koji nije zatvoren. Ovo je živući arhiv jednog od najznačajnijih
izvornih antifašističkih pokreta otpora u Evropi Drugog svjetskog rata, pokreta
1
Burton, Antoinette M. “Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history” Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2005. str. 7-8.
2
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. “Nomadic Theory as an Epistemology for Transnational Feminist History” u: Iris
van der Tuin i Bolette Blagaard, ur., The Subject of Rosi Braidotti. London, Bloomsbury, 2014.
3
Dugandžić Andreja i Jušić, Adela. “Intervju sa Alijom Maglajlićem”, Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena
Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, pristupljeno 6. novembra 2016. godine,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/16
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
17
čije se nasljeđe u postjugoslavenskom periodu sve više marginalizira i zaboravlja
uslijed rastuće hegemonije revizionističke, nacionalističke historiografije.
Još jedno pitanje koje nije zatvoreno, niti će ikada biti, jest pitanje emancipacije
žena, i feminizma, u svim periodima i na svim mjestima, u ovom konkretnom
slučaju na postjugoslavenskom prostoru. U Arhivu pronalazimo djeliće i fragmente
koji svjedoče o djelovanju žena i njihovoj dugoj borbi za socijalnu pravdu, slobodu
i ravnopravnost tokom i nakon Drugog svjetskog rata, na primjer u djelovanju
žena sreskog odbora u Tesliću koje su 1947. godine, nakon što su više puta slale
svoje članke, zahtijevale da ih se uvrsti u list Nova žena koji je AFŽ objavljivao u
Sarajevu. Zahtijevale su i više članaka sa raznim uzorcima za šivanje i savjetima
o podizanju djece, jer je lokalnim ženama upravo takav sadržaj bio najkorisniji.4
U okviru dominirajućih tumačenja ženske historije u socijalizmu, ovakvi zapisi
bili bi okarakterizirani isključivo kao neposredan dokaz patrijarhalne svijesti i
neuspjeh socijalizma da ospori postojeće rodne uloge.5 Međutim, kako dokazujem
4
“Po našem mišljenju trebalo bi da bar na jednoj strani pod rubrikom za naše selo piše šta najviše
interesuje naše drugarice na selu, o domaćinstvu, opšte o ženama majkama, djeci, o kuvanju koja
nisu neizvodljiva za njihove prilike. Iz razgovora sa drugaricama bilo bi poželjno da izlaze u listu
„NOVA ŽENA” razni uzorci i drugo po nešto iz šivanja (...) Koliko vole drugarice kad se piše o djeci.
Jedna majka kaže; sa nestrpljenjom očekuje svaki broj „NOVE ŽENE” jer uvijek ima o djeci vrlo
poučni savjeta. O savjetu pročitano u „NOVOJ ŽENI” ja sam moju djecu oslobodila glista, koje tako
štetno djeluju na nježnji dječiji organizam. Naše se drugarice pitaju, o mnogim Srezovima piše po
više članaka a o Tesliću ništa, kao da mi spavamo. Slali smo nekoliko puta članke za „NOVU LISTU”
ali do danas ništa o nama.” Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor Teslić Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a –
povjerenstvo za štampu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1178/1, 1947.
5
Gledano antropološki, patrijarhatom se nazivaju ona društva gdje muškarci imaju moć nad ženama
i djecom, u smislu vlasti, imovine i rada. Balkanske porodice su tradicionalno patrilinearne i
organizirane na principu muške dominacije nad proširenom porodicom. Pojam patrijarhata počeo
se još jače vezivati za Balkan nakon uspostavljanja novih nacionalističkih režima i nakon rodno
zasnovanog nasilja tokom jugoslavenskih ratova iz devedesetih. S druge strane, feministkinje su
socijalistički režim u Jugoslaviji, ali i drugdje, opisale kao „državni patrijarhat” u kojem je država
kontrolirala ženski produktivni rad, ali nije bila u stanju promijeniti kontrolu muškarca nad tijelima
i radom žena u privatnoj sferi (pogledati djela Žarane Papić i Mihaele Miroiu iz Rumunije). Zapadni
naučnici i naučnice često su takve kritike tumačili kroz prizmu postojećih hladnoratovskih stereotipa,
što je na koncu stvorilo fenomen kojeg su Kristen Ghodsee i Kateřina Lišková definirale kao „opće
znanje”, tj. niz dominantnih, banalnih tvrdnji koje se stalno ponavljaju kad god se govori o ženama
u državnom socijalizmu ili ženskim organizacijama iz tog perioda u centralnoj, istočnoj i jugoistočnoj
Evropi. Korištenjem takvih tvrdnji poricala se mogućnost i sposobnost žena da djeluju unutar
navodno homogenog režima državnog patrijarhata. Vidjeti: Ghodsee, Kristen i Lišková, Kateřina
„Bumbling Idiots or Evil Masterminds? Challenging Cold War Stereotypes about Women, Sexuality
and State Socialism”, Filozofija i društvo XXVII (3), 2016: 489-503.
�18
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
u ovom radu, izuzetno je važno taj interpretativni okvir proširiti i oduprijeti se
svođenju kompleksnog ženskog iskustva u Drugom svjetskom ratu i neposredno
nakon njega na pojednostavljene narative o uspjehu ili neuspjehu socijalističke
emancipacije, ili na pitanje istinske slobode djelovanja žena u socijalizmu.6
Ovaj Arhiv nam pomaže da shvatimo svu ambivalentnost i složenost tog perioda.
Danas je teško i zamisliti stupanj eksploatacije i siromaštva žena širom Jugoslavije
sredinom četrdesetih godina prošlog stoljeća, kao i svu snagu i privlačnost novonastajućeg rodnog imaginarija koji emancipaciju žena neizostavno vezuje s mirom, oslobađanjem od stranog okupatora, opismenjavanjem, radom i čistim
zdravim domovima. No, kako su aktivistkinje AFŽ-a ubrzo spoznale, višestoljetni
patrijarhat, usko vezan sa siromaštvom žena, ne poništava se tako lako. To nam
pokazuje i slučaj jedne muslimanke iz Visokog koja je 1947. godine rekla da bi rado
skinula zar, ali da nema šta drugo obući.7 Ovakvi detalji daju uvid u tadašnji život
žena i njihove probleme, te pomažu boljem razumijevanju proturječnosti ženske
historije Bosne i Hercegovine, historije nedovoljno zastupljene u literaturi o
ženskom i feminističkom pokretu na postjugoslavenskom prostoru, a koja i sama
nastaje tek u protekle dvije decenije.8 Proučavanjem arhiva AFŽ-a upoznajemo
složenu, fragmentiranu i neravnomjernu historiju ženskog angažmana, susrećemo žene često najhrabrije u svojoj generaciji, ali i žene koje su se naprosto zatekle
u nemogućoj situaciji, te pokušale učiniti nešto u vezi sa društvenom nepravdom
i progonom drugih, ili za vlastitu egzistenciju. Svojim angažmanom na njihovom
angažmanu suprotstavljamo se brisanju antifašističkog nasljeđa i njegovog utjecaja na živote žena.9
6
Za daljnju raspravu o (ne)mogućnosti žena da djeluju unutar državnog socijalizma vidjeti Funk,
Nanette. „A Very Tangled Knot: Official State Socialist Women’s Organizations, Women’s Agency and
Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 21, br. 4 2014:
344–360. Ghodsee, Kristen, „Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk,” European Journal of
Women’s Studies 22, br. 2 (2015): 248–252. De Haan, Francisca et. al. (2016), „Forum: Ten Years After,
Communism and Feminism Revisited”, Aspasia, 10.
7
„U vezi skidanja zara na srezu nije najpoželnije. Ima drugarica koje su skinule, a ima i onakvih koje
namjeravaju skinuti zar, ali da za sada ne mogu, iz razloga tog što nemaju u šta da se preobuku. Nemaju
novca da odma nabave, ali da će nastojati da što brže nadju, govoreći da i one žele da što brže pogledaju
očima.” Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – mjesečni izvještaj za
oktobar i novembar’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1290/1, 1947. Žene iz drugih mjesta
također su navodile nedostatak odjevnih predmeta, pa se postavlja pitanje da li su one zapravo pronašle
klasni izgovor da izbjegnu promjene kojima su se i same protivile, o čemu će biti govora kasnije.
8
Giomi, Fabio. „Uvod” u Aida Spahić et al. Zabilježene: žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. Vijeku.
Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, 2014. Mlinarević, Gorana i Kosović, Lamija (2011): „Women’s
Movements and Gender Studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Aspasia, svezak 5, str. 128-38.
9
O konceptu angažmana vidjeti Zaharijević, Adriana. „Pawning and Challenging in Concert:
Engagement as a Field of Study”, Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (2), 2016.
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U ovom radu iskustvo AFŽ-a promatra se sa stanovišta intersekcionalnosti, tj.
koristeći feminističku istraživačku metodologiju koja rodne odnose razmatra u
sprezi sa drugim važnim faktorima društvene diferencijacije kao što su klasa,
geografski položaj, etnička pripadnost, životna dob, nacionalnost i seksualna orijentacija.10 Analiziram razlike u biografijama članica ove organizacije, te metode
kojima je AFŽ zapravo funkcionirao kao most između žena sa raznih geografskih
područja, žena različitog stepena obrazovanja, žena iz različitih etničkih grupa i
klasa, te žena sa različitim političkim iskustvom – promovirajući nove oblike solidarnosti protiv patrijarhalne potlačenosti i otvarajući nove životne prilike, ali i uspostavljajući nove hijerarhije i nove načine kontroliranja propisanih ženskih uloga,
kao na primjer u slučaju pokrivenih muslimanki. Koristeći raznovrsne materijale
(arhivska građa, usmena historija sačuvana kroz intervjue, objavljeni izvori),
razmatram kako se lične priče žena uklapaju u zajednički okvir rodno definiranih
koncepata „moderniteta” i „zaostalosti” koje je koristila ova organizacija, te kako
nakon 1945. godine razlike među ženama utječu na osmišljavanje praksi AFŽ-a
posvećenih stvaranju modernih i emancipiranih feminiteta.
Ratni i poslijeratni masovni aktivizam žena u Jugoslaviji obilježen je hijerarhijskim
jazom između nekolicine urbanih, obrazovanih i politiziranih rukovoditeljica
AFŽ-a i članstva organizacije koje su uglavnom sačinjavale seoske žene i radnice.
Razlike među ženama ključne su i za razumijevanje organizacije arhiva AFŽ-a
širom postjugoslavenskog prostora. Antifašističke ženske organizacije bile su
ustrojene hijerarhijski, piramidalno, kako u svom pionirskom radu pokazuje
zagrebačka historičarka Lydia Sklevicky11. Postojala je fundamentalna razlika
između politiziranih („emancipiranih” ili „prosvijetljenih”) žena, koje su činile
avangardu ženskih organizacija, i (seljačkih, radničkih ili neobrazovanih) „ženskih
masa”. Sama organizacija djelovala je kroz mjesne odbore čije su članice birale
delegatkinje za okružne i regionalne odbore. Na vrhu piramide stajali su glavni i
centralni odbori. Ovakvo ustrojstvo organizacije odražava se i u arhivskoj građi:
pored reprezentativnih, agitprop-dokumenata (programske izjave, govori održani
na masovnim sastancima i javnim prigodama, članci iz štampe), tu nalazimo i
tragove dubljih, internih rasprava, npr. prijepise Centralnog odbora i interne
izvještaje u kojima lokalni i srednji kadrovi organizacije opisuju stanje i probleme
10
Postoji mnogo radova o intersekcionalnosti: za uvod vidjeti Lutz, Helma, Herrera Vivar, Maria Teresa
i Supik, Linda. (ur.), Framing intersectionality: debates on a multi-faceted conceptin gender studies.
Burlington: Ashgate, 2011.
11
Sklevicky, Lydia. „Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the case of postrevolutionary Yugoslavia” u: Angerman, A., Binnema, G., Keunen, A., Poels, V. & Zirkzee, J. (ur.)
Current Issues in Women’s History. London i New York: Routledge, 1989.
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CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
na pojedinim područjima.12 Lokalni, republički i federativni kadrovi AFŽ-a, dakle,
vode bitku protiv onog što se definira „primitivnim” poimanjem uloge žena, no
na lokalnom nivou nailaze na snažan otpor, ne samo muškaraca i partijskih
organa, nego i samih žena, s obzirom na to da tokom i neposredno nakon Drugog
svjetskog rata u Jugoslaviji koegzistiraju i sukobljavaju se vrlo različiti feminiteti.13
U nastavku ću istražiti biografije nekolicine žena u odnosu na rodno definirane
predodžbe tradicije i moderniteta, te u odnosu na društvenu diferencijaciju žena
unutar same organizacije.
2. Djelovanje žena između “naprednosti” i “zaostalosti”
Tokom socijalističke ere objavljeno je nekoliko zbirki o životima partizanki i
aktivistkinja. U njima se prije svega naglašava hrabrost žena, njihova odanost
Partiji i žrtvovanje za oslobođenje zemlje. S druge strane, naučni radovi objavljeni
nakon 1989. godine gledaju na iskustvo žena uglavnom iz rodne perspektive, kroz
novu feminističku paradigmu ženske historije. Dok američka historičarka Barbara
Jancar-Webster za svoju monografiju o ženama u jugoslavenskom pokretu
otpora intervjuira bivše partizanke, zagrebačka akademičarka Lydia Sklevicky
podrobno istražuje arhivsku građu o radu AFŽ-a tokom i neposredno nakon
Drugog svjetskog rata. U interpretativnom okviru oba njihova djela naglašava se
da su mobilizaciju žena kontrolirale komunistička partija i država, te da je ženski
antifašistički pokret tokom konsolidacije socijalističkog režima postepeno gubio
autonomiju.14 Završnim činom ovog procesa smatra se raspuštanje AFŽ-a 1953.
godine.15 Feminističke kritike patrijarhalnih struktura u socijalizmu nesumnjivo
12
Vidjeti također: Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, Žene, Ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska Infoteka, 1996.
13
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. (2014), „Women’s Political and Social Activism in the Early Cold War Era:
The Case of Yugoslavia”, Aspasia, The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern
European Women’s and Gender History, svezak 8, str. 1-25.
14
Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945. Denver, Colorado: Arden
Press, 1998. Vidjeti „Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement” iste autorice u Sabrina
P. Ramet (ur.) Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the
Yugoslav Successor States. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Lydia
Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi. Vidjeti „Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the
case of post-revolutionary Yugoslavia” iste autorice u: A. Angerman, G. Binnema, A. Keunen, V.
Poels i J. Zirkzee, ur. Current Issues in Women’s History. London i New York: Routledge 1989.
15
Za kritičku raspravu o ovome narativu vidjeti Tešija, Jelena. „The End of the AFŽ – The End of
Meaningful Women’s Activism? Rethinking the History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 –
1961”, magistarski rad, Odsjek za rodne studije, Centralnoevropski univerzitet, Budimpešta, 2014.
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su veoma značajne, ali tendencija viđenja interesa žena kao inherentno suprotnih
državnim i partijskim interesima dovodi do podcjenjivanja subjektivnog raskida
sa tradicionalnim rodnim ulogama koji se desio zahvaljujući učešću žena u
partizanskoj borbi i aktivizmu žena unutar AFŽ-a. Ovaj dominirajući narativ
također podcjenjuje i obezvrjeđuje rad žena, posebno kada je riječ o rukovodstvu
AFŽ-a. Barbara Jancar-Webster, na primjer, kaže:
Pretvorivši AFŽ u učinkovitu pomoćnu organizaciju, komunistkinje su
neko vrijeme imale priliku uživati u osjećaju moći i odgovornosti. Kada
ih se pozvalo da AFŽ pretvore u komunističku masovnu organizaciju, one
su to i učinile. Žene koje su se žrtvovale da poraze okupatora i odbrane
svoje domove postale su, u pravom smislu te riječi, žrtve partije koja im je
nalagala vlastite standarde.16
Autorica nadalje povezuje nedostatak autonomije žena unutar AFŽ-a sa nemoći žena u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji, kao i sa rodno zasnovanim nasiljem tokom
jugoslavenskih ratova, definirajući tako živote ovdašnjih žena kao stalnu viktimizaciju, od Drugog svjetskog rata do danas. I Jelena Batinić iznosi slične tvrdnje u
svojoj nedavno objavljenoj iscrpnoj monografiji, navodeći da je partizanska vlast
vješto prilagodila jezik dnevnim potrebama seoskih i nepismenih žena, ali da je
žene u antifašističkoj mobilizaciji doživljavala kao rezervnu armiju i da nije uspjela
promijeniti tradicionalne rodne uloge, ni pri organiziranju masovnog otpora, niti
unutar bojnih jedinica. Ova monografija u osnovi ne osporava postojeća tumačenja
ženskog učešća u pokretu otpora i ženskog aktivizma unutar AFŽ-a.17 Usljed takvih
interpretacija ostaju nedovoljno istražene biografije vodećih aktivistkinja AFŽ-a,
kao i njihovo djelovanje i subjektivni procesi politizacije, posebno kada je riječ o
rukovodećim i srednjim kadrovima, koji su tokom i nakon Drugog svjetskog rata
obavljali rukovoditeljske zadatke. Lydia Sklevicky, na primjer, otvoreno odbacuje
usmenu historiju bivših učesnica AFŽ-a koje su u to doba još uvijek uživale znatan
javni ugled: „Većina učesnica, posebno onih koje su bile na visokom položaju
u organizaciji i još uvijek se nalaze na pozicijama moći, žele predstaviti vlastito
iskustvo, stavove i uspomene kao jedinu istinitu verziju događaja”18.
16
Jancar-Webster, „Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement”, str. 85. kurziv dodala
autorica.
17
Batinić, Jelena. Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
18
Sklevicky, „Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation”. Kurziv dodala autorica.
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Iako je dobro što nas ovakva tumačenja upozoravaju da ne gajimo isuviše romantičnu sliku o iskustvu AFŽ-a, ona u suštini podrivaju ulogu žena kao organizacijskih i političkih rukovoditeljica, i zanemaruju različite stupnjeve truda uloženog u promoviranje novih rodnih predodžbi kojima se nastojao uspostaviti
„ujedinjujući” diskurs ženske ravnopravnosti bez obzira na klasu, geografsko
područje ili etničku pripadnost. Takva tumačenja također prikrivaju da se nakon Drugog svjetskog rata javljaju nove mogućnosti političkog angažmana,
obrazovanja i rada koje masama žena nude mogućnost izbora i omogućavaju nesvakidašnji generacijski raskid u samoodređivanju žena kao građanki i radnica.
Kako sam pokazala u svojoj disertaciji, novi su politički diskursi i prakse ženskog
aktivizma u eri Hladnog rata bili transnacionalni i prekoračivali granice zacrtane
Hladnim ratom.19
Patrijarhat ili, drugim riječima, dominacija muškaraca u javnim strukturama i
privatnoj sferi, dakako nije prestao postojati bez obzira na zvaničnu socijalističku
politiku ženske emancipacije. Diskursi i praksa ženske emancipacije imali su
nepostojan učinak, prvenstveno zbog već postojeće snažne patrijarhalne tradicije
porodica i neujednačenosti životnih prilika žena u različitim regijama, ali i zbog
stvaranja novih oblika društvene diferencijacije.20 Brojni dokumentarni filmovi
pokazuju da žensko iskustvo rodne (ne)ravnopravnosti i društvene mobilnosti
u socijalizmu nije uvjetovano samo tradicionalnim i široko rasprostranjenim
dvostrukim bremenom žena, već i različitim životnim putevima žena, posebno
različitim stupnjem obrazovanja, različitom klasom i porodičnom politikom.21
Usprkos težnjama Jugoslavije ka besklasnom društvu, razni su oblici kapitala
(političkog, društvenog, ekonomskog i kulturnog) određivali mjeru u kojoj i žene
koriste nove prilike na polju obrazovanja i rada. Napredovanje žena na ovim
poljima moglo je spriječiti i „nepodobno” porijeklo, političko ili vjersko, a u kriznim
situacijama obrazovane žene na ključnim pozicijama riskirale su da se nađu pod
teškom političkom represijom, kako se desilo u slučaju raskida Sovjetskog saveza
i Jugoslavije.22
19
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War Italy
and Yugoslavia (1945–1953.), doktorska disertacija, Univerzitet u Utrechtu, 2012.
20
Archer, Rory, Duda, Igor i Stubbs, Paul ur., Social inequalities and discontent in Yugoslav Socialism.
Farnham: Ashgate, 2016.
21
Vidjeti dokumentarac Borovi i jele (2002.) Sanje Iveković, te dokumentarce Želimira Žilnika Jedna
žena – jedan vek iz 2012. i Vera i Eržika iz 1981.
22
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata. Dom i svijet: o ženskoj kulturi pamćenja. Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije,
2008.
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Ovdje, dakle, zastupam suptilniji pristup procjeni ženskog učešća u AFŽ-u,
pristup koji razmatra međusobno povezane faktore društvene diferencijacije i
njihovu stalnu fluidnost, a ne inherentne suprotnosti između „žene” i „države”,
posebno u kontekstu krajnje fragmentirane i decentralizirane državne vlasti.
Izbjegavajući paradigmu potpune nepovezanosti „feminističkih” i „proleterskih”
ženskih pokreta, biografski i intersekcionalni pristup omogućava i praćenje kontinuiteta učešća žena u feminističkim organizacijama i kulturnim udruženjima u
periodu između dva rata, kao i rukovođenja AFŽ-om tokom ratnih i poslijeratnih
godina.23 Dodatni element kontinuiteta je i interpretativni okvir koji suprotstavlja
savremenost i zaostalost, gdje se rodni odnosi u ruralnim područjima, posebno
u muslimanskim zajednicama, tumače kao krajnji znak zaostalosti i rezultat
feudalnog osmanskog potlačivanja. Ovaj okvir je postojao i između dva svjetska
rata, ali je posebno izražen tokom djelovanja AFŽ-a u posljeratnom periodu.24
Aktivistkinje su se dakle, našle na raskršću ovih kontradikcija: sa jedne strane
različiti uvjeti političkog angažmana, a sa druge različiti zahtjevi naprednog i
nazadnog načina života. Individualne težnje žena na polju obrazovanja, rada
i bračnog života preplitale su se sa novim oblicima kolektivnog organiziranja i
novim utopijskim rodnim predodžbama. Pošto su siromaštvo i socijalna pravda
bili važna motivacija političkog angažmana, u nastavku ću predstaviti upravo biografije koje pokazuju svu složenost političkih putanja aktivistkinja, posebno onih
muslimanskog porijekla. Da bih pokazala ulogu faktora društvene diferencijacije
u mobilizaciji žena, predstavit ću i dva primjera gdje su važni pokretači političkog
angažmana bili obrazovanje i klasa. Ovi primjeri dakako nisu reprezentativni za
čitavu Bosnu i Hercegovinu, ni čitavu Jugoslaviju, tim više što među dostupnim,
objavljenim i arhivskim izvorima dominira perspektiva rukovodstva AFŽ-a, a ne
običnih članica. Kroz analizu ovih slučajeva predočavam kako se intersekcionalnim
i biografskim pristupom otvaraju nove perspektive i dolazi do novih tumačenja
arhivskog nasljeđa AFŽ-a.
23
Emmert, A. Thomas. „Ženski Pokret: The Feminist Movement in Serbia in the 1920s” u Sabrina P.
Ramet (ur.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav
Successor States. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
24
Ibidem. Vidjeti i Ballinger, Pamela i Ghodsee, Kristen. „Socialist Secularism. Religion, Modernity,
and Muslim Women’s Emancipation in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 1945-1991”, Aspasia 5 (2011): 6-27.
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INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
Među aktivistkinjama AFŽ-a koje su težile ličnoj slobodi i ravnopravnosti ističe
se Vahida Maglajlić (1907-1943)25 rođena u Banjoj Luci, u uglednoj muslimanskoj
porodici. Kćerka lokalnog kadije (sudije), najstarija od desetero djece, Vahida već
u djetinjstvu ispoljava živahan, snažan karakter; muškobanjasta djevojčica će postati izuzetno vješta tkalja i krojačica. Sanjala je da po svršetku ženske strukovne
škole nastavi školovanje na pedagoškoj gimnaziji u Zagrebu, ali otac joj to nije
dozvolio, iako su sva njena braća studirala i obučavala se za različita zanimanja.
No, njoj je njen brat Ekrem, aktivista, donosio ilegalnu ljevičarsku literaturu koju
je ona, krišom od oca, pomno čitala, postepeno prerastajući u komunistkinju.
Vahida je zbog svog nesputanog duha ubrzo prestala nositi zar i čak je, u skladu
sa tadašnjom modom, a na veliko zaprepaštenje svojih roditelja, odrezala kosu.
Vahida je bila uzor mnogim muslimanskim ženama i djevojčicama koje je stalno
ohrabrivala da se školuju, i za koje je organizirala brojne posjete kulturnim
društvima poput Gajreta. Neposredno pred početak rata, Vahida je postala sekretarka, a potom i predsjednica Ženskog pokreta, organizacije ljevičarki koje su
kasnije stupale u ilegalne partizanske aktivnosti. Kuća Vahidnog oca-kadije postala je tokom ustaške okupacije Banje Luke žarište antifašističkih aktivnosti.
Vahida Maglajlić je, kao i njene saborkinje Dušanka Kovačević i Rada Vranješević,
zar koristila da bi neopaženo stigla na sastanke ilegalaca i ilegalki. Vahida je
konačno uhapšena, ali je, nakon mučenja u lokalnom zatvoru, uspjela pobjeći na
slobodni teritorij.26 Prije nego su je u aprilu 1943. godine ubile njemačke snage,
Vahida je jako puno radila sa muslimankama na području Cazina, mobilišući ih
za partizanski pokret. U decembru 1942. godine, na prvoj konferenciji AFŽ-a u
Bosanskom Petrovcu, Vahida je izabrana za članicu Centralnog odbora AFŽ-a.
Nakon Drugog svjetskog rata položaj muslimanki postaje izuzetno osjetljivo
pitanje, dijelom i zbog složenog političkog položaja muslimana u tom ratu.27
Krajem četrdesetih AFŽ započinje kampanju protiv zara i feredže koja vrhunac
doseže usvajanjem niza zakona kojima se u Jugoslaviji zabranjuje pokrivanje
čitavog lica, 1950. i 1951. godine – u vrijeme kada je „uporedna kontrola religije
i oslobođenje žena postalo značajan simbol napretka i moderniteta”28. Pitanje
25
Vidjeti Beoković, Mila. Žene heroji. Sarajevo, Svjetlost, 1967. Za druge biografske prikaze života
Vahide Maglajlić vidjeti Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Himka. Zapisi o Vahidi Maglajlić. Banjaluka: Glas,
1973. i Rođena za burno doba: životni put narodnog heroja Vahide Maglajlić. Kragujevac: Dečje
Novine, 1977., iste autorice.
26
Žene Heroji, 216-218.
27
Hoare, Marko, Attila. The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History. London: Hurst & Co
Publishers Ltd, 2013.
28
Socialist Secularism, 12.
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25
vela je orijentalizirano i u negativnom smislu povezano sa historijskim nasljeđem
Osmanskog carstva.29 Svu ambivalentnost poslijeratne emancipacije žena pokazuje biografija Didare Dukazdjini, sedamnaestogodišnje Albanke iz bogate prizrenske porodice. Njoj je otac naredio da skine feredžu30 nakon što su lokalne komunističke vlasti tradicionalnog i zaostalog Kosova pozvale najuglednije porodice
da svojim primjerom pokažu uvođenje novih socijalističkih vrijednosti.
Godine 1947. stigla je direktiva Partije da se radi na ubeđivanju najuticajnijih
ljudi u gradu o neophodnosti da žene skinu feredže (...) Moj otac je bio na
prvom takvom sastanku i odmah je doneo odluku: njegova kćerka će da
skine feredžu. Naravno, mene ništa nije pitao. (...) Tatina odluka došla mi
je kao najstrašnija kazna. Stajala sam u šoku, zabezeknuta, bez snage da
mu se suprotstavim, da išta pitam, kad mi je saopštio da je dao reč Mesnom
odboru Partije. Celu noć sam plakala. Nisam mogla da zamislim užasniju
situaciju od te u koju me je gurao rođeni otac. Imala sam sedamnaest
godina, želela sam da se udam, da se ne razlikujem od svojih vršnjakinja.31
Didaru je ta očeva odluka šokirala. Izaći „gola” na ulicu njoj se činilo sramotom
koju ne bi mogla preživjeti. Didarin otac je, odlučivši da će mu kćerka skinuti feredžu, naumio i to da ona pohađa kurs za učiteljice. Didara se nakon tri mjeseca
i zaposlila kao učiteljica, zahvaljujući velikoj potražnji za pismenim radnicima
i radnicama koji mogu predavati na kosovskim selima. Didara se dvije godine
kasnije, kao devetnaestogodišnjakinja, zaljubljuje u Tošu, militantnog srpskog
komunistu koji joj nudi brak. „Komunista od glave do pete, Toša nije pet para
davao na različitost našeg nacionalnog porekla”32. Da bi se udala za muškarca
koga voli i izbjegla ugovoreni brak sa Albancem, Didara je morala pobjeći iz očeve
kuće, čime za narednih nekoliko godina potpuno prekida odnose sa roditeljima.
Kasnije se učlanjuje u AFŽ koji je šalje da kao „živi primjer” ženske emancipacije
po selima regrutira Albanke za aktivnosti Narodnog fronta. Didarin slučaj, koliko
god izuzetan, ilustrira nevjerovatne društvene i političke transformacije koje
su se nakon Drugog svjetskog rata dešavale u Jugoslaviji, kao i implikacije tih
transformacija po žene.
29
Za detaljnu raspravu o pokrivanju muslimanki u Bosni i Hercegovini iz historijske perspektive
vidjeti Andrea Mesarič, „Wearing Hijab in Sarajevo. Dress Practices and the Islamic Revival in
Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 22(2), 2013: 12-34.
30
Malešević, Miroslava. Didara. Životna priča jedne Prizrenke. Beograd: Srpski genealoški centar, 2004.
31
Didara, 39.
32
Didara, 46.
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INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
Arhiv AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine, ali i drugih republika bivše Jugoslavije, dokazuje
da su žene raznih etničkih grupa bile izuzetno zainteresirane za obrazovanje i
poboljšanje životnog standarda. Njihov interes je dijelom potaknut novostvorenim prilikama, ali i naporima koje AFŽ ulaže u pokretanje lokalnih programa
opismenjavanja, sanitacije i smanjenja stope smrtnosti novorođenčadi u ruralnim
područjima. S druge strane, kampanje poput one protiv nošenja feredže izazivaju
suprotstavljene reakcije, budući da podrivaju tradicije zajednica. Visoku stopu
nepismenosti na teritorijama nekadašnjeg Osmanskog carstva, prvenstveno u
Bosni, Makedoniji i Kosovu, rukovodstvo AFŽ-a smatra dodatnim dokazom povezanosti „zaostalosti, religije (osobito, iako ne isključivo, Islama) i potlačenosti
žena”33. Zakon o zabrani nošenja zara i feredže stoga su i same muslimanke
često tumačile kao poseban oblik napada na njihove zajednice, što izaziva produbljivanje jaza između muslimanki i AFŽ-ovih aktivistkinja iz drugih etničkih
grupa. Slična mišljenja su dokumentirana i među muslimankama iz Sandžaka
u Srbiji koje su otvoreno opisivale koliko ih je sramota skinuti zar u javnosti.34 U
jednoj od rijetkih autobiografija s tog područja prevedenih na engleski, Munevera
Hadžišehović, naučnica iz Sandžaka (rođena 1933. godine), govori kako se osjećala diskriminirano i izolirano zbog svog muslimanskog porijekla, ali opisuje i
podršku koju je dobila od socijalističke države, najprije kao izvrsna studentica,
potom kao naučnica zaposlena u javnom istraživačkom institutu u Beogradu, a
naposljetku kao samohrana majka tokom sedamdesetih i osamdesetih godina
prošlog stoljeća.35
Prikaz biografija muslimanki iz viših klasa pruža uvid u karakter proturječnosti
i ambivalentnosti procesa brze društvene modernizacije koja je obuhvatila žene
u Jugoslaviji nakon 1945. godine, a istovremeno prikazuju isprepletenost raznih
društvenih faktora koji su utjecali na živote žena. Obrazovanje i klasa su očito
predstavljali važne faktore političkog angažmana. Naime, u antifašističkom pokretu je učestvovao veliki broj mladih studentica, što potvrđuju biografije ostalih
žena narodnih heroina iz Bosne i Hercegovine, poput studentica Dragice Pravice
(1919-1943) i Radojke Lakić (1917-1941), te studentice i činovnice (jer nije mogla
postati učiteljica) Rade Vranješević (1914-1944). Posebno zanimljiva figura je
Sida Marjanović (rođena 1921. u Bosanskom Aleksandrovcu blizu Banje Luke),
nekadašnja učenica mostarske gimnazije i banjalučkog konzervatorija, članica
33
Socialist secularism, 16.
34
http://sandzakpress.net/ispovijesti-sandzackih-zena-nakon-prisilnog-skidanja-zara-iferedze-1951-godine
35
Hadžišehović, Munevera. A Muslim Woman in Tito’s Yugoslavia. College Station: Texas A&M
University Press, 2003.
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27
Saveza komunističke omladine i učesnica pokreta otpora. Radila je kao medicinska sestra, politička radnica i bila nadležna za radijski program i publikacije sve
do konferencije u Bosanskom Petrovcu 1942. godine. Nakon toga je učestvovala
u osnivanju odbora AFŽ-a na slobodnoj i okupiranoj teritoriji Kozare. Učestvovala
je u borbama aprila 1943. godine, kad su poginule mnoge njene saborkinje uključujući i Vahidu Maglajlić, a u oktobru iste godine rodila kćerku.36 Nakon rata je
imenovana potpredsjednicom Glavnog odbora i sekretarkom AFŽ-a u Banjoj
Luci. Nastavila je raditi u medijima, postala direktorica poduzeća Bosnafilm, te
napisala scenarije za nekoliko angažiranih dokumentaraca, te za čuveni partizanski film Bitka na Neretvi, o bitki u kojoj je i sama učestvovala.37 Kasnije se bavila
diplomatijom, uglavnom na polju kulturne razmjene, te postala prva predsjednica
Udruženja filmskih radnika Bosne i Hercegovine.
Pored učiteljica i studentica, antifašističkom pokretu su se priključivale i žene
politizirane kao dio radničke klase, kroz sindikate. S obzirom na koncentraciju
ženske radne snage u tekstilnoj industriji, u antifašističkom pokretu između dva
svjetska rata osobito su bile aktivne tekstilne radnice, koje su predvodile i nekoliko
štrajkova.38 Ovdje se izdvaja Judita Alargić (Novi Sad, 1917.), u međuratnom periodu radikalizirana kao tekstilna radnica, koja u ratu i poslijeratnih godina zauzima važne političke pozicije u Partiji i AFŽ-u. Konferenciji u Bosanskom Petrovcu
prisustvovala je kao jedina predstavnica Vojvodine, i postala članica Centralnog
odbora AFŽ-a.39 I nakon 1953. godine aktivno djeluje u socijalističkim ženskim
organizacijama (SDŽ i KDAŽ). Iako je dospjela na visoke političke pozicije, nikada
se nije prestala interesirati za sudbinu radnica, što pokazuje i njena intervencija
na sastanku rukovodstva SDŽ-a 1954. godine, kad ističe da žene u tekstilnoj industriji rade u strašnim uvjetima, za mizerne nadnice, a nemaju nikog ko bi se
brinuo o njihovoj djeci: „ti radnici bi štrajkovali u svakom drugom sistemu, ali ovo
36
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavija Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH – biografije
narodnih odbornica’, Kutija 7, 2526/5, 1949. Kratku biografsku skicu o njoj moguće je pronaći
na listi aktivistkinja u glavnim odborima iz decembra. Na internetu je moguće pronaći samo
datum rođenja i nekoliko crtica iz života. Biografski podaci također su preuzeti iz sljedećih knjiga:
Himka Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Rođena za burno doba: životni put narodnog heroja Vahide Maglajlić.
Kragujevac: Dečje Novine, 1977. Lukić, Dragoje, Rat i djeca Kozare, Narodna Knjiga, 1984.
37
Sida Marjanovic, Na Neretvi… (Sarajevo, 1950).
38
Lagator, Špiro i Čukić, Milorad. Partizanke Prve proleterske. Beograd, Export-press, 1978. Kecman,
Jovanka Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941. Beograd:
Narodna knjiga, 1978.
39
Vidjeti biografske prikaze koje je sakupila Gordana Stojaković
http://www.zenskestudije.org.rs/01_o_nama/gordana_stojakovic/AFZ/afz_licnosti.pdf
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BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
je socijalistička zemlja i ljudi razumiju situaciju, ali mi smo dužni da im pomognemo
koliko god možemo.”40
Ovaj citat pokazuje sve proturječnosti pokušaja rješavanja rodne i klasne nejednakosti unutar socijalističkog sistema. Aktivistkinje su ih bile itekako svjesne. U
narednom poglavlju ću analizirati kako se Antifašistički front žena krajem četrdesetih i početkom pedesetih prošlog stoljeća hvata u koštac sa etničkim i klasnim
razlikama među ženama, osobito kada se radi o ženama iz ruralnih područja.
Istražit ću i jaz između socijalističkih ideala i društvene stvarnosti, tačnije tenziju
između idealizirane slike nove socijalističke žene (pismene, zaposlene, politički
aktivne) i sveprisutne nepismenosti i političke pasivnosti žena. I ovdje me zanima
intersekcionalno tumačenje ženskog djelovanja, te utjecaj klasnih, obrazovnih i
etničkih razlika na diskurs i praksu AFŽ-a.
3. Socijalistički ideali i društvena stvarnost:
terenski rad aktivistkinja AFŽ-a
Antifašistkinje su i nakon rata snažno motivirane borbenim duhom antifašističkog
pokreta otpora. Partizani su pobjedu izvojevali zahvaljujući neprestanom aktivizmu i žrtvovanju za oslobođenje zemlje, u velikoj mjeri zahvaljujući i političkom
učešću žena. Stoga se smatralo da je masovna mobilizacija i dalje neophodna za
obnovu razrušene zemlje i zaštitu takozvanih tekovina revolucije, to jest radikalne
transformacije klasnih i imovinskih odnosa s ciljem poražavanja političkih i klasnih neprijatelja. Prateći sovjetski model, jugoslavensko rukovodstvo nakon 1945.
godine sve radikalnije poziva na klasnu borbu na nacionalnom i internacionalnom
nivou, što u konačnici dovodi do sukoba sa sovjetskim rukovodstvom. Raskidom
Jugoslavije sa Sovjetskim Savezom, 1948. godine ova radikalna pozicija postaje
još izraženija, barem u periodu neposredno nakon raskida kad se Jugoslavija
našla izolirana na međunarodnoj sceni, te je stanovništvo trebalo mobilizirati za
podršku vlastima. Stoga krajem četrdesetih i početkom pedesetih prošlog stoljeća vlast snažno promovira političku mobilizaciju i društvenu kontrolu, a „pasivnost” u političkom životu smatra se najvećim grijehom. Politizirane rukovoditeljice, mahom odrasle u gradskim sredinama i obrazovanije od većine ženskog
stanovništva, sa dugogodišnjim iskustvom borbenosti još od međuratnog perioda,
i dalje djeluju u duhu požrtvovnosti i neprestane političke mobilizacije, i svoje
vrijednosti nastoje širiti i među „ženskim masama”.
40
Beograd, Arhiv Jugoslavije, fond 354: kutija 1: Zapisnici i stenografske zabilješke sa sastanaka
upravnog odbora i sekretarijata SZDJ i sa savetovanja SZDJ 1954-1961. Zapisnik 6.3.1954, p. X/3.
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Kakvu je zapravo socijalističku „novu ženu” promovirao AFŽ i kako se taj ideal
provodio u praksi? Šta su aktivistkinje očekivale i kako su se suočavale sa stvarnošću života žena širom zemlje, posebno u Bosni i Hercegovini? Za spoznavanje
prirode tih ideala i predodžbi može poslužiti agitprop-štampa namijenjena ženama. Neposredno prije oslobođenja, Nova žena objavljuje značajan uvodnik kojim se
Bogomir Brajković obraća Hrvaticama u Bosni i Hercegovini, navodeći da se veliki
broj Hrvatica već priključio partizanskoj borbi, ali da jedan dio hrvatske zajednice
još uvijek ne uspijeva odabrati ispravan politički put. Uvodnik eksplicitno navodi
da hrvatske i muslimanske žene pate od iste zaostalosti kao i Srpkinje u Kraljevini
Jugoslaviji, ali da su se ove potonje uspjele osloboditi kroz partizansku borbu. Srpkinje su u borbama u Bosni i Hercegovini učestvovale u puno većem broju, što se
može objasniti i činjenicom da ih je proganjao kolaboracionistički režim Nezavisne
države Hrvatske u čijem se sastavu nalazila i Bosna i Hercegovina.41 Hrvatice iz
BiH pozvane su da se pridruže borbi povodeći se primjerom Hrvatica iz Hrvatske
koje su značajno doprinijele pokretu otpora u Istri, Lici, Slavoniji i Dalmaciji.
Hrvatice se izričito pozivaju na sestrinstvo s muslimakama i Srpkinjama, a u ime
zajedničkog iskustva žrtve pod čizmom zajedničkog neprijatelja (okupatorskih
snaga Osovine i domaćih kolaboracionista).42 S jedne strane, časopis AFŽ-a pokušava ublažiti etnički sukob među ženama i, kako kaže Jelena Batinić, igrati
ulogu „međuetničkog medijatora”43, propagirajući doktrinu koja će na koncu biti
definirana kao „bratstvo i jedinstvo”. S druge strane je pri izradi strategija za masovnu međuetničku mobilizaciju žena valjalo uzeti u obzir i etničke podjele.
Razlike među ženama nisu bile uvjetovane samo etničkom pripadnošću, nego,
što je još važnije, stupnjem političke osviještenosti, ali se često dešavalo da se ta
dva faktora preklope, kao u gorenavedenom slučaju Hrvatica i Srpkinja. Jedan od
uvodnika Nove žene iz 1946. godine razmatra činjenicu da su žene postale istinska
politička sila. Na žalost najangažiranijih aktivistkinja koje pokušavaju mobilizirati
žene, većinu se žena ipak nije moglo smatrati antifašistkinjama. Uvodnik iznosi
da depolitiziranim ženama valja prilaziti s razumijevanjem i pažnjom, jer su sve
žene žrtve fašizma, i one pasivne i one koje su ponašaju opozicionarski. Stav ovih
41
Vidjeti: Jancar-Webster, Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, i Batinić, Women and Yugoslav partisans.
42
„Srpska žena, čije je neizmjerne patnje ovjekovečio veliki hrvatski pjesnik Vladimir Nazor u
svojoj pjesmi „Majka pravoslavka”, pruža ruku hrvatskoj i muslimanskoj ženi i želi da zajednički
liječe rane koje im je nanio zajednički neprijatelj. I rodoljubive svjesne Hrvatice gledaju u srpskim
i muslimanskim ženama svoje sestre. To sestrinstvo, posvećeno nevinom krvlju bezbrojnih žrtava,
sve bosansko-hercegovačke žene moraju čuvati kao svetinju. „Nova žena, br.2, 5, „Hrvatice Bosne i
Hercegovine”.
43
Batinić, Women and Yugoslav partisans, str. 218.
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BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
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potonjih tumači se kao rezultat neznanja ili negativnog utjecaja članova porodice, posebno u slučaju žena seljanki i radnica. Samo se nekolicinu žena moglo
smatrati istinskim neprijateljima, a to su kolaboracionistkinje lakog morala, ili
klasni neprijatelji – žene koje su u prijašnjoj Jugoslaviji živjele od rada drugih i
priželjkivale povratak prijeratnog stanja. Uvodnik poziva antifašistkinje na otpor
„sektaštvu”, posebno u slučaju srpskih aktivistkinja i njihove podozrivosti prema
muslimankama ili Hrvaticama koje su osvojile određeni stupanj političke odgovornosti.44 Klasna borba morala je nadjačati postojeću etničku mržnju i podjele,
i žene su pozvane na zajedničku mobilizaciju u ime općeg dobra. Istovremeno je
trebalo podići političku svijest među ženama različitih političkih orijentacija, da bi
se pridobile simpatije ženskog građanstva na marginama javnog života.
Krajem četrdesetih AFŽ počinje iznutra stvarati preduvjete za ženski aktivizam
kroz masovne kampanje opismenjavanja i masovno regrutiranje u dobrovoljne
radne brigade i novu industrijsku radnu snagu. Članice AFŽ-a učestvuju i u osnivanju struktura socijalne skrbi za siročad, te porodiljskih klinika i jaslica za djecu
radnica. Dijeleći kulturni, ekonomski i politički kapital sa takozvanim pasivnim
ženama, rukovodstvo AFŽ-a pokušava među ženama učvrstiti legitimitet socijalističkog režima i rad žena iskoristiti za obnovu i mobilizaciju. Ali se ipak često
očituje slabost političkih „kadrova” na lokalnom nivou, kao i činjenica da ova organizacija ne dopire i ne uključuje sve žene diljem zemlje – naročito u ruralnim
područjima. Unatoč socijalističkim idealima jasno izraženim u propagandnim
materijalima poput ženske štampe, rukovodstvo AFŽ-a bilo je duboko svjesno
poteškoća u mijenjanju položaja žena. Na plenumu Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a BiH
održanog u martu 1948. godine, istaknuta bh. rukovoditeljica Dušanka Kovačević
izražava žaljenje što ova organizacija nije uspjela doprijeti do svih žena, posebno
onih u selima, zbog jaza između gradske i seoske realnosti. Ona eksplicitno navodi
da organizacija mora uključiti i iskoristiti snagu i sposobnost seoskih žena:
Drugarice, meni je na ovom sastanku pao u oči odnos prema ženi-seljanki,
kada su pojedine drugarice govorile da su žene-seljanke nepismene,
da nema sposobnih žena itd. Mi, drugarice, ne možemo tako govoriti. Ne
možemo govoriti o nesposobnosti žene-seljanke, ne možemo i nećemo da
slušamo o tome i ne možemo postaviti uvijek stvar tako: da imamo više
građanki, učiteljica, itd. bilo bi lako. Da vidite šta bi mi onda uradili. Mi
hoćemo da od seljanke stvorimo rukovodioca. Ona je pokazala u ratu šta
44
Nova žena: God. 1, br. 6, ‘Pitanja, u koja treba da se udubimo’, 15, 1945.
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/74c7a03e1f6ad2c383759272bb8da3da.pdf
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31
može, ona je dala ogromno mnogo u ratu, ona je veliki patriota naše zemlije
i njoj treba nauke. To je naš dug prema toj ženi i mi joj moramo pomoći.
Treba se pomučiti oko toga da uzdignemo još seljanki rukovodioca.45
Ovaj govor dokazuje da su rukovoditeljice AFŽ-a bile svjesne neoslobođenog potencijala žena sa sela. Ispostavilo se, međutim, da je obrazovati kadrove u selima
krajnje teško, jer najbolje aktivistkinje često prelaze iz ćelija AFŽ-a u lokalne
institucije, i radije rade za Narodni front, nego među ženama (Sklevicky je detaljno
analizirala ovaj problem).46 Često se istaknuti članovi Partije protive učešću svojih
supruga u radu AFŽ-a i ometaju aktivnosti lokalnih ogranaka ove organizacije.47
Izvještaji iz Vareša pružaju primjer takvih dešavanja.48 Članice AFŽ-a u selima
uglavnom su bile domaćice, sa tri ili četiri razreda osnovne škole, politizirane
uslijed ratnih gubitaka i učešća članova svojih porodica u ratu. Razina njihove
političnosti, međutim, nije uvijek bila zadovoljavajuća, posebno kad se radilo
o rukovoditeljskim sposobnostima. Na popisu biografskih skica članica AFŽ-a
koje su pohađale političku obuku u Sarajevu, mnoge su polaznice opisane kao
nedorasle rukovoditeljskim pozicijama. Neadekvatnosti su najčešće proizlazile
iz nedostatnog obrazovanja ili ograničenja osobne naravi (“tiha”, “šutljiva”, “voli
intrigirati”, “ne voli da diskutuje”, “nedisciplinovana”, “nije dovoljno bistra”, “prilično
zaostala, skoro je skinula zar”). Nepodobnima za rukovođenje lokalnih odbora smatrane su i žene premlade, prestare ili lošeg zdravlja, ili „nesređenog porodičnog
života”. Mnoge kandidatkinje su iskazale potencijal za politički angažman, ali
45
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik IV plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu,
13. marta 1948.’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2912/ 32, 1948.
46
Sklevicky, Konji, Žene, Ratovi, str. 120-121; 137.
47
Bonfiglioli, Women’s Political and Social Activism.
48
„U sreskoj organizaciji Vareša je jedna velika greška što drugarica koja je rukovodioc organizacije
živi partiskim životom u mjesnoj organizaciji pa radi čega ona svoje težište rada baca na mjesne
zadatke dok zadatke po sreskoj organizaciji AFŽ-a radi toga zapostavlja (...) U Varešu žena
sekretara SNO neće da radi u organizaciji AFŽ-a i to uvijek i svagdje naglašava. ” Glavni odbor
AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik 1. oktobar 1950’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4288/?, 1950. U
drugom izvještaju organizaciona situacija u Varešu okarakterizirana je kao veoma loša. Također
se napominje da supruge članova partije i istaknutih ličnosti ne žele raditi, a da ih njihovi muževi
opravdavaju. U izvještaju se također tvrdi da je lokalnim ženama puno više stalo do Katoličke
Crkve nego do bilo koje konferencije AFŽ-a ili Narodnog fronta. Na primjer, supruga jednog
lokalnog sekretara uredno je posjećivala katoličke mise, ali se nije pojavljivala na sastancima
AFŽ-a, zato što nije bila u dobrim odnosima sa jednom od aktivistkinja, iako su tokom rata obje
bile partizanke. Također, muslimanski članovi partije nisu dozvoljavali svojim ženama da skinu zar.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ Vareš Oblasnom odboru AFŽ –godišnji izvještaj o radu’, Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 91/1, 1949.
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INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
su trebale dodatnu obuku i obrazovanje. U većini slučajeva, ali ne uvijek, izbor
lokalnih rukovoditeljica ovisio je o njihovom stepenu obrazovanosti i spremnosti da
uče. Dakle, idealna seoska rukovoditeljica morala je biti otvorena, disciplinirana,
vrijedna, željna znanja i spremna pomoći drugima.49
Uvidjevši koliko je teško obučiti lokalne kadrove i premostiti jaz između urbanog
i ruralnog, rukovodstvo AFŽ-a počinje insistirati na obrazovanju i poboljšanju
životnog standarda, pošto se emancipacija žena u seoskim zajednicama dovodila
u usku vezu sa društvenim razvojem. U govoru Vide Tomšič, predsjednice AFŽ-a,
poslanog iz Centralnog odbora u Beogradu u Glavni odbor u BiH u septembru
1948. godine, navodi se da je zaostalost žena zaostavština stare Jugoslavije i da
je zbog toga rad sa ženama izuzetno važan. Govoreći u svoje ime i u ime ostatka
rukovodstva AFŽ-a, ona kaže:
Mi moramo ženu naučiti da mrzi svoju neravnopravnost koja se danas još
kod mnogih hiljada njih praktički krije iza feredže i drugih, iako manje vidnih
navika, mi moramo osloboditi mase žena od sujeverja, raznih predrasuda
itd. Isto tako moramo preko rada naših organizacija očistiti, okrečiti, oprati
naše kuće, izbaciti iz nijh srednjevekovna ognjišta, unijeti u kuće krevet,
naučiti održavanju čistoće i osnovnih higijenskih uslova (...) mi ne možemo
zamisliti izgradnju socijalizma bez istovremenog podizanja standarda života,
a naročito bez istovremenog podizanja težnje za poboljšanjem života naših
radnih masa, naročito na selu.50
Promoviranje obrazovanja žena i higijenskih standarda bilo je važno, kako za
smanjivanje stope smrtnosti novorođenčadi u čitavoj zemlji, tako i za težnju socijalističke države da svima, a posebno ženama, djeci i ratnim invalidima, osigura
socijalnu zaštitu i pomoć. Stoga AFŽ znatan dio svojih aktivnosti usmjerava na
49
Primjer opisa manje uspješne polaznice: „D.B., Bos. Dubica, rodjena 1923 godine, završila 4
razreda osnovne škole, pretsjednica SO AFŽ-a. Iako je mlada i ima uslove da se razvija nije
pokazala naročito interesovanje za učenje. Ne osjeća se odgovorna i nije disciplinovana u radu.
Ukoliko bi bila rukovodilac potrebno joj je ukazati na te greške. Dosada nije politički bila uzdignuta
te treba više da čita i uči.” Uspješne polaznice opisivale su se na sljedeći način: „N.D., Mostar
grad, rod.1918 god., završila 4 razreda srednje škole. Ima uslove da bude samostalan rukovodilac,
pozna rad organizacije AFŽ-a i nastoji da ga još bolje upozna. Disciplinovana je i ima volju za
učenje. Zauzima pravilan stav prema svim političkim događajima. Ima drugarski odnos prema
drugaricama i voljna je da i ostalim pomogne u učenju.” Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, ‘Glavni odbor
AFŽ BiH Oblasnom odboru AFŽ BiH - karakteristke polaznica političkih kurseva’, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 9, 352/6, 1950.
50
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor u Beogradu Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine – o
podizanju standarda života radnih ljudi’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2051/1, 1948.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
33
obrazovanje stanovništva, promoviranje novih životnih navika i podizanje životnog
standarda. Koliko su istaknute aktivistkinje AFŽ-a vjerovale u seoske žene i njihovu
sposobnost da poboljšaju svoju svakodnevicu možda najbolje ilustrira biografija
Rajke Borojević, još jedne figure koja se ističe u radu ove organizacije. Rajka
Borojević je bila učiteljica i partizanka iz Hercegovine koja se u ratu sa mužem i
dvoje djece sklonila na selo u Srbiju, gdje im je pomoglo lokalno stanovništvo, zbog
čega im je bila neizmjerno zahvalna i osjećala prema njima dug. Rajka Borojević
je zajedno sa mužem u Banjoj Luci osnovala Vitaminku, tvornicu za preradu voća i
povrća, a početkom pedesetih seli u selo Donji Dubac i 1954. godine počinje raditi
prve radionice sa seoskim ženama. Kasnije je u Dragačevu osnovala tkalačku
zadrugu koja je do kraja šezdesetih zapošljavala 420 žena.51
Prije učešća u plenumu Centralnog odbora AFŽ-a krajem četrdesetih, Rajka
Borojević je u Banjoj Luci organizirala obuku iz politike i kulture za seoske
žene. Tokom gorenavedenog plenuma u Sarajevu, imala je priliku govoriti o tim
obukama i opisati programe osmišljene za seoske žene. Žene su učestvovale u
konferencijama, posjećivale domove za djecu, dom za invalide i brojne tvornice
gdje su upoznale „mnoge udarnice o kojima su prije samo slušale a nisu vjerovale
kada se na konferenciji o njima pričalo”. Te žene sa sela vidjele su kako se
štampaju knjige i novine, išle u pozorište i kino, te prisustvovale raznim političkim
događajima. Te žene su bile „raspoređene po kučama naših najboljih aktivistkinja
tako da su imale prilike da vide i u kući kako se kuha, podižu djeca, da nauče
sve ono što selo još nema”.52 Borojevićka je govorila i o školovanju i stanju u
sirotištima, te pozvala aktivistkinje AFŽ-a da posjete sirotišta i da ratnoj siročadi,
čiji su se roditelji žrtvovali za oslobođenje zemlje, pruže prijeko potrebnu ljubav
i nježnost. I u kasnijoj autobiografskoj knjizi, gdje Borojevićka opisuje svoj rad u
Donjem Dubcu pedesetih godina prošlog stoljeća, primjetna je slična kombinacija
pedagoškog pristupa, etike brige i solidarnosti. Borojevićka opisuje poteškoće
koje je morala savladati pri organiziranju prve radionice sa lokalnim seoskim
ženama u ruralnoj Srbiji i svoje emocije nakon dolaska u selo poslije rata:
51
Borojević, Rajka. Iz Dubca u svet Beograd: Etnografski muzej, 2006., prvo izdanje iz 1964. Vidjeti
također Natalja Herbst, ‘Women in Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s. Primjer Rajke Borojević i
ženske kooperative Dragačevo, Kersten-Pejanić, Roswita, Rajilić, Simone u: Christian Voß, (ur.),
Doing Gender-Doing the Balkans. München, Berlin, Washington D.C. : Verlag Otto Sagner, 2012.
Vidjeti i nedavni umjetnički projekt „Uzeti zajedničku stvar u svoje ruke” inspiriran Rajkom
Borojević, kojeg je pokrenula njena unuka Ana Džokić (pristupljeno 19.10.2016.)
http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/25_taking.common.matter.into.your.own.hands.html
52
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik IV plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu 13. marta
1948’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 5, nedostaje broj dokumenta/7, 1948.
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INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
Naročito se radujem što opet, kao i za vreme rata, osećam bliskost sa ovim
narodom. Razmišljam kako bi im pomogla. Ta ideja nije od juče. Nosim je još
iz ratnih dana. Ponela sam je odavde — kao obećanje samoj sebi. Ženama
sam najbliža. One sve više dolaze. Presvučene, doterane kao za praznik.
Poveravaju mi svoje muke. Posavetujem koliko umem. Pokazujem im i
poslove iz domaćinstva, govorim o podizanju i vaspitanju dece. Vidim — sve
je to na parče i sasvim malo.53
U nastavku dnevnika Borojevićka opisuje svoj susret sa lokalnim običajima i
sujevjerjem, te borbu protiv niskih higijenskih standarda u svakodnevnom životu
seoskih žena, kao i pri porađanju i odgajanju djece. Dugo joj je trebalo da uvjeri
muževe da je obuka korisna njihovim suprugama. Ova aktivistkinja je čak javno
osudila muškarca koji je svoju ženu pretukao zbog učešća u obuci, a preko
članka objavljenog u beogradskom dnevnom listu Politika (nije, doduše, navela
njegovo ime, ali je zaprijetila da će otkriti njegov identitet ponovi li se nešto
slično). Časovi koje je držala u Donjem Dubcu sastojali su se od teorijskog dijela
(kućna higijena, ženska higijena i seksualno obrazovanje, prva pomoć, vaspitanje
djece, alkoholizam, ishrana, bonton) i praktičnog dijela (kuhanje i posluživanje,
pripremanje zimnice, pravljenje sapuna, bojenje tkanine, pletenje i šivanje,
sakupljanje aromatskog i ljekovitog bilja, pčelarstvo, uzgajanje malina, ručni rad,
pjevanje).54 Žene su kilometrima hodale iz obližnjih sela da bi učestvovale na tim
radionicama. Te žene su imale priliku posjetiti Beograd i po prvi put u životu otići
u kino, a kasnije su išle u Sarajevo, Banju Luku, Kumrovec (Titovo rodno mjesto) i
Zagreb. Tkalačka zadruga u Dragačevu počela je raditi početkom šezdesetih; cilj
je bio osigurati ekonomsku neovisnost žena. Položaj žena u selu postepeno se
poboljšavao, a 1967. godine u novootvorenom Domu kulture čak je održano i finale
takmičenja za „najboljeg muža”, gdje su žene otvoreno ocjenjivale najpodobnije
buduće partnere, o čemu je tada snimljen i dokumentarni film.55 Izgradnja Doma
kulture finansirana je zahvaljujući sijelima za izbor „najboljeg muža” prethodno
organiziranim u okolnim selima.56
Aktivizam Rajke Borojević, započet sa AFŽ-om i nastavljen dugo nakon gašenja
te organizacije, odličan je primjer kombinacije utopijskih imaginarija, kolektivnih
vrijednosti i individualnih težnji ljevičarskog rukovodstva da širom Jugoslavije
emancipira žene, osobito one sa sela. Mnoge žene koje su iskusile partizansku
53
Borojević, Rajka Iz Dubca u svet, 7.
54
Ibid., Iz Dubca u svet, 39.
55
https://vimeo.com/134070626
56
http://www.stealth.ultd.net/stealth/25_taking.common.matter.into.your.own.hands.html
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
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35
borbu usvojile su socijalističke vrijednosti i nastojale poboljšati položaj žena, posebno društveni i ekonomski, u skladu sa idejom da se ukupni društveni napredak
ne može postići bez poboljšanja položaja žena. Iako je bilo naznaka društvene
kontrole i emancipacije od vrha nadole, aktivistkinje AFŽ-a bile su svjesne situacije na terenu i postojanja jaza između socijalističkih ideala i stvarnosti, ali su
taj jaz pokušavale premostiti kako su znale i umjele, dijeleći sa drugim ženama
društveni, ekonomski i kulturni kapital.
4. Zaključak
Ovaj rad pruža intersekcionalnu interpretaciju položaja žena u Antifašističkom
frontu žena (AFŽ), zastupajući stanovište da je svu složenost položaja žena u toj
organizaciji moguće razumjeti tek kroz podrobnije istraživanje društvenih razlika
među ženama. Radom se nastoje prevazići dominirajuća tumačenja organizacione
dinamike AFŽ-a te se, umjesto naglašavanja suprotnosti interesa državnih interesa
i interesa žena, predstavljaju biografije nekolicine ključnih aktivistkinja (Vahida
Maglajlić, Didara Dukazdjini, Sida Marjanović, Judita Alargić i Rajka Borojević)
da bi se prikazala važnost individualnih težnji žena ka ravnopravnosti, slobodi i
socijalnoj pravdi, kao i razni načini pretočavanja tih težnji u političko djelovanje.
AFŽ, kako tvrdim u ovom radu, nije bio samo instrument političke mobilizacije i
društvene kontrole, već i način jačanja solidarnosti i brige kroz zajedničko sudjelovanje u kulturnom, političkom i društvenom kapitalu. Rukovodstvo AFŽ-a,
sačinjeno uglavnom od obrazovanih žena s političkim iskustvom čije je djelovanje
bilo ukorijenjeno u revolucionarnom duhu partizanskog otpora, pokušalo je svoje
vrijednosti propagirati među nepismenim apolitičnim ženama i premostiti jaz
između grada i sela. Bile su ustanovljene hijerarhije između politički aktivnih i
pasivnih žena, posebno u odnosu na muslimanke koje su bile smatrane nazadnima
i primoravane na skidanje zara. Bez obzira na to, društvena i politička važnost
seoskih žena bila je prepoznata zahvaljujući njihovom doprinosu antifašističkoj
borbi, a na etničke i vjerske identitete gledalo se kao na nešto promjenjivo,
nešto što se može postepeno transformirati obrazovanjem, znanjem i političkim
djelovanjem. Aktivistkinje AFŽ-a su, iskusivši ove transformacije na svojoj koži,
željele i drugim ženama ponuditi sličnu priliku.
Dakle, među članicama AFŽ-a postojale su ogromne razlike u smislu etničke i
klasne pripadnosti, političkih stavova i obrazovanosti, kao i političke i društvene
moći. Ali je ova organizacija poticala žene na prevazilaženje podjela i razlika
između grada i sela, između različitih nacionalnih grupa i klasa. Aktivistkinje AFŽ-a
su, uprkos svim poteškoćama, propagirale socijalistički ideal ravnopravnosti i
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BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
emancipacije žena, organizirajući programe opismenjavanja, kurseve o higijeni,
volonterske radne brigade i razne oblike lokalne mobilizacije. Arhiv AFŽ-a je
svjedočanstvo raznovrsnosti kapilarnog djelovanja i, s obzirom na preciznost i detaljnost izvještaja s terena, predstavlja dragocjen izvor ženske historije. Arhivska
građa AFŽ-a omogućava nam otkrivanje razlika među općinama, regijama i
republikama, i poređenje položaja žena unutar nejednako razvijene jugoslavenske
federacije. Kroz Arhiv također možemo analizirati kako su se federalne direktive
o ženskoj emancipaciji tumačile i provodile na lokalnom nivou. I individualne
životne priče žena, kako pokazuje ovaj rad, još su jedna ključna tema koju bi
valjalo dodatno istražiti koristeći se arhivskom građom, usmenom historijom,
memoarima i sekundarnom literaturom objavljenom tokom socijalističke ere.
Iako se memoari, biografije i zbirke priča o partizankama pisani u socijalizmu
obično smatraju ideološki pristrasnim i hagiografskim, u njima su sadržane korisne historijske informacije o dominantnim vrijednostima i predodžbama tog
doba. Ovaj rad zaključujem citiranjem posljednjeg pasusa autobiografije Rajke
Borojević koji ističe važnost memoara za historijsko istraživanje i naglašava
utopijske vrijednosti koje su nadahnjivale rukovoditeljice AFŽ-a:
Pruga Beograd-Bar primaknuće i ova sela većim centrima. Auto-put
Beograd-Titovo Užice biće upola kraći od onog preko Kragujevca. Putevi,
pruge, domovi, škole, dalekovodi... prodiru sve dalje, sve dublje u brda. U
nekadašnje zabačene krajeve. Doći će vreme kada će se došljak čuditi:
zar je Dubac bio zabačeno selo? Sela se menjaju sve bržim tempom. I ova.
Koliko ih je već izmenila elektrifikacija. I u selima, neminovno, staro ustupa
mesto novom. Pešačim prema Busenjači. Tačno je tako — samo pola sata
pješačenja. Pevam i sećam se onih vrlo, vrlo teških putovanja i teškoća u
radu. Bilo ih je mno-o-o-go. To je sudbina pionira. Ali — lepa je borba za
novo, za bolje! Zaista niču nove žene. I zato sam vesela.57
57
Borojević, Iz Dubca u svet, 223.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
37
Arhivska građa
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor Teslić Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – povjerenstvo za
štampu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1178/1, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – mjesečni izvještaj za
oktobar i novembar’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1290/1, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ-a Jugoslavija Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH –
biografije narodnih odbornica’, Kutija 7, 2526/5, 1949.
Beograd, Arhiv Jugoslavije, fond 354: kutija 1: Zapisnici i stenografske zabilješke sa
sastanaka upravnog odbora i sekretarijata SZDJ i sa savetovanja SZDJ 1954-1961.
Zapisnik 6.3.1954, p. X/3.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik IV plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu, 13.
marta 1948.’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 5, 2912/ 32, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik 1. oktobar 1950’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija
8, 4288/?, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ Vareš Oblasnom odboru AFŽ –godišnji izvještaj o
radu’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 91/1, 1949.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, ‘Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH Oblasnom odboru AFŽ BiH –
karakteristkinje polaznica političkih kurseva’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo,
Kutija 9, 352/6, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor u Beogradu Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine
– o podizanju standarda života radnih ljudi’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo,
Kutija 5, 2051/1, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Zapisnik IV plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a održanog u Sarajevu
13. marta 1948’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 5, nedostaje broj
dokumenta/7, 1948.
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Batinić, Jelena, Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance. New
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BIOGRAFIJE AKTIVISTKINJA AFŽ-A:
INTERSEKCIONALNA ANALIZA ŽENSKOG DJELOVANJA
Bonfiglioli, Chiara, “Nomadic Theory as an Epistemology for Transnational Feminist
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Funk, Nanette, “A Very Tangled Knot: Official State Socialist Women’s Organizations,
Women’s Agency and Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism,” European
Journal of Women’s Studies 21 (4), 2014.
Ghodsee, Kristen, and Kateřina Lišková, “Bumbling Idiots or Evil Masterminds?
Challenging Cold War Stereotypes about Women, Sexuality and State Socialism”,
Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (3), 2016.
Ghodsee, Kristen, “Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk,” European Journal
of Women’s Studies 22 (2), 2015.
Giomi, Fabio, “Introduction” in Aida Spahić et al. Women Documented. Women and Public
Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th century. Sarajevo: Sarajevski Otvoreni
Centar, 2014.
Hadžišehović, Munevera, A Muslim Woman in Tito’s Yugoslavia. College Station, Texas A&M
University Press, 2003.
Herbst, Natalja, ‘Women in Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s. The Example of Rajka
Borojević and the Dragačevo Women’s Cooperative’, in Roswita Kersten-Pejanić,
Simone Rajilić, and Christian Voß, (eds.), Doing Gender-Doing the Balkans. München,
Berlin, Washington D.C.: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2012.
Hoare, Marko Attila, The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History. London: Hurst
& Co Publishers Ltd, 2013.
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata, Dom i svijet: o ženskoj kulturi pamćenja. Zagreb: Centar za Ženske
Studije, 2008.
Jancar-Webster, Barbara, Women & revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945. Denver, Colo.,
Arden Press, 1998.
Jancar-Webster, Barbara, “Women in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement” in
Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.) Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Women and Society
in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1999.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
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39
Kecman, Jovanka, Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918194.1 Beograd: Narodna knjiga, 1978.
Lagator, Špiro Lagator and Milorad Čukić, Partizanke Prve proleterske. Beograd: Exportpress, 1978.
Lukić, Dragoje, Rat i djeca Kozare. Beograd: Narodna Knjiga, 1984.
Lutz, Helma, Vivar, Maria Teresa Herrera, and Linda Supik (eds)., Framing intersectionality:
debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies. Burlington, Ashgate, 2011.
Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Himka, Zapisi o Vahidi Maglajlić. Banjaluka: Glas, 1973.
Maglajlić-Hadžihalilović, Himka, Rođena za burno doba: životni put narodnog heroja Vahide
Maglajlić. Kragujevac: Dečje Novine, 1977.
Malešević, Miroslava, Didara. Životna priča jedne Prizrenke- Beograd:Srpski genealoški
centar, 2004.
Marjanović, Sida, Na Neretvi… Sarajevo, 1950.
Mesarič, Andrea,” Wearing Hijab in Sarajevo. Dress Practices and the Islamic Revival in
Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 22(2),
2013: 12-34.
Mlinarević, Gorana and Lamija Kosović, “Women’s Movements and Gender Studies in
Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Aspasia, Vol. 5, 2011.
Sklevicky, Lydia, “Emancipated integration or integrated emancipation: the case of postrevolutionary Yugoslavia” In: Angerman, A., Binnema, G., Keunen, A., Poels, V.
& Zirkzee, J. (eds.) Current Issues in Women’s History. London and New York,
Routledge, 1989.
Sklevicky, Lydia, Konji, Žene, Ratovi. Zagreb, Ženska Infoteka, 1996.
Tesija, Jelena, The End of the AFŽ – The End of Meaningful Women’s Activism? Rethinking the
History of Women’s Organizations in Croatia, 1953 – 1961, Master thesis, Department
of Gender Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 2014.
Zaharijević, Adriana, “Pawning and Challenging in Concert: Engagement as a Field of
Study”, Filozofija i Društvo, XXVII (2), 2016.
Stojaković, Gordana, Mapa AFŽ-a Vojvodine 1942-1953. Novi Sad, 2007. Dostupno na: http://
www.zenskestudije.org.rs/01_o_nama/gordana_stojakovic/AFZ/afz_licnosti.pdf
�NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ
Crteži rapidografom
�������ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE,
JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE
POUZDAVAM U TE1:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ
NARODNE (NAPREDNE)
UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM
GODINAMA IZGRADNJE
NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG
BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG
DRUŠTVA
Navedeno prema pismu djevojčice Vojke Beaković. Ovo kratko
pozdravno pismo ratnog siročeta koje je iz BiH prebačeno u Sloveniju
da se preko zime okrijepi i odmori, između ostalog svjedoči i o tome
kako su učiteljice čak i u ratnim godinama uspijevale uspješno
organizirati nastavu i uspostaviti prisan odnos sa đacima. Navodim
pismo u cijelosti: „Zdravo drugarice učiteljice, Prije svega pitati se
treba jesi li počela učiti drugi razred. Draga učiteljice piši mi ko je
prešao na drugi razred, ko nije. Jel prešla Milanka i Dana, dosad su
dobro učile, dok sam ja bila. Ja ovamo nijesam još počela, kažu da
ćemo učiti zimus, a na ljeto ja ću opet tamo tebi da me ti učiš. Šećer
sladak, a bombone ljute, ja se draga učiteljice pouzdavam u te.
Draga učiteljice jesi li se gotovo udala? Iz kamena voda curi molim
pismo da požuri. Evo sjedoh na jelovu klupu, uzeh pero u desnicu
ruku, a u lijevu maramicu bijelu, pismo pišem suze brišem. Draga
učiteljice pruži ruku da se rukujemo prije zore i bijela dana, cvati
ruža sitno sjeme sjećaš li se učiteljice mene. Ja se sjećam tebe, al
nemam krila da doletim tebi mila. Živio drug Tito i Staljin“. Pismo
je objavljeno u rubrici „Pisma djece iz Slovenije“ Nova žena 8 (1945),
12. U istom broju potanko je prikazan odlazak prve skupine ratne
siročadi na zimovanje u Sloveniju. Zahvaljujem Danijeli Majstorović
što mi je skrenula pozornost na ovo pismo.
1
AJLA
DEMIRAGIĆ
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
1. Uvodna napomena
Prve diskusije o ‘nevidljivosti’ žena u okviru jugoslavenske povijesti pokrenute
su tek sredinom 80-ih godina minulog stoljeća2, a neupitno najveći doprinos
promociji i osnaživanju feministički angažiranih povijesnih istraživanja ženskih
autonomnih organiziranja i udruživanja dala je Lydija Sklevicky, prerano preminula3
feministička teoretičarka koja je u svojim radovima4 sprovela dosljednu kritiku
tradicionalnog pristupa ‘velikim temama’ političke, vojne i diplomatske historije,
zalažući se za istraživanja i analize povijesnih mijena svakodnevnog života, odnosa
spola, roda, te općenito razvoja (nove socijalne) historije žena.5
I premda je druga polovina 80-ih prošla u znaku feministički orijentiranih radova6
i pojave novog interesa za ženska pitanja7, ovaj pozitivni istraživački trend bit
će zaustavljen kako ratnim8 tako i poratnim društveno političkim gibanjima i
2
Ovim istraživanjima prethodile su filozofske rasprave u kojima se rasvjetljava položaj žena u
socijalizmu. Usp. Nadežda Čačinovič-Puhovski, „Ravnopravnost ili oslobođenje. Teze o teorijskoj
relevantnosti suvremenog feminizma“, Žena 3 (1976): 125–128; Dunja Rihtman-Auguštin, „Moć žene
u patrijarhalnoj i suvremenoj kulturi“, Žena 4–5 (1980); Blaženka Despot, „Žena i samoupravljanje“,
Delo 4 (1981): 112–116; Nada Ler-Sofronić, „Subordinacija žene – sadašnjost i prošlost“, Marksistička
misao 4 (1981): 73–80. Pored ovih radova valja spomenutii jednu od prvih feministički orijentiranih
studija, sociologa Vjerana Katunarića, koja također ukazuje na problem reduciranja ‘ženskog pitanja’
na općedruštvena pitanja, čime se izbjegava ‘aktivno suprotstavljanje nosiocima dominacije’. Usp.
Vjeran Katunarić, Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti. (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984), 239. Pored ovih radova je
od iznimnog značaja i Međunarodna konferencija „Drugarica žena. Žensko pitanje-novi pristup?“
organizirana u Beogradu, 1978. godine, na kojoj se po prvi put javno raspravljalo o nejednakosti žena
u socijalizmu i stvarnoj poziciji žena u različitim društveno-političkim sferama djelovanja.
3
Poginula je u saobraćajnoj nesreći 1990. godine u svojoj trideset devetoj godini.
4
Sklevicky, Lydia. „Karakteristike organiziranog djelovanja žena u Jugoslaviji u razdoblju do drugog
svjetskog rata” Polja 308 (1984); i „Žene i moć – povijesna geneza jednog interesa” Polja 309 (1984).
U ovom radu referiram prema posthumno objavljenoj knjizi radova Lydie Sklevicky, koju je priredila
Dunja Rihtman Auguštin, Konji, žene i ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996.
5
Usp. Sklevicky, Konji, žene, op.cit. str. 15.
6
Usp. zbornik radova Žena i društvo. Kultiviranje dijaloga, Zagreb: Sociološko društvo, 1987., u kojem
su zastupljeni radovi istaknutih feminističkih teoretičara i teoretičarki tog vremena: Rade Iveković,
Žarane Papić, Blaženke Despot, Lydie Sklevicky, Andree Feldman, Vesne Pusić, Željke Šporer,
Gordane Cerjan-Letica, Vere Tadić, Vjerana Katunarića, Đurđe Milanović, Jelene Zuppa, Ingrid
Šafranek, Slavenke Drakulić.
7
U Okviru bh. historiografije tih godina Senija Milišić poduzela je pionirski poduhvat istražujući procese
emancipacije muslimanske žene u BiH. Usp. Senija Milišić „Emancipacija muslimanske žene u Bosni
i Hercegovini nakon oslobođenja 1947 – 1952 (Poseban osvrt na skidanje zara i feredže)“. Magistarski rad
na Filozofskom fakultetu u Sarajevu, 1986.
8
Rat će i ovog puta, riječima Ines Price, „zaduženja, popunjavanja zacrtanih praznina koje pojedina
razdoblja ostavljaju iza sebe u znanstvenoj evidenciji ili pak savjesti pomaknuti za neka mirnija
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49
kulturno-prosvjetnim politikama. Pitanja ‘ostavštine’ AFŽ-a i/ili emancipacije
žena u NOB-u i socijalizmu nanovo će se razmatrati iz feminističke vizure
tek početkom novog milenija.9 U tom kontekstu posebno je značajna pojava
nove generacije znanstvenica, u regionu i šire, koje su u okviru magistarskih i
doktorskih disertacija istraživale pojedine aspekte ženskog angažmana u NOB-u
i AFŽ-u.10
Iako unutar bh. historiografije još uvijek ne postoje naznake da će se u
dogledno vrijeme uspostaviti institucionalni okvir za sistematsko izučavanje
moderne povijesti žena,11 treba istaknuti da je kreiranjem internetskog arhiva
vremena“. Ines Prica, „ETNOLOGIJA POSTSOCIJALIZMA I PRIJE. ili: Dvanaest godina nakon
„Etnologije socijalizma i poslije“, u: Lada Feldman Čale i Ines Prica, ur. Devijacije i promašaji.
Etnografija domaćeg socijalizma, Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006. str. 21.
9
Između ostalih, vidjeti: Slapšak,Svetlan. Ženske ikone XX veka, Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek – Čigoja
Štampa, 2001.; Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. Dom i svijet. O ženskoj kulturi pamćenja, Zagreb: Centar za
ženske studije, 2008.; Bosanac, Gordana. Visoko čelo: ogled o humanističkim perspektivama feminizma,
Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2010;, Jambrešić Kirin, Renata i Senjković, Reana. „Legacies of
the Second World War in Croatian Cultural Memory: Women as Seen through the Media“, Aspasia:
International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History,
4, 2010. ; 71–96; Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke, Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju
– Evoluta, 2011. ; Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. „Žena u formativnom socijalizmu“, u: Refleksije vremena
1945.-1955. Zagreb: Galerija Klovićevi dvori, 2013.
10
Usp. Batinić, Jelena. „Proud to have trod in men’s footsteps: Mobilizing Peasant Women into the
Yugoslav Partisan Army in World War II”, (magistarski rad, Ohaio State University, 2001), i idem,
„Gender, Revolution, War: The Mobilization of Women in the Yugoslav Partisan movement in World
War II“ (doktorska disertacija, Stanford University 2009); Stojaković, Gordana. „Rodna perspektiva
u novinama Antifašističkog fronta žena u periodu 1945 – 1953“ (doktorska disertacija, Univerzitet u
Novom Sadu, 2011), Bonfiglioli, Chiara. „Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism
in Cold War Italy and Yugoslavia (1945-1957)“ (doktorska disertacija, Utrecht University, 2012), te
Jelušić, Iva. „Founding Narratives on the Participation of Women in the People’s Liberation Struggle
in Yugoslavia“ (magistarski rad, Central European University, 2015). Neka od ovih istraživanja
nastaju na temelju prvih studija o učešću žena u NOB-u realiziranih na američkim sveučilištima.
Usp. Reed, Mary Elizabeth. „Croatian women in the Yugoslav Partisan resistance, 1941-1945“ (dok.
disertacija, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.) i Webster, Barbara Jancar. Women & Revolution
in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, Denver: Arden Press, 1990. Većina navedenih radova naknadno su objavljeni
kao monografije.
11
Studije o ženama u poslijeratnom periodu češće nastaju u okviru nevladinih organizacija ili udruženja
građana nego pod okriljem zvaničnih institucija, odnosno odgovarajućih odjela za izučavanje
povijesti. Takav je slučaj npr. s knjigama Tanje Lazić, Ljubinke Vukašinović i Radmile Žigić, Žene u
istoriji Semberije (Bijeljina: Organizacija žena „Lara“, 2012. i Aide Spahić et al., Zabilježene – Žene i
javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku. Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE,
�50
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
Antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije12 napravljen znakovit
iskorak barem u arhiviranju građe13 o ženskom angažmanu u NOB-u i AFŽu.14 Ovaj arhiv omogućava novim generacijama znastvenica i istraživačica, ali i
umjetnica i kulturnih djelatnica, da istraže15 i ponude nove odgovore na pitanja
u vezi s nedovršenim procesima emancipacije i participacije žena u političkom,
kulturnom i prosvjetnom životu zajednice.
Zahvaljujući pozivu za sudjelovanje u izradi publikacije koja, između ostalog, ima
za cilj i afirmaciju Online arhiva Antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine
i Jugoslavije, dobila sam priliku da bar donekle istražim jednu od istaknutih
revolucionarnih figura – narodnu naprednu učiteljiicu, točnije njenu ulogu i zadaće
u okviru revolucionarnih aktivnosti i uspostave i izgradnje novog društvenog poretka. Usprkos činjenici da su narodne učiteljice u bh. društvu uživale ogromno
poštovanje i divljenje, one su ostale, najvećim dijelom, bezvremene heroine, simboličke figure odnosno „anonimne saučesnice, saputnice, saborci, saradnice“
koje, osim rijetkih slučajeva, još uvijek nisu ušle u povijest „sa svojim punim
imenom i prezimenom, sa svojim ulogama, funkcijama, mislima, osećanjima,
nadama i strahovima”16.
2014. dok je, primjerice, na Filozofskom fakultetu u Sarajevu obranjen tek jedan takav završni
diplomski rad: Emira Muhić, „Žena u socijalizmu u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1945. do 1971. godine prema
časopisu ‘Nova žena’“. Završni diplomski rad, Filozofski fakultet u Sarajevu, 2012.
12
Arhiv je napravljen u okviru aktivnosti Udruženja za kulturu i umjetnost „Crvena“ iz Sarajeva.
O arhivu i projektu više na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/o-nama
13
Detaljnije o stanju arhivske građe o Drugom svjetskom ratu, necjelovitosti fondova i nepotpunim
zbirkama, vidjeti: Kujović, Mina. „Stanje arhivske građe o Drugom svjetskom ratu u Bosni i
Hercegovini“ u Šezdeset godina od završetka Drugog svjetskog rata: kako se sjećati 1945. godine.
Zbornik radova, Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2006., str. 217-235.
14
Već je 1953. godine pokrenuto prvo trogodišnje sistematsko prikupljanje građe odnosno podataka
o aktivnostima žena u ratu. O pokretanju ovog arhiva, njegovim dometima u prvoj fazi, vidjeti više:
Jambrešić Kirin, Renata. Dom i svijet, str. 31-33.
15
Svakako uz nužnu svijest o višestrukim istraživačkim poteškoćama tvorbe ženske povijesti pomoću
arhivskog materijala, novinskih izvještaja i napisa, zabilježenih svjedočenja i usmenih izvora. O
nekim istraživačkim izazovima vidjeti više: Bonfiglioli, Chiara. „Povratak u Beograd 1978. godine:
Istraživanje feminističkog sjećanja“ u: Glasom do feminističkih promjena, ur. R. J. Kirin i S. Prlenda,
Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2009. str.120-131.
16
Milić, Anđelka. „Patrijarhalni poredak, revolucija i saznanje o položaju žene, Srbija u modernizacijskim
procesima 19. i 20. veka“, Položaj žene kao merilo modernizacije: naučni skup, Beograd: Institut za
noviju istoriju Srbije, 1998. Navedeno prema: Petrović, Jelena. „Društveno-političke paradigme
prvog talasa jugoslavenskih feminizama”, ProFemina Specijalni broj (2011): 59-81, 62-3. Autorica
pojašnjava da cilj povijesti žena nije da popunjava prazna mjesta postojećeg povijesnog kanona već
da prenosi znanja utemeljena na ženskom iskustvu povijesti na svemu što se sistematski izostavljalo.
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Zalagati se za njihov ulazak u povijest, zajedno sa svim drugim zaboravljenim,
zanemarenim ili izbrisanim figurama radnica i revolucionarki BiH, jedini je
način izlaska iz „beskonačnog kruga otkrivanja i ponovnog zaborava ženske
istorije, emancipacije i ponovnog potčinjavanja, iz beskonačnosti obnavljanja
patrijarhalnog poretka odnosa i vrednosti, koji u svakoj istorijskoj epizodi postaje
sve suroviji“17.
1.1. Okvir i cilj rada
Iako se u okviru domaće historiografije veći broj istraživača i istraživačica18 bavio
temom povijesnog razvoja bh. školstva od osmanskog perioda do kraja Drugog
svjetskog rata, o specifičnostima profesionalnog angažmana učiteljica i učitelja
i njihovom doprinosu kulturnom i društvenom razvoju zajednice postoji relativno
mali broj radova19. Premda je obrazovanih učitelja i učiteljica na prostoru BiH bilo
još od kraja 18. stoljeća te iako je njihovo djelovanje ostavilo dubok trag na razvoj
Ovakav pristup ujedno omogućava da se napokon izađe iz „beskonačnog kruga otkrivanja i ponovnog
zaborava ženske istorije, emancipacije i ponovnog potčinjavanja, iz beskonačnosti obnavljanja
patrijarhalnog poretka odnosa i vrednosti, koji u svakoj istorijskoj epizodi postaje sve suroviji.“ Ibid.
17
Milić, u: Petrović, „Društveno-političke paradigme“, op.cit. 63.
18
Između ostalih: Pejanović, Đorđe, Historija srednjih i stručnih škola u BiH, Sarajevo, 1953.; Esad Peco,
Osnovno školstvo u Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918, Sarajevo 1971.; Mitar Papić, Školstvo u Bosni i
Hercegovini za vrijeme austrougarske okupacije (1878-1918), Sarajevo, 1972, Istorija srpskih škola u Bosni
i Hercegovini do 1918. godine, Sarajevo 1978. ; Hrvatsko školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini do 1918. godine,
Sarajevo 1982., Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini (1918 – 1941), Sarajevo, 1984., Hajrudin Ćurić, Muslimansko
školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini do 1918. godine, Sarajevo, 1983, te Azem Kožar, “Osnovno školstvo u toku
Drugog svjetskog rata (1941-1945)” u: Osnovno školstvo u Tuzli (istorijski pregled), Tuzla, 1988.
19
Pored radova objavljenih u publikacijama poput „Zbornik sjećanja treće poslijeratne generacije
učiteljske škole u Derventi juni 1951. godine“ ili „Zbornik radova 100 godina učiteljstva u Bosni i
Hercegovini“ odnosno nekoliko radova prezentiranih na simpoziju organiziranom u Sarajevu 1987.
godine a u povodu obilježavanja stogodišnjice otvaranja prve učiteljske škole u BiH, ulogom učitelja
bavio se detaljnije Mitar Papić u knjigama Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1941. do 1955. Godine,
Sarajevo, 1981. i Učitelji u kulturnoj i političkoj istoriji BiH, Sarajevo (Svjetlost, 1987.) te donekle i Mato
Zaninović u studiji Kulturno-prosvjetni rad u NOB-u (1941 – 1945), Sarajevo, 1968., i Snježana Šušnjara,
„Učiteljstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme Austro-Ugarske”, Anali za povijest odgoja 12 (2013): 5574. Na Filozofskom fakultetu u Sarajevu 2014. godine obranjena je magistraska radnja pod naslovom
„Uloga učitelja u prosvjetnim, političkim i kulturnim promjenama u BiH od 1945. do 1951. godine”, u
kojoj Ademir Jerković istražuje materijalne uslove rada učitelja u ratnim i poratnim dešavanjima i
sagledava doprinos učitelja općem kulturno-prosvjetnom napretku BiH, te jedan završni diplomski
rad koji se bavi položajem učitelja za vrijeme austrougarske okupacije BiH. Vidjeti: Anđa Bandić,
„Društveni položaj učitelja u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme Austro-Ugarske” (završni diplomski rad,
Filozofski fakultet u Sarajevu, 2011.)
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
sveopće kulture, o tome se, kako naglašava Mitar Papić: „pisalo sporadično (...)
i još uvijek nemamo jedne sinteze koja bi pokazala da mi u BiH nismo imali (...)
jednog intelektualnog poziva koji bi se mogao čak i upoređivati sa onim što su
učitelji dali“20.
Međutim, prije 90-ih čak ni u tim sporadičnim osvrtima nije nastao niti jedan
rad koji zasebno razmatra status i društvenu ulogu učiteljica ili njihov doprinos
razvoju školstva u BiH. Štoviše, iako se još za vrijeme austrougarske vladavine
upravo učiteljice zalažu za osnivanje strukovnih, profesionalnih udruženja
(a Marija Jambrišak i Jagoda Truhelka već 1896. godine pozivaju učiteljice na
staleško udruživanje koje će se uspješno realizirati pokretanjem Kluba učiteljica
u okviru čitaonice Hrvatskog učiteljskog doma u Zagrebu 1900. godine21), Jovanka
Kecman će se u studiji posvećenoj ženskim radničkim i profesionalnim udrugama,
statusom naprednih učiteljica 30-ih godina 20. stoljeća pozabaviti promatrajući
njihovu djelatnost i aktivnosti isključivo u sklopu naprednog učiteljskog pokreta
i aktivnosti Komunističke partije22. Dakle, saznanja o pojedinim aspektima
djelovanja učiteljica ostaju vrlo fragmentirana i navode se usputno u sklopu
radova koji tretiraju širu problematiku školstva, odnosno učiteljskog pokreta.
Ovakav trend se nastavlja i nakon rata 90-ih, te je otada objavljeno svega nekoliko
radova koji se donekle bave obrazovanjem žene u bh. školstvu ili istaknutim
ženskim učiteljskim kulturnim figurama s kraja 19. i početka 20. stoljeća.23
20
Papić, Mitar. Učitelji u kulturnoj i političkoj istoriji Bosne i Hercegovine, Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987. str. 3.
21
Navedeno prema Suzana Jagić, „Jer kad žene budu žene prave: Uloga i položaj žena u obrazovnoj
politici Banske Hrvatske na prijelazu u XX. stoljeće”, Povijest u nastavi 11 (2008):77-100, 83-4.
22
Autorica ovakav uklon opravdava činjenicom da napredne učiteljice u međuratnom periodu nisu
oformile zasebne strukovne udruge. Usp. Jovanka Kecman, „Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i
ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941. Beograd, 1978. str. 373.
23
Usp. Kujović, Mina. „Muslimanska osnovna i viša djevojačka škola sa produženim tečajem (1894
- 1925) - prilog historiji muslimanskog školstva u Bosni i Hercegovini”, Novi Muallim 41 (2010):
72-79; i idem, „Hasnija Berberović – zaboravljena učiteljica – prilog historiji muslimanskog školstva
u Bosni i Hercegovini”, Novi Muallim 40 (2009): 114-118; Šušnjara, Snježana. „Jagoda Truhelka”,
Hrvatski narodni godišnjak 53 (2006): 239-256.; idem, „Jelica Belović Bernadrikowska”, Hrvatski
narodni godišnjak 54 (2006): 66-76., idem, „Školovanje ženske djece u BiH u vrijeme osmanske
okupacije 1463.-1878.”, Školski vjesnik4. (2011); i idem, „Školovanje ženske djece u Bosni i
Hercegovini u doba Austro-Ugarske (1878. – 1918.)”, Napredak 155 (4) (2014.): 453 – 466. U opsežnoj
studiji o poziciji žene u Srbiji u 19. i 20. stoljeću, Neda Božinović nudi i opći prikaz statusa učiteljica
u onim republikama koje su ušle u sastav KSHS, odnosno Kraljevine Jugoslavije, uz kraći osvrt na
prilike u BiH tijekom vladavine Osmanlija i Austrougara. Usp. Neda Božinović, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji:
u XIX i XX veku, (Beograd: „Devedesetčetvrta” i „Žene u crnom”, 1996). Bitno je istaknuti da većina
ovih radova ne zauzima kritički stav prema tradiconalnoj historiografiji i kreće se ka popunjavanju ‘
praznih mjesta’ postojećih povijesnih (u poratnom periodu naglašeno etno-nacionalnih) modela.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
53
Poput većine tema koje se vezuju za socijalističko nasljeđe, i tema naprednog
učiteljskog pokreta ili se zanemaruje ili tek usputno spominje u okviru općih
prikaza razvoja učiteljstva na tlu BiH, dok o naprednim narodnim učiteljicama
do danas nije objavljena niti jedna monografija. No, kao što ću pokušati pokazati
u ovom radu, upravo su u toj figuri upisane sve kontradikcije postajanja novom
radnom ženom u socijalizmu. Istovremeno, kao ona koja u bh. poraću i tranziciji
postaje nositeljica zazornog viška sjećanja24 na socijalizam i antifašističku borbu,
figura narodne (napredne) učiteljice može ukazati i na moguće alternativne
modele mišljenja aktualnog trenutka obilježenog procesima lažne emancipacije i
agresivne repatrijarhalizacije žena.
U radu će se razmatrati uloga i pozicija narodne (napredne) učiteljice od kraja
30-ih do početka 50-ih godina 20. stoljeća, budući da je to bio prijelomni period
sveobuhvatne transformacije državnog sustava masovnog osnovnog školstva gdje
se konstruirao i novi tip učiteljice. Figura učiteljice posebno je indikativna u tom
smislu. Proces tvorbe novog tipa učiteljice direktno se nadovezuje za nastanak ili,
točnije, nastojanja da se tijekom NOB-a kroz partijske odluke, a potom ustavnim
i zakonskim rješenjima u cijelosti promijeni društveni položaj žena25 i kreira novi
tip žene26 u BiH27.
Težište se stavlja na pokušaj da se istaknute ženske figure afirmiraju i uklope unutar postojećeg
kanona, a skoro uopće se ne raspravlja o tome kako i zašto je došlo do zanemarivanja povijesnog
prikaza jedne od najmasovnih ženskih profesija i još uvijek gorućeg pitanja školstva, obrazovanja
djevojčica i žena. O važnosti koncepta roda kao „društvene organizacije spolne različitosti“ u
povijesnim istraživanjima više u: Joan W. Scott, Rod i politika povijesti, Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1988,
2003. i Feminism and History, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996.
24
Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata. „Politike sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat u doba medijske reprodukcije
socijalističke kulture“, Lada Feldman Čale i Ines Prica ur., Devijacije i promašaji. Etnografija domaćeg
socijalizma Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006. str.157.
25
Usp. Katz, Vera. „O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942. 1953.“ Prilozi
40 (2011): 135-155.
26
U govoru na Drugom zasjedanju ZAVNOBiH-a, Danica Perović je istaknula da je novi lik žene „ženaborac koja je u toku borbe politički izrasla i sazrela i oslobodila se da vodi i odlučuje o svim pitanjima
borbe i narodnog života.“ Usp. Govor Danice Perović na Drugom zasjedanju ZAVNOBiH-a u Dokumenti
1943– 1944, Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1968, str. 200.
27
Ove promjene su zahvatile cijelu Jugoslaviju, no više radova ističe bitnu različitost ranijih ekonomskih
i društveno-kulturnih prilika u različitim dijelovima ove bivše države. Zemlje koje su ušle u sastav
Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, te kasnije Kraljevine Jugoslavije, imale su donekle drugačiji
društveni i državni poredak, te bitno drugačiji sastav stanovništva. Samim tim su postojale i bitne
razlike i specifičnosti u vezi s položajem žena u tim zemljama – od bračnog statusa preko učešća
u procesu obrazovanja do prava djelovanja unutar javne sfere. Razmatranje ovog pitanja unutar bh.
konteksta kao zasebne cjeline čini mi se opravdanim upravo zbog tih razlika, odnosno specifičnosti.
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
Polazeći od pretpostavke da se školstvo može promatrati kao splet diskursa,
znanja, pravnih i institucionalnih aranžmana vladajućih režima i društvenih
struktura koje su dugo vremena na prostoru BiH legitimirale i osiguravale
najprije isključivanje, a potom i diskriminaciju žena u okviru procesa obrazovanja i
profesionalnog pedagoškog učiteljskog angažmana, ovaj period zanimljiv je i zato
što će upravo u tih dvadesetak godina doći do drastičnog porasta broja učiteljica u
osnovnom obrazovanju. Učiteljice će ujedno po prvi put biti formalno izjednačene
sa svojim kolegama; nova vlast će im osigurati iste mogućnosti za rad i život kao
i učiteljima i, bar nominalno, nastojati unaprijediti tradicionalno vrlo nepovoljni
materijalni položaja učiteljskog kadra.
Nakana ovog rada je da u osnovnim linijama prikaže brojne društvene dužnosti
učiteljica tijekom NOB-a, prvenstveno njihovog rada na opismenjavanju i edukaciji
žena za potrebe opće mobilizacije tijekom NOB-a, pa do njihovog predanog i
požrtvovanog rada na odgoju i obrazovanju djece i opismenjavanju odraslih u
prvim godinama po oslobođenju zemlje, u okviru tzv. petogodišnjeg plana obnove.
Osnovni cilj rada je iscrtati putanju kretanja od revolucionarne figure narodne
napredne učiteljice, nastale kroz borbu za novi i pravedniji društveni poredak, do
figure koja se postupno depolitizira i pasivizira u okviru feminizacije ove profesije.
2. Materijalni uslovi rada i formalno pravni status učiteljica u vrijeme
austrougarske okupacije i u međuratnom periodu
Od početaka razvoja sistematskog (državnog) školskog sustava u BiH28 koji datira
od uspostave austrougarske uprave nad ovom zemljom, učiteljice su, kao državne
službenice, djelovale u skladu s izrazito diskriminatornim zakonima o državnim
službenicima i propisanim školskim zakonima koji su u velikoj mjeri doprinosili
kreiranju nepovoljnih uslova za rad i profesionalno napredovanje učiteljica.
28
U osmansko doba BiH školstvo je bilo isključivo konfesionalno i privatno. Nakon aneksije Bosne i
Hercegovine, austrougarska vlast uz već postojeće konfesionalne privatne škole postepeno otvara
sve veći broj državnih škola, tzv. „narodnih osnovnih škola” kojima država propisuje nastavne
planove i programe, udžbenike i školsku lektiru. Početkom austrougarske okupacije na prostoru
BiH je djelovalo 535 tzv. sibian- mekteba (što valja uzeti s rezervom jer sam u radu Snježane
Šušnjara naišla na podatak da je 1876. bilo registirano 917 mekteba), 54 katoličke škole i 56 srpskih
konfesionalnih škola, a pred kraj austrougarske vladavineu BiH, u školskoj godini 1912/13, pored
konfesionalnih škola je postojala i 331 državna škola. Podaci navedeni prema: Mitar Papić, Školstvo
u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme austrougarske okupacije 1878-1918, Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša. 1972.
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AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
55
Usprkos porastu broja ženskih osnovnih škola u odnosu na osmanski period29,
kao i većeg broja učiteljskih škola za žene,30 austrougarske vlasti zapravo nisu
osnaživale procese emancipacije žena, niti smatrale da im je u interesu povećati
broj žena unutar javnih službi. Naime, kako navodi Suzana Jagić, u austrougarskom
periodu su (navodne) tjelesne i duhovne razlike među spolovima korištene kao
osnovni adut za različite pristupe u obrazovanju31 žena i muškaraca, te njihovo
29
Prva ženska škola u osmanskom periodu počinje s radom u Sarajevu, tek u školskoj godini 1857/58,
a zahvaljujući upornosti i nesebičnom zalaganju učiteljice Stake Skenderove koja je ujedno bila i
prva žena u BiH koja je napisala knjigu (Ljetopis Bosne 1825—1856.). Drugu žensku osnovnu školu
osnovala je 1866. godine protestantska sufražetkinja miss Adelina Paulina Irby. Uz obje te škole
djelovao je i internat, i u obje škole su se školovale djevojčice svih konfesija. Budući su neke učenice
ovih škola po završetku naobrazbe i same postajale učiteljice u ovim školama, ove škole se mogu
tretirati i kao prve učiteljske škole za djevojčice na prostoru BiH. Pet godina nakon otvaranja škole
Miss Irby, redovnice iz Zagreba otvaraju prvu katoličku žensku školu u Sarajevu. Ove časne sestre iz
reda Sv. Vinka ubrzo zatim otvaraju škole i u Mostaru (1872.), Dolcu kod Travnika (1872.), Banjoj Luci
i Livnu (1874.). Muslimanke su u ovom periodu u pravilu pohađale konfesionalne škole (mektebe).
Podaci o školama navedeni prema studijama Mitra Papića, Istorija srpskih škola u BiH, Sarajevo:
Veselin Masleša, 1978. i Snježane Šušnjara „Školovanje ženske djece u Bosni i Hercegovini u doba
Austro-Ugarske“, op.cit.
30
Pored zasebnog odjela miss Irbynog zavoda za školovanje učiteljica, 1884. godine i kongregacija
Kćeri Božje ljubavi dobija dozvolu da u okviru samostana u Sarajevu pokrene privatnu žensku
učiteljsku škola koja radi po planu i programu učiteljskih škola austrougarske monarhije. Tek
krajem ove uprave, 1913. godine, pri osnovnoj i višoj djevojačkoj muslimanskoj školi u Sarajevu
pokreće se trorazredni tečaj za obrazovanje učiteljica za muslimanke koje su svršile višu djevojačku
školu, a 1914. godine viša srpska djevojačka škola dobija status javne škole ali zbog početka Prvog
svjetskog rata iste te godine i prestaje sa radom. Osim u konfesionalnim školama, od 1911. godine
edukacija učiteljica se vršila i u državnoj ženskoj učiteljskoj školi u Sarajevu, nazvanoj ženskom
preparandijom. Osim u Sarajevu, više ženske škole osnovane su u Mostaru (1893.) i u Banjoj Luci
(1898.) ali usprkos porastu broja ženskih osnovnih škola broj učenica u tim školama ostaje vrlo
nizak, o čemu najbolje svjedoči podatak da je u BiH 1910. godine od ukupno 88,05% nepismenih,
bilo 83,86% nepismenih Hrvatica, 95% Srpkinja i 99,68% muslimanki. Podaci nav. prema Papić,
Mitar. Školstvo u Bosni, n.dj. i Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje, op.cit.
31
Kako navodi Dinko Župan, u Austro-Ugarskoj monarhiji je pedagoški diskurs podržavao spolnu
politiku tako što je proizvodio znanja o spolnim karakteristikama na kojima su bile utemeljene
rodne uloge. Upravo će se u srednjim školama oblikovati poželjni ženski identiteti. Tako Župan
navodi: „Glavne karakteristike koje su učenice trebale zadobiti putem odgoja i obrazovanja u
višoj djevojačkoj školi bile su: pobožnost, prostodušnost, čednost, krotkost, stidnost, skromnost i
šutljivost.“ Na ovaj način izgrađeni ženski identitet predstavljao se kao prirodan i nepromjenjiv. No
ovaj identitet je samo naizgled bio univerzalan jer je jedinstveni ženski identitet bio ispresijecan
nizom drugih identiteta (klasnim, vjerskim, etničkim). Tako je npr. unutar svake klase dolazilo do
specifične primjene univerzalnog određenja žene. Poželjno ponašanje majke, supruge i kućanice
razlikovalo se s obzirom na njihovu klasnu pripadnost. Usp. Župan, Dinko. „Viša djevojačka škola u
Osijeku (188.-1900.)”, Scrinia slavonica 5 (2005), 366-383.
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
različito pozicioniranje u društvu.32 Tako su unutar ovog izrazito patrijarhalnog
društva33 žene kao ‘manje vrijedna bića’ dobijale ne samo drugačije zadaće i
uloge, već im je bila limitirana i sloboda djelovanja unutar javne sfere. Ni javne
službe, kao moguće područje angažmana žena, nisu na angažman žena gledale
s odobravanjem jer se smatralo da žene pripadaju privatnom prostoru doma, i da
su njihove glavne uloge uloge uspješnih domaćica, supruga i majki. Stoga su žene
kao javne službenice bile angažirane skoro isključivo u školstvu.
Premda će broj učiteljica biti u stalnom porastu, austrougarske vlasti nisu učinile
ništa na kreiranju pravnog okvira koji bi osigurao poboljšanje profesionalnih
i materijalnih uslova rada učiteljica. Naprotiv, Zakon o pravima i odnošenjima
učiteljstva višestruko je diskriminirao učiteljice. Osim što su im plate u startu bile
niže od plata učitelja i napredovanje u službi usporeno kroz tzv. platne razrede,
učiteljice se nisu smjele ni udavati, odnosno bi – u slučaju udaje – automatski
dobijale trajnu zabranu djelovanja u službi. Izuzetak su bili brakovi sklopljeni s
učiteljima, no u tom slučaju su plate učiteljica bivale prepolovljene i učiteljice
gubile pravo na plaćenu stanarinu i sve druge pogodnosti službe.34
Sve učiteljice koje su se školovale u ženskim učiteljskim školama svršavale su
školovanje s nepunih sedamnaest godina, no mnoge su kao pomoćne učiteljice
počinjale raditi već s petnaest ili šesnaest godina. Po završetku školovanja u
pravilu su postavljane u ženske osnovne škole; u muškim školama su mogle raditi
samo u slučaju da učitelja nije bilo, a i tada isključivo u nižim razredima. Pravo
da budu profesorice i predaju u svim razredima srednjih škola ostvarit će tek
u okviru Kraljevine Jugoslavije. Što se tiče službeničkog napredovanja i platnih
razreda učiteljica, kako je već istaknuto, proces je bio vrlo spor i učiteljice su u
najboljem slučaju tek pred kraj službe uspijevale stići do trećeg stupnja. Tako je,
primjerice, učiteljica Hasnija Berberović prvu učiteljsku zakletvu polagala 1909.
a zadnju 1934. godine; u službi je provela punih dvadeset devet godina. Godine
1939. je penzionirana zbog bolesti no, kako ističe Mina Kujović, pitanje je koliko
je ova vrijedna učiteljica uživala svoju zasluženu penziju od 1.475 dinara, budući
32
Usp. Jagić, „Jer kad žene”, 80. Autorica navodi da su se žene isključivo obrazovale kako bi postale
dobre supruge i majke jer samo obrazovana majka i supruga može udariti „religiozno-moralne
temelje odgoja o kojem će ovisiti blagostanje domovine.“ Ibid.
33
Budući da se danas patrijarhat može promišljati na različite načine i da on po sebi nije samorazumljiv
sistem, ovdje pojam rabim na tragu određenja Dunje Rihtman-Auguštin koja kao osnovne odlike
patrijarhalnosti navodi „dominaciju muškaraca u radu, odlučivanju i u imovinskim odnosima (...) i
odvojenost žena od javnog života te njihovu podređenost.“ Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. Etnologija naše
svakodnevice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga,1988. str. 193.
34
Usp. Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje, op.cit. 80.
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je zbog bolesti smještena u duševnu bolnicu a njena penzija je za to vrijeme bila
deponirana na sudu.35
Ni nakon sloma Austro-Ugarske i formiranja Kraljevine Srba Hrvata i Slovenaca,
kasnije Kraljevine Jugoslavije, uslovi rada učiteljica i njihov materijalni status
neće se značajno popraviti. Učiteljski problemi su i u novoformiranoj državi ostali
isti; učitelji i učiteljice štoviše nastavljaju živjeti u ekstremno teškim materijalnim
uslovima, o čemu možda najbolje svjedoči njihovo prekomjerno zaduživanje u
pojedinim banovinama, zbog iznimno niskih plata36, kao i veliki broj rezolucija koje
su o toj problematici donesene na učiteljskim konferencijama širom Kraljevine
Jugoslavije.37
Učiteljski kadar koji se zalagao za napredno školstvo38 i djelovao u okviru Komunističke partije Jugoslavije39 ili otvoreno simpatizirao Partiju bio je, u blažim slučajevima, prinudno prebacivan na službu u druge banovine, izlagan čestim kontrolama, hapšenjima i dugotrajnim sudskim procesima; neki od njih su u zatvoru
35
Usp. Kujović, “Hasnija Berberović – zaboravljena”, n.dj., 116.
36
I dok su ostali državni službenici primali platu od 2.900 do 7.500 dinara, učitelji i učiteljice su
primali platu u iznosu od 705 do 2500 dinara. Reč istine br. 1 (1940), 6. Navedeno prema Rade
Vuković, Napredni učiteljski pokret između dva rata Beograd: Pedagoški muzej, 1968., str. 109.
37
U rezolucijama se redovito zahtijevalo izjednačavanje prinadležnosti u srazmjeru s cijenama životnih
namirnica, izjednačavanje prinadležnosti udatih učiteljica sa prinadležnostima učitelja po principu
„za jednak rad, jednaka nagrada“, ukidanje III razreda skupoće, odbijanje V grupe kao i kod ostalih
službenika itd. Usp. Vuković, Napredni učiteljski, n. dj. 93.
38
Pod naprednim školstvom podrazumijeva se školstvo utemeljeno na socijalističkim idejama.
Srpski učitelji su u Zemunu već 1873. godine pokrenuli socijalistički pedagoški časopis Učitelj koji
je okupljao napredne učitelje Vojvodine, a u Srbiji se 1907. godine osniva i Klub učitelja i učiteljica
socijaldemokrata koji se, između ostalog, zalaže za opće obavezno i besplatno školovanje u svim
školama, tj. za to da država podiže i izdržava narodne škole. Usp. Vuković, Napredni učiteljski, n. dj.
10. Pedagoška biblioteka Budućnost već od 1908. godine djeluje kao tribina napredne pedagogije i
sa sve snažnijim političkim utjecajem na učiteljstvo. Međutim, dok je izvjestan dio učiteljskog kadra
Srbije i Hrvatske pripadao socijaldemokratskim organizacijama, učiteljski kadar iz BiH u vrijeme
austrougarske vladavine po pravilu nije stupao u otvoreni politički život, i manje je bio u doticaju sa
revolucionarnim pedagoškim idejama. Tek će nakon 1920. godine, i Kongresa učitelja Kraljevine
Srba, Hrvata i Slovenca, doći do porasta broja progresivnih učitelja na tlu BiH; kao jedan od prvih
aktivnih učesnika radničkog pokreta i poslanik KPJ posebno će se istaknuti Mitar Trifunović Učo.
Usp. Papić, Učitelji, n. dj. 45, 46.
39
Objavljivanjem Obznane i donošenjem Zakona o zaštiti bezbjednosti i poretka, 1921. godine započinje
period ilegalnosti KPJ. Obznanom je zabranjen i rad Kluba učitelja komunista, kao i izlazak partijske
i sindikalne štampe. Šestojanuarska diktatura ukida i stalnost službe, a učiteljski kadar stavlja pod
nadzor policije, te napredne učitelje i učiteljice nastavlja progoniti, otpuštati i zatvarati. Vidjeti više:
Vuković, Napredni učiteljski, n.dj., 14,15.
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
proveli i više godina. Tako je bilo i s nekolicinom učiteljica. Primjerice, učiteljica
Lepa Perović je, kao istaknuta partijska radnica, uhapšena zbog revolucionarnih
aktivnosti i potom prebačena iz Bosne u Srbiju, da bi 1937. godine bila otpuštena
iz državne službe. Učiteljica Draginja Savković provela je tri mjeseca u istražnom
zatvoru, potom izvedena pred sud zbog širenja i propagiranja komunističkih ideja,
ali je u nedostatku dokaza oslobođena optužbe. Po okončanju procesa je ostala
pod stalnim policijskim nadzorom, te premještena u drugi srez40. Ovi progoni
i hapšenja nastavljaju se i tijekom Drugog svjetskog rata. Ilinka ObrenovićMilošević, koju su zvali Crvena učiteljica, bila je uhapšena trudna, pod optužbom
da je prikupljala odjeću i hranu za borce, te deportirana u Banjički logor. Slična
sudbina je zadesila i naprednu učiteljicu Živku Vujinović-Bulu koja će u logoru
Banjica provesti jedanaest mjeseci, a potom biti otpuštena iz službe.41
Pored zakonom propisanih prava i obveza, učiteljsko zvanje imalo je i niz specifičnosti u samom obrazovno-odgojnom procesu, kako u radu u nastavi i školi, tako
i u angažmanu u sredinama gdje se službovalo, posebno tamo gdje je stanovništvo
bilo mahom nepismeno. To je prije svega bio slučaj sa učiteljevanjem na selu. Rad
na selu bio je puno teži zato što u takvim sredinama školske zgrade vrlo često
nisu zadovoljavale ni minimalne zahtjeve za rad i cjelokupna nastava se u pravilu
organizirala u jednom odjeljenju. Jovanka Kecman navodi da su se učiteljice po
završetku učiteljske škole zapošljavale uglavnom na selu. Pored rada u školi,
učiteljice su imale i posebene obaveze sudjelovanja u svim kulturnim i karitativnim
organizacijama koje su djelovale u datom okrugu, kao i obavezu organiziranja
analfabetskih tečajeva i tečajeva iz domaćinstva na kojima su educirale žene o
važnosti povećanja higijene i zdrave ishrane ili racionalnom vođenju domaćinstva.
Usprkos činjenici da su seoske učiteljice imale puno veći obim poslova, one su
bile najslabije plaćene, te ponekad dobijale i 50% manju platu od plate učitelja.42
3. Razvojni put narodnih naprednih učiteljica pred početak Drugog
svjetskog rata i tijekom NOB-a
Učiteljice su, upravo zbog šireg društvenog angažmana na selima, uživale velik
ugled među seljanima i utjecale na zajednicu tim prije što su, poštujući lokalne
običaje i živeći po pravilima sela, tretirane kao punopravne članice zajednice. I zato
40
U: Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op.cit. 381, 82.
41
Navedeno prema Radisav S. Nedović, Čačanski kraj u NOB 1941-1945: žene borci i saradnici, Čačak:
Okružni odbor SUBNOR-a, 2010., str. 59 -63.
42
U: Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op.cit. 373.
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će, nakon osnaženja i omasovljenja naprednog učiteljskog pokreta, Komunistička
partija, u duhu marksističke naobrazbe, poklanjati posebnu pažnju osposobljavanju
seoskih učiteljica za tzv. politički rad na selu43. Naime, budući da je mladi učiteljski
kadar u pravilu svoja prva namještenja dobijao na selu ili u varošima, te da politički
progresivni učitelji i učiteljice skoro nikada nisu dobijali službu u gradovima,
politička misija naprednog učiteljstva smjestila se gotovo isključivo na selu.
Budući da je od 1921. do 1936. godine KPJ djelovala ilegalno, svoj legalni rad
i djelovanje među učiteljskim kadrom realizirala je pokretanjem kulturno-izdavačkih zadruga. Napredni učiteljski kadar BiH tek je u okviru Kongresa učitelja44 organiziranog u Banjoj Luci augusta 1939. godine osnovao Zadrugu „Petar
Kočić”, do tada djelujući u sklopu Učiteljskih kulturno-izdavačkih zadruga „Vuk
Karadžić” i „Ivan Filipović”. Preko ovih zadruga organizirani su susreti učitelja
i učiteljica, gdje su posebno važni bili tzv. pedagoški tjedni organizirani tijekom
zimskih raspusta u periodu od 1938. do 1941. godine, kad su održavana ideološko
– politička predavanja i vođene diskusije o važnim pitanjima i strukovnim problemima45. Rad s naprednim učiteljicama i aktivnosti ovih zadruga posebno će se
intenzivirati od 1936. godine.46 Pored ovih periodičnih okupljanja, napredni učitelji i učiteljice svoj su politički i kulturno-prosvjetni rad razvijali kroz narodne
biblioteke i čitaonice,47 aktivno radeći u okviru nekoliko časopisa i listova među
kojima se posebno izdvaja glasilo Učiteljska straža.
43
Ibid. str. 375.
44
Na ovom Kongresu, odnosno Devetnaestoj glavnoj godišnjoj skupštini, predstavnici političkih grupa
podnijeli su tri kandidatske liste za izbor izvršnog, nadzornog i drugih odbora i organa Jugoslovenskog
učiteljskog udruženja. Unutar ovog krovnog učiteljskog udruženja inače su djelovale tri osnovne
politicke grupacije –Jugoslovenska radikalna zajednica (JRZ) ili Novi učiteljski pokret, grupacija
oko tzv. staleške linije građanskih demokrata i skupina oko „Učiteljske straže“, te Učiteljska zadruga
„Vuk Karadžić“ kojoj su pripadali komunisti i drugi napredni učitelji/učiteljice. Komunisti su na ovoj
skupštini podnijeli listu koja je zastupala interese treće učiteljske političke grupacije. Budući da
je bila treća po redu, ova grupa će potom biti prozvana Treća učiteljska grupa. Vidjeti više u: Rade
Vuković, Napredni učitelji, 74-88. Inače će ovaj kongres biti značajan i po tome što će na zasebnom
sastanku okupiti učiteljice iz raznih dijelova Kraljevine Jugoslavije – da bi prodiskutirale pravnomaterijalni status učiteljica. One su tom prilikom ponovo podnijele zahtjev za unošenje prijedloga o
stvaranju ženskih odsjeka unutar sreskih učiteljskih udruženja. Usp. Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije,
n.dj., 381.
45
Usp. Kecman, Žene Jugoslavije, op.cit. str. 375.
46
Ibid. str. 374.
47
U tekstu pod naslovom Vrijeme zrenja objavljenom u knjizi svjedočenja o angažmanu žena Mostara
u predratnom periodu, opisane su razne aktivnosti žena u okviru biblioteke i čitaonice. Vidjeti više:
Mahmud Konjhodžić, Mostarke, fragmenti o revolucionarnoj djelatnosti i patriotskoj opredjeljenosti žena
Mostara, o njihovoj borbi za slobodu i socijalizam, Mostar: Opštinski odbor SUBNOR-a, 1981., str. 36-38.
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ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
Kako su, kako je već istaknuto, napredni učitelji i učiteljice mahom bili smješteni
po selima, oni će postati osnovna snaga KP na selu i to, kada govorimo o BiH,
selima na prostoru Bosanske krajine, potom u okolini Sarajeva i području Romanije, Semberije i istočne Hercegovine. Upravo je na ovoj teritoriji radio najveći
broj učiteljskog kadra prvoboraca i prvoborkinja, nosilaca Spomenice 1941.48
Dok je tijekom rata na teritoriji BiH pod upravom NDH, vlast predano radila na
stvaranju novog državnog hrvatskog školstva tako što je „prvim pravnim aktima
nastojala udahnuti ‘ustaški i hrvatski nacinalni duh’ (...) u duhu antisemitske politike popraćene rasnim zakonima“49, rukovodstvo NOP-a je od početka ustanka,
nastojeći realizirati program KPJ i Platforme NOP-a, radilo na razvoju i unapređenju narodnog prosvjećivanja i to kroz masovno opismenjavanje stanovništva i
obnavljanje i razvoj sistema redovnog obrazovanja na gore naznačenoj (slobodnoj)
teritoriji BiH50.
Prema izvještaju učiteljice Mice Krpić, organizirani prosvjetni rad počinje već
od aprila 1942. godine u selima oko Drvara, gdje su osnovani prvi kulturnoprosvjetni odbori i analfabetski tečajevi na kojima se nastava odvijala tri puta
sedmično.51 Kulturno prosvjetni rad se proširio i po Kozari i selima Podgrmeča
gdje su organizirani analfabetski tečajevi kojima su rukovodile, pored ostalih, i
učiteljice Mica Vrhovec, Ivanka Čanković, Jela Perović i Anka Kulenović.52 Potom
su osnovani i prosvjetni odsjeci koji su organizirali i tečajeve na kojima su pripremali omladinu za rad u školama i na analfabetskim tečajevima. Pored toga su
učitelji Nijaz Alikadić i Cecilija Čebo izradili i prvi udžbenik za osnovne škole, tzv.
Livanjski bukvar53.
48
Usp. Papić, Učitelji u kulturnoj, n. dj., 67. Učiteljice – nositeljice Spomenice 1941. godine su: Vera
Babić, Mila Bajalica, Jela Bićanić, Milka Čaldarović, Dušanka Ilić, Milica Krpić, Danica Pavić, Jela
Perović, Lepa Perović, Nada Prica, Mica Vrhovac i Zaga Umićević. Ibid, 82.
49
Gladanac, Sanja. „Uspostava državnog školstva na području Velike župe Vrhbosna”, Husnija
Kamberović ur., Bosna i Hercegovina 1941: Novi pogledi. Zbornik radova. Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju
u Sarajevu, 2012: 67-97, 74,75.
50
Usp. Kožar, Azem. „O nekim aspektima obrazovno-odgojne politike Narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta
na području Bosne i Hercegovine 1941-1945”, Šezdeset godina od završetka Drugog svjetskog rata:
kako se sjećati 1945. godine. Zbornik radova, Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2006, str. 235-248. 236 i 237.
51
Zaninović, Kulturno posvjetni rad, str. 20.
52
Zaninović, op.cit str. 21.
53
Ovaj udžbenik imao je svega 44 stranice i bio je kombinacija bukvara i čitanke. Značajan je, pored
ostalog, jer predstavlja povijesni dokument u kojem se po prvi put pojavljuje sadržaj drugačije
odgojne, obrazovne i ideološke vrijednosti. Usp. Mihailo Ogrizović (1962). nav. prema Papić, Učitelji
u kulturnoj, n. dj.,74.
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61
Nakon Prvog zasjedanja AVNOJ-a, održanog u Bihaću krajem novembra 1942.
godine, Prosvjetni odsjek Izvršnog odbora AVNOJ-a dobija zadatak da na slobodnoj
teritoriji organizira prosvjetne aktivnosti. Odsjek usvaja niz propisa, među kojima
i Uputstvo za rad u osnovnim školama i pozive i uputstva NOO-ima za otvaranje
osnovnih škola, analfabetskih tečajeva, kao i programe rada osnovnih škola i
tečajeva, te narodnog univerziteta54. Kako tvrdi Kožar, ovi dokumenti Prosvjetnog
odsjeka IO AVNOJ-a „predstavljaju historijski značajan putokaz za reformu
školstva u duhu ideologije snaga NOP-a. S njima škola ulazi u nov period svoga
razvoja“55.
Od kraja 1942. godine, velikim dijelom zahvaljujući i osnaživanju AFŽ-a kao
masovne političke organizacije žena56, poboljšavaju se uslovi za organizirane
analfabetske tečajeve na slobodnoj teritoriji, ali i u partizanskim jedinicama.
Na zemaljskim i oblasnim tečajevima AFŽ-a, pored tečajeva za osposobljavanje
i pripremu rukovodilaca analfabetskih tečajeva, organiziraju se i tečajevi političkog obrazovanja žena i predavanja na kojima su aktivno djelovale, između
ostalih, Mara Radić, Nata Hadžić-Todorović (za oblast Bosanske krajine), te
Radmila Begović i Milka Čaldarević (u istočnoj Bosni). Pored ovih tečajeva, AFŽ
je organizirao kulturne grupe u okviru kojih su oformljene recitatorske sekcije,
grupe za organiziranje priredbi, te sekcije u kojima su se čitale radio-vijesti i
partizanska štampa.
U novembru 1943. godine organizira se Prva konferencija prosvjetnih radnika
na slobodnoj teritoriji na kojoj su glavne teme bile izrada cjelovitog bukvara
za osnovnu školu, i analfabetski tečajevi.57 Kako navodi Zaninović, organizacija
analfabetskih tečajeva se oslobađanjem velikih teritorija postavlja na nove osnove, a od kraja 1944. godine uvodi i obavezno trajanje tečajeva od 30 dana, po četiri
puta nedjeljno.58 Od kraja 1944. započinje proces masovnog otvaranja osnovnih
škola na oslobođenom teritoriju.
54
U: Kožar, „O nekim aspektima”, op.cit.
55
Kožar, „O nekim aspektima”, op.cit.
56
Prva zemaljska konferencija AFŽ-a Jugoslavije održana je od 6. do 8. decembra 1942. godine u
Bosanskom Petrovcu. Zadaci definirani tijekom pripreme Konferencije, na Konferenciji su
usaglašeni te potvrđene dvije osnovne skupine zadataka koje je AFŽ trebao realizirati tijekom rata:
s jedne strane, pomoć vojsci i osiguravanje normalnog odvijanja života na oslobođenoj teritoriji, s
druge politička i kulturna emancipacija žena i integracija na ravnopravnim osnovama u NOB-u i
borbi za novo društvo. Usp. Sklevicky, Konji, žene, op.cit. 25-26.
57
Up, Papić, Učitelji u, n. dj. 78, 79.
58
Zaninović, Kulturno posvjetni rad, n.dj., 158, 159.
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ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
No, širenje mreža osnovnih škola i porast ostalih oblika prosvjetnih aktivnosti
nameće pitanje učiteljskog kadra. Pred sami početak rata na području BiH je
djelovalo 1.043 osnovne škole sa 2.321 uposlenim učiteljem/učiteljicom, a nastavu pohađalo 150.783 đaka, znači u prosjeku 65 đaka po učitelju/učiteljici59.
Na kraju školske godine 1944/45 radilo je ukupno 577 škola s 82.705 đaka, 359
učitelja i 741 učiteljicom60. S obzirom na to da je tijekom rata, prema nepotpunim
podacima, poginulo 173 učitelja i 80 učiteljica61, jasno je zašto će upravo obnova
učiteljskog kadra postati jedan od gorućih izazova novih prosvjetnih politika.
Kao privremeno rješenje, odlučeno je da se još tijekom rata započne sa procesom
osposobljavanja tzv. privremenog učiteljskog kadra kojem bi poslije rata bilo
omogućeno stjecanje pune učiteljske spreme. Osnivaju se učiteljski tečajevi na
koje se pozivaju svi mlađi omladinci i omladinke sa bar dva završena razreda
srednje škole. Prvi tečaj održan je u Sanskom Mostu u maju 1943. godine. Potom
je u Lipniku otvoren je i drugi tečaj, a do kraja rata su tečaji sa istim programom
organizirani u još nekoliko gradova BiH. Većina polaznika i polaznica ovih tečajeva
po završetku rata završit će učiteljske škole i fakultete te postati predvodnici novih
prosvjetnih politika na prostoru BiH.62 Bitno je napomenuti da su za nove učitelje
i učiteljice, kao i za one koji su se kasnije pridružili pokretu i NOB-u, organizirani
i seminari na kojima ih se upoznavalo s ciljevima i zadacima NOB-a i prosvjetnim
politikama koje su sprovodili narodnoslobodilački odbori, te s osnovnim idejama
naprednog učiteljskog pokreta.63
Tako će, pored naprednih učiteljica koje su u međuratnom periodu započele
svoju revolucionarnu borbu i tijekom rata postale važne političke i revolucionarne
figure64, u samom NOB-u nastati još jedan tip narodne učiteljice: omladinke sa
nekoliko završenih razreda srednje škole ili gimnazije, koje dobrovoljno stupaju u
borbu ili su simpatizerke Partije. One će se osposobiti za rad u školi kroz učiteljske
tečajeve pokrenute u ratu. U pravilu će sve učiteljice – omladinke po završetku
rata završavati pedagoške akademije i sve do mirovine nastaviti rad u prosvjeti.
59
U: Papić, Mitar. Školstvo u Bosni i Hercegovini 1941-1945, 4-11.
60
Zaninović, op.cit. str. 176.
61
Ibid. 187, 190.
62
Detaljnije o ovim tečajevima u: Zaninović, Kulturno prosvjetni, n. dj.,124, 180-184.
63
Zaninović, op.cit, str. 185.
64
Kao dobar primjer može se navesti učiteljski put Rade Miljković, od napredne seoske učiteljice,
uspješne agitatorice do vojnikinje koja 1942. godine gine u borbi kod Bugojna, a 1953. godine biva
proglašena narodnim herojem. Detaljan prikaz njenog revolucionarnog angažmana dostupan na:
http://www.savezboraca.autentik.net/licnosti_rada_ miljkovic.php
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63
3.1. Petogodišnji plan obnove: novi izazovi i stara opterećenja za učiteljice
Prosvjetna politika Kraljevine Jugoslavije dovela je do toga da je 1941. godine
u BiH bilo nepismeno oko 75% stanovništva. Ovu nepovoljnu sliku još više će
pogoršati zastrašujući materijalni i ljudski gubici, tako da se BiH po završetku
rata suočava sa ogromnim razmjerama nepismenosti, posebice žena65, kao i sa
nedostatkom stručnog kadra, naročito učiteljskog, te s velikim brojem razrušenih
ili devastiranih škola.66 Sve to je usporavalo planirani tempo obnove zemlje zacrtan
Petogodišnjim planom67. Stoga je unapređenje školstva i prosvjetnih prilika bio
jedan od prioriteta nove jugoslovenske i bh. vlasti. Trebalo je obnavljati porušene
učionice i graditi nove škole, te školovati nove učitelje i učiteljice.
Istovremeno su novoformirana socijalistička država i KPJ imali specifična očekivanja od učitelja i učiteljica68. Pored ostalog, u prvim poratnim godinama paralelno
65
U tekstu pod naslovom Narodno prosvjećivanje, Danica Pavić ističe da je novoformirana narodna
vlast, za razliku od ranije „nenarodne vlade“, među prioritetne zadatke postavila rad na
općenarodnom prosvjećivanju. Pozivajući se na podatke koje je prikupilo Prosvjetno odjeljenje
G.N.O. autorica navodi da je nakon oslobođenja u Sarajevu evidentirano 13.591. nepismenih osoba,
od čega 10.765 žena, među njima najviše muslimanki (9.072) i domaćica (9.563), te da su očito
žene bile najveće žrtve neprosvjećenosti. Autorica sa velikim zanosom opisuje kako je u Sarajevu
pokrenuto 118 analfabetskih tečajeva i kako žene, među kojima i veliki broj onih starijih od 50
godina, „zadivljuju svojom voljom i željom za znanjem“ usprkos raznim materijalnim nedaćama. O
tome koliko su žene u prijeratnom Sarajevu bile isključene iz javnog i kulturnog života, po mišljenju
autorice ovog priloga najbolje govori činjenica da mnoge od njih, premda rođene i ostarjele u
Sarajevu, tek u okviru analfabetskog tečaja prvi put zajedno otišle u posjet kinu i tom prilikom
pogledale dva filma (Dani i noći i Parada fiskulture u Moskvi) koji su na polaznice tečaja ostavili tako
dubok dojam da su o njima diskutirale u više navrata tijekom tečaja. U zadnjem dijelu prikaza,
autorica nudi ocjenu analfabetskih tečajeva AFŽ smatrajući da su rukovoditeljice, mahom učiteljice
sarajevskih osnovnih škola, uz pomoć organizacija AFŽ-a i omladine, uspješno realizirale te
aktivnosti i da su „narodne vlasti samo u toku ove zimske kampanje narodnog prosvjećivanja,
uspjele da opismene više ljudi nego što su to raniji nenarodni režimi učinili decenijama“. U: Nova
žena: list Antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine, God. 2, br. 13 (1946), 9.
66
Netom po okončanju rata u BiH je bilo ukupno 684 osnovnih škola, 1.288 nastavnog osoblja te
97.116 đaka. Navedeno prema Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, Socijalistička Republika Bosna i Hercegovina,
separat uz II izdanje Zagreb, LZ, 1983., str. 230.
67
Petogodišnjim planom 1947.-1951. bio je predviđen razvoj novih industrijskih grana, obnova starih
preduzeća, mehanizacija rudarstva, usavršavanje poljoprivredne proizvodnje, izgradnja novih
puteva, proširenje mreže kulturnih i prosvjetnih ustanova te razvijanje zdravstvenih i socijalnih
ustanova.
68
Cvijetin Mijatović, ministar prosvjete NRBiH u prvoj poslijeratnoj vladi, istaknuo je na otvaranju
kursa za prosvjetne instruktore: „Osnovni zadatak učitelja u našoj školi je vaspitanje, i to ne uopšte,
nego u određenom smjeru u duhu NOB. (..) Kroz nastavu, kroz pravilne odnose sa djecom treba da
živi i struji duh nove nastave, stalna prošlost, težnja i stremljenja naših naroda (…) Hoćemo
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ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
sa procesom obnove i izgradnje škola teče i proces rekonstrukcije ili izgradnje
ostalih kulturnih ustanova. Otvarane su biblioteke i čitaonice, zadružni domovi
i domovi kulture. Sve ove ustanove uglavnom vode učitelji i učiteljice, često bez
ikakve dodatne materijalne nadoknade. Zbog svega navedenog učiteljski posao
je prvih poslijeratnih godina bio iznimno težak. No, u ovom periodu su osnovne
škole u samom centru pažnje države i društveno-političkih organizacija, a to još
više podstiče entuzijazam u radu učitelja.69
Kroz nekoliko narednih svjedočenja pokušat ću, bar u općim crtama, prikazati
esktremno teške uslove rada, ali i neupitan entuzijazam narodnih učiteljica u
ovom periodu.
Najprije treba spomenuti analfabetske tečajeve odnosno jednu od najmasovnijih
i najvažnijih društvenih akcija u tom periodu – tzv. kampanju opismenjavanja. Od
1945. godine do 1. oktobra 1950. godine, u okviru pet akcija narodnog prosvjećivanja
organizirano je 42.196 analfabetskih tečajeva u kojima je opismenjeno 670.874
lica.70 Pomoć narodnih učiteljica u akcijama prosvjećivanja bila je ogromna71
budući da su se tečajevi odvijali pod njihovim nadzorom. Učitelji i učiteljice vodili
su 3.099 tečajeva, uz to održavajući i redovna mjesečna ili petnaestodnevna
savjetovanja sa rukovodiocima tečajeva, kako bi se osigurao što bolji rad. Kako
naglašava Papić, u ovaj poduhvat „utkan je ogroman trud i prekovremeni napori
jer je svaki učitelj pored održavanja tečaja vodio jedno ili dva odjeljenja redovne
škole. Rad je počinjao jutrom a završavao se kasno uveče“72. Evo kako učiteljica
Slavica Bureković iz Sarajeva, koja je službovala u Pokrajčićima pored Travnika,
opisuje svoje iskustvo organiziranja i rukovođenja analfabetskih tačejava:
slobodne, odvažne, poletne ljude, a ne da budu podanici“ dok na selu „učitelj nije samo učitelj djeci,
nego u situaciji kad je on jedini intelektualac na selu, mora biti i nosilac društvenog rada u prvom
redu da kulturno uzdiže kraj u kojem živi. Učitelj u seoskoj školi radeći pod teškim uslovima ne
smije se odvojiti od sela, ali se ne smije ni miriti sa zaostalošću nego treba da vuče selo naprijed.
Poslovi van škole u kojima trebaju učestvovati učitelji su rad u seoskim zadrugama, analfabetskim
tečajevima, čitaonicama i na drugim poslovima u vezi sa kulturnim uzdizanjem.“ Usp. Cvijetin
Mijatović, „Govor na otvaranju kursa za prosvjetne instruktore održanog u Sarajevu u ljeto 1946”,
Prosvjetni radnik 7 (1946), 6.
69
Usp. Papić, Učitelji u, n. dj. 88.
70
Navedeno prema Jerković, „Uloga učitelja u prosvejetnim”, 20.
71
No, to svakako ne znači da je potpora učiteljica bila bezuslovna i da nije bilo i povremenih opstrukcija
u izvršavanju mnogobrojnih obaveza. Tako se, primjerice, u mjesečnom izvještaju Sreskog odbora
AFŽ-a, Sarajevski srez, br.1/48, navodi da su učiteljice najprije pristale da organiziraju predavanja i
tečaj općeg znanja, ali da su, kada je tečaj pokrenut, javile da su prezaposlene i da neće moći
održavati kurs. U; Fond AFŽ, Kutiji 4, Folder 5.
72
Papić, Učitelji u, n. dj., 88.
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65
Učitelji su dobili zadatak da opismene narod, to je bio jedan od najkrupnijih
koraka društva. Nepismenih je bilo uistinu mnogo, a među njima veliki broj
mladića i djevojaka. Mi, učitelji, smo analfabetske tečajeve organizirali i
na sijelima. Obično se nastava provodila u kasnim večernjim satima kada
su učitelji bili slobodni, kad prestane redovna škola. Mnogo žena sam
opismenila tokom ovih tečaja, računam da je bilo sedamdeset posto žena.
Inače, analfabetske tečajeve organizovala sam ne samo u mojoj kući nego
i po zaseocima. Nekoliko puta sam za svoj rad dobila novčanu nagradu.73
Krunoslava Lovrenović, učiteljica iz Ričica kod Zenice, ispričala je da su
analfabetske tečajeve organizirali u zimskim mjesecima, od kraja oktobra do
marta, odnosno početka aprila. Oni su uglavnom
bili organizirani u noćnim satima, jer smo mi učitelji radili u toku dana sa
redovnim učenicima. Nekad nismo imali dovoljno petroleja i morali smo se
krajnje racionalno ponašati, strogo smo vodili računa o potrošnji. Imala sam
slučajeve da u istoj klupi sjede majka i kćerka ili otac i sin. Inače, poslije
tečaja opismenjavanja polagao se ispit. Stavovi su bili jasni – neznanje je
naš najveći neprijatelj i što ga prije savladamo brže ćemo izaći iz općeg
siromaštva.74
Kao i u ranijim periodima, rad na selu je i nakon rata ostao najzahtjevniji oblik
učiteljskog angažmana, a novoformirana država nastavila je s praksom prvih namještenja mladih učiteljica – na selu. Težina učiteljskog posla na selu ogledala se
u dodatnom opterećenju vannastavnim aktivnostima kao i u obnašanju nekoliko
funkcija istovremeno. Naime, u seoskim školama je učiteljski kadar ujedno bio i
upraviteljski i administrativni, te su morali redovno dostavljati izvještaje o radu
škole. Istovremeno su bili opterećeni velikim nastavnim normama i radili u prepunim učionicama.
Đaci su nastavu pohađali u kombiniranim odjeljenjima. U seoskim školama vrlo
se često radilo sa više od stotinu đaka istovremeno.75 Pored toga su materijalni
uslovi rada i života u seoskim školama bili iznimno teški. Seoski učitelji i učiteljice
imali su pravo na besplatan stan i ogrjev.76 Međutim, kako im većina seoskih
73
Izjavu je Slavica Bureković dala Ademiru Jerkoviću. Usp. Jerković, „Uloga učitelja u“, op.cit. 21.
74
Jerković, „Uloga učitelja u prosvejetnim“, op.cit. 28.
75
Učiteljica Slavica Bureković imala je kombinovana odjeljenja u školi Pokrajčići kod Bile u kojoj je bilo
110 učenika, dok je učiteljica Olga Kurilić iz Vrbljana u školi radila sa 220 djece i uspješno kontrolirala
četrnaest tečajeva. U: Jerković, „Uloga učitelja u“, n.dj., 28-29.
76
Usp. Uredba o pravu na besplatan stan i ogrjev, 56/46-626.- Uredba o pravu na besplatan stan i
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ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
sredina nije mogla obezbijediti ova prava, bili su stambeno neobezbijeđeni ili na
korištenje dobijali jednu do dvije prostorije u samoj školi, mahom oštećene i bez
tekuće vode i kanalizacije. O tom periodu rječito govore brojna svjedočanstva.
Kada je učiteljica Krunoslava Lovrenović 1951. godine došla u selo Mošćanicu
kod Zenice, zatekla je školu u vrlo teškom stanju. Evo kako opisuje prilike u školi:
Škola je imala dva razreda i hodnik, imali smo i školsku kuhinju. Ne znam
da li je u to vrijeme bilo kruha. Peć je stajala nasred razreda. Kod mene su
skupa išla i pravoslavna i muslimanska djeca. Kad smo učiteljica Ljepša
Džamonja i ja došle, nije bilo ni brave na vratima. Mi smo obavljali nastavu
u tzv. kombinovanim razredima. Prvi i treći razred, drugi i četvrti, sve u istoj
prostoriji i tu se obavljala nastava za oba razreda. Prvo s jednim, pa onda
s drugim. Dok radite sa ovima kojima morate nešto da pričate, ovoj drugoj
djeci zadate da nešto crtaju, da miruju. Djeca su bila fina, dobro vaspitana
i uredna. Pravoslavne curice su nosile bluze i malo duže crne suknje i
obavezno pletenicu, a muslimanke su bile u dimijama i bluzama. Od obuće
je nosio šta je ko imao, vunene čarape, opanke ili kaloše. U hodniku su bile
police gdje su se skidali. Djeca su zimi dolazila i po dubokom snijegu (...)
Niko nam nije nabavljao drva, nego svako dijete je ujutro donijelo po jedno
drvo.77
Budući da su se na selu analfabetski tečajevi organizirali zimi, učitelji i učiteljice
nerijetko nisu mogli ostvariti ni pravo na odmor, već su marljivo radili i tijekom
zimskog raspusta. No, usprkos tako teškim materijalnim uslovima za rad, učitelji
su, čini se, u pravilu entuzijastično izvršavali predviđene obaveze. To je vidljivo
iz mnogih svjedočenja i zabilježenih razgovora sa učiteljicama. Tako primjerice,
u listu Nova Žena, učiteljica Mileva Grubač iz Višegrada sa zanosom prikazuje
rad sa ženama na analfabetskom tečaju u selu Dušća. Učiteljica Grubač najprije
navodi kako je na molbu žena iz tog sela „da dođe i njih uči“, obećala da će dolaziti
nedjeljom budući je ostalim danima zauzeta radom u školi i na analfabetskim
tečajevima u Višegradu. Evo kako opisuje svoj odlazak u selo, i prvi čas:
U nedjelju su poslali po mene jednoga dječaka da se ne bih izgubila i lutala
trazeći ih. Idem uz Drinu i razmišljam o toj divnoj, mnogo opjevanoj rijeci,
a još više okrvavljenoj. Teče mirna i plava, kao da ne pamti nikakvog zla.
Njene obale nadvisila su strma brda, a po gdjekojoj ravnici vide se tragovi
avionskih bombi. Ponegdje viri iz zemlje gvozdena konstrukcija neke zgrade
ogrjev učitelja narodnih osnovnih škola u selima, 46/48, 488.
77
U: Jerković, „Uloga učitelja u“, n.dj.,35.
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67
koju nadvisuje fabrični dimnjak. To su ostaci »Varde«, nekadanje industrije
drveta. Napokon stižem u određeno selo. Dočekuju me žene sa bukvarima
i tablicama. Radostan je bio naš prvi čas na kome su naše velike učenice
nevještim potezima, sa puno volje i strpljivosti, otpočele prve poteze pisma.78
Ogromnim entuzijazmom i angažmanom narodne napredne učiteljice položile su
važan kamen temeljac u izgradnju nove države. Zajedno sa svojim kolegama, učiteljice su diljem BiH organizirale škole i kreirale nove prosvjetne politike. U toj
borbi za nove škole nisu mijenjale samo nastavne programe već uspostavljale i
posve nov odnos sa đacima. U učionici je ukinut krut hijerahijski odnos i uspostavljene nove prakse učenja i rada, utemeljene na uzajamnom povjerenju i poštivanju. Učiteljice su često bile pune roditeljske brige za sve đake. Umjesto fizičkog
kažnjavanja, prakticirale su se metode uvjeravanja, njegovao se takmičarski duh
i jačalo drugarstvo.79 Zbog svega toga su učitelji i učiteljice uživali velik ugled u
društvu, i priznanje i poštovanje cijele zajednice, posebice djece i njihovih roditelja.
Pored toga su, kako je već istaknuto, aktivno radile u skoro svim kulturnim manifestacijama u sredinama gdje su službovale, a nerijetko su djelovale u svim kulturnim institucijama – od biblioteka i javnih čitaonica do amaterskih pozorišta i
sportskih sekcija.
Jedan takav egzemplaran učiteljski put predstavlja i angažman narodne učiteljice
Nasihe Porobić.80 Ova učiteljica rođena je 1928. godine u Derventi. Tijekom jednodnevnog boravka partizana u Derventi 1944. godine, pristupa pokretu kao
učenica V razreda gimnazije. U partizane odlazi posve nepripremljena; isprva
radi kao bolničarka u Tesliću, potom je izabrana kao delagatkinja na kongresu u
Sarajevu, a poslije rata odlazi na službu u školu u selo Korače, gdje radi sa 146
đaka. U Banjoj Luci je završila najprije tečaj, a kasnije i akademiju za nastavnicu
srpskohrvatskog jezika. Paralelno je studirala i radila. U školi je organizirala sve
učeničke aktivnosti, štampala knjige, sudjelovala sa djecom na svim konkursima
i organizirala priredbe. Naglašava da je učiteljski poziv i svoje đake voljela više od
svega, te da je zbog te velike ljubavi zanemarila čak i svoju porodicu, dvoje djece i
muža. Dobitnica je više priznanja za rad, pored ostalog i Ordena zasluga za narod
sa srebrnom zvijezdom.
78
Nova žena: list Antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine, god. 2, br. 13, 1946 g., str. 20.
79
Usp. Zaninović, Kulturno prosvjetni, op.cit. 186.
80
Intervju sa Nasihom Porobić vodila Elvira Jahić u januaru 2016. Intervju pohranjen u Audio zbirci
Arhiva antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/415.
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
Pokušavala sam, više puta preslušavajući intervju sa Nasihom Porobić, odgonetnuti šta to djeluje uznemirujuće u njenom glasu i načinu na koji odgovara na pitanja, zašto njeni odgovori stvaraju nejasan osjećaj nelagode. Ne, njena ispovijest
nije svjedočanstvo zaludnosti borbe od koje je, kako kaže, dobila onoliko koliko je
mogla primiti. Njen životni put nije bio zaludan, i nema kajanja. Učiteljica Nasiha
tvrdi da bi, kad bi mogla, sve isto ponovo napravila, samo bi ovog puta u borbu
„krenula opreznija, bolje bi se pripremila, barem dvije presvlake bi sa sobom
ponijela. Ne bi više išla grlom u jagode“.
Uznemirujući nije ni njen pomirbeni ton ni rezigniranost u glasu jer to će prije biti
staračka distanca ili čak mudrost s kojom se pred kraj života često postavljamo
prema vlastitim životnim odlukama. Uznemirava, zapravo, trpno stanje iz kojeg
se pripovijeda i koje sugerira da je učiteljica Nasiha u svom bogatom i ispunjenom
životu toliko toga radila i puno postigla, ali da je malo, premalo vremena imala
da taj i tako bogat život i proživi. Uznemirava to što je ona, poput većine žena
revolucionarne borbe, pristala da cijelog svog života nekritički podržava mit o
ženi koja se rado odriče svoga života u ime izgradnje buduće države i društva81.
Međutim, to je samo jedna strana medalje. Važno je imati u vidu da, pored toga što
su žene masovno pristajale na ulogu samožrtvujućih heroina, Ifigenija modernog
doba, postoje i sitemski propusti ili, pak, svjesne strategije u pogledu odnosa
prema ženama, u konkretnom slučaju prema narodnim učiteljicama, strategije
koje su osigurale da proces transformacije od potlačene do napredne učiteljice
ne bude, zapravo, nikada u potpunosti dovršen.
3.2. Između emancipacije i feminizacije učiteljske profesije
Kada se govori o specifičnosti društvenog i političkog organiziranja žena u Drugom
svjetskom ratu, u pravilu se ističe masovnost ženskog udruživanja i participacija
velikog broja žena sa sela, žena iz različitih društvenih slojeva, te žena različite
etničke pripadnosti82. Po mišljenju Ivane Pantelić83, na masovnu mobilizaciju žena
i njihov ulazak u revolucionarnu partizansku vojsku utjecao je upravo masovniji
dolazak učiteljica na sela nakon 1918. godine, učiteljica koje su na razne načine
radile na emancipaciji i osnaživanju žena.
81
Usp. Jambrešić-Kirin, Dom i svijet, n. dj., 27.
82
Usp. Dušanka Kovačević et al. Borbeni put žena Jugoslavije, Beograd: Leksikografski zavod Sveznanje,
1972. 209-210. Rad dostupan na http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/71
83
Pantelić, Ivana. „Yugoslav female partisans in World War II”, Cahiersbalkaniques 41(2013), 3. Rad
dostupan na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/files/original/f47c848c2d081c22905ba11a9d869fd3.pdf
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I premda su, pored bolničarki i borkinja, upravo narodne učiteljice bile istaknute
aktivistice antifašističkog pokreta i NOB-a, ni one neće biti pozvane da s podjednakim društveno-političkim angažmanom sudjeluju u radu izvršnih organa vlasti i
najviših partijskih tijela u ratnom i poslijeratnom periodu.84 Naprotiv, emancipacijski lik učiteljice-borkinje iz narodnooslobodilačke borbe postepeno će se transformirati u lik požrtvovane velike majke koja kroz proces obaveznog osnovnog
obrazovanja treba odgojiti novu naprednu generaciju.
Kako primjećuje Amila Ždralović, masovno uključivanje žena tijekom rata u
borbene jedinice
značilo je i početak borbi sa tradicionalnim predrasudama o mjestu i ulozi
žene, kako u njihovim porodicama tako i u jedinicama u koje su odlazile.
Iz priča o partizankama može se zaključiti da su mnoge od njih u svojim
jedinicama bile zadužene i za patrijarhalno definisane ženske poslove kao
što je kuhanje i šivanje. Međutim, u isto vrijeme obavljaju i poslove koji su
patrijarhalno definisani kao muški poslovi, a na najteže zadatke se često
dobrovoljno prijavljuju. Na taj način su razbijale tradicionalne predrasude i
stereotipe o mjestu i ulozi žene u društvu.85
Tako će se posebno popularizirati lik žene-majke koju je patrijarhalno-buržoaski
izrabljivački poredak tlačio i držao u stanju neznanja, ali koja u revolucionarnoj
borbi ne samo da se uspijeva opismeniti, kroz anafabetski tečaj, već postaje i ona
koja iz anonimnosti privatne sfere ulazi u obrazovni proces i podučava ostale.
U listu AFŽ-a Žena kroz borbu, u stalnoj rubrici Mi se borimo i učimo, opisujući
proslavu Muslimanske brigade u junu 1944. godine i dodjelu nagrada zaslužnim
borcima i borkinjama, jedna takva transformacija žene prikazana je na sljedeći
način:
Još prije godinu dana, kod kuće Zumreta je vukla ibrike, prala avlijsku
kaldrmu, radeći po tuđim kućama, daleko od knjiga i svakog kulturnog života
84
Ovo nije bio samo slučaj narodnih učiteljice, već općenito svih žena koje su uzele aktivno učešće u
revoluciji. Premda su se stalno isticale zasluge žena u NOB-i, njihov doprinos nije bio na odgovarajući
način nagrađen, odnosno u novoformiranoj vladi žene neće biti priliku da uzmu učešće i radu izvšnih
zakonodavnih tijela. U komparativnoj analizi podataka o broju učesnica na bojištu i broju vijećnica
u radu ZAVNOBIH-a i AVNOJ-a Vera Katz pokazuje da zastupljenost žena u političkim tijelima nije
bila adekvatna u odnosu na broj aktivnih učesnica u NOB-i. Primjerice u sastavu Prve vlade Bosne i
Hercegovine nijedna žena nije dobila niti jednu resornu funkciju. Usp. Katz, „O društvenom položaju”,
n.dj.,139, 141. I u poslijeratnom periodu ovaj trend će se nastaviti, pa je tako, primjerice, 1948.
godine u Ustavotvornoj skupštini FNRJ, kao u i CK KPJ bilo svega 4,7 % žena.
85
Ždralović, Amila. „Drugi svjetski rat i iskustva bosanskohercegovačkih žena”, Zabilježene, n. dj.,76.
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IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
i rada. Danas je nagrađena kao najbolji kulturno prosvjetni radnik u svojoj
brigadi (....) Zumreta je stekla toliko znanja da je mogla druge voditi i učiti.86
No, upravo ova nastojanja žena da kroz nesebično zalaganje i brigu za druge, dobrovoljni rad i obavljanje često najtežih poslova osiguraju svoju ravnopravnost u
društvu i nove pozicije i društvene uloge, u poratnom periodu dovode do toga da
će žene, nakon što iznesu svu težinu obnove razrušene zemlje, od sredine 50-ih
pa nadalje gubiti teškom mukom stečene pozicije87. Drugim riječima, ponovo će se
vraćati (točnije: biti vraćene) u okvir patrijarhalnih tradicionalnih uloga. Tako će,
riječima Vjerana Katunarića, od herojskog lika žene-borca, nova žena u socijalizmu
ponovno ‘skliznuti’ u lik pripitomljene kućanice i ‘modno osviještene’ žene:
Neposredno poslije rata (lik žene-borca op.a.) zamijenjen je ženom sa
socrealističkog plakata, ženom-graditeljkom u tvornici, na gradilištima,
sportskim natjecanjima, itd. Taj lik je odražavao revolucionarni polet oba
spola u tadašnjoj omladinskoj generaciji i spontanu asimilaciju žena u
muškim aktivnostima. Snažan blijesak u kulturnoj tradiciji postupno se
izgubio i bio preplavljen evolucijom standardne patrijarhalne kulture. Žena
biva potisnuta u privatnu sferu a uporedo sa porastom životnog standarda
porodice obnavlja se shema malograđanskog života (...) Eksplozija
žute štampe nastaje šezdesetih godina kao posljedica jačanja tržišta u
jugoslavenskoj privredi. Ženska štampa, usredotočena na modu i kozmetiku,
vjerno preslikava zapadni model ženskog tijela, interijera i sentimentalnosti.
Jacqueline Onasis i slični likovi bacili su u sjenu asimilatorske likove žene
socrealističke kulture borkinje, radnice, sportašice.88
U postrevolucionarnom periodu lik napredne učiteljice slijedi putanju transformacije koju su doživjele sve revolucionarne ženske figure. Tako će i narodna učiteljica, na krilima ideala rada, najprije postati udarnica koja će se, sve više radeći na
zadovoljavanju potreba svoje velike metaforičke89 porodice, postepeno zatvarati (ili
biti zatvorena) u tradicionalne (patrijarhalne) okvire/okove ranijih režima. Obnaša86
Žena kroz borbu: list Antifašističkog fronta žena istočne Bosne, God. 2, br. 3/ 8, 1945
87
Ivana Pantelić navodi se da je od sredine 50-ih bio u porastu broj otkaza radnicama u industrijskom
i državnom sektoru. Usp. Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao, op.cit.124-25.
88
Katunarić, Vjeran. Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti, Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984. str. 236, 237
89
L. Sklevicky ukazuje na to da je u periodu revolucije i izgradnje nove žene stvarna porodica poimana
kao proturječna budući s jedne strane potrebna, no s druge prepreka novim društvenim ulogama
žena. Zato se kao rješenje nudi ono što Sklevicky naziva metaforičkom porodicom, u kojoj se atributi
istinske ljudske zajednice pridaju pokretu i narodnooslobodilačkoj fronti. Usp. Sklevicky, Konji, žene,
n. dj., 48.
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jući tradicionalne ‘prirodne’ ženske uloge odgajateljice ‘nacije’, brižne majke svih
đaka i njihovih mahom nepismenih roditelja, narodnoj je učiteljici, kao i ostalim
radnim ženama socijalizma, ostajalo sve manje „vremena za samoupravljanje“ a
„ne imati vremena znači biti izvan vremena, izvan povijesti, ostati na svojoj biološkoj
prirodi“90 i trajnom stanju postajanja91 ‘naprednom’ učiteljicom.
No, bilo bi netočno sugerirati da je borba napredne učiteljice za potpunu emancipaciju, samostalnost i bolje materijalne uslove rada i odgovarajuću naknadu za
rad92 ostala nedovršena93 samo zato što su učiteljice bespogovorno pristale na
obnašanje nametnute uloge i djelovanje pod nepovoljnim uslovima. Posrijedi je
drugi, kompleksniji fenomen. Naime, tragom Blochove formulacije o ženskom
pokretu koji je zastario ili je, pak, nadomješten ili odgođen, i teze da ženski
pokret nakon revolucije dolazi na red kao samoozbiljenje ženstvenosti, Nadežda
Čačinović94 razmatra ‘odgođenost’ kao novi element unutar klasične doktrine
radničkog pokreta te, između ostalog, primjećuje da je ta mogućnost drugačijeg
samoozbiljenja ženstvenosti u postrevolucionarnim društvima i dalje odgođena,
90
Despot, Blaženka. „Žena i samoupravljanje”, Delo 4 (1981): 112 – 117, 115; vidjeti više: Blaženka
Despot, „‘Žensko pitanje’ u socijalističkom samoupravljanju“ u: Lydia Sklevicky, ur., Žena i društvo.
Kultiviranje dijaloga. Zagreb: Sociološko društvo, 1987,; i idem, Žensko pitanje i socijalističko
samoupravljanje, Zagreb: Cekode, 1987.
91
Tatjana Jukić smatra da je „indikativno što komunizam pokazuje strukturni afinitet sa ženom, i to
ondje gdje je žena za Deleuzea također platforma za postajanje, devenir femme; gdje žena za
Deleuzea označava logiku i dinamiku postajanja u podlozi svakoga kasnijeg identiteta i identifikacije.
Takva žena, devenir-femme, nalik na sablast iz prve rečenice Komunističkog manifesta, progoni tada
sve što se poslije razvija kao rodna politika socijalizma. Istom mjerom, to bi značilo da je rodna
politika socijalizma uvijek i unaprijed neadekvatna, već zato što nužno ne uspijeva zahvatiti taj
strukturni afinitet žene i komunizma“. Vidi: Jukić, Tatjana. „Žena kao revolucija: od Garbo do Tita.“
ProFemina Specijalni broj (2011): 33-39, 34.
92
Renata Jambrešić Kirin govori o konfliktnoj simultanosti i raslojenosti ženskih uloga „koja je
proizvela trostruko opterećenu ‘super-ženu’: radnicu, majku/domaćicu i društveno angažiranu
građanku koja je svoje uzore tražila barem u tri različite ideosfere“. Renata Jambrešić Kirin „O
konfliktnoj komplementarnosti ženskog pamćenja: Između moralne revizije i feminističke
intervencije“ ProFemina Specijalni broj (2011): 39-53, 47.
93
U novim kritičkim čitanjima pitanja pozicije radne žene u socijalizmu, Vlasta Jalušič će ustvrditi da
upravo ostvarena emancipacija koja je ženu svodila na radnika zapravo nije dopuštala da se preobrazi
u cjelovito političko biće. Usp. Jalušič, Vlasta. „Women in Post-Socialist Slovenia: Socially Adapted,
Politically Marginalized“, Sabrina Ramet ur., Gender Politics in the Western Balkans. Pennsylvania:
The Pennsylvania State University Press 1999. str. 112.
94
Nadežda Čačinović, „Odgovor na pitanje: kakva je sudbina ženstvenosti s obzirom na emancipaciju“
prvobitno je objavljen u časopisu Žena 1978. godine. U ovom radu tekst navodim prema: Čačinović,
Nadežda. U ženskom ključu: ogledi u teoriji kulture, Zagreb: Centar za ženske studije, 2000.
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IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
te da se ženstvenost nanovo pojavljuje kao stara veličina95. Pozitivnim napretkom
se smatra, kako pojašnjava Čačinović, već i samo nastojanje da svi budu uključeni
u radni proces, posebice u raspodjelu odgovornosti za upravljanje. ‘Novoj ženi’
načelno se priznaje da je čovjek i da samostalnim radom može ostvariti vrhunska
dostignuća, istovremeno obnašajući sve tradicionalne ženske uloge (tješiteljice,
hraniteljice, iscjeljiteljice). Međutim, zaključuje autorica, „unutrašnja neodrživost
te uloge priznaje se samo pod očitom natuknicom ‘preopterećenosti’, eufemizmom
koji skriva iscrpljivanje žena i nikakve pomake u muškoj ulozi“96.
Ovaj proces od emancipacije do feminizacije učiteljske profesije prije svega valja
promatrati sa šire ideološke razine djelovanja unutar kojeg dolazi do preuzimanja
i zloupotrebe tradicijskih vrijednosti u novom kontekstu.97 Tako su, još tijekom
priprema za masovnu agitaciju žena odnosno širih narodnih masa i njihovo priključenje NOB-u, rukovodstvo pokreta i njegovi čelni ideolozi zaključili da se
postojeća tradicija ne smije otvoreno osporavati, već da je „poštovanje tradicije
bolji/probitačniji oblik propagande i ekspanzije pokreta“98. Kako pokazuje Lydija
Sklevicky, ni CK KPJ, ni ostali upravljačku organi NOP-a nisu zapravo nastojali promijeniti tradicijske vrednote, već se naglasak prebacuje na njihovu modifikaciju u
odnosu na novi povijesni trenutak. Zato „tradicijske ‘ženske vrednote’ ne bivaju
osporene niti integrirane u neki novi vrednosni sustav, već se njihov emancipatorski
naboj očituje u korisnosti za širenje i jačanje NOP-a“99.
U konkretnom slučaju naprednog učiteljskog pokreta i pozicije narodne napredne
učiteljice u NOB-u, na emancipatorskim vrijednostima insistiralo se samo u mjeri
koja osigurava uspješno izvršenje općih ciljeva borbe. Zato je, kako pojašnjava
95
Ibid. 14-15.
96
Ibid. 15.
97
Ukazujući na to da normativna i operativna ideologija različito formulišu i osnovne vrijednosti
političkog sistema te da se ove dvije ideologije najviše razlikuju u sferi kulture i nacije, Siniša
Malešević u svojoj analizi identifikacije dominantne ideologije, njihove forme, sadržaja i postizanja
legitimnosti kroz studiju slučaja poslijeratne Jugoslavije, pokazuje da je moguće uočiti bitne razlike
u artikulaciji ‘socijalističke svesti’ u okviru ova dva tipa ideologije. „I dok normativna ideologija tu
svest povezuje s opštom emancipacijom ljudi i oslobođenjem od tradicije, autoriteta i eksploatacije,
operativna ideologija se poziva na moralnu superiornost izabrane i pročišćene zajednice i u tom
smislu koristi slike izvedene iz dobro poznate i javnosti prepoznatljive religijske tradicije“, kao i
postojećih modela tradicionalne kulture. Malešević, Siniša. Ideologija, legitimnost i nova država. Prev.
Slobodanka Glišić. Zagreb, Beograd; Jesenski i Turk i Edicija Reč, 2004., str. 240.
98
Sklevicky, Konji, žene, n. dj. 46. Kroz analizu pojedinih narativa Sklevicky pokazuje kako su
propagandni sadržaji koristili formule narodne književnosti, pa čak i liturgijski jezik. Ibid.
99
Ibid. 47.
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Sklevicky, i uspostavljen pragmatički pristup naspram tradicionalnih kulturnih
vrijednosti, što je posebno bio slučaj sa tradicionalno (patrijarhalnim) ‘ženskim’
vrijednostima, poput pijeteta, požrtvovanosti, časti i poštenja,100 vrijednosti koje
su postale temelj svih socijalnih funkcija koje su žene izvršavale u ratu. Tako se
vjerovalo da se posredstvom uloge majke i njene socijalizacijske uloge stvaraju,
između ostalog, temelji bratstva i jedinstva.101 Stoga će se i napredna učiteljica
graditi kroz figuru brižne majke koja u novom duhu odgaja generacije đaka – djece.
No ovaj trend će se nastaviti i u izgradnji poratnog, novog socijalsitičkog društva.
Odnosno, premda će vlast ženama načelno omogućiti ostvarivanje političkih prava, prava na rad, prava na školovanje i zaštitu materinstva, te javno propagirati
ideju rodne ravnopravnosti u svim sferama javnog djelovanja, riječima Renate
Jambrešić-Kirin
jugoslavenski ideolozi nisu prakticirali radikalni prekid s kulturnim formama
predrevolucionarnog društva utemeljenim na ideji rodne različitosti i
kompatibilnosti (….) Jugoslavenski su političari spremno posegnuli za
tradicijskim repertoarom rodnih simbola i uloga.102
Insistiranjem na figuri učiteljice kao brižne majke koja se dobrovoljno žrtvuje
za dobrobit cijele zajednice, odnosno tvrdnjama da se žene lakše snalaze i bolje
obavljaju profesiju učiteljce koja je ‘tek’ nastavak ženskih ‘prirodnih’ uloga i razvijanje njenih ‘urođenih sposobnosti’, započinje proces feminizacije103 te profesije
i snižavanja njenog društvenog statusa, a samim tim i moći žena. Naime, kako
su pokazala pojedina feministička istraživanja104, spolne stereotipije i orodnjene
profesionalne strukture dobrim su dijelom nastale zahvaljujući retorici ‘ženske
istinske/prirodne profesije’ koja je prikazivala učiteljice kao objekte znanja, a
vrlo rijetko kao aktivne/djelatne subjekte. Po analogiji se ni njihov profesionalni
100
Ibid. 56.
101
Ibid. 43.
102
Jambrešić-Kirin, Žene i dom, op.cit. 20, 21.
103
Feminizacija nastavničke profesije prisutna je u svjetskim razmjerima od šezdesetih godina 20.
stoljeća, a mnogi sociolozi ukazuju na to kako se drastičnim porastom broja žena među nastavnim
osobljem u osnovnim školama zapravo uloga domaćice i majke proteže i na plaćeni posao u
uslužnim profesijama. Usp. Šime Pilić, Knjiga o nastavnicima. Split: Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u
Splitu, 2008.
104
Između ostalih: M Grumet, „Pedagogy for patriarchy: the feminization of teaching”, Interchange, 12
(2-3) 1981., str. 165-184.; Acker, ur. Teachers, Gender and Careers, Philadelphia: Falmer Press,
1989.; P. Munro, Subject to fiction: Women teacher’s life history narratives and the cultural politics of
resistance. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1989.
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angažman i pedagoški rad nisu vrednovali kao prakticiranje profesionalnih
kompetencija utemeljenih na njihovoj naobrazbi, edukaciji i usavršavanju, što je
vodilo i ka postepenom napuštanju ideja naprednog školstva o permanentnom
usavršavanju pedagoških metoda i poboljšavanju nastavnih aktivnosti u učionici.
Stoga pojam feminizacije učiteljske profesije ne znači samo porast broja učiteljica,
već označava i nizak status i slabu materijalnu naknadu za obavljeni posao, što je
nužno vodilo tome da ova profesija s vremenom izgubi na društvenom značaju i
da se njena moć radikalno umanji.
4. Umjesto zaključka
Polazna premisa rada bila je to da se kroz lik napredne učiteljice mogu pratiti svi
limiti ženske profesionalne emancipacije kao i posljedice nedovršenosti procesa
tvorbe i/ili transformacije žene u nov, neovisan, oslobođen i ravnopravan subjekt
boljeg i humanijeg društva.
Kako je u radu istaknuto, dosadašnja su istraživanja malo pažnje posvetila rodnom
aspektu učiteljstva usprkos činjenici da žene od kraja Drugog svjetskog rata do
danas čine glavninu učiteljskog kadra. Od 1918. godine do početka Drugog svetskog
rata došlo je do porasta seoskog školstva i pojave većeg broja mladih profesionalnih
učiteljica koje se priključuju radu i aktivnostima naprednog učiteljskog pokreta.
Budući da se u tom periodu učiteljice još uvijek nalaze u iznimno nepovoljnom
materijalnom položaju i djeluju u okviru zakona diskriminatornog kako u smislu
nižih plata tako i u smislu zabrane sklapanja braka osim sa učiteljima, napredne
učiteljice istovremeno su se borile i za osiguranje jednakosti u radnim uvjetima i
za jednaka prava i istu naknadu za obavljeni posao.
Nove društveno-kulturne revolucionarne politike koje se počinju propagirati
i širiti tijekom rata dovele su do radikalne promjene statusa učiteljica. Mnoge
napredne učiteljice, posebice na selima i na slobodnoj teritoriji BiH, uzele su
aktivno učešće u ovim promjenama i aktivno sudjelovale u sprovođenju prosvjetne
reforme i uspostave novog društvenog poretka. I premda će figuru narodne
napredne učiteljice novi organi vlasti i nove službene ideologije konstruirati kao
jednu od istaknutih revolucionarnih ženskih figura, one će nakon rata, usljed
politika školstva koje su im nametale iznimno zahtjevne radne obaveze, biti sve
manje politički aktivne i intelektualno angažirane na planu dodatnog osnaživanja
i profesionalnog osamostaljivanja. Takav razvoj figure i prakse ženskog učiteljstva
velikim dijelom je rezultat činjenice da se njihov profesionalni angažman tretirao
kao urođena, a ne stečena vještina koja kao takva zahtijeva i dodatni trud i stručno
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usavršavanje. Učiteljska profesija će sve više biti feminizirana, da bi koncem 80ih od revolucionarnog angažmana učiteljica ostao ograničeni kulturni kapital i
simbolička uloga.
Tako bi se tranformacija lika narodne napredne učiteljice mogla sažeto i ironijski
predstaviti kroz tri slike: od učiteljice sa puškom i bukvarom u ruci, preko učiteljice
sa crvenim karanfilom za reverom, do učiteljice koja, sredinom 80-ih, očekuje da
joj đaci povodom osmomartovske proslave praznika žena poklone crveni karmin
marking 16.
Nažalost, u turbulentnim godinama poraća i tranzicije, izgubio se i ovaj simbolički
ugled i značaj učiteljica. U uzburkanom moru prosvjetnih reformi i kontinuiranog
procesa reorganizacije osnovnog obrazovanja, učiteljica se više ne promatra kao
jaka figura koja oblikuje nove generacije i usađuje im pozitivne vrijednosti. Učiteljska profesija dodatno se marginalizira i obezvrjeđuje, a njihova prava i slobode
u radu sa đacima sve više limitiraju i kontroliraju. Stoga, čini mi se, treba pledirati
da se, napokon, u BiH osnaži i formira stukovno udruženje učiteljica koje bi, usprkos svim uspostavljenim podjelama i segregaciji u aktualnom bh. školstvu,105
pronašle način da djeluju i kreiraju nove napredne učiteljske politike. A kako nas
uči feminizam, za bilo koji tip ženskog strukovnog udruživanja važno je pronaći
autentične figure iz prošlosti, prethodnice na koje se oslanjamo i prethodnice sa
kojima gradimo pravednije i odgovornije društvo. U tom smislu, ovaj rad pledira i
za pokretanje sistemskih feminističko-povijesnih istraživanja učiteljske profesije i
statusa učiteljica, istraživanja koja bi iz rodne perspektive usmjerila pozornost na
povijesni prikaz razvoja ove profesije u bh. kontekstu, a kako bi se uočile strukture
koje kontinuirano tlače učiteljice i još uvijek ih drže u nepovoljnom položaju.
Bibliografija
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. „Povratak u Beograd 1978. godine: Istraživanje feminističkog sjećanja,“
u: Glasom do feminističkih promjena, R. J. Kirin i S. Prlenda, ur. Zagreb: Centar za
ženske studije, 2009, 120-131.
Božinović,Neda. Žensko pitanje u Srbiji: u XIX i XX veku. Beograd: “Devedesetčetvrta” i “Žene
u crnom”, 1996.
Čačinovič-Puhovski, Nadežda. „Ravnopravnost ili oslobođenje. Teze o teorijskoj relevantnosti suvremenog feminizma.“ Žena 3 (1976): 125–128.
105
O ovom problemu vidjeti više Dvije škole pod jednim krovom. Studija o segregaciji u obrazovanju.
Sarajevo: Centar za ljudska prava i ACIPS, 2012. Studija dostupna na: http://www.shl.ba/images/
brosure/Dvije_skole_pod_jednim_krovom.pdf
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AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ: ŠEĆER SLADAK A BOMBONE LJUTE, JA SE DRAGA UČITELJICE POUZDAVAM U TE:
ULOGA I POLOŽAJ NARODNE (NAPREDNE) UČITELJICE U PRIJELOMNIM GODINAMA
IZGRADNJE NOVOG SOCIJALISTIČKOG BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKOG DRUŠTVA
Čečinović, Nadežda „Odgovor na pitanje: kakva je sudbina ženstvenosti s obzirom na
emancipaciju.“ u: Nadežda Čečinović, U ženskom ključu: ogledi u teoriji kulture,
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Jalušič, Vlasta. „Women in Post-Socialist Slovenia: Socially Adapted, Politically Marginalized,
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Jambrešić-Kirin, Renata. „Politike sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat u doba medijske reprodukcije
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Etnografija domaćeg socijalizma. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, 2006.
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Jerković, Ademir. „Uloga učitelja u prosvejetnim, političkim i kulturnim promjenama u BiH od
1945. do 1951. godine,“ Magistarski rad, Filozofski fakultet u Sarajevu, 2014.
Jukić, Tatjana. „Žena kao revolucija: od Garbo do Tita.“ ProFemina, Specijalni broj (2011):
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Katunarić, Vjeran. Ženski eros i civilizacija smrti. Zagreb: Naprijed, 1984.
Katz, Vera. „O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.1953.“ Prilozi
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Kecman, Jovanka. Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 19181941. Beograd, 1978., 373.
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Beograd; Jesenskii Turk i Edicija Reč, 2004.
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fakultet u Sarajevu, 1986.
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366-383.
��ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ
Digitalne grafike
����STVARANJE ‘NOVE’
JUGOSLOVENSKE ŽENE:
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ELEMENTI MEDIJSKOG
DISKURSA S KRAJA II
SVJETSKOG RATA
DANIJELA
MAJSTOROVIĆ
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DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ
STVARANJE ‘NOVE’ JUGOSLOVENSKE ŽENE:
EMANCIPATORSKI ELEMENTI MEDIJSKOG DISKURSA S KRAJA II SVJETSKOG RATA
Kraj drugog svjetskog rata period je kad se konstituiše nova jugoslovenska žena
koja aktivno učestvuje u ratu, obrazuje se i ulazi u svijet rada a emancipacija
žena od stega patrijarhalne kulture bila jedan od “neprijepornih zadataka Antifašističke fronte žena (AFŽ)”.1 U tom periodu, koji predstavlja istorijski prekid
sa prvenstveno agrarnom privredom i društvom u kojem je obrazovanje bilo
rezervisano uglavnom za žene iz viših društvenih slojeva, dolazi do stvaranja
uslova za najmasovnije obrazovanje žena do tad i proces modernizacije koji se
nije mogao odvijati bez ozbiljnog narušavanja patrijarhalne kulture2.
Daleko of toga da je ova emancipacija značila kraj patrijarhata ali praćenjem
ženskih medija iz tog perioda (Naša žena, Glas, Žena u borbi) primjećuje se da se
žene predstavljaju kao ravnopravni subjekti: one su borkinje, bolničarke, radnice,
narodni heroji i sl. a ne pasivne posmatračice. “Jugoslovenska” ženu trebala je
biti moderna i obrazovana, požrtvovana i odlučna, “ni Srpkinja, ni Hrvatica ni
Muslimanka” već upravo to sve, kao Jugoslovenka. Cilj ovog poglavlja jeste da,
prateći časopis Nova žena u periodu 1945-1946 iz dostupnog arhivskog materijala
o AFŽ-u, opiše glavne emancipatorne diskurse koji se obraćaju ženama, ocrta
kroz kakve argumentativno-retoričke strategije, metafore i leksičko-gramatičke
elemente ova “nova” jugoslovenska žena biva konstituisana, kao i da ustvrdi
poveznice između ovih istorijskih uvida sa današnjim, (nazovi) postsocijalističkim
trenutkom.
1. Ulazak u arhiv
U jugoslovenskom post-socijalizmu, nakon ratova, pljačke javnog dobra, etničkog
čišćenja i silovanja i njima pripadajućeg istorijskog revizioinizma, gdje režim rodne
“neravnopravnosti” i dalje osporava davanje ženskih prefiksa na neka zanimanja,
poput onog za borac-borkinja3”, banjalučki pjesnik Dragan Studen je odgovorio
već 1982., nazivajući svoju zbirku upravo Borkinje. U prvoj pjesmi progovara kao
žena, borkinja, ratnica koja se obraća nama u budućnosti:
1
Sklevicky, Lydija. Konji, žene, ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996. str. 25.
2
Ibid. Str. 135.
3
http://www.blic.rs/kultura/kako-reci-zena-borac-ili-borkinja/k7r6r7e
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Beležićemo ugljenom
oživeti žar
i biti zapamćeni
Uđemo li u sliku
na zidu obešenu
samo sebi bićemo slični
Nećemo prestati
Zemlju iz rova da izbacujemo
Da nas ne zatrpa
Vreme zgusnuto
na kriške seći ćemo
a nož beznadežan
izgoreće u jezgru
Uđemo li u sliku na zidu obešenu
tu ostaćemo
za vek-navek
On nas, pišući o iskustvu žene u Drugom svjetskom ratu, četrdesetak godina
kasnije, podsjeća da nam je “u zlu…izlaz” a “opstanak u propasti”, nagovještavajući
da se upravo u lomovima svjetske istorije išlo u borbu i smrt da bi se živjeti moglo.
Ova zbirka pjesama predstavlja dio šire arhive o ženama u Narodno-oslobodilačkoj
borbi (NOB-u) i bio mi je inspiracija za pisanje o arhivu Antifašističkog fronta žena
(AFŽ-u) danas, na evropskoj poluperiferiji kasnog kapitalizma, u postratnim i
postsocijalističkim državama poput današnje Bosne i Hercegovine (BiH).
Veliki iskorak za mase žena, prvenstveno seljanki i radnica kod nas, duguje se
ženskom organizovanju unutar AFŽ-a koji je djelovao u periodu između 1942-1953
u tadašnjoj, prvo Demokratskoj Federativnoj Jugoslaviji (DFJ) a potom Federativnoj
Narodnoj Republici Jugoslaviji (FNRJ) omogućivši ženama Jugoslavije i BIH najšire
učešće na svim poljima narodnooslobodilačke borbe. Iako AFŽ u početku nije bio
usmjeren na ženska pitanja već na prikupljanje volonterske energije miliona žena
da se osigura pobjeda u borbi protiv fašizma4, riječ je o organizaciji koja je u toku
jugoslovenske socijalističke revolucije i Drugog svjetskog rata nedvojbeno imala
veliki uticaj na modernizacijsku promjenu za koju su se žene borile i izborile.
4
Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941-1945. Denver: Arden Press, 1990.
str. 122.
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DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ
STVARANJE ‘NOVE’ JUGOSLOVENSKE ŽENE:
EMANCIPATORSKI ELEMENTI MEDIJSKOG DISKURSA S KRAJA II SVJETSKOG RATA
Ako je smisao arhivskog istraživanja u prošlosti pronaći življeno iskustvo kako bi
se danas pokazalo da ovo što znamo, kako govorimo i djelujemo nije oduvijek ni
zauvijek i da jednako tako može biti promijenjeno, onda arhiv nisu svi sačuvani
tekstovi već je arhiv istorijski okvir za uslov nekog iskaza5 6. Reaktivacija prošlih
iskaza može da ponudi smjernice da se preko prošlosti probamo osloboditi
“zarobljenosti u sopstevenom arhivu koji ne možemo opisati”7 kako bismo mogli/e
drugačije misliti i djelovati u današnjem trenutku. Namjera nije da se “uspostavi
ono što su ljudi u trenutku (nekog) govora mogli da misle, smeraju, iskušavaju,
žele” već da se analiziranom diskursu “pridružimo u identitetu” razumjevši ga
kroz “ponovno pisanje, tj. uređeni preobražaj… onog što je već napisano”8.
Susret ženskih borbi u dva istorijska trenutka, onom prije sedamdeset i kusur
godina i ovom današnjem, neophodan je ne samo za borbu protiv istorijskog
revizionizma već i za mišljenje novog političkog djelovanje ka jednakosti za sve.
Kriza u kojoj živimo slična je onoj tridesetih i četrdesetih godina prošlog vijeka
budući da se kroz procese njihove restauracije i rehabilitacije ponovo dovode u
vezu kapitalizam, fašizam i porast neravnopravnosti. Kako saznajemo iz referata
Cane Babović na Prvoj zemaljskoj konferenciji AFŽ-a održanoj 8. decembra 1942.,
upravo su antifašističke borbe tokom Španskog građanskog rata te položaj žena
u SSSR-u, gdje su žene “uživale punu ravnopravnost” i “imale puno učešće u
privrednom i političkom životu zemlje”, inspirisale jugoslovenske antifašistkinje
da krenu s prvim publikacijama već tridesetih godina prošlog vijeka:
U vreme krvavih događaja u Španiji 1936. kada su naše žene organizovano
počele da vode borbu protiv ratani fašizma, pojavljuje se list mladih antifašistkinja u beogradu “Žena danas” (sic). Taj list odigrao je ogromnu ulogu
u okupljanju i organizovanju žena, list je prodirući u svaki kutak naše zemlje
pokazivao ženama Jugoslavije šta fašizam donosi ženi, podizao njenu
političku svest, produbljivao mržnju prema fašizmu i pružao joj snagu u
njenoj borbi za ravnopravnost. Istu ulogu kao “Žena danas”, odigrao je i list
hrvatskih antifašistkinja “Ženski svijet”9.
5
Svi prevodi odlomaka neprevedenih tekstova sa engleskog na srpskohrvatski jezik su autorkini.
6
Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. 1972. str. 128-129
7
Ibid.., 130.
8
Fuko, Mišel. Arheologija znanja. Beograd: Plato, 1998. str. 152.
9
Babović, Cana. “Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ” referat predstavljen na I Zemaljskoj konferenciji AFŽ,
08.12.1942, Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/231), pristupljeno 20. septembra 2016.
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Mada sam se u toku istraživanja oslanjala na različite dokumente dostupne u
digitalnoj arhivi AFŽ-a, bazu za ovo istraživanje predstavlja list Nova žena10 kao
prvo glasilo AFŽ-a BiH čiji je prvi broj izašao u februaru 1945. a posljednji broj
dostupan u arhivi, dvadeseti, u novembru 1946. Kao propagandno oružje AFŽ-a
i Komunističke partije (KPJ), osim pretplate i članarina, časopis se finansirao
i štampao, između ostalog, i kroz “prodaju skupljenih krpa željezari”11 i potom
distribuirao ženama u selima i gradovima BiH kako bi se opismenile i privukle
radu i zadacima ove organizacije. Početkom 1946. godine, tiraž lista je 10 000
primjeraka a već u julu 1947. godine dostiže tiraž od 22 000 primjeraka12.
Iako koncentrisana na kratak vremenski period samog kraja rata odnosno početka mirondopskog perioda, analiza predstavljena u ovom poglavlju ima za cilj
da, prateći petnaest izdanja ovog časopisa u periodu 1945-1946, opiše kako ova
“nova” jugoslovenska žena biva konstituisana kroz medijski diskurs te da ustvrdi
poveznice između ovih istorijskih uvida sa današnjim životom u tzv. “pustinji postsocijalizma”13. U prvom redu su me zanimali emancipatorski elementi medijskog
diskursa koje je ženama obećavalo novo, socijalističko vrijeme u kojem se ova
nova žena stvarala i njih u najširem smislu posmatram kao do tad najmasovnije
uključivanje žena u društveno-politički život nove Jugoslavije i BiH, ulazak u svijet
rada, sticanje prava, opismenjavanje i sl.14.
U kakvim su odnosima modernizacija, emancipacija i patrijarhat u ovom kontekstu?
Modernizaciju u BiH donosi upravo socijalizam nakon 194515. kroz najmasovnije
opšte obrazovanje svih a naročito žena kao njen preduslov. Nova žena već na
prvi pogled vidljivo zaziva i predstavlja žene kao ravnopravne subjekte: one su
borkinje, bolničarke, radnice, narodni heroji i sl. a ne pasivne posmatračice. Sam
ulazak žena na tržište rada zbog zahtjeva urbanizacije, industrijalizacije, obnove
10
Časopis Nova žena izlazio je većinom u Sarajevu a u nekoliko brojeva u Beogradu. Prvi broj je štampan
na ćirilici dok su ostali štampani na mješovitoj upotrebi čirilice i latinice. U pitanju je službeno glasilo
antifašistkinja BiH a nedostaju brojevi 7, 11, 15, 16 i 19 te ovi časopisi nisu bili uključeni u analizu.
11
Glavni odbor AFŽ ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ - Zapisnik sa sastanka
Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945.’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo,
Kutija 1, 13/6, 1945.
12
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Materijali Drugog kongresa AFŽa BiH održanog 12 – 13. Jula 1947’, Arhiv Bosne
i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1543/109, 1947.
13
Horvat Srećko i Štiks Igor, Welcome to the Dessert of Post-Socialism. London: Verso, 2015.
14
Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke: društvena emancipacija partizanki u Srbiji, 1945-1953,
Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011.
15
Sklevicky, Lidija. Konji, žene, ratovi, Zegreb: Ženska infoteka. 1996. str. 134.
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i izgradnje značio je ozbiljno narušavanje patrijarhalne kulture16 i o ženskoj
emancipaciji od patrijarhalnih stega u BiH i Jugoslaviji može se jedino govoriti u
kontekstu socijalističke države.
Govoreći o odnosu emancipacijskog i modernizacijskog naspram patrijarhalnog,
balkanski patrijarhat posmatram kao kompleks hijerarhijskih vrijednosti ugraviran u društvenu strukturu predmodernih, agrarnih, pastoralnih ekonomija i kulturološki tradicionalnih i religioznih društava u kojoj dominantna uloga pripada
muškarcu i u kojoj su žene potčinjene u kontekstu zaštitnički orijentisane porodice
i domaćinstva17. U ranim danima NOB-a, kroz zajedničko učešće u partizanskoj
borbi, radu KPJ i Narodnog fronta te organizovan pozadinski rad unutar AFŽ-a18,
žene su počele zauzimati “upražnjeno mjesto moći”. U ovom smislu se i može
uslovno govoriti o privremenoj depatrijarhalizaciji ili depatrijarhalizacijskom potencijalu kao privremenom popuštanju patrijarhalnih stega koje su iznjedrili masovna organizovanost žena spremnih na borbu i promjenu, mogućnosti besplatnog
obrazovanja, ulazak u svijet rada19 te socijalna mobilnost unutar jedne generacije
za sve a posebno žene.
S ovim u vezi, ulogu AFŽ-a BiH na osnovu korpusa Nove žene dostupnog u arhivi
analiziram kroz:
a. Ulogu AFŽ-a u međunarodnom kontekstu,
b. Uloga AFŽ-a u borbi protiv fašizma i ostvarenju ravnopravnosti
(depatrijarhalizacijski potencijal)
c. Ulogu AFŽ-a u procesu kreiranja nove, jugoslovenske žene kroz zajedničku
borbu i sestrinstvo Hrvatica, Muslimanki i Srpkinja i
d. Ulogu AFŽ-a u procesu namasovnijeg opšteg opismenjavanja žena u u BiH
istoriji.
16
Ibid., 135.
17
Halpern, Joes, Kaser Karl, i Wagner, A.Richard. “Patriarchy in the Balkans: Temporal and CrossCultural Approaches” u Household and the Family in the Balkans, ur. Karl Kaser. Graz: University of
Gratz Lit Verlag, 2012. str. 49.
18
Dugandžić, Andreja i Jušić, Adela “Intervju sa Stanom Nastić,” Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena
Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, pristupljeno 21. novembra 2016.,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/285.
19
Ovo je konkretno bio slučaj mojih roditelja rođenih na selu u BiH početkom 1950-tih, koji su iz
siromaštva bili u mogućnosti da završe fakultete u Novom Sadu i Sarajevu nakon čega su našli
odgovarajuće poslove u Bihaću i tako postali srednja klasa u jugoslovenskom socijalizmu.
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a s obzirom na današnji trenutak u nerazvijenoj i siromašnoj, postdejtonskoj
BiH, kao možda najvećoj “pustinji postsocijalizma” u kojoj se sem kratkotrajnih
februarskih protesta 2014 slabo naziru mogućnosti društvene promjene. Ovo se
naročito vidi u
1. perifernom statusu BiH društva u odnosu na zemlje EU i nedostatku
internacionalizacije što utiče na samjerljivost i vidljivost socijalnih zahtjeva
i borbi u centru i na periferiji
2. nedovoljnoj kolektivnoj mobilizaciji žena u novoj postsocijalističkoj državi uprkos proliferaciji identitarnih politika i rodnom mainstreamingu koji
promoviše liberalne ideje ženskih ljudskih prava, individualizam i preduzetništvo a zanemaruje npr. prava radnica i nezaposlenih
3. nemanju jasnog odnosa prema fašistoidnim politikama usljed dejtonskiugrađenih nacionalizama potpirivanih kroz antijugoslovenstvo i antikomunizam, koji maskiraju odnose nejednakosti uslovljene autoritarnim kapitalizmom nove postsocijalistiške države a kojima je balkanski patrijarhat
“prirodni saveznik” (postsocijalistička repatrijarhalizacija)
4. nepismenosti odnosno nedostupnosti obrazovanja za najšire društvene
slojeve i generalno loše i korumpirano obrazovanje u zemlji.
2. Zašto arhiv? - Neki teorijsko-metodološki uvidi
Diskursivno-istorijski metod kritičke analize diskursa (CDA) identitete vidi kao
kontekstualno zavisne i dinamične momente koji se konstruišu, perpetuiraju
i dekonstruišu unutar nekog diskursa te u skladu s tim poprimaju različite
oblike20 i politički je posvećen društvenoj promjeni21. S obzirom na dostupan
istorijsko-politički kontekst i ranija istraživanja o AFŽ-u, tekstovima iz ovih
novina pristupala sam preko analize tema, kao hijerarhizovanih semantičkih
makrostruktura teksta22, toposa, kao osnovnih argumentativnih struktura u diskursu23, te standardnih tropa poput metafora i poređenja. Osim toga, pokušaj mi
je bio da kroz ove probleme i njima pripadajuće diskurse ustvrdim relevantnost
emancipatorskog potencijala u tom periodu s obzirom na današnji trenutak u BiH.
20
Wodak, Ruth, De Cillia, Rudolph, Reisigl Martin i Liebhart, Karl. The Discursive Construction of
National Identity. Edinburgh: EUP, 1999. str. 3-4.
21
Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. London: Longman, 1989.
22
Van Dijk, Teun. Elite Discourse and Racism. London: Sage, 1993. str. 33.
23
Žagar, Igor. “Topoi in critical discourse analysis”. Šolsko polje Vol. 20 (5/6) (2009), 47–75.
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Diskursivno-istorijsku analizu24 metodološki posmatram kao način na koji se
prokazuje kako se nanovo izmišljena tradicija i prošlost kroje da bi odgovarale
sadašnjici: propaganda iz perioda AFŽ-a 1945-1946 reagovala je na stvarne probleme žena s kraja rata ali o tome se nije moglo saznavati samo čitajući Novu
ženu već i arhivski materijal dostupan sa sastanaka AFŽ-a. Naša sadašnjica
se neumorno poziva na tradiciju ali u toj tradiciji AFŽ-a nema. U tom smislu,
koristan je kulturno-materijalistički uvid da je tradicija elemenat koji omogućuje
kontinuitet prošlosti i sadašnjosti ali i da je ona
kombinacija “namjerno selektivne verzije prošlosti koja se uobličava i
uobličene sadašnjosti koja onda moćno djeluje u procesima društvenog i
kulturnog definisanja i identifikovanja. […] Iz cjelokupnog mogućeg prostora
prošlosti i sadašnjosti u određenoj kulturi, određena značenja i prakse bivaju
naglašeni dok druga značenja i prakse bivaju zanemareni ili isključeni”25.
Kad je riječ istraživanju diskursa žena i o ženama u datom istorijskom trenutku,
koristan je Gadamerov26 uvid da što je komplikovaniji sadržaj koji treba da
shvatimo, to više pojedinačnih elemenata postaje relevantnima, a time širi i bogatiji mora biti i horizont shvatanja. Ulazak u arhiv iz perioda Drugog svjetskog
rata važan je kako zarad sticanja transgeneracijskih uvida u prošlost bosanskohercegovačkih i jugoslovenskih žena tog perioda tako i zbog sagledavanja interpretativne produktivnosti s obzirom na današnje probleme s kojima se žene u
BiH susreću. Samo se tad, uslovno, može govoriti o stapanju ovih horizonata (die
Horizontverschmelzung) koje omogućuje aktualizaciju benjaminovske istoriografije podjarmljenih gdje u svjetlu “iskustva sa prošlošću”, djelujući, “borbena, podjarmljena klasa…piše istoriju za sebe”27.
24
Diskursivno-istorijski metod (DHA ili engl. discourse-historical approach) nastoji da minimalizuje
rizik pretjerane istraživačke subjektivnosti, koja takoše podliježe uključivanju i isključivanju, i da
kroz triangulaciju, kao svoj fundamentalni i konstitutivni princip, djeluje na osnovu što raznovrsnijih
podataka, metoda, teorija, pozadinskih informacija itd. U ovom smislu DHA pokušava da “integriše
velike količine dostupnog znanja o istorijskim izvorima i pozadini društvenog i političkog polja u
kojima je neki diskurzivni događaj utisnut” (Wodak 2011, 65) kako bi “dentauralizovao ulogu koju
diskursi igraju u proizvodnji neinkluzivnih i neegalitarnih struktura pod određenim društvenim
uslovima” (Wodak 2015, 2). Pri tom ovaj metod unutar kritičke analize diskursa ili kritičkih studija
diskursa, diskurs vidi u vezi sa ostalim semiotičkim strukurama i materijalnim institucijama koji
zajedno reprodukuju društvo kroz semiozu kao process davanja značenja.
25
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. str. 115.
26
Gadamer, Hans, Georg. Istina i metoda. Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978.
27
Benjamin, Walter. “Istorijsko-filozofske teze” u Eseji. Beograd: Nolit, 1974.
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Upravo ova podjarljmljenost ostaje konstanta kad je riječ o mišljenju i djelovanju
nakon iskustva rata i poraća kao gubitka, siromaštva i periferalnosti, nacionalizma,
nezaposlenosti i prekarnosti, i nepismenosti koji opstaju sve do danas. Svi skupa
dodatno onemogućavaju organizovanje žena, ali i muškaraca, da promijene svoj
društveni položaj doprinoseći stvaranju te podjarmljene klase koja svoju borbenost gubi u nemogućnosti da artikuliše sopstvenu pozicije potčinjenog. Znanja
o AFŽ-u su u ovom smislu ključna za transistorijsko stapanje horizonata jer
nose potencijal zamišljanja drugačijeg svijeta i borbe upravo jer su ovu poziciju
artikulisala i organizovano pokušala riješiti što ću pokušati i da pokažem kroz
kritičku analizu elemenata koje sam prepoznala kao emancipatorne tada kao i da
o tome kažem ponešto u odnosu na sadašnji trenutak.
Zadatak istorijske materijalistkinje je da konstruktivno pokuša da (re)artikuliše
istoriografsku formu bez da se nostalgično vrati priči iz prošlosti već da je
“prepozna kao biljeg i trag”28. Samo u rupturi “gdje se mišljenje, u konstelaciji
zasićenoj napetostima, iznenada zaustavlja…i zadaje šok” leži “revolucionarna
šansu u borbi za podjarmljenu prošlost”29. Pored toga, baviti se arhivskim istraživanjem nikad nije samo “pitanje…prošlosti. To nije pitanje koncepta koji ima
veze sa suočavanjem s prošlošću koje nam je već na raspolaganju ili nam nije
na raspolaganju, nekim konceptom arhiva koji je moguće arhivirati. To je pitanje
budućnosti, pitanje same budućnosti, pitanje odgovora, obećanja i odgovornosti
za sutrašnjicu jer meta-arhiva i originala postoje samo “u budućnosti”. Ako želimo da znamo šta arhiv znači, “to ćemo samo saznati u vremenima koja dolaze.
Možda. Ne sutra, već u vremenima koja dolaze, kasnije ili nikada”30. Prvi korak
je svakako interpretacija arhivske građe koja “rasvijetljava, čita, i tumači svoj
objekat upisujući se u njega, otvarajući ga i obogaćujući ga dovoljno da s pravom
ima svoje mjesto u njemu”31.
28
Chowdury, Aniruddha. “Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin’s History”. Telos: Critical
Theory of the Contemporary 2008 (143), 36.
29
Benjamin, op.cit.
30
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1996. str. 27.
31
Ibid., 67.
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3. AFŽ i Nova žena
3.1. AFŽ i međunarodni kontekst
Periferni status BiH društva u odnosu na Evropu posljedica je internih trvenja u
samoj BiH u kojoj je jedini internacionalizam predstavlja geopolitička lojalnost
Rusiji, Hrvatskoj ili Turskoj. Ovome doprinose i ekskluzivističke a ponekad i fašističke političke prakse Zapadne Evrope i Sjeverne Amerike, poput kontrole nad
sve većim brojem migranata i radnika iz BiH i drugih zemalja periferije, rigoroznog
viznog režima, volatilnosti u preduslovima za članstvo u EU, posmatranja Balkana
i BiH kao “slučaja”. Danas gotovo da nema foruma u kojem ravnopravno učestvuju i
odlučuju žene tzv, Prvog i Trećeg svijeta a evropeizacija u BiH, koja se odvija preko
Kancelarije Visokog predstavnika (OHR-a) i Specijalnog predstavnika Evropske
Unije (EUSR-a), ne predstavlja ništa drugo do kolonizaciju nerazvijenog Drugog
kroz uvođenje liberalne demokratije, privatizacije javnih firmi, i tzv. slobodnog
tržišta, ekonomskih reformi i mjera štednje i o kojoj se pregovara isključivo sa
etnonacionalnim političkim elitama32.
Novu ženu u periodu 1945-1946 karaketrisao je jak internacionalni duh kako po
pitanju “Istoka” tako i “Zapada”. Posve se normalno govorilo o “Bratstvu bugarskog i našeg naroda” 33 te “Ulozi žena Albanije za slobodu svoje domovine” (Nova
žena 8: 17-18, 1945). U maju 1946. vidimo da je 3000 šegrta iz čitave Jugoslavije,
od kojih “u prvom transportu 150 iz BiH”, primljeno na šegrtstvo u “bratskoj
Čehoslovačkoj” kako bi se tokom tri do četiri godine stručno obrazovali (Nova
žena 14:12, 1946). U dosta brojeva javljala se i socrealistična priča, većinom iz
sovjetskog konteksta koja je opisivala pregalništvo, udarništvo i žrtvovanje ruske
žene “svijetla lica” kao otjelovljavljenje partizanskog obećanje života nakon rata34.
U avgustovskom broju (Nova žena 5:6, 1945), čitamo o posjeti delegacije sovjetskih
žena Sarajevu kao “radosti i sreći o kojima smo godinama sanjale”:
32
Majstorović, Danijela, Vučkovac Zoran i Pepić Anđela, “From Dayton to Brussels via Tuzla: Post-2014
Economic Restructuring as Europeanization Discourse/Practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 15(4) (2015), 661-682.
33
Nova žena, Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, 8 : 5, 1945.,
http://afzarhiv.org/files/original/c130e1fc9258a352e2e949767c6990e9.pdf
Napomena – imajući u vidu značajan broj navoda iz časopisa Nova Žena, u daljnjem će tekstu ovi navodi
biti integrisani u tekst i slijediti citate sa naznačenim brojem izdanja, brojem stranice i godinom izdanja.
Korišteni brojevi časopisa Nova žena dostupni su online na www.afzarhiv.org pod kategorijom Periodika.
34
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 119.
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Kad se na balkonu pojavila Jevgenija Žiguljenko - Ženja, heroj Sovjetskog
Saveza i pilot, koja je sama dovezla delegaciju, oduševljenje je dostiglo
vrhunac. To je pristupačna i bliska žena koju već odavno poznajemo preko
Poline Osipenko, Valentine Grizodubove i drugih hrabrih pilotkinja o kojima
smo čitale i divile im se još onda kad su se osposobljavale za velika djela
koja su ostvarile u narodnooslobodilačkom ratu. Ženja nas je pozdravila
ispred boraca Crvene armije, ispred žena koje se danas vraćaju iz vojske na
miran rad u fabrikama i poljima, da bi izvšile zadatke obnove zemlje onako
uspješno kao što su završile borbu protiv fašizma.
Iako je svrha ovakvog tematiziranja i izvještavanja bila je uspostavljanje internacionalne antifašističke svijesti i podizanje morala, kroz ove napise pozitivno su se
valorizovali hrabrost, žensko zajedništvo i solidarnost. Isticanje herojstva žene
koja se bori u ratu kao pilotkinja te avionom dolazi u Sarajevo, makar se “nakon vojske” i morala “vratiti na miran rad u poljima”, nema nigdje u današnjim
medijima a ako i ima, o njoj se piše kao piltokinji neke aviokompanije ali nikako
Crvene armije. Ovo stahanovitsko obećanje socijalne mobilnosti kroz napredak
od seljanke do rukovotkinje kolhoza ili državne funkcionerke, te društvene brige
o radnicama trudnicama gdje “buduća majka osjeća brigu kolektiva”, današnji
mediji ne prepoznaju. Zajedničke međunarodne mobilizacije ima u borbama
humanitarnog karaktera poput prevencije raka ili nasilja u porodici, međutim
zajednička antifašistička borba ostaje slijepa mrlja današnjih medija. Rad,
partnerstvo i materinstvo se tematizuju individualistički i konzumeristički, često
se pozivajući na topos tzv. “super žene”35 36 koja je uvijek dotjerana, ima vrhunski
posao i obrazovanje, troje djece i muža i koja može (da kupi) sve.
Kad je riječ o učešću bosanskohercegovačkih žena u međunarodnim ženskim
organizacijama vidimo da se one revnosno pripremaju za Prvi međunarodni
kongres žena u Parizu, čije je sazivanje 26. novembra 1945. predložila “drugarica
Koton”, osnivačka predsjednica Međunarodne demokratske ženske federacije
(Women’s International Democratic Federation ili WIDF). WIDF-u i Evgenie
35
Majstorović, danijela i Mandić, Maja. “What It Means to Be a Bosnian Woman: Analyzing Women’s
Talk Between Patriarchy and Emancipation” u Living With Patriarchy—Discursive Constructions of
Gendered Subjects Across Public Spheres, ur. Danijela Majstorović i Inger Lassen (Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 2011), 97.
36
Majstorović, Danijela. “(Un)Doing Feminism in Post-Yugoslav Media Spaces”. Feminist Media
Studies 16(6) (2016), 1093-1108.
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Cotton su prilično odsutne iz Zapadne feminističke istoriografije37 iako je to bila
najveća i najuticajnija ženska međunarodna organizacija nakon 1945. koja se od
početka profilisala kao lijeva i feministička okupljajući brojne komunistkinje ali
i progresivne nekomunistkinje širom svijeta uključujući SAD, Sovjetski Savez i
Kinu38.
Mnoge od nas, ulazeći 25. novembra u “Palais de la mutualite”, prvi put
smo vidjele dekor jedne velike međunarodne konferencije: dugi stolovi oko
kojih sjede delegacije i listaju bilješke i dokumentacije. Po stolovima natpisi
“Kina”, “Indija”, “Latinska Amerika”, “SSSR”, “Jugoslavija”, “Rumunija”,
imena četrdeset zemalja, četrdeset naroda, koji hoće istrebljivanje fašizma,
demokratiju, mir; zatim glasnogovornici, reflektori, tumači, koji već daju
neka obavještenja na tri razna jezika; nad tribinom veliki amblem Kongresagolub sa maslinovom grančicom i globus. Pred otvaranje, salom odjekuje
nervozni žamor na nekoliko desetina raznih jezika. (Nova žena 12:5, 1946)
Bosanskohercegovačke delegatkinje su ravnopravno učestvovale na ovim kongresima i izvještavale o njima, što dodatno upućuje na snažan internacionalni zamah
ženskih organizacija i pokreta sa širom političkom agendom, ženskih organizacija
tzv. Trećeg svijeta kao i onih sa socijalističkom, socijalističko-feminističkom
ili prokomunističkom orijentacijom. Kako su hladnoratovski napadi na WIDF
“negativno uticali na stanje, lokaciju i pristup arhivi WIDF-a” te na mogućnosti
prikupljanja materijala kroz metod usmene istorije”, dostignuća ove organizacije
nisu se upisala u kolektivno feminističko sjećanje. Donedavna nedostupnost
digitalizovane i pretražive arhive AFŽ-a imala je kao konsekvencu da se ovoj organizaciji, kao dijelu državne socijalističke strukture, ospori feministički potencijal
od strane Zapadnih feministkinja39 i da se revizionistkinjama nazovu istoričarke i
antropološkinje koje su prepoznavale feminizam u ženskim socijalističkim orga-
37
de Hahn, Francisca “The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF): History, Main
Agenda, and Contributions, 1945-1991.” http://wasi.alexanderstreet.com/help/view/the_womens_
international_democratic_federation_widf_history_main_agenda_and_contributions_19451991,
pristupljeno 20. septembra 2016.
38
Kad govori o nekim od razloga ovog isključivanja, de Haan navodi optužbe Komisije za neameričke
aktivnosti SAD-a (U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee ili HUAC) iz 1949. za prosovjetsko
djelovanje, kada WIDF-ov uticaj u SAD-u slabi, ali i fokusiranje Zapadne feminističke istoriografije
glavnog toka uglavnom na liberalni feminizam i rod (prim. aut.).
39
Funk, Nanette. “A Very Tangled Knot: Oficial State Socialist Women’s Organizations, Women’s
Agency and Feminism in Eastern European State Socialism”. European Journal of Women’s Studies
21(4) (2014), 344–360.
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95
nizacijama u Istočnoj i Jugoistočnoj Evropi40 41. Lepa Perović tako navodi da su
u incijativni odbor Kongresa “ušle delegatkinje Engleske, Amerike, Sovjetske
Unije, Kine, Francuske, Španije, Jugoslavije, ltalije, Madžarske (sic), Rumunije,
Poljske, Bugarske, Brazilije, Portugalije, Australije, Katalobije (sic), Belgije,
Grčke, Čehoslovačke i Švedske” te da incijativni odbor odlučio da se “proširi delegatkinjama iz zemalja koje još nisu zastupljene” te da “i kolonije mogu imati u
njemu svoje pretstavnike koji će biti potpuno nezavisni” (Nova žena 8: 5-6, 1945).
3.2. Borba protiv fašizma i ostvarenje ravnopravnosti
Ciljevi pariškog svjetskog kongresa žena bili su usmjereni na saradnju žena
cijeloga svijeta na sljedećem, prilično progresivnom programu koji ocrtava i ono
na čemu je tokom ratnih godina i kasnije insistirao i AFŽ:
1. Uništiti fašizam i osigurati demokratiju
2. Pripremiti srećnu budućnost novim pokoljenjima,
3. Dati ženi prava izražena u Internacionalnoj povelji žena.
Kao majci: pravo da rađa djecu u svijetu kojt je oslobođen strahota, bijede i
rata, u svijetu u kome će joj svaka vlada osigurati neophodnu socijalnu i
zdravstvenu zastitu i pristojne stanove.
Kao radnici: pravo da radi u svim granama industrije i da se bavi svim profesijama,
da za jednak rad prima jednaku nagradu, da ima iste mogućnosti kao i
muškarac za stručno obrazovanje i da joj se povjere odgovorni poslovi; da
se ukine eksploatacija žene kao jeftine radne snage i da joj se poboljšaju
uslovi rada.
Kao građanki: jednakost sa muškarcem pred zakonom i puna demokratska
sloboda izražavanja, mogućnost da glasa i da bude član sudskih vijeća i
međunarodnih ustanova i vlasti (Nova žena 8: 5-6, 1945).
40
Bonfiglioli, Chiara. “Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold War
Italy and Yugoslavia (1945–1957)”, doktorska disertacija, University of Utrecht, 2012).
41
Ghodsee, Kristen. “Untangling the Knot: A Response to Nanette Funk”. European Journal of
Women’s Studies 22, no. 2 (2015), 248–252.
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Antifašistička borba i ostvarenje ravnopravnosti poput prava glasa, zbog snažnog
uticaja borbi protiv fašizma u Španiji i ostvarene ravnopravnosti sovjetskih žena,
u Jugoslaviji datiraju još odranije. Prema riječima Cane Babović na Zemaljskoj
konferenciji AFŽ-a 8. decembra 1942., ova su dva zahtjeva predstavljala su ključnu
razliku između u početku zajedničkog angažmana žena u tadašnjem “ženskom
pokretu” građanskih feministkinja i rada antifašistkinja Jugoslavije čak i prije
početka rata 1941. godine dovodeći do njihovog raskola:
Napredne žene Jugoslavije, a to su bile antifašistkinje, smatrale su da
se borba žena protiv rata i fašizma može najlakše voditi tako da se žene
okupe i povežu u jednoj ženskoj organizaciji. Antifašistkinje su stupile u već
postojeće feminističke organizacije i otpočele su rad svih žena u Jugoslaviji
protiv rata i fašizma. Među ostalim akcijama koje su žene vodile za svoju
ravnopravnost bila je najizrazitija akcija za pravo glasa koja se vodila u
čitavoj zemlji, a koju su predvodile antifašistkinje i koja je u to vrijeme /1939/
imala izraziti karakter protiv rata, borbe protiv fašizma…vođstvo građanskih
feminističkih organizacija sramno je izdalo borbu žena pa su se čak i odrekle
svog programa tj. borbe protiv rata, da se ne bi trebale boriti i protiv fašizma,
jer su ta dva pojma nedeljiva. A kada se vodila velika borba za pravo glasa
one nisu bile samo pasivne nego su i sabotirale borbu žena antifašistkinja42.
Rat je bio na pomolu a veliki broj žena je ostao neorganizovan i KPJ je imala
potrebu da “kroz AFŽ mobiliše ženu da se pobijedi u ratu kao i da ubijedi žene
da će kroz pobjedu partizana budućnost za njh biti svjetlija”43. U tom smislu, AFŽ
je “najfascinantniji primer kako je relativno mala grupa komunista uspela da
temeljnim radom na terenu i u ratnim uslovima, a za vrlo kratko vreme, ubedi
velike mase žena da potpomognu partizanski rat, kako bi posle rata dobile
nova prava”44. Ipak, svo ovo vrijeme, odnos ravnopravnosti između muškaraca i
žena bio je ambivalentan. S jedne strane neosporne su bile muška dominacija i
patrijarhalna tradicija političkog vrha KPJ, budući da su partizanke govorile “kako
su bile poslane” i “kako su im dozvolili” da nešto urade45. Ovakva “muška politika”
bila je u vezi sa snažnom vojničkom i političkom disciplinom neophodnom kako
bi se dobio rat i u prilog ovome govori činjenica da su na Prvom zasijedanju
ZAVNOBiH-a, uprkos deklarativnom insistiranju na ravnopravnosti žena sa
muškarcima u političkom životu i u svim oblastima društvene djelatnosti, od
42
Babović, “Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ”.
43
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 114-116.
44
Katz, Vera. “O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.” Prilozi 40 (2011), 138.
45
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 106.
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247 vijećnika/ca, samo su četiri vijećnice bile žene: Mevla Jakupović, radnica iz
Tuzle; Zora Nikolić, radnica iz Sarajeva; Danica Perović, kapetan (sic) iz Banje
Luke, upravnica bolnice XI divizije i Rada Vranješević, studentica, član Centralnog
odbora AFŽ-a.46
S druge strane, prema riječima Milke Kufrin “jednakost (žena i muškaraca)
postojala je jedino u četi”47 i to su u ranijim intervjuima potvrdile rijetke preživjele
partizanke u BiH, Stana Nastić iz Sarajeva i Milica Stanarević iz Banjaluke.
Ratujući zajedno s muškarcima u antifašističkoj borbi, žene su osvojile do tad
nepoznatu slobodu i aktivno počele raditi na sopstvenom uzdizanju i jačanju svog
društvenog položaja. “One koje su do prije rata podnosile ćutke sve tegobe”,
“uzdigle su do smionih boraca za slobodu (Nova žena 1: 6, 1945)” ne želeći da se
ikada više vrate “na staro”. Upravo taj odnos “novog” i “starog” koji se promijenio
tokom antifašističke borbe dominantan je topos i u Novoj ženi pri čemu je staro:
Sjetimo se kako je bilo ono staro. U našim seljačkim kućama glavno je bilo
da žensko bude snažno i pokorno. Morale smo da radimo najteže poslove, a
niko nam ih nije priznavao…Bile smo nepismene i nismo znale šta se događa
u svijetu i šta nam se sprema. Govorili su da se žena to ne tiče. Zato nije
čudo što smo mi danas tako čvrsto vezane za borbu…Zato smo sve složne u
borbi da nam se staro više ne vrati. (Soja Ćopić, Novoj ženi 1: 7, 1945).
Kad je riječ o porodičnim pravima kao ovom “novom” koje je osvajalo društvenopolitički život, već u Fočanskim propisima, kao prvom pravnom propisu socijalističke Jugoslavije iz 1942. godine, jugoslovenska žena dobija pravo da bira i
da bude birana, uvode se građanski brak i razvod, jedankost pred sudom ali i
priznanje vanbračne djece, te jednaka plata za jednak rad, pristup bolnicama i
vrtićima, što su bili klasični socijalistički zahtjevi. Upravo u Novoj ženi 1946 9 i
10: 1-3, u kojoj se govori o ženi, djeci, braku i porodici u novom Ustavu, čitamo da
“vanbračna djeca imaju jednaka prava sa bračnom”, što je do tad bilo nepojmljivo,
kao da su “brak i porodica, prema riječima druga Kardelja, isuviše ozbiljne
institucije u državi da bi ih ona prepuštala nekoj drugoj organizaciji” i upravo će
država organizovati dječije vrtiće da bi majke mogle raditi.
O radničkim ženskim pravima kad veoma malo žena živi od neagrarne privrede a
zemlja je upravo prošla kroz rat, najbolje govore podaci o predratnom stanju vidljivi
iz rezultata popisa stanovništva iz 1931. U njima stoji da u BiH ima 1.138.515 (oko
46
ZAVNOBiH, dokumenti 1943-1944, knj. I, (Sarajevo: IP Veselin Masleša, 1968), 58-63.
47
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 99.
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46%) žena naspram 1.185.040 muškaraca od čega “84,1% stanovnika čini seljaštvo
koje živi od poljoprivrede, šumarstva i ribolova”48. S druge strane, Dobrijević49
navodi da je “1951. godine broj žena radnica, prema zvaničnim statističkim podacima, bio za 90% veći nego 1939. godine” kao i da je “najdramatičniji porast
zabeležen u Bosni i Hercegovini, gde je broj zaposlenih žena povećan dva i po
puta”. Postrevolucionarni period predstavljao je svakako istorijski prekid sa
agrarnom privredom i kapitalizmom “stare Jugoslavije” i stvaranju novih radnih
mjesta za sve a naročito žene i on nije bilo bez kontradiktornosti. Ipak ova promjena u vrednovanju rada nosila je obećanje posve novog, do tad neživljenog
života o kojem govori i Vida Tomšić, prva predsjednica AFŽ-a, u referatu “O radu i
zadacima žena na socijalnom staranju”:
Istovremeno kada nastojimo da ostvarimo jaku Jugoslaviju koja bi i u
privrednom pogledu čvrsto stala na svoje noge postavlja se pred nas veliki
zadatak da stvorimo bolje uslove za život najširim masama radnog naroda...
Ne radi se tu samo o obnovi stare Jugoslavije, ide se za nečim što je više.
Ide se za tim da se stvori takav život kakvog u Jugoslaviji uopšte još nije bilo.
(Nova žena, 5:4, 1945).
Iako emancipacija žena u socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji nije značila kraj patrijarhata,
niti poslove za sve žene, izjednačavanjem “interesa žena interesima proleterijata”50
tokom Drugog svjetskog rata i socijalističkog obećanja ipak je ostvarila ogroman
pozitivni uticaj na sticanje jednakosti i omogućila masovni ulazak žena u svijet
rada51. Pored ovoga, sprega borbenosti, antifašizma, internacionalizma i političkog prosvjećivanja ženama organizovanim unutar AFŽ, naročito u njegovim
prvim godinama, do 1947. “pomagala (je)… da se u prvom redu nauče državnički
misliti”, što je suštinski predstavljalo temelj za ostvarenje svih onih u borbi
stečenih ravnopravnosti52.
48
Brkljača, Seka. “Bosna i Hercegovina u prvim godinama Drugog svjetskog rata od 1939. do 1941.
godine,” u Bosna i Hercegovina 1941: novi pogledi : zbornik radova, ur. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo:
Institut za istoriju, 2012), 16.
49
Ivana Dobrivojević, “Od ruralnog ka urbanom: modernizacija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine u
FNRJ 1945–1955” u Identitet Bosne i Hercegovine kroz historiju: zbornik radova, ur. Husnija Kamberović
(Sarajevo: Institut za
istoriju, 2011), 19.
50
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 122.
51
Ibid., 25.
52
Ibid. 117.
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3.3. Zajednička borba: nacionalno sestrinstvo i jedinstvo
U dvije pjesme (Nova žena 12: 27, 1946), “Uz mangal” i “Žena s transparentom”,
Razija Handžić govori o “starim u novim muslimankama”. Opisujući njihovo
kretanje, u prvoj pjeva da one “u dugom sablasnom ruhu, promiču gluho kao
kroz san, ko uklete duvne, ko slijepe ptice, sa crnim velom kroz sunčan dan” a
u drugoj, da “ka moru žena, talasalo što se na svoj kongres prvi, jedna u zaru sa
transparentom, ko da bi prešla i preko krvi”.
Kroz “novo”, se isticao revolucionarni elan, borbu, jedinstvo i opismenjavanje a
valorizacija pojedinačnog stradalništva i žrtvovanje u borbi protiv fašizma bivala
je transformisana u stvar od nacionalne važnosti”53. Upravo su od nacionalne
važnosti za novu Jugoslaviju bili ključni “jednakost i saradnja između nacionalnosti
te hrvatsko-srpsko sestrinstvo” dok su za “tradicijom vezanije Muslimanke…rad
i priključenje AFŽ-u su značile i novi život”54. Ipak analiza Nove žene, ukazuje da
su upravo muslimanske žene višeg društvenog položaja poput Vahide Maglajlić,
“jedine muslimanke (Bošnjakinje) narodnog heroja”, njene majke Ćamile (kadinice) i čitave porodice iz Banjaluke bile zapravo liderke u širenju ideja NOB-a i
AFŽ-a među pripadnicama svih konfesija55. Interpeliranje u “jugoslovensku” ženu
koja je moderna i obrazovana ostvarivalo se preko zavnobihske ideologije da ona
nije “ni Srpkinja, ni Hrvatica ni Muslimanka” već upravo to sve, kao Jugoslovenka
i da se sve one bore protiv fašizma. Pregalnički rad na stvaranju jedinstva žena
u BiH bez obzira na etničku i vjersku pripadnost tokom NOB-a bio je nužan za
dvomilionsko omasovljavanje AFŽ-a ne samo kroz diskurs već i kroz jedinstvenu
antifašističku praksu.
Iz vizure etnički podijeljene BiH danas, prosto je nevjerovatno ovo simultano interpeliranje Srpkinja, Bošnjakinja (Muslimanki, a do 1974. muslimanki prim. aut.) i
Hrvatica kao i riječi Dušanke Kovačević koja o ovo jedinstvo legitimizuje njihovom
zajedničkom borbom za slobodu:
Za živote naše djece, za mir naših domova, da nikada više ne bude klanja
i ubijanja-mi smo se ujedinile. Jedinstvo Srpkinja, muslimanki i Hrvatica
objasniće čitavom svijetu otkud nam snaga za borbu, otkud nam vjera u
53
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 117.
54
Ibid., 116.
55
Duganžić, Andreja i Jušić, Adela. “Intervju sa Alijom Maglajlićem,” Arhiv antifašističke borbe žena
Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, pristupljeno 21. novembra 2016.,
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/16.
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pobjedu. Srpkinje, muslimanke i Hrvatice pričaće na kongresu o svojoj djeci
koja zajednički oslobađaju zemlju o zajedničkim poslovima koje obavljaju.
O Srpkinjama koje sakupljaju sjeme za popaljeno muslimansko selo, o
muslimankama koje nose darove u bolnicu i umiru po logorima za slobodu.
Naše jedinstvo biće najljepši dar žena kongresu, našoj mladoj državi, njenoj
sreći i budućnosti (Nova žena, 1: 6, 1945).
U istom broju, priča Jele Bićanić “Muslimanke u borbi” dirljivo opisuje stradanje
kadinice Maglajlić, majke narodne heroine Vahide Maglajlić, iz Banjaluke koju
“zatvoriše bijesni što nisu mogli uhvatiti njezina sina…No ništa nije moglo skršiti
tu majku kojoj je troje djece palo u borbi, dok je jedno i sada u logoru. Ona i dalje
vedro vjeruje u pobjedu. – Kad dođemo u Banju Luku, prva ću na stanici povesti
“kozaru”, često govori ona, - I tada ću kraj srca tri crvene zvijezde staviti!”
“Prve jeseni narodne borbe napustila je rođeni grad Ajša Karabegović.
Na slobodnoj teritoriji ona je krajnjom požrtvovnošću njegovala borce u
jošavčkoj bolnici. Četnički zlikovci prekidoše i taj divni poletni život.”
“Ujedno se provodila široka akcija za pomoć partizanima. Raifa Ćorbegović
pronijela je bombe u kolicima, pod djetetom.”
“Majka sestara Sarač gledala je svoje kćeri u fašističkim okovima, pa ipak je
i dalja kroz Banju Luku pronosila letke i municiju.”
U ovim odlomcima vidimo stvaranje i jedne nove muslimanske žene koja subvertira stege patrijarhalne kulture tako što pod zarom56 neopaženo rastura letke
ili kolicima pronosi bombe da bi sa svojim suborkinjama i suborcima gradila novu
BiH u Jugoslaviji. Ona je ta koja kao i njene komšinice požrtvovano šalje djecu u rat
radujući se novoostvarnom bratstvu i jedinstvu među narodima. Topos žrtvovanja
i hrabrosti isprepleten je sa ljubavlju kojom se ovo žrtvovanje opravdava:
“Samo kad smo doživjeli da se ovako volimo!” rekla je neposredno (kadinica
Maglajlić). “Zato ništa i ne žalimo. Moje je petero djece pod puškom, a tri su
mi borca pala. I ne plačem. Majke junaka neće plakati.”
U tekstu “One su pale za slobodu” u istom broju, spominje se da Vahida Maglajlić
“okuplja žene, sjedinjuje muslimanke, Srpkinje i Hrvatice, u zajedničkoj borbi.
Iskrena ljubav Vahidina prema narodu, koju je na djelu dokazivala, otvara srce
ojađenih srpskih majki i one je primaju kao svoju” (Nova žena 1:14, 1945). Anti56
I Rada Vranješević je takođe koristila zar da bi pokrivena rasturala ilegalnu poštu iako nije bila
Muslimanka (prim.aut.)
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fašizam, deklarativni i življeni nije trpio nacionalizme koji danas kroz istorijski
revizionizam rehabilituju nekadašnje fašiste i kolaboracioniste u glavnom kulturno-političkom toku nakon ratova 1990tih57 58: samo na kongresu žena Srbije,
ove žene su podigle “optužbu protiv onih koji su u ime “srpstva” pobili desetine
hiljada Srba po logorima i tamnicama, “koji su ubijali najbolje sinove Srbije ili ih
predavali Nijemcima” i “raspirivali mržnju i međusobno ubijanje među bratskim
narodima Jugoslavije” (Nova žena 1:14, 1945). Preko najoštrije osude ovih praksi,
Nova žena ciljano stvara ideološku matricu za gradnju novog zajedništva preko
iskustva stradanja na svim stranama:
Veliki su napori i žrtve žena Bosne i Hercegovine. Neprijatelj nije ništa
poštedio…Ustaše su klale srpsku djecu, a četnici su se “svetili” u vrisku i
krvi muslimanske i hrvatske nejači (Nova žena 1:6, 1945)
Na prvoj okružnoj konferenciji AFŽ-a na bihaćkom okrugu rečeno je da su “poslije
pročitanih referata, mnoge starije i mlađe žene, muslimanke, Srpkinje i Hrvatice
govorile o svome radu, borbi i patnjama, o zločinima okupatora, ustaša i četnika”,
kao i da se “po prvi put u svom životu slobodno sastaju i rješavaju o svojoj sudbini”
te da su “radosne što su doživjele da učestvuju u političkom životu svoga naroda”
(Nova žena 1: 19, 1945).
Zajednički rad je takođe osnaživao zajedništvo među ženama različite etnoreligijske pripadnosti:
Imanje narodnog neprijatelja A. Mešića zasijano je kukuruzom koji je
namijenjen našoj sirotinji. 100 dunuma zamlje treba okopati i ogrnuti!
Javljaju se od reda Srpkinje, Muslimanke i Hrvatice, građanke, seljanke,
stare i mlade. (Nova žena 5: 13, 1945)
Razvijanje narodnog jedinstva na krilima borbe protiv fašizma, kao novog političkog
jugoslovenstva, pratilo je priznanje svih etničkih i vjerskih partikularizama preko
kojih se gradilo jedinstvo na temelju zajednički pretrpljene boli i strahote rata
u kojem su i žene aktivno učestvovale. U tekstu “Hrvatice Bosne i Hercegovine”
(Nova žena 1945 2: 3-4) stoji da “hrvatske žene moraju shvatiti da se kroz narodnooslobodilačku borbu ispunjavaju vjekovne težnje hrvatskog naroda” povlačeći
vezu između borbi kmeta Matije Gupca, tog “neumrlog vođe hrvatskih seljaka”,
57
Radanović, Milan. Kazna i zločin: snage kolaboracije u Srbiji: odgovornost za ratne zločine (1941-1944)
i vojni gubici (1944-1945) (Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2015).
58
Čović, Bartul. “Povijest pišu gubitnici”. Novosti, http://www.portalnovosti.com/povijest-pisugubitnici, pristupljeno 10. septembra 2016.
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protiv plemića tokom Seljačke bune 1573. sa narodnooslobodilačkom borbom
budući da su obe u sebi sadržavale elemente klasne borbe. Kroz ovu strategiju
poistovjećivanja odnosno rekontekstualizacije borbi hrvatskog naroda unazad pet
vijekova sa NOB-om, NOB postaje odraz “vjekovnih težnji hrvatskog naroda” i ono
za šta su u “njegovoj slavnoj prošlosti davali živote najbolji hrvatski rodoljubi”
(Nova žena 1945 2: 3). Hrvatski se ciljevi tako poistovjećuju sa jugoslovenskim
a ne endehazijskim jer je NDH “nakazna tvorevina zločinaca”. Kroz biblijsku se
metaforu slijepca u tami, koji na Isusovu riječ progleda, veoma shvatljivu širokim
narodnim masama, navodi da je (hrvatski) narod, “dosada slijepac”, misleći na
period NDH, kroz NOB zapravo “progledao” (Ibid.).
Ipak, ovakvi napisi o zajedništvu su zapravo adresirali i dalje prisutan problem
nacionalizma o kojem čitamo malo manje u samoj novini a malo više u zapisnicima
sa sastanaka sa okružnih odbora AFŽ-a u Sarajevu i Banjaluci. Dok Nova žena
ublaženo govori o svećenicima sa “otvoreno neprijateljskim stavom prema
NOB-u” koji “na žene imaju veliki upliv”, kao razlogu zbog čega su mnogi Hrvati
i Hrvatice ostali izvan NOP-a (Nova žena 1945 2: 3-4), iz zapisnika sa sastanaka
AFŽ saznajemo da je situacija na terenu bila daleko problematičnija i da su novine
služile kao propaganda koja je direkto odgovarala na problem nacionalizma i
vjerske podjele. Iz zapisnika sa Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo od 25.11.1945.,
u kojem se dosta govorilo o izborima održanim 11. novembra 1945., saznajemo
da je uticaj klera kod hrvatskog naroda bio izuzetno jak, da “časne sestre trgaju
izborne plakate Narodnog fronta” i da se “u Čajdašu, hrvatskom selu puno kuglica
ubacilo u ćoravu kutiju” koju su popovi nazvali “kutijom za vjeru”. Saznajemo i to
da se “Srpkinje u zaboračkoj opštini slabo odazijvaju sastancima” i “da naročito
one s druge strane Drine neće uopšte da se miješaju sa muslimankama” ali i da
“četnici ometaju rad žena” budući da su “pred izbore ubacili letke i pripucavali
tako da se žene boje pristupiti radu”. Iz zapisnika sa Okružnog odbora AFŽ-Banja
Luka s kraja novembra 1945. saznajemo i o četničkim prijetnjama da će žene
iz kotorvaroškog kraja “ošišati samo ako idu na glasanje” kao i da “su se isti
slučajevi dešavali i na srezu Piskavica, Prnjavor i Srbac”59.
Jasno je bilo da je 1945. godina preloma pri čemu se ovi tekstovi javljaju u
mjesecu februaru kad rat tek treba da se zvanično završi ali je isto tako jasno da
će Narodni front na čelu sa Josipom Brozom izaći kao pobjednik. Nezahvalno je
govoriti jer o tome ne postoje istraživanja iz 1945. kako se običan narod osjećao
i koliko je zapravo susprezao svoje etničko porijeklo i pripadnost u odnosu na
59
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Banja Luka - Izvještaj o radu Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a
Banja Luka od 26.11.1945.’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 118/1, 1945.
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novo jugoslovenstvo. Ipak iz ovih tekstova vidi se znakovita ideološka interpelacija
običnog svijeta u jugoslovenstvo potpomognuta zajedničkim iskustvom stradanja
od fašista i želje za novim, boljim životom.
3.4. Masovno opismenjavanje
Kada je riječ o specifičnostima BiH u odnosu na ostale republike SFRJ, prvo se
mora istaknuti da je BiH tada imala, pored Kosova i Makedonije, najveću stopu
nepismenosti među ženama. S obzirom na običaje i tradicije Osmanskog carstva,
žene u BiH, posebno one islamske vjeroispovijesti mada i ruralne hrišćanke, bile
su mnogo izolovanije iz sfere javnog života uključujući i obrazovanje60 61. Širok
opseg prava kao i vidljivost borkinje možda su igrali navažniju ulogu u mobilizaciji
mlađih i obrazovanijih žena i radnica. Ipak dvomilionsku masovnost pokreta svakako nisu obezbjeđivale samo one. Prema riječima Mitre Mitrović62 “po prvi put
u njihovim životima seljanke su bile cijenjene zbog svojih svakodnevnih poslova
poput šivenja, kuhanja, sađenja, mljevenja žita za svrhu veću od porodične” a
upravo kod ove većinske ženske populacije u tom periodu, veliku ulogu u mobilizaciji igralo je opismenjavanje i obrazovanje.
NOP je stvorio novi lik žene u BiH, borbene, smjele i odlučne. One koje su
do prije rata podnosile ćutke sve tegobe, uzdigle su se do smionih boraca za
slobodu. Pred ženama su se otvorile vrata narodne vlasti, škola i kurseva.
One su, željne znanja, počele učiti (Nova žena 1: 6, 1945)
U društvu u kojem je obrazovanje bilo rezervisano samo za žene iz viših društvenih
slojeva, stvaraju se uslovi za najmasovnije opšte obrazovanje žena kao preduslov
za modernizaciju.
“Treba da objavimo pravi pohod protiv nepismenosti”, - rekla je drugacica
Olga Kovačić. Ni jedno dijete u našim selima i gradovima, ni jedna žena ne
smije ostati nepismena...” (Nova žena 5:5, 1945)
Na strani 20. prvog broja Nove žene prije impresuma, koji navodi da se prvi broj
štampao upravo u Sanskom Mostu, stoji poruka naslovljena sa “Drage drugarice,
60
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 27-31.
61
Popov Momčinović, Zlatiborka, Giomi, Fabio i Delić, Zlatan. “Uvod: period austrougarske uprave”
u Zabilježene - žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku, ur. Jasmina Čaušević. Sarajevo:
Sarajevski otvoreni centar i Fondacija Cure, 2014. str. 24-26.
62
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 142.
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EMANCIPATORSKI ELEMENTI MEDIJSKOG DISKURSA S KRAJA II SVJETSKOG RATA
izlazi prvi broj lista bosansko-hercegovačkih žena… Široke narodne mase naših
žena žele da uče, da se prosvjećuju. One traže štampu, one traže odgovor na
mnoga pitanja koja ih interesuju.” Upravo iz ovoga, a to će kasniji brojevi i potvrditi,
vidimo jedno insistiranje na masovnom opismenjavanju, naročito žena koje prati
ostale emancipatorske napore.
Već u drugom broju, dominira tekst naziva “Bosna i Hercegovina neće ostati
nepismena” (Nova žena 2: 7, 1945) u kojem saznajemo da je okupacija zatekla
zemlju u velikoj zaostalosti s kojom su “do juče uglavnom bili izmireni”. U istom
broju se navodi da je “prema podacima iz 1931 godine pismenost obilježena ovim
stanjem: u Bosni ima 31 posto pismenih, ili 69 posto nepismenih. Hercegovina ima
34 posto pismenih, ili 66 posto nepismenih. Nepismenost je nesrazmjerno veća
kod ženskog svijeta. U Bosni ima 39 posto pismenih muškaraca, a u Hercegovini
55 posto dok je pismenost žena u Bosni i u Hercegovini svega 15 od sto” (Nova
žena 2: 7, 1945). Takođe se navodi podatak da je u toku borbe u pozadini naučilo
čitati i pisati 12 500 odraslih. O ovom poletu i ideji napretka za sve slojeve idilično,
narodno-lirski pišu i novine:
Sa snagom ustanka narodne mase ponio je kulturni polet. Do juče uglavnom
izmireni sa svojom zaostalošću, kroz borbu za slobodu, stariji i mlađi, ljudi,
žene i djeca zaželjeli su da nauče čitati i pisati. Olovka i papir postala je
sastavni dio ratne spreme naših boraca. … Djevojka plete čarape, pjeva
pjesmu o borbi i napreže se da izveze slova na peškiru, rupcu i čarapama.
Čobanče, čuvajući stoku, urezuje prva slova na preslici i čuturici i traži od
svakog borca koga sretne olovku i papir da uči pisati. Omladinke i žene
čuvaju u njedrima omiljenu pjesmaricu i priču iz borbe. Pismenost postaje
obaveza na frontu i u pozadini. Nepismena bolničarka, pišući prva slova,
uzvikuje: »Mislila sam da je mnogo teže, da nikad neću naučiti...« Žena iz
Podgrmeča uči se pisati na tablici svoga sina i često se čuje i od starica toga
kraja: “Grehota je danas nepismen ostati”.
Zasluga za opismenjavanje prvenstveno se pripisuje narodnom pokretu koji je
“poveo na tečaj nepismene Srpkinje, muslimanke i Hrvatice da zajedno uče čitati
i pisati” (Ibid.) Alarmantna nepismenost poziva one koje znaju čitati i pisati da
poučavaju druge a opismenjavanje sprovodilo volonterski jer je svaka udarnica na
poslu obnove trebala “naći drugaricu koja će joj u kratkom slobodnom vremenu
posvetiti svoje snage i svoju ljubav da je upozna s knjigom” (Nova žena 5: 13, 1945).
U istom članku mlade skojevke i afežeovke kažu da “moramo učiti ako želimo
druge učiti” jer “će nas knjiga i olovka naučiti da cijenimo prava koja smo izvojevali i
pomoći da shvatimo našu slobodu i ravnopravnost, da upoznamo dužnoti časnog i
slobodnog građanina” ali i “osloboditi nas da kao nove majke odgojimo svoju djecu
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za srećan i bogat život u novoj, preporođenoj Jugoslaviji” (Nova žena, 5: 13,1945). Iz
Zaključaka sa prvog sastanka Prosvjetne sekcije Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a od 23.11.
1945. saznajemo da se zarad boljeg rada formiraju četiri podsekcije: podsekcija
za likvidaciju nepismenosti, podsekcija za vaspitno-politički rad, podsekcija za
opšteobrazovni rad te podsekcija za tečajeve.
“Nepismenost” je metaforički neprijatelj i treba ga kao takvog “likvidirati” odnosno
“obaviti pohod” na njega (Ibid) a “znanjem se trebamo naoružati”. Čitanje štampe
i opismenjavanje se organizuje po prelim i sijelima, u svakom selu i zaseoku gdje
se “zajednički čita štampa”, “skupno sluša radio”, a postoje i “pokretne knjižnice”
kao i “čitalačke grupe Narodnog fronta”63. Pored sekcija AFŽ-a za poslove socijalnog karaktera, koja se bavi invalidskim i dječijim domovima, u BiH jačaju i tzv.
propagandna sekcija zadužena za kampanje, radio i štampu te prosvjetna sekcija
zadužena za opismenjavanje kako mladog tako i starijeg svijeta čineći pismenost
preduslovom za izgradnju “nove” žene bez obzira na dob:
Tada se za tečaj prijavila stara 60-godišnja Zlata Halić i ostalim ženama
poručila: “Neka se sve mlade stide što ne idu na tečaj. Ja ću poći prva iako
sam već jednom nogom u grobu, ali hoću da umrem pismena. Darinka
Tasić iz sela Bijele…naučila je za osam dana da piše sva slova. Ovo je divan
primjer, koji pokazuje kako nove slobodne žene zadivljuju svojim radom kao
što su u borbi zadivljavale svojim junaštvom. (Nova žena 5:13, 1945).
4.0. Značaj AFŽ-a u kontekstu današnjice:
etnokapitalizam, repatrijarhalizacija, nacionalizam, nepismenost
Iako subjektivno, kako kvalitativnoj analizi i priliči, ključno za mene bilo je čitanje
arhiva kao vježbe iz kritičke pismenosti danas naročito zbog generacija kojima
je istorijski revizionizam etnonacionalno-kapitalističkih elita doslovno ukinuo
socijalističke i uopšte antifašističke horizonte. Rušenjem SFRJ i etabliranjem
novih nacionalnih država, znanja i iskustva jugoslovenske narodnooslobodilačke
borbe (NOB-a) i živućeg socijalizma, uprkos njegovim kontradiktornostima, posve
su zapostavljena i revidirana neoliberalnim, antikomunističkim, nacionalističkim
i patrijarhalnim narativima. Pokušaću ove tvrdnje raspakovati navodeći kako
vidim spregu njihovih međusobnih odnosa.
63
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a - zapisnik sa
sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine
Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/nedostaje broj stranice, 1945.
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DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ
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Uprkos proliferaciji identitarnih politika i dvadeset godina tzv. rodnog mainstreaminga koji je promovisao liberalne ideje ženskih ljudskih prava64, individualizam i preduzentištvo, danas se nudi malo “osnova za kolektivnu mobilizaciju žena”65 za razliku od perioda stvaranja nove jugoslovenske žene. Uprkos
ograničenjima i fazama jugoslovenskog moderniteta, mora se reći i to da je
patrijarhat tokom SFRJ opstajao, naročito u privatnoj sferi66 gdje je sve do
1980-tih godina, primjerice, nasilje u porodici još uvijek bio tabu67. Ovo se nije
do kraja riješilo, uprkos nastojanjima feministkinja 1970-tih68, a reprezentacije
žena u jugoslovenskom filmu krajem 1980-tih su već takve da ženski zahtjev za
beneficijama socijalističkog moderniteta, poput zaposlenja, rekontekstualizuju
kao nedostatno majčinstvo69. “Trebalo je ubiti stvarnu ženu nego dopustiti da
umre tradicionalni ideal žene-majke”70 i upravo će Bademu, tu “lošu majku” u
Kenovićevom filmu Kuduz, na koncu ubiti etnički osviješćen muškarac koji “ubija
za našu stvar” koji je “heroj a ne zločinac,” nagovještavajući prema Jovanoviću
ratove devedesetih koji su nosili etničku homogenizaciju i kraj socijalizma i za
koju im je repatrijarhalizacija bila nužna.
U postsocijalističkom periodu, zaoštrava se i podjela na dvije “naoko odvojene,
no u stvarnosti umrežene i međusobno ovisne sfere takozvanoga produktivnog i
reproduktivnog rada” koje su “hijerarhijski nanovo reorganizirane”71. Kroz repa64
Helms, Elissa. Innocence and Victimhood: Gender, Nation, and Women’s Activism in Postwar BosniaHerzegovina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.
65
Kaneva, Nadia. “Mediating Post-socialist Femininities: Contested Histories and visibilities”.
Feminist Media Studies 15 (1) (2015), 12.
66
Dunja Rihtman Auguštin, Etnologija naše svakodnevnice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1998.
67
Majstorović, “(Un)Doing Feminism in Post-Yugoslav Media Spaces”, 1096.
68
Sedamdesetih godina u Jugoslaviji dolazi drugi val feminizma, podstaknut studentskim
demonstracijama 1968. godine, a 1978. održava se i međunarodni skup “Dug-ca – Žensko
pitanje. Novi pristup?”. Skup je predstavljao prvi buran izlazak feministkinja na javnu scenu u
socijalističkoj Jugoslaviji, a fokus na žensko pitanje i problem rodne podjele poslova istaknuti su i
zvučnim sloganom konfederacije “Proleteri svih zemalja – ko vam pere čarape?”. Teme rasprave
na konferenciji bile su patrijarhat, spoj feminizma i marksizma, feminizma i psihoanalize, te
identitet, seksualnost, jezik i nevidljivost žena u kulturi i nauci. Razgovaralo se i o svakodnevnom
životu žena, diskriminaciji u javnoj i privatnoj sferi, dvostrukoj opterećenosti žena, nasilju i
opstajanju tradicionalnih patrijarhalnih uloga. (Čaušević 2014)
69
Nebojša, Jovanović, “Bosanski psiho: Kuduz, rat spolova i kraj socijalizma”. Sarajevske sveske: Da
li je Balkan muškog roda” 39/40 (2013), 156-175.
70
Ibid., 167.
71
Burcar, Lilijana “Iz socijalizma natrag u kapitalizam: repatrijarhalizacija društva i re-domestifikacija
žena”. Dva desetljeća poslije kraja socijalizma. Zagreb: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2014. str.114.
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trijarhalizaciju, reproduktivni rad je naturalizovan kao isključivo ženski a etnonacionalizam i dejtonska podjela, kao vrsta poželjne pripadnosti u novom kapitalističkom društvu, dodatno su galvanizirali ove odnose. Kako Močnik72 navodi:
U jačanju nadzora i zaoštravanju discipline dobro dođu oruđa koja su pri
ruci: religiozna ideologija, etnička lojalnost, tradicionalne vrijednosti. tzv.
obnova patrijarhalne obitelji, uskrsnuće tradicionalnih obrazaca, “retradicionalizacija” – sve su to novi načini društvenosti, koje iznuđuje suvremeni
kapitalizam.
Savremeni kapitalizam koji danas imamo u BiH kao vrstu tzv. autoritarnog kapitalizma73 karakterističnog za sve zemlje nastale raspadom bivše SFRJ čiji su
nosioci većinom bili profiteri rata 1992-1995 osigurao je raspodjelu sredstava kroz
etnička čišćenja a potom privatizacije. Kroz njega se patrijarhat se zapravo “vratio”
praveći kontinuitet sa naslijeđem kolonijalnog, agrarnog predsocijalističkog
doba. Kroz spregu institucionalizovane religije sa vlastodršcima, baš kao i prije
Drugog svjetskog rata, i novog, postsocijalističkog doba u kojem je moć jednako
tako koncentrisana kod etnokapitalista i klera, javile su se društvena retradicionalizacija74 75 i repatrijarhalizacija rodnih uloga i odnosa koje idu ukorak sa
trendom siromaštva i rastom nezaposlenosti.
Tezu o repatrijarhalizaciji zasnivam na depatrijarhalizacijskom potencijalu socijalističog perioda koji je u suprotnosti sa današnjim porastom mizoginije, diskriminacije, iskorištavanja i nasilja76 kao sastavnim dijelovima procesa restauracije
kapitalističkih društvenih odnosa. Unutar njih društveno-reproduktivni rad
se “klasifikuje kao ne-rad koji nije vrijedan spomena”77 zbog čega ekonomska
72
Močnik, Rastko. “Dvije vrste fašistoidnih politika”. Novosti, br. 677 (2012). http://arhiva.
portalnovosti.com/2012/12/dvije-vrste-fasistoidnih-politika1/, pristupljeno 20. avgusta 2016.
73
Dolenec, Danijela. “Prema reartikulaciji otpora ekonomskom liberalizmu”.
http://slobodnifilozofski.com/2016/09/prema-reartikulaciji-otpora-ekonomskom-liberalizmu.html
(2016), pristupljeno 10. oktobra 2016.
74
Popov-Momčinović, Zlatiborka. Ženski pokret u Bosni i Hercegovini: artikulacija jedne
kontrakulture. Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE i Centar za empirijska
istraživanja religije u BiH, 2013.
75
Leinert Novosel, Smiljana. Žena na pragu 21.stoljeća – između majčinstva i profesije (Zagreb: Ženska
grupa TOD, EDAC, 1999), 18.
76
Marina Blagojević, “Mizoginija: nevidljivi uzroci, bolne posledice” u Mapiranje mizoginije u Srbiji:
diskursi i prakse, drugo izdanje, ur. Marina Blagojević (Beograd: AŽIN, 2002), 31-55.
77
Burcar, “Iz socijalizma natrag u kapitalizam: repatrijarhalizacija društva i re-domestifikacija
žena”, 114.
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samodovoljnost žena biva dovedena u pitanje stavljajući ih “u djelomični ili potpuni položaj ovisnosti o ostalim članovima obitelji…na razinu socijalno i politički
obespravljenih subjekata. tj. drugorazrednih državljana”78, što je odraz međugeneracijske solidarnosti naspram državne intervencije u područje brige. Upravo
ovakav neplaćeni rad danas u feminističkoj kritici tzv. ekonomije brige79 stvara
dodatne uslove za izrabljivanje i potcjenjivanje žena preko skrivenog “polnog
ugovora”80 patrijarhalnog kapitalizma.
“Antikomunistički revizionizam postao je prevladavajući način sjećanja na socijalističku Jugoslaviju” koji opet “zgodno koincidira sa neoliberalnim ekonomskim
mjerama novih postsocijalističkih elita81. Danas teoretičari govore o tzv. postfašizmu elita u savremenim praksama novih liberalnih kapitalističkih država a koji
se ogleda u rasizmu, homofobiji, dokidanju radničkih prava, medijskim manipulacijama, birokratskim aparatima koji guše neslaganje unutar institucija te
huškačkim kampanjama protiv disidentskih grupa i pojedinaca. U takvom svijetu
žena rješava problem “kupujući proizvod” a neplaćeni rad u kući i materinstvo,
ideologizirani kao “prirodni”, zapravo stvaraju nevidljivi višak vrijednosti za kapitalizam. Dok se sve više produbljuje klasna nejednakost među svima a posebno
ženama, organizovanja nema jer ljevica ne uspijeva da artikuliše ove protivrječnosti i njima pripadajuće borbe.
Diskurs nakon rata 1992-1995 u BiH, proizvodeći isključivo bošnjačke, srpske i
hrvatske žrtve, trajno je razbio nekadašnje zajedništvo među ženama i malo je
bilo napora da se od ratnog iskustva stvori jedno zajedničko iskustvo stradanja na
svim stranama. Ovo ratno stradanje dodatno je pogoršano poratnim stradanjem
oličenim u iskustvima tranzicije i prekarnosti života u nekadašnjem zajedničkom
ekonomskom i političkom prostoru sada dva entiteta i jednog distrikta u BiH.
Osim rijetkih lijevo orijentisanih feministkinja koje imaju sluha za klasnu svijest,
a ne samo liberalni dnevni red brojnih ženskih i ljudskopravaških organizacija,
nemamo ni jedan politički glas koji na barem približno sličan način želi da zadobije
masovno povjerenje žena, simultano zazivajući Srpkinje, Bošnjakinje i Hrvatice da
zajednički ustanu u odbrani svojih prava ili kao protivnice narastajućeg fašizma
etnonacionalista. Takve interpelacije u političkom obraćanju svim ženama u BiH,
78
Ibid., 115.
79
Folbre, Nancy. Who Cares? A Feminist Critique of the Care Economy. New York: Rosa Luxemburg
Stiftung. 2014.
80
Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1988.
81
Krašovec, Primož. “Svi anti-komunisti su tigrovi od papira”. http://slobodnifilozofski.com/2010/06/
primoz-krasovec-svi-antikomunisti-su.html, pristupljeno 20. septembra 2016.
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109
i Hrvaticama, i Srpkinjama i Bošnjakinjama kao Bosankama i Hercegovkama,
kao nekad novim Jugoslovenkama, insistirajući na njihovom zajedništvu kroz
borbu, nažalost, ostaju marginalne i neorganizovane. Budući da nisu artikulisane
programskom agendom trenutno niti jedne stranke ili pokreta, one ostaju van
diskurzivne prakse, jer se njihovo uvođenje smatra preriskantnim po vladajući
dejtonski poredak.
Na kraju, ali ne i najmanje važno, kad je riječ o obrazovanju, rezultati popisa iz
2013. upućuju na to da sedamdeset godina kasnije, nepismenost u BiH od 2,82%,
ne samo da nije iskorijenjena već je najveća u regiji u usporedbi sa 1,96% u Srbiji,
te 0,8 posto nepismenih u Hrvatskoj82, pri čemu je od 89.794 nepismenih u našoj
zemlji 77.557 žena. Živuće iskustvo dejtonskog poretka koji već preko dvadeset
godina dodatno pospješuje etničku izolovanost i isključivost, što takođe pokazuju
rezultati popisa budući da su entiteti u velikoj mjeri etnički homogeni83, dodatno
čini nemogućim svako veće međuetničko žensko organizovanje koje bi išlo ka
državnoj politici širenja pismenosti i obrazovanja za žene naročito iz ruralnih
sredina i u trećoj životnoj dobi. 84
Kada sve ovo uzmemo u obzir kao današnji trenutak, vidi se da su promjene i
nastojanja tokom perioda Drugog svjetskog rata za vrijeme djelovanja AFŽ-a bili
emancipatorni naročito za one žene koje do tad nisu uživale nikakve privilegije,
seljanke, radnice, omladinke. Ostaci ovog naslijeđa u talasu postsocijalističke otimačine i privatizacija danas se samo naziru, a većina ih je potpuno urušena. U patrijarhalnoj, etnokapitalističkoj hegemoniji kakva je danas u BiH, a koju predvode
nacionalističke stranke kao glavni politički akteri sa agencijama Evropske Unije,
tradicija tako bira sukladnu prošlost kako bi proizvedenoj sadašnjosti obezbijedila neometan kontinuitet. U toj prošlosti nema ni Rade Vranješević niti Vahide
Maglajlić, a naročito ih nema skupa. Arhiv AFŽ-a predstavlja, ako ništa, kontrahegemoniju ovim režimima uvodeći u diskurs snažne akterke, žene, bez obzira na
klasu i etnonacionalnost, koje se organizuju, jurišaju na neprijatelja, rade i grade,
te mijenjaju postojeće društvene odnose.
82
Arnautović, Marija. “Popis u BiH: Nacionalnost važnija od pismenosti”, 30.6. 2016.
http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/popis-bih-nacionalnost-vaznija-od-pismenosti/27831061.html,
pristupljeno 13. septembra 2016.
83
Kada je riječ o nacionalnom izjašnjavanju u entitetima u FBiH živi 74 posto Bošnjaka, 22,4 posto
Hrvata i 3,60 posto Srba. U Republici Srpskoj živi 81,51 posto Srba, 2,41 posto Hrvata i 13, 99 posto
Bošnjaka. U Distriktu Brčko živi 42,36 posto Bošnjaka, Hrvata 20,66 i Srba 34, 58 posto (Arnautović
2016). O rezultatima popisa vidjeti vise na http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/popisni-rezultatinakon-25-godina-u-federaciji-vecina-bosnjaci-u-rs-srbi/27830387.html.
84
http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/u-bih-gotovo-90000-nepismenih
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5. Za buduće “veliko vrijeme”
Kako “bilježiti ugljenom” da bi se “oživjela žar”, da bismo pamtili ove borbe ne
kao “slike na zidu obešene” u kojima se ostaje “za vek-navek”, već kao aktivno
mobilizacijsko gorivo za današnje žene, kad su borkinje i afežeovke uglavnom
pokojne, a znanja o ovim borbama slabo prisutna u javnoj sferi, ali i u svakodnevnom životu? Uvidi u transgeneracijsko, suzbijeno znanje, rasvjetljavaju
borbe osvojene na talasu revolucije za koje su se izborile žene tog perioda, ali ove
diskurse treba reaktivirati smještajući ih “van homogenog praznog vremena” u
vrijeme “ispunjeno sadašnjošću”, jer u protivnom “ni mrtvi neće biti sigurni pred
neprijateljem, ako pobijedi”85.
Pisati o ovom velikim organizacijama i pokretima AFŽ, iziskuje ogroman napor
prvo zbog nedostupnosti njihovih glavnih akterki, arhiva, a i zbog složenosti veza i
odnosa u i oko njih. Uticaj AFŽ-a, naročito nakon direktive CK iz januara 1944. kad
je KPJ rasformirao njegovu unutrašnju hijerarhiju86 uveliko slabi. U članku “Za
čvršću povezanost među odborima AFŽ-a” (Nova žena 6: 9-10, 1945) vidimo trend
ukidanja interne hijerarhijske strukture unutar ove organizacije zarad potčinjavanja Narodnom frontu, odnosno narodnooslobodilačkim odborima u koji odlaze
tzv. “napredne žene”87. Tekst počinje generalizacijom da je “prirodno da se svaka
organizacija sastavljena od živih bića širi i razvija” nagovještavajući sam kraj
AFŽ-a i njegovu marginalizaciju u odnosu na Narodni front88 89. U članku se ta
odluka legitimizuje tvrdnjama da je “stroga odgovornost nižeg odbora višem”, pri
čemu se misli na odbore AFŽ-a, počela “odvajati (žene) od opšeg narodnog pokreta” te da je organizacija “postala pretijesna da primi nove antifašistkinje”, pa
su se “mjesto često začaurenih i zatvorenih odbora AFŽ-a počeli stvarati “široki
narodni odbori”.
O nejasnoćama zadataka AFŽ-a u odnosu na Narodni front, prestajanju sa radom
sa ženama i vertikalnoj mobilnosti samih žena kod nas najdetaljnije piše upravo
Sklevicky90 nazirući u tome i kraj ove organizacije 1953 koja ostaje “na margini
teksta povijesti”91. Uz evidentan nedostatak “autonomije cilja” organizacije žena
85
Benjamin, op.cit.
86
Jancar-Webster, op.cit. str. 148.
87
Sklevicky, op.cit. str. 120.
88
Ibid.
89
Jancar-Webster, op.cit.
90
Sklevicky, op.cit. 121
91
Ibid., 113.
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te “latentni strah” od “feminističkih zastranjivanja”, koji je postojao kod dijela
Partije, bilo je jasno da revolucionarni zanos AFŽ-a i njegov depatrijarhalizacijski
potencijal92, vidljiv i u pisanju Nove žene, neće biti dovoljno izdržljiv niti dug da
iznese cjelovitu depatrijarhalizaciju bosanskohercegovačkog niti jugoslovenskog
društva kojemu je zapravo trebalo “više socijalizma”.
Baš kao što danas nema širokopojasnog učešća žena u svakodnevnom, političkom, društvenom i privrednom životu BiH, niti artikulacije zbog čega bi ženski
angažman zapravo bio potreban u BiH, kod predsjednice Centralnog odbora
AFŽ-a, Cane Babović, vidimo sličan osvrt kad na Plenumu Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a
Hrvatske u završnoj riječi kaže “druga je stvar, što mi nemamo nečega posebnoga,
specifičnoga, neko pitanje za koje bi se mi kao žene trebale boriti”93.
Borkinje su prepoznavale značaj nacionalnog, jugoslovenskog jedinstva ostvarenog kroz antifašističku borbu, izvojevavši bitku za pismenost i obrazovanje te
jednaku plaćena za jednak rad sprovodeći koliko su mogle u praksi socijalističke
i feminističke ideale. Jugoslovenska žena, koja je svoju emancipaciju, ulazak u
svijet rada i ravnopravnost sticala tako što je rame uz rame sa svojim saborcima
ratovala protiv snaga nacističke Njemačke i domaćih izdajnika, znala je da je stub
borbe ali i da mora biti stub novog društva nastalog kroz borbu:
Odlazile su Hrvatice, Slovenke, Crnogorke, Bosanke, Dalmatinke, Makedonke, Vojvoađanke, Srbijanke, žurila se svaka svome kraju obuzeta dubokom
radošću sto zivi u ovom velikom vremenu (prim.aut. D.M:), što radi na velikom djelu stvaranja novog zivota. A u duši svake od njih čvrsne odluka
nepokolebiva kao zavjet: mi žene bile smo stub narodnooslobodilačake
borbe, stub natčovječanskih napora naših naroda u borbi za slobodu svoje
otadžbine, odsada ćemo biti stub njene veličanstvene izgradnje, njene
srećne budućnosti. (Nova žena 5:5, 1945).
Arhiv afežeovskih medijskih tekstova s kraja Drugog svjetskog rata otkriva obećanje socijalističke revolucije sa pregršt emancipatornih mogućnosti za žene
bez obzira na klasu, dob ili etnički predznak posebno kad je riječ o velikoj većini
92
Uprkos pravima, žene u SFRJ počinju da ih ostvaruju tek 1960tih godina. Katz (2011, 154) navodi da
je “jednakost muškarca i žene više…počivala na zakonskoj regulativi, a manje na suštinskoj
promjeni odnosa u svakodnevnom životu. Svoja prava iz četrdesetih bosanskohercegovačka
žena počela je više koristiti tek od šezdesetih godina 20. stoljeća, kada je i bosanskohercegovačko
društvo počelo bilježiti veći ekonomski napredak.” U ovom smislu takođe možemo govoriti o
depatrijarhalizacijskom potencijalu od nekih tridesetak godina.
93
Sklevicky, op.cit.str. 122.
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nezaposlenih, siromašnih žena koje kapitalizam može samo još vise ekspolatisati.
Pisati o onom što se ne može suzbiti u afežeovskom iskustvu znači ponovo ih
prisvojiti kroz današnje socijalističko-feminističke političke prakse kao blochovski
princip nade u kojoj društvena utopija osvještava i dokida ljudsku i žensku bijedu.
Ono znači ne pristati na i odupirati se statusu quo u kojem navodni nacionalizam
protkan patrijarhatom već dvije decenije maskira masovnu eksploataciju etnokapitalista proizvodeći djecu za rat i neplaćeni rad. “Stopiti horizonte” sa istorijske
distance znači repolitizirati taj status quo omogućivši “mjesto susreta” za neko
buduće veliko vrijeme gdje ćemo se, kad se sretnemo, moći organizovati za
borbu. Znanja o njima predstavljaju alternativnu istoriju ključnu za razumijevanje
budućih društvenih borbi za egalitarnije društvo, ne samo kad je u pitanju otpor
kapitalističkoj proizvodnji već i proizvodnji “nove djece za rat” što bolno odjekuje
u kriku savremene sarajevske pjesnikinje Dijale Hasanbegović94:
Ne dam djecu
za rat
govorim vam dlanova okrenutih prema gore
dlanova ljepljivih od kiselih žutih vrpci koje
krvnici nikad neće prerezati.
Arhivska građa
Glavni odbor AFŽ ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ - Zapisnik
sa sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945.’, Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/6, 1945.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Materijali Drugog kongresa AFŽa BiH održanog 12 – 13. Jula 1947’,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1543/109, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Banja Luka - Izvještaj o radu Okružnog odbora
AFŽ-a Banja Luka od 26.11.1945.’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1,
118/1, 1945.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Okružni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a - zapisnik sa
sastanka Okružnog odbora AFŽ-a Sarajevo održanog 24. i 25.11. 1945’, Arhiv Bosne
i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 13/nedostaje broj stranice, 1945.
94
Dijala Hasanbegović, “Djeca za rat”, http://darkocvijetic.blogspot.ba/2014/01/veliki-odmor-dijalahasanbegovic.html, pristupljeno 10.septembra 2016.
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Majstorović, Danijela.“Femininity, Patriarchy and resistance in the Postwar Bosnia and
Herzegovina.” International Review of Sociology 21 (2) (2011): 277–299.
Majstorović, Danijela, and Maja Mandić. “What It Means to Be a Bosnian Woman: Analyzing
Women’s Talk Between Patriarchy and Emancipation.” U Living With Patriarchy—
Discursive Constructions of Gendered Subjects Across Public Spheres, 81-109. Ur.
Danijela Majstorović and Inger Lassen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011.
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Majstorović, D. “(Un)Doing Feminism in Post-Yugoslav Media Spaces”. Feminist Media
Studies 16 (6) (2016): 1093-1108.
Majstorović, Danijela, Zoran Vučkovac i Anđela Pepić. 2015. “From Dayton to Brussels via
Tuzla: Post-2014 Economic Restructuring as Europeanization Discourse/Practice
in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
15(4) (2015): 661-682.
Močnik, Rastko. “Dvije vrste fašistoidnih politika”. Novosti, br. 677. Decembar 2012.
http://arhiva.portalnovosti.com/2012/12/dvije-vrste-fasistoidnih-politika1/.
Nova žena – list Antifašističkog fronta žena Bosne i Hercegovine, Arhiv antifašističke borbe
žena Bosne i Hercegovine i Jugoslavije, Periodika,
http://afzarhiv.org/items/browse?collection=5
Pantelić, Ivana. Partizanke kao građanke: društvena emancipacija partizanki u Srbiji, 19451953. Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011.
Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Popov-Momčinović, Zlatiborka. Ženski pokret u Bosni i Hercegovini: artikulacija jedne
kontrakulture. Sarajevo: Sarajevski otvoreni centar, Fondacija CURE i Centar za
empirijska istraživanja religije u BiH, 2013.
Popov Momčinović, Zlatiborka, Giomi, Fabio i Zlatan Delić. “Uvod: period austrougarske
uprave”. U, Zabilježene - žene i javni život Bosne i Hercegovine u 20. vijeku, 16-38.
Ur. Jasmina Čaušević. Sarajevo : Sarajevski otvoreni centar : Fondacija Cure, 2014.
Radanović, Milan. Kazna i zločin: snage kolaboracij u Srbiji: odgovornost za ratne zločine
(1941-1944) i vojni gubici (1944-1945). Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2015.
Rihtman Auguštin, Dunja. Etnologija naše svakodnevnice. Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1998.
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene, ratovi. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996.
Studen, Dragan. Borkinje. Beograd: Obeležja, 1982.
Van Dijk, Teun. Elite discourse and Racism. Sage, 1993.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Wodak, Ruth., De Cillia, Rudolph., Reisigl, Martin. and Liebhart, Karl. The Discursive
Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: EUP, 1999.
Wodak, Ruth. Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual (2nd. Ed.). Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave, 2011.
Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage,
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ZAVNOBiH, dokumenti 1943-1944, knj. I, Sarajevo: IP Veselin Masleša, 1968, 58-63
http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/u-bih-gotovo-90000-nepismenih
Žagar, Igor. “Topoi in critical discourse analysis”. Šolsko polje Vol. 20 (5/6), (2009): 47–75.
�KASJA JERLAGIĆ
Crteži olovkom
���HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT
ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI
DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
BORIŠA
MRAOVIĆ
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BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
1. Uvod
Bilo kakav pokušaj da iz današnjice razumijemo i valoriziramo dinamiku uspona
i pada Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije (AFŽ) suočava se sa pitanjem kako
čitati i razumjeti arhiv te organizacije. Problem je širi i ne tiče se samo arhiva
AFŽ-a već arhiva kao institucije koja savremenost omogućava kao kritički pogled
u prošlost, onakvu kako se pojavljuje u arhivima – tamo gdje oni postoje – koji
konstituiraju istoriju kao takvu.1 AFŽ je formiran 1942. godine u jeku Drugog
svjetskog rata (a ishod je dugotrajnijih pokušaja mobiliziranja i organiziranja
žena u okviru KPJ), kada se pred vođe naroda i države u nastajanju postavlja niz
teških i hitnih organizaciono-političkih pitanja. AFŽ se ugrađuje u tradiciju međunarodnog socijalističkog pokreta koja od 30tih godina razvija ideju narodnog
fronta kao odgovor na fašističko mobiliziranje i osvajanje vlasti. U istoriju
AFŽ-a upisan je ogroman fizički napor, najprije u organizaciji otpora domaćim
kolaboracionističkim i okupatorskim snagama, a potom i na postratnoj izgradnji
zemlje i struktura države. Historija AFŽ-a, međutim, svjedoči i o dinamičnom
susretu snažnih društvenih organizacija i ideja i mase ‘običnih’, ‘malih’ žena
koje su, zajedno i istovremeno sa svojim saborcima, stvarale jugoslavensku
istoriju. Iako ova istorija još uvijek živi kao pamćenje nekolicine, rekonstrukciju
ovog dinamičnog susreta uveliko otežava kompleksni istorijski razvoj od tada do
danas, mutacija našeg političkog pojmovnika i napuštanje prethodnih društvenopolitičkih formacija.
Rekonstrukciju mogu pomoći neki od osnovnih uvida novijeg kritičko-feminističkog
preispitivanja ženske istorije, prije svega oni koji se odnose na pitanja istorijskog
karaktera patrijarhata i efekata ove formacije na samo pisanje istorije. Pionirski
povratak ovoj neispisanoj istoriji koji je poduzela Lydia Sklevicky počiva upravo
na ovoj perspektivi koja inistira na fundamentalnom sadržaju ženskog pitanja.2
Razmatrajući različita razumijevanja ideje kontinuiteta u istoriografiji i istoriji žena
antropologinja, Svetlana Slapšak primjećuje da „kontinuitet [koji] u istoriografiji
nema naročito dobar položaj jer je često oruđe nacionalističkog imaginarija, u
istoriji žena znači nešto drugo. On se upisuje u jedan socijalno-kulturni oblik
koji poznajemo veoma dugo, kome ne znamo prave početke, a ni danas ga ne
možemo svrstati u prošlost – patrijarhat“. AFŽ i naše vrijeme povezuje upravo taj
kontinuitet, budući da on „nema nikakve veze sa etničkim mapiranjem, ne može
1
Parikka, Jussi. „Archival Media Theory An Introduction to Wolfgang Ernst’s Media Archaeology“ u
Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive, ur. Jussi Parikka, Minneapolis/London: University of
Minnesota Press, 2013., str. 7.
2
Sklevicky, Lydia. Konji, žene, ratovi, prir. Dunja Rihtman Auguštin. Zagreb: Ženska infoteka, 1996.
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se svrstati na jedan verski konglomerat niti na ideologiju“3. Iz ove perspektive,
organizaciona istorija, unutrašnji odnosi AFŽ-a i odnosi organizacije spram drugih
elemenata društva u nastajanju mogu biti rekonstruisani i kao rekonstitucija
patrijarhalne kulture. Onda je pitanje s kojim se suočavamo: kako razumjeti
historiju pomenutog kontinuiteta uprkos AFŽ-u?
Novije rasprave o AFŽ-u ispituju u kojoj se mjeri i na koji način u istoriji organizacije
sudaraju, izražavaju i kombiniraju dvije tradicije: socijalistička i feministička. Maca
Gržetić u svom govoru na prvom kongresu AFŽH u julu 1945. godine ističe da su
žene „do pobjede Narodno-oslobodilačkog pokreta u našoj zemlji bile dvostruko
neslobodne, dvojako potlačene“. Iako je teško definitivno utvrditi na šta je tačno
mislila Gržetićka, možemo pretpostaviti da je na umu imala važna pitanja koja se
tiču ovih dviju tradicija. Nažalost, ideja dvostruke neslobode, kao kriterija koji bi
mogao poslužiti kao mjera stvarne slobode žena, nije ozbiljnije razmatrana, pa
nije ni bilo ni plana dvostrukog oslobođenja.4 AFŽ iz rata izlazi čvrsto integriran
u novi poredak predvođen Partijom kao vodećom društvenom snagom koja
žensko pitanje, od samih početaka, smatra subordiniranim opštim ciljevima
Partije.5 Dakle, za Partiju je žensko pitanje, barem u principu, trebalo biti riješeno
progresivnom realizacijom narodne socijalističke vladavine. S obzirom na to da i
AFŽ gotovo bez ostatka zastupa ovaj stav, otvara se bitno pitanje o tome kako je
eliminisana jedna od dvije konstituirajuće intelektualne tradicije otjelovljene u
pokretu, te da li nam arhiv može o tome nešto otkriti?
S druge strane, ukoliko ovo pitanje za sada ostavimo po strani, može se reći
da je AFŽ nesumnjivo bio iznimna organizaciona društvena formacija čijim je
posredstvom žensko pitanje, u periodu postojanja ove organizacije, riječima
Adriane Zaharijević „posedovalo singularan i samostalan status, nastao u
duhu specifično socijalističkog aranžmana upravljanja“6. U jednom relativno
3
Slapšak, Svetlana. „Balkanske žene: rod, epistemologija i istorijska antropologija“ u Rod i nauka,
ur. Babić-Avdispahić, Jamsinka, Bakšić Muftić, Jasna i Vlaisavljević, Ugo. Sarajevo: Centar za
interdisciplinarne postdiplomske studije, 2009. str. 63.
4
Sklevicky, op.cit. 98, 107-108.
5
Jancar-Webster, Barbara. Women and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941 – 1945, Denver: Arden Press,
1990. str. 20.
6
Zaharijević, Adriana. „Fusnota u globalnoj istoriji: Kako se može čitati istorija jugoslovenskog
feminizma?“ Sociologija 57:1 (2015), 76. Zaharijević međutim potom dodaje: „No, upravo će u
okvirima tog istog uređenja, i to u trenutku kada socijalistički aranžman postaje samosvesno
zasnovan na još temeljnijoj jednakosti u samoupravljanju, samostalnost ženskog pitanja biti i
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dugom istorijskom periodu, AFŽ je najneposrednije osiguravao (i socijalnu i
ekonomsku) reprodukciju društva i novog društvenog poretka, i to neprekinutim
reproduktivnim radom i masovnim javnim besplatnim radom. Iz toga proizlazi
drugo i osnovno pitanje: šta nam danas – kad je naše učešće u društvu sve više
svedeno na pojedinačni rad na tržištu valoriziran isključivo u monetarnoj formi,
a patrijarhalna opresija duboko strukturirana u hibridnim fizičkim, prelaznim
i digitalno posredovanim prostorima – može značiti povratak ovoj organizaciji i
ovoj epohi, da li nas može uputiti na neka bitna pitanja i da li nas nečemu može
naučiti? Kako bih bar načeo neka od ovih pitanja u radu se fokusiram na period
od kraja rata do kraja postojanja Antifašističkog fronta žena (1953.) i nastojim
parcijalno rekonstruisati dinamiku konstrukcije herojske figure. Moja je teza (i
nada) da povratak ovim putem – upravo kao povratak ženskom u konstrukciji
herojskog – može naznačiti obrise neke nove figure herojskog koja bi bila u stanju
da u sadašnjost intervenira kao emancipacijska figura. Nešto od ove ‘figure koja
dolazi’ može se otkriti kroz otvoren, kritički i kreativan povratak kolektivnom
djelovanju koje je u našoj istoriji jednom već oprimjereno.
Tri su osnovna teorijska koncepta na koja se oslanjam. Prvi je Foucaultov
koncept dispozitiva. Dispozitiv shvatam kao široki institucionalno-idejni okvir i
sklop koji usmjerava opštu društvenu aktivnost. Unutar ovog okvira konstruira
se (relativno simbolički djelatna) figura koja me ovdje posebno zanima: figura
herojskog. U tom smislu, drugi važan teorijski pojam na koji se oslanjam vezan
je uz razmatranja Alaina Badiouoa koji nastoji naznačiti teorijsko-politički put
ka rekonstituciji herojskog kao figure koja bi čovječanstvo mogla izglaviti iz
gliba sadašnjice.7 Konačno, oslanjam se na koncept antropotehnologije – kao
istorijski konstruiranog seta osnovnih epistemoloških pretpostavki o tehnološkoj
konstrukciji društva putem „ispravnog vaspitanja“ – koju je kao interpretativni
alat pogodan za analizu jugoslavenskog socijalizma predložio Ugo Vlaisavljević.8
Kada je u pitanju sam AFŽ, osnovna teorijsko-empirijska referenca mi je rad
ukinuta. Ono od tada počinje da se tretira kao integralni deo klasnog pitanja, koje se predočava kao
ključno društveno pitanje na koje se sva ostala mogu redukovati.“ Vidjeti i raspravu koju je pokrenuo
tekst Funk, Nanette. ‘A very tangled knot: Official state socialist women’s organizations, women’s
agency and feminism in Eastern European state socialism’, European Journal of Women’s Studies,
21, No. 4 (2014): 344-360, te odgovore na taj tekst objavljene u Aspasia, The International Yearbook of
Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History: Is ‘Communist
Feminism’ a Contradictio in Terminis? 1 (2007); Ten Years After: Communism and Feminism
Revisited, 10, 2016.
7
Badiou, Alain. Philosophy for Militants, New York/London: Verso, 2012., str. 42 – 47.
8
Vlaisavljević, Ugo. Lepoglava i univerzitet – Ogledi iz političke epistemologije, Sarajevo: Centar za
interdisciplinarne postdiplomske studije, 2003.
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Lydie Sklevicky kojoj dugujemo ne samo obnovljeni interes za AFŽ nego i vrlo
važne metodološke i teorijske uvide. Kada je u pitanju primarni materijal koji
koristim za ilustraciju dinamike konstrukcije i artikulaciju herojskog, uglavnom
se oslanjam na materijale Arhiva antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine
i Jugoslavije.9
2. Socijalistički dispozitiv, heroizam i vaspitavanje društva
Dispozitiv predstavlja korisno analitičko oruđe jer omogućava obuhvatan pogled na sklop društvenih i političkih odnosa koji igraju konstitutivnu ulogu u
formiranju nekog društva. U opštem smislu moguće ga je razumjeti kao stratešku formaciju koja odgovara na potrebe većeg ili manjeg opsega. Foucault
određuje dispozitiv kao „heterogen skup koji se sastoji od diskursa, institucija,
arhitektonskih formi, regulacionih odluka, zakona, administrativnih mera, naučnih izjava, filozofskih, moralnih i filantropskih stavova, ukratko, ono što se
izgovara kao i ono što se ne izgovara... dispozitiv je sistem odnosa koji se može
uspostaviti među tim elementima“10. Oslanjajući na Foucaultovu definiciju,
Giorgio Agamben definira dispozitiv kao „set praksi i mehanizama (i lingvističkih
i nelingvističkih, juridičkih, tehničkih i vojnih) koji ciljaju na hitnu potrebu i manje
ili više neposredne efekte“11. Dispozitiv, dakle, istovremeno obuhvata i sklop
praksi i sklop institucija, ali i govor o praskama i institucijama, kao i njihova
povezivanja koja strukturiraju odnose unutar svake od pojedinih sfera djelovanja.
Njime su obuhvaćeni biološko-tjelesni, idejni, materijalni i institucionalni napori
na izgradnji socijalističkog svijeta kao novog, koji se praktično realiziraju kao
djelovanje organizacija i institucija posvećenih strukturiranju odnosa materijalne
izgradnje društva i njegovom idejnom utemeljenju. Tako i projekat stvaranja
socijalističke Jugoslavije možemo interpretirati kao dinamičnu konstrukciju
socijalističkog dispozitiva čiji je zadatak usmjeriti i organizirati novouspostavljene
radne, političke i proizvodne odnose. U tom strateškom prostoru se AFŽ razvija
9
Arhivska građa dio je građe Arhiva Bosne i Hercegovine u Sarajevu. Arhiva je u periodu od 2013. do
2015. godine digitalizirana naporima poduzetim pod okriljem organizacije Crvena, a dio arhiva je i
bibliografski obrađen i dostupan na: www.afzarhiv.org
10
Ovu „definiciju“ nalazimo u napomeni prevoditeljice u: Mišel Fuko, Volja za znanjem – Istorija
seksualnosti I, prev. Jelena Stakić, Loznica: Karpos, 2006., str. 30. vidi i: Jeffrey Bussolini, „What is
a Dispositive?“ Foucault Studies 10, (2010), str. 85-107
11
Agamben, Giorgio. What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2009., str. 8. prevod moj. Za kritički tretman vidi: Pasquinelli, Matteo. „What an Apparatus is Not:
On the Archeology of the Norm in Foucault, Canguilhem, and Goldstein,“ Parrhesia journal 22,
2015: 79-89. dostupno na: www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia22/parrhesia22_pasquinelli.pdf
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kao poseban element koji se u datom istorijskom momentu artikulira kao
odgovor na specifičnu urgentnu potrebu izgradnje novog društva. Proces opšte
izgradnje dispozitiva od samog početka operiše jednom značajnom figurom oko
koje nastoji organizirati društvenu energiju: figurom heroja. Istorijski se herojska
figura u pravilu vezivala uz imaginarij i prakse rata iako se neke tradicije razvijaju
i na nešto drugačijim osnovama. Do francuske revolucije prevladava figura heroja
kao figura individualnog „ratnika“, a nju revolucijom smjenjuje demokratska i
kolektivna figura vojnika.12 Badiou smatra da je naš „zadatak da se pronađe nova
herojska figura koja nije ni povratak stare religijske figure ni figure nacionalne
žrtve, niti nihilističke figure posljednjeg čovjeka“ koja bi trebala biti „paradigma
heroja s onu stranu rata, figura koja neće biti ni ona ratnika niti ona vojnika“13. Svi
su socijalistički projekti u većoj ili manjoj mjeri bili pokušaji da se upravo figura
heroja poveže s radom kao procesom, te da se time heroizam rada normira kao
najvažnija društvena vrijednost.
I jugoslavenska je istorija, posebno prve godine druge Jugoslavije, istorija
jednog ovakvog pokušaja. U ovom periodu se opetovano ispostavlja zahtjev za
herojstvom koji kao ujedinjujući označitelj treba usmjeriti svaranje novog društva.
Bitan je to element „antropotehnologije“ čiji je generalni zadatak da vaspitava na
unaprijed definisani način. Ekonomski je model bio jednostavan: „elektrifikacija
i industrijalizacija“ ali su, kako tvrdi Vlaisavljević, stvari bile mnogo suptilnije.
Po Vlaisavljeviću je fundamentalni element preobrazbe na kojoj izrasta novo
društvo epistemološka revolucija koja se realizira kao „tehnološka revolucija koja
je u svojoj ‘stvarnoj osnovi’ bila industrijska revolucija“ i koja se, iako u fizičkom
smislu realizirana „dalekovodima i stubovima koji su vodili do najzabitijih sela“ u
drugom smislu realizirala kao diskurs „koji je opisivao novu ljudsku i tehnološku
stvarnost, djelujući vaspitno“14. Antropotehnologija, kao znanje o „tehnologiji
oslobađanja“, kao tehnološko rješenje društvenog rada kao osnovnog mehanizma
proizvodnje ljudi, u opštem se smislu sastoji od materijalne izgradnje čovjekovog
svijeta, ali i od postupaka ispravnog vaspitanja ljudi. Ovdje treba tražiti objašnjenje
za relativno brzo napuštanje masovnih organizacionih formi – a posebno ženskog
organiziranja – koje tada određuju generalni karakter političko ekonomskog
razvoja nove države u periodu burne postratne konsolidacije.
12
Badiou, op.cit. str, 46 – 47.
13
Ibid., 45 – 46.
14
Vlaisavljević, op.cit. str. 50.
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3. Društvo naroda
Kako se dispozitiv uspostavlja neposredno poslije rata? U javnom političkom
rječniku, riječi „socijalizam“, „komunizam“, „diktatura proletarijata“ ili „socijalistička država“ najčešće se ne spominju. Figura naroda konstruisana u Narodnooslobodilačkom ratu izlazi iz rata kao pobjednik, pa i u političkom diskursu
dominira narodna demokratska terminologija: „narodna vlast“, „narodna demokracija“, „vlast radnog naroda“, „narodna država“ i slično. Ustav iz 1946. godine
ne spominje riječ „socijalizam“ već formuliše „princip narodne vlasti koju narod
ostvaruje preko svojih predstavničkih tijela – narodnih odbora i narodnih skupština“15. Državotvorna ideologija se nastavlja na tradiciju narodnooslobodilačkog
rata čiju ljudsku bazu čine frontovci unutar KPJ. U augustu 1945. godine formira
se Narodni front Jugoslavije (NF/NFJ) kao koalicija različitih grupa i političkih
partija s vodećom ulogom Komunističke partije Jugoslavije.16 Iako inicijalno
sastavljen od niza slabih političkih organizacija, NF se brzo homogenizira „asimilacijom građanskih grupa, koje su usvajanjem programa gubile svoju raniju
individualnost, ili otpadanjem onih građanskih snaga koje nisu mogle da slede
razvitak koji je inspirisala KPJ“17. Snage van Narodnog fronta podvrgavaju se
političkom pritisku i otklanjaju ih se.18 Osnovnu snagu NF čine „masovne orga15
Babić, Nikola. Na putevima revolucije, Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1972., str.125.
16
Bilandžić, Dušan. Historija Socijalističke Federativne Republiike Jugoslavije – Glavni procesi 1918. – 1985,
Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1985. str. 110.
17
Po Titovom mišljenju koje navodi Bilandžić, opozicija „nije dala ni jednu ideju koja bi bila bolja od
onoga što smo mi dali u programu Narodnog fronta. Ona uopšte i nema programa. To je onaj stari
lager neprijatelja naroda koji vuku točak historije natrag, a točak ih okreće oko sebe i, razumije se,
smrviće ih“. Bilandžić, Historija, 103
18
Petranovć navodi: „U sastavu NFJ nalazile su se i građanske stranke koje su mu krajem rata
prišle. Formalno gledano, načela NFJ su predviđala višestranačku strukturu zadržavajući
posebnost tih stranaka u organizaciji i njenim rukovodećim telima — što je bio izraz međunarodnih
obzira i težnje za angažovanjem svih rodoljubivih i demokratski raspoloženih građana na programu
daljeg revolucionarno-demokratskog razvitka — ali su joj na specifičan način umanjivala značaj
drugim odredbama. Pre svega, postojeće stranke morale su da prihvate program NFJ, a njihovo
članstvo da se uključi u njegove lokalne odbore. Nebitnih elemenata koalicije bilo je, s nekim
izuzecima, samo u višim rukovodstvima NFJ. Od ove formalne strane pitanja daleko su bili bitniji
stvarni politički odnosi. NFJ se od svog osnivanja izgrađivao kao jedinstvena organizacija masa,
koje su prihvatale i priznavale rukovodstvo KPJ u njemu. Postojeće građanske grupe nisu mogle
da bez spoljne intervencije ugroze političku čvrstinu organizacije, jer su bile malobrojne i slabe. Put
demokratskog razvitka, prema koncepciji NFJ, nije vodio preko višestranačke organizacije političkog
života, nego preko njene negacije.“ Up. Branko Petranović, Istorija Jugoslavije 1918 – 1988: Treća
knjiga: Socijalistička Jugoslavija 1945 – 1988, Beograd: Nolit, 1988., 43. Masovne organizacije se
angažuju da se izoliraju „nekomunistički“ dijelovi vlastitih tradicija poput „starog sindikalizma“
�126
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
nizacije“ – Ujedninjeni savez antifašističke omladine, AFŽ i Jedinstveni sindikati
radnika i namještenika Jugoslavije. Ideje i platforma Partije „nalaze svoj formalni
i javni izraz u programima masovnih organizacija koje je ona stvorila“19 dok
stvarna kontrola pozicija odlučivanja u novoformiranim tijelima omogućava Partiji
dominaciju na svim nivoima društvene organizacije, pa tako već 1947. godine NF
postaje, sa postepenom industrijalizacijom, „aparat za izvršavanje konkretnih
državnih zadataka i privredne operative, gubeći oznake političke organizacije“20.
Na osnovama herojskog narodnog oružanog otpora, tokom projekta obnove se
masovno uključivanje naroda, ovaj put u rad, konstruiše kao važna društvena
vrijednost i obaveza, a masovne organizacije dobijaju zadatak realizacije ovog
zadatka. Peti kongres KPJ stavlja naglasak na mobilizaciju masa „u borbi za
socijalizam“ i ističe problem birokratizacije kao veliku prepreku privlačenju
masa. Politički rad s masama definira se kao glavni zadatak partijskog djelovanja
a zadatak NF-a i masovnih organizacija kao: „objašnjavanje zadataka i puteva
naše socijalističke izgradnje, zadataka borbe protiv ostataka reakcije, tumačenje
konkretnih mera narodne vlasti u izgradnji socijalizma“ dok je poseban zadatak
bio razviti „nov odnos radničke klase i radnih masa uopšte prema radu, da
organizuju socijalističko takmičenje i podižu udarništvo...“21
Kroz NF narod ispostavlja narodu opšti zahtjev da dobre volje prione na posao
i da radi do granica izdržljivosti. Važno je ovdje ukazati na dvostruku poziciju
NFJ, koja vrijedi i za AFŽ, a koja, prema mišljenju Lydie Sklevicky, ujedinjuje
pozicije poretka kroz koji djeluje i pokreta u čije ime djeluje. Organizacijski govor
će biti duboko integrisan unutar narativnih struktura režima, ali će istovremeno
otkriti i njihov sraz sa društvenom realnošću ženskog stanja koji se artikulira
kroz stvarna povezivanja svojstvena pokretima, posebno onima čiji je osnovni cilj
omasovljavanje. U ovoj dvostrukoj poziciji treba vidjeti specifičnu konfiguraciju
moći i kontrole. Sačinjavaju je društvene snage koje konsolidiraju vodeću ulogu
Partije i stvarno političko iskustvo mobilizacije zemaljskog pokreta. Partija
među radništvom ili „feminističkih zastranjenja“ u AFŽ. Pripreme za izbore za narodne odbore
provedene tokom ljeta i jeseni 1945. godine podrazumijevali su „političko čišćenje“ tokom kojeg su:
„[o]tpadali ... oni koji su bili protiv revolucionarnih mjera, a ulazili u organe vlasti oni koji će
dosljednije ostvarivati te mjere.“ Bilandžić, op.cit., str. 104.
19
Sklevicky, op.cit. str. 108.; Čupulo, Dalibor. „Razvoj političkog i pravnog sistema Jugoslavije u
poslijeratnom periodu 1945-1968. - Pristup istraživanju i literatura,“ PP 7 1988: 203-248.
20
Petranović, op.cit. str. 57.
21
Rezolucija V Kongresa KPJ o osnovnim narednim zadacima organizacije KPJ;
dostupno na: http://www.znaci.net/00001/138_77.pdf
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eliminira osnovno političko pitanje strukture vladanja i preuzima zadatak
usmjeravanja opšteg društvenog razvoja kao ekonomskog, isključivši pitanje moći
iz jednačine novog društvenog ugovora.22 Iako će istorija Jugoslavije i dalje biti
obilježena različitim artikulacijama nacionalnog i radničkog pitanja, „ekonomska
baza“ ostaje osnovna preokupacija kreacije društveno političkih struktura.
Uvedeno je opšte takmičenje koje se 1946. godine pretvara u „masovan pokret,
koji je obuhvatao 60 procenata radnika i službenika“23. Iako je danas teško
pojmiti razmjere i karakter ovako masovne mobilizacije, ona je doista označila
prekretnicu u stvaranju jugoslavenskog društva. Većinu stanovništva sačinjavalo
je seosko stanovništvo dok je radništvo obuhvatalo značajno manji procenat
populacije. U zemlju pristižu ograničena finansijska sredstva i robne donacije,
međutim „u uslovima opustošenosti zemlje, opšte oskudice, ugašene razmene s
inostranstvom — mobilizacija masa [je] bila jedino sredstvo za izvođenje obnove“24.
Važan primjer je slučaj masovnog organiziranja omladine. Omladinski pokret iz
rata izlazi sa naslijeđem ogromnog direktnog ratnog angažmana zahvaljujući
kojem značajan broj rukovodećih pozicija zauzimaju upravo mladi. Uspostavlja
se kontinuitet između borbe u ratu i obnove zemlje; obnova je „sastavni... dio
one velike borbe na bojnom polju u kojoj su ginule desetine hiljada omladinaca
i omladinki“. Na formalnom poslijeratnom utemeljenju omladinskog pokreta u
BiH tokom prvog Kongresa Ujedinjenoga saveza antifašističke omladine Bosne
i Hercegovine od 6. do 9. aprila 1945. u Sarajevu, i omladina se priključuje
natjecanju.
Vrhunac masovne mobilizacije omladine jesu Omladinske radne akcije koje su
sve do 1988. godine postojale i kao pokret i kao organizacija – iako su zaista
22
Bilandžić, op.cit. str. 111.
23
Petranović, op.cit. str. 79
24
Bilandžić piše: „Modema radnička klasa zapravo se tek stvarala uglavnom iz redova seljaštva.
Zbog njezine malobrojnosti, mladosti, pa i nedovoljne angažiranosti u oružanoj revoluciji,
samo djelo velike prekretnice nije njezino neposredno djelo, već čin Komunističke partije,
točnije — njezina političkog vrha. Ali radnička klasa vidjela je u tome nov revolucionarni korak
koji će zaustaviti proces da ona postane puko oruđe ekonomske moći i političke vlasti birokratskotehnokratskog upravljačkog sloja, u što bi se revolucija neizbježno morala izroditi da je ostala
na starim naslijeđenim idejno-teorijskim osnovama.“ Bilandžić, op.cit. str. 207.; Petranović
navodi: „Za ‘samopregoran rad’ u toku takmičenja sticalo se udarničko zvanje. Tokom 1946. radno
takmičenje se pretvorilo u masovan pokret, koji je obuhvatao 60% radnika i službenika. Štampa
je popularisala stahanovski pokret u SSSR-u koji će u Jugoslaviji dovesti do pojave heroja rada
poput Alije Sirotanovića i njegovih sledbenika. Mase radnika i seljaka, naročito omladine, davale su
dobrovoljnom radu polet i širinu.“ Petranović, op.cit. str. 207.
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BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
značajno djelovale samo krajem 40tih prošlog vijeka.25 Podaci pokazuju da je do
1947. godine u radnim akcijama učestvovalo i do 85 procenata omladine. Masovni
dobrovoljni angažman omladine karakterističan za prve poratne godine upućuje
na produktivni susret impulsa koji poredak odašilje i uprizoruje kroz masovnu
organizaciju i osjećaj da se može samo naprijed. U ovom periodu, tvrdi Petranović,
„dobrovoljnost nije samo nadoknađivala finansijska sredstva i mašine nego i
iskazivala nov odnos prema radu“26, što fenomen radnih akcija jasno ilustrira. Te
akcije, međutim, nisu samo puki radni napor već i element antropotehnologije
novog režima. One imaju poseban političko-vaspitni karakter jer „kuju i prekaljuju
i izlaze iz rada novi ljudi sa novim pojmovima o radu. Stvara se jedan radni kolektiv
koji se ponosi svojim radom, ono što on stvara svojim sopstvenim rukama“27.
Ubrzo se, međutim, masovni dobrovoljni rad, iz prije svega tehničkih razloga i
u skladu sa „tehnološkom“ paradigmom na kojoj počiva novi režim, postepeno
zamjenjuje plaćenim industrijskim radom. Do 1948. godine masovni model
društvenog uključivanja postaje sve manje simbolički efektan i počinje gubiti
stvarnu mobilizacijsku snagu. Ipak, čak i 1949. godine, među vođstvom Partije
vlada stav da samo široke narodne mase mogu biti nosioci revolucije, te Edvard
Kardelj, dugogodišnji visoki funkcioner KPJ, govori:
Socijalizam može da raste samo iz inicijative milionskih masa, uz pravilnu
ulogu proleterske partije, odnosno najnaprednijih socijalističkih snaga.
Prema tome, razvitak socijalizma ne može ići nikakvim drugim putem nego
putem stalnog produbljivanja socijalističke demokratije u smislu sve veće
samouprave narodnih masa, u smislu sve većeg privlačenja k radu državne
mašine – od najnižeg organa da najviših, u smislu učešća upravljanja u
svakom pojedinom preduzeću, ustanovi, itd.28
25
Vejzagić, Saša.The importance of Youth Labour Actions in Socialist Yugoslavia 1948-1950: The
case study of the Motorway „Brotherhood-Unity“, Magistarska teza (Budapest: Central European
University, 2013). 4. Činjenica je da skoro 60 godina ove organizacije (1941–1988.) ostaje još uvijek
slabo istražena tema.; vidi i: Muhamed Nametak, „Uloga omladinskih radnih akcija u stvaranju
socijalističkoga društva u Bosni i Hercegovini 1945. – 1952. godine“, Časopis za Savremenu
Povijest 3 (2014): 437-452.
26
Petranović, op.cit. str. 81., kurziv moj
27
Erak, Zoran. ur. Tito i mladi, Beograd: Mladost, 1980., str. 19. Akcije funkcioniraju i kao neposredni
prostori vaspitanja i obrazovanja, čak i u krajnje doslovno: samo tokom dvije radne akcije, Brčko
– Banovići i Šamac – Sarajevo, 1946. i 1947. godine opismenjeno je gotovo 22.000 mladih.
Nametak, op.cit. str. 446.
28
Kardelj, Edvard. navedeno iz govora Vladimira Bakarića na komemorativnoj sjednici iz februara
1979. u: Josip Arnautović i dr. ur. Edvard Kardelj, 1910-1979, Beograd: Novinska agencija Tanjug,
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Vidimo ovdje još uvijek vrlo čvrsto artikulisanu ideju masovnog socijalizma,
kao i naznake nečega što bismo mogli nazvati ideja masovne države uz donekle
limitiranu ulogu partije. Razvoj je međutim ubrzo krenuo drugim pravcem: nakon
transformacije 1950. godine, kada se ekonomija organizira na sve originalnijim,
novouspostavljenim principima, jenjava i masovno organiziranje kao temeljni
element modusa društvenog razvoja.
4. Paradigma proizvodnje
Dispozitiv nikada nije homogeno polje već se konstruira ispresjecan društvenim
silama koje ga potvrđuju i dovode u pitanje. Ovo je posebno vidljivo u Jugoslaviji
nakon Drugog svjetskog rata. U periodu o kojem govorimo, širom Jugoslavije
još uvijek su operabilne ustaške i četničke snage, ispituje se i utvđuje učešće
pojedinaca u ratu, ojačava se figura naroda i tek se sklapa osnovna institucionalna
struktura nove države. Druga strana ovog procesa su objektivne okolnosti unutar
kojih se nastoje realizirati materijalni i simbolički ciljevi. Izgradnja jugoslavenskog
socijalizma do juna 1948. godine počiva na bliskim praktičnim i teorijskim
odnosima sa SSSR-om na čelu sa Staljinom. Zbog toga se rani poslijeratni period
uglavnom sastojao od praktičnih aktivnosti na uspostavi sovjetskog modela sa dva
osnovna elementa: državnim vlasništvom i centralnim planiranjem, što je trebalo
omogućiti nizom ekonomskih i administrativnih mjera poput kontrole cijena,
ograničavanja slobodne trgovine, utvrđivanja najamnina i plata, organiziranog
snabdijevanja itd.
Na istom se tragu 1945. godine poduzima i progresivna nacionalizacija koja počinje
redistribucijom veleposjedničkih poljoprivrednih resursa i posjeda kolaboratora.
Godine 1946. nacionalizira se privatni kapital u rudarstvu, industriji, bankarstvu,
trgovini na veliko i saobraćaju, a kasnije i u malotrgovini i ugostiteljstvu. Planiranje
je ozakonjeno Ustavom iz 1946. godine i već naredne godine se uspostavlja
osnovni aparat za centralno planiranje. Godine 1947. donosi se prvi petogodišnji
plan postavljen „na razinu općenarodnog patriotskog cilja“29. Eliminišući utjecaj
privatnog kapitala i realiziravši prelaz na državno vlasništvo, novi poredak uspijeva
ostvariti ono što se smatralo osnovom socijalističkog projekta. Inicijalni rezultati
su bili vrlo dobri. Godine 1947. dostiže se, uz ogromne napore, stepen predratne
1979., str. 29.
29
Vera Katz, Društveni i ekonomski razvoj Bosne i Hercegovine 1945-1953., Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju,
2011., str. 14. O ciljevima prvog petogodišnjeg plana vidi i: Babić, op.cit. str. 131.
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ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
proizvodnje. Kroz rast investicija i velik broj novih radnih mjesta, ubrzavaju se i
podstiču masovna urbanizacija i industrijalizacija.30
Rezolucija Informbiroa od 28. juna 1948. godine temeljito protresa ideološko
samopoimanje jugoslavenskog komunističkog vrha i u značajnoj mjeri utječe
na transformacije društveno-ekonomskog modela. Rukovodstvo KPJ na svom V
kongresu, nedugo nakon Rezolucije, još uvijek, iako zbunjeno, stoji na sovjetskoj
liniji te odlučuje da na sovjetske optužbe odgovori djelima koja podrazumjevaju
daljnje ubrzanje i proširenje kolektivizacije i nacionalizacije.31 Uskoro će se osjetiti
i ekonomske posljedice. Raskidaju se ugovori sa SSSR-om i drugim zemljama
Istočnog bloka, poništavaju se krediti i zavodi ekonomski bojkot zbog kojeg je
Jugoslavija prisiljena uspostavljati nove uvozne i izvozne veze. U ovakvim uslovima,
masovna mobilizacija postaje urgentna političko ekonomska strategija. Država u
decembru 1948. godine uvodi sistem posebnih priznanja, „moralnih stimulacija“,
te ističe simboličke figure udarnika, prvaka, heroja rada i niz drugih posebno
vrijednih oblika radnog angažovanja u poljoprivredi, što je trebalo stimulisati
posvećeni rad.32 Heroizam rada se tako institucionalizira kao zvanično prepoznat
30
Za investicije up. Branko Horvat, Privredni sistem i ekonomska politika Jugoslavije, Beograd: Institut
ekonomskih nauka, 1970., str. 34.; Kada je u pitanju zapošljavanje, u 1945. godini radništvo
obuhvata 461 000 osoba, u 1946. godini 721.000, dakle novih 260.000, u 1947. godini 1.167.000,
dakle novih 446.000, u 1948. godini 1.517.000, dakle novih 350.000, a u 1949. godini 1.990.000 dakle
473.000 novih radnika i službenika.
31
Dedijer, Vladimir. Izgubljena bitka Josifa Visarionoviča Staljina, Beograd: Rad, 1978., str. 186.
Kolektivizacija je usporena tek krajem 1949. godine odlukama plenuma KPJ održanog 29. i 30.
decembra 1949. godine.
32
Bilandžić navodi: „Radi većeg zalaganja radnika i službenika na radnom mjestu propisima savezne
vlade bilo je utvrđeno da se svaki rad pokuša normirati, pa se s tim u vezi propisima određivala
i visina nagrade prema visini norme. Savezni propisi utvrdili su i sistem moralne stimulacije.
Zakonom o počasnim zvanjima trudbenika od 8. prosinca 1948. godine uvode se ova počasna
zvanja za radne podvige: udarnik, prvak socijalističkog rada, junak socijalističkog rada narodne
republike, junak socijalističkog rada FNRJ; zaslužni zemljoradnik, zaslužni zemljoradnik zadrugar,
istaknuti zemljoradnik zadrugar narodne republike, istaknuti zemljoradnik zadrugar FNRJ; a za
radne kolektive: udarni kolektiv, kolektiv prvak socijalističkog rada, kolektiv prvak socijalističkog
rada narodne republike, kolektiv prvak socijalističkog rada FNRJ; za zadruge: zadruga borac za
visoki prinos, zaslužna zadruga, zadruga prvak narodne republike, zadruga prvak FNRJ.“ Bilandžić,
op.cit. str 123. Orden junaka socijalističkog rada Zakonom o odlikovanjima (14, 11. 1955.) svrstan je
u odlikovanja za građanske zasluge, kao drugi u rangu, iza Ordena Jugoslavenske velike
zvijezde a ispred Ordena narodnog oslobođenja. Prema ovom zakonu Orden junaka socijalističkog
rada dodjeljivao se „ ...pojedincima, vojnim jedinicama, ustanovama i privrednim i društvenim
organizacijama koji izvrše izvanredne radne podvige ili pokažu druge izvanredne rezultate i time
steknu osobite zasluge u oblasti privrednog, društvenog, naučnog i kulturnog razvitka zemlje“.
Sadržaj i obuhvat formalnog priznanja mijenjaju se i dopunjavaju nekoliko puta do 1976. godine,
nakon čega se više ne mijenjaju; vidi na: http://www.hrvatskanumizmatika.net/
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statusni stimulans. Moral, uprkos tim naporima, ipak opada. Godine 1950. zemlja
je dodatno pogođena jakom sušom, što drastično smanjuje poljoprivredni prihod.
Iste te godine posustaje dotadašnji ogromni rast zaposlenosti i u naredne tri
godine biva zaposleno tek nešto preko 15.000 novih radnika.33
Kao odgovor na ideološki sukob i ekonomski zastoj, razvija se kritika birokratizacije
i osnovnih sovjetskih ideja o odnosu vlasništva i upravljanja. Uskoro prevladava
stav da se „socijalistički društveni odnosi ne mogu ostvarivati na osnovu
državne svojine i državnog upravljanja privredom, jer to dovodi do birokratizacije
cjelokupnog političkog sistema“34, što ubrzo postaje i programski stav Partije. Tu
nalazimo osnovu revolucije u revoluciji koja će se realizirati originalnim modelom
upravljanja ekonomskim poslovima. Godine 1950. se Osnovnim zakonom o
upravljanju državnim preduzećima i višim privrednim udruženjima od strane radnih
kolektiva postavljaju temelji samoupravljanja. Naredne godine je prvi petogodišnji
plan produžen za godinu dana, ali nikada nije dovršen niti je o njemu ikada
objavljen konačni izvještaj. Uskoro je „privredni sistem bio potpuno izmenjen i do
kraja 1951. godine centralno planirana privreda je pripadala istoriji“35.
5. AFŽ, velika prekretnica i žensko pitanje
Šta se za vrijeme ovog turbulentnog perioda dešava sa organizacijom žena? Ta
organizacija se nakon formiranja, ratne 1942. godine, fokusira na organiziranje
aktivistkinja čiji se zadaci uglavnom vezuju za ratne aktivnosti. AFŽ je „ponikao
na bazi opšteg narodnog antifašističkog pokreta koji je organizovala i kojim je
rukovodila KPJ“ i radom na vaspitanju u „duhu programa Antifašističkog fronta,
hiljade i hiljade žena“ stavljaju se „u prve redove boraca protiv fašizma“36. Od
1944. godine ova organizacija usmjerava napore ka masovnom uključivanju novog
članstva, čime napušta užu aktivističku orijentaciju. Tako se AFŽ, zajedno sa
33
Za tri godine prvog petogodišnjeg plana zaposleno je 1.269.000 novih radnika. Sljedeća godina
donosi značajan pad. U periodu 1950—1954. godine zaposleno je samo 15.000, a u periodu 1964—
1967. godine broj zaposlenih opada sa 3.608.000 u 1964. godini na 3.561.000 u 1967. godini. Bilandžić,
op.cit. str. 114; Horvat, Privredni sistem, str. 27.
34
Babić, op.cit. str. 134; Bilandžić, op.cit. str. 208.
35
Horvat, op.cit. str. 11. Novi privredni sistem ustanovljen je 1952. godine zamjenom centralnog
planiranja, planiranjem tzv. „osnovnih proporcija“ (npr. stope akumulacije i raspodjele investicija),
devalvacijom dinara, uvođenjem tržišnog mehanizma kao regulatora cijena u većinu proizvodno
prodajnih sfera, i davanjem samostalnosti pojedinim preduzećima, što je značilo postavljanje uslova
za decentralizaciju ekonomije. Nakon toga, sve do 1956. godine radiće se na osnovu godišnjih planova.
36
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Postavke o AFŽ-u’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 63/4, 1949.
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drugim velikim dobrovoljnim udruženjima, priključuje masovnom dobrovoljnom
pokretu i u izgradnju poratne Jugoslavije ulaže stotine hiljada sati dobrovoljnog
rada.
Aktivnosti i usmjerenja AFŽ-a duboko su integrisane u NF. Kata Pejnović u
završnoj riječi Prvog kongresa AFŽ Hrvatske u julu 1945. godine, sažima osnovne
zadatke ove organizacije (u: Sklevicky): 1) učvršćenje bratstva i jedinstva, čišćenje
zemlje od ostataka fašizma, 2) učvršćenje narodne vlasti, 3) izgradnja i obnova
domovine razvijanjem široke inicijative, pronalaženjem novih udarničkih načina
rada, promjenom odnosa prema radu, 4) odgoj mladih naraštaja, zbrinjavanje
djece, pomoć zdravstvenim službama i jugoslavenskoj armiji i 5) suzbijanje
nepismenosti.37
Lydia Sklevicky prva tri cilja smješta u opšte „frontovske“ a zadnja dva označava
kao specifične ženske, budući se sastoje u „socijalizaciji njihovog reproduktivnog
rada“38. Ne smije, međutim, promaći činjenica da je opšte ciljeve u dužoj vremenskoj
perspektivi bilo moguće postići samo ostvarenjem ženskih ciljeva: jer kako se
drugačije mogla osigurati generacijska transmisija promijenjenog odnosa prema
radu i pouka bratstva i jedinstva – čime je trebalo učvrstiti narodnu vlast? Tu se
očituje sva kompleksnost ženskog zadatka. Valjalo je novim udarničkim radom
obaviti teške specifične zadatke, zbrinuti ogromnu populaciju djece, opismeniti
društvo, ali i mobilizirati mase ne gubeći iz vida temeljne vaspitne ciljeve.
5.1. Žensko pitanje i pitanje herojskog
Vladimir Nazor 1944. godine izjavljuje: „Žensko pitanje za nas je riješeno“. Ilustrativna je njegova istorijska metafora tog rješenja naznačena u naslovu predavanja
„Od Amazonke do partizanke“ koja ocrtava herojsku istoriju žena kao borkinja,
političarki i vladarica a razrješava je u figuri partizanke. Analizirajući diskurs sa
konferencije AFŽ-a u Sinju 1944. godine, Lydia Sklevicky primjećuje: „Tek sintagma ‘drugarice, žene borci’ priznaje [ženama] identitet u skladu s vlastitim zaslugama“39, ili: herojska sposobnost žene dokazana je u borbenom uključivanju u
rat što, onda, svako daljnje žensko pitanje čini riješenim. Rješenje ipak, ostavlja
37
Sklevicky, op.cit., str. 97.
38
Ibid, 97. O reproduktivnom radu uopšte i o nekim njegovim savremenim karakteristikama i
uvezivanjima u međunarodne procese cirkulacije kapitala i restrukturiranja radnih odnosa vidi:
Federici, Silvia. Revolution at the Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle,
Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
39
Sklevicky, op.cit. str. 50.
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„sumnjom netaknut, patrijarhalni predznak tradicijske kulture“ te, umjesto da
se „nastoji na promjeni tradicijskih vrednota“, radi se „na njihovoj modifikaciji
u odnosu na novi kontekst/povijesni trenutak“ što stvara okvir unutar kojeg se
„emancipatorski naboj“, koristi „za širenje i jačanje NOP-a“40.
Iako je načelni stav KPJ da je žensko pitanje riješeno, partijsko rukovodstvo smatra
organizaciju žena neophodnom. U jesen 1945. godine KPJ nalaže „partijskim
rukovodstvima da obrate veću pažnju na razvitak i unapređenje rada AFŽ-a“41.
Poseban ženski dio zadatka stvaranja novog društva nije dat unaprijed već ga je
trebalo definisati „kada utihne oružje, kada se razgrnu ruševine i sagradi novi
dom“42. Ipak, prije nego što su definisani specifični zadaci, i unutar samog AFŽ-a
je ispostavljen opšti poziv na udarnički rad. U pismu Centralnog odbora AFŽJ
Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH (od 4. juna 1945. godine) upućuje se poziv ženama
da u pripremama Prvog kongresa prionu na „udarnički rad, na udarnički rad na
njihovim svakodnevnim dužnostima, da pored svojih dužnosti preuzmu pred kongres još neku obavezu“43. Nema vremena za organizaciju takmičenja, ali je „baš
zato potrebno... da se kroz sve organizacije, u svim mjestima, na svim poslovima,
pojača aktivnost žena, koju treba produžiti i poslije kongresa“44. Na drugom
kongresu AFŽ BiH Tito referira na drugarice „koje su se u ratu dobro pokazale,
ali koje sada u miru ne učestvuju u javnom životu, u političkom i stvaralačkom
radu za zajednicu“. Na taj se način one „otuđuju od ogromne većine naših žena
koje su shvatile duh nove Jugoslavije i svoje dužnosti“. Kakav je taj duh i kakve
su dužnosti? Najsažetiji odgovor daje Tito, istom prilikom, dajući napomenu koja
spada u domenu radne etike: „Nikad ne može niko smatrati da je dao dovoljno
od sebe za zajednicu, ako je sposoban fizički i umno za dalji rad“45. Eto direktnog
poziva na herojski angažman koji u herojskom daru, najvećem mogućem daru
zajednici, u daru života, uspostavlja paradigmu kojoj valja dati drugačiji sadržaj,
onaj koji prevazilazi i napušta svoj izvor u herojskoj ratnoj žrtvi, te uspostavlja
nešto drugačije.
40
Ibid., str. 47-51.
41
Petranović, op.cit, str.53.
42
Sklevicky, op.cit. str, 55.
43
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH’, Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 1/2, 1945.
44
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH’
45
II kongres Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije: održan u Beogradu 25, 26, 27 januara 1948.
Sarajevo: Glavni odbor AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine, 1948, Kutija 6;
dostupno na : http://www.afzarhiv.org/files/original/00d53e25cc67684ddcbf27af4ff8d839.pdf
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Herojski rad je trebalo realizirati unutar opšteg napora cijelog društva, a u aprilu
1947. godine on dobija formu petogodišnjeg plana privrednog razvoja. Generalni
ciljevi tog plana bili su: 1) savladavanje ekonomske i tehnološke zaostalosti, 2)
jačanje ekonomske i vojne moći zemlje, 3) jačanje i razvijanje socijalističkog
sektora privrede, 4) povećanje opšteg blagostanja naroda. Iako ovaj plan ne
donosi specifično ženske zadatke, AFŽ u odnosu na njega procjenjuje sopstveni
angažman opštem društvenom doprinosu. Za plan se vodi „bitka“ koja pred
„organizaciju stavlja zadatak moblisanja ženske radne snage“46. Dio arhiva
AFŽ-a sadrži niz izvještaja o tome kako su pojedine drugarice „ispunile“ ciljeve
petogodišnjeg plana, ali i onih koji kazuju kako mnoge nisu, te kako je uvijek
potrebno uraditi još više. Angažman na realizaciji ovog plana postaje okvir unutar
kojeg je moguće raditi herojski. Ovo je, u skladu sa paradigmom uključivanja i
u skladu sa osnovnim interpretativnim okvirom, značilo dati određeni broj
dobrovoljnih radnih sati i na taj način „uštediti novac državi“. Nakon usvajanja tog
plana, pronalazimo zadatake opisane i shvaćene kao eksplicitno herojske:
Naše će žene poći kao čvrsto zbijena radna vojska, zbratimljene Srpkinje,
muslimanke i Hrvatice u borbu za pobjedu obnove i izgradnje naše zemlje.
Radeći na kulturno prosvjetnom uzdizanju širokoh masa, pomažući
ostvarenje privrednog plana, ulažući najviši radni elan, mi ćemo stvoriti novi
oblik heroizma, HEROIZAM RADA...47
Žene će, dakle, odlučne da urade najviše što mogu, stvoriti „novi oblik heroizma“.
Riječ je o heroizmu koji nije onaj koji kao „čin“ biva pripisan jednoj ženi ili muškarcu
koji mogu ponijeti orden. U pitanju je napor za zajednicu, kolektivni heroizam iza
kojeg stoji masovni napor dobrovoljnog rada koji će iznuriti hiljade tijela prije
nego se suoči sa činjenicom da su postavljeni ciljevi nedostižni upravo zato što su
herojskih proporcija, zato što podrazumijevaju da se uvijek može raditi još više,
još snažnije. Tek je u masovnom kolektivnom naporu bilo moguće proizvesti
46
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ Bosne i Hercegovine – o
vođenju evidencije raspoložive ženske radne snage’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 2,
711/1, 1947.
47
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Referat- Plenarni sastanak Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bosanski Brod’, Arhiv Bosne
i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1554/4, 1947., velika slova u originalu.
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nadljudsko, herojsko – jer samo je herojsko dostojno herojski umrlih heroja. Tu
pronalazimo osnovnu instrukciju dispozitiva kao tehnologije društvenog: rad će
preobraziti društvo, a da bi ono zaista bilo preobraženo, potrebno je raditi herojski.
Konstrukcija herojske prošlosti, odnosno kontinuiteta herojskog, počinje odmah
poslije rata. Godine 1945. distribuira se instrukcija o „sakupljanju materijala,
konkretnih podataka, fotografija i sl.“ što svjedoči o nastojanju da se evidentira
polazna tačka ujedinjenja trenutnog stanja i dotadašnjeg neposrednog ratnog
angažmana žena, koji uključuje i herojsku ratnu žrtvu, ali i ‘tradicionalnu žrtvu’
zvjerstava koje je „nad ženama i djecom počinio neprijatelj“ ili „majki koje su izgubile
sinove u borbi“ a koje se posebno „ističu svojim hrabrim držanjem“48. Ovakve će
se aktivnosti nastaviti i kasnije, s nešto izmijenjenim naglaskom. Tako se npr. u
pismu iz februara 1949. godine CO AFŽJ, u okviru priprema za osmomartovsku
izložbu, od republičkog odbora za BiH traži prikupljanje podataka koji uključuju
„razna dokumenta o radu žena prije rata/štrajkovi, fotografije štrajkova, proglasi
i rezolucije Partije o radu sa ženama...“ kao i druge dokumente koji pokazuju
tadašnji život žena u zadrugama i u drugim poljima aktivnosti49. U obraćanju na
Drugom kongresu Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije, Mitra Mitrović Đilas
napominje kako je sklop osobina žene artikulisan u ratu sada potrebno „dalje
vaspitavati i njegovati u duhu svjesnog odnosa pram radu... u duhu radne discipline
i odgovornosti, u duhu spremnosti na napore, na savlađivanje svih teškoća“. Motiv
herojskog je duboko prisutan, i očita je konstrukcija prelaza od ratnog herojskog
ka njegovom novom obliku: „iz tih osobina, neka poput lika naših junakinja iz rata
izraste novi lik žene iz izgradnje socijalizma. Neka vaspitavanje tih osobina bude
zadatak...“50 U ovom primjeru vidimo kako se veza sa ratnim herojskim održava
kao konstitutivna, čime heroji i herojska imena postaju garantori ispravne
socijalizacije, ne samo djece već i odraslih.51
48
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH’, 1945.
49
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH – povodom organizacije
8. martovske izložbe’ Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 6, 137/1, 1949.
50
II kongres Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije: održan u Beogradu 25, 26, 27 januara 1948.,15
51
O pitanju socijalizacije odraslih vidi: Ugo Vlaisavljević, Rat kao najveći kulturni događaj: ka semiotici
etnonacionalizma, Sarajevo: Meuna-fe Publishing, 2007., posebno: 35-50.
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5.2. AFŽ u prelazu
Kako je šira društveno-ekonomska transformacija čije su začetke uspostavili
sukob sa Sovjetskim Savezom i otvaranje prema Zapadu, što će u godinama kasnije
značajno usloviti i vanjskopolitičku poziciju i poziciju unutar internacionalnih
ekonomskih odnosa,52 utjecala na AFŽ? U raspravama (1947–1948.) o AFŽ-u
unutar KPJ prevladava stav o potrebi posebne ženske organizacije, ali se ističe
pitanje „kako i preko kojih organizacionih formi revolucionarnu snagu žena
spojiti sa snagama radničke klase i čitavog naroda u cilju njihovog potpunog
oslobođenja?“53 KPJ na svom Petom kongresu definiše NF kao glavnu političku
snagu, čime žensko pitanje prelazi u političku nadležnost NF, dok se u KPJ ukidaju
komisije za rad sa ženama. U praksi se NF uglavnom nije posebno bavio ženskim
pitanjem, što je kreiralo slobodan prostor za politički rad AFŽ-a.
AFŽ se rano, zajedno sa drugim organizacijama, uključuje u opšta društvena
takmičenja za izgradnju zemlje, ali se krajem 40ih sve snažije pokazuju fizičke
i praktične granice udarništva. Organizacija AFŽ-a prolazi niz promjena, što
narušava snagu organizacijskih struktura.54 Na sastanku AFŽ-a marta 1949.
godine u Sarajevu konstatuje se da „nisu svi zadaci Narodnog fronta naši zadaci“
već da je „osnovni zadatak na izborima izvesti sve žene na izbore“. Osnovni cilj
je na izbore izvesti 100 procenata žena.55 Još uvijek postoje znaci da se zadaci
ove organizacije interno redefinišu, i da ponegdje među aktivnim ženama vlada
nezadovoljstvo zbog toga što žena gotovo nema u organima vlasti.56 Dotadašnji
rad se procjenjuje dosta kritički: „Mi smo ponizili ime aktivistkinja na trčkaralo, a
52
Za istorijsku analizu ovih procesa i njihove današnje posljedice vidi: Živković, Andreja. „From the
Market…to the Market: The Debt Economy After Yugoslavia“ u Welcome to the Desert of Postsocialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia ur. Srećko Horvat, Igor Štiks. London/New York: Verso.
2015. str. 45-64.
53
Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, Beograd: Pinkpress, 1996, str. 161.
54
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Bosanska Gradiška Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – izvještaj o
radu organizacije žena za mjesec august’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 838/1, 1947.
„kada je uslijedilo fuzionisanje mjesnih Narodnih odbora, mi nismo uspjeli da fuzionišemo i Mjesne
odbore AFŽ-a, tako da nam se organizacija dosta rasplinula...“
55
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevska oblast – najava takmičenja u čast izbora
za Narodne izbore, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4/1, 1949.
56
U pismu iz septembra 1947. Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Doboj, ističe kako NF nije pomagao većem političkom
aktiviranju žena i pominje nezadovoljstvo drugarica formulirano riječima „kad smo u stanju rame uz
rame sa drugovima polaziti na dobrovoljne radove – onda možemo i u odbore.“ Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski
odbor AFŽ-a Doboj Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – izvještaj o radu organizacije za mjesec august’,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 842/1, 1947.
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trebamo je izdići do uloge političkog rukovodioca“57. Eto jasnog mjerila uspješnosti
rada te organizacije: žena kao politički rukovodilac.
Treći kongres AFŽ-a Jugoslavije održan je u oktobru 1950. godine. Po zaključcima
Kongresa, AFŽ se integriše u NF koji od tog trenutka treba rukovoditi političkim
i vaspitnim radom AFŽ-a. Težište rada AFŽ-a se pomjera na uža ženska pitanja,
zaštitu majki i djece, održavanje dječijih ustanova itd.58 Arhiv AFŽ-a stotinama
izvještaja svjedoči o radu sekcije „majka i dijete“ i gotovo potpunoj obustavi
političkog rada. Insistira se na zapošljavanju kao osnovnom uslovu ravnopravnosti.
S druge strane, ogromna većina žena još uvijek živi na selu i tek su malobrojne
zaposene u gradu, a i dalje je rasprostranjen konzervativni stav o uključivanju
žene u industrijske proizvodne odnose.59 No, i prije artikulisanja takvih stavova,
očit je značajno reduciran okvir djelovanja. Na prvom plenumu Sarajevske
oblasti u februaru 1950. godine postoje samo dvije tačke dnevnog reda: 1) Pitanje
izbora za skupštinu FNRJ i 2) Rad AFŽ-a na vaspitanju podmlatka, i one bivaju
jednoglasno usvojene.60
Ovi primjeri organizacijskog govora sugerišu presudan utjecaj društvenih
promjena na rad AFŽ-a. Pomaci ka decentralizaciji, prekidanje kolektivizacije
nakon nemira 1950. godine i opšti kurs borbe protiv birokratizacije neminovno
su značili i pritiske na rad i ustrojstvo organizacije žena. Sve društveno-političke
organizacije redefinisale su sopstveni identitet i formu nakon što je to učinila i
Partija u novembru 1952. godine, na svom Šestom kongresu, promijenivši ime u
Savez komunista Jugoslavije, i tako se udaljivši od klasične centralizovane partije
sovjetskog tipa. Tokom kongresa je „preciznije određena nova koncepcija KPJ [...]
odbačen put što je vodio u državni socijalizam, a prihvaćena borba za izgradnju
samoupravnog društva u Jugoslaviji“. Tada se još uvijek insistira na radu na
ženskoj emancipaciji. Zastupajući takav stav, Tito ističe potrebu napuštanja
zastarjelog gledanja na društvenu ulogu žene. U januaru naredne godine NF
mijenja ime u Socijalistički savez radnog naroda, čime socijalističko radništvo
potiskuje narod na kraj reda predstavljanja.61
57
Glavni odbor AFŽ, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja rukovodioca reonskih odbora AFŽ-a grada Sarajeva - 3031. mart, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 6, 776/6, 1949.
58
Božinović, op.cit. str. 162.
59
Ibid. str. 154.
60
Oblasni odbor AFŽ, ‘I Plenum AFŽ-a Sarajevske oblasti održan 22.02.1950.godine - zapisnik’, Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 422/1, 1950.
61
Božinović, op.cit. str. 166-167. Drugim riječima narod je, mnogo prije nego što je to zvanično
potvrđeno Ustavom iz 1974. godine, zamijenjen radnim čovjekom, jedinim pravim subjektom
socijalističkog projekta; up. Zaharijević, op.cit. str. 75.
�138
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
Tu kritika postaje puno izraženija. NF zastupa stav „da AFŽ nije dovoljno brzo
menjao svoj sadržaj i metode rada, da su radni ljudi brzim tempom izrastali u
graditelje socijalizma“ što je za posljedicu imalo to da je „poseban politički
rad sa ženama ili postao izlišan, ili je tražio bitne izmene“62. NF nije tražio
ukidanje AFŽ-a ali je smatrao da, u skladu sa opštim društveno-ekonomskim
promjenama, i AFŽ mora poduzeti mjere u smjeru decentralizacije. Na Četvrtom
kongresu AFŽ-a, Milovan Đilas, tada član Politbiroa CK KPJ, zastupa stav da je
– zbog promijenjenih okolnosti – postojanje te organizacije nepoželjno. Na tom
tragu, i samo rukovodstvo AFŽ-a zastupa stanovište da je AFŽ „postao kočnica
za rad među ženama“ i da „su nužne promene u organizaciji samih žena, kao i
u organizaciji i formama političkog rada među njima“. U skladu s tim se donosi
i zaključak po kojem bi posebna organizacija: „izdvajala žene iz zajedničkih
napora u rešavanju društvenih problema, podržavalo pogrešno mišljenje o tome
da je pitanje položaja žene nekakvo odvojeno žensko pitanje, a ne pitanje naše
društvene zajednice, pitanje svih boraca za socijalizam“63.
AFŽ se na temelju ovih zaključaka ukida i formalno transformiše u Savez
ženskih društava. Velika je promjena semantičkog sadržaja: odstranjeni su front
i antifašizam – znakovi ženskog učešća u narodnoj revoluciji. Iako je socijalizam
„zvanično uveden“ u ime osnovne društvene organizacije, čak ni za njega nije bilo
mjesta u imenu organizacije koja je formalno naslijedila AFŽ. Bio je to i stvarni
i simbolički kraj onoga što je AFŽ predstavljao.64 AFŽ, kao i centralno planiranje
nekoliko godina ranije, odlazi u istoriju. Jedna era je završena. Kakve su bile
reakcije u bazi? Malo je izvora koji o tome nešto otkrivaju. Neda Božinović navodi
da su dugo nakon ukidanja AFŽ-a „žene, naročito na selu, često rukovodećim
ženama prebacivale ‘što ukidoste naš AFŽ’“ jer je to ponovo presložilo odnose
s muškim dijelom populacije koji je „likovao“ i „govorili su im: „dosta je vašeg
bilo!“; ili: „gotovo je, gotovo!”; ili: „nema više!“ Muškarci su imali „svoje kafane,
fudbal, pa i Narodni front“ a nestala je inicijativa koja je okupljala žene „željne...
da štogod čuju i da razgovaraju o svojim ženskim stvarima“65.
62
Božinović, op.cit. str. 165.
63
Ibid.
64
Vera Katz sažima evoluciju rada organizacije: „relativno mala grupa komunista uspela da temeljnim
radom na terenu i u ratnim uslovima, a za vrlo kratko vreme, ubedi velike mase žena da potpomognu
partizanski rat, kako bi posle rata dobile nova prava. Program je u potpunosti uspeo, toliko da je
žensko političko organizovanje već posle nekoliko godina postalo opasnost za komuniste, i AFŽ je
rasformiran. Posle toga, ideološki obrat je preživeo neobičnu kombinaciju potrošačkog i
patrijarhalnog modela nametnutog ženama, ali dobar deo obećanih prava je preživeo.”; vidi: Vera
Katz, „O društvenom položaju žene u Bosni i Hercegovini 1942.-1953.“ Prilozi 40 (2011), str. 138.
65
Božinović, op.cit, str. 170.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
139
Ovo ukazuje na poseban karakter gubitka kojeg je značio kraj ove organizacije.
Poznato je da je glavnina AFŽ-ovog rada bila usmjerena na rad po selima, posebno
u BiH koja dugo nakon rata ostaje dominantno ruralna sredina. AFŽ je na selu
bez sumnje predstavljao avangardni prostor koji je po prvi put u cijeloj (ženskoj)
istoriji ovih prostora ponudio mogućnost da se zamisli nešto kao kolektivni ženski
politički subjekt koji se formira kroz „okupljanje“ i razgovor o „svojim“ stvarima.
Jednom kada je izgubljen ovaj prostor okupljanja koji je bio i otvaranje polja
mogućnosti, nestalo je i mjesto govora kao kreativne mogućnosti samodefinicije
kolektivne akcije.
6. Rad, heroizam i žensko pitanje hiljadu godina kasnije
Problemi praktične i tehničke organizacije ustrojstva sistema samoupravljačke
proizvodnje i potrošnje postaće i trajni izazov cijelom jugoslavenskom socijalističkom
projektu. Kulminaciju ovog avangardnog procesa predstavlja Zakon o udruženom
radu kojim je dispozitiv trebao dobiti svoj definitivan pravni izraz. U ovom su periodu
mnogi „iskreno verovali da će samoupravna transformacija dovesti do ‘Republike
udruženog rada’“66. Ivan Stojanović smatra da se radilo o mitologizaciji koja je u
zakonodavstvu o radu vidjela „programe epohe i budućnosti a ne zakone kojima je
nužno regulisati ponašanje društvenih i privrednih subjekata u današnjici“ što je
dovelo do toga da „hipernormativizam“ i „hiperinstitucionalizam“ eliminišu osnovu
samoupravljanja, „samoinicijativu i samoorganizaciju ljudi i njihovih kolektiva“67.
Tako i formu koju žensko organiziranje uzima nakon rata treba vidjeti kao pokušaj
da se u jednom specifičnom istorijskom trenutku na urgentni zahtjev organiziranja
društva odgovori formulom koja će reformulisati i radne i rodne odnose. U
najranijim fazama izgradnje socijalizma, AFŽ se, isto kao i druge organizacije
koje su bile dio NOP-a, uspostavlja kao element široke, sveopšte borbe na čijem
čelu stoji KPJ. U postratnom dobu, u prvi plan dolazi njihova vaspitna uloga. Na
temeljima masovnog društvenog mobiliziranja, suočena sa zahtjevom herojstva,
ženska masovna organizacija preuzima opštu obrazovno vaspitnu ulogu ali i
generalni zadatak organiziranja rada sa ženama. Neki materijali upućuju na
posebnu dimenziju autonomije koja nije pripadala organizaciji kao strukturi odbora
već ženama koje su uz pomoć organizacije kreirale prostor koji je omogućio,
ako ne istinsku emancipaciju, onda barem krhke osnove da se krene putem
emancipacije. Ovo je sigurno jedna od najdalekosežnijih posljedica raspuštanja
66
Petranović, op.cit. str. 468.
67
Stojanović, Ivan. Kuda i kako dalje? Zapisi o odnosima i protivrečnostima ekonomije i politike,
Beograd: Ekonomika, 1989. str. 15-16.
�140
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
organizacije, jer time nestaje otvoreni prostor političkog organiziranja žena koje
je sadržavalo mogućnost dvostrukog oslobađanja. Raspuštanjem te organizacije
nestali su jedno moguće polje i jedna moguća forma ženskog djelovanja. Djelomični
uvid u ovu istorijsku eru ženskog pokreta može pomoći jasnijem sagledavanju
zamršene mreže instrukcija u kojoj se nalaze današnje radne i rodne politike.
Herojsko će još dugo ostati važan označitelj socijalizma. Bilo bi potrebno slijediti
njegovu konstrukciju i nakon 1953. godine i opisati prelaz od masovnog herojstva,
sasvim očekivan iz ugla tehnološke paradigme socijalizma, kao i teorijske
evolucije njegovih nositelja i vođa, na narednu formu herojskog u kojoj je kolektivni
napor masa zamijenjen biotehnološkim radom samoupravnih preduzeća i korporacija.68 Trebalo bi vidjeti da li se i kako u ovom prelazu nastoji održati veza sa
originalnim herojskim činjenjem, na što upućuju fabrike i institucije nazvane imenima narodnih heroja, što opet upućuje na nastojanje da se materijalni pomak
i prelaz homogenizira unutar identičnog horizonta. Moguće je pretpostaviti i da
je heroizam trebao osigurati vezivno tkivo između herojskog vojnika i vojnikinja
i herojskog masa i modernih industrijskih kolektiva. Ostaje pitanje do kada i
kako ovo ulančavanje ostaje efektivno. Vezivanje heroja vojnika i socijalističkog
heroizma upućuje na to da socijalizam druge Jugoslavije nije uspio herojsko
emanciprati od vojničko-ratničke figure. Herojska figura koja će dočekati raspad
Jugoslavije bila je već potrošena. U određenom smislu, u industrijskom heroizmu,
na kraju cijele sekvence, dostojni herojskog postaju oni samoupravni kolektivi koji
„zapošljavaju i uspješno posluju“. Tu smo pred potpuno transfiguriranom slikom
individualnih heroja čije činjene i čin nisu više neposredno u njihovim rukama, već
se herojska namjera mora prilagoditi silama tržišta, uspjesima ili neuspjesima u
tržištom takmičenju.
I ova je figura danas stvar daleke prošlosti, uspješne firme su cijenjene, ali ne
kao kolektivni projekti stotina i hiljada radnika i radnica već kao demonstracije
vizije i preduzimljivosti vlasnika i menadžera. Heroji konstruisani nakon krvavog i
zamršenog raspada ponovo su isključivo heroji rata, poraza i pobjeda na bojnom
polju, nikako na polju agrikulture ili industruje. Kraj Jugoslavije je donio sveopštu
privatizaciju radnih i proizvodnih odnosa, privatizaciju vlasništva i upravljanja,
izvedenu kao usvajanje i institucionaliziranje, uslovno rečeno, zapadnog modela,
i taj proces još uvijek traje. Ovu transformaciju je pratila (i nastavlja da prati)
68
Osim ovog najvišeg priznanja, krajem 1968. uspostavljen je i Orden rada sa crvenom zastavom koji
će do kraja 1980. godine zaslužiti 245 kolektiva, koji obuhvataju nastavne, školske i istraživačke
institucije, ali i industrijska samoupravna preduzeća kao i građevinska preduzeća; vidi: Heroji rada
Jugoslavije, Beograd: Zavod za informacione sisteme, 1981., str. 4.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
141
diskurzivna nadgradnja koja rad kao sredstvo proizvodnje društva reinterpretira
u rad kao disciplinsku tehnika tijela, i mehanizam kojim se pojedinačno transformišemo u kapital i prilagođavamo promjenama uslova i sredstava rada, ponudi
i potražnji, te organizacijskim inovacijama.
Može li se onda u ovakvim okolnostima, makar i u grubim crtama, naznačiti
nekakva nova herojska figura; i kakav bi to herojski rad obuhvatalo? Radni kolektivi su sve manje izvori ponosa i dinamični elementi identiteta, a sve više prezrena mjesta svakodnevne eksploatacije (ukoliko nisu nekadašnji giganti čije je
rasparčavanje i uništavanje ostavilo ne samo materijalnu bijedu i propast nego
i složene identitetne posljedice koje tek valja analizirati). Nema sumnje da se
herojsko, ono koje može ponuditi odgovor na urgentne izazove sadašnjice koji
prijete da kroz ljudsko djelovanje i sumanutu ekonomsku utrku iscrpe ne samo
živote već i uslove za život, mora kreirati kroz kolektivni napor – za koji nam nedostaju i ime i format. Tu se otkriva sva težina zadatka koji stoji pred svima koji
sanjaju oslobođenje. Oslobođenje nesumnjivo mora obuhvatiti i oslobođenje žena,
koje možda jedino može omogućiti da se imenuje i povede projekat univerzalnog
oslobođenja. Ime i opis jednog takvog projekta, zajedno sa obrisima nove herojske
figure mogu, parafrazirajući poznate Marksove riječi, doći samo iz budućnosti, ali
kolektivni napor budućnosti otvoren samo kao suočavanje sa silama sadašnjosti.
Arhivska građa:
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Postavke o AFŽ-u’, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 63/4,
1949.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH›,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 1/2, 1945.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH›
1945.
II kongres Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije : održan u Beogradu 25, 26, 27 januara
1948. Sarajevo: Glavni odbor AFŽ-a Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 6, 1948.; dostupno
na : http://www.afzarhiv.org/files/original/00d53e25cc67684ddcbf27af4ff8d839.pdf
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ Bosne i
Hercegovine – o vođenju evidencije raspoložive ženske radne snage›, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 711/1, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Referat- Plenarni sastanak Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bosanski Brod›,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 3, 1554/4, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Pismo Centralnog odbora AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH›,
1945.
�142
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
HEROIZAM RADA
ANTIFAŠISTIČKI FRONT ŽENA I SOCIJALISTIČKI DISPOZITIV 1945.–1953.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Centralni odbor AFŽ Jugoslavije Glavnom odboru AFŽ BiH – povodom
organizacije 8. martovske izložbe› Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 6,
137/1, 1949.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‹Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Bosanska Gradiška Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a –
izvještaj o radu organizacije žena za mjesec august›, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine
Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 838/1, 1947.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevska oblast – najava takmičenja u
čast izbora za Narodne izbore, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 4/1,
1949.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, ‘Sreski odbor AFŽ-a Doboj Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a – izvještaj o radu
organizacije za mjesec august›, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 2, 842/1,
1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja rukovodioca reonskih odbora AFŽ-a grada
Sarajeva - 30-31. mart, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 6, 776/6, 1949.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ, ‹I Plenum AFŽ-a Sarajevske oblasti održan 22.02.1950.godine zapisnik›, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 8, 422/1, 1950.
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��SUNITA FIŠIĆ
Crteži tušem
��OD REVOLUCIONARNOG DO
PROIZVODNOG SUBJEKTA:
ALTERNATIVNA HISTORIJA
AFŽ-a
TIJANA
OKIĆ
�148
TIJANA OKIĆ
OD REVOLUCIONARNOG DO PROIZVODNOG SUBJEKTA:
ALTERNATIVNA HISTORIJA AFŽ-A
Ali vi, kad najzad dođe vrijeme
Da čovjek čovjeku bude drug,
Spomenite se nas
S trpeljivošću
Brecht
1. Uvod ili početak nakon kraja historije:
misliti AFŽ opet i iznova
Misliti Antifašistički front žena danas, 74 godine nakon njegova formiranja i 63
godine od njegove „disolucije”, zahtijeva mnogo više od prostog poznavanja
(arhivskih) činjenica. Premda činjenice ne možemo i ne smijemo zanemariti,
naša je dužnost staviti ih najprije u njihov, a potom i naš historijski kontekst. No,
koja je veza između ova dva konteksta i trebamo li ustrajavati na njoj insistirajući
na političkim kontinuitetima? O kojim i kakvim kontinuitetima bi uopće bila
riječ? Nije li ono što naše vrijeme razlikuje od vremena AFŽ-a upravo navodno
zatvaranje revolucionarnog horizonta, ruptura u historijskom pamćenju iskazana
u raznim ideologijama tranzicije i kraja historije? U takvom odnosu snaga,
misliti AFŽ značilo bi u ovim novim okolnostima starim jezikom ispisati i nanovo
imaginirati mogućnosti djelovanja unutar kojeg bismo, za početak, sami ponovno
mogli misliti svoju vlastitu historiju. I baš zbog toga ćemo krenuti od pitanja
koje postavlja Daniel Bensaïd: „kakvu politiku zamišljati bez historije… i kakvu
historiju zamišljati bez političke imaginacije mogućeg?”1 Ako politike nema bez
historije, onda ni historije nema bez politike, a između njih je otvoren upravo
prostor mogućeg. Kako ustati i opstati nakon iskustva poraza koje je navodni
kraj historije postavio kao početak i kraj svakog mišljenja o mogućem utopije i/ili
strategije? Suvremena historiografija, na valu historijskog revizionizma koji traje
već više od pedeset godina, sasvim rutinski minimizira i negira svako iskustvo
u kojem postoji i minimum političkog otpora dominantnoj revizionističkoj slici
slijeda i događaja.
I upravo tu se otvaraju problemska mjesta o kojima u ovom tekstu želim govoriti
u odnosu na historiju Antifašističkog fronta žena u Jugoslaviji i danas. Drugim
riječima, da bismo izbjegli monumentalno i antikvarno2 viđenje vlastite historije,
Jugoslaviju moramo misliti kritički, što znači da kao feministice moramo pisati
1
Bensaïd, Daniel. Éloge de la politique profane. Pariz: Albin Michel, 2008. str. 355
2
Nietzsche, Friedrich. O koristi i šteti istorije za život. Beograd: Grafos, 1977.
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o prvoj i drugoj smrti AFŽ-a. Pisati o dvije smrti ne znači suočiti se sa prošlošću,
kako bi to današnji revizionisti htjeli – niti znači zarobiti se u prošlost budući da je
naš odnos sa prošlošću uvijek ‘ukotvljen’ mjestom, vremenom pa (foucaultovski
govoreći) i tijelom iz kojeg pišemo: dakle posredovan je i akumuliranim i
iskustvom-interpretacijom prošlosti i bremenom sadašnjosti. Pisati o dvije smrti
AFŽ-a naprosto znači ne čitati prošlost iz rezigniranosti sadašnjeg trenutka – iz
jada i bijede tranzicije koje u prošlost učitavaju želju da u njoj uslijed siromaštva
sadašnjosti vide bolje sutra – nego iz budućnosti sutrašnjice. Ovako čitati AFŽovsku prošlost znači ne odreći joj njen oslobodilački karakter i ne oduzeti mu
utopijski impuls. Znači prepoznati ga, sakupiti ga, i upravo s njim djelovati iz
sadašnjosti koja gleda u budućnost.
Eppur si muove, unatoč represiji, beznađu i siromaštvu. Sljedeće stranice
ispisujem u uvjerenju da je trag koji nam valja slijediti upravo ‘princip nada’.
Parafrazirajući upravo Ernsta Blocha, arhiv AFŽ-a želim čitati kao simultanost
ne-simultanog (Ungleichzeitigkeit). No, ovakvo čitanje sa sobom nosi i određene
posljedice. Ono, naime, nužno mora krenuti od analize kontradikcijā inherentnih
jugoslavenskom poimanju tzv. ženskog pitanja kako bi uopće moglo doći do
problemā i kontradikcijā danas. U tom smislu, bauk koji kruži ovim radom jest
bauk marksizma. Sve naše analize na ljevici/ljevicama postjugoslavenskog
prostora slavno su propale u pokušaju da na Jugoslaviju primijene osnovne
marksističke kategorije proizvodnje i reprodukcije, dok smo istovremeno naučeni
na taksativno nabrajanje institucija države blagostanja kao da one predstavljaju
socijalizaciju obitelji i svakodnevnog života, ne naglašavajući da to nije ista
stvar. I još važnije: ne naglašavamo da se za te usluge plaćalo upravo temeljem
proizvodnje vrijednosti na tržištu, i to dvostruko: plaćali su ih radnice i radnici kao
serviseri tržišta. Disoluciju AFŽ-a zato treba posmatrati kao neuspjeh Jugoslavije
da uspostavi socijalistički-komunistički društveni poredak, unatoč proklamiranju
socijalizma kao vladajuće i noseće ideje društva. Prva smrt AFŽ-a dogodila se već
u Jugoslaviji, ne samo njegovim formalnim ‘samoukidanjem’ 1953. godine, nego
mnogo ranije, već 1944. godine, kako sugerira Lydija Sklevicky. Druga smrt dogodila
se nakon 1989. godine pod najezdom vala historijskog revizionizma unutar kojeg
se ženska historija nanovo mogla ispisati/izbrisati samo ‘izmišljanjem tradicije’
u kojoj nije bilo i nema mjesta ni za figuru AFŽ-ovke ni za figuru partizanke.
Ljevica kao početno mjesto svog historijskog razumijevanja ne bi smjela uzimati
postavke koje nameće historijski revizionizam. Ona ne smije biti obrnuta slika
revizionizma. Zbog toga Enzo Traverso navodi da moramo odbiti „iskušenje…
određenih komunista, historičara i politologa [riječ je o D. Losurdu] koji preokreću
nolteovsku [Ernst Nolte] revizionističku shemu i staljinizam predstavljaju kao
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proizvod teške fašističke prijetnje: pretjeran i žaljenja vrijedan, kriminalan u
svojim krajnjim ishodima, ali najzad deriviran i reaktivan3. U tom smislu i Daniela
Bensaïd nas upozorava da moramo odbiti juridičku (tribunalizacijsku) funkciju
historije, ali ne i odreći se donošenja (historijskog) suda.4
Ovaj esej je uvelike inspiriran posljednjom knjigom Darka Suvina „Samo jednom
se ljubi: radiografija SFR Jugoslavije”, uz dva važna dodatka: prvi je da ovaj rad
kreće upravo tamo gdje je Suvin stao – od pitanja organizacije i položaja žena.
Dijelim Suvinov stav da je „postojao snažan emancipacijski smisao – iako uvijek
ugrožavan, a kasnije izdan”5. Drugi je da ovu izdaju smještam nešto ranije no Suvin.
Uz to, ništa manje važno, želim naglasiti i to da se oslanjam na pionirske studije
o radu i djelovanju AFŽ-a čije su autorice Lydija Sklevicky, Gordana Stojaković i
Renata Jambrešić-Kirin. Riječ je o ženama koje su na ovom polju napravile neke
od najvažnijih koraka, i ovaj rad je prilog kritici koju su one započele. Mnogi dijelovi
ovog rada sadrže neizrecive poticaje došle iz čitanja njihovih radova. Čitajući ih,
došla sam do zaključka da se u velikim i važnim dijelovima historija različitih
republičkih AFŽ-ova može uzimati pars pro toto. Zbog toga u svome radu fokus
stavljam na druge elemente koji su preko njihovih čitanja otvorili prostor za moje.
Čitaoce upućujem na njihov rad ukoliko žele naučiti nešto o vlastitoj (ženskoj)
historiji.
U radu ću pokušati pratiti historiju i disoluciju AFŽ-a kroz tri poglavlja. Za pokušaj
razumijevanja historije, a potom i disolucije tj. navodnog samoukidanja AFŽ-a,
važna su tri pitanja: a) historijski zaborav nekih političkih kontinuiteta, posebice
na ljevici; b) odnos privatno-javno u poratnoj Jugoslaviji; c) problem tržišnih
reformi i odnosa između proizvodnje, subsistencije i reprodukcije u odnosu na
pitanje obitelji i kućanstva. Kada je riječ o obitelji, moja razmišljanja o patrijarhatu
polaze od Görana Therborna6 i njegovog razumijevanja patrijarhata i dinamike
obiteljskih odnosa. On naime pokazuje da obitelj za sebe i po sebi ne posjeduje
nikakvu unutarnju dinamiku promjene sve dok na nju ne utječu izvanjski faktori.
O tim izvanjskim faktorima je riječ u ovom radu.
3
Traverso, Enzo, De l’anticommunisme. L’histoire du xxe siècle relue par Nolte, Furet et Courtois,
L’Homme et la société 2001/2: 169-194., str.189.
4
Bensaïd, Daniel, Qui est le juge? Pour en finir avec le tribunal de l’Histoire. Paris: Fayard, 1999. str. 127
5
Suvin, Darko, Samo jednom se ljubi. Radiografija SFR Jugoslavije. Beograd: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung,
2014., str. 23
6
Therborn, Göran, Between Sex and Power, Family in the World 1900-2000. London: Routledge, 2004.
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2. O prehistoriji AFŽ-a
Pokušaji da se AFŽ misli historijski nerijetko su obilježeni upravo nedostatkom
historijske svijesti. AFŽ je uglavnom, posebice na ljevici, portretiran kao organizacija koja nastaje 1942. godine bez ikakvih prethodnih utjecaja, kao nešto sui
generis. Takvo promatranje AFŽ-a dio je sveopćeg historijskog zaborava – u posebno upitnoj formi prisutnog na postjugoslavenskoj ljevici – gdje se prošlosti
sjećamo ili selektivno ili reaktivno. Historijski zaborav ima pogubne posljedice.
Jedna od najpogubnijih jest ahistorijsko shvaćanje o tome šta se događalo
sa ženskim pitanjem i položajem žena u prvoj, a potom i u drugoj Jugoslaviji.
Imajući u vidu to da AFŽ jest bio jedinstvena i nikad prije viđena organizacija na
području Jugoslavije, no ni u kojem slučaju prvi ženski revolucionarni pokret,
potrebno se sjetiti zaboravljenih i zabranjenih uzora. Minimum historijske svijesti
i intelektualnog poštenja nalažu da ne zaboravimo djelovanje KPJ između dva
svjetska rata, ali ni djelovanje ženskih građanskih udruga i pokreta koji su
prethodili AFŽ-u. To je nužno kako ne bismo dopustili da „vlastitu istoriju čitamo
kao pogrešnu fusnotu”7. Ne čitati „vlastitu istoriju kao pogrešnu fusnotu” u slučaju
AFŽ-a znači govoriti o nekim kontinuitetima ženskog organiziranja. Upravo bih
zbog toga, potpuno svjesna opasnosti analize koja se oslanja na analogiju, željela
ponuditi i jednu moguću historijsku analogiju. Kroz nju ću, onoliko koliko dopušta,
u drugom dijelu ovog poglavlja pratiti razvoj AFŽ-a ukazujući na neke bitne razlike
u odnosu na sovjetski Ženotdel i time, ako ništa drugo, otvoriti prostor za buduća
istraživanja i razmišljanja.
Cilj ovog poglavlja jest upravo da protiv historijskog zaborava postavi teorijski
okvir8 koji formiranje AFŽ-a promatra kao konačni rezultat najmanje tri izvora,
struje i tendencije koje su mu prethodile. Riječ je prvenstveno o ženskom
organiziranju unutar socijalističke, a potom i komunističke partije Jugoslavije,
o ženskim i feminističkim pokretima između dva svjetska rata, o omladinskim
sekcijama ženskih pokreta koje su odigrale ključnu ulogu u kasnijoj frontovskoj
politici KPJ i, konačno, o Ženotdelu kao zabranjenom uzoru.
7
Adriana Zaharijević, Fusnota u globalnoj istoriji: kako se može čitati istorija jugoslovenskog
feminizma. „Sociologija Vol. LVII : 72-89, 2015. str. 86
8
Ovaj okvir je nezamisliv bez radova Jovanke Kecman, Nede Božinović, Lidije Sklevicky, Gordane
Stojaković
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2.1. Žensko organiziranje u radničkom pokretu
Ženske sekcije u komunističkom pokretu, njihove metode i ciljevi rada direktno
su naslijeđe Druge internacionale (Socijalistička internacionala 1889–1916.)
i posebno odlučne uloge Klare Zetkin u nametanju prakse ženske organizacije
SPD-a na cijelu Internacionalu. Klara Zetkin je zaslužna za dvije fundamentalne
inovacije.9 Prva nije vezana samo uz pitanja politike, nego i organizacije: žensko
pitanje ne može biti odvojeno od klasnog. Drugo je još važnije: ideja da su žene,
premda eksploatirane kao radnice, podvrgnute specifičnoj formi opresije koja
podrazumijeva i specifične historijski uvjetovane metode organizacije i političkog
djelovanja žena i radnica. Nakon rezolucija Druge internacionale, sve socijalističke
(tada su nosile ime socijal-demokratske) partije morale su u svoj rad inkorporirati
ženske komitete, odbore, te izdavati časopise koji se bave ženama i ženskim
pitanjem. Tako je, dugi niz godina prije formalnog osnivanja AFŽ-a, i djelovanje
socijalističkog pokreta u regiji – pa i KPJ – bilo usmjereno na organiziranje žena
i osnivanje ženskih sekcija i komiteta. Iako malobrojne, socijalistkinje (i komunistkinje) organizirale su akcije unutar svojih redova. Tako je u martu 1919. godine
Pokrajinski sekretarijat žena socijalista (socijal-demokrata) Bosne i Hercegovine
organizirao analfabetske i druge tečajeve namijenjene ženama10. U aprilu iste
godine uslijedio je Kongres ujedinjenja Socijalističke radničke partije Jugoslavije
(komunista) održan u Beogradu, gdje je izabran Centralni sekretarijata žena
socijalista-komunista. U statutu je rečeno da sekretarijat „sebe smatra kao dio
partijske cjeline… [i] isključuje svaku zasebnu organizaciju žena, a smatra se
tehničkim-izvršnim odborom u agitaciji i organizaciji žena”11. Odnos sekretarijata
žena sa Centralnim partijskim vijećem bio je takav da „prema instrukcijama
Centralnog partijskog veća SRPJ (k) Centralni sekretarijat žena socijalistakomunista daje direktive za celokupni rad žena”12. Teze o „međunarodnom komunističkom pokretu žena”, usvojene 1920. godine na Drugom kongresu Kominterne
(Komunistička internacionala, 1919–1943.), kasnije usvojene i unutar KPJ, ne
predstavljaju bitniju inovaciju već postojeće socijalističke prakse, osim možda
utoliko što eksplicitnije zahtijevaju uključivanje žena kao ravnopravnih članova
9
Ono što slijedi je moje čitanje članaka Klare Zetkin sabranih u zborniku Clara Zetkin, Selected
Writings, New York: International Publishers. Ur. Philip S. Foner, predgovor Angel Davies. Ajli
Demiragić zahvaljujem na ovoj knjizi.
10
Kecman, Jovanka, Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 1918-1941.
Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1978. str. 93
11
Istorijski arhiv KPJ, tom 2, Kongresi i Zemaljske konferencije KPJ 1919-1937. Beograd: Istorijsko
odeljenje CK KPJ, 1949. str. 24-26
12
Ibid., str. 25.
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u rad komunističkih partija i drugih proleterskih organizacija. Ovaj kontinuitet
otjelovljuje Klara Zetkin koja je bila sekretar Međunarodnog ženskog biroa
Druge internacionale a 1920. godine postala sekretar Međunarodnog ženskog
sekretarijata Komunističke internacionale.
Drugi dio statuta žena socijalista-komunista, donesenog na istom Kongresu 1919.
godine, navodi rad s mladeži kao jedan od specijalnih zadatka ženskog pokreta:
„jer su žene prirodom svojom najpozvanije i najkompetentnije za taj rad… a taj rad
se treba odvijati prema modernim pedagoškim načelima, a sa čisto praktičnog
gledišta na cjelokupno vaspitanje”13. Svrha ovog rada bila je pripremanje mladeži da budu „odani članovi proleterskog pokreta”14. U to vrijeme je rijetko koji
socijalistički pokret dovodio u pitanje fundamentalnu i primarnu društvenu i
socijalnu ulogu žena, odnosno ulogu žena kao majki i primarnih njegovateljica
odgovornih za odgoj i uzdizanje novih generacija. Kasnije ćemo vidjeti da Tito,
poput Staljina, insistira na tome da je primarni zadatak „nove žene” vezan uz
njenu specifičnu biološku funkciju majke, ali ćemo vidjeti i kako avangarda
boljševičke revolucije Alexandra Kollontai ustvrđuje da socijalistička revolucija
mora prerasti u seksualnu revoluciju. Misliti AFŽ historijski omogućava nam da
još jednom ispitamo različite modele ženske emancipacije na ljevici, imajući u
vidu i važnost za nas danas. S jedne strane, model ekonomske emancipacije koji
slijedi liniju argumentacije da će ekonomska neovisnost nužno, matematičkom
progresijom, rezultirati emancipacijom žena kroz nadničarski rad. S druge
strane, model Aleksandre Kollontai i Ženotdela za koje socijalizacija socijalne
brige nije prvi preduvjet za ulazak žena u nadničarski rad, nego se smatra ciljem
po sebi, jednim od ciljeva komunizma kao samoupravljanja direktnih proizvođača.
Dok su vođe, od Tita preko Vide Tomšič do Mitre Mitrović i Cane Babović, također afirmirali određeni kontinuitet rada među ženama kao temelj za kasnije
aktivnosti AFŽ-a, sa historijske točke gledišta važno je insistirati i na određenim
rupturama. Potrebno je razlikovati periode djelovanja i političke perspektive
koje su ih uvjetovale. U revolucionarnom periodu, tj. periodu bolnog „rađanja”
Kraljevine SHS obilježenog štrajkovima, seljačkim ustancima i nacionalnim gerilskim otporom Beogradu, fokus KPJ bio je isključivo organiziranje radnih žena.
Nakon tzv. Obznane od 30.12.1920. godine, rad KPJ postaje ilegalan odnosno
polu-legalan, a rad među ženama prebačen je u sindikalne organizacije. Od 30ih godina postoji tendencija proširivanja utjecaja na masovne organizacije poput
ženskih pokreta. Definitivnim nametanjem Kominternine politike narodnog
13
Ibid. str. 26
14
Ibid.,
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fronta u borbi protiv fašizma iz 1935. godine, nastaje konačna ruptura.15 Otada
sudjelovanje i ulazak u ženske buržoaske organizacije, radi formiranja posebnih
(frontovskih) organizacija, postaje polazište i model za stvaranje sveklasnog
ženskog saveza u progresivnoj borbi za jednakost žena, protiv rata i fašizma. Takav
pristup predstavlja raskid s modelom Klare Zetkin koja je odbijala bilo kakvu
suradnju radničkog pokreta i buržoaskog feminizma u borbi za npr. pravo glasa,
građanska prava i jednakost, kao i sa njenim protivljenjem stvaranja zasebne
vanpartijske ženske organizacije. Na ovom primjeru možemo vidjeti kako se
jugoslavenski komunistički pokret preoblikovao po uzoru na staljinističke modele
u kretanju koje je borbu za emancipaciju žena ograničilo na demokratsku fazu
u kojoj je jedini i ključni zadatak bio poraz fašizma i obrana Sovjetskog Saveza.
Od početka Drugog svjetskog rata borba za ostvarenje demokratske perspektive
nacionalnog oslobođenja i jednakost žena susreću se s političkim problemom,
odnosno barijerom: savezom između Staljina i saveznika. I premda ovdje ne
možemo detaljno raspravljati o ovoj politici, bitno je istaknuti da su Jugoslavija i
Kina bile jedine države u kojima su revolucionarne i demokratske snage uspjele
prevazići ove barijere, ujediniti narod u antifašističkoj borbi protiv starog poretka
(ancien régime) i otvoriti perspektivu društvene revolucije. Od revolucionarne
Španjolske, preko francuskog narodnog fronta, do talijanskog i grčkog pokreta
otpora, slijepa poslušnost Staljinovom diktatu značila je sunovrat revolucije.
Historijski bismo također trebali uzeti u obzir postojanje paradoksalne i kreativne
sinteze i obogaćivanja buržoaskog feminizma i jugoslavenskog komunizma kao
organizacijskog, moralnog i političkog preduvjeta za jedan od najvećih masovnih
pokreta ikada viđenih na našim prostorima: AFŽ.
2.2. “Odabrane srodnosti”: ženski pokret i komunizam u Kraljevini
Feminističke i ženske građanske grupe pokrenule su neke od prvih kampanjā
za opismenjavanje žena, analfabetske tečajeve, radile na podizanju svijesti o
ženskom pitanju i pravima, bavile se i propagandnim radom kroz izdavaštvo novina. Od 20-ih pa do kraja 30-ih godina XX stoljeća jedna od najvažnijih ženskih
i feminističkih organizacija u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji bila je Feministička alijansa,
koja 1926. godine mijenja ime u Alijansa ženskih pokreta16. Gordana Stojaković
u tekstu „Crtica o feminističkoj istoriji grada Zagreba 1919-1940”17 navodi imena
svih važnih predstavnica feminističkih i ženskih pokreta koje su osobnim zalaga15
Sklevicky, Žene Hrvatske u NOB-u
16
Kecman, Božinović, Stojaković
17
Tekst dostupan na: http://pravonarad.info/?p=350
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njem i agitacijom napravile prve korake za izlazak žena iz sfere privatnog i
nevidljivog u sferu javnog. Iako je riječ o ženama iz bogatijih obitelji, pismenim,
često i fakultetski obrazovanim, njihovi su zahtjevi bili usmjereni na jednakost svih
žena. Neda Božinović, jedna od aktivistkinja AFŽ-a Srbije u knjizi „Žensko pitanje
u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku” svjesno nastoji naglasiti i potvrditi naslijeđe predratnog
ženskog pokreta koji ju je formirao:
[...] još od vremena kada sam pre Drugog svetskog rata prišla ženskom
pokretu impresionirale su me žene koje su začinjale i razvijale ženski
pokret. Ne manje osećanja gajim prema ženama svoje generacije koje su,
naročito u ratu, ne štedeći sebe, pa ni svoje živote, dale svoj puni doprinos za
ostvarenje fundamentalnih pretpostavki ženskog oslobođenja. Moje duboko
ubeđenje je da su žene svih generacija, u svom vremenu sa svim njegovim
i svojim vlastitim ograničenjima, uradile što je bilo moguće. Ovaj rad je...
pokušaj da se na jednom mestu prikaže istorija pokreta žena u Srbiji, da
se ukaže i na napore i upornost samih žena da doprinesu promenama, da
menjaju svoj status, na podršku i osporavanja koje su u tome imale. Jer, one
su umnogom zaboravljene – o njima istorija malo piše.18
Zbog toga nije dovoljno samo ustvrditi da se moraju razumjeti historijski kontekst
i sva ograničenja i prepreke s kojima su se feministice susretale da bismo
shvatili koliko su njihovi zahtjevi bili progresivni. Bila je potrebna revolucija i
još dvadeset godina kako bi se ovi zahtjevi ispunili, i to ne u potpunosti. Neda
Božinović potvrđuje da su feministički programi međuratnog perioda u SFRJ ne
samo bili prihvaćeni nego su se zakonska rješenja SFRJ formulirala na osnovu
tih programa sve do sredine 60-ih godina.19 Potrebno je ukazati na dva najvažnija
doprinosa (inovacije) feminističkog i ženskog pokreta koji su za kasniji razvoj
ženskog pitanja bili od presudne važnosti. Jedan od najvažnijih ispostavljenih
zahtjeva bio je promjena građanskog zakonika i ujedinjavanje pravnih propisa
važećih u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji.
Naime, danas se često zaboravlja da u toj Kraljevini nije postojao jedinstven pravni
sustav. U časopisu Alijanse Ženski pokret navodi se da u Jugoslaviji postoji šest
pravnih područja na kojima važe različiti propisi građanskog zakonika.20 Ali svima
su im bili zajednički podređeni položaj žene i potpuna fizička i materijalna ovisnost
18
Ženski pokret, januar februar, 1937. str. 5-6, zahvaljuem Gordani Stojaković na proslijeđivanju dva
broja ovog časopisa.
19
Božinović, str. 262
20
Ženski pokret, januar februar, 1937. str. 6-15.
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žene o muškim članovima obitelji. Alijansa je iznijela dva najvažnija prijedloga
rješenja akata građanskog zakonika: a) nadležnost sekularnih, građanskih sudova
u pogledu svih predmeta, ukidanje očinske i muževljeve vlasti, b) priznanju jednakog
prava ženama da raspolažu sobom i imovinom, uvođenje stečene imovine, jednako
pravo na nasljeđivanje. Drugi element se odnosi na socijalno zakonodavstvo za
koje je Alijansa ponudila sljedeća rješenja:
[d]a poslodavci vode strogu kontrolu o izvođenju zabrane noćnog rada za
žene, o radu žena pre i posle porođaja, da se staraju o tome da poslodavci
otvaraju dečja skloništa prema zakonskoj obavezi, u kojima će nadzor voditi
stručno žensko osoblje; da vode računa o higijenskim uslovima rada, naročito
o ispravnoj ventilaciji, osnivanju kuhinja, umivaonica, odvojenih za muške i
ženske, garderobama itd; da se postigne što efikasnija zaštita materinstva za
žene uposlene u industriji, zanatima, kućanstvu i poljoprivredi predlažemo:
da se proširi zakon o osiguranju radnika i na poljoprivredno radništvo; da
se uspostave propisi zakona o osiguranju radnika iz godine 1922 u pogledu
roka osiguranja za sticanje prava na pomoć o porođaju, trajanja porodiljske
zaštite, potpore za porođaje, opreme za dete i potpore za dojenje… 21
Alijansa ženskih pokreta iznijela je i zahtjev za uvođenjem ženskih radnih
inspektora kako bi se osiguralo sprovođenje gore navedenih zahtjeva i već
postojećih zakona. Iste zahtjeve nalazimo i u socijalističkom ženskom časopisu
Jednakost (Die Gleichheit, 1892–1923.) koji je uređivala Klara Zetkin. Tvrdnja Lidije
Sklevicky da je AFŽ „bio i ostao jedinim legitimnim nasljednikom ovog pokreta”22
slaže se sa tvrdnjom Nede Božinović.
Premda se mnoštvo tekstova bavi narativima ženskih pokreta, istaknutim figurama, rezolucijama ili opisima organizacija, do sada nije napisana nijedna
sveobuhvatna socijalna historija žena u Kraljevini. U odsustvu takve historije,
želim istaknuti nekoliko važnih elemenata. Pojava i proliferacija istaknutih i
važnih ženskih pokreta, od onih lijevo orijentiranih do religijskih i dobrotvornih,
rezultat je onoga što bismo Blochovim rječnikom mogli nazvati simultanost
nesimultanosti ili još jednostavnije, Lenjinovim riječima, nejednakim razvojem.
I dok su žene u pogledu prava u suštini ostale malodobne i nezrele, podređene
autoritetu najprije starijih muškaraca a potom i sinova, dok je svaka druga žena
bila nepismena, period između dva svjetska rata je ipak, prema Veri Erlich, bio
21
Ibid.
22
Sklevicky, str. 81
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period „kriznog vremena... opšteg nemira i konflikta u porodici”23. Tradiconalne
forme patrijarhalne obitelji (zadruga i višegeneracijsko domaćinstvo) sve više
su se raspadale – no ne i u Makedoniji i među muslimanskim stanovništvom –
a novčana privreda je sve više prodirala u poljoprivredu. Očevi više nisu mogli
zapovijedati na isti način, a odnosi među mladim muškarcima i ženama rapidno
su se mijenjali i postajali slobodniji. Žene sa sela gubile su stvarnu zaštitu
patrijarhalnih običaja i našle se između patrijarhalnog pravnog poretka s jedne i
neograničene slobode eksploatacije tržišta s druge strane.
Trendovi zapošljavanja ženske radne snage, koji su u stvarnosti često značili
zamjenu muške radne snage ženskom i dječjom, bili su uvjetovani ne samo smrću
dijela muške populacije u Prvom svjetskom ratu nego i ratom izazvanim naglim
demografskim promjenama. Tako je primjerice 1921. godine 40% stanovništva
Kraljevine Jugoslavije bilo mlađe od 14 godina.24 Uz to je na ionako osiromašenom
selu nastavljena fragmentacija zemljišnih posjeda, što seosko stanovništvo
prisiljava da sve više traži dodatne izvore prihoda. Rastuća klasa radnika-seljaka,
odnosno ženska i dječja radna snaga, predstavlja rezervnu armiju nezaposlenih,
što poslodavcima omogućuje da smanje cijenu rada i nadnica.
Brisanjem granica između pozadine i fronta, nova era totalnog rata dovodi u pitanje
i rodne granice između privatnog i javnog. Tako su žene tokom Prvog svjetskog
rata zbog odsustva muškaraca zauzele važne društvene funkcije koje (barem u
gradovima) uspijevaju zadržati čak i u periodu demobilizacije.25 U gradovima su,
pod utjecajem zapadnjačkih trendova, žene pohađale škole, univerzitete i borile se
za veća politička prava. Na univerzitetima je bilo oko 20% ženske populacije koja
se, pod snažnim utjecajem liberalnih i socijalističkih ideja o jednakosti spolova,
okreće protiv dvostrukog seksualnog morala. Nije se radilo samo o odbijanju
zastarjelih običaja, nego o tome da su „diktatura i njene reakcionarne snage…
sprovele prema ženama svoje nazadne mere i zapretile im novim oduzimanjem i
ono malo stečenih prava”26.
Upravo su gore navedeni procesi u osvit rata omogućili i uvjetovali i formiranje
jezgra KPJ i kadra AFŽ-a. Taj kadar je činila mlada grupa seoskih učiteljica i radnica
23
Erlich, Vera S. „Das Erschütternd Gleichgewicht in der Familie, aus eine Jugoslawischen Studie”
Citirano u: Holm Sundhausen, Historija Srbije od 19. do 21. veka. str. 296. Beograd: Clio, 2009.
24
Čalić, Žanin-Mari., Socijalna istorija Srbije 1815-1941. Beograd: Clio, 2004. str. 253-254.
25
Čalić, Žanin-Mari. Historija Jugoslavije u XX veku. Beograd: Clio, 2013, 123.
26
Bilten „Ženski pokret kroz omladinsku sekciju”, izveštaj br. 2. Januar 1940, u: ur. Cvetić, Bosa, Žene
Srbije u NOB-i, str. 56-9.
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TIJANA OKIĆ
OD REVOLUCIONARNOG DO PROIZVODNOG SUBJEKTA:
ALTERNATIVNA HISTORIJA AFŽ-A
koje su, stekavši u gradu obrazovanje odnosno radničko iskustvo, donosile natrag
u sela slobodarske i progresivne ideje, te buržoaska univerzitetski obrazovana
omladina koja se pod utjecajem komunističkih ideala, u turgenjevskoj drami
majki i kćeri sukobila s „gospođama“ iz feminističkog pokreta. Tako se sredinom
30-ih godina prošlog stoljeća nova generacija mladih žena, studentica i radnica
pridružuje postojećim ženskim i feminističkim organizacijama. Povezujući pitanja
jednakosti s borbom protiv rata i fašizma, omladinske sekcije su uspjele feministički
pokret povezati sa antifašističkim. U borbi za pravo glasa 1939. godine, u Srbiji se
primjerice dogodilo to da je „po prvi puta jedan široki društveni pokret prihvatio
ideju da se sloboda i demokracija mogu odnositi na potlačenu polovinu društva:
žene”27. Nekadašnje pripadnice omladinskih sekcija ženskog pokreta, pokreta
Univerzitetski obrazovanih žena i drugih članica ženskih organizacija sudjelovale
su u pripremama za oružanu pobunu 1941. godine i spontano osnovale ženske
antifašističke komisije – prethodnice AFŽ-a.
Godine 1939. u maju se održava Zemaljsko savjetovanje KPJ na kojem se u osvit
rata raspravlja o uključivanju žena kao ravnopravnih članova u rad Partije i drugih
proleterskih organizacija, a što je Partija imala u planu puna dva desetljeća ranije.
Tito, strahujući da će mobilizacija i represija desetkovati partijsko vodstvo, vidi u
ženama potencijalne kadrove koji su „klasnom neprijatelju nepoznati”. Upravo
iz toga proizlazi ideja da „ne sme biti ni jednog foruma bez ženskih članova. Ako
je većina kadrova do sada podcenjivala važnost uvlačenja žena u KP – onda sada
moraju postati svesni činjenice da je stvaranje ženskih partijskih kadrova naš
najvažniji organizacioni zadatak”28. Muški članovi Partije bili su kritizirani što na
rad sa ženama gledaju kao na ženski rad, ali kada se vodstvo ženskog pokreta,
suočeno s ratom i prijetnjom represije povuklo iz političke borbe, još veći problem
postaje feminizam. Na partijskom kongresu 1940. godine Vida Tomšič izjavljuje:
„[f]eminizam postavlja zajedničke zahtjeve žena sviju slojeva odijeljeno od zahtjeva
radnog naroda. Naglašavanjem zajedničkih ženskih zahtjeva u suprotnosti i u
borbi protiv muškaraca feminizam sakriva klasnu osnovu ženskog pitanja, te
time odvraća masu žena od borbe protiv kapitalizma kao i protiv klasnog društva
uopće”29. Isto ovo, i s jednakim pravom, mogla je reći i Klara Zetkin oko 1890.
godine. No, KP u tom trenutku vodi politiku u okviru narodnog fronta i zapravo ne
povezuje opća demokratska pitanja sa borbom protiv kapitala budući da govorimo
o vremenu demokratskog antifašističkog saveza.
27
Božinović, Neda, Položaj Žene u Srbiji u XiX i XX veku, Beograd: Žene u crnom, 1996. str. 260
28
Tito, 1939, objavljeno u: Proleter, br. 1-2, januar-februar, 1940, str. 6.
29
Vida Tomšič, citirano u: Šoljan Marija, ur. Žene Hrvatske u NOB-u, Vol I, str. 1-8.
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2.3. AFŽ kao revolucionarni pokret
Prema službenim brojkama, dva je miliona žena sudjelovalo u NOB-u: ta brojka
čini najveći ženski organizirani pokret u Drugom svjetskom ratu. Borilo se 100.000
žena (partizanki) a njih 2.000 su dobile vojni čin. 25.000 partizanki je ubijeno, a
preko 40.000 ranjeno u borbi. Dodamo li ovome stravične slike fašističkog terora
i genocida, međunacionalne masakre kojima su orkestrirale kolaboracionističke
snage i totalni kolaps društvenog i ekonomskog života, postignuća AFŽ-a, u
principu organiziranog pokreta masa seljanki, vrijedan je najmanje dubokog
naklona.
Širenjem oslobođenih teritorija, od početka ustanka bivaju uspostavljani Narodno
oslobodilačka vojska (NOV) i organizirani izbori u Narodnooslobodilački odbori
(NOO) u kojima su mogli glasati svi punoljetni građani, bez obzira na religiju, spol
ili nacionalnost. Pravo glasa žena nastalo je u borbi i iz borbe za novu vlast. AFŽ
je mobilizirao žene za prve istinski slobodne i jednake izbore ikada viđene na
tlu Jugoslavije, te ohrabrivao žene da se i same kandidiraju. U samoj BiH je do
kraja rata u seoske i mjesne odbore NOO-a bilo izabrano 3.000 žena. No, kao
i u KPJ, u više organe vlasti izabrano je mnogo manje žena nego muškaraca.
U revolucionarnu vlast BiH (ZAVNOBiH) izabrano je samo pet žena, četiri puta
manje nego u njegov hrvatski ekvivalent – ZAVNOH, budući da je AFŽ u Hrvatskoj
bio daleko najjači i najorganiziraniji. Na historijskom zasijedanju Antifašističkog
vijeća narodnog oslobođenja (AVNOJ), gdje su se narodnooslobodilački odbori
proglasili legitimnom i suverenom vladom Jugoslavije, sjedila je samo jedna žena
– Kata Pejnović, predsjednica Izvršnog odbora AFŽ-a, izabrana u Predsjedništvo
AVNOJ-a. Na drugom Zasijedanju AVNOJ-a, u Bihaću, žene su činile 4% ukupnog
članstva, a u Predsjedništvo su izabrane samo dvije – Spasenija Cana Babović i
Maca Gržetić, obje članice Izvršnog odbora AFŽ-a.
Jedan od prvih osnivačkih dokumenata AFŽ-a kojima se precizira cilj i način
djelovanja, jest Okružnica broj 4. Centralnog komiteta komunističke partije
Hrvatske iz 1941. godine gdje se govori o osnivanju AFŽ-a i njegovoj ulozi „u cilju
aktiviziranja i povezivanja širokih slojeva žena i njihovog uvlačenja u narodnodnooslobodilačku borbu bez obzira na njihovu političku, nacionalnu i vjersku
pripadnost”. Ovim dokumentom je po prvi put skicirana buduća organizacijska
struktura AFŽ-a koja je, poput partijske, bila teritorijalna i izborna, i penjala
se od nižih kvartovskih, gradskih, oblasnih i sreskih do Glavnog odbora; bila
je centralizirana, a niži odbori su bili podređeni višim. Prvobitni zadatak AFŽ-a
bio je da osigura potporu partizanskim odredima, a sam AFŽ je ušao u sastav
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Narodnooslobodilačkog fronta.30 Na listi političkih ciljeva i zadataka AFŽ-a
pojavila se i borba za jednakost među spolovima, što je trebalo postati drugim
centralnim pitanjem djelovanja AFŽ-a.
Na prvom Zemaljskom kongresu AFŽ-a u Bosanskom Petrovcu, vezu sa prijašnjim
aktivnostima AFŽ-a potvrđuje Titovo obraćanje: „[n]a koncu bih htio da kažem
još to da je Antifašistički front žena, koji postoji već odavno, a sada je dobio i
svoju organizacionu formu, jedna od organizacija koja je ponikla odozdo….”31. O
tome da AFŽ jest ženska organizacija, ali ne odvojena od drugih, svjedoče druga
dva važna dokumenta prvog Zemaljskog kongresa AFŽ-a. Riječ je o referatima
Cane Babović i Mitre Mitrović, tajnice omladisnke sekcije ženskog pokreta i jedne
od glavnih ženskih figura Partije.32 One se također osvrću na rad u predratnim
godinama, potvrđujući da je formiranje AFŽ-a rezultat dugogodišnjeg rada i
borbe žena Jugoslavije za pravedniji svijet. Oba referata bi trebalo čitati kao programatska, posebno zbog činjenice da je AFŽ svoj statut usvojio mnogo kasnije,
kao i zbog činjenice da se KPJ u oba referata spominje kao nosilac borbe protiv
fašizma, a za jednakost svih. Isticanje važnosti KPJ predstavlja suptilan odmak od
politike narodnog fronta, čime se ponovno potvrđuje gore navedeni podatak da
je KPJ istovremeno slijedila (za što također nalazimo primjere u referatima) ali i
odstupala od trvrde linije narodnog fronta.
KPJ je od početka razumijevala da (parafrazirajući referat Mitre Mitrović) vodi
borbu i rat u kojima se briše razlika između pozadine i fronta. Više nije bilo
moguće front smatrati muškim, a pozadinu ženskom. Stoga ustanak naroda nije
mogao bez podrške žena i apsolutne mobilizacije prerasti u općenarodnu borbu i
pobunu. Žene je bilo potrebno mobilizirati za borbu ali, još važnije, za pozadinski
rad od kojeg je ovisilo snadbijevanje vojske, narodnog fronta, prenošenje poruka i
uopće komunikacija viših i nižih komiteta KP, kao i odbora AFŽ-a. Veliki problem
u tom smislu predstavljalo je seljaštvo. Budući da je seljaštvo činilo većinu
stanovništva, cilj daljnjeg toka borbi počivao je upravo na stupnju mobilizacije
seljaka u partizanske redove. Jednako važna bila je i proklamacija jednakosti
muškaraca i žena, obećanje bolje budućnosti i socijalne pravde na kojem je
počivao cijeli revolucionarni podvig: rušenje starog i stvaranje novog.
30
Žene Hrvatske u NOB-u, Vol I, str. 57.
31
Tito ženama Jugoslavije, dostupno na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/92
32
Cana Babović, Organizaciono pitanje AFŽ-a, dostupno na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/231,
Mitra Mitrović, Antifašistički pokret žena u okviru narodno-oslobodilačke-borbe
dostupno na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/232; svi naglasci su moji
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Borba partizana naslanjala se na gerilske strategije ali i na lokalne tradicije
hajduka i uskoka, Prvog i Drugog Srpskog Ustanka (1804–1817.), seljačke pobune
protiv Otomanskog carstva u BiH 19. stoljeća, ženske revolucionarne vojne komitete VMRO-a koji su sudjelovali u Ilindanskom ustanku 1903. godine, ženske
gerilske borce crnogorskog otpora autrougarskoj okupaciji od 1916. do 1918.
godine, kao i ustaničke pobune protiv ranijih okupatora. Milovan Đilas, primjerice,
navodi da je Partija svjesno koristila „drevne tradicije i mitove“ da bi predstavila
NOB kao nastavak „vjekovne borbe naših slobodoljubivih naroda”33. Analiza
Jelene Batinić34 pokazuje kako je KPJ figuru nove žene stvarala povezujući je s
epskim figurama južnoslavenskog folklora. Partizanska ženstvenost počivala je
na dva stuba: plemenite junakinje koja svoju čast i vrijednost (odnosno jednakost)
dokazuje u bitkama, i majke koja poziva na osvetu svoje mrtve djece. Oličenje
ove potonje bila je Kata Pejnović, u narodu poznata kao „majka Kata“, koja je
na osvetu pozvala na Prvoj Zemaljskoj konferenciji AFŽ-a. Prva figura porediva
je s ulogom mladih seljanki kao borkinja i bolničarki, a druga s pozadinskom
ulogom starijih seljanki, majki koje su obavljale tradicionalne ženske poslove.
Zajedno su među seljaštvom imale ogroman mobilizacijski potencijal budući da
su sadržavale elemente tradicije, što je utjecalo na buđenje patriotskih osjećanja
i stupanje u borbu.
Ove figure nove žene naslovnica prvog broja časopisa Žena u borbi slikom ujedinjuje
u ženu koja jednom rukom drži dijete, a drugom pušku. Spajajući tradicionalno
sa novim i modernim, KPJ čini sasvim legitiman korak kojim stvara upravo uvjet
mogućnosti za revolucionarni prevrat. Iako ni ustaše ni četnici nisu zanemarivali
važnost žena, u njihovim prikazima žene su i dalje bile nejednake i vezivane uz
crkvu, kuću i djecu.35 Načinivši jasnu razliku u odnosu na poimanje žena, KPJ osigurava stratešku prednost nad okupatorskim i kolaboracionističkim snagama.
U svojem referatu o organizacijskim pitanjima AFŽ-a, Cana Babović podcrtava da
je borba koju vodi i koju će voditi AFŽ – borba KPJ, stoga se kao glavni zadatak
pokreta uopće zahtijevalo „potpuno obezbeđenje naše vojske”. Cana Babović u
svom referatu oštro napada „buržoaske” feminističke pokrete kako bi pokazala
da je cilj jednakosti podređen općim ciljevima NOB-a.
33
Djilas, Milovan, Wartime. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. str. 227.
34
Batinić, Jelena. Women and Yugosav Partisans. A history of World War II Resistance. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
35
O ulozi i mjestu žena u ustaškom pokretu vidjeti više u radovima: Bitunjac Martina, Le donne e il
movimento ustascia. Rim: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2013.Renata Jambrešić-Kirin i Senjković Reana,
Puno puta bi vas bili... Narodna umjetnost, 42/2, 2005, str. 109-126
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Drugi važan zadatak AFŽ-a bilo je izdavanje časopisa koji je trebao služiti
za mobilizaciju žena, a time i kao pomoć vojsci. Časopisi su trebali služiti i za
političko uzdizanje žene, što je također navedeno kao jedan od ciljeva organizacije.
Unutarpartijski dokumenti, kao i dokumenti Arhiva, ponavljaju da mnoge žene,
čak i aktivistice AFŽ-a ne samo da ne razumiju svoju ulogu u NOB-u, nego ne
razumiju niti da se borba vodi za njihovu jednakost. Samo političkim uzdizanjem
žena bilo je moguće osigurati da sve žene shvate važnost borbe i nužnost
okupljanja svih antifašistkinja (bez obzira na klasu, religiju i nacionalnost) u borbi
protiv fašizma. Kako bi se podigla „politička svijest” najprije je trebalo iskorijeniti
masovnu nepismenost, tako su na oslobođenim teritorijama partijski kadrovi
koji su vodili i AFŽ odmah pokretali analfabetske tečajeve, tečajeve o higijeni,
domaćinstvu i političkim ciljevima NOB-a.
Treći važan element rada AFŽ-a bio je rad na oslobođenoj teritoriji s ciljem
učvršćivanja narodne vlasti i podržavanja narodnih odbora. Govoreći o oslobođenoj
teritoriji i važnosti upostave narodne vlasti, Mitra Mitrović u svom referatu
navodi da se već „sada na oslobođenoj teritoriji podižu dečiji domovi”. Jedna od
zanimljivosti njenog referata jest i prikaz načina na koji su se žene transformirale
u borbi i kroz borbu – zauzimajući istu poziciju kao i muškarci. Žene uključene u
narodnooslobodilačku borbu ponosno su isticale kako su zauzele muško mjesto
i u borbi dokazivale svoje „junaštvo, hrabrost i sposobnost”. I dok je jedan od
nesumnjivo najvažnijih doprinosa bio taj da je u kriznom trenutku omogućeno da
„transgresijom tradicionalnih rodnih uloga” žena – kao partizanka – uopće stupi
u poredak političkog, ovo stupanje u borbu za pravednije društvo u svojoj suštini
nije dovelo u pitanje rodne odnose i norme nego ih je ponavljalo i perpetuiralo (što
potvrđuju i referati Cane Babović i Mitre Mitrović).
Iako je strategija KPJ uvelike ovisila o uspjehu uvođenja žena u pokret i borbu,
mobilizacija žena u AFŽ koegzistirala je sa tradicionalnim shvaćanjima, a
žene koje su doprinosile partizanskoj borbi činile su to u pravilu obavljanjem
tradicionalno ženskih zadataka i poslova: čišćenjem, pranjem, njegovanjem i
brigom za druge. Rad AFŽ-a tako se od početka formira isključivo kao ženski rad
koji u velikoj mjeri počiva na tradicionalnom modelu koji ističe „žensku” prirodu i
„ženske” kvalitete. I dok je u ratu taj strateški ustupak partizanima donio prevagu
a ženama omogućio da se potvrde i kao revolucionarni subjekti, u poratnom
periodu kontradikcije rodnih uloga zadobijaju drugačiju putanju.
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Problemi u radu AFŽ-a pojavili su se već u njegovoj prvoj fazi. Iako Lydija Sklevicky36
o prvoj fazi djelovanja AFŽ-a govori kao o fazi autonomnosti, pozivajući se na referat Mitre Mitrović sa Prvog zemaljskog zasijedanja AFŽ-a, ja u referatu Mitre
Mitrović ne pronalazim dokaze za to. Prije će biti da je Lydija Sklevicky zamijenila
referate Cane Babović i Mitre Mitrović, jer u referatu Cane Babović eksplicitno stoji
„da će Centralni odbor nastojati da se naše organizacije vremenom osamostale”.
Čitanjem arhivskih dokumenata utvrdila sam da je ipak sve ostalo na nastojanju.
AFŽ nikada nije bio niti postao autonomna organizacija. Rad AFŽ-a je od početka
bio subordiniran djelovanju NF, a NF je bio direktno podređen KPJ. Premda je AFŽ
imao ograničenu operativnu autonomiju, nikada nije imao potpunu organizacijsku
autonomiju. Operativna autonomija je bila izraženija na okupiranom teritoriju,
budući da je protok informacija od CK KPJ i NF do odbora AFŽ-a stizao mnogo
teže, što je značilo da su odbornice AFŽ-a same morale pronalaziti načine
djelovanja. Stoga i na ljevici ponavljane tvrdnje o autonomiji AFŽ-a smatram
potpuno neopravdanim, što pokazuje i mnoštvo dokumenata Arhiva. Pripisivati
AFŽ-u autonomiju koju nikada nije imao zapravo znači ne historizirati ga, nego ga
mitoligizirati. Glavni cilj mita o autonomiji jest legitimirati liberalne teze drugog
vala feminizma koji tvrdi da bi ženski pokret trebao biti politički i organizacijski
neovisno od ljevice.37 Iz ovakvog viđenja proizlazi metafizički dualizam koji Lidiju
Sklevicky vodi ka postavljanju teze o pretežno herojskoj fazi AFŽ-a i pretežno
dijaboličkoj fazi podređenosti Partiji koja kulminira disolucijom AFŽ-a 1953.
godine. Sve i da ovo uzmemo kao istinito, to ne objašnjava ograničenja ženske
emancipacije za vrijeme i poslije rata. Teza o autonomiji na taj način u suštini
zamagljuje centralni politički ulog tj. pitanje političke strategije u odnosu na
ciljeve revolucije i značenje emancipacije: konflikt između modela ekonomske
emancipacije i abolicije (komunističkog ukidanja) obitelji, klase i države o kojima
će biti riječi kasnije.
Direktivno pismo CK KPJ iz januara 1944. godine prvi je korak ka još većoj
centralizaciji AFŽ-a potvrđenoj i na V Kongresu KPJ kada se događa druga
preraspodjela zadataka između NF-a i AFŽ-a, kad AFŽ postaje izvršni organ
NF-a i više se ne stara o političkom uzdizanju žena. Arhiv svjedoči i o problemima
nakon završetka rata. Izvještaji u više navrata spominju da žene funkcionera i
članova NF-a ni na koji način ne sudjeluju u radu AFŽ-a.38 To je mnogim ženama
36
Sklevicky, žene Hrvatske u NOB-i, str. 108.
37
O čemu govori i Lilijana Burcar, više u: Burcar Lilijana, Restavracija kapitalizma: repatriarhalizacija
družbe, str. 113-142, Ljubljana, Sophia, 2015. Lilijani Burcar se zahvaljujem jer mi je poslala svoju
poticajnu knjigu koja predstavlja do sada jedini pokušaj objašnjenja položaja žena u tranziciji.
38
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Dopis sreskog odbor AFŽ-a Velika Kladuša, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
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predstavljalo problem, a nekima i znak da ni one ne bi trebale sudjelovati u radu
odbora. Jednako se tako navodi i da drugovi ne daju drugaricama da pohađaju
tečajeve, ili pak da žene funkcionera „s ponosom ističu” da ne žele raditi u
organizaciji.39 Nećemo pogriješili ako kažemo da je usred revolucije i sama ideja
da su žene jednake muškarcima predstavljala revoluciju. Sama ideja je već od
samih početaka nailazila na otpor, i upravo su zbog toga žene morale iznalaziti
načine da dokažu da nisu zaostale i glupe. Sve to se odražavalo i na rad AFŽ-a.
Trideset godina kasnije, Dušanka Kovačević, jedna od centralnih figura AFŽ-a
BiH, to opisuje ovako:
žene su …okrećući leđa tradiciji koja je sputavala njihove snage, moralno,
fizički i psihološki postale drukčije, ne u smislu da su sticale osobine
muškaraca kako se to često misli, nego su postajale ono što je bilo potrebno
slobodi naroda i revoluciji. U revoluciji su žene i djevojke našle mjesto što je
važnije od lične sudbine zapisane u istoriji žene, ali su nagonski tražile izraz
iz sudbine svojih majki i baba. Prvi put u istoriji, valjda, žena je izgrađivala
svoj sopstveni ideal žene, nezavisno od toga kakvu ženu želi muškarac. Taj
ideal gradila je mjerilima revolucije i pobjede nad neprijateljem. Vrijednost
kao što su odanost narodu, hrabrost, znanje, preduzmljivost potiskivale
su stara mjerila koja su od žene tražila poslušnost, nemiješanje u muške
poslove, zatvorenost u kući, itd. Muškarci su se manje mijenjali. Mnogi od njih
su prihvatili tu novu ženu, drugaricu, kao nužnu, ali i prolaznu ratnu pojavu, dio
surove ratne stvarnosti.40
No, čitavoj je arhivskoj građi zajedničko to da se borba KPJ gotovo ne povezuje
s borbom protiv kapitalizma, što ima veze sa već spomenutim strateškim revolucionarnim pitanjem. To je umnogome odredilo reakciju koja je bitno uvjetovala
kasniju politiku KPJ. Činjenica da je program KPJ od 1935. godine balansirao
između nezavisne revolucionarne politike i politika narodnog fronta proizvela
je dva značajna rezultata: s jedne strane je revolucionarna politika osigurala
Kutija 2, 901/47, 1947. Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Zapisnik sa savjetovanja predsjednica i sekretara
sreskih odbora AFŽ održan u Sarajevu 20.1.1949. godine”, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 7a, ?
1949., Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, “Zapisnik s pleuma za oblast Bihać” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine,
Kutija 9, br. dok. ?, 1950…
39
Primjerice: Glavni dobor AFŽ BiH, “Zapisnik plenarnog sastanka Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a održan
26.9.1948. godine” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 84/48, 1948. Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Oblasni
odbor AFŽ-a, “Zapisnik Plenarnog sastanka AFŽ-a u Bihaću održanog u prostorijama u vjećnici
G.N.O dana 9.2.1950. godine, str. 2. Arhiv Bosne i Hrecegovine, Kutija 9, 1061/5, 1950. Oblasni odbor
AFŽ-a, “Zapisnik sa sastanka sekretarijata Oblasnog odbora za oblast sarajevsku koji se održaje
10.1.1950. godine”, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 1053/4, 1950.
40
Žene BiH u NOB-u, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1977. str. 38-38, italic T.O.
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otvaranje revolucionarnog polja i stvorila uvjet mogućnosti revolucije, no s
druge strane je slijeđenje politika narodnog fronta onemogućilo KPJ da borbu
protiv fašizma, koju je stavljala na prvo mjesto, poveže s borbom protiv kapitala
i kapitalizma. Ovo je posebno važno za razumijevanje položaja žena u Jugoslaviji
i razumijevanje odnosa proizvodnje i reprodukcije, kao i forme koju je ovaj odnos
poprimio već 50-ih godina prošlog stoljeća, a o čemu i Arhiv svjedoči.
2.4. Čega Ženotdel (ni)je ime?
U prethodnom dijelu teksta je navedeno da ću pokušati ispitati granice jedne
moguće historijske analogije. U arhivu AFŽ-a, u kasnijim biografijama partizanki i
u većini djela jugoslavenske historiografije koja se bave ženskim pitanjem, uočava
se nešto što ću za potrebe ovog rada nazvati simptomatičnim odsustvom. Naime,
literatura o jugoslavenskom komunističkom pokretu i AFŽ-u ni ne spominje
sovjetski Ženotdel (Женотдел) ni njegove glavne protagonistice Aleksandru
Kollontai, Inesu Armand, Nadeždu Krupskaju, Konkordiju Samojlovu i Klaudiju
Nikolaevnu. I nasumična Google pretraga o Ženotdelu jedva da daje rezultate na
našem jeziku, a u tim malobrojnim rezultatima se spominje isključivo uz ime
Aleksandre Kollontai. To da se Ženotdel ni danas gotovo ne spominje zasigurno
je rezultat brisanja historije Ženotdela – najprije iz sovjetske, a onda nužno i svih
istočno-blokovskih historiografija, uključujući i jugoslavensku. Pitanja o odsustvu
Ženotdela nameću se sama od sebe: da li je u vremenu formalnog uspostavljanja
AFŽ-a u Jugoslaviji bilo zabranjeno govoriti o Ženotdelu koji je do tada prestao
postojati? Da li je model Ženotdela bio model kojeg se moralo zaboraviti i na
kojeg se nije smjelo pozivati niti ga se prisjećati? I, u konačnici, glavno pitanje:
koja je razlika između Ženotdela i AFŽ-a? Struktura AFŽ-a je u velikoj mjeri – ali
ne u potpunosti – oponašala strukturu Ženotdela.41 I već je stoga o Ženotdelu
moguće govoriti kao o u odsutnom modelu a – u periodu formalnog osnivanja
AFŽ-a – i kao o zabranjenom modelu, budući da tada Jugoslavija u potpunosti
slijedi Staljinovu politiku Kominterne i politiku narodnog fronta42.
41
Više u: Stites, Richard, Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917-1930, Russian History, Vol.
3, br. 2, str. 182.
42
Ideja da za potrebe ovog teksta po prvi puta uopće pokušam napraviti kratku komprativnu analizu
Ženotdela i AFŽ-a, javila se nakon što sam u arhivu AFŽ-a pročitala Dopis centralnog odbora AFŽ-a
iz Beograda Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a za BiH od 30.1.1947. godine u kojem se govori o propustu
vezanom za ”problem djece palih boraca koloniziranih po porodicama. Propust je bio taj da je
izdržavanje djece postalo vrsta zarade. Mnoge su porodice uzimale djecu da za sebe izvuku stalnu
mjesečnu korist” Centralni odbor AFŽ-a predlaže da se osmisle novi načini upravljanja ovim
pitanjem i da se pronađu načini da se ovoj djeci da pravilan politički odgoj (T.O). Glavni Odbor AFŽ BiH,
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Opće mjesto specijalističkih rasprava o sovjetskoj historiografiji danas zauzima
analiza pravnih akata i normi uvedenih nakon velike Oktobarske revolucije, budući
da govorimo o jednom od najprogresivnijih zakonodavstava ikada igdje uvedenih.
Dobro je poznata i činjenica da je februarska revolucija 1917. godine – koju su
predvodile žene zahtijevajući prestanak rata koji ih je lišio osnovnih životnih
namirnica i uvjeta za život – bila katalizator i okidač za kasnija revolucionarna zbivanja. Neposredno nakon revolucionarnih zbivanja 1917. godine i nakon mnogo
pritisaka i demonstracija predvođenih ženama, a za koje su agitirali i buržoaske
feministice i boljševici, Privremena vlada je ženama dala univerzalno pravo glasa.
Nakon uspostave revolucionarne vlasti u decembru 1917. godine legaliziran je
razvod, ujednačena prava bračne i vanbračne zajednice a time i priznanje djece
bez obzira na to da li su rođena u formalnoj ili neformalnoj zajednici. U novembru
1920. godine legaliziran je abortus, po prvi puta u historiji, a izvođenje abortusa
izvan za to predviđenih institucija donosio je najstrožije zatvorske kazne. Uslijedio
je (30.12.1922.) zakon o zemljišnom posjedu koji je predstavljao možda najdublji i
najsistematičniji pravni pokušaj razbijanja tradicionalnih patrijarhalnih kulturnih
i pravno-posjedničkih obrazaca i normi.
Pokušaj promjene tradicionalnih patrijarhalnih obrazaca, onaj koji pogađa najveći
dio populacije, morao je biti isti onaj koji sasijeca problem u korijenu i izaziva najviše
protivljenja. Ovim zakonom omogućena je jednakost muškaraca i žena na Dvoru,
upravljanje kućanstvom bilo je jednako mogućnost i obaveza i žene i muškarca,
žene su dobile pravo nasljeđivanja zajedničke imovine Dvora…43 Svi navedeni
zakoni umnogome su bili rezultat osobnog zalaganja Aleksandre Kollontai koja
je nakon revolucije postala komesarkom za socijalna pitanja.44 Abolicija obitelji,
nemisliva bez potpunog i radikalnog dokidanja rodnih i patrijarhalnih normi,
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 2, 149-47, kao i ”Zapisnik sa održanog savjetovanja žena iz grada
i sreza Zenice po pitanju formiranja raznih društava a u vezi zaključka sjednice Izvršnog odbora C.O.
AFŽ-a”, gdje je drugarica Mardić Olga predložila da se formira društvo za pomoć besprizornoj djeci.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9,1082/4, 1950.
43
O zakonskim propisima i normama ranog postrevolucionarnog perioda, kao i kasnijim staljinističkim
kontrarevolucionarnim mjerama vidjeti više u: Rudolf Schlesinger (ur.), „The Family in the U.S.S.R.,
Documents and Readings”, Routledge, 2000.
44
Premda u historiografiji postoje sporovi oko toga koliku je ulogu Aleksanda Kollontai imala pri
donošenju progresivnih obiteljskih zakona i samom formiranju Ženotdela, Carol Eubanks Hayden
je odlučna u svojoj ocjeni da bi bez individualnog zalaganja Aleksandre Kollontai mnogo toga
ostalo mrtvo slovo na papiru. Vidjeti npr. doktorsku disertaciju Carol Eubanks Hayden „Feminism
and Bolshevism: The Zhenotdel and the Politics of Women’s Emancipation in Russia 1917-1930.”
University of California, Berkley, 1979. Iako je Kollontai kasnije podnijela ostavku na to mjesto, nije
prestala raditi u drugim partijskim tijelima.
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bila je jedna od ključnih karakteristika boljševičke revolucionarne teorije koja
se „oslanjala i na marksističke klasike, ali i na djela ruskih marksistkinja poput
Kollontai i Krupskaje”45.
Fluidnost i fluktuacija poimanja rodnih uloga jedna je od osnovnih ideja koje stoje
iza ideje komunalnog življenja, pokušaja i djelomično ostvarenog utopijskog sna
o stvaranju institucija socijalizacije kućanskog rada, dijeljenja kućanskih poslova
i obaveza, te „iščezavanja” obitelji kao proizvodne jedinice zajedno s državom i
klasama.46 Ideja kojom su se vodili vođe Oktobarske revolucije predstavlja dosad
jedini pokušaj da se komunizam ostvari ne samo vlasništvom nad sredstvima
za proizvodnju, nego i abolicijom obitelji, budući da su to smatrali ništa manje
važnim dijelom revolucionarne preobrazbe društva. Dekonstruiranjem i dokidanjem rigidnosti rodnih određenja i kategorija koje su ženu vijekovima držale u
podređenom položaju i vezivale ju za kućanski rad koji je, kako je rekao Lenjin,
„zatupljuje, oglupljuje i porobljava”47, nastojali su sprovesti ideale u djelo. Upravo su
zbog toga, još od 1905. odnosno 1909. godine, Kollontai i Krupskaja iznosile ideje o
važnosti i nužnosti organiziranja žena proleterki i seljanki kroz rad posebne grupe,
komiteta ili sekcije. Međutim, njihove ideje o osnivanju posebne unutarpartijske
ženske organizacije ostale su nerealizirane sve do 1917. godine. Iste godine nastavljeno je izdavanje predratnog časopisa Rabotnica48 koji je služio kao jedno od
glavnih propagandnih oruđa agitacije i rada među ženama. Priča o Ženotdelu je
priča o tome kako se, unatoč unutarpartijskom protivljenju, ipak formirala specifično ženska organizacija. Raznolikost pozicija u boljševičkoj partiji za vrijeme
Oktobarske revolucije možda najbolje ocrtava činjenica da su se osnivanju
Ženotdela protivili i članovi i članice Partije. Tako je u decembru 1917. na Prvoj
konferenciji petrogradskih radnica došlo do sukoba između Alleksandre Kollontai i
45
Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Boslhevik Party, Russian History, Vol, br. 2, str.
150-173., 1976.
46
Stites, Richard, „Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian
Revolution”, Oxford University Press, 1989. Zanimljivo je da Stites ova stremljenja smješta upravo
u period od 1917. do 1930., budući da taj period koincidira sa osnivanjem i djelovanjem Ženotdela.
47
Lenjinove riječi. Lenjin je inače sve vrijeme davao bezrezervnu podršku radu i djelovanju Ženotdela i
nekoliko puta je govorio na kongresima žena koje je sazvao Ženotdel. Vidjeti: Stites, Hayden.
48
Vidjeti više u: Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Party, Russian History Vol. 3, br. 2, str.
150-173., 1976., Richard Stites, Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917-1930, Russian
History, Vol. 3, br. 2, str. 174-193., 1976. Važno je istaknuti da je i Rabotnica pokrenuta nakon
Međunarodnih ženskih socijalističkih kongresa održanih za vrijeme konferencija Druge
internacionale u Stutgartu 1907. i Kopenhagenu 1910. godine.
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Klaudije Nikolaevne49 koja se, uz Konkordiu Samoilovu, protivila formiranju ženske
sekcije unutar Partije.50 Na Sedmom sveruskom kongresu boljševika održanom
u aprilu 1917. godine Aleksandra Kollontai predlaže sastanak delegatkinja radi
formiranja ženskog odjeljenja unutar boljševičke partije, i u septembru iste godine
formalno se uspostavlja odjeljenje koje će 1919. godine, nakon uspješne političke
agitacije i mobilizacije, dobiti status partijskog odjela (otdel).
Prelomni događaj bio je Sveruski ženski kongres kojeg su organizirale Kollontai i
Armand, uz pomoć radnica, seljanki i drugih delegatkinja koje su iz cijele Rusije
došle u Moskvu izlažući se opasnostima i pogibijama građanskg rata. Carol E.
Hayden ističe da je formiranje žena u poseban odjel (Žen-otdel) u jeku građanskog
rata tim značajnije što je trebalo obraniti i konsolidirati revolucionarnu vlast,
ali i omogućiti ostvarenje zakonskih rješenja i dekreta revolucionarne vlasti.
Boljševici su tako bili u kontradiktornoj poziciji jer su „ženama morali pristupati
kao odvojenoj kategoriji kako bi ih uvjerili da to nisu”. Rad boljševičke partije
karakterizirala je svijest o nedovoljnosti nominalne pravne jednakosti, te o potrebi
jačanja i osiguranja primjene zakona.
Armand i Kollontai su radile do granica izdržljivosti, obilazile cijelu zemlju, organizirale tvorničke radnice i seljanke uključujući ih u rad Ženotdela i uopće u revolucionarni zamah. Agitirale su ne samo među radnicama i seljankama, nego i među
nezaposlenima, suprugama vojnog osoblja itd. Carol E. Hayden upravo u tom kontekstu govori o važnom principu Ženotdela, a on je glasio „agitacija djelima, ne
riječima”, dok Stites ističe da je pravi kontekst Ženotdela taj da se „formalnom,
legislativnom programu emancipacije moralo dati značenje u društvenoj revoluciji
odozdo”51. Jedan od glavnih sistema kojim se ostvarivala „agitacija djelima” bio je
sistem praktikanstva. Suština ovog sistema bila je u tome da radnice i seljanke
među sobom odaberu delegatkinje koje su kao praktikantkinje provodile tri do šest
mjeseci u centrali Ženotdela, obilazile i upoznavale se sa radom sudova, partijskih
odjeljenja, bolnica i ostalih institucija, upoznavajući svoja prava da bi kasnije mogle
ukazivati na nepoštivanje pravila i zakona u svojim fabrikama, kućanstvima, selima.
Prema Richardu Stitesu, praktikantkinje su „u pravilu vidjele mnogo, a izvještaje
podnosile iskreno”. Cilj je bio jasan: osposobljavanje ženskih kadrova kako bi se
postigle što dublje i sveobuhvatnije promjene svakodnevnog života i socijalizacija
49
Nikolaevna će kasnije postati direktoricom Ženotdela.
50
Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Party, Russian History Vol. 3, br. 2, str. 150-173
51
Stites, ibid., str. 176
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kućanskog rada”52. Wendy Zeva Goldman ističe da je članstvo u Ženotdelu zauvijek
izmijenilo živote hiljada radnica, seljanki, domaćica i sluškinja koje su kroz sistem
praktikanstva stekle iskustva koja su prenosile drugima.53 Unatoč tom ogromnom
utjecaju i važnosti za svakodnevni život stotina hiljada žena, rad Ženotdela je od
početka bio opterećen predrasudama i problemima. Članovi i članice Partije na
višim i nižim nivoima protivili su se osnivanju i radu Ženotdela, optužujući ovu
organizaciju za feminističku devijaciju, i prisiljavajući članice Ženotdela da se
stalno pravdaju i objašnjavaju kako njihov rad nema veze sa feminističkim devijacijama. Dolazilo je i do sukoba u kojima su provincijski predsjednici komiteta u
Centralnoj Aziji vršili nasilje nad ženama uključenim u rad Ženotdela, zabilježen
je i slučaj spaljivanja ureda Ženotdela, kao i slučajevi obiteljskog nasilja gdje su
muževi tukli svoje supruge koje se odvaže otići na „ženske” sastanke.54 Konkordia
Samoilova u jednom pismu iz 1920. godine piše da su ih kolege seksistički nazivali
„babski centar i bab-kom”. I mnoge visokopozicionirane članice Partije odbijale su
rad u Ženotdelu smatrajući ga manje vrijednim i nedostojnim, te potvrdu tražile u
muškom pokretu.55 Ogromni problemi u radu Ženotdela počeli su nekoliko godina
nakon završetka građanskog rata, uvođenjem tržišnih mehanizama NEP-a, koji je
koincidirao sa demobilizacijom boraca Crvene armije, čime je na ionako ugroženom tržištu rada ženska radna snaga postala još ugroženijom. U proračunu je
za Ženotdel i njegove zadatke bilo sve manje novaca, a masovna nezaposlenost
muškaraca i žena samo je doprinosila smanjenju troškova predviđenih za rad
Ženotdela.
Nakon smrti Inese Armand, prve direktorice Ženotdela, te razrješenja Aleksandre
Kollontai (koja je pristupila Radničkoj opoziciji protiv jednopartijske države) uslijedio
je niz imenovanja direktorica koje su sve teže radile pod paskom staljinističkog
aparata. Od 1924. godine i socijalizma u jednoj državi, staljinistička kontrarevolucija
malo pomalo nagriza tekovine Oktobarske revolucije. Godine 1930. partijskim
dekretom je Ženotdel ukinut pod izlikom da je „postignuta jednakost muškaraca
i žena, te da su žene uzdignute na nivo muškaraca”56, a aktivnosti Ženotdela
52
Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Party, Russian History Vol. 3, br. 2, str. 166.
53
Wendy Zeva Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, Soviet Family Policy and Social Life 19171936. Cambridge University Press, 1993. O promjenama koje je donio Ženotdel vidjeti i: Stites,
Richard: Did the Bolshevik Revolution Improve the Lives of Soviet Women – dostupno na:
http://faculty.sfhs.com/lesleymuller/ap_euro/Debates/debate_soviet_women.pdf
54
Carol Eubanks Hayden, The Zhenotdel and the Party, Russian History Vol. 3, br. 2, str. 161. O
55
Clemens, Evans, Barbara, The Bolshevik Women, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
56
U: Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade. Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia,
Indiana University Press, 1997. Iako je istraživanje Elizabeth Wood izvanredno i zaista u svakom
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prebačene su unutar djelovanja AgitPropa. Godine 1936. kontrarevolucija uspijeva
zadati konačni udarac civilizacijskom napretku postignutim revolucijom, vraćajući
carističke zakone kojim su zabranjeni abortus i homoseksualnost, a razvod je bio
gotovo nemoguć zbog raznih pravnih ograničenja. Time je izbrisan emancipacijski
potencijal velike Oktobarske revolucije, a ideja abolicije (iščezavanja) obitelji i ukidanja
patrijarhalnih i rodnih normi i uloga zauvijek spremljena u ropotarnicu historije.
Vidjeli smo da Ženotdel nastaje iz prethodne revolucionarne mobilizacije žena kako
bi se u napadu kontrarevolucije za vrijeme građanskog rata obranila sovjetska
vlast i tekovine revolucije, dok je AFŽ, čak i prije invazije na Jugoslaviju, koncipiran
kao organizacija za mobilizaciju žena za rat narodnog oslobođenja u kojem se
formalno traži savezništvo i s jugoslavenskom vladom u egzilu i sa saveznicima.
Usporedimo li Ženotdel i AFŽ kao ženske organizacije u zemljama gdje se dogodio
revolucionarni prevrat, jednom od najvažnijih razlika među njima ispostavlja
se to što je političko-mobilizacijska funkcija u slučaju Ženotdela postajala sve
važnijom, a u slučaju AFŽ-a sve manje važnom, i sve manje podrazumijevajući
političku mobilizaciju a sve se više fokusirajući na dobavljanje dobara, rad sekcije
majka-dijete i uopće pitanja socijalnog karaktera. Ove dvije organizacije susretale
su se sa sličnim, ako ne i istim poteškoćama s kojima se nužno susreće bilo koji
pokušaj promjene stoljetnih tradicija i vjerovanja. I Ženotdel i AFŽ su izmijenili
živote žena koje su sudjelovale u njihovom radu. Međutim, nepobitnom ostaje
činjenica da su se za ostvarenje različitih ciljeva koristila različita sredstva. Dakle,
boljševici, a time i Ženotdel, od početka su se borili protiv kapitalizma pa zbog toga
i protiv buržoaske forme obitelji. U slučaju KPJ i AFŽ-a borba protiv kapitalizma,
za komunizam, nije bila sastavni dio borbe nego je kao stvarni cilj predstavljena
tek nakon zauzimanja vlasti. Zbog toga jugoslavenska revolucija nikada nije, čak
ni na pet minuta, proglasila aboliciju obitelji. Ženotdelovska stremljenja danas
postoje samo unutar usko specijalizirane historijske literature, i više nemaju ni
ime ni mjesto: abolicija obitelji, sablast najavljena u Komunističkom manifestu.
Sablast koja danas više nikoga ne proganja i ničim ne kruži.57
smislu vrijedno proučavanja, ne slažem se s njenom (revizionističkom) ocjenom da su „žene
bile rezervna armija revolucije, uvučene na tržište rada i političke borbe kada je to bilo potrebno
i odbačene kada to nije bilo potrebno”. Upravo Ženotdel, o kojem je ona i napisala knjigu, svjedoči
o pokušaju da se borba univerzalizira jer bez zajedničkih napora žena i muškaraca ne može biti
materijalnog postvarenja revolucionarnih principa. Zbog istih razloga se ne slažem niti
sa analizom Jelene Batinić, koja slijedi argument Elizabeth Woods i u sovjetskoj politici vidi
neizdiferenciranu emancipaciju odozgo.
57
Marx, Karl i Engels Friedrich, Manifest komunističke partije, dostupno na:
http://staro.rifin.com/root/tekstovi/casopis_pdf/ek_ec_586.pdf
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3. Od revolucionarnih subjekata do produktivnog subjekta
Do 30-ih godina sovjetski model emancipacije sveo se, duhovitim riječima
Barbare Clements, na „emancipiranu radnicu i sretnu domaćicu”58. Za Staljina su
baš njih dvije bile stub proizvodnog ženskog subjekta: „žene sačinjavaju polovinu
stanovništva naše zemlje... one sačinjavaju ogromnu radnu armiju i one su pozvane da vaspitaju našu decu”59. Ekonomska neovisnost žena u socijalističkoj
ekonomiji je u teoriji trebala voditi do pune emancipacije žena. Međutim, to se
nije desilo. Eric Hobsawm primjećuje:
Jer iako se od velikih promjena, kakva je masovni ulazak udatih žena
na tržište rada moglo očekivati da će proizvesti propratne ili naknadne
promjene to nije bilo nužno: o čemu svjedoči SSSR (nakon što su početne
revolucionarno-utopijske težnje iz 20-ih godina napuštene) gdje su se udate
žene u većini našle pod dvostrukim bremenom starih dužnosti u kući i novih
dužnosti zarađivanja plate, bez ikakve promjene u odnosima između spolova
ili u javnoj i privatnoj sferi.60
U svim ekonomijama zasnovanim na slobodnom najamnom radu, status „emancipirane radnice” podređen je njenoj društveno-socijalnoj funkciji majke. Vizija
takve nove žene bila je prisutna i u jugoslavenskoj praksi. Tito, na trećem Kongresu
AFŽ-a Jugoslavije 1950. godine, izjavljuje: „Ja mislim, drugarice, da vi u prvom
redu svom svojom snagom i elanom treba da vršite dužnosti koje proističu iz tih
vaših specifičnih obaveza, kao što je, na primer, briga o ženama majkama, briga o
higijeni djece i briga o djeci uopšte, briga o zdravlju, o vaspitanju žena u Jugoslaviji...”61
U Arhivu ne nalazimo potvrdu da je u Jugoslaviji ikada postojala ideja abolicije
obitelji kao što je, vidjeli smo, postojala u Ruskoj revoluciji.
Osim retoričkih, u Jugoslaviji drugi koraci nikad nisu poduzeti. Za vrijeme rata je
AFŽ-ov časopis Žena u borbi prenoseći sovjetsku formulu najamnog rada i majčinstva uvodio pojam novog proizvodnog subjekta „slobodne, ravnopravne građanke socijalističke zemlje” i vožnju traktora, udarništvo i postajanje kemičarkom kao glavna postignuća koja bi čitateljice trebale imitirati. Stoga ne treba
58
Clements, E. Barbara, A history of women in Russia, from the earliest times to the present,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012., str. 429.
59
cit. Jelena Filipova, Iz SSSR-a, Šta je dala ženi velika Oktobarska socijalistička revolucija, u Nova
Žena, godina 2, br. 20, Novembar, 1946., str. 20.
60
Hobsbaum, Erik, Doba ekstrema, historija kratkog XX veka 1914-1991, Beograd: Dereta, 2002, str. 238.
61
Iz govora Josipa Broza Tita, Treći kongres Antifašističkog fronta žena Jugoslavije, 1950.
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iznenaditi činjenica da je Ustav FNRJ bio gotovo identičan Ustavu SSSR-a iz 1936.
godine. Primjerice, abortus u Ustavu FNRJ nije bio legaliziran i tek je kasnije
(početkom 60-ih) liberaliziran, te ozakonjen Ustavom iz 1974. godine. Jugoslavenska i sovjetska praksa razlikovale su se u stupnju u kojem je nova žena za
svoju reprodukciju ovisila o mehanizmima države ili tržišne akumulacije.
Sve se revolucije suštinski mogu odrediti u odnosu na to kako pristupaju ženskom
pitanju. Stoga po svojoj formi mogu biti modernizacijsko-emancipacijske ili
patrijarhalne. Razlika između prvih i drugih u tome je što prve smjeraju na
emancipaciju žena i naglašavaju jednakost, a druge ženu vezuju uz obitelj i
naglašavaju spolne (pa time i rodne) razlike.62 Upravo zbog toga su sve velike
revolucije dosad uvijek propagirale novi tip žene. Jugoslavija, vidjeli smo, nije
izuzetak. Ukoliko znamo da „položaj žene u bilo kojem društvu ovisi od toga
kako to društvo organizira osnovne funkcije poput reprodukcije, subsistencije
i proizvodnje”63, onda je važno sagledati kontradikcije od početka prisutne u
načinu pristupa organiziranju ovih osnovnih funkcija. Tu, upravo zbog danas i
sutra, moramo govoriti o međusobnom prožimanju ovih dvaju poimanja mjesta
i uloge žene u revoluciji ili, preciznije, u postrevolucionarnom periodu kada je
riječ o Jugoslaviji. I upravo govoriti o ovom prožimanju znači ostati vjeran AFŽ-u,
odnosno shvatiti historijsku putanju razvoja i disolucije AFŽ-a kao duboko
antagonističnu. Samo tako možemo razumjeti fundamentalni antagonizam koji je
postojao i postoji kada je u pitanju mjesto žena u društvu.
Dok je u kontekstu poratne Jugoslavije stvaranje nove žene s jedne strane retorički naglašavano kao jedan od glavnih ciljeva i zadataka nove vlasti, s druge
strane možemo pratiti kako se stvarnost udaljava od ostvarivanja borbenog ideala
kojim su se žene (samo)potvrdile kao subjekti revolucionarne borbe. Kraj rata
je za Jugoslaviju značio novi početak u izgradnji nove zemlje i novoga društva.
Srušen je stari poredak i trebalo je uvesti novi, što je zahtijevalo ujedinjenje svih
raspoloživih snaga i resursa radi obnove i izgradnje zemlje, ali i uvođenje niza
političko-pravnih akata i novih mobilizacijskih strategija.
62
Valentine M. Mogadham, Gender and Revolutionary Transformation, Iran 1979 and Eastern
Central Europe 1989, Gender&Society, June 1995, str. 328-356
63
Woodward, Susan L. The Rights of Women: Ideology, Policy and Social Change in Yugoslavia, str.
576-636 u: Women, State and Party in Eastern Europe. Ur: Susan L. Wolchik i Alfred G. Mayer, Duke
University Press, Durham. 1985.
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Maxine Molyneux64 ističe da je u postrevolucionarnom periodu progresivna zamjena
starog novim jedan od glavnih zadataka svake revolucionarne vlasti zemalja Trećeg
svjeta ili zemalja gdje je vladao ancien régime, radi ubrzanog ekonomskog razvoja
i društvene promjene. To podrazumijeva „stvaranje centraliziranog, sekularnog
i egalitarnijeg društvenog poretka”. Stvaranje takvog poretka ovisi i o uvođenju
istih zakona u ruralna područja gdje prevladava običajni zakon. Nakon donošenja
Ustava 1946. godine postupno je uslijedilo uvođenje novih, standardiziranih
zakonskih propisa.65 Za žene je jedno od najvažnijih postignuća bilo ukidanje
pravnih razlika postojećih u prethodnih šest pravnih područja Kraljevine. Susan
Woodward66 primjerice ističe da je u Jugoslaviji vlast očeva zamijenjena vlašću
države, što jest poremetilo dominantno patrijarhalnu i patrilokalnu strukturu
jugoslavenskog društva. KPJ nakon Ustava iz 1946. godine67 čini prvi korak ka
stvaranju uvjeta za poboljšanje položaja žena. Uslijedilo je uvođenje jedinstvenih
zakona i obaveza nadležnosti građanskih sudova za pitanja bračnog, radnog i
krivičnog prava, čime su se ispunjavali zahtjevi ženskog pokreta iz 30-ih godina.
Žene su time formalno-pravno zadobile ono što su puškom izborile.
Ali šta je to što je bilo izboreno puškom? Jednakost ili jednakopravnost? Još u
prvoj (ratnoj) fazi djelovanja AFŽ-a uglavnom se govori o „građanskoj i društvenoj
jednakopravnosti” ali ne i o jednakosti. Ako se jednakost i spominjala, bilo je to
u kontekstu jednakosti s muškarcima, što nas opet vraća na jednakopravnost i
izjednačavanje prava žena i muškaraca. Neospornom i golemom, neizrecivom
historijskom zaslugom KPJ ostaje to da su žene nakon izborene pobjede u Jugoslaviji po prvi puta u historiji postale, pravno govoreći, osobe. Odnosno, kako
to sjajno primjećuje Ivana Pantelić68, žene su postale građanke – što arhivski
dokumenti potvrđuju. Žene su se izborile za pravo glasa, pravo na obrazovanje,
zaposlenje, jednaku plaću za jednak rad (makar nominalno); postojao je javni
sustav zaštite zdravlja, zaštita materinstva i djeteta, porodiljski dopusti, itd. Sve to
je dubinski pretreslo društvene odnose koji su počivali na patrijarhalnom pravnom
poretku vlasti očeva, te ženama osiguralo veći stupanj autonomije i neovisnosti. I
64
Molyneux, Maxine, Socialist Societies Old and New: Progress Towards Women’s Emancipation,
Feminist Review, Summer 1981, str. 1- 34.
65
Božinović, Neda, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku, Žene u Crnom: Beograd, 1996. str. 157-158.
66
Woodward, Susan L. op.cit
67
AFŽ je bio mobiliziran u pitanjima rasprave oko Ustava, Centralnog odbora AFŽ-a Jugoslavije
Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH od 10.12.1945. godine, Glavni Odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, 1/ 135, 1945.
68
Pantelić, Ivana, Partiznake kao građanke, Beograd, Institut za savremenu istoriju, Evoluta, 2011.
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danas, izložene sve jačim i težim napadima konzervativnih i neoliberalnih politika,
stojimo na tlu i naslijeđu izborenom tada.
Mnoge su feministice i teoretičarke69 već ukazale na probleme s kojim se jugoslavenski politički projekt susreo već kasnih 40-ih i početkom 50-ih. Bez ulaska u
analize pojedinačnih djela, ukratko bismo mogli reći da sve one prepoznaju da je
revolucionarna heroina i junakinja, ta nova žena morala p/ostati stara, odnosno
da je pitanje opće društvene emancipacije (a time i emancipacije žene) sve više
shvaćano kao sekundarno. Pošto je jugoslavenska politika bila uvjetovana i unutarnjim i vanjskim faktorima koji su pak uvjetovali smjer kretanja društvenih i
ekonomskih odnosa, to se odrazilo najprije na gore spomenutu organizaciju proizvodnje, reprodukcije i subsistencije. Mene ovdje zanima to da, uzimajući u obzir
marksističke i feminističke analize, slijedeći Arhiv, pokušam pokazati kako su se
ove uvjetovanosti odrazile na položaj žena.
Da bismo to razumjeli potrebno je prepoznati nesumjerljivost između koncepcije
revolucije, kao moderniteta, i mobilizacije – revolucionarni događaj kao dokidanje jednog poretka i stvaranje novog. Ove koncepcije nisu identične iako podrazumijevaju raskid sa prošlošću, progres i otvaranje horizonta budućnosti. Štoviše,
radikalno su suprotstavljene. Perry Andreson nas podsjeća da svaka od njih ima
zasebnu temporalnost: „karakteristično vrijeme ‘modernosti’ je neprekidno i
sveprožimajuće kao i sami proces industrijalizacije: kao najekstenzivnije, upravo
totalitet same epohe. Vrijeme revolucije je isprekidano i razgraničeno: određena ruptura u reprodukciji uspostavljenog poretka, koja po definiciji počinje u
jednoj konjunkturi i završava u drugoj”70. Modernost označava benjaminovsko
prazno linearno vrijeme „u kojem je svaki trenutak različit od drugog samom
činjenicom da dolazi poslije, ali istovremeno je i isti kao zamjenjiva jedinica u
procesu beskonačnog ponavljanja”71. Vrijeme kapitalističke reprodukcije je vrijeme koje svoj najjasniji ideološki izraz ima upravo u teleološkom konceptu modernizacije. Čin revolucije je isprekidan, diskontinuiran, trenutak zbijenih političkih
transformacija koje otvaraju revolucionarni prostor, ali to nužno znači i otvaranje
nove, druge temporalnosti koja se ne može svesti na linearno vrijeme i linerani
razvoj događaja vezanih uz kapitalistički način proizvodnje, tj. beskonačne
proizvodnje robnih odnosa.
69
Primjerice: Lydija Sklevicky, Gordana Stojaković, Renata Jambrešić-Kirin, Susan Woodward (iz
sasvim drugog ugla), Svetlana Slapšak.
70
Anderson, Perry, A Zone of Engagement, London: Verso, 1992. str. 46-47.
71
Ibid., str. 30.
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Socijalističke revolucije podrazumijevaju tri diskontinuirane i kontradiktorne
konjugacije revolucionarnog događaja i procesualnog trajanja: nagli prijelaz od
demokratske ka društvenoj revoluciji; produženi prijelaz od političke revolucije
(trasnformacija pravno-političkog poretka) ka kulturnoj revoluciji (transformacija
običaja) i konačno prijelaz od nacionalne ka svjetskoj revoluciji.72 Riječ je, dakle,
o diskontinuitetima, rastrganim i diferencijalnim temporalnostima i ritmovima
klasne borbe, tj. revolucije i kontrarevolucije, ekonomskog eksperimenta, kulturne revolucije i društvene emancipacije u kojoj ni događaji ni procesi u vremenu
ne slijede ravnu crtu; ne možemo ih znati unaprijed, niti možemo biti sigurni
u ishod. Antonio Gramsci upravo zato naglašava da ne bismo smjeli miješati
„ekspolzije političkih strasti…sa kulturalnim transformacijama koje su spore i
postupne” jer se “promjene u načinima razmišljanja ne događaju kroz brze,
simultane i generalizirane ekspolzije”.73
Tako vidimo poraz utopijske i fragmentirane temporalnosti koju je otvorila
Ruska revolucija, poraz vremena Ženotdela i abolicije obitelji, koje je zamijenila
temporalnost „sovjetske nove klase”, socijalizam u jednoj državi, „Termidor u obitelji” i formiranje moderne, nuklearne obitelji. I mislim da upravo tu treba tražiti
razloge i uzroke usporenju procesa emancipacije u Jugoslaviji. Ako patrijarhat
nije samo skup društvenih vrijednosti nego ima veze i s načinom proizvodnje,
onda možemo ustvrditi da je u jugoslavenskom slučaju upravo modernizacija,
kao reprodukcija tržišnih odnosa, ključni element kojim se premostio patrijarhat.
Onoga trenutka kada je došlo do postupnog samoograničenja nastupila je i apologija koja negira odnose dominacije i subordinacije, njihove sistemske uzroke i
činjenicu da se – upravo zato što su sistemski – vremenom sami reproduciraju.
Reprodukcija patrijarhata zadobija formu modernog kroz pravno-političku podjelu privatno-javno, a nju najbolje vidimo u razlici između jednakopravnosti i
jednakosti.
Zato bi, slijedeći mladog Marxa, bilo dobro razgraničiti pojmove jednakopravnosti
i jednakosti.74 To znači da, sa stajališta marksističke teorije emancipacije kao
dezalijenacije i zahtjeva za (radikalnom) jednakošću, ove pojmove ne bismo
smjeli svoditi jedan na drugi. Jednakopravnost ne implicira jednakost, osim u
formalnom smislu, kako je opisao još mladi Marx. Za sada se vrijedi prisjetiti
da, za mladoga Marxa, formalna odnosno juridička jednakost predstavlja formu
72
Bensaïd, Daniel, Le pari mélancolique., Paris: Fayard, 1997. str. 73
73
Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderno 24, Giornalismo, §3, u: Quaderni del carcere, Vol III, Torino: Einaudi,
1975. str. 2269.
74
Marx, Karl, Prilog kritici Hegelove filozofije prava, Beograd: Kultura, 1957.
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mistifikacije stvarnih društvenih odnosa. Njome se prikrivaju stvarne materijalne
nejednakosti formalno slobodnih i jednakih građana. Razdvajanje ekonomske od
političke moći istovremeno predstavlja i njihovo proizvođenje kao dviju različitih
sfera: „ekonomske” i „političke”. Drugim riječima, o sferi građanskog društva
govorimo kao o sferi slobodnih privatnih ugovora između vlasnika-posjednika, a o
sferi političkog kao o sferi u kojoj kao građani imamo pravno-politička prava. Kako
nas podsjeća Tamás, proizvodnja distinkcije privatno-javno je— baš zato jer je
sfera slobodne razmjene između slobodnih vlasnika radne snage— istovremeno i
sfera bezgranične dominacije i eksploatacije najamnog rada. Sloboda svojstvena
slobodnom radu govori nam nešto i o formalnoj jednakosti orodnjenog rada.
Unutar moderne, nuklearne obitelji ne vrši se nikakva razmjena vrijednosti, a
muškarci i žene u ugovor ulaze kao slobodni i jednaki kako bi reproducirali vlastitu radnu snagu i radnu snagu budućih generacija.
Pošto je žena odgovorna za društvenu reprodukciju, njen slobodni izbor da stupi
u obiteljske odnose izraz je činjenice da se za vlasnike radne snage pristup
sredstvima za subsistenciju odvija isključivo na tržištu. Budući da tržište nastavlja
vrednovati privatni rad kao društveno nužni rad, formalna jednakost ženskog i
muškog radnika uvjet je podjele buržoaskog subjekta na buržuja-građanina,
muški-ženski rod, privatno-javno, ekonomsko-političko i sve moguće separacije i
alijenacije karakteristične fetišizmu robe.
Marxovu kritiku formalne jednakosti tako možemo primijeniti i kada govorimo
o kontradikcijama koje su, neposredno nakon završetka Drugog svjetskog rata,
dovele do prvih poteškoća u realiziranju socijalističkog ideala u Jugoslaviji.
Žene su od subjekata revolucije i revolucionarnih subjekata postale građanke
– vlasnice svoje radne snage. Time je revolucija efektivno zaustavljena, procesi
opće društvene emancipacije usporeni, a pitanje emancipacije žena odgođeno za
neko buduće vrijeme.
Mnoštvo dokumenata iz ovog perioda koje pronalazimo u Arhivu svjedoči o tome
da je emancipacija žena sve više shvaćana isključivo kao ekonomska kategorija,
da se insistiralo na povećanom korištenju ženske radne snage (uz konstantni
problem manjka institucija koje bi socijalizirale teret reprodukcije, što će posebno
doći do izražaja u manje razvijenim dijelovima/republikama) čime je emancipacija
svedena na ugovornu, nadničarsku formu.
U Arhivu nalazimo svjedočanstva o novim progresivnim mjerama čiji je cilj
povećanje aktivnosti i sudjelovanja žena u javnom životu, procesima proizvodnje i
gospodarskim aktivnostima, ali nalazimo i izvještaje s terena koji otkrivaju nešto
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drugačiju priču. Logično je postaviti pitanje zašto i kako je bilo moguće da žene
nakon revolucije, unatoč zakonskoj jednakosti i iznimno progresivnim zakonima,
i dalje ostanu nejednake? Odgovor nudi upravo spomenuta distinkcija privatnojavno, utemeljena na marksističkoj kategoriji slobodnog najamnog rada. Po
Maxine Molyneux, često se previđa, iako od presudne važnosti, to da formalna
jednakost (jednakopravnost) koju žene po prvi puta zadobiju nakon revolucija, kao
i to da žene ponekad obavljaju „ne-ženske” poslove, podrazumijeva dva važna
elementa: upornu spolno-rodnu podjelu rada i neuspjeh da se umanji ili iskorijeni
teret kućnog rada i odgovornosti među spolovima.75 U nastavku ću, slijedeći
Arhiv, pokušati pokazati kako su se ove kontradikcije ispoljavale u SFRBiH (ali i
u Jugoslaviji).
U prvim je poratnim godinama rad AFŽ-a ušao u fazu koja je, riječima Gordane
Stojaković76, usmjerena na „jačanje, obnovu i izgradnju”. Pored toga je bilo važno
nastaviti s neometanim radom drugih postojećih struktura, poput Narodnog
fronta (NF). Tako i Hamdija Čemerlić, kao član Narodno Oslobodilačkog Fronta
(NOF), na Kongresu AFŽ-a BiH (08.06.1945.) drži godine govor u kojem kaže:
[n]aše žene su svojim naporima i zaslugama stekle za uvijek svoja politička
prava i zauvijek se izjednačile sa našim muškarcima… Nema sjetve i nema
žetve da naša žena ne unosi veliki napor oko toga posla. Briga oko invalida,
njegovanje naših ranjenih boraca, zbrinjavanje siročadi sve je to vaše djelo.
Vi ste dosada na tom radile i vi ćete odsada na tom raditi.77
Ovaj primjer, čini mi se, jako dobro pokazuje tendenciju očekivanja da žene
prihvate „biološke i prirodne” uloge koje su obavljale kroz historiju, ali sada u
novim okolnostima – kao formalno-pravno jednake s mogućnošću uživanja svih
prava koja iz toga proizlaze. Rad AFŽ-a u ovoj fazi bio je organiziran kroz rad
sekcija: majka-dijete, kulturno-prosvjetna i socijalno-zdravstvena. Arhiv pruža
detaljne podatke o tome koliko su vremena i rada žene dale na obnovi i izgradnji
75
Molyneux, Maxine, Women in Socialist Societies Old and New. ProgressTowards Women’s
Emancipation. Feminist Review 1981: 1-34.
76
Gordana Stojaković navodi da su postojale tri faze rada AFŽ. Iako ona govori o AFŽ-u Vojvodine, isto
se može primijeniti i na AFŽ BiH. Prva faza stvaranja i podrške NOB-u 1942-1945, druga faza širenje
aktivnosti na jačanju, obnovi i izgradnji 1946-1949 i treća faza gašenja u kojoj se promovira ekonomija
njege i brige, 1949-1953. Partizanke, žene u narodno-oslobodilačkoj borbi, str. 13. Ur: Duško
Milinović i Zoran Petakov, Novi Sad: Cenzura, 2010.
77
Pozdravna riječ dr. Hamdije Čemerlića sa Prvog kongresa AFŽ-a BiH od 08.06.1945, Arhiv BiH, Fond
– Zbirka / Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH, 1945, Kutija 1, 1945. dostupno na:
http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/272
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zemlje, radeći na organiziranju i pripremi izbora, podizanju infrastrukture, novih
objekata, krečenju, organiziranju analfabeteskih tečajeva po selima i zaseocima,
držeći predavanja o domaćinstvu, održavanju kuće, higijeni, sprječavanju zaraznih
bolesti, njezi djece, ispravnom načinu brige za djecu i domaćinstvo, praznovjerju,
držeći babičke škole itd.78 Arhiv nam tako pokazuje da su zadaci dodjeljivani
afežeovkama u suštini uvijek bili vezani uz njihovu biološku percepciju kao žena,
majki, sestara i drugarica od kojih se očekuje da ispune sve norme i propise koji
proizlaze iz njihovih „prirodnih” uloga.
To se potvrđuje i na sastanku plenuma glavnog Odbora AFŽ-a BiH 1946. godine;
to, i važnost izlaska na izbore.79 Međutim, veoma brzo postaje jasno da se rad
AFŽ-a u drugoj fazi vezuje uz modernizaciju – masovni udarnički rad, izgradnju
i industrijalizaciju zemlje i sve druge poslove koji proizlaze iz činjenice da
je postojala i perpetuirala se rodna podjela rada. Tako je bio raspoređen i rad
u afežeovskim sekcijama: majka-dijete, socijalno-zdravstvena i kulturnoprosvjetna (koja je ujedno trebala služiti za politički rad). Nakon što je politički rad
u potpunosti prebačen u domen NF-a, AFŽ postaje organizacija koja je, u suradnji
sa NF-om i ministarstvima, trebala ispunjavati isključivo socijalne funkcije.
Godina 1948. predstavlja zaokret: raskid sa Staljinom i sukob s Informbiroom,
okretanje ka tržišnim mehanizmima i u skladu s time prve ekonomske reforme
uvođenjem samoupravljanja. Inicijalno, u strahu od napada i invazije, država
mobilizira mase za rad i nastavak neometane proizvodnje. Prijetnja rata i invazije
postaju stvar prošlosti nakon 1949. godine i ulaska Jugoslavije u Vijeće sigurnosti
UN-a. Jugoslavija se okreće samoupravljanju koje je u prvoj fazi trebalo osigurati
povećanje rentabilnosti ulaganja i proizvodnje i time ubrzati akumulaciju
kapitala. Budući da se država vodila logikom proizvodnje, prvi „sumnjivci” postaju
žene, na koje su, riječima Vide Tomšič, prve poratne predsjednice AFŽ-a, „zbog
78
Primjerice: Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Sreski izvještaj AFŽ-a za srez sarajevski Glavnom odboru
AFŽ-a BiH (izbori, izgradnja dječjeg ljetovališta, narodno prosvjećivanje, analfabetski tečajevi),
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 4, 1137/48, 1948. Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Dopis Sreskog odbora
AFŽ-a Doboj Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a za BiH, 7.2.1947. godine” (izvještaj o radu zdravstvene sekcije,
analfabetski tečajevi), Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 2, 199/47, 1947. Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH,
Sreski Odbor AFŽ-a Bijeljina, Zapisnik sa sastanka Sekretarijata Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a BiH
(organiziranje žena za rad na izgradnji pruge Bijeljina-Rača). Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5,
1182, 1948.
79
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, “Zapisnik sa plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a BiH održanog 05. i 06.06.
1946.” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, 116/46., 1946. Plenum je održan u čitaonici Napretka, a
pored članica AFŽ-a, ispred NF-a bio je prisutan Ljubo Babić.
dostupno na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/332
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materinstva gledali kao na nerentabilnu radnu snagu”80. Snaga njenog argumenta
nestaje samom pretpostavkom da su žene kao slobodni i autonomni najamni
radnici upravo radna snaga koja proizvodi vrijednost i višak vrijednosti. Pažljivim
iščitavanjem Arhiva iz tog perioda pratimo izvještaje s terena koji ukazuju na način
odvijanja okretanja ka tržištu i na to kako taj proces pogađa žene i rad AFŽ-a.
Upravo ovaj period pokazat će se kao paradigmatski, budući da je uvjetovao sav
kasniji odnos prema ženama i sustavu društvene proizvodnje, reprodukcije i
subsistencije. Dolaskom na vlast i postupnom demobilizacijom masovnog antifašističkog pokreta, AFŽ sve manje biva revolucionarna organizacija a sve više tek
administrativni organ NF-a. AFŽ obavlja pozadinske funkcije u vezi s društvenim
i socijalnim preduvjetima za masovni ulazak seljanki u industrijsku radnu snagu,
a za vrijeme procesa neuspjele kolektivizacije ima zadatak da organizira pristup
žena u zadruge. U Arhivu tako iščitavamo masu dokumenata o organizaciji
proslave 8. marta koje se uvijek završavaju radnim natjecanjima, a žene iz raznih
srezova se natječu u tome koji će srez ‹više, bolje i jače› ispuniti normu i proizvesti
više robe.
Iako se nakon 1945. godine uvode zadruge i kombinati, država nikad nije do kraja
sprovela formalnu eksproprijaciju, te kategorija privatnog seoskog vlasništva nije
nestala. Susan Woodward81 u svojoj analizi navodi da su progresivni zakoni koji
se izrijekom odnose na zaštitu žene, djece i obitelj, uzeti odvojeno, samo logična
sredstva za ono što je trebalo postići. Ona, međutim, sjajno primjećuje da pravu
sliku dobijamo tek kada se ovi zakoni sagledaju svi zajedno:
Ono što je zapravo kompromis između obaveze da se potpuno zabrane svi
oni običaji i zakoni koji nipodaštavaju ženu, s jedne strane, i potrebe da
obitelji preuzmu odgovornost za zadatke koje država nije spremna preuzeti,
s druge, ove nove politike su prikrile vizijom odnosa između muškaraca i
žena kao jednakih, njegujućih, voljnih i slobodnih (dakle „privatnih”)82
Drugim riječima, Susan Woodward govoreći o Jugoslaviji zapravo primjećuje istu
stvar koju primjećuje i G.M. Tamás kada govori o zemljama sovjetskog bloka,
80
Citirano prema: Stojaković, Gordana: „Vida Tomšič- zašto je ukinut AFŽ”;
dostupno na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/353
81
Susan L. Woodward, The Rights of Women: Ideology, Policy and Social Change in Yugoslavia,
str. 417-459 u: Women, State and Party in Eastern Europe. Ur: Susan L. Wolchik i Alfred G. Mayer,
Durham: Duke University Press, 1985. Woodwardica govori o feminizaciji poljoprivrednog rada,
jednoj od posljedica uvođenja tržišnih mehanizama.
82
Woodward, Susan L. op.cit 430-431
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naime to da distinkcija tržišnog društva privatno-javno opstaje unatoč činjenici
da su istočnoblokovska društva doista bila egalitarnija. Tamás podcrtava to da
su stvarna socijalistička društva društva u tranziciji ka socijalnom poretku bez
najamnog rada, robne proizvodnje, novca, stroge rodne podjele rada, materijalnih,
socijalnih i kulturalnih nejednakosti, bez države u smislu superiornosti, institucija
opresivnog aparata poput vojske, policije, zatvora, kampova, crkava, obaveznih
doktrina i opresija svakojake vrste83. Iz ove perspektive, uzimajući u obzir
isprekidanu i nejednaku temporalnost revolucionarne promjene o kojoj je bilo
riječi, ovo je mjerilo jugoslavenskog i svakog mogućeg i mislivog socijalizma (a
kamoli komunizma); ovo a ne veća jednakost koja je postojala u jugoslavenskom
i drugim istočnoblokovskim društvima.
Tamáseva analiza je sjajna jer pokazuje da ono što je uspostavila klasična liberalna
filozofija – rad kao privatni akt u koji se ulazi (privatnom, autonomnom) voljom i
koji zato ne pripada javnoj, političkoj sferi – opstaje i u real-socijalizamu. Dakle,
rad u društvima realnog socijalizma (a isto vrijedi i za jugoslavenski socijalizam)
u svojoj suštini je slobodni najamni rad koji, bez obzira na institucije radničkog
samoupravljanja i udruženog rada, potpada pod vladavinu razmjenske vrijednosti.
Budući da je priroda rada ostala privatnom, i dalje je postojala reprodukcija
sistemske eksploatacije i dominacije odnosno tržišne razmjene motivirane
profitom84 koja je i mogla dovesti do onoga što u Arhivu pratimo od 1950. godine:
83
G.M. Tamás – Normative orders, dostupno na: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZyKxnPUrVo
84
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a, BiH, Izvještaj Centralnog odbora Beograd sa sastanka socijalno-zdravstvenog
saveta pri Komitetu za socijalno staranje pri Vladi FNRJ Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine Kutija 3, br. 1124-47, 1947: Donesen je niz uredba o zaštiti trudne žene i majke dojilje,
kojim se u radnom/službeničkom/ odnosu daje majci koja je u radnom odnosu pravo na porođajno
odsustvo i to 6 nedelja prije i 6 nedelja poslije porođaja. Ova uredba daje majci pravo da može prekidati
svoj posao radi dojenja svaka 3 sata i to za vrijeme 6 mjeseci poslije porođaja. 1949. godine ova
uredba je izmijenjena i dopunjena novim olakšanjima, za majku, što je došlo kao rezultat povoljnijeg
ekonomskog položaja u zemlji uopšte. Tako nove uredbe o izmjenama i dopunama uredbe o zaštiti
trudnih žena majki dojilji koja stanuje dalje od mjesta rada omogućava skraćemo radno vrijeme.
Radno vrijeme u tom slučaju traje samo 4 časa, sve do kraja 6 mjeseci poslije porođaja, a ovo radno
vrijeme može da se produži i do navršene treće godine života ako za to ima opravdanih razloga.
Za to vrijeme majci pripada 75% ukupne plate u vremenu od 6 mjeseci, a kasnije 50 %. Žena
poslije 3-mjesečnog porođajnog odsustva ima pravo da koristi godišnji odmor. Ova uredba zabranjuje
upošljavanje trudne žene na prekovremenom radu, zabranjuje noćni rad a predviđa prebacivanje
trudne žene na lakši posao. Uredba o stvaranju jaslica i vrtiča obavezuje svako preduzeće koje ima preko
200 (u Kraljevini je bilo više od 100) uposlenih radnica, da iz svojih sopstvenih vlastitih sredstava otvaraju
takve ustanove, te time osiguravaju majkama u radnom odnosu smještaj njihove djece.” U časopisu
Ženski pokret iz 1937. čitamo da su ovakve zakonske odredbe u gotovo identičnoj formi bile prisutne i
u Kraljevini. Ženski pokret br. 1-2, 1937. str. 10-11. (posebno identično sve što je u italic, T.O).
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masovna otpuštanja radnica, trudnica i uopće ženske radne snage (unatoč
zakonskoj zabrani i izrazito progresivnim i poticajnim mjerama za zaštitu majke
i djeteta). Drugim riječima, onoga trenutka kada je poštivanje zakona postalo
preskupo, a profit nužno morao biti ostvaren, na udaru su prve bile žene. Tako
su izvještaji koji dolaze s terena bili u kontradikciji sa legislaturom donesenom
godinu ranije, a afežeovke očigledno zbunjene svime što se događalo. Glavni odbor
AFŽ-a BiH tako u dopisu poslanom CK KP BiH, odjeljenju za informacije85, piše:
„… predviđen je kredit od 1.700.000 dinara za izgradnju obdaništa u Brezničanima,
ali se po tom pitanju još ništa nije učinilo… preduzeća su od 75 radnika otpustila
50 žena među kojima ima i žena na bolovanju i u drugom stanju“. U izvještajima
nakon uvođenja samoupravljanja stalno pristižu informacije o otpuštanjima žena,
o rezanju budžeta, nedostatku jaslica i vrtića, te mogućnosti da se žene politički
uzdižu, jer nemaju kome ostaviti djecu. Sve to je višestruko pogađalo žene, tako
da Zaključci sa savjetovanja rukovodilaca sreskih i oblasnih organizacija AFŽ-a
BiH iz 1950. godine86 kao jedan od zadataka AFŽ-a navode: „pored sprovođenja
agitacije za uključenje žena u privredu naša organizacija treba da vodi brigu o
smještaju žena, uslovima života i rada žena u privredi. Voditi računa da preduzeća
ne smanjuju broj radnika na račun trudnih žena i žena sa djecom“.
Stavimo li ovo u širi kontekst, sve jasnijim postaje da je emancipacija žena sve
više bivala shvaćana kao „emancipacija od ugnjetavanja starog poretka, a ne
emancipacija od svih oblika opresije“87. Posljedično, 50-te godine generalno
predstavljaju regresiju u odnosu na proklamiranu jednakost. Dominantna uloga
žene sve se više vezivala uz majčinstvo, promovirao se gotovo pa fordistički model
85
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, “Dopis glavnog odbora AFŽ CK KP BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine”,
Kutija 9, 497/50, 1950.
86
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zaključci sa savjetovanja rukovodilaca sreskih i oblasnih organizacija
AFŽ-a Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, 422/50; Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik plenuma oblasnog
odbora AFŽ-a za Mostarsku oblast održanog 18.5.1950. godine, Arhis Bosne i Hercegovine, 1071/6,
1950. I u ovom dokumentu podaci ukazuju na isti trend. U razgovoru aktivistica iz Sarajeva i
aktivistica mostarskog sreza za riječ se javila odbornica Tanović Ševala iz Gackog koja je saopćila:
„Sav rad naše organizacije leži na profesionalcu. Žene se protive otvaranju obdaništa. Tri drugarice
pre mjesec dana pred porođajem otpuštene su iz službe. Sekretarijat AFŽ-a tražio je da se ponovno
prime u službu i ukazao na nepravilan stav prema ženama trudnicama. U tome se nije uspjelo da se
dotične ponovno povrate u službu. Kad se je tražilo zašto one ne mogu biti u službi navode na
primjer za jednu od drugarica slijedeće: ona ima troje djece, a sada će roditi i četvrto. Takvog mi
službenika ne trebamo, a na njezino mjesto primit ćemo jednog muškarca.” Kurziv T.O. O masovnim
otkazima 50-ih svjedoči i knjiga Ivane Pantelić Partizanke, građanke.
87
Molyneux, Maxine, Family Reform in Socialist States: a Hidden Agenda, Feminist Review, 1985. 4764, str. 52
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nuklearne obitelji, monogamnih veza i, generalno govoreći, učvršćivanje rodne
podjele rada – i u kućanstvima i u industriji. Došlo je do opadanja zaposlenosti žena,
a taj trend se se nastavlja i u narednim desetljećima. Barbara Jančar-Webster
ističe da je proces industrijalizacije već u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji podrazumijevao
feminizaciju određenih industrijskih sektora i zanimanja, a isti trend se nastavio i
u drugoj Jugoslaviji, što statistike jasno pokazuju.88 Ovdje je važno napomenuti da
su industrijski sektori (tekstil, duhan, uslužne djelatnosti) u Kraljevini bili sektori
koji su zapošljavali 200.000 radnica, dok su kućne pomoćnice 1939. godine činile
najveću grupu radnica izvan ne-poljoprivrednog sektora. Ishod je bio taj da su
žene i u drugoj Jugoslaviji žene činile manje kvalificiranu radnu snagu: žene su
bile zaposlene u slabije plaćenim industrijskim sektorima i generalno su u većoj
mjeri bile nezaposlene i sačinjavale rezervnu armiju rada. Mislim da je mitove
o jednakosti žena u Jugoslaviji koji su danas dostigli status legende posebno
efektno razbila Susan Woodward:
pritisak na žene da uđu na tržište rada koji je bio prisutan u ostatku
Istočne Europe i Sovjetskog saveza nikada nije postojao u Jugoslaviji. Udio
žena u radnoj snazi društvenog sektora u stvari je 50-ih godina opao, a
od 1957. godine postupno rastao da bi tek kasnih 1970-ih dostigao nivoe
zapadoeuropskog prosjeka (oko 33%), ali ne i nivoe visoke participacije u
skandinavskim zemljama i u Istočnoj Europi. S druge strane, od ranih 1950ih, otkad Vlada počinje sakupljati podatke o nezaposlenosti, žene su bile
nesrazmjerno podložne nezaposlenosti.”89
Samo na temelju nejednakog tržišnog razvoja možemo razumjeti nevjerovatni
podatak koji iznose Tea Petrin i Jane Humphries: u ukupnom udjelu ženske radne
snage na tržištu ukupno aktivne radne snage i u bruto stopi participacije ženske
radne snage bilo je veoma malo promjena. Ostaje slučajem za sebe podatak da
su 1931. godine žene predstaljale 33.5% ukupne radne snage, a da se taj broj do
1971. godine jedva popeo do 36%.90 U Arhivu od 50-ih godina pratimo i ono što
će u kasnijim godinama i desetljećima za BiH postati i ostati kronični problem,
a vremenom će se uslijed produbljivanja nejednakosti među republikama samo
pogoršavati. Tako izrijekom čitamo da „budžetom nije odobreno otvaranje
88
Barbara Jančar-Webster, Women&Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945. Arden Press: Colorado,
1990., str. 17, str. 165
89
Woodward, Susan L., op.cit, str. 549, Tea Petrin i Jane Humphries, Women in the Self-Managed
Economy of Yugoslavia, Economic Analyses and Workers’s Managment, 1, XIV, 1980, str. 77
90
Petrin, Humphries, op.cit str. 71-73.
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jaslica”91 dok žena zaposlena u preduzeću Ukrina govori „da u je u preduzeću
otvaranje jaslica neophodno, ali zgrade za jaslice nema. Žene koje imaju sasvim
malu djecu pošalju kući da ih nahrane, dok ostale žene svoju djecu ostavljaju u
komšiluku zato što ih nemaju gdje smjestiti”92.
Samoupravljanje je omogućilo da firme i privredni subjekti u većoj mjeri odlučuju
o svome poslovanju, a posljedice uvođenja tržišnih mehanizama samo su dodatno
pogoršale položaj žena uopće. Postojali su svi problemi koje u tom periodu
možemo pratiti i na kapitalističkom Zapadu: feminizacija određenih industrijskih
sektora i zanimanja što će reći da su žene uvijek radile u slabije plaćenim
sektorima, postojao je rodni jaz u plaćama, žena na direktorskim pozicijama
gotovo da nije bilo, a u jugoslavenskom slučaju u siromašnijim republikama rodni
jaz u plaćama se, uslijed strukturnih razlika očitovao još više. Krajnje posljedice
su za siromašnije dijelove, poput BiH i Kosova, mogle su značiti samo još veću
nejednakost u razvoju. Tako je između 1959. i 1979. godine postotak korisnika
(djeca do sedam godina starosti) jaslica, vrtića i zabavišta za cijelu Jugoslaviju
rastao od 2,4% do 10%. Naravno, većinom je bila riječ o djeci kvalificiranih i
polukvalificiranih radnika, ali isto tako i o velikom broju djece srednje klase. To
pokazuje isti trend kao i u Zapadnim zemljama: od institucija države blagostanja
najveću korist imali su roditelji srednjeklasnog statusa. U BiH je između 1959. i
1979. godine broj jaslica, vrtića i zabavišta dostigao brojku 137, ali je u njih bilo
smješteno samo 3,2% djece. Usporedimo li to sa Slovenijom gdje u istom periodu
postoji 616 ovakvih institucija koje koristi 27.7% djece, sasvim je jasno kakve
posljedice uvjetuje nejednak razvoj tržišta.93
91
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja s rukovodiocima srezova održanog 24. i 25. januara
1950.” Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, str. 2 Kutija 8, br. dokumenta nepoznat 1950.
92
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, „Zapisnik sa OOAFŽ-a održanog u Tuzli 14.2.1950.” Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 276, 1949-1950
93
Milić, Anđelka, Berković, Eva i Petrović Ruža, Domaćinstvo, porodica i brak u Jugoslaviji. Beograd:
Institut za sociološka istraživanja Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu, 1981., str. 102. Daljnji podaci
koje nalazimo u ovoj knjizi poprilično su poražavajući i potvrđuju iste trendove kao i u zemljama
Zapada u isto to vrijeme i, još važnije, potvrđuju da od 50-ih godina možemo pratiti sve veće
promjene između siromašnijih i bogatijih republika i posljedice tih promjena na stanje i strukturu
obrazovanja, sustav zdravstvene zaštite, te društvo uopće.
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4. Početak nakon kraja, umjesto zaključka
Namjera mi je bila ovim radom rekonstruirati jedan historijski događaj i, kroz
tu rekonstrukciju, pratiti historiju AFŽ-a. AFŽ je formalno ukinut 1953. godine, a
tadašnja predsjednica AFŽ-a Vida Tomšič, kao jedan od razloga ukidanja AFŽ-a,
navodi „da smo u izvjesnoj mjeri, ako se to može kazati za cijelu zemlju, jedan
od naših zadataka prilično izvršili... u izvjesnom smislu u nekim dijelovima naše
zemlje a naročito u gradovima, već postigli da je žena ravnopravna”94. Ponovila je
isto ono što je u Sovjetskom Savezu rečeno 1930. godine, kada je ukinut Ženotdel.
Ali podatak da je, primjerice u Srbiji, zakon o jednakosti u naslijeđivanju uveden
tek 1955. godine95, govori dovoljno u prilog tvrdnji da je izjava Vide Tomšič bila
naprosto – neistinita. U trenutku ukidanja AFŽ-a nisu bili usvojeni ni mnogi
zakoni postupno uvođeni do 60-ih i 70-ih godina, tako da ne možemo govoriti čak
ni o građanskoj jednakopravnosti. Narativ o AFŽ-u već se do sredine pedesetih
rastvorio i rastopio u narativu o NOB-u koji je postao središnjim mjestom i
ideološkim uporištem državnog aparata. Kolektiv AFŽ-a je zamijenjen heroinama
sa točno određenim imenom i prezimenom, likom i djelom. Tako je izvršena prva
revizija afežeovske prošlosti u kojoj se ujedno dogodila i podjela na privatno i javno.
Ako je Svetlana Slapšak96 u svojoj analizi filma Slavica (1947.) govorila o smrti
partizanke, možda se može reći da smrti partizanke prethodi smrt afežeovke,
iako AFŽ službeno nestaje tek pet godina kasnije. Partizanka u smrti preživljava
i odlazi u slavnu historiju, postajući simbolom poratne Jugoslavije. Na nju se
odnosi službeno i sankcionirano historijsko sjećanje koje su promovirale državne
komemoracije, historiografija i memorijali. Ona postaje dijelom slavne prošlosti,
a građanke kao proizvodni subjekti postaju figurama sadašnjosti i budućnosti.
Činjenica da ne postoji niti jedna jugoslavenska historija djelovanja žena u AFŽ-u,
a da postoje mnoge o djelovanju žena u NOB-u, sugerira da je AFŽ iz javnog
pamćenja počeo nestajati već sredinom 50-ih kada izlazi prvo, hrvatsko izdanje
o ulozi žena u NOB-u. Do bh. izdanja će proći više od puna tri desetljeća od kraja
tog rata. Za ta tri desetljeća se promijenilo mnogo. Promijenila su se sjećanja
preživjelih žena, promijenilo se lice i naličje revolucije, promijenila se država,
promijenili su se zakoni. No, jedno je ostalo isto. Žene su i dalje nejednake i
neravnopravne. Zato je analiza Lydije Sklevicky još uvijek bezvremena. Žene su
94
Gordana Stojaković, Vida Tomšič – zašto je ukinut AFŽ; i svi ostali navodi Vide Tomšič koje koristim
i parafraziram preuzeti su iz ovog teksta.
95
Gudac-Dodić, Vera, Under the Aegis of Family, Women in Serbia, The Journal of International Social
Research Vol. 3 br. 13, 2010. str. 112.
96
Slapšak, Svetlana. Ženske ikone XX veka. Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek. 2001.
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(po)stale nevidljive slobodne građanke, a konji i muškarci su nastavili vladati
dominantnim historijskim i obrazovnim narativima. Izjavu Vide Tomšič da su
se žene „okrenule modi i prevaziđenim načinima ponašanja… pojava koja je
vidljiva u dnevnim novinama” ne mogu nego shvatiti kao moralizatorsku zato
što u potpunosti zanemaruje klasne razlike koje se počinju pojavljivati već u
jugoslavenskom društvu, među klasama, ali i unutar radničke klase. Počinju
se pojavljivati upravo zato što se negirala prosta činjenica da je i dalje postojala
podjela na privatno i javno, ekonomsko i političko. Žene su i dalje proizvodile
radnu snagu, a teret reprodukcije je i dalje bio u sferi privatnog. Osobina radne
snage je to da ona, ne samo da proizvodi vrijednost, nego je i jedina roba koja nije
proizvedena u procesu proizvodnje. Budući da privatna reprodukcija radne snage
u obitelji ne proizvodi vrijednost, odnosno da je proizvodi samo posredno, kao
takva nema razmjensku vrijednost. Zbog toga ženska radna snaga na tržištu ima
manju vrijednost jer ju se manje-više smatra privremenim dodatkom obiteljskom
dohotku. To je bio slučaj i u Jugoslaviji. Mjere koje je uvela država zapravo su
maknule teret sa onih mjesta i zanimanja koja su tradicionalno bila muška, a na
žene je od početka padao samo veći teret privatne i privatizirane reprodukcije.
Upravo zato su žene oscilirale između „rentabilne” i „nerentabilne” radne snage
– i zato je kraj AFŽ-a bio početak zaborava činjenice da bez socijalizacije tereta
reprodukcije, nema socijalističkog društva. Danas, kada se – mukom i borbom
izborena – formalna prava i slobode ruše kao kula od karata pod najezdom
političkog reakcionizma i njegova ekonomskog napada, dominacija tržišta (i očeva,
svećenika i vođa) postaje sve bezgraničnijom. Sav teret socijalne reprodukcije
prenosi se na radničku klasu generalno, i na žene partikularno.
Šta bi onda danas značio AFŽ? Kakve političke lekcije možemo naučiti? Prva i
najvažnija je ta da odgovor ljevice na historijski revizionizam današnjice ne može i
ne smije biti revizionistički. Druga lekcija koju nam pokazuje historija AFŽ-a već je
izrečena: Marxova i Fourrierova, da je položaj žena mjerilo napretka čovječanstva,
što bi u slučaju o kojem je ovdje bilo riječi značilo da je poraz emancipacije žena
istovremeno i nužno bio i poraz revolucije. Kao što je Lenjin običavao reći: trajnost
revolucije ovisi o tome u kojoj mjeri u njoj sudjeluju žene. Treća, ništa manje
važna, jest da zaustavljena revolucija ne znači i njenu nemogućnost. Naprotiv,
AFŽ nam pokazuje da prošlost ne možemo ponoviti, ali iz nje možemo naučiti
da samo u zajedničkoj političkoj borbi – koja je uvijek i borba za (ali ne i samo)
prava – možemo emancipirati sebe i uvjete u kojima živimo. Emancipacija može
doći samo iz kolektivnih napora, koji, parafrazirajući Bensaïda, nikada ne smiju
zapasti u uvjerenje da revolucija nije moguća. To je zadnja i najvažnija lekcija
AFŽ-a i jugoslavenske prošlosti.
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Arhivska građa:
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Dopis sreskog odbor AFŽ-a Velika Kladuša, Arhiv BiH, Kutija 2,
901/47, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a, BiH, Izvještaj Centralnog odbora Beograd sa sastanka socijalnozdravstvenog saveta pri Komitetu za socijalno staranje pri Vladi FNRJ Glavnom
odboru AFŽ-a BiH, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Kutija 3, br. 1124-47, 1947.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja predsjednica i sekretara sreskih odbora
AFŽ održan u Sarajevu 20.1.1949. godine, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, ” Kutija 7a, ?
1949.,
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik s pleuma za oblast Bihać, ? Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, br.
dokumenta nepoznat, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH,Zapisnik plenarnog sastanka Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a održan
26.9.1948. godine, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 5, 84/48, 1948.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik Plenarnog sastanka AFŽ-a u Bihaću održanog u prostorijama
u vjećnici G.N.O dana 9.2.1950. godine, str. 2. Arhiv Bosne i Hrecegovine, Kutija 9,
1061/5, 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik sa sastanka sekretarijata Oblasnog odbora za
oblast sarajevsku koji se održaje 10.1.1950. godine, 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a, Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 1082/4, 1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH,Pozdravna riječ dr. Hamdije Čemerlića sa Prvog kongresa AFŽ-a BiH
od 08.06.1945, Arhiv BiH, 1945, Kutija 1, 1945.
Primjerice: Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Sreski izvještaj AFŽ-a za srez sarajevski Glavnom
odboru AFŽ-a BiH (izbori, izgradnja dječijeg ljetovališta narodno prosvjećivanje,
analfabetski tečajevi), Arhiv BiH, Kutija 4, 1137/48, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Dopis Sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Doboj Glavnom odboru AFŽ-a za
BiH, 7.2.1947. godine (izvještaj o radu zdravstvene sekcije, analfabetski tečajevi),
Arhiv BiH, Kutija 2, 199/47, 1947.,
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a BiH, Zapisnik sa sastanka Sekretarijata sreskog odbora AFŽ-a Bijeljina
Zemaljskom odboru AFŽ-a BiH (organiziranje žena za rad na izgradnji pruge
Bijeljina-Rača), 1948. Arhiv BiH, Kutija 5, 1182, 1948.
Glavni odbor AFŽ-a, Zapisnik sa plenuma Glavnog odbora AFŽ-a BiH održanog 05. i 06.06.
1946., Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 1, 116/46., 1946. Plenum je
održan u Napretkovoj čitaonici, a pored članica AFŽ ispred NF-a bio je prisutan
Ljubo Babić. dostupan na: http://www.afzarhiv.org/items/show/332
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Dopis glavnog odbora AFŽ CK KP BiH, Arhiv Bosne i
Hercegovine, Kutija 9, 497/50, 1950.
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Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Zaključci sa savjetovanja iz rukovodilaca sreskih i oblasnih
organizacija AFŽ-a Arhiv BiH, Kutija 9, 422/50, italic kao i
Oblasni odbor AFŽ-a Sarajevo, Zapisnik s plenuma oblasnog odbora AFŽ-a za Mostarsku
oblast održan 18.5.1950.
Glavni odbor AFŽ BiH, Zapisnik sa savjetovanja sa rukovodiocima srezova koji se održaje
24. i 25. januara 1950. Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, str. 2 Kutija 8, ? 1950.
Oblasni odbor AFŽ Sarajevo, Zapisnik sa OOAFŽ-a održan u Tuzli dana 14.2.1950., Arhiv
Bosne i Hercegovine Sarajevo, Kutija 9, br. 276. 1949-1950
Časopis Alijanse ženskih pokreta, Ženski pokret, br. 1-2, 1937. godina.
Bibliografija:
Anderson, Perry, A Zone of Engagement, London: Verso, 1992.
Babović, Spasenija Organizaciono pitanje. Pristupljeno: 10. 7. 2016.
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Batinić, Jelena. Women and Yugoslav Partisans. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Bensaïd, Daniel Le pari mélancolique., str. 73, Pariz: Fayard, 1997.
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Bitunjac, Martina. Le donne e il movimento ustascia. Rim: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2013.
Božinović, Neda. Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XiX i XX veku. Beograd: Žene u Crnom, 1996.
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Cvetić, Bosa ur., Žene Srbije u NOB, Beograd: Nolit, 1975.
Čalić, Žanin-Mari. Historija Jugoslavije u XX veku. Beograd: Clio, 2013.
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Djilas, Milovan, Wartime. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
Eubanks Hayden, Carol. „The Zhenotdel and the Politics of Women’s Emancipation in
Russia 1917-1930.” Russian History (Vol 2. ), 1976: 150-173.
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OD REVOLUCIONARNOG DO PROIZVODNOG SUBJEKTA:
ALTERNATIVNA HISTORIJA AFŽ-A
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Gramsci, Antonio, Quaderni del carcere, Vol III, Torino: Einaudi, 1975.
Gudac-Dodić, Vera. 2010. „Under the Aegis of Family, Women in Serbia.” The Journal of
International Social Research 3. 2010: 110-119.
Hobsbaum, Erik, Doba ekstrema, historija kratkog XX veka 1914-1991, Beograd: Dereta,
2002.
Jambrešić, Kirin Renata i Senjković Reana, Puno puta bi vas izbacili kroz vrata, biste bila
išla kroz prozor nutra: preispisivanje povijesti žena u Drugom svjetskom ratu,
Narodna umjetnost 42/2, 2005: 109-126.
Jančar-Webster, Barbara. Women&Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945. Colorado: Arden
Press 1990.
Kecman, Jovanka. Žene Jugoslavije u radničkom pokretu i ženskim organizacijama 19181941. Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 1978.
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��ADELA JUŠIĆ
Kombinovana tehnika
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
Kombinovana tehnika
�ADELA JUŠIĆ
Crtež olovkom
��BIOGRAFIJE
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ
DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ
TIJANA OKIĆ
NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ
ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ
SUNITA FIŠIĆ
KASJA JERLAGIĆ
ADELA JUŠIĆ
�196
BIOGRAFIJE
CHIARA BONFIGLIOLI trenutno radi kao EURIAS Junior Fellow u Beču
(Institut za humanističke znanosti, IWM), a sa Centrom za kulturološka i
povijesna istraživanja socijalizma (CKPIS) u Puli surađuje u okviru programa NEWFELPRO. Završila je preddiplomski studij političkih znanosti u
Bologni, te diplomski, postdiplomski i doktorski studij na Institutu za povijest
i kulturu (program Rodni studiji) u Utrechtu. Od 2012. do 2014. godine radila je na Sveučilištu u Edinburghu kao postdoktorantica i suradnica na
projektu CITSEE. U doktorskoj disertaciji bavila se ženskim političkim i
društvenim aktivizmom u Italiji i Jugoslaviji (1945-1957). Objavila je više
radova o povijesti žena i feminizma u europskom kontekstu. Posljednjih
godina istražuje utjecaj postsocijalističke tranzicije i deindustrijalizacije
na rodne odnose u bivšoj Jugoslaviji, s posebnim naglaskom na radnice u
tekstilnoj industriji.
AJLA DEMIRAGIĆ radi kao docentica na Filozofskom fakultetu Univerziteta
u Sarajevu. Na Odsjeku za komparativnu književnost i biliotekarstvo izvodi
nastavu iz predmeta Uvod u znanost o književnosti, Uvod u naratologiju i
Feminističke književne teorije. Pored angažmana na Odsjeku za komparativnu književnost i bibliotekarstvo, bila je angažirana i kao suradnica na
interdisciplinarnim postdiplomskim rodnim studijama Univerziteta u Sarajevu. Doktorirala je na Filozofskom fakultetu u Sarajevu, sa temom Prikaz
rata u tekstovima bosanskohercegovačkih spisateljica: žensko ratno pismo
1992.-1995. Istraživački interes usmjeren joj je na feminističke teorije,
teorije pripovijedanja, te književno-teorijska istraživanja ratne književnosti.
DANIJELA MAJSTOROVIĆ vanredna je profesorica anglističke lingvistike
i kulturoloških studija na Filološkom fakultetu Univerziteta u Banjoj Luci.
Autorka je preko trideset članaka na temu reprezentacije, etniciteta, roda,
diskursne analize, medija i filma, kao i tri monografije: Diskurs, moć i međunarodna zajednica (2007, Filozofski fakultet, Banja Luka), Youth Ethnic and
National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Social Science Approaches (2013,
Palgrave, London) te Diskursi periferije (2013, Biblioteka XX vek, Beograd).
Urednica je tri zbornika: Living with Patriarchy: Discursive Constructions of
Gendered Subjects Across Cultures (2011, John Benjamins, Amsterdam),
U okrilju nacije: konstruisanje nacionalnog i državnog identiteta kod mladih u
Bosni i Hercegovini (2011, CKSP, Banja Luka), te zbornika Kritičke kulturološke
studije u post-jugoslovenskom prostoru (2012, Filološki fakultet, Banja
Luka). Producirala je i režirala dva dokumentarna filma: Kontrapunkt za nju
(2004) i Posao snova (2006). Predavala je i gostovala na brojnim domaćim i
stranim visokoškolskim ustanovama. Jedna je od pokretačica Banjalučkog
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
socijalnog centra i kao aktivistkinja bori se protiv nacionalizma, istorijskog
revizionizma, zalažući se za socijalnu pravdu i radnička pitanja. Trudi se da
živi i odgaja sina u skladu s feminističkim načelima.
BORIŠA MRAOVIĆ, istraživač, urednik i saradnik, dio je operativnog tima
Udruženja za kulturu i umjetnost Crvena, gdje se bavi istraživanjem političke ekonomije urbanog pitanja, upravljanjem urbanim resursima i
urbanom mobilizacijom, te priprema obimno istraživanje rave kulture u
Bosni i Hercegovini 1996.-2006. Objavljivao je tekstove u međunarodnim
časopisima i zbornicima, a urednik je zbornika Šta da napišem na zidu? u
izdanju Crvene. Dobitnik je istraživačkih stipendija Fonda otvoreno društvo
(2013-2014), ERSTE Fondacije za društvena istraživanja (2015-2016), a
u septembru i oktobru 2013. godine bio je gostujući istraživač Centra za
demokratske studije Aarau, u Švicarskoj. Radio je sa nizom lokalnih i međunarodnih organizacija i akademskih institucija na istraživanjima koja se
bave migracijama, izbornim sistemima, lokalnom upravom i političkom
teorijom.
TIJANA OKIĆ rođena je u Sarajevu 1986. godine. Studirala je filozofiju
i sociologiju, a potom magistrirala filozofiju na Filozofskom fakultetu
u Sarajevu, gdje je poslije bila uposlena u zvanje asistentice. Od 2015.
godine pohađa doktorski studij filozofije na Scuola Normale Superiore
u Pisi. Objavila je nekoliko filozofskih tekstova. Organizirala je i aktivno
sudjelovala u radu Plenuma u Sarajevu 2014. godine. Članica je uredničkog
tima Viewpoint magazina. Prevodi sa nekoliko jezika, uživa u čitanju poezije i
romana i priprema doktorat. Trenutno živi na relaciji Sarajevo – Pisa.
NARDINA ZUBANOVIĆ rođena je 1987. godine u Sarajevu, BiH. 2014. godine diplomirala je na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti, Univerzitet u Sarajevu, odsjek skulptura, gdje trenutno pohađa magistarske studije. U svom
umjetničkom radu koristi različite medije, od skulpture do prostorne intervencije/instalacije, performansa, fotografije i videa. 2009. godine osnovala
je neformalnu kulturnu organizaciju Kolektiv Kreaktiva koja je producirala
preko 30 umjetničkih događaja (izložbe, radionice, koncerti i performansi) i
surađivala sa više od 100 kulturnih radnika/ca iz cijelog svijeta. Pored toga
što koordinira i osmišljava program Kolektiv Kreaktive, Nardina Zubanović
kurirala je i učestvovala na brojnim samostalnim i grupnim izložbama i art
radionicama u regiji i svijetu, u suradnji sa institucijama i udruženjima kao
što su: Historijski muzej BiH, izložba ZID 2015; Nacionalna galerija BiH,
Sara Art Fair, 2015; Klub ljubitelja sedme umjetnosti, Bahanalije, Sarajevo,
197
�198
BIOGRAFIJE
BiH, 2014; Centar La Kultur, Dani otvorenog ateljea, Sarajevo BiH, 2015. i
2016; Land Art kolonija festivala Javorwood, Jahorina, BiH, 2016; Factory
of Memories, Tirana, Albanija i Sarajevo, BiH, 2015; Actopolis, Crvena,
Sarajevo, BiH, 2016, itd.
ALEKSANDRA NINA KNEŽEVIĆ rođena je u Sarajevu, 1973. godine. Diplomirala je na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti, Cetinje, Crna Gora, na odsjeku
za grafički dizajn. Radovi Aleksandre Nine Knežević se odlikuju čistom i suvremenom idejom, jednostavno komuniciraju internacionalnim vizualnim
jezikom, a predstavljeni su kroz razigranu tipografiju i ilustraciju. Za svoj
rad primila je brojna međunarodna priznanja i nagrade, a njeni radovi su
objavljivani u mnogim časopisima specijaliziranim za umjetnost i dizajn
(Communication Arts, Luezers Archive, Print, Typo, Fontmagazine…). 2010.
godine uvrštena je među 200 najboljih svjetskih ilustratora/ki (Luerzer’s
Archive: 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide 09-10). U razdoblju od 2006. do 2010.
godine bila je predsjednica Udruženja likovnih umjetnika primijenjenih
umjetnosti i dizajnera BiH (ULUPUBiH). Radi kao freelance dizajnerka i kao
dizajnerka i ilustratorka knjiga izdavačke kuće Buybook u Sarajevu. Za svoj
projekat Sarajevo Dingbats, 2014. godine dobila je godišnju nagradu sarajevskog Collegium artisticuma.
SUNITA FIŠIĆ rođena je u Livnu 1989. godine. Živi i radi u Sarajevu. Studira na
Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti u Sarajevu, na Nastavničkom odsjeku. Pored
ostalih medija, bavi se illustracijom, slikarstvom i uličnom umjetnošću.
Učestvovala je na brojnim izložbama širom svijeta, od kojih se izdvajaju:
Oslikavanje zida, LAB-1, Eindhoven, Holadija, 2016; slikarska radionica,
Grassroots projekat, Kolektiv Kreaktiva, LA Kultur, Sarajevo, BiH, 2015; Split
3D Street Art Festival, Split, Hrvatska, 2015; Beton IV Festival 3D street art,
Sarajevo, BiH, 2015; Mostar Street Art Festival, uljepšavanje zidova grada
Mostara, BiH, 2015; Samostalna izložba i oslikavanje zida, LAB 1, Dutch Design
Week, Eindhoven, Holandija 2014; Pecha Kucha prezentacija umjetničkih
djela, SOS Dizajn Festival, Kriterion, Sarajevo, 2014; Samostalna izložba
digitalnih radova, Bitola Open City Festival, Makedonija, 2014; Radionica
oslikavanja zidova na ulazu u Olimpijsku dvoranu Zetra, Kids festival, Sarajevo,
2014; Mostar Street Art Festival, uljepšavanje zidova grada Mostara, 2014;
Kolektivna izložba Inicijacija, Yage, Collegium artisticum, 2014, itd.
�IZGUBLJENA REVOLUCIJA:
AFŽ IZMEĐU MITA I ZABORAVA
KASJA JERLAGIĆ je rođena 1996. godine u Sarajevu, gdje živi i radi. Studira
na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti Univerziteta u Sarajevu, odsjek grafika.
Kasja Jerlagić nalazi se na samom početku svoje umjetničke karijere, te je
do sada učestvovala samo na jednoj kolektivnoj izložbi - Kupujmo domaće u
galeriji Duplex100m2, Sarajevo, BiH, 2016. godine. Volontira u sarajevskim
galerijama Duplex100m2 i galeriji 11/07/95, te odnedavno radi u Charlama
galeriji u Sarajevu, koju vodi umjetnik Jusuf Hadžifejzović.
ADELA JUŠIĆ je rođena 1982. godine u Sarajevu, BiH, gdje živi i radi.
Magistrirala je grafiku na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti, Univerzitet u
Sarajevu 2007. godine, te je 2013. magistrirala ljudska prava i demokratiju,
Univerzitet u Sarajevu i Bologni. Suosnivačica je Udruženja za kulturu i
umjetnost Crvena, u kojem radi od 2010. godine. Adela Jušić je izlagala na
oko 100 internacionalnih izložbi, uključujući bijenale Manifesta 8, Murcia,
Španija; Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Njemačka; Image Counter Image,
Haus der Kunst, München, Njemačka; Balkan Inisight, Pompidou Center,
Paris, Francuska, itd. Učestvovala je na više rezidencijalnih programa za
umjetnike/ce (ISCP, New York; Kulturkontakt, Vienna; i.a.a.b. Basel, itd).
Dobitnica je nagrade Young Visual Artist Award za najboljeg/u mladog/u
bosanskog/u umjetnika/cu 2010, Henkel Young Artist Price CEE 2011,
i specijalne nagrade Oktobarskog salona, Beograd, 2013. godine. Bila
je učesnica brojnih panela, radionica i konferencija (London School of
Economics, Royal College of Art, London, UK, itd).
199
�Zahvale: Svima, od Burme preko Pekinga, od Švedske
do Texasa koji su u sklopu projekta Šta je nama naša
borba dala? doprinijeli crowdfunding kampanji kojom
je prikupljen inicijalni fond potreban za digitalizaciju
arhivske građe. Zahvaljujemo se osoblju Historijskog
muzeja i Arhiva Bosne i Hercegovine, bez čije pomoći
stvaranje Arhiva antifašističke borbe žena Bosne i Hercegovine ne bi bilo moguće. Također, brojnim drugim
organizacijama i osobama koje su podržali naš rad i
obogatili sadržaj Arhiva: Muzej II zasjedanja AVNOJ-a,
UABNOR Centar Sarajevo, Savez antifašista i boraca
NOR-a Tuzlanskog kantona, Mediterranean Women’s
Fund, Eve Ensler, Nina Karač, Feđa Kulenović, Boro
Jurišić, Elvira Jahić, Stana Nastić, Lucija Mravić, Šemsa
Galijašević, Alija Maglajlić, Nasiha Porobić, Milka Jakšić,
Miholjka Reljić, Jelena Lazić, Ankica Đurić, članice i
članovi CRVENE i mnogi drugi.
���
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Istraživački radovi
Knjiga
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Izgubljena revolucija: AFŽ između mita i zaborava
Description
An account of the resource
Za izdavača: Danijela Dugandžić
Urednica ilustracija: Adela Jušić
Ilustracije: Sunita Fišić, Aleksandra Nina Knežević, Kasja Jerlagić, Adela Jušić, Nardina Zubanović
Prijevod teksta Chiare Bonfiglioli sa engleskog jezika: Selma Asotić
Lektura: Mirjana Evtov
Grafičko oblikovanje i priprema za štampu: Leila Čmajčanin
Tiraž: 300
Štampa: Dobra knjiga, Sarajevo
ISBN: 978-9926-8131-0-9
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Urednice: Andreja Dugandžić i Tijana Okić
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Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost CRVENA
Date
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decembar 2016.
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Supported by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe with funds of the German Federal Ministry for Economic and Development
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Udruženje za kulturu i umjetnost CRVENA
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SH, BH
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12-IR
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204 str.
2016.
AFŽ
Ajla Demiragić
Boriša Mraović
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Danijela Majstorović
revolucija
Tijana Okić