Bitter and sweet: remembering food and childhood in socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract

Growing up in Socialist Yugoslavia (1945-1991) put its stamp on lives of several generations, whose formative experiences relate to different periods in development of the new state and society. Childhood in early post-war period, characterized by severe austerity measures, differed from the later periods of relative prosperity and abundance in the late 1960ies and 1970ies (mostly due to specific position of socialist Yugoslavia in the Cold War competition), that was followed by ascending crisis in the times after Tito's death in 1980. In this chapter I will outline a variety of memories in which food and childhood in socialist Yugoslavia are linked together as food memories, through different generations of Yugoslavs. I suggest they could be interpreted as traces of changing everyday lives, regimes of value, desires, tastes in a challenging context of Yugoslav socialist modernization project.