UC San Diego

A Seaside for the Future presents a narrative of the transformation of the eastern Adriatic coastline during and after the socialist experiment in Yugoslavia (1945-1991). From a social and environmental perspective, the most dramatic shifts in the modern history of the coast—from Montenegro to Croatia and Slovenia—occurred under Yugoslav socialism, especially with a dramatic rise of tourism that transformed the lives and surroundings of coastal populations. This rise in tourism, in turn, inspired political leaders, experts, and citizens to initiate and partake in groundbreaking attempts at environmental management, sustainable development measures, urbanization, pollution, and the expansion of infrastructure. In examining these tremendous changes, I show how and why Yugoslavia’s socialist experiment, tourism, and the physical coastal environment itself all interacted and became entangled in this process of transformation. The outcome of this interrelationship was the shaping of the eastern Adriatic coastline into a seaside environment—or a “tourismscape” where ideas of socialism, tourism, and nature became symbiotic and coproducing factors.Few existing studies on the history of Adriatic tourism pay serious attention to environmental questions, but the work presented here demonstrates the all-important role of the environment as a major influencing factor in the process of the shaping of the seaside. My environmental approach also makes an argument for the significance of events and contingencies during the socialist period to Yugoslavia’s successor states that help us better understand how and why tourism has become so dominant in many coastal communities in the twenty-first century. Yugoslavia’s socialist-informed visions and approaches for managing the seaside became entangled with the coastal environment and tourism as a major force for modernization. Tourism, for its part, was heavily dependent on the image and perceived health of the coastal environment. My findings are based on evidence found in archival materials, official government correspondence, popular publications, cultural representations, and scientific data. These sources allow me to explain how tourism became so important, in fact dominant. But also importantly, the sources show how tourism cannot be separated from the broader economic and political histories of Yugoslavia and its successor states along the Adriatic, as Yugoslav socialism and the coastal environment, along with the region’s exceptional natural and architectural heritage, have been fundamental in shaping the trajectory of development on the coast.