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Galaxy and the New Wave: Yugoslav Computer Culture in the 1980s

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Hacking Europe

Part of the book series: History of Computing ((HC))

Abstract

During the Cold War, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was geopolitically positioned in-between major world powers. Neither a part of the Warsaw Pact nor of NATO yet sandwiched geographically between these powerful blocks, the country occupied a unique position among countries politically, technologically, and culturally. In the context of the Cold War, the local emphasis on self-reliance and massive government investments resulted in a high-level technological expertise in urban Yugoslavia, while the government maintained tight control over the import of objects and ideas from the superpowers. In the cultural sense, Yugoslavia followed many contemporary trends with Western Europe and the United States, while adding a distinct local cultural flavor into the mix. As a consequence, Yugoslavia knew local subcultures that were more than a mere emulation of their Western analogues. One of these subcultures, coming to prominence in the 1980s, was the Yugoslav New Wave scene: it blended social critique, music, and arts with the occasional use of home computers. Among young urban educated Yugoslavs, a specific set of routes and trends in appropriating technologies emerged that included a home-brew computer industry and distinct subculture of meetings, radio shows, music, and parties.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Economist. 1984. Yugoslavia. In The world in figures, 240–242. London: MacMillan. For an impression of daily life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia 1945–1990, see: Edin Veladžić, Goran Miloradović, et al. 2010. Yugoslavia between East and West; Ordinary people in unordinary country. Online project EUROCLIO – HIP http://www.cliohip.com. Accessed 24 Nov 2011.

  2. 2.

    Interview author with Gordana Radević, M.D. in Belgrade, a student of medicine in Sarajevo 1985–1990, July 18, 2010.

  3. 3.

    Interview author with Rafo Dužnović, Vareš, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Summer of 2009.

  4. 4.

    Interviews author with Darko and Andrej Šolar, Sombor, Serbia, early 1994 and Novi Sad, Serbia, July 13, 2009.

  5. 5.

    This chapter has been based on magazines Galaksija, Svet Kompjutera, PC Pres, Džuboks, Polet, and Ilustrovana Politika as well as the online resources and recollections by Zoran Modli, a Yugoslav counterculture icon from the 1980s, (http://www.modli.rs/. Accessed 20 Feb 2011); “Srbima Treba Vremeplov,” Interview with Zoran Modli, Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, June 23, 2006; recollections of Dejan Ristanović, Yugoslav 1980s home computing pioneer. http://www.dejanristanovic.com. Accessed 23 Sept 2010; documentary film “Sretno Dijete” about the New Wave in Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Croatia, 2003).

  6. 6.

    William Zimmerman. 1987. Open borders, non-alignment and the political evolution of Yugoslavia. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Sabrina P. Ramet. 2006. The three Yugoslavias: State-building and legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

  7. 7.

    Zimmerman in 1972 sketched the Yugoslavia’s restricted room to maneuver in terms of Rothstein’s concept of “small power,” bound to short terms policies. William Zimmerman. 1972. Hierarchical regional systems and the politics of system boundaries. International Organization 26(1): 18–36, here 30. Robert L. Rothstein. 1968. Alliances and small powers. New York: Columbia University Press.

  8. 8.

    Gary K. Bertsch, and Thomas W. Ganschow. 1976. Comparative communism: The Soviet, Chinese, and Yugoslav models, 131–133. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

  9. 9.

    Untypical of Zimmerman’s “small power” behavior, Yugoslavia succeeded in creating an international milieu for what Dulić and Kostić refer to as “socialist self-management.” It developed such long term policies as a defense industry. Zimmerman, Hierarchical regional systems and the politics of system boundaries, 30. Tornislav Dulić, and Roland Kostić. 2010. Yugoslavs in arms: Guerrilla tradition, total defence and the ethnic security dilemma. Europe-Asia Studies 62(7): 1051–1072, here 1052. J. Barryman. 1988. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia’s defence and foreign policy. In Yugoslavia’s security dilemmas—Armed forces, national defence and foreign policy, ed. M. Milivojević, J.B. Allcock, and P. Maurer, 192–260. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  10. 10.

    Glenn E. Curtis. 1990. Yugoslavia: A country study. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division. William C. Potter, Djuro Miljanić, and Ivo Slaus. 2000. Tito’s nuclear legacy. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 56(2): 63–70.

  11. 11.

    The organization and funding of Yugoslav scientific programs with (semi-)military purposes has traditionally suffered from intentional lack of transparency, as indicated by Robert J. Walen, Stevan Dedijer, and Pavle Savić of IBK Vinča. 1953. O dva bitna uslova za razvitak atomske energije kod nas. Belgrade. However, the institutes receiving funding from the defense budget were the first to initiate research and production of automatic computers in Yugoslavia.

  12. 12.

    For the nuclear aspect of this institute, see Potter, Miljanić, and Slaus, Tito’s nuclear legacy.

  13. 13.

    R. Tomović, A. Mandžić, and T. Aleksić, et al. 1960. Cifarski Elektronski Računar CER10 IBK Vinča. ETAN-1960 1:305–330.

  14. 14.

    Marvin Perry, Myrna Chase, and Margaret C. Jacob, et al. 2007. Western civilization: Ideas, politics, and society, 860–865. Boston: Wadsworth.

  15. 15.

    Jelica Protić, and Dejan Ristanović. 2011. Building computers in Serbia: The first half of the digital century. Computer Science and Information Systems 8(3): 549–571.

  16. 16.

    Tomović, Mandžić, and Aleksić et al., Cifarski Elektronski Računar CER10 IBK Vinča.

  17. 17.

    Vladan Batanović, and Jovan Kon. 2006. IMP Riznica znanja, 25–28. Belgrade: M. Pupin Institute and PKS.

  18. 18.

    Milan Mesarić. 1971. Suvremena znanstveno tehnička revolucija. Zagreb: Ekonomski institut.

  19. 19.

    See: CIA’s overview in the annual World factbook (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1975).

  20. 20.

    Patrick H. Patterson. 2006. Dangerous liaisons: Soviet-Bloc tourists and the Yugoslav good life in the 1960s and 1970s. In The business of tourism: Place, faith and history, ed. Philip Scranton and Janet F. Davidson, 186–212. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

  21. 21.

    Patterson, Patrick H. 2003. Consumer culture, the new ‘New Class,’ and the making of the Yugoslav dream, 1950–1965. Paper presented at states and social transformation in Eastern Europe 1945–1965. London: The Open University Conference Center.

  22. 22.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    New Scientist Technology Review. 1971. Yugoslavia Grows Ripe for computer boom. New Scientist and Science Journal 51(768): 576.

  25. 25.

    Yugoslavia Grows Ripe.

  26. 26.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  27. 27.

    D. Abramovitch. 2005. Analog computing in the Soviet Union. An interview with Boris Kogan. IEEE Control Systems 25(3): 52–62.

  28. 28.

    Nikola Markovic. 2009. E-Potencijali Srbije nr1. CEPiT E-volucija, 3–11. Belgrade: Studeni.

  29. 29.

    Patrick H. Patterson. 2009. Making markets Marxist? The East European grocery store from rationing to rationality to rationalizations. In Food chains: From farmyard to shopping cart, ed. Warren Belasco and Roger Horowitz, 196–216. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

  30. 30.

    Patterson, Dangerous liaisons.

  31. 31.

    Petar Janjatović. 1998. Ilustrovana Enciklopedija Yu Rocka 1960–1997. Belgrade: Geopoetika.

  32. 32.

    Margit Rosen. 2011. A little-known story about a movement, a magazine, and the computer’s arrival in art; New tendencies and bit international, 1961–1973. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  33. 33.

    Holm Sundhaussen. 2012. Jugoslawien und seine Nachfolgestaaten 1943–2011. Eine ungewöhnliche Geschichte des Gewöhnlichen. Wien: Böhlau. See especially the section “Vom Dogmatismus zur Verwestlichung der Kulturszene”, 148–151.

  34. 34.

    Time magazine. 1972. Yugoslavia: The specter of separatism. TIME Magazine, February 7, 1972.

  35. 35.

    Central Intelligence Agency. 1990. World factbook. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency.

  36. 36.

    Marie-Janine Calic. 2011. The beginning of the end: The 1970s as a historical turning point in Yugoslavia. In The crisis of socialist modernity. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1970s, ed. Marie-Janine Calic, Dietmar Neutatz, and Julia Obertreis, 66–86, here 76. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

  37. 37.

    Harold Lydall. 1989. Yugoslavia in crisis, 102–105. Oxford: Clarendon. Calic, The beginning of the end, 79.

  38. 38.

    “US Policy toward Eastern Europe,” National Security Decision Directive NSDD-54 and NSDD-133 (partially declassified in 1990).

  39. 39.

    Predrag Marković, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ – Yugoslav culture in the 1970s, in Calic, Neutatz, and Obertreis, The crisis of socialist modernity, 118–133.

  40. 40.

    Sergei Zhuk. 2010. Rock and roll in the Rocket City: The West, identity and ideology in Soviet Dnepropetrovsk. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

  41. 41.

    Dalibor Misina. 2008. ‘Who’s that singing over there?’ Yugoslav rock-music and the poetics of social critique. PhD thesis, University of Alberta, Alberta; Thomas Taylor Hammond. 1954. Yugoslavia between East and West. Washington, DC: Foreign Policy Association.

  42. 42.

    Tjebbe van Tijen (ed.). 1989. Europe against the current: Catalogue on alternative, independent and radical information carriers. Amsterdam: IISG; Tjebbe van Tijen. 1990. Europa tegen de stroom. De Gids 153(6): 466–471; John K. Cox. 2005. Slovenia: Evolving loyalties, 77. London: Routledge.

  43. 43.

    Interviews with Gordana Radević; with Rafo Dužnović; with Darko and Andrej Šolar. Cf note 2, 3, 4.

  44. 44.

    Interview author with Gordana Radević (cf note 2); interview author with Zdravko Jakić, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 19, 2010.

  45. 45.

    Interview author with Djordje Jovanović, co-owner of such a small firm in 1984, Belgrade, Serbia, July 24, 2009.

  46. 46.

    Dejan Ristanović, http://www.dejanristanovic.com/rac1.htm. Accessed 23 Sept 2010.

  47. 47.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  48. 48.

    Voja Antonić. 1983. Galaksija. http://www.paralax.rs/pr83.htm. Accessed 17 June 2010.

  49. 49.

    Ratko Bošković. 1984. Kako je rodjena Galaksija. Magazine Start, February, 25–26.

  50. 50.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  51. 51.

    Ibid. Recollections of Zoran Modli. http://www.modli.rs/. Accessed 20 Feb 2011.

  52. 52.

    Zoran Modli. 2011. Ventilator 202 recollections. http://www.modli.rs/radio/ventilator/ventilator.html. Accessed 20 Feb 2011.

  53. 53.

    Antonić, Galaksija.

  54. 54.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  55. 55.

    Cox, Slovenia; interviews author with Darko and Andrej Šolar; Wikipedia contributions by Aleksandar Šušnjar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_the_SFRY. Accessed 21 Feb 2011.

  56. 56.

    Protić and Ristanović, Building computers in Serbia.

  57. 57.

    Interviews author with Gordana Radević; with Rafo Dužnović; with Darko and Andrej Šolar, note 2, 3, 4.

  58. 58.

    Marie-José Klaver. 1998. De digitale vluchtweg. NRC Handelsblad, October 29. CFJE. 1999. CFJE Joins Campaign to support Radio B92 in Belgrade. CJFE News Release, March 26, 1999; Marie-José Klaver. 1999. Boem, boem uit de chatroom. NRC Handelsblad, May 17.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Bruno Jakić (Independent researcher)

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerard Alberts

  2. School of Innovation Sciences, History Department, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Ruth Oldenziel

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Jakić, B. (2014). Galaxy and the New Wave: Yugoslav Computer Culture in the 1980s. In: Alberts, G., Oldenziel, R. (eds) Hacking Europe. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5493-8_5

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