The Yugoslav economic crisis through rural-urban relations. The socio-economic bases for the construction of political discourse in Belgrade
Keywords:
Yugoslavia, Serbia, Belgrade, crisis, country side, cityAbstract
One of the most neglected social phenomena in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia is rural-urban relations. Understanding the countryside-city relations that are generated in Belgrade requires a cross-sectional study that ranges from the economic and migratory evolution of the country to the study of local habits and customs. From the end of the Ottoman occupation to the present, countryside-city relations can serve to take the pulse of the degree of social and economic modernization of Belgrade. The industrialization process initiated at the beginning of socialist Yugoslavia (1945) was a modernization project that sought to strengthen the hegemony of the urban environment over the countryside. The economic crisis that opened the doors to the fall of the former Yugoslavia during the decade of the eighties and nineties represented an interruption, and even a regression, in that process that seemed a constant since the sixties, revealing the strength and validity rural economic-social environment. As a more immediate consequence of the crisis of the Yugoslav State and, therefore, of socialist ideology, the Serbian countryside claimed to be not only an economic but also a social and ideological driving force in Belgrade. To develop this scenario, the text will take a tour of the historical context in which the migrations to Belgrade took place, from the end of Ottoman hegemony to the current period, through various sociological and anthropological studies; Then it will address the Yugoslav economic crisis, with special emphasis on the Serbian case to, finally, analyze what the marginalization of the Serbian countryside consisted of and to what extent that influenced the construction of the Serbian political message from Belgrade.
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