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ABSTRACT
For the Yugoslav Sokol, the leading organization dedicated to physical education in Interwar Yugoslavia, the youth was both an object and a tool of conquest. The education of younger generations was at the heart of its project of creating a new ‘Yugoslav man’ and a key asset in enforcing its legitimacy as an important agent in state-building. Yet, while the Sokol multiplied its initiatives to attract children and youth, these showed a contradictory interest in the organization. Moreover, besides the epic overtones of the official’s narrative, intergenerational relations were often contentious: while the older representatives expected the younger ones to commit to the Yugoslav national project, the latter were frequently more interested in popular entertainment, and, even at times, in radical forms of political engagement. By critically analysing a diverse corpus of sources – publication and archives related to the Sokol’s educational programmes together with different types of visual documents – as well as focusing on its local implementation in the Belgrade Sokol district, this article observes the discrepancies between the Sokol’s ambitions and its reception on the ground, trying thus to shed light on the young people’s experience and agency inside the organization.
RÉSUMÉ
En tant que principale organization dédiée à l’éducation physique de la population dans la période l’entre-deux-guerres, le mouvement des sokols yougoslaves fait de la jeunesse à la fois un objet et un outil de conquête. L’éducation des jeunes générations se situe au cœur de son projet de fabrique du « nouvel homme yougoslave » et s’impose comme un atout clé pour asseoir sa légitimité en tant qu’agent et allié de la construction du jeune État qu’est le Royaume des Serbes, Croates et Slovènes (à partir de 1929, Royaume de Yougoslavie). Pourtant, si le Sokol multiplie les initiatives pour attirer les enfants et les jeunes, ceux-ci témoignent d’un intérêt contradictoire pour le mouvement. Aussi, malgré les peintures apologétiques des textes officiels, les relations intergénérationnelles y étaient souvent conflictuelles: les membres plus âgés attendaient des jeunes qu’ils s’engagent dans le projet national yougoslave alors que ceux-ci étaient davantage attirés par les divertissements populaires, et même parfois, par des formes radicales d’engagement politique. À travers une analyse critique d’un corpus diversifié de sources – publications et archives liés aux programmes éducatifs du mouvement ainsi que différents types de documents visuels – et un focus sur sa mise en œuvre à l’échelle locale dans le district de Belgrade, cet article observe les décalages entre les ambitions des idéologues du Sokol et la réception de leur projet sur le terrain, afin de mettre en lumière l’expérience et l’agentivité des jeunes au sein de l’organization.
Acknowledgements
This article originated from a call for papers for the 2021 workshop entitled ‘Rallying Europe: Intersectional Approaches to Youth and Gender in the mid-Twentieth Century’. The author expresses gratitude to the editors Katharina Seibert and Barnabás Bálint, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their valuable comments and suggestions. Special thanks are extended to Slobodan Mandić from the Historical Archives of Belgrade for granting permission to reproduce the photographs from the Glavinić fund. The research for this paper was conducted with the support of Labex TEPSIS, EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) and CETOBaC (Centre d’études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. On the Czech Sokol see Nolte, The Sokol in the Czech Lands to 1914.
2. The term Sokol (Falcon) would have been chosen as a reference to “Slavic Folklore.” Nolte, 197.
3. On the Turner movement see Krüger, “Body Culture and Nation Building.” On the French gymnastics movement see Arnaud, Les athlètes de la République. On gymnastics as a cultural transfer see Pfister, Gymnastics, a Transatlantic Movement. More generally on civil society and voluntary associations see Nolte, “Voluntary Associations and Nation-building in Nineteenth-century Prague”; and Hoffmann, Civil Society, 1750–1914.
4. The Sokol was forbidden by Austria-Hungary during the First World War and its members were identified as actors of Serbian propaganda; many were sentenced and imprisoned. Popović, Sokolski Veleizdajnički Proces u Zagrebu Iz 1915–1916; and Dušan, “Proces protiv Sokolstva u Bosni i Hercegovini,” 118–20.
5. The organization was first named the Sokol Union of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Sokolski savez Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca) and renamed the Yugoslav Sokol Union (Jugoslovenski Sokolski Savez) to address conflicts among national branches and to stress the ‘nationalizing’ and ‘unifying’ mission. “Zapisnik glavne skupščine Sokolskega Saveza SHS, dne 30. avgusta 1920. v Mariboru,” Sokolski Glasnik, no. 9 (1920): 391; and Brozović, Soko Kraljevine Jugoslavije, 94.
6. We will further refer to it in all its historic phases as the “Yugoslav Sokol.”
7. Žutić, Sokoli, 48.
8. The three Yugoslav constitutive nations, Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, were regarded by the official ideology of Yugoslav integralism as three ‘tribes’ of one Yugoslav nation.
9. Putevi i Ciljevi, 12.
10. Putnik, Arhitektura sokolskih domova.
11. Slet is a Slavic word referring to a landing flock of birds. Zec, “The Sokol Movement from Yugoslav Origins to King Aleksandar’s 1930 All-Sokol Rally in Belgrade.”
12. While the Sokol did develop various programmes aimed at the countryside, these were more akin to social development initiatives such as professional education, health and hygiene, or literacy classes, and had very little to do with physical education. Additionally, since rural youth transitioned almost directly from childhood to adulthood, they rarely experienced adolescence and therefore did not constitute a significant target group for the Sokol. See Šantić, Jugoslovensko selo i sokolstvo.
13. Children and youth represented between a quarter and a third of membership. The census was carried by each club, which had its own ‘statistician.’ However, different figures appear in several sources. Ante Brozović gives for the year 1934 a total of 264,212 members, while Tomaž Pavlin, based on the statistics published in the annual publication Jugoslovenski sokolski kalendar, gives a figure of 281,143 members for the same year and 332,356 for 1934. Nevertheless, this number was divided into categories (men and women, children, and adolescents) and reveals a significant increase in the population of children, and, to a lesser extent, adolescents, with their numbers tripling during the period. Starting from 17,266 adolescents in 1930, the number reached 35,187 in 1934, with 36,553 children increasing to 93,382 in 1934. See Brozović, Sokolski Zbornik, 81, 89, 97, 103, 113, 121; and Pavlin, “Razvoj Sokolstva v Sloveniji med leti 1929–1941,” 135.
14. Hajdarpasic, Whose Bosnia? 128.
15. Žutić, Sokoli, 59. See the keen negotiation with the state around education issues: Letter to the Ministry of Education, 1 March 1929, with a draft law for compulsory physical education for youth. Letter to the Ministry of Education to engage youth as a main asset in the 1930 All-Sokol Belgrade rally, dating from 5 April 1929; Letter to the Ministry of Education to grant special status to schoolchildren members of the Sokol, dating from 22 September 1929 (AJ-66-1266-1514).
16. Vidic, “Prostovoljna disciplina,” 2.
17. “Sokolići,” Sokolič, no. 2 (1921): 17.
18. Babović, Metropolitan Belgrade, Culture and Class in Interwar Yugoslavia.
19. Troch, Nationalism and Yugoslavia; Nielsen, Making Yugoslavs; Žutić, Sokoli.
20. On youth in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, interwar France and the Scouts see Stargardt, Witnesses of War; Pine, Education in Nazi Germany; Ledeen, “Italian Fascism and Youth”; Downs, Histoire des colonies de vacances; Whitney, Mobilizing Youth; Jeal, Baden-Powell; and Harvey, “The Cult of Youth.”
21. On Nazi youth movements in the Yugoslav context see Mezger, Forging Germans; Matzer, “Be(com)ing ‘German’: Borderland Ideologies and Hitler Youth in NS-Occupied Slovenia (1941–1945).” On local youth movements see Prlenda, “Young, Religous and Radical”; Kaytchev, “Children into Adults, Peasants into Patriots”; and more generally see Naumović and Jovanović, Childhood in South East Europe.
22. Mitterauer, “A History of Childhood.”
23. The Sokol was then only one movement among several others, among which: the Scouts; the Catholic youth Orel (Orlovi); the youth of the Red Cross and of the Adriatic Guard (Jadranska straža); the Holiday Union (Ferijalni savez); the Zionist youth and many others who strove to bring together the urban bourgeois youth, while the clandestine communist youth (Savez komunističke omladine Jugoslavije/ Zveza komunistične mladine Jugoslavije, SKOJ) attempted to raise awareness among young workers and students.
24. On state initiatives directed towards youth and children see King, “Future Citizens”; and Zahra, “Lost Children.” On the transformation of youth culture’s perception see Heilbronner, “From a Culture For Youth to a Culture Of Youth.”
25. On the question of sources see Stargardt, “Children’s Art of the Holocaust”; Stargardt, Witnesses of War; and Maynes, “Age as a Category of Historical Analysis.” More generally on methodological debates see Jordanova, “New Worlds for Children in the Eighteenth Century”; and Levison, Maynes and Vavrus, Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agent.
26. Stanković, Mladost Vedrine; and Bevc, Liberal Forces in Twentieth Century Yugoslavia.
27. See for instance Zec’s mention of the writer Borislav Pekić recalling his negative experience as a child in the Sokol; Zec, “The Sokol Movement from Yugoslav Origins to King Aleksandar’s 1930 All-Sokol Rally in Belgrade.” Writer Duško Radović’s biographers mention the tragic episode of the drowning of his adolescent sister during a Sokol excursion in Dalmatia. See Ršumović, “Poreklo Duškove poetike.” See, for example, the few mentions in the partisan and member of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army Avdo Humo’s autobiography (Humo, Moja generacija), or in the choreographer Marija Maga Magazinović’s memoirs (Magazinović, Telesna kultura kao vaspitanje I umetnost).
28. The term ‘Matica’, which could be translated as ‘queen bee’ or ‘beehive’, is used here in reference to the Slavic institutions created in the nineteenth century to promote national culture. The Matica Sokol club is therefore the reference club of the city of Belgrade, also the capital of the kingdom. On the history of Slav Maticas see: Krisztina Lajosi and Andreas Stynen, The Matica and Beyond.
29. Glavinić Family Fond (1850–1987), Historical Archives of Belgrade, IAB 1119.
30. Latinčić, “Dr. Milan Glavinic, architect (Belgrade 1891 – Belgrade 1968),” 73–84.
31. Burke, Eyewitnessing.
32. Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method.
33. Didi-Huberman, Images malgré tout.
34. Morizot, Interfaces; and Vouilloux, “Texte et Image ou Verbal et Visuel ?”
35. Harvey, “The Cult of Youth.”
36. See, for example, the many occurrences of the term in the Slovene journal Slovenski Sokol (1904–14).
37. Mostly physical education instructors, doctors and health officers, but, more generally, Yugoslav nationalist activists and civil servants.
38. “Prva svečana sjednica sokolskog sabora Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca. 28.VI.1919. Načelno stanovište Sokolskog Saveza SHS o državi i Sokolstvu,” Sokolski Glasnik, no. 6-7 (1919): 207–8.
39. Popović, “Novo Sokolstvo,” 12.
40. The term mostly referred to adolescents, but sometimes also included children.
41. Hajdarpasic, Whose Bosnia? 129–31.
42. Youth department of the JSS, “O vaspitanju naraštaja,” 229–38.
43. Ambrožič, “Sokolska vaspitna metodika, IV 4. Kako delimo sokolske pitomce,” 275–6.
44. Putevi i Ciljevi, 20. See also Popović, “Za naše sestre,” 113–17.
45. Vrdoljak, “O tjelovježbi,” 471.
46. Ibid.
47. Sokolić (1919–21) was published in Serbian as the journal of the youth section of the Belgrade Sokol club in collaboration with the Scout movement. Sokolič was published in Ljubljana from 1919 by JSS.
48. Bowersox, Raising Germans in the Age of Empire, 121.
49. The illiteracy rates illustrate rather the pending social gap in the Kingdom. While in 1921 Slovenia, barely 8.85% of the population was illiterate; in Serbia, this number was up to 65.43%. Troch, Nationalism and Yugoslavia, 44. The contrast between rural and urban areas is also blatant: in 1931 Belgrade, 89.1% of the population (84.7% of women) were able to read. Dimić, Kultuna Politika u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: 1918–1941 I, 56.
50. Čupić, Građanski modernizam i Popularna Kultura; and Flitouris and Dermentzopoulos, “Le pas suspendu de la modernité.”
51. Assembly of the Educational board of the ‘Matica’ club, dating from 15 September 1932 (IAB-1119-K19-3.8.10).
52. The primary school Cara Dušana in Belgrade had 2756 screenings in 1938. “Pregled pirkazivanja sokolskih filmova,” Sokolski Glasnik, no. 3 (January 20, 1939,): 5.
53. The primary school Skopje had, for example, 2450 screenings in 1938; the school ‘Draga’ in Sušak had as many as 3976. Ibid.
54. Vaniček, Sokolićima! Za Braću Oko Dunava, 2.
55. Since the nineteenth century, the Sokols have been wearing a red shirt as a reference to the leader of the Italian Risorgimento, Giuseppe Garibaldi.
56. Iveković, “Reforma Sokolskog odela,” 500–3.
57. “Pozdravljen, kraljevski član naše sokolske organizacije!,” Sokolski Glasnik, no. 11–12 (1923): 1.
58. On the role of the camera in mass spectacle representation see Burt, Alien Bodies.
59. Oj letni Sivi Sokole, Kamilo Bresler (Director), Zagreb: Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1934) 35 mm, Croatian Cinematheque.
60. Majcen, “Hrvatski Etnološki Film”; and Majcen, Filmska Djelatnost Škole Narodnog Zdravlja.
61. Popović Velimir and Milovanović, Oj Letni Sivi Sokole!
62. Popović, Moje Letovanje.
63. Popović, Moje Drugo Letovanje
64. Pavlović, “Oj letni Sivi Sokole,” 6.
65. A.A., personal photograph, “Muška deca na vežbi” (IAB-1119-K22.3.8.17.26).
66. Todić, Moderno dete i detinjstvo, 109–25.
67. Report of the education section of the Belgrade Sokol district dating from 22 September 1933, Momir Sinobad & Milan Glavinić, 16 (IAB-1119-K19-3.8. 3.3).
68. Bogićević, “Izvor i utoka sokolstva,” 1.
69. Troch, Nationalism and Yugoslavia.
70. Troch, “Interwar Yugoslav State-Building and the Changing Social Position of the Sokol Gymnastics Movement.”
71. Report of the Educational board dating from 19 January 1930, 2 (IAB-1119-K19-3.8.1–3).
72. Milan Glavinić’s speech, undated ‘Draga Braćo, Drage Sestre’ (IAB-1119-K20-3.8.12).
73. Report of the education board of the Sokol club Matica for the year 1930, dating from 19 January 1930, Dr. Milan Glavinić, 2 (IAB-1119-K19 3.8.1).
74. Bogunović, Sokolstvo i Narodna Vojska.
75. Report of the Educational Conference in Belgrade, 21–22 November 1932 (IAB-1119-K19-3.8.2.2).
76. Ruma is town and municipality in the Srem region, about 60 km from Belgrade.
77. Ibid.
78. Draft programme for propaganda and finance for the year 1936. Miloš Kovarz and Ivan Šarović (IAB-1119-K19-3.8.-1-3).
79. Miroslav Vojinović, Rad sa omladinom, Sokolski Glasnik, no. 44 (3 November 1939): 1–2.
80. In 1932, for instance, the section took over 686 photographs. Belgrade Sokol district, educational board report, 22 September 1933, Momir Sinobad and Milan Glavinić, 19 (IAB-1119-K19-3.8.3.3).
81. A.A., personal photograph, “Đurđevdanski uranak 1933. god u Košutnjaku na Sokolskoj livadi” (IAB 1119 K22 3.8.17.19).
82. Jelić, “Aux origines du basket-ball en Yougoslavie (1923–1940)”; Mills, The Politics of Football in Yugoslavia; and Zec, “The Origin of Soccer in Serbia.”
83. Ambrožič, “Sokolstvo in šport,” 316.
84. “Predlogi sokolskega društva Zagreb I–II. Sokolstvo in šport te slične organizacije,” Sokolski Glasnik, nos 12–13 (1924).
85. Lectures held at the first and third puppetry courses of the educational board of the Sokol District Belgrade. Č. Vasič, Cilj pozorište lutaka u Sokolskim jedinicama (IAB 1119 K19.8.1.8) 1.
86. Lectures held at the first and third puppetry courses, 1.
87. Ibid.
88. Putevi i ciljevi, 8.
89. “Sokolstvo i politika, Predlog starešinstva sokolskoj skupštini u Mariboru,” 396–8.
90. Ibid., 397.
91. Žutić, Sokoli.
92. Bondžić, Dragomir and Ristanović, “Beogradski student i političe organizacije 1935–1941.”
93. Vladimir, “Kako ćemo zadržati omladinu,” 1.
94. Žutić, Sokoli, 284; and Šakota, Beogradska srednjoškolska omladina.
95. Knežev, Beograd Naše Mladosti, 27.
96. Šakota, Beogradska srednjoškolska omladina; Vasić, Revolucionarni omladinski pokret; and Knežev, Beograd naše mladosti.
97. In the local context of Slovenia, the then illegal Communist Party had a slight influence on a small branch of the Sokol who joined the Liberation Front of the Slovenian Nation (Osvobodilna fronta, OF) at the advent of the Second World War see: Deležak Barič, “Sokolstvo na Slovenskem.”
98. Auty, “Popular Front in the Balkans.”
99. Humo, Moja generacija, 479–80.
100. “Jedna ozbiljna opomena,” 1; “Stalno na oprezu,” 1.
101. ‘Vesti, Oko Sokolovo, 3.
102. Čok, “Sva prestonička udruženja za jaku i nezavisnu Jugoslaviju!” 2.
103. “Glas omladine,” 3.
104. “Sokolstvo i omladina,” 1.
105. Vladimir, “Kako ćemo zadržati omladinu,” 1.
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Jovana Papovic
Jovana Papovic is a PhD candidate in History at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and a doctoral fellow of the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan, and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC) in Paris, France. Her thesis focuses on the experiences of commitment in associational culture among South Slavs in the context of the making of the first independent Yugoslav state. Her main interests lay in generational relations, youth movements and cultures, nationalist commitment and visual history. Previously, she completed a master’s degree in Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris and a master’s degree in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. She has also conducted research and published articles and book chapters on youth subcultures and youth political organization in contemporary Serbia.