CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Zimbrek, Ivana Mihaela |
|---|---|
| Title | Links in the Chain: Department Stores, Modernization of Retail, and the Transformations of the Urban Environment in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1950-1975 |
| Summary | This thesis explores the history of department stores in Socialist Yugoslavia from the 1950s to the mid-1970s in order to ask what department stores as retail spaces and urban institutions can tell us about the experts and professionals involved in their operations, the urban and social environments they occupied, the socio-economic and political system they emerged in and transformed, and the global setting Yugoslavia was embedded in during the Cold War. The thesis puts to the forefront the discourses and activities of experts and professionals in four groupsretail and trade, architecture and urban planning, urban administration, and home economicswho imagined, planned and constructed Yugoslav department stores from 1950 to 1975. The main case studies in the thesis are RK Beograd and Na-Ma, two largest Yugoslav department store chains, and their activities in Belgrade and Zagreb, the capital cities they were based in, and in Kumrovec and Svetozarevo, two rural and industrial locations where the chains were also active. Comparatively, the thesis also analyzes department stores in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo and Mostar, where the modernization of retail took a different turn, powered by regional retail enterprises. This thesis consists of four chapters, which cover the main regimes in the development of department stores and modernization of urban retail in Yugoslavia from 1950 to 1975. The first two chapters focus in detail on the development of the Yugoslav retail sector in the 1950s and early 1960s, the initial production of knowledge on modern retail by different experts and professionals, and the first appearance of modern retail spaces such as supermarkets and department stores. The third and fourth chapter analyze the implementation of modern retailing systems and technology in the construction of department stores in different Yugoslav urban and rural centers from the early 1960s to mid-1970s. The thesis shows, first, that from 1950 to 1975 Yugoslav retail transformed from a centralized and administrative into decentralized and independent sector, whose modernization began in the late 1950s, blossomed during the 1960s, and further diversified in the early 1970s. Second, the thesis shows that the growth of cities in Yugoslavia in the period from the early 1960s was significantly impacted by the construction of department stores and the incorporation of retail into Yugoslav urban environments. Third, the thesis shows that retail modernization was embedded in the self-management system in several ways. The self-management system was an administrative framework that defined the interactions between experts and professionals, the main location for retail modernization, as well as the popular participation of Yugoslav citizens as consumers. The thesis demonstrates, therefore, that modernization of retail and transformation of urban environments in Yugoslavia were closely intertwined and mutually formative processes, in which a major role was played by various experts and professionals engaged in national, federal and transnational exchanges. |
| Supervisor | Siefert, Marsha |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/zimbrek_ivana.pdf |
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