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Paper short abstract

After WWII, countries that adopted socialism paired reconstruction with the idea of a “new man.” Its strongest realization was success in the struggle against nature’s forces. I will illustrate this through newspaper and literary narratives on youth labor brigades in the socialist Yugoslavia (SFRY).

Paper long abstract

In countries that, after World War II, proclaimed a socialist social order, economic and infrastructural reconstruction was closely tied to the idea of creating the “new socialist man.” This presentation focuses on one model of postwar reconstruction in the young Yugoslav state—the so-called Youth Labor Brigades. Thousands of young men and women not only built railways, highways, factories, and housing settlements, but also entered what was imagined as a “future in the present,” an ideal setting for the formation of socialist citizens. In other words, they were “tempered” not only through shock-work achievements and educational content, but also, equally importantly, through challenges of confronting natural forces and disasters. Political speeches, newspapers, and literary reviews reported on “heroic successes,” “superhuman efforts,” “exceptional creativity,” and “miracles” that brought into being what had previously seemed “unimaginable,” “insurmountable,” and “impossible.” “The river was ordered to move to the right, to give up part of its bed […]. The cliff was ordered to disappear from the horizon and it obeyed,” wrote one author. “They are like giants,” noted another. “We are changing nature, and we ourselves are changing,” declared a character in a 1947 feature film. Such accounts were the rule rather than the exception. These “victories in battles with nature” were intended to testify not only to the great achievements of postwar reconstruction, but also to the emergence of new, stronger, better prepared, and more complete people who were expected to lead the country toward a bright socialist future.