N.Zagora, D. Šamić
From Early Yugoslav to Socialist Yugoslav Sarajevo
Context: The Early Yugoslav period of Sarajevo’s historical trajectory ended with WWII. After a four-year occupation by Nazi forces, Sarajevo was liberated on April 6th 1945, and it became the capital of the Republic of Bosnia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was a period of exponential industrial, economic, urban and socio-cultural progress for the city, which peaked with the XIV Olympic Games. During the Socialist Yugoslav period, the population of Sarajevo increased from less than 100,000 to almost 500,000, the city transformed and expanded geographically, and the private and public spheres were integrated for the first time (Donia, 2006). After the destruction and stagnation in Bosnia and Herzegovina during WWII, a new social system and communist ideology were established. Because of post-war economic scarcity, the greater part of the initial reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina did not meet the high architectural standards found elsewhere in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Straus, 1998). Despite strong political pressure from Eastern Bloc countries and the Communist Information Bureau, local architects continued the tradition of modernist principles from 1920s and 1930s architecture, and ignored the doctrines of socialist realism (Kurto, 1997). In the 1950s, the architectural ambience in Bosnia and Herzegovina became more democratic and liberal: it was the decade of the establishment of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Sarajevo, a time when local architects gained insight into events on the international architectural scene, and in which the most important urbanism and architectural competitions 32
