Everyday living in Yugoslavia: A life beyond the realm of necessity

Abstract

In the text author discusses the living standard of the daily and averaged Dasein living in Yugoslavia. Given that the article is written in a form of retrospective gaze from the perspective of a completely different economic, social and political regime the emphasis is put on those indicators that testify to the high living standards: consumption, housing and the availability to spend summer vacations in the sea resorts. These indicators are considered to be part of luxury from contemporary perspective. Through selected topics the author will also attempt to demonstrate a certain level of democracy within socialism which was also the emblematic feature of Yugoslavia?s socialism. Yugonostalgia, a term often associated with remembering life in Yugoslavia, should therefore be understood not as a romantic repentance, but as a projection of former social organization from the perspective of capitalist societies, in other words as the comparison of then and now.