Sanja PETROVIĆ TODOSIJEVIĆ
Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, Beograd
uransp@gmail.com

The Pioneer Town in Zagreb during the 1950s: A Socialist Childhood Laboratory

Abstract: This paper attempts to underline the role that the Pioneer Town in Zagreb played in the process of establishing a new educational policy in Yugoslavia proclaimed at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia  in  December  1949. This reform was carried out during the following decade, culminating in the General Law on Education in 1958. The Pioneer Town in Zagreb, with its elementary school as the central object, “simulated” a school of the future which was supposed to become not only a role model for the standard Yugoslav school, but also the initiator of the important social processes with the aim of placing children ‒ one of the most numerous social groups‒ at the center of political and social attention.

Key  words: Pioneer, Pioneer Town, Child, Childhood, Third Plenum of the CPY Central Committee, Commission for Educational Reform, General Law on Education, Parents

Summary

The decision to build the Pioneer Town in Zagreb as the “final landmark of the Pioneer Railway” was made in October of 1947. It was opened in 1951, although the formal decree on its establishment was not passed until 1955. The relatively late adoption of the most important founding document was a consequence of the complex process of defining the purpose of the Pioneer Town. It was built and conceptually elaborated in line with the major school system reform, which culminated with the General Law on Education in 1958 and the adoption of a unified eight-grade elementary school. These reforms were introduced at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1949 when the party first proclaimed that the socialist social order in Yugoslavia could not rest on bureaucracy and “molded thought.” The role of the Pioneer Town was outlined by the 1951 Elaborate whose author, among others, was Miloš Žanko, the president of the Commission for Educational Reform in Yugoslavia. It was imagined as a “simulator of a school of the future,” i.e., a policy of education and upbringing that should be dominant in socialist Yugoslavia and based on both the teaching process within school and extracurricular activities. The Pioneer town in Zagreb played a significant role not only in the process of implementing the official state policy of education and upbringing, but also in the process of creating and promoting a new concept of happier childhood. Its “decline” began already during socialism as a result of insufficient finances, lack of qualified staff, but also because the policy which viewed education and upbringing as a process inseparable from the rest of the community was abandoned.