Creating a New Intellectual: Shaping Belgrade Students’ Cultural Horizons (1946–1953)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the cultural and educational activities of student organizations at the University of Belgrade and other Belgrade-based colleges and music and art academies from 1946 to 1953. These activities reflected broader efforts by leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to ideologically remould the masses while promoting the cultural advancement of the various population categories to align with their respective roles in this socialist society and general cultural levels. Student organizations actively sought to implement the Party’s political, economic and cultural policies and programs, drawing on a defined set of forms, themes, and practices. The cultural education of students underwent multiple phases that reflected broader changes in the general approach to these educational efforts and modifications to some of their key policies. The paper aims to present the most important shifts and explain their possible causes.