Literary polemic 1956–1957 about the unified Yugoslav criterion

Abstract

In 1956 the leadership of Yugoslavia made an attempt to strengthen cultural rapprochement tendencies among Yugoslavian peoples. The new course was implemented by indirect methods, without setting direct party directives. The Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia used indirect methods for infl uence on intelligentsia and didn’t proclam its aims in public way. But this course faced with resistance in Slovenia, which took on the character of a literary polemic over a unified Yugoslav criterion in culture. Serbian literary critic Zoran Mishich acted at the side of Yugoslavian leaders, and his opponent was the Slovenian literary critic Drago Shega. The public opinion didn’t saw the polemics as something significant one, but the leading Yugoslav politicians drew attention to it. They abandoned a unified Yugoslavian criterion in culture and began to pay more attention to national problems in the country.