More Croatian Hiking With a Side of Communist History

This weekend was the last of our time in Croatia. We were expecting a lot of rain last week, but that mostly didn’t materialize, so we enjoyed one last Dalmatian coastal hike.

This is the Setnica Walking Trail: a relatively short hike in Lapad that began about five minutes from our apartment rental. I tell you what: if this path was that close to my apartment at home, I would visit it every week.

Also in Lapad, we visited the Red History Museum, which documents the rise and fall of communism in Yugoslavia.

This history of this part of the world is as fascinating as it is complicated. We’ve been travelling around the Balkans for over two months now, and I feel like I’m only just starting to understand the political landscape.

In brief (and incredibly oversimplified): Josip Broz Tito was a revolutionary who led a highly successful resistance (The Yugoslav Partisans) against the Nazis in WWII. After the war, he ruled Yugoslavia — which included the modern-day countries of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and North Macedonia — under a communist regime.

According to the Red History Museum, Tito’s government was quite successful at improving Yugoslavia’s standard of living by greatly increasing access to education, healthcare, and housing. This made Tito a popular, almost cult-like figure (well, that and the propaganda).

It is difficult to say how much of this success was due to good governing, versus general increases in standards of living throughout the world in the 50s and 60s. Yugoslavia also received quite a bit of American aid during this time (and imported their rock music).

The government also did a lot of… communist stuff. This included rigging elections, banning religion, censoring books, and imprisoning and killing people who were perceived as a threat to the regime.

In the 1970s, Yugoslavia faced an economic crisis along with the rest of Europe that included high inflation and unemployment rates. By all accounts, Yugoslavia’s government handled this crisis poorly. Then, Tito passed away in 1980 without an agreed-upon successor. The communists lost political power, and Yugoslavia began to formally break apart in 1990. What followed was a brutal series of wars, which we will learn more about this week. Stay tuned for our posts from Bosnia & Herzegovina!