Politics of a Tree: The All-Yugoslav Initiative of Planting 88 Trees Dedicated to Josip Broz Tito in the 1980s

• In Event: Memories in Stone, Satire, and Soil: The Politics of Commemoration in the Balkans

Abstract

Presentation will focus on an ambitious forestation project in the 1980s socialist Yugoslavia, known as 88 Trees for Comrade Tito. When the lifelong president of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, died in 1980, the country found itself in difficult times since the charisma of the ruler was irredemably lost. Political elites tried to find a new mechanism to overcome amounting national differences, but they could only do so with referring back to the deceased ruler under the motto 'After Tito - Tito'. One of the most interesting forms of political cult was the initiative to plant groups of 88 trees, the number corresponding to Tito's age at the time of passing. The first planting of a row of 88 trees happened in Tito's birthplace, and was soon expanded across the state. Hundreds of municipalities, city districts, villages, and parks planted trees which were supposed to keep memory of the deceased revolutionary alive and create a better living space for the citizens. This initiative was far from the only such project; Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia also planted memorial trees to their rulers, so the 88 Trees project was a continuation of a monarchist tradition translated into a socialist context. After the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the memorial trees were mostly forgotten about. Some were torn down, but the majority simply regressed back into the natural state of being non-politically charged entities of the landscape when the memory of the circumstances under which they were planted has faded.

Author

• Ivan Smiljanić, Inst of Contemporary History (Slovenia)