A Cultural History of the 1984 Winter Olympics: The Making of Olympic Sarajevo

"This impressive monograph captures Sarajevo's fleeting Olympic moment, when the city stood as a proud 'Oasis' in a divided Cold War world. Casting non-aligned, socialist Yugoslavia in the best possible light, a transformed Olympic Sarajevo revelled in its role as a bastion of peace and tolerance, and as a culturally, economically, and environmentally progressive cosmopolitan city. In conveying this rich history, Jovanović succeeds in challenging ingrained perceptions of the Cold War Olympics and of Yugoslavia's final decade."
—Richard Mills, author of The politics of Football in Yugoslavia.
This book examines the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympic Games. It tells the story of the extensive infrastructural transformation of the city and its changing global image in relation to hosting of the Games. Reviewing different cultural representations of Sarajevo in the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the book explores how the promotion of the city as a future global tourist centre resulted in an increased awareness among its populace of the city’s cultural particularities. The analysis reveals how the process of modernisation relating to hosting of the Olympics provided an opportunity to re-imagine the city as a particularly environmentally progressive city. Placed within the field of studies of late socialism, the book offers important insights into Yugoslav society during the period, including those relating to the country’s unique geopolitical position and its nationalities policies.

Zlatko Jovanovic is an affiliated researcher at the research centre The Many Roads in Modernity, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.