Research Seminar: Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek
Virtual Event
April 8 2026
Time 12:00-1:30
Registration via Eventbrite
From the morning hours on September 14, 1960, a mass of people stormed the newly opened glass pavilion on the Square of the October Revolution, the center of the working-class neighborhood Trešnjevka in Zagreb. Unlike the historical event that the square was named after, the revolution in question was of a different kind—the opening of the first self-service department store in the Croatian capital after the Second World War. The opening of the store was one of the events that kickstarted the spread of department stores based on the self-service system in large Yugoslav urban centers. Perceived as pinnacles of modern retail by different experts, professionals and politicians, self-service department stores began to define Yugoslav urban environments from the early 1960s. During this time, the Yugoslav government placed more emphasis on increasing personal consumption and the consumer experience as essential components of its political and socio-economic system. This trend, which was also occurring in other European socialist states, ignited the modernization and expansion of urban retail networks and the professionalization of the retail workforce, conjoined with the import and production of new equipment, technology, and business know-how.
In this chapter, I demonstrate that large department store chains were the key players in the modernization and expansion of Yugoslav retail, which in the 1960s took place in large urban centers, primarily capital cities. By focusing on two largest Yugoslav department store chains—Na-Ma and RK Beograd—I illustrate how the expansion of these retail enterprises through new department stores, technological advancements, innovations in retailing, and professionalization of the workforce shaped and were shaped by the urban environments of Zagreb and Belgrade. Not just limited to the physical dimension of urban space, during the 1960s new department stores came to increasingly occupy, in Lefebvrian terms, the social and mental spaces of the Yugoslav socialist state as the preferred means for the modernization and expansion of urban retail networks. I argue that the result of these processes was the institutionalization of department stores as the most ubiquitous, tangible elements of Yugoslav retail and consumption in large urban areas. The planning and construction of department stores were modernizing processes that intersected retailing with the physical and social transformations of urban environments in capital cities impacted by decentralization and liberalization of the Yugoslav economy and the self-management system. The focus of the chapter is mainly on the external expansion through physical and infrastructural growth in urban environments, but also internal expansion vis-a-vis managerial practices and the workforce is also addressed. The transnational encounters and exchanges of Yugoslav experts and professionals, as I show, were crucial for powering both of these interconnected processes.
Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical-social Research, Vienna.
Alejandro Gómez del Moral of the University of Helsinki will provide an introductory comment.
