Student scholarships were a huge part of Yugoslavia’s nonaligned diplomacy and one of the most tangible and visible ways Yugoslav citizens experienced nonalignment. Between 1955 and 1984, Yugoslavia granted nearly 8,000 scholarships to young people from 90 political parties, liberation movements, and countries of the Global South, with foreign students receiving professional, military, and university training and education in the country for various periods. But the program also had an ugly side: discrimination and racism (PLUS). 

With Rima Sabina Aouf, Leonora Dugonjic-Rodwin, and Peter Wright, plus Goran Musić, Žiga Smolič, Paul Stubbs, and Damir Vučićević. Featuring music by Gofret (courtesy of Arsivplak) and Yangaman Bob (Dig This Way Records). Part 5 of 7.

Listen: “Nonaligned Movement: Education” (Episode #110)

Bonus Extras: “Nonaligned Movement: Education” (Episode #110)

Extended, ad-free version of “Nonaligned Movement: Education” (Episode #110).

Transcript: “Nonaligned Movement: Education” (Episode #110)

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[SOUNDBITE]

[JINGLE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok. 

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[JINGLE] 

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your chairman, Peter Korchnak.

Nonalignment turned out to be a much bigger topic than I anticipated. What I thought would be a matter of a single episode grew into a series. And now, what I thought would be the multiple leftover subjects of this episode also grew so much that I’m splitting them up into two episodes. And so the series is now a seven-parter. A neater number anyway.

So let’s get right to it. Today we’ll talk about education.

After World War II, one of the ruling Communist Party’s main tasks was to train qualified professionals in all areas, to rebuild Yugoslavia and turn it into a prosperous socialist country. In the ensuing decades, no country in the region invested more in education.

Decolonizing and developing countries, too, needed to educate their citizenry in order to spur development. Yugoslavia supported liberation movements and newly independent countries of the Global South in various ways. The most visible form of assistance within Yugoslavia was providing scholarships to foreign students to study at Yugoslav universities. 

Between 1955 and 1984, Yugoslavia granted nearly 8,000 scholarships to young people from 90 political parties, liberation movements, and countries of the Global South, with foreign students receiving professional, military, and university training and education in the country for various periods. 

Student scholarships were a huge part of Yugoslavia’s nonaligned diplomacy and one of the most tangible ways Yugoslav citizens experienced nonalignment. But the program also had an ugly side: discrimination and racism. 

And these are our topics to  day.

Before we study all this, remember that like every episode in the series, this one comes with an ad-free, extended version, featuring extra interview footage, stories, analysis, and music. These bonus extras are available exclusively to Yugoblok members. To get access and listen at Yugoblok or in your podcast listening app, go to yugoblok.com/join and sign up to be a Yugobloknik. In addition to ad-free extended and bonus episodes and other perks of membership, your contribution will ensure the podcast and much more remains free to all who remember Yugoslavia. So go to yugoblok.com slash join and enroll to become a Yugoblok member today.

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia’s scholarship program became the largest component of Yugoslavia’s economic aid and cooperation program to nonaligned countries.

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: There was this idea that if you created scholarships for international students, then you would create international cooperation where students could go back to their countries, or home countries, and be a link.

PETER KORCHNAK: Leonora Dugonjic-Rodwin is a sociologist and associate professor at the University of Stockholm. She studies globalization and international relations in education, including in the nonalignment framework. She spent part of her early childhood in Sarajevo and lived in several countries since.

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: And this is very much related to elite, the creation and the formation of elites.

PETER KORCHNAK: One goal of hosting students from the Global South was to help create educated leaders in the decolonizing and independent countries who would in turn be friendly to Yugoslavia and help it with its own political and business goals. 

PETER WRIGHT: The scholarship program was conceived not just as this, you know, one sided aid to decolonizing states, but as a mutually beneficial initiative that would produce dividends for Yugoslavia as well. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Peter Wright is a professor at the Slavic Languages and Literature Department of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a historian of socialist Yugoslavia and the Balkans, focusing on economic development and cooperation within the Nonaligned Movement.

Yugoslavia sought to reap political dividents by cultivating its image and growing its prestige in the Global South. 

The quote unquote “post-colonial education migration” also served an important symbolic, if not propaganda function domestically. The very visible presence of foreign students demonstrated to Yugoslav citizens that their country was exceptional, open, and progressive and helped show how much Yugoslavia was respected in the world. 

There were also economic dividends to be had.

PETER WRIGHT: From the inception of the policy, Yugoslav leaders are viewing scholarships for students from developing countries as a way to boost Yugoslavia’s economy, specifically, its export industry which is increasingly oriented towards the Global South. 

There’s this search for new markets and trading partners that’s a guiding principle for us all of international politics, and that it informs the scholarship program. 

So officials talk about students in terms investments, or even capital for Yugoslav economic interest.  

Yugoslav experts who were engaged in developing countries claimed that offering scholarships for education in Yugoslavia became a precondition for the Yugoslav state and its enterprises to do business in a given country. 

PETER KORCHNAK: So a lot was at stake when it came to hosting students from the Global South in Yugoslavia.

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER KORCHNAK: The history of educating the Global South in Yugoslavia dates back to 1948.

PETER WRIGHT: Student exchanges between Yugoslavia and the developing world really appear in this moment after the Tito-Stalin schism, when Yugoslavia was searching for new allies outside of Europe. Yugoslavia was seeking affirmation internationally.

This imperative for new allies eventually led Yugoslavia to begin offering scholarships to prospective students as part of a broader program of technical cooperation with emerging postcolonial states in the early 1950s. 

And it was attractive to post-colonial states as a recent development model in socialist Europe.

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia was not unique among socialist or in fact Global North states in offering scholarships to students from the Third World during the Cold War.

PETER WRIGHT: Many like East Germany and Czechoslovakia hosted many more students in Yugoslavia. 

And students migrating from decolonizing countries for education was also a global phenomenon, with students scattered north and south, east and west, the United States, France, United Kingdom, West Germany, and hubs of decolonization, such as Cairo, New Delhi, and Beijing hosted thousands of students. 

So Yugoslavia was a unique destination, but just one of many.

PETER KORCHNAK: As in other areas of cooperation, including military assistance—

PETER WRIGHT: The first scholarships were offered to Indian and then Burmese students in 1951 and ‘52, but it really wasn’t until the mid-1950s that there was a significant number of students from these countries.

These Yugoslavia state finance scholarships came to be a fundamental part of bilateral cooperation agreements with the Yugoslavia’s new partners.

PETER KORCHNAK: In the 1954–55 academic year, students from 20 countries received scholarships; a third were from India and Burma. 

PETER WRIGHT: By the late 1950s there were hundreds of students from newly independent former colonies and yet to be liberated colonies such as Kenya and Tanganyika. 

And the countries with the largest contingents of students in Yugoslavia at this time were from the United Arab Republic, the short lived union of Syria and Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq and Indonesia, so predominantly North African and Arab states. 

PETER KORCHNAK: And then the nonalignment began. 

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: What we can see from the statistics, is that the influx of students from nonaligned nations really corresponds to the nonaligned politics after ‘61, after the summit. This becomes very clear.

PETER KORCHNAK: To manage its international development work, Yugoslavia in 1961 established a separate agency, Zavod za međunarodnu tehničku saradnju (Institute for International Technical Cooperation, ZAMTES). With a federal bureau and branches in each republic, ZAMTES coordinated technical assistance and development aid to developing countries as well as foreign student stays in Yugoslavia. ZAMTES considered scholarships as a form of aid, necessary to help liberate colonies from their yoke. 

The proportion of non-European students in Yugoslavia surpassed that of European students this academic year; by 1965, three in four international students were from non-European countries and one in three were of African origin. This at a time when some universities in the United States were still barring entry to Blacks.

PETER WRIGHT: In the early 1960s we’re talking about, you know, 400 to 600 scholarship students, total. And then the peak in ‘67 at least for the 60s, there’s about 1,200 scholarship students. So it rises actually quite precipitously. But there’s at least the same amount, if not more so, of these students.

PETER KORCHNAK: Between 1958 and 1967 about 7,000 students from developing countries, both on scholarships and self-paying, came to study at Yugoslavia’s technical schools and universities, where Yugoslavia placed much focus in terms of its educational priorities. 

PETER WRIGHT: The numbers, they dip for a variety of reasons in the late 60s, before they then rise again in the mid 70s and into the late 80s. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Overall, 1977 was the peak year for scholarship students, when nearly 1,500 foreigners received scholarships. 

In all, foreign students comprised up to about 1 percent of total enrollment in Yugoslavia thru the 60s and 70s. 

PETER WRIGHT: And then in the late 80s, some statistics indicate that there are, you know, anywhere between 20 and 30,000 students, international students in Yugoslavia, which is actually a huge number of students, I think it makes up about 5% of total student population, which comparatively, is one of the highest in the world. 

So Yugoslavia is a really popular destination for international students. Per capita, it’s probably one of the this countries that hosted the most students, roughly, you know, on par with other socialist states. But once again, it pales in comparison to the numbers in the Soviet Union, West Germany.

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1989, fewer than 500 students from nonaligned countries received scholarships, the lowest level since the early 1960s. 

While the Federal Institute of Statistics maintained official stats on the all-Yugoslav level, the numbers fluctuated constantly. Some students stayed in Yugoslavia for their studies, and after. Many more enrolled but immediately left for the West or other countries, using Yugoslavia as a transit country, for example students from the former French colonies joining their relatives and compatriots in France. There were also increasing numbers of self-paying students who were tracked the least in official statistics.

It’s hard to generalize from limited data who exactly the incoming students were. Roughly speaking, though, they were were upper middle and upper class in their countries, with well-connected and well-positioned or accomplished fathers in business or government or education, and they had multiple siblings, many of whom studied abroad. Or as the scholars say, they came from backgrounds with considerable social capital.

PETER WRIGHT: The prestigious scholarships, state scholarships were typically but not always reserved for politically or economically, economically connected youth whom the ruling party of their home country awarded as a form of patronage. 

PETER KORCHNAK: If the early batches of students were mostly from Asia, the Arab world, and North Africa, from the mid-60s on the numbers of students from Sub-Saharan Africa grew dramatically.

PETER WRIGHT: By the late 1950s and especially into the 60s, it’s hard to just characterize this as a state-led project. In the 1960s especially, you have different groups involved, such as trade unions, African independence movements sponsoring Yugoslav scholarships for students from European colonies like Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Palestinians came to study in Yugoslavia in big numbers, especially after the war in 1967. In fact, Palestinian students received the majority of scholarships from among all Arab students.

PETER WRIGHT: So in addition to existing Arab and more students from Sub-Saharan Africa, you have Palestinian refugees who are coming through UN scholarships. So the UNRWA is sponsoring Palestinians to come to Yugoslavia, among other places. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: Especially from the early 70s onwards, that Yugoslavia becomes a very popular destination for the Palestinian students to come.

PETER KORCHNAK: Žiga Smolič is a PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana researching Yugoslav involvement in the Middle East.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: It had a renomé of good universities and beside that, it was also pretty much cheap to come here. Yugoslavia gave a lot of scholarships to the Palestinian students as well.

We have to get this image of Yugoslavia hosting at least 10,000, maybe even 15,000 Palestinian students in just what, like 15 years. So it was quite a big presence of the Palestinians in Yugoslavia, and a lot of them received Yugoslav scholarships. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Palestinian military cadres were schooled in Yugoslavia as well, beginning in 1971.

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: We’re talking again hundreds of Palestinians that came to Yugoslavia and they received training as military generals or pilots or, I don’t know, people that got specific knowledge in how to handle, like, some heavy machinery or heavy arms and so on. 

A lot of this military training was given for free, a lot of it was paid by at the time, at certain time, from Libya, Gaddafi, paid a lot of those trainings. 

PETER KORCHNAK: As for the gender breakdown of scholarship students—

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: Male students were the majority. 

PETER KORCHNAK: —studying mostly in technical disciplines like engineering. But then— 

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: But in the 80s, specifically, there were, you know, 10 percent women. That’s very significant, from a statistical point of view, it’s significant, but also from the point of view of, you know, it’s power of attraction, of context. You know, what was possible for women at the time in Yugoslavia was, you know, truly revolutionary as compared to other, even European states. What attracted them to Yugoslavia, on a more personal level of what they could become, what could, what they could be as women, you know, beyond family expectations that they couldn’t become that in their countries of origin.

[SOUNDBITE – “Walking In The Rain, Walking In The Sun” by Yangaman Bob]

PETER KORCHNAK: “Walking In The Rain, Walking In The Sun” by Yangaman Bob from the album The Unreleased Sounds of Top Rank Records. The song comes to you courtesy of Dig This Way Records, an independent Italian label which aims to quote “dig out the best underground and forgotten music from Africa.” Buy their music on Bandcamp! I’ve included the links at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

PETER KORCHNAK: By law, Yugoslav students and students on international scholarships attended university for free. Foreign students only needed to cover their living expenses.

PETER KORCHNAK: One of these students was Jamil Aouf from Aleppo.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: He seems to have a pretty average, sort of like middle class background. His father was a court stenographer, I think. And he died when dad was quite young, and his four older siblings pooled their money together to send him abroad for uni. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Jamil’s daughter, Rima Sabina Aouf, is a Croatian-Yugoslav-Syrian graphic artist from Australia, living in the UK. You may remember her from Episode 66, the first installment of the Inspired by Yugoslavia series, where she presented a graphic biography in progress of her late mother, who was from Zagreb.

Let’s rewind a bit.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: By the time he was a teenager and going to study overseas, like he was very interested in socialism and pan Arabism, which Nasser was well known as an advocate for. And so, like, knew about the non alignment, Nonaligned Movement, and that was definitely part of the draw to Yugoslavia. Like growing up in Syria, Dad had quite a big knowledge of Yugoslavia. It was seen as a guiding light, a bit of a beacon in the dark.

Before the Nonaligned Movement had officially started, apparently Tito and Nasser had had a meeting in Aleppo. And dad has this memory of being, he says 14, it would been ‘58 or ‘59, 1958 or 1959 and they all gathered together and went to where this meeting was taking place, and kind of stalked them, I guess, they were celebrities who were in town. And Dad said that he remembers being just a few meters away from Tito.

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1966, young Jamil set out for Spain to study mechanical engineering.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: He got to chatting to some kind of older Syrian students on the train who convinced him to try Yugoslavia because they’d had such a good time there. And he just pulled his bags off the train in Zagreb and decided that he liked it, and that’s where he stayed. I guess it was a different time.

PETER KORCHNAK: He had a tourist visa and some friends there.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: He said that part of the draw was that the universities there were very reputable. 

He didn’t have a scholarship, but the situation for students coming from nonaligned countries was that your education would be paid for, as would your health benefits, health cover, but you had to study the language for a year first, which was also free, and then you had to support yourself somehow, with income from somewhere. So his brothers and sisters were covered, covering his living costs for him, which also made Yugoslavia quite attractive, it was much cheaper than studying in the West. So there were a lot of draws there for someone coming from one of these nonaligned countries.

I think my dad said foreign students made up only a tiny percentage of his course, like maybe sort of five, percent but that they were definitely there, and certainly of our close family, friends, three other families are other Syrian-Croatian families that all went to university at that time together, and they continue to be basically like cousins to me

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER WRIGHT: So scholarships were not the only way for youth in the developing world to obtain a university degree from Yugoslavia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1969, tuition was introduced for foreign non-scholarships students. The goal was to lower the number of foreign students in order to relieve pressure on resources and infrastructure. 

This backfired. 

The change coincided with the introduction of self-management to universities and schools. On the one hand universities gained more decision-making power, including who they enrolled. 

But on the other hand the federal government cut funding to universities in order to increase their independence, responsiveness to the economy, and collaboration with enterprises. 

The result was that universities were forced to look for funding alternatives. Tuition offered one such alternative.

PETER WRIGHT: In the 60s, you also see an explosion of what are called private students in Yugoslavia. 

This is the path that thousands of students took to higher education. It’s mostly Arab students in this period, in the 60s, and they actually outnumber scholarship students by 1960.

Most Palestinians actually had to find their own way to Yugoslavia, following networks to Europe that family, friends, and others from their home countries had created. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Tuition was a sure-fire way to generate much needed foreign currency and a lucrative source of revenue for universities and state budgets. Many universities, particularly in the medical fields, even had specific policies to attract self-financing international students.

“[F]ull-paying international students represented a windfall for cash-strapped Yugoslav universities buffeted by inflation, falling enrollments, and unfavorable government reform,” writes Wright in a paper. 

There were no limits on what universities could charge these foreign students paying their own way. The price rose steadily. And fierce competition developed among universities for self-funding students.

As Yugoslavia decentralized and its economic situation devolved, money spoke louder and louder. For one, republics were increasingly concerned with their own interests and so international political considerations and humanitarian assistance to developing countries diminished in importance. 

As with technical assistance Yugoslavia provided in fellow nonaligned countries, university education became commercialized. “[P]rofit-seeking began to dominate Yugoslav policy makers’ thinking about technical aid and eventually eclipsed previous models of technical cooperation,” writes Wright. 

A major influx of self-financing students occurred in the early 1980s, coinciding with economic problems. With the oil crises rocking the world, Yugoslavia became more interested in cooperating with oil producing states, whose students could indeed pay their own way through university. 

Serbia was said to bring in more foreign currency in 1985 from tuitions than from manufacturing. In 1987, about 97 percent of foreign students in Yugoslavia were self-financing.

Additionally, the UN had found that rather than closing the gap between the Global North and South, international aid in the form of education actually created greater dependency of the latter on the former. 

So attention shifted from university education abroad, which was expensive and took a long time, to short-term vocational or technical training in home countries, which was cheaper and faster. 

Accordingly, Yugoslavia lowered the number of available university scholarships and started to emphasize shorter, technical specialization training programs. These were also easier to charge for.

A related focus are was workforce training in developing countries, often on the job. Workforce training became one of the ways Yugoslavia differentiated itself from other countries that provided technical assistance to the Third World.

GORAN MUSIĆ: All of these newly independent countries in Africa, Zambia was no exception, lacked skilled workers and Energoprojekt was willing to send not only engineers, experts, architects, managers, but also a great number of manual, skilled manual workers who would then train Zambian workers hands on during the actual works, during the construction time. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Goran Musić is a social historian focusing on labor issues at the University of Vienna. 

GORAN MUSIĆ: So for instance, in Zambia, one of the main tasks of Energoprojekt, apart from building all this infrastructure, apart from finishing all these projects in kind of record-breaking time, was training the local workforce.

So unlike other socialist countries or development schemes which envisioned schools or kind of training centers, which could then give results in a couple of years where only experts from these countries would go and serve as as trainers, Yugoslavia was actually doing it through work, through construction, through business, and this was one of its calling cards.

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER KORCHNAK: Initially most foreign students went to Belgrade, and Zagreb was also a popular destination. Later—

PETER WRIGHT: There’s a concerted attempt in the 60s to disperse or share the students more among the different republics, to ease burdens and also to decentralize the program.

PETER KORCHNAK: This effort intensified in the late 1970s so that more international students went to Sarajevo, Skopje, Ljubljana, and so on. 

Zagreb is where Jamil Aouf got off the train. Through some twists of fate and bureaucracy, he ended up with a degree in petroleum engineering. 

Foreign students generally had a positive experience in Yugoslavia.

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: Based on my interviews, the way that my interviewees talked about their experience highlighted most often very, you know, warm, welcoming kind of relationship with their— if they stayed with families, or, you know, with with other students in the dorms. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Young Jamil Aouf was no exception. 

RIMA SABINA AOUF: In terms of the actual educational experience, there was lots that he loved about studying in Yugoslavia. He always felt very welcome. People were friendly. 

He also loved the social aspect. He said he he learnt to like pork after after being tricked into eating it by his fellow students, who told him that I think pork schnitzel was chicken, but now, now he loves it.

My father is Muslim, but he comes from quite a secular, non-practicing background, and to that extent Yugoslavia was a very familiar place for him, because that was very much the sort of culture among Muslims there as well. There were certain practices that he kept up that he then ended up dropping because he lived in Yugoslavia. For instance, the eating of pork. 

And another one was he did learn to partake in a little bit of gambling. That was also,  There’s a story of, apparently, when my uncle came to visit him, they he would take him to the casino on the 14th floor of hotel Esplanade, maybe? And his wife, my uncle’s wife, would call home and be like, oh, did you find a, you know, a mosque to pray at? And and my uncle would say, yes, they have a very modern one here, it’s on the 14th floor of this hotel. 

PETER KORCHNAK: What about rakija?

RIMA SABINA AOUF: Oh, yeah, no, he’s always embraced the rakija. 

PETER KORCHNAK: After graduating, Aouf had a long career in the oil industry, including with the Croatian-Yugoslav giant INA. 

RIMA SABINA AOUF: He really loved life there. Yugoslavia, he saw it become wealthier and more prosperous in just the 20 years that he was there, largely because of their leadership of the Nonaligned Movement, and what that meant for like trade and the reputation they had out in the world. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Scholarship students, many of whose fathers were active in decolonization movements, did much more in Yugoslavia than study and socialize.

PETER WRIGHT: We’re used to seeing these images of African students protesting side by side with Yugoslav students and Yugoslav citizens on the streets of Belgrade were protesting the Vietnam War or protesting neocolonialism in the Belgian Congo, for example, there’s famous photos on the occasion of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. 

PETER KORCHNAK: —when students organized large demonstrations in Belgrade and attacked the Belgian Embassy. 

Many, if not most, demonstrations in support of decolonization were organized by international students. 

ŽIGA SMOLIČ: You have a very active Palestinian student population Yugoslavia, collaborating with local students, organizing events…

PETER WRIGHT: There’s Palestinian activism that before ‘67 authorities tried to suppress to a certain degree. 

And there’s a lot of dissent from the typical nonaligned anticolonial politics of Yugoslavia. 

Political conflict among students from former colonies and from the same country was very common. For example, Sudanese, Iraqi, and Syrian communist students challenged other nationalist students from their own countries, and they challenged Yugoslavia’s nonaligned politics, sometimes in the streets. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In the classic Yugoslav fashion—

PETER WRIGHT: There’s this continual attempt to channel students social and political activities in what officials saw as healthy, safe directions. 

There’s a series of clubs for international students, called International Student Clubs of Friendship that are established in all the major cities in Yugoslavia and it’s envisioned as a meeting point for Yugoslav and international students, but it’s also a site of surveillance and control for the state as well.

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER KORCHNAK: So what did the scholarship program accomplish for Yugoslavia?

PETER WRIGHT: These scholarships in Yugoslavia that students are using to obtain advanced degrees they are an incredible boon and support to developing countries.

There is this evidence that students coming back with Yugoslav degrees are at least attempting to integrate into their post colonial states’ economies.

PAUL STUBBS: These student links formed tangible bonds and networks that maintain, that were maintained. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Sociologist Paul Stubbs, who kicked us off in this series.

PAUL STUBBS: I was just very recently at a conference on Yugoslav architecture in the Global South, and I think it was the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, where one mayor of Kabul had actually studied architecture in Zagreb. And so later, he brought those connections when they were reconstructing parts of Kabul, he had Yugoslav architects in mind. You go to Ghana and one bit of the road leading to the presidential palace kind of looks like parts of Rijeka, and it’s because there were the newly opened School of Architecture in Accra was led by two or three Yugoslavs. 

PETER KORCHNAK: It’s impossible to quantify the results of the scholarship program. I’m not sure the data exist.

Yugoslavia did not track foreign students within the country, let alone their characteristics. 

They also didn’t track what actually happened to those students, what those students became or accomplished after they left Yugoslavia with their degrees (or without them, for that matter). 

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: We know nothing about those who left and where did they go. So we can’t assume that most of them went back to their countries, even though that’s what the authorities think, because they imagine these students as representatives of their countries. But we don’t know that.

PETER KORCHNAK: You could say Yugoslavia failed at Program Evaluation 101.

All that said, ZAMTES did conduct some fact-finding missions to see how the program was performing. After one such trip in the late 1960s they found that after graduating from a Yugoslav university, most students completed their specializations in Western countries, where they stayed and became integrated. 

PETER WRIGHT: There’s a problem of brain drain. Many of these students are are staying in Europe, even after graduation.

PETER KORCHNAK: Many of those who went back to their home countries then experienced difficulties having their Yugoslav diplomas recognized and became unemployed. 

PETER WRIGHT: There is a constant concern among Yugoslav officials in committee meetings, the records of committee meetings that Yugoslavia is not getting its return on investment from these students, as they as they’d hoped. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Because universities were in such need of funding the lucrative self-financing students soon crowded out the scholarship students. Foreign students would complain that their universities treaded them less as visitors or students and more and more as customers. This undermined the rationale behind the scholarship program and impacted its results. 

ZAMTES concluded that Yugoslavia was quote not receiving “any benefit from [its] long-term investment.” The scholarship program had failed because, while it had “certainly helped countries in development,” Yugoslavia’s economy had “not derived any use from it.”

PETER WRIGHT: In terms of the results, I would say they’re decidedly mixed, both for Yugoslavia and post-colonial states. 

PETER KORCHNAK: We do know a little more about the students who stayed in Yugoslavia after graduation. 

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: Most of them who I’ve interviewed married Yugoslav women and, you know, had kids and stayed for this kind of  emotional reason. 

PETER KORCHNAK: One of these students was Jungo Chokwe, the son of a political independence activist and later government minister from Kenya. He came to Yugoslavia in 1965 to study psychology at the University of Belgrade. He eventually became a popular actor and musician under the name Steven Hannington, commonly known as Steva Šumadinac. His hits included a commercial for the garment and parachute company Kluž, some cameos in movies, and the songs “Mpendzi Na Sokaku” (Darling in the Street)

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: “Mujo Kuje Konja Po Mesecu” (Mujo is shoeing his horse in the moonlight)

[SOUNDBITE]

PETER KORCHNAK: —and “Najlepša Si Kada Ćutiš” (You’re the best woman when you’re quiet)

Aouf was among the visiting students who put down roots in Yugoslavia as well.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: His biggest, I guess, transformation of his life was when he met my mother, which  then went on to be the reason that he stayed in Yugoslavia, I guess.

[SOUNDBITE]

RIMA SABINA AOUF: They have a great story. 

I think it was 1968 that they met. So he would have been in his first year, I think.

They met because my mom and her best friend were hitchhiking one day, and my dad stopped to pick them up. It was uncommon enough at the time that my mom didn’t want to do it. She had to be persuaded to hitchhike by her much more adventurous friend. So this was very much a sliding doors moment. It could have gone either way.

And he says he did that because he wanted to take every opportunity to practice in Serbo-Croatian. So he decided to do so with these two random women, and, yeah, the rest is happily ever after, I guess.

PETER KORCHNAK: Rima, who was born in 1984, and her brother Samir, born in 1972, are children of nonalignment. We’ll hear this story in the final episode of our nonalignment series.

So, you could say some foreign students who stayed in Yugoslavia were successful.

LEONORA DUGONJIC-RODWIN: I think they actually did accomplish, in a way, what they wanted to. Because these students, were, you know, despite difficulties, successfully integrated into this society and have still a very positive vision of Yugoslavia, because it enabled them to either accomplish their dreams or to find, you know, to establish themselves, to find the loves of their lives, etcetera. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1988 Aouf found a job on offshore oil rigs in Australia and the family, including the 4-year-old Rima, moved from Yugoslavia to Perth. Temporarily, they thought. But the wars of Yugoslav dissolution grounded them. After a long break, they’ve been visiting Croatia frequently. 

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret] 

PETER KORCHNAK: “Great Africa” by Gofret, courtesy of Arsivplak, a label that strives to “bring back to light albums that have almost been forgotten and to pass them on to the next generation.” Buy their music on Bandcamp!  

Return on Investment was only one issue the scholarship program wrought. 

Foreign students from developing countries were starting out in Yugoslavia from a much lower education base, so they had a lot of catching up to do. The same went for how different, indeed foreign, Yugoslavia was compared to their home countries, so there was that tough adjustment. 

Then there was the cost of living. Stipend amounts decreased over time and some schools illegally charged tuition. 

PETER WRIGHT: In interviews I’ve conducted with former students who have stayed in Yugoslavia, a lot of them detail how they’re forced to take on second jobs while they’re working, or they have to pause their studies, or even drop out and never finish their studies because they didn’t have the money to live on. 

There’s like a student service for, you know, for jobs. And a lot of these students are international students are getting job as menial jobs, moving things or working as janitors and so forth while they study. 

And one archival document talks about how this is a problem, because this is not the intent, this is not the intent of the scholarship program to bring these students to, you know, to work here, but rather to study and then return to their home country.

PETER KORCHNAK: Croatia’s ZAMTES found that scholarship students from poorer countries were quote “living on the edge of existence.” Scholarship students would protest against this, and as they had less time for school while they worked, their academic performance suffered. Many students took longer than the usual four years to complete their studies. Some students were sent back because of their poor academic performance. Many students left Yugoslavia without obtaining diplomas.  

The language was another major issue. Every foreign student first had to take a year of Serbo-Croatian. That included young Aouf.

RIMA SABINA AOUF: He found it extremely hard to understand the lectures. After just a year of studying Serbo-Croatian, you are conversational at that point, you are not at a technical level, I guess, to understand the ins and outs of mining. 

He had to use two dictionaries to like, read any of his coursework. He used the Serbo-Croatian to English dictionary, and then English to Arabic. And he said it took him more than a day to read a single page of any one of his texts in this fashion. So I don’t know how he managed to get through uni, but he did. 

[SOUNDBITE – “Great Africa” by Gofret]

PETER KORCHNAK: The biggest problems around the foreign students boiled down to two causes old as civilization: money and women.

Which brings us to discrimination and racism. That story is in the extended episode, available to Yugoblok members. Study the membership options and enroll at Yugoblok.com to listen now.

But the student scholarship program and this incredible history, this novel history of Africans, Arabs, Latin Americans, Asians come into Yugoslavia in their thousands, you know, attest to this anti-racist project. This is a manifestation of a commitment of nonaligned Yugoslavia to combat inequality and discrimination that is intertwined with racist colonial history. 

RIMA SABINA AOUF: I actually do have a very funny story about that with regard to the peculiarities of the racism you might encounter in Yugoslavia. I have an aunt who is she’s about 20 years older than me. And there’s a story of when she was a kid on a tram in Zagreb, she apparently saw a black woman for the first time and went up to her and kissed her hand. Which I think is hardly the ideal response in that situation. But sometimes, I think, if only that was the kind of racism then that’s a good problem to have.

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member to take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others, and enjoy the extended version of this and other episodes, featuring additional interviews, analysis, and music.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOx5DkDkceU. 

Additional music courtesy of the labels Arsivplak and Dig This Way Records. Buy their music on Bandcamp!

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Ćao!

RIMA SABINA AOUF: Brotherhood and unity, when my family and our friends describe growing up with this concept to me,  it was something that they really took to heart, and tolerance and compassion was was widely practiced. And so I guess, yeah,  That was what nonalignment brought to Yugoslavia.

Additional Sources

• Dugonjic-Rodwin, Leonora and and Ivica Mladenović. “Transnational Educational Strategies during the Cold War: Students from the Global South in Socialist Yugoslavia, 1961–91. In: Paul Stubbs. ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, pp. 331-359
• Kuč, Nedžad. “Southern African Students in Southeast Europe: Education and Experiences in 1960s Yugoslavia.” In: Lena Dallywater, Chris Saunders and Helder Adegar Fonseca, eds. Southern African Liberation Movements and the Global Cold War ‘East’ Transnational Activism 1960–1990. Berlin: DeGruyter-Brill, 2019, pp. 181-196
• Stubbs, Paul. ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023
• Subotic, Jelena and Srdjan Vucetic. “Performing Solidarity: Whiteness and Status-Seeking in the Non-Aligned World.” Journal of International Relations and Development Vol. 22, No. 3 (2017): 722–43
• Wright, Peter Quinnan. “Between the Market and Solidarity: Commercializing Development Aid and International Higher Education in Socialist Yugoslavia.” Nationalities Papers (2020), 1–21
• Wright, Peter. ““Are there Racists in Yugoslavia?” Debating Racism and Anti-blackness in Socialist Yugoslavia.” Slavic Review 81, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 418-441