Nela Erdeljac obtained her PhD from the History Department at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 2024 and is currently employed as a Lecturer at Karlovac University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests include cultural diplomacy, the connection between music and violence and Yugoslav-American relations. She published papers on the said topics and presented portions of her research at various conferences in Europe and the United States.

''[T]o all four corners of the globe'': Yugoslavia's cultural diplomacy tackles its own ''no boundaries'' policy

Abstract: In the post-1948 era (the aftermath of the rift with the Cominform), the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRY; later Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)) adopted cultural diplomacy as one of its instruments through which to express the core principles the country aimed to represent in global affairs. In the upcoming decades the country's cultural diplomacy, in principle, became marked by the desire to send its cultural wares and representatives to various countries around the world. In essence, this meant that its cultural diplomacy was to know no territorial boundaries. This paper addresses one segment of this post-1948 cultural diplomacy of FNRY/SFRY which has so far not received detailed scholarly attention. The ever- increasing research on Yugoslavia's cultural diplomacy has up to now produced valuable insights into the country’s cultural diplomatic ventures in different countries and areas, the agents involved and the cultural products used to represent the country externally. However, what is missing in current literature is insight into the subtle nuances that were present in the minds of those tasked with conducting official Yugoslav cultural diplomacy. This paper addresses this gap by narrowing its analysis on one of the main bodies of Yugoslavia's cultural diplomacy, the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and its subcommittees, in its attempt to demonstrate that, despite universal proclamations on the meaning and values culture was to represent in global affairs and the territories it was to perform in, these people, who struggled to define the ''borders'' of what they referred to as ''general Yugoslav interest'', created ''borders'' in the form of factors and values that guided the obvious categorization of different geographical areas Yugoslavia was to culturally interact with. This perspective, so this paper believes, can provide valuable insight into the currently largely understudied general postulates of Yugoslavia's cultural diplomacy.