Subculturalisation/tribalisation as a social process: The Yugoslav 1980s and the roots of the ultras subculture in Croatia

Introduction

Through the past five decades, academic discourse surrounding football supporters has shifted from the concept of ‘hooligan’ towards those of ‘activist’ (Kossakowski, 2020: 205–232) and ‘fan movement’ (Cleland et al., 2018: 161–180). In the post-socialist context, nationalism is often present on the ultras scene (Hodges, 2016; Grodecki, 2021). In Yugoslavia, two characteristics of the football tribe dominated amongst the public in the 1980s, and are still often mentioned today – violence and nationalism. However, the strong activist nature of the modern ultras subculture and the broader supporter base of the international, heterogeneous Against Modern Football movement also occupy an important place in the domestic research context (Perasović and Mustapić, 2013). The struggle of football supporters against corruption in football and state institutions has marked the past two decades in Croatia. This is especially true of the supporter movement surrounding Split’s Hajduk football club, where supporters succeeded in gaining real influence over the club through democratic elections for the club’s supervisory board in 2011, as well as obtaining a controlling share of more than 30.12% of shares in the club in 2022. Dinamo's supporters, and their long struggle against Zdravko Mamić, ¹ are another good example of the ‘activist's spirit’ (Milak, 2020). Like in other European countries, the ultras subculture – or the group of supporters Giulianotti’s (2002) typology dubs traditional/hot supporters – form the core of the Croatian Against Modern Football movement. The long-term independence of members of the Croatian ultras subculture from political centres of power undoubtedly raises numerous questions. These questions regard the context and specificities of the Croatian football supporter subculture, as well as theoretical approaches to studying them. Without presuming to provide a complete, final answer, we hold that a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, when the football hooligan subcultural style was created, can help us at least directly investigate the connection between this period and the modern characteristics of the ultras subculture in Croatia.

Theory: The subculturalisation and tribalisation of football supporters

Scientific research on youth subcultures has spanned an entire century, beginning in the 1920s in Chicago. Various theoretical and methodological frameworks have been used in the field, including all three known sociological paradigms (functionalism, Marxism, interactionism), as well as various post-modern criticisms of macro-sociological theories. While the functionalists (Cohen, 1955; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960) and Marxists (Hebdige, 1979; Willis, 1978) considered social class the key concept in youth subcultures and the place where these subcultures are created, the interactionists (Becker, 1963; Matza, 1969) focused their approach on describing subculture actors independent of class determinism, as well as describing the system of social control and social reactions to deviance. In the 1990s and 2000s, the post-subculturalists (Muggleton, 2000; Bennet, 1999) and numerous other researchers who reaffirmed the concept of subculture in various ways (Thornton, 1995; Pilkington, 2004; Hodkinson, 2002; Ueno, 2003) also made contributions to this field. Although the research of some authors was not intended to radically diverge from the heritage of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), while simultaneously abandoning the strict class determinism the centre was known for, a sharp division occurred in the academic world between the subculturalists and post-subculturalists. The subculturalists endeavoured to maintain the concept of social class as the central concept by which to understand the creation of subcultures and the resultant concept of social inequalities, while the post-subculturalists emphasised the post-modernisation of society, holding that modern affiliations amongst young people do not create firm subcultural styles as they once did, but instead forms of congregation characterised by temporariness, impermanence, fluidity, a lack of connection to social class, the ‘picking and mixing’ of styles, and the transition from one style and form of affiliation to another. More than two decades after the division between the subculturalists and post-subculturalists, this gap is still deep; one side insists on the concept of subculture (Blackman and Kempson, 2016) and the other on the concept of the neo-tribe (Hardy, Bennett and Robards, 2018).

The supporter subculture began in England in the 1960s simultaneous to the first TV broadcasts of football matches. Although the commercialisation process was also present then – which some authors described as the ‘bourgeoisification’ of football (Taylor, 1971; Clarke, 1973) – a powerful new wave of football commercialisation and commodification began in the 1990s, by which professional clubs adopted corporate business management forms and supporters became mere consumers of products and services (King, 1997; Millward 2011). Alongside the commodification and the purchase of numerous clubs by primarily business- and profit-oriented actors, the abolishment of standing room at matches, expensive tickets, strict supervision and control changed the typical image and atmosphere at stadiums in the country where both football and the football hooligan subcultural style came about. During the period of the division between subculturalists and post-subculturalists, it seemed that the subculture tied to football was disappearing entirely (Redhead, 1997). This created the impression that subcultures once came about under social structures present in the 1970s, and that young people no longer have such forms of congregation and identification in post-modern, de-industrialised societies. The post-subculturalists believed that the concept of the neo-tribe taken from Maffesoli (1996) better described the fluidity and impermanence of youth congregation in modern consumer society. Our approach, founded on our own research and that of others, is entirely the opposite. We believe that elements of mixing styles and moving from one style (subculture/tribe) to another also existed in the 1970s, even in much less developed countries than the UK. We also believe that, in highly developed consumer capitalist societies, subcultures/tribes still exist, sometimes with clear, firm borders dividing one group (subculture/tribe) from another. Maffesoli was correct in his emphasis of the instinctive, affective, symbolic element in the tribalisation process. Affective practices are central to building the identity of the supporter tribe. The post-subculturalists emphasised only some of Maffesoli's concepts, not mentioning that Maffesoli (1996) also often used other metaphors for actors in the tribalisation process, such as ‘mafia’ and ‘secret society’. In the context of football, the notion of subculture is still present in research on football supporters (Pearson, 2012), but not as the key term. Here, we must also mention the concept of counterculture, which is close to but significantly different from the concept of subculture. We hold that counterculture, as used by Roszak (1969), describes social actors who call for thorough social change and whose values and norms differ entirely from those of the dominant culture. In the context of football, this concept would be appropriate for initiatives such as ‘three sided football’, which have spread in the past two decades (Pollock, 2021).

This paper will examine the processes that led to the creation of the football supporter subculture in Croatia in the 1980s. Our approach to the analysis of this process takes into account the duality of the concept of subculture, which usually involves both a specific social group and the symbolic structure tied to this group. We also consider socioeconomic status an important factor in the subculturalisation process, but we do not see social class as the exclusive place where the majority of subcultural styles, both modern ones and those of the 1970s and 1980s in Croatia, were created. This is a social process in which a group creates its own values and norms and builds its own style and identity by using, adopting, interpreting, and reinterpreting symbols, mass culture objects, bodies, and practices. Of course, this process unfolds in interaction with the environment, which includes the market and commercialisation and commodification processes, as well as the world of the media and institutions such as the police, judiciary, and educational system. The subculturalisation process can also be referred to as the tribalisation process (Maffesoli, 1996) or a process that results in the creation of an affective alliance. The creation of a new style and the appearance of a new ‘common denominator’ on the diverse subcultural style scene is what we wish to recreate here. The supporter subculture in Croatia began to develop in the late 1970s. The elements most often mentioned by the public at the time, which were often also the subject of moral panic, were nationalism and violence. Although these two elements undoubtedly play an important role, we believe the process by which subcultural styles (tribes, affective alliances) are created enables an understanding of the broader spectrum of influences and relationships between actors on the social scene.

Aim and method

The goal of this research is to reconstruct the creation of the football hooligan subcultural style in Croatia (as a part of socialist Yugoslavia) in the 1970s and 1980s. Aside from the significance of this process to an understanding of the modern ultras subculture in Croatia today and its independence from the political and football establishment, we believe it important to reconstruct this process due to the sociological context of the debate on subcultures and the division between the subculturalists and post-subculturalists. Contrary to the discourse formed by this division, our thesis is that the mixing of styles, combination of elements from existing subcultural styles to create new tribes, and movement from one subculture/tribe to another also existed in the 1970s.

We draw our conclusions on the basis of numerous studies and data collecting throughout the years. The first author of this research participated in the first research on football supporters in socialist Yugoslavia in 1988/1989 and has access to the data collected during this research (through 18 months of participant observation and 27 interviews), the majority of which has never been published. The first and second author of this research conducted a four-year ethnography (2012–2016) of the oldest European ultras group – Torcida from Split, Croatia – consisting of participant observation and 25 semi-structured interviews with members of the group’s core. These same authors also conducted a two-year ethnography (2016–2018) with the ultras group White Stones and other supporters involved in the first Against Modern Football club in Croatia – FC Varteks from Varaždin. In addition to participant observation, they also conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with members of the group’s core. One aspect of the recent research with Torcida and the White Stones was focused on memory transmission within the group, regarding the group's foundation period. The third author is a historian who complemented the data from the three aforementioned studies with an analysis of archival material and other sources related to socialist Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s.

The political and social context of the 1980s in Yugoslavia

The death of Josip Broz Tito, lifelong president of socialist Yugoslavia, in 1980 signified a complete change in the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations within the federation. Tito’s authority suppressed numerous tensions between the political leadership of particular republics for a long time; after 1980, these tensions quickly became apparent. This was especially evident in Yugoslavia’s difficult economic situation and crisis, which lasted throughout the entire last decade of its existence (Ramet, 2002; Ramet, 2006; Radelić, 2006).

Tito was replaced as head of state by a collective presidency consisting of representatives of eight federal units (the six socialist republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia, and two autonomous regions of Vojvodina and Kosovo, which were part of Serbia but had the status of a constitutive part of the federation, which meant an independent vote within Yugoslavia’s presidency). The structure and operations of the state were founded on its 1974 constitution, which quickly became one of the fundamental points of contention between the republics. Dissatisfaction also came from Serbia’s intellectual elite, which claimed that Serbia and Serbs were being neglected and exploited (Benson, 2001: 143). The first steps towards strengthening their position were to be achieved by abolishing the autonomy of Vojvodina and Kosovo and strengthening Yugoslavia’s centralisation. Of course, these ideas met resistance in the other republics; the leadership of Slovenia – economically the strongest and ethnically the most homogenous of the republics – was especially vocal in this. Croatian complaints at the time were weaker; this is often referred to as the ‘the silent republic’. This silence was largely the result of the suppression of the reform movement in Croatia in 1971, the consequences of which the public still felt (Radelić, 2006).

Serbia’s increasingly aggressive policies especially came to the fore after Slobodan Milošević came to power in 1987. The main characteristic of Milošević’s political style was his insistence that the Serbs confide in him personally as a strong leader who would reach their political goals. For Milošević, the first step towards abolishing the regions’ autonomy was to overthrow their unsuitable leaders. The change in the leadership of the autonomous regions was orchestrated through a movement referred to as the ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’, which consisted of a string of mass demonstrations against regional governments and their bureaucracies. The leadership of Vojvodina was removed in October 1988; in November of the same year, the leaders of Kosovo were replaced, however they quickly retook their positions only to be removed again in February of 1989. Individuals close to Milošević were named to replace them. By March 1989, the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Serbia had adopted constitutional changes resulting in the loss of most of Kosovo's and Vojvodina's autonomy. However, all rights the regions had at the federal level remained untouched; the most important of these were their members of the presidency of Yugoslavia, who still had an equal right to vote. Simultaneous to the process of subjecting the provinces to Serbian authority, in early 1989, the political leadership of Montenegro was replaced with individuals close to Milošević. This meant that Serbia had secured half of the votes in the Yugoslav presidency.

This increase in pressure from Serbia resulted in a counter-reaction in the other republics. The opening of public space to increasingly harsh discussions resulted in the questioning of the social monopoly of the League of Communists. The first democratic initiatives in Croatia were launched in 1988. The first political opposition party in Croatia after World War Two, the Croatian Socio-Liberal Alliance (cro. Hrvatski socijalno liberalni savez / HSLS), was founded in May 1989. The Croatian Democratic Union (cro. Hrvatska demokratska zajednica / HDZ), which would take on the main political role in the coming decade, was founded in June 1989. Increasingly vitriolic rhetoric and the inability to find a solution to the crisis culminated at the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, at which the party disintegrated along national lines. The first democratic elections came this same year, with advocates of independence from Yugoslavia coming to power in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. However, due to resistance to this development from Serbia and Serbs in the other republics, war ensued (Ramet, 2002, 2006; Radelić, 2006).

Youth at the collapse of Yugoslavia

Simultaneous to the collapse of Yugoslavia, alternative social styles began to spread, especially amongst youth. As compared to the Eastern Bloc nations, despite its communist socio-political order, this process was accentuated in Yugoslavia due to its greater openness to the West; this was especially apparent in the adoption of patterns of behaviour from pop and rock culture. Even during the 1970s, a number of subcultural groups developed amongst youth in urban parts of Croatia, including groups such as šminkeri (preppies), hašomani (hash heads), and štemeri (thugs), joined soon afterward by punks, metalheads, dark/gothic heads, rockabilly fans, and football supporters/hooligans (Perasović, 2001).

The growth of mass media played an important role in spreading the popularity of subcultural ideas, especially radio stations, newspapers that were either partly or completely dedicated to youth or pop culture topics, and television. The socio-political context that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia naturally had a great influence on youth. This is affirmed by research showing that youth in the late 1980s were less tolerant than older members of society; this was especially pronounced in rural areas (Sekulić, 2004). However, youth had almost no influence on political processes (Gvozdanović and Kovačić, 2020). Additionally, due to an economic crisis with a complete lack of growth and high inflation, the unemployment rate amongst youth was exceptionally high (Sekulić, 2014). In accordance with this, Vrcan (1990: 6–7) indicates a modernisation gap and social crisis as the foundational causes of the difficulties faced by youth in Croatia in the 1980s. Under such conditions, their feelings towards societal institutions were dominated by mistrust. They thus displayed strongly accentuated values of privacy and individual affirmation (Radin, 2002; Ilišin and Gvozdanović, 2016).

At the time, the majority of the media system was controlled by the Yugoslav League of Communists; together with the educational system, it represented a tool of continuous cultural hegemony in which there was no room for alternative political narratives. In this context, the new subcultural style of the football supporter was unique to other subcultures in that the domain of their activities was also an important element of the dominant culture. Their rituals at the stadiums were viewed and occasionally participated in by the masses, as well as followed by millions of others via television and radio broadcast. In the second half of the 1980s, the stadiums became a more frequent venue for criticism of the establishment, as well as for the affirmation of particular nationalist myths and narratives that were at odds with the official political narratives. In this context, the general public viewed supporters as the bearers of nationalist sentiment in public space. As the core of supporter groups at the time were mostly minors and young adults, there was frequent speculation as to domestic and foreign state enemies who instructed young people to behave in such a way. Communist government bodies and eminent individuals forcefully placed this theory in the public discourse beginning in the 1980s. However, the influence of the political situation on the profiling of the supporter subculture in Croatia was only one element in a longer process; existing analyses mostly overemphasise this aspect while ignoring all other component parts of its much more complex developmental path. Its roots can be found in Split in the late 1970s, when a group of young Hajduk supporters came together under the name ‘Non-Aligned’.

The first actor in the supporter subculturalisation/tribalisation process: The Non-aligned

The football supporter subculturalisation process in Croatia began in Split in the late 1970s. Although Torcida had been founded in 1950 by Hajduk supporters inspired by Brazilian fans at the 1950 World Cup, the group was banned shortly after its founding and its members and sympathisers were persecuted (Mills, 2018; Lalić, 2018). Under a strict one-party system, it was undesirable to speak of Torcida; the name was not publicly mentioned for thirty years. Fans gathered in other large cities as well, although they did not undertake organised action. In accordance with this, there was organised supporting for Hajduk in Split, but not by an established group; instead, a number of informal groups and individuals gathered on the eastern stands of Hajduk’s stadium. The most impassioned Hajduk fans gathered in the middle of the eastern stands; this is where the founders of the Non-Aligned group met in the 1970s. The core of this group gathered daily in Split in the ‘Sarajevo’ and ‘Dubrovnik’ cafés; later, they had a space in the centre of town and regularly gathered on Peristil square and at ‘Luxor’ café (Perasović, 1989). Peristil square was a popular location amongst locals; during summer, it was also a destination for foreign members of various parts of the rock culture, whose long hair and clothing evoked images of the hippie movement and related styles. The group of fans who would reach a shared ecstatic state supporting Hajduk would continue socialising during the week, forming a shared group identity that culminated in a name and coat of arms for the group, which particular members wore on their jackets. On the level of political interpretation, Dugi, one of the group’s key members in late 1970s, said the following in an interview (Čotić and Čotić, 2008: 23–24):

‘Non-aligned was more a tongue-in-cheek answer to likely accusations that we were “nationalists” or “anti-national elements”, but the cops didn’t take it like that, so we were brought in for “informative discussions” [police interrogation] as if we were a terrorist organisation. But those Non-Aligned were a younger generation than those I first joined as a kid on the east side of the “Old Ground” (cro. Stari Plac).’

On the level of cultural significance, their own interpretations of their name show characteristics of self-reflection, which begins from the position of youth in Split at the time. Perasović (1989) writes that the most influential members of the Non-Aligned at the time stated: ‘We are neither druggies nor hillbillies, we are non-aligned’. Druggies (Cro. drogaši) is a term indicating all long-haired fans of the rock culture, while hillbillies (Cro. vlaji) is a term used by citizens of Split to indicate people from the rural area ‘behind the hills’ or those who do not live in the coastal belt. In the context of the time, druggies represented an urban spirit that held contempt for ‘country folk’; the expression hillbilly in fact suggests this kind of label. As music was a crucial source of identity for the druggies, supporters could not count themselves amongst them because Hajduk was more important to them; however, they did not want to be less urban than the druggies, nor did they wish to be labelled hillbillies. The desire to be non-aligned also suggests distance from other parts of the mainstream, especially from the official political discourse, which considered placing youth on the side of socialism not only desirable, but mandatory. This was a period of required, prescribed enthusiasm for the building of socialism, for youth work actions, and for worship of the great leader Comrade Tito. However, members of the Non-Aligned had no ear for the official discourse; instead, they were much closer to various options that had been articulated during the Croatian Spring, which ended with the removal of Croatia’s political leadership in 1971. The national orientation of the group was unquestionable, which guaranteed additional problems with the police. The national awareness of the group is attested to by its coat of arms, which featured a red, white, and blue stripe at the top (the colours of the Croatian flag), the text ‘Patria nostra’, and the letter N (Nesvrstani) in the middle.

In the socio-political context of Yugoslavia, ‘non-aligned’ was one of the founding concepts upon which the state was built. It indicated the political rejection of the Cold War global division into blocs. To this end, Yugoslavia was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which in the following decades grew to encompass nations in which the majority of the world’s population lived. Adopting the concept of ‘non-aligned’ in a subculture group such as football supporters Hajduk in the 1970s has multifaceted significance. Alongside the primary meaning of differentiating them from others (druggies, hillbillies), the concept also had a subversive character with an entirely different meaning than that in the official political discourse of the time. Instead of endangering the identity of the supporter group, it subversively (for insiders) strengthened it as an opponent to socialism. It is like a good joke, a well-executed inversion of a given discourse, even more complex than the traditional adoption of pejorative terms, as Afro-Americans might adopt the word ‘nigger’, feminists the word ‘bitch’, or Hajduk supporters the word ‘tovar’ (donkey). Here, the word adopted had an absolutely positive meaning in the official discourse.

The non-aligned were the first to wear bomber jackets, which would become a trademark of the new subcultural style in the following years. Not all wore them, but some did; in addition to flares and smoke bombs, they would later become massively accepted by all supporter tribes in Yugoslavia. The use of new drugs in addition to alcohol, which everyone consumed as heritage from the dominant culture, represented a step away from previous patterns of behaviour. Alcohol was not considered a drug, while cannabis had been previously reserved only for druggies and rituals of the rock subculture. The Non-Aligned were the first to begin smoking marijuana and hashish, which had been unthinkable for supporters previously (Perasović, 2001).

Until the appearance of the Non-Aligned and the wave of subculturalisation/tribalisation that took place throughout Croatia in the 1980s, football supporters had been much more similar to the parent culture than any other youth subculture, especially those whose identity was based on rock music. Supporters also occasionally beat up long-haired members of the rock subculture. Prior to this subculturalisation process, they were two separate worlds – football and forms of expression at the stadium on the one hand, and rock concerts and the local reception of the hippie movement and other movements tied to rock music styles on the other (Perasović, 2001). The Non-Aligned followed Hajduk to all away matches however they could, by train, hitchhiking, and with little or no money. They were mostly from working-class families, they were ready to fight, they invented songs that all Hajduk supporters would sing decades later, they sewed large flags, and were amongst the first to wear scarves. The Non-Aligned represent the beginning of the process that would create the football hooligan subcultural style. They listened to both pop and rock music. They had a talent for creating songs based on popular melodies familiar across the world (i.e. ‘Rivers of Babylon’) with simple words of love for Hajduk. The culmination of the group’s work was the season in which Hajduk was champion (1979) and left its ‘Old Ground’. The Non-Aligned embodied nearly all the main characteristics of numerous Croatian supporter tribes after the subcultural style spread: a subculture identity, resistance to part of the mainstream and establishment, resistance to conformist youth, connecting elements from other subcultures, stylised clothing, hairstyles, their own symbolism, conflict with other supporter groups, and anti-regime and patriotic/nationalist attitudes. Under the political system at the time, this kind of group could not last long; they could have been prosecuted for their symbolism and actions not only under the infamous Article 133 of the criminal code (known as a ‘verbal offence’), but also under Article 144 (‘organised spread of enemy propaganda’) which carried the threat of multi-year prison sentences (Miškulin, 2021). After multiple arrests and pressure from the system, the group ceased to exist; the majority of its members would soon find themselves part of a much broader group – the renewed Torcida.

From the specificities of split and the meaning of Torcida to broader subculturisation/tribalisation processes

Hajduk football club has always been an important part of the identity of the city of Split and the region of Dalmatia; even those who do not attend matches are tied to the club. If we observe this fact from the perspective of the relationship between the dominant culture and youth subcultures, we can explain at least a part of the phenomenon of the Non-Aligned and Torcida from earlier periods in the development of the subcultural scene in the 1980s, when Torcida was the strongest, most numerous subcultural group in the city. Torcida then also served as a unifying common denominator for many other subcultural styles, which often lived independent lives separate from football in other areas. This means that Hajduk’s characteristics also served as a kind of ‘shield’ from the anger of the dominant culture towards the unfamiliar, unacceptable behaviour associated with subcultural styles inspired by rock music. While Torcida may have been a shield in the cultural sense, insofar as football and Hajduk were characteristics of the dominant cultural complex in Split, the opposite was the case regarding politics. Instead of serving as a shield, it exposed its members to labelling and repression. However, this is only one of the aspects of the subculturalisation of supporters in Split that indicates local idiosyncrasies. This is a much broader process, which also took place far beyond the borders of Split, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. The specificities of Split and the cult of Hajduk allowed football supporters from Split to play an initiating, avant-garde role in this process. As the only group with its own name amongst Croatian supporters in the early 1980s, Torcida became a unifying factor, a common denominator for subcultural deviation from the dominant reality in Split. This did not change even after other groups appeared in Croatia in the late 1980s.

Zagreb, Yugoslavia’s second largest city, had a significantly more highly developed subcultural scene in the late 1970s, including a division between preppies and hash heads. Aside from these two opposing camps, there were also thugs, the first subcultural style which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, reminiscent of the classic American sociological subculture research on corner boys (Kalapoš, 1996). Thugs were most often the children of families that had moved to Zagreb; they strongly identified with their neighbourhoods or streets, gaining a reputation through physical altercations, occasionally committing minor crimes, accentuating masculinity, physical ability, and competition. Group belonging was strongly emphasised; while an individual thug could not exist, group belonging was not stylised, and thugs’ external characteristics did not differ at all from the parent culture. A true explosion of the thug style took place after the release of the film ‘Warriors’ (1979). However, even after this, the stylisation of the group identity was not very developed. Thugs in Zagreb did not tie their identity to the stadium until the period of subculturalisation and the mixing of subcultural styles (Perasović, 2001). Preppies followed fashion, wishing to suggest higher social status through their external appearance, while hash heads was a moniker for youth who identified with various types of rock music. While hash heads looked similar (long hair, tanker jacket, worn out jeans, scarf, tennis shoes or chukka boots, etc.), there were divisions within the group in accordance with rock styles such as acid rock, symphonic rock, hard rock, etc. Numerous albums of international rock bands were available in Yugoslavia in the late 1970s, and the production of local performers increased; ‘Bijelo Dugme’ (en. White Button) was the first band to fill large sports halls throughout Yugoslavia, and there were numerous other popular rock groups as well. Given the manner in which the Non-Aligned arose in Split, we may assume that the dynamics of adolescent group interactions and the influence of the markets and media (even within existing divisions on the subculture scene in Zagreb between hash heads, preppies, and thugs) would have resulted in the mixing of styles and the football supporter subculturalisation process in other cities as well. However, unlike Split, the punk movement and its subgenres such as Oi, hardcore, and others gave additional momentum to this process in Zagreb. The wave of fragmentation that separated speed/death/thrash metal from the main metal genre is also equally important, as is the creation of the rockabilly genre and the influential band Stray Cats, as well as numerous other genres that developed during the 1980s. Football supporters were able to embrace rock music before punk, as witnessed in statements by actors from Split during the time of the Non-Aligned; one young supporter describes how he secretly (so as not to be called a druggie) borrowed the Pink Floyd album Meddle from a peer, because the album featured the song ‘Fearless’ which included a recording of Liverpool fans singing ‘you’ll never walk alone’. After listening to just this song, he also listened to the whole album multiple times (Perasović, 1989). However, several years after it started in Split with the Non-Aligned and the renewed Torcida, the first broader wave of supporter subculturalisation in Croatia was enabled by punk and metal bands.

‘MI HRVATI’ (Eng. ‘We Croats’) AND ‘MI PANKRTI’ (Eng. ‘We Bastards’)

The first, best known punk band in Yugoslavia was ‘Pankrti’ founded in Ljubljana in late 1977. Their appearance alongside bands such as Novi Sad’s ‘Pekinška patka’ (en. Peking duck), Belgrade's ‘Električni orgazam’ (en. Electric orgasm), Rijeka’s ‘Parafi’ (en. Initials) and numerous others marked a period of new intensity in music, greater provocativeness, explicitness, and a type of expression that included audiences more than did previous rock bands, sometimes literally by handing the microphone to audience members in the front row. In addition to the emergence of local bands, it is important to note that some of the most important international punk albums, such as the debut album of the Clash, were available for purchase in Yugoslavia immediately after their release in the UK. Pogačar (2008: 820) notes that Yugoslavia's unique geopolitical position enabled the strong influence of Western cultural products on youth in the 1970s and 1980s.

Research on the punk scene describes the highly dynamic, complex processes of adopting, assuming, and giving meaning to objects, symbols, and practices in a very specific context, at a particular time and place. Considering the prevailing stereotypes in the Croatian media space, punk and new wave had nothing in common with football supporters. However, research from within paints an entirely different picture; data was collected and interviews were carried out with many members of the scene as a part of the international research project ‘Post-socialist punk: beyond the irony of self-abasement’ (Perasović, 2012). One participant remembered a concert of ‘Pankrti’ in Zagreb in 1984: ‘Yes, I remember it very well, before Pankrti came out on stage, Fleki climbed on stage and started to chant “Mi Pankrti” (We, bastards), clapping his hands to the rhythm of the words… Some punks were confused because it was the rhythm of the football stands, like the chant “Mi Hrvati” (We, Croats), but this time it was “Mi Pankrti”… After a minute, hundreds joined in the chanting, and by the time the band came on stage, the whole crowd was shouting “Mi Pankrti”!’ (Perasović, 2012: 291). Fleki, who climbed on stage and began chanting, was both a punk and an impassioned Dinamo fan at the very core of the group that would later become Bad Blue Boys. He attended matches in a leather jacket with recognisable punk features. He was not the only one; from the beginning to the end of the 1980s, many young supporters combined their stadium experiences with those from concerts. Ivan, a Torcida member from Zagreb, stated: ‘I have gone to many punk concerts, not only in our country, but also abroad. I have experienced many wild crowds dancing the pogo, jumping, but the wildest pogo, the wildest and the most real, the most authentic punk experience, is at the football stadium’ (Perasović, 2012: 292).

During the 1980s, football supporters came closer to subculture through punk, metal, and other genres of music. This was also influenced significantly by local bands formed during the beginning of the punk/new wave scene that had become popular throughout the country and drew large audiences, such as Azra. While the subculturalism of the preppies in the 1970s (under stricter socialism) had an air of subversiveness, as they were protesting the mandatory wearing of lab coats in schools, this element began to disappear in the 1980s together with the discourse of anti-consumerist socialist uniformity. This focus on material wealth and leisure angered some youth, both amongst the remnants of the hash head scene and on the new scene just being created, which mixed punk, metal, and other styles alongside the nascent football hooligan style. Almost every punk band had at least one song that was derisive of preppies, but this attitude spread independently of the lyrics of particular songs. This is clearly apparent in the first group interview with the Bad Blue Boys (BBB), who speak strongly against preppies who ‘brag about the keys to the motorcycle their daddy bought them’ (Buzov et al., 1989). Other actors on the scene perceived the subculturalisation of football supporters as a kind of urbanisation or distancing of supporters from the old label of ‘country boys who go to matches’. Research encompassing ‘aggressive BBB’, ‘moderate BBB’, ‘Dinamo supporters who are not BBB’, and ‘non-supporters’ showed that ‘aggressive BBB’ are far more similar to ‘non-supporters’ in how they spend their free time (Fanuko et al., 1991). This shows that those who create the football hooligan style are actually subcultural actors, who are in certain important issues of style much more similar to their non-supporter peers inspired by punk, metal, rock, and other kinds of music, who pay attention to their clothing, appearance, symbols, and create their own slang and rituals. The process hinted at by the small Non-Aligned group in Split, which continued with Torcida and the growth of subcultural elements comprising the supporter style, was completed in the second half of the 1980s with the founding of Bad Blue Boys Zagreb (1986), Armada Rijeka (1987), Kohorta Osijek (1988) etc. The important elements of this process are:

Group self-awareness, awareness of one’s own picture in the newspaper, of one’s own signature on the wall, of one’s own match being played parallel to that on the pitch, of one’s own flags and scarves and how they will look in photos. Italian magazine Supertifo, which published exclusively pictures of supporters from matches instead of players, had a powerful influence on the core of supporters in creating their self-image and work on visual expression.

A new youth subcultural style emerges on the social scene in the 1980s

During the 1980s, football hooligan subcultural styles emerged in other Yugoslav cities, such as Red Devils or Ultras (supporters of Red Star) and Grobari (Eng. Gravediggers; supporters of Partizan) in Belgrade (Đorđević, 2016) and others. Many of these affirm the theory of subculturalisation and the mixture of styles. Although punk was never the leading force in the stands, punks in the 1980s were an essential part of Grobari (Đorđević and Pekić, 2017; Stajić and Gačanović, 2019). Joint Union (a subgroup of Manijaci/The Maniacs, the supporter group of Željezničar Sarajevo), gave their leader the nickname ‘Čonta’ after the frontman of Novi Sad punk band Pekinška patka; many placed symbols, such as those of hardcore (punk), alongside the territorial designations on their scarves. The prime driver of gatherings of supporter groups and individuals is love for their football club. However, the aforementioned elements of the subculturalisation/tribalisation process and the importance of the group identity indicate how different this type of supporting is from that of previous generations. In addition to ecstatic states and a feeling of interpersonal connectedness, group members also developed solidarity, mutual aid, a feeling of community, the sharing of food and drink, and a kind of brotherhood. The two final elements comprising the new football hooligan style were violence and nationalism, both of which were abundantly used by the media to create moral panic.

Neither of these elements is independent from the subculturalisation process. As concerns violence, some actors in the thug subcultural style began to attend matches more frequently in the 1980s, expanding their neighbourhood or street (in the sense of identification) to football clubs and football tribe rituals. The first research on Bad Blue Boys (Buzov et al., 1989) and the contacts enabled by group interviews include anecdotes in which supporters poke fun at some ‘thugs from the neighbourhood’, who were of great help during fights but whom supporters ‘had to teach what offside meant’. However, these are isolated examples. Violence was still mostly symbolic. In accordance with their findings, Croatian football hooligan researchers considered the theory of ritualised aggression (Marsh, 1978) appropriate to local conditions, not as a complete explanation for supporter behaviour as a whole, but at least for the majority of it (Buzov et al., 1989; Lalić, 1993). The media created panic regardless of whether violence was symbolic or real, even concerning slogans taken from western films or comic books written on walls, such as ‘stranger, the law won’t protect you here’. Broken windows in trams or buses used by supporters garnered incomparably more media space than domestic violence or failed economic investments; however, this is also a characteristic of the media approach outside of the local context. In its various forms, from symbolic to real, violence was a part of the rituals of some supporter tribes. However, considering the size of the new subculture, it was not as widespread amongst all members, instead being limited to a smaller core at the centre of a significantly broader group. This broader circle around the core was fuelled by symbolism, stylisation, and adrenaline from this proximity to violence, as well as occasional participation in large group fights, in which usually only a small number of those in the front lines would be injured.

Nationalism is similar to the aforementioned phenomenon of violence in terms of the degree to which it was accepted within the concentric circles radiating from the core of the group through the first, second, and other circles of followers. The core members of supporter groups were mostly patriotic or nationalist, however this was not the basic, constitutive dimension of the group’s identity (Buzov et al., 1989; Fanuko et al., 1991; Lalić, 1993), especially as one moves from the roughly 50 members of the hardcore to the next 300 or 500 members, followed by the first and second group of followers of roughly 1,000, to the 10,000 supporters present in the stands at a typical large match. A pro-Croatian orientation was very important to a majority of supporters, who tied this to the struggles of other nations for their rights and independence. In the 1980s, Hajduk banners featured the flags of the Basque Country and Catalonia; sympathy for the struggle of the IRA was expressed with the occasional chanting of ‘IRA-Belfast’. At the time, a 50-metre-long graffiti mural appeared in Zagreb with the full name of the Irish Republican Army. Due to the desire to emphasise national symbols, supporters developed a unique ‘game’ with the police they called ‘how small can a communist star be for a banner to still be let into the stadium?’. Until the mid-1980s, standard security procedures did not include the detailed search of supporters, which made it easy to hide and smuggle in flares, smoke bombs, or bottles of brandy. However, the standard procedure did include a detailed search of all banners to ensure they had ‘socialist characteristics’. For example, Hajduk supporters drew a coat of arms that included the Croatian checkerboard, but would draw a communist star as small as possible, occasionally in one of the squares of the checkerboard; this would confuse police, who would sometimes allow the banners in, but would more often confiscate them if they judged the star too small (Perasović, 1989).

Aside from the aforementioned patriotic–nationalist orientation amongst the Non-Aligned in the late 1970s and other supporters in the early 1980s, it is important to note the provocativeness, subversiveness, and anti-establishment charge this orientation carried; many stadium attendees would join in nationalist chants or symbolism even though they did not display nationalist attitudes in their everyday lives. In the late 1980s there existed a ‘silence’ in Croatian official, public life; the stadiums were the only public place where people did not stay quiet. On the contrary – they loudly expressed protest, sang supporter-style songs against Milošević, Serbia, and Serbs, and showed support for Kosovo leader Azem Vllasi and for Croatian independence. They tried to oppose the dominant trend on television and in other media within the single, ruling party in any way possible. In this context, chants in support of Stipe Šuvar become understandable, not because supporters loved a communist politician, but because they needed an opponent to Milošević at a similar level of comparison; at one point in time, Stipe Šuvar served this purpose at the top of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Hrstić et al., 2020).

The social context, the collapse of the League of Communists along ethnic lines, and the war ‘hanging in the air’, amplified and spread nationalist expression far beyond the borders of the football tribe. However, the subculture character of the core of supporter groups did not disappear. Nor did conflicts between Croatian groups disappear, regardless of occasional, temporary ‘truces’ between the two largest groups, Torcida and Bad Blue Boys, chanting ‘Croatian brothers’, and other joint actions or conflict with Serbian supporter groups at away matches. Even after the Hajduk-Dinamo match, considered the greatest example of ‘brotherhood’ between Torcida and Bad Blue Boys in Split, on March 18^th 1990 (one month before the first democratic elections on April 22^nd 1990), a mass fight broke out resulting in numerous serious injuries. The same rivals at the same stadium one year later (April 27^th 1991), in the last season of the Yugoslavian Championship, caused even bigger disorder with more injured people. This remains the fundamental feature of the rivalry between these groups even today.

Concluding remarks

Our findings completely differ from the discourse that claims the mixing of styles and easy movement from one subculture/tribe to another is a characteristic of post-modern consumer capitalist societies from the late 1980s on. While our other research (Krnić and Perasović 2013; Perasović and Mustapić 2017; Perasović and Mustapić 2018; Perasović et al. 2022) has shown that the ultras subculture/tribe (like the psy-trance subculture/tribe and many others) do not currently lack a certain firmness and power, as opposed to theses that focus exclusively on fluidity, impermanence, and the post-modern ‘pick and mix’ principle in building styles and temporary ‘neo-tribal’ identities, the current research concludes that young people used the ‘pick and mix’ principle in the past, using support at football stadiums combined with elements taken from other subcultures/tribes as the basis upon which to build their own style and identity. Due to this, as opposed to the division between subculturalists and post-subculturalists, we believe the processes of subculturalisation and tribalisation, which the current authors have observed in this paper with a focus on football supporters from the 1970s until the Croatian War of Independence, are one and the same. Also, research findings since the 1980s show that, while socio-economic status does play a certain role in the subculturalisation/tribalisation process, the presence of members of the middle and upper class in the core of the ultras subculture/tribe, as well as the inclusion/exclusion mechanisms the group nurtures, indicate the need to discard class determinism in the interpretation of how this subculture/tribe came about, both during socialism and today.

The period of the war, which many supporters participated in as volunteers (Vrcan and Lalić, 1999), has been studied; however, this research does not focus on this topic, nor on supporters’ struggle against the political establishment and club management in the 1990s (Vrcan, 2003; Brentin, 2013). However, due to various mystifications of the role of the supporter movement in the late 1980s, it is important to emphasise the subculturalisation/tribalisation process that took place from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. This process made supporters a separate subcultural style and social actor, strongly tied to anti-establishment, anti-mainstream sensibilities that arose through interaction with subcultural styles founded on rock and similar genres of music. Although supporters are neither mentioned in academic research (Pogačar, 2008; Mišina, 2013; Spaskovska, 2011; Zubak 2019,) nor in popular or media portrayals of punk, new wave, and rock social actors and subcultures, our research has shown the enormous significance this scene had in the supporter subculturalisation/tribalisation process at the time in Croatia/Yugoslavia. One reason why the majority of media portrayals of rock/punk/metal and related subcultures do not mention supporters certainly lies in the ‘politically incorrect’ image of supporters, which might detract from or tarnish stories of creativity, criticism, subversiveness, or the artistic value of particular musical genres, bands, or movements.

Our analysis does not correspond to two types of mystification – two typical interpretations of both musical movements such as punk or new wave in Yugoslavia in the early 1980s, and the role of supporters in ‘destroying’ Yugoslavia in the late 1980s. The first mystification desires to portray the music and subculture scene as incompatible with stadium rituals, violence, and the collectivism which supporter tribes bear. The argument against this mystification lies in the fact that football supporters share one highly important element with the majority of subcultural scenes surrounding punk and new wave in Yugoslavia (as well as with the majority of foreign exemplars in rock, punk, and metal) – masculinism. The presence of masculinism on both sides is undisputable; some researchers, such as Kyav (2009) mentioned sexism as a latent function of the entire Yugoslav punk/new wave scene. The second mystification refers to the supposedly important role played by supporters in ‘destroying’ Yugoslavia. After the publishing of the secret dossiers of the Yugoslav secret police, many supporters embraced this myth as it made them into heroes of a sort. However, a close reading of the secret police dossiers shows that supporters were viewed as nationalists and antisocialist elements, but also as young, hedonist subcultural actors. The secret police's only fear was that they might be instrumentalised by foreign powers or newly-founded strong political parties (Hrstić et al., 2020). Of course, this does not mean that supporters were not targeted by the media or the repressive apparatus; many were victims of police violence, labelled as enemies, and subjected to excessive prison sentences.

Before the first democratic elections in 1990, political parties who counted on the support of football supporters in Croatia, such as HDZ, succeeded in winning such support only for a very short time, limited to an occasion upon which the party managed to convince supporters to smuggle a banner with the party’s logo on it (with the same letters but a different background, white for Torcida and blue for BBB) into matches before the first elections in 1990. Torcida used it only once; the fact that BBB did so one or two more times led Torcida to chant ‘BBB for HDZ’ at matches during the first season of the Croatian league. Bad Blue Boys took this as it was intended – as an insult. With the exception of a very small group of Dinamo fans in 2010, whom all domestic ultras referred to as ‘mercenaries’ loyal to Zdravko Mamić (Perasović and Mustapić, 2018; Šantek, 2020), Torcida, BBB, and other fan groups never agreed to any concessions or ties to any political party or any part of the business, football, political, criminal, or media establishment. We hold that this characteristic – football supporters’ significant independence from club management and political institutions or parties throughout the long period after the subculturalisation process, from the early 1990s until today – is evidently tied to the process we have described from the 1980s, in which supporters and other youth subculture actors created resistance to a part of the mainstream world, accepting the best-known, oldest division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that exists in subculture: the difference between originality and commercialisation/collaboration, between ‘being yourself’ and ‘selling out’. This claim is not made to romanticise the football supporter subcultural style, nor to normalise hate speech or violent behaviour. Subculture is not counter-culture; only certain values and norms differentiate it from the dominant culture. If patriarchal forms of socialisation and heteronormativity, accentuating national identity, and pronounced masculinism are inherited from the dominant culture, then the stubborn independence, social activism, and belonging to the modern ultras subculture characterised by the Against Modern Football movement can be better understood by examining a period when supporters first divorced these norms and values from the dominant culture.