Cultural Policy in Rural Areas of Serbia: Socialism – Post-socialism

Republic of Serbia is a European country with a specific developmental trajectory and pronounced discontinuities in its cultural policy toward rural areas after the Second World War. This paper examines the characteristics and transformations of cultural policy in rural areas of Serbia across two key periods - the socialism (1945-1989) and the post-socialism (1989-present), highlighting the ways in which ideological, political, and economic context have shaped approaches to culture in rural settings. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview and critical analysis of the main goals, instruments, and measures of the cultural policy in Serbia's rural areas, observed at the intersection of differing ideological paradigms and socio-political systems. The research employs qualitative and interpretative methodological approaches, focusing on a diachronic comparative analysis of secondary data sources. The findings indicate that cultural policy in rural areas in Serbia has evolved from an ideologically driven, enlightenment-inspired dogmatic model during socialism to a market-conditioned fragmentation and commodification of cultural practices in the post-socialist era. This trajectory of cultural development in rural areas, with all its advantages and limitations, has resulted in diverse resistant and adaptive responses from local communities, which are analyzed in this paper through selected case studies.