Voluntary youth work in the socialist Yugoslavia and possibility of its revival

This work analysis the youth work activities in the socialist Yugoslavia and questions the possibility of their revival. The research is based on the archive evidence and also on the interviews made with people who actually participated in the past voluntary youth work activities. A survey has been made with the secondary school pupils in order to collect precise data on the attitude the youth that lives in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century has towards voluntary youth work. The analyisis of the youth work actions of the past shows they were of both educational and social imporatnce including powerful ideology significance especially in the first twenty years of their existence. In the period to come, ideology influence on the young, although still present, ceased to be dominant and became a sort of ideological folklore. During the 70's and in the beginning of the 80's, voluntary youth work was very popular among the young because of the specific etics which prevailed during the work and included both equality and solidarity. The survey carried out among the young shows that these kinds of voluntary youth work could be organized nowadays, without ideological influences and with certain modification in terms of freedom to use their free time. The work also includes the comparison between the voluntary work camps as a dominant form of voluntary work in modern capitalism and classic work activities.