Page 223 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2026. Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes: preplet stanovskega in nacionalnega | Composers’ Societies Past and Present: Combining the Professional and the National
Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-555-9.223-242
© 2026 Maja Vasiljević, Biljana Leković
Yugoslav-Soviet Union relations from the 1950s
to 1970s: Cooperation, Exchange, and Cultural
Transfer through the Composers’ Association
of Serbia (UKS) and the Union of Yugoslav
Composers (SAKOJ)

Maja Vasiljević
Univerza v Beogradu
University of Belgrade
Biljana Leković
Univerza umetnosti v Beogradu
University of Arts in Belgrad

Although the postwar musical life in Federative People’s Republic of Yugo-
slavia/Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY, SFRY) has received
some scholarly attention, preliminary findings indicate gaps in the mate-
rial, the dispersal of existing sources, and generally limited scholarly in-
terest of local musicologists in studying the Union of Yugoslav Composers
1
(Savez kompozitora Jugoslavije – SAKOJ) and the Composer’s Associa-
tion of Serbia (Udruženje kompozitora Srbije – UKS) after the dissolution
2
of the SFRY. Although scholars from other disciplines, such as historians,
have shown interest in this period, they have predominantly focused on
the broader, macro-level aspects of culture and cultural politics, while pay-
ing comparatively little attention to the practices, works, and individual
1 The abbreviation SAKOJ was introduced in 1965. Until then, the acronym SKJ had
been in use, but we will not use it here in order to avoid confusion. SOKOJ was used
as a sort of successor institution in Serbia, but originally Organization of Music Au-
thors of Serbia (Organizacija muzičkih autora Srbije) which merged high-artistic
practice composers and authors of popular music.
2 An exception is the short monograph published by musicologists Ivana Neimare-
vić and Ksenija Stevanović from 2021, which, unfortunately, contains neither a list
of consulted references nor evidence of original research aimed at uncovering new
data or reassessing existing findings. See: Ivana Neimarević and Ksenija Stevanović,
Sokoj - Organizacija muzičkih autora Srbije: 70 godina (Belgrade: Organizacija muz-
ičkih autora Srbije, 2021). Important dates from the history of SOKOJ are provided
on the website of its successor institution in Serbia, established after the dissolution
of the SFRY. SOKOJ – Organisation of Music Authors of Serbia, https://www.sokoj
.rs/o-nama/istorijat/.

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