Yugoslavia

/ 17.11.2007. u 05:53

Komentari: 44
Čitanost: 13044
/
Preporuke: 792
/

"Before the 1990s, we were like drunk Americans!" a friend proclaimed in a Sombor cafe to me as he expounded on the history of the area. "We had good schools, free apartments, cars, we could travel anywhere we wanted ... even the cleaning women had $10,000 a month!"

It's a theme I've heard before many times from my husband's lips, although for him the time was the 1970s that were truly golden in Yugoslavia (before he grew up and had to try to find a job in the 1980s that interested him remotely.) He can speak for hours quite poetically about the free apartments, free healthcare, traveling anywhere, etc. My former-Yugoslav friends of that era overall seem to have had far more blissful childhoods than anyone I ever met in the US.

Growing up in the US in the 1970s and 1980s pretty much sucked. Our family life and the economy started getting significantly better just about at the same time Yugoslavia fell apart and your lives went into the toilet for awhile. So my experience of life has been that things generally start out badly and then get better. If you work hard and are patient, life can be blissful. I suspect some of my former Yugoslav peers feel the opposite -- life can be blissful but then the idiots in authority (or forces of history) will inevitably screw things up for you, so it's not much bother trying to build something.

I also suspect that this feeling, coupled with Slavic poetic darkness and emotion, is what causes so many Serbs to complain endlessly about their country instead of getting the energy and hope together to take matters into their own hands and improve things now.

Note: I'm not saying things are not improving - I see very real improvements all the time in Serbia, but I rarely if ever hear Serbs talking about them. Instead I hear ceaselessly about how great things were, how bad they are now (generally a theme of "not enough money"), and how everything is hopeless for the future due to circumstances beyond one's control. But when I point out that in many countries such as Mexico and India things are MUCH worse, and the people far more cheerful about their current lot and about their chances for progress, Serbs say, "well that's all very well and fine. They didn't grow up in the Golden Age. They have no comparison."

I am, in fact, writing this blog from a CyberCafe in Pokhara Nepal, having arrived from Delhi India a few days ago. In both places life is for the general mass of people somewhat harder than it is in Serbia. For example, pollution is so bad ordinary people and police directing traffic in the city wear face masks; there are homeless people sleeping in the streets; and, the tap water is not safe for drinking unless you boil it. Yet, in both areas the people seem to be far more cheerful about their future and current lives than Serbs do.

My husband cites the Yugo Golden Age as the culprit for this. But you know, I've read Slavenka Drakulic's books and collected essays on life in Yugoslavia before and after. Things were not all that golden. Maybe more golden than other Communist countries, but still, not that great. At least for many women and certainly for journalists.

So my question - at the end of this slightly rambling post - is: how golden was Yugoslavia really? Is an entire generation of Serbs wearing rose-colored glasses, mesmerized by a semi-imagined past of Yugo-glory so they can't imagine anything worth viewing in the future? Is it possible there may be an even better future to that you could build in reality - if only you could look up from the past to imagine it?

postavite na |

Komentari (44)

Sakrij replike | Pošaljite komentar

Komentare je moguće postavljati samo u prvih 7 dana, nakon čega se blog automatski zaključava

Temerin 06:39 17.11.2007

kako je to bilo

evo malo bgd atmosfere iz 80-tih - koga zanima, filmovi to vreme dosta lepo mogu docarati

kriminala je bilo, ali samo na filmu. drugo vreme skroz

azra 06:40 17.11.2007

Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

Hmm, how good was it?

Let me refresh my memory...

...Zastava 101, Zastava 750, Zastava Yugo... Was there anything else in the streets? Oh, yes: Moscvich, Trabant, Fiat 1300, some old Opel maybe... and the inevitable Tomos Automatics!

...Even/odd system of driving: those with even numbers on their plates were driving during the even days, and those with odds on the odd days... Sunday was for all of them...

...Yes, we were free to travel... But how many of us actually did? I remember some cheap vacations in Greece, and one winter in Italy (where we were shocked by the most ordinary aspects of the West we dreamed about)...

...Only two types of bread in the stores (when the third, much better type appeared, I remember people spontaneously named it "Lepa Brena" after the most-popular folk singer of those times)...

...No Coke, Pepsi or beer in cans... No cans, actually... We collected Coke cans that foreign tourists were throwing around... We were keeping them on our shelves as souvenirs, as symbols of some more tasteful world...

...I remember lines in front of the stores... Was it about milk? Or sugar? Or oil?... And no, I don't speak about the 90's, it was even worse then...

...No electricity, twice or three times a week. "Economic stabilization", that's how they called it on TV...

...SVOZ, do you remember SVOZ, eh? "Svi u odbranu i zastitu" (All of Us for the Defence And Protection)... Mature people playing war games... Well, no one can say we weren't trained enough for the follow-up decade...

...Chocolates? Some, mostly domestic and ugly. Bananas? Yes, very expensive. Jeans? Smuggled from Italy or Greece. LP records? Licenced editions only - no Kraftwerk, Ramones, Sex Pistols or similar stuffs, too agressive for the domestic censors. International brends of tasty Ice Creams? No way!

As you notice, I speak only about childish dreams. But I can't help, I was a child in those times. And we were talking about our "happy ex-Yugoslav childhood", weren't we?

So, what was so good about that country?

The lack of responsibility, I guess.

aurelije 11:16 17.11.2007

Re: Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

...Zastava 101, Zastava 750, Zastava Yugo... Was there anything else in the streets? Oh, yes: Moscvich, Trabant, Fiat 1300, some old Opel maybe... and the inevitable Tomos Automatics!

We were producing Opels IDA in Sombor, Citroens in Kopar, VW in Sarajevo, Reno from Slovenia... Even Zastava cars were Italian design. Difference between cars was not so big as today (average car si 18 years old!).

...Even/odd system of driving: those with even numbers on their plates were driving during the even days, and those with odds on the odd days... Sunday was for all of them...

That was not local problem. The Arabs stopped producing oil because they were frustrated with western help to Israel. We were friends of Arabs so we were getting oil (under the old prices) so Yugoslav big export companies decided that it is better to export oil to the west and get a huge extra profit, than to sell it in domestic market.

...Yes, we were free to travel... But how many of us actually did? I remember some cheap vacations in Greece, and one winter in Italy (where we were shocked by the most ordinary aspects of the West we dreamed about)...

Kids from secondary schools were traveling to the Netherlands! Today it is problem even for students. A lot of students could go study foreign universities and society was giving stipends.

...No Coke, Pepsi or beer in cans... No cans, actually... We collected Coke cans that foreign tourists were throwing around... We were keeping them on our shelves as souvenirs, as symbols of some more tasteful world...

In Germany it is forbidden to have more than 50% of production in cans or plastic bottles. Glass bottles are the best for ecology and health.

...No electricity, twice or three times a week.

I do not remember that during 80s in my little town.

...Chocolates? Some, mostly domestic and ugly. Bananas? Yes, very expensive. Jeans? Smuggled from Italy or Greece. LP records? Licenced editions only - no Kraftwerk, Ramones, Sex Pistols or similar stuffs, too agressive for the domestic censors. International brends of tasty Ice Creams? No way!

Josip Kraš had really good chocolates (Životnjsko carstvo and those with golden paper, I do not remember the name). I were getting Milka chocolates from my aunt (she lives in Germany) and I did not notice any significant difference in quality. Some of the world most famous rock groups were playing in Yugoslavia (Belgrade and Zagreb). And we had our own rock scene.

apatrid 19:09 17.11.2007

Re: Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

...No Coke, Pepsi or beer in cans... No cans, actually... We collected Coke cans that foreign tourists were throwing around... We were keeping them on our shelves as souvenirs, as symbols of some more tasteful world...

Fuj! Bljak!

...SVOZ, do you remember SVOZ, eh? "Svi u odbranu i zastitu" (All of Us for the Defence And Protection)... Mature people playing war games... Well, no one can say we weren't trained enough for the follow-up decade...

Duck and cover?

bauer 07:11 17.11.2007

Rosemary,

We have been over this so many times on the blog :) (by the way, the cleaning lady was never making $10,000.00, not in a life time).

Those days seemed to be not so bad when we were the kids growing up (lots of great memories, very few responsibilities). The kids, whose childhood days now nostalgically resemble of snapshots from cool black-and-white movies. However, looking back at it, it all pretty much sucked :(

Nietzsches Aprentice 07:32 17.11.2007

...

I wasn't born yet when the "bliss" of former Yugoslavia started fading so I really only experienced the 'shitty' times of the last one, as it were. This is why I don't complain - I don't remember life being better than it was during the 90's that I spent in Belgrade. I'll digress for a second to mention that, all things taken into account, I don't consider the lifestyle I led during the 90's bad, nor do I consider my childhood sad, things that I owe a lot for to my parents who did a lovely job protecting me and my brother. I do, however, believe that this whole business of nostalgia really boils down to the fact that it's easier to cope with a bad situation if that's the only mode of operation that you know from experience. When you've had something (and I can say that my parents did have at the very least free schooling, opportunities to travel far more than I did and fairly easily attainable decent paid job positions), it's obviously going to much more frustrating when everything goes down the toilet than in a situation in which you're used to coping with miserable standard of living. Add to that that, for an average person, there is only that many times that he/she can start from scratch and that, especially for those who are now approaching their fifties and sixties and consider themselves the fictitious middle class in Serbia, the weight of having to cope with shitty political and economical conditions, while at the same time providing for a family, has worn them down to the point of extreme, and you get the idea why people weave gospels about the Former Yugoslavia. There's also the ever present tendency of humans to romanticize past, so, once everything is taken into consideration, there is little mystique left about the whole phenomenon...

Vega 08:48 17.11.2007

Serbia and India

Quote:
"am, in fact, writing this blog from a CyberCafe in Pokhara Nepal, having arrived from Delhi India a few days ago. In both places life is for the general mass of people somewhat harder than it is in Serbia. For example, pollution is so bad ordinary people and police directing traffic in the city wear face masks; there are homeless people sleeping in the streets; and, the tap water is not safe for drinking unless you boil it. Yet, in both areas the people seem to be far more cheerful about their future and current lives than Serbs do."

Do you mean that people in Serbia should not complain about anything given the situation in India? or Iraq maybe?

blejach 09:30 17.11.2007

It wasnt...

It wasnt so "golden", people generally tend to idealize "the times before"... imho that's probably because they were younger than, and thus happier and more carefree.
It was better but not golden...

Umetnica 11:22 17.11.2007

IMHO, it pretty much sucked...

It wasn't golden at all. It was poor, depressive, repressive. I was a child of 1970's and to this day, I like to go to any supermarket (Merkator, Vero, Idea, whichever) just to walk around and look at shelves stocked up with shiny, colourfull items I have no intent of buying. I think that's my inner child reliving times when shelves were stocked up with poor choice of ugly, domestic stuff. There's nothing like whif of capitalism to make someone who grew up in Soviet-like socialism, feel truly alive.

But as sucky as it was, it resembled a real and stable state, with real government, with real institutions (police, justice system, army, social service etc) -- much more then poor excuse for state we're living in since 2003. More important, there was no war and future was certain. I think that's where all the nostalgia comes from, because in Kostunica's Serbia, future seems bleak, uncertain and peope's very existence is threatened.

codex_casti 12:10 17.11.2007

time... p. floyd

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun..

RiskyBiz 13:27 17.11.2007

Golden Age for Whom?

I remember my first visit to Yugoslavia in 1981. People would stare at me wherever I went and when I asked my relatives why they said because of the clothes I was wearing which were just ordinary jeans and sweater.

There were shortages of everything, in particular coffee, toilet paper and washing powder. If you didn't buy your bread before 7.00am there wouldn't be anything left.

I don't know who was travelling but my relatives only ever visited other eastern bloc countries and that would usually be for a shopping trip.

Noone seemed to be doing anything very productive at work and the main aim for getting a job was to get into an organisation where you could get a free apartment.

I wonder if these free apartments are the ones people complained they were kicked out of during the wars.

Emir Halilovic 14:17 17.11.2007

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

It was very different than today. People were carefree because for most of them the state provided employment, accommodation and education. Private initiative and entrepreneurship was also allowed--to a point. Shortages etc. were the thing of early eighties, but from 1986-7 things started looking up and by 1989 I could, for example, earn enough money for summer vacation by working in a car wash couple of months during summer. After that, everything fell apart, as we know.

Obviously, it wasn't all roses, but people had something to look forward to, things were, more or less, only getting better all the time. Where it all could have ended can easily be seen in Slovenia, which is to my surprise probably the least changed part of former Yugoslavia. And lastly, but not least importantly, we lived in a country which was to be reckoned with regionally and internationally, unlike the current collection of banana republics.

Igor_Jaramaz 14:46 17.11.2007

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

RiskyBiz
I remember my first visit to Yugoslavia in 1981. People would stare at me wherever I went and when I asked my relatives why they said because of the clothes I was wearing which were just ordinary jeans and sweater.

Yeah, the good sh*t was scarce, had to by it in the "Komision" for foreign cash... Imagine what kind of an extraterrestrial you must've looked like in rural areas, to old pensioners. I remember a situation from 1990, entering a rural bus (with my brother) driving from grandma's village to Zajecar. The driver dropped his jaw and cigarette and all of the old babushkas and dedushkas (we don't call 'em that in Serbian but them foreigners on B92 won't know the difference, right :))) were just staring at me as if I had just landed from another planet...

There were shortages of everything, in particular coffee, toilet paper and washing powder. If you didn't buy your bread before 7.00am there wouldn't be anything left.

End of 70's and whole 80's. Shortage of diapers too, at times. My mother remembers one particular summer when a Non-Aligned African nation paid some financial transaction in a boatfull of bananas. She said that bananas were so cheap that summer all of Belgrade ate so much they could not even bare to look at them. That's central planning for ya, USSR or Yugoslavia, its only shades of the same evil.

Basically Rosemary had her stagflation, we Serbs are just now paying the prices for our Keynesian and Marxist/Karedeljite failed experiments.

I don't know who was travelling but my relatives only ever visited other eastern bloc countries and that would usually be for a shopping trip.

Keep in mind the mentality of the average working-class Yugoslav. With not to much money and scarce knowledge of foreign languages the preferred destinations were Romania (Timisoara/Temisvar), Hungary or Bulgaria. The more adventurous would go to Prague or Poland. Now, every single Yugo-Communostalgic follows the same storyline:
- Worker travels abroad for the first time
- Worker has a blast because he has money and the poor saps don't, plus everything is so cheap and corruption is rampant (even worse than back home), everything has a price
- The worker's ego starts to grow, eventually he starts thinking about how much it would cost to buy all of Romania/Bulgaria/Czechoslovakia
- He might even get lucky with some local broad, waitress or such, for a small financial transaction/drink/whatever
- Worker has to go back to his old bleak routine and leaves his kingdom behind

Of course that he will remember those as the good old days, he basically did nothing at his job but for that very reason never learned the true value of the money he was so carelessly spending on Pilsener, Slovakian broads and his hotelroom in some castle owned by the Hapsburgs/Hohenzollerns.

Noone seemed to be doing anything very productive at work and the main aim for getting a job was to get into an organisation where you could get a free apartment.

Hence the ridiculously high prices of real estate in Belgrade (besides government 'taxes on land usage'), no one really earned any of those 100,000Euro they are asking for their decrepit one-bedroom flat in 'Centar', but what does he care, some poor sap from abroad will buy it and the idiot down the hall is asking for the same price, right...

Yeah, Yugoslavia the good old days, please spare me, I tend to loose my self-restraint when faced with such idiocies being flung.

RiskyBiz 16:33 17.11.2007

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

You're so right!

The only Yugonostalgics I know are people like my neighbours who sucked the country dry. They're an old couple who both had some kind of paper pushing job (one I think was a pravnik and the other an ekonomist but then again, wasn't everyone in the good old days). No wonder noone takes any notice of the laws of the land and the economy is a basket case.

Anyway, they bought a plot of land cheaply in the best part of Herceg Novi and built a huge house where they rent out rooms. It was one of those government redistribution of private land schemes so you had to be chosen specially to get the offer. They also had a holiday home on Brac which they've sold. On top of which their pension is combined 800 Euros a month. That's only the stuff I know.

Now they have the nerve to complain how hard life is for them and how wonderful things were before.

berab 22:26 17.11.2007

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

Are you sure you have been in Yugoslavia?Perheps it was Romania or Albania.Check your passport,please.

jinks 17:33 17.11.2007

How good it was

Maybe it partially depends on the point of view (i.e. of the generation you belong to). For somebody who was born around the beginning of the golden decade, and grew up together with the emerging turmoil, that culminated with the destructive force of pure ambition combined with the endless hunger for power and wealth – golden age is Eden like garden of a wonderful blessed childhood. For others a bit older, I suppose that the '70's were the everyday struggle, common to any grownup in the world anywhere anytime. But looked upon now, for them it is the reminiscence of the blessed youth :), more than anything else, I suppose.

From the current perspective, I think that what catches the glance and captures the hearts and minds of many is the sent of freedom, that pops out of every sentence that you mentioned. Freedom to get employed, to get educated, to travel, freedom to have you own home, freedom not to fear from illness or old age …

But anybody could ask: how come this country could enable people this kind of life, and others could not, as if it was an glory island surrounded with the endless valley of tears. Maybe, one of simpler answers could be: yu was also the country that required a lot of hard work and hard life, similarly to the hardness of life in u.s. you’ve portrayed in the post, before the golden age.

Any land with the plan (with some kind of future in politics, economics, whatever, it thrives to) requires in a way a bit harder kind of life, that only a few can reminiscent about with tears in eyes (an yu was no different from u.s. or majority of other countries, as far as this is concerned). The golden age begun about the same time when country lost it’s plan, and when the politicians (i.e. tito and others) gave up on everything, and just joined the ride with the others, waiting altogether for things to end by themselves (and spent some foreign money by the way). And end came, as expected, since nothing else was expected to happen anyway.

Brooklyn 17:44 17.11.2007

....

Is an entire generation of Serbs wearing rose-colored glasses, mesmerized by a semi-imagined past of Yugo-glory so they can't imagine anything worth viewing in the future?

no, it isn't. and those people you talked to are not very smart. but i'm sure your husband has a heart of gold....

s56a 19:00 17.11.2007

Choice

Your countryman told me in 1960's long before I visited USA that the main difference is a greater choice. Our golden years were 1970's but foreign debt accumulated and economy declined for 10 years before the wars. You lived in improving environment while ours was changing fast without the rule of law.

Present day Slovenia is what EU YU could have been in early 1990s. But primitive nationalism replaced inefficient communism. Danke Deutschland

babola 20:21 17.11.2007

re: Yugoslavia's, Golden Age?

I'm sure almost every country in the world had a "golden age" of some sorts. The problem with Yugoslavia's golden age is that it became a useless mantra to so many people. Last time I checked, the time machine hasn't been invented yet so, what's the point lamenting the "good old days", whether they really existed or not? It's a pathetic excuse to just sit around and do nothing.

BuntBogoljub 22:01 17.11.2007

Give me one more chance

The scary thing is, people here are not so enthusiastic like those in India and Nepal.

I will cite the song sent to me by Vladimir from Moscow

I turned around too late to see the fallen star
I fell asleep and never saw the sun go down
I took your love for granted
Thought luck was always on my side
I turned around too late and you were gone

So give me one more chance
Darlin' if you care for me
Let me win your love
'Cause you were always there for me
If you care for me
Be there for me

I like to play the queen of hearts
And never thought I'd lose
I rolled the dice but never showed my hand
I planned it out so perfectly
So you'd never leave a girl like me
I was a fool, but now I understand

So give me one more chance
Darlin' if you care for me
Let me win your love
'Cause you were always there for me
If you care for me,
Be there for me

Here is the law of the land
You play with fire and you'll get burned
Here is the lesson I've learned
That you don't know what you've got til it's gone

So give me one more chance
Darlin' if you care for me
Let me win your love
'Cause you were always there for me

So give me one more chance
Darlin' if you care for me
Let me win your love
'Cause you were always there for me
If you care for me
Be there for me

Give me one more chance

http://snagasrbije.blogspot.com/

Vasa S Tajcic 22:32 17.11.2007

Welfare state

The old Yugoslavia was a welfare state. Some people had more than they deserved. There were people who lived in one bedroom apartments, but there were people who lived in 5000 square feet houses given to them by the government. Those were mostly high ranking communists and army generals. Actually, these people still live in these houses. Children of these people are ruling Serbia today. Some like politicians and some like “businessmen”. Those communists, who were punishing everyone from even mentioning western lifestyle, were very fast to adapt capitalist system. They used their connections and they stole, while at the same time selling Serbian people the “patriotism” story. People were preoccupied with wars, nationalism, war criminals, war heroes, while they were quietly accumulating wealth. Now they rule. People are still being fooled and distracted.

The sad thing is that those generals were getting rich based on the fact that they would protect the country (YU). They actually broke up the country, left the enormous amount of arms to people to kill each other.

Comparing the nineties to old YU, old country and regime looked better. Anything compared to the nineties looks better.

RiskyBiz 23:03 17.11.2007

Re: Welfare state

The same old question is why are people in Serbia so easily fooled time and time again?

Krugolina Borup 23:38 17.11.2007

Fake goldness

There's no quick and easy answer to your question from the title of the blog, Rosemary. There's so many levels on which the goldness of that age can be judged. Yes, it was safer then than now, and institutions sort of functioned. But, oh, was it boring...

Boredom is what majority of people like and enjoy. They want their safe job from the moment they graduate, until they retire. They want the job from 7am to 3pm, so that they can spend better part of the day with their family. They are not ambitious, they are not creative. They just want to get up in the morning, go do their terrible choir at the working place, and get back home with enough time and money to enjoy life.

For creative people, people with initiative, ambitious people... golden age was hell. The only creativity such system supported was: how to milk the system. So, they did.

I was 14 when I went to my first trip abroad - to Canada. It was early 80s. Boy, did I get a cultural shock!! First week I spent with remote control, flipping through numerous chanals, wondering why back home we have just two. And I remember how, upon returning home after two months, first thing I said when we landed at the Belgrade airport was: "What is this strange smell?" And cars seemed so funny and small, small, small...

That is the first time I started doubting what, up until then, I was thought in school. And that is: Yugoslavia has the best economical system, better then capitalism of USA, and better then comunism of USSR.

The best sum up of goldness and non-goldness of the period is, imho, to be found in the movie "Lepa sela lepo gore", where Bata Zivojinovic and Nikola Kojo have the very discussion. Boils down to: they lived on my credit, and I'm paying installments for their golden years now by sacrifizing what is supposed to be my most productive years on bare survival.

Dragoberto 09:50 18.11.2007

my 2 cents

Let me remind you that after the October 5th the people were full of enthusiasm. There was a feeling that the bad times were over and we could finally move on. Even the police officers were polite. One could feel that the system was there to serve you and not to repress. In my opinion, when people realized that it would take a looong time before we really move on, they lost the faith in change. And that is why you now hear the stories about the Golden Age.

From what i've heard from my parents, the 70s where the Golden Age in the sense that everyone willing to work or "find a way" was able to afford a good living. In contrast to the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the wellbeing was distributed outside the Party circles. And the reason for that were the loans from IMF and similar institutions. This probably leads the people to the conclusion that life was better than it really was.

In some previous comments you will read about free child care and other services, but you will also read about the shortages of almost everything. The life was definitely more carefree back then, but the socialist/communist ideology has been an important part of it until the mid-80s.

So, i would never go back. The only inspiration you could get from those times is try remembering how relaxed we were before the 90s.

man ray loves me 13:09 18.11.2007

a couple of things

My first childhood memory is the day Tito died. I was three. The TV was on and I still remeber the dirge. My grandma was crying. I didn't know what was going on.
Afterwards, I always had this feeling something was off. I was always fascinated by how it works. What makes people choose this one guy and trust him with everything.
Then there was Milan. I used to listen to EKV all through primary and highschool. It was important.
Then I started getting into the movies, going to Kinoteka and all.
The most important thing in my family was 'would we get the flat'. They were free and there were these lists, and we never seemed to have enough points.
Old Yugoslavia was ok, I guess, for people who wanted simple small town lives. It's they that feel tricked now. But should you want anything else, just to say that is sucks for example, your life would become increasingly difficult. That's why the 80ies were important, with this new voice, the people who were saying that it does suck, that it shouldn't be like that. 'Decko koji obecava' and the whole scene.
When I was reading 1984, it felt perfect. It was an explanation of what we were going through.
So don't cry for old Yugoslavia. Especially not now, when it's been paid for.

oldtajmer 15:32 18.11.2007

Golden Age

I liken it to the 50s in the States:

Rise of the middle class, general feel of optimism and forward progress, but much lower living standards and also lesser needs and wants. People had the basics, and that was it. Nowadays, i think the problem is people are finding it hard to satisfy some of their basic needs, but they have much more choices and much more luxuries.

Of course the big problem was all this worked well if you were a member of the Party and if you didn't "stray" from the Communist mainstream. For those, life was not rosy at all.

There is another important aspect, and you touched on it talking about your husband: Nostalgia for one's youth. Sure, life was nice and easy and careless...when I was 17 ;-)

ugly 00:29 19.11.2007

You're kiddin', right?

free apartments

There is so much nonsense in the stuff people told you, but the one above is enough to get me started. Free apartments? Free education? Free health care? Excuse me, but what should be a GDP of a country that can give all of that for free to its citizens? Did it ever cross your or anyone else's mind? Name a few of the wealthiest countries in the world then or today and let me know if any of those offers all of the above for free. I'll move there tomorrow (and please, don't try to sell me the non-functional socialized medicine in countries like Canada or UK). Let's get in touch with the reality.

"Free" is the filthy demagoguery of the bandits ("revolutionaries"

that occupied Yugoslavia for almost half a century, taking ("borrowing"

money from left and right (mostly right) and wherever they could get it from in order to pacify the public and offer them an illusion of peace, brotherhood, unity and everything for free. Don't you realize that money for all of that "free" stuff had to come from somewhere? Wherever it came from, it has to be paid back, sooner or later. Of course, Serbia of today has a grim future not only because of the debt, but because of its corrupt politicians, apathetic people, lazy, laid back attitude, and totally nonexistent economic and legal system that will never ever offer its citizens anything of the sort you're talking about. Never have, never will.

As far as the cleaning ladies making $10K, even if that had been the case (and I don't quite remember), it is just one of the examples of demagoguery and inequalities that forced several hundred thousand educated people to leave the country over the last few decades, never to return. This brings us to another one of communists' frauds. "Free" travel.

In the 60's, after years of banning people to legally live the country, shooting them at the border crossings if they attempted to leave illegally, and throwing them in prisons, all of a sudden passports started to become available to more and more citizens. No wonder that in the coming years, almost a million Yugoslav citizens went abroad as "guest workers", to Germany in particular, but to many other countries as well, such as France, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries etc. This was a win-win situation for the regime:

a) solve the problem of huge unemployment (which still persisted for decades and up to this day)
b) huge financial gain - overwhelming majority of these people kept sending substantial cash back to YU, spending very little in their countries of residence.
c) paint a picture of democracy by allowing its citizens to travel freely, unlike the rest of the eastern block.

All of the above had only one purpose - buy the social peace, solidify the dictatorship in place and provide an illusion of good life. And for the people that didn't know any better, good it was. Just like today.

Whyomar 12:08 19.11.2007

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Free Education; Free Health-Care?
--try Norway / Sweden / Denmark
Free apartments+
--try Utopia
:)

Brooklyn 12:25 19.11.2007

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Free Education; Free Health-Care?
--try Norway / Sweden / Denmark

yes, it's free if you're one of those people who lives off wealthfare. if you happen to work, you pay for it dearly through the highest tax rates in the world. and you also pay the way for all of those people that are smarter than you because they realized that they can live just fine off your tax money:)

ugly 04:39 20.11.2007

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Free Education; Free Health-Care?
--try Norway / Sweden / Denmark

"In the Land of the Free, nothing is for free". Although this saying, obviously, goes for USA, it applies to any society that proclaims to give things away (for free). There is no such thing. Everything you get "for free" has to come from somewhere and as a rule it is your pay check.

Exorbitant tax rates in Scandinavia are seemingly humane in its concept, but are terribly unjust if you believe in principle of fair reward for your labor. I've lived in Sweden many years ago and saw this "socialized" system degenerate into its own worst enemy. Some of the most successful and educated people left Sweden because of this. Certainly, not in worrisome numbers such as is the case with Serbia, and were easily replaced by immigrants (such as from Serbia). Meanwhile, herds of alcoholics line up in front of liquor stores as soon as they get their welfare checks. For them, money well spent. For me, thank you, but - no, thank you.

Gyre 10:59 20.11.2007

Good times, bad times

My mother is a primary school teacher. She was waiting for a job from 1974-1984, in old, great Yugoslavia. She was never a member of a communist party, never rich, without any connections. If you had all these things you could have a very nice life I guess. On the other hand, you could have spent 5 years in jail like Borislav Pekic for sticking to your principles or waiting for a position for 10 years like my mum. Two years ago, my good friend had to become a member of a political party he hates because oherwise doctors don't get jobs. What has changed? How has it changed? People in Serbia have been living the same nightmare since a long, long time ago, and that is the ultimate truth.

Brooklyn 11:20 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad times

She was waiting for a job from 1974-1984

What has changed? How has it changed?

what has changed: now, you don't need to "wait for a job", you can look for one, on make one for yourself.

what hasn't changed: most people still "wait" for a job..

Gyre 12:15 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

Brooklyn
what has changed: now, you don't need to "wait for a job", you can look for one, on make one for yourself.

Being an English techer, I was one of the privileged people in education who could find a job easily after 2001. However, I was still witnessing politically correct colleagues (or those with influential parents) getting all the best positions in all the best schools, while myself and the likes of me were forced to commute to villages off the bitten track, nothwithstanding the qualifications, experience etc. So how can a person in education or medicine 'make a job' for him/herself? Only by being a suck up or born into a right family. That's one of the greatest reasons why I left Serbia and am not planning to come back any time soon. Turns out I could 'make a job' for myself 'out there' only by using my experience and expertise, sth I could have never done in my own country. I still haven't seen a country where political influence reaches so far into the odinary people's lives as it does in Serbia, and it still makes me sick to my stomach.

Brooklyn 12:48 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

you can give private instructions, or if you are ambitious you even could open a school as a business. you can subcontract as a translator (which is what i did during my studies, and i didn't even study english) or open translating services business. but getting a job in a village off the bitten track, can also be a good option sine you often can secure an apartment that way, since demand for the teachers there often exceeds supply. you have plenty of options, in fact. the problem is that you need initiative, not a capacity for "waiting"...

Gyre 15:10 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

Brooklyn, I hope you don't mind me asking if you are by any chance a member or supporter of a political party, or just an optimist?

ugly 15:15 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

you have plenty of options, in fact. the problem is that you need initiative, not a capacity for "waiting"...

I always felt that Serbia is a promised land. A couple of hundred thousand educated people that left were lamers with no initiative and completely void of creative thinking. They don't deserve any better but to rot in the rotten West.

Brooklyn 15:17 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

i don't vote and i don't support political parties. what i wrote reflects my approach to life. it works for me and it works for other people who try it, too.

Brooklyn 15:19 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

I always felt that Serbia is a promised land. A couple of hundred thousand educated people that left were lamers with no initiative and completely void of creative thinking. They don't deserve any better but to rot in the rotten West.

ugly, i don't know about you but i prosper in the rotten west, and i believe i more than deserve everything good that i have :)

ugly 15:39 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

ugly, i don't know about you but i prosper in the rotten west, and i believe i more than deserve everything good that i have :)

You may prosper, but what happened to your sense of humor? My previous comment falls under "sarcasm". The "rotten" adjective was a common descriptor for the West in the post war communist SFRJ. Or you're too young to know that?

Brooklyn 15:44 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

You may prosper, but what happened to your sense of humor? My previous comment falls under "sarcasm". The "rotten" adjective was a common descriptor for the West in the post war communist SFRJ. Or you're too young to know that?

i understood your comment perfectly, hence my answer.

Gyre 16:27 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

ugly, i don't know about you but i prosper in the rotten west, and i believe i more than deserve everything good that i have :)

Sorry, Brooklyn, one more question. Did I understand correctly that you are not currently living in Serbia? Because if that's true, I don't find your comments very plausible. I agree with ugly that far too many intelligent people leave Serbia, probably that's one of the reasons why the development (especially of the mind) is so slow.

Brooklyn 16:57 20.11.2007

Re: Good times, bad time

Because if that's true, I don't find your comments very plausible

that's fair enough :)

but i subscribe to the same principle where ever i lived (which included serbia). that is: pay attention to the opportunities that present themselves and don't spend too much (any) time deliberating why you can't do something, but concentrate on what you can do.

my main grind with communism (or good old days) is that the system didn't let you seize opportunities as much as this does. although this one is far from perfect. for example, you can't use your own money as you see fit (because you can't freely invest abroad). that is a big issue for me. in fact, big enough for me to not want to live in serbia, but still it is better than it was before.

skyspoter 13:39 20.11.2007

rosemary

Yet, in both areas the people seem to be far more cheerful about their future and current lives than Serbs do.

I hope you are enjoying Nepal. Try bungy jumping at the Last Resort which is close to the border with Tibet.

In meantime just to remind you that you are in Southern Asia and we, Serbia, in Eastern Europe and you cant compare this two countries for obvious reasons.

Out of Beirut 18:24 25.11.2007

How golden was Yugoslavia

"How golden was Yugoslavia really?"

It was exceptionally peaceful and secure, for nearly everyone, physically and economically. That's the best thing I can think of. (I don't recall anyone to use the epithet "golden" about Yugoslavia, btw.)

" Is an entire generation of Serbs wearing rose-colored glasses, mesmerized by a semi-imagined past of Yugo-glory so they can't imagine anything worth viewing in the future?"

It seems so. In this, Serbs aren't any different from the other people from YU. I guess the Yugoslav culture instilled arrogance on the individual level. How so?

Well, more generally, country's diplomatic successes tend to generate a dangerous mixture of confusion and arrogance: Richelieu, Mazarin -> French revolution, Bismarck -> Germany's World War defeats, USA's Cold War victory -> the disasters in Iraq et al.

Yugoslavia's remarkable diplomatic successes may have been too much of a good thing.

-----

"Is it possible there may be an even better future to that you could build in reality - if only you could look up from the past to imagine it? "

It's strange, you see, to think you've got an avant-garde outlook, but not to believe in betterment of your country, let alone continuous betterment.

Sakrij replike | Pošaljite komentar

Rosemary Bailey Brown

RSS Feed Saznajte više o autoru

Blogovi autora

Svi blogovi

Yugoslavia

kako je to bilo

Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

Re: Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

Re: Yugoslavia, Golden Age?

Rosemary,

...

Serbia and India

It wasnt...

IMHO, it pretty much sucked...

time... p. floyd

Golden Age for Whom?

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

Re: Golden Age for Whom?

How good it was

....

Choice

re: Yugoslavia's, Golden Age?

Give me one more chance

Welfare state

Re: Welfare state

Fake goldness

my 2 cents

a couple of things

Golden Age

You're kiddin', right?

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Re: You're kiddin', right?

Good times, bad times

Re: Good times, bad times

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

Re: Good times, bad time

rosemary

How golden was Yugoslavia

Rosemary Bailey Brown

Blogovi autora

Najnovije VIP blogeri

Najnovije blogeri

Arhiva

Kategorije aktivne u poslednjih 7 dana

Najaktivniji autori u poslednjih 15 dana