Here's a weird insight: My mother used to work for one of these self-managed companies. They elected the new manager by vote, debated whether to invest, save or spend their surplus profits, whether to buy a new car or do some renovations in the offices. The whole company was no more than 20. employees. I can tell you they all traveled a lot and they got a lot of presents for New Years and women's day. The job was to do the paperwork and accounting for similarly small craftsman companies. So, when Saddam in Iraq wanted to build a network of underground bunkers, vaults, and safe houses, he hired Yugoslav companies. One of them was my mom's company. They took on the project and coordinated the planning, logistics, and work with many, many craftsmen companies and on paper, it looked like you hired one big construction company and not a myriad of small ones. The bunkers were made, and the 'pay' was I think like 3% of the whole project cost. Much later, FBI agents came to Belgrade and would go to the company to seek plans for underground facilities in order to find Saddam's hidden vaults for gold and art collections to steal it all for the oligarchs... They found all the plans since bureaucracy was tight in those decades.
@@reddude3086just look at the cars they made. The yugo was once imported to America and it’s regarded as among one of the worst ones ever. And they changed very little on this 70’s car all the way up until 2008
Well, the nationalists wont teach you the good that Tito had done. Also keep aware that the creator of the channel mentions Yugoslavia as a dictatorship. Tito was not a dictator. Tito was authoritarian, Yes but he was a benevolent person, something You don't see in a dictator. Tito had done more good than evil (cleaning off nationalism in Yugoslavia, industrializing the nation from the ruins of Second World War, was more liberal (but not a nationalist) than an average pro-Soviet leader. What made Yugoslavia collapse was not Communism! There was no justice in the collapse of Yugoslavia. Only betrayal and dishonor from no other than Milosevic. The disunited Yugoslavia as of today has a series of political bombs such as the pro-Chetnik Republic of Srpska in BIH which was created by the Western "Dayton" Agreement (high treason of the brotherhood and unity), formation of an illegal entity in the northern part of Kosovo (pro-Chetnik as well), the Croatian nationalism in Herzegovina (their so-called "Herzeg-Bosna"), and the undemocratic Aleksandar Vucic. Josip Broz Tito was the one and only man who had to spend his time wisely building the Yugoslav nation, knowing that no one could inherit him and be as good as him. Tito served as a top commander of all the partisan forces in WW2 and was promoted to Marshal rank in 1943 in the second session of AVNOJ (where the Socialist Yugoslavia was born), the Western Capitalists played both sides in Yugoslavia. They helped Chetniks because of Petar II who in London openly supported Mihailovic and the crimes they committed with their ultra-nationalist Serb hegemonist ideology which was adapted in the Monarchist Yugoslavia since its inception in 1918. If Tito was never a thing, then imagine Yugoslavia as a barely prospering state. Heavy ultra-nationalist and fascist oppression against the non-Serbian population, then after the monarchy falls, it becomes a pro-Soviet state without any form of resistance (in 1948, the Tito-Stalin ideological conflict led to the Informbiro resolution which expelled Yugoslavia from the Eastern Bloc, a turning point in the Yugoslav history and a road towards prosperity and an utopia). Even as a pro-Soviet state it wouldn't prosper and it would be far worse upon its dissolution and a bloody ethnic conflict. Yugoslavia without Tito would have been treated like a native African tribe. We don't need Chetniks, Ustashas or the Handzhars! We want peace, unity, and our long lost Brotherhood! Together We Stand! *Smrt Fasizmu! Sloboda Narodu!*
@@ChristopherSobieniak The reason the modern day Croatia is avoiding Tito has to do with the Croatian Spring or MASPOK (Masovni Pokret), a period of political conflict between the liberals/reformists SKH and the conservatives of SKH (Savez Komunista Hrvatske/League of Communists of Croatia), which lasted from 1967 to 1971. Tito was only involved in 1971 to suppress the movement that advocated for greater individual rights but was benevolent enough to reassure of equality for every Yugoslav in the 1974 constitution where he also introduced Albanians and Bosnians (under the name "Muslims" given the majority of them were of Muslim religion). Among the people of the MASPOK, one such is Franjo Tudjman who ironically enough was a Croatian Partisan who fought for Brotherhood and Unity but due to his stupidity, he got himself into a conflict with Tito because all he cared was for Croats, and not other Yugoslavs. Whether Tito liberalized Yugoslavia too much or it was just enough, being as Josip Broz Tito in his every day life was not an easy task. Tito was constantly under the pressure from Yugoslavs. Serbians advocated for centralization of the state while Croats and other non-Serbs advocated for de-centralization, the path which Tito took and used in the constitutions of 1963 and 1974 to balance powers among the republics. However, Yugoslavia wouldn't collapse if there was a successor of Tito who was just as capable as Tito was and would maintain the Brotherhood and Unity. The one-year term presidencies that occurred after Tito's death were a minor contribution to the downfall of Yugoslavia since each president had some form of imperfection and difference.
I am from Slovenia and as a teenager at end of 70-ies I was able and afford to travel freely all over Europe. The passport was high valued and i had no problem to travel to Soviet Union, China, the USA when I was a student. The living standard was high and everyone, at last in Slovenia, owned a solid house or appartment. The university education was kind of standard and was high valued abroad. Even today, over 30 later the living standard in Slovenia is ranked as 9th compared e.g to 25th of the USA. Communist dictatorship...hm, maybe but in the spirit of that time... but still more free than Greece, Spain, Portugal, at the same time the USA was with the "Red hunt", so different freedom, but the other perspective.
When I first went there in the early 80s as a backpacker traveler, I was very impressed with how nice the coastal areas and the north western areas were and how breathtaking beautiful the country was, but also surprised by how drab Belgrade and Skopje appeared to be. I only knew about the tension under the surface when I spoke to the local university students. 10 years later the country was gone.
Yeah communism is really obsessed with a veneer of equality so they tend to make building look similar, couple that with their obsession with cheap easily produced everything and you get copy and paste, drab, grey buildings. Add to that the eastern blocks heavy reliance on coal power, especially cheap but polluting Lignite (aka brown coal) that blots out the sun with overcast grey clouds most of the year and you've got a recipe for the most drab cities on the planet. That's also why the coasts were sometimes the only good looking areas: plenty of fresh air blowing in and pushing the smog out.
A very good episode. At some point David mentioned the 1960s Yugoslav pop singers and social life in Yugoslavia, and in one of the earlier episodes he mentioned a future episode on the German punk rock scene. It would be nice if sometime in the future you guys would consider making an episode about Yugoslav pop culture, which was very specific due to Yugoslavia's position during the Cold War and its openness to Western culture. There are numerous interesting topics - partisan and Black Wave films, Yugoslav comics, and especially Yugoslav rock scene, which was, as a rock scene of a communist country and one of the most eclectic and vibrant rock scenes in Europe, a very interesting phenomena.
From the obscure electronic music, (La Card, Romanticne Boje) to the mainstream rock (Kerber is great! Igraj Sad, Nebo Je Malo za Sve, Ratne Igra, Bele Utvare), 1980s Yugoslavia had a music scene like no other. Dronemf S. and others here on RUclips have thankfully done a lot to preserve it.
@@juanjuri6127 Oh, it's a shame. Yugoslav rock scene, for instance, was something wonderful. From 1960s beat and rhythm & blues bands (Bijele Strijele, Crveni Koralji, Siluete, Elipse, Grupa 220), singer-songwriters (Drago Mlinarec, Đorđe Balašević), 1970s prog rock (Indexi, Korni Grupa, YU Grupa, Smak, Pop Mašina, Time, Drugi Način, Galija), jazz rock (Leb i Sol, September) and avant-garde rock (Buldožer, Laboratorija Zvuka), hard rock and arena rock (Bijelo Dugme, Parni Valjak, Atomsko Sklonište, Riblja Čorba, Kerber), heavy metal (Divlje Jagode, Osmi Putnik), punk rock (Pankrti, Pekinška Patka, KUD Idijoti, Psihomodo Pop), new wave (Prljavo Kazalište, Azra, Film, Haustor, Paraf, Idoli, Električni Orgazam, Šarlo Akrobata, Lačni Franz) and garage rock (Partibrejkers), 1980s pop rock (Bajaga i Instruktori, Crvena Jabuka, Piloti) and synth-pop (Zana, Denis & Denis, Videosex), to electronic music (Beograd) and alt rock (Ekatarina Velika), regional scenes-like the Belgrade 1970s acoustic scene (S Vremena Na Vreme) and Macedonian dark wave scene (Mizar)-Yugoslavia's unique movements, like the New Primitives (Zabranjeno Pušenje, Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors) and New Partisans (Plavi Orkestar) and acts whose work was so unique that they can not be labeled, like Laibach, Disciplina Kičme and Rambo Amadeus. And the ones I mentioned here were only the greatest of greatest.
@@ostalocutanje Of the bands you listed I've heard of some but Zana is the only one I've heard a lot of. I found them to be a bit of a mixed bag. Rukuju Se Rukuju and Vejte Snegovi were good. Dodirne Me kolina on the other hand was rather grating to my ears.
I was born in 1967 in Vojvodina and have an excellent memory. I just want to say this is probably the most objective video on Yugoslavia I've ever seen. Not that there are no oversimplifications or slightly skewed views, but it's surprising how few there are. By the way, Coca-Cola appeared on the market one year after I was born (Pepsi in the early 70s) and coexisted with Cockta and other local cola-inspired concoctions for decades making it the only communist country of the sort.
A worker's soviet was convened. There was unanimous consent to push the like button. When the subject of the subscribe button, also referred to as the bell button, schisms were found. While all agreed it should be pushed various factions, all with ties to different current leaders in government posts and from varying ethnicities, the degree of "bell pushing" was disputed. There were many proposals put forward to solve the issue. But none gained a strong enough majority support. Some factions called for it just to be pushed and to revisit the subject later. But radicals from others called in foreign allies for support of only their position and threatened a walkout which would lead to a collapse of the soviet due to failure from lacking enough representation to create a legal quorum. Others called for a general strike until the subject was finally decided. The entire situation was on the verge of becoming a spark that would ignite another revolution. The situation was resolved when an entity known only as "Thumb" pressed Bell Button while the others were consulting with their constituents. While not a perfect solution it will do for now. We are certain that continuing along this path will absolutely not lead to civil war or ethnic cleansing by the various groups in the future. We see only peace and prosperity in perpetuity.
Growing up in StPetersburg, RU in the 70s we didn’t know how much more prosperous Yugoslavia was comparing to all other Warsaw Block countries. StPete had seen millions tourists from the West, because the Northern Venice, was full of world class museums, concert holes , opera/ ballet theaters and Versailles type environs. Only once I met 2 Yugoslavians from Dubrovnic, who were visiting their relatives in StPete and knew nothing about the city. For the next 5 days I was their guide through the best places, including Peterhof- Russian Versailles on the Baltic sea. They told me a lot about Yugoslavia, their unique economic structure, why they were more prosperous. And they didn’t like the Baltic sea, its blue- grey color! But most of all I couldn’t believe that Yugoslavs could freely travel to any other European country, without visa. Traveling outside of the Adriatic region within an hr or so,by car, we would hike in the Alps of Triglav. The 1990s were hard for Slovenia, most of people didn’t want to join the EU, they knew, their lives from comfortable would go lower. They were saying:” we won’t be able to afford living in our country”. Next 20:47 came expats from GB, Germany and Belgium, buying the best properties in Portoroz and Piran. The same has been happening in Croatia with its hundreds of islands, including newly restored Dubrovnik.
My grandmother was a hotel accountant in Belgrade in 70's and early 80's. With her salary she could afford to travel around Europe frequently. As a child, she would tell me many stories from her travels. She visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, in late 70's and was fascinated by things like Borodino battle museum and Hermitage. My dad also told me stories of early 80's in Yugoslavia, eating in restaurants every day, affording seaside travel and still having plenty of money left at the end of the month. He could afford new car at that time with few months savings. This is in startling contrast to early 90's where everything fell apart and people were pushing each other to grab last loaf of bread on the shelf.
Yup MANY farmfields arent even in possetion of Croatia,Serbia,Bosnia.....ALOT is in the hands of German,France,Italy and EVEN Saudi Arabia both huge amount of agricultural land in teh balkans wich was in past more predominantly woned by German,Austria.Today in my gues estoimates around 40 to 70% of the fertile agricultural ladns in former Yu federations are owned by foreign country.
@@goranstojanov1160 It’s very sad, that beautiful Yugoslavia became a pawn of EU and other countries, that have no interest in lives of country’s people.
Supposedly, there was a worker in Yugoslavia who made a grievous on the job mistake and nearly killed somebody. It was expected this guy would loose his job. The manager decided to ask the other workers "How should we punish him?" One voice went, "Let's F _ his wife" and supposedly they laughed so hard that the worker wasn't punished.
I went there in 1974 with a German girl I met on an island in Greece (my teenage years were lots of fun). When we were in Ljubljana we were in a shop. I picked up a package of cookies and declared "communist cookies", which at the time I thought very funny (please forgive me). My girlfriend did not. It was an interesting experience for me and caused me issues in getting security clearances in the years after. I was born in Washington, DC and my father worked for an Army weapons lab. So, finding myself in a communist country at that time was quite an experience. It was also interesting since I had just left a right-wing dictatorship in Greece. By the time we got to Trieste the junta in Greece had fallen.
But that socialistic country was the only such country that had Western weapons, built airbases by western standards and had secret agreement with USA to jointly fights Warsaw packt. Yugoslavia even spied for USA sending new MIGs from Hungarian defectiors for inspection
How was Greece in the 1980s a right-wing dictatorship? Private ownership rights were TIGHTLY controlled by the centralized government. Right wing refers to decentralist economics, individualist social systems and rights to private ownership whereas left wing refers to centralist economics, public ownership and collectivist social systems, it quite literaly requires democratic actions in the market which permits personal ownership and sale and rights to ownership to quality as right wing. Nationalism is not a right or left wing element, otherwise every communist country that promoted its values of communism etc through promotion of national values, labor zionists etc would all be right wing and no country that employed centralized economics and stiffled private ownership rights (like most nationalist nations) and individual autonomy could be named right wing, nor is autocracy.
@@syfiliskerino1998 I was there in the early 1970s, not the 1980s.I don't know if that was just a typo. Let me know. I certainly saw the nationalistic fervor in Athens. I have lots of stories on that. I think you are reacting to the term "right-wing". I have a similar reaction, but that is the terminology we are stuck with. So, I get your points.
Thanks very much for this video. It was thoughtful and unbiased. I was born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and I was 20 when it started to come apart. Having lived in these parts for all of my 51 years, I believe that the bane and curse of all Balkan nations is nationalism. Having banned it, Tito effectively elevated the Yugoslav nations to unprecedented heights. Now that nationalism has been back on the table for decades, the Balkan nations have resumed their downward spiral, which is painful to watch.
@@guyguy7634 as mentioned in the video, the country became too dependent on Tito, and once he was gone, so was the glue that held things together. Either through sheer personal charisma and crude implementation of authority.
Tito put his fellow Yugoslavs on path of destruction, instead of uniting people(like Alexander did) he had disunited his people by creating new nations. When you put something under the rug for so long of course it will blow up. Old communist parties still rules all our countries.
There was a TV debate held in Bosnia somewhat recently where one representative of each Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks were debating if there was one shared language they all spoke or if they each spoke their own different language, debate turned ugly as they all proclaimed that they spoke different languages and started dick measuring whose language was the best, and all this without a translator in sight mind you. Also wanted to say that Cockta is way better than Coka-cola, I love both, but Cockta just hits differently, it was and still is made from rose hips if anybody wondered.
Reality is that it was one language wuth certain amount of slangs that turend into 2,semi two languages and a smore autonomy was given each satrted doing tehir own personal mini reforms/revisions until 90s when the EXTREME amount of reformings of languiage satrtd to be rapidly introduced like for example Croati added BUNCH of german but also some english words (overtiue they added even more),while Bosnai added BUNCH of middle eastern words into it to say thank you to many middle eastern muslim contries wich supplied with weapons,money,t*rrorist.Then each now country started to add,eject,change the language wich was basiclay one language with some additional slangs depending on the aprt of the country.
@@goranstojanov1160 yeah, I know about all the "look at me I'mdifferent" changes, my favourite is that Croats changed "Aparat za kokice" loan word and slav word into "spravljač popkorna" slavic word and a loan word, we have an expresion here dpt that "presipanje iz šupljeg u prazno" esenttialy a fools errand as it changes something only superficialy
Actually there were only 3 major languages with major differences. Slovenians, Macedonians and the rest (not talking about foreign minorities who lived there at the time and spoke their native language). For common people they would only struggle to understand Slovenian and Macedonian if they were not from those areas. All others (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin) they could perfectly understand each other no matter how much they claim they differ. It is like in GB they all speak English but tell this to Irish, Scots, and Welsh (or some other parts of England). They meet in foreign country and they all communicate just fine. Also because the official language was (so called) Serbo-Croatian even Slovenians and Macedonians had to learn it so they both could understand it. Language barrier was non existent in post WW2 in Yugoslavia, its only with rise of nationalism that language become the issue. Yes, there are sub dialects but not a barrier for communication.
He was a regular attendee. Some years he dressed like Ironman, others like Batman. Once year he allegedly went dressed as Susumu Kodai, but is was mostly because of the uniform.
Off-topic, but I remember Yugoslavia winning the Eurovision Song Contest one year (their winning entry was "Rock Me, Baby") When they hosted the contest the following year, I was struck by how modern the country appeared to be - practically indistinguishable from Western European countries. And yet, within a matter of years, this had all fragmented.
how can yugoslavia not be seen as a success? raised living standards and held one of the most ethnically fraught parts of the world together for decades, without ever signing up to be a vassal state of any superpower. it took mere months after dissolution for the region to fall back into the ethnonationalist strife it experienced before socialism.
I would say Yugoslavia was both success and a failure. On one hand, you had a country that many still miss, I often hear people who lived in it complain how standards of living now are way worse, my father's family was able to travel basically everywhere for vacation, we are talking Japan, Malta, South America, USA, despite not being part of the party, even my mother's family, which wasnt even rich, were able to afford building this massive two story house that's basically two houses joint together, it's still in our family's ownership and 3 different generations still live in it, they all got more positive things to say about Yugoslavia then negatives, even tho they acknowledge it had many flaws it wasn't as bad as it's now. On other hand, the fact it all came apart and it's economy was constantly hanging on for its dear life, shows how fragile the system was.
"how can yugoslavia not be seen as a success?" The Yugoslav communist party borrowed a lot of money during the Cold War that it could not pay back and then had a meltdown when communism fell in Eastern Europe.
Excellent work. This is my new favorite episode of the cold war. It is so hard to find reliable big-picture information about the economy and political history of Yugoslavia in the cold war period.
I'm from Serbia and i can tell that basically 90% of older folks i know, my parents, grandparents and so on, have positive experience of that time, they actually lived easy care-free life back in Yugoslavia. It was more socialist than a communist state (nothing close to Warsaw pact block), since there was very little oppression and it was almost nonexistent in everyday life, people even had full freedom to travel anywhere abroad (Yugo was special case since with that passport you could travel both West and behind the iron curtain). For example my grandpa who was locksmith worked 4 years during 70s in Germany and returned back here, government simple had zero issue with people being influences by West culture since it was present in everyday life (you had American movies, music or comic books, Yugo even had punk bands in 70s, rock bands from the West having concerts here etc.). Both my grandparents (from mother and father side) just by being regular factory workers built big houses and rcreational cabins in the countryside, now in capitalism most of factory workers don't have enough money even for regular monthly expenses and can only dream of building house/buying apartment. I think the main problem that led to collapse was bad economic managment in late 80s which led to big crisis and people turning to nationalism to cope with it, if we had just more capable leaders after Tito Yugo would be reformed and would move slowly into democracy and join EU already in the late 80s.
Yugoslavia has always been an interesting subject during the Cold War. And this video was a curious insight into that country during this time. Nice job.
And equally most toxic topic you can ask if someone from that area came to comment section or discussion (if participants are not form area of Ex- Yugo then you could have nice civilised discussion)
@@notoriusdrifter40 Not all people are "right wing borderline nationalists". You can definitely have productive and fact-based discussions with people from Ex-Yu. You can even understand their daily struggles and mindset and alter it. It's fairly easy to do (just not very likely on the internet), when you break down their thinking into common understandings. Opinions nearly always can be changed.
@@milan51259 I agree often our opinions are too emotionally charged without seeing the whole picture whether its about the war in the 90s or the life in SFRJ. And yeah their experiences are also vastly different and those experiences also influence their opinions very much.
I have a “yugoslavic” (probably mostly Albanian but they have everything) food store around the corner from the school I work and I’ll pop in there for snacks sometimes. Cockta is a great soda and I wish it was more commercial available on the US lol
Cockta is great, it's funny how people react trying it and expecting just another cola knock-off. nope, no cola and no caffeine to be found in that stuff.
This is such a great series! History and commentary on history without any political agenda, underlying motive, etc. Just well-researched and well-communicated.
Overall a good video, although I would have to disagree on the mentioning of unemployment. I live here and my parents and grandparents have lived here and I can tell you that entire cities were raised for factories/industry. After WW2 there was a big focus on rebuilding and industrializing. There was even a worker's calling throughout the country, young men would go do volunteer work on summer building railroads and a lot of infrastructure, my grandfather went a few times. You can't find these things on the internet, only from stories from people that lived to experience it. There is so many towns and cities that literally developed and were built for the purpose of the factory. My town, started in 1949 with the founding of the factory first, sparked development of the town which expanded up to the 1990s when the war started, a town of 20,000 people and almost all of the 20,000 people worked in the town factory in three shifts. EVERY small town had a factory with most of the town working in it. Now imagine the bigger cities. I mean there are industrial zones that employed over 50,000 people, go see "Energoinvest", "TAS", "FAMOS" from Sarajevo - so many huge factories just from one city. There is a company called "IMT" from Belgrade - tractors. 90% of the tractors you will see in ex-yu countries even to this day are IMT. They still work because the quality is so pristine. This period of "communist" yugoslavia was the only time in history that this area of the world was developed, where we had our on technologies, we manufactured everything ourselves with the quality being equal or even better than the US or USSR at that time, the military was strong, free healthcare, free education - quality education above all. The country even allowed you to study abroad. The country invested massively into sports, with the 1984 winter olympics being hosted in Sarajevo. Sports are still a huge part of our society. Ex-yu countries still have sportsmen that are some of the best in the world. Yugoslavia was always in the top 5 in most sports. The passport was at that time one of the strongest in the world due to it's neutrality between the east and the west. The 1980's saw record numbers in manufacturing and technology. I mean, we developed and manufactured TV's in color before Sony. 3rd in the world in ship construction. Anything you could think of, we manufactured it. The idea was self sustainability. I mean go talk to older people in a bigger city like Sarajevo. That's where you'll find out about yugoslavia. The internet is filled with data mostly written by people from the west who really have no idea what life here was like. Don't take that as an insult, it's just a fact. Cities expanded, and a factory worker would apply for an apartment in the new buildings. They would get the apartment for free. They would take a few dinars(currency) of your paycheck, about a pack of cigarettes worth. That's it. At that time a pack of cigarettes was like a dollar. So many benefits. People could actually own land, farmers had a nice life. Agriculture was strong. See "Podravka" a company for food. My point is, unemployment was NOT a problem in yugoslavia, 100%. Thank you.
My paternal side of the family was living in abject poverty not too far from Austria because the socialist centralized system did not issue development to anything that wasn't a city or industrial section. They had nothing in stores and lived in squalor. Whereas my mother's side, in a highly populated town, had enjoyed government benefits and a decent living standard.
In 70s there was enormous rise off living standards that was for sure not realistic ,my grandfather who was just worker in factory bought in 70s 3 new cars (2 cars and van ) and build new big house ,all with one salary because my grandmother did not work ..from early 70s rise off living standard was enormous but it all stoped in 1980 so in 80s there was like stagnation,there was no rise off standard ,living standard was still good but fall compare to 70s
You must be joking, my grandparents and mother and Father lived in complete poverty, in the village, no running water in the shack where they lived, had to get water from the nearest river for themselves and cattle and livestock that they had to survive. Not sure which country your talking about? Yugoslavia was a S/ hole to live in. Why do you see a large Croatian, Bosnian diaspora around the world.
@@markokrezo1377 I can smell Croatian nationalist after just few words so its f pointless to waste my time but will say few words ..there were some poor vilages in Bosnia and few other parts off Yu but even in that poorest villages they had running water so just make things up or talk before WWII. Also Croats and Bosnias moved abroad after 1991..after end off Yugoslavia so you arguments is total bullshit ..Croatia had 4.8 milion peole in 1991..now it has 3.8 milion so it lost more then 25% off people AFTER END OFF Yugoslavia,it had 3.8 milion n 1948 so it gained 1 milion during Yugoslavia and lost 1 milion after end off Yugoslavia. So just talk total crap like every nationalist
@@markokrezo1377 He's right though, my grandfather was feeding a family of four, wife, had a car, summerhouse in the mountain and went to seaside holiday twice a year. Single earner in the family. 1970's were GREAT in Yugoslavia.
@@chanunceybillups1212 That all o.k for those families that did well under communism but how about all the people who had their families houses/apartments and other property (farm land) stolen after 1945. Stealing private property that people worked hard for isn`t a good foundation for a state.
@@northernstar4811 Communists had a formula to assign square meterage per family member. If richer families had bigger homes, they were assigned a tennant since Nazis and Allies destroy hundreds of thousands of homes across Yugoslavia. That was stopped after '60s.
Yugoslavia sort of got it right in theory at least, mainstream Marxist literature views small entrepreneurs, small business owners who work themselves, not as members of the Capitalist class, but as 'self-employed' (aka Petit-Bourgiousie), though they often have a few people working for them, they are seen as part of the working class, that by no means would have to vanish under Socialism. Socialists should actually support them in their struggle against those big multinational enterprises. That's still the view of various parties in Europe. Collectivization was a policy created by hardliners, nowhere in Marx' work is this being advocated
In theory socialism works, in practice in doesn't. I lived through it in YU and I'm extremely happy that it is over. The reality of Yugoslav socialism is that in 1986 it had more political prisoners than there were in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland taken together (google Helsinki report / Human rights watch for YU 1986). The economy was collapsing, there was no gas, no electricity, huge inflation, huge unemployment, etc. After fall of communism in eastern Europe, Milošević's Yugoslavia was the last remaining communist regime in Europe (Miloševič played the war game to disrupt attention of the masses and to keep in power, just like what Putin is doing now).
@@PeterKese all these things you mentioned can occur and we have seen in hyper-capitalist or fascist countries. The economy of Chile broke down when hyperliberal policy was introduced under Pinochet. Philipines is a hypercapitalist country where people starve and live in dumps, in trash, same with South Africa in the past.. That's why I begun with "they had it right in theory" in reality things can play out different. Second point, a lot of Socialist nations not only started off as former third world colonies, but also endure strict trade- embargo's or sanctions by richer Western countries. And even with that in mind they managed to organise a reasonable workable society. Cuba for example has a high level of education and healthcare, but is still a poor country, well if you look at the embargo's, no Western countries trade with them, so they'vd not been able to rise wellbeing for their citizens since the 1980s, still no one has to be homeless or starve there. So you need to take into account the specific history and circumstances.
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Just to clear one thing: Yugoslavia had about the opposite situation of embargo's or economic sanctions. Due to it being unaligned in the cold war, it had quite a unique position of being able to trade with both blocs. Many companies made good business by building tech products using western components (integrated circuits, etc.) and selling it to the east (CCCP, China) and to the unaligned (India, Iraq, etc.). Still, the unique socialist management style and incompetent government economical policies managed to mostly ruin even that, especially after the communist politics and intelligence services tried to get involved. The level of incompetence was just appalling.
@@PeterKese yes I'm aware of Yugoslavia's position they had, and you know far more in detail than I do, but like you said: "socialism doesn't work" well, was it "socialism" or was it the incompetent partyleaders that messed things up? All the time we hear Venezuala is screwed up "because of socialism", while a country like Norway is as or more 'socialist' then Venezuela in its policy, and Norway is reportedly the most succesful nation on earth. In reality incompetence runs through all political ideology, I mentioned a couple of Liberal failed states, well is that Liberalism, or are the leaders incompetent or corrupt? Chances are it is exactly that
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 yep Norway is more socialist today, even then Serbia in Yugoslavia was. Only Slovenia and Croatia in YU had real workers-self management and real industrial planning (de-centralized one). More socialism, more wealth. Peter Kese is idiot.
Self management is a fantastic concept, if only as a concept - the workers are joint owners of the company and have the motivation to invest because they share excess profits in the form of summer vacations, winter vacations, higher salaries, additional leave days. Unfortunately, in practice things are not as they are on paper .
I am a great fan of the Cold War and this is a particularly good edition. I am not sure that your thesis that the horrible collapse was rooted in Tito and Market Socialism. It seems to me much more the heritage of Yugoslavia being from the beginning being a hodge-potch of different nationalities and entities that were forced together by outsiders after the First World War. After the Second World War it really was only Tito's personality and charisma that held it together - and it was those factors that held it together rather than communism and the system that was implemented. That said, Kadec's ideas which Tito did support seem to me to arrive at a successful economic and social system that could really be the ideal compromise for Europe including the UK.
Croatia started a protest in 1971 and it was repressed. Moreover, ozna - udba jumped on stage when someone broke balls in home and abroad as well. For example, Zelijko Raznatovic 'Arkan' began his path to evil as an udba agent. There is an interesting book about Arkan by C. Stewart.
It was surely a mixture of reasons but this pot of nationalities was actually not that different than it was in early Germany or Italy with very strong identities being Lombardian, Sicilian or Prussian or Bavarian or Svabian. The diference betwwn Siciaily and Lomabriad where even greater both culturally , economically even language wise. However where they forced newly formed Italian identity in Yugoslavia they did just opposite. You could not even declare as Yugoslavian until 1961. Even first name of unified country was Kingdome of Serbs Croats and Slovenians. They later change the name but accent on different ethnicities remained. Unification of Germany was in part inspired by Illyrian movement in 1835 : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_movement
@@alexd9735 Yes Yugoslavs were minority in own country ,most who declared Yugoslavs were people born from mix marriages but everyone other still declared himself same as before Yugoslavia.I thing that was biggest problem that lead to falling apart.
Great job! As a economist from Serbia I would add something about PRODUCTIVITY of companies: Even IF you had a god director of a company, and even IF this company earned profits in a market with competition, there was a problem. DEMOCRACY was used where it shoudn't. So if this director wanted to use this new profits to invest in new technology, just two workers could overvote him and vote for exemple for a pay rise insted. Through years inefficiensies cumulate, and pay rises startet to be a PISSING countest betwen workers of one company and workers from another. People had false sense of control but lost strategicall decisions. As a song from Queen say it was like that: "I want it all I want it now". Add nationalism and it was game over.
My grandpa exploited the living shit out of his company along with his coworkers by calling on all benefits and did minimal work. He was paid massively, whereas my maternal family was elsewhere in abject poverty with empty stores. Socialism truly generates equality.
True. Also there was a tradition that companies who made good profit get forced to be united with companies that always created depth because politician did not want to let a single company to went bankrupt. Despite autonomy of companies there was kind of political pression and promises to the workers to vote for it on meetings.
I don't like communism but I've always had respect for Tito considering the man was able to constantly play the east and west off against each other to protect his own country and due to the fact that despite being a communist, his nation was far more oriented towards the free market than the other communist nations were.
Excellent summary. I was born in Belgrade after Maspok. My parents always talked about 1970s and how well they lived. I do remember some of severe economic downslide towards mid to end of 80s then I ended up in the war in 90s. Good timing. I live in the US now.
My professor did talk about Maspok, he is from Serbia. He told that the government made atmosphere of fear, every body was afraid of terrorists for long time. A bit like USA after 9/11 (funny thing, bigger chance is to die in mass shooting)
@@manjelos There was an terrorist group that crossed Austrian border and kidnapped a truck in Slovenia. Whole country was on alert, Territorial defense alarmed and hunt started. Most of those terrorist were eliminated and some of defenders of Constitution were killed in that action. Yugoslavia should have bombed Austria like US would do to Mexico if such large group would be trained on their territory and sent to USA
They have more in common then other way around, the differences were not the reason why Yugoslavia disintegrated , it was Special Interest responsibility to execute their agenda, If you do not know what agenda is , just look around what going on today in the World. Yugoslavia was way ahead its time to survive in this primitive corrupted World.
@@account-369 , it was ahead of its time because its social and security system designed to work positive for most of the working class people , it was not head of the World , out there are some nations who care about their people, but not to many and those are also falling down due dark capitalism on rise - neo capitalism agenda and NWO, return of the ideology of the Feudalism.
@@account-369 Not that it was way ahead of all nations but specifically the ones in the Eastern Europe. Yes, the nationalism and dickhead politicians in the 1980s after Tito died made it collapse but Yugoslavia was prosperous because of their leader and the traits he gathered in his life.
@@account-369 1. Yugoslavia was less cruel. 2. Upon Tito's death, the responsibility for Yugoslavia laid within the hands of evil (Nationalism, Fascism, Chetniks) 3. Tito did it in four constitutions (1945, 1953, 1963, 1974) 4. Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians, Serbians, Croatians, Montenegrins, and Slovenians were all equally treated despite some minor issues such as Aleksandar Rankovic. Conclusion - Yugoslavia was communist. However, Tito opposed Stalinism therefore the Soviet-style regime was abolished in 1948 and replaced with a more appropriate communist (Titoist) regime of Josip Broz Tito with an international focus as well.
Having been born in the 1980s Yugoslavia I have to commend you on covering such a vast and incredibly complex topic with such quality. It's better than most foreign textbooks. However, two notes are in order: AFAIK there were no direct foreign investments in Yugoslavia, ever. I read notes of a meeting when Tito meet one of the Rockefellers in 1970 who asked him if Yugoslavia was to allow foreign investments and if so would their profits be available to the investor outside of Yugoslavia and he got an answer "that this should be made possible" [in the future]. The second is more of a lesser one: yes the republics each did have an institution that was called "National bank of Socialist Republic of X" but this was just a name on paper (the Communism loves those), as they could not print their own (i.e. non Yugoslav Dinar) money nor issue money by themselves (the first time this was done was (implicitly by a state owned enterprise that issued bad checks on an industrial scale) in Bosnia and then in Serbia at the end of 1980s and all other republics saw this as daylight robbery). Until then such actions were tightly controlled by the Federal National bank. Perhaps a more accurate saying would be (and this was also said in the docu in a way) that each republic was allowed to have their own banks who would get very powerful economically and basically republics would be able to control their own economies and make an important part of their own investments through their own banks. As said, this is all quite complex.
You are absolutely correct Toni. I was born in the 70s and still remember the bad checks story :) But one thing that is maybe nostalgic about Yugoslavia... I remember that people had less stuff, but a lot more hope and happiness. We have got just basic things in life, but we were so happy. Now we have everything, but that "social" component is gone. And I miss it...
Fiat invested in former Yugoslavia. They spent money, together with the Serbian government on a car factory in Kragujevac making the Zastava which was the Fiat 500, and Fiat 750 in other markets. Now that I think about it, Citroen built a factory in Slovenia too. I think they built the Ami there.
@@apscoradiales I stand corrected, you're right. There were car factories in Slovenia with direct investments from Citroen and Renault (Cimos in Koper (they also built DS and GS there) and IMV in Novo mesto (Renault 4)) where the state was just the major stakeholder. I've also read about some other Slovenian companies that were wholly owned by foreign German investors since at least the end of the 1960s. So there definitely were at least some direct foreign investments in Yugoslavia.
Ive just visited Slovenia and people still talk positively about Tito. There is even a large lettering of Tito at Nova Gorica right on the border to Italy
Tbh Tito created their country so why wouldn't they? They took everything they can get and gave middle finger to 'brotherhood and unity'. A true role model in opportunism.
@@Svemirsky Slovenia was paying into the common Yugoslav moneypot much more than it was taking out. In fact, when they and Croatia left, the rest pretty much fell apart within a year.
@@mg4361 ah yes the moneypot argument. Funny how that works - without Kingdom of Serbia it probably never would have existed in the first place. Same goes for Croatia. Maybe give some credit to where credit is due.
@@Svemirsky Croatia woudnt exist without "kingdom of serbia" ? Are you delusional or just didnt learn history? Or most likley,you learned history that fits your petty serbian nationalist agenda
Yeah, their Basketball team was supposedly top notch. Probably couldn't beat the Dream Team in their prime, but they were the next best team in the world from what I gathered.
hi, writing to you from a parallel present - just want you to know we're all perfectly fine, the health is great, the economy is great, we are happy, proud of who we are, and very optimistic about the future
Yugoslavia was severely underrated.. Calling it a 'dictatorship' is too simplified and bad faith. Just because a country rotates leaders from 2 major parties very 4 years both financed by the oligarchy doesn't make it ideal, in fact these governments have normalised non-accountability.
It’s not only about that, in usa there’s freedom of press , in Yugoslavia there isn’t , in Yugoslavia you had no right to criticize Tito, there was a state funded cult of personality around Tito , who purged any political opposition he could find. Living conditions in Yugoslavia were better than let’s say Albania or Romania, but don’t make it seem like it was an ideal place
Don't forget that Slovenia and Croatia have always been much more connected to western realities like the republic of Venice and the Austro-Hungarian empire, while Serbia has always watched eastwards, Moscow. And actually Slovenia and Croatia are members of the EU and have got € in their pockets.
@Nikola S. Yes, Serbia became independent from the Turkish empire and it supported the panslavic movement. Don't forget that Russia intervened in 1st world war as an ally of Belgrade. France supported the Karadjordjevic's kingdom after the 1st world war, yes, because Italy, both its liberal version and the fascist regime, wanted to take over parts of the kingdom.
@Nikola S. The Medieval Serbian state was never a vassal of Bulgaria, several Serbian lords during the tenure of the Principality of Serbia were vassals of the Bulgarian Empire, but that is it, whereas the combined time that the Medieval Serbian state had spent as a vassal of Hungary and the ERE is but several decades. Both Duklja and the Nemanjic Serbian state were regional powers, the latter being an ever-expanding state that slowly but surely overpowered the Second Bulgarian Empire in the 13th, and the ERE in the 14th century, both sought to prevent that at Velbazhd, which dramatically failed and ushered the Serbian Empire during which Serbia was the most powerful state in SE Europe, even the Lazarevic and Brankovic successor states were regional powers and the only true threat to Ottoman Expansion on the peninsula in the late 14th, and throughout the 15th century. the Serbian state exerted influence in the Kingdom of Bosnia and the Duchy of Herzegovina, the southeastern Adriatic coast, and even in Wallachia and Moldavia, I suggest reading Stefan Staretu's work on the matter. Regarding Bulgaria, the Despotate of Vidin was originally Serbia's vassal during the reign of Milutin, and the Tsardom of Bulgaria was the Serbian Empire's vassal during the tenure of Dusan and his son.
@Nikola S. Except Serbia, unlike Bulgaria and Greece, never lost a single battle in the First Balkan War and liberated the largest territory from Ottoman rule. Macedonia was granted as restitution by the European Powers because of the reversal of Serbia and Montenegro's conquest of Ottoman Albania, and every rising power in human history has expanded at the expense of their rivals, the problem is that the power vacuum was filled by Serbia AFTER the ERE and Bulgaria, who had plotted against Serbia, had disastrously failed at subduing Serbia at Velbazhd, the dirt-farmer plot had failed, and history is proof of it. Comparing Serbia to NATO-propped Ukraine is senseless given that Serbia was not waging war and shelling itself for 8 years, or worse, invading Austrian territory, Serbia was invaded under false pretense by Austria-Hungary, who then proceeded to lose all three of its early battles against Serbia, and had to retreat west of the river Drina, and had even involved Germany in the war to prevent Serbia from rushing them in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unlike Bulgaria, which invaded without a declaration of war, the Serbian army did not just survive its retreat through Albania, it managed to play a pivotal role in the southern Front, and has not lost a single battle from 1916 onward. That is the opposite of post-Maidan Ukraine, and the opposite of Bulgaria, whose post-First Balkan War role in history was that of a stooge, as witnessed in World War II, and when Bulgaria refused to join Yugoslavia after they allowed their president to be assassinated by Soviet Union.
Yugoslav economy was brought down to it's knees when Paul Walker hiked the rates on USD to stop inflation in the USA. Suddenly the country could not service it's foreign debts and a full blown economic crisis developed in the eighties. Hyperinflation destroyed the standard of living, the people got mighty pissed off and turned to nationalism which was offered to them as an, obviously fake, solution. Much of the borrowed money was wasted on the army, rather than being invested productively. This created a paradox: the army, which was supposed to defend the country, became much too powerful and independent minded, a sort of a state within a state, and played an incredibly destructive role. This was largely due to the army falling under Serbian control during the eighties and acting as a de facto Serbian army in the nineties. While the local populace, never famous for it's brightness, cheerfully embraced nationalism and started killing their neighbors with unfettered enthusiasm, the question remains who exactly pushed nationalism so incredibly aggressively in the 80s, after four decades of "brotherhood and unity". Was it all home grown or was it, and to which extent, aided by the malign foreign services?
In general a good, basic introduction to Yugoslavia for someone not knowing anything about the area. To delve into it deeper would take a long time. It was more a benign dictatorship than anything else and changed from decade to decade. The lj in Kardelj is pronounced more as an English l than a Croatian or Serbian j. Nevertheless keep up the good work.
If you wanna know what happened in the 90`s I recommend "NATO In The Balkans: Voices Of Opposition" by Sean Gervasi, former economic adviser in the Kennedy Administration who resigned in protest of US invasion of Cuba, and the man who broke the story about US support for Apartheid, as a member of UN commission.
@@GhostshadowShadowghost Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen...The same pattern which is not working for NATO in former Ukraine, because Russians read this book years ago.
Fascinating video! I have been long interested in digging down on aspects of Yugoslavian socialism and this video renewed that interest. I thought the video had a sophisticated approach to the Yugoslavian model. It was clearly flawed, but not nonredeemable. I have always been jaundiced towards market socialism, but other policies like self-management seemed in need of more exploration and development. I have always wondered what might have happened in the West, had some real attempts at self-management, if it had gained more attraction here. I was not surprised to see Tito and the elites, in the end, could not stand the challenge to their power. Important as efficiency, increased productivity, logistics, lower capital costs, etc. are to any business (East, West, State Communist, Capitalist, Stalinist or whatever some partisan politico says their loved/hated worldview is) do not kid yourself, CONTROL is paramount. When push comes to shove any elite will choose control. Sad to see that Tito did not have the vision and determination to really and truly do what it would have taken to send the former Yugoslavia into a more democratic and freedom oriented direction. It would have been interesting to have seen and visited. Again, great video!! Thanks, folks! 😊
Tito was a corrupt totalitarian leader. There was no way he would and didn’t see genuine capitalism to take charge as he would be out of a job. Lots of “people” where “MIA” as they weren’t interested in joining the communist party structure and system. If you want to know what general Tito was like, read the letter he sent to Stalin, when Stalin tried to assistant him on several occasions, he was a real bad ass. And this is coming from a Bosnian Croatian descendant.
In 1980. I was in my early 20's, and I meet young American journalist on the sea side.He asked me:"Do you think now after Tito's death, Yugoslawia will become really democratic state?" I wasn't involved in politic, and my answer was just a presentiment:"Here on Balkan democracy means civil war." Yugoslawia had very problematic legacy from WW2, and the wars in 90's were just second half-time of civil war during 40's. There's anecdote about conversation between 3 intelectuals from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.First one said:"If some foreign country attack us, we will be united like one man!" The second reply:"Yes indeed, but what if nobody attack us!?"
@@markokrezo1377 Corrupt? How? Well, he did enjoy some villas like in Dubrovnik or the island of Brioni, his house in Belgrad tough was not so much impressive, was looking like average high middle-class house in the US. Everything what he "had" was belong to the federation and after his dead state did take it. If he would be so corrupt his children, grand children, wife and so on would be still have some wealth left. Instead of this they just went to school and start pretty normal career as every body else
Good video. One tip is to add text when you say important things, for example when you say the three pillars, you should highlight words on the screen "Socialism", "Market" and "Self management". It's easier for the human brain to remember stuff when we hear it and see it at the same time. Thanks for making this video. Hvala!
Aleksandar Rankovic was a Serb nationalist first, then later a communist. Same can be said about many Serb politicians at that time, the dream about Greater Serbia was very much alive till they started to attack close to every single ex-Yugoslav state and start the process of genocide and mass rapes, primarily in Bosnia but also Kosovo and Croatia to a lesser extent
@@allanhouston22 NR Hrvatska/PR Croatia 15.11.1945. Country Commision for war crimes Done in the Independent State of Croatia during WW2 has stated that more than 700 000 Serbs were killed in Jasenovac
The video is a bit too devoid of nuanced view that is required for Yugoslavia. You've portrayed the politics of Yugoslavia as basically a fight between Kardelj and his liberal prowesterner nonaligned autonomists against Ranković centralizer prosoviet Serbian nationalists, but both of them were antisoviet, Ranković was more Yugoslav and Kardelj was more Slovenian nationalist, Kardelj was an economic and state reformer and had little interest in foreign policy. Guys like Dapčević and Popović were the ones pushing for west and nonalignment, not Kardelj. Kardelj wasn't even liberal, Popović was pushing for liberalism.
The first video I watched on your channel and it's great! Me being from Croatia, born in the 80's I can tell you that the ordinary people, workers were more happy than today, when I was a kid there was a sense of hope and prosperity among the people, which is rare unfortunatelly in Croatia these days. The thing that destroyed Yugoslavia in the end was nationalism and it still plagues the former countries to this day, but I am hopefull that future generations will be wiser in this regard.Keep up the good work and all the best in the coming year. Cheers
good thing u aint a croat tho, even if you were born here, we didnt particularly enjoy being second class citizens in serbias 'greater serbia' plan. i hate when people mask any sense of love of culture or country as extreme nationalism. we croats are very happy with our independence contrary to what you said, and grew tired of serbs leaching off us and slovenia for everything all whilst getting nothing in return. the ACTUAL death of yugoslavia was the cause of tito's death, not nationalism, and his failure to appoint a worthy successor (thankfully he didnt because communism is a cancer), which in turn created a power struggle and serbs being the strongest and most influential group, wanted to own all of yugoslavia under their flag which they attempted to achieve by force but thankfully failed. nationalism is what saved the rest of yugoslavia from being imprisoned under serb control, which as a croat, is a damn good thing that didnt happen.
Tito was a full bred opportunist. During WW1 he was an avid supporter of der kaiser, and participated the austro-hungarian invasion of Serbia. Later on he was quick to realise where the wind blew from, and adapted accordingly. The cold war neutrality was just one part of that.
Love your channel! I was born in Yugoslavia, but I can't recall much from it, however I can very well remember it's end and the aftermath. Since this was an economic perspective more than a political I will also only focus on that part of the aftermath of Yugoslavia. Many great things and achievements were made. But, those things would have happened if Yugoslavia was a market economy or there was no Yugoslavia at all. There are many old traditions (workers professionalism most importantly) that were ruined during the socialism era and the consequences are still present and will remain present until some generations remain. Most importantly is that bad habits are not passed on to new generations. The overall legal and judicial systems of all countries that came out of Yugoslavia (and Yugoslavia as well when it existed) are swamped with the legal mess of community ownership which are holding up the current progress. Not only did Yugoslavia had many foreign investments, but also made a lot of credit at foreign financial institutions which made the Yugoslav economy run. My stance is that the period of 1945 - 1990(1995) was a missed opportunity to grow much more than Yugoslavian economy did. Most peoples lives improved during those times, I will not deny that, but the (economic) system was not sustainable and had to collapse.
@@howilearned2stopworrying508 But then again, would that growth be equitably distributed? If you want a US without a federal government, look at Brazil in the days of the Old Republic. Do you want a cabal of rich states rule over the country and thr only economy be whatever those states make?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 I saw venezuelan collapse being extremely narrow elite on top and then it collapses to sorta communism type kleptocracy/incompetency and absolute poverty... china seems to be on same path now despite being nicely capitalistic for couple decades helped by US
For people who are old enough to remember Socialist Yugoslavia, it is still hard to understand that in a "democracy" people are expected to be homeless, die of hunger and curable illnesses just because they are poor. You could be poor in socialism, but you would still have a home, enough to live on, free healthcare and education right up to university level. Children of low income families were even entitled to free holidays at the sea and the mountains. You even had limited right to criticize the regime. Of course if you constituted any serious threat to the establishment, you would be dealt with. But ordinary people could say whatever they wanted, as long as they respected Tito himself. Main problem was that all real power was concentrated not in the institutions but in the Communist Party. And when communism collapsed all across Europe - so did the real government of the country. Disguised as democrats - nationalists took over. Many of them ex-communists. In every republic the new "democrats" took over the infrastructure and the resources of the Communist Party. Privatization and market-economy meant that they will now own everything that used to "belong to the people". That is the real reason why the country broke up along "national lines" - so that the nationalist could grab power and property. It's good to be the king - even in a much smaller, weaker, poorer country.
Great video!!I remember as a kid visting family on vacation to then Yugoslavia...my family is from Macedonia, people traveled freely, made money overseas and were able to build houses etc... my grandparents lived well, it wasnt drab like people think of the old Soviet union.. it wasnt perfect, but better than other places at the time... i also remember cockta..Macedonia though has always been generally more poorer than places like Slovenia or croatia....
@@Ashguy733 Let's also mention that Rankovic was an anti-semite towards the Albanian population. Until the 1960s, a period of unrest in Kosovo was present and Rankovic was for violence and genocide against Albanians. At that point, Rankovic was a Chetnik because he disrespected a non-Serbian culture. Rankovic also opposed the recognition of the Bosnians as well as the Muslim population in general. As a result, Tito removed Rankovic in 1966 and had him prosecuted for advocating for Greater Serbian Hegemony which was true given his crimes committed against the Brotherhood and Unity. Upon his death in 1983 and funeral, Rankovic became a prominent anti-Titoist figure among the Chetniks who opposed Tito and the Brotherhood and Unity.
@@austria-hungary4981 Id say it was more his opposition to the self management policies and reforms that Kardelj put forth and it impeding the formulation of those reforms, along with Tito's distrust and paranoia of Ranković's intentions along with his fears of a Serbian Hegemony, along with Jovanka consistently convincing him the Serbs were after him that sealed his fate. The rumors of his takeover after and before Tito's death after 1965 also permeated this suspicion. The fact he was treated as a head of state at the delegation dinner in the Soviet Union that took part in the 23rd Congress by the CPSU and praised as the future president by the Yugoslav delegation didn't help either along with the rumors of a coup d'etat with his meetings with a CPSU delegate Suslov in Warsaw only enraged Tito. Also contrary to him being a Chetnik, many Serbs hated him because of his participation in the arrest of Draža Mihailović, however he was praised as a guardian of Serbian interest. He actually had a weak presence in the Serbian League since 1965 that had a liberal trend of opposing internal enemy elements and in 1966 exploited a session of the CC to condemn the hostile attitudes of leading politicians of the republic to reforms and were in favour of younger cadres taking their positions in fear of a resurgence of national phenomena occurring in Serbia. By this time Tito cut off ties with Ranković. Bakarić who in 1964 applauded UDBA's 20th year anniversary, was with Tito's consent created speeches blaming the climate of suspicion in Yugoslavia on the organization and specifically Ranković. The CC of the Slovenian League also expressed such criticisms and fear of Serb Nationalism. Essentially Tito orchestrated a plot which Kardelj later admits that the Executive Committee acted against Ranković as a body with Ivan Krajačić, and Milan Misković (Federal Secretary of Internal Affairs) and Ivan Misković (Chief of Military Intelligence involving the interception of UDBA activities surrounding the Reforms put forth by the Eighth Congress, particularly the recording of conversations, open threats towards high officials into boycotting reforms. Specifically a rotation reform in which no official could occupy the same post for more then 2 years that would begin in 1967 in which radical administration would take place in which 38,000 officials would be replaced when turnover would take place. Tito of course being exempt from this, Ranković was not, but was not ready to renounce his vice presidency of the SFRY and his appointments in the LCY. To Kardlej, Bakarić and Tito this was unacceptable for fear of a Serb Hegemony. Hence a chain of events was starter by Edo Brajnik, Slovene deputy secretary of Internal Affairs that asked for a meeting with the Executive Committee to discuss one item of on the agenda: state security in Belgrade. This started a private investigation by Ivan Krajačić and two Croatian police experts to investigate and examine the homes of Tito and other prominent individuals in which bugs were found and one in particular from Tito's house connected to Ranković's house. However, these measures were years earlier Tito had authorized the installation of these bugs in the residence of his comrades and that Kardelj had also authorized this activity in his office. Ranković agreed that such methods should stop, but questioned the veracity of the accusations. Tito then proposed a formation of a Commission, (Crvenkovski Commission) charged with an overview of the security department and its methods. It composed itself of 6 members of each republic. What was uncovered and presented to the Executive Committee was a safe found at the Deparrment of Foreign Affairs containing files with numerous intelligent reports about numerous ambassadors and secretaries of state which were filed with Ranković and UDBA's Chief Stefanović notes. It was concluded by commssion's findings that during the Split with Stalin UDBA had done good work and was in order, but after the introduction of self-management the organization was unable to resist the temptation to place itself above society by trying to control the party and the state and also a series of economic enterprises in order to direct investments. It became a monopoly of individuals while its leader Ranković acquired political significance. Tito from then on took the threat of a coup seriously as UDBA had access to tanks and weapons, and had guards posted at Radio and TV stations around Yugoslavia, mobilized the police and even was organized an alternative transport out of Belgrade, due to fear of kidnapping. The Fourth Plenum laid the charges against Ranković - tolerating illegal activity of the UDBA which had tried to seize power and hinder the development of Self-Managment democracy and spying, manipulation, and spread of false information Other charges which were not made public were - massacre of Collaborationists - Outrages perpetrated against the peasants and the Cominformists Now the veracity of whether he had a coup planned is up for speculation but one of 6 members of the Crvenkovski Commission Mike Tripalo did say this "Something was clear pretty soon. The security service had a powerful position in society and depended on a small group of officials. It would be difficult to say that Ranković was preparing a coup against Tito, nearer to the truth was that he was getting ready to succeed Tito smoothly when he died." Id also like to point out that Tito was pretty apathetic towards the Albanian question in Kosovo and Bosnian question in general.
Yugoslavia, when the Croats (Josip Broz- "Tito") or Slovenes (Edvard Kardelj) were more or less controlling it was doing o.k as soon as the Serbs (Milosevic) took over it turned into...
One important reason for Yugoslavia downfall was suppression of Yugoslav identity. A lot of people, especially from ethnically mixed families felt like Yugoslavs, yet you could declare as such until 1961 which was too late. Census in 1981 had more than million Yugoslavs rather than Serbs, Croatians Slovenians etc. However this concept should have been promoted from get-go and not suppressed. Imagine newly formed Italy or Germany where you could not declare as German or Italian and you are actually forced to declare as Lombardian or Bavarian respectively. Same with language. Instead to standardize and call it Yugoslavian (like Italy did) they went another route. With all of this being said, although not ideal I was blessed with opportunity to live in Yugoslavia and to experience it first hand. I just feel sorry for people from both west and east, that will never been able to understand it completely. The statement about foreign debt of Yugoslavia is plain wrong. Each of current states has today much higher foreign debt than whole of Yugoslavia, of course adjusted for inflation.
You'll get this in the U.S., too, since people can sometimes identify with their state moreso than the country as a whole. It's certainly not comparable to Yugoslavia, but there is quite a bit of autonomy within U.S. states, and as political disagreements boil over here, it's likely state governments will grow stronger as they more often pick and choose which federal laws to abide by.
It's never the size of the debt, but it's your ability to pay it off, yu went thru several inflation cycles where they had to erase few zeros from their banknotes, even in everyday use one dinar was called a thousand - as it was before the new banknotes, 20 or 100 dinars note was called 20 or 100 thousands instead dinars, so yugoslavia while struggling to pay off its debts in attempt to save foreign currency to fight the inflation and fund some megalomaniac vanity projects especially concerning its military infrastructure, always needed some new loans to stay affloat, so it was different in that regard.
@@dannyboy-vtc5741 true that, there was a project for underground military base with in a mountain in Bosnia. It was different times, cold war and shit, looked rational to someone at that time. Now I am not by any means expert on finances but I would argue on current states debt vs ability to pay actually still being in favor of YU even if you take worst possible snapshot from just before the war. Could the debt vs real gdp be indicator of this?
@@alexd9735 i don't agree that yu had better conditions of paying off debts, but it depends a lot under what conditions the loan was given, for instance when the west started pumping money it was really cheap or completely free as financial help, later not so much, but it differed a lot, depending from whom and under which conditions, also republics borrowed money on their own and big firms too, but those were mostly business loans that were paid off with bo probs, but federal institutions had all sorts of loans for different purposes and from different sources. And yes gdp plays a big role in this, but also the credit status of the country, and yu had pretty poor credit status toward the end, which meant expensive capital. Cro, for an example as i know the situation here last few times of change of credit status was everu time the new record in that sense that we never had that status before, and unilke serbia atm that needs to borrow from arabs of beg the imf for cash to sustain the current state budget affloat, we can get cash cheaper than ever in our history, and the thing is we don't need it because for any infrastructure project or some restructure in society or agriculture abd so in, basically for whatever we need a lot of cash, we need a good project that will show where the money goes and that it will be well spent and we get at least half and up to 85% free cash from the eu to use it, and hence you don't need a new loan and pay off your old loans and your credit rate is constantly rising, and that's good because if you would need a lot od money suddenly you would be able to get it cheap, but you learn not to borrow it just like that just to cover your latest expences because it's stupid when you didn't even fully used everything you could have from free eu money. It's a circle, downward spiral in economic terms is a circle, more you borrow more you need to borrow further, like it was in the ex yu, and now serbia faces because they ruined their energy sector that provided them with cash before instead of eating hige amounts bow, and many other wrong decisions. Same is with upward spiral, lesa you borrow less you need to borrow, same applies to private citizens and their credit cards and other not favourable loans. The difference is the eu, not as much as handing out money, although we get more out than we pay in, but more because you can have money if you soend it wisely and know exactly what will yu get from it, in economis like the ex yu or now serbia and similar states a lot of the cash that comea in just disappears on top of it not being low interest, due to corruption on all levels when there's no control what you do with the money after you get it and minister buying 24 apartments in bulgaria has bo problems and stays a minister even in the next gov and he's not nearly the worse case, so it depends on many things.
Like some other postwar European nations, US movie industry could not take out the profits of showing their films in Yugoslavia which were frozen. The studios would spend their frozen funds on production in those countries. In 1969, MGM made Kelly's Heroes in Vizinada, Croatia. One of the main reasons is that Tito allowed the production to use its massive American-Aid supplied army's tanks. Oh, and they had a war ravaged town (which they intended to simulate a French village) that the production company could insert their soon-to-be destroyed buildings for the film. Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland (who almost died there), Don Rickles and others spent months there. Future director John Landis was an assistant on the shoot. Says John, "My wife is always saying I should write a book on my Kelly's Heroes experience as it was so nuts and I was at the perfect age, 18, to appreciate it." It would be fun to see him write a making-of Kelly's Heroes, but I would enjoy more his writing of his experience of an American film production spending months in living in communist Yugoslavia. I think that the encounter of two different cultures would make a great story and makes great history.
For those who don't understand why Tito purge so many nationalists, the reason is Nationalist were Hitler supporters during the WW2 and the other reason is Nationalist politician from Balkans uses let's have a own country rhetoric, because that way he can become sultan of the country and steal tax money like he is in candy land. Maybe you want to believe, maybe you won't, but after 90s ex-YU countries are ruled this way with no exception. If Tito didn't happened most of the people in Yugoslavia will be farmers and work in the agriculture sector and drive on bad roads, not because US or other countries won't give money to modernize Yugoslavia after the WW2, but because those politicians in power (if it wasn't Tito) will steal the money for themselves, just like they do for the past 30+ years. Love him or hate him, he was at the right time and place in History to modernize Yugoslavia
This is a stupid argument giving the fact that all European countries progressed in postwar period. Just look at Greece, Spain or Portugal. They had similar standard of living before ww2 and in 1970/80 they were two times richer than SFRY
@@branimirkolarov3493 Stipe Mesic said in one interview - I propose to Milosevic - let's all have independent countries, but we stay in economical union Milosevic said : No There was proposition in the 80s Yugoslavia to be part of EU, but politicians said NO You can't compare nationalistic politicians with politicians from Greece, Spain or Portugal because those politicians are also corrupt, but they also think for the future of their country and their economy, unlike nationalistic politicians from Yugoslavia. The last 30 years are really good indicator what wound happened to Yugoslavia if it wasn't for Tito No highways, No industry and everything is corrupt to the bone just like today
@@JosifovGjorgi Since you have started talking about nationalistic politicans you should know that almost all those politicans came from League of Communist, just look at Milošević in 1986 when he criticized SANU memorandum for being a "great serbian idea", while in later years he became man who wanted to ''unite the all Serbs". All those politicans came into party just to rip benefits from it and when it collapsed they started blame each other for their own failures (they stoped talking about brotherhood and unity and had started talking about their nations being in danger). Spain is also in intresting situation where all nations pretty much hate each other, but that state didn't collapsed while Czechoslovakia did. All socialist federations fell. And yes, those highways would be build since they had started to be build in late 1930s, hell even more would be build.
@@branimirkolarov3493 well, there weren't any political party other then Communists, so nationalists where waiting for a chance as communists. And the highways, maybe but they will be finished in the 90s, because of corruption and less people to work on, because most of them will migrate to better places like USA, just like Tesla did and many more smart people wound follow the lead.
My paternal side of the family was starving in a rural village in the developed part of Croatia during this time due to the socialist system and its barring of private businesses and economic centralization that had left non-city areas impoverished.
If this isn’t talking about the 1951 drought, which the US sent hundreds of thousands of tons of aid to fix which worked, I’m calling total bullshit on this story.
The story of Yugoslav factories, first-hand: "We have everything, a new building and production hall that the state gave us, a new fleet of vehicles that "Zastava" gave us, solid production, 2 times more workers than we need, absolutely everything. We just don't have the money and we don't know how to earn it." And that's it, a short ballad about self-governing socialism that is still there, in the dreams of the population. For a very short time, they lived very well with very little work, and such ideas hardly leave an empty head. Dreams are one thing, reality is quite another. Especially the economic one.
@@zb7621 oh yes, literally no one else has ever used nefarious means to get rid of rivals, people in their way... only russians. things like this have never been perpetrated in the global south on behalf of the US, UK, or other European nations
Yugoslavia was doomed from the day one. All republics were saying that Yugoslavia was a dungeon but reality is that Serbia did had worst time during that federation. Yugoslavia was created that Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia would one day be separated countries. It united victim's and butchers. If that didn't happen, after the WWI, Serbia and Italia would then be neighbors in today's Croatia. Anyhow, the way Yugoslavia fell apart, only shows the level of hate and primitivism between people.
my grandpa was yugoslav german from vojvodina, his house is still standing, where he was expelled from in 1945. but very interesting summary. very good, that you mentioned the role of the economy so broadly, because most american historians say: yugoslavia broke up, because serbs became nationalists and shooted innocent people. there is a pre-text. the only thing i never got, concerning the policy of the us towards sfrj when the coutry broke up in 1991 is this- yugoslavia annually hold meneuvres with us- army instructors, yugoslav army´s standard-weapon was the m-16, not the ak-47, despite there was a yugoslav makeover of the ak, but the soldiers were eqipped with the m-16.... but when the country broke up, the us took the german anti-yugoslav position after a while. this is not the behavior of an ally.
Great video. It is interesting that even after so many wars and the partition of Yugoslavia, most folks I've spoken to, still have appreciation and even nostalgia for Tito.
There were many who lived through Stalin that became nostalgic for his rule. Over time and with sympathetic historians much of the evil of even the worst dictators can be overlooked in favor of a small amount of good done. Tito was a mixed bag, every bit a brutal socialist dictator but his rule did give a sense of identity beyond the ethnic tensions that usually characterize the region's politics.
@@josephahner3031 Except that Tito was nothing like Stalin. Apart from the descendants of former Nazi sympathisers, he was beloved amongst the rest of the population.
@@daeseongkim93 Nationalist? He literally united dozens of different nationalities. If he was a nationalist he would side wity Croatians as he was a Croat himself.
Interesting and entertaining video, as usual. Would you be so kind of sharing the sources used for your research? Thanks in advance, and happy holidays!
The Željava Air Base (located in a mountain) was a crazy Yugoslav communist project in which the Yugoslav communist party spent $6 billion USD to build this military project. In the end the Serbs blew it up in the 1990`s. Projects like this ruined the Yugoslav economy as this money was borrowed and had to be paid back with interest but did not generate any income it was just an ongoing cost.
Something about Yugoslavia that you can't read in news reports and official pronouncements are the underground ethnic currents. Publicly you couldn't talk about ethnicity and discrimination but in reality it was deeply institutionalized. A lot of political crisis that you mentioned also had an ethnic component with Serbs wanting centralization while other people wanting more independence. Over time, Serbs promoted other Serbs to key positions and promoted Serbian culture and Serbian view of history. Bosnjak people weren't even recognized as a group until the 1976 constitution which recognized them as Bosnian Muslims. In Bosnia the streets and schools were all named after Serb historical figures, and Serbian literally works were promoted in curriculum and on television. Even on the street Serbian nationalist propaganda was pushed with jokes depicting Bosnians, and Bosnjak people as stupid, Montenegrins as lazy, Croats were devious and Albanians as primitive and backwards. By the time of 1990s, Serbian nationalist controlled all the Yugoslav security institutions like the army and the secret police which were then turned on Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovo's Albanians.
Historically, Bosniaks are mostly Serbs and some other locals that went very closely with the ottomans and converted to their religion. And don’t be putting all dogs on Serbia for the events of the 90s. And are they really wrong about Montenegrins and Albanians? A Montenegrin has to sit down and rest after waking up 😅
Bosnians were christians slavs before Ottomans invaded, they converted to avoid pay tax or some benefits? Maybe first converts were smart people, all they wanted was to game the system while occupation lasts. Problem was occupation lasted centuries and subsequent generations started following religion for good instead of reverting back to Christianity
@@hamobu Freely was not an option under Ottoman or any Islamic occupation for that matter. There was a reason why many converted. “To have a better life” or in translation: Not to be bullied.
While traveling on holiday to Montenegro from Serbia, we were out of supply of PLAZMA cookies. When we crossed the "border" you can only buy the same cookies called DJETIC, bad copy of PLAZMA. That is what con-federalization done to Yugoslavia's market.
3:25 Cockta is miles better than Coca Cola. Still when i buy soft drink i go with Cockta, event today. EuroCrem, Kraš, Cockta, Ledo we didn't need Nutella or Coca Cola we had pretty much everything on par or better, regarding food items. But we had Coca Cola, we had western products. I was born in Yugoslavia and yes it was dictatorships in a way but we had everything i had C64, had VCR, the borders were opened, for Yugoslav passports well allmost to everywhere, but really didnt had to go we had best seas, mountains, valleys, and historical sites You could actually own property private business. The religion was not hindered, in my town there are numerous Mosques, Churches but you could not mix religion with politics that is one way to Goli Otok. Strange country was Yugoslavia, and in my childhood before war it was greatest country then war came and i was left without food, water, electricity for three years as child. That Yugoslavia deserved everything what happened to her. But we needed just beter curistamnces to split in peace.
My grandpa always speaks good about Yugoslavia as it was the best country in the world. My grandpa was Ustasa from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second world war. So must be really good country to impress one Ustasa 😂
@@agrameroldoctane_66 l am 34 yold.. l not said he is still alive but he always speaks good about Yugoslavia. Partisans gives him amnesty because he was just a regular soldier.. and in part of Herzegovina he is from everyone was ultra ustasa so they give amnesty to many better than kill complete population of Western Herzegovina 😂
whatsoever l am South African Croat.. born and rised in South Africa. l am not obsessed with nationalism and your identity and history problem there.. My parents comes to South Africa before you guys there started your hate and all that wars.. so all that really avoided me on time. l have Croatian passport and going on vacations to Dalmatia nd thats all.. l am really not a good person for your Balkan debates 😂
I lived in Yugoslavia since I was born until 1989. I loved the country and would return immediately if it ever comes to existence as it was before. I can not even compare the freedom and security I felt in comparison to my life now in Sydney. As a teenager, in 80's, I would walk at 3 AM by myself without even thinking of being robbed or raped. That was almost non existant.
Well atleast Tito was better leader than Regent Paul and King Alexander, nobody looks upon those times with nostalgia Tito was by far best leader of all ex-yugoslav nations in their history
@@WarCrimeGaming How do you know this? I know we are being lied to about what is going on right now. History of the world is bunch of lies. I can not imagine times being more wrong, corrupt, than now.
@@adnanbosnian5051 Ignoring all the evidence of that time and the fact that politics today (in West Europe and the USA at least) are far more strict on corruption than before, guess what. I also had ancestors living back then in today's Bosnia and let me tell you, pure hellhole. Children starving on the few roads that existed, outdated Infrastructure even for the time, dirty, damaged hospitals, bad salary and police so corrupt you could bribe them with a few dinar to get away with assault or theft combined with a far stricter punishments for speaking against the oh so great King. Even the 500 - 600 thousand man "strong" army was poorly equiped and badly trained. Truth is, you are living in the best of times and you should be thankful for it.
one of the greatest sources on the final years of Yugoslavia is From the Death of Tito to the Death of Yugoslavia by Raif Dizdarević, former president of the SFRJ.
I'm reminded of the (very dark) "joke" mentioned on one of the videos covering Yugoslavia (and or the balklands video) That there was the super dark and ended up true joke of "so when he Tito dies, are we gonna start shooting eachother again?" Hopefully mentioning another great channel like Rare Earth is ok, as I think if anyone is interested in history and already subscribed to all the channels and watched all the videos on the great war, world war 2, etc... Then there is a *giant* chance they'll move Rare Earth Plus it's not like stealing subscribers, just a great channel like cold war, and even if the rest of the videos aren't of interest, the Yugoslavia/balklands video is a good follow up to this video for anyone interested in what happens from and past the timeframe the coldwar video covers (and the balklands video is just a the Yugoslavia videos combined)
Are there any modern day movements in any of the former member nations to reunite Yugoslavia in any form? Thank you for this excellent episode! God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)
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Great to see a video about this subject just when I was interested in researching it! That being said, what are the sources for this video?
You do Tito dirty, the man was based
@@hello-o3i i don't think they're going to reply. they never replied to my comment either.
@@account-369 the man killed stalin, he was no puppet
Lp
Here's a weird insight: My mother used to work for one of these self-managed companies. They elected the new manager by vote, debated whether to invest, save or spend their surplus profits, whether to buy a new car or do some renovations in the offices. The whole company was no more than 20. employees. I can tell you they all traveled a lot and they got a lot of presents for New Years and women's day. The job was to do the paperwork and accounting for similarly small craftsman companies. So, when Saddam in Iraq wanted to build a network of underground bunkers, vaults, and safe houses, he hired Yugoslav companies. One of them was my mom's company. They took on the project and coordinated the planning, logistics, and work with many, many craftsmen companies and on paper, it looked like you hired one big construction company and not a myriad of small ones. The bunkers were made, and the 'pay' was I think like 3% of the whole project cost. Much later, FBI agents came to Belgrade and would go to the company to seek plans for underground facilities in order to find Saddam's hidden vaults for gold and art collections to steal it all for the oligarchs... They found all the plans since bureaucracy was tight in those decades.
Can you give a little bit more info on how the system worked?
This is fascinating! I'd love to learn more if you'd be willing to share
Interesting
@@reddude3086it didn’t. The employees would always choose to pocket profits instead of innovating/upgrading the business so advancement was stagnant.
@@reddude3086just look at the cars they made. The yugo was once imported to America and it’s regarded as among one of the worst ones ever. And they changed very little on this 70’s car all the way up until 2008
It is a tragedy that as a Croatian I had to learn this from an English speaking YT channel instead of in school.
@KiT how old are you?
Well, the nationalists wont teach you the good that Tito had done. Also keep aware that the creator of the channel mentions Yugoslavia as a dictatorship. Tito was not a dictator. Tito was authoritarian, Yes but he was a benevolent person, something You don't see in a dictator. Tito had done more good than evil (cleaning off nationalism in Yugoslavia, industrializing the nation from the ruins of Second World War, was more liberal (but not a nationalist) than an average pro-Soviet leader.
What made Yugoslavia collapse was not Communism! There was no justice in the collapse of Yugoslavia. Only betrayal and dishonor from no other than Milosevic. The disunited Yugoslavia as of today has a series of political bombs such as the pro-Chetnik Republic of Srpska in BIH which was created by the Western "Dayton" Agreement (high treason of the brotherhood and unity), formation of an illegal entity in the northern part of Kosovo (pro-Chetnik as well), the Croatian nationalism in Herzegovina (their so-called "Herzeg-Bosna"), and the undemocratic Aleksandar Vucic.
Josip Broz Tito was the one and only man who had to spend his time wisely building the Yugoslav nation, knowing that no one could inherit him and be as good as him. Tito served as a top commander of all the partisan forces in WW2 and was promoted to Marshal rank in 1943 in the second session of AVNOJ (where the Socialist Yugoslavia was born), the Western Capitalists played both sides in Yugoslavia. They helped Chetniks because of Petar II who in London openly supported Mihailovic and the crimes they committed with their ultra-nationalist Serb hegemonist ideology which was adapted in the Monarchist Yugoslavia since its inception in 1918.
If Tito was never a thing, then imagine Yugoslavia as a barely prospering state. Heavy ultra-nationalist and fascist oppression against the non-Serbian population, then after the monarchy falls, it becomes a pro-Soviet state without any form of resistance (in 1948, the Tito-Stalin ideological conflict led to the Informbiro resolution which expelled Yugoslavia from the Eastern Bloc, a turning point in the Yugoslav history and a road towards prosperity and an utopia). Even as a pro-Soviet state it wouldn't prosper and it would be far worse upon its dissolution and a bloody ethnic conflict. Yugoslavia without Tito would have been treated like a native African tribe.
We don't need Chetniks, Ustashas or the Handzhars! We want peace, unity, and our long lost Brotherhood! Together We Stand!
*Smrt Fasizmu! Sloboda Narodu!*
@@austria-hungary4981 Well said comrade.
Sad if they swept this under the rug in your country.
@@ChristopherSobieniak The reason the modern day Croatia is avoiding Tito has to do with the Croatian Spring or MASPOK (Masovni Pokret), a period of political conflict between the liberals/reformists SKH and the conservatives of SKH (Savez Komunista Hrvatske/League of Communists of Croatia), which lasted from 1967 to 1971. Tito was only involved in 1971 to suppress the movement that advocated for greater individual rights but was benevolent enough to reassure of equality for every Yugoslav in the 1974 constitution where he also introduced Albanians and Bosnians (under the name "Muslims" given the majority of them were of Muslim religion).
Among the people of the MASPOK, one such is Franjo Tudjman who ironically enough was a Croatian Partisan who fought for Brotherhood and Unity but due to his stupidity, he got himself into a conflict with Tito because all he cared was for Croats, and not other Yugoslavs.
Whether Tito liberalized Yugoslavia too much or it was just enough, being as Josip Broz Tito in his every day life was not an easy task. Tito was constantly under the pressure from Yugoslavs. Serbians advocated for centralization of the state while Croats and other non-Serbs advocated for de-centralization, the path which Tito took and used in the constitutions of 1963 and 1974 to balance powers among the republics.
However, Yugoslavia wouldn't collapse if there was a successor of Tito who was just as capable as Tito was and would maintain the Brotherhood and Unity. The one-year term presidencies that occurred after Tito's death were a minor contribution to the downfall of Yugoslavia since each president had some form of imperfection and difference.
I am from Slovenia and as a teenager at end of 70-ies I was able and afford to travel freely all over Europe. The passport was high valued and i had no problem to travel to Soviet Union, China, the USA when I was a student. The living standard was high and everyone, at last in Slovenia, owned a solid house or appartment. The university education was kind of standard and was high valued abroad. Even today, over 30 later the living standard in Slovenia is ranked as 9th compared e.g to 25th of the USA.
Communist dictatorship...hm, maybe but in the spirit of that time... but still more free than Greece, Spain, Portugal, at the same time the USA was with the "Red hunt", so different freedom, but the other perspective.
💯🎯👍😎 from Zagreb🤟💙
When I first went there in the early 80s as a backpacker traveler, I was very impressed with how nice the coastal areas and the north western areas were and how breathtaking beautiful the country was, but also surprised by how drab Belgrade and Skopje appeared to be. I only knew about the tension under the surface when I spoke to the local university students. 10 years later the country was gone.
A friend of mine did the same back then and he really liked the area for the same reasons as you.
Yeah communism is really obsessed with a veneer of equality so they tend to make building look similar, couple that with their obsession with cheap easily produced everything and you get copy and paste, drab, grey buildings. Add to that the eastern blocks heavy reliance on coal power, especially cheap but polluting Lignite (aka brown coal) that blots out the sun with overcast grey clouds most of the year and you've got a recipe for the most drab cities on the planet. That's also why the coasts were sometimes the only good looking areas: plenty of fresh air blowing in and pushing the smog out.
@@nigeh5326 there's a reason the area has been a popular vacation spot since Roman times
Well, had you not asked all those questions we wouldn't have broken up! You selfish jerk.
@@arthas640which area do you mean? The Adriatic coast or Slovenia?
A very good episode. At some point David mentioned the 1960s Yugoslav pop singers and social life in Yugoslavia, and in one of the earlier episodes he mentioned a future episode on the German punk rock scene. It would be nice if sometime in the future you guys would consider making an episode about Yugoslav pop culture, which was very specific due to Yugoslavia's position during the Cold War and its openness to Western culture. There are numerous interesting topics - partisan and Black Wave films, Yugoslav comics, and especially Yugoslav rock scene, which was, as a rock scene of a communist country and one of the most eclectic and vibrant rock scenes in Europe, a very interesting phenomena.
From the obscure electronic music, (La Card, Romanticne Boje) to the mainstream rock (Kerber is great! Igraj Sad, Nebo Je Malo za Sve, Ratne Igra, Bele Utvare), 1980s Yugoslavia had a music scene like no other. Dronemf S. and others here on RUclips have thankfully done a lot to preserve it.
@@Contrajoe Of the more famous Laibach started in 1980 and influenced whole European music scene.
I know only two things about Yugoslav pop culture. 1) Yu-Mex, 2) Turbofolk
@@juanjuri6127 Oh, it's a shame. Yugoslav rock scene, for instance, was something wonderful. From 1960s beat and rhythm & blues bands (Bijele Strijele, Crveni Koralji, Siluete, Elipse, Grupa 220), singer-songwriters (Drago Mlinarec, Đorđe Balašević), 1970s prog rock (Indexi, Korni Grupa, YU Grupa, Smak, Pop Mašina, Time, Drugi Način, Galija), jazz rock (Leb i Sol, September) and avant-garde rock (Buldožer, Laboratorija Zvuka), hard rock and arena rock (Bijelo Dugme, Parni Valjak, Atomsko Sklonište, Riblja Čorba, Kerber), heavy metal (Divlje Jagode, Osmi Putnik), punk rock (Pankrti, Pekinška Patka, KUD Idijoti, Psihomodo Pop), new wave (Prljavo Kazalište, Azra, Film, Haustor, Paraf, Idoli, Električni Orgazam, Šarlo Akrobata, Lačni Franz) and garage rock (Partibrejkers), 1980s pop rock (Bajaga i Instruktori, Crvena Jabuka, Piloti) and synth-pop (Zana, Denis & Denis, Videosex), to electronic music (Beograd) and alt rock (Ekatarina Velika), regional scenes-like the Belgrade 1970s acoustic scene (S Vremena Na Vreme) and Macedonian dark wave scene (Mizar)-Yugoslavia's unique movements, like the New Primitives (Zabranjeno Pušenje, Elvis J. Kurtovich & His Meteors) and New Partisans (Plavi Orkestar) and acts whose work was so unique that they can not be labeled, like Laibach, Disciplina Kičme and Rambo Amadeus. And the ones I mentioned here were only the greatest of greatest.
@@ostalocutanje Of the bands you listed I've heard of some but Zana is the only one I've heard a lot of. I found them to be a bit of a mixed bag. Rukuju Se Rukuju and Vejte Snegovi were good. Dodirne Me kolina on the other hand was rather grating to my ears.
I was born in 1967 in Vojvodina and have an excellent memory. I just want to say this is probably the most objective video on Yugoslavia I've ever seen. Not that there are no oversimplifications or slightly skewed views, but it's surprising how few there are. By the way, Coca-Cola appeared on the market one year after I was born (Pepsi in the early 70s) and coexisted with Cockta and other local cola-inspired concoctions for decades making it the only communist country of the sort.
Cockta still going strong here in Croatia lol (also Pipi is f-ing amazing, better than fanta by a factor of 10)
A worker's soviet was convened. There was unanimous consent to push the like button. When the subject of the subscribe button, also referred to as the bell button, schisms were found. While all agreed it should be pushed various factions, all with ties to different current leaders in government posts and from varying ethnicities, the degree of "bell pushing" was disputed. There were many proposals put forward to solve the issue. But none gained a strong enough majority support. Some factions called for it just to be pushed and to revisit the subject later. But radicals from others called in foreign allies for support of only their position and threatened a walkout which would lead to a collapse of the soviet due to failure from lacking enough representation to create a legal quorum. Others called for a general strike until the subject was finally decided. The entire situation was on the verge of becoming a spark that would ignite another revolution.
The situation was resolved when an entity known only as "Thumb" pressed Bell Button while the others were consulting with their constituents. While not a perfect solution it will do for now. We are certain that continuing along this path will absolutely not lead to civil war or ethnic cleansing by the various groups in the future. We see only peace and prosperity in perpetuity.
You won the comment section
This could be a copypasta
@@jangsoodlor There still has to be some real author
Very inspired parody, I think.
Ye
Growing up in StPetersburg, RU in the 70s we didn’t know how much more prosperous Yugoslavia was comparing to all other Warsaw Block countries. StPete had seen millions tourists from the West, because the Northern Venice, was full of world class museums, concert holes , opera/ ballet theaters and Versailles type environs. Only once I met 2 Yugoslavians from Dubrovnic, who were visiting their relatives in StPete and knew nothing about the city. For the next 5 days I was their guide through the best places, including Peterhof- Russian Versailles on the Baltic sea. They told me a lot about Yugoslavia, their unique economic structure, why they were more prosperous. And they didn’t like the Baltic sea, its blue- grey color! But most of all I couldn’t believe that Yugoslavs could freely travel to any other European country, without visa. Traveling outside of the Adriatic region within an hr or so,by car, we would hike in the Alps of Triglav.
The 1990s were hard for Slovenia, most of people didn’t want to join the EU, they knew, their lives from comfortable would go lower. They were saying:” we won’t be able to afford living in our country”. Next 20:47 came expats from GB, Germany and Belgium, buying the best properties in Portoroz and Piran. The same has been happening in Croatia with its hundreds of islands, including newly restored Dubrovnik.
My grandmother was a hotel accountant in Belgrade in 70's and early 80's. With her salary she could afford to travel around Europe frequently. As a child, she would tell me many stories from her travels. She visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, in late 70's and was fascinated by things like Borodino battle museum and Hermitage. My dad also told me stories of early 80's in Yugoslavia, eating in restaurants every day, affording seaside travel and still having plenty of money left at the end of the month. He could afford new car at that time with few months savings. This is in startling contrast to early 90's where everything fell apart and people were pushing each other to grab last loaf of bread on the shelf.
Yup MANY farmfields arent even in possetion of Croatia,Serbia,Bosnia.....ALOT is in the hands of German,France,Italy and EVEN Saudi Arabia both huge amount of agricultural land in teh balkans wich was in past more predominantly woned by German,Austria.Today in my gues estoimates around 40 to 70% of the fertile agricultural ladns in former Yu federations are owned by foreign country.
@@goranstojanov1160 It’s very sad, that beautiful Yugoslavia became a pawn of EU and other countries, that have no interest in lives of country’s people.
Yugoslavia was not a Warsaw Pact country, it did not belong to the Soviet bloc - it was non-aligned.
Until big Yugoslav international loans meant to be repaid in 80', then everything fall apart.
Supposedly, there was a worker in Yugoslavia who made a grievous on the job mistake and nearly killed somebody. It was expected this guy would loose his job. The manager decided to ask the other workers "How should we punish him?" One voice went, "Let's F _ his wife" and supposedly they laughed so hard that the worker wasn't punished.
I need this to be real so bad lmao
@@fithianmt7468 It was on R/ Yugoslavia. I have no way of knowing if it's real but I hope so lol
That worker's name? Homer Simpson
@@alexcarter8807 More like Homer Simpsović
@@Contrajoe Omer could pass
I went there in 1974 with a German girl I met on an island in Greece (my teenage years were lots of fun). When we were in Ljubljana we were in a shop. I picked up a package of cookies and declared "communist cookies", which at the time I thought very funny (please forgive me). My girlfriend did not. It was an interesting experience for me and caused me issues in getting security clearances in the years after. I was born in Washington, DC and my father worked for an Army weapons lab. So, finding myself in a communist country at that time was quite an experience. It was also interesting since I had just left a right-wing dictatorship in Greece. By the time we got to Trieste the junta in Greece had fallen.
But that socialistic country was the only such country that had Western weapons, built airbases by western standards and had secret agreement with USA to jointly fights Warsaw packt. Yugoslavia even spied for USA sending new MIGs from Hungarian defectiors for inspection
Communist cookies!!
That really made laugh - even if they didn’t at the time! 😂😂
How was Greece in the 1980s a right-wing dictatorship? Private ownership rights were TIGHTLY controlled by the centralized government. Right wing refers to decentralist economics, individualist social systems and rights to private ownership whereas left wing refers to centralist economics, public ownership and collectivist social systems, it quite literaly requires democratic actions in the market which permits personal ownership and sale and rights to ownership to quality as right wing. Nationalism is not a right or left wing element, otherwise every communist country that promoted its values of communism etc through promotion of national values, labor zionists etc would all be right wing and no country that employed centralized economics and stiffled private ownership rights (like most nationalist nations) and individual autonomy could be named right wing, nor is autocracy.
@@syfiliskerino1998 I was there in the early 1970s, not the 1980s.I don't know if that was just a typo. Let me know. I certainly saw the nationalistic fervor in Athens. I have lots of stories on that.
I think you are reacting to the term "right-wing". I have a similar reaction, but that is the terminology we are stuck with. So, I get your points.
what are you smoking?@@aurelije
I remember back in the late 1970s as a kid I owned and wore 2 pairs of Adidas running shoes made in Yugoslavia. They were of good quality too.
"Hire a commitee of workers to decide whether to press the bell button!" Ha! You got the essence of Yugoslavia, mate!
Original Cockta was built with 11 different types of herbs. Now it’s just sugar and I still prefer it more than coca cola
true to some extent, but it is not so drastically worsened... and I agree about the preference 😁
They still make Cockta, it’s delicious; we can get it in Australia, and it’s something completely different to other soft drinks
Where in Oz can you find it? I love trying things like that.
Search for it, every time I post names of shops the comment gets auto deleted, but they’re easy to find
@@pbosustow European shops around Liverpool town centre in Sydney
Cockta has a unique flavour and is the best coke that I've had a chance to taste.
@@BcroG11 Who's your dealer?
😜
Thanks very much for this video. It was thoughtful and unbiased. I was born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and I was 20 when it started to come apart. Having lived in these parts for all of my 51 years, I believe that the bane and curse of all Balkan nations is nationalism. Having banned it, Tito effectively elevated the Yugoslav nations to unprecedented heights. Now that nationalism has been back on the table for decades, the Balkan nations have resumed their downward spiral, which is painful to watch.
If Tito banned nationalism, how come it came back?
@@guyguy7634 it came back after he died
@@guyguy7634 as mentioned in the video, the country became too dependent on Tito, and once he was gone, so was the glue that held things together. Either through sheer personal charisma and crude implementation of authority.
Tito put his fellow Yugoslavs on path of destruction, instead of uniting people(like Alexander did) he had disunited his people by creating new nations. When you put something under the rug for so long of course it will blow up. Old communist parties still rules all our countries.
@@ilejovcevski79 The fact of the matter is, the nationalist leaders allowed themselves to take advantage of this.
There was a TV debate held in Bosnia somewhat recently where one representative of each Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks were debating if there was one shared language they all spoke or if they each spoke their own different language, debate turned ugly as they all proclaimed that they spoke different languages and started dick measuring whose language was the best, and all this without a translator in sight mind you.
Also wanted to say that Cockta is way better than Coka-cola, I love both, but Cockta just hits differently, it was and still is made from rose hips if anybody wondered.
Reality is that it was one language wuth certain amount of slangs that turend into 2,semi two languages and a smore autonomy was given each satrted doing tehir own personal mini reforms/revisions until 90s when the EXTREME amount of reformings of languiage satrtd to be rapidly introduced like for example Croati added BUNCH of german but also some english words (overtiue they added even more),while Bosnai added BUNCH of middle eastern words into it to say thank you to many middle eastern muslim contries wich supplied with weapons,money,t*rrorist.Then each now country started to add,eject,change the language wich was basiclay one language with some additional slangs depending on the aprt of the country.
@@goranstojanov1160 yeah, I know about all the "look at me I'mdifferent" changes, my favourite is that Croats changed "Aparat za kokice" loan word and slav word into "spravljač popkorna" slavic word and a loan word, we have an expresion here dpt that "presipanje iz šupljeg u prazno" esenttialy a fools errand as it changes something only superficialy
Actually there were only 3 major languages with major differences. Slovenians, Macedonians and the rest (not talking about foreign minorities who lived there at the time and spoke their native language). For common people they would only struggle to understand Slovenian and Macedonian if they were not from those areas. All others (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin) they could perfectly understand each other no matter how much they claim they differ. It is like in GB they all speak English but tell this to Irish, Scots, and Welsh (or some other parts of England). They meet in foreign country and they all communicate just fine. Also because the official language was (so called) Serbo-Croatian even Slovenians and Macedonians had to learn it so they both could understand it. Language barrier was non existent in post WW2 in Yugoslavia, its only with rise of nationalism that language become the issue. Yes, there are sub dialects but not a barrier for communication.
"and all this without a translator in sight..." cracked me up. The whole thing sounds like it could take place in a bus by three grumpy old men.
@@aleksandarmaksic5040 no one ever used that term
You’re telling me Tito never went to Comic-Con?
Missed opportunity to cosplay as an anime girl
@@Game_Hero yes, I believe he mentions this as a missed opportunity in mis momoirs🤣
Legends say he went, but he was wearing a costume of himself, so nobody noticed
He was a regular attendee. Some years he dressed like Ironman, others like Batman.
Once year he allegedly went dressed as Susumu Kodai, but is was mostly because of the uniform.
@@TheColdWarTV 🤣🤣🤣 nice!
Off-topic, but I remember Yugoslavia winning the Eurovision Song Contest one year (their winning entry was "Rock Me, Baby") When they hosted the contest the following year, I was struck by how modern the country appeared to be - practically indistinguishable from Western European countries. And yet, within a matter of years, this had all fragmented.
There's a joke:
- Comrade Tito, Comrade Krcun died in a car crash!
- Oh, is it eleven thirty already...
how can yugoslavia not be seen as a success? raised living standards and held one of the most ethnically fraught parts of the world together for decades, without ever signing up to be a vassal state of any superpower. it took mere months after dissolution for the region to fall back into the ethnonationalist strife it experienced before socialism.
Yugoslavia's survival depended on the cold war never ceasing.
I would say Yugoslavia was both success and a failure.
On one hand, you had a country that many still miss, I often hear people who lived in it complain how standards of living now are way worse, my father's family was able to travel basically everywhere for vacation, we are talking Japan, Malta, South America, USA, despite not being part of the party, even my mother's family, which wasnt even rich, were able to afford building this massive two story house that's basically two houses joint together, it's still in our family's ownership and 3 different generations still live in it, they all got more positive things to say about Yugoslavia then negatives, even tho they acknowledge it had many flaws it wasn't as bad as it's now.
On other hand, the fact it all came apart and it's economy was constantly hanging on for its dear life, shows how fragile the system was.
It was a success thanks to foreign financing that was designed to disrupt the socialist bloc. Once it had outlived its usefulness it was toast.
@@russotusso1695 History shows how good of a leader Tito was. It shows that diversity is strength, if you have good leadership.
"how can yugoslavia not be seen as a success?"
The Yugoslav communist party borrowed a lot of money during the Cold War that it could not pay back and then had a meltdown when communism fell in Eastern Europe.
Excellent work. This is my new favorite episode of the cold war. It is so hard to find reliable big-picture information about the economy and political history of Yugoslavia in the cold war period.
I'm from Serbia and i can tell that basically 90% of older folks i know, my parents, grandparents and so on, have positive experience of that time, they actually lived easy care-free life back in Yugoslavia. It was more socialist than a communist state (nothing close to Warsaw pact block), since there was very little oppression and it was almost nonexistent in everyday life, people even had full freedom to travel anywhere abroad (Yugo was special case since with that passport you could travel both West and behind the iron curtain). For example my grandpa who was locksmith worked 4 years during 70s in Germany and returned back here, government simple had zero issue with people being influences by West culture since it was present in everyday life (you had American movies, music or comic books, Yugo even had punk bands in 70s, rock bands from the West having concerts here etc.). Both my grandparents (from mother and father side) just by being regular factory workers built big houses and rcreational cabins in the countryside, now in capitalism most of factory workers don't have enough money even for regular monthly expenses and can only dream of building house/buying apartment.
I think the main problem that led to collapse was bad economic managment in late 80s which led to big crisis and people turning to nationalism to cope with it, if we had just more capable leaders after Tito Yugo would be reformed and would move slowly into democracy and join EU already in the late 80s.
@@carick235 I wish Yugoslavia had saved itself by reforming
Yugoslavia has always been an interesting subject during the Cold War. And this video was a curious insight into that country during this time. Nice job.
And equally most toxic topic you can ask if someone from that area came to comment section or discussion (if participants are not form area of Ex- Yugo then you could have nice civilised discussion)
@@madkoala2130 You can have a civilized discussion with people from Ex-Yugoslavia region too :->
@@milan51259 Not really if they are right wing borderline nationalists, and sadly most of our people are.
@@notoriusdrifter40 Not all people are "right wing borderline nationalists". You can definitely have productive and fact-based discussions with people from Ex-Yu. You can even understand their daily struggles and mindset and alter it. It's fairly easy to do (just not very likely on the internet), when you break down their thinking into common understandings. Opinions nearly always can be changed.
@@milan51259 I agree often our opinions are too emotionally charged without seeing the whole picture whether its about the war in the 90s or the life in SFRJ. And yeah their experiences are also vastly different and those experiences also influence their opinions very much.
I have a “yugoslavic” (probably mostly Albanian but they have everything) food store around the corner from the school I work and I’ll pop in there for snacks sometimes. Cockta is a great soda and I wish it was more commercial available on the US lol
cockta now is woke af, i dont want to buy it and im from Slovenia
@@ivanbregar1646 why?
@@ivanbregar1646 how the fuck is a soda woke, are you ok
@@ivanbregar1646 with a name like that it has to support gay people though!
Cockta is great, it's funny how people react trying it and expecting just another cola knock-off. nope, no cola and no caffeine to be found in that stuff.
This is such a great series! History and commentary on history without any political agenda, underlying motive, etc. Just well-researched and well-communicated.
Overall a good video, although I would have to disagree on the mentioning of unemployment. I live here and my parents and grandparents have lived here and I can tell you that entire cities were raised for factories/industry. After WW2 there was a big focus on rebuilding and industrializing. There was even a worker's calling throughout the country, young men would go do volunteer work on summer building railroads and a lot of infrastructure, my grandfather went a few times. You can't find these things on the internet, only from stories from people that lived to experience it. There is so many towns and cities that literally developed and were built for the purpose of the factory. My town, started in 1949 with the founding of the factory first, sparked development of the town which expanded up to the 1990s when the war started, a town of 20,000 people and almost all of the 20,000 people worked in the town factory in three shifts. EVERY small town had a factory with most of the town working in it. Now imagine the bigger cities. I mean there are industrial zones that employed over 50,000 people, go see "Energoinvest", "TAS", "FAMOS" from Sarajevo - so many huge factories just from one city. There is a company called "IMT" from Belgrade - tractors. 90% of the tractors you will see in ex-yu countries even to this day are IMT. They still work because the quality is so pristine. This period of "communist" yugoslavia was the only time in history that this area of the world was developed, where we had our on technologies, we manufactured everything ourselves with the quality being equal or even better than the US or USSR at that time, the military was strong, free healthcare, free education - quality education above all. The country even allowed you to study abroad. The country invested massively into sports, with the 1984 winter olympics being hosted in Sarajevo. Sports are still a huge part of our society. Ex-yu countries still have sportsmen that are some of the best in the world. Yugoslavia was always in the top 5 in most sports. The passport was at that time one of the strongest in the world due to it's neutrality between the east and the west. The 1980's saw record numbers in manufacturing and technology. I mean, we developed and manufactured TV's in color before Sony. 3rd in the world in ship construction. Anything you could think of, we manufactured it. The idea was self sustainability. I mean go talk to older people in a bigger city like Sarajevo. That's where you'll find out about yugoslavia. The internet is filled with data mostly written by people from the west who really have no idea what life here was like. Don't take that as an insult, it's just a fact. Cities expanded, and a factory worker would apply for an apartment in the new buildings. They would get the apartment for free. They would take a few dinars(currency) of your paycheck, about a pack of cigarettes worth. That's it. At that time a pack of cigarettes was like a dollar. So many benefits. People could actually own land, farmers had a nice life. Agriculture was strong. See "Podravka" a company for food. My point is, unemployment was NOT a problem in yugoslavia, 100%. Thank you.
My paternal side of the family was living in abject poverty not too far from Austria because the socialist centralized system did not issue development to anything that wasn't a city or industrial section. They had nothing in stores and lived in squalor. Whereas my mother's side, in a highly populated town, had enjoyed government benefits and a decent living standard.
In 70s there was enormous rise off living standards that was for sure not realistic ,my grandfather who was just worker in factory bought in 70s 3 new cars (2 cars and van ) and build new big house ,all with one salary because my grandmother did not work ..from early 70s rise off living standard was enormous but it all stoped in 1980 so in 80s there was like stagnation,there was no rise off standard ,living standard was still good but fall compare to 70s
You must be joking, my grandparents and mother and Father lived in complete poverty, in the village, no running water in the shack where they lived, had to get water from the nearest river for themselves and cattle and livestock that they had to survive. Not sure which country your talking about? Yugoslavia was a S/ hole to live in. Why do you see a large Croatian, Bosnian diaspora around the world.
@@markokrezo1377 I can smell Croatian nationalist after just few words so
its f pointless to waste my time but will say few words ..there were some poor vilages in Bosnia and few other parts off Yu but even in that poorest villages they had running water so just make things up or talk before WWII.
Also Croats and Bosnias moved abroad after 1991..after end off Yugoslavia so you arguments is total bullshit ..Croatia had 4.8 milion peole in 1991..now it has 3.8 milion so it lost more then 25% off people AFTER END OFF Yugoslavia,it had 3.8 milion n 1948 so it gained 1 milion during Yugoslavia and lost 1 milion after end off Yugoslavia.
So just talk total crap like every nationalist
@@markokrezo1377 He's right though, my grandfather was feeding a family of four, wife, had a car, summerhouse in the mountain and went to seaside holiday twice a year. Single earner in the family. 1970's were GREAT in Yugoslavia.
@@chanunceybillups1212 That all o.k for those families that did well under communism but how about all the people who had their families houses/apartments and other property (farm land) stolen after 1945.
Stealing private property that people worked hard for isn`t a good foundation for a state.
@@northernstar4811 Communists had a formula to assign square meterage per family member. If richer families had bigger homes, they were assigned a tennant since Nazis and Allies destroy hundreds of thousands of homes across Yugoslavia. That was stopped after '60s.
Yugoslavia sort of got it right in theory at least, mainstream Marxist literature views small entrepreneurs, small business owners who work themselves, not as members of the Capitalist class, but as 'self-employed' (aka Petit-Bourgiousie),
though they often have a few people working for them, they are seen as part of the working class, that by no means would have to vanish under Socialism. Socialists should actually support them in their struggle against those big multinational enterprises. That's still the view of various parties in Europe.
Collectivization was a policy created by hardliners, nowhere in Marx' work is this being advocated
In theory socialism works, in practice in doesn't.
I lived through it in YU and I'm extremely happy that it is over.
The reality of Yugoslav socialism is that in 1986 it had more political prisoners than there were in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland taken together (google Helsinki report / Human rights watch for YU 1986). The economy was collapsing, there was no gas, no electricity, huge inflation, huge unemployment, etc.
After fall of communism in eastern Europe, Milošević's Yugoslavia was the last remaining communist regime in Europe (Miloševič played the war game to disrupt attention of the masses and to keep in power, just like what Putin is doing now).
@@PeterKese all these things you mentioned can occur and we have seen in hyper-capitalist or fascist countries. The economy of Chile broke down when hyperliberal policy was introduced under Pinochet. Philipines is a hypercapitalist country where people starve and live in dumps, in trash, same with South Africa in the past.. That's why I begun with "they had it right in theory" in reality things can play out different.
Second point, a lot of Socialist nations not only started off as former third world colonies, but also endure strict trade- embargo's or sanctions by richer Western countries. And even with that in mind they managed to organise a reasonable workable society. Cuba for example has a high level of education and healthcare, but is still a poor country, well if you look at the embargo's, no Western countries trade with them, so they'vd not been able to rise wellbeing for their citizens since the 1980s, still no one has to be homeless or starve there.
So you need to take into account the specific history and circumstances.
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Just to clear one thing: Yugoslavia had about the opposite situation of embargo's or economic sanctions. Due to it being unaligned in the cold war, it had quite a unique position of being able to trade with both blocs. Many companies made good business by building tech products using western components (integrated circuits, etc.) and selling it to the east (CCCP, China) and to the unaligned (India, Iraq, etc.).
Still, the unique socialist management style and incompetent government economical policies managed to mostly ruin even that, especially after the communist politics and intelligence services tried to get involved. The level of incompetence was just appalling.
@@PeterKese yes I'm aware of Yugoslavia's position they had, and you know far more in detail than I do, but like you said: "socialism doesn't work" well, was it "socialism" or was it the incompetent partyleaders that messed things up? All the time we hear Venezuala is screwed up "because of socialism", while a country like Norway is as or more 'socialist' then Venezuela in its policy, and Norway is reportedly the most succesful nation on earth. In reality incompetence runs through all political ideology, I mentioned a couple of Liberal failed states, well is that Liberalism, or are the leaders incompetent or corrupt? Chances are it is exactly that
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 yep Norway is more socialist today, even then Serbia in Yugoslavia was. Only Slovenia and Croatia in YU had real workers-self management and real industrial planning (de-centralized one). More socialism, more wealth. Peter Kese is idiot.
Tito is one of the best examples of a benevolent dictator who had absolutely no idea how the system would work without hum.
It wouldn't without his popularity or a major change
You're a little naive. He ensured disintegration with the 1974 constitution.
BENEVOLENT? His system killed 400.00 people and another 2.1 milion left country.
he was far from benevolent, try living in any form of a socialist country before spilling this kind of bullshit
Apparently, he told one of his coworkers something like "if this all collapses after I'm gone, it [the work] was all in vain..."
1968 student protests were inspired by those from all over the world, most directly from Paris. Croatian protests 1971 had nothing to do with it.
Self management is a fantastic concept, if only as a concept - the workers are joint owners of the company and have the motivation to invest because they share excess profits in the form of summer vacations, winter vacations, higher salaries, additional leave days.
Unfortunately, in practice things are not as they are on paper .
Self management can also work in practice like Mondragon Corporation in Spain
@@joshuaherbert30 Mondragon isnt worker managed though its worker owned, its like saying PAN AM was self managed cus pilots had shares
The workers will spent extra profits on vacation,higher salaries and neglect long term investment.Those companies won’t be competitive for long.
Another term for self managed companies are workers cooperatives, have a look for successful companies following that model.
@@billyosullivan3192 yeah, but it means workers get some level of say in management.
I am a great fan of the Cold War and this is a particularly good edition. I am not sure that your thesis that the horrible collapse was rooted in Tito and Market Socialism. It seems to me much more the heritage of Yugoslavia being from the beginning being a hodge-potch of different nationalities and entities that were forced together by outsiders after the First World War. After the Second World War it really was only Tito's personality and charisma that held it together - and it was those factors that held it together rather than communism and the system that was implemented. That said, Kadec's ideas which Tito did support seem to me to arrive at a successful economic and social system that could really be the ideal compromise for Europe including the UK.
Croatia started a protest in 1971 and it was repressed.
Moreover, ozna - udba jumped on stage when someone broke balls in home and abroad as well. For example, Zelijko Raznatovic 'Arkan' began his path to evil as an udba agent. There is an interesting book about Arkan by C. Stewart.
what holds the united states together other than a military government that threatens to take out the whole world if things don't go their way?
It was surely a mixture of reasons but this pot of nationalities was actually not that different than it was in early Germany or Italy with very strong identities being Lombardian, Sicilian or Prussian or Bavarian or Svabian. The diference betwwn Siciaily and Lomabriad where even greater both culturally , economically even language wise. However where they forced newly formed Italian identity in Yugoslavia they did just opposite. You could not even declare as Yugoslavian until 1961. Even first name of unified country was Kingdome of Serbs Croats and Slovenians. They later change the name but accent on different ethnicities remained. Unification of Germany was in part inspired by Illyrian movement in 1835 : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illyrian_movement
@@alexd9735 Yes Yugoslavs were minority in own country ,most who declared Yugoslavs were people born from mix marriages but everyone other still declared himself same as before Yugoslavia.I thing that was biggest problem that lead to falling apart.
@@alexd9735 It actually was, a lot different, if you actually had read the history of these yugoslavian countries before Yugoslavia.
Reminds me of the stories that my father told me about going on a holiday in modern day Croatia in the 70ies and eating steak for the first time.
Great job! As a economist from Serbia I would add something about PRODUCTIVITY of companies:
Even IF you had a god director of a company, and even IF this company earned profits in a market with competition, there was a problem.
DEMOCRACY was used where it shoudn't. So if this director wanted to use this new profits to invest in new technology, just two workers could overvote him and vote for exemple for a pay rise insted.
Through years inefficiensies cumulate, and pay rises startet to be a PISSING countest betwen workers of one company and workers from another.
People had false sense of control but lost strategicall decisions. As a song from Queen say it was like that: "I want it all I want it now". Add nationalism and it was game over.
So true!
My grandpa exploited the living shit out of his company along with his coworkers by calling on all benefits and did minimal work. He was paid massively, whereas my maternal family was elsewhere in abject poverty with empty stores. Socialism truly generates equality.
True. Also there was a tradition that companies who made good profit get forced to be united with companies that always created depth because politician did not want to let a single company to went bankrupt. Despite autonomy of companies there was kind of political pression and promises to the workers to vote for it on meetings.
Hello, based department?
Yep, we've got one.
RIP Tito and Yugoslavia.
I don't like communism but I've always had respect for Tito considering the man was able to constantly play the east and west off against each other to protect his own country and due to the fact that despite being a communist, his nation was far more oriented towards the free market than the other communist nations were.
Excellent summary. I was born in Belgrade after Maspok. My parents always talked about 1970s and how well they lived. I do remember some of severe economic downslide towards mid to end of 80s then I ended up in the war in 90s. Good timing. I live in the US now.
My professor did talk about Maspok, he is from Serbia. He told that the government made atmosphere of fear, every body was afraid of terrorists for long time. A bit like USA after 9/11 (funny thing, bigger chance is to die in mass shooting)
@@manjelos There was an terrorist group that crossed Austrian border and kidnapped a truck in Slovenia. Whole country was on alert, Territorial defense alarmed and hunt started. Most of those terrorist were eliminated and some of defenders of Constitution were killed in that action. Yugoslavia should have bombed Austria like US would do to Mexico if such large group would be trained on their territory and sent to USA
It was destined to fail the minute it was created. The differences between republics were too great.
They have more in common then other way around, the differences were not the reason why Yugoslavia disintegrated , it was Special Interest responsibility to execute their agenda, If you do not know what agenda is , just look around what going on today in the World. Yugoslavia was way ahead its time to survive in this primitive corrupted World.
@@plutoniusis No, it was the differences.
@@account-369 , it was ahead of its time because its social and security system designed to work positive for most of the working class people , it was not head of the World , out there are some nations who care about their people, but not to many and those are also falling down due dark capitalism on rise - neo capitalism agenda and NWO, return of the ideology of the Feudalism.
@@account-369 Not that it was way ahead of all nations but specifically the ones in the Eastern Europe. Yes, the nationalism and dickhead politicians in the 1980s after Tito died made it collapse but Yugoslavia was prosperous because of their leader and the traits he gathered in his life.
@@account-369 1. Yugoslavia was less cruel.
2. Upon Tito's death, the responsibility for Yugoslavia laid within the hands of evil (Nationalism, Fascism, Chetniks)
3. Tito did it in four constitutions (1945, 1953, 1963, 1974)
4. Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians, Serbians, Croatians, Montenegrins, and Slovenians were all equally treated despite some minor issues such as Aleksandar Rankovic.
Conclusion - Yugoslavia was communist. However, Tito opposed Stalinism therefore the Soviet-style regime was abolished in 1948 and replaced with a more appropriate communist (Titoist) regime of Josip Broz Tito with an international focus as well.
Kardelj was not "quite possibly the mind" but actual the MIND that shaped market socialism and self management.
Having been born in the 1980s Yugoslavia I have to commend you on covering such a vast and incredibly complex topic with such quality. It's better than most foreign textbooks.
However, two notes are in order: AFAIK there were no direct foreign investments in Yugoslavia, ever. I read notes of a meeting when Tito meet one of the Rockefellers in 1970 who asked him if Yugoslavia was to allow foreign investments and if so would their profits be available to the investor outside of Yugoslavia and he got an answer "that this should be made possible" [in the future]. The second is more of a lesser one: yes the republics each did have an institution that was called "National bank of Socialist Republic of X" but this was just a name on paper (the Communism loves those), as they could not print their own (i.e. non Yugoslav Dinar) money nor issue money by themselves (the first time this was done was (implicitly by a state owned enterprise that issued bad checks on an industrial scale) in Bosnia and then in Serbia at the end of 1980s and all other republics saw this as daylight robbery). Until then such actions were tightly controlled by the Federal National bank. Perhaps a more accurate saying would be (and this was also said in the docu in a way) that each republic was allowed to have their own banks who would get very powerful economically and basically republics would be able to control their own economies and make an important part of their own investments through their own banks. As said, this is all quite complex.
You are absolutely correct Toni. I was born in the 70s and still remember the bad checks story :) But one thing that is maybe nostalgic about Yugoslavia... I remember that people had less stuff, but a lot more hope and happiness. We have got just basic things in life, but we were so happy. Now we have everything, but that "social" component is gone. And I miss it...
Fiat invested in former Yugoslavia. They spent money, together with the Serbian government on a car factory in Kragujevac making the Zastava which was the Fiat 500, and Fiat 750 in other markets.
Now that I think about it, Citroen built a factory in Slovenia too. I think they built the Ami there.
@@apscoradiales I stand corrected, you're right. There were car factories in Slovenia with direct investments from Citroen and Renault (Cimos in Koper (they also built DS and GS there) and IMV in Novo mesto (Renault 4)) where the state was just the major stakeholder. I've also read about some other Slovenian companies that were wholly owned by foreign German investors since at least the end of the 1960s. So there definitely were at least some direct foreign investments in Yugoslavia.
Ive just visited Slovenia and people still talk positively about Tito. There is even a large lettering of Tito at Nova Gorica right on the border to Italy
Tbh Tito created their country so why wouldn't they? They took everything they can get and gave middle finger to 'brotherhood and unity'. A true role model in opportunism.
@@Svemirsky Slovenia was paying into the common Yugoslav moneypot much more than it was taking out. In fact, when they and Croatia left, the rest pretty much fell apart within a year.
@@mg4361 ah yes the moneypot argument. Funny how that works - without Kingdom of Serbia it probably never would have existed in the first place. Same goes for Croatia. Maybe give some credit to where credit is due.
@@Svemirsky blue states pay more into the federal govt than red states
@@Svemirsky Croatia woudnt exist without "kingdom of serbia" ? Are you delusional or just didnt learn history? Or most likley,you learned history that fits your petty serbian nationalist agenda
One thing is for sure: Yugoslavia like Chechoslovakia would be giant in many sports now if those didnt detach.
Yeah, their Basketball team was supposedly top notch. Probably couldn't beat the Dream Team in their prime, but they were the next best team in the world from what I gathered.
Its still a giant. Serbia and Croatia have insane results at many sports.
@@alxnd_r6345 Croatia has won two bronze medals in WC and one silver in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
I truly love this topic and am always searching for more information. Y'all never disappoint.
hi, writing to you from a parallel present - just want you to know we're all perfectly fine, the health is great, the economy is great, we are happy, proud of who we are, and very optimistic about the future
Yugoslavia was severely underrated.. Calling it a 'dictatorship' is too simplified and bad faith. Just because a country rotates leaders from 2 major parties very 4 years both financed by the oligarchy doesn't make it ideal, in fact these governments have normalised non-accountability.
It’s not only about that, in usa there’s freedom of press , in Yugoslavia there isn’t , in Yugoslavia you had no right to criticize Tito, there was a state funded cult of personality around Tito , who purged any political opposition he could find. Living conditions in Yugoslavia were better than let’s say Albania or Romania, but don’t make it seem like it was an ideal place
where can we find sources and ideally specific citations for your videos?
Thank you for giving honest and truthful overview of my homeland.
Don't forget that Slovenia and Croatia have always been much more connected to western realities like the republic of Venice and the Austro-Hungarian empire, while Serbia has always watched eastwards, Moscow.
And actually Slovenia and Croatia are members of the EU and have got € in their pockets.
@Nikola S.
Yes, Serbia became independent from the Turkish empire and it supported the panslavic movement.
Don't forget that Russia intervened in 1st world war as an ally of Belgrade. France supported the Karadjordjevic's kingdom after the 1st world war, yes, because Italy, both its liberal version and the fascist regime, wanted to take over parts of the kingdom.
@Nikola S.
Thanks for this info.
Hvala 🙂
There's more to Serb history than the resurging, early 19th-century state, Serbia was a Medieval Empire centuries before Russia.
@Nikola S. The Medieval Serbian state was never a vassal of Bulgaria, several Serbian lords during the tenure of the Principality of Serbia were vassals of the Bulgarian Empire, but that is it, whereas the combined time that the Medieval Serbian state had spent as a vassal of Hungary and the ERE is but several decades. Both Duklja and the Nemanjic Serbian state were regional powers, the latter being an ever-expanding state that slowly but surely overpowered the Second Bulgarian Empire in the 13th, and the ERE in the 14th century, both sought to prevent that at Velbazhd, which dramatically failed and ushered the Serbian Empire during which Serbia was the most powerful state in SE Europe, even the Lazarevic and Brankovic successor states were regional powers and the only true threat to Ottoman Expansion on the peninsula in the late 14th, and throughout the 15th century. the Serbian state exerted influence in the Kingdom of Bosnia and the Duchy of Herzegovina, the southeastern Adriatic coast, and even in Wallachia and Moldavia, I suggest reading Stefan Staretu's work on the matter.
Regarding Bulgaria, the Despotate of Vidin was originally Serbia's vassal during the reign of Milutin, and the Tsardom of Bulgaria was the Serbian Empire's vassal during the tenure of Dusan and his son.
@Nikola S. Except Serbia, unlike Bulgaria and Greece, never lost a single battle in the First Balkan War and liberated the largest territory from Ottoman rule. Macedonia was granted as restitution by the European Powers because of the reversal of Serbia and Montenegro's conquest of Ottoman Albania, and every rising power in human history has expanded at the expense of their rivals, the problem is that the power vacuum was filled by Serbia AFTER the ERE and Bulgaria, who had plotted against Serbia, had disastrously failed at subduing Serbia at Velbazhd, the dirt-farmer plot had failed, and history is proof of it.
Comparing Serbia to NATO-propped Ukraine is senseless given that Serbia was not waging war and shelling itself for 8 years, or worse, invading Austrian territory, Serbia was invaded under false pretense by Austria-Hungary, who then proceeded to lose all three of its early battles against Serbia, and had to retreat west of the river Drina, and had even involved Germany in the war to prevent Serbia from rushing them in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unlike Bulgaria, which invaded without a declaration of war, the Serbian army did not just survive its retreat through Albania, it managed to play a pivotal role in the southern Front, and has not lost a single battle from 1916 onward. That is the opposite of post-Maidan Ukraine, and the opposite of Bulgaria, whose post-First Balkan War role in history was that of a stooge, as witnessed in World War II, and when Bulgaria refused to join Yugoslavia after they allowed their president to be assassinated by Soviet Union.
Yugoslav economy was brought down to it's knees when Paul Walker hiked the rates on USD to stop inflation in the USA. Suddenly the country could not service it's foreign debts and a full blown economic crisis developed in the eighties. Hyperinflation destroyed the standard of living, the people got mighty pissed off and turned to nationalism which was offered to them as an, obviously fake, solution. Much of the borrowed money was wasted on the army, rather than being invested productively. This created a paradox: the army, which was supposed to defend the country, became much too powerful and independent minded, a sort of a state within a state, and played an incredibly destructive role. This was largely due to the army falling under Serbian control during the eighties and acting as a de facto Serbian army in the nineties. While the local populace, never famous for it's brightness, cheerfully embraced nationalism and started killing their neighbors with unfettered enthusiasm, the question remains who exactly pushed nationalism so incredibly aggressively in the 80s, after four decades of "brotherhood and unity". Was it all home grown or was it, and to which extent, aided by the malign foreign services?
Imperialist west forces agenda
In general a good, basic introduction to Yugoslavia for someone not knowing anything about the area. To delve into it deeper would take a long time. It was more a benign dictatorship than anything else and changed from decade to decade. The lj in Kardelj is pronounced more as an English l than a Croatian or Serbian j. Nevertheless keep up the good work.
If you wanna know what happened in the 90`s I recommend "NATO In The Balkans: Voices Of Opposition" by Sean Gervasi, former economic adviser in the Kennedy Administration who resigned in protest of US invasion of Cuba, and the man who broke the story about US support for Apartheid, as a member of UN commission.
There were tanks on Slovenia, tanks on Croatia and tanks on Bosnia... That's what happened...
@@GhostshadowShadowghost Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen...The same pattern which is not working for NATO in former Ukraine, because Russians read this book years ago.
Due to the market liberalization, Zagreb and Belgrade were ranked the happiest cities among every other city in socialist countries
A load of B/S
What about Sarajevo?
Fascinating video! I have been long interested in digging down on aspects of Yugoslavian socialism and this video renewed that interest. I thought the video had a sophisticated approach to the Yugoslavian model. It was clearly flawed, but not nonredeemable. I have always been jaundiced towards market socialism, but other policies like self-management seemed in need of more exploration and development. I have always wondered what might have happened in the West, had some real attempts at self-management, if it had gained more attraction here. I was not surprised to see Tito and the elites, in the end, could not stand the challenge to their power. Important as efficiency, increased productivity, logistics, lower capital costs, etc. are to any business (East, West, State Communist, Capitalist, Stalinist or whatever some partisan politico says their loved/hated worldview is) do not kid yourself, CONTROL is paramount. When push comes to shove any elite will choose control. Sad to see that Tito did not have the vision and determination to really and truly do what it would have taken to send the former Yugoslavia into a more democratic and freedom oriented direction. It would have been interesting to have seen and visited. Again, great video!! Thanks, folks! 😊
Tito was a corrupt totalitarian leader. There was no way he would and didn’t see genuine capitalism to take charge as he would be out of a job. Lots of “people” where “MIA” as they weren’t interested in joining the communist party structure and system. If you want to know what general Tito was like, read the letter he sent to Stalin, when Stalin tried to assistant him on several occasions, he was a real bad ass. And this is coming from a Bosnian Croatian descendant.
In 1980. I was in my early 20's, and I meet young American journalist on the sea side.He asked me:"Do you think now after Tito's death, Yugoslawia will become really democratic state?"
I wasn't involved in politic, and my answer was just a presentiment:"Here on Balkan democracy means civil war."
Yugoslawia had very problematic legacy from WW2, and the wars in 90's were just second half-time of civil war during 40's.
There's anecdote about conversation between 3 intelectuals from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia.First one said:"If some foreign country attack us, we will be united like one man!" The second reply:"Yes indeed, but what if nobody attack us!?"
@@markokrezo1377 Corrupt? How? Well, he did enjoy some villas like in Dubrovnik or the island of Brioni, his house in Belgrad tough was not so much impressive, was looking like average high middle-class house in the US. Everything what he "had" was belong to the federation and after his dead state did take it. If he would be so corrupt his children, grand children, wife and so on would be still have some wealth left. Instead of this they just went to school and start pretty normal career as every body else
@@biserkasertic1208 Well, today is "ex-Yugoslavia" at least democratic
Good video. One tip is to add text when you say important things, for example when you say the three pillars, you should highlight words on the screen "Socialism", "Market" and "Self management".
It's easier for the human brain to remember stuff when we hear it and see it at the same time.
Thanks for making this video.
Hvala!
Aleksandar Rankovic was a Serb nationalist first, then later a communist. Same can be said about many Serb politicians at that time, the dream about Greater Serbia was very much alive till they started to attack close to every single ex-Yugoslav state and start the process of genocide and mass rapes, primarily in Bosnia but also Kosovo and Croatia to a lesser extent
Cut the crap.
Never forget Jasenovac 700 000 killed Serbs.
@@mutav2166 pls show us a reference regarding 700 000 dead. And by a serious institution claiming this
@@allanhouston22
NR Hrvatska/PR Croatia 15.11.1945.
Country Commision for war crimes
Done in the Independent State of Croatia during WW2
has stated that more than 700 000 Serbs were killed in Jasenovac
@@mutav2166 again, a link to that claim. pls
@@allanhouston22 Find it yourself.
Thanks again, I'm fascinated with Jugoslavie and all it's pre history. Enjoy your weekend Sir. #LFC ⚽Eng v Fra. 👍
The video is a bit too devoid of nuanced view that is required for Yugoslavia. You've portrayed the politics of Yugoslavia as basically a fight between Kardelj and his liberal prowesterner nonaligned autonomists against Ranković centralizer prosoviet Serbian nationalists, but both of them were antisoviet, Ranković was more Yugoslav and Kardelj was more Slovenian nationalist, Kardelj was an economic and state reformer and had little interest in foreign policy. Guys like Dapčević and Popović were the ones pushing for west and nonalignment, not Kardelj. Kardelj wasn't even liberal, Popović was pushing for liberalism.
Well said. Kardelj had his pluralism within one party, Montenegrin liberals like Đilas wanted a two-party system.
The first video I watched on your channel and it's great! Me being from Croatia, born in the 80's I can tell you that the ordinary people, workers were more happy than today, when I was a kid there was a sense of hope and prosperity among the people, which is rare unfortunatelly in Croatia these days. The thing that destroyed Yugoslavia in the end was nationalism and it still plagues the former countries to this day, but I am hopefull that future generations will be wiser in this regard.Keep up the good work and all the best in the coming year. Cheers
good thing u aint a croat tho, even if you were born here, we didnt particularly enjoy being second class citizens in serbias 'greater serbia' plan. i hate when people mask any sense of love of culture or country as extreme nationalism. we croats are very happy with our independence contrary to what you said, and grew tired of serbs leaching off us and slovenia for everything all whilst getting nothing in return.
the ACTUAL death of yugoslavia was the cause of tito's death, not nationalism, and his failure to appoint a worthy successor (thankfully he didnt because communism is a cancer), which in turn created a power struggle and serbs being the strongest and most influential group, wanted to own all of yugoslavia under their flag which they attempted to achieve by force but thankfully failed. nationalism is what saved the rest of yugoslavia from being imprisoned under serb control, which as a croat, is a damn good thing that didnt happen.
@@zoranstefanovic3193 sorry chetnik i dont speak war criminal, latinica or english thanks.
I study Yugoslavia for years and didn't expected to hear something new here but there were a lot of new facts for me, great work!
The framed meme photo of Karl Marx watching the economy graph arrow collapsing/stagnating was hilarious to spot! Thank you! 😂
Tito was on to something.
Yes becouse of that they destroyed a country
14:40 my uncle, mom's side, was one of the students that protested, he was in Rijeka at the time.
Tito was a full bred opportunist. During WW1 he was an avid supporter of der kaiser, and participated the austro-hungarian invasion of Serbia. Later on he was quick to realise where the wind blew from, and adapted accordingly. The cold war neutrality was just one part of that.
Love your channel! I was born in Yugoslavia, but I can't recall much from it, however I can very well remember it's end and the aftermath. Since this was an economic perspective more than a political I will also only focus on that part of the aftermath of Yugoslavia. Many great things and achievements were made. But, those things would have happened if Yugoslavia was a market economy or there was no Yugoslavia at all. There are many old traditions (workers professionalism most importantly) that were ruined during the socialism era and the consequences are still present and will remain present until some generations remain. Most importantly is that bad habits are not passed on to new generations. The overall legal and judicial systems of all countries that came out of Yugoslavia (and Yugoslavia as well when it existed) are swamped with the legal mess of community ownership which are holding up the current progress. Not only did Yugoslavia had many foreign investments, but also made a lot of credit at foreign financial institutions which made the Yugoslav economy run. My stance is that the period of 1945 - 1990(1995) was a missed opportunity to grow much more than Yugoslavian economy did.
Most peoples lives improved during those times, I will not deny that, but the (economic) system was not sustainable and had to collapse.
Thank you for your lucid perspective.
america would grow alot faster if we got rid of our federal government too
hahahha look at your countries now a basket case with hilarious cultures.
@@howilearned2stopworrying508 But then again, would that growth be equitably distributed? If you want a US without a federal government, look at Brazil in the days of the Old Republic. Do you want a cabal of rich states rule over the country and thr only economy be whatever those states make?
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 I saw venezuelan collapse being extremely narrow elite on top and then it collapses to sorta communism type kleptocracy/incompetency and absolute poverty... china seems to be on same path now despite being nicely capitalistic for couple decades helped by US
For people who are old enough to remember Socialist Yugoslavia, it is still hard to understand that in a "democracy" people are expected to be homeless, die of hunger and curable illnesses just because they are poor. You could be poor in socialism, but you would still have a home, enough to live on, free healthcare and education right up to university level. Children of low income families were even entitled to free holidays at the sea and the mountains.
You even had limited right to criticize the regime. Of course if you constituted any serious threat to the establishment, you would be dealt with. But ordinary people could say whatever they wanted, as long as they respected Tito himself.
Main problem was that all real power was concentrated not in the institutions but in the Communist Party. And when communism collapsed all across Europe - so did the real government of the country. Disguised as democrats - nationalists took over. Many of them ex-communists. In every republic the new "democrats" took over the infrastructure and the resources of the Communist Party. Privatization and market-economy meant that they will now own everything that used to "belong to the people". That is the real reason why the country broke up along "national lines" - so that the nationalist could grab power and property. It's good to be the king - even in a much smaller, weaker, poorer country.
Great video!!I remember as a kid visting family on vacation to then Yugoslavia...my family is from Macedonia, people traveled freely, made money overseas and were able to build houses etc... my grandparents lived well, it wasnt drab like people think of the old Soviet union.. it wasnt perfect, but better than other places at the time... i also remember cockta..Macedonia though has always been generally more poorer than places like Slovenia or croatia....
Just a mall correction: Kardelj wasn't the one who came up with the idea of self-governance, it was Svetozar Markovic way before WW 2.
Self-governance was old socialist idea and even exist in the west, call cooperatives. In Finland is much developed
No, but he did advocate for it vs the centralism that Rankovic was pushing, but otherwise you are correct.
@@Ashguy733 Let's also mention that Rankovic was an anti-semite towards the Albanian population. Until the 1960s, a period of unrest in Kosovo was present and Rankovic was for violence and genocide against Albanians. At that point, Rankovic was a Chetnik because he disrespected a non-Serbian culture.
Rankovic also opposed the recognition of the Bosnians as well as the Muslim population in general. As a result, Tito removed Rankovic in 1966 and had him prosecuted for advocating for Greater Serbian Hegemony which was true given his crimes committed against the Brotherhood and Unity.
Upon his death in 1983 and funeral, Rankovic became a prominent anti-Titoist figure among the Chetniks who opposed Tito and the Brotherhood and Unity.
@@austria-hungary4981 Id say it was more his opposition to the self management policies and reforms that Kardelj put forth and it impeding the formulation of those reforms, along with Tito's distrust and paranoia of Ranković's intentions along with his fears of a Serbian Hegemony, along with Jovanka consistently convincing him the Serbs were after him that sealed his fate. The rumors of his takeover after and before Tito's death after 1965 also permeated this suspicion. The fact he was treated as a head of state at the delegation dinner in the Soviet Union that took part in the 23rd Congress by the CPSU and praised as the future president by the Yugoslav delegation didn't help either along with the rumors of a coup d'etat with his meetings with a CPSU delegate Suslov in Warsaw only enraged Tito.
Also contrary to him being a Chetnik, many Serbs hated him because of his participation in the arrest of Draža Mihailović, however he was praised as a guardian of Serbian interest. He actually had a weak presence in the Serbian League since 1965 that had a liberal trend of opposing internal enemy elements and in 1966 exploited a session of the CC to condemn the hostile attitudes of leading politicians of the republic to reforms and were in favour of younger cadres taking their positions in fear of a resurgence of national phenomena occurring in Serbia. By this time Tito cut off ties with Ranković. Bakarić who in 1964 applauded UDBA's 20th year anniversary, was with Tito's consent created speeches blaming the climate of suspicion in Yugoslavia on the organization and specifically Ranković. The CC of the Slovenian League also expressed such criticisms and fear of Serb Nationalism.
Essentially Tito orchestrated a plot which Kardelj later admits that the Executive Committee acted against Ranković as a body with Ivan Krajačić, and Milan Misković (Federal Secretary of Internal Affairs) and Ivan Misković (Chief of Military Intelligence involving the interception of UDBA activities surrounding the Reforms put forth by the Eighth Congress, particularly the recording of conversations, open threats towards high officials into boycotting reforms. Specifically a rotation reform in which no official could occupy the same post for more then 2 years that would begin in 1967 in which radical administration would take place in which 38,000 officials would be replaced when turnover would take place. Tito of course being exempt from this, Ranković was not, but was not ready to renounce his vice presidency of the SFRY and his appointments in the LCY.
To Kardlej, Bakarić and Tito this was unacceptable for fear of a Serb Hegemony. Hence a chain of events was starter by Edo Brajnik, Slovene deputy secretary of Internal Affairs that asked for a meeting with the Executive Committee to discuss one item of on the agenda: state security in Belgrade. This started a private investigation by Ivan Krajačić and two Croatian police experts to investigate and examine the homes of Tito and other prominent individuals in which bugs were found and one in particular from Tito's house connected to Ranković's house. However, these measures were years earlier Tito had authorized the installation of these bugs in the residence of his comrades and that Kardelj had also authorized this activity in his office. Ranković agreed that such methods should stop, but questioned the veracity of the accusations.
Tito then proposed a formation of a Commission, (Crvenkovski Commission) charged with an overview of the security department and its methods. It composed itself of 6 members of each republic. What was uncovered and presented to the Executive Committee was a safe found at the Deparrment of Foreign Affairs containing files with numerous intelligent reports about numerous ambassadors and secretaries of state which were filed with Ranković and UDBA's Chief Stefanović notes.
It was concluded by commssion's findings that during the Split with Stalin UDBA had done good work and was in order, but after the introduction of self-management the organization was unable to resist the temptation to place itself above society by trying to control the party and the state and also a series of economic enterprises in order to direct investments. It became a monopoly of individuals while its leader Ranković acquired political significance.
Tito from then on took the threat of a coup seriously as UDBA had access to tanks and weapons, and had guards posted at Radio and TV stations around Yugoslavia, mobilized the police and even was organized an alternative transport out of Belgrade, due to fear of kidnapping.
The Fourth Plenum laid the charges against Ranković
- tolerating illegal activity of the UDBA which had tried to seize power and hinder the development of Self-Managment democracy and
spying, manipulation, and spread of false information
Other charges which were not made public were
- massacre of Collaborationists
- Outrages perpetrated against the peasants and the Cominformists
Now the veracity of whether he had a coup planned is up for speculation but one of 6 members of the Crvenkovski Commission Mike Tripalo did say this
"Something was clear pretty soon. The security service had a powerful position in society and depended on a small group of officials. It would be difficult to say that Ranković was preparing a coup against Tito, nearer to the truth was that he was getting ready to succeed Tito smoothly when he died."
Id also like to point out that Tito was pretty apathetic towards the Albanian question in Kosovo and Bosnian question in general.
Hello from Croatia, originally from Yugoslavia. You have made a nice documentary. Not taking any sides. Objective.
Thank you.
Yugoslavia, when the Croats (Josip Broz- "Tito") or Slovenes (Edvard Kardelj) were more or less controlling it was doing o.k as soon as the Serbs (Milosevic) took over it turned into...
Milosevic was installed for a reason. To ruin it
Cut the crap .
Milošević was Montenigrin.
One important reason for Yugoslavia downfall was suppression of Yugoslav identity. A lot of people, especially from ethnically mixed families felt like Yugoslavs, yet you could declare as such until 1961 which was too late. Census in 1981 had more than million Yugoslavs rather than Serbs, Croatians Slovenians etc. However this concept should have been promoted from get-go and not suppressed. Imagine newly formed Italy or Germany where you could not declare as German or Italian and you are actually forced to declare as Lombardian or Bavarian respectively. Same with language. Instead to standardize and call it Yugoslavian (like Italy did) they went another route. With all of this being said, although not ideal I was blessed with opportunity to live in Yugoslavia and to experience it first hand. I just feel sorry for people from both west and east, that will never been able to understand it completely. The statement about foreign debt of Yugoslavia is plain wrong. Each of current states has today much higher foreign debt than whole of Yugoslavia, of course adjusted for inflation.
same thing with PC 'identity politics' - a divide and conquer strategy that destroys nations.
You'll get this in the U.S., too, since people can sometimes identify with their state moreso than the country as a whole. It's certainly not comparable to Yugoslavia, but there is quite a bit of autonomy within U.S. states, and as political disagreements boil over here, it's likely state governments will grow stronger as they more often pick and choose which federal laws to abide by.
It's never the size of the debt, but it's your ability to pay it off, yu went thru several inflation cycles where they had to erase few zeros from their banknotes, even in everyday use one dinar was called a thousand - as it was before the new banknotes, 20 or 100 dinars note was called 20 or 100 thousands instead dinars, so yugoslavia while struggling to pay off its debts in attempt to save foreign currency to fight the inflation and fund some megalomaniac vanity projects especially concerning its military infrastructure, always needed some new loans to stay affloat, so it was different in that regard.
@@dannyboy-vtc5741 true that, there was a project for underground military base with in a mountain in Bosnia. It was different times, cold war and shit, looked rational to someone at that time. Now I am not by any means expert on finances but I would argue on current states debt vs ability to pay actually still being in favor of YU even if you take worst possible snapshot from just before the war. Could the debt vs real gdp be indicator of this?
@@alexd9735 i don't agree that yu had better conditions of paying off debts, but it depends a lot under what conditions the loan was given, for instance when the west started pumping money it was really cheap or completely free as financial help, later not so much, but it differed a lot, depending from whom and under which conditions, also republics borrowed money on their own and big firms too, but those were mostly business loans that were paid off with bo probs, but federal institutions had all sorts of loans for different purposes and from different sources.
And yes gdp plays a big role in this, but also the credit status of the country, and yu had pretty poor credit status toward the end, which meant expensive capital.
Cro, for an example as i know the situation here last few times of change of credit status was everu time the new record in that sense that we never had that status before, and unilke serbia atm that needs to borrow from arabs of beg the imf for cash to sustain the current state budget affloat, we can get cash cheaper than ever in our history, and the thing is we don't need it because for any infrastructure project or some restructure in society or agriculture abd so in, basically for whatever we need a lot of cash, we need a good project that will show where the money goes and that it will be well spent and we get at least half and up to 85% free cash from the eu to use it, and hence you don't need a new loan and pay off your old loans and your credit rate is constantly rising, and that's good because if you would need a lot od money suddenly you would be able to get it cheap, but you learn not to borrow it just like that just to cover your latest expences because it's stupid when you didn't even fully used everything you could have from free eu money.
It's a circle, downward spiral in economic terms is a circle, more you borrow more you need to borrow further, like it was in the ex yu, and now serbia faces because they ruined their energy sector that provided them with cash before instead of eating hige amounts bow, and many other wrong decisions.
Same is with upward spiral, lesa you borrow less you need to borrow, same applies to private citizens and their credit cards and other not favourable loans.
The difference is the eu, not as much as handing out money, although we get more out than we pay in, but more because you can have money if you soend it wisely and know exactly what will yu get from it, in economis like the ex yu or now serbia and similar states a lot of the cash that comea in just disappears on top of it not being low interest, due to corruption on all levels when there's no control what you do with the money after you get it and minister buying 24 apartments in bulgaria has bo problems and stays a minister even in the next gov and he's not nearly the worse case, so it depends on many things.
In my eyes the biggest problem was that we the Slovenians and Croatians worked like hell for the idiots in the south to spend on stupid projects.
EAT SHIT YOU WERE MORE PAID THAN MACEDONIA IN YUGOSLAVIA UNGREATHFULL PIGS I WISH YOU TO FINISH LIKE GREECE IN 2008
Like some other postwar European nations, US movie industry could not take out the profits of showing their films in Yugoslavia which were frozen. The studios would spend their frozen funds on production in those countries. In 1969, MGM made Kelly's Heroes in Vizinada, Croatia. One of the main reasons is that Tito allowed the production to use its massive American-Aid supplied army's tanks. Oh, and they had a war ravaged town (which they intended to simulate a French village) that the production company could insert their soon-to-be destroyed buildings for the film.
Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland (who almost died there), Don Rickles and others spent months there. Future director John Landis was an assistant on the shoot. Says John, "My wife is always saying I should write a book on my Kelly's Heroes experience as it was so nuts and I was at the perfect age, 18, to appreciate it." It would be fun to see him write a making-of Kelly's Heroes, but I would enjoy more his writing of his experience of an American film production spending months in living in communist Yugoslavia. I think that the encounter of two different cultures would make a great story and makes great history.
Recall Mel Brooks made a film there called "The 12 Chairs".
Tito wasn’t like Khrushchev when Khrushchev open up to the west
Yello from Sarajevo
For those who don't understand why Tito purge so many nationalists, the reason is Nationalist were Hitler supporters during the WW2
and the other reason is
Nationalist politician from Balkans uses let's have a own country rhetoric, because that way he can become sultan of the country and steal tax money like he is in candy land.
Maybe you want to believe, maybe you won't, but after 90s ex-YU countries are ruled this way with no exception.
If Tito didn't happened most of the people in Yugoslavia will be farmers and work in the agriculture sector and drive on bad roads, not because US or other countries won't give money to modernize Yugoslavia after the WW2, but because those politicians in power (if it wasn't Tito) will steal the money for themselves, just like they do for the past 30+ years.
Love him or hate him, he was at the right time and place in History to modernize Yugoslavia
This is a stupid argument giving the fact that all European countries progressed in postwar period. Just look at Greece, Spain or Portugal. They had similar standard of living before ww2 and in 1970/80 they were two times richer than SFRY
@@branimirkolarov3493 Stipe Mesic said in one interview -
I propose to Milosevic - let's all have independent countries, but we stay in economical union
Milosevic said : No
There was proposition in the 80s Yugoslavia to be part of EU, but politicians said NO
You can't compare nationalistic politicians with politicians from Greece, Spain or Portugal because those politicians are also corrupt, but they also think for the future of their country and their economy, unlike nationalistic politicians from Yugoslavia.
The last 30 years are really good indicator what wound happened to Yugoslavia if it wasn't for Tito
No highways, No industry and everything is corrupt to the bone just like today
@@JosifovGjorgi Since you have started talking about nationalistic politicans you should know that almost all those politicans came from League of Communist, just look at Milošević in 1986 when he criticized SANU memorandum for being a "great serbian idea", while in later years he became man who wanted to ''unite the all Serbs". All those politicans came into party just to rip benefits from it and when it collapsed they started blame each other for their own failures (they stoped talking about brotherhood and unity and had started talking about their nations being in danger). Spain is also in intresting situation where all nations pretty much hate each other, but that state didn't collapsed while Czechoslovakia did. All socialist federations fell. And yes, those highways would be build since they had started to be build in late 1930s, hell even more would be build.
@@branimirkolarov3493 well, there weren't any political party other then Communists, so nationalists where waiting for a chance as communists.
And the highways, maybe but they will be finished in the 90s, because of corruption
and less people to work on, because most of them will migrate to better places like USA, just like Tesla did and many more smart people wound follow the lead.
@@branimirkolarov3493 Greece was for sure not reacher then Yugoslavia in 80s ..in 90s yes but in 80s no
My paternal side of the family was starving in a rural village in the developed part of Croatia during this time due to the socialist system and its barring of private businesses and economic centralization that had left non-city areas impoverished.
Here in the UK in 2023 we have private businesses, and we also have people starving.
If this isn’t talking about the 1951 drought, which the US sent hundreds of thousands of tons of aid to fix which worked, I’m calling total bullshit on this story.
The story of Yugoslav factories, first-hand:
"We have everything, a new building and production hall that the state gave us, a new fleet of vehicles that "Zastava" gave us, solid production, 2 times more workers than we need, absolutely everything. We just don't have the money and we don't know how to earn it."
And that's it, a short ballad about self-governing socialism that is still there, in the dreams of the population. For a very short time, they lived very well with very little work, and such ideas hardly leave an empty head.
Dreams are one thing, reality is quite another. Especially the economic one.
Wait! Did Tito just "heartattack" his security Chief?
Old Russian trick. Heartattack, car accident, fell from stairs, hung himself, he shot his family then himself....
@@zb7621 who could have known?😂
@@zb7621 oh yes, literally no one else has ever used nefarious means to get rid of rivals, people in their way... only russians. things like this have never been perpetrated in the global south on behalf of the US, UK, or other European nations
I know you have to condense a big topic in just 20 min, but the result is that viewers get a very distorted picture
Pretty much on point. 👍
Yugoslavia was doomed from the day one. All republics were saying that Yugoslavia was a dungeon but reality is that Serbia did had worst time during that federation. Yugoslavia was created that Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia would one day be separated countries. It united victim's and butchers. If that didn't happen, after the WWI, Serbia and Italia would then be neighbors in today's Croatia. Anyhow, the way Yugoslavia fell apart, only shows the level of hate and primitivism between people.
my grandpa was yugoslav german from vojvodina, his house is still standing, where he was expelled from in 1945.
but very interesting summary. very good, that you mentioned the role of the economy so broadly, because most american historians say: yugoslavia broke up, because serbs became nationalists and shooted innocent people. there is a pre-text.
the only thing i never got, concerning the policy of the us towards sfrj when the coutry broke up in 1991 is this- yugoslavia annually hold meneuvres with us- army instructors, yugoslav army´s standard-weapon was the m-16, not the ak-47, despite there was a yugoslav makeover of the ak, but the soldiers were eqipped with the m-16.... but when the country broke up, the us took the german anti-yugoslav position after a while. this is not the behavior of an ally.
Great video. It is interesting that even after so many wars and the partition of Yugoslavia, most folks I've spoken to, still have appreciation and even nostalgia for Tito.
There were many who lived through Stalin that became nostalgic for his rule. Over time and with sympathetic historians much of the evil of even the worst dictators can be overlooked in favor of a small amount of good done. Tito was a mixed bag, every bit a brutal socialist dictator but his rule did give a sense of identity beyond the ethnic tensions that usually characterize the region's politics.
@@josephahner3031 Except that Tito was nothing like Stalin. Apart from the descendants of former Nazi sympathisers, he was beloved amongst the rest of the population.
@@cinilaknedalm Tito fought and organized the Yugoslav partisans through much of the Second World War, he was anti-Nazi and a nationalist all the way
@@daeseongkim93 Nationalist? He literally united dozens of different nationalities. If he was a nationalist he would side wity Croatians as he was a Croat himself.
@@cinilaknedalm No , he was half Slovenian and Half Croat, married to a Serbian wife who was very influential, and was a traitor to his own people.
Private companies could employ up to 100 workers, at least in the later days of Yugoslavia.
Interesting and entertaining video, as usual. Would you be so kind of sharing the sources used for your research? Thanks in advance, and happy holidays!
The Željava Air Base (located in a mountain) was a crazy Yugoslav communist project in which the Yugoslav communist party spent $6 billion USD to build this military project. In the end the Serbs blew it up in the 1990`s.
Projects like this ruined the Yugoslav economy as this money was borrowed and had to be paid back with interest but did not generate any income it was just an ongoing cost.
Something about Yugoslavia that you can't read in news reports and official pronouncements are the underground ethnic currents. Publicly you couldn't talk about ethnicity and discrimination but in reality it was deeply institutionalized. A lot of political crisis that you mentioned also had an ethnic component with Serbs wanting centralization while other people wanting more independence.
Over time, Serbs promoted other Serbs to key positions and promoted Serbian culture and Serbian view of history. Bosnjak people weren't even recognized as a group until the 1976 constitution which recognized them as Bosnian Muslims. In Bosnia the streets and schools were all named after Serb historical figures, and Serbian literally works were promoted in curriculum and on television. Even on the street Serbian nationalist propaganda was pushed with jokes depicting Bosnians, and Bosnjak people as stupid, Montenegrins as lazy, Croats were devious and Albanians as primitive and backwards.
By the time of 1990s, Serbian nationalist controlled all the Yugoslav security institutions like the army and the secret police which were then turned on Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovo's Albanians.
Historically, Bosniaks are mostly Serbs and some other locals that went very closely with the ottomans and converted to their religion.
And don’t be putting all dogs on Serbia for the events of the 90s.
And are they really wrong about Montenegrins and Albanians?
A Montenegrin has to sit down and rest after waking up 😅
Bosnians were christians slavs before Ottomans invaded, they converted to avoid pay tax or some benefits?
Maybe first converts were smart people, all they wanted was to game the system while occupation lasts. Problem was occupation lasted centuries and subsequent generations started following religion for good instead of reverting back to Christianity
@@joeshugabowski1444 that's not a problem. People freely choose their religion.
@@joeshugabowski1444 Serbs are also Slavs… They were Serbs or at least many of them.
@@hamobu Freely was not an option under Ottoman or any Islamic occupation for that matter. There was a reason why many converted. “To have a better life” or in translation: Not to be bullied.
It's important to note that two autonomous provinces were part of Serbia, not Yugoslavia. This was not clearly said.
For anyone interested, Cockta is still better than Coca cola;)
While traveling on holiday to Montenegro from Serbia, we were out of supply of PLAZMA cookies. When we crossed the "border" you can only buy the same cookies called DJETIC, bad copy of PLAZMA. That is what con-federalization done to Yugoslavia's market.
Sad. A shame these former Yu brands aren't given special status to be sold throughout the former republics.
3:25
Cockta is miles better than Coca Cola. Still when i buy soft drink i go with Cockta, event today.
EuroCrem, Kraš, Cockta, Ledo we didn't need Nutella or Coca Cola we had pretty much everything on par or better, regarding food items.
But we had Coca Cola, we had western products.
I was born in Yugoslavia and yes it was dictatorships in a way but we had everything i had C64, had VCR, the borders were opened, for Yugoslav passports well allmost to everywhere, but really didnt had to go we had best seas, mountains, valleys, and historical sites
You could actually own property private business.
The religion was not hindered, in my town there are numerous Mosques, Churches but you could not mix religion with politics that is one way to Goli Otok.
Strange country was Yugoslavia, and in my childhood before war it was greatest country then war came and i was left without food, water, electricity for three years as child.
That Yugoslavia deserved everything what happened to her.
But we needed just beter curistamnces to split in peace.
My grandpa always speaks good about Yugoslavia as it was the best country in the world. My grandpa was Ustasa from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second world war. So must be really good country to impress one Ustasa 😂
So you must be in your 60's now?
@@agrameroldoctane_66 Bro look at this pic...
@@agrameroldoctane_66 l am 34 yold.. l not said he is still alive but he always speaks good about Yugoslavia. Partisans gives him amnesty because he was just a regular soldier.. and in part of Herzegovina he is from everyone was ultra ustasa so they give amnesty to many better than kill complete population of Western Herzegovina 😂
whatsoever l am South African Croat.. born and rised in South Africa. l am not obsessed with nationalism and your identity and history problem there.. My parents comes to South Africa before you guys there started your hate and all that wars.. so all that really avoided me on time. l have Croatian passport and going on vacations to Dalmatia nd thats all.. l am really not a good person for your Balkan debates 😂
I lived in Yugoslavia since I was born until 1989. I loved the country and would return immediately if it ever comes to existence as it was before. I can not even compare the freedom and security I felt in comparison to my life now in Sydney. As a teenager, in 80's, I would walk at 3 AM by myself without even thinking of being robbed or raped. That was almost non existant.
most channels only talk about Yugoslavia's violent conclusion, the good ones show how it was always fundamentally flawed
deep
Any recommendations?
@@Grenadier311 channel: The Great War
@@christianweibrecht6555 Thanks.
I am a Yugoslav, always was and always will be. My youth was not flowed, it was beautiful. I am not flowed, period.
Odličan video, hvala lijepa :)
Tito became President for life in 1974... but was dead by 1980. Ironic, huh?
Well atleast Tito was better leader than Regent Paul and King Alexander, nobody looks upon those times with nostalgia
Tito was by far best leader of all ex-yugoslav nations in their history
But then again, being better than King Alexander I isn't a high bar.
My great grand mother, Paša, who was born in 1912, said that best times were when the king ruled.
@@adnanbosnian5051 Nah. Yugoslavia was one of the poorest and most corrupt nations in europe during Alexander I.
@@WarCrimeGaming How do you know this? I know we are being lied to about what is going on right now. History of the world is bunch of lies. I can not imagine times being more wrong, corrupt, than now.
@@adnanbosnian5051 Ignoring all the evidence of that time and the fact that politics today (in West Europe and the USA at least) are far more strict on corruption than before, guess what. I also had ancestors living back then in today's Bosnia and let me tell you, pure hellhole. Children starving on the few roads that existed, outdated Infrastructure even for the time, dirty, damaged hospitals, bad salary and police so corrupt you could bribe them with a few dinar to get away with assault or theft combined with a far stricter punishments for speaking against the oh so great King. Even the 500 - 600 thousand man "strong" army was poorly equiped and badly trained. Truth is, you are living in the best of times and you should be thankful for it.
one of the greatest sources on the final years of Yugoslavia is From the Death of Tito to the Death of Yugoslavia by Raif Dizdarević, former president of the SFRJ.
Cockta is just better than Cocacola highly recommend 😊
I'm reminded of the (very dark) "joke" mentioned on one of the videos covering Yugoslavia (and or the balklands video)
That there was the super dark and ended up true joke of
"so when he Tito dies, are we gonna start shooting eachother again?"
Hopefully mentioning another great channel like Rare Earth is ok, as I think if anyone is interested in history and already subscribed to all the channels and watched all the videos on the great war, world war 2, etc...
Then there is a *giant* chance they'll move Rare Earth
Plus it's not like stealing subscribers, just a great channel like cold war, and even if the rest of the videos aren't of interest, the Yugoslavia/balklands video is a good follow up to this video for anyone interested in what happens from and past the timeframe the coldwar video covers (and the balklands video is just a the Yugoslavia videos combined)
Are there any modern day movements in any of the former member nations to reunite Yugoslavia in any form? Thank you for this excellent episode!
God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)
We could start one!
@ً Well, on their shitty terms. Titoism is pretty much dead unfortunately.
Bit late to reply but Rojava is an informal state embracing market socialism, probably the closest entity today with Yugoslavian type economy.
I would like to know what the work ethic was in the various republics. Thank you.