Quote from: jeff37923 on November 11, 2021, 01:36:26 AM

Quote from: jhkim on November 10, 2021, 09:42:35 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 10, 2021, 08:10:22 PM
Hey, any Yugoslavians (former) here? I've got one dude on Youtube comments insisting that in Communist Yugoslavia it was a paradise where you could get all the latest pop culture from the USA and you could get anything published.

I don't think it was a paradise - but apparently many current citizens consider that things were better in Communist Yugoslavia than the modern-day capitalist states. Unlike some post-communist changeovers, the average income has gone down in the former Yugoslavian countries since the break-up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo-nostalgia
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2015/06/30/were-bosnias-good-ol-days-really-that-good/
https://www.obserwatorfinansowy.pl/in-english/macroeconomics/between-wealth-and-poverty-former-yugoslavia-25-years-after-the-breakup/

Well, that was predictable.....

Greetings!

*LAUGHING*! Ahh, so true, heh, Jeff?

I just imagined you saying that in kind of a dead-pan tone, and it made me choke on my coffee laughing.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Are the people nostalgic for Soviet-era Yugoslavia old enough to remember those years?

I read a little book a while back. I've completely forgotten its name, or the author. But it was a series of stories that recounted the horrors of life behind the Iron Curtain, written by someone who lived through that period, and based on the stories she ferreted out from other people who were old enough to remember. The book itself was explicitly a reaction to the romanticization of the Soviet era by the younger generation. She was trying to warn people, before it was too late. One of the things the forward pointed out was that the older generation had grown up in an era where they had learned the hard way to keep their mouths shut. Combined with their natural inclination to spare their children from the horrors they experienced, the stories had simply not been passed down. The result was a generation who were unfamiliar with how horrible the things really were, and thus were susceptible to the siren call of false nostalgia and the pseudonationalic lure of imagined glories of the past.

The entire story of the human race is one of morons who never learn from anyone else's pain but our own.

The stove was hot for them but it will not be for me because I'm special and smarter and know how to touch it. Just remove this barrier in the way, it's inefficient anyway, it makes it hard to even reach it.
We will touch it so much better than SHIT! I'm burnt! Someone Help me! This is really messed up! Why would you let me touch it? OMG this hurts! Why is this a thing? We need to make sure people can't just touch it. Let's build a barrier to it.

It just repeats over and over from the beginning until the end.

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 10, 2021, 08:10:22 PMHey, any Yugoslavians (former) here? I've got one dude on Youtube comments insisting that in Communist Yugoslavia it was a paradise where you could get all the latest pop culture from the USA and you could get anything published.

Neighbour, not inhabitant, but... Yugoslavia was one of the more bearable communist regimes, and its inhabitants enjoyed some privileges.
1) It was an independent state, not a conquered and humiliated Soviet satellite. That made for a different national mentality, and a lot more manouevring room in politics and economic policy.
2) The Yugoslav model of the economy was based on worker councils running companies instead of relentless top-down planning. No, it did not work (and neither did a lot of the employees, har har), but it was often more comfortable than the alternatives. A few Yugoslavian companies were very good (competing on western markets without difficulty); most were very crappy.
3) There was relative freedom of movement. Yugoslavian citizens could travel to the west, and even work there as temporary workers. This was unthinkable elsewhere.
4) Access to western goods and culture was certainly better than any other socialist country, including Hungary (which was also relatively open).
5) Freedom of speech was slightly better than most other socialist countries, and much better than hellholes like Romania and Albania. All things being relative.
6) From the POV of people from the less developed republics, there were enormous federal transfers to modernise them, which was an advantage. (Coincidentally, this is why also why annexing Bosnia was such a foolish venture for the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: we poured enormous piles of money in there to build basic infrastructure and a modern state, and did not see a red cent back.) Serbia, while not very developed, benefited from being the "ruling" republic where the capital was, and was placated with political influence.

And the caveats:
1) Yugoslavia was a federal state, whose member republics and two autonomous provinces ranged from highly developed almost-western Slovenia, touristy Croatia, to barely industrialised Macedonia and Kosovo. There were enormous development differences, so anything said about "Yugoslavia" may only be true for a smaller slice of it.
2) Yugoslavia went almost bankrupt in the early 1980s, going through hyperinflation and mass unemployment before the rest of the socialist bloc. This was papered over by allowing people to work abroad and bring home salaries in western currencies (a MAJOR advantage), but most of it was as dysfunctional as any other socialist state.
3) It ended really, really badly, which is why, in contrast, people tend to be so nostalgic about it. Slovenia and Croatia are doing quite well, Serbia, Montenegro and [Northern] Macedonia so-so; and Bosnia / Kosovo are essentially failed states.

All things considered, it was relatively better than most alternatives (Yugoslavians were generally envied by their neighbours...), and there is an enormous halo of nostalgia around it because the War and its aftermath were so terrible for the average person. It was somewhat liveable and less restricted, a bit like Francoist Spain, but with crappier economics. But to consider it any kind of success is, nah.

I would like to see the time period the tankie is waxing nostalgic for, too. The years right up to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. saw a lot of penetration into the eastern European markets by Western goods and culture, thanks to glasnost.

Quote from: jhkim on November 10, 2021, 09:42:35 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 10, 2021, 08:10:22 PM
Hey, any Yugoslavians (former) here? I've got one dude on Youtube comments insisting that in Communist Yugoslavia it was a paradise where you could get all the latest pop culture from the USA and you could get anything published.

I don't think it was a paradise - but apparently many current citizens consider that things were better in Communist Yugoslavia than the modern-day capitalist states. Unlike some post-communist changeovers, the average income has gone down in the former Yugoslavian countries since the break-up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo-nostalgia
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2015/06/30/were-bosnias-good-ol-days-really-that-good/
https://www.obserwatorfinansowy.pl/in-english/macroeconomics/between-wealth-and-poverty-former-yugoslavia-25-years-after-the-breakup/

Quote from: Pat on November 11, 2021, 02:49:16 AM
Are the people nostalgic for Soviet-era Yugoslavia old enough to remember those years?

I read a little book a while back. I've completely forgotten its name, or the author. But it was a series of stories that recounted the horrors of life behind the Iron Curtain, written by someone who lived through that period, and based on the stories she ferreted out from other people who were old enough to remember. The book itself was explicitly a reaction to the romanticization of the Soviet era by the younger generation.

Pat - you're talking about the Iron Curtain in general, but as the links I gave document - and as Melan discussed in his post, the experience of older Yugoslavians has been very different from the experience of, say, older East Germans. Prior to the division, Germany had been a major colonial power - and it was kept apart only by external forces. After the reunification, East Germans saw a rise in their fortunes - plus the dismantling of the Soviet-backed secret police.

By contrast, Yugoslavia had always been a poor backwater. In Yugoslavia, the older generation saw the country that they grew up in torn apart, ravaged by war and ethnic cleansing, and saw a decline in average income in much of the country - especially Bosnia and Kosovo. I had a former coworker who was Croatian, who had come out OK, but then he was lucky (as he put it).

Pundit asked specifically about Yugoslavia, so I tried to answer specifically about such. I know a bunch of people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, including a woman from East Germany I was with for three years. They are all generally anti-Soviet, but they had differing views on the details.

Quote from: jhkim on November 11, 2021, 02:27:19 PM
Pat - you're talking about the Iron Curtain in general, but as the links I gave document - and as Melan discussed in his post, the experience of older Yugoslavians has been very different from the experience of, say, older East Germans. Prior to the division, Germany had been a major colonial power - and it was kept apart only by external forces. After the reunification, East Germans saw a rise in their fortunes - plus the dismantling of the Soviet-backed secret police.

By contrast, Yugoslavia had always been a poor backwater. In Yugoslavia, the older generation saw the country that they grew up in torn apart, ravaged by war and ethnic cleansing, and saw a decline in average income in much of the country - especially Bosnia and Kosovo. I had a former coworker who was Croatian, who had come out OK, but then he was lucky (as he put it).

Pundit asked specifically about Yugoslavia, so I tried to answer specifically about such. I know a bunch of people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, including a woman from East Germany I was with for three years. They are all generally anti-Soviet, but they had differing views on the details.

Melan's post was useful. Yours was just Wikipedia and other links, and this new post of yours is a meaningless "different things are different" that doesn't seem related to anything I wrote. The book I referenced was not about the Iron Curtain in some general abstract sense or East Germany in particular, as you're falsely stating and implying. It was a series of specific stories from specific regions and countries that fell under that rubric. I was pretty clear I didn't remember a lot of the specifics, and I don't recall if it included Yugoslavia, but the stories that composed it were from the full range of Soviet Bloc countries, from the most repressive to the loosest.

I wish I could remember the name of the book or the author. It made an impression on me, but I'm having a hard time finding it in searches.

 Alexey Pazhitnov created Tetris in spite of communism. I'm guessing he wishes he got some money for his creation.

My experience is with East Germans in the 90s but the younger folks jumped right in and embraced capitalism. The older East Germans seemed to prefer Communism because they were afraid they might not succeed at this late point in their life.