Well my hindsight back to those times is crystal clear to remember that statement "living in a dump and absolutely horrific times" is absolutely not true.
You're not addressing the arguments with counter arguments, you're just saying that it's so because you remember it being so.
I didn't say "living in a dump". I said the standard of living was in the dumps, in other words, not good. I said the 80s were horrific in terms of the economy. If you look at GDP per capita, Yugoslavia in the 80s was pretty much the same as it was in the 50s. Paired with failing state enterprises, rising unemployment, internal social tension, political instability and the general unreliability of basic products like fuel, I dare say that it was a pretty horrific situation (but I can concede that that word may be just a tad too much). Here's an article I found about the Yugoslav economy.
YU Historija... ::: Welcome ... Economy
Haven't read the whole thing yet, but what he's saying is that Communism held back the country tremendously. And basically the only thing keeping it afloat was foreign debt (coming from the west). Which, once it came time to service the debt, caused huge problems across the board.
Every time the subject is revived in the forum, I think to myself "here we go again".
The problem is identity politics. When one's ego is attached to an identity, it inherits its irrational rationalizations.
In a war like this one, everybody looses. However, it's easier to lose a war than to admit that all involved parties were played by the Western powers. For the ego, recognizing that one has been deceived (and still being deceived) is very difficult, hence the continuous finger pointing and the blame game. Still seeing NATO as saviors and protectors after all this time is a very bizarre delusion indeed.
I'm trying to steer clear of the identity politics and look at the facts. Maybe I'm failing, but that's my intention. Not trying to play the blame game, just trying to figure out what actually happened, and if that sounds like playing the blame game, then so be it.
Throughout the 1980s, Yugoslavia (Dalmatian coast) was a popular summer holiday destination for Western Europeans. I have family members who went there regularly. Not that that speaks definitively to the state of the country then, but it does suggest it wasn't some dystopian hovel.
I didn't say that it was a dystopian hovel at any point. It was a relatively functioning state with beautiful natural resources that any amount of mismanagement couldn't destroy. It was also pretty civilized, so no wonder your family members felt good going there.
I'm saying that it was far from some sort of Communist utopia that many here are trying to paint it as. By the late 80s, it was barely functioning and it had nothing to do with external forces working to break it up and everything to do with the incompetence of the Communist leadership and their refusal to make any meaningful reforms.
In fact, the only reason it even worked out for so long, is because the West jumped onto the opportunity to stick it to the Soviets after the 1948. schism between Tito and Stalin, and decided to finance Yugoslavia to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. If you look at it that way, Yugoslavia was the West's poodle almost since its inception.
@Revolucionar, for the sake of clarity, can you explain your position in simple terms? What I'm getting is that you are Croatian from Zagreb and have an enduring hostility towards the Serbs in the way that they behaved during the war.
Is that it, more or less?
No. My only goal here is to unearth the reasons for the breakup and the war. I didn't even want to talk about the war itself too much.
What I've been seeing, and this thread is confirming, is that there's this enduring misplaced nostalgia for Yugoslavia and the idea that the West is the main culprit for the breakup and the ensuing conflicts. I just don't see these positions being borne out by the facts that I can gather.
I seriously have no ill feelings towards the Serbs. I have many Serb friends, from Croatia and from Serbia. I had a long time girlfriend who was a Croatian Serb and I feel like we are brotherly nations. I don't bear ill feelings towards anyone here either for anything they may have said. I hope we can have a civilized discussion.
As I said earlier in this thread, my goal was to try to rectify the, IMO, malconceived notion that the West was entirely to blame for what happened by propping up nationalists in Croatia and elsewhere and that the Serbs were somehow anti-imperialists who the West smeared, etc, etc...
There were plenty of articles on SOTT that carried this basic idea and I set out to pick apart some of those lies, misrepresentations and omissions.
Above all, I'm interested in the history, per se. I don't care about finger pointing or anything, just want to deal with the facts as they are to be found. I think it's a very interesting area with a lot of rich history that goes back millenia.
www.sott.net
