first can you comment on how common or unusual it would have been to find a pastry shop run by a person of Albanian origin in the towns and villages of socialist Yugoslavia?
Rory Archer: I think it would have been very common. Judging from the sources, it’s kind of ubiquitous.
Canadian rapper Drake says he is "Yugoslavian" in his new song "8am Charlotte":
— kos_data (@kos_data) October 6, 2023
"Where I go you go, brother, we Yugoslavian. Formal is a dress code, dog so many checks owed I feel Czechoslovakian” pic.twitter.com/wCnJIeJ6N2
From a Reporter's Notebook
By Christopher Bir
Problems of Communism, Jul-Aug-Sep-Oct 1969
Mr. Bird is a free-lance writer who recently spent a year in Yugoslavia as a correspondent for Time
magazine (New York). He has previously contributed to this journal.
- Spoiler:
...
King “Ethnos”
All these stimuli blow a new cosmopolitan wind over a country too long absorbed in its own solipsisms and still not yet fully awakened from the trance induced by the hypnosis of ideology. To many foreign residents, Yugoslavia seems like a vehicle which, in trying to ford a swift-moving river, suddenly finds itself stalled in midstream. As the water swirls around it, the passengers of the car are more prone to squabbling among themselves as to which places they shall sit in, who shall drive, and who shall be allowed to back-seat drive, than to getting the motor running again and the car in motion. After a 25-year history which has seen the nation broken but not beaten in war, Sovietized, and then de-Sovietized into a singular brand of Titoist communism, the vehicle of state finds itself in midstream—that is, in the midst of an economic and social transformation wherein old institutions and controls struggle with newly released forces and concepts.
Ruling over the vagaries of the situation is an old monarch, King “Ethnos.” His Greek name has the advantage of meaning both nation and people. The establishment of six republics in Yugoslavia after World War II gave political and territorial recognition to the six principal peoples of the nation and translated a pervasive, if often mystical, ethnic self-identity into more tangible self-government. The Yugoslav Federation is now engaged in a gradual transfer of central power to these republics (on which more shortly). Decentralization is the key fact of the day, and it is proceeding apace.
To grasp the Yugoslav reality, it is necessary to recognize that two main factors have held these republics together until now: the profound impact of Tito's leadership, and the threat of pressure—any pressure—from without. To continue the analogy of a vehicle, whenever the pressure is on, the motor hums smoothly— as it did during World War II when Yugoslavs of all ethnic derivations fought the invader; as it did in the 1950's when the country rallied behind its leaders in the face of grave Soviet threats; and as it did most recently when Yugoslavia's reformist neighbor, Czechoslovakia, fell prey not to threats but to outright invasion.
Remove Tito, turn off the current of pressure, and the motor may die. The leadership factor is bound to be altered in a few years; Tito's replacement is a committee of 15 men, whose ability to hold the nation together remains to be seen. The factor of pressure will depend on European events. It is significant to note that when actual pressure on Yugoslavia has been lacking, Tito has been adept at fostering the impression that threats nonetheless lurked everywhere, warning his countrymen at one time or another about the dangers posed by Italian army maneuvers in Venetia, by the new junta of colonel-dictators in Greece, by the Bulgarians casting covetous eyes on Macedonia, by the CIA, by the presence of the US fleet in the Mediterranean, and so forth. It seems obvious he felt it was better to keep popular attention riveted on outside enemies and what they might be doing, than to have various Slavs striving to best their neighbors.
Ethnocentrism pervades the life of the country. When one lives in Belgrade one is in Serbia, not Yugoslavia. Try to cover a story on art, books, cinema, education, religion, press, theater, behavior, or whatever, and you find you get a Serbian view of the Serbian side of the issue. Serbian actors on these many stages often do not know, and more often do not care to know, what is going on in Ljubljana, Skopje or Zagreb. And the reverse holds as well.
Nowhere else in Europe is this ethnic absorption so obvious. From Madrid to Helsinki, from Paris to Sofia, the capitals are the foci, the brains, the reflection of the entire nation. The only possible exception is Italy, but even there regional self centeredness does not approach that in Yugoslavia.
Like a computer conceived and designed ethnically, each Yugoslav republic is programmed to calculate in terms of its own ethnic interest. Where it is in the lead, it neither needs nor looks to the nation. Slovenia, fast becoming a sort of Slavic Austria in material respects, aims at the further development of its economy on a self-sufficient rather than an interdependent federal basis.
One could feel the hot breath of Slovenian chauvinism in the air at the opening, in the spring of 1968, of a $30 million rail spur linking the new port of Koper (the old Italian Capodestria a few kilometers south of Trieste) to the national rail grid. A crowd of 3,000 heard a brass band compete with high oratory to herald the new iron artery as a Slovene-planned, Slovene-financed and Slovene executed acomplishment. Press handouts and brochures featured the republic as a crossroads in the transportation network of central Europe, appending a map that linked up Slovenia with a heartland consisting of North Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The only accent on federalism was a banquet given to Tito and his entourage at a local hotel that evening.
Where the republic is culturally and technically in the rear, as for instance in the Yugoslav “mezzogiorno,” it tends to look to the federation as to a parent for help in distributing the family wealth equitably among all the children." It also leans much more heavily toward the coordination of economic needs on a federation-wide basis. But it nevertheless fetes its economic achievements in a spirit of republicanism. For example, in the fall of 1967 the city of Skopje (Macedonia) celebrated the official opening of a $160 million steel mill—an investment which almost equalled, in one lump, the entire industrial capital invested in Macedonia since the end of World War II. Half the city's population turned out for opening day, and the streets were lined with children waving flags. But again, it was only the presence of Tito, who arrived to cut the tape, that gave this Macedonian festival a touch of Yugoslav flavor.
Many economists are doubtful whether the Skopje steel complex will be profitable, but the local force of engineers and other personnel, all of whom trained for the project from scratch at their own initiative, are optimistic that they can make steel pay by keeping labor productivity high and integrating final production into the Yugoslav economic system as a whole. While the project may appear illogical from the all-Yugoslav viewpoint, no one can deny that the Macedonians have created skills and jobs where none existed before.”
On another front, totally divergent republican approaches to life were revealed among the youth in the manifestos of student bodies in Belgrade and Ljubljana during last fall's university protests. While the Serbs' remonstrances centered on the idea, or ideal, of material egalitarianism (“Enough of Red Capitalism,” “More Peasant and Worker Sons and Daughters at the University,” “Equal Wages for All”), Ljubljana's manifesto was rife with anti-establishmentarianism (no matter what the establishment) and anarchism.
These esoteric variations among students are paralleled by a pride in language differences that extends down to the least educated, barely literate element of the populace—a factor that seriously impedes unity within the country. A Slovenian highway patrolman who stops a foreign car for a traffic violation will open with the query (in his own language), “Do you speak Slovenian?”—as unlikely a probability as if Basque had been in question—and only then try another language, usually German rather than Serbo-Croatian.
On one occasion a Croat friend and I crossed the border from Croatia into Slovenia to visit the little town of Krsko just over the frontier. The visit had been recommended by Janez Stanovnik, the affable Minister of State, a native of the town. During World War II the entire adult population of Krsko had been sent to Germany as forced laborers; upon their return, they had used the diverse skills they had learned to build a remarkably modern and economically active community in what was one of the most backward parts of the republic.” As we drove into town, we stopped to ask a uniformed policeman the way to the city hall. The cop, somewhat harassed by his duties as a traffic director (one in seven people owns a car in Slovenia today) yelled the way at us, adding rudely in his native language: “And why the hell don't you talk Slovenian?”
...
The Political Puzzle
No commentary on present-day Yugoslavia would be complete without a glimpse at the political scene, though that is a hard subject to tackle in brief. Understanding the twists and turns of Yugoslav political life, even when one is in the country, is a frustrating and complicated business. One can begin by perusing the two morning dailies in Belgrade, Borba and Polityka, whose columns are translated into English by nightfall by a joint British-American committee for the use of the diplomatic corps. Reading this press was one of the least satisfying experiences this writer has had since becoming literate. The language often has the ring of some 16th or 17th-century sectarian debate. Hard and reliable facts are few and far between in the 50 or so closely-typewritten, legal-size pages the translators churn out each day. The meaning must be ferreted out from hints, suggestions, allusions, indirect references, and aspersions.
Personal communication is often just as unsatisfactory. A member of the party Central Committee whom I interviewed was so tautological and tortuous in his verbiage that, after a good half-hour, I was still unable to elicit one concrete piece of data about the party’s “reorganization,” the principal focus of his concern. This appears to be part of a game that goes on all the time. At a press conference given by the outgoing head of the Communist Youth, questions requiring factual replies were consistently referred to staff members to be answered at a later date. Finally one foreign journalist got to his feet to ask if anything at all of interest was going to be aired at the conference. This directness produced nods of assent from his press colleagues and a reaction of merriment among many of the Yugoslavs in the room.
Perseverance is mandatory in the hunt for the Yugoslav political animal, which, after hours of conversations and bushels of words, one thinks one begins to discern in the thick jungle of cant and sanctimony that all too often pervade political discourse. Fortunately, there are moments of revelation. For example, the deputy director of a leading political weekly let out some frank remarks on the party’s reorganization,” a catchword which can be interpreted as “the on-going search for a new political structure in the country.” He said:
The economic reform is a sort of cattle prod to politics; it is part of an unexplored river down which we are being driven by the force of the new economics. All intelligent people recognize that technocrats are an important new force outside the party. Indeed, the party men may have to take a back seat to them in coming events.
With similar candor, a noted economist with whom I talked proffered the theory that none knew any longer what the party's role really was or what it ultimately should be. He felt that in any event there was no longer any need for indoctrinatign either party members or unaffiliated citizens in positions of responsibility. “Yugoslavs have become good socialists the way Britishers became good democrats,” was the way he put it.
At the same time he went on to defend the notion — currently in vogue among Yugoslav ideologues—that the creation of a multi-party system, even on a peaceful basis (this doubtful at best) would be a retrogression, if not a disaster, for Yugoslavia.” He stated:
We want to get rid of political society as such, with all its party leaders and party bureaus. We want everyone to play a role; we want to form an “association of associations,” with a rotation of the people in power to counteract stagnancy. We are on the verge, perhaps, of a period something like that in 19th-century England and France, where liberal capitalism produced Western democracy. We feel we can, with our system, produce real social democracy.
This theme, albeit with varying overtones, is constantly in the wind. A prominent expert in international relations adumbrated the notion that the League of Communists will ultimately have to disappear somewhere far along the line. In the meantime, he stated solemnly, every society must have an elite which influences general thought patterns and sustains efforts to arrive at goals. It is problematical whether thinking Yugoslavs really give credence to this notion of a future “a-party” system. But it is an important doctrinal innovation of Titoism and it is therefore bandied about in an almost ritualistic fashion. As for the man on the street, it was my impression that he was largely apathetic about both politics and ideology, contemptuous of politicians, and interested primarily in his own material advancement.
A West European specialist with long residence in the USSR and other parts of East Europe saw political Yugoslavia as an oligarchy in its most classical form, upheld by a party trying to cure itself of its own sclerosis but totally unsure of the right therapy. “You can paste any label you want to on this oligarchy,” he went on unpedantically, “it’s not important. What is important is to determine whether progress toward economic and social goals is being made on a rational basis.” He saw a great deal of evidence of such progress insofar as domestic issues were concerned, but was skeptical about Yugoslav foreign policy, which he characterized as “confused by ideology.” He was also pessimistic about the ability of any post-Tito directorate to push its own self-liberalization, giving two reasons: the paucity of historical precedent, and the fact that many institutions in Yugoslavia constitute a real block to the further growth of freedom.
For the puzzled onlooker, I would suggest a look at Mexico as a backboard on which to bounce the current Yugoslav political prognosis. Not only does this lead one away from the dismal swamp of ideology and its interpretation but gives the advantage of certain parallels upon which to construct possible comparisons and predictions. Not the least of these parallels are the one-party system, the myth of an on-going revolution, and a rapidly developing economy faced with a massive problem of income distribution. Somehow Mexico has managed to exist—and indeed to achieve considerable progress—over the past few decades under a one party system (the Partido Revolucionario Institucional) which provides an institutional framework for contending political views and factions, and which—despite a tendency to corruption—shows no sign of evolving into an oligarchical or personal dictatorship. Perhaps this is the direction in which the Yugoslav system is heading, too.
The professional “Communists”—the party functionaries—in Yugoslavia make a valiant effort to rationalize the political situation, which often confuses the issue by raising as many questions as it answers. One of the more communicative officials with whom I talked defended the party's mediating role in what he called Yugoslavia's “historical philosophical-humanistic struggle.” From the party's point of view, I as could assess it, dangers to the development of the current Yugoslav system have arisen from two conceits. The first is rooted in self seeking, which has caused resistance to economic reform and the ideas of self-management by a large clique of persons who long to return to what was for them a more secure past. The second springs from intellectual arrogance, expressed in the attitude of so-called “radicals” within the intelligentsia who—seeing themselves as political pragmatists— scoff about “our hope and belief that our young working class of uneducated and semi-literates can one day take their place in a society which will allow everybody to develop on an equal basis.” In the minds of party theorists, the rank opportunists and the self-centered eggheads (respectively symbolized, perhaps, by Rankovic and Djilas) are equally dangerous to their own concept of how Yugoslavia should develop.
Future Prospects
What the future holds for Yugoslavia, given the maze of contradictory imponderables in that beautiful, many-faceted country, is hard to predict. Within the maze, the course of development with respect to three of the problems discussed above will be crucial. These key problems pertain to the uncertainties of the political succession, the impact of ethnic rivalries, and—of course—the progress of economic reform.
Concerning the succession, those attempting to apply what Lenin termed “kto kogo” to Yugoslavia are in for a difficult time. To reach for an analogy, the setting up of a 15-man executive bureau to succeed Tito can be compared to the custom in prize-fighting of naming a list of the principal heavyweight contenders. Nobody will know who the real sluggers are until they get into the ring, and that won't happen until the final retirement of the present champion.
As for King “Ethnos,” however strong the centrifugal force driving the various Yugoslav peoples to serve their own interests, a counteractive centripetal force exists simply because of the absence of any solid, viable alternative to unity. The idea of converting Yugoslavia from a federation into a confederacy is sedulously suggested in many quarters as the next step that ought to be taken to institutionalize ethnic rights on a more harmonious basis. Perhaps this notion will bear fruit.
The problem of economic reform involves the bipolarity of an economic system that is trying to combine commercial and fiscal pragmatism with neo-Marxist theology. At present pragmatism is to the fore, and progress reports on the reform are encouraging. Following a period of slowdown, the economy took a new upturn in mid-1968, when the government adopted a policy of reflation. The year 1968 as a whole registered an advance over 1967 of 6.5 percent in industrial production and 4 percent in overall growth. A good part of this gain was attributable to increased productivity, since employment in the same period rose only 1 percent (nevertheless reversing a two-year decline). Exports leaped forward 13 percent, for the most part in a westerly direction, indicating that the economists who bet on the ability of Yugoslav enterprises to compete, once they were under pressure to do so, may well win their wager.
Signs point to the continuation, strengthening and broadening of the economic reform. It got solid backing at the Ninth Congress of the Yugoslav party early this year, and more and more people in the population at large seem to be moving toward the view that the advantages of the new measures far outweigh the handicaps. At the same time many problems remain to be ironed out. For example, something must be done about income policies— so far left to the determination of workers' councils in each enterprise—since, with characteristic lack of foresight, many factories have been voting them selves higher wages than their production war ranted, at the expense of capital investment. This problem could be solved by legislation requiring that a given proportion of net income be set aside for investment.
One could speculate at length on more radical directions in which the reform could move, including the further liberalization of private eco nomic activity, the passage of a new law on foreign investments offering better terms to foreign capital, and the establishment of closer bonds with Western Europe. To return to an earlier analogy, steps taken along any of these paths would give new impetus to the Yugoslav vehicle of state out in midstream. But at present they appear to be remote possibilities; certainly they could not come about without a further erosion of doctrinaire attitudes and more fearless action in the spirit of the “open door.”
Ovakvih projekata koji su u startu imali dubioznu ekonomsku racunicu je bilo dosta u SFRJ (fabrika aluminijuma u CG, fabrika glinice u Obrovcu). Medjutim imale su politicki znacaj, kao sto autor i primecuje. I to je tako funkcionisalo dok nije doslo vreme da se vracaju pare MMF, i onda je djavo dosao po svoje.While the project may appear illogical from the all-Yugoslav viewpoint, no one can deny that the Macedonians have created skills and jobs where none existed before.”
Tito has been adept at fostering the impression that threats nonetheless lurked everywhere, warning his countrymen at one time or another about the dangers posed by Italian army maneuvers in Venetia, by the new junta of colonel-dictators in Greece, by the Bulgarians casting covetous eyes on Macedonia, by the CIA, by the presence of the US fleet in the Mediterranean, and so forth. It seems obvious he felt it was better to keep popular attention riveted on outside enemies and what they might be doing, than to have various Slavs striving to best their neighbors.
As for the man on the street, it was my impression that he was largely apathetic about both politics and ideology, contemptuous of politicians, and interested primarily in his own material advancement.
These esoteric variations among students are paralleled by a pride in language differences that extends down to the least educated, barely literate element of the populace—a factor that seriously impedes unity within the country. A Slovenian highway patrolman who stops a foreign car for a traffic violation will open with the query (in his own language), “Do you speak Slovenian?”—as unlikely a probability as if Basque had been in question—and only then try another language, usually German rather than Serbo-Croatian. As we drove into town, we stopped to ask a uniformed policeman the way to the city hall. The cop, somewhat harassed by his duties as a traffic director (one in seven people owns a car in Slovenia today) yelled the way at us, adding rudely in his native language: “And why the hell don't you talk Slovenian?”
served with the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950's
two morning dailies in Belgrade, Borba and Polityka, whose columns are translated into English by nightfall by a joint British-American committee for the use of the diplomatic corps. Reading this press was one of the least satisfying experiences this writer has had since becoming literate
When one lives in Belgrade one is in Serbia, not Yugoslavia. Try to cover a story on art, books, cinema, education, religion, press, theater, behavior, or whatever, and you find you get a Serbian view of the Serbian side of the issue. Serbian actors on these many stages often do not know, and more often do not care to know, what is going on in Ljubljana, Skopje or Zagreb. And the reverse holds as well.
At present pragmatism is to the fore, and progress reports on the reform are encouraging. Following a period of slowdown, the economy took a new upturn in mid-1968, when the government adopted a policy of reflation. The year 1968 as a whole registered an advance over 1967 of 6.5 percent in industrial production and 4 percent in overall growth. A good part of this gain was attributable to increased productivity, since employment in the same period rose only 1 percent (nevertheless reversing a two-year decline). Exports leaped forward 13 percent, for the most part in a westerly direction, indicating that the economists who bet on the ability of Yugoslav enterprises to compete, once they were under pressure to do so, may well win their wager.
Kako su povecali produktivnost, fiskalnom politikom ili promenama u funkcionisanju fabrika, tj prepustanju vece kontrole direktorima naspram partijskih rukovodilaca iil nesto trece?Nektivni Ugnelj wrote:ali, ovo je kljuc imho
At present pragmatism is to the fore, and progress reports on the reform are encouraging. Following a period of slowdown, the economy took a new upturn in mid-1968, when the government adopted a policy of reflation. The year 1968 as a whole registered an advance over 1967 of 6.5 percent in industrial production and 4 percent in overall growth. A good part of this gain was attributable to increased productivity, since employment in the same period rose only 1 percent (nevertheless reversing a two-year decline). Exports leaped forward 13 percent, for the most part in a westerly direction, indicating that the economists who bet on the ability of Yugoslav enterprises to compete, once they were under pressure to do so, may well win their wager.
e, ali vraga. bolje da se vratimo ekonomskom i nacionalnom populizmu.
E ali smo zato dobili nekoliko godina kasnije Zakon o udruzenom radu. Koja je bila motivacija toga? Da se spreci korupcija medju direktorima?Nektivni Ugnelj wrote:ali, ovo je kljuc imho
At present pragmatism is to the fore, and progress reports on the reform are encouraging. Following a period of slowdown, the economy took a new upturn in mid-1968, when the government adopted a policy of reflation. The year 1968 as a whole registered an advance over 1967 of 6.5 percent in industrial production and 4 percent in overall growth. A good part of this gain was attributable to increased productivity, since employment in the same period rose only 1 percent (nevertheless reversing a two-year decline). Exports leaped forward 13 percent, for the most part in a westerly direction, indicating that the economists who bet on the ability of Yugoslav enterprises to compete, once they were under pressure to do so, may well win their wager.
e, ali vraga. bolje da se vratimo ekonomskom i nacionalnom populizmu.
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