My Uncle was born in the Socialist Federate Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in the 1980s, and I Interviewed Him.
<u>The Good
</u>
SFRY was a communist country until it broke up in the early nineties. I got to experience the “golden era of Yugoslav socialism, “ right before all hell broke loose and the wars in Bosnia and Croatia started.
Yugoslav form of communism was quite different from Soviet communism (one of the reasons why Stalin and Tito hated each other). After several reforms, private property was allowed, although it was limited to things like small farms, shops, cafes etc. You could never own a large factory or an airline. All services were nationalized. Healthcare and education were free. Unemployment was almost non-existent.
Yugoslavia went from a complete ruin after the war to a relatively developed country during the Communist era.
SFRY had a well established “worker class” of people who lived comfortable middle-class lives in the 80s. Salaries were good, employment came with a lot of fringe benefits. Even if you were an assembly line worker, you were entitled to things like state sponsored housing and family vacations in one of the worker’s resorts (mostly in coastal Montenegro).
Religion was not illegal, but it was not publicized or encouraged either. We had churches priests and monks, mosques and imams, and people were free to go to church (except during the inform-bureau period, see below). However, religion was not something that was allowed to penetrate into the the public sphere much. Or into politics.
<u>The Bad
</u>
So far it sounds like paradise, right? There was bad stuff too.
There was never anything resembling a democracy. No freedom of speech or free elections. And for a lot of people, this was OK. They were perfectly willing to sacrifice their political rights for the life standard they were enjoying.
What people didn’t realize (or didn’t care about) at that time is that their life standard was supported by an enormous public debt which eventually crashed the economy and sent Yugoslavia down the spiral into a civil war.
