Yes, dramatically better. I grew up in Soviet Union, but I’ve been living here in Montenegro for many years already, and I have friends who remember life in SFRJ. That’s how I can compare things.
"By 1988 emigrant remittances to Yugoslavia totaled over $4.5 billion (USD), and by 1989 remittances were $6.2 billion (USD), which amounted to over 19% of the world's total. A large portion of those remittances came from Yugoslav professional and skilled workers employed by Yugoslav engineering and construction firms with contracts abroad, including large infrastructure projects in the Middle East, Africa and Europe."[1]
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/yugoslav-guest-workers-torn-between-ge...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder...
This is misleading. It was not a totalitarian state.
Benevolent dictatorship is even an exaggeration.
Yugoslavia had a very liberal socialist economy. Trade with the west was very common. International travel was allowed. Collectivism was common but it’s misleading to suggest this is an element of totalitarianism. Strikes were more legal in communist Yugoslavia than they are in present-day United States. Control over the media is accurate.
It’s off topic but citizens also had free access to healthcare.
It most definitely was, without any doubt. However, it was achieved not by physical force like in most other cases, but by management of ideological education and control of all aspects of life, carefully choosing what will be allowed and how. This control was very subtle and by necessity needed to be carefully adapted with time, but without it the country would have fallen apart much sooner than it actually did, with catastrophic consequences.
Everything you write is exactly the result of this information control, and is what things seemed like at the surface.
I think what matters most is the culture. It’s much deeper, and much harder to change, than ideology or politics.
Historically, people living here were free, and they were and still are willing to fight for their freedom. They accidentally started WW1 this way, but that’s another story. I think that’s the root cause why Yugoslavia refused to become a satellite state of USSR. And also why the regime here was way more relaxed: the borders were open, small businesses remained in private hands, it was OK to discuss politics, miniskirts were available, etc…
Another reason is west and international politics came in. It was politically beneficial for the west to maintain good relations with Yugoslavia despite the ideology.
A political ideology is only as strong as the society that enforces it. That includes the economic framework and all its superstituous nuances defining feedback loops of behavior being accepted dogmatically as the backbone of a society.
If it aligns with your values, literally, of course it's going to be something you see as true, because questioning it would be too challenging to manage. But there are plenty of intelligent people out there who can afford to question it, and it doesn't imply a breakdown in society. It can imply progress. But only if you want to see things that way.
That honestly depends on whether you can hit the middle understanding that your philosophy on societies and all the fears that are attached as a consequence of an economic loop you believe you have control over are actually true. Lots of people don't have control over it. They aren't stupid or lacking in skill. Assuming they are is flawed. Assuming you aren't being taken advantage of because you've been indoctrinated into believing the economy is the strongest principle defining a society is additionally, flawed.
These things actually matter when the economy is the only thing guiding a society and there is a literal breakdown of morality, ethics, values, belief systems coming from the head. They influence behavior, which influences beliefs, which influences awareness, which influences actions. All of this propagates across all the smaller 'heads' of a society when those are the rules that define and enforce ideologies. That is a breakdown in society and it happens because people have nothing besides finances to hold onto to tell them about their own self. Who wants to feel like a bag of money and then just die? Who actually wants that to be a life?
There is no problem with a hierarchy. Not every person has the experience to know how to lead and not every person has the desire to own that responsibility. There is a BIG BIG BIG problem with it when it sends the wrong message.
The author’s memory is OK. There were little to no such things in communist Yugoslavia.
Unlike Warsaw bloc countries, Russian army did not occupy Yugoslavia. The country remained independent, and human rights situation was much better than in Russia.
> he had mainly good memories—of “long dinners discussing politics,” the “excitement of new books,” “languid sunsets, whole-night concerts, epic soccer games, girls in miniskirts.”
In soviet Russia, a long dinner discussing politics would cause the participants to be sent to Siberia, there were no whole-night concerts, and miniskirts only appeared on girls after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.