I'm afraid the Yugoslav model of market socialism & federalism, *in the course of devolution*, themselves laid the material and ideological grounds for the dissolution of Yugoslavia, as much as the IMF's SAPs, Western imperial geopolitics (especially the USA & Germany), NATO bombings, assorted nationalists on all sides, etc. did. I agree with Michael Hoover & Paul Phillips, among others, on their analysis of the problem of devolution of politico-economic powers to republics:
***** From: phillp2 at Ms.UManitoba.CA To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:10:19 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:21897] Re: Yugoslavia
...Yoshie's question about inequality breaks down to two issues: regional and gender though to some extent they are related. The first general point is that, according to studies by an economist at York University (I can't remember his name at the moment and my copies of his paper on the subject are hidden in the mounds of shredded trees that line my office), Yugoslavia had one of the most equal distribution of incomes in the world, particularly intra-enterprise. However, between enterprises the income distribution was much more unequal though I believe (if I remember correctly) it was still less unequal than in the USSR and other eastern bloc countries. The real inequalities were between regions (i.e. republics) where the ratio of GDPs between top and bottom (Slovenia vs Kosovo) ranged up to 15 times. However, this is somewhat misleading in that the areas such as Kosovo, Macedonia, southern Serbia including Montenegro and Bosnia had a much higher percentage of virtually peasant agriculture and a huge grey economy plus Kosovo in particular (Albanians) had a high percentage of "guest workers" in the more developed republics and in the north generally who remitted monies to their home families. I.e. there was a structure not unlike the Sicilian families. Almost all the fruit and vegetable stands, pastry shops, and many of the bars in Slovenia, for instance, were owned and run by young Albanians who remitted profits to their families, mainly located in Kosovo. Thus, measured GDP considerably understated the income and wealth in these areas and over estimated the disparities between republics. In any case, these disparities all predated the market socialist period and narrowed during that period only to increase again when contractual socialism replaced market socialism.
However, the major problem with regional disparities was the move to "wither away the state" through decentralization to the republic level leaving the central government with little or no power to redistribute income or investment or indeed to implement any macroeconomic development policy. The one remaining method was the Fund for the Faster Growth of the Less Developed Republics and Autonomous Provinces which was, essentially, a tax on Slovenia and Croatia, to make payments to the governments of the poorer republics and provinces. What irked the Slovenes most was that the money was not being used for economic development but for conspicuous spending on cultural monuments. For example, just before I first went there, Kosovo had used the money to build and enourmous, (and beautiful) library in Pristina largely devoted, I am told, to Albanian culture and literature. At the same time, Kosovo was unable to invest in industrial capacity because it lacked skilled engineers, tradespeople, economists, technical skills, i.e. it could not absorb the available capital. Yet at the same time, I was told by an economist at the University of Skopje that 80 % of the students at the University in Pristina were studying Albanian language, history and culture. As a result, the level of unemployment of university grads was staggering. These unemployed youths, mainly men of course, became the recruits for the independence movement. Generally speaking again, the status of women also had a regional and rural/urban dimension. In the cities in the developed republics, women's status was generally quite high and there was a high degree of gender equality in wages and employment opportunities. The situation was very "European" although the participation rate of women, particularly in full-time work, was very high by European standards (I think it was around 80% in Slovenia in the late 80s). The situation in the south and, in particular in the Albanian Muslim areas, however, was very different. I was repeatedly told the story of a female Albanian factory worker who was elected to the workers' council in her factory. The next day she came to work badly bruised and resigned from the council. When pressed for an explanation, she said that her husband had beaten her when he heard of her election since it was unthinkable in that culture for women to have authority over men. Now I don't know whether this is an apocryphal story or not but what makes it ring true is the existing treatment of women in the region. If you drive from Skopje to Ohrid which is through the western area of Macedonia where the majority population is Albanian, all along side the roads are farm houses surrounded by 8 foot high stone fences designed so that the women of the household could not be seen by men travelling on the road. Also, I understand that girls were taken out of school to work at home after elementary school with the result of very low attendance at post-secondary institutions. In short, this was a cultural trait and not a result of the market or lack thereof. The communists did try to overcome this and banned the veil in 1950 which most affected the Bosnian Muslims who had become "Europeanized." (However, the alleged intention of the Moslem government under Izabegovic to implement an Islamic State in Bosnia was one of the issues leading to the Bosnian civil war. But that is another question.)...
Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba *****
Regional disparities exacerbated by decentralization to the republic level that Paul Phillips mentions above explain the Yugoslav problem with nationalisms (which predate economic disasters caused by the SAPs as well as the rise of Milosevic):
In the immediate post-WW2 period, the LCY suppressed extreme nationalist expressions, verbal or physical: "Basic manifestations of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness, such as the use of one's own language or alphabet, were not prohibited -- and in some cases such as Macedonian nationhood were actually fostered for symbolic political reasons -- but traditional expressions of nationalist fervor, particularly religiously based ethnic affirmation, were harshly suppressed" (Lenard Cohen, _Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition_, 2nd ed., Boulder: Westview, 1995, p. 28). For instance, Alija Izetbegovic was incarcerated for his advocacy of Islamic fundamentalism in 1946 (Sabrina P. Ramet, _Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991_, 2nd ed., Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1992, p. 186). After the beginning of decentralization & liberalization in the period 1963-71, the Yugoslav communists had to contend with the ideological reassertion of extreme nationalism, along with the politico-economic effects of devolution; for instance, "Liberalization, decentralization, and appeasement of Croatia had only fed the Croats' ever-increasing hunger for autonomy. Indeed, military intelligence later uncovered evidence that some of the party leaders had been in contact with Croatian _Ustase_ emigre groups in West Germany" (Ramet, p. 129). Even aside from such ultranationalist movements' emergence, at the level of everyday politics, old cadre who shared the experience of war-time Partisan struggles against fascists were beginning to be replaced by young intellectuals: "As...young university-educated Party cadres started to replace the older generation of Partisan cadres, they and the republics' leaders...no longer shared the common experience of Partisan struggle and endeavour. The only alternative experience they shared was that of cultural background, language and nationality...." (Aleksandar Pavkovic, _The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism in a Multinational State_, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 63-4). After a brief period of recentralization (1972-73), which jailed such emerging ultranationalists as Franjo Tudjman, Yugoslavia once again embarked upon the fatal road toward political, economic, & ideological fragmentation, culminating in the present disaster.
In short, Yugoslavia should have strengthened the federal power of redistribution instead of destroying it, and it should have made investments more wisely in order to minimize regional disparities & nationalist discontents instead of aggravating them.
Yoshie