At 09:43 PM 17/10/2007, jim d wrote:
Has anyone read Ed Herman & David Peterson's little book THE DISMANTLING
OF YUGOSLAVIA (the October 2007 issue of MONTHLY REVIEW)? Though I
haven't read the whole thing, it seems very accurate.
I will have to rely upon the kindness of MR online posts as I am
hardcopy- deprived here.
(The main gap is that they don't explain Serbia's interest in
preserving the old Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia. Or why the US.
Germany, etc.
wanted to split it up. Maybe I haven't gotten there yet.
(My guess is that Slovenia and Croatia wanted to split up Yugoslavia
because they were subsidizing the poor republics (sort of like those
white suburbs of Atlanta, which don't want to pay for the inner city).
Serbia wanted to keep it together because it had a lot of power in the
federation.)
My sense was that Slovenia and Croatia were different in this
respect. Croatia was very nationalistic and had hatred and contempt
for Serbia which they felt dominated the federation [it did have the
numbers, too]; In the case of Slovenia, I am inclined to agree--- I
can recall the complaints by Slovenian economists about the
'Albanians' and the Serbs who imposed all that subsidisation; they
wanted back in the Austro-Hungarian empire, please. In the case of
the Serbs, though, one striking thing is that they referred to
themselves as Yugoslavs-- unlike most of the other nationalities--
both in Serbia proper and in other republics [eg.,
Bosnia-Herzogovina]; ie., I don't think it was a narrow power
orientation. These are just recollections. Paul Phillips can
supplement and correct me.
michael
--
Jim Devine / "The trick for radicals has been and will be to make of
earth a heaven, but without blind faith." -- Mike Yates.
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Director, Programme in 'Transformative Practice and Human Development'
Centro Internacional Miranda, P.H.
Residencias Anauco Suites, Parque Central, final Av. Bolivar
Caracas, Venezuela
fax: 0212 5768274/0212 5777231
http//:centrointernacionalmiranda.gob.ve
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