Anyone here care much about Yugoslavia? I’m pretty interested at the moment, namely because:
- worker self management seems rad
- pretty cool multiethnic state that balanced minority rights, regional autonomy, and party oversight pretty well
- a bit like a red precursor of the EU
- property law was radically different and separated nominal ownership (pretty much all the state) from use rights (enterprises etc) in basically the same way old English common land did
- choosing industrial democracy over political democracy doesn’t seem like a bad choice at all
I think ultimately history has shown that the Yugoslav line regarding market socialism was mostly correct and the split between them and the rest of the socialist bloc was a grave mistake from all sides involved.
I absolutely detest the great man-ism that clouds even communists’ minds around this period. Tito probably never said badass things about Stalinist assassins or whatever and Stalin probably didn’t personally want Tito’s head on a spike. It was more complicated than what it’s made out to be, and focusing attention on two Great Men instead of the ruling parties and material reality writ large does a disservice to historical understanding. It’s everywhere, though.
The CPY/LCY shouldn’t have split with the Cominform and should have maintained communication instead of running to the west/U.S. at the sign of any criticism. The Cominform should have addressed its Soviet-centric model of prescribed socialism and allowed for pragmatic differences in socialist construction between parties based on national realities while maintaining a sense of proletarian internationalism and socialist fraternity. As with the Sino-Soviet split, dogmatism and petty nonsense helped facilitate the beginning of the destruction of yet another socialist project that should still be standing today.
TLDR: Yugoslavia pretty good.
Turns out I didn’t see this reply at the time, but: yes! The focus on individuals blinds us to the processes. I’ve an interest in the splits that occurred that we’re talking about here and I honestly have no idea what forces out there in the world could have led to them: the Great Man approach is blinding.
On that note… any idea what a good not-Great Man book covers this kind of thing?
