Tito and Market Socialism - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on Tito, Market Socialism, how Yugoslavia functioned in the Cold War era and the late stage of Tito's reign.

#ColdWar #Soviet #Space

[UrosUros-trsm]

Here's a weird insight: My mother used to work for one of these self-managed companies. They elected the new manager by vote, debated whether to invest, save or spend their surplus profits, whether to buy a new car or do some renovations in the offices. The whole company was no more than 20. employees. I can tell you they all traveled a lot and they got a lot of presents for New Years and women's day. The job was to do the paperwork and accounting for similarly small craftsman companies. So, when Saddam in Iraq wanted to build a network of underground bunkers, vaults, and safe houses, he hired Yugoslav companies. One of them was my mom's company. They took on the project and coordinated the planning, logistics, and work with many, many craftsmen companies and on paper, it looked like you hired one big construction company and not a myriad of small ones. The bunkers were made, and the 'pay' was I think like 3% of the whole project cost. Much later, FBI agents came to Belgrade and would go to the company to seek plans for underground facilities in order to find Saddam's hidden vaults for gold and art collections to steal it all for the oligarchs... They found all the plans since bureaucracy was tight in those decades.

[mojaslovenija]

I am from Slovenia and as a teenager at end of 70-ies I was able and afford to travel freely all over Europe. The passport was high valued and i had no problem to travel to Soviet Union, China, the USA when I was a student. The living standard was high and everyone, at last in Slovenia, owned a solid house or appartment. The university education was kind of standard and was high valued abroad. Even today, over 30 later the living standard in Slovenia is ranked as 9th compared e.g to 25th of the USA.
Communist dictatorship...hm, maybe but in the spirit of that time... but still more free than Greece, Spain, Portugal, at the same time the USA was with the "Red hunt", so different freedom, but the other perspective.

[tng]

When I first went there in the early 80s as a backpacker traveler, I was very impressed with how nice the coastal areas and the north western areas were and how breathtaking beautiful the country was, but also surprised by how drab Belgrade and Skopje appeared to be. I only knew about the tension under the surface when I spoke to the local university students. 10 years later the country was gone.

[ostalocutanje]

A very good episode. At some point David mentioned the 1960s Yugoslav pop singers and social life in Yugoslavia, and in one of the earlier episodes he mentioned a future episode on the German punk rock scene. It would be nice if sometime in the future you guys would consider making an episode about Yugoslav pop culture, which was very specific due to Yugoslavia's position during the Cold War and its openness to Western culture. There are numerous interesting topics - partisan and Black Wave films, Yugoslav comics, and especially Yugoslav rock scene, which was, as a rock scene of a communist country and one of the most eclectic and vibrant rock scenes in Europe, a very interesting phenomena.

[Markko]

It is a tragedy that as a Croatian I had to learn this from an English speaking YT channel instead of in school.

[dragandraganic]

I was born in 1967 in Vojvodina and have an excellent memory. I just want to say this is probably the most objective video on Yugoslavia I've ever seen. Not that there are no oversimplifications or slightly skewed views, but it's surprising how few there are. By the way, Coca-Cola appeared on the market one year after I was born (Pepsi in the early 70s) and coexisted with Cockta and other local cola-inspired concoctions for decades making it the only communist country of the sort.

[christopherconard]

A worker's soviet was convened. There was unanimous consent to push the like button. When the subject of the subscribe button, also referred to as the bell button, schisms were found. While all agreed it should be pushed various factions, all with ties to different current leaders in government posts and from varying ethnicities, the degree of "bell pushing" was disputed. There were many proposals put forward to solve the issue. But none gained a strong enough majority support. Some factions called for it just to be pushed and to revisit the subject later. But radicals from others called in foreign allies for support of only their position and threatened a walkout which would lead to a collapse of the soviet due to failure from lacking enough representation to create a legal quorum. Others called for a general strike until the subject was finally decided. The entire situation was on the verge of becoming a spark that would ignite another revolution.
The situation was resolved when an entity known only as "Thumb" pressed Bell Button while the others were consulting with their constituents. While not a perfect solution it will do for now. We are certain that continuing along this path will absolutely not lead to civil war or ethnic cleansing by the various groups in the future. We see only peace and prosperity in perpetuity.

[stonefireice]

Growing up in StPetersburg, RU in the 70s we didn’t know how much more prosperous Yugoslavia was comparing to all other Warsaw Block countries. StPete had seen millions tourists from the West, because the Northern Venice, was full of world class museums, concert holes, opera/ ballet theaters and Versailles type environs. Only once I met 2 Yugoslavians from Dubrovnic, who were visiting their relatives in StPete and knew nothing about the city. For the next 5 days I was their guide through the best places, including Peterhof- Russian Versailles on the Baltic sea. They told me a lot about Yugoslavia, their unique economic structure, why they were more prosperous. And they didn’t like the Baltic sea, its blue- grey color! But most of all I couldn’t believe that Yugoslavs could freely travel to any other European country, without visa. Traveling outside of the Adriatic region within an hr or so, by car, we would hike in the Alps of Triglav.
The 1990s were hard for Slovenia, most of people didn’t want to join the EU, they knew, their lives from comfortable would go lower. They were saying:” we won’t be able to afford living in our country”. Next 20:47 came expats from GB, Germany and Belgium, buying the best properties in Portoroz and Piran. The same has been happening in Croatia with its hundreds of islands, including newly restored Dubrovnik.

[reddevilparatrooper]

I remember back in the late 1970s as a kid I owned and wore 2 pairs of Adidas running shoes made in Yugoslavia. They were of good quality too.

[Contrajoe]

Supposedly, there was a worker in Yugoslavia who made a grievous on the job mistake and nearly killed somebody. It was expected this guy would loose his job. The manager decided to ask the other workers "How should we punish him?" One voice went, "Let's F _ his wife" and supposedly they laughed so hard that the worker wasn't punished.

[xgamerbih]

Original Cockta was built with 11 different types of herbs. Now it’s just sugar and I still prefer it more than coca cola

[Underestimated]

They still make Cockta, it’s delicious; we can get it in Australia, and it’s something completely different to other soft drinks

[Doccit]

Excellent work. This is my new favorite episode of the cold war. It is so hard to find reliable big-picture information about the economy and political history of Yugoslavia in the cold war period.

[martinboskovic]

"Hire a commitee of workers to decide whether to press the bell button!" Ha! You got the essence of Yugoslavia, mate!

[Drunken_Master]

There's a joke:
- Comrade Tito, Comrade Krcun died in a car crash!
- Oh, is it eleven thirty already...

[aleksandarmaksic]

There was a TV debate held in Bosnia somewhat recently where one representative of each Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks were debating if there was one shared language they all spoke or if they each spoke their own different language, debate turned ugly as they all proclaimed that they spoke different languages and started dick measuring whose language was the best, and all this without a translator in sight mind you.

Also wanted to say that Cockta is way better than Coka-cola, I love both, but Cockta just hits differently, it was and still is made from rose hips if anybody wondered.

[brokenbridge]

Yugoslavia has always been an interesting subject during the Cold War. And this video was a curious insight into that country during this time. Nice job.

[SunniLeBoeuf]

You’re telling me Tito never went to Comic-Con?

[ottovonpoptart]

I have a “yugoslavic” (probably mostly Albanian but they have everything) food store around the corner from the school I work and I’ll pop in there for snacks sometimes. Cockta is a great soda and I wish it was more commercial available on the US lol

[louisgiokas]

I went there in 1974 with a German girl I met on an island in Greece (my teenage years were lots of fun). When we were in Ljubljana we were in a shop. I picked up a package of cookies and declared "communist cookies", which at the time I thought very funny (please forgive me). My girlfriend did not. It was an interesting experience for me and caused me issues in getting security clearances in the years after. I was born in Washington, DC and my father worked for an Army weapons lab. So, finding myself in a communist country at that time was quite an experience. It was also interesting since I had just left a right-wing dictatorship in Greece. By the time we got to Trieste the junta in Greece had fallen.