Blog » My Blog » Yugo-nostagia 9th July 2011

Hej, Sloveni, jos ste zivi!  - Hey Slavs, you’re still alive! 

  I’ve just received an invitation on Facebook to become a friend of Sfr Jugoslavia Kulturna Bastina – and I’ve accepted. I’ve accepted because I genuinely mourn the passing of SFRJ. However many cracks there were in so-called “Bratstvo-Jedinstvo” and even though “samoupravljenje”, was doomed to failure because human beings are far more interested in the “samo” bit than in “upravljenje”, my first decade in Yugoslavia, the 70’s were by far the happiest, the most enjoyable, the most satisfying, the richest – not because everyone had pots of money – from the cars one sees speeding through Belgrade today, many of the driven by people who grew up after the break-up of Yugoslavia, one can see where the money is today – but because ordinary people were on the whole content with their lot, we could travel freely both within the six beautiful republics and abroad – and the cost of foreign travel was within the reach of a far greater percentage of the population than it is today. With the Adriatic Sea and the Julian Alps at our disposal, we did not need to go abroad for our summer or winter holidays. Yugoslavia was unique – Europe in miniature. And Tito, Yugoslavia and Yugoslavs were respected throughout the world. People employed in larger firms or organizations could expect a flat when their family status – marriage, children – reached a certain level. Salaries were on the whole sufficient to live a fairly comfortable life. There were not many luxuries, but all one’s basic requirements for that fairly comfortable life were available in the shops. This was achieved by a successful renewal of Yugoslavia after the Second World War, led by Josip Broz Tito and achieved by Yugoslavs.  

What normal person would throw away a life like that? Of course, I am well aware of what happened during the 80s – foreign debt caught up with us, none of the six presidents of the presidency trusted the other five, so to all intents and purposes we were without effective government, and having lost the trust and respect of the foreign community we couldn’t expect any help from abroad to help with our foreign debt, for which I accept Tito was partly responsible, but no more than the leaders of all the other countries who had problems with their foreign debt and financial crises – which includes Great Britain. If we had retained a tiny bit of the accord and harmony we had under Tito and had all pulled together, we could perhaps have overcome the crisis, but no, nationalism had to rear its ugly head and along came Milošević and Tudjman to use the simplest method of getting to power – fanning the flames of nationalism and blaming foreign powers for our troubles. We happily queued for milk, bread, sugar and cooking oil, because it was far more important to fight for Greater Serbia than to think of the basic necessities of life. Thousands of young lives were sacrificed for the same myth.

Since October 5^th 2000 Serbia has supposedly been a fully democratic country. True, we are free to vote for the party of our choice – but what sort of choice do we have? Nobody now needs a visa to travel within Schengen countries – but what percentage of people can afford to travel? In the 70s the humblest of citizens of SFRJ could go to Cavtat for their summer holidays. The same people today have to be happy with Ada Ciganlija.

I know many of you will justifiably accuse me of naivety and oversimplification, and the younger among you probably won’t understand what I’m talking about. For those born during the past 25 years, what is “normal” is very different from what it is to us older ones.  But I’m not a politician, I am just someone who has lived in this country for forty years and witnessed many changes, most of them, over the past thirty years, for the worse.

That is why I have joined the group Sfr Jugoslavia Kulturna Basta and that is why I look back with nostalgia to the days of Josip Broz Tito and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia.

Hey Slavs!

 Hey Slavs! You’re still alive

the spirit of our grandfathers still lives,
As long as their sons` heart beats

for the people.

It lives, It lives, the Slavic spirit

it will live for centuries,
The abyss of hell threatens in vain,

the fire of thunder is in vain.

Now let everything above us

be carried away by the bura (violent south wind).
The rock cracks, the oak breaks,

let the Earth shake.

We stand steadfastly

like cliffs;
Cursed be the traitor

of his homeland!

Serbian

Hej Sloveni, još `te živi
duh naših dedova,
dok za narod srce bije
njihovih sinova.
Živi, živi duh slovenski
živet ce vekov`ma
zalud preti ponor pakla
zalud vatra groma.

Nek se sada i nad nama
burom sve raznese
stena puca, dub se lama,
zemlja nek se trese.
Mi stojimo postojano
kano klisurine
proklet bio izdajica
svoje domovine.