The 200 the anniversary of the French revolution was followed by the domino-effect of the breakdown of east-central European communist regimes. A wave of triumphalism then washed over not only the minds of ordinary people, but also the temples of ‘Sovietology’ and similar scientific disciplines involved in analyzing communist systems and regimes.

For the people, after the removal of the iron curtain, symbolized in the fall of the Berlin wall, suddenly the clear possibility for the realization of their dreams appeared: freedom from pressure, the disappearance of fear, increased welfare, personal and social progress, and openness to many new possibilities. Many scholars, no matter how deeply aware of the complexity of their societies, also were trapped in optimistic wishful thinking. Only a few were more careful about predicting a unilinear path towards the political and economic modernization of C/EE societies.

The best example of wishful illusions was the former Yugoslavia. One of the most widely spread optimistic predictions was that Yugoslavia, which seemed to be rather different from the majority of other Central and Eastern European countries, had significant advances which would enable painlessly bridging the "transitional gap" and for rapid post-communist modernization. These predictions were not based on wrong arguments (see: Appendix, Table 1) As Susan Woodward wrote in her book, Balkan Tragedy, "on the eve of 1989 revolutions in eastern and central Europe, Yugoslavia was better poised than any other socialist country to make a successful transition to a market economy and to the West." Since the 1970s Yugoslavia was taken as a good example of successful industrialization, specific and different from that implemented in other East European socialist countries. Due to the introduction of the worker control in state-owned enterprises in the Yugoslav model of socialism, it was considered to be the opposite of the Soviet model (Griffin, 1989).

Another foreign observer, Paul Lendvai (1991) emphasized three main reasons why Yugoslavia deserved different treatment in comparison with other East European countries. First, it was independent from Soviet control. Second, it was involved in the creation of a new kind of international policy, through the Movement of non-aligned countries. Finally, its social and economic system was neither orthodox state socialism, nor western free trade economy, but a sort of economic democracy (i.e., self-managed) in economy and federalism in politics.

Up to the mid 1960s, Yugoslavia had performed at very high rates of economic growth, especially in industry and trade (Table 2), but it was a disbalanced developmental strategy which was exhausting natural resources (both raw materials and human capital) and did not achieve balanced development of all regions of the country (Table 3).

Thus, the 1970s ended with extreme external shocks. An economic crisis originating in the foreign sector could no longer be averted by minor adjustments, but required fundamental reforms. Unemployment and impoverishment began to rise sharply: total unemployment rate grew from below 14 percent in 1979 up to close to 17 percent in 1988; simultaneously, by the end of 1984 the average income was approximately 70 percent of the official minimum for a family of four, and the population living below the poverty line increased from 17 to 25 percent. Above all, annual economic growth had fallen to the lowest rate since World War II — in the period 1981-1988 it was only 0.5 percent. During the 1980s the former Yugoslavia, from a newly industrialized and promising country, returned to the position of the stagnant, underdeveloped and politically unstable society, with a peripheral economy (Schierup, 1991).

The belated economic reform — without political reform — initiated by the last federal government of the former Yugoslavia was not diggovormy to prevent the dissolution of a shared country. Disillusionment with the famous "Yugoslav experiment" was very painful. Two years after the `revolution’ Yugoslavia had ceased to exist, and devastating local wars were being waged to create new states.

Officially, Serbia and Montenegro, i.e., the current ‘reduced Yugoslavia’, did not take part in these dissolution processes: they ‘were not involved’ in the local wars in the former Yugoslavia as a state(s). But the costs of the wars were ‘delivered’ to the population through different accounts.

This brings us closer to the main topic of this article: what are the consequences of this turnover in which structural advances in the course of modernization of society had turned into backwardness and underdevelopment, and why does current Serbia\Yugoslavia suffer blockade and retrogressive trends in economic and political development.

The costs of this are disaster for the economy, dramatic brain-drain, collapse of institutions, dissolution of the civil sphere of society, broadly spread anomie within the population and uncertainty over the future. Here I will discuss the three most significant sources of unbalanced development of Serbian\Yugoslav society during previous decade, which appear as the main obstacles to its prospects for coherent and successful modernization. These sources are a nondemocratic political system, the economic system and brain drain.

Thus, the first elections in Serbia ushered in a semi-presidential and conflicting model of the political system, not a "representative", but, as O’Donnell labeled it, a "delegative democracy". This violated the cornerstone of the modern democratic order: the separation, relative autonomy, mutual control and limitation of legislative, executive and juridical powers. During the following elections (which in Serbia were very frequent), the system was `improved’ with more and more benefits for the ruling circles, and an ongoing suspension of both "procedural" and "substantive" democracy in favor of oligarchic personal\group rule. A weak political opposition, split internally and incapable of offering an alternative political program different from a pure will for power, fits this system of new authoritarian rule. The majority of opposition leaders is also deeply involved in systemic "political capitalism," collecting benefits and wealth from (political) semi-legal `business’. Thus, they are not truly interested in changes in the system, but rather are willing to bargain for some of `His master’s mercy’, eager to pick up a few crumbs of political power from His table.

The second aspect of ‘corporatisation’ is returning the (private) economy into the mortal ‘embrace’ of the party/family owned state. Namely, into the ‘gravitational field’ of total monopolization was pulled also the emerging strata of private entrepreneurs. Their successful business in the exhausted, isolated and party/state-controlled economy depends completely on support from the formal and informal structures of the ruling political parties. Thus they are forced to join (or at least to become ‘fans’ of) the ruling "Left coalition"!

Finally, the third mode of ‘corporatisation’ seems to be the most far-reaching and structurally the most dangerous for the future of the social and economic changes in Serbia. This emerges from the informal installation of the economic, political and social privileges only for the members and ‘fans’ of the ruling political parties, e.g., the installation of extra-legal benefits. To these correspond inequalities and discrimination for out-groups, which are recognized due to their ‘(un)loyal’ political orientation. This goes far beyond the worst features of the system of political privileges which were established in the previous ‘corrupt’ self-management system of the former Yugoslavia. It has led to establishment of "political capitalism" in Weber’s sense. Politics understood and run only as accumulation of the enormous power, benefits and privileges of a narrow group at the top of the privatized party-state. This leads to fragmentation of society and to de-politicization and disgust of ordinary people with such kind of "democracy".

The civil sphere of society is totally fragmented and marginalized. The autonomy of the universities is practically suspended and they are put under full control of the state. Putting university professors into the position of (economically and career) dependent state clerks, the former strong voice of a competent public is mostly deaden. The same applies to broad public opinion, manipulated through strongly controlled media. The conservative ‘national’ intelligentsia either fully support the regimes’ performance, or grumbles because of the regimes, failure in fulfillment of "Serbian national interest" ("The Greater Serbia"). The younger, modern intelligentsia is either abroad, or is blackmailed with unemployment and the lack of prospects for the future. Finally, the Serbian Orthodox Church, in contrast to churches in some other countries (Poland!), never succeeded in becoming a back-bone of the sphere of civil society, both due to its fundamentalist conservatism and to some more or less open nationalist inclinations in (poorly hidden) support of a military solution to "Serbian national problem" in the Balkans.

Where is the ordinary Serbian "people" in all this? If we put aside theoretical disputes on whether ordinary citizens were ever deeply convinced in and sincerely devoted to, the basic values of democracy (Campbell, The American Voter) and what those values are, it appears that both sides of the political body (rulers and citizens) correctly recognized the main `rule of the game’: democracy does not (and will not?) live here. The population, with about 50 percent of functionally illiterate persons, with more than 3\4 economic `state clients’, with a low political and civic culture, had embraced the `modern’ value approach (security) — no matter how modest it is — rather than the `uncertainty’ of democratic risks. (In one public opinion survey, conducted in July 1997, when asked whether they would prefer to live in a society without economic problems or in a society where they could freely express their opinions, two thirds of the respondents chose the first alternative!)

A third economic policy was implemented in Serbia, in contrast to two other possible policies:

- The first, overall stability of the economy in the short run, labeled macroeconomic stabilization measures. They are directed at the following sorts of potentially conflicting goals: preventing high inflation, avoiding a flight of capital out of the country when there is no confidence in the currency, restoring the ability of the country to borrow in international markets, generating full employment and ensuring that all citizens can achieve some basic standard of living;

- The second is no less urgent, but the goals can only be achieved some time in the future, since they require major adjustments in the structure of the economy and not just stabilization based on the current structure. The common goals are to use workers and resources more efficiently in order to increase economic output, and to make investments in people and productive capacity in a way that will promote economic growth that can be sustained in the future. The objective is not simply to correct imbalances in the allocation of resources, but to adopt a system that encourages innovation and can accommodate future changes. The policy measures often include deregulation of prices, elimination of subsidies, the removal of barriers to international trade and investment, and privatization of the state enterprises (Mutti, 1997: 220).

Structural Crisis. The economic situation in F.R. of Yugoslavia has all the features of a deep structural crisis. Real GNP in Serbia in the period 1989-1993 decreased on an average annual rate of 18.7 percent. In 1989, with 3300 $US GNP per capita, Serbia was closer to the top of group of middle developed countries, while in 1994, with 1,100 $US Serbia dropped on the bottom of that group.

Together with the drop of GNP, its structure also changed. The share of agriculture and of primary economic sector (production of raw materials, mining, etc.) increased in relation to the second sector (industry) and the third sector (trade and services). The structure of industrial production changed as well: while in 1990 energy and food industry was 25.6 percent of total industry production, in 1994 these sectors produced 56,4 percent of industrial output. However, efficiency in use of industrial capacities was not more than 25-40 percent (Petrovic, 1996: 52).

The other Janus face of the economic structure is an increase of the "gray" and "black" sectors of the economy (Mrksic, 1995: 29). In the very beginning of the former Yugoslav crisis, in the mid 1980s, the "gray" economy was close to one third of the regular economy. During 1992 its share increased to 41.7 percent of registered GNP, while at the top of hyperinflation (1993), the share of "gray" and "black" was 54.4 percent (Petrovic, 1996: 54).

Economic transformation in the course of the "transition" to a market economy (privatization) had two opposite phases and directions: the first phase took place before the war (1990/1991) and the second after the wars had started, including the imposing the sanctions of UN Security Council against Serbia and Montenegro (after 1992 June).

The first period was marked by the evident inclination of the Federal government at that time to economic (and less to political) reforms, which were a combination of the economic policies mentioned above. It introduced internal convertibility of the domestic currency, stopped the first wave of hyperinflation through devaluation of the domestic currency, and fixed the currency rate to the DEM. According to federal law privatization was started through distribution of internal share stocks to employees in ‘public’ (state) enterprises. A private sector economy was encouraged by a flexible taxing policy; the import of goods was liberalized and orientation towards foreign capital investments and integration into Europe was manifest. Resistance to these processes had appeared at that time and all effects of the reform attempts were abandoned after the wars started.

In Serbia and Montenegro, the process of annulment of the reform effects had very peculiar reasons, described above through the features of the political system. After the first free elections, in 1990, contrary to other republics in the former Yugoslavia, the previous power (pseudo-communist) structure was preserved and the attitudes of (legitimized) power holders towards reforms and especially towards changes in the types of property (deregulation and privatization) were negative. Indeed, the rejection of the first outcomes of the reform process was deepened and destruction of its initial effects went on without their replacement by some ‘genuine’ policy.

Unemployment remained one of the burning problems of Serbian economy. During 1994 employment in so-called public (state-controlled) sector of economy was 20.9 percent lower than in 1989. One short-term measure, implemented to reduce unemployment (but very soon abandoned) was offering the surplus labor credits (in amount of 24 average month salaries) to start private business. But rigid labor legislation, administrative obstacles, the policy of (high) taxation and inflation very soon ‘melted’ the values of these ‘credits’ and the majority of small private enterprises went bankrupt. This expanded the illegal sector of employment ("gray" and "black" economy), because the majority of former ‘small entrepreneurs’ transferred their ‘capital’ from legal channels into the uncontrolled ‘street economy’. On the other hand, the special decree of Serbian government that during the period of sanctions of UN Security Council against Serbia and Montenegro nobody could be fired, created a hypocritical behavior in enterprise management. Employees were not fired, but they were sent on so-called ‘paid vacations’ (i.e. "obligatory leave" for a period from three to six months), while being ‘paid’ 30-60 percent of average monthly wages (usually in food and other commodities for households). There is no official data about the number of workers and clerks exposed to this peculiar type of ‘hidden unemployment’, but it is estimated at about 800,000 people.

Drop of economic income and the growth of poverty. In the period 1978-1987 the real value of salaries and wages in the former Yugoslavia dropped more than 30 percent, but a much more significant decrease in incomes began in 1989. Total real incomes of households in 1994 were 55-60 percent lower than in 1989. The worst period was 1992 and 1993 when, due to hyperinflation, real salaries fell to 15-38 percent of their 1989 value. The January 1994 hyperinflation rate of 313 million percent will go down in world economic history. Average monthly salaries, pensions and other incomes of the population in December 1993 and January 1994 were on average of 10-30 DEM. After the hyperinflation was administratively (!) canceled the situation improved somewhat (average salary in 1997 was something above 150 DEM); still monthly incomes do not cover more than 40 percent of elementary needs of a family of four.

In the period 1978-1987, according to criteria of the World Bank, poverty in Yugoslavia increased from 17 to 25 per cent. According to some estimates, in the first half of 1994 35.6 percent of population in Central Serbia was poor, meaning 2.1 million people. When the figure is extrapolated to the total population (including the Autonomous Provinces Kosovo and Vojvodina) the figure approaches 3.7 millions (in a population of about 10 millions). The number of poor in 1994 increased in comparison with 1990 some 5.75 times!

In 1978 the majority of poor people lived in rural areas, but after 1987 the majority of the poor lived in urban areas. During 1990s this trend continued, so in 1996 70.5 per cent of poor people live in towns. In 1990 the poverty index among rural population was 7.2 percent and in 1994 it was 28.6 percent, while during the same period among urban population it increased from 5.7 percent to 38.5 percent. The drop of real salaries and wages affected all social strata, but not equally. It was worst for urban clerks’ households (63 percent), pensioners (60 percent), and the less for peasants (34 percent). The economic devastation, caused by hyperinflation and economic disaster reduced the economic aspirations of majority to the level of pure survival (Petrovic, 1996: 54).

Development Strategies. What was the answer of Serbian power holders to these devastating processes in the economy? One could claim that there were several answers, but all of them were short-term, shortsighted and with no far-reaching strategic vision — except one: stubborn resistance to necessary reforms and transformations in accord with worldwide trends.

Globally speaking, the answers to the deep structural economic and political crises during the 1990s were severe centralization (unprecedented in the worst communist times), nationalization of economic resources, establishment of pseudo-markets (in fact, its reduction to monopolistic bargaining and an open field for extra-legal profits for "selected" and "loyal" servants of the regime), nationalistic mobilization and Nazification of politics, behind a "front" of democracy.

The first "strategy" implemented at the beginning of the 1990s was a "war economy", embodied in both external and internal battles for resources.

(a) External ‘accumulation’ was based on "nationalization" of ‘enemy’ property on our territory, "plundering", invasion and transfer of economic resources from the war zones, confiscation and spending of the public property of the former state (specially federal foreign currency funds, but also common Army infrastructure, Yugoslav enterprises abroad, embassies, etc.);

(b) Internal ‘accumulation’, driven through "closed", criminalized economy and in an atmosphere of an ‘encircled war camp’, oppressed the majority of ordinary people: over-taxing of the population through hyperinflation, drop of incomes and, consequently, of living standards and the quality of life, increase of misery, in a word, through intentional development of underdevelopment. (As J. M. Keynes said, "there is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.")

The surplus squeezed from this ‘economic strategy’ was invested in the trans-Drina river war adventures, but a significant part went also to the hidden private bank accounts abroad.

The second "strategy" was implemented during the period of UN SC sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. Its official name was "import substitution" (or "self-sufficient") economy based on the ideological illusion (disseminated to the population) that "we can survive sanctions by our own means and resources, if they lasted even one hundred years". Practically, this "strategy" led to enormous exhaustion of natural resources together with the total devastation of the productive sectors of economy, devaluation of installed technology and de-professionalization of skilled labor power (`obligatory leave’). Behind the veil, this strategy was in fact realized as an officially (but tacitly) supported "smuggling economy", which granted enormous, tax-free profits to its "entrepreneurs", the emerging nouveau riches class.

Finally, the third "strategy" was invented after a (hypocritical) "decisive turn from war to a peace-making policy" was proclaimed and after the "inevitable Serbian return to the world, where it eternally belongs" became a new ideological slogan (as a sign of abandoning "the Greater Serbia" dream). Due to a lack of fresh capital for investments and for a revival of production, a combination of strategic means is used. One is "barter-economy", i.e. natural exchange of (rare) industrial products and food for oil, gas and other deficit (or profitable) commodities. The other strategic means is a "sales-economy", meaning selling also rare profitable enterprises for a "handful of dollars" to international capital, under very unfavorable conditions. Needless to say, all these `business operations’ do not pass through regular parliamentary procedures, but (the Serbian and federal) governments run them. Besides, all `business’ benefits went on the accounts of several monopolistic enterprises and their managers, who at the same time are ministers in the government! Thus Serbia is exposed to active (and even more tacit) but stubborn resistance to effective "transitional" economic transformations. This resistance is initiated, encouraged and (more or less openly) supported from the top of the regime. Instead of inevitable reforms and an opening of the economy, a firm constellation of monopolistic profits, (non-market) benefits and party\family (cosa nostra) privileges is continued. The consequences are a "frozen" social dynamics and paralysis of upward\downward social mobility based on education and professional skills. This leads to the establishment of a static social structure and the continued reproduction of a stagnant society, very similar to a "pseudo-caste" system.

An evident consequence of the rejection of economic change and liberalization of the economy is an accelerated structural polarization in social stratification. With the flare up of civil war in the former Yugoslavia, social re-stratification destroyed the "class society" with its `normal\spontaneous’ division of social strata in Giddens’s sense, in favor of the establishment of a ""split society" with a concentration of uncontrolled political power and enormous wealth within a narrow group (3-5 percent) of the population.

This currently dominant group (‘elite’) is narrower than in socialism and on the basis of slightly different interests is divided into several substrata:

1. A restricted number of ‘political capitalists’ holds the overall ruling positions (authority). This is the ‘caste’ of "untouchables" which is more or less closed and which recruits new members only through special ‘adoption’ from above;

2. ‘Public entrepreneurs’ who directly administer ‘public enterprises’, the state apparatus and civil services, from media to social and health care (they are the source for recruitment into the ‘caste’);

3. War profiteers accumulating capital through illegal and/or para-legal channels (in ‘gray’ and ‘black’ parallel economy). This stratum is closely tied with the previous two, but prospectively its interests could conflict with the rulers, especially when economic appetites are joined with political ones;

4. A particular stratum of the ‘leadership’ of some opposition parties which gained significant economic benefits from their ‘politically-run business’ on local levels, but are still eager for a redistribution of political power;

5. The lowest strata in this constellation of the new economic elite are still rare market-oriented entrepreneurs, who try to run legal business, thus suffering the turbulence of a de-regulated market and the payment of extra-legal fees to the ruling establishment.

Since the wealth of the "new economic elite" is not acquired through `normal’ business (trade, finance, manufacture, transactions that demonstrate true entrepreneurial ability), this group is formed as a lumpen-bourgeoisie rather than a factor of modernization. It is likely to be much more interested in preserving the present state of anomie, wherein political power is the guarantee of its monopoly status than in helping to bring about stable conditions for economic development (Lazic, ibid.).

The immediate interests of this elite are opposite those of the powerless and impoverished masses lower in strata, mainly the working class, which is de-structured, fragmented and pushed into a ‘wolf-like’ struggle for pure survival against all ‘factions’ of the powerless positioned a bit higher. At the same time, these opposite interests of the highest and lowest strata are hidden behind the paternalistic ‘care’ for the latter through a hypocritical ‘preservation’ of the economy (and their economic status) from ‘loses that could emerge from privatization and restructuration’. The ‘care’ is carried out through (voluntaristic) redistribution of equal poverty, which is labeled cynically as "just social policy".

The worst consequence of the de-structuration of ‘normal’ social strata is the dissolution and marginalization of the middle strata, which usually are the most significant in promoting and realizing structural changes in society, and whose status differences (such as savings, level of education, life-style, etc.) were rapidly melted away. These strata were (and still are) the main source for recruiting economic emigrants.

Since 1989 the "gateway" of highly educated experts (known as massive intellectual emigration and popularly called "brain drain") from the former socialist countries is a dramatically increasing phenomena. According to data from US Department of Justice (published in the 1993 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Washington D.C. 1994), in the period 1990-1993 regular immigration of educated experts only in the U.S.A. from the former socialist countries was 12,434 persons (for particular countries see table 9). Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. During 1993 Canada granted about 7,000 immigration visas, almost a quarter of them to highly educated experts.

Estimates for the previous 25 years indicate that in this period about 30,000 skilled and highly skilled persons left Serbia and Montenegro. On the current population of 10.5 millions this seems an almost negligible percentage of 0.3. But global numeric statistics usually gives superficial data. One must bear in mind that the share of highly educated persons in the population of the two Republics in the same period did not surpass 6 percent (meaning, on average something more than 630,000 skilled and highly skilled experts). In light of this fact, it appears that the loss of intellectual capital was almost 5 percent. According to the results of one current investigation, 50 among them could be considered as a top experts by international standards: they had published articles, are quoted in prestigious international scientific journals, have registered intellectual property (patents and models) and teach in prestigious world universities.

In the survey mentioned above, conducted in mid 1995, on a sample of 500 researchers in F.R. of Yugoslavia more than one third (37.9 percent) responded that they "think very often about leaving permanently for abroad" while almost two thirds were thinking in the same direction "temporarily". The main `push factors’ for leaving the country were: "low living standards" (24,8 percent), "uncertainty of future" (18.7 percent) and, far below, "housing problems" (6.2 percent). The "pull factors" (attractiveness of going abroad) were mostly chances for better salaries (21.2 percent) and better conditions for scientific and research work (15.2 percent), etc.

The education of one highly skilled expert costs the country approximately $100,000 (some estimations go much higher, up to $250,000-300,000), and the creation of a single top world expert takes at least ten years after his/her formal graduation. Thus the direct loses from accelerated brain drain from Yugoslavia are between $1.5 and $3.0 billion, and real (still hidden) financial loses are at least ten times higher, if measured only in lost profits and inadequate replacement of the departed experts. Above all, costs which could not be calculated in currency measures are pointed out in the warning, stated by famous Russian academician, Piotr Kapica: It is more than painful for one big country to loose 50 top experts, for its science can be decapitated thereby. For a small underdeveloped country this risk is several times greater. The outflow of gifted people inevitably leads to technological backwardness, decrease in economic growth and ‘stabilization’ in a stagnant, backward economy and society.

All the features, discussed above, indicate that current Serbian/Yugoslav society is very far from even the ‘entry’ to efficient and successful post-communist modernization. On the contrary, it is racing back in time — from the end of 20th to the early 19th century. Stubborn anti-democratic politics, an economy ‘released’ from all economic laws and regulations (including rationality and calculability) and the irrational loss of what is most important, namely, human capital, create a stable anti-modern syndrome. This pushes the country back into a pre-modern community, based on a stagnant social structure, conservative traditional values, and smoldering but growing conflicts. These could suddenly erupt into bloody clashes with unpredictable effects. The current regime seems even to seek and encourage such a scenario, because only in an entropy of institutions and a (desirable) chaos of non-institutionalized conflicts could it postpone endlessly its (inevitable) downfall. Does this mean that ‘history’ here could be repeated, not as a farce but as a tragedy? Pessimists would answer: yes; as for optimists, are there still any?

1. In the first and last global sociological research on a massive representative sample of about 13,000 respondents in the entire former Yugoslavia, conducted by the Consortium of Yugoslav Sociological Institutes during 1989-1990, when asked whether each ethnic group should have its own state, two thirds (over 66 percent) of the respondents answered negatively, while only about 13 percent responded positively.

2. In the same survey (when answering "very afraid" and "somewhat afraid"), respondents gave high scores to different threats they feared: unemployment (83 percent), poverty (80 percent), violation of security (80 percent), social riots/conflicts (77 percent), inter-ethnic conflicts (72 percent), civil war (70 percent), and hunger (65 percent). (Public opinion survey "Civic Consciousness and Civil Disobedience in FR of Yugoslavia," conducted by Argument, Agency for Applied Sociological and Political Research. Raw data table).

3. In the 1990 elections 71 percent of the electorate voted; in the 1992 elections — 70 percent; in 1993 elections — 62 percent. In the presidential elections in 1997 September, less than 50 percent of the electoral body voted, so the president was not elected. In repeat elections in December, under very "foggy" conditions, by 50.1 percent of those participating a candidate of the Serbian Socialist Party became president.

4. "Nearly all of the former communist states have experienced explosive inflation, decreases in industrial production, and a drastic drop in their standard of living. Central European countries, such as Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic have overcome these initial setbacks, controlling inflation and generating positive growth again. Their success, however, has not come from trying to turn the clock back to pre-1989 era. Rather, they have been able to stabilize their economies and to restructure them" (Mutti, 1997: 223).

6. The number of private enterprises in 1994 was over 200.000, but these were mostly small enterprises: they employed about 11 percent of employees and accounted for no more than 10 percent of the GNP. On the other hand, the private economy sector, no matter how modest, showed more economic efficiency than the public and state-owned sectors: during 1992, this sector, with only 0.2 percent of total invested capital, realized 18 percent of GNP per capita, 33.2 percent of profits, 34.3 percent of accumulation and only 2.8 percent of economic losses) (Petrovic, 1996:57).

7. "The current regime in Serbia, due to its populist character, mainly relies on the broad lower strata of the social hierarchy. . . . In order to ensure the (literally) elementary necessities of life, part of the income of the middle strata would then have to be transferred to the lower strata, the technical role in the process being played by hyperinflation, with direct grants of money and goods. . . . The worst off was the numerous group of urban pensioners, totally dependent on the state and quite incapable of offering any resistance" (Lazic, 1995:17).

8. "Disintegration of the state and the civil war resulted in the collapse of the legal order, making ample room for quasi-legal or illegal activities by `mushrooming’ dubious quasi-private firms, or rather their owners. . . . Linked directly or indirectly to the state, they lead a parasitic life, benefiting from all aspects of the economic crisis (Lazic, 1995:19).

9. "The economic blockade of the country created favorable conditions for a proliferation of forms of gainful activity which are the current hallmark of our towns: street vending of smuggled, foreign and domestic products (foodstuffs, gasoline, etc.), the resale of foreign exchange and the like. . . . The needs of the war followed by the UN sanctions necessarily channeled the state itself towards illegal international market transactions, with private firms providing the necessary services, thus ensuring enormous profits to themselves" (Lazic, ibid.).

10. Vladimir Grecic, "Migrations of Scientists and Professionals from the Republic of Serbia" (Institute for International Politics and Economy, 1995).

11. "Emigration of Highly Educated Experts Abroad" (Belgrade: Serbian Ministry of Science and Technology and Institute for International Politics and Economy, 1995).

12. To this figures should be added an unknown number of young people (estimates run from 200,000 up to 400,000, mostly university students), who left the country during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, unwilling to participate in the mutual slaughter. The state is still "deaf" to all demands for amnesty for these people, so they are threatened with jail if they return, no matter if their country "was not involved in the war"!

Table 1.

East-Central European countries in transition

1989 1994

$US % $US %

FR of 2.920 100.0 1100* 100.0

Yugoslavia

Czechoslovakia 3.450 135.8 - -

Czech Republic - - 3.200 290.9

Slovakia - - 2.250 204.5

Hungary 2.590 88.7 3.840 349.0

Bulgaria 2.320 91.3 1.250 113.6

Poland 1.790 70.4 2.410 219.0

Romania - - 1.270 115.4

Albania - - 380 34.5

(Source: The World Bank 1991, 1994; * For FR of Yugoslavia: Federal Statistic Office)

Table 2.

Average annual GNP growth in (former) SFR of Yugoslavia

Period Total Industry and Agriculture and Trade economy mining fishing

1953-1956 6.6 11.3 6.6 7.3

1957-1960 11.3 14.1 9.2 14.0

1961-1965 6.8 10.9 - 0.1 10.1

1966-1970 5.8 5.4 3.1 8.0

1971-1975 5.9 7.9 3.2 6.1

1976-1980 5.6 6.8 2.4 5.2

1981-1988 0.5 2.2 0.7 - 1.8

Total 5.4 7.5 3.1 5.9 1953-1988

Table 3.

Regional (republic) developmental differences

Country Income Relative level Yugoslavia

per capita =100

in $US

1950. 1986. 1950. 1986.

Yugoslavia 469 2300 100.0 100.0

Serbia 407 2075 86.8 90.2

Croatia 532 2873 113.4 124.9

Slovenia 820 4664 174.8 202.8

Vojvodina 387 2714 82.5 118.0

Serbia 450 2291 96.0 99.6

proper

Table 4.

Legitimacy of representative institutions and institutions of

order in Serbia and F. R. of Yugoslavia

Institution 1996* 1997**

Trust No trust Trust No trust

FRY parliament 28.0 58.0*** 32.7 45.4***

FRY government 28.0 61.0 32.5 45.0

Serbia parliament 28.0 62.0 28.0 48.1

Serbia government 29.0 60.0 26.9 50.0

Montenegro 53.0 41.0 26.7 40.5 parliament****

Montenegro 25.0 62.0 27.0 41.9 government****

Army 51.0 43.0 54.6 27.1

Police 37.0 57.0 39.4 42.9

Courts 35.0 57.0 30.9 45.6

(Sources:

* Public opinion poll, 1996, Institute of Social sciences, Belgrade: S. Mihailovic, 1997;

** "Civic consciousness and civil disobedience in F.R of Yugoslavia", public opinion survey, Agency for applied sociological and political research, Belgrade: row data;)

*** Differences to 100 per cents are answers: ‘Can not estimate’

**** Only for Montenegro sub-sample Data are not completely comparable because of different samples and data processing. They are put together just to illustrate development trends.)

 

Table 5.

Legitimacy of ‘civil society’ institutions in Serbia and

F. R. of Yugoslavia

Institution 1996 1997

Trust No trust Trust No trust

Churches 54.0* 38.0 57.8 19.4*

Educational 66.0 29.0 63.5 14.8

system

State media 26.0 65.0 26.3 53.0

Private media 28.0 55.0 24.7 40.6

Academy of 44.0 28.0 35.7 24.1

arts and science

Health care 54.0 42.0 51.0 25.9

Old trade unions 20.0 52.0 17.1 42.6

New trade unions 15.0 54.0 17.5 38.1

(Sources: The same like in table 4.

* Differences to 100 per cents are answers: ‘Can not estimate’.)

Table 6.

Changes in structure of capital property during

Serbian "economic transition"

TYPE OF PROPERTY 1992 1993 1994

‘Public’ (state-controlled) capital 83.8 47.2 85.3

Share-holding (mixed) capital 10.4 16.9 2.2

Private-owned capital 5.2 36.0 2.2

(Source: Gredelj, 1996)

Table 7.

Brain drain from E/C Europe to USA

Country of emigration Absolute figures %

Poland 5.909 47.5

USSR 3.423 27.5

Romania 487 3.9

Former Yugoslavia 422* 3.4

Hungary 200 1.6

Former Czechoslovakia 187 1.5

Bulgaria 176 1.4

Others 1.630 13.1

(* Data given only for 1993; more current data not available)