Practice Exam Essay Questions - The Other Europe

Perestroika was pursued in the context of economic failure all over Eastern Europe due to the inability of a command economy to match with the economies of the West. There were high energy prices/interest rates and a general acceptance of the need for a radical reform of command economy. People started to see that socialist market solutions di not work. Furthermore, there was a collapse in their relationship with the West in terms of loans and in the Eastern Bloc, trade was much more bilateral rather than multilateral trade between the countries. People were generally starting to lose hopes for a solution, as countries were not progressing and development was slowing down.

Tensions between Serbs and Croats were boosted by the problem of distribution of investment in Yugoslavia, as most investments went into the underdeveloped parts of the federation, while the more developed Croatia and Slovenia were overlooked, even though they produced most of the nation's wealth. The Croats opposed the centralized system of government in Belgrade, as they had to send their earnings to the government in Serbia which would then redistribute it, but mainly to the Southern party of the nation. A general feeling of Serbian-oriented and dominated control over Yugoslavia prevailed among Croats. Furthermore, a new dictionary of Serbo-Croatian language was introduced in 1967 and presented mainly Serbian phrases as the standard done, while ignoring the Croat ones or branding them as a dialect. this created a feeling of superior position of the Serbian language. There was also a religious difference between the two ethnic groups; while the majority of Serbs were Orthodox, Croats were predominantly Catholic. Another factor was the overrepresentation of Serbs in the army and police of Croatia, which had a significant minority population Serbs. The Croats, as well as Slovenes, demanded more autonomy, price liberalization, lower exchange rate of the dinar, more cuts in the profit their enterprise made and were made to send to Belgrade. They also demanded to open up Yugoslavia and the Adriatic coast up for international tourists, which would later produce much profit for Yugoslavia. they also wanted to establish legality in the statuses of the Serbian, Slovene, Croatian and Montenegrin language.