Word: yugoslavia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From one end of Yugoslavia (pop. 23 million) to the other last week, the nation that Josip Broz Tito rebuilt from the rubble of World War II seemed to be nearing collapse. An unruly amalgam of six republics, two autonomous provinces and more than a dozen languages, Yugoslavia has been divided against itself since it was founded in 1918. But the charismatic Tito brought unity to Yugoslavia and took it out of the Soviet orbit. Before he died in 1980, after 35 years in power, Yugoslavia appeared to be a model of innovation -- and a proudly neutral nation wooed...
Since then, however, economic woes and regional strife have gradually torn the country apart. While neighboring Hungary and the Soviet Union are moving slowly ahead, Yugoslavia is stumbling backward. Some 1,000 strikes have flared since Belgrade first froze wages in February. The country is staggering beneath nearly 200% inflation, the highest in Europe, and a 15% unemployment rate that only a few European countries exceed. At the same time, Mikulic is desperately trying to finance $19 billion in hard-currency debt. "This is perhaps Yugoslavia's greatest crisis in almost 40 years," said a Western diplomat long resident...
...Yugoslavia's economic turmoil was echoed last week in Poland and Rumania. In Warsaw consumers scoured shops for bargains after the government proposed price hikes that would double food costs and triple energy bills. Poles will vote on the reform package, aimed at reviving the tottering economy, in a national referendum this Sunday. In Rumania police reportedly broke up protests by some 5,000 workers in the city of Brasov, demonstrating against harsh labor conditions and growing food shortages...
Mikulic's stature hit a new low last summer when an investigation uncovered Yugoslavia's biggest financial scandal since World War II. Led in part by the country's newly aggressive press, the probe found that Agrokomerc, a giant food-processing firm based in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had issued up to $500 million in worthless IOUs to 63 Yugoslav banks and other enterprises. The revelations forced the country's Vice President, Hamdija Pozderac, to resign after the Belgrade newspaper Borba and other publications linked him to the scandal. Agrokomerc Chief Executive Fikret Abdic is in jail awaiting trial...
Meanwhile, authorities have had to cope with Yugoslavia's long-simmering ethnic tensions. The worst problem is the impoverished southern province of Kosovo, where once dominant Serbs are now outnumbered almost 9 to 1 by ethnic Albanians, many of whom seek independence from Belgrade. Animosity has run high since Yugoslav troops crushed ethnic Albanian riots in 1981. The Serbs complain of rising Albanian persecution in the form of rapes, murders and cattle blindings. Hostility mounted last month when Serbian newspapers quoted former Yugoslav Vice President Fadilj Hodza, a top-ranking ethnic Albanian Communist, as sardonically telling army-reserve officers that...