It is not correct to refer to it as Soviet-Era. Using the logic from the title, Apple Macintosh is also Soviet-Era.
Yugoslavia was never part of Warsaw bloc, it had its own political system and no USSR army on its territory.
Relevantly for us and this topic, Yugoslavia was not subject to the Western bans on exporting sensitive technology to Communist countries. Western personal computers and semiconductors could be legally imported, in theory, assuming you could afford them and the unfavourable exchange rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...
I actually don't know if Yugoslavia was embargoed too though (technically, Yugoslavia wasn't part of the "Eastern Bloc").
But of course even without embargo the markets were just not interesting for western companies, because of the worthless currencies (for instance, 8-bit home computers didn't fall under the embargo, but they were still not generally available in shops, only on the grey market).
Only the richest of the rich (literally few hundreds of people) could buy legally imported western electronics. It was available, even in the Eastern Bloc, but nobody had the money.
For instance, East Germany had so called "Intershops" stuffed full with western consumer products (also home computers), but those were sold for hard currency only, and their main purpose was to siphon off the circulating D-Marks which were coming into the country via relatives from West Germany, or to directly sell to western visitors, because some prices were cheaper than in Western Germany.
From time to time Western companies also did one-time deals for industrial products (East Germany had a pretty good optics and mechanical engineering industry which could come up with competitive products from time to time, but usually such deals didn't benefit the general population).
During my time at university we had VAX 11/785, MicroVAX 3100, and by the mid-'90s, we even had an SGI Indigo. Additionally, we had some IBM VM computer, though I can't recall the exact model. There was an IBM 1130 in the seventies.
As far as I can recall, the western parts of Yugoslavia had around 300 VAX machines deployed across various companies. Each republic developed its own computing ecosystem, resulting in a diverse landscape.
While there were some microcomputers in limited production, such as the Orao, Pecom, and Oric Nova, the ZX Spectrum and C-64 enjoyed far more popularity. Later, the Atari ST and Amiga took their place.
In the late eighties, my high school had a collection of original Apple II computers, along with IRIS 8 clones.
Of course, there was always smuggling and bribing custom officials, citizens who emigrated for work didn't have these limits when returning home, so there were ways to get computers.
But Galaksija was important at that time (1984) because it was cheap and because it was sold as a kit to be soldered by end user, so it wasn't affected by import limits.
At least into Hungary my parents literally needed to smuggle a ZX Spectrum they sourced in Munich from a bargain bin. That was in 1985. I learned programming then and haven't really stopped since :)
Yugoslavia no longer exists.
While Serbia may be -- I've been there twice and it's a rather scary country -- the other fragments of Yugoslavia are far less so. Bosnia has a distinct Ottoman influence, while Croatia and Slovenia are very Western Europeanised indeed.
I haven't been to Montenegro yet, but had the best beer I tasted in Bosnia was Montenegrin (as opposed to the awful Jelen).
So, no: only one of its fragments, I think.
What was scary in Serbia? And I agree, Jelen is bottom of the barrel. Only worse than thet would be private store brands, and you might even find better than Jelen among them.
The T-shirts on sale were another example. My Cyrillic is poor and my Czech is too but I can understand a bit. One was in English: "I am Vladimir Putin, and what I put in, stays there." The ones praising "war heroes" were worrying, too.
On my train back to Budapest the last time I was there, the crop-haired older gentleman opposite me was reading "Ветеран" magazine and a biography of a general.
The general impression I got was that here was a country whose sympathies lie East, not West.
At the time, I lived in Czechia, and I drove to Guča with some friends. The cultural difference from where I lived and where we drove in a single day -- and we didn't drive fast -- was shocking.
On my next visit, I had an overnight stop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_split
Yugoslavia wasn't member of the Warsaw Pact or the COMECON for instance, and apparently people were even allowed to travel to western countries.
Famous message from Tito to Stalin:
“Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.”
For the curious, it is translated as 'council'.
Within the group of European socialist countries, Yugoslavia was the most independent from the Soviet Union, and at times even an open opponent.
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/harry-truman-requests...
"The United States then began inching closer to Tito, supporting his regime rhetorically, economically and, finally, militarily, in order to ensure that Yugoslavia would remain out of the Soviet orbit. Throughout the Cold War, American officials saw in Tito a useful example of a communist leader who was not under the Kremlin’s thumb."
...
"With congressional assent, the United States and Yugoslavia signed a bilateral military agreement in November 1951 that tacitly incorporated Yugoslavia into NATO’s defensive web."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/mutdef.asp
(in 1949-1951)
- 1949 - NATO Treaty; April 4
- 1951 - Defense of Greenland: Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark, April 27
- 1951 - Defense of Iceland: Agreement Between the United States and the Republic of Iceland, May 5
- 1951 - Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of the Philippines; August 30
- 1951 - Security Treaty Between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (ANZUS); September 1
- 1951 - Military Facilities in the Azores: Agreement Between Portugal and the United States, September 6
- 1951 - Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan; September 8
- 1951 - Military Assistance Agreement Between the United States and Yugoslavia, November 14
> A communist.
Yugoslav
> An unfaithful communist.
These good relations with USA did real good when their country was obliterated to shreds when it was no longer needed. Sigh.
The US had these teachers:
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
Always new counties which have to experience that.
So I don't see any point to nitpick.
(Speaking of ignorance.) The parent knows what they're talking about. "The people's democracies" was indeed the term that was customarily used within the Soviet block to include countries that did not belong to said block but otherwise lived under similar regimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_democracy_(Marxism–...
As opposed to regular plain old democracy.
People's democracy is a theoretical concept within Marxism–Leninism and a form of government which developed after World War II and allows in theory for a multi-class and multi-party democracy on the pathway to socialism.
The German Democratic Republic had a plural multi-party system. The largest by members and parliament seats were the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), followed by Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD).
(The was also National-Democratic Party [1].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_G...
Yugoslavia didn't have a top-down economy the same way soviet countries did, it had a market of worker-run coops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_self-management).
It also wasn't allied with the Soviet Bloc, but a leader of its own block of non-aligned countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement).
Yugoslavs also enjoyed much greater Freedoms, at one point having the strongest passport in the world - the only one that allowed for free travel to both the West and the East.
Yugoslavia was Soviet during the Cold War the same way Switzerland was Nazi during WW2 - not at all, just neutral.