[prerok]

I grew up in Yugoslavia.

Again, not half as bad as your statements suggest. I have never heard people being coerced to work en masse. Everybody had a job and there were plenty who did very little, as I said in my previous post. In some sense, I guess it was considered bad if you lived in the city and didn't work but plenty of people lived in countryside where they just lived off the land. As far as I know, nobody cared if you had a job or not.

I am not saying it was good. Free political thought was not allowed, speaking against the regime got you into nasty prisons, where, yes, you were coerced to work like a slave. I knew a few people who went through that and that really was bad :( What I am saying is that most people still led relatively normal lives.

[donw]

Interesting! I did some reading, and it looks like Yugoslavia managed to escape the work camps and genocide thanks to Tito, who split with Stalin early on, and was able to maintain power in Yugoslavia (which was then excluded from the Warsaw Pact).

Also looks like there was US aid involved as well. Interesting. Not sure why the Soviets didn't push for military action, though.