Social,economic and political dilemmas of reform in Yugoslavia

All of the communist party‐ruled states of Eastern Europe, from the elder brother of the ‘socialist family’, the Soviet Union, to non‐aligned, sui generis Yugoslavia, are in some degree of economic crisis. Gone are the once loudly trumpeted assurances that the socialist ‘economic formation’ by its very nature — its centrally planned and directed economy, its leadership by a communist party armed with the ‘scientific’ social and economic theory of Marxism‐Leninism and its foundation on the principles of proletarian social justice — excluded the possibility of economic ailments such as sluggish growth rates, inflation, social inequality and unemployment. It is now admitted that precisely these problems currently threaten virtually all communist systems. The principal issue for the political elites in these countries (with the perhaps temporary exception of relatively prosperous East Germany and Czechoslovakia and perennially contrary Romania) is not whether radical reform is necessary, but how to implement the requisite economic, social and quasi‐political reforms without undermining the foundations of ‘socialism’ and of the communist party's domination that they identify with it Yugoslavia is a valuable test case of the general project of reform in communist systems, since it consciously undertook to dismantle the of Stalinist system it had been establishing under Soviet tutelage at the end of World War II in response to Stalin's ostracism of Tito in June 1948. From its inception the Yugoslav reform process was informed by a commitment to return to the sources of Marxian social and economic theory in order to build an authentic socialist system untrammeled by the structures and immoral practices of Stalinist ‘etatism’. Worker self‐management, ‘market socialism’, the decentralisation of political and economic decision‐making, periodic rotation in office, and a number of other formally democratic, participatory socio‐political processes, most of which Gorbachev and his supporters have been discussing under the rubric of perestroika, glasnost’ and demokratizatsiia, have all been tried in one form or another in Yugoslavia during the past four decades.     

AN ARCHAEOMETRIC STUDY OF MEDIEVAL GLASS FROM THE FIRST BULGARIAN CAPITAL,PLISKA (NINTH TO TENTH CENTURY AD)

Glass finds from the first Bulgarian capital, Pliska, have been analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The analytical data, together with previous results from analysis of glass samples from the second Bulgarian capital, Preslav, were subjected to cluster and discriminant analysis. The local origin of part of the analysed samples was proven and some conclusions about the technology of production were possible.     

FLPMA: A Decade of Management Under the ELM Organic Act

This article assesses the impact on public land management policy in the west following a decade's experience under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The assessment first describes the political and institutional forces that converged to produce the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Organic act and then identifies three major policy innovations found in the Act. In conclusion, the article assesses the impact of these policy innovations of FLPMA on management of the public lands.