Memes

didn't the federal system lead to the various republics becoming increasingly economically independent from each other, competing for resources, and thus laying the seeds for future political conflict? to me, it seems like exactly the kind of system that produced people like milošević in the first place!

also, a federal system risks exacerbating, instead of relinquishing, needless national differences, creating opportunities for people to primarily identify with their petty national groupings, rather than the internationalist project as a whole, and risking giving breathing space to reactionary movements hiding behind the shield of this or that national cultural grievance.

from the mid-'80s onward, the soviet government was granting greater and greater degrees of cultural and, more importantly, economic independence to its various republics, imitating some aspects of the yugoslav system. this policy ultimately led to nothing but further decomposition of social unity, which went on contributing to the country's collapse.