SLOWED SERBIAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY UNTIL WORLD WAR II

Abstract

Permanently economic backwardness of Serbia (as, after all, and most of the Balkan countries) compared to the Western and Central Europe always makes actual causes of this trend. Of course, there is no simple and straightforward answer. The prevailing opinion is that the countries of South Eastern Europe, because of the specificity of its historical development, primarily in the age of the first industrial revolution lost pace compared to the rest of the continent and found themselves at a disadvantage, which can not fail to compensate. Such thinking usually implies the necessity to southeast Europe, or Balkans, pass the path of development identical western European way. However, whether it the only model that leads to creation of economically prosperous and socially stable society or priority should be given to understanding the local specificity and optimally use them in order to build a welfare state? Serbia can now be classified as countries that have not successfully passed the transition period from a socialist to neoliberal capitalist system. The reasons for this here we can not discuss in detail, but we will mention the most difficult challenges facing the country has faced since the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia until today. These are, first, the Yugoslav wars, including them in the armed conflict with the NATO alliance in 1999, economic sanctions and international isolation in the last decade of the last century, the unsuccessful privatization of public enterprises in the years of the autocratic regime of Slobodan Milosevic after him and, as a consequence, worsening the situation of workers who will be a key generator of losing confidence in democratic government and return to the main political scene those who in the 1990s were the protagonists of the Yugoslav wars, and who were the main culprits for the degradation of the international reputation of the Serbian nation is unprecedented in the history of Serbia. Today Serbia is far closer to autocracy rather than democracy, exposed internal political violence, with non-free state institutions, unclear status of Kosovo and Metohija and undefined national borders. Omnipotent Government is trying to attract foreign investors by promoting its own citizens as cheap labor for which workers' rights are not applicable in the present developed societies. Essentially an important answer to the question why Serbia today so gloomy and hopeless.We will try to clarify the situation somewhat emphasis on the social history of modern Serbia.