As luck would have it, I left Yugoslavia for the second time only months before Tito’s death. The country’s days were numbered, but it still survived more than a decade of turmoil. In the meanwhile, the division of the country into future sovereign nations proceeded at an accelerated pace. Under the guise of so-called market socialism, the communist elite from each republic fought for every bit they could get from all other republics. The competition was fierce. Much of the proceeds went directly into the pockets of those best placed to employ every sort of trick that the old system tolerated. Nay, stimulated.

And the communist elite eventually inherited entire countries that were formed after the breakdown of Yugoslavia. They swiftly joined nationalist parties of all colors, which led the many wars that followed. Shedding their communist past, the splintered nationalist elites kept using the collapsed and corrupted market as their tool of choice. Capitalism they created on the ruins of market socialism kept its key characteristics inherited from the turmoil: corruption and organized crime in every imaginable form.

Nearly all of this I missed, as luck would have it once again, and it thus took me quite a while to recognize the market socialism of old in the fake capitalism that came in its place. But the communist elites are still around and about. Just beneath the surface, they are recognizable by their crooked ways. As well as the common criminal mindset. Disguised in so many threadbare ways, they are still essentially the same two decades hence. Born out of a travesty of socialism, capitalism on the territory of former Yugoslavia is a travesty of capitalism, too. And so is the so-called transition between the two systems. Transition, what transition?