/
Events
/
Lectures

This work by Vera Katz, Aleksander Lorenčič, Jože P. Damijan, Neven Borak is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR FOR THE GLOBAL
ORDER AND YUGOSLAVIA
The Second World War led to widespread destruction of infrastructure across Europe and Asia, especially Japan. Cities, factories, transportation routes, and ports were either destroyed or severely damaged. As a result, the United States of America, emerging from the war as the strongest economic power, played a leading role in shaping the post-war international economic order. This was reflected in the creation of institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as agreements like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Additionally, the U.S. launched the Marshall Plan (1948–1952), aimed at rebuilding Western Europe economies, which allowed for rapid economic growth, regional stabilization, and the containment of communism.
The Cold War created two opposing economic systems: capitalism in the West and socialism in the East. Yugoslavia, which suffered significant material damage during the war, implemented many political and economic reforms in its aftermath. The country underwent processes of reconstruction, accelerated electrification, industrialization, nationalization and the establishment of a socialist economic system modeled after the Soviet Union. This system was based on state ownership, a planned economy, and collectivization. However, the 1948 split with the Soviet bloc (the Cominform crisis) drastically changed Yugoslavia’s trajectory. Yugoslavia began receiving U.S. aid, which allowed it to develop a unique socialist system with some capitalist elements and open borders.
Yugoslavia transformed from a poor, predominantly agrarian country into a moderately developed state in the decades after the war. This transformation was partly due to its own efforts and partly due to Western economic and financial aid. However, by the 1980s, the country entered an economic crisis, as the political and economic processes in its republics and provinces developed unevenly. This disparity affected their later development and ultimately contributed to the wars and the dissolution of Yugoslavia.