Socialism on Borrowed Time: Sovereign Debt and the End of History

• In Event: Histories and Cultures of Debt in Eastern Europe

Abstract

The sovereign debt crises that beset Eastern European governments in the final decade of the Cold War played a profound role in undermining these states’ legitimacy. More than simply eroding the living standards of its citizens, these crises disrupted state socialism’s temporal order. As utopian visions of a future of credit-fueled growth gave way to a stagnant present permeated with fragments of a repressed past, the regime of historicity that underpinned socialist ideology was radically disrupted.

This paper explores the temporal dimension of the sovereign debt crisis in 1980s Yugoslavia. It pays close attention to the emergence of historical revisionist accounts of WWII and reads them against the decade’s broader culture of indebtedness. It argues that the “end of history” was not simply characterized by the tapering of socialism’s horizons of expectation, but also by a return of repressed historical memories that troubled and undermined the ideological framework of the Yugoslav state. Reinterpreted through the temporality of sovereign debt, the end of history can be understood as simultaneously the uncanny return of a history many had thought put to rest.

Author

• James MacEwan Robertson, UC Irvine