Well hello there, pleased to meet you all

[Faust Arp]

I've been regularly lurking on RevLeft for a long, long time, so I thought I could finally get my simultaneously lazy and overworked ass to register and start posting.

I'm a student from Belgrade, Serbia (there unfortunately seems to be a chronic shortage of people from these parts as of lately, it seems) and i've been seriously interested in radical left politics for several years already, but have been genuinely politically active for only around two and a half years, as a member of Marks21, a revolutionary socialist organization. Politically, I could most accurately be described as a heterodox state-cap Trotskyist (though I tend to avoid the label) with dashes of Luxemburgism, Marxist-Humanism and a bit of some other stuff.

I came here mostly because I got somewhat sick of the staleness (and general terribleness) of the Serbian left scene and want to engage in discussion with people with some relatively fresh perspectives, learn a bit from people with more experience and help those with less grow politically.

Hope we'll get around to knowing each others better soon.

[Q]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

[Thirsty Crow]

Zdravo :D

Feel free to contact me if you wish. There's a chronic shortage of discussions in the West Balkans forums to be sure (as the mod, sometimes I feel like a dusty old man just waiting for something to happen while the place is enveloped in spider web), but the main boards are lively.

Hope you find this place worthwhile.

[Faust Arp]

Zdravo!

I noticed that the West Balkans forums are pretty much dead - I've already got an idea for an interesting topic (related to what I said about the "terribleness" of the Serbian left scene), but I hope there's gonna be more people there than just the two of us. :/

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I sometimes haunt the west Balkans forum like the terrible spectre of Spartacism that I am (no, wait, that's another user, I've confused myself now), although I don't know if I will be able to say anything of interest as my understanding of the Serbian left pretty much ends with Imširović (what a character). I could regale you with stories about our (I mean Croatian) kinda-anti-sorta-revisionists telling me they're not interested in foreign affairs and so on.

[DOOM]

Dobro doso :)

Yugo takeover when?

[Tim Cornelis]

Hvala

Nazdrovje

smrt fazismu svoboda narodu.

So far my knowledge of 'West Balkan'/Slovenian.

How do 'West Balkan' languages work, are they all the same language, just dialects? (if I may hijack this thread)

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Slovenian is a separate language with limited mutual intelligibility with Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin/whatever. As is Macedonian. Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin are the same language (the mutual intelligibility is almost complete; I understand someone from Belgrade much, much more clearly than I understand my ancestral clan in the Zadar archipelago) with several official variants - a pluricentric language, like Hindi/Urdu/Awadhi, Macedonian/Bulgarian, or Farsi/Dari/Tajik.

Nazdravlje means something like "gesundheit". Nazdrovje, I believe, is Russian, and means something slightly different. Likewise, we say "sloboda", as opposed to the Russian form "svoboda".

[DOOM]

Ah yes, B/C/S, the most absurd political issue in Ex-Yugoslavia.
The absurdity of this issue lead to a massive amount of linguistic non-sense, especially in Bosnia.

http://www.svjetlorijeci.ba/slike/upload/2014/misli_i_zapaanja/pusenje.jpg

smoking kills

[Tim Cornelis]

It's Nazdravje in Slovenian apparently (svoboda also Slovenian).

What about reading? Can y'all read cyrillic?

[Faust Arp]

I sometimes haunt the west Balkans forum like the terrible spectre of Spartacism that I am (no, wait, that's another user, I've confused myself now), although I don't know if I will be able to say anything of interest as my understanding of the Serbian left pretty much ends with Imširović (what a character). I could regale you with stories about our (I mean Croatian) kinda-anti-sorta-revisionists telling me they're not interested in foreign affairs and so on.

Imširović. :wub: I kinda miss the old guy. But no matter how paranoid, sectarian and abrasive he was, he still was a genuine Marxist - which can't be said for most of the pseudo-Marxist academics which currently dominate the scene, who are absolutely nothing but left-wing national populists. So yeah, it's even more terrible than Pavluško. Think of a bunch of hipster grad student Miloševićs and you can get a vague picture.


Dobro doso :)

Yugo takeover when?

Što pre!


What about reading? Can y'all read cyrillic?

The somewhat older generations of Croats and Slovenians all can, but most of those under 30 can't since Yugoslavia broke up by the time they got into school and cyrillic was phased out of the school curriculum. I'm not sure about Bosnia, though - do they learn cyrillic in schools outside of Republika Srpska?

[Exterminatus]

Both cyrillic and latin are official in Serbia, but i'm sure many in Croatia/Bosnia also know cyrillic.

Also hello everyone, i'm also a long-time lurker from Serbia. I call myself a communist because my knowledge about Marxism is very limited, even though i completely support what little i know.

[Thirsty Crow]

It's Nazdravje in Slovenian apparently (svoboda also Slovenian).

What about reading? Can y'all read cyrillic?
I can't read Cyrilic. Unfortunately, my generation saw cyrilic thrown out of the school syllabi, and I never had the motivation to learn it on my own as most of the writing I'm interested in is already in latin alphabet.

I'm also down with yugo takeover. PM details of the coup.

[Faust Arp]

Both cyrillic and latin are official in Serbia, but i'm sure many in Croatia/Bosnia also know cyrillic.

Also hello everyone, i'm also a long-time lurker from Serbia. I call myself a communist because my knowledge about Marxism is very limited, even though i completely support what little i know.

Zdravo! :grin:

Heh, we're slowly coming out of the woodwork. A coup is definitely in order.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In Croatia, unfortunately, the number of people below 30 who can read Cyrillic is small, perhaps a bit higher in Dalmatia (I'm basing this on personal experience, mind) but even there it doesn't amount to much. I can read it - I actually taught myself when I was young, reading my mother's Cyrillic books.

Also, god, hipster Milošević. He only campaigns against less well known nationalisms, you probably haven't heard of them.

[DOOM]

It's Nazdravje in Slovenian apparently (svoboda also Slovenian).

What about reading? Can y'all read cyrillic?

Learned it by myself, which wasn't too hard because cyrillic is official in Bosnia and I spend my holidays there. (inb4 fucking dijaspora)

[Tim Cornelis]

Shit, the Yugoslavs are going to take over. I still remember when this place was basically run by the Dutch. :crying:

[Redistribute the Rep]

Some of the words sound similar to russian

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, B/C/M/S and Slovenian are both Slavic languages, although the South Slavic branch has marked differences with East Slavic (not as much as with West Slavic, though, which is basically all gibberish to us).

There was actually a very artificial variant of Serbian, popular in Vojvodina, that was effectively a hybrid between old Serbian and Russian. It was quite something.

edit: Popular in the 18th century.