The Class of 1977 Is Not as Unhappy as We Thought

The season for reunions of former high school graduates. Groups gather to reminisce about the good old days at milestone anniversaries, to boast about something, to confirm the impression that ‘everyone except me has aged’… So it is with us, former students of the 4th D class of the Virovitica Gymnasium Petra Preradović (class of 1973 – 1977). We have managed to maintain our gatherings continuously for 45 years. That is no small feat!

Every five years, in the rhythm in which we meet, ‘Ekonomalije’ that first come after our reunion are dedicated to analyzing what our generation has gone through, in economic, personal, and professional terms. We lived thirty years in socialism and thirty years in capitalism. Thirty years in an analog environment and thirty years in a digital one. The thesis has continuously boiled down to the fact that we lived in exciting times and that we were an unhappy generation. One that just didn’t quite work out.

From Inflation to Inflation

Now, after 45 years, the impression has changed. No matter how much we went through various social, political, military, and economic Scylla and Charybdis, compared to what seems to await the generations of graduates who are celebrating the end of high school these days with whistles in their mouths, flour in bags, and beer in hand, perhaps we were not such an unhappy generation after all.

We entered the workforce after finishing our studies (80 percent of us 28) in the mid-1980s. Right at the time of one of the crises marked by shortages of goods and inflation. Generations before us quickly received social housing in companies. We did not have that opportunity. Loans were mostly unavailable, and if any did occur, they were fixed to the German mark and could not be repaid in a few years with a rate equal to the price of a box of matches. Then, in the early 90s, the SFRY simultaneously disintegrated, and the transition from socialism to capitalism began, ‘seasoned’ with a five-year war. Of course, along with inflation. Which was stopped in 1994, but the price was high. A grotesque transformation followed, then illiquidity, bankruptcies…

Then, after 2000, things stabilized somewhat, only for a six-year recession to ‘hit’ in 2009. Then a bit of sunshine after 2015, followed by the hammering of the COVID-19 pandemic. And for the finale, before retirement, a full circle – and the war in Ukraine that triggered inflation. A careful reader will rightly ask: ‘Where are the arguments that we were not an unhappy generation?’ First of all, events were indeed more spread out over time than today. There was not the mad rush and chasing of one’s own tail. From my classmates, I see that almost no one is in significant scarcity. Everyone owns their own property, many have managed to secure apartments for their children, and here and there a few apartments or small houses by the sea have fallen…

Secondly, a bit harder to explain: all the, pardon my French, crap was our internal, local. Both inflation. And war. And corruption. But the world was stable during those forty years. We could defend ourselves from inflation by buying German marks. We were not additionally buried by global economic shocks. The West was stable, the collapse of socialism (except in our case) was mostly peaceful (the collapse of the USSR). China was just beginning to awaken. It was not yet a dangerous contender for world leadership, and its rapid growth in demand fueled the growth of the West. Globalization brought benefits. Climate change had not yet fully erupted…

Bad Cards

Today’s generations face a much trickier package of dangers. My generation leaves them with crumbling institutions, a never-built value system, and a lack of vision. And on top of that, there is aggressive Russia, a strengthened China, and the USA with internal discord… Nature is taking revenge for what has been done by maximizing economic growth at any cost. Additionally, there is the digital revolution that accelerates life and working conditions to the point where the human brain is about to burst.

If we return to my class, of the 28 of us, 26 are alive. Interestingly, a third of us are self-employed (companies, crafts, family farms, law offices). A third are civil servants. A few colleagues are employees in companies, and we also have two long-term voluntary unemployed. Perhaps a similar structure will also be present in the generations that are just entering the workforce.

What we could drastically differ in is the place of work. Of the 26 of us, only one colleague is outside Croatia. When today’s graduates celebrate, for example, their 20th anniversary of graduation, they will likely do so virtually. It is not hard to imagine that only one of them will be in Croatia, while all the others will be around the world.