8 June 2006 Best of SluÅ¾beni list

SluÅ¾beni list is a 62-year old official gazette of the Yugoslavian (now Serbian) government. It publishes laws and treaties of the country, not as much to make them more transparent, but mostly to keep the populus up-to-date on what they need to know.

Unfortunately, the gazette is self-financed, so full texts are not available online, but they do keep an overview of all their editions. I browsed around a little and here are some of the headlines which caught my eye (semi-random), followed by my comments:

Year 1945, Act 16: Decision (decree) of awarding Josip Broz Tito the title of Marshal of Yugoslavia.
Tito was the only person ever to hold this highest Yugoslavian army rank.
Year 1948, Act 805: Bylaws of teaching content at economics departments of the universities in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately, I don't have the text of the entire act, but I imagine educational program was tweaked a bit to reflect the new economic reality.
Year 1969, Act 196: Decision of the ban of import and distribution of books "History of the Albanian party of Labor".
Tito had enemies in the least expecting countries. One of them was Enver Hoxha. Both websites are top-notch!
Year 1980, Act 552: Decision of the ban of import and distribution of "Der Spiegel".
Tito spent significant time hospitalized and died in 1980, it was a tough year for national security.
Year 1991, Act 482: Order of the ban of establishing so-called border crossings within the territory of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Everyone and their dog declared independence in 1991. The government also started using the term which marked 1990s in Serbia: so-called ("border", "independent country", "peace keepers", "independent media", "journalists", "students", "protestors", "democrats", "NATO", "War crime tribunal", "United Nations", "Earth"...).
Year 1991, Act 682: Regulation of Yugoslavian standards of ceramic tiles.
Somehow somebody somewhere decided it was really important to standardise ceramic tiles in 1991.
Year 1993, Act 814: Decision of changing prices of certain goods back to a certain level.
1993 was a year of hyperinflation in Serbia. The banknote on the right illustrates why prices (cene) were mentioned in every edition of SluÅ¾beni list at the time.