You could move anywhere in the world it was a well respected passport and the state would not bother you, the state even encouraged you to go work in Sweden,West Germany for example.
That's fair enough, but I'm not sure if it was actually as easy as you make it sound.
Poland, for instance, wasn't impossibly difficult to leave, but you could either leave on a leash of sorts, or burn the bridges behind you (effectively trading your citizenship for political asylum in the west). I'm simplyfing things a bit, but the authorities would have rather kept malcontents out of the country like that.
Interestingly, quite a few North Koreans work in EU countries, hired by human resource companies via North Korean diplomatic outposts. They come bundled with overseers, aren't allowed to move around freely or talk to the locals and their wages serve as pocket money for Kim Jong-il and his pals. Just a digression.
Also Yugoslavia was not even part of the Eastern Bloc as they refused to join the Warsaw Pact and were kicked out of the comitern during the split with Stalin in the 50s.
I know that, but sovereignty alone doesn't warrant observance of civilised standrads. Country's "native" authorities can be as detrimental to its people's welfare as installed by foreign powers, China being a drastic example.
Only Socialist country in the world where you could get your hands on Western products during the cold war.
I still doubt their economy was in a much better shape than that of GDR or Czechoslovakia (to name countries where it was indeed better than in the majority of Eastern Bloc). As for trading goods with western markets, I suppose Yugoslavia received some kind of preferential treatment, a bit like Greece got dragged into European Communities for political reasons, despite being economically not quite up to its standards at the time, or like Kosovo switched to euro as its official currency and got away with it as well as other shortcuts possibly because EU needs a friendly Muslim pet country as a poster child for the human face of Islam.
Don't get me wrong, considering the land's most recent history I can see why Yugoslavia is remembered fondly by some. What baffles me is that so many people in post-Soviet countries like Moldova (still not quite democratic by the way) or Ukraine appear to be genuinely MISSING the days of Soviet Union. I know right where their disappointment with free market policy stems from, have personally witnessed the decline and fall of "people's democracy", been as far as Eastern Ukraine in the mid-nineghties and found it dilapidated to say the least (my most persistent memory of that fairly enchanting land is one of those stray dogs getting hit by a car on a highway much worse than Mad Max films were shot on), but those who refuse to acknowledge any connection between the
ancien régime and their country's current poverty don't seem to understand that if you keep letting things go to waste, you end up with fuck all at some point.
