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Yugoslavia Introduction of Socialist Self-Management
Faced with economic stagnation, a Soviet-bloc trade embargo,
dwindling popularity, and a dysfunctional Soviet-style economic
system, Yugoslav leaders returned to the core of their
philosophy, the writings of Marx. Their aim was to reassess their
ideology and lay the groundwork for a new economic mechanism
called Socialist (or workers') self-management. Enterprises
formed prototype workers' councils in 1949, and the Federal
Assembly passed laws in 1950 and 1951 to implement the system
fully. These laws replaced state ownership of the means of
production with social ownership, entrusting management
responsibilities to the workers of each enterprise. The laws
empowered enterprise workers' councils to set broad production
goals and supervise finances, but government-appointed directors
retained veto power over council decisions. The government also
reformed economic planning and freed some prices to fluctuate
according to supply and demand, but foreign trade remained under
central control
(see Socialist Self-Management
, ch. 3).
The replacement of a command economy with a self-management
system required the Communist Party to loosen its hold on
decision making. At its Sixth Congress, in November 1952, the
party renamed itself the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
(
LCY--see Glossary) to signal a break with its Stalinist past and a
revision of its leading role in the country's political life. The
Congress declared that the party would separate itself
structurally from the state. Instead of directing government and
economic activity, the party was to influence democratic decision
making through education, propaganda, and the participation of
individual communists in political institutions, workers'
councils, and other organizations. Free intraparty debate would
determine party policy, but once the party had made a final
decision, the principle of democratic centralism would bind all
members to support it. By rejecting multiparty pluralism, the
party retained a monopoly on political organization. Three months
after the Congress, the People's Front became the Socialist
Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia (SAWPY), an umbrella
organization through which the party would maintain this
monopoly. In addition, individual communists continued to occupy
key government and enterprise-management posts.
In 1953 the Federal Assembly amended virtually the entire
1946 constitution to conform with the new laws on workers'
self-management. On the federal level, the amendments created an
administrative Federal Executive Council and reorganized the
Federal Assembly. The amendments also reduced the already minimal
autonomy of the individual republics, while local government
retained power in economic and social matters.
In March 1953, the government began dissolving collective and
state farms. Two-thirds of the peasants abandoned the collectives
within nine months, and the socialist share of land ownership
sank from 25 percent to 9 percent within three years. In an
attempt to mitigate the problem of peasant landlessness, the
government reduced the legal limit on individual holdings from 25
to 35 hectares of cultivable land to 10 hectares; this
restriction would remain on the books for over three decades and
would prevent the development of economically efficient family
farms. The government also eliminated the system of compulsory
deliveries, fixed taxes in advance, encouraged peasants to join
purchasing and marketing cooperatives, and increased investment
in the agricultural sector. As a result, Yugoslav agricultural
output grew steadily through the 1950s, and its farms had record
harvests in 1958 and 1959. Yugoslavia maintained its focus on
industrial development through the 1950s, despite the
government's new approach to economic planning and enterprise
management. The industrial sector boomed after 1953;
manufacturing exports more than doubled between 1954 and 1960;
and the country showed the world's second highest economic growth
rate between 1957 and 1960.
Living conditions, health care, education, and cultural life
improved in the wake of the economic and political reforms. In
the mid-1950s, the government redirected investment toward
production of consumer goods, and foreign products became widely
available. The regime also relaxed its religious restrictions,
allowed for a degree of public criticism, curbed abuse of
privileges by party officials, and reduced the powers of the
secret police. Travel restrictions eased; Yugoslavs gained
greater access to Western literature and ideas; artists abandoned
"socialist realism" to experiment with abstraction and other
styles; and film makers and writers, including Nobel Prize-winner
Ivo Andric, produced first-rate works. But already in 1953
liberalization was an uneven, changeable phenomenon in
Yugoslavia. A meeting of party leaders at the north Adriatic
island of Brioni that year resolved to strengthen party
discipline, amid growing concern that apathy had infected the
rank and file since the Sixth Congress. Over the next several
years, the party tightened democratic centralism; established
basic party organizations in factories, universities, and other
institutions; purged its rolls of inactive members; and took
other measures to enhance discipline.
Milovan Djilas, one of Tito's closest confidants, disagreed
with the Brioni decisions. In a number of articles in the foreign
press, he criticized the party leadership for stifling democratic
intraparty debate. He also exposed elitism in the private lives
of leaders and suggested that the League of Communists dissolve
itself as a rigid political party. This criticism exceeded Tito's
tolerance, and his former comrades dismissed Djilas from his
posts and imprisoned him. In 1957 Djilas published The New
Class, in which he described the emergence of a new communist
ruling elite that enjoyed all the privileges of the old
bourgeoisie. The book won him international notoriety and
prolonged his jail term. Publication of Conversations with
Stalin in 1962 earned him more fame and a second prison term
(see Djilas, Praxis, and Intellectual Repression
, ch. 4).
Data as of December 1990
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