Titoism in Action: The Reforms in Yugoslavia After 1948

By Fred Warner Neal

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1958.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520350458

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titoism in action

berkeley and los angeles

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 1958

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles Cambridge University Press, London, England

© 1958 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-10291

Printed in the United States of America Designed by Marion Jackson Skinner

this book is dedicated to Irena

preface

EVER SINCE the Communist party of Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in 1948, the Yugoslavs have been experimenting with new theories of communism and have evolved a new political structure and economic system, different from those usually associated with communism of the Soviet type. The Yugoslav experiments constitute the most interesting and most significant development in Marxism since the Russian Revolution, and they have had an enormous impact on the whole Communist world, including the USSR itself.

The Yugoslav reforms apparently reflect an effort to create a society that is socialist and yet has within it some elements of political democracy. One of the most important questions of our times is whether it is possible to have such a society. To the extent that the Yugoslav experience throws light on that question, it is hoped that this study will serve a purpose beyond the rather narrow limits imposed by scholarship.

This book undertakes to trace the development of the new reforms, and the theories behind them, explain them and evaluate their significance. Emphasis is on the development up through 1954, by which time the basic pattern had emerged. But the new Yugoslav system is still incomplete and still undergoing constant changes. The book attempts to describe the Yugoslav system as it was operating in 1957. Originally, it was planned to treat only the internal developments, but before the writing was concluded there occurred something of a rapprochement between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union; there were also the sensational developments in Poland and Hungary in 1956, themselves a reflection of the impact of Tito- ism. As far as one can see, these developments have not vitally affected the internal situation in Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, there has been added a postscript on Yugoslav foreign policy which may help to put Yugoslavia’s relations with the Soviet Union, as well as with other countries, in perspective.

In making an assessment of the Yugoslav situation, I have drawn on my personal experiences in Yugoslavia, both before and after the Cominform Resolution of 1948, and especially on detailed researches undertaken there during 1954. I was able to observe firsthand the operations of political and economic institutions in each of the six republics of the country and attend meetings of worker-management bodies, local government organs, citizens’ meetings of worker-management bodies, local government organs, citizens’ groups, courts, and Communist party committees. I talked with leading Yugoslav officials, from Tito on down, and with countless ordinary citizens.

In addition, this work is based on texts of Yugoslav laws, government documents, statements, and other official publications, on Yugoslav books, journals, and newspapers. I have also utilized my experiences in the USSR and official Soviet sources as well as pertinent books, articles, and reports published here and abroad. With the exception of certain items taken from the Joint Translation Service’s daily summary of the Yugoslav Press, made available by the United States Embassy in Belgrade and by the External Research Staf of the State Department, the material quoted from Yugoslav language publications has been translated by me or under my direction. Citations from Borba are always from the Belgrade edition unless otherwise indicated.

Material is cited from various issues of the Serbo-Croat language publications Arhiv za Pravne i Drustvene Nauke and Medjunarodna Politika, as well as from issues of their respective English language editions, New Yugoslav Law and Review of International Affairs, depending on which was available. Transliteration of titles and names from the Serbian Cyrillic is given in the Croatian Latin equivalent. Transliteration from Russian follows the style prescribed by the Library of Congress.

A detailed analysis of all the new Yugoslav reforms, including Yugoslav foreign policy, has not been attempted heretofore, although certain works have dealt with some phases and with the general situation in post-Cominform Yugoslavia. A number of the works dealing with Yugoslavia—especially those in English—have been written by persons with ethnic relationships in Eastern Europe. The contribution of some of them has been limited by emotional overtones that the authors, no doubt understandably, were not able to circumvent. I have no emotional commitment to my subject, ethnic or otherwise, and the book has striven to avoid value judgments on the theory that the readers can make their own.

It is always presumptuous for a foreigner to discuss the institutions of other countries. This may be especially true of Yugoslavia, because the system is altogether new and still evolving. It is not impossible that, despite considerable effort to prevent it, errors have crept into this book, errors of both fact and interpretation. If so, I can only say they were made honestly in an attempt to serve the interests of scholarship and the interests of peace and understanding, which—I am glad to say—are also the interests of my own country.

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of the American Universities Field Staf, whose representative I was in Yugoslavia during my 1954 researches, and the American Philosophical Society, which conferred a grant furthering those researches. I am appreciative of permission to quote extensively from American Universities Field Staff Reports. In Yugoslavia, I had the wholehearted cooperation of the United States Embassy and of my friend Ambassador James W. Riddleberger. Among the large number of Yugoslavs who went out of their way to help I am especially indebted to Milos Martie; Blagoje Lazic, now chief American correspondent for Borba; Jovan Djordjevic, chief of the Federal Executive Council secretariat for legislation and of the Legal Council; Kiro Gligorov, now chief of the Federal Executive Council secretariat for economic affairs; Branko Novakovic, deputy director of the Yugoslav Information Center in New York; Ivan Bozecevic, secretary-general of the Yugoslav trade-union Sindikat; Milovan Djilas; Edvard Kardelj, vice-president of Yugoslavia; Aleś Bebler, former deputy foreign secretary; and Josef Vilfan, chief of President Tito’s secretariat. These gentlemen talked freely with me, attempted to answer my questions in detail, and frequently supplied me with invaluable documentation. Needless to say, however, the interpretations and conclusions are mine alone.

I am also indebted to J. K. Pollock, A. A. Lobanov- Rostovsky, James H. Meisel, and Henry L. Bretton of the University of Michigan, for a critical reading of a part of the manuscript. I also benefited from discussions about Yugoslav developments with Louis Kostanick, of the University of California, Los Angeles; Jozo Tomasevich, of San Francisco State College; and many others.

Unless otherwise indicated in the legends, all photographs are reproduced through the courtesy of the Yugoslav Information Center, New York.

I wish further to thank Miss Adele Baker, of Los Angeles, for her yeoman service—far beyond the call of duty—in typing the final manuscript. And, of course, I could not have written this book at all had not my wife shown superhuman forbearance in putting up with me during the throes of composition.

F. W. N.

The Claremont Graduate School

Claremont, California

contents

preface

contents

illustrations

I introduction

II the new doctrine

Ill the communist party

IV the leader

V the new governmental system

VI management and control of the economy

VII the reforms in local government

VIII the reforms in agriculture

IX relaxation of totalitarianism

X reflections on titoism

XI a postscript on yugoslav foreign policy

notes

selected bibliography

index

illustrations

(following page 46)

Tito on his 65th birthday Marshal Tito during World War II Edvard Kardelj, vice-president of Yugoslavia Aleksandar Rankovic, vice-president of the Federal Executive Council A meeting of the Workers⁹ Council Steel works at Zenica The Belgrade International Fair, 1957 A peasant woman at work in her home Farm machinery in Vojvoidina Market in Rijeka Boulevard Marshal Tito, Belgrade Grave of World War II hero in Bosnia Pioneers parade in Belgrade, 1955 Gate of Dubrovnik Cathedral of Zagreb Market in Mostar, Herzegovina The Yugoslav army on maneuvers

I introduction

THE COMMUNIST leadership which came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945 organized the country along the lines prescribed by the Soviet Union for an Eastern European people’s democracy. ¹ All industry as well as large estates was nationalized and a policy of collectivization was begun. A program of industrialization was swiftly launched. A federal planning commission worked out a detailed plan, of the Soviet type, and various federal economic ministries and administrations directly operated the factories. The 1946 constitution set up people’s republics in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia, but the great preponderance of power was held by the federal government. A federal control commission supervised the execution of federal laws throughout the land. The federal ministry of the interior, with its political police, known as OZNA,² stamped out all opposition to the Tito regime.

All political and social life in the country was controlled directly or indirectly by the Communist party. Most of the prewar parties were outlawed. Those that remained were compelled to operate through a single People’s Front, which had a single program. That program was dictated by the Communist party. The party was a member organization of the People’s Front, but it alone kept its independent political organization and program. Tito, as leader of both the government and the party, wielded supreme authority.³

Although in the years immediately following the war Yugoslavia seemed to be a model Soviet satellite, there were already at work several factors which ultimately belied the appearance. The biggest difference between Yugoslavia and the other Eastern European satellites was that in Yugoslavia— and only in Yugoslavia—had the Communists established themselves in power without important assistance from the Soviet Union. Even before Soviet troops reached Belgrade in late 1944, Tito’s Partisan army—with the backing of Great Britain and the United States—had cleared large areas of the country of the Axis invaders.⁴ Since the wartime Partisans comprised large numbers of all the ethnic groups of Yugoslavia and from all sections,⁵ Tito was, at least as compared with Communist leaders elsewhere in Eastern Europe, a national leader in his own right. Furthermore, unlike his comrades elsewhere, he had a tested army that was primarily loyal to him.

Thus when differences with the Soviet Union began to appear, Tito was in a unique position to assert his point of view. The differences were not slow in appearing.⁶ They involved Yugoslavia’s ambitious industrialization plans, Soviet attempts at economic exploitation, reluctance of the Yugoslavs to follow the advice of Soviet advisers, and their opposition to Soviet recruitment of Yugoslavs for the MVD. There were also operational-doctrinal differences, which had to do with the peculiar Yugoslav approach to collectivization of agriculture, the role of the Yugoslav Communist party, and foreign policy differences involving Yugoslav relations with Albania and Bulgaria.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had organized the Communist Information Bureau⁷ to cope with just such nationalist deviation as was being manifested by the Yugoslavs. There then began the series of notes between Soviet and Yugoslav leaders. When Tito refused to admit completely the error of his ways and confess deviation—as Communist mores demand— the Soviet Union read the Yugoslavs out of the Cominform and proceeded to denounce them as enemies of communism.⁸

It was this resolution of the Cominform expelling the Yugoslav Communist party which set the stage for the development of the new Communist theories and practices that are dealt with in the ensuing chapters. The Resolution itself was followed by more tangible opposition, chief of which was an economic blockade imposed on Yugoslavia by the entire Soviet bloc.

Far from escaping from Soviet domination, the Yugoslav Communists were stunned by the impact of the Cominform Resolution. Imbued, like Communists elsewhere, with both love and obedience for Stalin and the USSR, the Yugoslavs were heretics only because Moscow saw heresy in anything less than complete subjection in all things. Their expulsion from the Cominform produced a psychological and political crisis among Yugoslav Communists. That they had erred might be possible; but that they had sinned irrevocably and an anathema should be pronounced on them by the very objects of their adoration was inconceivable. Although Tito and his inner core of advisers had realized for some months before the Resolution that they were in for an unhappy time, even they found the actual act of excommunication both terrible and unexpected. Psychosomatic illnesses were common among them. Tito, for example, suffered his first gall-bladder attack at the time.⁹ The late Boris Kidric, a member of the Politburo, told the author that in the days following the Cominform Resolution he spent agonizing, sleepless nights, and struggled with my conscience and my skin broke out. Blazo Jovanovic, head of the party in Montenegro, and a member of the federal Central Committee, confessed that the Resolution was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me."

If the leaders of the Communist party of Yugoslavia found Moscow’s denouncement of them difficult to accept, the same was even more true of the rank and file. They were experiencing the same feeling as American Roman Catholics might if they were to wake up one morning to discover that the entire American hierarchy had been excommunicated.

Their psychological difficulty to comprehend what had happened, plus, doubtless, uncertainty about the reaction of the rank and file of the party, accounted for the ambivalent attitude of the Yugoslav Communist leaders in the days following their excommunication. They literally begged to be taken back into the Cominform fold. In a speech to the Fifth Party Congress in July, 1948, Tito pledged his faithfulness to the USSR and promised to work with all our might to mend relations between our party and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia’s foreign policy, Tito said, was in full accord with the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, for the Soviet policy corresponded and corresponds to the interests of our country. When he concluded his speech to the congress the hall rang with cries of Hail Stalin, Hail Tito. ¹⁰

Similarly, Yugoslav actions at the Danubian Conference in Belgrade in the summer of 1948 are inexplicable except by the theory that the Yugoslavs either hoped Moscow would forgive or that they were still unable psychologically to accept the fact of their new position. A top Yugoslav foreign office representative acted as unofficial floor leader for the Soviet leaders, and the Yugoslav delegation constantly voted with the USSR, usually against their own interests.¹¹

Yet at that same time, Tito and his lieutenants did stand by their guns. Tito told the Fifth Party Congress: Can we renounce everything and say it is true we are nationalists simply because it says so in the Resolution of the Information Bureau? Of course we cannot … admit this. … The signers [of the Resolution] did not take objective truth into account at all. ¹²

This defiance of the Soviet Union, compromised though it was, was undoubtedly popular among the mass of non-Communist Yugoslavs. Although there was little outward reaction among the traditionally apolitical peasants, among the more politically aware opposition to communism was identified with opposition to the Soviet Union. Although at first incredulous, they now had to recognize the hated Yugoslav Communists as the chief defenders of the country from the hated Soviet Union.¹³ Put in this difficult position, many became perforce more or less supporters of the regime, especially when the secret police, now busy tracking down Comin- formists, stopped bothering them.¹⁴

The Yugoslav Communists had already made noteworthy strides toward eliminating the nationalist-religious strife that had plagued the Yugoslavs long before they were organized into a state. If this problem had not been altogether solved, it had at least been so muted that it was no longer a major political problem. The strongly nationalist role assumed after 1948 by the Yugoslav Communist party—the first really nationwide party the country ever had—put still further into the background the old struggles between Serbs and Croats, between Roman and Orthodox Catholics. Although some might feel that a common opposition to the Communists was also a factor in this, on balance there was little reason to dispute Milovan Djilas’ 1951 evaluation that our government is in a much stronger position among the people as a result of our firm defense of national independence against the USSR.¹⁵

On the eve of the Cominform Resolution, Yugoslav relations with the West were probably the worst of any satellite country. Unfailing supporters of the USSR in the cold war, the Yugoslavs had alienated Western public opinion by their undemocratic methods and by the execution of General Mihailović and the imprisonment of Archbishop Stepinac. In addition, they had shot down two U.S. Air Force planes flying near Yugoslav territory, resulting in the death of two American soldiers. Still further disputes involved detention of the Yugoslav Danube fleet, gold deposited in New York by the Royalist government, and American claims for expropriation of property and lend-lease balances.¹⁶

Western diplomats, unable to dismiss the possibility that the whole Cominform incident might be a complex Soviet tactic, were further puzzled by the Yugoslavs’ protestations that they were loyal Soviet Communists and also by their continued hostility to the West for the first year after the break. It was not until November, 1950, that the American government definitely put itself on record as supporting Tito and believing that the split with the USSR was genuine. This policy was expressed in a letter by President Truman to Congress, stating that $16,000,000 of Mutual Defense Assistance funds had been used for drought relief in Yugoslavia. This assistance was given in response to a formal Yugoslav request for aid in a note dated October 20, 1950. Further relief was then provided after the President had advised Congress as follows:

Since the break between the Kremlin and Yugoslavia, it has been the policy of this government to assist Yugoslavia to maintain its independence. The continued independence of Yugoslavia is of great importance to the security of the United States and its partners in NATO and to all nations associated with them in their common defense against the threat of Soviet aggression. We can help preserve the independence of a nation which is defying the savage threats of the Soviet imperialists, and keeping Soviet power out of one of Europe’s most strategic areas. This is clearly in our national interest.¹⁷

The immediate result of American aid was the beginning of a pro-Western Yugoslav foreign policy. At the same time, the Yugoslavs had begun to edge away from the Soviet Union as far as internal policies were concerned. In the beginning, this manifestation was almost altogether in the realm of theory, and even here they backed into changes from what was at first an entirely negative position. Actually, they had little choice. The continued and mounting hostility of the Soviet Union had driven Tito and his comrades into a reconsideration of their entire position. There was a need to find an ideological basis for their position as a Communist nation outside the Soviet community, and the discovery that the Soviet brand of communism was not for them in at least one respect soon brought them to an examination of other aspects of it as well.¹⁸

The Yugoslavs took the position that since they remained Communists, and the Soviet Communists opposed them, this meant that the Soviets were not good Communists. Good communism was equated with Marxism-Leninism. The Yugoslavs contended that the Soviet Union had deviated from true Marxism-Leninism as a result of an independent Communist bureaucracy created by Stalin which transformed the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship over the proletariat. Proof was the Soviet Union’s imperialist denial of equality between socialist states, as manifested by the Cominform Resolution.¹⁹ This theme, that Stalin had been guilty of revisionism of basic Marxism-Leninism, began to be echoed and reechoed in the statements and writings of the Yugoslav Communists in the fall of 1949 and afterward.²⁰

From here, the Yugoslavs worked out new theories of their own—theories based on Marxism but with interpretations different from those of Soviet doctrine. These added up to a new theoretical approach to communism, involving a new theory of state, of surplus value, of agriculture, and of the party. During this new theorizing and ideological groping, the Yugoslavs insisted that they remained Marxist-Leninists, socialism and communism were their goals as before, and only Stalinism was repudiated.²¹

Perhaps the essence of the new Yugoslav doctrine was that the state must start at once to wither away. Having erected the outlines of their new ideology, the Yugoslavs, in 1950, began to implement it by a series of reforms that transformed the political and economic character of the state. The new reforms were to safeguard against Stalinist bureaucratic state capitalism and launch the withering away of the state.²² Also the reforms were to bring about a different and more democratic type of socialism, although not political democracy of the Western type.²³

The key to this development was decentralization—decentralization of the government, decentralization of the economy, and, later, decentralization of the Communist party. Decentralization, said Mose Pijade, one of the leading theoreticians among the Yugoslav Communists, was the first and most vital step toward democracy and the road to socialism. ²⁴

Although in one sense the reforms are all of a piece, they fall logically into several categories. Generally speaking, they were not put into effect by individual laws but rather as a series of measures created by decrees and then finally pulled together in formal enactments.

First were those dealing with industry and the economy generally: worker-management of factories, revamping of the planning mechanism, and decentralization of the state economic administration. Although the establishment of workers’ councils in the factories preceded the decentralization, Yugoslav theory holds that it was decentralization that made worker-management possible. Without the abandonment of the attempt to plan directly all production, bureaucratic control on top would have stifled worker initiative.²⁵

The second group of reforms was in the realm of political organization, and was embraced, as were most of the administrative changes, in the constitution of 1953. Here was the extension of greater political autonomy to the republic governments, broadening of authority of municipal governments, and direct worker representation in legislative bodies at various levels. Also in the constitution are the new theory of separation of powers between political and administrative functions and a new form of executive.

Third was a whole series of agricultural measures which reflected the failure of collectivization and ultimately spelled the end of the kolkhoz system. The agricultural reforms, however, were in a separate category from the others, because of both theoretical and operational factors. They were begun as temporary measures, and the Yugoslavs only reluctantly came to consider them as an integral part of the whole new system.

Finally, there were the reforms relaxing the nature of totalitarianism in Yugoslavia. Included in this group were not only the new criminal code and the new election statute, but also the new and decentralized role of the Communist party and the broadened responsibility and authority for the People’s Front.

With one major exception, these reforms appeared to set a pattern that the Yugoslav leaders hope will continue for some time to come. The exception was the commune. Exactly what the commune is to be is a matter of much discussion in Yugoslavia, but the Yugoslav leaders have emphasized repeatedly that they consider it a vital part of the ultimate structure they are creating.²⁶ As set forth by Kardelj and others, the commune is to be the end product of socialist decentralization—a combined political and economic unit embracing both the countryside and agriculture on the one hand, and the city and industry on the other. It would be a more or less self-contained and self-supporting local administrative unit that would integrate industrial and agricultural production with consumer needs.²⁷ Certain communes were formed in 1955, but disagreement about their role and exact organizational form remained.

As originally conceived, the reforms were seen as a ‘return to real Leninism," from which Soviet direction had taken the Communist movement.²⁸ As they developed, however, the new practices in government, economy, and party went beyond even Leninism, although they remained well within the confines of Marxist philosophy. The implications of this comprised one of the main facets of a dispute within the Communist party and contribute to an essential political contradiction in the new system.

Yugoslav theoreticians, in discussing the new developments, constantly stressed their difference from Soviet practice.²⁹ There is no doubt that they do differ. The decentralization, for example, went so far in certain instances as to draw criticism from American officials in the FOA Mission in Belgrade,³⁰ and some observers have concluded that a main Yugoslav motivation was to do things as differently as possible from the way they are done in Russia and still maintain a claim to Marxism.³¹

At the same time, the new economic and political structure in Yugoslavia has drawn to some extent on Western institutions. This is freely admitted by the Yugoslavs,³² although they emphatically deny that Western pressure forced them into the new developments or that Western aid was a factor.³³

In addition to doing things differently from the USSR and borrowing from the West, the Yugoslavs also sought to go back to revolutionary experiences of the past to find models for their new system. The French Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety, the Paris Commune, and the early Soviets in Russia are not infrequently referred to in discussions of the new reforms.³⁴ But it is claimed that the system as a whole is new and original and some of its forms are unique in the annals of political and economic organization.³⁵

In all governments, there is often a big gap between statutory provisions and hortatory statements concerning them on the one hand, and political fact on the other. This is especially true of Communist Eastern Europe, not only because of the extralegal authority wielded by the Communist parties and the class nature of the governments, but also because, traditionally, law means less there than in the Anglo-Saxon West. As with the Soviet system, law tends to be regarded more as a norm, a statement of what should obtain, rather than a fixed principle that invariably applies in all cases.³⁶ Significantly, a Russian proverb observes: Law is like a wagon tongue. Wherever you turn it, there it goes.

Yugoslavia is no exception. Indeed, legal reality in Yugoslavia is sometimes all the more vague because of contradictions seemingly inherent in the new reforms. For example, these reforms create a decentralized economy, in which initiative has full play within the confines of economic laws, and at the same time maintain a socialist and a planned economy. That this effort is officially described as a decentralization which is in its essence not antagonistic to an essential centralization of the socialist plans³⁷ does not in fact make it not antagonistic. On the political side, the reforms have had the effect of making for more personal freedom and encouraging discussion of new ideas while the Communist party continues to exercise exclusive control. Further, these developments are taking place in a country comprised of a people with a low cultural level, widespread illiteracy, and no real experience in self-government—a people who are inevitably confused by the ideological zigzagging of the past decade.

In addition, the official Yugoslav approach is one of experimentation and eschews preconceptions about the right forms or even the exact nature of the goals.³⁸ Especially in a revolutionary situation, this means frequent changes. The laws spelling out the new reforms in Yugoslavia have already been changed often, and frequent additional changes are anticipated.³⁹ How the laws should work and how they should be altered is a topic of frequent public debate at all levels in Yugoslavia.

The peculiar psychology of the Yugoslav Communists is a factor here. In one sense, their undogmatic approach to socialist forms is more in the spirit of American pragmatism than Soviet Marxism. But at the same time they still sometimes manifest a rigid and doctrinaire attitude typical of ideologists in general.⁴⁰ The first characteristic prompts them to change; the second makes them reluctant to admit error.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the new Yugoslav system does not always work as it is supposed to on paper and sometimes appears to be breaking down entirely.⁴¹ Nor is it surprising that at various times—no matter what the law says—government and party officials step in to direct the course of affairs the way they want them.⁴²

Certain observers of the Yugoslav scene have concluded that the new reforms are altogether a façade, designed only to fool the public, foreign and domestic ⁴³ It is true that many Yugoslavs hostile to the Tito regime agree. The investigations reported herein, however, fail to validate this judgment. It may be that in the future, if the new laws do not operate successfully, their forms may be maintained, but not their substance. Certainly it is correct to state that the Yugoslav leaders hope, and expect, that the reforms will bring socialism and communism to their country.⁴⁴ The dominant role of the Communist party often sharply limits the democratic nature of many of the reforms, and there has been no indication that the party intends to abdicate its primacy. Nevertheless, life in Yugoslavia has changed as a result of the new system. Few indeed would say that the Tito regime in 1956 was not less absolutistic than it was before 1950. Further, despite the economic difficulties Yugoslavia was encountering, the cold figures show real physical improvement. The standard of living has risen since 1951, and so has key industrial production.⁴⁵

This is not to say that the new system is working properly, or even well, or that it necessarily can succeed without major changes. Tito has declared that the real implementation of the new system depends on the pace of cultural developments, adding that for "poor peasants who