The Postwar Period 165
their right to own 20–30 hectares of land. But this did not solve the problem of
overcrowding in the countryside, or improve living conditions. Things worsened
in autumn 1945, when the obligatory sale of agricultural produce was imple-
mented in a bid to feed the cities and the army and to keep factories supplied
with raw materials. Food and other goods were distributed to workers, employ-
ees, and specific categories of the poor through bonuses and ration cards.^85
The AVNOJ decree of 21 December 1944 approved the confiscation of the
property of the Third Reich and its citizens, along with the assets of war crim-
inals, collaborators, and traitors. The law of 5 December 1946 nationalized large
and medium businesses such as shops, banks, and transport companies. By the
following year, the state sector encompassed 90 percent of all production. This
meant, in the words of Vlatko Velebit, “that at least half of all the industry in
the country was destroyed in just one ultra-Bolshevik decree... Tito, Kardelj
and the other leaders were oblivious, and if they weren’t, they didn’t bother
themselves about the power of private property and the extent to which it
motivates productivity.”^86 Following the Soviet model, a Five-Year Plan was
announced for the years 1947–51 that forecast GNP growth of 193 percent and
a fivefold increase in industrial and twofold increase in agricultural produc-
tion. Unsurprisingly, its emphasis was on heavy industry. Initial post-liberation
propaganda about “the people’s democracy” was replaced with a new narrative
focusing on the “construction of socialism” and its capacity to free the country
from its semi-colonial past and transform it into an industrial powerhouse.^87
When a journalist asked Djilas, shortly before his death, whether the leaders
had enough economic knowledge to achieve this immense task, he answered:
“You know they didn’t have much. It was based on Marxist doctrine, badly
understood and accepted in the Stalinist variant. The knowledge of those who
led the economy was simply miserable. Those economists whom we considered
bourgeois did know something. They were here to help as experts, but at that
time nobody cared for their opinions.”^88
Billions of “the people’s money” was put into a forced, overambitious indus-
trialization, but very little was invested wisely: most of the cash went into badly
conceived, poorly realized projects that yielded mediocre results. The entire
country was full of grand “socialist factories,” built by highly competitive
“Stakhanovite” workers or by so-called “youth brigades,” filled mostly with stu-
dents on their summer breaks, some of whom enrolled voluntarily, although
most did not.^89 Living conditions became much worse even than in the prewar
years; the population was malnourished (only partially fed by United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration aid), and at the mercy of disease
(particularly tuberculosis). In addition, the regime was suspicious of intellectu-
als and professionals who were included in the black list of “petit bourgeoisie”