The Postwar Period 229
of social relations in production—regarding the social property and the rights
and the obligations of the working people—and therefore we must and can
realize it, if we really want to build socialism.”^405
Bombastic declarations aside, this new economic policy never fully won the
trust of the masses, primarily because of the discrepancy between theory and
practice. Self-management required the worker to become a broad-minded
manager with a developed “socialist consciousness,” ready to dedicate time and
energy to administrative activities in addition to the commitment to his job. In
everyday reality, a conflict soon arose between ideological premises and the
actual social, economic, and political conditions of the population. The Yugo-
slav theoreticians frequently spoke of the “initiative of the masses from below,”
which, according to them, had already been the main cause of victory during
the liberation struggle. The self-managing experience was paralyzed from the
beginning by widespread illiteracy or semiliteracy, economic backwardness
and the general deficiencies of the society, and above all the determination of
the party not to renounce its hegemonic mission. It is true that, with time,
the regime mellowed, for instance permitting a choice between several candi-
dates when elections were held, but this does not mean that the central role of
the party in all aspects of society disappeared. Technological development
required increasingly sophisticated management and expert cadres, which is
why the ideal of an active role of the workers in the administration of the fac-
tories began to be increasingly inefficient. Self-management was in reality a
political and ideological façade that concealed something quite different. In
his diary toward the end of 1954 the great Serb writer Dobrica Ćosić criti-
cized the fact that “the Workers’ Councils have not yet improved production or
the economy.... They allow more initiative, but also more absenteeism, more
words, but little real democracy.”^406 In spite of this unpromising start, self-
management was later introduced at all levels of public life, from rural com-
munities to the administrative summit, on the assumption that it epitomized
the highest form of the people’s power. When the sun was setting on Yugosla-
via, Koča Popović wrote the truth: “An overall look shows, in my opinion, that
we were not mature enough for real self-management. For instance, how can
self-determination and widespread illiteracy or general ignorance, not only of
common interests, but even of the most elementary hygienic norms, go hand
in hand? When he built his theories, Kardelj perhaps had Slovenia in mind,
certainly not Kosovo.”^407
He was right, since Kardelj was unable to understand and accept the com-
plexity of Yugoslav society or, if he did, he started from the premise that “Slo-
venia should be acceptable to Yugoslavia, and Yugoslavia should be structured
in a way that would be acceptable to Slovenia,” since Slovenia was the most