Dijana Pleština - Regional Development in Communist Yugoslavia: Success, Failure, and Consequences

Success, Failure, and Consequences

Dijana Pletina

First published 1992 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pletina, Dijana.
Regional development in Communist Yugoslavia: success, failure,
and consequences / by Dijana Pletina.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-8186-X
1. YugoslaviaEconomic conditions1945 Regional disparities.
2. YugoslaviaEconomic policy1945 I. Title.
HC407.P57 1992
330.9497'02dc20 92-32259
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28544-9 (hbk)

The research for this book was first undertaken in fall 1982 thanks to the Canada-Yugoslavia Exchange Fellowship. The University of California, Berkeley, provided additional support for research in Yugoslavia as well as for the early stages of the writing through the U. C. Chancellor's Fellowship, the Robert A. Braden Fellowship and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. For the latter two, I thank the Department of Political Science and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies. I also thank Andrew Janos, Kenneth Jowitt and Laura D'Andrea Tyson for their early guidance on the dissertation on which this book is based. Three institutions provided the support necessary to complete the project. The Social Science Research Council organized a Workshop on Soviet and East European Economics in July 1989, which was a welcome forum for a great deal of helpful discussion. The PICAS Fellowship held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor enabled me to begin rewriting the book in spring 1990. Finally, without the continuing support of the College of Wooster, from which I received summer research grants from 1988 to 1992, it would have been impossible to bring to date information on Yugoslav regional development policies and effects and thus to finish this book.

From September 1982 to November 1983, while holding the Canada-Yugoslavia Exchange Fellowship, I was based at the University of Belgrade, Professor Ljubislav Markovic kindly arranged access to various libraries and closed collections and generally proved helpful in the early orientation in Belgrade. During those fifteen months I travelled extensively throughout Yugoslavia. While the travelling and the work load on the trips were often gruelling, the courtesy and unfailing helpfulness of my respondents, especially in the less developed regions, provided that extra push when my stamina and energy faltered. Their surprise and genuine delight that I was Croatian, and as such "theirs," showed in their frequent exclamations of "a, pa ti si nasa! " (well, you're [one] of ours! ); their pleasure that though now living in America I still wanted to find out about them made me indeed feel Yugoslav, in the best sense of the word. The time .

Additionally, there are a few individuals whose endless patience in repeated and/or particularly long and exhaustive interviews I wish to especially acknowledge: Milovan Djilas, Bosko Gluscevic, Hasan Zolic, Misa Jandric, Marjan Korosic, Sulejman Kamenica, Ljubislav Markovic, Kosta Mihailovic, Mihailo Mladenovic, Jovan Radovanovic, Maurice Romano and Rudi Supek were particularly generous with their time and energy and helpful in explaining the broader socio-political context in which regional development occurred.

Various parts of the manuscript were read by friends and colleagues to whom I remain indebted. Many of their helpful remarks and incisive comments have been incorporated into the book. For this I thank Ellen Elias-Bursac, Aleksandar Bogunovic, Ognjen Caldarovic, Bogomil Ferfila, Gregory Grossman, Thomas Hellie, David Ost, Stjepan Plestina, Jan Svejnar and Mark Weaver.

Without my family in Croatia and Canada, who provided love and support, this project would have been far more difficult to carry out. In particular, I thank my family in Zagreb and Novska, who have continued through the years to provide me with a bed and a place for my suitcase even though I come so often and often stay for so long.

The assistance provided by Sarah Choudhury, Kimberly Niezgoda and Teresa Wilson was most helpful in the completion of the manuscript. Kim's library research kept me supplied with the books that I needed. Terry and Sarah did an excellent job typing and preparing the manuscript for camera-ready copy. The skill, good humor and encouragement of all three lightened my work considerably. In addition, Sarah undertook the task of indexing as well as of seeing the project through to completion. I am immensely grateful to her for her excellent work.

Finally, there are a number of individuals who, through the years, directly or indirectly contributed a great deal to this book. Richard Lowenthal, who in his own life so successfully combined social and political involvement with intellectual concerns, has been an inspiration. Patricia Walker has helped me to find a voice without which it would have been impossible to write. The friendship and the shared conversations with Gary Bonham and Christine Paige have been important throughout this project. Issues of social equity and social justice, which form the background of this project, were first explored many years ago with Atul Kohli. Those times of shared concerns and mutual support I continue to cherish. Marina Gozze-Gucetic and Branislav Pujevic have for years provided me with my home in Belgrade. Jovan Radovanovic has been a friend and a colleague for a decade. Our long conversations have helped me to understand a great deal of the "Yugoslav" realities, perceptions and self-perceptions. In Zagreb, I can always count on a well-informed, intelligent and thoughtful perspective thanks to my friend and cousin Mario Weisser.

To the above-mentioned, this acknowledgment is a small expression of my gratitude.

Dijana Pletina

I feel compelled to begin by acknowledging that my interest in Yugoslav politics in general and in the politics of regional development in particular is not that of a supposedly neutral observer; nor is it a recent development based upon the savage war currently being waged on its soil. I was born in Zagreb. My experiences of the 1950s, filtered through the memory of childhood were, like those of most small children, shaped by the prism of family life. One Jaffa orange carefully wrapped in tissue paper, brought to my sister's birthday party as the present; certain friends coming to our house every few weeks for a bath; visiting our kumove perched on their heads, in the other carrying their town-shoes, meant market days and excitement if we too were going to buy piglets or sell a cow; a marker on the side of the road where a partisan had been killed by the ustase was the half-way point to a friend's house; a tin of orange marmalade, left-over from food packages dropped by Americans during the war, was the prize found in the pantry one cleaning day; and daily card games with my dear grandfather who, crushed by the helplessness of watching his once-prosperous flour mill nationalized then left empty to crumble before his eyes, would be briefly assuaged by a high-spirited and blissfully happy granddaughter.