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munism. Consequently, the Party apparatus had a free hand in build-ing a state of its own choice. Unfortunately, the alternatives available were extremely limited; the only practical example was that of the Soviet Union, or morę precisely, Stalin’s model of the state. And that model was faithfully transferred and emulated. This was perfectly logical if one takes into consideration the entire complex of social-historical and eęonomic circumstances that confrontcd Yugoslavia: pressures exerted by Western countries; threats from remnants of the old bourgeois society and emigres; a desperate economic situation in a devastated country; and, a Party apparatus that had for too long been almost entirely and exclusively subordinated to decisions of the Com-intern and Moscow. Let us remember only that immediately before the war, the Party apparatus, when faced with the danger of the fascist attack on the country and with the possibility that the Comintern would dissolve the Party, quite ruthlessly settled accounts with those Communist intellectuals who could not reconcile themselves with the Stalinist pogroms at the trials and in the concentration camps.

In fact, immediately after the war, the Party apparatus enjoyed a strong support of the people and had almost unlimited freedom of action in all spheres of the society. The Party was monolithic and un-divided. There was a consistent subordination of the lower to the higher organs. Life went on in the shadow of the Victor’s absolute monopoly while the political system which emerged from that life searched for new supports.

The process of pressing back the peasantry to the margins of socio-political system became irreversible. Compulsory land-purchases and complusory collectivization (after the example of the Soviet »kolkhoz«) broke the links between the peasantry and the main bearers of socio-political life in the country. The process was lasting and inevitable. The results is well known. Of 1,046,000 members of the League of Communists in 1966 7.8% (77,000) were peasants, but although today the peasantry still comprises 50,2% of the population, they comprise only 2% of the party membership. Every second Yugoslav is a peas-ant - 54% of the population of Belgrade and 61% of that of Zagreb were born in yillages - yet today Yugoslavia has to import foodstuffs (wheat, for example) in order to feed herself. Finally, and perhaps fortuitously, a single peasant has found a place on the benches of the Federal Assembly.

We are still too far from the day when agriculture will become a branch of industry. Self-management is even physically (by several tions of government, and the local communitics are still in their for-Pope in Romę. The Commune is too distant and too sunk in the func-tions of government, and the local communities are still in their formatce stage. Compulsory contributions are the closest the peasant ever approaches Self-management; tax-demands, military call-up and the local law-courts represent the nearest that he ever comes to the government for a public service. And no wonder nobody wants to be a peasant today. To cali someone a peasant is to insult him. If this re-presented a protest against »the idiocy of peasant Iife« it would be very significant. But half of our population is still subject to that

8 PRAXIS 441