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posed program of long-run stabilization, thus denying in the most convicing way rumours about »fundamental« disagreements of a re-publican, theoretical, ideological or similar character, and sought that the materials be turned over to the Federal Executive Council and be published, which was done.⁴

In February 1969, the Scientific Section again organized a confer-enee in Kragujevac on the problems of stability.^{1 2} At the conference it was shown by empirical analysis that not one of the proclaimed goals of the reform (which can be ouantified) was achievcd nor could be achieved. It was emphasized that in so far as the policy announced by the then-president of the Federal Executive Council were carried out, the number of unemployed would by 1975 exceed a million, half within the country and half abroad.³ (Today we know that this esti-mate was too optimistic, for the figurę of one mi!!'o:i is ;>'rea'iv sur-passed.) Immediately after the Kragujevac conference a closed meet-ing in the Central Committee of the Yugoslav League of Communists was held on the basis of materiał of two economic institutes, one in Zagreb and the other in Belgrade, which gave an identical judgment of the economic situation. One of the present federal functionaries asserted that the judgment of the Belgrade institute consited of »half-

truths«!⁴

Ali these, as well as numerous other attempts which I do not men-tion, had absolutely no effect except to bring unpleasantness to the authors of these judgments and proposals.

Throughout this entire period the judgments of state and political functionaries differed diametrically from the judgments of scholars. From the statement of the then president of the Federal Executive Council in Parliament in October 1966 (»I think that we can say un-ambiguously that the course of the reform up to now is successful and that we can be satisfied with the results achieved«) to the report at the meeting of the Presidium of the Yugoslav League of Communists in May 1969, directly after the analysis of the cited economic institutes (»The course of the reform has withstood the test... On a qualita-tively new basis we have entered into a phase of dynamie growth of production and productivity of labour, employment and the standard of living«), our country’s public has been informed of the successful carrying out of the economic reform and the medium-term plan, of the successful fulfilling of strategie goals, of the qualitatively new struc-ture of production and such. When the slowing of growth became evident, then it was begun to be emphasized (along with the ample assistence of unąualified economists) that slow growth represents the price of »significant restructuring of the economy«. This slogan was launched and maintained until two young scholars⁵ showed by a

535

1

Institut Ekonomskih nauka, Sumarna analiza prwrednih krelanja i prijedlozi za ekonomsku politiku (Beograd, 1968)

2

•    Sce Ekonomist, 1 (1969).

3

•    Ibid., 53.

4

B. Jclić, »Ccmu poluistine«, Borba (Mar. 9, 1969), p. 2.    _p,

5

•    O. Kovać, Lj. Madźar, .Stopa rasta i promene u privrcdnoj strukturi-, cko-

nomist, 1 (1970), 5-32.