Page 146 [146]
NATIONALISM, MODERNIZATION AND SOCIETY IN CROATIAN LONG CENTURY
of well-educated agricultural workers — the Germans. All of this supports
the idea of modernization as a mechanism carried out by individuals. Viktor
Gutmann was killed by the communist authorities for cooperation with the
occupier, and his brother Ernest was killed by the Ustasha authorities because
he was no longer needed."
While the aforementioned agrarian reform favored the suitable according
to similar ethnicity, the agrarian reform after World War II was based on the
idea that the land owner can only be a person who handles that same land.
State have prescribed agrarian maximum, person who had more land would
lost its property without possibility of compensation. The aim of the reform
was not to improve the agricultural production, but to provide a social help
to poor farmers. Agrarian reform took away the land from those who knew
how to make money írom it, and gave it to those who did not. Inputting the
confiscated land in the Land Fund, 1,500,000 hectares of land were shared,
of which 51% of the total or 80% of arable land was given to farmers. Forest
estates, as well as all industrial enterprises, fell under state ownership.?°
The policy of the communist rulers on villages targeted the so-called big
farmer, who was marked as a potential enemy of the people, and who was then
imposed with a progressive tax in the form of the repurchase of agricultural
products. The task was to make agricultural production complementary to
industry and other sectors of the national economy and to bring the arable
land owned by farmers into full operation and application of all known agro¬
technical measures. Rural properties larger than 10 ha represented a problem
since they were used to speculate with the price of wheat and other grains,
but they exploited only 60—65% of their capacity. The new policy towards the
village failed, but it started the transition of the peasant masses to the city
center, where large investment cycles began as a part of a five-year plan (from
1947). The resistance of peasants towards the new measures in agriculture
was marked as Bourgeois nationalism by the communist government.
The administrative centralism was also marked as a type of nationalism.
It evolved in all aspects of government, from central to state and local. It
evolved in the relations between the ministries and the bodies responsible for
the implementation of the five-year plan at the federal and state level to the
companies and state economic institutions. It was the residue of the capitalist
worldview which was characterized as economic particularism, because it
24 Ivo Goldstein: Hrvatska 1918-2008, 256, 267; Milan Salaji¢: Old Belisée, Belisée 2012,
107-115; Hrvoje Volner: Nacionalne ideologije i oslobodilacke revolucije, Zbornik radova
Kultura, Identitet, Drustvo-Europski realitet, Osijek-Zagreb, 2014, 784; DAOS fond 6
Poglavarstvo grada Osijeka, box 5188.
Enciklopedija Leksikografskog zavoda, Zagreb, 1959, bibliografska jedinica “Jugoslavija”,
19-27. Marijan Maticka: Agrarna reforma i kolonizacija 1945-1948, Zagreb, Skolska
knjiga, 1990, 47-48; Marijan Maticka: Uvjeti i okolnosti za provodenje agrarne reforme i
kolonizacije u Hrvatskoj, Casopis za suvremenu povijest 27, 1978, 5-12.