Socialist Republic of Croatia

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Socialist Republic of Croatia
Socijalistička Republika Hrvatska

A federal unit of the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

←

1963 — 1990

→


Flag	Coat of arms

Capital

Zagreb

Official language

Croatian language (1963-1971), (1989-)
"Croatian or Serbian" (1971-1989)

Established
In the SFRY:
- Since
- Until

April 7, 1963

April 7, 1963
June 25, 1991

Area
- Total
- Water

Ranked 2nd in the SFRY
56,524 km²
0.227%

Population
- Total
- Density

Ranked 2nd in the SFRY
4,784,265
84.6/km²

Currency

Yugoslav dinar (dinar)

Time zone

UTC + 1

Socialist Republic of Croatia was the official name of Croatia as a constituent republic in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It became part of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia in 1944, then run by Josip Broz Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia. In 1990, the Socialist Republic came to an end as Croatia adopted democratic institutions.

1 The Tito era
- 1.1 Economics
- 1.2 Politics
2 Tito's death
3 Road to independence
4 See also
5 References

[edit] The Tito era

Under the new communist system, private property was nationalized. This caused the old landowners as well as the Catholic Church in Croatia to lose large amounts of wealth. The republic underwent a major rebuilding process in order to recover from World War II. A notable phenomenon during this process were the major volunteer public works that rallied young people in the building of roads and other public facilities. In contrast to popular opinion, the vast majority of public works of the period (among others, the Adriatic coastline highway) were financed by the federal government.

[edit] Economics

The economy developed into a type of socialism called radničko samoupravljanje (workers' self-management), in which workers partially shared profit in state-run enterprises.

This type of socialism was first introduced in Croatia, then in other parts of Yugoslavia. Croatia gave one of world's biggest, if not the world's biggest name in the field of workers' self-management in economic theory, Branko Horvat.

This kind of market socialism created significantly better economic conditions than in the Eastern Bloc countries. Croatia went through intensive industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s with industrial output increasing several-fold, and with Zagreb surpassing the Yugoslav federal capital Belgrade in the amount of industry in the city (even though Belgrade is much larger than Zagreb).

Factories and other organizations were often named after Partisans who were declared People's Heroes. Before WWII Croatia's industry was not significant, with the vast majority of the people employed in agriculture. By 1991 the country was completely transformed into a modern industrialized state. At the same time, the Croatian Adriatic coast began to take shape as an internationally popular tourist destination, all coastal republics (but mostly SR Croatia) profited greatly from this, as tourist numbers reached levels still unsurpassed by modern Croatia. The government brought unprecedented economic and industrial growth, high levels of social security and a very low crime rate. The country completely recovered from WW2 and achieved a very high GDP and economic growth rate, significantly higher than the present-day Republic.

This article is part of the series on the History of Croatia

Early History
Before the Croats
Origins of the Croats
Medieval History
Medieval Croatian state
Kingdom of Croatia
Union with Hungary
Habsburg rule
Yugoslav Croatia
State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Independent State of Croatia
Socialist Republic of Croatia (as part of SFR Yugoslavia)
Contemporary Croatia
War of independence
Republic of Croatia
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[edit] Politics

On the political front, the Croats were still in a minority in Yugoslavia compared to the Serbs, but Tito, whose father was Croatian, adopted a carefully contrived policy to manage the conflicting national ambitions of the two nations: nationalism on either side was suppressed. The constitution of 1963, the one that introduced the country name Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY, didn't allow Serbs to have all the political power in the country. Indeed, this was true to such an extent that the Serbs grew increasingly more disgruntled. Croatians participated in state politics at the highest levels: five out of the nine Prime Ministers of the SFRY were Croats. The Serbs, however, in the same way that happened in the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia, dominated the military and the secret services^[1]^[2], as most of the generals in the Yugoslav People's Army were either Serbian or Montenegrin.

Trends after 1965 (like the fall of OZNA and UDBA chief Aleksandar Ranković in 1966^[3]) led to the Croatian Spring of 1970-71, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause, so a new Constitution was ratified in 1974 that gave more rights to the individual republics, much to the (eventual) satisfaction of the protesters.

In early 1970s Ustashe-inspired cells in Western Europe tried to create a separatist momentum by Mafia-like and terrorist actions^[4] and even by little guerrillas, but they’re largely unsuccessful since even most Croats and other Yugoslav Catholics refused support to them.^[5]

[edit] Tito's death

In 1980, after Tito's death, political and economic difficulties started to mount and the federal government began to crumble. The economy was actually in a very good shape until the fall of communism, and Croatia was the second richest of the six republics, surpassed only by Slovenia. However, probably due to the imminent end of the Cold War and all the subtle benefits Yugoslavia received because of it, inflation soared. The last federal prime minister Ante Marković, who was from Croatia, spent two years implementing various economic and political reforms. His government's efforts were initially successful, but ultimately they failed due to the incurable political instability of the SFRY.

Ethnic tensions were on the increase and would result in the demise of Yugoslavia. The growing crisis in Kosovo, the nationalist memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the emergence of Slobodan Milošević as the leader of Serbia, and everything else that followed provoked a very negative reaction in Croatia. The fifty-year-old rift was starting to resurface, and the Croats increasingly began to show their own national feelings and express opposition towards the Belgrade regime.

On October 17, 1989, the rock group Prljavo kazalište held a major concert before almost 250,000 people on the central Zagreb city square. In the light of the changing political circumstances, their song "Mojoj majci" ("To my mother"), where the songwriter hailed the mother in the song as "the last rose of Croatia", was taken to heart by the fans on the location and many more elsewhere because of the expressed patriotism.

[edit] Road to independence

In 1990, during the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the delegation of Serbia led by Milošević insisted on replacing the 1974 constitutional policy that empowered the republics with a policy of "one person, one vote", which would benefit the majority Serb population. This caused the Slovenian and Croatian delegations (led by Milan Kučan and Ivica Račan, respectively) to leave the Congress in protest and marked a culmination in the rift of the ruling party.

Ethnic Serbs, who constituted 12% of the population of Croatia, rejected the notion of separation from Yugoslavia. Serb politicians feared the loss of influence they previously had through their membership of the League of Communists in Croatia (that some Croats claimed was disproportionate). Memories from the Second World War were the rhetoric coming from the Belgrade administration.

As Milošević and his clique rode the wave of Serbian nationalism across Yugoslavia, talking about battles to be fought for Serbdom, emerging Croatian leader Franjo Tuđman reciprocated with talk about making Croatia a nation state. The availability of mass media allowed for propaganda to be spread fast and spark jingoism and fear, creating a war climate.

In March 1990, the Yugoslav People's Army met with the Presidency of Yugoslavia (an eight member council composed of representatives from six republics and two autonomous provinces) in an attempt to get them to declare a state of emergency which would allow for the army to take control of the country. Serbian and Serb-dominated representatives (Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo) already in consent with the army, voted for the proposal, but as representatives of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia voted against, the plot failed.

The dying country had yet to see few more Serb leadership's attempts to push the plan for centralizing the power in Belgrade, but because of resistance in all other republics, the crisis only deteriorated. This led to international involvement and Serbia's branding as the source of the crisis, which, together with the destruction of cities and numerous war crimes committed by Serb paramilitaries in Croatia and Bosnia, resulted in UN sanctions for Serbia and its ally Montenegro. Beginning with 1992. the second Yugoslavia effectively ceased to exist as a state.