The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

ered and led to painful realizations and to a transformation of society, in
Yugoslavia, the uncovering of a crime was more likely to provoke state
repression, or revenge from the murderer on whom one had informed.
The count of the victims officially set at a very high level just after the
war, to justify demands for reparations, generated great frustration and
resistance to the state from all sides. Thus for example, Serbs and Croats
still argue about the number of people killed in the Jasenovac extermination
camp. During the ‘60s, the Yugoslav Statistical Office had
stated the number of killed as 59,000, but never published this figure.
The question of guilt and responsibility grips Croatia like an octopus, al -
though the Ustaša was defeated precisely because of the massive participation
of Croatians in the partisan resistance.
The break with Stalin temporarily provided space for some critical voices
within the party, who demanded economic reforms and attacked topdown
state control. However, the discussion was broken off from above,
to thwart the supposed danger of “anarchy and the restoration of bourgeois
society”, as soon as some members questioned the sole power
of the party – and some saw it as a “new class”; it was another lost opportunity
for democratization.
Deprivation, expropriation and reconstruction
As elsewhere in the Europe destroyed by Nazi madness, Yugoslavia
after 1945 suffered greatly from famine. Most villages and towns were
in rubble, the most important industrial plants, the infrastructure, and
the currency and financial systems had been destroyed. The urban pop -
ulation tried to survive by trading sewing machines, cloth or tools for
flour or potatoes. After Stalin’s economic blockade against Yugoslavia
in 1948, the hungry population was provided with Care packages from
the USA.
As in other socialist states, the private property of “collaborators” and
“enemies of the state” was expropriated; by the end of 1948, banks,
companies and large estates had become state property. Out of consideration
for the discontent of the peasants, many of whom had been
resistance fighters, the Soviet model of agricultural collectivization was
reversed after two years. The fertile areas in the north of the country
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