The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

from which some half a million ethnic Germans had fled or been ex pelled
after the war, were nationalized, and in many cases, people from poor,
underdeveloped parts of the country were settled there. Land was also
confiscated from over half a million Turks who were expelled from the
southern regions, together with Albanians who were proclaimed to be
Turks.
Education and industrialization were to alleviate the greatest deprivation.
Some 80% of the people lived in the countryside in traditional, patriarchal
communities; most were illiterate. The development of raw materials
and heavy industry had priority in the area of development. The rise
from an underdeveloped, backward agrarian country was carried on with
great ambition and great hope. The enormous destruction of the environment
and damage to the cultural heritage that that entailed was not
an issue, nobody was interested in it. Many people suffered work accidents.
Another group of victims were the goats, killed in the whole country
in 1952, because they hindered “reafforestation”.
Young people in the countryside were recruited as workers for industry;
first, they participated in large numbers in the voluntary services as part
of the international work campaigns. At the training sessions conducted
there, many were enthusiastic about the idea of building up not only the
country’s infrastructure, but also its industry, and thus attaining secure
economic progress. A major wave of migration from the land began. The
desired proletarianization of the population was implemented irreversibly.
Forty years later, in 1991, only 20% of the Yugoslav population still
lived in the countryside. In many regions, the villages were deserted,
the fields overgrown, and the roofs of the houses had collapsed. Only
the cemeteries got ever bigger. At the same time, the cities and their
suburbs sprawled.
The uprooting of the village communities, and with it the patriarchal way
of life, strengthened people’s feelings of uncertainty in the municipal
surroundings, where they felt inferior in any case. Broken family rela -
tions were frequently among the results. While the first generation still
travelled back and forth between work in the factory and their rural
homes, accepting long trips and great effort, the second generation no
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