Socialist Entrepreneurship and Integrated Peasant Economy: Failed Collectivization in Yugoslavia (1949–1953)

This article explores the specific features of collectivization in socialist Yugoslavia, focusing on Slovenia as one of its constituent republics. Through a bottom-up approach, it examines selected cases from the countryside surrounding the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, between 1949 and 1953. Unlike the Soviet and broader Eastern European cases, the Slovene/Yugoslav regime stemmed from both a socialist revolution and the National Liberation War. Alongside coercion, it used pragmatic strategies to win over the peasantry—allowing wealthier peasants to join labour cooperatives and promoting ‘entrepreneurship’, a value rooted in capitalism, as a socialist principle. While aiming to preserve the industriousness of petty commodity production, the authorities sought to achieve this within a new environment: no longer in private enterprises, but in state or collective (cooperative) ones, protected from the destructive consequences of capitalism. Drawing on case studies, the article demonstrates that collectivization failed: Support from revolutionary activists proved insufficient, peasants rejected the proposed entrepreneurial model, and they continued to pursue individualistic family farming. It explains the persistence of traditional agriculture through the concept of the integrated peasant economy, in dialogue with theories of pluriactivity and petty commodity production.