Conditions and Circumstances for Carrying out Agrarian Reform and Colonization in Croatia in 1945

The author proceeds from a viewpoint that the agrarian reform and colonization were important social phenomena at the time of their carrying out. The beginnings of their materialization are found in the National Liberation War already, while the period from forming the Temporary Government of Democratic Federative Yugoslavia to the passing a Law of Agrarian Reform and Colonization was a special phase of a very intensive preparations. The author discusses particularly some questions concerning problems of adopting principal views about carrying out the agrarian reform and the colonization to the beginnings of final discussions concerning the Law, as well as some characteristics of conditions in Croatian villages. In the first part - the analysis of general views - some conceptions of Moša Pijade, vice-president of Presidency of AVNOJ (Antifascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia) and the president of its legislative committee, brought in articles in Borba in March and June 1945, are presented. The author thinks there are certain differences in these views. In the first article, it seems, Moša Pijade put a greater emphasis o on the land possessed mostly by the state, given to peasants for the use only, and to the advantages of collective tilling the soil. In the second article stress is on the division of land into a fully private ownership. There follow some views about the competences of central authority and federal units in the affairs of agrarian reform and colonization. In the second part - an account of some characteristics of the conditions in Croatian villages in the eve of the so called internal colonization - questions of the colonists of NDH (Independent State of Croatia), refugees in Slavonija, particularly those from Bosnia and Herzegovina (muhadžiri), and self-willed occupying of abandoned houses and farms are discussed. On the ground of archival materials numerical data are given and dimensions and complexities of these problems are presented, without solutions of which there could be no quick and successful carrying out the internal colonization in Croatia