Part-time Holdings in Yugoslavia

The first chapter deals with an appearance of peasant-workers in the prewar period in Yugoslavia. The author stresses the fact that the conditions for the emergence of this mixed social stratum in Yugoslavia were created relatively late, due mainly to specific historical circumstances (frequent wars), which disrupted or postponed the utilization and application of many technical inventions of the modem civilization. For instance, the steam machine and construction of railway roads started at the end and at the beginning of the second half of the XIX-th century. Before the Second World War the most regions of today Yugoslavia had not developed industrially, so it is quite understandable that the number of peasant-workers in that times were minimal. It is estimated that in Yugoslavia 9.00% of the total number of agricultural holdings were mixed (part-time) in 1938. In the second chapter the author analyses the development of mixed agricultural holdings in the postwar period. Due to rapid changes of the social structure of population under the influence of the developing industries and tertiary activities, the number of mixed agricultural holdings has been growing from year to year. Already in 1960. they amounted up to 34.00% of the total number of agricultural holdings and today it is estimated that approximately 50.00% of the total number employed in nonagricultural sector are coming from agricultural holdings. In the third chapter the author considers some causes of the origination of mixed holdings. He particularly analyses the economic reasons, namely the agrarian overpopulation. Among other reasons he mentions aspirations of agricultural population for better life and higher living standard by the employment in nonagricultural activites, need for money accumulation necessary for the realization of certain specific goals, like migration to other richer regions or a town, schooling of children, payments of state land tax or debts and different individual motives. In the fourth chapter the author pleads for more systematic and scientific research of this mixed stratum; differentiation of various substrata on the basis of certain characteristics which can be taken as real hypotheses that essentially influences their different production and cosumption orientation as well as their different behaviour and attitudes towards other social strata is necessary. In this sense the author exemplifies his thesis, citing the data on different size of holdings and different consumption characteristics of mixed holdings (households). He separately points out the regional and local pecularities of mixed households. Here too, we find an explication of preliminary results of the questionnaire on mixed holdings which was carried out by the Agrarian Institute in Zagreb last year. In the last chapter the author critically reviews several more or less already generally accepted views on peasant-workers (as bad agricultural and nonagricultural workers, as the lowest social stratum, as people with no formal group participation etc.)