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Resentment against socialization of the land is even sharper.
Yugoslavia is essentially a peasant country. One of the phony accusations made by Stalin against Tito was that land sociali zation had not gone far enough, and that Yugoslavia was run by the "kulaks." The fact is that there are 6,500 collective farms in Yugoslavia, supporting between 1,250,000 and 1,500,000 people who are working 4,353,900 acres, or 23% of the land under cul tivation. In Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, less than 10% of the land is collectivized.
The farmer who clings to his own land is denied such benefits as improved seeds, fertilizers, and easy credits. He cannot em ploy labor outside his family. If his resistance is especially fierce, he is classified as a "negative individual" and a kulak. He is driven to the wall by such devices as government production quotas deliberately made so high that he cannot fill them. Often he must give up his private holding because he has failed to meet a quota, or he may be sentenced to one, two or three years' imprisonment. The commissars boast: "We make great prog ress. By 1951 half the land in Yugoslavia will be socialized.
But we don't go too fast. We know that a peasant, like his pig, can only be driven so far and so fast." An authoritative guess is that several thousand recalcitrant private farmers were imprisoned in 1949. In some villages as many as 50 farmers were arrested in a single night. I saw 200 peasants shuffling along a road in Serbia, picks and shovels in their hands. I was told they were voluntary workers. But at either end of the procession were soldiers with Tommy guns.
Near Stara Pazova I came upon an old peasant leaning over a fence and talking to a hog. Through my interpreter, I asked him why he hadn't joined the local zadruga (cooperative). He stared at me for a long time. Then he reached down with a long-fingered hand and picked up a piece of his soil, black and wet.
He squeezed it until his knuckles whitened and the mud oozed between his fingers. That was his only reply.
To such men, no technological progress under collectivism can compensate for the rape of their property. I talked to a Cro atian peasant who thought he could not hold out much longer against the cooperative drive. His assets had melted. He com plained of having no sense of security, of being at the mercy of sudden and unjustifiable levies. "I am eating as well as before the war," he admitted, "but if I had ten sons I would send them all out of the country." He would, if he could. A Yugoslav who applies for a passport to leave the country is almost certain to be arrested.
Some private farmers attack collectivism on economic grounds. One, whose opinion was confirmed to me from other sources, said: "Of course, no man will work collective land as well as his own land, however well he is paid. Come back here in the summer. Drive down a road bordered on one side by a zadruga, and on the other by private land. You will immedi ately know which is which. Just try and count the weeds on the collectivized land."
"There Is No God"
The passive resistance of the peasants to the socialization of the land, admirable as it is in many ways, is likely to crumble slowly. Tito holds too many trump cards.
Other reasons for resistance may last