ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 46. (ZAGREB, 2003.)

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Summary SOCIO-ECONOMICAL REFORMS OF 1950-1952 AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CROATIA Due to new political and ideological changes the Yugoslav leadership took a new direction during the fifties. By leaving the current role model, the USSR, Yugoslavia started on a new course towards then still undefined system of self-government. Through the abandonment of formally administrative centralist system, socio-economic reforms were put into motion and they proved to have a great impact on the administration. The reform changes took place in several steps during the 1950 and 1952 being concluded when the Constitutional law regarding the basis of social and political organization of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia and the federal organs of government was accepted. This law confirmed the sociopolitical changes during the period from 1950 to 1952 and legalised a system which proclaimed public property as the basis of social system, at the same time trying to create a system of Yugoslav class unity. A basic function of these reforms was to deal with the abandonment of already existing ruling forms of commitees and general directorates. Ministries and councils remained main bodies. A role of the councils was dominant, while the ministries took care of the classical part of administration, not covering area of the economy. New administrative bodies, the councils, should have represented coordinative bodies, based on parity principle. They still retained a coordinative role of the federal center. The idea of self-government, based on theoretical propositions of the heads of the Yugoslav Communist Party, was founded on the political need of finding a specific road in leading the country. Regardless of the 1950 and 1952 reforms, which were conducted before the acceptance of self-government legislation, the basic characteristics of statist socialism were retained, keeping also the form of state property and control of the entire political system. Key words: self-government, councils, administrative reforms