Annual of social work, Vol. 13 No. 1, 2006.
Original scientific paper
SOCIAL POLICY AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES IN CROATIA IN THE PERIOD FROM 1900 UNTIL 1960
Vlado Puljiz
Abstract
In this paper the author discusses three periods in the development of social policy and social activities in Croatia in the period from 1900 until 1960.
The first period preceded World War I, and the author calls it «the end of the long 19th century». At that time, the Croatian society was poorly developed, languishing on the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, far from the European developmental core, with the dominant peasantry and rudimentary social institutions that operated without any significant influence of the state.
During the second period between the two World Wars, Croatia was placed in a more unfavourable developmental context than the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The state of that period, The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1931 onwards the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) passed the first important social laws, but due to numerous reasons, it was not able to implement them. Social problems were increasingly appearing in towns, and poorly developed social institutions of civil society could solve them only to a marginal extent.
The third period lasted from the end of World War II until 1960. It was characterised by the strong state intervention in all spheres of life, including the social sphere. In the years following the war, social legislature was established, primarily protecting the victims and participants of the national liberation war and the population employed in the state sector, while numerous peasantry continued to remain outside all main social security systems. Parallel to the gradual abandonment of the administrative socialism in the 1950s, more attention was being given to social problems. At that time important social institutions were founded in Croatia, among which we single out the Professional College of Social Work and centers for social work. As social problems, primarily poverty and unemployment, but also various forms of socially deviant behaviour increasingly rose to the surface of society, particularly in the 1960s, social policy gained more importance, as well as various forms of social activities.
As it is well known, the collapse of socialism in European countries ensued in the 1980s. Namely, due to exhausted opportunities for progress in the economic and social sphere, as well as due to the deficit of civil and political rights, socialism depleted its developmental potential and therefore simply imploded as a system. In the 1990s, Croatia waged a difficult war for independence, at the same time undergoing a painstaking post-socialist transition, which caused radical changes in social policy and social activities.
Keywords
social activities; social policy; social work; historical context; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
7590
URI
Publication date:
10.10.2006.
Visits: 11.866 *