Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v58i1.40094
Facing Internal and External Challenges: Electrification in Yugoslavia during the First Five-Year Plan (1947–1952)
Aleksandar Rakonjac
; Institute for Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Following the Second World War, the Yugoslav communist leadership justified a radical break with pre-war economic policy by emphasizing the country's economic backwardness and presenting electrification as a prerequisite for rapid industrialization and socialist transformation. Inspired by Soviet experience and Leninist ideas, the regime placed electrification at the centre of its economic strategy, a commitment formalized by the 1946 Law on the Electric Power Industry. Debates among engineers from Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana over the future organization of the electricity sector were ultimately resolved in favour of a unified electric power system, with Zagreb designated as the planning centre owing to its well-developed electrical industry and technical expertise.
Electrification became an integral component of the First Five-Year Plan and was supported by a range of institutional and financial measures, including the establishment of the Central Electrification Fund and the introduction of tax exemptions for investment in the electricity sector. At the outset, Yugoslavia expected substantial technical assistance from the USSR and other countries of the Eastern bloc, particularly Czechoslovakia, while simultaneously maintaining limited cooperation with several smaller Western countries. These expectations proved increasingly unrealistic after the Tito–Stalin split of 1948, which abruptly cut access to Soviet equipment, technology, and expertise, forcing repeated revisions of electrification priorities and investment plans.
By redirecting available resources towards projects that could realistically be completed and by expanding domestic production of equipment for the electric power sector, Yugoslavia succeeded in completing or substantially advancing the construction of numerous hydroelectric and thermal power plants despite severe financial, technological, and political constraints. Although the ambitious targets of the First Five-Year Plan were not fully achieved, by 1952 the country had reached 71 per cent of its planned electricity output and established the foundations of a unified national electric power system. This infrastructure became one of the key preconditions for the accelerated industrial and economic development of Yugoslavia during the 1950s.
Keywords
Yugoslavia; electrification; industrialization; First Five-Year Plan; hydroelectric power plants; thermal power plants
Hrčak ID:
350876
URI
Publication date:
10.9.2026.
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