Izvorni znanstveni članak
How the nationalization and confiscation of the artificial steam mill owned by Matija Peršić and Jelisava Kolar in Virje was carried out in 1948
Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević
; Zagreb
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* Dopisni autor.
Sažetak
This article reconstructs how the nationalization of a private steam mill in Virje (Podravina region, Croatia) was converted into outright confiscation in 1948, examining the case of Matija Peršić's “Umjetni paromlin” and his daughter and co-owner, Jelisava Kolar (Peršić). Drawing extensively on family archival material — wartime receipts, court records, official correspondence, and personal recollections of the author, Jelisava's daughter — the study shows how the mill's nationalization, formally announced in April 1948, was deliberately escalated into a full confiscation of the family's property, including their home, within only a few months. The article first traces Jelisava Kolar's wartime role: from 1942 she supplied Partisan units on Bilogora with flour from the mill, free of charge, earning her the nickn name “Partizanska mlinarica” (the Partisan miller), and risking reprisal from both occupying forces and the Ustaša regime. Despite this documented cooperation with the National Liberation Movement — supported by surviving receipts and a 1946 certificate from the local National Committee — postwar authorities showed no leniency. When Jelisava lodged formal appeals contesting the scope of the nationalization (seeking to exclude the family house, garden, and personal belongings from the decree), the appeals provoked the opposite of the intended effect: regional and republic-level officials, including Miloš Žanko, hardened their stance, ultimately ordering that the house be included in the confiscation as well. Simultaneously, a separate criminal prosecution was launched against Jelisava for alleged “illicit speculation” with flour, based on her failure to keep formal commercial bookkeeping. The district court initially imposed only a fine, recognizing her wartime services, but the appellate court in Bjelovar overturned this, converting the case into full confiscation of the mill plus a one-year prison sentence with forced labor. The author argues this dual-track legal strategy — pairing nationalization with a fabricated economic crime — was a deliberate device used across Yugoslavia to dispossess private owners without compensation, regardless of their political loyalties. The article follows the family's subsequent hardships: their eviction, exile to a single overcrowded room in Koprivnica, Jelisava's imprisonment in Slavonska Požega and later in Koprivnica, and a further attempt in 1960 to seize additional land allegedly omitted from the original 1948 confiscation. It concludes with an account of the prolonged and largely unsuccessful post-1991 dekonfiskacija (restitution) process, which dragged on for two decades and yielded only token compensation long after both Jelisava and her son Branko had died. The author situates this micro-history within the broader pattern of how Croatia's communist authorities dismantled private industry after World War II, often disregarding documented wartime loyalty to the Partisan cause, and argues that the case illustrates how legal procedure was subordinated to political will, transforming productive citizens into a permanently disadvantaged “second-class” social category.
Ključne riječi
nationalization; confiscation; steam mill; Jelisava Kolar; Virje; Podravina
Hrčak ID:
350982
URI
Datum izdavanja:
25.6.2026.
Posjeta: 0 *