The Metamorphosis of Festivals in a Socialist Country.

In the analysis of the system of Yugoslav socialist festivals and rituals, the hypothesis of the French historian Michel Vovelle about the metamorphosis of revolutionary festivals has been followed. Socialist festivals rhythmize the year in ways that do not disrupt the traditional cycle of annual rituals , still they postpone or anticipate it's peaks. Besides, Yugoslav official socialist ritual neglects crucial moments in individual life cycle. Cultural historic ethnology in Croatia and in Yugoslavia did not consider socialist festivals and rituals as a part of popular culture and was not interested in the research of these phenomena. The present author sketches an outline of the ethnology of socialist ritual.

In recent years, I have come to feel increasingly uneasy about the celebration of the Women's Day on 8th March each year. Although, the day is not a public holiday in Yugoslavia, it is celebrated at work, and the Institute of Folklore Research is no exception in this regard . But I have tried to abstain from this celebration and I hurry home instead, where I expect everything I was trying to avoid in the officenamely, that my children and husband should offer their congratulations for that day . Yet , usually they do not do that, believing that I am emancipated enough not to participate in this folk custom.
Ethnologists are only human; besides, it is well-known that insiders have considerable difficulties trying to perceive their own culture. This is especially true of rituals in which we participate ourselves. Still, my personal experience has led me to the following analysis of the socialist festival of 8th March.

An analysis of a socialist festivaF
In the years immediately following World War II, 8th March was officially 2 celebrated in Yugoslavia at special observances , with prominent politicians giving speeches in praise of the 7 Ethnologia Eur opae a XX,2 women 's struggle for equality . Only chosen guests and local elites received invitations to those ceremonies. Additionally, in Partisan families, 8th March was also a family festival: the men were expected to bring flowers and even presents to the women -their wives, mothers and sisters .
In the fifties already a custom of male employees bringing flowers to their female colleagues on that day became popular; the women in turn offered sandwiches, cakes and drinks. Increasingly singing was a part of such office parties, and the women, beaming with joy, were allowed to leave work a little earlier.
In the sixties, business firms began to organize excursions for their female employees on the occasion of 8th March . Women travelled to thermal spas or holiday resorts without their husbands, they danced with one another and enjoyed a few drinks, for once taking on the male role. The world was turned upside down .
The official women's organization publicly criticized the commemoration of 8th March in this way, advocating instead a 'solemn' and/or 'working' observance of the day in a manner 'worthy of the strugggle for the equality of women'. Despite such objections and earnest injunctions, 8th March continues to be cele-brated in a carnivalesque mood (in fact the day falls within or close to the carnival3 festivities).
The late seventies and early eighties brought a new dimension to the festival. On one hand, it was used to promote the sales of particular goods. On the other hand, feminism became increasingly influential: modern feminism in Yugoslavia began to grow in early seventies, at first sharply attacked by the official women's organizaton, but then gradually recognized through the growing acceptance of some feminist initiatives. Feminists criticized the celebration of 8th March as inappropriate and actually discriminatory. Women struggling for equality have no need of one day of equality, but a whole life of equality. For this reason educated women belonging to the upper classes began to disassociate themselves from this celebration.
However, on the level of everyday life, for instance in Zagreb, where I live, and notwithstanding the general air of crisis in the country, advertisements began to appear already in January 1989 offering special concerts and entertainment shows for the International Women's day. Travel agencies advertised one-or two-day trips to spas or shopping expeditions to Triest or Graz and Leibnitz. Despite the crisis, well-off firms could afford such pleasures for their female staffs. In February shop-windows were displaying a rich selection of more or less provocative lingerie. A city preparing to mark the revolutionary Women's Day filled it's shop-windows with sophisticated mannequin figures displaying provocative bras or lacy nightgowns. Street vendors sold a variety of 'fashion items' and trinkets, while sweet shops had their varied sweet-boxes already nicely wrapped of time.
Thus, 8th March had become consumptionoriented, not unlike the West European 'Mother's Day ' (cf. on Muttertag Weber-Kellermann 1985: 156), which used to be observed in prewar Yugoslavia. The similarity does not end there. Children in kindergarten and schools organize parties and prepare presents for their mothers. They recite schmalz verses, and the whole atmosphere is reminiscent of a pious veneration of the mother of God, whose days come two months later in the calendar, in May.

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To complete the picture of the 8th March festivities, it should be noted that in villages there are organized groups of women (members of local branches of the national women's organization) for whom organizing 8th March festivity is among their main activities: they organize dancing parties and feasts or shopping expeditions across the border.
Thus, in this festivity, one can discern several levels: the level of an invented revolutionary (ideological) holiday with solemn observances and political speeches; the level of a traditional carnival behaviour (the world turned upside-down, women assuming male roles); the level of consumerism; and the level of Mother's Day, with elements of both consumerism and of the Christian relation to the mother. All four levels interact and exist even in the days of social, political and economic crisis. After all, viewed retrospectively, different levels prevail at different times, reflecting economic and political changes in Yugoslav society. A festival belonging originally to the communist ideology has undergone stages of transformation in keeping with the increasing employment of women and with the country's gradual opening to modern consumerism and Western lifestyles. One should not ignore the traditional level, in other words, possible correspondences between the ritual behaviour concerning the Women's Day and the carnival. Finally, the withdrawal of the upper classes and intellectuals from this festivity (partly also of the national women's organization, which now restricts itself to a very modest marking of 8th March) and the adoption of the holiday by organized local groups of women in villages all point to the conclusion that the invented tradition has percolated into folk culture.

The ethnology of socialist festivals
To establish its legitimacy and identity, postwar Republic of Yugoslavia introduced its own festivals and rituals and declared public holidays by federal and state legislation. In addition to these, there are other commemorative days, like the aforementioned International Women's Day 8th March, various anniversaries and other more or less formal memorials of Spring 1945, immediately after the end of World War II: A rally with speeches in Zagreb as popular festival. Photo: Agencija za fotodokumnetaciju. particular historic dates, events and personalities.
These belong for the most part to invented traditions, as defined by E. Hobsbawm in the introduction to the famous collection of papers by a group of British historians Invention of Tradition: "Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules of ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historical past" (Hobsbawm 1983: 1). Most Yugoslav national holidays seek to traditionally commemorate historic events, especially events of the Partisan war and socialist revolution.
Over more than forty years those 'Red' festivities have undergone various changes and have had their ups and downs. They were used as a negation of religious and folk traditions; 7* influenced by those traditions they changed consequently their own meaning as well. It might be instructive, therefore, to examine the nature of the revolutionary holidays and about their metamorphosis over nearly half a century of recent Yugoslav history.
The ethnological science in the socialist countries treats the socialist festivals in two characteristic ways.
(1) Traditional ethnology, which was largely cultural and historical ethnology in Croatia, has persistently ignored the socialist festivals and holidays as an element of folk culture. This is probably due not only to a conservative methodology but also to the quiet rejection of the ideological underpinnings of the 'Red' holidays.
(2) Another type of ethnological approach takes an activist stand in relation to the socialist festivals. The 'activists' seek to create new holidays, thoroughly researching the traditional ones in order to extract what is 'good' and 'positive' in them from what is 'backward' and 'negative' (Tultseva 1984, Urazmanova 1987. According to some researchers, it is the ethnologists' duty to weed out 'bad' traditions and offer to society rituals and festivals 'worthy of the socialist personality' (Tokarev 1980: 35, Drobizheva & Tultseva 1982. It should be said, however, that such approaches are quite rare in Yugoslavia . They are more frequent in soviet literature, although S. A. Tokarev (1980: 35), for example, warns that it is not easy to determine which rituals are good and which are bad, which should be banned and which encouraged (!) 4 • Ethnological accounts of present-day customs, rituals and festivals, both socialist and those inherited from what historians would call the time of the 'longue dun~e', more often than not end with a statement that traditional (folklore) and modern forms meet in modern holidays. The researcher accepts such claim without examining the quality of the encounter and the meaning of modern rituals and festivals. Furthermore, he does not explore their relation to ideologies (socialist, catholic or orthodox). He also fails to look into the specific socioeconomic and political context of modern festivals and the historical processes at work. Finally, he misses the very important question of how holidays and rituals rhythmize life. It is generally accepted in ethnology that rituals rhythmize human life. In agricultural civilizations they rhythmize it in harmony with nature. What happens with the rhythm of work and festivities in the revolutionary calendar? This is one of the key questions raised by Michel Vovelle in his masterly analysis of the metamorphosis of festivals in Provence in the years before and immediately after the French Revolution (Vovelle 1976; I quote from the Italian translation 1986).
Vovelle confronts the rhythm of festivals of the 'longue duree', that is those known in ethnology as lifecycle rituals or festivals, rites of passage, and annual cycle festivals 5 , with festivals in the revolutionary calendar.
The revolution introduced a new calendar. And together with it also several completely new festivals. Vovelle classifies the revolutionary festivals as occasional celebrations, periodical commemorative days, festivals marking 100 the decades of the new calendar, spontaneous feast days and moral holidays. He believes that as time passes "the revolution begins to impose its own dynamics, disrupting the balanced rhythms of the past" (Vovelle 1986: 191, 192).
An outline for the study of socialist festivals in Yugoslavia When speaking of prewar Yugoslavia, one can justly speak of the dominance of folk culture, for the simple reason that 80 per cent of the population lived on land and engaged in traditional farming and livestock raising. According to Enciklopedija Jugoslavije (Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia 1962) illiteracy was as high as 50,5 per cent in 1921 and 44,6 per cent in 1931. Only a few cities had populations over 100.000. This is not to say, however, that there was no urban culture, but it is true that not all the regions in Yugoslavia participated equally in the European civilization process as described by N. Elias.
Prewar festivals in Yugoslavia have not been investigated in Vovelle's terms, but there are accounts by Milovan Gavazzi, for example, who wrote Godina dana hrvatskih narodnih obicaja (Croatian Folk Customs Throughout the Year). Niko Kuret's Praznicno leto Slovencev (The Slovene Year of Festivities), Tihomir Dordevics Nas narodni iivot (Our Folklife), and many individual descriptions of different customs and rituals fall in the same category. These accounts describe festivals of the 'longue duree': the winter cycle including Christmas, New Year and the carnival, the spring cycle including Easter and May, the summer cycle including Midsummer day. Before the World War II, these holidays were celebrated, with minor modifications, in ways celebrated by rural folk for many centuries, as argued by cultural historical ethnology. The traditionalistic cultural and historical ethnology was not interested in urban festivities, therefore no detailed descriptions of these customs are available, although fairs, Corpus Christi processions and Christmas Eve midnight masses as well as May Day celebrations were popular features of urban life. Prewar Zagreb, like many other cities and towns, had its popular Spring 1945: Dancing folk dance "kolo" in the main city square in Zagreb. Photo: Agencija za fotodokumnetaciju.
political events, election rallies, open-air folklore shows with processions or roasting in Maksimir, one of the city's parks. Careful research would certainly reveal the existence of invented traditions before the war, side by side with the traditions of the 'longue duree.
What does the socialist year of festivities look like?
A characteristic feature of the early postwar years, until the fifties, were frequent rallies with speeches and marches, involving large masses of people. In time, holidays were fixed within an official calendar, marking days when people did not have to work. Each year begins with the New Year holiday celebrated for two days. Next comes the already described Women's day on 8th March, which is a working day. The spring cycle opens with the Youth's Day Oate 'Chairman' Tito's birthday) in April followed by commemoration of May Day (two days off). Liberation Days are commemorated in spring in the northern regions and in the autumn in the eastern regions of Yugoslavia. These are working days, but rallies are held with speeches . Throughout spring, until 1988 Tito's Relay Race was run from city to city, ending in Belgrade on Tito's birthday. In each city or town the arrival of the Relay Race was greeted with rallies and speeches and the ceremonial transfer of the relay baton from one set of runners to the next. The central event was a sports rally in Belgrade in the presence of Tito and the entire nomenklatura 6 • The summer holiday is the Partisan Veteran' Day on 4th July. The constituent republics of Yugoslavia mark also their respective Days of the Uprising, commemorating the formation of their first Partisan units in 1941. In Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, that day is 27th July, in Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia a little earlier, and in Macedonia somewhat later. 7 Then follows a rather large period without a holiday, but in late November (29th) there comes the Day of Republic, another two-day holiday. The holi-days which are officially celebrated for two days actually last longer, as by law, the holiday is extended by one day ifit falls on Sunday. But there are other possibilities too: if the holiday falls on Tuesday and Wednesday, business firms can make up for Monday in some way, and ifit falls on Wednesday and Thursday they make up for Friday, in each case building a bridge giving their employees a whole week off.
Such 'bridging' arrangements to extend the holidays have become popular only in the last twenty years (and were initially frowned upon by the official institutions) as the collective and ideological aspects of official holidays have gradually given way to individual and family forms of celebration. The early postwar years, as already noted, were characterized by mass rallies, speeches and marches through the city centres, very much in the style of the early years of the Soviet Union (see N . S. Polishchuk's 1987 interesting article based on a press survey of similar phenomena in the Soviet Union in 1918). May Day parades in the capitals of Yugoslav republics at that time were similar to those on Red Square in Moscow. These were partly military parades and partly carnivalesque processions with moving cars featuring the 'achievements' of individual firms. Such processions were abolished in the early sixties. Military parades continued for some time, but the only military element that now survives are ceremonial gun-salutes on the eve of the Day of Republic or of the Day of the Army. The last carnivalesque and televised parade with decorated moving platforms and wagons was held in the Bosnian town ofVelika Kladusa on May Day 1987, a few months before the outbreak of a large scale financial scandal (caused by the same firm which organized the parade) which shook the whole economy and the nomenklatura of Bosnia and Herzegovina from which this region and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina have not yet recovered.
In addition to parades and other elements of the invented tradition, ethnologists have noticed also the interaction of traditional May customs with modern-day celebrations of the First May. Thus, L. Rocenovic (1989) describes the practice or decorating company premisses 102 in two towns in Croatia (Samobor and Lipovljani) for May Day which is essentially the same as the traditional May custom of putting up a decorated tree without roots or a branch. The socialist festivals in Yugoslavia did not include the practice of tree-planting (with roots) like the freedom -tree of the French Revolution (cf. Vovelle 1986: 253) until Tito's death, when 88 trees were planted in many cities and towns, one for each year of his life.
In Yugoslavia the separation of the church and the state removed the traditional holidays of a more or less religious nature (Easter, Christmas, All Saints' Day) from the list of public holidays. Recently, rather heated debates have started on whether the politicians should broadcast Christmas greetings to believers and should Christmas be a day off in Croatia 8 as in Slovenia. Public opinion was divided between those who claimed that the celebration of Christmas was a strictly religious matter and those who advocated the right of every citizen to celebrate this holiday widely accepted in European civilization (cf. Rihtman-Augustin 1987).
An interesting analysis of New Year's Day and Christmas celebrations in the early postwar years (Sklevicky 1989) has reconstructed the process of semantic reinterpretation of New Year's Day. Christmas was still an official holiday 9 in 1945 all daily newspapers carrying Christmas greetings across the front page. Gradually the public character of this holiday was repressed, while already in the fifties some of the symbols of Christmas were transferred to New Year's Day. The process can be viewed in the context of the fierce fight for 'the separation of the Church and the State' so that we can speak of'repudiation of ritual' as described by P. Burke (1987) and which I have exemplified elsewhere (Rihtman-Augustin 1988b).
However, it seems that ardent repudiation of rituals and their de-Christianization is behind us: on the occasion of the mammoth rally on Kosovo polje on 28th July 1989 to commemorate the 1389 battle between the Serbs and the Ottoman, the television for the first time broadcast the entire Orthodox liturgy that preceded the rally becoming a part of contemporary populist movement in Serbia. In the pe- riod between fifties and eighties, one could speak of the tendency of de-Christianization in political action which strongly influenced festivals and holidays. The actual political situation at the end of the eighties shows strong connections between populistic movements, traditional symbols and national mythologies accompanied with a tendency of re-Christianization.
The socialist festivals and rituals discussed above may in a way be compared to older festivals of the seasonal cycles. They accompany the seasonal changes in nature up to a point, but they occasionally disrupt the annual cycle: May Day comes at the end, or after, the Easter period, and 29th November anticipates Advent. As people are usually free a few days on that occasion, many use the opportunity to visit their relatives in the country on 29th November. Anticipating traditional pre-Christmas calendar they slaughter pigs and begin preparations for Christmas (Muraj 1989: 134). Even marriages are celebrated at that day and not earlier in November (Rajkovic 1973: 182).
Other forms of socialist festivites Following Vovelle, we could include many other events among the revolutionary or socialist holidays and festivals.
-The re-naming of streets and cities can be seen as the invention of new traditions, as repudiation of past traditions, and also as a glorification of heroes of the revolution. The process of re-naming has affected a series of towns with the attribute Tito's (one in each constitutive republic and region(!): Titov Drvar, Titova Korenici , Titova Mitrovica, Titovo Velenje, Titov Veles, Titov Vrbas, Titovo Uzice and Titograd, the new name of former Podgorica). New names were given to some towns in memory of other revolutionaries, mostly close associates of Tito: Ivangrad (after Ivan Milutinovic), Zrenjanin (after Zarko Zrenjanin), Kardeljevo (after Edvard Kardelj while he was still alive). 10 -Furthermore, one should remember frequent ribbon-cutting ceremonies, regularly shown on television. These rituals previously reserved only for Tito and his closest associates , are now open to anyone of some rank in the local no-menklatura. Critics refer to such people disparagingly as 'ribbon-cutters'.
-On the Day of Uprising rallies are held and political speeches are made each year . Besides the institutional component, these rallies also have commercial and merrymaking components, because, once the official ceremony is over the events continue as folk festivals .
-At last one could analyze political mass rallies, held in 1988 and 1989 mostly in Serbia and Montenegro and having the characteristics of public festivals: besides the institutional and aggressive populistic political component, they have also a commercial component (for example, the mass rallies in Belgrade and Gazimestan on Kosovo Polje were accompanied by various commercial activities , such as the selling of food, beverages and various keepsakes) , as well as merrymaking component.
-Other forms of folk festivities can be mentioned as well. At midnight on New Year's Eve, bursts of shots and fireworks and crackers are fired from the balconies of high-rise buildings in modern residential areas in cities. Accidental injuries and deaths have been reported on such occassions. Any important victory of a national sports team is regularly celebrated with shooting from the balconies and windows.
Side by side with the 'Red calendar' festivities, the life cycle rituals and those closely tied to the church and religion continue their active existence . Villages celebrate their local patron saints. On the island of Lastovo, for example, whose many inhabitants now live as migrants in other parts of the country and abroad, the carnival time in February or March and the Patron Saint 's Day (15th August) bring together not only the remaining villagers, but also large numbers of expatriates. Popular pilgrimages and kermis festivals are held in some places, such as Marija Bistrica in the northern Croatian region of Zagorje, near Zagreb .
I could conclude this outline of the socialist holidays and festivals in Yugoslavia with the observation that the state legally regulated its main holidays in such a way that they rhythm-104 ize the working year . It has made small effort, however, to regulate the rituals of life cycle. There are no formal provisions for atheist funerals!11 Only for civil marriage ceremonies more festive premises have been set up -specially decorated halls or even historic buildings. Naturally, the older the building, and the higher its cultural and historic value , the greater is its social status and appeal to young couples. There are no official regulations for atheist or civil giving of name to a child as for instance in Bulgaria (cf. Roth 1989). Official rituals to mark the achievement of different stages of age include the admission to the children organization of Young Pioneers and to the youth organization after the age of fourteen. The initiation ceremony for Young Pioneers is held at school, and it is a custom for an army officer to make a speech on that occasion! No importance is attached to the admission into the youth organization, as the Union of Socialist Youth carries no prestige, serving only as a springboard for the social and political promotion of just a few of its members. Apart from the official rituals, graduation from secondary school is marked in many cities by noisy and somewhat rowdy processions of graduates in the streets, accompanied by singing, drinking and unruly behaviour (cf. Vodopija 1976).

Instead of a conclusion
Socialist rituals have been repeatedly discussed in the Soviet Union and there are ev, bn special institutions to deal with them . No such discussions have ever taken place in YugosJavia and no institutions have been formed. It is an important characteristics of the official socialist ritual in Yugoslavia that it has paid small attention to rituals marking particular events in individual lives. (In the Soviet Union, apart from the official wedding ceremony, there are atheist funeral rituals and some maturity rituals such as the handing of identity cards.) In Yugoslavia one could speak only of the formalized marriage ceremony, but it is noteworthy that even the special halls for civil marriage ceremonies were introduced fairly late, rather with a view to consumption than ritual.
Looking at the legislation on public holidays and the policy of commemorating 'revolutionary dates', as well as some days of importance in the history of individual Yugoslav nations, one gets the impression that the year is rhythmized in ways that do not disrupt the traditional cycle of annual rituals: the socialists calendar recognizes the winter and the spring holiday cycles and respects the prolonged pause in summer . Still, the calendar does actually disrupt these cycles, as it postpones (1st May) or anticipates (29th November) their peaks. The 'Red calendar' pays no attention to religious holidays, resulting in certain parallelism and overlap. Besides, the socialist ritual neglects the crucial moments in an individual life cycle. This reflects the negation of individuality, which is not a rare phenomenon in the Yugoslav system. At the same time, the system, thus, does not attempt to intervene in the personal sphere, unlike the situation in the Soviet Union, where active efforts are made to penetrate into sphere of personal festivities (cf. Tultseva 1984). The practice of the rites of passage remains tied to tradition, and leaves enough scope for individual expression.
Still, the socialist ritual does not exist solely on the institutionalized level. I have tried to point out and exemplify the social, cultural and historical processes evident in festivals and rituals. For various reasons, ethnology in socialist countries has often studied socialist holidays starting from the propagandist and stateconstructivist platform. The approach which I would call 'questioning' gives a much better insight into highly differentiated palette of holidays and mentalities.
Commenting a discussion on soviet rituality published in soviet press in late sixties the famous Italian ethnologist Ernesto de Martino (De Martino 1982) speculated about humanistic and civil symbolism. While Christian symbolism leaned on man-god, soviet symbolism, as he thought, was based on moral values of the Revolution. De Martino was hoping that new revolutionary values opened the way to the new civil humanistic symbolism.
Yugoslav experience did by no means confirm his expectations. Civil revolutionary sym-bolism did not succeed, as many expected, to substitute neither the religious symbolism nor the traditional one. One could solely speak of different levels of transformation or metamorphosis.
Writing on Pere Noel (1952), Claude Levi-Strauss said that an ethnologist infrequently meets the occasion to witness changes of the rituals. Ethnologists in Eastern Europe, as well as in Yugoslavia in 1989, have witnessed dramatic social and political changes. In the period between the first (summer 1989) and the last version (December 1989) of this paper official attitudes towards Christian festivals in Croatia have completely changed. Not only Christmas greetings of the President of the Communist Party of Croatia but also Christmas Eve midnight mass were broadcast by national television network, while some socialist holidays and rituals lost their glamour.
Political changes unquestionably influence socialist rituals and festivities and also modify the views of ethnologists themselves. Notes 1. The following analysis of the 8th March is based on a chapter of my book Ethnologija nase svakodnevice (The ethnology of our everyday life) 1988a: 209-210 . 2. I will not analyze the war-time observances of 8th March, nor do I propose to describe the history of 8th March as an invented tradition (described in detail by L. . Equally, I do not discuss the instrumentalization of 8th March in the cause of political struggles (cf. for instance Tultseva: 1986). 3. Peter Burke notes the commemoration of the day of St. Agueda in early modern Spain. The festival was part of carnival period, and it involved women as masters and men as their subjects (Burke 1978: 195). On the other side, a kind of dance where only women participated used to be tradition in some rural areas of Yugoslavia . 4. Semantic approach to the study of mass manifestations (May Day) was presented by Vilmos Voigt (1981). He emphasized primarily political and social meaning of May Day, in contrast to traditional festivities and rituals which have been connected with religion or cult. Thus, in his analysis folklore traits of the May Day have been separated from its political and social components. 5. All of them have institutional aspects (village and county events, liturgical motifs), economic aspects (fairs) and aspects of play in the full sense of the word (Vovelle 1986: 50). 6. After heated debates, the Tito memorial Relay Race with all its socialist realist paraphrenalia and the arrival ceremony in Belgrade was finally abolished in 1989. 7. The dynamics of these dates has some symbolic value, as it marks the date on which a particular republic and nation joined the national liberation war in 1941, the assumption being that those who joined earlier deserve greater credit. 8. The fate of All Saint's Day in Croatia varied. In early postwar years it was a day off, then for many years it was a working day, and finally four days before 1st November 1989, the Parliament of Croatia decided that All Saint's Day should be a day off, a typical decision of current political liberalization. 9. In his wartime diaries, Tito's biographer Vladimir Dedijer wrote that Tito sent Christmas greetings to his Partisan units during the war. 10. An opposite revolutionary intervention in the toponimy should be mentioned, that is, the elimination of the attribute Sv. (St. for saint-sveti) in names of towns. A town near Zagreb once known as Sveti Ivan Zelina is now called Zelina. Several towns in Croatia were called Sveta Nedjelja (St. Sunday) and today they are simply called Nedjelja. Perhaps this should be ascribed to the tendency of the de-Christianization, and a kind of repudiation or ritual. It seems that the process of de-Christianization in Croatia was very strong. In other republics many towns and villages still possess the attribute 'saint' (e.g. Sv. Stefan in Montenegro). 11. A form of atheist funeral has evolved only for veteran Partisans and for political figures of some prominency.