From a survey of current behavior patterns, it seems as though the historically-determined situations into which the Yugoslav peoples have been thrust — especially peasant society and colonial domination — continue to structure their perceptions and their norms. Indeed, the self-concepts and explanations to which all the Yugoslav national minorities subscribe indicate their origins in the presocialist past. By continually citing their ‘cultural underdevelopment’, ‘Oriental mentality’, and ‘bureaucratic mentality’, Yugoslavs suggest that the social reality in which they live owes more to a pervasive, traditional culture than to an intensive, official ideology. Nevertheless, it is not only the weight of the past which makes the learning of new behavior problematic. Several other factors complicate the current situation: the paradox of trying to institutionalize a revolutionary peasant tradition, the task of inculcating norms which logically contradict those of the traditional base, and the inherent conflict between certain norms of two basic areas of the new culture — industrialism and socialism.