crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Appendix B: Note on the 1947 show trial involving Franjo Sirc
In 1947, Stalin ordered the elimination of democratic politicians in Eastern Europe. In her book
Faust’s Metropolis (Berlin), Alexandra Richie describes the events:
In 1947, the communist party seized power in Hungary after forcing the resignation of the Nagy
government. In Bulgaria Petkov, the leader of the opposition was hanged; in Romania Maniu, leader of
the Peasant Party, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and in Poland Mikolajczyk, leader of the noncommunist
opposition, was forced to flee to the West. By February 1948 a Soviet plot had brought about
the capitulation of President Benes, who handed power to the communists.
Yugoslavia is not mentioned because in 1948 Stalin inexplicably turned on Tito, whereupon the
West tended to sweep Tito’s communist crimes under the carpet. Yet Tito was a fervent Stalinist and did
not fail, in spite of his solemn promise to Churchill and the appropriate agreements with the Yugoslav
Government-in-Exile in London, to stage three trials of the Yugoslav democratic opposition to fulfil
Stalin’s wishes.
If proof is needed, a leader in The Times of 27 August 1947 headed “Petkov and Furlan”, connected
the Bulgarian Petkov with the Slovene Furlan, a co-defendant of Franjo Sirc in the Ljubljana Yugoslav
trial. Indeed Furlan and Franjo Sirc’s son were both sentenced to death, although the sentences were not
carried out, while a third co-defendant, Crtomir Nagode, was killed, as was Petkov.
The British Foreign Office Archives quote Kardelj, Tito’s second-in-command, as saying: “Our
opponents, when they are brought to court, must be punished, and so punished that they will be harmless
for ever.”
Disregarding Franjo Sirc, who was put on trial with the above-mentioned because of his son’s
activities, some of the co-defendants were Slovene politicians who had been members of the Londonbased
Yugoslav government in exile and returned home believing the assurances Tito gave Churchill.
Other defendants belonged to an ad hoc left wing nationalist group assembled in 1941 to join the
communist-organised Liberation Front. This group was expelled from the Liberation Front at the
beginning of 1942 because it opposed a communist ruling that nobody was allowed to fight the enemy
outside the Liberation Front, under penalty of death.
In fact, Franjo Sirc’s son Ljubo escaped to Switzerland in order to warn the Allies about this
perverseness of communism, but nobody would listen. He returned to Yugoslavia after Tito’s agreement
with the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile sponsored by Churchill. After serving in the partisan Fifth
Overseas Brigade and the VIII Corps Artillery, Ljubo Sirc was used as a Slovene government interpreter
and met most foreigners in Ljubljana at that time.
The group tried to link up with democratic opposition leaders in Belgrade and Zagreb, but
discovered that Tito would not allow any opposition activity. For purposes of revolutionary terror, the
attempts at organising a democratic opposition were branded espionage and conspiracy against the
state. In the words of British diplomats, Boris Furlan and Ljubo Sirc were selected to be sentenced to
death “because they dared to behave openly as friends of the British Consul”. To make matters worse,
Ljubo Sirc also inquired about the fate of the crew and passengers of two American airplanes shot down
over Slovenia in 1946 on Tito’s orders.
As to the trial itself, the British Consulate in Ljubljana reported to the British Ambassador in
Belgrade on 22 August 1947:
A brief reading of the newspaper reports, however, will suffice to make it clear that the trial was
first and foremost a gigantic political propaganda stunt whose double aim was first to show Britain and
America as irreconcilable enemies of the new Yugoslavia, and second, finally to frighten off anyone
who might still think that it is possible to associate with officials of the Western countries and get away
with it.
Of course, the communists knew full well that Franjo Sirc had no contact with the British or
Americans in Ljubljana and was not involved with any attempt at democratic opposition. Yet he was
a successful pre-war entrepreneur providing employment and higher wages with higher productivity.
In the eyes of the communist leaders whose views were distorted by their doctrine, entrepreneurship
was exploitation and hence criminal. Strangely enough, this idea prevails to this day so that the bulk of
the property confiscated as a punishment has not yet been returned to the family. This is an additional
reason for the Sirc family to want the property back, as a clear sign that it was not acquired by Franjo
Sirc’s exploitation but through entrepreneurship in the service of a better living standard for all.
144