crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
The Slovenian Communist authorities tried to present the labour camps as institutions for reeducation
of convicted persons. In the report of the Administration for Implementation of Sentences for
1949 the following can be read: “We used labour as a means of education with the purpose to arouse
a correct attitude towards the labour in convicted persons and at the same time to re-educate them
in a political sense, because physical work was closely linked with political re-education, mostly by
means of lectures, by which we presented to the convicted persons the importance of production for the
achievement of a five-year plan and socialism, and the importance of the socialist social order for the
man.” 18 The report of the Administration for Implementation of Sentences of 15 June 1950 states that
physical work, educational work and cultural work were used as the means of re-education. 19 The above
report emphasizes that all these three forms of work as re-educational means are “tightly interlinked,
which is indispensable if we want to instill in the convicted persons the correct, i.e. socialist approach
or attitude to work.” 20 “It is indispensable to show to the convicted persons”, continues the report, “in
parallel to their work, the advantages of the socialist social order …” 21 Production and physical work
was deemed to be the most appropriate and the most effective means of re-education of convicted
persons. As stated by the annual report of the Administration for Implementation of Sentences for the
year 1950, the physical work was “most closely linked with the political re-education, particularly
with the political study and lectures, by which the convicted persons were shown the importance of the
socialist social order for a working man and the purpose of production for successful implementation
of a five-year plan; for this purpose we also extensively used, in addition to study groups and lectures,
radio broadcasting and with this aim furnished the penal-correctional institutions in Ljubljana, Maribor
and Rajhenburg with audio equipment”. 22
Persons convicted to the forced, correctional and socially beneficial labour were “re-educated”
in labour camps and other penal-correctional institutions also by “cultural and educational work”, in
addition to physical work. It was, however, always important that everything was ideologically set in
the right direction. The drama groups in these institutions were required, for example, to “show on the
stage the people required by our social order, i.e. the working man, fighter for socialism, our labour
efforts and success in implementing the tasks of a five-year plan and the building of socialism”. 23 The
texts of the songs that the convicted persons were allowed to read and recite 24 were of the same type. The
convicted persons could not choose the books that they wanted to read within their cultural-educational
work; only such materials as were ideologically appropriate and that were considered to have a reeducational
effect were available. The list of books in the library of the working group engaged in
socially beneficial labour in Strnišče at Ptuj indicates that they included above all the works of Marx,
Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Plehanov, Kardelj and Josip Broz - Tito. The above list does not contain belletrist
literature.
Although political re-education of the convicted persons did represent one of the reasons for the
establishment of labour camps in Slovenia, it was by no means the main and sole reason for that. In fact,
economic reasons played the main role in their introduction. The state needed vast quantities of cheap
labour after the war to begin reconstruction and for implementation of the first five-year plan of the socalled
capital construction. In addition to war prisoners, the persons convicted to forced, correctional and
socially beneficial labour represented the cheapest labour force that the state could exploit in the worst
manner. They were used above all for the heaviest and most dangerous work in various construction
sites, such as, for example, in the construction of factory facilities, hydropower plants, roads, bridges,
railways, etc. Therefore it was not a coincidence that the existence of labour camps coincided with the
period of reconstruction implementation (1945–46) and later on with the period of the first five-year
plan implementation (1947–51). Many major economic facilities in Slovenia, such as, for example,
Litostroj (Titovi zavodi) in Ljubljana, hydropower plants Moste-Žirovnica and Medvode, the factory
for bauxite and aluminium Kidričevo, all built in the first five-year plan period, were largely built by the
work of persons convicted to forced, correctional and socially beneficial labour.
18
ARS, AS 1267, sign. arh. of the unit:13/620, Annual report of the Administration for Implementation of Sentences for 1949.
19
ARS, AS 1267, sign. arh. of the unit:9/507, Report on certain problematic issues in terms of implementation of 15 June 1950.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
ARS, AS 1267, sign. arh. of the unit: 14/621.
23
ARS, AS 1267, sign. arh. of the unit:9/507, Report on certain problematic issues in terms of implementation of 15 June 1950.
24
Ibid.
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