crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
New labour camps began to be established in 1949. These were correctional camps and camps
for socially beneficial work, officially called “working groups”. Such labour camps were set up in
locations where major facilities such as factories, power plants, etc. were built. Convicted persons were
sent to these camps mainly by the administrative authorities for internal affairs based on the Offences
Against Public Order and Peace Act, which was adopted in Slovenia on 11 May 1949. 7 Within the
people’s committees, special “offence commissions” were established that were responsible for issuing
the criminal sanction of socially beneficial work. The basic Party cells had an important role in deciding
who should be sent to correctional and socially beneficial work. In 1949, the courts and administrative
authorities sent 2,709 men and 839 women to serve the sentence of correctional labour, and in 1950,
they sent 2,610 men and 658 women. 8 In 1949, the administrative authorities (offence commissions)
sent 1,900 persons to socially beneficial work, in 1950, 80 persons and in 1951, only 43 persons. 9
The main purpose of establishing these labour camps was to exploit convicts for hard labour in
reconstruction and construction of major economic and other facilities that were part of the first fiveyear
economic plan. Political convicts prevailed in labour camps, and the authorities believed that
they needed to be politically re-educated. Therefore, special emphasis was placed on their political reeducation
in labour camps. The circumstances in these labour camps were similar to those that we know
from the description of Stalin’s gulags in the Soviet Union.
Convicted persons were sent to labour camps until the beginning of 1951, when the new Yugoslav
penal code abolished the sentences of forced, correctional and socially beneficial work.
5. Forced deprivation of property
In accordance with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, Communist rule in Slovenia in the first few postwar
years implemented a series of forcible denationalisation measures, by which it mainly intended to
destroy the private economic sector and thus create the conditions for the emergence of state or social
property. The most important forcible deprivations of property were carried out in the period from 1945
to 1948 with the implementation of:
– Confiscations;
– Agrarian reform;
– Nationalisation of private economic entities.
All the above denationalisation measures under Communist rule not only represented extremely
brutal interference with the right to private property, but also one of the worst forms of repression. The
largest and most violent interventions were carried out through confiscations. Other measures (agrarian
reform and nationalisation) in fact only supplemented denationalisation measures. How extensive
this denationalisation measure was is demonstrated by the fact that around 26,000 confiscations of
property were proclaimed after the war in Slovenia. Confiscations were accompanied by other forms
of aggression on the owners of the confiscated property: court prosecutions, being sent to labour camps
and even killings. Because confiscations represented the most brutal interference of the Communist
regime with private property, we will hereinafter limit ourselves to this form of interference.
Confiscation was the forcible deprivation of property for the benefit of the state without
compensation. Confiscations were most massive in the years 1945 and 1946, when the confiscation of
the property of so-called national enemies was carried out. The legal framework for these confiscations
was the Decree of the AVNOJ Presidency on the transition of the enemy’s property into state ownership
from 21 November 1944. 10 This Decree was aimed at all “German property” that was located in the
territory of Yugoslavia/Slovenia. “German property” was property belonging to persons of German
nationality and the property of the German Reich and its citizens. Confiscation of this property was
considered a form of war reparation for the damage caused by the German occupying forces. In order to
7
Official Gazette of the People’s Republic of Slovenia, No. 16/1949.
8
Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (ARS), AS 1267, sign. of the archive unit 14/620 and 14/621.
9
ARS, AS 1931, technical unit 1440, Report of the Ministry for Internal Affairs of the LRS for 1949.
10
Official Gazette of Democratic Federative Yugoslavia, No. 2/1945.
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