crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
2. The system of preserving and developing revolutionary heritage
After the Second World War, the communist partisan movement was part of the victorious global
anti-Fascist coalition and had won the civil war against the Slovenian anti-communists. Slovenia gained
territory 13 and received limited status as a republic in the second Yugoslavia.
The ethnic image of Slovenia changed under Titoism. More than 50,000 members of the German
and Italian minorities were exiled or decided to emigrate, more than 20,000 Slovenians fled communism
or decided to emigrate for economic reasons to the West. More than 200,000 migrants from other
Yugoslav republics moved to Slovenia. 14
The basic goal of the victorious communists was to execute the Bolshevik revolution. The
period 1945–60 was the time of the worst offensives in the party’s civil war against Slovenia and its
population. This was the time of the implementation of the Leninist-Stalinist revolutionary model (oneparty
dictatorship, systematic violations of human rights). There were numerous breaking points. In
the second half of the 1950’s, the hard revolutionary model became developmentally impossible, the
characteristic Yugoslav crises began, the centre of the development/dissolution of Yugoslavia at the
end of the 1950’s and the beginning of the 1960’s moved towards increasingly strained relationships
between the Yugoslav nations and economic crises.
All these processes carried a heavy ideological burden, implanted by Titoism onto Yugoslav and
Slovenian society with the so-called system of preserving and developing revolutionary heritage. It was
the basic element of the formation of the leading elite of Titoism, called the ‘new class’ by Milovan
Djilas. The new class was formed from members of the Communist Party (since 1952: the League
of Communists) – league of communists, the so-called revolutionary avant-garde, and the League of
Veterans’ Associations, a veteran organization of the partisan movement.
Members of the Communist Party/League of Communists assumed all leading positions in the
society. A typical party member was a man, with a better job or a leading function, with a good wage and
access to other benefits. So many party members were functionaries, and very few manual labourers or
farmers. The leading party was both a magnet and a source of disappointment. Between 1950 and 1977,
almost 124,000 members were accepted into the League of Communists of Slovenia 15 , and 68,000 left
the party or were expelled.
The leading positions in the party were, almost to its dissolution, held by the partisan veterans who
carried out the revolution. The partisan army veterans and partisan co-operators from the Second World
War were joined in 1948 in the League of Veterans’ Associations. Even though numerous partisan
veterans left the party, their loyalty to the regime was ensured by numerous privileges. In Slovenia in
1948, when it was formed, the League of Veterans’ Associations had 120,000 members in 792 local
branches. Data from 1953 reveals than less than 45,000 were soldiers; others were members of the
political organizations of the partisan movement. The number of members of the League of Veterans’
Associations rose to 157,000 by the year 1973, and 86,000 had their years of participating in the partisan
movement officially recognized towards their retirement funds, some even had the years doubled. In
1996, more than 50,000 partisan veterans received bonuses with their pensions; in 2007, around 27,000
partisan veterans received around 61,000,000 Euros of bonuses to their pensions.
The system of privileges, developed all throughout Titoism, gave partisan veterans access to
numerous benefits, from assuming leading positions without adequate education, advantages in
13
Slovenia 1941: 15,849 square kilometres.
Territory gained in 1947: 4,143 square kilometres.
Territory gained in 1954: 263 square kilometres.
Slovenia 1954: 20.255 square kilometres.
14
Population of Slovenia from 1945 grew from around 1,500,000 to 2,000,000, where it is now.
15
Number of members Percentage of population
1941 1,200 < 0,1
1945 8,500 0,6
1954 49,000 3,4
1965 70,000 4,3
1978 110,000 5,8
1982 126,000 6,7
1988 110,000 5,6
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