crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
4. Critical confrontation with the crimes of Titoism
Critical treatment of the criminal heritage of Titoism has marked the processes of independence
and democratization in Slovenia; numerous elements of transitional justice were also implemented after
Slovenia gained independence.
The suitable basis for the just and expert study of totalitarianisms is legal research. For Slovenia,
Dieter Blumenwitz performed such an overview 20 ; the Titoist lawlessness was also treated by the
Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia in a series of decisions. 21
There were many epistemological breakthroughs, as we are now slowly realizing the vast breadth
of totalitarian violence against Slovenia, and also what part we Slovenians took in the totalitarian
regimes as collaborators or perpetrators.
Slovenia can confidently present its endeavours to implement transitional justice. In the Slovenian
transitional-justice model, there are several measures comparable to attempts elsewhere, and it is
characterized by a number of innovative initiatives, by the large numbers of people involved and by
the great significance of these processes for the democratization of Slovenia. Because of Slovenia’s
relatively small size and marginality, those processes were carried out mostly with inter-personal
Slovenian definitions, calculations, re-evaluations and confrontations. With new scientific discoveries,
civil-social initiatives, political accelerations and decelerations, at least some areas of Slovenian
transitional justice also began to be noticed internationally.
An overview of reconciliatory initiatives and methods cannot be complete yet, however in his
statesman-like gestures, Jože Pučnik especially stands out. 22 The Slovenian parliament was not capable
of accepting the condemnation of communism, adopted by the Council of Europe, because of the
strength of the parties defending the Titoist heritage; however the parliamentary committee led by Jože
Pučnik did manage to carry out a basic investigation of Titoist crimes.
During the 1980’s, there was a great resonance to the call by Spomenka Hribar to accept all of the
dead into national memory and to create an obelisk of reconciliation. The communists sentenced in the
so-called Dachau processes were exonerated by the League of Communists. The media started publishing
data on the crimes of Titoism. The peak of these attempts before Slovenia gained independence was the
reconciliatory mass in Kočevski Rog in June, 1990.
Rebellion against Titoistic abuses of fake history to maintain one-party dictatorship, against
the police state, against systematic violations of human rights, were always present in the Slovenian
political emigration and among part of Slovenians abroad. That resistance was in various ways alive
in Slovenia as well – especially various forms of resistance by those impacted by the most severe
forms of Titoistic violence (from murders of their relatives, confiscations of property, collectivization of
agriculture, fight against religion and church, dissenting party members or veterans …). Following the
increasingly obvious crisis of Titoism and the disintegration of its foundations (economic and political
bankruptcy of self-management, the death of Josip Broz, the dissolution of the League of Communists
of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Federation, the waning of the Non-Alignment Movement …) was one
of the basic processes of independence and democratization of Slovenia in the 1980s - the process of
justice, truth and reconciliation.
A majestic proof that Slovenian society rejected the Titoist model of revolutionary and totalitarian
violence was the war to defend the independent Republic of Slovenia in June and July, 1991. Any research will
point out a number of examples of numerous Slovenians acting to prevent bloodshed. The Slovenian success
is that much more poignant when we compare the number of victims during the Slovenian independence war
and the number of victims in the Balkan wars of the 1990’s, following the Slovenian war.
20
Dieter Blumenwitz, Occupation and Revolution in Slovenia 1941–1946 – International Legal Study, Klagenfurt–Ljubljana–Vienna 2005.
21
Gašper Dovžan, Urška Tekavec, Temne strani slovenske pravne preteklosti v luči slovenske ustave (Dark Sides of the Slovenian Legal
Past in Light of the Slovenian Constitution): argumenti Ustavnega sodišča Republike Slovenije o hudih, množičnih in strukturnih kršitvah
človekovih pravic in svoboščin v Sloveniji v času prevlade ideologije in prakse komunizma 1945–1990; introduction by Peter Jambrek and
Lovro Šturm, Ljubljana 2001.
22
Overview of some reconciliatory ideas and acts, cf.: Jože Dežman, Spravna mavrica, S spravno ljubeznijo iz rdeče ledene dobe
(Reconciliatory Rainbow, With Reconciliatory Love out of the Red Ice Age), Klagenfurt–Ljubljana–Vienna 2005.
202