crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
to reconsider their policy towards Yugoslavia, with the well known outcome in l943. However at the
time, they still assessed that partisan propaganda was not objective evidence of the charges brought up
against Mihajlović.
The change in the policy of the CPY reached Slovenia by autumn 1942. Moscow’s criticism
finally made the Slovene communists realise that the moment for world revolution was not yet ripe.
They finally understood that they would have to put up with the Liberation Front – OF, for some time
to come. For the first time in many years, they were ready to truly accept and meet the standards of a
policy of a broad people’s front (7 th Congress of the Comintern) and apply them to the OF. This meant
that they were prepared to meet some of the demands of the parties inside and outside the Liberation
Front, demands they had previously turned down in 1941. The Slovene CP was now ready to renew
its talks with the moderate parties outside the OF, the so-called “sredina” (the middle), i.e., parties, or
parts of them, that had not joined either side in the civil war; (they kept that stand till the end of the
war). 15 The CPS was willing to accept a representative of the socialist party into the OF (namely F.
Svetek, a renowned anti-Communist). At the same time, the CPS conceded a larger amount of freedom
to other groups inside the OF (the Christian Socialists and Sokoli) and even established posts for three
assistant political commissars in the army (one from each party), something that never happened before
or since. 16 These concessions went so far that they collided with the party line once more.
In January 1943, the politburo of the CPY sent Ivo Lola Ribar, a member of the Supreme command,
as a delegate to Slovenia. His task was to strengthen the loose ties between the liberation movement
in Slovenia and the CC of the CPY and to “broaden the Slovene narrow outlook” (which meant their
self-sufficiency and isolation from the rest of Yugoslavia, for which the Slovene party was responsible).
After he assessed the situation, Lola’s primary criticism went to the Slovene CP. He admitted that the
Slovene party tactics to encourage and give initiative to the OF had its positive aspects. It achieved an
expansion of the partisan fight, but it also had its negative consequences. The “masses” in Slovenia
were not tied to the party and the party was not the primary leader of the liberation fight. The masses
did not recognise the party as the leader of the Liberation Front. He reported to the central leadership,
that there was “rotten democracy” in the Slovene army and in the overall state of things, that fighting
party sectarianism led the party to the other extreme. 17
So, the CP of Slovenia tackled the problem of inner relations in the Liberation Front again. Again
it reversed its policy, now for good. This was done under the watchful guidance of Kardelj, who was
responsible for Slovenia and Croatia in the CC of the CPY. The Slovene communists reproached their
partners in the Liberation Front (mainly the Christian Socialists), that they were promoting their own
separate organisations inside the movement. They decided that they should prevent this, with all due
strictness, and institutionalise their own vanguard role. In February 1943, Kidrič made it very clear:
if their partners chose to establish their own political parties, the party would end all cooperation with
them in the Liberation Front. The party would also be obliged, due to the stage their fight was in, to
instantly liquidate such parties on the field. 18 On March 1 The CPS made their political partners in the
OF sign the so-called “Dolomitska izjava” (the Declaration of Dolomiti – a range of hills near Ljubljana
where the political leadership was situated). The declaration determined that the communist party was,
as leader of the liberation movement, the only party entitled to its own party organisation, while all
other groups in the OF renounced their right to keep their own organisational structure, and agreed to
be represented by a joint assembly of activists of the OF.
During these political turnovers, another element of the future was slowly springing up – the
hierarchy of an alternative state system of liberation councils (in Slovenia, the committees of the OF),
claiming their right of representation of the Yugoslav people. Only in July 1942, the leadership of
the CPY (including Kardelj) had criticised the Slovene leadership for setting up a national liberation
council with commissions (poverjeništva, that were later established within AVNOJ as predecessors of
the future ministries). Kardelj reported to Tito, that the Slovenes went so far as to appoint him some
15
After the war, most of its members stayed on in Slovenia and were later on persecuted by the UDBA and sentenced on different politically
arraigned court trials.
16
B. Godeša, op. cit.
17
Ivo Lola Ribar, Ratna pisma (War Letters), assembled by Jozo Petričević, Zagreb–Beograd 1978, pp. 197–199.
18
Dokumenti ljudske revolucije, vol. 5, pp. 458–459. These were Kidrič’s directives sent to the party organisation in Ljubljana. They were
mainly directed against the Christian Socialists inside the movement, cathegorically undermining any attempt to make a coalition out of
the OF, instead of a unified organisation.
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