crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
the Western Allies (mainly Great Britain) in Yugoslavia, because he assumed and feared they would
side with the ‘bourgeois’ political parties and obstruct the revolutionary process.
In Slovenia, the collapse of Italy resulted in a sizeable gain of territory by the partisans (as it
did elsewhere: the Eastern Adriatic coast, parts of Macedonia, Bosnia, etc.). They held some of this
territory only for a short spell, but some was never to be recovered by the Germans again. The arrival
of the Germans into previously Italian-held territories caused a massive departure of people who feared
them, into partisan ranks. But during the interregnum, the Slovene partisans made fierce attacks on
their internal enemies, the white-guards and the chetniks or blue-guards (as the partisans called those
who considered themselves the king’s army). The latter were gathering their forces in order to join the
Anglo-Americans, who they thought, were about to disembark in Istria. This, of course, was a wrong
estimate. The partisans refused talks with them, militarily defeated them both, and put their captured
leaders on trial in October 1943, while they secretly executed most of the soldiers. This meant the
end of any possibility of future talks and compromises between the Liberation Front and the parties
outside the liberation movement. The result was that the counter-revolutionary block ended up forming
its united forces, the Slovene Home-guard, that stood under German protection. They did keep some
illegal forces, as well, and illegal work went on communications with London). But all this was far from
being as widespread as the partisan movement.
By the time the Allies agreed on a joint policy to support the partisan forces in Yugoslavia at the
Teheran conference on 28 November 1943, which in reality meant the international recognition of the
partisan fighting forces in Yugoslavia, the process of the formation of a new state was well under way.
Now the partisans moved further and pressed for the recognition of their new political representative
body, AVNOJ, which met at its second session in November 1943 and declared itself the supreme
legislative body. It appointed its executive body, the National committee of the liberation of Yugoslavia
(NKOJ), and issued decrees depriving the government in exile of the right to represent the Yugoslav
people and proclaiming that Yugoslavia was to attain a democratic and federate rule.
From this point on, the post-war political system and its main features were set. The most important
ones (the United Popular Front, the army, the police and the judiciary) were in place before the war was
to end, which in practice meant the installation of the repressive apparatus of the new state, and the one
and only political organisation that was to supplant the pre-war political party system. The CPY was
now concentrated on a different set of problems: the future legal system, elections, people’s councils,
and political unity. Since it had no such experience of its own, it constantly looked to the Soviet Union
for the right solutions. It gradually introduced a centralised state and party system, which was to be
expected, due to the model it followed.
However, the AVNOJ meeting of November 1943 gave only the basic, general framework of the
new state. Immediately following the session of AVNOJ, its Presidency passed a decree setting up
the Commission for war crimes. 26 From that point on, it refrained from elaborating any more specific
laws or rules or for that matter, aspects of the new state organisation. For example, it did not specify
the rules on civil courts of law, leaving this sphere of activity to military tribunals. 27 The politburo of
the CPY and the central leadership (which were mostly the same people) were doing this deliberately;
they just kept the general legislation open for revolutionary measures, as need arose and time was right.
What they did was to stimulate the lower levels – the land (national, future republic) leaderships – to
carry on the formation of the new system. It thus happened that these land assemblies were the first
to introduce some of the new laws. This process went the furthest in Slovenia and Croatia, one reason
being that both lands had more elaborate legal traditions, going back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
as did some other parts of Yugoslavia. After the first meeting of ZAVNOH in Croatia, Kardelj promptly
wrote to Slovenia that they should follow the Croat example in the organisation of military tribunals and
other decrees (confiscation and requisition of enemy property, compulsory surrender of goods, etc.), as
well as in other aspects of the organisation of liberated territories. These legal matters were handled
26
The exact name of this Commission and the ones set up on the lower levels was: The Commission for the Ascertainment of the Crimes
of the Occupiers and their Accomplices. In Slovenia it was founded on 19 February 1944 at the first session of SNOS – The Slovene
National Liberation Assembly (earlier the Slovene National Liberation Committee) founded on the basis of the decisions of the Second
session of AVNOJ in Jajce, November 1943. In Croatia it was formed 18 May. These commissions originated from the policy of the
Allies, adopted at the Moscow and Teheran conferences in October and November 1943
27
The Slovene representative proposed in January 1944, that the NKOJ should appoint a Supreme state court and Supreme state prosecutor,
so they could immediately start prosecuting and trying war criminals. This was another one of the measures (as a decree on the
prosecution for treason and of the enemies of state), that were drafted, but not adopted.
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