crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Croatia witnessed a constant pressure for the renewal of the Croat Peasant Party, but even Šubašić’s efforts
in this direction were not successful. In the meantime, members of the politburo of the CPY held meetings
with eminent pre-war politicians, with the aim to individually win them over for the Popular Front. They
also enhanced the policy of incorporating the membership of the parties into the unified Popular Front, on
lower levels, as seen before. Contradictory as it may seem, the Tito-Šubašić Agreements helped a great deal;
they gave semblance of state continuity and legitimacy to the regime changeover in Yugoslavia. They also
produced another wave of massive enrolment into the partisan forces of those segments which, until then,
had supported the legitimacy of the exiled government in London. They now thought that the Agreement
changed the situation and assured future democracy. Even the Amnesties that Tito and the new state served
in August and November 1944 were a means to achieve the same purpose. The policy of a united political
front reached its peak at the First Congress of the Popular Front in August 1945. From then on, the pressure
against any kind of opposition mounted, until the elections for the Constituent Assembly on 11 November.
The collapse of the remaining opposition was only an anticipated outcome. Established on much the same
principles (in political and all-Yugoslav terms), were unified trade unions and organisations for women and
for youth; they were founded in the summer of 1945. All pre-war organisations, unions and societies that did
not join in were soon banned by the state and republic Ministries of Internal Affairs.
Tito visited Moscow at two crucial moments of this last stage of the communist take-over of power
in Yugoslavia. His first visit took place in September 1944, just preceding the partisan invasion of Serbia,
and the second in April 1945, preceding the liberation of Croatia and Slovenia. We have a fairly accurate
account of his talks regarding the international situation. However, all aspects of his talks in Moscow are
not yet public, such as the content of discussions about the internal situation in Yugoslavia, the punishment
of the quisling and counter-revolutionary troops, the role of the OZNA, the future of the revolution in
Yugoslavia, and so on. That they did talk about these issues, we can tell from Tito’s account at the First
Congress of the Communist Party of Serbia in May 1945. A delegate asked when should we expect
the second stage of the revolution, and Tito explained that he had discussed with Stalin the differences
between the Soviet and the Yugoslav revolution (where there was not to be such a distinct move from its
first to its second stage). 37
The arrests, purges, mass-killings and trials that followed the end of the war in May 1945, were
thus just a continuation and implementation of the already established state system and communist rule.
These measures had not been so harsh in those parts of the country that were liberated before the end of
the war. One of the reasons being that implementation of the Agreements was still under the watchful
eye of the Western Allies. Most remaining chetnik troops and their sympathisers in Serbia joined the
partisan fight. Because of the presence of their pre-war politicians and political parties, the secret police
OZNA kept its purges at a reasonably low level. The leadership also took into consideration the doubts
of the Americans on the nature of Mihajlović’s movement. For the same reason, some of the chetniks
(those who fled Yugoslavia after the end of the war) were never handed over to the Yugoslav Army.
However, when the liberation of Slovenia and Croatia came about in May 1945, all of these scruples
and tactical impediments did not exist any more. In May and early June came the mass killings of the
counter-revolutionary (some also overtly quisling) troops that the British Army turned over or turned
back from Austria. Among them were also a large number of civilians, their followers. 38 Meanwhile
many people were arrested, among them all leading political figures of the past. They were brought to
court, sent to labour camps or released and kept under the watch of OZNA. Until fall, martial law ruled
and civil courts were under suspension. The authorities carried on a massive confiscation of property,
basing it either on military court rulings or simple decrees. In Slovenia 90 % of all industry became state
property by September. When the Nationalisation Law was passed in December 1946, the state already
ran most of the economy. The new authorities did everything to strengthen their political grip. There
was little attention given to matters of economy, the ideological transformation of the cultural sphere,
etc. These matters came on the agenda in the next few years.
After the elections to the Constituent Assembly, these harsh measures subsided. However the
party did not lessen its pressure on any eventual opposition. In Slovenia, it first cleansed (eliminated
37
Osnivački kongres KP Srbije (Founding Congress of the CP of Serbia), IIRP, Beograd 1972, p. 212. At that point, Stalin obviously agreed,
probably for international reasons, that even a constitutional monarchy could be a phase in the transition into socialism. That is what
Kardelj told the Slovene Politburo in June 1945.
38
It is impossible to find out the exact number of those liquidated. Today the number reaches 14,531 Slovenes and an estimate 65,000 to
100,000 Croats (mainly the Croat Home-guard, which was the regular army and not ustasha forces). Among them were also civilians.
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