crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
Damjan Hančič and Renato Podbersič
Totalitarian regimes in Slovenia in the 20 th century
1. Introduction
Slovenia is the only member of the European Union to have gone through all three types of
totalitarian regime in the 20 th century: Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. On account of the considerable
lack of knowledge among both the Slovene and the wider European public, the authors in this article
devote a few more words to the latter.
The west of present Slovenia, which in 1920 with the Treaty of Rapallo became part of the Kingdom
of Italy, was the first region confronted with the first totalitarian system – Fascism. Italian Fascism denied
any national rights to Slovenes (also, Istrian Croats) and tried to Italianize them. The nationally conscious
Slovenes, above all priests and educated people were exiled and moved towards interior of Italy. However,
the Primorska region or Venezia Giulia, was inhabited by Italians from others parts of the country. Fascist
terror increased more and more, year by year, and flourished between 1941–43, when Italy occupied part of
post-war Slovenia (the Drava Province) the so-called Ljubljana region (Notranjska, Dolenjska, Ljubljana).
The next totalitarian regime which affected the Slovenes was German National Socialism. This
first influenced a Slovene minority in Carinthia, which found itself within the borders of the Third Reich
in March 1938 after the “Anschluss”. Educated Slovenes, particularly Slovene priests, were the most
affected. When the Germans attacked Yugoslavia and occupied a large region of the post-war Slovene
territory, the circumstances aggravated. (Gorenjska, Styria, part of Carinthia). In these areas they
immediately undertook rigorous denationalizing measures, which included not only the deportation of
educated Slovenes, but also of a major part of the Slovene population from various regions. Then these
areas were populated by the German population.
At the end of 1941, the Nazis and the Italian fascist authorities jointly achieved the migration
of the Germans from Kočevje area and colonized them to the region of the Sava and Sotla rivers; the
Slovene population had already been removed. This ethnic cleaning of Kočevsko was completed after
the war by the Slovene-Yugoslav communist authority.
The third and longest totalitarian system in Slovenia was Communism. Its beginnings go back to
before World War Two (WWII), but its crucial influence became stronger after the occupation of Slovenia
in the middle of 1941, when it started a communist revolution under the pretence of liberation struggle
against the occupation. This is shown in the monopolization of the resistance movement and the liquidation
of political opponents even in time of war. On account of this, it is hard to distinguish precisely between
the liberation struggle and the communist revolution even today, because both occurred simultaneously.
Although there were some definite differences in individual Slovene regions: civil war and revolution
took place mainly in the Italian Ljubljana region, while in the northern, regions occupied by Germans and
Hungarians the so-called second phase of the revolution occurred, which during wartime had been set
aside, even though it had showed signs of “ideological” struggle or communist revolution.
On account of the post-war division of spheres of interest in Yalta in 1945, the former Yugoslavia,
of which Slovenia was part, belonged to the Communist Bloc, and therefore the communist system
could develop to its fullest extent. After the break with Stalin (the Com Inform) in 1948, the communist
terror increased and in many ways exceeded the violence in the Soviet Union. From the beginning of
the 50’s the severe regime began to weaken because of the dependence of the Yugoslav political system
upon American aid, although it remained totalitarian until it broke up in 1990, which showed in many
different fields. Thus we can already in the mid-1980s find individual cases of political trials, not to
mention ideological platforms in the school and educational systems. Throughout, the system swung
between so-called “liberalism” or détente, and tension. The most important period of Communist
liberalism was at the end of 1960s, after the fall of the Interior Minister, Aleksander Ranković, but at
the beginning of 1970s this was smothered, due to fear that the system could be remodelled as multiparty
pluralism, and again began the “Leaden times”, which lasted until the middle of the 80’s.
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