crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
The largest and most important trial was that of Miodrag Mihajlović and 12 co-defendants, which
was held in October of 1946 before the Military Tribunal of the 4 th Army in Maribor. The purpose of
the trial was to intimidate members and supporters of illegal groups in the field and to put on public
display the “criminal activities” of the group members and the “against the people” clergy. The trial was
also important because the court tried the representative of the emigration to Austria and the member
of the Main Intelligence Centre, Mihajlović, the leaders of what were at the time the two largest illegal
groups in Štajerska, two priests and members of several other illegal groups. They were sentenced to the
loss of liberty for 15 years and the loss of citizen’s rights. Mihajlović was handed over to the military
counterintelligence service after the trial. 35
Another important trial was the trial of 12 members of the Sernec illegal group, which was tried
by the Military Tribunal of the 4 th Army in Ljubljana in July 1947. This was one of the largest illegal
groups, and also the only group that had come into Slovenia from Austria. The trial was prepared very
quickly, as the UDV arrested the majority of the defendants at the end of June and the beginning of
July 1947. They were accused of being “English spies”, whose terrorist and espionage activities were
associated with the political emigration to Austria. The court condemned 7 of the defendants to death,
but it is not known whether they were all executed. 36
According to UDV data between 1945 and 1949, 512 members of illegal groups were captured,
of whom 114 fell in battle and 398 were tried, many of whom were sentenced to death. During the
same period, the UDV captured more than 1,300 supporters of illegal groups and tried the majority of
them. 37
5. Judicial proceedings against farmers
After the end of the war the Party guided the development of agriculture through several
administrative measures. One of the first, which directly affected farmers, was compulsory purchases
and compulsory delivery of surplus goods to the state. This means that the authorities precisely defined
for farmers the amount of produce, products and livestock they had to cultivate and deliver to the state. 38
The compulsory purchases and deliveries were a major burden on farmers, and they resisted in various
ways. One consequence of these policies was judicial proceedings against farmers, which began in the
autumn of 1945, and by 1951 the courts had tried several thousand farmers.
The trials of farmers reached their peak between 1949 and 1951. At that time the position of
farmers was strongly affected by the process of so-called socialist re-education of villages and the
collectivisation of agriculture, which began in 1948, after the dispute with the Informbiro. In a resolution
adopted by the members of the Informbiro in Bucharest, the CPY was labelled a “kulak party”, and
its leaders were said to be pursuing a policy, which was hostile to the Soviet Union and its party. They
accused the Yugoslav party of allowing the strengthening of capitalist elements in villages and pursuing
a mistaken agricultural policy. 39 They therefore accused the Yugoslav Communist Party of straying
from the Soviet model of building socialism, and therefore excluded them from the Informbiro (aka
Cominform).
One of the consequences of the dispute was that the Party severely constrained its relations
with farmers in order to demonstrate that the accusations in the resolution were not true. Under
these circumstances the Central Committee of the CPY adopted a resolution to convene the Fifth
Party Congress, which was held in Belgrade in July 1948. The delegates resolutely rejected all of the
accusations of the Informbiro, 40 and Kardelj set the process of the socialist re-education of villages and
the collectivisation of agriculture as the most important task of the CPY. In his opinion, this was to
happen via the system of collectivisation. This meant assembling farmers into agricultural collectives,
35
AS 1931, Skamlic gang; Zavadlav, Crusaders, pp. 91–92, 95–96.
36
AS 1931, Sernec gang.
37
AS 1931, Beginning and End of Gang Activity in Štajerska and Illegal Organization of Gangs – Analyses.
38
Cf. Slavica Tovšak, The Collectivisation of North-Eastern Slovenia as a Segment of Socialist Agricultural Policy 1945–1951, Doctoral
Dissertation, Maribor 2005.
39
History of the Association of Communists of Yugoslavia, Ljubljana 1986, pp. 308–310 (hereinafter History of the ACY); Darinka Drnovšek,
Minutes of the Politbiro CK KPS/ZKS 1945–1954, Ljubljana 2000, pp. 112–113 (hereinafter Drnovšek, Minutes of the Politbiro); Letter
CC CPY and letter VCP(b), Ljubljana 1948; Mateja Režek, Between Reality and Illusion, Ljubljana 2005, p. 18.
40
5 th Congress of the CPY, p. 318-319.
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