Dr. Jože Pučnik is the best-known post-war Slovene political dissident. As a young child he heard about nationalisations in the village, about liquidations, atrocities, acts of pressure. Just before the baccalaureate examination, Pučnik was for one year prohibited to attend the examination by the teachers' assembly. He appealed to ministry for education, but his expulsion from school was extended to four years. He decided to enter the military service and was only allowed to take the baccalaureate examination after completing his service. He studied Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Ljubljana Faculty of Arts. After his graduation in 1958, Pučnik was employed as an assistant at the department of philosophy. Pučnik’s articles, especially one in the publication Revija 57 titled Our Social Reality and Our Illusions, in which he critically assessed the social situation, caused him to be arrested in the autumn of the same year. In January 1958 he joined the League of Communists, but he was expelled from the League in the same year In the autumn of 1958, Pučnik was the subject matter of different political forums and immediately afterwards, by law enforcement bodies. At the end of October 1958, he was detained and in the following months submitted to intensive interrogations in the Ljubljana prison. In March 1959 the district court in Ljubljana sentenced Pučnik to nine years of strict imprisonment. Pučnik allegedly attempted to found a group of people whose goal was to undermine the power of the working people, and he also allegedly spread hostile propaganda against the state and social order in writing. After the verdict, Pučnik was placed in Maribor jail. On the occasion of the general amnesty in 1961, his sentence was shortened to seven years, while he was released on parole after five years in 1963. He returned to Ljubljana and published a dissertation On the Dilemmas of Our Agriculture. He did not manage to get published the article titled On Methods and Perspectives of Social Action, which led to his arrest and conviction. His parole was cancelled and he had to go to prison once again; this time to Dob. He spent twenty months in solitary confinement. When he returned to freedom after serving two years, he unsuccessfully searched for a job. After emigrating to The Federal Republic of Germany, he settled in Hamburg, where he made his living as an auxiliary worker in the zinc plant and in the port. He enrolled in part-time study at the University of Hamburg, studied Sociology, Philosophy and Pedagogy and concluded his studies in 1971 with a PhD. He obtained the position of assistant professor of sociology at the University of Lüneburg, from where he retired as a senior academic councillor in 1989. In the second half of 1980's, Pučnik once again actively joined politics. He joined the Social-Democratic Association of Slovenia, which he led from 1989 onwards. He was one of the co-founders of the multi-party movement Demos, and also led it as the indisputable authority figure of the opposition. Demos won the first democratic election in April 1990 and carried out a historic role – it implemented formal democracy and in 1991 carried out the independence of Slovenia. In 1993 he dedicated himself to the investigation parliamentary commission on post-war killings. He produced a report, which represents an excellent foundation for the search for reconciliation against the Slovenes.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 36433453The exhibition was created as an international grant project of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. It presents the statistics of the victims of the gravest crimes of Fascism/Nazism and Communism of the 20th century from 12 today`s EU Member States. The exhibition is designed as a black album containing one page per country and totalitarian regime, its victims, some of the main persons responsible for the crimes and the criminal prosecution of perpetrators after the fall of the regime. The exhibition is accompanied by a screening of short documentary films on the topic of crimes of totalitarian regimes from the countries presented. The exhibition, which was prepared in collaboration of more than twenty institutions and organisations associated in the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, is addressed to the broad public. Its aim is to educate about the criminal nature of totalitarian regimes and about the link between the two major totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The goal is to increase the awareness about this dark chapter of our common European heritage and about the necessity to defend fundamental human rights, to help achieve a better understanding among citizens of Europe and to help prevent any rise of totalitarian power in the future.
F.28 Organising an exhibition
COBISS.SI-ID: 35369261In Slovenia, but also in Carinthia, some historians, lawyers and political scientists again and again claim that the legal basis for the handing over of the Yugoslav refugees in Carinthia to Tito troops in 1945 has to be sought in the war conferences of the Allies in Yalta and Potsdam. The contribution indicates that although the Allies spoke about Yugoslavia in Yalta, they did not speak about the repatriation of Yugoslavian refugees, but only about putting into operation the Tito-Šubašić agreement signed on the island of Vis on June 16, 1944. The bilateral repatriation agreements signed in Yalta between Soviets and British and Soviets and Americans – later on also with French and Belgians – did definitely not refer to Yugoslavia. And the Potsdam agreement treated merely the repatriation of the Germans. The British handed over the Yugoslav refugees in Carinthia to the Yugoslav army without informing them about the rights they had according to the 1929 Geneva Convention. The British made use of a deception, as they told the prisoners that they would be transferred to the British zone in Italy (Palmanova). The Yugoslav units and civilians who escaped to Italy, to a British zone also, weren’t delivered to Yugoslavia. Therefore the reason for the handovers must be sought in Carinthia. On May 17 the British Brigadier Toby Low [6Th Armoured Division] gave the order to hand over all Yugoslavian citizens in Carinthia to Tito troops as quickly as possible. He rested on the order given by the deputy of field marshal Alexander in Caserta general Brian Robertson, in absence of the field marshal Alexander, on May 14, 1945. However, Toby Low ignored an order of field marshal Alexander given a few hours later containing the exact opposite arrangement, namely the transportation of all Croatians and Yugoslavian dissidents to the area of "District One" ("Distone") in Italy. To this day, the negotiations and the agreements made on May 19 and 20, 1945 between the Tito troops and the British units in Carinthia were not taken enough into consideration, although they were (jointly) responsible for the delivery. The question was primarily and still is very thoughtlessly argued away whether there has been a connection between the retreat of the Yugoslavian troops and the handovers.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 35562797After dealing with the damaged mentalities communism produced, the paper presented the Slovenian case. It emphasized that there was no clear break between the totalitarian regime and the democratic system. The country went throug no lustration, the secret political police was not dismissed, most of the archive material was destroyed, nobody was punished for the crimes he committed. It also underlined that all victims of totalitarian regimes must be treated equally. They have a right to gain justice. And what is essential: we have to use the dark side of our common historical experience as an educational tool to promote human rights, fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and other values on which our society is based.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 36239917From the end of the war until independence, the Communist regime viewed the Catholic Church as its main enemy. The main repressive authority was the secret political police (OZNA, UDV, SDV), which supervised and interrogated representatives of the Church, some of its more notable followers and their family members, and forcibly turned many of them into its collaborators by means of falsely constructed material. Until 1951 it was even in charge of criminal investigation. It violated human rights until the very end and decided the fate of so-called opponents. The secret police archives represent the main source for understanding the persecution of the Church during 1945 and 1990.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 36184877