During the Second World War, several distinct yet closely related processes took place in the territory of Slovenia: the uprising against the occupation, collaboration, revolution and counter-revolution. The area of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana represented the starting point for the wartime resistance and revolutionary activities and the violence associated with them. The term revolutionary violence is understood as violence committed during World War II by military and other armed groups under the leadership of the Communist Party. Their activities often included violence against the civilian population. In Ljubljana and its surroundings revolutionary violence reached its peak in the first half of the year 1942, the victims being either civilians or keepers of public order; the victims lost their lives in this area (either in Ljubljana or its suburbs, or were abducted from their homes and murdered in the woods near Ljubljana). The revolutionary side, where resitance and revolutionary elements were characteristically closely intervebned, accused its victims of collaboration with the occupying forces and "treason", but such allegation were very vague and could rarely be justified. It was mostly a "preventive elimination" to make sure that those people would not compromise the resistance and revolutionary activities of the Communist Party and the units under its command during the war or try to prevent it from taking power after the war ended. Between July 1941 and the end of 1942, the revolutionary side carried out physical attacks on over 220 people, 180 of whom were killed. 11 of these were "their own", i.e. partisan deserters and partisans who were either politically unreliable or who committed a breach of discipline o morality in partisan units. After the formation of village guards in the area of Ljubljana and the Ljubljana Village Guard in the city itself, which were organised by the prewar bourgeois camp in self-defence and with the permission of the occupying authorities, the status of the victims of revolutionary violence and the place of their death changed. Between 1943 and May 1945, the victims from Ljubljana were mostly armed members of the counterrevolutionary side (village guards, Slovenian chetniks and members of the Slovenian Home Guard) who were killed in combat with the partisans or shot as prisoners. In 1943, 164 inhabitants of Ljubljana were killed, mostly armed members of the chetnik movement and village guard (MVAC - the Anti Communist Volunteer Militia) who lost their lives fighting in Inner and Lower Carniola after the capitulation of Italy in autumn 1943. In 1944, the number of victims of the revolutionary side in Ljubljana was significantly lower, dropping to 79; again, most of the casualties were not civilians but members of the Slovenia Home Guard who dies fighting the partisans in Inner and Lower Carniola. In 1945, mainly due to the postwar mass killings of members of the Slovenian Home Guard (i. e. Teharje, Kočevski rog and Huda jama), a significant increase in the number of victims of revolutionary violence can be seen, including in Ljubljana, with around 934 inhabitants of Ljubljana falling victim to revolutionary (war) violence by the end of June that year; this number does not include the victims of numerous politically-motivated post-war trials engineered by the new Communist authorities between the summer monts of 1945 and the end of the year.
COBISS.SI-ID: 282058240
The present work is being issued almost a quarter of the century after the establishment of Demos (Democratic Opposition of Slovenia). Without Demos the wheel of Slovenia’s modern history would have probably turned in another direction. The democratization processes were more or less influenced by many new civil-social subjects, whose core was later represented by the democratic opposition, and partially the old subjects, particularly their liberal part within social-political organizations. The first reform processes were – though under the pressure of the new political public – still carried out by the old nomenclature (constitutional changes in September 1989 and the first altered electoral legislation in late 1989). After the government takeover at the first democratic elections, the fundamental reforms that altered the system’s character (from non-democratic to democratic) were led and carried out by Demos. Apart from rare exceptions there was no outstanding pact (co-operation) between both elites that would mark the type of Slovenia’s transition. On the contrary, the old elite acted hindering. Demos and the opposition started cooperating during the plebiscite, but right at the beginning, at the first adoption of the plebiscite law, the old elite was against it. The question was arising, whether the independence should be thorough, with all the prerogatives of a state, including its own armed forces, or only partial, so called operetta independence. These contrasts were particularly manifested during the adoption of the necessary legislation in the parliament. In March and April 1991 the key decisions in the parliament were adopted solely by votes of the Demos members. These were especially the Budget Law – the defence part, the Defence Law and the Military Service Act. These key-decisions were at that time publicly opposed by the prominent members of the opposition. The results of the survey published in the book also clearly show that the new opposition was unconstructive. There was no clean rupture (turn) in Slovenia, because the old elite carried out some reforms, necessary for further democratization, but also because in Slovenia too few elites were replaced in different social subsystems. For the rupture one precondition should have been met, that is the appropriate circulation and rotation of elites, which in fact does not mean a radical replacement of all leading people, but to such extent that the democratic changes would not be threatened. The old nomenclature was not interested in changes. The new elite mainly took over the more exposed political functions, but was almost not present in social subsystems. At the break of the nineties, in Slovenia was thus asserting a new democratic political culture. It was commonly accepted that the old system was undemocratic, totalitarian and that the Slovenian people decided for a new social order. All these liberalization processes have co-created the political environment, in which the political opposition started to form. First, in 1988, the Slovenian Farmers’ Association was established and then in 1989 also the Slovenian Democratic Union, the Social-Democratic Union of Slovenia, the Slovenian Christian Social Movement, the Greens of Slovenia, the Slovenian Tradesman Party, the Slovenian Tradesman- Business Party and the Grey Panthers. An important programme role in the modernization of the politics in Slovenia has the May Declaration. It summarized the demands of the forming opposition on the independent Slovenian state, free decision-making on integration, respecting of human rights and freedoms, enforcement of democracy and political pluralism and the social order that would ensure spiritual and material well-being of Slovenia. Jože Pučnik assessed the May Declaration as a milestone on the Slovenian path from single-mindedness towards democracy. The response on the May Declaration was enormous; the authorities were disturbed particularly by the anticommunist tones an
COBISS.SI-ID: 76805889
Damjan Hančič came to the surprising findings in both the extent of violence as well as the number of civilian casualties caused by the revolutionary site. For the communist revolution in Upper Carniola it is typical that there were some cases of direct revolutionary violence in 1941 and 1942, which were mostly directed towards actual opponents of the partisan movement. In this period residents indirectly felt the revolutionary violence through revenge of the German occupier for the performed partisan actions. The direct party or revolutionary violence strengthened in the middle of 1943, especially after Italy’s capitulation in autumn 1943. At the time in Upper Carniola started an even bigger ideologization of the resistance movement that consequently led to a growing flare up of the civil war, which culminated at the end of 1943 and in the middle of 1944. Even more: precisely the establishment and activities of the Security and Intelligence Service (VOS), which has in addition to actual opponents of the resistance movement started to murder political and ideological opponents of the communist party, caused the establishment of armed self-protection departments of the anticommunist oriented population. This was eventually, especially since spring 1944, allowed also by the German occupier. The same way, following the example of Home Guards from the Ljubljana region, Upper Carniolan Home Guards or Upper Carniolan Self-protection has formatted. While the Home guard at the Kamnik and Jesenice Region did not spread much, it was successfully enforced in the central Upper Carniola – the Kranj and Škofja Loka Region. Accordingly there were more victims of post-war communist confrontation with the Carniolan counterrevolution. In short, when the German Nazi terror was stronger, the civil war or ideologization in Upper Carniola was not present in such a great extent, but when the German occupation pressure has lessen, the ideological dispute among the Slovenes began to deepen, which caused the flair up of the civil war. Its part was also the revolutionary violence in various forms, e.g. the confiscation of property of political opponents, persecutions, threats, torture, killings. If we compare the conditions in that period at the Kamnik or eastern Upper Carniolan area with those at the central and western Upper Carniola, we can conclude that there are certain similarities and also differences. The differences are shown particularly in the amount of killings and encounters with ideological opponents of the communist party, particularly the elite members of the pre-war Slovenian People’s Party. This was to a much greater extent present in western Upper Carniola, as from the records of these organs on killings it is much easier to figure out that the executions were carried out for ideological and political reasons, as in the eastern Upper Carniola. On the other hand revolutionary violence did not only manifest as means for confrontation of political opponents, but also as means of some dissatisfied individuals to confront those, towards whom they held personal or typical neighbourhood grudges, in the framework of the unpredictable war period, when it is thought that many things are allowed. And only after the war, according to the doctrine of the communist party separation of victims on »yours and ours«, this conducted war violence was given an ideological connotation, since even totally non-political victims of the revolutionary violence were put through »political hell«, with all from the fact arisen consequences for the relatives of this victims. The study is based on the now known and accessible archival sources, testimonies and literature, including emigrant. Very valuable are testimonials, photos, and above all the documents in the appendix.
COBISS.SI-ID: 270243072
The Study Centre for National Reconciliation published a scientific monograph entitled Slovenia in 20th Century: The Legacy of Totalitarian Regimes. In it 17 authors from different scientific fields highlighted numerous violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as other characteristics of totalitarian regimes, which Slovenia experienced in the 20th century, and their consequences. For three chapters - "Reflections", "Facts" and "Legacy" - members of the program group wrote the following contributions: dr. Andreja Valič Zver: "Democracy is Fragile: Importance of Searching for the Truth"; dr. Tamara Griesser Pečar: "September 16, 1941: The Outbreak of Civil War", dr. Andreja Valič Zver: "War and Revolution: Slovenia 1941–1945", dr. Damjan Hančič: "The Origins of the Communist Revolution and the Civil War in Slovenia in 1941–1942"; dr. Renato Podbersič: "A Different Perspective: The Revolution’s Violence in Slovenia, 1941–1945"; dr. Damjan Hančič, dr. Renato Podbersič, dr. Andreja Valič Zver: "National Report of the Crimes of Communism in Slovenia"; dr. Mateja Čoh Kladnik: "Farmers – the Class Enemies in Slovenia in the Decade after World War II"; Neža Strajnar: "How the Establishment of the Yugoslav-Italian Border in 1947 Affected the Lives of People in the Border Area – Case Study of Goriška Brda"; dr. Tamara Griesser-Pečar: "The Secret Police after the Tito-Stalin Break" in Jelka Piškurić: "Images of the Past: Remembering Socialism".
COBISS.SI-ID: 288126208
In the scientific monograph entitled Lawlessness "in the name of the people" are published the articles on the repressive measures of the Communist Party from 1941 until the independence of Slovenia, which led to a number of the most serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. In the foreground are the fundamental characteristics of the development of military justice during the Second World War, the organization and the establishment of the judicial system after the war and the characteristics of the staged political and judicial process.
COBISS.SI-ID: 285670400