The author discusses the controversy concerning the rights of believers which developed among younger theologians, some laymen and some representatives of the faithful on the one hand, and communist politicians and Marxist theorists on the other, in Slovenia in the 1970s. The controversy opened key questions about the relationship between Marxism and atheism under Yugoslav self-management socialism and touched some of the basic ideological postulates on which the League of Communists built its social engagement. Demands for greater equality for believers, based on examples from Western and Eastern Europe, were rejected as unfounded in the vast majority of cases and did not trigger a change in the established understanding of religion by the ruling communist party. However, the awareness of everyday discrimination against believers in their public life spread amongst the younger generation of more liberal-oriented communist leaders.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1537662660
The article is focused on the role of the Catholic thinker Andrej Gosar in the context of ideological divisions among leading figures of Slovenian Political Catholicism in the 1930s. The author presents Gosar’s concept of self-management, which denied both, Marxist ideology and authoritarian Corporativism. Analysing his main works, Pelikan discusses his affirmative stance towards private ownership, market mechanisms and parliamentarian system. Because of that pro-democratic orientation Gosar was strongly rejected by both opposing sides, right-oriented group, which followed Papal Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno and left-oriented Catholic Socialists, associated with Communists. Consequently, he was isolated in the Slovenian public sphere before and during the World War II, while his oeuvre is selectively read still today.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1537844932
The extensive monograph discusses the life and political career of the prewar communist, the leader of the resistance movement during World War II, and the postwar Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito in the context of European and global history of the 20th century. Besides the importance of his character within Yugoslav internal and foreign politics, the author defines the role of his comrades and key political figures Edvard Kardelj, Aleksandar Ranković and Milovan Đilas, and describes their complex relationships and the consequences of their political decisions that determined the history of Yugoslavia as well as the development of global socialist movement.
COBISS.SI-ID: 7852012