The Communist Party of Slovenia was a branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia from 1937. On 26 April 1941, a group of pre-war communists founded the Anti-Imperialist Front, renamed the Liberation Front on 22 June 1941. The organisation was initially led by Josip Rus (1941-1943) and later by the writer Josip Vidmar (1943-1945). The most prominent activists during the war were Boris Kidrič and Edvard Kardelj, who also had an enormous impact on post-war life in Yugoslavia. The Slovene National Liberation Committee acted as a governing organ until it transformed into the Slovene National Liberation Council (SNOS) in 1944. SNOS upheld the supremacy of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ).

 

As a result of the Allied Forces’ offensive in Northern Italy, anti-Communist politicians - the main party being Jože Basaj’s Slovene People’s Party - also established the National Committee of Slovenia as an alternative government. In February 1945, however, one of the provisions agreed upon at the Yalta Conference confirmed the AVNOJ as the official representative of the resistance movement and included an agreement between the government-in-exile and the partisans; this put an end to the aforementioned alternative Slovenian government.

On 5 May 1945, the Slovene National Liberation Council appointed the National Government of Slovenia in Ajdovščina with Boris Kidrič as its President. After its liberation, the city of Ljubljana became the seat of government on 10 May 1945. At the first congress in July 1945, the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation expressed its support for the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and soon joined the People’s Front of Yugoslavia, the creation of which was inspired by the Slovenian Communist Edvard Kardelj, who was the most influential theoretician of Communist ideology after the war.

During the 1945 elections on 11 November, the highest rate of secret ballot votes was recorded in Slovenia. Sixty-three percent of voters voted for the National Front of Yugoslavia. Poor election results compared to other parts of Yugoslavia led to a change of party authorities.

The constitution of the republic was adopted on 16 January 1947.

According to Piotr Żurek, one of the major goals for Slovenia was not only to rebuild the country, but also to form borders.  The Communists’ aim was to unite all the lands inhabited by Slovenes. The border with Croatia had, for the most part, remained unchanged since 1941 (running along the frontier of the Drava Banovina and the Sava Banovina), while the border in the territory of Istria, ceded to Yugoslavia, was established in 1944. Slovenian communists sought to occupy Carinthia and the Venezia Giulia region. Trieste was taken by the Yugoslav army between 31 April and 1 May 1945. Troops of the Allied Forces under the leadership of General Bernard Freyberg reached Trieste a few days later, which triggered a border dispute over the wider region.

Joseph Stalin ultimately avoided conflict by ceding the area to Italy, fearing that resistance would have sparked a greater conflict. As a result of pressures from the Soviets, a temporary agreement was signed on 9 June 1945 in Belgrade between Arso Jovanović - Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav People’s Army - and General Morgan regarding the division of Trieste and its surrounding area. This was later confirmed in 1954 at the London conference, which gave Zone A with Trieste to Italy and Zone B with the Southern part of Zone A (part of Istria) to Yugoslavia. The formal agreement regarding the Yugoslav-Italian border was settled in the treaty between Rome and Belgrade in 1975.

A change of path in society and politics which took the form of workers’ self-management and constitutional law in 1953 resulted from an ascent in prominence and importance of Slovenian politicians, especially Edvard Kardelj and Boris Kidrič.

The constitution of 1963 amply fulfilled Slovenian and Croatian aspirations to autonomy. Even though the position of the republics vis-à-vis the federation was not strengthened, enterprises, labour unions and local authorities gained more independence.

Growing tendencies towards autonomy among the Slovenian communists became particularly evident during a dispute which erupted in the press at the turn of 1962 (in the Belgrade-based journal Delo and Naša spodobnost from Ljubljana). A Serbian and a Slovenian writer, both connected to the Communist Party, Dobrica Ćosić and Dušan Pirjevec polemicised over centralism and increased autonomy of the republics. Ćosić believed that the pursuit for sovereignty by political entities within the federation - which his adversary was calling for - could serve as the spark for secession.

The removal of Aleksandar Ranković at the SKJ’s fourth plenary meeting in 1966 was met with enthusiasm by the Slovenes. The most ardent supporter of reform was Stane Kavčić, who would soon become the most popular politician and Slovenia’s prime minister in 1967. An economist by training, the Slovenian prime minister spoke in favour of strengthening market mechanisms in the economy, bigger investments within the republics, and expanding the republics’ self-reliance. He opposed the mandatory financing of the poor republics by the more developed ones. His administration’s decision to rehabilitate the victims of the Dachau trials could serve to be yet another piece of evidence of the changing political climate.

A matter which drastically undermined Kavčić’s administration was the so-called Road Scandal, which broke out in 1969 when the funds for building motorways in Slovenia were redistributed by the federal leadership.  Societal disappointment with that situation was intensified by the fact that the funding was used to support the Novi-Sad to Belgrade motorway project, even though it was in Slovenia where the traffic was significantly increasing.

Kavčić engaged in a public feud with the more conservative party members, foremost Edvard Kardelj, France Popit, and Stane Dolanc. Josip Broz Tito himself openly criticised Kavčić’s position. After the liberals had been removed from power in Croatia at the turn of 1972, Slovenian reform-seekers became the next target. In October 1972, Kavčić was forced to resign as prime minister. According to historian Mitja Velikonja, dismissing the Slovenian “liberals” led by Stane Kavčić stopped the process which could have improved Slovenia’s economic situation. The Slovenes also expressed their discontent with the lack of appropriate representation of their nation in federal institutions and in the army.

In the 1970s, Stane Dolanc became a major figure on the political scene in not only Slovenia, but the entirety of Yugoslavia. From 1972, he was the head of SKJ’s Executive Bureau and voiced his opposition against reforms. Edvard Kardelj died in 1979.

Josip Broz Tito, the unquestionable leader of the country, died on 4 May 1980 in Ljubljana. The coffin containing his body was transported to Belgrade, where many Yugoslav citizens came to bid farewell to their leader. After his death, the country was hit by an economic crisis and gradually began falling into decline. As a result of Belgrade’s growing pressure to return to centralisation, Slovenia adopted constitutional amendments granting the republic more sovereignty on 27 September 1989. Political parties had already been legalised a year before.

At the end of 1989, plans to organise a “meeting of truth” in Ljubljana were announced in order to inform the public about the events in Kosovo which were meant to help Slobodan Milošević’s policies in Serbia. However, the event was banned due to its nationalistic nature. At the fourteenth SKJ congress in 1990, Slovenian politicians left the proceedings to manifest their disagreement with Milošević’s policies and called for the creation of a confederation.

In May 1990, Slovenia organised a general election and on 23 December 1990 a referendum in which 90% of voters voted to leave Yugoslavia. In June 1991, Slovenia declared independence. Despite Belgrade’s objections and Yugoslav attempts to prevent it through the use of military force, Slovenia succeeded in its endeavour to become an independent state. The Slovenian war of independence, called the Ten-Day War, resulted in several dozen fatalities, following which the Yugoslav People’s Army withdrew from the republic.

Yugoslavian Idea and Political Development. 

Stevan Pavlovitsch states that the concept of Yugoslavism dates back to the first half of the 19th century. Since 1830, Serbia had increasing autonomy within the Ottoman Empire and, striving to achieve complete independence, sought to build a strong state organism. It took great interest in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, northern Albania, and Montenegro in particular. The Montenegrins saw themselves as the heirs of medieval Serbian culture, emphasising that they were never conquered by the Turks.

In the first half of the 19th century, the Illyrian movement emerged in Croatia with the explicit aim to unite all Slavs under the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 1860s, the concept of Yugoslavism appeared with its focus on the shared roots of the South Slavs despite the schism in the Christian church, an idea introduced by two clergymen – Franjo Rački and Josip Juraj Strossmayer.

In 1906, a Croat-Serb coalition won the parliamentary elections of Croatia (the Sabor). The Serbs pledged to respect the historical rights of the Croatians in the unification of all Croatian lands in exchange for having their equal status recognised. On the eve of WWI, ties with Serbia as well as the desire for cooperation and unification were strong.

Towards the end of WWI, in 1917, the Corfu Declaration was signed, due in part to the activities of the Yugoslav Committee in London led by Ante Trumbić, a Split-born politician representing the Croat-Serb coalition. It expressed the Serbs’ desire to merge all South Slavic lands inhabited by Serbs and Croatians, who had believed that a unified country would raise their status within the Habsburg Monarchy to a level equalling that of Austria and Hungary. In October 1918, the National Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs was created in Zagreb, declaring the aspiration to create a country of Southern Slavs. After the signature of the armistice between Austria-Hungary and the Allies, the members of the National Assembly expressed their wish to unify with Serbia and Montenegro. On 1 December 1918, they presented their proposal to the king of Serbia, Aleksandar Karađorđević, which in turn led to the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929) was not very warmly welcomed onto the international stage, apart from Serbia which was ruled by the House of Karađorđević. WWII stirred up further animosities between the various ethnic groups. The independent State of Croatia was engaging in genocide politics against the Serbs within Croat territory, seeing as the resistance movement consisted mainly of Serbs. Draža Mihajlovć’s Chetniks, although proclaimed defenders of Yugoslavia, were a primarily Serbian movement. The partisans wanted the restauration of Yugoslavia just as much as the Chetniks did, but on fundamentally different grounds.

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) was entirely dependent on the USSR in the period of illegal activity since 1921. Milan Gorkić (aka Josip Čižinski) became its leader in 1932 and recruited Tito to the party only two years later.

Tito was a former soldier of the Austro-Hungarian Army, a prisoner of war between 1915 and 1920, and later a free man in the USSR. Upon returning to Yugoslavia, he joined the Communist Party, but after being arrested in 1928 for the possession of weapons and propaganda materials, he refrained from getting involved in politics. He spent six years in prison, where he began studying communism. He left for Moscow soon after his release from prison (1934-1936). His knowledge of Russian helped gain him popularity during his time in the Soviet capital. The main tasks assigned to Tito and Gorkić were to establish a People’s Front and send volunteers to Spain. Cominform’s new directives on the People’s Front drastically changed the CPY’s political agenda. From then on, instead of promoting the dissolution of a country seen as oppressive towards other people, they started to advocate the creation of a federation, which would satisfy all the nations. Tito ultimately emerged victorious in the power struggle with Gorkić, finally returning to Yugoslavia at the end of 1937, where he began his cooperation with Milovan Đilas, Ivo Lola Ribar, Alexandar Ranković and Edvard Kardelj.

From August 1938 until January 1939, Tito sought Moscow’s endorsement for his politics which he was able to secure in the end. His activities in Yugoslavia aimed to consolidate party structures and remove his adversaries.

The occupation of Yugoslavia began in April 1941, when the occupants (Italy, Albania, Bulgaria and Hungary) finally divided the Yugoslav territories. As part of this move, the fascist Independent State of Croatia and the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, governed by Milan Nedić, were established.

After the breakout of the Nazi-Soviet War on 22 June 1941, Tito was forced to act on his own, lay out the groundwork for the future government and wait for the victorious Red Army to enter Yugoslavia. In the autumn of 1941, he conducted fruitless talks with Draža Mihailović; Tito continuously accused the Chetniks of collaborating with the occupants. Instead of following the Soviet instructions to create the People’s Front, he sought to create his own National Committee for Liberation and to fight the Chetniks. As a result, the National Unity Front was founded in 1942. It incorporated all anti-fascist organisations and was controlled by the CPY. In November 1942, the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) was established in the town of Bihać.

At the conference in Tehran, it was agreed that the Yugoslav Partisans would form the legitimate resistance movement in Yugoslavia. Over 29-30 November 1943, the second session of the AVNOJ took place in Jajce, during which the council was proclaimed as the highest legislative power, the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia was elected to act as the temporary government, and Tito was named the Marshal of Yugoslavia. The future Yugoslavia was defined as a federation of equal nations. The future political system was supposed to be shaped by the democratically elected representatives of the free nations.

During Tito’s visit in Moscow in September 1944, the Soviets encouraged him to come to an agreement with the royalist Yugoslav government-in-exile. On 16 June 1944, Tito reached a settlement with the last Ban, Ivan Šubasić, who proclaimed the formation of a coalition government.  On 20 October 1944, the Soviet troops marched into Belgrade and on 1 November, Šubašić and Tito agreed on the principles based on which the future country was to function: Reconstruction of a federation, leaving the choice of the political system to the nation in a referendum, and appointing a Regency Council controlled by the AVNOJ. King Peter II accepted that agreement in January 1945. The new government was formed in March 1945.

The newly established country was strongly centralized. The Party and the Political Bureau had unlimited power. The slogan “brotherhood and unity” refers, on one hand, to the mutual tolerance between the nations, and to the unity of the communist ruling party on the other. However, initially, there was no party federalisation, as the communists had to remain a homogenous whole.

During the third AVNOJ conference in Belgrade in August 1945, the name of the institution was changed to The Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. The provisions of the Yalta Conference and of the UN Charter were ratified then, apart from the formation of a presidium and organs of the state. A resolution was adopted which granted Yugoslavia land which had been in foreign hands since 1918 (such as Istria, Zadar, and the Kvarner Islands). All adult citizens, including women, were granted the right to vote. Partisan fighters under the age of 18 were also given the right to vote, unlike collaborators who fought against the partisans. This decision led to the resignation of all non-Communist ministers. Following these developments, all non-Communist parties boycotted the elections held in November 1945, but it was possible to cast a vote using a secret ballot („ćorava kutija”). With a turnout of 88%, the National Front secured over 90% of the votes.

The National Assembly, elected on 11 November 1945, declared the abolition of the monarchy already as part of the first proceedings on 29 November 1945. On 31 January 1946, a new constitution, based on the Soviet model from 1936, was approved by acclamation by the parliament. Thus, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed. The National Assembly presidium became the highest organ of state power. Tito was appointed Prime Minister and Minister of Defence.

The constitution of 1946 established a federation of six republics and two autonomous regions and defined the authorities’ decision-making procedures; this did not, however, lead to a separation of judicial and legislative powers. A presidium, composed of federal cabinet ministers and the republics’ prime ministers, was the highest organ of the Parliament. The central constitutional organ was the Ministerial Council.

After a few months, systematic persecutions of political opponents began, including not only collaborationists, but also members of the Partisan movement and anyone who raised objections against the new regime.  March 1946 marked the apprehension of Draža Mihailović who was sentenced in a show trial three months later. Among the more prominent cases were also the sentencing of August Košutić, a prominent member of the Croatian Peasant Party, for having conspired with the Partisans, as well as indictment against Dragoljub Jovanović, a key figure of the People’s Peasant Party, and the trial of cardinal Aloysius Stepinac charged with collaboration.

On 28 June 1948, Yugoslavia was expelled from Cominform. In his attempt to consolidate the Eastern Bloc, Stalin denounced Yugoslavia as an internal enemy. Even though Yugoslavia’s ruling party had pledged loyalty to the USSR at the fifth CPY plenary session held in July 1948, they shifted to anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns in late 1948.

At the second CPY plenary session between 28-30 January 1949, the tightening of state control was proposed as part of the fight against Cominform. The party expressed the need for a more effective exercise of power, which practically meant having a total monopoly, despite urging the local Party centres to undertake their own initiatives.

Paradoxically, Yugoslav communists achieved the highest level of centralisation between 1948 and 1953, when the country became highly centralised and political repression was severe, despite previous promises that the country would not go back to the ways of the interwar period. On the other hand, the decentralisation of the country, which occurred in the later decades, was a sign of the legitimation of its own power and political system established in opposition to both the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Stalinism. A “re-reading of Marx” proved crucial, as it led to the proclamation of workers’ self-management in 1950, which opposed Soviet “bureaucratic perversions”. In theory, this interpretation was meant to be genuine communism in the form of self-management of factories through their workers. In an attempt to legitimise the authorities, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was renamed The League of Yugoslav Communists (LCY) in 1952 – a clear reference to the Communist League of 1848.

In 1953, the presidium was dissolved and replaced with the Federal Executive Council (SIV), which consisted of thirty members led by the president. The separate republics did not have their own presidents – this title was awarded only to the leader of the entire federation. Josip Broz Tito acted as president of the country, leader of the SIV and Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists.

In 1958, the Seventh Congress in Ljubljana (the last to take place outside Belgrade) adopted the new programme of the League of Yugoslav Communists. The programme reinforced self-governance and introduced the possibility of criticising national policies; this was no longer deemed a sacred topic.

A constitution dubbed The Self-Management Charter was adopted in 1963, and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In the 1960s, the federalist movement gained the upper hand over those who favoured centralisation. The dangers of the unitarist tendency to ignore the differing economic characteristics of the republics were first discussed at the 8th Congress of the League of Yugoslav Communists in 1964.

A reorganisation of the League of Yugoslav Communists took place in 1966 - the number of representatives of the Executive Council was reduced to eleven members and the institution obtained executive and administrative authority. A presidium of the Central Committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists was established and put in charge of formulating national policy.

In the 1960s, the number of party members was limited, which was interpreted as a sign of social and political stability. However, there were still discussions regarding the distribution of decision-making processes and competencies between the individual republics and the federation as a whole.  At a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists in 1966, Aleksandar Ranković, who had overseen party recruitment and state power ministries, fell from power and was ousted from the party. This led to a significant liberalisation of social and political life. Especially in Slovenia, Croatia (particularly the Croatian Spring movement), Serbia (see Serbian Liberalism) and Macedonia, supporters of deep reforms became increasingly vocal. To this effect, several amendments were made to the constitution in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which considerably increased the republics’ executive power. In 1972, as a result of the far-reaching demands of politicians opposed to the dominance of federal structures over republican ones, the Yugoslav leader decided to mount a purge and remove the pro-reform politicians from power. His aim was to preserve the unity of both the party and the country.

The constitution of 1974 was to guarantee state continuity following Josip Broz Tito’s eventual death. According to the provision of the new constitution, the Yugoslav Presidium consisted of eight members - one representative of each republic or province. The document proclaimed Tito as president for life. The prerogatives of the federation were limited to foreign policy, the economy and defence. Another proof of the system’s decay was the unsuccessful reform of 1976, the Law on Associated Labour, whose aim was to reform the self-management system by creating the illusion of social subjectivity.

After Tito’s death on 4 May 1980, control fell into the hands of the Presidium, which was incapable of introducing the necessary changes to the republics’ extensive competences. A move towards secession was becoming more and more visible, especially among Kosovo’s Albanians. For lack of a party leader as charismatic as Tito, the republics started looking after their own interests and disregarding the federal organs.  Within a complex state organism such as Yugoslavia, the interests of the individual territorial units were often contradictory.

At the 14th SKJ congress in 1990, the demands of the Serbian authorities were rejected, delegates from Slovenia and Croatia left the meeting, and the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina alongside Macedonia rejected the proposal to bring back centralism. In the face of the global situation and gradual emancipation of the Central and Eastern European nations from Soviet dominance, a united Yugoslavia no longer appeared as an integral part of the politics of the superpowers. The climax of the process of gaining independence by the republics came between 1991 - 1992, leading to the dissolution of the country, as well as civil wars in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The victims of the first repressions in the post-war period were 8,200 Slovene collaborators, members of the Home Guard, who fled to Austria following the withdrawal of the German troops together with the Chetniks (5,500 Serbians and 400 Montenegrins) and 12,000 Ustasha. Between 12-13 May, they surrendered to the British who then handed them over to Tito’s troops on 14 May 1945. The biggest number of Slovenian troops surrendered in the town of Vitkrieg – they were then executed there soon after. Slovenian security services (OZN) used brutal methods to fight against collaborators. Kočevski Rog was the main location for mass executions; 13,500 people were killed in that area alone.

On 5 June 1945, SNOS passed a law on the punishment of crimes against the Slovene nation. As the law stood, repressions affected people who were actively involved in collaborationist activities (such as the so-called Christmas trial during which high-ranking soldiers from collaborationist troops were tried), as well as politicians who posed a threat to the communist regime, even if they had never actually collaborated. One of the targets was Miha Krek who fled to Italy and attempted to create an alternative Slovenian government in Trieste which was under Allied control at the time; he was also the leader of the People’s Party.  He was tried in absentia together with Leon Rupnik, the president of Ljubljana during the Italian and German occupation, and other close collaborators.

In the summer of 1947, two other politicians were tried; Črtomir Nagode, a member of the liberal party Stara Pravda, was sentenced alongside the Slovenian minister of transportation, Franc Snoja. Out of 15 people who were put on trial at that time, three received capital punishment.

Show trials known as the Dachau trials were held between 1947 and 1949. Based on forged evidence, 37 people were tried for collaboration, most of whom were former prisoners of the German concentration camp.

As pointed out by Piotr Żurek who quoted the historian Aleš Gabrič, around 1,000 Slovenians actively resisted Tito’s policy of opposing Stalin – around half of them were subject to repressions. Three-hundred and forty-eight people were put in a prison camp on the island of Goli Otok. According to Piotr Żurek, the support for Stalin was not as great as in Serbia or Montenegro, probably because of the Soviets’ disapproval of ceding Trieste to Slovenia, as well as a more general lack of pro-Russian sympathies.

Among the most prominent figures in Slovenia who suffered from repressions was the Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana and Spanish war veteran, Dragotin Guštinčič, who was arrested in April 1948 and imprisoned in Goli Otok until 1951. In 1949, students and employees of the University of Ljubljana, including professor Cene Logar, were arrested.

The question of nationality was first explicitly raised when 5,000 miners from Trbovlje went on strike in January 1958. They spoke of the inequality and exploitation of Slovenia. The existence of conflicts of interest between the nations was acknowledged at a secret meeting of the federal authorities on 6 February 1958.

Student strikes, which were spreading across the biggest cities of Yugoslavia in 1968, broke out in Ljubljana between 3-6 June 1968. The demands ranged from student issues to national matters. The demonstrators ended their protest after a rally held on 6 June, where Deputy Prime Minister Franc Hočevar promised to satisfy their demands.

According to Irena Stawowa-Kawka, Slovenia owned 1,094 factories and 1,222 manufacturing companies in 1945. War damages in the country were not as severe as in other regions of Yugoslavia.

The Laws on Agrarian Reform and Colonisation, adopted on a federal level on 23 August 1945, were more widely implemented in Slovenia in 1946.  Slovenian authorities took land away from collaborationists, the Church and the German minority. The approval of the policy resulted partly from the fact that many clergymen, including the Slovenian archbishop Gregorij Rožman, were enthusiastic supporters of the Italian occupation and, after Italy’s capitulation, called for the establishment a puppet government in Ljubljana controlled by Nazi Germany. Almost half of the land acquired through confiscation was given to farmers without any land of their own, while the remaining land was taken over by agricultural cooperatives and state-owned companies.

Collectivisation gained speed as a result of the conflict between Yugoslavia and the USSR, but of all the regions it was still the least widespread in Slovenia. According to Piotr Żurek, the lands which were turned into kolkhoz consisted of less than 5% of Slovenia’s farmlands.

Slovenian politician Boris Kidrič was, along with Andrij Hebrang, the main architect of the five-year plan adopted by the Slovenian parliament in April 1947. Since then, many big industrial facilities were built, such as hydroelectric power plants in Moste and Dravograd or a cement factory in Nove Mesto. 

Slovenian economists - Kidrič (deceased in 1953) and later Boris Kraigher - actively shaped the reforms of the system between 1950 and 1952, as well as the economic reform of 1965 which was designed by Kraigher, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time. The measures taken by Kidrič were a response to the ineffective collectivisation of farms and were also inspired by his desire to prove the validity of his ideals in the feud with the USSR. As a result of those reforms, worker cooperatives were established and by 1950 there were already over 120 workers’ councils.

The five-year plan of 1957-1961 demonstrated that the wealthier republics, including Slovenia, were developing faster than other regions. An economic crisis at the beginning of the 1960s caused Slovenian politicians - Miha Marinko, President of the League of Communists of Slovenia, and Slovene Prime Minister, Boris Kraigher, - to seek economic autonomy for the republics with even greater urgency.

Slovenia’s economic and political sovereignty increased in the second part of the 1960s. This becomes evident when considering the high level of exports to Western European countries, capital concentration due to the creation of a single Ljubljana Bank, the subsequent investment boom and expansion of its road network, as well as the investments by companies like Gorenje or Citroën that were made in Slovenia.

Despite Yugoslavia’s economic stagnation, the 1970s were a time of prosperity in Slovenia. The GDP growth rate reached 37% in the first half of the decade, whereas industrial production grew by 50%. Motorways were built and transport infrastructure developed swiftly. Slovenia offered the highest living standards among all Yugoslav republics. At the end of the 1970s, the republic contributed as much as 16.5% of Yugoslavia’s GDP, even though its population amounted to a mere 8.3% of the federated nations. Slovenia had successfully transitioned from an agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse.

Yugoslav culture in the post-war period was strongly marked by propaganda spread through the outlets of Agitprop. Boris Ziherl was the head of this institution in Slovenia.

Crucially, many Slovenian pre-war institutions such as the National Theatres in Ljubljana and Maribor, as well as the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, were re-established.

In the 1950s, artists gained more artistic freedom and started challenging the myths around the war of national liberation, the result of which was a collection of novellas by Edvard Kocbek entitled Strah in pogum (Fear and Courage). The writer explored the theme of mass executions and collective responsibility due to which he fell out of the authorities’ favour. Kocbek made even more enemies when he gave an interview to Zaliv magazine published in Trieste in 1975, in which he criticised the 1940s repressions against the opponents of the communist regime.

The journalists who interviewed him, Boris Paholj and Alojz Rebula, were barred from entering Slovenia. The article sparked a storm among intellectuals. Franc Miklavčič, a judge from Ljubljana, former Christian socialist activist and member of the Liberation Front publicly called for the retrieval of the mass graves of the victims of the communist regime, for which he was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison. This sentence was later reduced to 19 months following pressure from Amnesty International.

Since the 1950s Slovenian academic journals about philosophy, literary criticism or sociology frequently addressed sensitive issues and engaged in a dispute with the authorities. Among those journals was Revija 57, which was shut down just a year after it was launched. One of its writers, Jože Pučnik, was convicted for anti-national activities, released in 1962 only to be sentenced again for his articles published in Perspektive, in which he attacked the monopoly of the Communist Party.

A four-year-old Pespektive magazine was also shut down in 1964, as well as Oder 57 - a theatre founded by the intellectuals connected with Revija 57, putting on performances inspired by the most vibrant trends in world theatre. Mladina and Nova revija were the most influential magazines published in the 1980s, which, by the end of the decade, openly spoke about the interests of the nation which, in their view, could not be fulfilled in Communist Yugoslavia. The notion that the regime severely lacked legitimacy in Slovenia is best supported by the fact that Mladina’s journalists were never imprisoned despite receiving prison sentences in 1988.

Slovenia was also one of the music centres of Yugoslavia with the growth of major world trends such as punk or new wave - it was the home of bands like Pankrti or Lačni Franz, which criticised life in Yugoslavia. Leibach was a separate phenomenon which relied on provocation and showiness. From its very beginning in 1980, it explored the connections between culture, ideology, arts and politics.

After bishop Gregorij Rožman fled the country, Antonin Vovk became vicar general in the Diocese of Ljubljana in May 1945. A law on the Legal Position of Religious Communities in Yugoslavia was passed in 1952, in the middle of the country’s fiercest battles against the Church which reached its apogee in the attempted assassination of bishop Vovk. In light of the newly introduced law, all priests were directed to pledge loyalty to the authorities. Surprisingly, as much as 87% of all Slovenian clergymen did so. In that very year, religion was removed from schools and the Faculty of Theology was removed from the jurisdiction of Ljubljana University.

Bishop Rožman died in exile in 1959, which contributed significantly to the relaxation of the government’s policy against the Church. Bishop Vovk was proclaimed the archbishop of Ljubljana in 1960. Slovenian bishops participated in the Second Vatican Council in 1962. In 1964, Pope Paul VI established the Apostolic Administration of the Slovenian Littoral, which ended the feud with the Italian Church over the control of those territories.

 

The National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ) had 800,000 soldiers at the end of World War II. Its Commander-in-Chief was Josip Broz Tito. Between 1941 and 1945, the structure of the army consisted of two commanding officers on every level: the political commissar and the military commissar. The army was restructured in 1945 when the number of soldiers was reduced by half and the army changed its name to the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA). It was one of the main factors guaranteeing legitimacy to the Yugoslav regime.

Josip Broz Tito acted as the army’s Commander-In-Chief between 1941 and 1980. Between 1941-1945, he was the head of the General Staff of the Partisan Detachments for National Liberation, which was later renamed the Supreme Staff of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. At the second AVNOJ proceedings in 1943, he was elected president of the provisional executive authority called the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia, which secured him the position of NOVJ Commander-in-Chief.

The constitution of 1946 gave the parliament the authority and power to elect the Commander-in-Chief, but given the Politbureau’s omnipotence under the aegis of Tito, the choice was obvious. Constitutional laws in 1953 ensured that the President of the Republic would also automatically be the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Similar provisions were included in the subsequent Yugoslav constitutions with the only difference being that new constitutions from the 1970s granted authority to the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was also led by Tito.

After 1953, the Presidium received help from federal Secretaries of Defence (since 1971 federal Secretaries of Defence were equivalent to the Ministry of Defence): Ivan Gošnjak (1953-1967), Nikola Ljubičić (1967-1982), Branko Mamula (1982-1988) and Veljko Kadijević (1988-1992). They answered to Parliament, to federal authorities (federal SIV) and to the Commander-in-Chief. Conflict with the Eastern Bloc in the late 1940s and early 1950s generated the highest spending on armed forces for the federal budget - in 1952, the country spent 22-24% of its national budget on defence – these numbers fell again shortly after, going down to 10.8% in 1956.

In the mid-1950s, after the situation between Belgrade and Moscow was settled, the country’s military doctrine changed and was refocused on defending the country from NATO. The approach changed yet again after the attack on Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries in August 1968. This military incursion into Czechoslovakia inspired the initiative for a territorial defence system organised by the republics themselves, should there be an invasion by external aggressors.

According to tactics planned by General Gošnjak, the aim of territorial defence was to form partisan units. The formation of the People’s Defence forces of the republics began at the end of 1968 and the Law on All People’s Defence that was adopted by the federal parliament on 11 February 1969 started this particular form of militarisation of the country. The Army was restructured in such a way that the capital of each republic was supposed to take responsibility for establishing its Army’s leadership, as it was the republican authorities who oversaw territorial defence.

Serbian and Montenegrin dominance in the YPA’s ranks was manifest. In 1953, Serbians constituted 53% of the Army’s high-ranking officers (but 41.7% of the whole Yugoslav population), whereas Montenegrins made up 10.8% of the Army’s elders (compared to 2.8% of the population) and 20.3% of the higher cadre were from Croatia (with 23.5% of the population).

There was also a big disproportion in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Serbs overwhelmingly dominated the party, military and security service structures; this was one of the many remnants of domestic disputes during World War II. This disproportion was at its most visible in the 1980s when Serbs and Montenegrins made up almost 70% of all high-ranking military officials.

The constitution of 1974 emphasised the crucial role of the YPA as the protector of the country’s unity. These changes, which led to an increased level of autonomy for the Territorial Defence forces and the fragmentation of the country, were not enthusiastically welcomed by top-ranking military officers.

Branko Mamula, a Serb from Croatia, became the Minister of Defence in the 1980s and later sought to subordinate territorial defence to the YPA in his quest to centralise the armed forces, and to invest further in armaments. He managed to achieve his goal when a law in 1987 transferred the control over territorial defence from the republics to the General Staff of the Yugoslav Armed Forces.

By virtue of constitutional amendments adopted in Croatia and Slovenia in 1990, control over territorial defence was returned to republican authorities, which resulted in conflict with the YPA. In Slovenia, this did not raise any problems due to the homogenous nature of the country, whereas in Croatia, the territorial defence involved different nationalities - the Serbs and the Croatians - serving side by side.

As the consequent republics declared independence, from October 1991 the YPA answered to the Serbian authorities. Serbia along with its autonomous provinces (despite abolishing autonomies in 1989) and Montenegro still had their representatives in the Presidium. In April 1992, the YPA officially became the Yugoslav Army consisting only of Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers.

Noticing tendencies moving towards the dissolution of the country, JNA Generals, Veljko Kadijević and Branko Mamula, spoke strongly in favour of keeping Yugoslavia a single entity.

As soon as the reserve of the Macedonian Army reported its first casualties in the war against Croatia in the spring and summer of 1991, Macedonians demanded the right to only serve in their own republic. Their request was denied by the federal ministry to little effect; Macedonia broke all ties with the Yugoslav army when the country declared its independence in September 1991 and adopted its first constitution in November 1991. In February 1992, laws were passed in Skopje regarding military service and an agreement was signed that very same month announcing the JNA’s withdrawal from the republic.

With the outbreak of war in Slovenia and Croatia, Alija Izetbegović, the president of the Presidium of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, decided in September 1991 to stop drafting new recruits into the YPA.  In November 1991, Izetbegović still claimed that the ongoing war in Croatia in 1991 did not concern Bosnia. However, there were units based in Bosnia which were carrying out military operations in Croatia.

In December 1991, Slobodan Milošević demanded that YPA units be transferred to Bosnia and Hercegovina. This led to a gradual concentration of troops in Serbian strongholds. In June 1992, Izetbegović demanded the YPA’s withdrawal from Bosnia. Talks concerning the YPA’s status in Bosnia and Hercegovina were held in Skopje between Branko Kostić, a member of the federal Presidium, Izetbegović, a member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidium and Blagoje Adzić, the acting Minister of National Defence. Initially, the talks were postponed, but later the YPA joined them taking the Serbs’ side.

 

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Interviews:

Danijel Ivin- historian, former dissident

Petar Janjatović- journalist, musician critique

Gordan Jovanović- social activist, former dissident

Dagomir Olujić-journalist, former dissident

Predrag Ristić- architect, former dissident