By: Dr Metod Berlec
I admit, in September 1990 I never thought that 35 years after the fall of communism and the first democratic elections we would still be dealing with totalitarian monuments.
Back then, with friends from Kamnik, we drove late at night to Ljubljana and, in protest, sprayed orange paint on Kardelj’s monument, his face, at what was then Revolution Square (today Republic Square), because the new Demos government had not yet removed it. For us young men, everything was moving too slowly, too cautiously. Of course, we understood that things could not change overnight, but we wanted change, including a symbolic break with the previous totalitarian system. So I was not even surprised that on Saturday night the six‑meter statue of communist dictator Josip Broz Tito, standing in Tito Square in Velenje, was left without a head. The police announced on Saturday that they had already tracked down the “suspect” and were conducting “appropriate procedures” against him, while the Velenje municipality, long dominated during the transition by SD’s red cadres, declared they would “repair the damage as soon as possible” and that in Velenje “there is no room for vandalism or attacks on cultural and historical heritage.”
But is the statue of a dictator, allegedly erected “at the initiative of the local community” in 1977, really “cultural heritage”? Absolutely not! At most, it is a reminder of post‑war communist massacres, one‑party dictatorship, and a failed socialist experiment. As such, it belongs on the trash heap of history, in museum storage, or in a museum dedicated to the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. In this, we can only agree with Miroslav Pačnik, who publicly explained why he removed the head from Tito’s statue. He believes that Velenje and Slovenia deserve monuments that unite people, not symbols that evoke fear, pain, and division. Tito came to power through a bloody communist revolution during World War II. Under his rule, according to official data, several hundred thousand people were killed, half a million imprisoned in camps, and more than a million exiled. Therefore, in a democratic state there is no place for the glorification of crime and totalitarianism, as EU institutions have pointed out and as Slovenia’s Constitutional Court warned years ago.
But the current ruling “new class” does not realise this. Under Golob’s leftist government, Slovenia is witnessing the dismantling of the foundations of independence, the rehabilitation of communist criminals and representatives of the former totalitarian regime, and even the re‑erection of their statues in public spaces. Meanwhile, in former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the opposite is happening: monuments to criminals are being torn down, removed, or relocated to museum storage, where they are presented as part of historical memory, not as revered symbols. This difference shows that our country has not even come close to completing a definitive break with its totalitarian past.