By: Dr Andreja Valič Zver
Let us recall what was happening exactly 35 years ago. For a very simple reason: people forget too quickly; important historical events, processes, and personalities fade, and even those who lived through them begin to lose clarity, let alone the younger generations, who were not part of those magnificent historical moments.
These were times when many still believed that the Yugoslav army would not attack and that Slovenia would become independent on the approaching D‑day. During those decisive and tense days, the DEMOS government was grappling with numerous difficulties. The left‑wing opposition, together with the trade unions, kept throwing obstacles in its way: blocking privatisation and denationalisation, organising a teachers’ strike, filing an interpellation against the government, replacing the public prosecutor Drobnič, and more. The relatively strong political force LDS even demanded the demilitarisation of Slovenia. The government was fighting a fierce battle with Belgrade over customs sovereignty. To make matters even more tense, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, Zimmermann, firmly stated that his country would not recognise the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. In short, sharp pressure from the U.S. and the EU was intensifying. There was even talk of intervention by Western European forces if they assessed that independence threatened European security. The Italian foreign minister De Michelis was particularly vocal. So – even the external conditions for independence were far from ideal. Marković brought the federal government to Ljubljana and threatened sanctions if Slovenia continued with independence. Belgrade was running out of money. Speaking in the Slovenian Assembly, Marković also met with the opposition, forming a kind of anti‑DEMOS pact. They expected the DEMOS government to fall by autumn at the latest. At Otočec, Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian communists met and once again pledged themselves to the so‑called “third Yugoslavia” and to opposing the policy of the Slovenian government.
Despite the unfavourable circumstances, things moved forward because ministers within the government, and others, carried out their work courageously and decisively, both abroad and at home. We must especially highlight the achievements of Peterle, Janša, Bavčar, Rupel, Kacin, Krkovič, and others. Without these people, and Pučnik, who guided them as the leader of DEMOS, we might have missed a historic opportunity that would never return. For us Slovenians, the state was not given as a gift or as some automatic historical inevitability. Without courageous people who felt bound to the will of the nation, nothing would have happened; even though they had no support from the dominant media, and all social and political subsystems were still run by cadres of the former regime. The secret political police and criminal investigators continued to operate according to old patterns, and the trade unions remained a political force, just as before. The architects of independence faced an impossible task: to enforce the political will of the people in hostile structural circumstances. Janša had the most difficult conditions of all, in the event of war, he would have had to defend the independence measures with military force. Yet the international arms embargo was still in place, and domestically there was not enough weaponry – partly because the old political elite had handed it over to the Yugoslav army. In short, just days before the aggression, there was considerable uncertainty, amplified by the media. The only things we had were the firm determination of the DEMOS government to carry out the national project and the high level of public trust in the government. Apparently, that was enough.
It is right that we remember these sacred stories of Slovenian history in other ways as well. That is why last Friday the Jože Pučnik Institute organised an international conference titled 35 Years Later – Assessments and Analyses of the Transition to Normality, and last Saturday a “Walk for the Homeland” took place in several Slovenian cities. With the slogan: Proudly pay tribute to “our home”!
