By: Bogdan Sajovic
Slovenian Bolsheviks are still hyperventilating because, two months ago, a citizen dared to behead the statue of their idol. Recently, they therefore organised a consultation for the “protection of the national liberation struggle” and “against the falsification of history.”
Well, if anyone falsifies history, it is primarily them. The communists did not care about the occupation of Slovenia; they entered the fight only when the Soviet–German war broke out and Stalin called on all communists to take up arms. That is how Slovenian communists also went into the woods – in defence of Stalin and the USSR, not Slovenia. The Partisans swore allegiance to Stalin and to the world revolution. They acted according to directives from Moscow and in its interest, not in the interest of the Slovenian nation. They sang, “Slovenia the heroic, Soviet you shall be.” General Rupnik, in the middle of the war, named the academy of sciences and arts “Slovenian” (and the occupiers had nothing against it), while the national‑liberation Partisans removed the word “Slovenian” from the academy’s name in June 1945. The OZNA and later the UDBA were established to fight the counterrevolution.
General Rupnik was still in the 1960s labelled as the leader of the “Slovenian counterrevolution and reaction.” The achievements of the revolution were celebrated, and in school we wrote essays on the theme “the revolution continues.” At the end of the 1970s, Stane Dolanc said: “Whoever claims that the Partisan struggle was not primarily a communist revolution does not know very much.” Only in the 1980s, when world communism was collapsing in complete discredit, did Slovenian communists push the revolution into the background and begin bleating about the national liberation struggle. Even though any emphasis on Slovenian identity was considered nationalism, and in the “people’s army” recruits were not even allowed to take their oath in the Slovenian language. We achieved national liberation only in 1991, and for most communists that was not their “intimate option.”
Partisan monuments therefore have very little to do with national liberation. They are monuments to a failed totalitarian ideology and should be removed, to museums, or better yet, to the rubbish heap.