By: Dr Matevž Tomšič
It is well known that in all non‑democratic regimes, the judiciary is one of the most important instruments for maintaining power. This means that its primary task is not to ensure order and legality, but to protect the ruling elite from real or imagined opponents. It therefore does not serve to protect ordinary citizens, but to protect those in power. The former become victims of prosecution as soon as the latter feel threatened by them.
This was also the role of the judiciary during the former regime. All its protagonists – judges, prosecutors, and others – were “socio‑political workers” (similar to people in all key social subsystems), meaning that their main task was to defend the communist (officially “self‑managed socialist”) system and its holders. In essence, the entire legal system, led by criminal law, was intended for this purpose. As one of the main legal ideologists of that period, Ljubo Bavcon, wrote: criminal law is primarily a means for “suppression and systematic struggle against a certain part of the population, that is, against a class which, due to its different views, resists the integrity of the existing social order or its constituent parts.” In doing so, he referred to none other than the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – Lenin, considered the father of Soviet communist totalitarianism.
Slovenian judiciary consistently and zealously performed the role of protector of the communist regime. Numerous show trials testify to this, in which those accused of undermining the regime lost their freedom, property – and some even their lives. It is true that in the last years of the regime, its determination and zeal in persecuting dissidents weakened significantly, but loyalty to party rulers remained until the end.
And even after the change of regime, many things did not change. The judiciary is among the social subsystems that underwent the least reform. Most judges and prosecutors remained in their positions. This also applies to those who had demonstrably carried out politically motivated prosecutions and thereby violated human rights. Those who trained these cadres at law faculties also remained in their positions. In this way, continuity was preserved. Even new generations of judicial staff were instilled with the old‑regime mindset.
Thus, even today, more than a quarter of a century after the end of the communist regime, some parts of the judiciary behave as its guardians. Miroslav Pačnik, who last year stirred the Slovenian public with his act of beheading the Velenje statue of Josip Broz Tito (eliciting enthusiasm from some and outrage from others), received an indictment filed against him by the Celje District State Prosecutor’s Office. He is accused of the criminal offence of “damaging or destroying an object of special cultural significance or natural value.” And what value is this statue supposed to represent for the diligent prosecutors, what cultural significance is it supposed to have? It undoubtedly expresses values, but certainly not those on which the independent Slovenian state with its democratic order was founded. It is an expression of glorifying a communist dictator who stood at the head of an oppressive regime and as such bears primary responsibility for the systematic trampling of rights and restriction of citizens’ freedoms. The celebration of such figures should have no place in a country that is a member of the European Union, where human rights and freedoms represent one of its fundamental values. If anywhere, such monuments belong in a thematic park – as a reminder of the delusions of a dark past. The citizen in question deserves recognition for his act, not prosecution, while his persecutors have no place in the judicial apparatus of a state that considers itself democratic.