“At no point did he lead the process. At one point, he even went against the government, saying that he was not preparing this and that with the forced process, he was taking us to very critical waters,” the former Minister in the government which was formed after Slovenia gained its independence, Igor Bavčar, said on the show Conversations with the people who fought for our independence, on RTV, as he explained the background of Kučan’s famous speech, which was actually an attack on the independence process. He described Kučan as the man who knew how to weigh all the aspects of a situation and assess its outcome. “In his position, he knew he should keep the levers he still had,” Bavčar added.
Igor Bavčar is the founder of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, which was formed in 1988, following the arrest of Janez Janša in the JBTZ affair. He was also the Minister of the Interior in the Demos government, which was one of the most important functions at the time, and he also led the process of Slovenia’s gaining of independence, and, as a Minister in Janez Drnovšek’s government, coordinated Slovenia’s entering into the European Union. After the year 2001, he left politics and continued working in the economic sector. While serving his sentence, he is trying to prove his innocence, and in the meantime, he is enjoying writing and reading.
Bavčar began his political career very early, when he failed his first year of high school, due to rebellion. Despite the fact that his family was opposed to the idea, he enrolled in the police school, where he began working in a youth organization, and also worked in the municipal committee of Šiška. Not wanting to work as a policeman, he decided to study political science at the then-Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journalism, where he worked in a student organization and was also hired to be a part of the team that worked on the newspaper Tribuna, at a time when they discovered corruption in the process of construction of the student dormitories. “That’s when I met Janez Janša,” he added.
At the very beginning, Janša covered the field of general resistance and defense, where curious individuals were being accepted. Janša was one of the people who knew a lot, which was soon followed by his first serious clash with the party, Bavčar says. Together, they worked as editors on the book Diary and Memories of Stane Kavčič (Dnevnik in spomini Staneta Kavčiča), which caused problems for Bavčar at the faculty, as he was not allowed to graduate for two years. He later succeeded with the help of Ernest Petrič, Zdenko Roter and Vlado Benko.
The JBTZ affair and the arrest of Janez Janša
It all started with a house search of SDV – UDBA, in which Janša appeared as a witness. They tried to make the incident public, but Radio Študent was the only one willing to help them. Mile Šetinc was the only journalist to write a short news story about the event for the Delo newspaper. Bavčar tried to find out what was going on, and while calling the police, he got a phone call from Tomaž Ertl, the then-Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. When he tried to save Janša, he didn’t even know that he was actually fighting for four Mladina journalists. “Therefore, we first established the Committee for the Defence of Rights of Janez Janša, which was later renamed to the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, as we discovered that in addition to Janša, David Tasić and later Ivan Borštner were also arrested, and Franci Zavrl went to a psychiatric hospital,” he added.
“The JBTZ affair was based on the famous copy of a military document and a transcription by Milan Kučan, who upset the Slovenian public with Vlad Miheljak‘s text about the Night of the Long Knives,” said Bavčar. The situation was sensitive to the party, as in this case, it was Kučan, and the party should have imprisoned some people without the army, but they did not want to do that. Thus, it was easier to leave the detention to the military judiciary and hope that the Communist Party could reach an agreement with the emerging opposition and rid themselves of any guilt, which was later confirmed.
Kučan’s concept of Yugoslavia coincided with Kadijević’s
The JBTZ process was a turning point for changing the attitude towards the rule of law, democracy, free elections, as well as the issue of Slovenia’s position, but in fact, the fate of Yugoslavia itself was being weighed. At the time, no one knew what would become of Yugoslavia. All the great international empires, such as the Soviet Union, were on the brink of great change, while Yugoslavia was searching for its compass after Tito’s death. During all this time, the fate of the JBTZ four was being weighed, and Nova Revija (new magazine) was created. The Yugoslav current, whose main representative was the army, still had a strong influence. “And as strange as it may sounds today, I still claim that the concept of Kadijević’s Yugoslavia coincided with the concept of Kučan’s idea of Yugoslavia,” Bavčar added.
At the time of the formation of the first government, the League of Communists would come to the forefront, as, viewed individually, they would have won at the time, and were it not for the victorious Demos coalition, they would have been the ones forming the government. “They knew how to do it. Their election headquarters consisted of key people who were the first to deal with Slovenian public opinion at the time: Zdenko Roter, Niko Toš, the team that worked at the institute. Because Kučan was not bothered by the fact he would have to cooperate with this opposition on the one hand, and on the other hand, he would have to ban its rallies, or even plan them,” Bavčar added.
Kučan would have used the cops against his own people
When it comes to Kučan as a true communist tyrant, Bavčar revealed his actions at the announced Serbo-Montenegrin Rally of Truth in 1989. “A very famous sentence in the preparations for the rally was when Jože Smole suggested to the presidency of the Central Committee that everyone, including Kmetec’s union, would appear together, as this was such a serious matter. At that time, the Slovenian party feared the intervention of the Yugoslav army, due to the riots. Dolničar, a former general, spoke about this. And Kučan attacked him, saying, you mean the illegal Kmetič union? He also said that if things went on like this, Ertl would have to use those 3,000 policemen he mobilized against the ‘protesters’ to discipline the domestic scene. And that really says a lot about his understanding,” Bavčar added.
When it comes to the question of how big Kučan’s role actually was at the time of Slovenia gaining its independence, Bavčar said the following: “At no point did he lead the process. At one point he even went against the government, saying that he was not preparing this and that with the forced process, he was taking us to very critical waters,” adding that Kučan’s speech was, in fact, an attack on the process of gaining independence, which was later taken over by Bavčar. “This was then followed by the famous meeting of the Demos leadership in Brdo, where Jože Pučnik cut the matter and demanded that the process begin because the hesitation was not the result of a political belief of the Christian Democracy, of Peterle, of only one part. I heard the conversation between Peterle and Kremžar, where Kremžar warned him not to force himself out of Yugoslavia, as it would be economically difficult.”
Kučan swore on being a chameleon
Former Minister of the Interior Bavčar admitted that there was a fear of where the path would actually lead, as the nation was entering into the era of an independent country, which is something it had never had before. Many people were convinced that gaining independence was actually a mistake, and meanwhile, Kučan was investing a lot of time in returning to the Yugoslav union. “At that time, the meetings of Croatian-Slovenian communists were also going on. These things were not something that could be taken for granted. It wasn’t something that someone could have simply decided on. It all had to be prepared. Milan Kučan is a man who knows how to adapt to the situation and knows how to assess the situation. He never led the process of gaining our independence, but he was also never declaratively against this process – from the very beginning,” he stressed. He described Kučan as a man who knew how to weigh all aspects of the situation and assess its outcome, and at the same time, he had people with him, who enabled him to communicate with every part of Yugoslavia. “Virtually no one important at the time played the role of a janissary or anything like that. You will not find a man like that in Slovenia. And Kučan knew how to keep the levers he had in his own position,” Bavčar revealed.
When the Yugoslav army invaded Slovenian territory, there was no going back. Bavčar and Janša were one of the main actors in the territorial defence. “We requested authorization to use the weapons, and we also received it immediately. This, of course, was a point, from which there was virtually no return. At that moment, it would mean having to surrender, and it would be the end, no one could take it upon themselves. However, it is true that the year before that, he had peacefully accepted the disarmament of the territorial defence,” he added. They worked together and established coordination led by Bavčar. He described Janša as a man with genius ideas. “He studied the law on the people’s defence and social self-protection and found this concept within the socialist law. He came to me. It is interesting that the Slovenian army was created within the Ministry of the Interior,” he explained.
The road to independence was paved with many hardships
When Bavčar looks at history, he says that Slovenia has had periods where it needed Austria-Hungary and both Yugoslavias, so that in the end, it was finally able to come to life as an independent country, that joined the European Union and NATO. “There are no forever friends and no forever enemies in international politics, but rather, there is the interest of the state, and the ability of politics to assert them. Is this the Visegrad Group at the moment? The group is not about undermining the European Union, but about dominating within the European Union. As you know, we are in the period of the end of liberal democracy, the importance of nation states,” he added.
Sara Kovač