By: G.B.
The month of June is approaching, when we especially remember the ground-breaking events from the time of Slovenian independence and the defence of our country. A few years ago, a lie began to spread on social networks that Janez Janša, as Minister of Defence during the war for Slovenia, “hid in the basement of Cankar Hall”, while many veterans, “left-wing Slovenes”, bled and died on battlefield.
Of course, this is a structural lie that is also being spread by the media. And because this lie is persistently repeated, it is no surprise that many “little people” who do not know what was going on in 1991 identify with it – even though there is a lot of useful information online in recent years. For example, the portal https://enciklopedija-osamosvojitve.si/, which was recommended to us by Dr Tomaž Kladnik also talks about the republican coordination group that directed the Slovenian defence.
Slovenia’s defence was coordinated by the so-called Republic coordination
According to the website, the Operational Coordination Body for Emergencies, as the Republic Coordination was officially called, was established by the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia on March 18th, 1991, at the suggestion of Janez Janša. In his book Premiki, Janša explains: “This is how we named the task force because of legal diction, which did not allow for a dilemma, but it was practically a body that coordinated all defence and security preparations, and then performed the duties of the Supreme Commander’s Headquarters during the war. According to the Constitution, the role of the Supreme Commander was performed by the Presidency of the Republic, extended by the Prime Minister and the Assembly. The Ministers of Defence, Interior and Foreign Affairs, Information and the Commander or Chief of the Republic Staff for Territorial Defence and Civil Protection also took part in the work of the Presidency.” In addition to the Ministers of Defence, Interior and Foreign Affairs and the Commander of the Republic Staff for Territorial Defence and Civil Protection, the broader coordination group also included: Tone Krkovič, Vinko Beznik, Miloš Bregar, Miha Brejc, Pavle Čelik, Milan Domadenik, Marjan Fekonja, Franc Kokoravec, Jože Kolenc, Bogdan Koprivnikar, Lojze Kuralt, Danijel Kuzma, Andrej Lovšin, Rudi Merljak, Stane Praprotnik, Janko Stušek, Bojan Ušeničnik, Anton Vereš, Ludvik Zvonar, and Franci Žnidaršič. In the operational work of the group, individual duties were also performed by: Lojze Bogataj, Janez Švajncer, Zoran Klemenčič, Miha Butara, Dominik Grmek, Bogdan Avbar, and others.
In addition to the Republic Coordination Group, seven coordination subgroups were established to coordinate armed and civil defence measures, the police and intelligence activities at the provincial level. At that time, they were led by: Ljubljana region: Starc; Lower Carniola region: Albin Gutman; Upper Carniola region: Hočevar; East Styria region: Silvo Komar; West Styria region: Viktor Kranjc; South Littoral region: Anton Žele; and North Littoral region: Vidrih. Immediately after its establishment, the working groups of the Operational Coordination Body began to draft versions of measures in the event of the use of YA force, and in the Territorial Defence (TO) they began experimental mobilisations of units by regions. The practical test of the operation of the TO was the exercise Shift 91, in which the TO successfully tested the operation on the entire territory of the Republic of Slovenia. At the same time, they began to draw up mobilisation plans for the provinces and issue orders to begin the mobilisation of individual TO military units. During the war days and nights, the Republic Coordination was directly led by the Republic Secretaries or Ministers of Defence and the Minister of the Interior, Janez Janša and Igor Bavčar. They made all the most important decisions, which the Republic Coordination submitted for implementation. In the most important cases, both ministers communicated their decisions directly to the field to individual commanders of the TO or operational subgroups, the Encyclopaedia of Independence writes.
As is well known, the Republic Coordination had been occupying almost continuously since May, especially at the beginning of the open YPA aggression on June 26th, 1991. When a helicopter shot down over Ljubljana in the evening of June 27th, 1991, the coordination was still in peacetime location in the building of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, due to which it was not safe from airstrikes. Only a few days later, due to the danger of attacks, it withdrew to safer rooms in the basement. Of course, the Republic Coordination was in fact the headquarters where the Slovenian defence in the fight against the occupying Yugoslav People’s Army was coordinated, as no army can successfully defend itself without proper coordination.
Is the answer in disarming the TO?
So why such lies? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in bad conscience due to Milan Kučan’s tacit support for the disarmament of the TO in May 1990. As is well known, Kučan took over the presidency from his predecessor Janez Stanovnik at the end of April that year, shortly after the second round of elections, thus making him Supreme Commander of the Slovenian Armed Forces. The YPA’s plan to confiscate weapons from “unsuitable” TO units throughout the former Yugoslavia was apparently drawn up earlier, and the contractors were just waiting for a period of “interregnum” or handing over of business when action would not be possible. In Slovenia, this happened in mid-May, when the Demos government had not yet been elected. However, the intelligence services have already reported that the weapons of the TO and the administrative bodies of defence are being confiscated, claiming that they are being taken out of the TO warehouses and transferred to the YA warehouses. At that time, the republican headquarters of the TO was still led by Lieutenant General Ivan Hočevar, who was loyal to Belgrade. As early as December 1989, he ordered his subordinate staffs to draw up “plans to provide the necessary storage space within the YPA facilities”. The task was marked as strictly confidential and was part of the 1991-1995 TO plans. In its order, the Republican Headquarters of the TO did not seek information on the missing storage space, but exact figures on the quantities and types of weapons and ammunition stored by the TO outside YPA facilities, therefore, it was clear that the content of the task contradicted the reasoning, writes the Encyclopaedia of Independence.
Thus, in the second half of April 1990, the TO headquarters handed over to the army obsolete and trophy weapons, which the TO units no longer intended to use and only took up space in the warehouses. However, Belgrade was not satisfied with that. At the end of April 1990, a session of the SFRY Military Council was held in Belgrade, at which they adopted the basis for the disarmament of the TO and explained to high-ranking military officers the anti-revolutionary and anti-Yugoslav nature of political change in Slovenia and Croatia. General Hočevar also attended the meeting and, following a written order received from Belgrade in early May, appointed Drago Ožbolt, chief of the SRS TO headquarters, who had similar experience in “suppressing the counterrevolution” in Kosovo. He wrote and signed order no. SZ 625/1-90 and sent it to the commanders of 13 provincial TO headquarters in Slovenia. “They had to finish and hand over the weapons of the TO by 7 pm on May 19th, 1990, at the latest. The elders in the TO headquarters mostly accepted the order to transfer weapons and began to inform the new republican leadership, so on the afternoon of May 19th, 1990, the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia sent a confidential telegram to the municipalities to stop handing over weapons. This was, of course, very late, because weapons were not yet handed over in the 12 municipals TO headquarters, and part of the weapons and ammunition of the 30th Development Group or the Protection Brigade remained. The generals of the Yugoslav People’s Army were more or less satisfied with the operation, as most of them succeeded. In addition, they disarmed the entire Croatian Armed Forces (more than 200,000 weapons were confiscated) and most of the BiH Armed Forces, but some Herzegovinian municipalities, where mostly Croats lived, refused to hand over their weapons. Most weapons were confiscated from the Slovenian TO, so a secret project was launched to form the National Defence Manoeuvring Structure.”
It is therefore obvious that the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia acted very late in disarming the TO, which raises the question of whether this was deliberate silent support for Belgrade.
The planned attack on the barracks was not disputed
What about a so-called planned attack on Ljubljana’s barracks, which is being misused by left-wing circles as a kind of proof that the then Minister of Defence Janša endangered the security of the civilian population? “The execution of the order is not being discussed in the army. Not at all during the war. In concrete terms, as in all of them, it was explicitly stated that the civilian population is adequately protected during combat operations,” explained Dr Kladnik. Obviously, there is also resentment because some provincial commanders were replaced during the war for Slovenia, including in the Ljubljana province of TO, where the defence forces missed and did not prevent the tank from dropping out of the Vrhnika barracks on the night of June 27th, 1991.
The fact is that despite some mistakes and delays, the Slovenian defence was very well organised. “In the entire preparations and course of the fighting until the departure of the YA from Slovenia, the decision to establish coordination groups at the provincial level, which coordinated combat activities between the TO, ONZ and CO, proved to be an extremely good decision. The organisation of preliminary training also proved to be very good, especially the organisation and implementation of the Kobra-91 staff war exercise and the Premik-91 tactical exercise, as TO units trained in manoeuvring throughout the Republic of Slovenia, which enabled timely and efficient use of smallest units. The continuous operation of the command-and-control system was ensured – from the republican, provincial coordination to the units and vice versa, which was also a consequence of the new system of Racal communications, which was not provided at all levels of command. In the coordination groups, data on the enemy were combined, which enabled effective defence in the implementation of its specific combat activities,” writes the already mentioned online Encyclopaedia of Independence.
This, of course, means that we must not neglect any of the members in the defence: neither Slovenian soldiers and police officers (plus members of the civil defence, health workers, doctors, firefighters, members of the CZ…), nor the headquarters that coordinated the defence and in which Minister of Defence Janša also participated. The latter was the target of harsh criticism on July 2nd, 1991, when he “missed” a meeting of the presidency chaired by Kučan’s deputy Ciril Zlobec – that day, Kučan was at a meeting with German Foreign Minister and Chairman of the KEVS (now the OSCE) Hans Dietrich Genscher near Villach in Austria. Therefore, left-wing circles that were partial to the Yugoslav People’s Army even spread rumours that the military coup that day took place not only in Belgrade but also in Ljubljana, saying that Janša and Interior Minister Igor Bavčar did not obey the presidency. Well, the truth is completely different, because on that day the YPA aggression reached its peak, and the Slovenian Armed Forces achieved an important turnaround, due to which the YPA was ready to negotiate, and which led to negotiations in Brijuni a few days later. Several factors were decisive: the success of the TO in the Kraków Forest, the intrusion of the parent soldiers into the Serbian Assembly, the rebellion of bare-handed Zagreb citizens in an attempt to manoeuvre the YPA from the Novo Zagreb barracks, on that day, the newly appointed President of the Presidency of the SFRY, Stipe Mesić, and a member of the Presidency, Dr Vasil Tupurkovski visited Slovenia at the same time…
In short, in any case, the claim that Janša was hiding in the basement of Cankar Hall is a great fabrication and lie.