By Metod Berlec
March 1991 began in Slovenia with a discussion of the Constitutional Commission of the Slovene Assembly, which supported a proposal for the military training of Slovene recruits in the Slovene Territorial Defence (TO) and police, and the transformation of the infamous State Security Service into the Security Information Service.
As Aleš Žužek wrote in the article “Franco Juri against the redirection of recruits to the Slovenian TO”, which was published on the gov.si website, the Slovene Assembly already, at its January session, demanded from the Slovenian government, or then still officially the executive council, that a moratorium be established on all referrals of Slovene recruits to the Yugoslav People’s Army before the adoption of a new Slovene constitution. The government therefore prepared a working draft to amend Articles 96 and 97 of the then Slovenian Constitution on People’s Defence. The changes provided for the military training of Slovene recruits in the Slovene Territorial Defence and police.
Supporters and opponents of the Slovenian army
On March 1st, 1991, the draft of the constitutional law was discussed by members of the Constitutional Commission of the Slovenian Assembly. Delo newspaper reported that that day mainly two views clashed. The first was represented by Franco Juri, a member of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, who opposed the proposed constitutional law, saying that the moratorium would help demilitarise the country, not strengthen the military apparatus in Slovenia. The opposite view was taken by Ciril Kolešnik, a member of the Slovenian Christian Democrats. He said that they understood the moratorium as a freeze on the departure of recruits to the Yugoslav People’s Army, which of course does not mean that Slovenia would not have its own army.
Slovenia without a response from the federal government
The draft of the constitutional law was also explained to the MPs by the Secretary of Defence in the Demos government, Janez Janša. Among other things, he said that no resolution of the assembly spoke of a moratorium in the service of the TO and Ministry of Interior, and that the Slovene political leadership, during discussions on the minimum functioning of the federation, proposed to the federal government in Belgrade that the Yugoslav People’s Army be gradually withdrawn from Slovenia within three years. During this time, Slovenia would finance the most urgent functions of the army. Slovenia’s proposal was also that the YPA vacate one third of the facilities in Slovenia by August 1st, 1991. The federal government had not yet responded to these proposals, the defence minister said. Before the vote in the Constitutional Commission, Janša emphasised that the dilemma was completely clear: would they accept the moratorium and the recruits would not go to the Yugoslav People’s Army in March, or would it be the other way around. Despite the opposition of some anarcholiberals and post-communists, the Constitutional Commission then voted in favour of the draft of the constitutional law and submitted it to the assembly as a proposal.
Assessment of Slovenian independence
As Peter Colnar wrote in the Slovene Chronicle of the Millennium, on March 1st, 1991, a good two months after the plebiscite, Croatian television published a lengthy article on the situation in Slovenia by a journalist who judged that there were differences between Slovene parties only on the question of how the independence should look like, that one no longer hears of secession, but of separation. According to her, the only party that has not yet proposed a resolution on separation is the LDS party (former ZSMS), which also resents the government for not yet calculating how much Slovenian independence costs. (Of course, it is worth remembering the president of the ZSMS/LDS, Jožef Školč, who constantly protested in the Assembly and threw spanner in the works of Demos in his efforts for Slovenian independence.) The journalist said that in Slovenia they first talk about dismantling, only then about assembly, perhaps also with Croatia, as it used to be in Austria-Hungary. She ended the post with two quotes. First, there was a quote from the then more pronounced left wing weekly Mladina, she wrote that the path from Yugoslavia leads through Belgrade, where Slovenian politics should drive high politics, not parade around Europe. Then she quoted the left wing malcontent Miha Kovač, who wrote that we Slovenes jumped into the pool, but we do not know if we can swim and if there is water in it at all. The journalist concluded that Slovenians are convinced that we can do both.
The end of the SDV as a political police
On March 1st, 1991, the new organisational scheme of the SDV (State Security Service), implemented by Miha Brejc, came into force. The latter was appointed head of the then infamous SDV by the then Secretary of the Interior Igor Bavčar. The law set a new name for the service, the Security Information Service (VIS). For the first time, the law also defined in more detail the scope of work of the service and the special methods and means and powers of VIS employees, and the law also contained some restrictive provisions from the point of view of personal data protection. Moreover, the fact that there was no provision in the law that would direct the operation of the service to the internal area was very important. This was also the formal end of the political police. The law did not allow covert investigations, the use of wiretapping equipment, the placement of misinformation, etc. Another important novelty was that only the court could authorise the use of wiretapping in phone conversations. Brejc later wrote in detail about this in his book “Intermediate Time – Security Information Service and the Formation of the New Slovenian State 1990-1993”.
Moratorium for Slovenian recruits
On 6th and 7th of March 1991, at a joint session of the Slovene Assembly, the delegates discussed the draft of the constitutional law in the field of People’s Defence, by imposing a moratorium on sending recruits to the Yugoslav People’s Army from Slovenia. According to the then Republic Secretary for People’s Defence Janez Janša, in 1991 around 12,000 recruits should go to serve in the Yugoslav People’s Army. The implementation of the moratorium on referral to the Yugoslav People’s Army “would make it easier to enforce the shortened military service and speed up the independence of the Republic of Slovenia. A surplus of recruits in 1991 who would not be sent to military service could be sent in the following years. In part, this problem would also be solved by introducing a civil service.” Janša therefore proposed that they only adopt a moratorium on sending recruits to the Yugoslav People’s Army, that is, that the March generation’s appeals be revoked. Well, despite that, some who came mainly from “southern families” decided to still go serve in the YPA.
Money for defence and opposition
As Peter Colnar wrote in the Slovene Chronicle of the Millennium, the financing of the Slovene defence has always aroused opposition from some. This was also the case after the adoption of the constitutional amendments on March 8th, 1991, when the Deputy Secretary of State for People’s Defence Jelko Kacin, Mile Šetinc (LDS), Milan Aksentijević (a representative of the Armed Forces or the Yugoslav People’s Army in the United Labour Assembly), and Ivan Kuhar, Chairman of the Defence Commission gathered on Žarišče TV Slovenija. The topic of the show was very hot, as the delegates adopted the republic’s budget in March, in which the delegates of the SDP and LDS, as well as some socialists, demanded a sharp reduction in funds for their own defence. Kacin defended the allocated funds for defence with all his might, especially with the fact that in 1990 the YPA was allocated 9 billion, and for 1991 the proposal of the Secretariat for “People’s Defence” amounted to just over 6 billion, of which 2.9 billion was allocated for the YPA, and 2.6 billion dinars for defence spending in Slovenia.
In short, similar to today’s representatives of the left opposition (LMŠ, SD, Levica, and SAB) which oppose the law on providing funds for investments in the Slovenian Army in 2021 to 2026, their post-communist predecessors in 1991 opposed funds for the Slovenian TO, that is just a few months before a key event in Slovene history – the Slovene independence.