By: Sara Kovač
The show Utrip on RTV Slovenija this time took viewers back to the year 1980. Although it is obvious to anyone with European, democratic values that the Tito statue in Velenje belongs in a museum, RTV defended it at all costs, even with nostalgia.
Yugoslavia has long since “disintegrated,” and with delay its totalitarian symbols are also “rotting.” Just days ago in Velenje, the statue of the Balkan butcher Josip Broz Tito was beheaded, an act that can be understood as a sign of democratic awakening. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, symbols and statues tied to the former undemocratic regime have long since vanished from public spaces. The European Union has also reminded Slovenia, in a recent resolution on the criminality of the communist regime in Slovenia, that a democratic European state must clearly distance itself from socialism.
That is why the latest episode of Utrip, broadcast on December 13, 2025, should be seen as a sign of despair, a hysterical attempt to defend something that can no longer be defended. To anyone committed to democracy and European values, it is clear that socialism is obsolete, that in decades of existence it never proved itself, that it inflicted unspeakable suffering, and that depictions tied to it, such as Tito’s statue in Velenje, belong in museums.
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There they should serve as reminders of horrors. Tito is a regime corpse that belongs in the graveyard of history, not “on the plates” of viewers who are even forced to pay for such obscenities. In the latest Utrip, he was staged as a source of nostalgic inspiration – as if the tens of thousands murdered after the war, Goli Otok, and other atrocities were in vain. At the outset, journalist Špela Kožar said that Velenje is Slovenia’s youngest town, recalling that Tito visited it four times and called it a “socialist miracle.”
The programme went on to recall how townspeople built the city through numerous volunteer campaigns. “In the last campaign, in more than 30,000 hours of voluntary work, they paved the road to Šentilj, the very road on which today the beheader of Tito’s statue, Miroslav Pačnik, drives home,” Kožar added. The authors of Utrip are convinced that “without Tito’s support such a town could not have been built.” According to the journalist, citizens collected funds and gave up a day’s wages.
As for Pačnik’s act of beheading, they claimed that “if a Roma had done it, he would already be in prison”, a gross deception. Recall the flood of crimes in recent months and years committed by members of the Roma community, for which no one was held accountable. It is rather the case that members of the ethnic minority are protected more than ordinary citizens. The mass protest after the death of Aleš Šutar, allegedly killed by a Roma, should be understood as the culmination of dissatisfaction among residents of southeastern Slovenia.
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Recently, the only detained suspect for the murder – Sabrijan Jurkovič – was released. They also recalled Miroslav’s public statement that “in democracy there must be no room for worship of totalitarianism,” while in the same breath attributing totalitarian impulses (because of necessary epidemiological measures) to the last government of Janez Janša. Let us remember that social restrictions were a necessity to contain a poorly understood and dangerous coronavirus, and often milder than in some Western democracies, where even leaving one’s home was restricted.
RTV insists that uttering the word Yugoslavia has become almost blasphemous, but according to them, if we had “more foresight,” we would have preserved “many good Yugoslav practices.” Among these they listed self-management, etc. Unlike them, we believe that such relics (especially mental ones) are so numerous that other countries of the former Eastern bloc are overtaking us on the right. High taxes and constant demonisation of entrepreneurship are suffocating the economy. Lately, even Croatia is catching up with us.
The programme went on to touch on problems in healthcare, criticise doctors, lament and demonise the outcome of the referendum on medical euthanasia, celebrate the release of the Roma suspect in Šutar’s murder, sow some fear about a possible future right-wing government, and recall recent court proceedings against Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković. Finally, there was a brief promotion of the ultra-leftist show Marcel and condemnation of European rearmament. At the same time, not a word was heard about any peace appeal to Europe’s chief destabiliser – Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
