By: Peter Truden
Years ago, a well-known researcher of the Udba archives, Igor Omerza revealed that in the previous regime, the political top led the then secret communist police Udba. In the independent state, however, many of its leading “employees” remained in positions in the political, economic, and social spheres.
And they are still trying to install some in new parties, such as in the party of Robert Golob’s Gibanje Svoboda.
Once mighty, today “benefactors”
Interestingly, during the time of the independent state, the former bosses are trying to present themselves to the public as protocol leaders of an insignificant amateur society, as Omerza said in an interview in 2013 for Demokracija magazine. But let us add that, as a result, all their subordinates, agents and co-workers have been trying for years to present themselves only as members of so-called civil initiatives and the like. In short, benefactors, humanitarians.
Udba was the striking fist of the Communist Party, its goal was “the destruction of the enemies of the working people, sometimes called ‘devils’, and thus the realisation of the full and undisputed power of the party”. They even had their own Udba textbook, in which the following categories of agency were written: agent, resident, and informant. Each category had a precise definition, including tasks.
The biggest at the top of the party
Igor Omerza has so far revealed many names of former Udba collaborators based on documentary material. He also noted that the Slovenian Udba had the longest history compared to the rest of Yugoslavia. It was already founded in 1941.
The biggest udba members were at the top of the party. The leader was Edvard Kardelj, who was also hierarchically above the leading Slovene communists who studied at the Lenin School in the Soviet Union as professional revolutionaries. Kardelj also taught at this school, today we know him as the grandfather of Igor Šoltes, former president of the Court of Audit, then president of the failed party Verjamem, through which he managed to become an MEP and now one of the leaders in SD.
Among the leading Udba members was also Ivan Maček – Matija, who led the VOS, which was later renamed Udba. The VOS was founded in 1941 by Kardelj and Zdenka Kidrič (Armić), the wife of Boris Kidrič, whose monument is still worshiped by the leaders of the SD party. Maček was the grey eminence of Udba.
Zdenko Roter, a former adviser to Milan Kučan and a former professor at the Faculty of Sociology, Political Science and Journalism (FSPN), was also an employee of Udba. As a servant of the Udba, he specialised in persecuting priests.
Silvo Gorenc was also in Udba. At the end of February 1992, he was the head of the Federal Udba in Belgrade, and in independent Slovenia he supported the SD party and the fighters’ union for all these years. He drew attention to himself at the SD congress in 2012 by calling on the party to support then-President Danilo Türk in the presidential election.
Before Gorenc, Kardelj’s man Edo Brajnik – Štefan and Egon Conradi were also important in the federal Udba. After Gorenc, the federal Udba was also led by Martin Košir, Dimitrij Kraigher and, after a few years’ break, Ivan Eržen. The latter was also the head of the Slovenian Udba during the JBTZ affair (Janša, Borštnar, Tasič, Zavrl) in 1988.
Janez Zemljarič played a big role. Omerza wrote about this in more detail in a book entitled 88 Stairs to Hell with the subtitle How Zemljarič’s Janez kidnapped Bato Torodović. The latter lived in Munich, was associated with political migration, and was arrested at the time when Udba was led by Zemljarič. Omerza wrote for Zemljarič that he was “a good executor of the dirty political desires of Tito’s and Kardelj’s clique”.
Omerza also pointed out Stane Dolanc, long-time secretary of the Executive Bureau of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Until the deaths of Tito and Kardelj, he was the executor of their policy. As vice-president of the SFRY presidency, he initiated the JBTZ process in Belgrade on May 20th, 1988. Namely, he informed the army about the Udba find of a military document in Mikro Ada or at Janez Janša. Omerza described this act in detail in his book on JBTZ.
An important member was Tomaž Ertl, associated with Kardelj, Dolanc, and Zemljarič. Ertl is known to have lived in Gorenjska after independence, and SD members visited him regularly. Former Minister of the Interior Rado Bohinc was also a regular guest. Moreover, some SD members collected various data for Ertl on their own to guide him. According to our sources, this was still the case around the year 2000. Ertl, the former head of the secret political police or Udba, was awarded the state medal in 2010 by Danilo Türk.
Confrontation with Janša
Omerza also revealed about Ertl that at a secret meeting of militiamen and Udba with Milan Kučan in Tacen on April 15th, 1988, he said that Udba preferred to leave the dirty business of arresting Janez Janša to the military judiciary because they knew that the extremely nervous military leaders (Branko Mamula, Veljko Kadijević, Stanislav Brovet and others) would immediately take a bite out of the offered apple. Why did they arrest Janša? Because at that time he announced his candidacy for president of the Association of Socialist Youth of Slovenia and in the programme, he announced the struggle for power, which according to Dolanc was “forever reserved for the circulating and self-reproducing communist elite”.
Criminalist Zvonko Hrastar took part in the arrest of Janez Janša in 1988. His wife, state prosecutor Branka Zobec Hrastar, later wrote an indictment against Janša in a judicial-political construct called Patria.
It is important to know all this about the events after the war of independence in independent Slovenia.
Economy, media
According to media reports, Dragan Isajlović was also a former employee of the Slovenian State Security (SDV or Udba). He is said to be close to Ertl and linked to the SD party. He was also an adviser to Finance Minister Franc Križanič (SD) and is best known to the public as a member of the SDV group, which arrested Janez Janša in 1988. Isajlović later turned into an “entrepreneur”.
Udba or SDV, whatever we call it, also had its tentacles in the media. Slavko Splichal, a professor at the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, is also said to be one of its collaborators. The media also revealed Splichal’s name among Udba’s associates. He had an SDV file. Mitja Meršol, a former journalist and former MP of Janković’s Positive Slovenia, is also said to have worked for Udba.
Politics
Recent events include the entry of Anton Grizold, a former defence minister during the LDS government. Years ago, Igor Omerza revealed Grizold’s Udba dossier. From the documentation of the former SDV, which was found in the Archives of Slovenia by the researcher and publicist Omerza, it is evident that Grizold had the code name Ghana and the number 14000-05883, which according to Udba records means the source of SDV or Udba. Grizold is said to have worked hard to work with the former SDV, his code name was Ghana. And what is Grizold today? He is helping to prepare a defence programme to Robert Golob, president of the Gibanje Svoboda party.
The Pozareport.si portal recently revealed a part of a document from the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (so-called Udba.net), which shows that Slavko Bobovnik, now a retired journalist and before a long-time host of TV Dnevnik and Odmev on RTV Slovenia, was a trusted colleague or a source of former secret political police. The name Stanislav Bobovnik is written in the archives, but all other data (date of birth, place of residence) match Slavko Bobovnik’s data. He was run under the code 0020000-00000, which was the designation for the secret military political police of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (YLA), better known as the KOS.
