Slovenia. Occupation, Repression, Partisan Movement, Collaboration, and Civil War in Historical Research

Traditionalists. Preserving Interpretations of the Liberation Movement

The first group includes historians, including among them some younger ones, who seek to preserve the tradition of researching the liberation movement, especially the partisan units. An important publication outlet for these scholars has been, and continues to be, the ‘Partisan Book Club’ series (Partizanski knjižni klub), coordinated by the Association of Writers of the History of the National Liberation Struggle in Slovenia (mentioned above). More than forty books have been published in this series since 1992, the last of which appeared after 2010. Based on extensive archival materials as well as oral sources, these works are detailed and thorough overviews of the activities of partisan units or military zones. They are largely descriptive and chronical in style. Marjan Linasi researched the Slovene partisans in Carinthia (both the Yugoslav part and the southern part of Austria); Tomaž Teropšič studied the military tactics, weapons, and equipment of four armies that were active in the occupied Slovenian part of Styria; and Marjan žnidarič reassessed the German and Hungarian occupation in Southern Styria, Carniola, and Prekmurje, as well as the activities of the liberation movement in these regions.^[29] Several historians of the OF with a more local focus belong to this first group, such as Ivo Križnar (working on the district of Jesenice in Slovenia’s northwestern-most alpine corner), and Živa Kraigher (researching the Pivka region, about 50 kilometres east of Trieste).^[30] It is also important to mention the research undertaken by France Filipič on the Slovenes in the Mauthausen concentration camp.^[31] Filipič is the author of several works on the history of the Communist Party of Slovenia before the Second World War, and was himself interned in Mauthausen in 1944-45.

Reversalists. Anticommunism as a Perpetuated Motif

The second group of authors is stronger and more organized, and includes those who seek to justify collaboration as having been a necessary means of preservation for the Slovenians. According to them, Slovenian (Yugoslav) communists were only an offshoot of Stalin, while the country was engulfed in communist totalitarianism for the entire period between 1941 and 1991. Forgetting the victims of the fascist and national socialist occupations, these authors depict collaborators and their family members as a group unified by being victims of communist terror. In this kind of new ‘history-writing’, the resistance against the occupying forces is explained as a ‘communist revolution’ and ‘a war against one’s own people’ (Jože Dežman).^[32]

One of the most influential representatives of this group is Tamara Griesser Pečar. In her book on the ‘torn-apart nation’, she does refer to the most important archival materials, but, in doing so, bases her argument on the assumption that the leadership of the liberation movement (OF)—which she wrongly equates with the Communist Party—started a civil war in September 1941, when it decided to turn the Slovene People’s Liberation Assembly into a state-building organ and issued the decree with which it pointed out that, during the ‘time of foreign occupation’, any organization that fights for freedom independently of the OF, was detrimental.^[33] Griesser Pečar forgets that the Slovene lands were divided between three occupying forces, all of whom sketched out plans to wipe out the Slovenians as a national group, and that a part of the Slovenians collaborated militarily with the occupiers. In fact, she reduces the events during the war only to the struggle between the so-called revolutionary and counter-revolutionary (Slovenian) camps. She assigns all responsibility and guilt exclusively to the former.

Between January and July 2008, Slovenia assumed the presidency of the Council of the European Union, as the first of the new EU member states. In September 2008, upon the initiative of the right-wing government led by Janez Janša, a day was installed that condemned totalitarian systems. The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism has, however, successfully been commemorating the suffering of the East European societies, depicting these societies exclusively as victims of two totalitarian regimes, without any historical responsibility of their own.^[34]

A few months earlier, at the end of April 2008, the Slovenian government had established a Study Centre for National Reconciliation (Študijski center za narodno spravo), which operated at first from within the Ministry of Justice. The ‘About Us’ page of the Centre’s website explains the reason for its establishment as follows:

‘In autumn 2005, the history section of the Sector for Redressing of Injustices and National Reconciliation started to operate within the framework of the Ministry of Justice. Its fundamental task was examination of all forms of violence and violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms against the Slovenian nation and members of other ethnic and religious communities in Slovenia during specific periods caused by all three totalitarian systems: fascism, communism and Nazism. End of April 2008 the Government of Republic of Slovenia established the Study Centre for National Reconciliation. The reason for this was in an objective need for increase of state activity in the above-mentioned area and its commitment to objective examination of historical facts and realisation of the conditions for national reconciliation. […] Thus, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia wanted to follow in the footsteps of Central and East European countries (e.g. Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia and Hungary) which have undergone a similar historical experience as Slovenia. […] The study centre creates and implements conditions for realising national reconciliation among Slovenians. […] Accepting the democratic Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia meant a break with the totalitarian system, which systematically violated human rights and fundamental freedoms of individual. That is, also the fundamental norms of a society.’^[35]

Between May 2008 and December 2014, the Centre received more than 2.7 million euros from the Ministry of Justice and the Slovenian Research Agency, which, measured in terms of research funding, is a huge sum of money. When, in November 2008, the right-wing government was replaced by a left-centre coalition, the then-minister of justice, Aleš Zalar, maintained (in January 2009) that the earlier government decision to establish the ‘Sector for Redressing of Injustices and National Reconciliation’ under the patronage of the Ministry of Justice was open to dispute. Namely, because of this decision, the employees of this ‘Sector’, working from within the ministry, had become public employees. The prime minister of the new left-centre coalition, the social democrat Borut Pahor (who would, in December 2012, become president of the Republic of Slovenia) disagreed with Zalar, and the Centre has continued to receive the same amount of money, even when all other research institutions were struck by the financial and economic crisis and saw their budgets cut. There is one more detail of note: although the number of scholars employed at the Institute of Contemporary History was cut by more than 25%, through forced early retirements and the termination of contracts of doctoral researchers upon completion of their PhDs, the number of employees at the Study Centre remained unchanged. To this day, and through the administrations of the three succeeding Slovenian governments, its activities and financing have never been topicalized.

The Study Centre is supposed to examine all three totalitarian regimes (i.e. fascism, nazism, and communism), but its staff almost exclusively examines the violence of communism both during and after the war. The title of its research programme between 2009 and 2016 is indicative of this tendency: ‘The Tyranny of Totalitarian Communism in Slovenia 1941-1990’. The project leader was Tamara Griesser Pečar. With regard to the war years, the project summary maintains that:

‘Slovenia is the only member state of the EU that in 20^th century experienced three totalitarian regimes: Fascism, Nazism and Communism. The Communist regime lasted much longer than the others: from the end of the World War II till the first democratic elections in April 1990. […] The aim of the programme is a comprehensive approach to the problems of Communism in Slovenia on the same level as those of Nazism and Fascism. The Communist regime in Slovenia came to power in 1945 through a revolution that had begun already in 1941. The Communists saw in the occupation the only chance to gain power. An umbrella organisation of resistance called ‘Liberation Front’ was organized that monopolized resistance against the occupiers. That led to a civil war.’^[36]

Among other aspects, the Centre’s aim is ‘to show in its entirety the revolutionary violence during the Second World War in the single Slovenian provinces’: that is, the violence of the participants in the liberation struggle (or the ‘revolution’) against actual and alleged enemies. Yet it is unconcerned with the violence directed by the collaborative movements against members of the liberation movement, or with the violence of all three occupying forces.^[37]

A new programme has begun in 2017, which proposes to study the violence of all three totalitarian systems in twentieth-century Slovenia. The project leader, once again, is Tamara Griesser Pečar. The project summary states, among other things, that:

‘It became increasingly evident that for the understanding of the Communist system it is necessary to examine the characteristics of all totalitarian systems and phenomena on the territory inhabited by Slovenians in the 20th century, even across the border. […] Crimes that were committed on Slovenian territory after the end of the WW II, even from the view of standard norms, cannot be separated from the pre-war and wartime normative framework.’^[38]

As a plan, this is to be regarded as a step forward in the attempt to make sense of Slovenian history in the twentieth century.

The Centre’s series ‘Documents and Testimonies’ (Dokumenti in pričevanja), which is supposed to contain documents and testimonies about ‘the varying forms of violence that the totalitarian systems caused in Slovenia in the twentieth century’,^[39] has, until now, published only documents on postwar violence in labour camps and on other postwar events.^[40] Yet another series, entitled ‘Totalitarianisms—questions and challenges’ (Totalitarizmi—vprašanja in izzivi), has gathered together volumes which originate in conferences organized by the Study Centre. I will mention just one. In April 2008, during the time of the Slovenian EU presidency, a public hearing took place in Brussels under the title ‘Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes’.^[41] In the following year, the contributions of the Slovenian participants were published in Slovenian under the title ‘Totalitarianisms in the Slovenian Lands in the 20th century’. The collection was intended to ‘present to the Slovenian public in one location the workings of all three totalitarian systems that, in the past century, marked the Slovene space and the Slovene humans’.^[42] The Centre then published a bilingual collection on ‘Slovenia in 20th Century: The Legacy of Totalitarian Regimes’ in 2016.^[43]

In conclusion—and disregarding the fact that their focus is almost exclusively confined to one topic—the Centre’s research, with rare exceptions, does not correspond to any standards of scholarly work.^[44] This research has not had any wider echoes among the Slovenian public, except among the rather small groups of those who remain convinced that the Home Guard and other collaborating forces were, in fact, fighters for a free Slovenia, because they were attempting to protect it against communism. According to this view, collaboration with the occupiers was, under the given conditions, a necessary evil. The Centre’s staff has achieved a greater public resonance by actively participating in the disclosure of so-called hidden graves from the period immediately following the war, as, for example, the disclosure of corpses in the St Barbara mining pit at Huda Jama in southern Styria.^[45]

One of the first and most resonant of the numerous initiatives in the framework of this ‘new history’ was the 1998 exhibition and book ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’.^[46] Both exhibition and book dealt with events in Slovenia between 1945 and 1990, and both were prepared upon the initiative of the established Slovenian writer Drago Jančar.^[47] In March 1997, Jančar published an article in the newspaper Delo, in which he expressed criticism of the permanent exhibition in the Museum for Contemporary History of Slovenia (Muzeju novejše zgodovine Slovenije) in Ljubljana, writing that it failed to show the ‘dark sides’ of the socialist era in a sufficiently convincing manner, in particular with respect to the postwar killings and the trials against actual and alleged enemies of the communist government. Instead, he maintained, the part of the exhibition entitled ‘Land of Workers and Peasants’ foregrounded the positive aspects of the postwar period.^[48]

Given that the postwar decades were inextricably linked with the events of the war itself, several of the contributors to the exhibition and the book reached back into the war years, paying particular attention to the questions of civil war and so-called revolutionary violence. In this way, they triggered a broadly polemical reaction among historians, particularly with regard to the interpretations of some of the collection’s authors, such as the claim by the historian Vasko Simoniti that the totalitarian era of communist repression lasted from 1941 to 1990. Several of the most established Slovenian historians, who had researched this era themselves, objected publicly to this assertion. In 2008, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the exhibition, the then-director of the Museum, Jože Dežman, maintained that the authors of the exhibition ‘put down milestones and disseminated these milestones’, and that the critical scholars, including three of the most important Slovenian historians—Jože Pirjevec (University of Koper, and professor emeritus at the University of Padua), Božo Repe, and Dušan Nećak (both professors at Ljubljana University)—were simply ‘coated-over apparatchiks’. As the most important contributors to this exhibition, Dežman named Milko Mikola and Tamara Griesser-Pečar (members of staff at the then newly founded Study Centre for National Reconciliation), as well as the former minister of justice and founder of the Centre, Lovro Šturm.^[49]

Differentiating Perspectives, Asking New Questions

The most interesting group of historians working on the Second World War are those who have sought to take research forward. Among them, there are younger scholars and those who started publishing in the 1970s and 1980s and whose work progressed throughout these decades. It is this research which has brought Slovenian history-writing to the eye-level of European standards and which represents its qualitative development. I would add here that the work of many of the historians mentioned in the first part of this article, from Metod Mikuž onward, maintains its quality and significance even today. The lacunae of these studies from before 1985/1990 can be attributed to a lack of access to significant archival sources, not only in Slovenia, but also abroad—in Italy and the Soviet Union / Russia, but partly also in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany—as well as to the inherent opportunism towards the regime, which needs to be duly deciphered.

Among the more significant works in this third group is Bojan Godeša’s book ‘Who is not With Us is Against Us’, published in 1995, but containing research results that he was already gathering in the mid-1980s. It focuses on the relations between the occupiers, the OF, and the counter-revolutionaries on the one hand, and the Slovenian intellectual elite on the other, assessing the latter’s responses to the challenges brought by war and occupation. Godeša attempts to understand how many among them chose to favour sides among the various Slovenian groups, how many attempted to evade any decision, and what their respective motivations were. There has thus been strong evidence for more than twenty years to demonstrate how the events of the war in the Slovenian lands can be regarded as an intertwining of multiple and at times contradictory processes, largely in the contexts of occupation, liberation struggle, revolution, civil war, and collaboration.^[50] Godeša later published another groundbreaking monograph on the role of the prewar political elites at the beginning of the occupation. In it, he discusses the activities of the Slovene People’s Party (Slovenska ljudska stranka, SLS) during one of the most fateful turning points in modern Slovenian history—the events connected with the beginning of foreign occupation in April 1941—through the prism of three of its key protagonists: the long-time leader Anton Korošec, who died in 1940; his successor Franc Kulovec, who was killed in the bombing of Belgrade on 6 April 1941; and Marko Natlačen, who was killed in October 1942 by the Security and Intelligence Service of the OF (Varnostno Obveščevalna Služba, VOS) upon the accusation of collaboration. A critical approach to the sources indicated that, contrary to what had been hitherto believed, the largely clerical leadership of the pro-Catholic Slovene People’s Party had attempted to establish a collaborative engagement with the Axis powers from its first contact with them, and had poured all its forces into the search for a solution to the Slovene question, in accordance with the framework of the racist and totalitarian Nazi ‘new order’. Godeša challenged the thesis that had hitherto been dominant, even among historians, that the majority of those who collaborated with the occupying forces in spite of the instructions of the Slovenian politicians in the Yugoslav emigré government, were motivated to do so by their wish to act as a bulwark against communism and were, in fact, proponents of a western-style parliamentary democracy. Godeša offered empirical proof that this was not always the case, and it is important to add that during the 1930s the Slovene People’s Party—by far the strongest political force in the Slovenian lands—had operated strongly exclusionist policies. Upon the occupation of Yugoslavia they were prepared to collaborate with the occupier, despite the fact that the Italian fascist regime had, since its ascent to power in 1922, exercised what they called a ‘policy of ethnic bonification’, or cultural genocide against the Slovene population in Italy. Defying all evidence, the proponents of the SLS still counted on being able to keep a part of their influence and power in the Italian-occupied Province of Ljubljana, and acted accordingly.^[51]

Vida Deželak Barič, in her monograph on the organization and politics of the Communist Party of Slovenia (CPS) from the attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941 to the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, establishes that, in April 1941, the CPS stepped into the political arena as a marginal party with fewer than 1,300 members, and as an integral part of the centrally organized Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), which was a section of the Komintern. These factors significantly influenced its work and direction, which were in line with the interests of the revolution and the state interests of the Soviet Union. Behind it lay twenty years of clandestine illegal work, which proved to be useful when the war came, not only in coordinating action against the aggressor, but also in the domestic context, as it proved capable of taking over the leading role in the Slovenian liberation movement.^[52]

In her book on the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People, Eva Mally discusses the groups that were active within it, with attention to their programmes, organizational structures and the relations between these groups after March 1943, when the OF was no longer formally a coalition, but became a unified organization under the leadership of the Communist Party.^[53] She dedicates a chapter to the treatment of the OF in Slovenian historiography, and in the public and political spheres, after 1990. Here, she stresses that she finds it difficult to agree with the common perception among scholars and the Slovenian public that ‘for the end of the war it is not possible to use the label “liberation”, as allegedly one repression was exchanged for another’:

‘Even though the Second World War was an era of many contradictory events and the Slovenian People’s Liberation Struggle did have dark sides, the CPS at the beginning of the war was only a marginal party. The Slovenian people, however, because of its antifascist orientation responded so massively to its call into the resistance movement, as beyond the communist one there was no considerable other initiative towards revolt. The liberation struggle, thus, first of all was a struggle of the Slovenian people, united in the Liberation Front, which was indeed unique because of its dimensions, as it was one of the strongest resistance movements in occupied Europe.’^[54]

The question of collaboration and the Home Guards (Domobranstvo) has continued to interest Boris Mlakar (mentioned above) in particular, whose foundational work was only published in 2003, despite research beginning at the start of the 1980s. He demonstrates a broad knowledge about questions of collaboration in Yugoslavia and wider Europe.^[55] In 2002, Tone Ferenc, the most prolific Slovenian scholar on the topic, published a monograph with the telling title ‘Dies Irae’. Using a broad range of source materials, he analysed the role of the members of the Voluntary Anticommunist Militia (MVAC) and of the Slovenian Chetniks. In autumn 1943, after the capitulation of Italy, a significant proportion of those who were taken captives by partisans were liquidated, with or without a preceding trial. In his book, Ferenc deals also with topics that had received little prior attention, including, for example, the communication of the Italian occupying powers with the Chetnik forces, the MVAC forces, and with the partisans.^[56]

Other significant recent works include Martin Premk’s study of those military units that, after the war, were outlawed and attempted to act against the new regime;^[57] as well as assessments by Gorazd Bajc and Blaž Torkar of the relations with the Western Allies, with a focus on their missions with the Slovenian partisans and the intelligence services. These studies are based on both Slovenian and Yugoslav archives, and British and American ones. Beside the problems involved in reconciling these relationships with the predominantly communist Slovenian liberation movement, these relations also foreground questions regarding alterations to the Yugoslav (Slovenian) borders with Italy and with Austria.^[58]

A significant step forward for Slovene historiography on the war was also taken in the field of the history of everyday life. Mojca Šorn writes on everyday life in Ljubljana under German occupation, and her starting point is a letter written in January 1945 by a Ljubljana woman, when the city’s inhabitants risked freezing to death:

‘In the town, almost all wooden fences are gone. […] I sincerely thank you for the buckwheat and corn flour that you sent. We will gratefully think about you when eating the (hard boiled corn) mush we make from it.’^[59]

Sabine Rutar has contributed several important works on the history of the Second World War in Slovenia which focus on labour relations and explore the local social contexts of the economic exploitation of mining industries during the war. Among her case studies are the coalmines of the Zasavje region (Trbovlje) and the lead and zinc mine in Mežica. These mines are situated in the German-occupied regions of Southern Styria and Carinthia, respectively.^[60]

On a different but analogous note, Božidar Jezernik analyses the everyday life, if you can call it that, of the inmates of German and Italian concentration camps.^[61] Upon its publication in 1983, the original Slovenian edition of ‘Struggle for Survival’ gave rise to several polemical responses as well as resistance by former camp inmates, since, unlike earlier authors, Jezernik openly wrote about disagreements among inmates, about hunger and the fight for food, about sexuality, relationships with the guards, contacts with the local people, and psychological pressures.^[62] He thereby shed light not only on the life of Slovenes in Italian camps, but also spoke out about ‘silenced’ aspects of the everyday life of the deported inhabitants of the Province of Ljubljana in 1942 and 1943, a topic already difficult enough to articulate, given its inherent brutality and inhumanity.

Another important contribution was made by the collective work of twenty-four scholars from the Institute for Contemporary History—among them Tone Ferenc, Boris Mlakar, Bojan Godeša, Vida Deželak Barič and Damijan Guštin—who compiled a comprehensive ‘Modern History of Slovenia’, which incorporated extensive overviews of the Second World War.^[63] And finally, in a recent initiative, scholars gathered at the Museum for Modern History in Ljubljana, on the symbolic date of 9 May 2016, to discuss questions relating to remembrance and war memorials.^[64]

A new approach also characterizes the book ‘Violence during the War and its Aftermath’, in which the authors focus particularly on the roles of individual victims. They document, for example, the fate of hostages and their families, deported from occupied Lower Styria to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, while children were separated from their parents and sent to Lebensborn camps. They also detail the experiences of those who were killed during the war by members of the liberation movement, or, after the war, by the new Yugoslav regime.^[65]

The book resulted from a larger research initiative on those killed during and after the war, outlined below. The history of victimhood during and after the war in Slovenia is multifaceted, but earlier Slovenian historians largely focused on documenting those war victims who lived on the territory of today’s Slovenia, and asked few questions about the graves of those who were captured and killed in Slovenia by the Yugoslav Army because the war had ended and they happened to be there: these included members of the collaborationist units, such as the Croatian Ustasha and Home Guards, Serbian Chetniks, and civilians from other Yugoslav regions.^[66]

In conclusion, I would like to stress the significance of this recent project— the survey of fatalities in Slovenia both during and as a consequence of the World War—which was conducted at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana between 1997 and 2012, and whose importance for any future research agenda cannot be overstated.^[67] In terms of geographical outreach, its results are limited to the territory of today’s Republic of Slovenia encompassing people who, during the war, held residential rights in this region. The project proceeded in several phases and was modelled upon similar research on the districts of Trieste / Trst, Gorizia / Gorica, and Udine / Videm, coordinated by the Friulian Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement (Istituto Friulano per la storia del movimento di liberazione) in Udine.^[68] The goal was to find out how many individuals lost their lives because of the events of the war, and to identify them. Three staff members were in charge (Tadeja Tominšek Rihtar, Marta Rendla, and Mojca Šorn, the last succeeded by Dunja Dobaja), and other Institute members offered contributions (Tone Ferenc, Damijan Guštin, Vida Deželak Barič, Bojan Godeša, Boris Mlakar).

The survey investigated more than 99,000 individuals who, between April 1941 and January 1946, lost their lives due to wartime and postwar violence. It offers a unique basis for future research. The research group strove to create a so-called ‘personal card’ for every victim, with twenty-five categories of information. They systematically reviewed literature, newspapers, archives, and other documentary materials, in order to assess the total number of human lives lost; a basic distinction was drawn between armed, uniformed personnel, and the civilian population. When the data is compared to what we know about the First World War, an increase is noticeable not only in the number of victims, but also in the number of civilian victims, as one of the indicators of intense, total, war.

The greater proportion of the victims, numbering more than 57,000, did belong to members of various armed formations, and among these the partisan units carried the largest losses, more than 28,000. There were also numerous victims among those who were forcibly mobilized into the German (10,366), and Hungarian (313) armies, or—as Italian citizens in the Julian March—into the Italian army (1,316).^[69] Among the Home Guard formations (Domobranci) 14,000 lost their lives, 11,771 of them after the war, as well as 455 Slovenian Chetniks (151 after the war), and 817 members of the MVAC. Among civilians, the researchers counted more than 30,000 victims: this group is very heterogeneous, and includes individuals who did not actively participate in the war, as well as those involved in collaboration with the partisans, the Home Guard, and the occupying powers. It has to be acknowledged, then, that one of the reasons for the high civilian death-toll was that many of them were, in fact, active participants in the war.

Despite its comprehensive ambition, the project did leave aside several matters. As indicated above, it left out persons without residential status who died within the territory of today’s Slovenia, since it was impossible to verify their complete data with the available means. Only single assessments were included that pertained to Italian and German military personnel, as well as to those members of the collaborationist units, and civilians, who were killed on Slovenian ground after 15 May 1945 by the Yugoslav military and police units, after the end of the last battles in the region, or upon having been handed over to the Yugoslav forces by the Allies. An enormous research infrastructure would be required to arrive at an even more thorough assessment. Since the survey ended in 2012, there has been very little funding for actual use of the collected data in further research. This means that a whole new generation of researchers could easily set to work.

Writing on the War in the Italian-Yugoslav/Slovene Border Region

Earlier works on the so-called ‘Trieste question’ focused on its diplomatic aspects,^[70] but after 1980, and especially after 1985, researchers started to look closer into the events in the Yugoslav-Italian border region. In the foreground now, in addition to the events at the peace conferences, stood the schisms between the multiethnic populace, some of whom endorsed the preservation of the old Rapallo border between Yugoslavia and Italy, whilst others desired recognition of the so-called ‘Slovenian ethnic border’, which meant the incorporation of Trieste and the entire Julian March into Yugoslavia. The dividing lines were by no means only of an ethnic nature; they were also ideological, since incorporation into (communist) Yugoslavia favoured not only Slovenians and Croatians, but also left-leaning Italians, in particular the workers. This more recent research was based not least on materials discovered in newly opened archives both in Slovenia and in Italy, where the materials in the Historical Diplomatic Archive of the Italian Foreign Ministry (Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri) were first made accessible, followed by—but only after 2010—important materials from the ‘Office for the Border Zones’ (Ufficio per le zone di confine). The topic was thoroughly explored by local scholars of both Italian^[71] and of Slovene nationality, myself amongst them.^[72] Among international colleagues, the most important contribution came from Rolf Wörsdörfer, who analysed the events in the Italian-Yugoslav border region between 1915 and 1955 in a comparative and complex manner.^[73]

In all years since the war, the issue that has aroused the most polemical debates is the so-called fojbe. The practice of killing people or disposing of dead bodies by throwing them in the deep carsic pits that perforate the landscape of Trieste’s hinterland, especially on the Istrian peninsula, was used throughout the war, peaking after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, and at the war’s end in May 1945, when several thousand people arrested by the Yugoslav authorities in Venezia Giulia were executed in this way, or died later in prisons or camps in Yugoslavia.

Galliano Fogar, from Trieste, was the first Italian historian to address the issue in Yugoslavia, when, in 1986, he took part in a conference in Koper on the Trieste question ‘between the Italian attack on Yugoslavia and the peace conference’, that is between 1941 and 1947.^[74] The polemics around the fojbe saw proponents of the right, especially in Venezia Giulia, grossly exaggerate the number of alleged victims, and they did not tire to repeat that people had been thrown into the pits and killed simply because they were Italians, while identifying the Italian communists, the Slovenians and the Croats as perpetrators. They were silent about the fact that Italy had occupied a part of Slovenia and had been responsible for numerous atrocities. On the other side, in Slovenia and Yugoslavia, the issue was not taken up at all, on the grounds that ‘only’ fascists, guilty of crimes, had been killed in the fojbe. When, during the aforementioned conference, Fogar expressed himself in a matter-of-fact manner, he instigated a parallel debate in Slovenia, where relevant archival materials had just become accessible. In close cooperation with Italian scholars, Slovenian historians started to research the topic, and one reflection of this cooperation is a collected volume published in 1997.^[75] The following years saw the broadening of research not only on the question of how many people had died, and of the motives for the actions of the Yugoslav regime, but also on the question of who exactly the victims were. This brought the whole complexity of the story to the fore: among the victims were many individuals who had committed crimes against Slovene and Italian antifascists; there were individuals who had died in camps as prisoners of war, where they had been sent as members of the military and police units of the occupying forces; and there were also several members of the liberation movement.^[76]

Bilateral Commissions

Quite soon after the establishment of Slovenia as an independent republic in October 1993, the serving ministers of foreign affairs in Slovenia and Italy agreed on the establishment of a Slovene-Italian Historical and Cultural Commission and gave it the task of conducting a comprehensive, in-depth study of all issues pertaining to the history of political and cultural relations between the two nations. At its first session, the Commission established that the period from 1880 to 1956 was to provide the chronological frame for its work: that is, from the beginning of a process of national and political differentiation in the linguistically mixed border area towards Italy (then ruled over by the Habsburg monarchy), to the immediate consequences of the postwar border established by the London Memorandum of 1954. The Slovenian historians in the Commission, led by Milica Kacin Wohinz, concluded their work in 2000 when the Commission’s common report was published.^[77] On each side, beside the chair and the vice chair, there were six members who were specialists in the particular historical periods under scrutiny. On the Slovene side, these were nominated by the foreign minister, mostly upon the advice of the chairperson: Branko Marušič, France M. Dolinar, Andrej Vovko, Nevenka Troha, Boris Gombač (later replaced by Boris Mlakar), and the writer Saša Vuga.

This joint report on the relations between Slovenia and Italy addressed issues that had been kept quiet for a long time, mostly pertaining to the Second World War: for the Italians, key issues included Italian aggression and the occupation of the Province of Ljubljana, and, for the Slovenians, they included the fojbe and the postwar ‘exodus’ of Italians from Istria. The Commission, which can, in a way, be regarded as establishing an ‘official’ bilateral stance on the historical events, arrived at three core conclusions regarding the war, as outlined below:

‘World War II was sparked off by the Axis and introduced a new dimension to Slovene-Italian relations, by which these have been marked decisively ever since. On the one hand, both the attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the occupation strained the relations between the two nations to the extreme, on the other hand, the war period brought about drastic changes in the relations between Slovenes and Italians. In 1941, with the occupation of Yugoslavia, Italy had reached the peak of its political power; the occupation and fragmentation plunged Slovenes into the abyss. At the end of the war, the Slovene nation celebrated victory, and in 1945 most Italians in Venezia Giulia feared ruin of the nation.’^[78]

‘During World War II, the Slovene–Italian conflict reached its peak, and at the same time, cooperation against Fascism existed between the nations, based on the decades of unity of the workers’ movement. It culminated in the cooperation of both Communist Parties; of Slovene and Italian partisan units which were also joined by Italian soldiers; in committees of workers’ unity and partly also in the contacts between the National Front and the CLN (National Liberation Committee). On the whole, the cooperation between the Slovene and Italian liberation movements was close and developed successfully.’^[79]

‘[In May 1945, N.T.,] [m]ost Slovenes and Italians in favour of the Yugoslav solution welcomed enthusiastically the expansion of Yugoslav military control from the already liberated partisan territories to the entire Venezia Giulia. Slovenes experienced double liberation: from the German occupation and from the Italian state. At the same time, the population of Venezia Giulia in favour of Italy experienced Yugoslav occupation as the darkest moment in their history due to the fact that in the areas of Trieste, Gorizia and Koper, it was accompanied by a wave of violence, manifested in the arrests of several thousands, mostly Italians, and also of the Slovenes who opposed the Yugoslav communist political plan. Some of the arrested were released at intervals; the violence was further manifested in hundreds of summary executions—victims were mostly thrown into the Karst chasms (foibe)—and in the deportation of a great number of soldiers and civilians, who either wasted away or were killed during the deportation; in prisons and in the prisoner-of-war camps in various parts of Yugoslavia. These events were triggered by the atmosphere of settling accounts with the fascist violence; but, as it seems, they mostly proceeded from a preliminary plan which included several tendencies: endeavours to remove persons and structures who were in one way or another (regardless of their personal responsibility) linked with Fascism, with the Nazi supremacy, with collaboration and with the Italian state, and endeavours to carry out preventive cleansing of real, potential or only alleged opponents of the communist regime, and the annexation of Venezia Giulia to the new Yugoslavia. The initial impulse was instigated by the revolutionary movement which was changed into a political regime, and transformed the charge of national and ideological intolerance between the partisans into violence at the national level.’^[80]

The report was well received in Slovenia, and the majority of public opinion approved of its conclusions, particularly with regard to the time of Italian occupation of the province of Ljubljana. In Italy, where the report was published in several academic journals,^[81] it received divided reactions, including the approval of the left-leaning public, for example, and the absolute rejection of the right, in particular among the circles of exiled Istrians and their descendants.^[82]

Following seven years of work and the publication of the Slovene–Italian report, an analogous Slovene–Austrian commission of historians and legal experts was founded in October 2001, in order to analyse the relations between these two countries in the twentieth century. The commission was led, on the Slovenian side, by Dušan Nećak. The first meeting took place in the same month in Maribor, and fourteen topics were on the agenda. However, it emerged that the Austrian and Slovenian historians were irreconcilably divided in their interpretations of individual fundamental problems, not least the role of Austrian national socialists in occupied Slovenia, including such figures as Odilo Globocnik, Friedrich Reiner, and Franz Kutschera, who had held important positions in the occupational apparatus. Another insurmountable problem involved the Austrian conduct with regard to the Slovene minority in Austria. Thus, unlike the Slovenian–Italian Commission, this commission did not succeed in compiling a joint report. In 2004, the Slovene group of scholars published their findings independently in a bilingual Slovene–German edition.^[83]

After this, in 2005, a Slovene-Croatian historical commission was also founded, whose Slovene group was led by Janko Prunk. The commission adopted a procedural rule to publicize the variant positions of Slovenian and Croatian historians, among whom different historical interpretations persisted, in the hope of avoiding the difficulties the earlier commissions had faced. The commission took on the task of analysing the relations between Slovenia and Croatia from the mid-nineteenth century until the establishment of independent states in 1991. Both sides did prepare their reports, with the intention of publishing them in a joint book, but they found that Slovenian-Croatian relations in the 150 years they were dealing with were, in fact, predominantly cooperative: difficulties started only after 1991. These complicated relations became even more complicated after 2007, and the commission stopped working. The report was never published.

The failure of the Austrian-Slovenian and Croatian-Slovenian commissions does not, of course, mean that there is no international cooperation between historians. The opposite is true. For example, a special issue of the journal of the Institute of Contemporary History, on ‘Repressions during the Second World War and its Aftermath’ (based on a symposium held in Ljubljana in 2012), contains research articles by Christian Promitzer from Graz University, Vladimir Geiger from the Croatian Institute for History in Zagreb, and Darko Dukovski from Rijeka University, as well as historians from Italy and Hungary.^[84] In fact, the level of cooperation—especially with colleagues from Zagreb, Rijeka, and Pula—has become very close over the last years. A focus on the history of Istria, throughout the Second World War and in the decade after it, has also seen Italian colleagues very interested in scholarly exchange.^[85]