Božo Repe
From 1988 onwards, various attempts were made to discipline Slovenia and remove its reformist government. The leaders of the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) were at the forefront of most of these attempts; it should be mentioned that Slobodan Milošević made an attempt to organize the “Rally of Truth” after the rally held in Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana which had been organized to show support for the Kosovo miners on strike (they rebelled against the planned abolition of autonomy in Kosovo) on 24 February 1989 (by that time, Milošević had already successfully replaced the governments of Vojvodina and Montenegro with mass rallies). The “Rally of Truth” was then postponed to 1 December 1989 but was prevented by the Slovene militia with action “North”, in which its units secured the Slovene territory.
As the Yugoslav state was falling apart, several attempts were made by the YPA leaders to introduce a state of emergency in Slovenia; they had begun planning these attempts in 1987. As regards Slovenia, three attempts were at the forefront: in the spring of 1988 which was followed by the so-called JBTZ Affair; in September 1989 when constitutional amendments were being adopted; and in 1990 during the elections. After the elections and the victory of DEMOS, the threat of an YPA intervention escalated to an armed conflict after Slovenia had declared independence in June 1991. Other conflict situations were: an attempt to disarm the Slovene Territorial Defence in May 1990; adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty in the Slovene Assembly on 2 July 1990; occupation of the Territorial Defence Headquarters in Ljubljana on 4 October 1990 (it was occupied by members of the YPA after the Presidium had deposed the Chief of Territorial Defence in Slovenia, Ivan Hočevar, and appointed Janez Slapar in his stead); the plebiscite on the autonomy and independence of the Republic of Slovenia on 23 December 1990; adoption of the Constitutional Act on Military Service by the Slovene Assembly on 8 March 1991, which did away with compulsory military service in the YPA for citizens of Slovenia; an attempt to shut down both Territorial Defence training centres (Pekre and Ig), which had been opened on 15 May 1991; Slovenia taking over recruit rolls and carrying out conscription; and a few similar events.
In between these attempts, the army leadership (Headquarters of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of the SFRY, which could only be formed for the purpose of commanding the Armed Forces to defend the state against an external enemy) even attempted to convince the Presidium of the SFRY to introduce a state of emergency throughout Yugoslavia. It did so in collaboration with Slobodan Milošević and the Serbian President of the Presidium of the SFRY, Borisav Jović, who even resigned so the army could execute the plan (his resignation was later revoked). To this end, they convened a session of the Presidium of the SFRY with the General Headquarters on 12, 14 and 15 March 1991; a part of the session was held in the bunkers of the YPA General Headquarters in Dedinje. The location was chosen with the intention of intimidating the Presidium; the YPA also recorded the meeting to show the public who the “wreckers” of Yugoslavia were. This action of the YPA leadership failed, even though in the meantime the Minister of Defence Veljko Kadijević had secretly flown to Moscow for support but failed to obtain it.
A state of emergency was introduced in Kosovo on multiple occasions in the Eighties; for the first time in 1980 during the mass demonstrations of Kosovo Albanians who demanded that Kosovo become a republic. At the request of the army leadership, the state of emergency was reintroduced about a year before the dissolution of Yugoslavia, in February 1990. The President of the Presidium dr. Janez Drnovšek had refrained from voting but in the end signed the order. At first, the army was to act demonstratively, taking over the key communications and thus achieving a psychological effect; it was to react only if attacked. However, it was given permission to use weapons. The introduction of a state of emergency in Kosovo coincided with the demand that the Presidium must prevent the multi-party elections by political and legal means, claiming that the victory of national parties would break up Yugoslavia. Simultaneously, the army leadership was also preparing a plan for the “Kosovization” of Slovenia and Croatia, should the elections occur. In the end, as many times before, it abandoned the plan because it had failed to win enough political support – apart from Milošević and the Serbian representatives (those from Serbia; the Bosnian member of the Presidium, otherwise of Serbian descent, Bogić Bogičević stood firm against its pressure). Afterwards, the YPA attempted to influence the elections in Slovenia. In Maribor, the military authorities filed a charge against Jože Pučnik, the president of DEMOS and a candidate for the president of the Slovene Presidium, on account of the poster bearing the title “DEMOS for Slovene Armed Forces”, which had been signed by Pučnik. The YPA claimed that the poster “deeply offended the YPA with claims that the army was incapable of defending the country against external enemies, that it was killing our children, poisoning our economy, and jeopardizing our freedom”. The public prosecutor of Maribor dismissed the charge, thus further strengthening the support for DEMOS.
YPA's first attempt at introducing a state of emergency in Slovenia took place two years earlier, in the spring of 1988. The attempt was popularly called “The Night of the Long Knives” after the banned article by Vlado Miheljak, a columnist for the magazine Mladina. (“Nacht der langen Messer” is an expression used to describe the internal purge within the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in 1934; in it, Hitler ordered the execution of Ernst Röhm, head of the SA, i.e. the Nazi militia; with tacit support from the Wermacht and President Hindenburg, the purge was executed by the rival SS and Gestapo).
Occasional grudges between Slovenia and the YPA emerged throughout the post-war period, particularly during the establishment of the Territorial Defence in 1968 and its arming. The YPA suspected throughout that Slovenia was planning to create its own army, which it had lost in March 1945 when the Slovene Partisan Army was incorporated into the Yugoslav Army. Regardless, in Slovenia the YPA was generally considered of the people because it greatly helped the people during natural disasters and took part in various construction projects; among other things, it helped to build the Brnik Airport. Cooperation with the army was mostly good, although in principle Slovenes were never enthusiastic about the army, unlike other parts of Yugoslavia. Hence, in the Eighties a strong peace movement developed in Slovenia.
Grudges began to pile up in the second half of the Eighties. At round tables and in articles, Slovene writers began to advocate civilian control over the YPA and its radical reorganization (reducing investments in armament, nationally homogeneous units, civilian military service). Some of the megalomaniac armament projects were criticized (e.g. the making of a supersonic plane; this project was revealed to the public at the end of 1987). The criticism that was begin to tarnish the YPA's reputation was joined by the increasing demands of Slovene politicians – not only at closed meetings but also in the Federal Assembly and at speeches – for cutting costs and abolishing the previously inviolable privileges. The YPA viewed that as interference with its very existence. The army, convinced that Yugoslavia was about to collapse, was “faced with the challenge to stop the merciless events”, as described by the then Minister of Defence, Admiral Branko Mamula. The army began executing specific actions in 1987 but upon a closer look it becomes clear that it had attempted to lay the political ground at least a year earlier, at the 13th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in June 1986 (the debates and polemics at the congress had quite clearly indicated a conflict between Slovenia and “others”). In organized and well-prepared speeches, YPA delegates demanded that the army be recognized the status of an equal social partner which could legally intervene in the social situation. The point of their debates was (as reported to the Slovene government by General Ivan Dolničar): “If the League of Communists and other sociopolitical powers are incapable of running the country, then the army has the right to take over its governance.” This was followed by a political and propaganda war of the YPA leadership against Slovenia and against some of its newspapers (Mladina, Delo, Nova revija) and politicians; numerous analyses that allegedly proved the “counter-revolution” in Slovenia; meetings of the highest-ranking Party and government authorities and with the Slovene government. This scenario continued to repeat itself until 1991.
On 4 February 1988, the newspaper Delo published an article titled “Admiral amidst Hunger”, in which Avgust Pudgar reported on the visit of the Federal Secretary of Total National Defence in Ethiopia and the conclusion of a military agreement under which Yugoslavia was to supply weapons to Ethiopia; somewhat later (on 12 February) the magazine Mladina published a commentary by Gorazd Suhadolnik “Mamula go home!”
The Public Prosecutor's Office in Ljubljana, in agreement with the Slovene political leadership, initiated criminal proceedings against Pudgar and Franci Zavrl (Mladina's managing editor) due to offensive writing about the Armed Forces of the SFRY and the Minister of Defence Branko Mamula. A short time later, Mamula was again attacked by Mladina which wrote about soldiers building him a villa; the cover showed a drawing of Egyptian slaves building the pyramids. Irrespective of the writings of the Slovene press, in the end Mamula lost the position of Federal Secretary of Total National Defence owing to his aggressiveness, arrogance and conflicts with powerful generals (after his term of office had expired it was not extended, even though that was customary). He was replaced by his assistant Veljko Kadijević; through him, Mamula retained his influence over the main decisions of the YPA leadership until the YPA withdrew from Slovenia.
Organized pressure exerted by army leaders on the Slovene government and on Slovenia began to escalate. At the request of the military leadership, on 18 February 1988 the Presidium of the SFRY discussed the attacks on the YPA in the media. At the session, they condemned the attacks on the YPA and warned of the danger of underestimating them in certain settings, especially in Slovenia. They also demanded that the competent civilian authorities, and military authorities if need be, take action. On 8 and 10 March, the same topic was discussed by the Presidium of the Central Committee (CC) of the LCY, which demanded “ideopolitical differentiation” from those who were rejecting the concept of Total National Defence. After the debate, the Presidium appointed a working group which was to gather information on the attacks on the YPA and submit it to the Presidium at the next session. The working group based its work on the information provided by the analytics service of the Ministry of Defence, in which it criticized Mladina, Katedra, Tribuna and Nova revija as papers that discussed the YPA in the most biased, tendentious and “socially unacceptable” way. According to the findings in this piece of information, the above-mentioned magazines and newspapers, and a few others, opposed the role of the YPA in the socialist self-management system and portrayed it as an unsupervised conservative power and as the seventh republic; they also opposed its modernization programme; they demanded that the YPA stop interfering with political life; that YPA funding be radically reduced; they demanded the introduction of nationally homogeneous units, of giving commands in the languages of Yugoslav nations and nationalities, and civilian military service; they considered the army's system Stalinist. The main reproach in this piece of information was that the writers of such articles were merely implementing the policy of the Slovene government, that similar views were being expressed by civil servants too, and that the Slovene authorities had not reacted to this despite warnings from the army and joint meetings.
On 16 March 1988, similar assessments were made at a session of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order as the Federal Presidium had made on 18 February. The council ascribed a counter-revolutionary character to the political liberalization taking place in Slovenia. It also drafted a document entitled “Information on Attacks on the Design of the Total National Defence, the YPA and the State Security Service”, whose contents were released to the public as late as 28 March. These assessments were later debated at other levels within the federation: the very next day, after the session of the Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order, on 17 March, they were again discussed by the Presidium of the CC LCY; then by the secretaries of the interior with the federal secretary (on the same day) and the presidents of republican councils for protection of the constitutional order with the president of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order (29 March). In the meantime, the most important session was that of the Military Council (Council of Armed Forces of the SFRY) on 25 March, at which they announced a direct intervention by military judicial authorities in Slovenia and by military units, if need be. Formally speaking, the council was merely an advisory body to the federal secretary of Total National Defence. Even though it had no executive powers, it was very influential as the majority of the military leaders, commanders of armies and commanders of republican Territorial Defence forces had a seat on the council. A few retired generals also exerted their influence through this council. The views of the Military Council were much harsher than the views of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order and of the Federal Presidium; they were also published in the media.
The Slovene government strongly opposed these assessments at every session in Belgrade. Regardless, the military leadership assessed – even before the cycle of condemnations of events in Slovenia had come to an end – already after the February sessions of both federal presidiums, i.e. the state and the party presidium – that the views of both presidiums were sufficient political and legal grounds for taking action, even though the Presidium of the SFRY as the supreme commander had not actually given the army any direct instructions or tasks.
The accessible sources and first-hand accounts give us a general idea of the measures the army leadership had in mind. Its first intention was probably to arrest and sentence the writers of negative articles and members of civil society; to intimidate Slovenes; to restrict or prevent the democratization processes in progress. At the same time, they would discredit the Slovene government in the eyes of the Yugoslav public and then replace it. The session debates reveal a tendency towards searching for “healthy powers” and towards sowing dissension throughout the Slovene government, especially to split up Milan Kučan, the president of the Presidium of the CC LCY, and Stane Dolanc, a Slovene member of the Presidium of the SFRY. In Dolanc's case, they counted on his pro-Yugoslav stance and on the possibility of him taking over the leading role in Slovenia in the event of potential purges; however, Dolanc remained Kučan's ally. They used the same approach to escalate the differences between Janez Stanovnik, the president of the Presidium of SRS, and Kučan. They also toyed with the “Kosovo scenario”, according to which special measures or a state of emergency would be introduced in Slovenia, at least temporarily, based on assessments regarding the counter-revolution.
Afterwards, the army leadership adapted individual moves to this objective based on the reaction at the federal level and in Slovenia.
The day after the session of the Military Council, on 26 March 1988, the General of the Ljubljana Military Zone Svetozar Višnjić (who had constantly been working towards good relations with the Slovene government) asked the Chief of the State Security Service Ivan Eržen and Slovenia's Minister of the Interior Tomaž Ertl whether Slovene security bodies would be able to control the situation in the event of a mass response to the arrests allegedly initiated by the military prosecutor on account of the counter-revolution in Slovenia. They did not want to reply to that on their own, so they convened in Gozd Martuljek with the President of the Presidium of the CC LCS Milan Kučan and member of the Presidium of the SFRY Stane Dolanc. Višnjić said that in the event of public reactions to demonstrations he was instructed to first protect the military facilities, officers and their families; Slovene security bodies would be assisted by the army if they would be unable to maintain public order.
After the meeting with Višnjić, Dolanc inquired about the matter of the President of the Federal Presidium, the Macedonian Lazar Mojsov, who knew nothing about the measures taken by the Military Council. Kučan's inquiries of the President of the Presidium of the CC LCY, Boško Krunić from Vojvodina, yielded the same result.
It was anticipated that on 29 March the Presidium of the CC LCY would be continuing the discussion of the attacks made against the design of the Total National Defence and the YPA. At the session (72nd Session, 29 March 1988) Slovene members of the Presidium rejected the above-mentioned draft assessment, which had been prepared by the working group of the Presidium of the CC LCY, as unacceptable. Nevertheless, demands were made for arrests in Slovenia. Kučan greatly opposed this and rejected the hypotheses that a counter-revolution was taking place in Slovenia, that members of the YPA were in danger there, and that it was coordinated unconventional warfare connected with hostile emigration. Considering what the Military Council had ordered Višnjić, Kučan judged that the Council had become an autonomous political body, as neither the Presidium of the SFRY nor other bodies were aware of its actions. In his interventions at the session, the Minister of Defence Veljko Kadijević continued to attack Slovenia on account of the counter-revolution. When the topic switched to the conduct of the Military Council and its demand that Svetozar Višnjić and the 9th Army prepare for action, he withdrew and relativized the instructions given to Višnjić. He defended himself by saying that the Military Council was merely complying with the decision of the Presidium of the SFRY to examine the possibility of military judicial authorities taking over the proceedings should the civilian law enforcement authorities fail to react against those attacking the YPA, in light of the fact that these were attacks against armed forces. Hence, the commander of the 9th Army or of the Ljubljana Military Zone had been tasked with conferring with his comrades in Slovenia how such proceedings could be carried out and what the consequences would be should the Presidium reach such a decision. Kučan again harshly rejected this, stating that Višnjić had understood the assessment made by the Military Council exactly as intended: that a counter-revolution was taking place in Slovenia and that measures had to be taken; that such measures might provoke public reactions and that it was his duty to protect himself, his men and facilities, and to help the Slovene government with controlling the situation.
After a lengthy discussion, they decided that a delegation of the Presidium of the CC LCY would visit Slovenia, meet with the Slovene government, and attempt to harmonize their assessments regarding the information obtained by the Presidium of the CC LCY about the attacks on the YPA, which was not to be directly related to the alleged counter-revolution and unconventional warfare in Slovenia. This indeed happened and a very bland document was adopted in April as an internal document of the Presidium of the CC LCY, without imposing any binding decisions. Regardless, the Slovene government continued to demand that the responsibility of the Military Council be clarified and held on to the view that it had been an attempt at introducing a state of emergency. On the other hand, sessions continued to be held in Slovenia at the highest-ranking party and state bodies; at a session on 25 May 1988, the Federal Presidium supported the army's interpretation of events. At that session, Slovene representatives again claimed that there had been a threat of a military coup and that Slovene representatives in the Republican and Federal Assembly would therefore be demanding the establishment of a state commission. They pointed out that the development of democracy entails tolerating the activities of the opposition and that these must be dealt with using legal and not repressive means.
In the meantime, a shorthand note of Milan Kučan's debate from the March session of the Presidium of the CC LCY, though labelled a state secret, had been leaked to the public. This document allegedly came from Igor Bavčar who was at the time employed at the Republican Conference of the Socialist Alliance of Working People (RC SAWP); he secretly copied the copy kept by the Vice-President of RC SAWP Jože Knez (that copy had originally been given to the President of RC SAWP Jože Smole). He handed the copy to Janez Janša, at the time a reporter for the weekly magazine Mladina and a candidate for the president of the Socialist Youth League of Slovenia; Janša handed it over to the editor of Mladina, Franci Zavrl, who then passed it on to Vlado Miheljak. Other copies were being distributed and with them the rumours of allegedly planned arrests of hundreds of dissidents and politicians in Slovenia. The State Security Service began investigating how the shorthand note had been made public, in the process secretly searching the premises of the computer company Mikroada, where Janez Janša was employed. There it discovered the shorthand note of Kučan's speech and Višnjić's document on increasing combat readiness. It informed the Slovene government about its find; after two weeks of hesitation, it also informed the leaders of the YPA. The State Security Service initially suspected that the YPA had planted it on the Slovene government. But then Stane Dolanc unintentionally asked the chief of the Security Service of the YPA what the deal was with these military documents and he knew nothing about them. Dolanc realized that he had made a mistake and informed Tomaž Ertl; the Slovene State Security Service was then forced to notify the YPA. On 31 May, the military prosecutor demanded the arrests of those involved (i.e. “the Four”: Janez Janša, David Tasić, Ivan Borštner, Franci Zavrl). Borštner was arrested by military authorities but Janša and Tasić were arrested by the State Security Service as they were civilians; then, they were handed over to the military authorities in conformity with the law. Zavrl avoided arrest by being hospitalized. These arrests and the court martial in Ljubljana triggered a mass movement of all segments of the population and the establishment of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights.
Based on the shorthand note, Vlado Miheljak wrote the article titled “The Night of the Long Knives” (although signed with the name of a national heroine used by the editorial board, i.e. Majda Vrhovnik), in which he warned of the threat of a state of emergency being introduced in Slovenia. The article was scheduled for publication in Mladina on 10 May but was retracted by the editorial board at the request of the State Security Service and the prosecutor.
Viewed in the context of the overall events in the late Eighties, the then Slovene reformist government, led by Milan Kučan, which manoeuvred its way between the pressures exerted by the leaders of the YPA and federal authorities on the one hand and the pressures and demands of civil society on the other (but also with support from the latter), successfully prevented this first attempt at introducing a state of emergency.