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2. Changed Conditions in Europe and the World and Attempts at a Different Evaluation
of History and Historical Symbols Connected with This
The post-war European (and world) regime was formed by the winners and was based on anti-
Fascism. The European community began to be built on a political level when the French and
the German overcame their differences. A part of this was the de-Nazification in Germany
(but not in Italy, which was, nevertheless, under strict ally control). World War II is a too
complex phenomenon, while the alliance, and especially the position of the individual nations
and social groups – despite the mentioned recognizable and even today at least verbally valid
demarcation line, that is, anti-Fascism – is so diverse and with such different endings that it
On the changed view also see the article by Janko Prunk, Ph.D.: Čas bi bil, da bi politika zgodovino prepustila
zgodovinarjem (21. 2. 2004) and the replies (Janko Pleterski, Ph.D., Bogdan Osolnik, Branko Marušič, Marjan
Tepina), and the polemics NLS= revolutionary violence, between Prunk, Tamara Grieser Pečar, Ph.D., on the
one hand, and Ivan Kristan, Ph.D., on the other, in Sobotna priloga of the newspaper Delo in March and April of
2006. Regarding the findings of the »communist« and »modern« historiography it must be pointed out that
Kidrič's paper had been published back in 1964 in the documents of the People's Revolution, and similarly
published in different collections of sources in the sixties and seventies was also the majority of other documents
regarding the viewpoints of Kidrič and Kardelj, and of the leading communists during the war.
b) Jože Dežman is the author of several studies on Skoj [Alliance of the Communist Youth of Yugoslavia]: the
diploma paper Skoj na Gorenjskem [Skoj in Gorenjska], Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana;
Prispevek k zgodovini naprednega mladinskega gibanja na Gorenjskem 1920-1945 [Contribution to the History
of the Progressive Youth Movement in Gorenjska] (Skoj 1919-1945). Prispevki k posameznim obdobjem
[Contributions to Individual Periods], Komunist, Ljubljana 1980; O organizaciji in aktivistih v letih 1943-1945
[On the Organization and Activists in the Years 1943-1945] (Skoj na Gorenjskem 1920-1984, ed. Jože Dežman,
Gorenjski muzej 1984). In the works quoted he describes the work of the communist youth (and of the broader
communist movement) in an engaged and emotionally involved way. The limited scope of this contribution does
not allow for a broader analysis, therefore only a fragment from the work SKOJ 1919-1945 is quoted: »The
youth of Gorenjska, in addition to those fallen in battles, the national heroes that originated in the pre-war and
inter-war ranks of revolutionary youth, also lost activists in the field; they were crushed during tortures and burnt
in camps. Among the hostages in Gorenjska, over 280 of them were under 24; of these more than half had not
turned 20« (Quoted work, p. 269).
»The starting-points of the historians are: in our society we, the historians, have a place at the front of the
revolutionary forces. With our works we weave the historical consciousness of contemporaries. The revived
heritage, reforged into scientific truth, brings a valuable incentive into everyday life. In our research work we
derive from the mental and value definitions of the dialectic and historic materialism. Our attention is given
foremost to the studying of the circumstances and conditions, the appearance and development of the creative
revolutionary forces, their struggle for the authority of the workers, for a more humane world« (Jože Dežman:
Zgodovina mladih, zgodovina o mladih. Nekaj predlogov za razpravo o organizaciji in metodi zgodovinske
raziskave, summary of a paper (undated, probably the first half of the eighties, kept by the author).
»I began my path of research as a political activist – in Zveza socialistične mladine [Alliance of Socialist Youth]
and Zveza komunistov [League of Communists] I had worked precisely on a system of preserving and
developing revolutionary tradition. I gradually began to realize that it was a system of compulsory lies, built on
numerous ideological, factual and ritual falsifications. Thus I could gradually comprehend, as a man from the
Party world, that the fundamental interest of the Slovene Bolshevist elite was to conquer and maintain authority
with murder, robbery and lies, with the use of racist stigmatization of the majority of the population…« (Jože
Dežman, zgodovinar, direktor Muzeja novejše zgodovine Slovenije, Muzejske novice No. 1, year 2, 2006, p. 3).
For more on such interpretations of history and terminology see the quoted polemics.
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had already been impossible in the past to place it under a common denominator, and is all the
more difficult today. Thus the fundamental demarcation line was the victory over Fascism and
Nazism in 1945 and from here on everyone is, of course, entitled to their doubts. The
expansion of the European Union had not only brought exceptionally positive processes into
it, but also many traumas brought on by the new members that wish to expand their internal
problems in the evaluation of history to the entire EU and thus within their own countries as at
the level of the EU enforce their view of the past as the »official« or prevailing view. They
have motives and reasons for this. Among the countries that had triggered a debate in the EU
a while back on the banning of communist symbols, Lithuania was, e.g. before and after
World War II, under the Soviet Union, and during the war its SS units fought alongside
Germans on the Russian front. At home over 100 000 Jews were sent to their deaths. Until
1944 Hungary lay under the authority of the Arrow Cross Party; at the time of the German
occupation a majority of Jews was sent to German concentration camps (also those from
Prekmurje!); Hungary was afterwards freed or occupied (depending on one’s interpretation)
by the Soviet Union. This view ties well to the situation of certain other members, e.g. Austria
and Italy. The Italian interpretation of history – now also on a European level – begins with
the »wrongful« Paris Peace Treaty, foibe and the exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia.
For the Fascist treatment of the Littoral Slovenes, a two and a half year cruel occupation of
the so-called Province of Ljubljana, which in the goals and the treatment since 1942 onwards
had not differed at all from the German one, or for the bombing and gassing of Ethiopian
tribes at the time of the Abyssinian War, there is no room in this interpretation. That Austria
as well has never completely dealt with its Nazism is most likely not necessary to prove
additionally, and today it tries to emphatically show itself in the role of a victim of Nazism,
despite the fact that this role had been given it at the Moscow Conference of 1943 with many
ifs and conditionals, and in the context of the indeterminate common intensions of the Allies
for the solving of the German issue.
In the past two decades, and particularly after the end of communism and the division of the
world in blocs, the attitude towards communism became clearly harsher. A number of studies
on the communist regimes, among them especially Fourét's Izgubljene Iluzije [Lost Illusions]
and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism, placed communism alongside Fascism and
Nazism, creating a predicament regarding the inter-war alliances and collaborations. In the
extreme interpretations, also in the Slovene area, the inter-war anti-communist
collaborationists are said to be the first, »far-sighted« fighters for the bringing down of
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