75
and the purges, the collectivization, Stalinist processes, the reverberating reports by the
French intellectual Andre Gide (his famous book Return from the USSR was published in
Slovenec in thirteen installments). There was also plenty of disinformation or overstated news
(e.g. how at the meetings the leading politicians, including Stalin, shot at one another).
73
The
tendency of trying to connect anti-communism with anti-Semitism is often obvious. There
were also plenty of ideologically neutral and even positive articles.
74
The communist side did not have such a vast informative and propagandistic apparatus
available; in its newspapers, gazettes, and also oral propaganda it showed life in the SU in
exceptionally bright and idealized tones. The rare communists that had experienced life in the
SU, said nothing of the circumstances. In favor of the creation of a myth of the SU as an
economically and socially successful country of »workers and farmers« was the global
economic crisis that had not affected the SU, and the unsuccess of the parliamentary
democracies in facing the crisis and the growing Fascism. On the other hand, the ruthless and
selfish policy of the SU at the end of the thirties particularly repelled the critical intellectuals,
otherwise inclined towards the communists, who also provoked critical debates on the Soviet
system, which are clearly witnessed in the replies by Lojze Ude to Dušan Kermavner: »Each
such revolution also destroys so many goods that it then takes years and decades for these
goods to be recreated and that it is finally possible to move on. Merely look at the SU. Both
the industrial and the agricultural production dropped with the revolution, dropped hard and
only reached the starting condition in a decade, while in the meantime the working masses
had to contribute immense sacrifices of restriction, of satisfying the most basic needs and
even suffer want. One wonders whether Russia would have reached this state of agricultural
and industrial production and the improvement of the material situation of the working class
also in a bourgeois democracy by Kerensky. Was the dictatorship of the proletariat truly
necessary for this? /.../ The dictatorship of the proletariat is to you, as it seems, a value by
itself and it does not bother you that not even in the SU can we speak of a dictatorship of the
proletariat, but a dictatorship of the Communist Party as an organization, as you say, the most
advanced part of the proletariat /.../ Under democracy you imagine /.../ a dictatorship of the
proletariat, more precisely: a dictatorship of the Communist Party, while I imagine something
else under democracy; to me democracy without consistent humanity and freedom is an
empty word. Your democracy is directed towards destroying my democracy /.../«
75
73
For more on the topic see Marko Jenšterle (ed.), Pogledi na Sovjetsko zvezo, Ljubljana 1986.
74
More on the topic: Simon Feštajn: V Sovjetskem raju, Borec, year 56, 2004, pp. 145-245.
75
Pisma Dušana Kermavnerja in Lojzeta Udeta, Nova revija, year V, No. 54, 55, 56, 1986, pp. 1752-1755.
76
In the summer of 1940 the communists, with the help of influential individuals of
different political orientations (also Slavophiles, such as, for instance, Ljubljana’s Mayor
of many years, Ivan Hribar) and smaller groups organized a campaign for the foundation
of Društvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze [Society of the Friends of the Soviet Union]. The
Catholic press strongly opposed this action, which was also obstructed by the
gendarmerie, which accompanied the signatories. The initiators managed to collect 20
000 signatures for its foundation, which a special delegation carried over to the Soviet
Embassy in December of 1940 under the leadership of Josip Vidmar as a gift to Stalin
(the diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the SU had been established only a
few months prior to this, in June of 1940).
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Although the documentation on the
intentions of the society had not been preserved, it is well-known that one of the goals
was to bring the internal Soviet conditions closer to the Slovenes and to strengthen the
awareness of their alliance (at that time among the communists the thesis on two
imperialist camps – the Fascist and the West – was still valid). The second intention of
the society is said to have been a connection of actions, which was later labeled as the
starting-point for the creation of the LF, though the opinions on this matter were divided
amongst the then participants (particularly Boris Kraigher stands out, who had not
attributed the action with great significance). The future founding groups of the Anti-
Imperialist (Liberation) Front had in fact participated in the action for the foundation of
this society, nevertheless, it is difficult to confirm the sometimes popular thesis that the
society represented a link between the People's Front policy from the middle of the
thirties and the National Liberation Struggle (thus neglecting the sectarian policy of the
KPS after the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Soviet-Finnish war).
Therefore, before the beginning of World War II, how great was the influence of the
myth of the SU as an ideal state or of socialism as a system of the future that needs to be
imitated and that sooner or later Slovenes will have to accept as well? Among the non-
communist politicians it was certainly not great, likewise in the case of the critical
intellectuals, for, as Kocbek, who was far more inclined towards the communists than
Ude, had written: »the USSR cannot be deemed an absolutely positive progressive force,
76
For more on the foundation of the society see Božo Repe, Društvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze, Borec, year
XLI, No. 9, 1989, pp. 900—919. See also: Bojan Godeša: Priprave na revolucijo ali NOB? Slovenski upor 1941:
Osvobodilna fronta slovenskega naroda pred pol stoletja: zbornik referatov na znanstvenem posvetu v dneh 23.
in 24. maja 1991 v Ljubljani. SAZU, Ljubljana 1991 pp. 69-85.
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