Slovene Intellectuals and the Communist Regime.

Abstract

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Yugoslav authorities made great efforts to demonstrate to the West that the country had become more democratic. These efforts included campaigns in which they presented progress reports on human rights issues to the international public. For this reason, Yugoslavia was kf'en to contribute a number of case studies of rulings made by Slovene courts in 1950, demonstrating their respect for fundamental human rights, and to publish them in the 1951 United Nations Report on Human Rights. The Secretary General of the Slovene Government, Boris Kocijancic, addressed a letter to the Slovene Minister of Justice, Heli Modic, requesting that his department ascertain which court rulings in Slovenia in 1950 "were representative of case studies of the acknowledgement, adherence to, and development of human rights in our judicial system," for use in such a report. The reply to this request, however, came as somewhat of a "cold shower" to many leading politicians. It brought home the realization that Slovenia would not be able to participate in the project, since Modic had promptly reported on July 10, 1951, that