17 July, 2000

To: Robert Wright and Jonathan Birchhall
FINANCIAL TIMES
One Southwark Bridge
London SE1 9HL

Dear Robert Wright and Jonathan Birchall,

Allow me first to congratulate you on the economic part of your contribution to the Financial Times Survey of Slovenia. You rightly underline the problems resulting from the incredibly slow restitution of property and the strange results of privatization which leaves a large proportion of property in the hands of the State. It is not just this - the whole system of privatization has lead to a very large number of cumbersome companies by shares while there is a lack of small and medium size enterprises owned by individuals or families. Professor Prasnikar recently reported that there are 135 public companies by share ownership in the Netherland, while in Slovenia there are as many as 928, i.e., there would be about 4500 if Slovenia had the same population as the Low Countries. The Slovene growth rates may be all right, but do not forget that the enormous growth rates of East Germany and the burden they now represent for the West Germany. What is less encouraging is the very slow improvement, if any, of the enterprises, whether this is measured by productivity or by the value added. The specialist for this problem is Professor Marko Kos. Restitution of property confiscated from Slovene enterprenneurial families might rectify this shortcoming.

However, what I particularly want to warn you about is the bias -- also in your article -- in favor of the communists. You describe [Slovenia's Premier] Bajuk as the son of parents who had to escape because of their wartime support of Slovenia's occupiers. Let us pass over this for the moment and ask -- if you describe Bajuk in this way, why don't you mention that Matev Krivic is the son of the man who acted as a Vishinsky-type prosecutor (Stalin's Star prosecutor) in the 1948 trial of some fifteen fellow communists who had spent years in [the German concentration camp of ] Dachau and of whom twelve were eventually hanged for collaborating with the Gestapo even though there was no evidence for the charges at all.

You obviously have no idea of the horrors perpetuated by the Yugoslav and Slovene communists during the war and during their regime afterwards. Enclosed are two of my writings on this topics. In 1941, the communists proclaimed the transition from national liberation to class war, prohibited the fighting against the occupiers by those who did not accept communist leadership and started killing their potential opponents, driving some of them into collaboration. This is what Bajuk's parents had to cope with. They were Christian Democrats and would have been murdered, had they not left. In May and June 1945, that is, the first two months after the end of World War II, the communists massacres over 150,000 Croats, Serbs and Slovenes trapped in Slovenia. The summary of your Financial Times Supplement articles in the Ljubljana paper DELO claims that you advise the Slovenes not to pay so much attention to their past (a claim that I do not find confirmed), but the question is -- who can forget a past of this sort, especially the final bloodbath in Slovenia? It would be immoral to forget such a crime.

You do say that the partisans "fought for the allies." Did they? To my mind they fought for Stalin and I should know because I was there, as you can read in my book "Between Hitler and Tito" (Deutsch 1989). Anybody suspected of sympathies for the British or the Americans was in mortal danger.

Immediately after the war, the communist police murdered almost all the British and American trained specialists of Slovene extraction who were parachuted into Slovenia to help the partisans. Ask John Earl, a British journalist in Trieste, who knows all about it. Among the killed was Dusan Lenscak who came to Slovenia with a British liaison mission.

In 1946, the communists shot down two American airplanes over Slovenia.

In 1947, the communists rounded up -- on Stalin's orders -- all democratic politicians and tried them on charges of conspiracy against the State and spying for Britain and America. The atmosphere prevailing at the time is described in the enclosed excerpts from the Public Records Office papers. I myself was sentenced to death and spent seven years in prison, a codefendant of mine, who sat next to me at the trial, was shot, apparently after torture.

You describe Janez Jansa as "an aggressive right winger." He is the only politician who has experience with communist tricks because he was a leading member of the young communist organization until his arrest in 1987 by the Yugoslav communist Army for not being sufficiently subservient. And if you call him an aggressive right-winger, why do you not call President Kucan a dyed-in-the-wool communist? He has never repudiated communism and still insist that Slovenia should be based on anti-fascism (a code word for communism) and national liberation (read: "class struggle"). Kucan's talk about consensus is a sham, the only consensus he knows is total obedience to him by everybody. The left-right division is not being revived -- it has existed since 1941 but the communists have dominated the situation.

You mention with astonishment that Bajuk was elected by two maverick independent Members of parliament who switched sides. In 1996, the non-communist parties would have had a majority in the Parliament if the two representatives of the Italian and Hungarian minorities, elected on a second vote, had not voted with the communists. With the support of these two, the communists had an equal number of votes in the Parliament. Then President Kucan personally "persuaded" (nobody knows with what) one member to cross the floor and vote for Drnovsek to become the Premier.

You obviously do not know the circumstances. I beg you and your journalist colleagues to be careful. Do not be lenient with the communists, otherwise Europe will soon be confronted with a renewed communist movement, especially after the advent of Putin. Call a spade a spade and do not harbor suspicions only against those who should normally be called moderates. Calling the communists and their successor parties "center-left" is ludicrous.

The enclosed summary of your report in "Delo" of July 12 says that your description of the situation in Slovenia is on the whole fair enough but that one can detect an undercurrent of the "contemporary ideology or Anglo Saxon neo-liberalism (contempt for the continental welfare state, excessive praise for globalization, obvious lack of understanding for the concerns of a small nation, and the like)." This is what the communists are now hiding behind. And do not forget that all East-European "reformed" communist parties are now members of the Socialist International.

What neo-liberalism is supposed to mean is nicely expressed by President Kucan's appointee to the European Court of Human Rights, Mr. Zupancic, who says that Western law, which he calls "neo-liberalism" -- literally embodies the yuppie values of selfishness, ruthlessness and predatory conduct." Opposed to this, according to him, socialist ideology and practice were at least nominally pursuing solidarity and altruism. It appears that his orientation is going to be in line with the communist attack in an attempt to link up with the social democracy. The principal goal for the present is to stay in power.

Therefore, it is strange to describe the Bajuk - Jansa attempt to replace some leading figures in Slovenia as mistaken. Does the European Union really wish to be infiltrated by communists? So far all government appointments in Slovenia have been done by the communists. Should the same tired party bureaucrats stay in the positions of responsibility and power forever and do the bidding of Kucan? Mencinger said that the changes now being made are similar to what happened in 1945 when the communists dismissed and dispossessed everybody who was not a communist and replaced them with their ignorant followers. But to return to 1945 the new government would have to order the massacre of some 10,000 communists, as the communists did with their opponents, and terrorize everybody into submission. At any rate, Jansa and Bajuk did not appoint illiterates as the communists used to.

Dear Robert Wright and Jonathan Birchall, when writing about Eastern Europe, please double check everything the communists tell you because deception is part of their ideology. If you and your colleagues are not careful, the Western press and politicians will praise totalitarians and criticize liberals as they are already doing it to some extent. This would be the best prescription for a revival of deceitful and, eventually, deadly communism.

Sincerely yours,

Ljubo SIRC