Foreign Policy In Focus

For many the decomposition of Yugoslavia into its constituent republics in the early 1990s was anything but smooth.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

You are born in a country. You are a citizen of that country, and you don’t give it much thought. It’s like the air that you breathe.

And then the country disappears.

Everything that you took for granted has vanished. The ground beneath your feet has shifted irreversibly. Your national identity is up for grabs.

When Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s, most people simply became citizens of what had once been constituent republics: Croatia, Bosnia, and so on. But for some, it was not a simple process at all.

In Slovenia, for instance, a significant minority of the population did not successfully make the transition. After the country’s independence, citizens of other former republics living in Slovenia had six months to file for citizenship. More than 25,000 failed to do so and, through an administrative decision, were denied residency in the land where some had lived virtually their entire lives.

They had once been Yugoslav, and they were not deemed Slovene. They fell between the stools, and the fall was a hard one.

Eventually, this group of people came to be known as the Erased. They are a diverse group. Many were born outside of Slovenia; some did not have personal documents; some did not know about the option to file for citizenship; some felt that they should not have to do so.

Irfan Besirovic was born in Bosnia and came to Slovenia when he was only a year old. Slovenia is the only land that he remembers.

This is his story.

The Interview

When did you first come to Ljubljana?

In 1963.

You were quite young.

I was five years old. Before that, our family lived in Pivka, a small Slovenian town. I came to Slovenia when I was one year old.

How was your early life when you were in school? Was it generally a happy time?

Until the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was generally a happy period. I finished school, made a family, had a job. My life was generally stable until the breakup of the country.

I went to a Slovenian school. When my family came to Slovenia, we were one of the first families to come from the south. There were not so many people coming to Slovenia from other parts of Yugoslavia in those days. In my primary school, there were only two families from Bosnia. The school was in Trnovo, near the Ljubljanica River. I didn’t have any problems because of my origin.

You didn’t experience any discrimination growing up?

From time to time we were called “Bosnians.” But everyone was a Bosnian in those days: the Serbs, the Macedonians, the Bosnians. The word didn’t have a bad connotation until after independence. After independence, they  called all the people from the other side of the Kolpa River (a river bordering Slovenia and Croatia), from the republics south of Slovenia, they called such people “chifuti” or “chefurji.”

What does “chifuti/chefurji” literally mean?

It comes from “Chifuti”, which is another word for “Jew.” But here in Slovenia  the word means Bosnian.

How did you think of yourself in those days: as Slovenian, Yugoslav, Bosnian?

We considered ourselves Yugoslavs. We didn’t know about republican citizenship. Whenever you were asked, you responded, “Yugoslav.”

Do you remember where you were when you heard about the fall of the Berlin Wall?

I was in Ljubljana. It was in the media a lot that the Berlin Wall fell. We said, “Finally, the Germans have joined their nation together. It’s great that that happened.” But then, all the other countries around here fell apart.

Was there a point at which you were worried that the situation in Yugoslavia would end up as a war?

No, never. When a Slovenian came to Bosnia or a Bosnian went to Slovenia, they were accepted. There was eating and drinking, and everyone did it together. I never imagined that a war would happen here in Yugoslavia.

What did you think when Slovenia declared independence?

I was not surprised. Everything had already started in the 1980s. There were signs, like the young people in Slovenia boycotting the shtafeta — when young people carried a baton in a relay race through all of Yugoslavia and gave it to Tito on his birthday, on May 25. Later, the Slovenian Communist Party left the party’s Central Committee. So, it was not a complete surprise. But no one thought it would end in this way.

Do you remember when Tito died?

I remember it well. I woke up with a terrible toothache. I went to work and told my boss. He told me to go to the dentist. On the way to the dentist, I heard that Tito died. So I went to the café bar Slon. There was really sad music, and all the people there were crying. The whole moment was really sad. Everyone was on the street in Ljubljana. Everyone was crying, regardless of nationality.

Were you sad too?

Tito meant something to us then. So, yes, I was sad, I had been a soldier. I had carried the shtafeta. I watched his train leave when he went to Romania. I was part of youth brigade when Tito visited along with an African president. It was 1976, and I was able to say hello to him.

Do you feel the same way about Tito today as you did back then?

I still respect Tito. But my feelings have changed a lot. There is too much nationalism — not only here but all over Yugoslavia.

Can you describe the moment that this process of erasure began and how you felt about it?

When they made a hole in my identity card, I didn’t know what that meant. They told me that I was erased from the registry of permanent residents, and I had to arrange my status as foreigner. I didn’t know what the extent of the consequences would be, not until I had health issues and I couldn’t go to the doctor because they wouldn’t treat me, not until my domestic situation worsened and I had an argument with my wife because I wasn’t earning any money and I couldn’t be an equal part of the community. Only then did I realize what the consequences would be. Without documents I couldn’t go to the doctor. Without papers, I couldn’t get a job.

I went to the Red Cross, and they said they couldn’t help me because I wasn’t a refugee, I wasn’t anything, I wasn’t entitled to any help. And then all my problems started. I broke up with my partner. I was homeless.

A couple years later, I met a person and made arrangements to stay at his place. I worked as a waiter at his restaurant. But I didn’t get a paycheck. I also took care of his baby and his grandmother. I roasted pigs. I cleaned. I did everything. But I wasn’t paid.

Before the erasure, I worked as a waiter. After I finally got citizenship in 2004, I got work in a construction company. I had to get a job quickly. But after a month at that job, the vein in my leg burst, so I was on sick leave.

Your health is better now?

It’s better, but it’s not okay. I still have problems with wounds on my legs. Some are healed, some are still open. They can’t discover where the veins are blocked. But even if they do, and they do the operation, there’s a risk that I could be an invalid. So the health consequences are long-lasting.

After the erasure, you knew very few people in the same situation.

Until 2002 when I joined the Association of Self-Organized Erased, I knew a couple people. I wasn’t aware that there were thousands of Erased. Only through this association did I learn about this. At the beginning, the official number of Erased was 18,000. Then the government admitted that it was 25,000.

What was your reaction when you learned there were so many people in the same situation as you?

Personally it was easier to know that the number was so huge. It was a relief that the public was becoming more aware of the Erasure. If we were fighting together, we could get something done about this issue.

It’s been nearly a decade of activity on this issue. How would you evaluate this work?

It’s been quite hard. There were a lot of provocations from a lot of people But overall, I would say that it was a success. We proved that it was the state’s fault, not our fault. And the European Court of Human Rights has proven/confirmed that.

Can you give an example of a provocation?

From the ordinary people, it was: “What do you want, you Bosnian? Just go back!” From the side of the politicians, they spoke of aggressors against Slovenia. They said that these illiterate cleaning ladies should just be put on trains and sent back.

These were provocations in the media or said to you personally?

Ordinary people said these things to me personally, but politicians said this in the media.

What did people say when you told them that you’d been in Slovenia since you were a baby? 

When they heard the stories of me and others, the reactions changed. There is quite a lot of support now. When I meet someone who saw me on television, they tell me, “Good job, this is how it should be done.” So, it has changed on an everyday level. But some politicians haven’t changed.

Has this movement inspired other Slovenians to fight for their rights?

Yes, more and more people are fighting for their rights. The most important message is that if you don’t fight for your rights, if you stay at home and don’t fight, nothing will happen. It’s a really important part of this movement that it’s been inclusive. We weren’t just struggling for the Erased. We were fighting also for the rights of Roma and the LGBT community.

You’ve taken on a leadership position of the movement. How has that been?

I took over the function of president of our association two years ago. The public is quite fond of me, I think, because I choose my words carefully. I don’t attack ordinary people. I only attack the politics. So, it’s been a good experience to gain some recognition from the public. At first, when I took over this job, I was afraid of what would happen. There wasn’t so much support in the public. But now, I’m swimming in it. It’s no problem.

Was the decision of the European Court a surprise for you?

In 2010, when the first verdict was issued, I was really surprised. Then when the Slovenian government made a complaint, I was hoping that it would be positive in the end. When the court issues something positive the first time, it’s a bigger surprise if the decision isn’t positive the second time around. So I was more surprised after the first verdict in 2010 than the more recent one in 2012. 

Do you think the Slovenian government will abide by the decision?

The Slovenian government must abide by the verdict. It has until June 26 to come up with a plan for compensation. Otherwise, the court will decide what kind of compensation will be made for the Erased. And just yesterday, a new commission was announced to come up with this compensation plan. The chief of the commission is the general secretary of the ministry of the interior. So I’m quite sure that they’re working on it. I just don’t know what the final result will be.

Will there be a representative of the Erased on the commission?

For now, I don’t know, because this is new information. But there should be a representative from one of the two associations of the Erased. We should decide our conditions. It’s not good when someone else decides that for us. Someone who was not erased cannot know what it was like to be Erased and what the compensation should be.

Are there major differences of opinion between the two associations of the Erased?

There’s a difference of methodology. The other association is fonder of negotiating behind the table and taking the legal path. Our organization is more for actions, demonstrations, and a more public way of struggling, though of course we also support the legal path. If we didn’t do demonstrations and hunger strikes, I’m sure that the European Court decision wouldn’t have been made. The legal case at the European Court was also a result of the actions of our association.

Using your own example, can you explain how the compensation might work?

I always say that there is no money in the world that can compensate for lost health, for lost work, for lost contact with my child. There should also be moral compensation. This would be punishment, prosecution, for the people guilty of the erasure.

Do you think that will happen?

Not in Slovenia. Compare the situation of the tycoons in charge of privatization who drained the companies before they went bankrupt. If they have not been punished for what they did, then the people responsible for the Erased will not be punished either.

Do you think the Slovenian public will accept the compensation? Or are they saying that Slovenia just doesn’t have the money for this?

I think that the people are divided. There are forums where many people speak against the compensation. But many people say, “Finally the situation is resolved and people should get compensation.”

The biggest problem is that the politicians are inflating the amount of money for compensation. Then the people are afraid of such a high amount, such a big hole in the budget. We need to know that not all Erased had equal damage. Some were erased for a year, some for five, some for 20. If we don’t give the same compensation to everyone, if we do it case by case, then the compensation won’t be so high. Also, some Erased are prepared to receive a certain amount of money each month – maybe 300-400 Euros per month — for the rest of their life. So it doesn’t mean a lot of money at once.

This may take years to figure out, especially if it’s case by case.

Of course it will be a complex process if it’s case by case. And each person must prove the damage.

There is also a large number of Erased who never asked for permanent residency. The opportunity to get permanent residency is open only for another year. And I’m worried that many people will not get that status.  So it’s not clear whether they will get compensation.

And then there are all the people who died. I don’t know what will happen with them and their families.

But Slovenia will have to make the compensations. If it doesn’t, there will be a sanction. The government can’t say it doesn’t have the money. That would be like if I have to go to the prison and I say that I don’t have the time to do that!

In addition to compensation, what are the other unfinished tasks for your association?

If Slovenia provides compensation, it would be the end of the fight for the Erased. The only thing left would be maybe punishment of the guilty. The official statutes of our association say that it will function until the violations are corrected. Compensation would mean that the violations are corrected. But we can still go on with the struggle — just not within the association. We can struggle on behalf of other peoples’ human rights.

What do you think of the current political and economic situation in Slovenia — the economic crisis, the corruption trials?

There is corruption everywhere in Slovenia, in all spheres. We all know that this corruption has been happening for 20 years. Only now is it coming out in public. We also know that without this corruption the economic crisis wouldn’t be so big.

In terms of the political crisis, one huge problem is that the opinion of voters is not respected. The prime minister is on trial and still his situation doesn’t change. Other people in parliament have been accused of various crimes but they don’t leave their seats. They simply don’t respect the will of the people.

Until this generation of politicians passes, nothing will happen.

Many of the services that Slovenians have enjoyed over the last decades are being gradually taken away. Someone told me that they thought that the average Slovenian is now beginning to feel what the Erased felt.

What’s your opinion of that?

It’s not just a reduction in public services. It’s also fewer jobs. So, people in this situation will face something similar to the Erased, though it will be a bit better for them since they will receive some social benefits. But it is quite obvious that this policy is ruining the state. I can’t remember before, in former Yugoslavia, when so many people were unemployed and hungry. In a year or two, there will be more homeless people who can’t afford electricity, rent. I think that the future is bleak.

Ljubljana, October 18, 2012

Interview (2008) 

I came here when I was one year old, from Bosnia. I’ve lived all my life in Slovenia. I’ve never really had any connection with Bosnia again.

I was erased 30 years later after I came to Slovenia. This is how it happened:

There was a period of time when the government was accepting applications for citizenship. Just before this period, I had a major car crash. It was on December 31, 1990. I was in a coma. I’d broken my pelvis. I’d bit through my tongue. During all of 1991, I was in hospital and undergoing rehabilitation. In April 1991, I received my identity card without a problem. I needed this for the health insurance. The term for applying for Slovenian citizenship lasted from July to December 1991. During this period, I went to apply for citizenship. But the employee at the unit told me that I’d already missed the term.

Then, in March 1992, I got an invitation from the administrative unit saying that I must go there and arrange things. The clerk asked me if I had Slovenian citizenship. I said no, but it’s being arranged. The last time they told me I’d missed the term. This clerk said that I must give her my ID card. She took it and made a hole in it so that it wasn’t valid any more. It was like this for many people: all the documents of the Erased just expired. But for other citizens of Slovenia, their old passports were valid again. Anyway, she gave me back my ID.

I was living at the time with the mother of my son, who was born in 1991. We broke up after the Erasure. In March and April 1992, I had no place to live. I was homeless. I had no papers, no documents. All the Erased at that time were hiding and were afraid to tell anyone that they didn’t have status. I knew that there were other people like me because my brother was also Erased. I heard from him from time to time, but not regularly, because we were all afraid. For almost one year, I was homeless. Sometimes I slept at my friend’s, but this was not a permanent solution. I was also sleeping outside. I spent the winter in basements.

I had surgery after the car crash, and they put a piece of metal inside my pelvis. But they made a mistake and cut the nerve. Later they were afraid to take out the metal because there might be something wrong with the nerve and I might become paralyzed. But the problem was that my body was rejecting this metal. In the early 90s, I began to get open wounds all over my body. Also in the 1990s, I survived thrombosis. I didn’t have health insurance. One of the side effects was that I almost lost sight in my right eye. I still don’t see well on that side, but it’s better than it was before.

I had been a waiter all my life. I knew many people and many people knew me. In 1993, I ran into a man that I had known before. He took me home. He gave me a job as a waiter in exchange for shelter and food, but I didn’t get any pay. This lasted for two years. Then in 1995, inspectors closed down the restaurant, and I was again on the street. This lasted for a few months. But it was the summer, so sleeping on the street was easier. Then I ran into another person and arranged to work as a waiter under the same conditions: in exchange for food and shelter. This restaurant was in a poor part of Ljubljana where many Erased lived. I was in contact with people in the same situation as me but we didn’t know it.

My first problem with the police came in 2002. They came to the bar at 7 a.m. and started to ask for documents. I didn’t have documents. They asked me for my name. They asked for my ID card. Since it was not valid, they took me with them to the court. They wanted to deport me. But the judge said that there was no need to deport me. The police put me in a detention center anyway and told me that they were going to deport me to Sarajevo.

“I have no connection to Sarajevo,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” they said. “We’ll leave you at the airport there.”

I stayed overnight at the detention center. I talked with the social worker, who told me to call a lawyer and the restaurant owner. They came and signed a guarantee that I will stay at a friend’s house. But the police still wouldn’t let me out of the detention center. The next day, the social worker came and said, “What are you doing here?” She called the police inspector. After two more hours of waiting, they released me. For the next two years, I had to go back monthly to get a stamp at the detention center. I could move around in the area of the city where I was living.

After two years, the police returned. They told me that my staying in Slovenia had expired and they were there to bring me back to the detention center. In 2003, the law was passed for the Erased to get Slovenian citizenship. It was easy for some, and not for others. If you could prove that you had stayed in Slovenia between 2003 and 2004, you could qualify. I told the police that I’d applied for citizenship. They said, “We will check,” even though I had confirmation from the ministry that I’d applied. I had to call the lawyer again. We went to the Ministry of Interior to get the original confirmation that I’d really applied. They said that until the procedure was approved or not, I could stay in the country. And then they left me in peace.

On October 13, 2004 I finally got Slovenian citizenship. I could finally get health insurance, but my problems were far from solved. I could move around freely, and I could get treatment for my health problems. I also could get a proper job. I found a job in construction. I worked for one month. Then a vein burst in my leg because the job was too strenuous and the veins could not take all the pressure. I lost almost a liter of blood on my way to the hospital. I didn’t have supplemental insurance on top of the basic insurance that doesn’t really cover anything. They just cleaned the wound. After one month, after I arranged for the supplemental insurance, I was able to get proper treatment. But I was in and out of hospital for the next few weeks. I had a problem with my eye. I was told my kidneys and lungs were weak. I spent two years on sick leave. After that, the construction firm couldn’t find me any work. The unemployment office couldn’t find me any work.

I’ve been part of the Erased movement since 2002. I’ve been in all the actions, demonstrations, and hunger strikes. It was not clear at first that the situation was so terrible, that there were so many Erased. After I was first on TV, all these guests that I’d been serving at the restaurant started to tell me that they were in a similar situation.

In the beginning our goal was to get back our status and our permanent residency. Some have gotten this status, some have not. Personally, if they would recognize all those years of my being Erased, I could accumulate enough of a working period so that I could retire. But I have this hole in my biography.

As for compensation, even if I get 5 million euros, that will not bring back my health. The only thing I wish for is that the people responsible for the Erasure, and for prolonging the Erasure, are convicted, that the Erasure is recognized as a crime.

"There was a very peculiar alliance between the punk music scene and the intellectuals, who tried to justify the appearance of this punk music."

The worlds of rock music and academia are not entirely separate. Noam Chomsky has appeared on stage with Rage Against the Machine. Poet Paul Muldoon and fellow Princeton professors play gigs as the Wayside Shrines. And, of course, plenty of students opt for courses that deconstruct Madonna, probe the historical impact of the Beatles, and so on.

But in Yugoslavia, and particularly Slovenia, a particularly close relationship sprang up in the 1970s between punks and professors. “At that time, classical political and social critique was not possible, so the political and cultural discontent and critique took the form of Rock music,” explains sociologist and politician Pavel Gantar. “Punk Rock music was a form of contestation. Later on, the State started to apply political oppression, and, as I said, intellectuals came out against this oppression. In the late 1970s, Rock music substituted for the absence of political and social criticism.”

Intellectuals came to the defense of punk rockers, and musicians expressed many of the sentiments that intellectuals couldn’t safely utter in public. The music scene in Yugoslavia soon became the envy of everyone else in the Eastern bloc, and many music fans in the West also began to follow bands like Pankrti and Laibach.

Laibach was a particularly provocative band. In Bulgaria, Zheliu Zhelev wrote a book about fascism that was in fact a veiled critique of communism. Laibach offered a much more in-your-face comparison. Adopting a totalitarian aesthetic that was equal parts communism, fascism, and futurism, it parroted the rhetoric of the Yugoslav authorities and thereby presented itself as a paragon of socialist realism. Defending Laibach, Slovenian intellectuals were also defending freedom of expression.

But by the 1980s, when Laibach appeared, intellectuals were already beginning to create the civil society movements that served as vehicles for social and political critique. Music remained a powerful amplifier of social discontent. But now there were proto-political formations that began to carve out space in Yugoslav society for alternative platforms.

When I interviewed Pavel Gantar in 1990, he was the head of the Liberal Party. The number one question in those days was the fate of Yugoslavia. Would it stay together as a loose confederation or as a more centralized federation? Or, as some began to hint at in those days, could the country stay together at all?

“We went to Belgrade and came back very disappointed,” he told me in 1990. “Rational discourse was not possible. We talked about interests and they are talking about Serbian soil and blood and fears and fights and so on. That’s why we think that Yugoslavia is probably not an option any more. But still the question remains: how to come to such solutions if we can’t stick together. Every solution is a bad solution in this game. We would stand for any solution which would not cost lives.”

Slovenia would declare its independence in June 1991. Pavel Gantar went on to join parliament and become its chairman in 2008. He was a politician for 18 years: six years as minister of environment and spatial planning, four years as minister for telecommunications, information, and technology, four years as an MP in the opposition, and then three years as speaker of the house of parliament.

When I caught up with him a few months ago, he was taking a hiatus from politics. We talked about his years supporting oppositional culture, the period he spent in government and parliament, and what Slovenia might have done differently during its transition. Below the most recent conversation is the original interview from 1990.

The Interview 

Do you remember where you were and what you were thinking when you heard about the fall of the Berlin Wall?

I certainly remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was here in Ljubljana watching the direct TV transmission, and certainly, as far as I remember, we discussed this issue with our friends very closely and considered what is going to happen after that. 

And what did you think was going to happen?

We believed that this was the end of the Eastern bloc, but at that time I was not quite sure how quickly the so-called reunification of Germany would come true. At that time, Yugoslavia was not a member of the Eastern bloc, but everybody knew that this would somehow stimulate the democratic processes in Yugoslavia.

At that the time you were teaching?

I was an assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana, in the faculty of social sciences. My professional area is urban sociology and urban planning. Ever since I enrolled in university, I was in involved in student politics, and later on in democratic politics. I was involved in student movements from 1968 to 1974. Then there was the period of communist oppression from 1974 until the end of the 1970s.

The different civil movements started slowly in Slovenia, basically with the rise of punk music in the late 1970s. There was a very peculiar alliance between the punk music scene and the intellectuals, who tried to justify the appearance of this punk music. Punk music was immediately attacked for being anti-socialist, obscene, pornographic, pro-fascist, and so on. Why punk music? Rock music was the only form of criticism tolerated at that time. Therefore social and political critique was spoken in the language of punk rock. There were a lot of intellectuals, including myself and Tomaz Mastnak and others, who engaged in the public media against the labels that were given to this music. And from that point on started all the different movements like the peace movement and the ecological movements.

There was a debate here on civil society based on the interesting articles of the UK scholar John Keene on why civil society matters for socialists and others, which posed the idea of taking the notion of civil society out of the prevailing conservative discourse to give it more of a socialist orientation. And this discussion of civil society was very important in Slovenia: we started with the idea of socialist civil society and then we evolved to the idea of civil society under socialism, which actually proved that, in a one-party system with limited pluralism, civil society can virtually not exist. It can only exist in private, as an alternative independent of the socialist or communist structure. These debates were the basis for the social movements.

I also became president of the culture organization called Skuc Forum, which developed different artistic forms and aesthetics through theater, music, movies, and so on. Most of the artists involved at that time were suppressed in different ways. But these men and women, who are now 30 or 40 years older, now form the core of Slovenian art. All of them have received high awards. But they started in isolation.

In the 1970s the idea emerged that if you cannot change the system you should try to organize your life independently of the system. You should develop alternative forms of socialization that express your interests, and you shouldn’t care about what happens around you in institutions. The idea of antipolitics of Gyorgy Konrad had a great impact upon us. Then there was conflict between the army and Slovenian civil society in the case of Janez Jansa. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall and all these transformations. Slovenia had an opportunity to become independent and start a new chapter in history with a lot of good things and, of course, a lot of bad things.

I’m curious what elements of the student movement of the late 1960s proved to be enduring contributions to the debate in the alternative sector in Slovenia?

I would say, in terms of direct importance, none of them. But in the middle of the 1970s, the student movement and its serious suppression produced a very important experience for the actors in the movement. They realized that change is not so easily achieved. They understood the huge gap between the ideas of socialism and the reality of socialism. Losing these illusions was a very important experience for those who were active in the student movement and then later in the civil movement. We became more skeptical. We understood that, most likely, the change of the system was impossible. But no system is so perfect, so totalitarian, that you can’t develop your own forms of socialization. And that’s what we did. We tried to expand the area of freedom. We tried to stand up against the very orthodox aesthetic criteria of the formal culture of Party politics. In the environmental field, we stood against water pollution, the illegal and unethical conduct of some companies toward nature, and so on. We criticized the national army in connection with the anti-nuclear movements in Europe at the time.

In this way, I think the experience of disillusionment was important for those who participated in these movements and later in the civil movements. We recognized the distinction between society and state. This is very important. And it came out of the discussion of socialist civil society, which turned into a discussion how civil society can survive under socialism. 

As a result of many of the protests of the 1960s and early 1970s, which were repressed in turn in each of the republics, Yugoslavia got the 1974 constitution. Many people have told me that the 1974 constitution basically met many of the demands of these movements for greater autonomy of the republics.

Yes, the issue of autonomy was certainly an issue for the student movements: autonomy of the university, autonomy of different social groups, and also autonomy of the republics. But autonomy of the republics was not itself the goal. It was more autonomy in terms of democracy. I think the federal party leadership changed the constitution because it realized that the very strong oppression of the different autonomy movements – the so-called nationalism in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia – would not work, that they had to find a forum and formula that would in the future prevent such sort of nation-based politics in the republics. And they tried to do this by somehow easing the relations between the federal level and the republics. They were sure that they could keep this within strong institutional structures.

There was a debate in the Party about whether to allow some forms of political pluralism or to allow the more autonomous activity of the Party within the republics, and they obviously decided for the latter. Greater autonomy for the republics was basically a rejection of greater political pluralism. I don’t think they dreamed that later on this autonomy could bring about secession or the collapse of Yugoslavia. They thought they had all the serious political strings in their hands under the control of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav National Army. So they could ease up on the relations between the republics and the federation and at the same time maintain the political domination with the Party and the Army. It was a miscalculation.

It was not only a miscalculation. You’re suggesting that the choice between different types of autonomy — autonomy at the republic level versus greater political autonomy — ultimately determined how Yugoslavia would dissolve. It other words, it could have dissolved in a politically liberal way, but instead it dissolved in a national republic way.

Certainly this is true. The problem of Yugoslavia is, speaking very frankly, that Tito probably died 10 years too late. He was a sort of symbolic guarantee of the state, but at the same time he was a guarantee that nothing would change. If you look at the history of Yugoslavia, from the time it was established in 1920 up to 1990, what do we see? Yugoslavia existed as a democratic state for only for a few years—from 1920 to 1922. And then there was authoritarian rule up to the beginning of World War II. After that there was a dictatorship and the rule of the Party. Immediately when authoritarian rule started to loosen up, the so-called centrifugal tensions became stronger.

So basically Yugoslavia might have been a nice idea, but it never actually functioned as a democratic state. This was the difference between the collapse of Yugoslavia and the peaceful division between Slovaks and Czechs. Here it was much more based on nationalist ideas, particularly of the Serbs. At that time, the Serbs implicitly equated their own views and interests with the interests of the entire country. And that was unbearable.

I’m particularly interested in the punk music period. It’s so unusual for university professors to come to the defense of punk musicians.

At that time, I was a very young assistant. I started as assistant at the university during the dismantling of the student movement in the early 1970s. This dismantling encompassed all student movement institutions, including the independent community of high schools in Slovenia. Only one institution remained: Radio Student. Radio Student was the first student radio in Europe, established in 1970 as a part of the syndicalist program of the student movements. I also worked there, as a correspondent. Radio Student broadcast from noon to 3 pm, which wasn’t very much. The Communist Party considered Radio Student relatively apolitical and not a dangerous institution—so they left it alone.

But at a time when other institutions had been erased, Radio Student took on the role of expressing protest and cultural discomfort through music. They were the most important promoter of international Rock music in Slovenia. They played all the new Rock music, especially British punk music like The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and so on. This music was also broadcast immediately here, maybe with fewer administrative and political obstacles than in the UK, because here it was just foreign music and nobody cared about attacking the Queen of England.

I’m sure the Communist Party here was happy to promote music that attacked the Queen of England!

Yes. Three years ago, I had dinner with the Queen, and I recall thinking, “How nice this lady is! She really looks just like my mom. It’s very pleasant to talk with her.” And I remembered the Sex Pistols lyric, “God save the Queen, the fascist regime,” and I thought, “Maybe she didn’t deserve that!”

But back then, this punk music found its natural environment here. The people were disappointed. The young generation was without hope. There was growing tension in the economy. There was no future. Slowly some local bands were established, like the band Pankrti. The lead singer Peter Lovsin had a big interview today with the newspaper Dnevnik, where he said that he never consciously meant to be a revolutionary, that it was only by accident. But the provocative lyrics, like the ones about having no future, were absolutely critical. At that time, classical political and social critique was not possible, so the political and cultural discontent and critique took the form of Rock music. Punk Rock music was a form of contestation. Later on, the State started to apply political oppression, and, as I said, intellectuals came out against this oppression. In the late 1970s, Rock music substituted for the absence of political and social criticism.

And there was Laibach…

Laibach was post-Punk. Laibach came later, in the early 1980s. While Punk actually criticized the hopelessness of the situation, Laibach took all these development one stage higher. Laibach was actually mimicking socialism. They took socialism seriously. They held up a mirror to power, to the Party. And it was because of this that they were subversive. They didn’t say, “We don’t like this ideology.” No, they said, “We will seriously apply this ideology to music.” And the authorities were very surprised with Laibach.

And did the audience understand this?

There is always a question of whether or not you understand the music, whether or not it touches you. And of course this music touched a lot of youngsters. They made the effort. But no one can really say how it affected people’s lives. But basically Laibach fans were more or less oriented toward democratic movements. Laibach comes from a coal miner’s town in Trbovlje, where there is a strong proletarian tradition, which has both some sort of nostalgia about that time as well as criticism of the coal miner tradition, industrial society, and so on.

And in this post-punk era, was it necessary for intellectuals to come to the defense of Laibach as well?

Of course! Laibach was actually operating under the Skuc Forum. And I did a lot of activities to protect the group. This peculiar connection between Rock music of all sorts and critical intellectuals persisted all through the 1980s up to the 1990s.

I want to focus on one aspect of the 1980s and that’s the anti-politics aspect of Gyorgy Konrad’s work. As you point out, there was a point at which people said, “We will simply ignore the political reality and will create our own space.” It seemed to be two options coming out of Konrad’s understanding of anti-politics. One was that you ignore the official political sphere and you focus on the private sphere. The other was to take the Charter 77 approach and challenge the authorities not politically morally.

Yugoslavia and Slovenia at that time were, in terms of political freedom of expression, much more open than the Czech Republic or Hungary. So basically a Charter 77 movement was not really needed, because a lot of things could be said here. There were movements around the magazine Nova Revija and its famous issue number 57, where actually there was already the idea of an independent Slovenia. And there was the Trial of the Four in 1988 [that pitted the Army against the magazine Mladina], which had some resemblance to the movements in Czechoslovakia at that time. But again, Slovenia was a relatively free country in terms of expression, so political engagement took a different form.

And do you think that the anti-politics of that period still has resonance today? I find that in other countries, in Bulgaria for instance, where people still have profound suspicion of the political realm, even if it’s a different political system?

Yes, I think so. Some part of the so-called 99% movement in Slovenia, which had been camping last year in front of the national stock exchange, resembled this anti-politics, even if they were not aware of it. They were much more inclined toward the radical political ideas of the 1980s and 1990s from the United States, like David Harvey and some others, and not so much inclined to rethink the experience of the protest movements and anti-political ideas developed under socialism in 1970s and 1980s.

And when you assess the political temperament of the average person in Slovenia—not so much the activist or the 99% movement, but the average person—is there any anti-political residue from that period?

I would say there is an exhaustion with politics. There is a general non-confidence in politics. There is a general conviction that politics is something dirty, something you cannot rely on. The people are sick of politicians and politics. They tend to withdraw to the private realm. But it’s not the type of engagement used in anti-politics. It’s much more neo-corporatist, I would say, more focused on collectivities like trade unions, pensioners, teachers, and trolley drivers.

When we talked in 1990, the discussion was still about whether a confederal model was possible. And at the time I think the specific debate was whether Croatia and Slovenia should work more closely with each other or whether Slovenia should go off by itself.

This idea of a close cooperation of trade between Slovenia and Croatia was a very transitory idea. The idea of a so-called Yugoslav confederation designed on the model of the European Economic Community was much more viable, and I remember the Liberal Democratic Party (LDS) actually advocated this idea. It was represented as an idea by intellectuals in Belgrade and elsewhere, but it was rejected entirely. The intellectual movement in Belgrade demanded radical democratization: one person, one vote, and so on. But that wouldn’t have changed anything, and it would have meant the absolute predominance of Serbian politics and the centralization of the state.

You could ask, “What would have happened if Milosevic was not there?” Maybe there could have been some sort of window of opportunity to redesign the federation into a looser, more democratic community of nation states. But this may or may not have happened. You could say that it was almost inevitable that Milosevic as a movement would appear. So, we should not ask ourselves what would have happened if Milosevic had not appeared. Instead we should ask ourselves, “Why did it happen that Milosevic was the option for Serbia?”

Back in 1990 you said, “There would have been a very good possibility that Vuk Draskovic would have been in power” and that would have perhaps been even worse.

Even worse. Because he would have had a democratic legitimation at least at the beginning. So as I said, Yugoslavia was a beautiful idea. But never in its 70-year history—except for maybe two years—did it exist as a more-or-less democratic state.

Do you think that any action by any major actor at the time, between 1989 and the end of 1990, could have made a difference in terms of avoiding such a savage war? And I don’t mean simply what Slovenia could have done, or what Croatia could have done, but also what the European Union or the United States could have done.

I think everyone underestimated the potential for ethnic conflict in terms of the agreements of Milosevic and Tudjman on the division of Bosnia. This was the problem. Everybody overlooked that. What we knew in Slovenia is that we should exit. Slovenians at different levels tried also to convince some others that this was an option for them too, but they didn’t believe it. They waited too long. They should have learned their lesson earlier. The basic problem was that the disintegration of Yugoslavia was an opportunity for the nationalist idea in Croatia and Serbia. Their claims over such a large ethnic and physical territory: that was the problem. Only if Bosnia, when it declared independence, could have come under some sort of international protectorate, with the UN or the EU immediately sending forces down there. You can’t really blame European or American politicians for not doing this. Nobody probably could have done this.

It would have been unprecedented.

Unprecedented. In the end, it would have been impossible because the Soviet Union stood strongly on the side of the Serbians and Milosevic. Nobody was happy about what was happening. The European Economic Community at that time tried to keep Yugoslavia together. But it was difficult to prevent the disintegration. Only maybe if Izetbegovic had been more open to the Serbs and Croats, advocating a much more ethnically pluralist society instead of building a Bosniak party. But again I think this would not have prevented the situation.

As you point out, the discussion at Karadjordjevo between Tudjman and Milosevic had already taken place. So nothing Izetbegovic could have done would have been effective.

No, not by that time.

When you look back at the decisions that Slovenia made, after the brief war that took place and once sovereignty was established, is there anything that could have been done differently that could have ensured a better outcome?

Of course, yes, particularly two decisions. One was very bad, and this was the law on the restitution of property that had been seized and nationalized during the communist rule from 1945 to around 1957. According to this law, everything should be given back to people in terms of property, objects, and so on. And if the property was no longer available, then qualified people would get really generous payments. We’re still paying for this. It has actually produced new inequities. With the restitution in Germany, if the house was still there then you got it back. If it wasn’t there, your compensation was very small. The more you have had confiscated, the less you got back. If the communists confiscated from you 100 euros, you got 100 euros back. But if the government confiscated 1 million euros, then you only got back 100 thousand euro. But here, it has been one of the great redistributions of wealth. Many of the properties that were nationalized had mortgages. And those loans were held by companies that had been nationalized. So, if you were overburdened with loans and your property was nationalized, now you were given it back after 30 or 40 years without any debt. Or you would get compensation if your house was no longer there because it had been replaced by a highway or something like that.

So it was 100% restitution?

Almost. And particularly for the church. The archdiocese of Ljubljana was allowed to restore the ownership of large forests in some Slovenian regions. Some of these forests had been actually sold to the state in the early 1920s. Later, on the eve of World War Two, they were returned to the Church. When the Germans occupied Slovenia they renationalized these forests, and of course when the communists came to power the forests remained in state ownership.

I don’t understand that. So the Church actually sold the forest in the 1920s…

Yes, and because this had been renationalized by the German state and then the communists nationalized it again, and so then it was subject to restitution. And just recently the Catholic Church got back the only island in Slovenia, which is on Lake Bled.

So they had owned this island up until the communist period?

Yes, they owned the church on the island. Nobody had any objections that the church building goes back to the Catholic Church.

But they get the whole island?

The whole island, yeah. It’s crazy. And there’s been a reorganization of local communities and municipalities, which has been led by the conservative parties. They want to preserve as many of the municipalities as possible. We are now facing enormous costs connected to local politics. We have 210 municipalities, and some of them don’t even have a thousand inhabitants. They have more eagles than people!

When the restitution law was proposed, was there opposition to it?

There was opposition, but it was not sufficient to prevent this law.  Some of the members of the opposition—particularly ex-communists and liberal democrats—didn’t vote for this. They actually abstained and thus allowed the law to be adopted.

Also, the voucher privatization was not very good. Everybody got vouchers, but of course some of them traded their vouchers as soon as possible. Later of course some of these companies were viable; some others were not. But speaking very clearly, some sort of privatization had to happen. It was not optimal here, but I would say it was much better than in Hungary or some other countries where they simply sold what they got to funds controlled by foreign investors.

Up until recently, the Slovenian model of economic reform was held up as an example

The Slovenian model, after 20 years, is at the stage when it should consider some constitutional changes to promote better development. For instance, we should make some changes concerning the referendum process, because referendums are so easily achieved that you can block any sort of legislative decision.

Can you give me an example?

For example, on pension reform. Everybody knows that we should change the age of retirement from 63 to 65, not because of the economic crisis but because we live longer. But the law, which is very mild in terms of a long transition period, had been turned back by referendum.

It passed in parliament, but it was blocked by referendum.

Yes, and there have been other laws as well.

And there’s no mechanism for parliament to overturn a referendum?

No. The referendum is the last word. It’s not that the referendum should not be allowed. But the problem is that there is no quorum. If 20% of the population votes in the referendum, this 20% of population decides. And a lot of the issues have not aroused the wider attention of the public, so the minority can control the issue through the referendum process.

Also, the election law should change, in terms of providing more competition and more equal chances in some regions. Politically Slovenia has become very polarized. Center politics has disappeared in Slovenia, and now it’s much more polarized to the left and to the right.

The polarization of politics is of course happening in many countries. What factors do you think contribute to this polarization, aside from internal factors? What do you think are the common factors that lead to this polarization?

I keep asking myself this, but unfortunately I have no answer. In the Slovenian case, I would say that when one actor, like Janez Jansa, who has personified right-wing politics, chooses polarization, it’s very difficult for the other side not to play this game. The economic crisis has also created conditions in which politicians call for clear-cut solutions, which are one-sided and polarize the people.

In Slovenia there is a historical reason as well. There is a longstanding conflict between liberals and conservatives, between the clerical politics on one side and liberal (sometimes only “liberal”) politics on the other side. This polarization has existed in Slovenia since the late-19th century.

When we talked in 1990 the central tendency in the liberal party was between those focusing on classical liberalism—the classic economic liberalism of the European tradition—and the liberalism that focused more on civil liberties, and also social benefits, or the American liberal tradition. Does that tension still exist here?

It’s not very strong. This was an issue for the liberal democrats even before they came to the power. But later on the ideas of the traditional social liberalism of the American variety has prevailed in the LDS. The so-called neo-liberal politics played only a minor role in the early stages of the LDS. Later on the neo-liberals have been located elsewhere, particularly in the Slovenian Democratic Party. In the UK and the United States too, the political expression of neo-liberal economic ideas is conservatism, so they have been much more been linked to conservative politics, not liberal politics.

You mentioned two things in terms of your own experience of being both an academic and an activist and then going into politics. You mentioned the experience of polarization and also the experience of the power of referendum. Are there other things that surprised you about the political experience?

I spent 18 years in professional politics: six years as minister of environment and spatial planning, then four years as minister for telecommunications, information, and technology, then four years as an MP in the opposition, and then three years as speaker of the house of parliament. So I have a really rich experience in politics, and a lot of things surprised me.

I was surprised until my last day of professional politics, and I’m surprised even now, by how aware we were in the first period that we were creating a new state. We were developing institutions to enable people—at least so we believed—to have a decent life. Particularly in the environment and with physical planning and urban planning, our idea was to connect Slovenia by building highways. We did that. We believed that water was one of the most important resources and should be preserved and developed. So we started a large water-cleaning program. We adopted all the legal structures according to the demands and requirements of the European Union. So, there was a sense that we were doing something to enable Slovenians to have a better life, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about the water they were drinking, and so on. And this period ended with Slovenia’s entrance into the European Union.

The following period coincided with Janez Jansa taking over the government. And this became more of a battle over who gets what out of development. This has actually brought this country to the brink of economic disaster, where we now have to apply to the European Central Bank and the European Union for help. All of this earlier awareness has been lost after entering the European Union and adjusting our institutions to the requirements of a modern democratic state. After that, there was no big goal any more. It was more like: we are where we want to be so now it’s time to get as much as possible out of it. And those who resist this approach have no political power. So Slovenia now has a very unpredictable future.

Do you think that if EU membership had been delayed a couple of years more, these challenges could have been met internally?

I don’t think so. I think that this problem has been somehow present this whole time. After we joined the European Union, we thought that nothing bad could happen to us. It’s a psychological problem. But again, I’m somehow optimistic. I believe that we will find a way out of this period. And in many ways Slovenia is not doing bad.

Are you willing to back into politics?

I don’t know. Never say “never again.” I’m very happy with my position. I’m very glad not to be around politics right now. After 20 years of democracy in Slovenia obviously this is a time of generation change in Slovenian politics.

When you think back to your own positions back in 1990 or so, have you rethought any of your positions in any substantial way?

Not really in a substantial way. I rethought some of my decisions, for sure, but not in a substantial way. So, for instance, I would have made some environmental policies more quickly.

What about your understanding of liberalism as a philosophy?

I never understood liberalism in the market way. I saw it as a complex of ideas of basically European origin plus some later American features. I still persist in believing that thinkers from the 18th or 19th century cannot really fully answer questions today. But of course, you can also see how these issues and problems have been developed during this history, and that’s useful. So I’m not a dogmatic liberal-thinking politician. I know that the liberal set of ideas is maybe the most unorganized and controversial set of ideas ever. So if someone says to me that he is liberal, then I just start to consider what he could really mean by that.

Do you think the concept of an open society—which is fundamentally a liberal conception–is under attack in a substantial way? Do you see the possibility of an actual rollback to a very dangerous time, and I’m thinking here of FIDESZ in Hungary and…

Yes, certainly, I think so. This concept of open society is absolutely essential, particularly for the kind of democracy that can evolve out of authoritarian or totalitarian rule. I was so upset when I found that in the program of the LDS about six or seven years ago there was no mention of open society. Fortunately, I redrafted some of the chapters and put it back.

This is a really important issue, because the solution that is offered, whether by FIDESZ in Hungary or the Slovenian Democratic Party and Janez Jansa here, is a closed society: keeping society under control and depriving the people of possible alternatives. That’s a very dangerous idea. Sometimes people all too easily accept this idea, because they think that they will get security. At the end of the day, however, they will have neither openness nor security.

The last three questions are, quantitative. When you look into the future, the next couple of years for Slovenia, how do you assess the prospects on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being most pessimistic and 10 being most optimistic?

Six.

When you look back into the past from 1989 until today, and you assess everything that has changed or not changed here in Slovenia, how would you rate that on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being most dissatisfied and 10 being most satisfied?

Seven.

And when you look at your own personal life over the same period, 1989 to today, same scale, 1 to 10, 1 being most dissatisfied, 10 being most satisfied?

I would say 8.

Ljubljana, October 17, 2012

Interview (1990)

Could you describe your present activities?

You should know that I am a member of the presidency of the Liberal party here in Slovenia. It is an interesting issue of how the party I belong to became a liberal party, what liberalism means for us, politically, economically. The history of this party also describes the democratization processes here in Slovenia and also the dilemmas that appeared after the first so-called free elections. If I start at the end of the story, one thing which is more or less obvious for us: the path from the one party system, basically totalitarianism, to a pluralist system, democratic elections and so on, is not such a one directional path. After the elections, we have still problems and issues with democratic institutions. Partly we are witnessing a new appearance of totalitarianism within the so-called democratic parties. We see some danger of the over-emphasis of the focusing on issues of national sovereignty which, I am speaking personally, endangers the rights of individuals.

One very important issue, to illustrate, is the question of national army. Now it is a very important issue in the so-called democratization process. Before the election, there was the idea that we should try to achieve some sort of internationally recognized status of Slovenia as a de-militarized zone, a zone where there is no army and so on. Almost all so-called opposition parties before the elections were for this zone more or less but after the elections, after Demos came into power, they very strongly changed their attitude and they see the national army as a very important attribute of national sovereignty.

The Liberal party’s view is that we should now build our economic and political future more on the formal institutions guaranteed through checks and balances so that political options should prevail in their totality and not so much on substantive issues which might be national sovereignty or the army. This liberal option is: we don’t believe in great projects. We don’t believe in socialism. Our organization has done a lot to show how to dismantle this system. We don’t believe in projects in big capital letters: Socialism, Nation, even Democracy. What we are really trying for is a sort of a actual political and economic system which would prevent any political group and any political issue from dominating all the others. And here our prime concern, therefore, is human rights. Human rights considering the citizens of Slovenia and Yugoslavia and trying particularly now in the debate centered around the new constition, we will strongly support maximum human rights guarantees, all sorts of checks and balances built into the constitution.

In the sphere of the economy, we clearly see that the so-called socialized socialist economy didn’t work. But on the other side, we see that there is no one way, no easy solution. We also know that the market economy or regulated market economy has had crucial setbacks. But nevertheless we don’t think that here we can organize an ideal economic system. What we are striving for is to create a situation which would enable people to take their initiatives in the economy with all necessary measures, particularly concerning ecology, social issues and so on. I would describe our liberalism more as human rights liberalism than economic liberalism. Although we think that we have to de-nationalize and re-privatize the economy but with some guarantees that would not allow the management and owners free disposal and so on.

The other very important topic is Yugoslavia. We also function differently on the topic of Slovenia-Yugoslavia. Before the election, the parties involved in Demos were standing for the independence and sovereignty of Slovenia as soon as possible. But we stood for cooperation which we operationalize in terms of a Yugoslav economic association which would have a common market, common elements of external politics, some financial and banking institutions. But the republics should be in other ways independent to act. Now, after the elections, Demos took this idea of cooperation. Now the situation is so that Demos will probably fight for cooperation between Slovenia and Croatia which we still don’t consider a good solution. Because good relations between two republics in which one is very small like Slovenia, various sorts of differences can come out. But now the situation concerning Yugoslavia is very different. As it looks, we went to Belgrade to see if there is some sort of possibility for restructuring Yugoslavia and then we found out quite clearly that there is not. Not because we don’t want it, but because Serbia doesn’t want it.

At the moment.

Yes, but this moment could last a very long period. Even after the elections. We talked with the opposition groups and they have the same position as the ruling party. We spoke of some sort of pact between Yugoslav nations and they were talking about war and redrawing the borders, dividing the territories – Macedonia, Bosnia and so on. So actually it is not the issue that Slovenia and Croatia are for greater independence but that Serbia is now determined that if they can’t rule over all Yugoslavia, they will advocate some sort of separatism to dominate south-eastern parts of Yugoslavia. Concerning the elections in Serbia, the opposition parties there think that Milosevic will prepare a new constitution, give the constitution to a referendum, certainly he will win a overwhelmingly majority and after that immediately organize the elections in a period of months with no chaance for the oppositional parties to prepare a fair pre-election campaign. But even if some other party comes to power, it will not display a different view on this issue. Particuarly if Draskovic comes to power. The Democrats and the Liberal Forum, whose basic ideas are close to ours in terms of liberal democracy, have no chance of coming near to power. So paradoxically if we are left to choose between confederation of Croatia and Slovenia and an independent Slovenia, we are inclined more toward independence.

What about these more democratic Yugoslav options?

This is what we were striving for. We produced this document about the Yugoslav economic association which is based on the following assumptions. All republics should have free elections. After the elections, the major political powers that come out of these elections should come together in some sort of round table and see the options. As you know, Yugoslavia’s beginning was already marked with bad marks. And that after the war, Yugoslavia was based on some rational assumptions which may work on a symbolic level but not on a level of practical political life. Its very rude what I will say, but: the fact that Yugoslavia is composed of very different cultural worlds (I’m not saying that the cultural wworld that Slovenia belongs to is higher, I’m a cultural relativist). So I’m not saying that the Serbs are in comparison to Western culture something less. Rather, I would claim quite the opposite. But the fact is that they are different worlds. The more I think of Yugoslavia, the more I believe that the causes of conflicts are based in the cultural sphere not in political or economic disagreements. But in the very differnt ways that people think that life should be organized. On the other side, the south-eastern space – from the alps to Greece – could present a terrain of mutual cooperation, but it must be based on mutual interest of the republics, of the nations. We think that Yugoslavia is possible if it is based on “a pure and rational calculation of interests.” So if every republic thinks that it will be better for it to join Yugoslavia, then Yugoslavia is possible. There are very few issues of interest: dispersion of population (Croats living in other republics) and the economy

There seems to be a basic contradiction between the ideals of liberalism (rational self-interest) and the irrational forces of nationalism that today exist within Yugoslavia. What will come of this clash

We went to Belgrade and came back very disappointed. Rational discourse was not possible. We talked about interests and they are talking about Serbian soil and blood and fears and fights and so on. That’s why we think that Yugoslavia is probably not an option any more. But still the question remains: how to come to such solutions if we can’t stick together. Every solution is a bad solution in this game. We would stand for any solution which would not cost lives.

Even if you become independent you will still have to deal with Serbia. Serbia will not suddenly become transfered to another part of the globe.

That’s the point. There are different options. But the problem is: the Serbians say “if you Slovenes don’t want to stay in Yugoslavia, you are free to go.” But that is not the situation in Croatia. 10 per cent of the population there are Serbs. Serbia are claiming historic territory including almost all of Bosnia and part of the Dalmatian hinterland. There are two possibilities in Serbia-Croatia relations: one is violent conflict, the other is some sort of agreement between Croats and Serbs. And this would allow that Yugoslavia would become some sort of confederation. But what would be the price of such an agreement? If the price would be that Kosovo goes to Serbs, and also part of Macedonia, then we would not go for such compromise. Because this was the politics before the war. Two big brothers were dealing between themselves and the smaller nations paid the price – Slovenia, Macedonians, Albanians.

Superpower relations.

Yes. Here human rights issues are involved. If we go apart, we would leave the Albanians to themselves. But if we stay in Yugoslavia, can we help the Albanians? That’s why I said that there is no good solution.

I don’t think anyone wants to see a partition solution as between Indiaa and Pakistan. That would mean population traansfers and the creation of homogenous populations. And the loss of life.

We claim that as well. Such a scenario involving moving a large section of population would be the worst for us. We are strongly in favor of ethnic minorities. They are entitled to the same rights as the majority population. And we do see them as a sort of element, abstractly speaking, which increased the variety of society. What is really boring is one nation. Sometimes we make jokes with Austrians: it’s really boring there! Yugoslavia is something you have to experience, sometimes dangerous, dynamic compared to the stagnant Austria.

In terms of Serbia, it will perhaps become more dangerous if isolated, if it feels cornered or trapped.

As I can see, Serbia is not very much interested in the Western parts of Yugoslavia. They are interested in part of Croatia, part of Bosnia-Herzogovina, and Macedonia. What we can see in Europe, tensions have been removed from East-West relations and transfered to the Balkans. If you see those Balkan countries treat national minorities you will see that Serbs are the most democratic! Compared to Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Albania. Sometimes I think that these Balkan nations are only waiting for Yugoslavia to fall apart and then they will jump for Macedonia. Part of the territory will go to Greece, the major part divded between Serbia and Bulgaria. Albania is simply too weak though it has 1/3 of the population in Macedonia.

You mentioned earlier some of the principles of classic political liberalism, checks and balances, etc. I’m wondering if you also hope to follow another liberal principle: the triangular relationship between state, business and labor developed in the U.S. in the 20th century?

Yes. I worked on this interwar period in U.S. history in my Ph.d. But Slovenia is very small and prone to corporatist solutions – in which labor and government come to some agreement, some undefinable unity. We would not be able to see how these interests are articulated. Already in the last 20 years, the Slovenian government wanted to rule the country as a big corporation with everything owned by the government. Some sort of unstructured corporate division which developed some para-governmental structure: this is what we want to prevent 

Like Slovenia as a company-town.

Yes, we would like to prevent this. The other issue: precisely because we are small, the social space is very intensive. A lot more is happening in a small social space. Slovenia is in those terms a modern society. Therefore we stand for a strictly proportional system of voting which would allow that political and other preferences are presented through the institutional systems, in opposition to the majority system in which you have a reduction of interests before they enter into the institutions. But basically we do accept this scheme that social policy should be determined by these three actors: government, business and labor. But we want to see clearly defined positions. Now, the government is becoming even stronger than the last two years before the elections. Before it didn’t have the legitimacy as a one party government. Now it is a multiparty government but institutions remain the same. So it has political legitimacy and all the powers from the one party system. Which is very abnormal. On the other side, we have a business shattered by the bad position of the economy. We have a considerable industrial tradition, we don’t have big industrial cities or urban industrial working class. Aproximately 50 per cent of the working class is working farmers. Either they are employed in small industrial companies in the country or small cities or they move from the villages daily to the cities. The industrial urban working class is supposed to be the social basis for strongly organized labor either politically or in trade unions. But trade unions are not very important social factors here. Workers-farmers are culturally and politically inclined toward the country way of living and toward more rightist parties. Slovenia is not good soil for liberalism either. You had the domination of two big collectivist ideologies here: Catholicism and Communism. The urban middle class educated is very tiny.

You want to create countervailing forces without the social basis for such forces and in the face of a government clearly not interested in creating such opposition. What can you do?

The point is, as I said, when we think in these macro-sociological categories, the situation looks rather pessimistic. But I don’t really believe very much in terms of political parties and social bases. What is very charasteristic for our party, liberal intellectuals or even leftist-liberal intellectuals are certainly a minority in terms of the population as a whole but not a minority in terms of providing concepts and ideas. They have knowledge and skills of mobilizing the population. If you would order all liberal writers to stop all their writing, then the papers would simply have no articles! Right now we have 40 members of parliament out of 240 total. We are the strongest single party in parliament. That’s not so bad. In those terms, it is a question of party strategy. If it is able to organize, but not in a party way: it is chaarasteristic of liberal intellectuals not to want to belong to a party. What we do with this party is to create a supporting mechanism for the members of parliament and to make some channels for information and so on. We don’t want to be some kind of populist party with 50,000 members. We don’t need this.

One problem for liberals in the West, however, is that they often can’t win in elections because they have this faith in the power of ideas while other parties believe in the power of power.

We think that if we can manage to have some 15-20 per cent of the elected bodies, we would have a fairly good chance of providing stability. We wouldn’t say that publically: we say that we want more publically. But 15-20 percent, we think we  can get that. Lawyers and professionals like that support us. Managers too. So we are not so restricted to only so-called liberal intelligentsia.

Are there major differences of opinion between branches of the party, between human rights liberals and economic liberals for instance?

We had the very same structuring in the Liberal party as characteristic in European Liberal party with this opposition of the two groups. Up to now, we don’t see this opposition as damaging to the party. On the contrary, it constitutes an internal dynamic of party life.

"There is no success in the Balkans without reconnecting everything except politics."

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

When I was traveling in East-Central Europe in 1990, I had only a handful of contacts outside of Poland, where I had lived the year before. I usually arrived in some capital city and started calling the few numbers I had. Then I relied on those people to connect me to their friends, their colleagues, and sometimes their political adversaries as well.

So it was that I was exiting a café in Ljubljana, the charming capital of Slovenia, after a meeting with political scientist Mitja Zagar. We happened on a group of party representatives drinking coffee on the terrace. Mitja made introductions for me and I quickly arranged interviews with two of the people there. One of them, Vojko Volk, was serving at the time as a consultant for the Socialist Party. He had previously worked on human rights issues.

When I prepared to return to Slovenia 22 years later, I discovered that Vojko Volk had become a diplomat and was now posted in Zagreb as the Slovenian ambassador. One of the great pleasures of this current project is to see where people have gone and what they have done in the intervening years. Because many of the people that I met in 1990 spoke English quite well and were engaged politically, it is no surprise that many of them became diplomats. On this trip alone, in addition to Vojko Volk, I spoke with the Bulgarian ambassador in Slovenia and the former Croatian ambassador to Egypt, both of whom I interviewed in 1990 before their leap into diplomacy.

In this interview, Vojko Volk talked about the challenges that Slovenia currently faces, particularly in the economic realm. On this issue in particular, he has had some second thoughts over the years.

“I was suspicious that the so-called Slovenian model of transition would not in the end be the best,” Volk told me. “Our model was not to sell the silver, not to sell the companies that were basically owned by the state. All the other countries did the opposite: Hungarians, Czechs, they sold their companies, they sold everything. We didn’t do that. And it went well for us for 15 years. It was swell even after we entered European Union. From 2004 to 2008, we had an average growth of more than 4 percent every year, and sometimes more than 5 percent. We achieved, can you imagine, 92 percent of the GDP average inside the European Union! It was the record for ex-communist states. Then it turned out, in the last four years after the Lehman Brothers collapse, that state ownership is not good when it comes to banks.”

As in 1990, our conversation returned in the end to the potential of regional cooperation. Twenty-two years ago, we discussed the viability of an Adriatic Alliance. This was before, of course, the collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars. Now, Volk champions a slightly different proposal: Reconnecting the Balkans.

“There is no success in the Balkans without reconnecting, reconnecting everything except politics,” he concludes. “We should reconnect everything in former Yugoslavia: energy, roads, railways, sports, culture, economy, market.”

Below the current interview I have included a transcript of our discussion in 1990.

The Interview (2012)

Do you remember where you were when you heard about the fall of the Berlin Wall? 

I was in Ljubljana, and I was trying to find a way to go to Berlin, of course. We were in contact with some friends from the German Socialist party because at that time I was a human rights activist and I was trying to establish a socialist party in Slovenia. I was following the news closely. I was glad that many of my friends were actively involved in bringing down the Berlin Wall, including some friends from the Salzburg Global Seminar, which is famous for discussions of human rights and which I participated in 1988. At that Salzburg Seminar were journalists from the opposition papers of what were at that time communist states, from Slovenia and Serbia, from the Middle East, Catholic and Protestant journalists from Britain and Ireland. At that time I was writing for Mladina, the famous Slovenian newspaper.

In 1988, nobody believed the Berlin Wall would be destroyed the next year. Nobody.

George Will, the famous American columnist, published a column in early November 1989 saying that the Berlin Wall would last for at least another two decades. So that was embarrassing for him! Since that time, have you had any second thoughts about anything you thought in those days? Have you rethought any of your positions, or do you pretty much believe now what you believed back then?

I pretty much believe in the same things, but not everything. There’s an old saying between old war veterans: when they gather to drink together, they say, “We didn’t fight for this!” Sometimes I say this also, because my country doesn’t look like what I wanted it to be. Especially today, because this economic crisis is so bad. It’s not just an economic crisis in Slovenia, there’s also the political situation, the relationship between our political parties. The political divisions are still strong, between those on the right and those on the left, between those who have different opinions about World War II. So, our unification at the time of independence did not last long.

So maybe I made two mistakes in my opinions. The first was that our unification around independence would last longer, and it didn’t. It lasted for maybe 3-4 years until some events caused us to split.

Second I was suspicious that the so-called Slovenian model of transition would not in the end be the best. Our model was not to sell the silver, not to sell the companies that were basically owned by the state. All the other countries did the opposite: Hungarians, Czechs, they sold their companies, they sold everything. We didn’t do that. And it went well for us for 15 years. It was swell even after we entered European Union. From 2004 to 2008, we had an average growth of more than 4 percent every year, and sometimes more than 5 percent. We achieved, can you imagine, 92 percent of the GDP average inside the European Union! It was the record for ex-communist states.

Then it turned out, in the last four years after the Lehman Brothers collapse, that state ownership is not good when it comes to banks. State ownership is killing the real free market, so maybe this was not the best idea.

Do you think it would have been smarter to start selling the silver right at the beginning or maybe once you joined the EU?

The answer to that is very simple. You should sell the company when you have buyers. We had buyers in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. We had buyers for telecom; we had buyers for banks. We had buyers for our biggest pharmaceutical plant Lek, which was bought by Sandoz and which boosted our budget by more than a billion Deutschmarks. And it is still a very successful company, though it is owned by the Swiss.

We missed the chance to sell our telecom company, which is now practically 100 percent state-owned, and it’s bringing us nothing but problems. Our biggest bank is 60 percent state-owned, and it’s dragging us over the cliff. Slovenia’s problem is not the condition of the state economy. Our problem is the condition of the two major banks. So the problem was that we didn’t sell on time. There is always a best time to sell, and we missed it.

There are some things we can sell now. The Triglav insurance company is the biggest insurance company in this southeast European region, and we have buyers. If we sell either the Triglav insurance company or the Petrol oil company, it would be enough to cover everything, and we could live life like before. In Croatia they have nothing left to sell. The same in Hungary. We have to sell, but it’s not the time for selling. Now it’s the time of crisis.

A number of Bulgarians regret selling their airline to foreigners, who then closed it down, and now Bulgaria has no airline. And that’s a problem not because they could have had a great airline but because they expected it to be a hub for international travelers.

Everybody wants to have a hub.

Right, but if you have no airline it’s very difficult. Now, did you ever think 22 years ago that you would be sitting in this position someday?

No. Not here.

Where did you think you would be 22 years ago?

At that time I was a human rights activist, and I was trying to establish a normal political system, which we mostly accomplished. I saw myself more in human rights, more becoming something like an ombudsman. Because when you deal with human rights, something catches you. You really help people. There are so many poor people in the world who suffer different injustices.

But then it turned out that my political career was not very easy. My political party, the Socialist Party that we had established, didn’t succeed in entering parliament in the second elections. So we all went from the liberal left to a newly established party, the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, guided by the famous late president Janez Drnovsek. With that I entered diplomatic service, which was not difficult for me because I studied international relations and international law. I entered the diplomatic service, and I did quite well and I liked it. I like my job.

Where else have you been posted?

My first diplomatic mission was deputy ambassador in Rome from 1993 to 1998. Then I was ambassador in Rome from 2001 to 2005. Then I was first chief of the UNMIK office of Slovenia to Kosovo for two years and ambassador there. And now I’m ambassador here in Zagreb.

You’ve come here at a reasonably good time. Relations between Slovenia and Croatia were not always so good, given the disputes over the maritime boundary. Has that left any residue of tension between the two countries?

Yes, unfortunately. I was there when we were planning together our independence. I remember these nice times when we, with our Croatian friends, even with Croatian President Tudjman, were personally organizing our independence. We declared that we were leaving Yugoslavia because at a certain point we realized that there was nothing left to do and for us it was best to leave the house.

Then, in 2001, the Tudjman era in Croatia ended. I was working at the time with President Drnovsek as state secretary for the ministry when we prepared the Drnovsek-Racan agreement to resolve the border dispute — under the encouragement of Washington and Brussels. This was for me the best possible agreement. In 2001, Washington and Brussels already knew that Slovenia would very soon enter the European Union. Their concern was very logical. It would be good to resolve this border issue with Croatia before we entered the European Union, because otherwise it could create problems for us and especially for Croatia. It was very well organized, and the impetus came as well from Zagreb.

So, we started to prepare. For six months we prepared the Drnovsek-Racan agreement, and it was accepted by Ivica Racan, then the prime minister of Croatia. In that agreement, we resolved the border issue and also the Ljubljanska Banka issue, which is still bothering us today. And you can imagine how disappointed I was when this agreement couldn’t be ratified in Croatia because extreme nationalistic forces were against it. And the politician that built his reputation around the rejection of this Drnovsek-Racan agreement was Ivo Sanader [who became Croatia’s prime minister in 2003]!

So you can imagine how happy I was to go through it all again and finally achieve an arbitration agreement over the border issue. This was déjà vu for me. And now we have to repeat the exercise with Ljubljanska Banka. It’s not nice to say, but I’m a bit fed up.

But today the bank issue aside, most outside observers say that the hard right here in Croatia has largely collapsed. The Party of Rights doesn’t really have any representation in parliament. HDZ, up to the last elections at least, has moved to the center. The extreme right here in Croatia has declined in its political influence. And is that your observation as well?

This is mostly true. But it’s also not good at the same time. Because of the simple reason that in order to have an efficient government you need a strong opposition. This is the lesson we have learned in Slovenia. Usually, here in the Balkans, people are happy when they get a government with 2/3 of majority, with just one or two strong parties. On the contrary, the opposition must be strong because here in the Balkans absolute power corrupts absolutely, like everywhere but here even more. So I don’t think this is good for Croatia.

A couple months ago, I spoke to Tomislav Karamarko, the leader of HDZ, and I told him about the experience of the Slovenian Liberal Democracy Party. I told him that, in order to be a big and stable power, you need to go over the bridge to find supporters and voters. If you just keep on your side of the river, you risk remaining with just 20 percent. You must speak to the voters that are not completely yours. Karamarko is doing just the opposite by trying to convince voters who are already on the right. Maybe he has good reasons to do this, but I don’t think so. Only by expanding your ideology to embrace more and more people can you be a good ruler.

Do you think that human rights issues in Slovenia have largely been solved?

Except for the Erased, yes.

And that problem is still going on?

Not anymore. The European Court for Human Rights reached a verdict and we have to fulfill it. And that’s that.

And will the government do it? Other countries have ignored the European Court…

Well, that would be really against the nature of Slovenia.

That’s good to hear!

Of course, nobody likes it. I don’t like it that my taxes are going to reimburse people because some stupid bureaucrat did the wrong thing in 1992. But the position in Slovenia is to respect the courts, especially European courts. Maybe the intention of those bureaucrats in 1992 was not bad, but the execution was wrong and we have to pay for it.

We also have, of course, some slight problems with the Roma minority in Slovenia. But if you take into account that there are maximum 10,000 Roma in Slovenia, the scale of this problem is much different than in neighboring countries where they have half a million.

As an ex-human rights activist I would say we are doing very good in the field of human rights except for those two things. And we are doing good also with the Roma minority because there are two models in Slovenia. One is in the eastern part of Slovenia where 4,000 are living, fairly integrated, with electricity, water, schooling. Near the Croatian border, there is a different kind of Roma community, which has more problems interacting with people. But we are solving even that.

One of the issues we focused on 22 years ago was this gap between rich and poor that had emerged in Slovenia. Do you think that for the most part the economic benefits achieved during the years of economic growth were distributed relatively equally throughout society?

In the first years, yes. And in the time of growth, the social welfare state was treated fairly enough: the health care system, the school system. All the social reimbursements were really high, so it’s difficult to complain about that. Of course, in the time of crisis, huge differences began to appear, because the welfare state in Slovenia was completely dependent on the economy. We don’t have access to the transition funds, so the welfare state depends on the budget. If the budget goes down, so does social welfare. It’s suffering now, and it might suffer even more.

There’s a book recently published in the United States about the Slovenian model. It didn’t really talk much about the issue of privatizing the best…

The issue of not privatizing.

Yes. It talked more about the pace of economic reform and it argued that the Slovenian model was quite different from what happened in Poland, for instance. It held it up Slovenia as a useful model, not necessarily for this region any longer but perhaps for other countries in the world thinking about economic reform.

And I agree. Because in capitalism there are just two models. There’s the model where a national economy is highly competitive because it has low taxes and a poor welfare state. And there’s the model with extremely high taxes and an extremely strong welfare state, which of course is the Scandinavian model.

I recently wrote an article about the Scandinavian model of the welfare state. I wrote that there is no economist in the world who can explain why, among the top ten competitive economies in the world, you can find all five Scandinavian states and three Asian states and Switzerland and Malaysia and Singapore. These are five states with extremely high taxes and five states with extremely low taxes. There are some mysteries in economics, too.

We are average. In Slovenia, our tax rate is 40 percent. When I get my wage, 40 percent goes to the state and 60 percent goes for me. 

That’s high from a U.S. point of view, but from a Scandinavian point of view that’s…

In Germany, they take away 44 or 45 percent.

A social scientist, not an economist, would look at that situation and say that obviously taxation is not the important variable here in terms of economics. What do you think is the most important variable?

To have an efficient state. This is my answer in that article. The Scandinavians have discovered how important it is to have an efficient state. For example, when you ask a Scandinavian, “Is it really so wise to give an unemployed person 1,000 Euros of support,” they will tell you, “Yes, because if I give him 1,000 Euros, he won’t go to jail, he won’t be a druggie, he won’t steal. Because then it will cost me even more.” I like this answer.

But if you buy a car in Denmark, do you know the tax on the car? 200 percent. So if you buy a car for 10,000 Euros, that car will ultimately cost you 30,000 Euros. Try to explain this to Americans!

Americans would not accept that.

That’s why many people call Denmark a communist state.

A lot of people here in Croatia, but certainly all the people I’ve talked to in Serbia and Bulgaria, have said that the most important factor is the opposite of efficiency: corruption. Which proves your point, too. Corruption is the most important factor holding back Bulgaria and Serbia.

There is no corruption in Scandinavia. Almost none.

What about in Slovenia?

Quite a bit, I’m sorry to say. It’s a bit difficult to understand how you can count corruption, but if you believe the numbers, then yes, quite a bit. In Denmark, in Scandinavia, they believe in good police, good courts, good criminologists, all of which fight corruption. If it’s true that corruption costs Slovenia more than a billion Euro per year, it’s better to invest in police, in courts, in more efficient courts. Because a billion Euro is a lot of money.

So there must be some reason that is not in the economics textbooks why Scandinavians are successful. Maybe the reason is in some other kind of book, a sociology book maybe, that talks about how the values are much different in Scandinavia than they are in the Balkans. In Scandinavia, they value the state, they value the police, they highly value the army, they highly value even administration not to mention teachers. In the Balkans, if you are a teacher, it’s close to being a waiter in a bar.

It’s not just the Balkans. You’ve been to Italy, so you can speak about the challenges there…

This is what happened in Italy, too. Teachers, scientists, research: they are all going down.

They are going down or they are going out? Leaving the country? And is that a problem in Slovenia? It’s obviously a problem in Croatia.

Not yet. But we are struggling right now. Everybody supports the government reforms that would enable us to come out of the crisis. Three reforms are most crucial. The reform of pensions is for obvious reasons since we are living longer. Second is reform of the labor market, which should be more flexible. And third is reform of our banking system to make our bank system healthier. But of course the most important reform is to cut the budget. And people from the university world are pretty angry. They’re already protesting on the street.

If those enterprises were owned by foreign corporations and they cut the work force, then the anger would be directed at foreign corporations. But if they are owned by the state and the state cuts the jobs, then the anger is directed at the state. So there is a political cost to state ownership as well.

Indeed. I wouldn’t take Malaysia or Singapore as a model for central European society. But South Korea is a good example. You pump 20 percent of the budget into science and schools, and within 10-20 years you get one of the most developed societies in the world. We are doing just the opposite.

When we talked 22 years ago, one of your major goals was to see an authentic left emerge in Slovenia, do you think it ever did?

No.

At the time we talked, the Social Democratic party was basically a party of the right. It embraced a rather severe austerity program and was somewhat nationalistic. So, why didn’t an authentic left emerge in Slovenia? Of all the countries in the region, Slovenia would have seemed the most likely place for an authentic left to emerge.

It’s a very simple reason why we don’t have today an authentic left or an authentic right. The reason is the experience of our fathers who fought in the Second World War, when we were divided. As you know, Slovenia was occupied by Germans and by Italians, by Nazis and Fascists. The Nazis succeeded in dividing the Slovenian nation. And then the Communists did as well. Even today we suffer from this division. There are the families of those who collaborated with the German occupiers, and there are the families of those who were on the side of the Partisans, with the resistance. And this is how we interpret politics today, whether you’re talking about privatization or the welfare state or anything. This is the tragedy of Slovenia. We don’t have normal political divisions.

What will take to get beyond this kind of division? The dying off of an entire generation of people?

I’m afraid that we have tried so-called conciliation, but it’s difficult to force conciliation on people who literally fought each other. I was one of those trying to do everything for conciliation. I remember an anecdote when I was trying to convince at least one important resistance veteran to go to the festivity of the veterans of the other side. And he said, “Why would I go there?” You should go there, I said, because you can tell them that you were wrong but you have no hard feelings and we must build the future together. In the end he told me: “Listen, I might go to that festivity, but I won’t say what you are suggesting.” And you know what he wanted to say? “We didn’t kill enough of you!” I was so shocked. That’s when I understood that we need a new generation that’s not poisoned by the stupid divisions of their fathers.

And you think the younger generation…

They’re coming to that point. They don’t give a damn about those things.

That’s a good thing as long as the younger generation stays in Slovenia.

Croatia, Serbia, and all other republics suffered a brain drain. Serbia is maybe the world record holder. Years ago many highly educated young people escaped from Serbia because of Milosevic. It happened also to Croatia but on a minor scale. It’s not happening to Slovenia. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. People go, but they like to come back. There’s nice nature in Slovenia. The landscape is perfect. The air is healthy. Maybe that’s why.

If people come to Slovenia from other parts of the region, are you the beneficiary of this brain drain?

Yes, we are a beneficiary. But we also did something about this. For example, years ago we abolished fees for study for everybody who comes from ex-Yugoslav countries. They don’t have to pay anything to go to university. I fought for that. We have also introduced a lot of scholarships, hundreds of scholarships, which then were cancelled last year because there is no money. We did this because we need physicians, doctors, computer programmers, engineers. Mostly they come from Croatia and Serbia. They learn the language in three months. They like to stay here because they are close to home and their wages are three times more than in Serbia, two times more than in Croatia. So, yes, we are a beneficiary.

Almost everyone I talked to in Bulgaria thought that they had been brought into the EU too early for a variety of reasons. Some of them felt that economically they were not prepared. Many others felt that the EU lost an opportunity to use the political leverage of accession to demand that Bulgaria reform more thoroughly, especially on the issue of corruption. Do you think that anybody in Slovenia believes that Slovenia entered the EU too early? 

No. Actually public opinion polls say that more than 60 percent of Slovenians are satisfied with being members of the European Union and would vote again for the EU.

Are there any negative side effects to membership? Other than, obviously, the economic crisis.

It’s all connected to the economic crisis. Everybody blames Europe. There is no escape from that.

And in some sense that provides a certain amount of political cover for whatever government is in charge in Ljubljana. They can say, “It’s not our fault.”

Exactly. This is the reason why in all five of the last elections no government was reelected. Which I like. Eight years of one government is too much. I would introduce a law that the government must change every four years.

In Croatia, support for accession was around 66 percent.

In Slovenia, it was 89 percent. 

That’s amazing. A lot of people in Croatia expected to be a part of the EU in 2005 or 2006. But do you think that anybody here believes in Croatia that they are entering too early.

Yes, many people believe that, but for different reasons. There are people who think that there is no need to hurry because the European Union is suffering a very bad moment. A year or two years ago, we didn’t know the outcome of the European crisis. Now we can foresee that Europe will survive, and we can foresee that the European Union will somehow reform itself and proceed.

Another group of Croatians are against the EU on the basis of really deep nationalist or hard right positions. In rural areas, I’ve heard people say, “why should we enter the European Union when it’s a Sodom and Gomorrah?” I said, “What?” And they said, “Yes, men are marrying each other, girls are marrying each other. They want to have gay pride parades.” I don’t know how big a percentage of the population this is but perhaps 20-30 percent.

We are very similar, Croatians and Slovenians, and we’ve had similar history for the last 2,000 years. But at the same time we are very different. Gay pride in Slovenia has been around for 10 years. Of course if you introduce a law on gay marriage in Slovenia, there will be a debate. And some Slovenians are not very happy about making such marriages completely equal. But to introduce the law to legalize marriages and for gay people to have equal rights? It’s a piece of cake.

What explains the different cultural attitudes of Croatians and Slovenians?

Historians will tell you that the differences arise from the fact that Croatia was under the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Slovenians were under the Austrian part. But I don’t believe this very much.

The Austrians are not necessarily more liberal when it comes to social attitudes.

I think that rural society in Slovenia was never so rural as it was in Croatia. There are parts of Croatia that are still inaccessible because of bad roads and bad communications. In Slovenia, thanks to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the infrastructure was always there. There have been roads to every village of Slovenia for hundreds of years.

Plus, Slovenian independence was prepared for by civil society, not just by politicians. Even the church had a role in the independence movement here. I remember today’s archbishop in Ljubljana, Anton Stres, was with us. We prepared together the first free elections. He was one of us. So we treat church as a civil society —  the most important part of civil society, but still. So this was the difference also.

They have civil society in Croatia, of course, but it suffered a lot because of the war. How could you speak in favor of the Serbs during the war here? Or refugees? There were people who did that, but it was very difficult.

What do you think are the most important issues that Croatia has to deal with in order not only to get into the EU but to succeed once it gets into the EU?

One issue is Croatian, the other is regional. The regional one is even more important. It’s impossible to live in the Balkans if you don’t have relations with all your neighbors. If you’re always trying to resolve issues with your neighbors, you never really have time to promote important ideas. There’s a saying: great minds discuss ideas and small minds discuss neighbors. We should stop discussing neighbors and start discussing ideas.

When I was coordinating the western Balkans in the ministry before I came to Zagreb, I introduced this idea — I have a copyright so you can’t steal it! — called “reconnecting the Balkans.” There is no success in the Balkans without reconnecting, reconnecting everything except politics. We should reconnect everything in former Yugoslavia: energy, roads, railways, sports, culture, economy, market.

You actually talked about supporting an Adriatic alliance 22 years ago.

We cannot escape from here. We are so interdependent.

But the internal problem is that we are all lacking a good, efficient political establishment. Croatia needs to have this. The establishment needs to introduce the laws and reforms so that Croatia can become a booming country. They have everything they need. They have a coastline. They have resources. They even have oil.

In Slovenia, we had a wonderful government that brought us into European Union. We had also a very good political establishment in the first period after we entered the EU. Before that and after that, we were not so lucky.

So, my explanation is very easy. You must have good politicians in the government. If you have bad ones, you can screw up even the best country in the world.

The Interview (1990)

Vojko Volk works as a consultant for the Socialist party, the smallest of the parties in the Slovenian parliament.

Could you describe your work with the Socialist Party?

I used to work as a human rights activist and I also travelled around Europe, but in Western countries. I advise on questions of human rights and international politics. I studied those questions and I worked on those questions. Now those issues are not so hot. In Yugoslavia they are, but in Slovenia, most human rights activists are active in various governmental bodies or in political parties. So I am too.

I understand you have a human rights commission here?

We have some governmental organizations and also a lot of non-governmental organizations. And I used to work in a kind of non-governmental organization for human rights. We had this organization for three years and we worked a lot and had a lot of success. Now, our organization is mostly governmental and works in parliament and it is paid by parliament. And that is better because before we worked as volunteers.

What does the commission work on?

The work of this body is now the same as in Western countries. It works on some issues specific to ex-East countries. These are questions about some problems which were made in the times of totalitarianism: some political judgments, war crimes during and after the war, ex-political police and questions typical to the Western world like issues of security and privacy of information.

In some countries in this region, the new governments must decide what to do with files once kept on citizens.

This problem is mostly solved in Slovenia. Those files are open and anyone who wants them to get them. Our Council for Human Rights is now dealing with questions of criminal code. Because our code is quite socialistic, we have to reform it. So this body of experts works on the reform of the criminal code. Our code is not so problematic as in the southern parts of Yugoslavia. We have not had for instance the death penalty in Slovenia for thirty years now. Now it is also legal, it is written in the constitution, that there is no death penalty. In 1961 we had the last execution. The last people prosecuted for political reasons in 1974 were imprisoned for one year and are now members of the leadership of two of our parties.

Do the governmental or non-governmental organizations devoted to human rights violations deal with problems in other parts of Yugoslavia?

We have solved most of the civil and political rights problems here in Slovenia and also in Croatia. We don’t deal much with political and civil rights. Now we deal with social rights. But in Serbia and other countries they haven’t done anything about political or civil rights. A few days ago in Serbia they registered formally the first political parties. Then you have violations of fundamental civil rights all over. You don’t have free trade unions, you have only a few political parties registered. Then you have all sorts of violations of privacy. Then you have the violations of rights of whole nations, like the Albanians in Kosovo. You perhaps heard about the Helsinki Federation being thrown out of Serbia just two days ago. Their delegation went to see what was going on in Kosovo – since Yugoslavia is a signer of the Helsinki Declaration, they have the right to go and see. But the Serbian police arrested them and declared them persona non grata in Yugoslavia for three years. Our party protested that action with a letter sent to the American Senate and the Helsinki Watch group. It is important that these people now know that it is not Yugoslavia that is violating human rights, but Serbia. Its very important for us because we don’t have violations. We have protested the situation in Kosovo since 1981. We had a very big political gathering here in Slovenia a year ago: all the political parties participated. It was one of the biggest gathering of the year protesting the violations: at the time there were 20 people dead in riots in Kosovo. At that time, we had very strong conflict between Slovenia and Serbia. Serbia also stopped all economic relations with Slovenia. There was an economic embargo.

In what way are you working on social rights?

The social rights is connected with the bad economic situation here in Slovenia. Though Slovenia is quite a developed country with $6000 per capita salary. But we have now the problem of unemployment. From this year on, our people will have to pay for schools, medicine.

Through taxes?

No. Directly. We also pay through our taxes. If you get an average salary of 800 DM, you have to pay 350 DM for taxes. And these taxes include money for school, for medicine, for culture and so on. But now we will have to besides that, directly!

So all services have been privatized?

No, they’re not privatized. This state just doesn’t give enough money to medical institutions and schools because they must find equilibration between industry and non-profit parts of the economy. It is the problem of socialist heritage. It would be very easy to blame the new government. It is the problem of the whole Eastern world. Now the unemployment will 10 per cent like in Western countries. Last year we had 4 per cent. This was a low percentage. One wage in Western Europe is enough to survive for one family. But not here.

What happens to people if they don’t have enough money to pay for school and medicine?

Those people are tax-free. They won’t have to pay. But the problem is that the privatization of schools and medical services is beginning. And we are afraid, as a socialist party, that those people who don’t have enough money will just have to put their children in national schools which will have turned really bad. We want to ensure that everyone will have the chance to go through all the levels of education. We are a nation of 2 million people. We cannot afford to have a big gap between educated and unqualified. Our strategic plan from our party is to have here a higher level of ecuation than in Italy. Another problem is the segregation between the rich and the poor. This segregation will get worse during the privatization of social property. Some wild actions of privatization could ruin our social structure here. Or people from abroad could come and buy all our property.

There seem to be two strategies concerning the privatization of public services like education. Either keep the state services and allow privatization from below. Or actually sell the state properties associated with those services. Which will prevail here?

Nobody knows exactly. Also my party does not know which way to go. But something we do know is that we want a normal and not revolutionary process.

Frankly speaking, I don’t think that any country is ready to recognize an independent Slovenia.

Our general view is that any kind of solution should be rational, functional and democratic. Within these principles, we don’t think very much about the forms that it might take. We support generally confederation. But we also know that if someone would go wrong in Yugoslavia that a sovereign state is one solution. We know what it is like to live in a confederation with big differences. Not just human rights. The index of economic differences between Slovenia and Kosovo is 1:8. The index between Slovenia and Serbia is 1:5. And if you know that the index between Sweden and Turkey is 1:4, you know what this means. You simply cannot have the same criminal or economic code, the same politics, the same international relations with these differences. It is impossible. It is very opportunistic if you live in Italy or Germany and say, “Well, you Yugoslavs should stick together because we don’t want to have problems in the Balkans.” Today, federation is not possible. But confederation – maybe it is stupid because it is not a known term – means for us that each part of this confederation is sovereign and it has in common just those things which are rational and functional. That means common borders, duties, common market of course, common international affairs in general (though it is normal for us to work with Italy and Austria and for Serbia to work with Romania, Bulgaria and Greece). And we can also have a common, but common, army. That means that this common army is composed of armies of those republics. In peace, our army; during a war, duties are common.

Don’t you think that the problems of federation now in Yugoslavia will also make a confederation difficult as well?

Of course.

If there are in fact major economic differences between the partners, won’t common policies be near to impossible to devise and then enforce within a confederation?

But you should look at the EEC. This is a kind of confederation that works on functional, rational issues. Especially economic issues.

But those are equal partners. And where they’re not equals, there will be for instance cash transfers to ensure equality. So practically, confederations cannot possibly work between unequal partners.

Yes, well that’s true. But we know that and despite that we are trying our best to solve our problems within the borders we have. You can do anything in Yugoslavia but change the borders. We hope that these borders will become in ten or fifteen years just formal borders. As in the EEC.

What about Italy trying to regain part of its previous territory in Slovenia?

We are not worried about that. Some lines in Europe are so strong that if they intend to do something like that, they will be ruining the Helsinki document and treaties like that.

The problem is: which surrounding countries are most natural to cooperate with for Slovenia? Middle Europe? Or Slovenia and Serbia? Slovenians have lived in Middle Europe, in Austro-Hungary, with Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Austrians and North Italians for 200 years. And we are living with Serbians for 70 years. 70 years is nothing compared to 200 years. Our farmer in Slovenia is the same as in southern Austria and is very different from Serbian farmers. For example.

Nations should live together in some kind of homogenous region and then they will be satisfied and they won’t be searching for problems, for wars.

Do you expect a one person/one vote system here in Yugoslavia? 

It would be really astonishing if you had one person/one vote in Yugoslavia. We would all turn to Serbs because they are more than ten million.

But what of the Czechoslovak solution with two chambers of parliament?

That works in Czechoslovakia. And we have that system now in Yugoslavia. In our federal parliament we have two chambers, one civil and one republic. And it doesn’t work. Because you always have the process of majoritization.

Have you considered an Adriatic Alliance?

The newest promotion of my party is the idea of the parliament of the Middle Europe. We are developing this idea in the socialist parties of the Alpine-Adriatic. Socialists in Austria and Italy, in Hungary and in southern Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our idea is to make Middle Europe again a common political and economic space. With institutions such as the Council of Europe. Our idea is to make such mechanisms for Middle Europe. There are many reasons for this. First, Italians and Austrians and Germans in Bavaria (who would also be included in Middle Europe) are afraid of the Fourth Reich, as they say, of the united Germany. They are not afraid in political terms but mainly in economic terms. Because Germany has the major economic connections with Yugoslavia and Hungary, not Italy. And Italy wants to be our main economic partner. Also, many of the countries of Middle Europe do not have a chance to join the EEC for another ten years. So this would be to prepare politically and economically these Middle European countries to join the EEC. It would also be a great chance for the USSR to become a member of the European house. We are not prepared now to go to Europe. Our economy is not prepared to compete on equal terms with Germany. It is not a question of making Austro-Hungary again! The fact is that this Middle European space could be very endangered by the process of German unification. We would like to involve all of Yugoslavia in this but they have to express their preparation. Bosnia and Herzegovina is now in the game. And we believe that Macedonia will be soon. And Serbia we will see.

How much support does this idea have outside of socialist parties?

There are some suspicions from people who are not the promoters. If they would be the promoters, however… I think this idea will go through because it means economic advantage to everyone.

Now to turn to the Socialist party. Where does it come from?

Let’s start from the end. We are now quite a modern normal socialist party of the Western type. Our program is like this and so are our documents and our work in Parliament. We are the constructive opposition here and cooperate with all the parties. We are a lay party, which means that we cooperate with the church, but not just with Catholics. Our goals are a socially right state, like the goals of any other socialist party in the West. We are not just ex-Communists in our leadership. There are people who were never in the party. Maybe our leadership has fewer Communists then the present anti-Communist parties. Our heritage is mostly socialists from before the second world war. Socialists had a very rough history here in Slovenia because they were not for Yugoslavia in the 1920s; they were against the Serbian king and they were against the idea of Yugoslavia. So they disappeared because the clerical parties before the war were for Yugoslavia. And there were not many workers before the war. But on the top we had some very strong people, writing books and so on. So we are basing our movement on their thoughts and their thoughts were of the modern socialist movements in the Western world. But we had here in Yugoslavia after the war some kind of national front like in Poland which was working until 2 years ago. Within this national front you had all those individuals who are now in different parties. Out of this national front came the social democrats, the liberals and so on. And the last of the parties to come from the national front was ours, the Socialist Party of Slovenia including myself. Even our human rights organization, which was independent, was financially cooperating on this national front which 2-3 years ago was very open.

The main problem at the beginning of our party was that we were the most eager anti-Communist party in Slovenia. But that was our problem here in Slovenia. Because everyone was telling us that we were some kind of different clothes Communists and it was not true. And we had the most problems on the political scene with the Communists! We decided to go into the elections and reached our six percent of seats in the main chamber of parliament. We won many seats in local communities; we have mayors there. So we are one of smallest parties in parliament, which means that we are also one of the most important parties in Slovenia if you count the parties which are not in parliament. We know that we will have to cooperate with the Communists and the Liberals because we are in the opposition.

The problem is that socialism is not very popular in this country. But if this country develops in a normal way, socialists will become part of the normal power as in France, Italy, Austria or anyone else. We just hope to have better cooperation with Social Democrats. Because they are now in power. Our goal is in one or two years to maybe unify the parties. To have Socialists and Social Democrats in one country is rather stupid.

What are the differences now between Socialists and Social Democrats?

The only difference is that they are in power and are quite right-oriented. We are both kind of members of the Socialist International. But their program is quite right wing.

In what sense right-wing?

In terms of nationalism and social politics.

So what makes it a Social Democratic party exactly?

Nothing really.

The name.

Yes, the name. We know that they will have to change if they want to become really social democrats. That’s the problem with this period.

The problem with membership in the Socialist International is that we are not a party of a formerly acknowledged state. We could be accepted as members of the SI if we were the Yugoslavian Socialist party. So now we are trying our best to convince the SI to have us as a full member. The danger is that new Yugoslav Socialist parties are emerging, with ten members but they call themselves Socialist parties and who knows? It would be rather stupid if the SI gave more legitimacy to those who call themselves socialist than those who are really socialist. And the Serbian Communist party could call itself the Yugoslav Socialist party. A few days ago we had a press conference in which we called the Serbian Socialist party “national socialists” because of what they are doing in Kosovo. We are not prepared to cooperate with them until they change. We cooperate with Croatian socialists, Bosnia-Herzegovina socialists, Montenegro socialists.

In most countries in this region, people say they like the idea of socialism as in Sweden, but the respective governments simply don’t have enough money for such social programs. Therefore, austerity is the only possible answer. How do you answer this here in Slovenia?

Our Social Democrats talk this way. A week ago representatives from our party and from the Social Democrats were at a Western meeting of socialists and the president of the SD spoke this way. And everybody was laughing: what kind of social democrat is this? Well, it’s rather crazy to talk this way. We have a very strong tradition of civil society here. Our sociologists, writers and thinkers began five years ago to promote strongly the idea of civil society which means a separation of power, state of law, and so on. And we have very clear ideas here in Slovenia about what the state of law is, about what government is, about the three levels of power and also about civil society means for normal life. In that way, if you would say “we don’t need a left wing any more,” we would become a very rightwing country in ten years. And in ten years, no one would have any chance to be socialists or to talk of civil society. We would have again totalitarianism here. That’s for sure. And that’s the reason why the intelligentsia which was working on democratization for all these years are not now in power. They are neither in government nor in the opposition. They look from the side. They know that this spirit is very important to survive. The left wing must survive.

You will not see racism and nationalism as strong here in Slovenia as in Croatia. Because in Croatia there was no democratization. They just had totalitarianism then very quick free elections and now they have democracy, so-called. It is a very nationalistic democracy without people who know what democracy is. Romania is also an example of what you have when you don’t have democratization. That is not to give medals to our Communists. But you must give them acknowledgement. At least they have not been repressing democratization for the last ten years.

We know that we don’t have the money for a social state. But that doesn’t mean that we must not fight for social rights! The logic would be very beastly then. You can fight for social rights only in rich countries? That’s rather stupid. We have now two trade unions in Slovenia. And one is pro-government and it says, “don’t strike, people! Because our poor country doesn’t have enough money!” That’s not logical. We are not prepared to forget our ideas and our name simply because it was compromised in history.