Stane Dolanc
Encyclopedia
Stane Dolanc was a Yugoslav
and Slovenia
n communist politician, one of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito
's closest collaborators and one of the most influential people in Yugoslav federal
politics in the 1970s and 1980s. He was secretary of the Executive Bureau of the Presdium of the Central Committee (CC) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
(LCY) from 1971 to 1978, federal Secretary of the interior
from 1982 to 1984 and a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia from 1984 to 1989. He was regularly appointed a member of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order
and was chairing the body in late 1980s. For most of his poltical career Dolanc defended strong authoritarian rule of the LCY and struggled against nationalism stemming from various parts of the country. He was influential in Yugoslav security structures and it is believed that he inspired a number of politically motivated arrests, especially while he was interior minister.
, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After finishing elementary school in his home town, he was sent to the prestigious Bežigrad High School in Ljubljana
. In April 1941, northern Slovenia
was occupied by Nazi Germany
. Dolanc continued his schooling in Graz
in Austria
. American journalist Dusko Doder stated in his book The Yugoslavs, published in 1978, that during the war Dolanc had been a member of Hitlerjugend. In 1944, however, Dolanc joined the Yugoslav Partisans and continued his military career after the war. He served as a deputy to the prosecutor in Ljubljana Army
corps and finished his involvement in the military in 1960 while being a colonel in Zagreb
office of the Yugoslav military counter-intelligence service KOS. During his military career Dolanc received a university diploma and in the 1960s he was a director of the Political Science School in Ljubljana run by the Slovene branch of LCY.
In the same speech Dolanc stressed that LCY had to be a united organization, announced expulsions of those party members that did not follow the new line and attacked Serb, Croat and Slovene nationalism. Dolanc's Split speech was directly preceded by a letter signed by himself and Tito addressed to local LCY organizations throughout Yugoslavia. The letter urged strengthening party's unity and leading role in the society, and thus announced continuation of Tito's and his collaborators' struggle with liberalism and nationalism in LCY that eventually resulted in thorough changes within Croatian, Slovene and Serbian Party leaderships.
Though the post of the Executive Bureau secretary was meant to change its holder every year, Dolanc kept it for eight years and thus remained one of the strongest persons of the Yugoslav politics. While he was occupying the office, he was often mentioned as a possible Tito's successor. However, during 1970s in both LCY and federal state institutions evolved a system of rotating collective leadership that made it hardly possible for any single official to become a new leader after Tito. At the eleventh Congress of LCY in 1978 the Executive Bureau was abolished and although Dolanc was appointed secretary of the CC LCY Presidium, he resigned from this office in May 1979. The resignation is sometimes linked to the death of Edvard Kardelj
of February in the same year, who reportedly had been protecting Dolanc. Dolanc however remained a member of the CC Presidium and, besides, in June 1979 he was re-appointed a member of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constutional Order, an agency of the Yugoslav Presidency coordinating internal security institutions. Dolanc therefore kept playing an important role in Yugoslav communist establishment after Tito's death in May 1980.
led by Milka Planinc
. While in office, he carried out the police repression following the crush of Albanian
protests in Kosovo
who had demanded greater autonomy for their province. In May 1983 Dolanc complained about the increase of nationalism and of hostile activities against the communist regime and accused dissident intellectuals being one of the moving forces of it. In Spring 1984 two politically motivated cases took place that are both directly ascribed to Dolanc. In Belgrade 28 participants of a lecture of Milovan Djilas were brought to a police interrogation; one of them was found dead few days later while six others faced a trial, which however resulted in lenient or none punishments. One of the attendees of the lecture, a Serb intellectual Vojislav Šešelj
was arrested again a few weeks later for stating nationalist ideas in an unpublished essay. Dolanc publicly condemned him in a TV interview and Šešelj was eventually sentenced for a several-year inprisonment. Dolanc has been accused of ordering assasinations of political emmigrant activists commited by Yugoslav security service abroad and of personal protection of one of its agents, career criminal Željko Ražnatović Arkan
.
From May 1984 to May 1989 Dolanc was the Slovenian member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and during the term he was also chairman of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order. In 1988 and 1989, alongside the majority of the Presidency, he was unsuccessfully opposing the anti-bureaucratic revolution
which he regarded an expression of Serb
hegemonism. One of his last public interventions was an interview with the liberal opposition magazine Mladina
, published in May 1989, in which he described himself as the "last Titoist
".
close to Kranjska Gora
. He died in Ljubljana
on December 12, 1999 of cerebral stroke.
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
and Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
n communist politician, one of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
's closest collaborators and one of the most influential people in Yugoslav federal
Federation
A federation , also known as a federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central government...
politics in the 1970s and 1980s. He was secretary of the Executive Bureau of the Presdium of the Central Committee (CC) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
League of Communists of Yugoslavia
League of Communists of Yugoslavia , before 1952 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Savez komunista Jugoslavije/Савез комуниста Југославије, Slovene: Zveza komunistov Jugoslavije, Macedonian: Сојуз на комунистите на Југославија, Sojuz na...
(LCY) from 1971 to 1978, federal Secretary of the interior
Ministry of the Interior (Yugoslavia)
The Ministry of the Interior of Yugoslavia refers to the internal affairs ministry which was responsible for interior of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1945 and the communist SFR Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1992...
from 1982 to 1984 and a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia from 1984 to 1989. He was regularly appointed a member of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order
Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order (Yugoslavia)
Federal Coucil for Protection of the Constitutional Order was an agency of the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in charge of controlling all public and secret internal security institutions of the country...
and was chairing the body in late 1980s. For most of his poltical career Dolanc defended strong authoritarian rule of the LCY and struggled against nationalism stemming from various parts of the country. He was influential in Yugoslav security structures and it is believed that he inspired a number of politically motivated arrests, especially while he was interior minister.
Early life
Dolanc was born to a worker family in the Slovenian town of HrastnikHrastnik
Hrastnik is a town and a municipality in central Slovenia. Traditionally the area was part of the Lower Styria region. The entire municipality is now included in the Central Sava statistical region. Located in the valley of a minor left bank tributary of the Sava River, the area is known for its...
, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. After finishing elementary school in his home town, he was sent to the prestigious Bežigrad High School in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
. In April 1941, northern Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
was occupied by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. Dolanc continued his schooling in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. American journalist Dusko Doder stated in his book The Yugoslavs, published in 1978, that during the war Dolanc had been a member of Hitlerjugend. In 1944, however, Dolanc joined the Yugoslav Partisans and continued his military career after the war. He served as a deputy to the prosecutor in Ljubljana Army
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
corps and finished his involvement in the military in 1960 while being a colonel in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
office of the Yugoslav military counter-intelligence service KOS. During his military career Dolanc received a university diploma and in the 1960s he was a director of the Political Science School in Ljubljana run by the Slovene branch of LCY.
Second person of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia
In 1965 Dolanc became a member of the CC of the League of Communists of Slovenia (LCS), and at the ninth congress of LCY in 1969 he was elected a member of the CC LCY. Two years later Dolanc became secretary of the newly established Executive Bureau of the Party Presidium, i. e. second person of LCY, despite the de facto number two of Yugoslav politics remained Edvard Kardelj. Dolanc quickly gained strong influence in the Party. Dolanc was one of main organizers of the Kardjordjevo Party Presidium session in December 1971 that resulted in resignation of the leaders of the Croatian Spring. In November 1972, at a CC LCS plenum, he called for purges of the liberal wing of the Slovene Party branch which, eventually took place. He became famous for a statement he had made at a local communist conference in Split in September 1972:- "We have to make clear that in this country we communists are in power. For if we were not, it would mean someone else is. And for now this is not so neither will ever be."
In the same speech Dolanc stressed that LCY had to be a united organization, announced expulsions of those party members that did not follow the new line and attacked Serb, Croat and Slovene nationalism. Dolanc's Split speech was directly preceded by a letter signed by himself and Tito addressed to local LCY organizations throughout Yugoslavia. The letter urged strengthening party's unity and leading role in the society, and thus announced continuation of Tito's and his collaborators' struggle with liberalism and nationalism in LCY that eventually resulted in thorough changes within Croatian, Slovene and Serbian Party leaderships.
Though the post of the Executive Bureau secretary was meant to change its holder every year, Dolanc kept it for eight years and thus remained one of the strongest persons of the Yugoslav politics. While he was occupying the office, he was often mentioned as a possible Tito's successor. However, during 1970s in both LCY and federal state institutions evolved a system of rotating collective leadership that made it hardly possible for any single official to become a new leader after Tito. At the eleventh Congress of LCY in 1978 the Executive Bureau was abolished and although Dolanc was appointed secretary of the CC LCY Presidium, he resigned from this office in May 1979. The resignation is sometimes linked to the death of Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj
Edvard Kardelj also known under the pseudonyms Sperans and Krištof was a Yugoslav communist political leader, economist, partisan, publicist, and full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts...
of February in the same year, who reportedly had been protecting Dolanc. Dolanc however remained a member of the CC Presidium and, besides, in June 1979 he was re-appointed a member of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constutional Order, an agency of the Yugoslav Presidency coordinating internal security institutions. Dolanc therefore kept playing an important role in Yugoslav communist establishment after Tito's death in May 1980.
Minister of the Interior and member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia
In May 1982 Dolanc became the Secretary of the Interior in the new Federal Executive CouncilPrime Minister of Yugoslavia
The Prime Minister or the President of the Federal Executive Council of Yugoslavia was the head of government of the Yugoslav state, from the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 until the end of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992.-Kingdom of...
led by Milka Planinc
Milka Planinc
Milka Planinc was an ethnic Croatian Yugoslav politician. She served as a Prime Minister of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1982 to 1986. She was the first female head of government in the history of real socialism...
. While in office, he carried out the police repression following the crush of Albanian
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
protests in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
who had demanded greater autonomy for their province. In May 1983 Dolanc complained about the increase of nationalism and of hostile activities against the communist regime and accused dissident intellectuals being one of the moving forces of it. In Spring 1984 two politically motivated cases took place that are both directly ascribed to Dolanc. In Belgrade 28 participants of a lecture of Milovan Djilas were brought to a police interrogation; one of them was found dead few days later while six others faced a trial, which however resulted in lenient or none punishments. One of the attendees of the lecture, a Serb intellectual Vojislav Šešelj
Vojislav Šešelj
Vojislav Šešelj, JD is a Serbian politician, writer and lawyer. He is the founder and president of the Serbian Radical Party and was vice-president of Serbia between 1998 and 2000...
was arrested again a few weeks later for stating nationalist ideas in an unpublished essay. Dolanc publicly condemned him in a TV interview and Šešelj was eventually sentenced for a several-year inprisonment. Dolanc has been accused of ordering assasinations of political emmigrant activists commited by Yugoslav security service abroad and of personal protection of one of its agents, career criminal Željko Ražnatović Arkan
Željko Ražnatovic
Željko Ražnatović , widely known as Arkan was a Serbian career criminal and later a paramilitary leader who was notable for organizing and leading a paramilitary force in the Yugoslav Wars...
.
From May 1984 to May 1989 Dolanc was the Slovenian member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and during the term he was also chairman of the Federal Council for Protection of the Constitutional Order. In 1988 and 1989, alongside the majority of the Presidency, he was unsuccessfully opposing the anti-bureaucratic revolution
Anti-bureaucratic revolution
Anti-bureaucratic revolution as a term, refers to a series of mass protests against governments of Yugoslavian republics and autonomous provinces during 1988 and 1989, which led to resignations of leaderships of Kosovo, Vojvodina and Montenegro, and the capture of power by politicians close to...
which he regarded an expression of Serb
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
hegemonism. One of his last public interventions was an interview with the liberal opposition magazine Mladina
Mladina
Mladina is a Slovenian weekly left-wing current affairs magazine. It was first published in the 1920s as the youth magazine of the Slovenian Communist Party...
, published in May 1989, in which he described himself as the "last Titoist
Titoism
Titoism is a variant of Marxism–Leninism named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of...
".
Late life
After his term in the Federal Presidency expired, Dolanc retreated from public life and moved to Gozd MartuljekGozd Martuljek
Gozd Martuljek is a settlement in the Kranjska Gora municipality in the Upper Carniola region of Slovenia. The settlement was once called Rute, and is even today divided into Spodnje and Zgornje Rute....
close to Kranjska Gora
Kranjska Gora
Kranjska Gora is a town and a municipality on the Sava Dolinka River in the Upper Carniola region of northwest Slovenia, close to the Austrian and Italian borders.Kranjska Gora is best known as a winter sports town, being situated in the Julian Alps...
. He died in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
on December 12, 1999 of cerebral stroke.
Sources
- Bojan Balkovec et al., Slovenska kronika XX. stoletja (Ljubljana: Nova revijaNova revijaNova revija is a Slovenian publishing house and cultural institute that developed from the literary journal with the same name.- The magazine :...
, 1997). - Miran Lesjak & Bernard Nežmah, "Poslednji titoist" (interview with Stane Dolanc) in Mladina, n. 18 (May 19, 1989).
- Božo Repe, Rdeča Slovenija: tokovi in obrazi iz obdobja socializma (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2003).
- Bernard Nežmah, "Stane Dolanc (1926–1999): najtrša pest slovenskih komunistov" in MladinaMladinaMladina is a Slovenian weekly left-wing current affairs magazine. It was first published in the 1920s as the youth magazine of the Slovenian Communist Party...
, n. 51 (December 20, 1999). - Božo Repe, "Vojak partije, veliki gobar iz Martuljka, naš čovik: smrt Staneta Dolanca" in DeloDeloDelo is the largest national daily newspaper in Slovenia. It was established on May 1st, 1959, when two newspapers Ljudska pravica and Slovenski poročevalec merged. Nowadays, it is the most influential and credible daily newspaper in Slovenia...
, y. 41, n. 294 (December 18, 1999).