«LJUBLJANA FOUR» TRIAL AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE YUGOSLAV CRISIS OF THE LATE 1980S

Abstract

The essay examines the role of “the Ljubljana Four” trial of 1987 in the development of the crisis in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. The analyzed episode is almost entirely ignored in the Russian and Western historiography, but it played a very important role in the Slovenian road to independence. In all probability, it was instigated by chief military leaders as a warning to the Yugoslav dissidents. Three distinguished Slovene dissidents, who had published some articles concerning the possibility of a military coup in Yugoslavia in a popular local magazine «Mladina» and had tried to prove it with some military documents, became the targets for the trial. The military persons decided to accuse those dissidents and their source in military establishment of disclosing classified information. They preferred to consider the case by military court, because such politically motivated cases could be dismissed by civilian courts, as it had happened before. Probably, the instigators of the trial intended to send a strong-worded message to all opposition forces in the country, but severely miscalculated and made some grave errors, such as arranging the trial in the Slovenian capital in Serbo-Croatian but not Slovene language, prohibiting the accused to have civil defense lawyers and completely losing information war during the trial. The Slovenian dissidents, from their side, demonstrated considerable capability of using direct and indirect actions, both in Yugoslavia and abroad, in order to achieve their goals. The «Ljubljana Four» were jailed, but military efforts backfired: instead of silencing critical voices, the trial aroused a strong response of the society, cemented the opinion against military leaders and made many Slovenes to move from centrist political position to anti-establishment and later separatist sentiments.