Jansa Honours Role of Pucnik in Slovenia's Independence
Prime Minister Janez Jansa has honoured the role played by political dissident Joze Pucnik in bringing independence to Slovenia. According to Jansa, a great injustice is being done to Pucnik, as his role in the independence efforts has not been emphasised enough.
Pucnik (1932-2003) never put his personal renown before the ideals he fought for, Jansa told a symposium "Culture and Politics" organised by the Joze Pucnik Institute.
According to Jansa, Pucnik never hesitated and there were many periods in his life when "his perseverance with a set of principles was the only satisfaction he had".
Even when Slovenia gained independence, there was bitter aftertaste when the time came to recognise his work. Some had purposefully created a vacuum in this respect, which means a great injustice has been done to Pucnik, Jansa said.
If things had happened as they did in most Central European countries, history textbooks in Slovenia would contain as much information about Joze Pucnik as Czech textbooks contain about Vaclav Havel, Jansa said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said that Slovenian self-determination was not based on historical but on cultural rights.
The communists had always wanted to get the cultural workers on their side, as they feared them, he said. The communists saw cultural workers as a potential anti-communist party and Pucnik was a key factor in this, said Rupel.
"It could be said that he was a serious threat to the party monopoly," said Rupel and added that with the appearance of Demos, the first pro-democracy party in Slovenia, and Pucnik's leadership, politics in Slovenia reached a maturity seen in "normal European countries".
Pucnik was the leader of Demos when it emerged victorious at the first multi-party elections in the country, held in 1990. Demos would go on to form a government that led Slovenia to its independence.
From 1989 Pucnik served as the head of the Slovenian Social Democratic Party (SDSS), the predecessor to the current Slovenian Democrats (SDS). In 1993 he handed the leadership to Jansa. He retired from politics in 1997.
In the former Yugoslavia, Pucnik was a writer persecuted by the Communist authorities for his dissenting opinions. Among others, he was sentenced to nine years in prison in 1958 for propagating anti-Communist ideas.
Continually hounded by the Communist authorities, Pucnik emigrated in the late 1960s to Germany, only to return to Slovenia in the late 1980s to lead independence efforts.
He was one of the authors of the famed 57th issue of the dissident Nova revija magazine, which was released in 1987 and openly discussed Slovenia's independence.
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