- Stane Dolanc
Stane Dolanc (
November 16 ,1925 –December 12 ,1999 ) was a YugoslavCommunist politician and one ofTito 's closest men.Dolanc was born to a worker family in the
Slovenia n town ofHrastnik , then part of theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . After finishing elementary school in his home town, he was sent to the prestigiousBežigrad High School inLjubljana . In April 1941, northernSlovenia was occupied byNazi Germany . Dolanc continued his schooling inGraz and was even drafted in theHitlerjugend . In 1944, he joined theYugoslav Partisans and started his military career.He became involved with politics relatively late, in 1969, when he was already forty-three year old. Nevertheless, his unexpectedly quickly rose to one of the most important members of the
Communist Party of Slovenia . In 1969 he was appointed as a member of thePresidium of theLeague of Communists of Yugoslavia , which he remained until 1982. In the early 1970s, he helped the Yugoslav presidentTito to crush the nationalist and liberal reforms in Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. He became famous for a statement he made in a Communist rally inSplit in 1972: "Let be clear to everybody that here, in Yugoslavia, we Communists are in power. If we were not in power, someone else would be, and this is not so. It will never be so." His phrase is generally regarded as a preludium of the authoritarian turn in Yugoslav Communist policy in the mid 1970s, especially after the crushing of theCroatian spring .In the late seventies, Dolanc became one of Tito's closest collaborators. After the death of
Edvard Kardelj in 1979, Dolanc became one of the most influential figures in theSocialist Republic of Slovenia , together withMitja Ribičič . By mid 1980s, the two lost influence in the Slovenian Communist Party to the autonomist current represented byIvan Maček Matija andMilan Kučan . Dolanc nevertheless retained his influence in the federal politics. Between 1982 and 1984 he wasminister of the interior in the Yugoslav government. While in office, he carried out the police repression following the crush of Albanian protests inKosovo who had demanded greater autonomy for their province.Between 1984 and 1989, he served as the Slovenian representative in the
Presidency of the SFRY . After 1989, he held some minor positions on the federal level and soon recluded to a private life. 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". After the democratization of Slovenia in 1988–1990 and the breakup of Yugoslavia, he rarely appeared in public. He died in Ljubljana on December 12, 1999 of cerebral stroke.See also
*Željko Ražnatović Arkan
*Jovanka Broz Sources
*Bojan Balkovec et al., "Slovenska kronika XX. stoletja" (Ljubljana:
Nova revija , 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" inMladina , n. 51 (December 20, 1999).
*Božo Repe, "Vojak partije, veliki gobar iz Martuljka, naš čovik: smrt Staneta Dolanca" inDelo , y. 41, n. 294 (December 18, 1999).External links
* [http://www.vreme.com/arhiva_html/467/09.html Stane Dolanc, titoista]
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