The Outlooks of the Slovenian Bourgeois Politics on the October Revolution until World War II

Abstract

On the basis of their understanding of the human society and individuals in it, the members of the Slovenian bourgeois camp – who possessed a thorough insight into the revolutionary October and the country it took place in – saw the October social overthrow and the consequent Soviet social, political, and economic development as a fundamental threat to the civilised world in which they lived and which they consciously advocated. Even though they understood the October phenomenon historically, they did not accept its consequences. While simultaneously exhibiting an anti-Semitic viewpoint, they would underline the totalitarian, all-encompassing class-based Bolshevik power, the collectivist and anti-religious character of the Soviet community, its inherent personal insecurity, and its unpromising social and economic development – even though they did recognise some of its economic and educational achievements. Ivan Tavčar stood out with his negative opinion of the October Revolution on the liberal side, just as Dr Ivan Ahačin and Fran Erjavec did on the Catholic side. Dr Aleš Ušeničnik, the leading Catholic philosopher, rejected it theoretically as well. The bourgeois camp saw Bolshevism as its key opponent, and the declared struggle against it represented a permanent feature of the bourgeois politics in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This was an integral part of its ideological foundations, which the Catholic side provided with a distinct world-view moment as well. With such an ideological and political attitude, the bourgeois camp saw the end of the Yugoslav Kingdom and entered the time of World War II in Slovenia.