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The clash between the Party’s “healthy forces” or the conservatives with the “liberals” took place in the League of Communists of Slovenia (ZKS) in the autumn of 1972. At the end of September 1972, the members of the Party received a letter from the presidium of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (ZKJ) and the executive bureau of the presidium of the ZKJ or the so-called Tito’s letter. The letter said that the matter at hand is the fate of socialism in Yugoslavia and that the Communists therefore need to intensify their activity in self-government authorities, state authorities and socio-political organisations. The letter was primarily aimed against liberalism. The Kamnik municipal committee of the League of Communists discussed the letter at the second session of the Kamnik municipal conference of the ZKS, which took place on 12 October 1972 in the meeting room of the Assembly of the Municipality of Kamnik. The article presents the main highlights of this discussion, which show that aside from a few rare exceptions most participants in the discussion did not comprehend the significance of Tito’s views and the change of the “Party’s course”.

The article presents the attitude of the Communist Party towards religious communities on the local level in Kamnik in the first post-war years, particularly the attitude towards the Catholic Church and partly towards Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were the most active non-Catholic religious community in the area. Compared with other areas in Slovenia, the Party’s attitude towards the Church in the Kamnik area was slightly less conflictive in the post-war period; however, we can see the Party’s strong tendencies for controlling the Church and its members and for limiting the Church’s social influence.

The contribution contains an overview of the Communist Party‘s operation in the Kamnik area as well as some consequences of its operation during the war and in the early post-war years. The analysis based on archival and other sources shows the organisation and operation of the Communist Party during the war and the consequences of its operation. This refers mainly to the victims, most of which were civilians. The article also presents the post-war repressive measures and the influence the Communist Party had over development in the early post-war years. This period is imbued with revolutionary violence and represents the toughest period of communist totalitarianism.