France Bučar – Tikveš

The book documents the extensive stalking of France Bučar from 1975 to 1990. The Slovenian secret political police (Udba) gave Bučar the “stalking” code name “Tikveš”.

In the last years of the failed regime, he was the most secretly monitored individual in socialist Slovenia. In his homestead in Bohinjska Bistrica, secret police installed listening devices, even in the toilet! He was close to imprisonment for writing in the 57th issue of Nova revija and for appearing before a committee of the European Parliament (January 20, 1989).

The speech was radical and fearless for those times, given the possibility of reprisals at home, as France Bučar said, among other things, that financial aid to Yugoslavia and similar countries was pointless and harmful because it allowed them to continue the “anti-democratic practice of governing their peoples.”

Jože Smole, the then head of the Socialist League, therefore called him a national traitor! And this “traitor” and intensive subject of secret stalking became the first president of the democratically elected Slovenian parliament in just over a year and also made a decisive contribution to the sovereign, internationally recognized Slovenian state. That is why he is already described in the title of France Bučar’s book as a giant of Slovenian independence!