The author explores the reconciliation rhetoric at the time of the most intense transition process in Slovenia. At first the basic elements of rhetorical criticism are presented, then it is used as a method for analysis of reconciliatory rhetoric in the speech of president Milan Kučan, given on July 8th, 1990 at the commemoration ceremony at the burial ground in Kočevski Rog. It is claimed that the families and sympathizers of Home Guard soldiers, executed without due legal process at the end of Second World War, had been an unrecognized and deprevileged minority, that had to be recognized in the process of transition. The achievement of presidentćs reconciliatory rhetoric in 1990 is that his masterful rhetorical speech recognized the suppressed minority in such a way that it did not alienate the opposing political side. With his rhetoric the president put together a minimal consensus between ideologically opposing sides that was necessary for the realization of national independence.
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