1

Božo Repe

Between Myths and Ideology

Some Views on Slovene Contemporary

Historiography

With Chronological Survey of Slovene History, written

by Darja Kerec
 2

Between Myths and Ideology

Some Views on Slovene Contemporary Historiography
(With Chronological Survey of Slovene History, written by Darja Kerec)
Author: Božo Repe
Reviewers: dr. Dušan Nećak, dr. Bojan Balkovec, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts,
Department of History

© University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, 2009

All rights reserved.

Published by University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Issued by Department of History, Faculty of Arts
For the publisher: Valentin Bucik, Dean of the Faculty of Arts

Ljubljana 2009
First edition

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Publication is free of charge.

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930.1(497.4)(0.034.2)

REPE, Božo
Between myths and ideology [Elektronski vir] : some views on
Slovene contemporary historiography / Božo Repe ; with
Chronological survey of Slovene history, written by Darja Kerec. -
1st ed. - El. knjiga. - Ljubljana : Faculty of Arts, 2009

Način dostopa (URL): http://www.zgodovina-ff-uni-lj.net/index.php?o

ption=com_remository&Itemid=26&func=select&id=8

ISBN 978-961-237-335-1

1. Kerec, Darja

248758784
 3

Table of Contents:

Slovene View of the Surviving State Formations p. 4

Slovenes and Yugoslav Historiography after World War II p. 29
Mythic Notions of Slovenes p. 44
The Myth and Reality of Communism p. 61
How Much Comparativity can be Found in Slovene Historiography? p. 86
Chronological Survey of Slovene History (written by Darja Kerec) p. 91
 4

Slovene View of the Surviving State Formations1

Slovenes are faced with two basic problems in modern history: the
issue of democracy and the national issue (which political elites
usually place in the foreground). The development of democracy
was only partially determined by ourselves, in so far as its primary
characteristic was the induction of mutual intolerance and the
exclusion of those with different opinions2.

The position of the Slovene nation during each respective

formation of state was usually evaluated "in retrospect" from
the standpoint of current political needs, while the newly
formed situation was at the same time euphorically praised.
This is how after World War I, Austria suddenly became "the
jail of nations" even in the eyes of those Slovene politicians
and intellectuals who, only a few years earlier, had claimed
to be loyal to it.

After World War II, a similar fate befell the Kingdom of

Yugoslavia, although here the situation was somewhat
different. Namely, neither the resistance movement nor the
Allies recognized the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the
annexation of occupied territories to enemy states. At the
end of the war a compromise between Tito and the
president of the royal government Ivan Šubašič was
reached, turning criticism toward internal problems – the
political system and national relationships.

1
Published in English: Historical consequences of the disintegration of Yugoslavia for Slovene Society. Österr.
Osth., 2001, jhrg. 43, hf. 1/2, pp. 5-26. Ilus.
2
Slovene political mentality developed in its basic elements at the end of the19th century and grew from the fact
that opponents had to be either completely subjugated or forced to be part of the national enemies' camp. This
remains a basic characteristic in all three political camps (Catholic, liberal and socialist or communist)
throughout the political history of the 20th century. The exception is the period of attaining independence during
the second half of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. As far as parliamentarism is concerned, only the
"fragmentary" development of particular periods from the second half of the 19th century onwards can be
discussed. The Slovene parliament, in the modern sense of the word (with a universal franchise and multi-party
system), has been in operation without intermission for only 10 years as of yet. This is also a time - probably the
only one in Slovene history - of "absolute" independence, as before, it only had local significance or was
subordinate to bodies above the national level, as will also be repeated once incorporated in the European Union
(more on the subject: Božo Repe, Pravne, politične podlage, okoliščine in pomen prvih demokratičnih volitev
[Legal and Political Foundations, the Circumstances and Significance of the First Democratic Elections]. In:
Razvoj slovenskega parlamentarizma [The Development of Slovene Parliamentarism], ed. Državni zbor
Republike Slovenije [National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia], Ljubljana 2000, 26-69).
 5

'

Fig 1. The glorified page in honor of Franz Joseph's birthday (Tedenske

slike - Weekly Pictures, August 16, 1916). A photograph with the
grandson and patriotic song May God Sustain Austria. The approach was
similar in all newspapers during his long regime. Till his death and even
afterwards - practically until the end of World War I - Franz Joseph was
synonymous with the so-called "good old times" for the majority of
Slovenes - the same attitude was actually spread throughout the empire. Loyalty
to the Habsburg Monarchy was one of the basic characteristics of Slovene
consciousness, particularly expressed among politicians and the clergy,
but no less among ordinary people. It was systematically built through the
school system, public life, especially through celebrations, holidays,
anniversaries etc.
 6

Fig. 2: Slovenes strongly supported the Austro-Hungarian Declaration of War with

Serbia and the corresponding propaganda was very strong. "Serbien muss sterbien" is a
well known motto from postcards and cartoons of that time (published in Hans Weigel,
Walter Lukan and Max, Peyfuss, Jeder Schuss ein Russ, Jeder Stoss ein Franzos,
Wien 1983). In the Slovene oral version this motto was changed considerably into an even
more chauvinistic motto: "Srbe na vrbe”, which means "Hang Serbs on willow trees"
[Serben gehören an Weidenbäumen erhängt]. In Yugoslavia such events later became the
subject of many disputes and one of the proofs for the Serbian side that Slovenes belonged to
the occupiers. According to them, Slovenia was actually saved by Serbia with the
incorporation into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Slovenia was
therefore to be grateful, remain silent and pay the price, both economic and political, for its
attitude.3

3
Vasilij Melik, Božo Repe, Franc Rozman: Zastave vihrajo. Spominski dnevi in praznovanja na Slovenskem od
sredine 19. stoletja do danes (selection of illustrations and subtitles Darja Kerec). Modrijan. Ljubljana 1999. The
text was originally published in the book Öffentliche Gedenktage in Mitteleuropa, Böhlau Verlag Wien, 1997,
edited by Emil Brix and Hannes Stekl).
 7

Fig. 3: When things changed during the war, Austria and the Habsburgs slowly
but surely changed into antagonists and then enemies. One of the first signs was
the announcement that the omnipotent German bridge to the Adriatic coast was
rocking. Cartoon by Hinko Smrekar, published in Kurent's album in 1918 shows
a Slovene farmer, tied like Gulliver, chained to the ground. The tied giant wants
to stand up. Troops of Germans and their adherents («nemškutarji«) are passing over
him, but their carriages and coaches are falling down. The subtitle is Roar, roar
the Adriatic Sea, you were and will always be Slavic.
 8

Fig. 4: Simultaneously, a certain distance towards former idols can be

observed. A Slovene soldier before the end of the war in 1918 far-sightedly
subtitled a propagandistic postcard with portraits of Austrian military leaders with the
comment: "Greatness of former Austria" In: Slovenska kronika 20. stoletja [Slovene
Chronicle of the 20th Century], part 1 (Ljubljana 1995) 192.
 9

Fig. 5: A very short time later triumphant and ironical feelings were shown, for
instance in this obituary, published in the satirical journal Kurent in 1918, which says:
"After a long, painful disease Austria expired its dirty soul" In: Slovenska kronika 20.
stoletja 1, 201.
 10

Fig. 6: And a variation of the same topic. Finis Austriae. In:

Slovenska kronika 20. stoletja 1, 201.
 11

Fig. 7: Pro-Austrian or pro-German feelings became something to be ashamed of, they

were slightingly named as "aystrijakarstvo". Slovene intellectuals turned toward France,
while the German language almost ceased to be a school subject between both
World Wars. But on the other side - as is shown by this caricature by Hinko Smrekar
from 1921, before a new, centralist constitution was adopted - expectations from the new
state were great, idealized and naive; in the new state there was little knowledge about the
Serbs and about South Slavic nations in general.
 12

Fig. 8: This simple mindedness passed quickly, as is illustrated in another caricature - "United
Yugoslays": In: Slovenska kronika 20. stoletja 1, 223.

Naturally, a negative thought pattern developed concerning the former state; even after
the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia, which became synonymous with 'Balkanism',
'Byzantinism', etc. It was a state, which during the time of its existence, economically and
politically limited the Slovenes and prevented them from attaining independence, and in a
cultural sense kept them on a lower level, i.e. in a different cultural circle, one to which
the Slovenes were not supposed to belong. This was all the easier since Yugoslavia was a
communist, or rather a socialist state and thereby an excellent target for double criticism:
national as well as ideological.

It is already forgotten that Slovenes believed in Yugoslavia for a long time and that they
had invested a lot of energy in its planning and development. But on the other side, the
Yugoslav federation had never been able to function in the course of its existence without
the compulsory cohesive measures from outside or internal factors. When these fell away
(the decline of socialism and the lifting of the Iron Curtain, the disintegration of the party
and of the army) it could not find a democratic alternative for its existence. The fear of
and opposition to establishing any institutional ties with the Balkan states has to be
regarded in the light of this experience. It is a general opinion that such a process might
cause the country to slip from its status of a state "bordering on" the conflict area to that
 13

of the group of countries that constitute the conflict area. In every proposition (as for
example the Stability Pact) the politicians see the aim for Slovenia to be "pushed" back to
the Balkans to help to stabilize and democratize the region. It was quite a shock when in
the beginning of 1994, the special envoy of the American President Bill Clinton,
Madeleine Albright, who came to Europe to explain the initiative for the Partnership for
Peace, classified Slovenia as a "Balkan democracy" together with - can you imagine -
Romania, Bulgaria and even Albania.4 Recent changes in Croatia and Serbia,
accompanied by proposals of Western politicians to create a kind of association of
Balkan states, caused a similar anxiety.

4
Clintonova odposlanka Albrightova v Sloveniji [Clinton's envoy Albright in Slovenia]. In: Delo, January 15,
1994.
 14

Fig. 9: Poor exploited Slovenia (A. Novak, Delo, September 29, 1986). The cartoon represents
Slovenia as a hen, which is about to be beaten by the Yugoslav federation.
 15

Fig. 10: Because of its geographical image, the hen is one of the symbols of Slovenia. It can also
be characterized as a naive, slightly slow minded, typical animal, which is waiting for its destiny.
This cartoon was created at the end of the eighties by Mat'kurja - one of the first domestic Internet
servers, which is still operating on the web.
 16

Fig. 11: Slovenia, stripped bare, rests with only a coif (national cap) — Milan Maver, Delo,
September 29, 1988.
 17

Fig. 12: After the national plebiscite in December of 1990, a discourse with a Serbian (Yugoslav)
soldier is represented in a completely different manner as on the previous cartoon from the time of
the establishment of Yugoslavia when he was seen as a great deliverer of the Slovenes. A drunken,
brutal soldier says: "Let's go home!" And the Slovene girl answers: "Oh, don't be ridiculous!"
(Franco Juri, Delo, December 24, 1990).
 18

Fig. 13: Innocent Slovenia, supposedly raped by a Yugoslav soldier (Mladina, June 25, 1991).
 19

Fig. 14: Oh, that Balkan, says Slovenia, the self-sufficient, clean and reborn girl as she slams the
door behind her (Franco Juri, Delo, Sobotna priloga, October 12, 1991).
 20

In Slovenia, the critical assessment of the national position in different periods is slow in
forming, and it is even slower in becoming a part of the historical consciousness. Here I
am referring to the acknowledgement that Slovenes did not only suffer the negative sides,
but were also faced with a positive experience. For example, in the multinational milieu
of the Danubian Monarchy they were able to form, besides the regional one, also a
national consciousness; Slovenes acquired political culture and, though in a limited form,
became accustomed to parliamentarism. They achieved a sort of informal cultural
autonomy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, despite it being centralist and nondemocratic.
Communist Yugoslavia rendered it possible for the Primorska (coastal) region (i.e. one
third of the Slovene population and more than a quarter of its territory) to be joined with
Slovenia; and last but not least, Slovenes were given federal status, a constitution, their
own national assembly and other state agencies, and under the specific circumstances of
the Communist Party state, implemented the delayed processes of modernization that
former elites either could not or did not want to bring to effect, for example, the agrarian
reform, industrialization, separation of Church from State, women's emancipation, a more
balanced social structure.5

What differentiates the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s from the previous historical
periods is the simultaneousness of the two processes, i.e. the gradual democratization,
which ended in the installment of a multi-party system, and the fight for national
emancipation, which ended with the formation of the Slovene states.6 Namely, in earlier
periods the development of democracy did not always correspond with the current
position of the Slovene nation; often it was even in opposition to making progress in
resolving the national issue (as I mentioned before: in the centralist Kingdom of
Yugoslavia Slovenes had made enormous cultural progress, including the establishment
of the first university, which Austria had not allowed in all the time of its existence;
communist Yugoslavia successfully solved the question of the Western border, etc).

Among the political elites and factors of development in the 80s there were, in fact,
differences concerning priorities. The League of Communists, for example, was quick to find
common ground with the opposition as regards Yugoslavia, but much slower as to the issue of
5
More on the subject in abridged form: Božo Repe: Slovenci v XX. stoletju [Slovenes in the 20th Century],
Katalog stalne razstave Muzeja novejše zgodovine v Ljubljani [Catalogue of the permanent exhibition of the
Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana] (Ljubljana 1999) 19-36.
6
Leopoldina Plut-Pregelj, Aleš Gabrič, Božo Repe: The Repluralization of Slovenia in the 1980s (with an
Introduction by Dennison Rusinow) (= The Donald W. Treadgold Papers No. 24, The Henry M. Jackson School
of International Studies, University of Washington, February 2000).
 21

democratization. The majority of alternative movements, in part also the League of Socialist
Youth, placed democratic civil rights before the national issue. The Slovene Democratic Al-
liance and some other parties conceded the same importance to both issues.7 Differences were
existent even after Demos (democratic opposition) came to power in the spring of 1990, since
it was evident that a part of the political forces primarily wished to consolidate its position in
power, take control of the social capital, while independence would follow later on.
Nonetheless, it can be assessed that the political gravitation in Slovenia at the time leaned
towards the simultaneousness of both processes. In Yugoslavia, generally speaking, a strong
opposition to both processes is discernible; and as regards international circumstances, the
western forces, especially the USA, supported democratization but were against secession.8
Choosing between both processes, they were prepared to sacrifice democracy for geostrategic
interests and allowed the Yugoslav Premier Ante Markovič the so-called limited intervention
with army in Slovenia (which changed to real war).

7
Koga voliti? Programi političnih strank in list na pomladnih volitvah v Sloveniji
[Who to Vote for? Programs of Political Parties Taking Part in the Spring Elections in Slovenia], ed.
Jugoslovanski center za teorijo in prakso samoupravljanja Edvard Kardelj [Yugoslav Centre for Theory and
Practice of Self-Management Edvard Kardelj] (Ljubljana, March 1990). See also: Nastajanje slovenske
državnosti [Formation of Slovene Statesmanship], ed. Slovensko politološko društvo (Ljubljana 1992).
8
The USA held this position until the final collapse of Yugoslavia, most decisively in the spring of 1991.
American Secretary of State James Baker had, only a few days before the proclamation of Slovene independence
in Belgrade on June 21, 1991, told Slovene representatives that the USA wished to preserve the unity of
Yugoslavia and that they would not recognize the independence of Slovenia, nor would any other country do so,
but that they wished to help with the democratization of Yugoslavia (Note of the discussion between the
President of the Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kučan and James Baker Ill, Secretary of State of
the USA, Belgrade, June 21st, 1991, Arhiv Predsedstva Republike Slovenije [Archives of the Presidency of the
Republic Slovenia], see also Warren Zimmermann: Origins of a Catastrophe, New York 1996, 71).
 22

Fig. 15: Yugoslavia an orphan girl, poor child, is waiting before a drawbridge of the Eu-
ropean fortress (Milan Maver, Delo, February 20, 1989). The general opinion at the end of
the eighties in Slovenia was that it would not be able to enter the European Community as a
part of Yugoslavia. That was a matter of dispute with the federal centre and especially with
Serbia. The conflict with Serbia was not a conflict of two nationalisms, as is usually
interpreted, but a split between two evolutional concepts: the Slovene, oriented towards Europe
and modernization, and the Serbian one, patriarchal, introverted and oriented towards the past.
"To Brussels over Ljubljana and not over Belgrade" was a popular phrase at the end of the
eighties and the beginning of the nineties.

The independent Slovene state was a result of political and social changes in the 1980s.
These took place in the context of a global crisis of communism, the disintegration of the
bipolar division of the world, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and a deep political
and economic crisis in Yugoslavia, as well as a crisis in the relationships among the
different nations within the state. Independence would not have been possible without these
external changes and likewise, the internal process of democratization would also have
been very different. Incorporated among the basic internal characteristics, which the
Slovenes themselves could influence, was a relatively open political scene which enabled
a circulation of ideas and meetings between those in power and those in opposition, a strong
 23

civil society, supremacy of a reformist movement within the Communist Party and a high
level of consent concerning basic national issues. The processes of social democratization
and of national emancipation were tightly intertwined. This situation enabled a smooth
transition from the one-party to a multi-party system and successful preparations for attaining
independence. Consensus between the socialist government and the opposition was settled
upon through a confederation status, a fact that is nowadays all too frequently forgotten.
Even when Demos came to power the evaluation of a confederation as the maximum
achievement possible under such circumstances did not alter. It was only after the
Yugoslav People’s Army attacked Slovenia that the standpoint and the situation shifted.

Following the proclamation of independence, there has been an ongoing shift in the
Slovene political sphere, polarization was re-established and parties continued to fall apart and
merge. This process has been going on for already more than a decade.

The 10-year economic balance demonstrates that, on the whole, Slovenia underwent a
successful transition and it continues to make progress. Nowadays GNP, for example,
exceeds 10 000 US$, purchasing or buying power is even stronger, about 14 000 US$.
Towards its end, the GNP of Yugoslavia was less than 3000 US$ for the whole country,
whereas Slovene GNP was about 5000 US$; two thirds of the former Yugoslav market
were replaced with western markets, etc. But a high price had to be paid: social
differences and unemployment increased (the present rate is about 12%), with the
consequence that an increasing number of young people, educated people are being turned
into second-rate citizens. There are many other side effects, all influencing the
augmenting of an unbalanced social structure. One of the basic characteristics of Slovene
society is its tendency towards 'particracy', a growing ideological intolerance, and due to the
small size of the country, the formation of clienteles and clans. The once powerful civil
movements have been sucked into the various parties and no longer play an important
role.

The new political ideology, which developed following the proclamation of independence
and is shared by the majority of the political parties, could be labeled as a "rush towards
Europe". But the course is directed by the European Union and proceeds more in
accordance with the Latin proverb "festina lente" [Eile mit Weile] "more haste, less
speed". Characteristically, it presents the so-called Europe as an internally non-
differentiated notion, which can generally adapt to particular political interests (following
a self-serving principle, for example, educational systems that correspond to a particular
line of argumentation would be used, and the same holds true for the relationship
between Church and State — adherents of confessional religious subject in schools
claim that a European (i.e. Austrian, Italian) model should be followed, whereas the
opponents are in favor of the European (read: French) model, etc.
 24

Fig. 16: But all the others in Yugoslavia are grabbing at her feet when she is knocking on
Europe’s door (Milan Maver, Delo, May 25, 1989).

In this "rush towards Europe" Slovene politicians are, as always throughout history,
overly compliant, even servile, and prepared to make smaller or larger concessions as a
sign of "good will": closing duty-free shops; introducing visas for Balkan states; signing
the so-called Spanish compromise;9 reacting indifferently to unofficial or semiofficial
demands from Austria about closing the nuclear power plant in Krško; recognizing the
so-called Old Austrian minority; recalling certain AVNOJ decrees and codes or possibly
even its basic resolutions and decisions on which federal Yugoslavia was created.

9
In 1993, Italy, as a condition for not impeding the signing of the Association Agreement between Slovenia and
the European Union, demanded different concessions of Slovenia. The key one concerned the property issue of
Italian refugees - after World War II - from Istria and the Slovene Primorska (coastal) region (this issue having
been already resolved with Yugoslavia). The direct Italian demands were initially comprised in the so-called
Aquileia Agreement, signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lojze Peterle, but refused by the Slovene
parliament. In a milder and more general version (the so-called Spanish Compromise, made after the Spanish
Intervention), parliament passed the Italian demands in April 1996. Slovenia obligated itself to open the real-
estate market after the ratification of the Association Agreement for all those citizens of the EU who had lived in
the territory of Slovenia for at least three years (at any time in the past). Even though the Prime Minister, Janez
Drnovšek, as well as the President, Milan Kučan, interceded on behalf of the Spanish Compromise, they later
labeled it as an example of conditioning and extortion (Kučan even did so in his speech before the European
Parliament).
 25

One of the consequences of the newly formed situation within the state was that Slovenes
were again faced with dilemmas and situations from the turn of the century or even
earlier; that was when they were marginalized, during either the Yugoslav or communist
period, and for which it had appeared that they would never have to deal with again.
Relations between the larger neighboring nations (Austrians - or Germans, Italians,
Hungarians) and Slovenes, which could be characterized as having been traumatic for the
past centuries, are being established anew (or as old models in a new disguise).

Incorporated among these is the extraordinary persistence of regional identities, which in

many ways prevents the development of a nation; at the same time there is a revival of
former regional centers beyond the present Republic of Slovenia (Graz, Klagenfurt,
Trieste, also Vienna in a broader context), which are slowly but reliably becoming
gravitational points for a large part of the working force from the bordering regions, and
also have a growing importance in education.

The transitional character of the country, its economic periphery, the influence of
different cultures and a linguistic endangerment seem to be permanent features in the
historical developments.10

In psychological terms, self-assertion should be added, a belief in self-sufficiency and

prejudices towards anything different, all of which were only strengthened after attaining
independence. It is easy to substantiate through historiography how difficult it was for
"the Carniolan mind" to get used to the "different" character of those people from
Prekmurje and Primorska (the coastal region, integrated into Yugoslavia after World
War II). Prejudices and stereotypes about regional affiliations proved to be one of the most
persistent elements of the psychosocial make-up of Slovenes.

10
Peter Vodopivec, Glavne poteze in stalnice v slovenskem zgodovinskem razvoju in poskus zgodovinarjevega
pogleda v prihodnost [Main Traits and Permanent Features in Slovene Historical Development and a Historian's
Attempt to Look into the Future]. In: Slovenija po letu 1995, razmišljanja o prihodnosti [Slovenia after 1995,
Reflections on the Future], ed. Fakulteta za družbene vede (Ljubljana 1995) 30-37.
 26

Fig. 17: Proceeding from such a situation is also another perception of the European
Union which includes the conviction that Slovenia is experiencing unfairness, waiting in
front of the Europe’s door with no clear conditions which it has to fulfill to enter. Slovenia
feels like an unacknowledged lover (Amor), who is about to run out of arrows when
shooting at the seductive EU (Marko Kočevar, Delo, January 1995).

Another discernible syndrome conditioned by history and arising from the lack
of state tradition is "snitching" on the opposing political option abroad and the
search for an external arbiter for internal conflicts. Where Slovene politicians
previously turned to Vienna and Belgrade, they now turn to Brussels.11

11
The most recent instance, but not the only one, was the pursuit for arbitration with the so-called Venice
Commission - the "Democracy through Law" commission of the European Council - concerning the election
system just before the elections in October 2000. The conflict was instigated by the Prime Minister at the time,
who did not agree with - an otherwise perfectly legal - decision of the Parliament.
 27

Fig. 18: The map by the caricaturist Marko Kočevar, ironically stressed this feeling by
showing Slovenia as the centre of the world.

This demonstrates that the processes experienced in this state during the last
decade are superficial and that the permanent features did not change in their
essence after attaining independence.

An evaluation of the historical consequences of the disintegration of

Yugoslavia for Slovene society, the formation and the 10-year existence of the
Slovene state, as well as the democratic processes within it, are for the moment
only transitional, as were the estimates of past situations. A more objective
evaluation can be established once Slovene society is integrated in the
European Union; what the integration process contributed and how Slovenia
will be able to handle the loss of a national state, while it is in fact still
enduring its puberty, shall only then be clarified. Doubtless, the Slovene state
was a tremendous and necessary historical achievement, especially as regards the
circumstances in Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that independence was achieved at a time when the classic national state, based
on 19th century patterns of national economy, the defense system, foreign policy,
proper currency and other attributes ranging to a legitimate aviation company,
is in decline in Europe. It is also a time when the (national) state, at least in the
West, no longer represents the determining factor in protecting democratic
rights, since these are, of course, becoming universal.
 28

Fig. 19: It is not possible to say that in Slovenia there is no such awareness
and self-irony. In this cartoon, titled »Famous« (Franco Juri, Slavna naša
zgodovina [Our famous history], Ljubljana 1992), Slovenia and Croatia
are exposed at the time when they were (together with Bosnia) accepted in
the United Nations. It says: »Go on, numbers 176 and 177! Oh, good boys«.
The cartoon also stresses the different psychosocial approach between
Slovenia and Croatia - president Kučan with a small bench and president
Tuñman with a royal armchair.

New solutions are needed for these new challenges, although it seems that
this type of realization has hardly affected Slovene social sciences. History is
to a large extent still evaluated from the viewpoint of a national state, arising
from the belief that the Slovene state should be the ultimate goal of
successive Slovene generations, even though historiography does not offer
empirical proofs for such claims.

Historians critical of this sort of approach are labeled as "anational".

12
This sort of claim is of course logical in a political sense, since it
offers the possibility of appropriating the so-called "independence
capital", be that in a historical sense (demonstrating the "far-
sightedness" of particular political forces or individuals in various
historical periods) or in view of the current political situation.
Scientifically speaking it is also very convenient as it limits
research to finding the earliest possible "proofs" justifying a

12
The evaluation that there is "an extremely loud and influential anational movement" present in Slovene
science, was noted by Stane Granda. In: Zgodovinski časopis 53 (1999) 4, 612.
 29

Slovene state-forming mentality. There is no need to take much

interest in the broader historical context; various sources can be
interpreted "in retrospect"; there is no need for comparisons with
other and similar nations, and it is possible to avoid confrontation with
the determinations of researchers concerned with the social sciences
of other nations. However, this, of course, only occasions putting
off a problem that will have to be faced sooner or later anyway.

Slovenes and Yugoslav Historiography after World War II 13

Institutional Connections of Yugoslav Historians and Common Projects

Yugoslav historiography as a whole actually never even existed. It was in fact a set of national
historiographies (historical societies in republics and provinces) with rather fragile
connections. Institutionally speaking, there existed Zveza zgodovinarjev Jugoslavije
[Yugoslav Historians' Association], which united the republican and provincial societies of
historians. Historians would meet at congresses that were held approximately every four
years. Thus, in the post-war years, there were nine congresses (the first in 1954 and the last in
1987). In 1981 the congress was to be held in Priština, however, due to national outbursts, it
was postponed and carried out two years later in Aranñelovac (Serbia). Between 1977 and
1981 the Association became practically inactive; the connections between republican and
provincial organizations had been severed, and the publication of the society's historical
newspaper, Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis (JIČ), ceased.14 Afterwards, the revival of the
Association and the direction of its program was also supported by politics.15 JIČ began to be
issued once more in 1986, but only for a short time, the last number (3-4) being issued in

13
Published in the Slovene language: Razpad historiografije, ki nikoli ni obstajala: institucionalne povezave
jugoslovanskih zgodovinarjev in skupni projekti, Zgodovina za vse, Celje, 1996, year 3, No. 1; Jugoslovanska
historiografija po drugi svetovni vojni, Tokovi istorije/Currents of history, Beograd, Journal of the Institute for
recent history Serbia, 1-4, 1999 and in the Slovak language Juhoslovanska historiografia do osemdesiatych
rokov 20. stotočia, Bratislava, Historický časopis, 2001, roč. 49, 2, pp. 294-306.
14 Miomir Dašić: Deveti kongres istoričara Jugoslavije, Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis (hence JIČ), year XXIII,
No.1/2, 1988, p. 205
15 On January 15, 1987 the presidency of Zvezna konferenca SZDL [Federal Conference of the Socialist
Alliance of the Working People] discussed the problems of historiography and supported the measures that had
been proposed by the Presidency of the Yugoslav Historians' Association in order to revive the work of the
Association.
 30

1988.16 The reissuing was accompanied by polemics; some historians even claimed that the
newspaper's financial aid in 1981 had been cancelled because it carried the name
"Yugoslav."17 On the other hand, at least a part of the management of the Yugoslav
Historians' Association constantly criticized the "polycentrism" within the discipline, claiming
it had "lost touch with its centre" (the President of the Association, Miomir Dašić, even
mockingly spoke of "parochial" historiography) and - deriving from such a finding –
endeavored to centralize the discipline or to "synthetize" the national historiographies into a
single "higher" Yugoslav historiography. Particularly in Montenegrin and Serbian
newspapers, articles appeared depicting Yugoslavia as one of the rare, if not the only country
in the world without its common "history." 18
The last published issue of JIČ contained contributions from the last (ninth) congress of
Yugoslav historians. This was nonetheless held in Priština, at a time when the Association had
already begun to disintegrate.19 The next, tenth congress was to be held in Croatia, but it
never took place.
Yugoslav historiography did have a few ambitious common projects, but they were carried
out only partly or they fell through. Among the successful projects, realized by the entire
Yugoslav scientific community with a substantial contribution from historiography, is the first
edition of Enciklopedija Jugoslavije [Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia] in the Serbo-Croatian
language (the last volume was issued in 1971). What greatly contributed to the realization was
the authority of the leader of the project, the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža. The repeated
and expanded edition in the languages of the nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia, which
began preparation in 1980, succeeded, alongside disagreements regarding the
historiographical topics themselves, to issue six books in the Serbo-Croatian edition, and less

16 JIČ began to be published in 1935; ceased publication with the beginning of the war in 1941, and was
renewed in 1962. In 1981 it once again ceased publication, and was renewed in 1986. In addition, the
Association also issued the newspapers "Nastava istorije" and "Acta historico - oeconomica Jougoslaviae".
Regarding the issuing of JIČ (and also of the publishing activity of the Yugoslav Historians' Association)
constant polemics took place. Thus, for instance, the first post-war director of the newspaper, Branislav ðurñev,
resigned because the Yugoslav bibliography of historiographical works "completely excluded works discussing
the theoretical and methodological issues, that is, works conceived in Marxism." (Branislav ðurñev: Ključni
trenutak naše istotiografije, JIČ year XXII, No. 1-2, Beograd 1987, p. 175).
17 Jugoslovenski istorijski časopis Br. 1 - 4/1986 solemnly presented to the public, JIČ year XXII, No. 1-2 p.
247, Beograd 1987.
18 Zemlja bez "istorije", Nin, 8.2. 1987 pp. 22 - 24.
19 The main topics of the last consultation were: "Processes of Historical Approximation of Yugoslav Nations
and Nationalities" and "Situation of History Lessons in the SFRY School System in Comparison with the
Situation of these Lessons in the School Systems of European Countries and the USA." For the handling of the
issue of history lessons in schools the Yugoslav Historians' Association in 1972 founded Stalna jugoslovanska
komisija za napredek pouka zgodovine [Permanent Yugoslav Commission for the Advancement of History
Lessons]. In the name of the Association, the Commission organized Yugoslav symposiums on history lessons in
schools.
 31

in the languages of the nations (different by republics). In the last published volume the
Yugoslav historians still managed to write the entry Yugoslavia.
The biggest and most ambitious project of Yugoslav historiography was Zgodovina narodov
Jugoslavije [History of Yugoslav Nations], which had begun preparation in 1949 at the
initiative of Svet za znanost in kulturo FLRJ [Council for Science and Culture of FPRY] with
the original ambition to write a textbook for secondary schools. At a time when Yugoslavia
was still centralized, the project was run by a special government commission; in 1953 the
first book was published, and in 1959 the second. The books covered the time until the end of
the 18th century. The work was then interrupted due to profound disagreements among the
historians working on the third book, particularly due to the disagreements between Croatian
and Serbian historians.20 The cause for the differences mostly lay in the different evaluations
of the national movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, the evaluation of the Yugoslav idea
in individual nations, the origin of the modern Yugoslav nations and the creation of the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1985 the efforts to continue Zgodovina narodov
Jugoslavije (the title now also included "nationalities") were revived and encountered political
support (a decision that the work must be continued was, among other things, accepted at the
13th congress of the ZKJ ["League of Communists of Yugoslavia] in 1986). A self-governing
agreement on the financing of the project was signed. Ambitions were great, even leading to
expectations of the work with the project to "revolutionize the scientific organization and
scientific work."21 However, the project was at a standstill already in the beginning phase,
since in the meantime the differences between the historians deepened still. The previous
controversial topics were joined by new ones; ones that in the beginning of the sixties the
historians had not even the courage to bring up (the question of the civil war, revolution,
international relations in the new Yugoslavia, etc.).22 Certain historians saw the continuation
of the work also as a chance to rank as foremost within historiography – as an "epoch-making
historical act" - the creation of a single Yugoslav state (1918), while the "internal" problems

20 Branisla ðurñev: Na zastarelim stranputicama (first part), JIČ year XXIII, No. 1-2, p. 162 - 164, Beograd
1988 and Informacija o aktuelnim problemima nastave istorije, istorijske nauke i djelovanja Saveza istoričara
Jugoslavije, JIČ year XXII, No. 1-2, Beograd 1987, pp. 238 - 254.
21 Josip Hrvatin, Aktuelni problemi istorijske nauke, Rasprava na predsedništvu Savezne konferencije SSRNJ
(II),, JIČ, XXII, No. 3, Beograd 1987, p. 195
22 The work was envisaged to be issued in six parts with a shorter synthesis (two books) in foreign languages.
Certain renowned historians (e.g. Branislav ðurñev) were against this and strove for a merely two-part history in
the Yugoslav version as well (one part was to cover the period until 1918 and the other part after 1918). This was
substantiated by the fact that before 1918 there actually had not existed a Yugoslav history but merely a
"prehistory" of Yugoslavia, that is, a collection of the histories of individual nations; and later with the argument
that a two-part project can still be controlled, while an extensive six-part project would take a very long time and
that the Yugoslav society in the circumstances of political and international instability needs a synthetic work on
its common history as soon as possible.
 32

(the unresolved national issue, the political regime, etc. - TN) should not be equated with this
great historical act. That is why the work from the fourth book onwards was also to be
renamed "Zgodovina Jugoslavije in njenih narodov in narodnosti [History of Yugoslavia and
its Nations and Nationalities]."23

In 1963 Pregled zgodovine zveze komunistov Jugoslavije [Review of the History of the
League of Communists of Yugoslavia] was published in a single book, with the ambition of
the Yugoslav historians to prepare in the years to come a history of the ZKJ in several parts.
The new work began to take shape at the initiative of the Central Committee of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia at the end of the seventies. The work was set out very broadly,
with the establishment of scientific groups for individual periods and a network of
collaborators across all the republics. The work was coordinated by special commissions for
history at the republican central committees and a history commission at the Central
Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In the end, in 1986 only one book
was issued and not even a very voluminous book (416 pages in the Slovene edition) in the
languages of all the nations of Yugoslavia, entitled Zgodovina zveze komunistov Jugoslavije
[History of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia]. In the preparation of the book
ideological and international disputes emerged; there was a strong influence of politics on the
creation and content of the book (the text was commented on by more than 250 former and
active politicians, while the extent of the notes exceeded the extent of the authorial text by
several times). The book that the public received as the "official" history of the Yugoslav
Communist Party was barely fit for release, since the views on history were already so diverse
that strong political pressure, as well as "bargaining" regarding the content, was necessary to
reach a consensus. Hence certain historians characterized it as a "Party manual which...even
lags behind the individual parts."24 The planned multi-part history of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia, naturally, never came out, and neither had the monographs on the
history of the communist parties by republics. The only one to research the history of
Yugoslavia as a whole in the eighties (but only the period of the National Liberation Struggle)
was Vojno-historijski institut JNA [Military History Institute of the Yugoslav People’s
Army]. The institute had been created in the time of the Information Bureau with the ambition

23 Branko Petranović, a discussion at the meeting of the presidency of the Federal Conference of the Socialist
Alliance of the Working People, January 15, 1987, JIČ, year XXII No. 3 , Beograd 1987 p. 217.
24 Dr. Zlatko Čepo: Opake besjede gospode akademika, Danas 14.10. 1986 p. 25
 33

of showing the truth about the National Liberation Struggle in Yugoslavia, and issued over
140 volumes of documents in the next few decades.

Among the larger, at least partially realized projects, apart from certain collections of sources
(volumes of the historical archive of the KPJ with Party documents, for instance, began being
published already in 1949), the publication of the collected works by Josip Broz – Tito is also
worth mentioning. These were published in the Serbo-Croatian edition in twenty books, while
the collection covered the period until June 1944, although it was also supposed to include the
post-war period. The publication of the collected works as well – similarly to the history of
the League of Communists of Yugoslavia – began with a political initiative.25 Of similar
projects only the collection of the collected works by Boris Kidrič was realized, while the
preparation of the collected works by Edvard Kardelj was cancelled in the beginning phase.

The Yugoslav Historians' Association from 1955 onwards issued a comprehensive

bibliography for every other world congress of historians; at first in the English and French
languages, and afterwards only in English. For the world congress in Stuttgart in 1985 the
Association no longer prepared a bibliography, formally due to lack of money, thus only
issuing three volumes in their entirety (the last and most voluminous one, in 1975). The
Yugoslav historians participated in various bilateral commissions; the work of Slovene
historians in the Austrian-Yugoslav and Italian-Yugoslav commission should be pointed out,
since they appeared in a professionally qualified manner and completely equal to their Italian
and Austrian colleagues.

Historiographical Schools and Methodological Differences

Yugoslav historiography was too heterogeneous, too small and underdeveloped to be able to
create its own "historical school" (analogous to German, French or Anglo-Saxon
historiography). Although a multitude of round tables and discussions in the entire post-war
period, and particularly in the eighties, at first glance gives the impression that Yugoslav
historians had dealt greatly with the theoretical questions of historiography, there are,
however, few in-depth studies that would withstand a critical analysis. Individuals or groups
of historians that were in the minority, leaned towards this or that of the "great" European

25 The decision to publish Tito's collected works was adopted by the Presidency of the League of Communists
of Yugoslavia on May 1972, on Tito's seventieth year.
 34

directions. The influence of French historiography (of analysts and Fernand Braudel) was felt
on Slovene as well as certain other historians, especially the historian Mirjana Gros from
Zagreb, who, from the end of the seventies onwards, occasionally sharply polemicized with
the most notable advocate of the Marxist school of historiography, otherwise from Vojvodina,
Branislav ðurñev.26 However, the labels "Ljubljana", "Zagreb" or "Belgrade" historical
school apply more or less to the historiography that had already begun before World War II
and was then preserved at all three faculties in the first two decades after World War II.27

The post-war period of Yugoslav historiography therefore shows the influence of the so-
called "structural history of the modern French school", then the so-called "traditional
historical school" or "bourgeois historiography" as it was also labeled (that is, of positivist or
"event" history), and – as the strongest one - the Marxist historical school, which basically
insisted on historical determinism, that is, the theory of "the natural laws of social
development." 28 Much weaker, though not entirely unnoticeable, was the influence of the
Anglo-Saxon way of writing, which was introduced among the first by Vladimir Dedijer
(often without a particular feeling for historical sources or for historical truth, which critics
frequently reproached him with).
Of course this division is also simplified, since the directions listed were not uniform even in
the original itself, and, in general, European historiography, at least from the sixties onwards,
was greatly fragmented and moved away from the traditional schools. Even the circumstances
in individual Yugoslav republics differed greatly. Some of the directions listed were also
intertwined in the Yugoslav version, sometimes unusually. Branislav ðurñev, for instance, in
the polemics with the "structuralists", connected Marxist historiography with "event" history,
although in the first post-war years it had been precisely the Marxists that vigorously rejected
the positivists. ðurñev was of the opinion that structural history can only be used for pre-

26 See e.g. Mirjana Gros: Je li historija društvena ili prirodno - historijska nauka, Časopis za suvremenu povijest
I, Zagreb 1978, p. 112; Mirjana Gros: Dva nespojiva svijeta, Prilozi Instituta za istoriju u Sarajevu XVI,, No. 17,
p. 320, Sarajevo 1980; Dubravka Stajić, MA: Metodološki problemi savremene istorije (Saopštenje sa Okruglog
stola održanog 17. i 18. decembra 1985 godine u Beogradu, JIČ year XXII, No. 4, Beograd 1987, pp. 145 - 149).
27 The Belgrade University was characterized by byzantology under the leadership of Georgije Ostrogorski and
by medievalism under the leadership of Jorja Tadić and Mihailo Dinić. In Zagreb the critical medievalist school
was founded by Ferdo Šišić, while Jaroslav Šidak educated a group of historians for newer Croatian history. The
Ljubljana historical school was represented by Milko Kos and Fran Zwitter. In Ljubljana, already very early on,
in 1947 Metod Mikuž also founded a chair of the history of World War II.
28 Marxist historiography was particularly reproached by its opponents in the eighties as limited and politicized,
since with its work it uncritically glorifies the revolution, thus supporting the League of Communists in its
authoritative position; that it holds on to an outmoded thesis of the avant-gardism of the working class, while
neglecting the role of the other classes; and that it writes the history of winners.
 35

capitalist periods, while modern history, and especially the history of Yugoslav nations,
cannot be handled any other way than with Marxist methods and the "event" approach. 29
Even the prevailing Marxist historiographical school was rather heterogeneous and ranged
from the direct servicing of politics and ideology at a very low level, all the way to the high
achievements of historians who were constantly in contact with the processes in the European
and world historiography and who understood Marxism as one of the possible methodological
procedures and not as the absolute and the only real truth. Hence it was not unusual if certain
authors, by referring to Marxist historiography, emphasized primarily the class approach and
defended revolutionary measures and the monopolistic role of the Communist Party, while
others in the same name advocated Serbian hegemonism or the efforts to create one (socialist)
Yugoslav nation, while the third emphasized primarily the national tone in historiography,
while the fourth searched for a symbiosis in the class and state. Despite these paradoxes (or
precisely because of them) the relatively great pluralism and the openness to the world are
two characteristics that fundamentally distinguish Yugoslav historiography (or at least its
parts) from the historiography in the East European countries.

Periods in Yugoslav Post-War Historiography

Considering the different circumstances in the republics and provinces, the periodization of
the individual periods in the development of Yugoslav historiography is rendered very
difficult and can only be characterized roughly. 30
The fundamental characteristic of the first post-war period was the constitution of Marxist
historiography. 31 The first generation of Marxism-oriented historians consisted mostly of

29 This can e.g. be deduced from his article "Na zastarelim stranputicama", JIČ year XXIII, No. 1-2, Beograd
1988, pp. 163-175. A similar viewpoint was represented by Bogumil Hrabak, who, in so doing, referred to the
congress of historians in Frankfurt: "The disillusionment of those who were in favor of the total elimination of
description in history began at the last international congress in Frankfurt (1985), at which Marxists themselves
were in favor of keeping the necessary description in order to provide causal and other required explanations."
(Dubravka Stajić, MA: Metodološki problemi savremene istorije, saopštenje sa Okruglog stola održanog 17. i
18. decembra 1985 godine u Beogradu, JIČ year XXII, No. 4, Beograd 1987, pp. 145 - 149).
30 Macedonian historiography had neither historians nor the appropriate institutions and had to create everything
after the war (in December 1944 there were only some 1000 people in Macedonia with a higher education than
secondary school, of which only 150 had finished college, while three decades later Macedonia already had all
the highest educational and research institutions, including an academy of science, while several valuable
synthetic works on Macedonian history had been published. The situation in Kosovo was even worse and
Albanian historiography only began to form in the seventies, after the University in Priština had been founded at
the end of the sixties and the first local generation of intellectuals quickly educated. Similar was the case with
Montenegrin and Bosnian historiography (with the exception of Balkan studies); while the Croatian, Slovene and
Serbian one had a longer and rather strong tradition.
 36

trained or additionally schooled partisan staff. Hastily, Soviet textbooks were translated for
various levels of education, even faculties. A special branch of historiography became the
study of the history of the labor movement, the Communist Party and the class struggles. This
study was rather isolated in its method of work and usually did not place the studied topics in
a broader social context. Despite these changes, as Janko Pleterski, Ph.D., found in 1987, the
continuity of the "bourgeois" historiography was maintained, however, only for the study of
the history of older periods.32 Slovenia, for example, saw in 1954 the beginning of the
publication of Zgodovina slovenskega naroda [History of the Slovene Nation] in five parts by
Bogo Grafenauer, Ph.D., and in 1955 of Zgodovina Slovencev od naselitve do 15. Stoletja
[The History of Slovenes from the Settlement to the 15th Century] by Milko Kos, Ph.D. The
first writer belonged to the Catholic circle, and the other to the liberal one, although in
Grafenauer's case, as one of the rare Slovene historians to deal with the theory of
historiography (Struktura in tehnika zgodovinske vede [Structure and Technique of Historical
Science], Filozofska fakulteta, Ljubljana 1960), a considerable influence of Marxist
historiography is also noticeable.33

At the time of the conflict with the Information Bureau, Yugoslav historiography was
"monolithically unanimous" and in the function of proving the correctness of the Yugoslav
viewpoint, struggling for "the truth about the National Liberation Struggle of the nations and
nationalities of Yugoslavia, for the truth about the idea and practice of the National Liberation

31 The first volume of the Croatian Historijski zbornik [Historical Journal] from 1948 gives historians as their
three most important missions the conquering of Marxism-Leninism or historical materialism and dialectical
methods, followed by directing attention to the study of the near past, in which the present has its immediate
roots, and thirdly, avoiding such topics in the research of the history of the Yugoslav nations that would discuss
their conflicts, in other words, the affirmation of the Yugoslav "collectiveness." However, in the editorial (with a
selection of various quotations by the editor Jaroslav Šidak) it is also clearly indicated that the historians do not
wish to accept the vulgar Marxism that permeated Soviet historiography and was exported into the East
European countries. The "cleansing" of national historiographies in favor of strengthening the brotherhood and
unity was merely intended to denote that interpretations which had mostly been created under the influence of
Fascism are not to be taken into consideration. (Nikša Stančič: Plodovi i ožiljci, Vjesnik, Zagreb 15.2. 1991).
32 "Without major personal rifts, the work of professional academic historiography at the faculties and
academies, which strove for the preservation of its scientific level, continued with new momentum... When
talking about the history of the XX century, the influence of the bourgeois conceptions in Yugoslav
historiography until recently still existed primarily within the borders of topics regarding the bourgeois society
before 1918. This influence was demonstrated less in the topics of the history of the Yugoslav state between
both wars, while the time of the National Liberation War and revolution was more or less only treated from a
bourgeois viewpoint abroad." (Janko Pleterski: Različna pisanja zgodovine and Zgodovina je zgodovina
zmagovalcev, Delo 21. and 28. 2. 1987)
33 More on the topic, see Oto Luthar Med kronologijo in fikcijo, ZPS, Ljubljana 1993
 37

Front, for the truth about the leading and inspiring role and the historical act of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia."34

At the beginning of the sixties the Yugoslav political top experienced the end of the idea and
political monolithness; in the middle of the sixties the thesis that socialism in Yugoslavia had
in principle solved the national issue once and for all was refuted; at the end of the sixties the
federalization of the country was begun. The politically strongly supported theories of the
creation of a single socialist Yugoslav nation or, in a milder version, of a uniform Yugoslav
socialist culture, had not lost any significance. Therefore historiography was occasionally still
asked to search for and discuss that which had in the past united the Yugoslav nations, and not
that which had separated them or created conflicts between them. The actual processes in
historiography went in the direction of political change, that is, of strengthening the position
of the republics, and emphasized national individualities. At the turn of the seventies, politics
and historiography began in certain environments to lend each other a hand, no longer only on
a class level, but on a national level. After the defeat of the national and liberal movements at
the beginning of the seventies, certain historians (particularly Croatian and Albanian) were
accused of developing a distorted historical consciousness with their works and encouraging
the national euphoria that had led to the national rebellions (in Kosovo in 1968, in Croatia in
the so-called "maspok" in 1971).

Parallel another trend was noticeable: a shift from the handling of older periods to newer
ones; especially favored was the study of the history of the labor movement and the National
Liberation War in the discipline itself, and even more so in the "amateur" publicistic and
commemorative production. The tendency to "narrow the issues to questions that are
interesting to everyday politics and to the time in the immediate vicinity of the revolution" (as
this had been characterized by Peter Vodopivec) brought a part of historiography closer to
apologetics.35 This trend had already begun in the sixties and reached its peak in the
seventies. After the defeat of the "liberal" movement in the League of Communists, the
winning movement wanted to fortify its authoritative position also by referring to the
revolutionary legacy and by proving the revolutionary continuity, by writing about history,
celebrating various anniversaries and naming the streets after revolutionaries holding an

34 Janko Pleterski: Različna pisanja zgodovine and Zgodovina je zgodovina zmagovalcev, Delo 21. and 28. 2.
1987).
35 Peter Vodopivec: Poizkus opredelitve razvoja slovenskega zgodovinopisja z vidika odnosa zgodovina -
ideologija, Problemi, Ljubljana 1984, No. 12, p. 9.
 38

important role. In addition, the standard in Yugoslavia was at that time relatively high, and the
budgets had enough funds for various subsidies.

At the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies the Yugoslav historians were
openly at each other's throats; the disputes occurred mostly between the Croatian, Albanian
and Serbian historians, while the Bosnian ones chose sides according to their national
affiliation. Already after taking care of "liberalism" and the national movements in individual
republics at the beginning of the seventies (1972), four well-known Yugoslav historians Ivan
Božić, Sima Ćirković, Milorad Ekmečić and Vladimir Dedijer wrote a book entitled Istorija
Jugoslavije [History of Yugoslavia]. The way in which Ekmećić and Dedijer discussed the
national issue, particularly the Serbo-Croatian relations and the question of Yugoslavism,
provoked the sharpest polemics of Yugoslav historiography yet. The book triggered a deep
and never settled dispute between the Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb historians; some writers
simply marked it as "a political pamphlet".36 This dispute was, nevertheless, more of an
exception than a rule in the seventies, since politics succeeded in temporarily suppressing
international disputes (also historiographic ones).

Eight Historiographies in the Eighties

"Engaged" Historiography or History as the Object of Political Struggles

Problems connected with the handling of the common past of the Yugoslav nations in the
eighties moved into almost pure politics. The political elites in individual republics tried to
consolidate their position and their vision of the reorganization of Yugoslav society by
evaluating the past. Everything that was connected to evaluating the past: works of art,
memories, feuilletonism or "real" historiographic works, became the object of polemics, thus
obscuring the line between professional historiography and the more lay genres, while the
historiographic discipline grew ever more politicized and closed off within the republican
borders.37 "Whenever an entire history tries to be written in Yugoslavia from determined,

36 Dušan Plenča: Povijest - znanost ili diverzija?, Vijesnik u sredu, 4.7. 1973, pp. 20/21.
37 Only rare Yugoslav historians dealt with the history of other nations in a research manner. This applies
particularly to Serbian historians, for which an obstacle had also been the unfamiliarity with the languages of
non-Serbian nations (although the situation, naturally, cannot be entirely generalized, since, for instance, the
Serbian historian Momčilo Zečević, Ph.D., also established himself by researching Slovene history, and there are
other examples as well). It was certainly a great surprise for the Serbian historians when in the seventies young
Albanian historiography broke through and (although often with a national romantic direction and also
 39

mutually opposing positions, it becomes part of a political struggle", wrote the author of
Istorija SFRJ [History of the SFRY] Dušan Bilandžić, Ph.D., in 1985.38 The eighties in
Yugoslavia fought a battle for the interpretation of history ("we shall see what will happen in
the past" wrote the Serbian journalist Aleksandar Tijanić at that time). So many books, expert
discussions, publicistic works, newspaper articles, various round tables, radio, television and
other debates with historiographic content had not been issued or had not appeared in any of
the decades before, perhaps not even in all of them combined. 39 In that haste, the future was
practically forgotten and it is no wonder that none of the Yugoslav historians predicted the
disintegration of Yugoslavia.
The curve of the handling of historical topics began to rise a year or two after Tito's death.
Before that time there still reigned a sort of pietistic calm, a gathering of forces, and
afterwards it began to pour down and the "historiographic storm" turned into persistent and
continuous rain, which subsided only in the beginning of the nineties. The most intense were
the polemics from the middle of the eighties and until 1988, when the attitude of individual
nations towards the future of Yugoslavia was formed and national programs were created
(1986 the program Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; in 1987 the
Slovene national program, published in Nova revija). After the first multi-party elections in
individual republics (1990), history lost its political function as regards Yugoslavia, however,
it still remained an important factor in the political struggles within individual republics.
Communication between Yugoslav historians was (with the exception of rare personal ties)
severed long ago. At least from 1988 onwards the thought of organizing an important all-
Yugoslav meeting was utter utopia. The Yugoslav Historians' Association quietly vanished
after the congress in Priština (1987) and was not followed by public polemics as had been the
disintegration of certain other federal institutions (e.g. Zveza književnikov Jugoslavije
[Yugoslav Writers' Association]).

Although there was a vast amount of controversial topics and these were very diverse and
covered different historical periods (yet with an emphasis on newer history), two "target"

withholding certain facts and emphasizing others) began to tear down the Serbian idea of Kosovo, and at the
same time tried to historically substantiate the right of Albanians in Kosovo to self-determination, including the
right to secession.
38 Dušan Bilandžić: Predrasude povijesti, Vjesnik 9.11. 1985, p. 6
39 A comprehensive review of all the Yugoslav newspaper and other historiographical production, which in the
eighties comprised hundreds of articles, cannot be formed due to the disintegration of the state and insufficient
documentation. To illustrate, when writing this contribution I have taken into consideration some 150 newspaper
and magazine articles (available in Slovenia) on the topics that were in the foreground of the polemics the most.
 40

points of the polemics can be clearly identified.40 The first – the issue of a (socialist) social
regime – was problematized with a critique of the revolution. The second – the issue of
international relations in Yugoslavia – was problematized with a critique of Yugoslav
(con)federalism.

In the beginning phase of the conflicts the "object" of discussion primarily became Josip Broz
- Tito, who, as the leader of the revolution and the main creator of the post-war Yugoslav
regime, was a symbol of both controversial points. The destruction of the myth of Tito was
begun by his official biographer Vladimir Dedijer, who in the third part of "Prispevki za
biografijo Josipa Broza - Tita" [Contributions to the Biography of Josip Broz-Tito] published
a mixture of documents, memories and unverified stories regarding both Tito's personal life
and the question of revolutionary measures and international relations.41 Dedijer (who was
interested more in his own promotion than in any kind of a political concept) had not
consistently broached both controversial issues in this book (he did, however, do so in certain
later ones); he also did not go as far in evaluating Tito as certain other writers had, who
simply declared Tito as an "obedient spy of the Comintern".
The book that actually harmed the ideological structure of authority in Yugoslavia was the
work by two Belgrade sociologists, Vojislav Koštunica and Kosta Čavoški, Stranački
pluralizam ili monizam [Foreign Pluralism or Monism] (1983), in which the authors described
the post-war takeover of authority by the Communist Party, in which they mostly considered
the Serbian view of the problem.42

40 Among the concrete topics that had caused differences were e.g. the existence of individual nations
(Montenegrin, Macedonian and Muslim); the liberating or occupying character of the Balkan wars; the so-called
Bujan Conference at the end of 1943 (at which the Albanian delegates declared for the accession of Kosovo and
Metohija to Albania); the creation of the Kingdom of SCS; the issue of the armed uprising, the civil war, the
foundation of a federal state; from the post-war history, the dispute with the Information Bureau, dealing with
Djilas, the Brioni Plenum of 1966 (dealing with Aleksandar Ranković as the main holder of Yugoslav
centralism), mass national and "liberal" movements of 1971 and many other topics.

41 Critical notes on Tito encouraged the authorities to pass an act for the protection of the name and work of
Josip Broz – Tito; a special committee to deal with this was also founded (it was similar in the case of the
protection of other dead revolutionaries). The Slovene historian Dušan Biber, Ph.D., then ironically proposed
that they set up a committee for the protection of the revolution itself.
42 The "bourgeois" interpretation of relations within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the evaluation of the
National Liberation War and revolution had, in fact, already appeared in individual works in the seventies
(before that time it had only been characteristic of the writings of emigrant writers, whose works were brought
illegally into Yugoslavia). The bourgeois writers in their writings negated the "noble" goals of the revolution,
presented the National Liberation War as a civil war, and the activity of the KPJ as blind obedience to the
Comintern and a struggle for power. This struggle was supposedly only won by the KPJ (labeled as a Stalinist
party) due to a set of circumstances and "Machiavellianism", and was, by carrying out a revolution, to return
Yugoslav society to the absolutism of the 18th century (this thesis was developed, for instance, by Ljubomir
Tadić in his book Tradicija i revolucija [Tradition and Revolution], which was published at the beginning of the
seventies). An important element of the writings was also the rehabilitation of the quisling and
 41

The second issue, that is, the problem of organizing international relations in Yugoslavia,
opened up upon the publication of a book by Veselin Djuretić, Zavezniki in jugoslovanska
vojna drama [Allies and the Yugoslav War Drama]. The book (which was proclaimed a "first-
class historiographical provocation") otherwise had the intention of rehabilitating the
Chetniks. In it, ðuretić also problematized the issue of the revolution and the civil war. A part
of the book was also intended for proving that the second session of the Anti-Fascist Council
for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) on November 29, 1943 in Jajce, at which
the second (federal) Yugoslavia had been formed, had not properly solved the Serbian issue.
The incorrect interpretation of these decisions is, in the writer's opinion, the reason why the
process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia began later on. It was, of course, no coincidence
that upon the solemn promotion of ðuretić's book at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and
Arts the demand for the so-called third Yugoslavia (a return to the former centralist regime)
was mentioned for the first time.43

While in the criticism (and defense) of the revolution in all the centers there was a certain
unanimity practically until the end of the eighties, in the middle of the eighties the opposing
positions of the national historiographies were already clearly crystallized. In 1985 three
historiographic works were published that drew a lot of attention and were received quite
diversely in different centers, of course, under the motto "whichever statement you give
today, either regarding history, or regarding anything, you know in advance that your
judgment will be greeted in certain centers with applause and in others with a knife."44 The
books in question were by Dušan Bilandžić Istorija SFRJ [History of the SFRY], by Janko
Pleterski Nacije, Jugoslavija, revolucija [Nations, Yugoslavia, Revolution], and by Branko
Petranović and Momčilo Zečević Jugoslavija 1918-1984 [Yugoslavia 1918-1984] (a
collection of documents). Bilandžić was accused of attributing to the Serbs the aspirations for
redefining Yugoslavia, Petranović and Zečević of trying to show the Serbian view of the
creation and development of Yugoslavia by selecting and shortening the documents, while
Pleterski was criticized for his thesis on the "multinational revolution" (during the war, under
the leadership of the working class as the leading political force, each individual nation in
Yugoslavia fought its own fundamental political battle, in its own way, with its own powers

counterrevolutionary forces. This writing had a certain influence also on Marxist historiography, for it – at least
in part – broached several problematic topics (e.g. the killing of quislings after World War II or the so-called
"left movements" (dealing with alleged class opponents) in Montenegro in 1942, and elsewhere.

43 Dr. Zlatko Čepo: Opake besjede gospoda akademika, Danas, 14.10 1986, pp. 25 - 28.
44 Dušan Bilandžić: Predrasude povijesti, Vjesnik 9.11. 1985, p. 6
 42

and its own specific problems). This thesis was strongly opposed by Petranović, which caused
a polemics between the two historians (they already polemicized for the first time two years
before, in 1983, upon the publication of Petranović's book Revolucija i kontrarevolucija u
Jugoslaviji [Revolution and Counterrevolution in Yugoslavia]. A polemics with Petranović
was also started at the end of 1985 by Dušan Biber, Ph.D., first at a round table at the
Belgrade Institute of Contemporary History, and later in newspapers as well. Biber (namely a
harsh critic of the attempts to rehabilitate Chetniks and the idea of the Great Serbia) opposed
Petranović's thesis that the Chetniks had also been Anti-Fascists.45
The "Slovene-Serbian" historiographical dispute was not of key importance; it served more as
a warm-up.46 The Croatian-Serbian dispute was becoming key; it had been smoldering for a
longer time with occasional outbursts in the first half of the eighties, although mostly wrapped
up in ideological conflicts. The Serbian and Montenegrin historians (e.g. Velimir Terzić in his
book Slom kraljevine Jugoslavije [The Collapse of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia] launched a
thesis that the Croatian nation had betrayed Yugoslavia in 1941 (this thesis was publicly
contradicted by the Croatian historian Ljubo Boban, Ph.D.). On the basis of such theses a part
of the historians demanded that historiography explore and prove "the existence of a
continuity between nationalistic and separatist movements and organizations that had strove
to break apart Yugoslavia between the two world wars and today's nationalisms."47
In certain other works (an article by Vasilije Krestić O genezi genocida nad Srbima [On the
Genesis of the Genocide over the Serbs] in Književne novine 15.9. 1986) the thesis was set
that the genocide of the Croatians allegedly originated from the 16th and 17th centuries, and
not "merely" from the time of Pavelić's Independent State of Croatia. This meant an
intensification of the historiographic war between Croatian and Serbian historians (each, of
course, writing in their own magazines and newspapers) until the beginning of an actual war
and even beyond.48

45 Mirko Arsić, Ambicije in interesi, Komunist, Ljubljana 27.12. 1995 and other articles
46 The Slovene-Serbian dispute was not unimportant, especially since in Serbia it was connected with Slovene
support to the Albanians. In Slovenia in the eighties several books had been published on Kosovo and the
Albanians, which proved to be controversial for Serbian historians and even more so for politicians; one of
Kosovar historians (with equally controversial theses for the Serbs) received a doctorate at the Department of
History at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana.
47 Agonija učiteljice življenja (a talk with Prof Miomir Dašić, Ph.D., President of the Yugoslav Historians'
Association, published in Duga, reprint Naši razgledi, November 21, 1986, p. 651.
48 The polemics had been triggered by other topics before, e.g. Kljakić's book on the Croatian Communist leader
Andrija Hebrang (Hebrang Dossier), in which the writer tried to implicitly prove the nationalistic and separatist
tendency of the Croatian communists. Already from the end of the sixties onwards the number of Serbs killed in
the Ustaše concentration camp of Jasenovac had been controversial (for trying to prove a number smaller than
the official one, Franjo Tuñman, Ph.D., was attacked at the time, while in the eighties Boban polemicized on the
number of those killed with Rastislav Petrović, Ph.D.).
 43

Only rare Serbian historiographers - among them belongs in the first place, without a doubt,
Latnika Perović, Ph.D. – advocated the (con)federalist viewpoint regarding Yugoslavia.

Politics and Historiography

"Releasing the dog from the chain", as the crosswise bombardment with historiographical
topics had been labeled by the Slovene historian Tone Ferenc, Ph.D., was double-edged for
politics. On the one hand it suited it (and was – particularly in interrepublican disputes -
encouraged), and on the other hand it grew over its head, for it ate away at its legitimacy that
had been founded in the revolution. Therefore it tried to somehow make the
historians/communists "chase the dog." Yet since also the Marxist historians were of different
nationalities and despite their membership in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia also
of different political and ideological convictions, and, last but not least, also in conflict with
one another, this was a rather fruitless affair. Among the otherwise rather numerous attempts
to ideologically discipline the historiographic community (and in general all the writing about
the past) on various levels, in the eighties there were three the most far-reaching attempts: the
conference "Posvetovanje historiografija, memoarsko - publicistička i feljtonistička
produkcija u svjetlu aktualnih idejnih kontroverzih", held on October 7-8, 1983 in Zagreb;
Teden marksističnih razprav [Week of Marxist Discussions] from February 4-8, 1983 in the
Bosnian seaside little town of Neum, and the meeting of the Presidency of the Central
Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia on December 17, 1986 in Belgrade,
which was attended by approximately sixty historians from all of Yugoslavia, and was
intended as a preparation for the meeting of the Central Committee of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia on ideological issues. The first conference was organized by
Centar CK SK Hrvatske za idejno - teorijski rad under the leadership of Stipe Šuvar, Ph.D.
For the conference, Šuvar prepared a so-called "White Book" of controversial works on the
past, in which, though covertly (under a cloak of the defense of the revolution, Tito and the
Yugoslav socialist system), especially works by Serbian writers were criticized (on the whole
as many as 168 writers were mentioned in a negative context). The conference itself (to which
those accused had not been invited) provoked a strong reaction in the public, particularly in
the Serbian one. The publication of the discussions from the conference (Historija i
suvremenost, Zagreb 1984) did nothing to calm down the polemics, but in fact intensified it.
The Week of Marxist Discussions in Neum, alongside the disputes regarding the already
mentioned topics, primarily included disputes between the advocates of a "pure"
 44

historiography and those who claimed that Yugoslav historiography "cannot be a pure science
without political content."49

The meeting of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of
Yugoslavia was, in relation to texts and phenomena with controversial ideas, full of
compromise. The debaters were of the opinion that politics reacts too quickly to such
occurrences, while historiography reacts too slowly; that the League of Communists should
not merely be an observer in local historiography and journalism, however, that it would also
not be all right if it took over the role of the arbitrator on call.50
The conventions mentioned (including others on republican and local levels) had not
contributed much to calming down the circumstances of the "newly composed"
historiography (as the newspapers called it), and near the end of the eighties politics could no
longer summon the strength for potential new attempts at disciplining, not even on a symbolic
level. The Yugoslav "teacher of life", already in the middle of the eighties labeled as a "raped
lady", after turbulent years lived to see eternal rest without obituaries and a solemn funeral.

Mythic Notions of Slovenes51

We, Slovenes, as regards myth, do not differ greatly from other similar nations. Of the
multitude of myths (sometimes these are more historical constructs than classical myths),
which are at times connected with each other or complement each other, and sometimes also
contradict each other, those in the foreground (among the older ones) are the myth of the
origin of the Slovenes, the myth of Slovenes as a farmhand and oppressed nation, the myth of
the »Slovene national ascent« and the myth of the fact that a »true« Slovene can only be a
Catholic one (and, additionally, that we are »Mary's nation «, namely, a nation of which Mary
is supposedly particularly fond, on which also Poles, Croatians and Hungarians pride
themselves). Among the younger myths, created by the disintegration of states and the
creation of new ones, are the myths of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as
»dungeons for nations« and the myth of how Slovenes are economically backward because of
socialism (communism) and that after World War II, because of the communist nature, the

49 Žarko Rajković: Naše zgodovinopisje ne more biti brez politične vsebine, Delo 5. 2. 1985.
50 Iz politike v zgodovinopisje, Delo 18.12. 1986.
51
Published in Slovene in Mitske predstave pri Slovencih. In: NOVAK-POPOV, Irena (ed.). Stereotipi v
slovenskem jeziku, literaturi in kulturi: zbornik predavanj. Ljubljana: Center za slovenščino kot drugi/tuji jezik
pri Oddelku za slovenistiko Filozofske fakultete, 2007.
 45

authorities had failed to obtain the entire Slovene national territory in the West (particularly
the Trieste harbor).
The myth of the origin of Slovenes belongs to the so-called autochthonous theories. It is
derived from the belief that Slovenes are the original settlers of the area on which they live
today, and that the Slovene language (also literacy) originates from that time as well. Among
the different theses of Etruscan, Illyrian or Veneti origin, the public adopted the so-called
Veneti theory the most. The theory appeared in the middle of the 1980s; its main authors were
»venetologists« Matej Bor, Joško Šavli and Ivan Tomažič, who, in the book Veneti, naši
davni predniki [Veneti, our Ancient Ancestors], proclaimed Slovenes as the descendants of
the Veneti, while these are allegedly »the first nation created from an Indo-European people
in Central Europe«, and afterwards endured all later occupations, including the Roman one.
The authors try to prove their theory with language interpretation, especially with the
explanation of the origin of names, and with archaeological finds. The interpretation
(»translation«) of different place, lake and river names throughout Europe goes something
like this: Drava (Dravus) means to run, a river with a fast current. The word is derived from
Sanskrit, and Drava does not only appear in Slovenia, but also in Poland and Switzerland
(Derotchia), which testifies of the expansion of the Veneti, and at the same time of the direct
connection the Slovenes had to them. According to this logic (which, among other things,
does not consider the development of the language at all), the following are of Slovene origin:
Celeia (selo=hamlet), Logatec-Longaticus (log=grove; Locarno and Lugano are supposedly of
the same origin), Trst-Tergeste (trg=market), Oterg-Oderzo (otržje=place with a market), etc.
Such argumentation is very similar to the one by the Americanized father of Greek descent
Gus Portokalos in the comedy by Joel Zwick My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who was
convinced that he can etymologically prove that every word is of Greek origin. Thus he – in
addition to a number of other funny ideas – established that a kimono (»ki« means 'to wear' in
Japanese, and »mono« means 'object, thing') comes from the Greek »kimona« (»cheimonas«
is Greek for winter) and concluded: »What do you wear in the winter? A robe! So there you
go!«)

The archaeological proof of the Veneti theory is supposedly the so-called Lusatian culture
(after Lužice in Poland) of urn burial sites, which »venetologists« ascribe to the Veneti,
although both historiography and archaeology discovered some time ago that the material
culture of a place remains (can remain) unchanged, even if the population changes. Veneti
(Slovenes) are said to have spread some 1000 years before Christ from Poland over all of
 46

Europe and survived to this very day, which would mean, as ascertained by Peter Štih, who
had argumentatively rejected the Veneti theory in scientific and lay articles, as well as in
newspaper polemics (see Štih: Miti in stereotipi v podobi starejše slovenske nacionalne
zgodovine, and his other articles), that three millennia ago the Slovenes had controlled two
thirds of Europe and wrote in their language, while today they are left with only 20,000
kilometers of modern Slovenia. A few years later Ivan Tomažič »corrected« this unpleasant
discovery in his book Slovenci. Kdo smo? Od kdaj in od kod izviramo? [Slovenes. Who are
We? When and Where do We Come from?] with a thesis that in the Veneti »lies the origin of
other nations in Central Europe as well: Pomeranians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, the majority
of Germans and Austrians, the Italian Venetians, Friulians«, and to all of their
consciousnesses the Veneti theory is to bring »insurmountable problems«. The Veneti theory
is rejected by the most prominent Slovene medievalists (beginning with the late academician
Bogo Grafenauer), as by archaeologists (Mitja Guštin) and by most linguists. A journal was
published on the unscientific nature of this theory (Arheo, No. 10, 1990), the polemics filled
the letters of readers at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties, and the
»venetologists« replied to Arheo the same year with the book Z Veneti v novi čas [With the
Veneti into a New Era]. The polemics, various round tables and lectures on this topic are still
topical today; lately the efforts of the »venetologists« are headed in the direction of the
genetic »proving« of autochthonism.
The theories of autochthony connected with the Illyrian-Slavic tradition, and also with the
Veneti, are much older. They are already apparent with the Protestants, Marko Pohlin,
Valentin Vodnik (Ilirija oživljena - [Illyria Resurrected]) and a number of writers in the
second half of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century, all the way to the socialist
Henrik Tuma. The modern Veneti theory fell into a time when the Slovenes had begun to tear
away from Yugoslavism, when it had to be proved that they have »no historical and ethnic
tie« to the southern Slavs (Ivan Tomažič) and on the basis of this ascertainment find a new
identity. It is therefore understandable that this theory had reached a peak right before the
attaining of independence, although it is – a little due to inertia, and a little probably due to
never-ending Slovene complexes – preserved also after the attaining of independence, when it
has already exhausted its »national awakening« function.

In the time of the separation from the southern Slavs in the 1980s, in addition to the rise of
venetology, also belongs the renewed quest for a common Central European identity (mostly
connected with the area of the former Austria-Hungary), which above all came to life at a
 47

level of cultural connecting and perhaps a political illusion here and there (in certain Austrian
political circles the illusion of how they could regain »the imperial/royal« role if the
circumstances were to change), however, it did not reach mythical proportions. It had
triggered quite a few polemics; in Slovenia primarily due to the statement by the Austrian
writer Peter Handke that Central Europe is nothing other than a »meteorological notion«
(Repe: 1999) and the cynical rejection by certain politicians (a few years ago, while visiting
Slovenia, the cynical Czech President Vaclav Klaus labeled the modern quest for a Central
European identity and the act of connecting on that basis as »rhetoric«).

The myth of the farmhand nature of the Slovene nation is connected with the myth of the lost
state – Carantania and the constant longing for it (a part of the quest for this connection lies
also in symbols – e.g. suggestions to include the Carantanian panther in the Slovene coat-of-
arms, which is, according to Joško Šavli, »the symbol of every Slovene«). The essential part of
the story is that the Slavs (or in the mythic version Slovenes) settled on today's territory as
Avar serfs at the end of the 6th century, managed to become independent and create their own
state, and were later enslaved by the Germans, remaining under German slavery until World
War I (Carinthia, »the cradle of Slovenism« remaining there for ever). Such mythology is
otherwise characteristic of all Central European (as well as other) nations that had had (are
said to had had) some form of statehood in the early Middle Ages (although nationality had
not played a part at that time), and afterwards lost it. The farmhand perception, which was
largely also an integral part of the early Slovene scientific historiography, has created several
stereotypes, which comprise the whole of the myth, and also function by themselves. One part
refers to Germans as the greatest Slovene enemies; it had dragged on until the end of the
1980s and was only lost after that place in Slovene consciousness was taken on by the Serbs;
Austria, and especially Germany, became Slovene allies during the attaining of independence.
Naturally, the modern fear of Germans was realistically founded in the international (also
physical) confrontations in the second half of the 19th century, when the Germans had
dominated many regions in Carniola and other provinces, while the »German fortress
triangle« (Janez Cvirn) particularly controlled the Lower Styria (this also caused a rift in
Slovene ranks and a great hatred towards the so-called »Germanophiles«, who did not
envisage modernization for the Slovenes without Germanism); in the chauvinistic acts of the
Austrian Germans during World War I and upon its ending; and especially in the Nazi
ethnocide over the Slovenes during World War II.
 48

The second part refers to the continuous identity of the Slovenes from the 6th century
onwards, even though »…the identities of the inhabitants were different at that time«. The
inhabitants north of the Karavanke mountain range considered themselves Carantanians and
were also called thus by their Bavarian and Lombard neighbors, while south of them lived the
Carniolans«, both peoples were Slav, but not Slovene (Peter Štih: 2006 and his other works,
listed in the article). According to the same author, the Carantanians were only »made«
Slovenes from Linhart onwards (the name Slovenes is first mentioned in 1550 in Trubar's
Catechismus, and Slovenia as late as in a poem by Jovan Vesel Koseski in 1844); to speak of
Slovenes in the early Middle Ages »is nothing other than nationalizing history in retrospect;
it means to create an imaginary image of a national history before it was even begun.«
Moreover, in the case of Slovenes regional identity is prevailing until the end of the 19th
century.
It is true, however, that we, Slovenes, can count Carantanians as our ancestors (also in the
linguistic sense), yet they were not the only ones.
The third part refers to Slovenes as oppressed peasants without their own upper classes, who
suffered due to national affiliation (although it played no part in the feudal relations nor in the
colonization of German peasants on Slovene territory, since the owners paid no attention to
nationality; they did not care what color the cat was, as long as it caught mice; the feudal lords
on today's Slovene territory were as autochthonous as the Slovenes themselves, they were
integrated into the environment, they lived with them and contributed to the development of
the environment, they at least partly also spoke the local dialect, which is proved in the works
of Štih, Maja Žvanut and Marko Štuhec, as well as other medievalists).
The fourth part refers to the continuous loss of Slovene territory, which had reached far into
Austria and needs to be regained (it was in fact a Slav territory, and was designated
»Yugoslav« between the wars). The image of Carinthia, as a sort of lost Kosovo, became
fortified in the Slovene consciousness after World War I, when the inhabitants (also a large
portion of Slovenes) opted for Austria instead of the Kingdom of SCS at a plebiscite. The
myth of Carantania and a lost »Slovene« territory has been preserved to this very day. It has
also received support from the most important historians. The leading Slovene medievalist
after World War II Bogo Grafenauer, for instance, published a book in 1952 entitled
Ustoličevanje koroških vojvod in država karantanskih Slovencev [Enthronement of the Dukes
of Carinthia and the State of the Carantanian Slovenes], while in the German title of the
abstract, instead of Slovenes it is correctly written Carantanian Slavs - »Karantanenslawen«.
(Grdina: 1996, Štih: 2006).
 49

The fifth part refers to the alleged early (and then until 1990 lost) democratic tradition of
Slovenes, connected with the enthronement of dukes – a special feudal ritual, which had its
roots in the older enthronement of the Carantanian princes, and was preserved in a modified
form until 1414 (the last to be merely symbolically enthroned by Slovene peasants was Ernest
Železni). At first authority was granted to the prince by a tribal or people's convention, and
later on this function was taken over by "kosezi" or freemen (a sort of higher, free peasant
class). In the end this was merely a ritual without content, since the prince was actually
enthroned by the Franconian (Germanic) ruler. The ritual was carried out at the Prince's
Stone, a part of a Roman column, which had originally probably stood at Krn Castle (Austrian
Carinthia). The nationally romantic image made the Prince's Stone a cult object, which also
appeared upon the attaining of independence on money vouchers, the predecessors of the
tolar, which caused protests by the nationalistic Carinthian politicians lead by Jörg Haider.
When Slovenia introduced the Euro this year, it printed the Prince's Stone on the coin for two
cents and the story of the protests was repeated (there was perhaps some wisdom in
presuming that the coins for one and two cents will be cancelled in the EU). In 2005 Haider
had the monument moved from the Provincial Museum in Klagenfurt to the Carinthian
Provincial Parliament (most likely to emphasize that the enthroning tradition is connected
with Carinthia and not with the Slovenes and their recently formed state). In 1990, after the
first multi-party election, there was also a tendency to inaugurate the Slovene Presidency and
the President at a place called Vače, the geometrical centre of Slovenia, after the model of the
enthronement at Gosposvetsko polje, which the four members of the Presidency and its
President, Milan Kučan, refused. The ritual of the symbolic passing of authority to the
Carantanian Prince and the Duke of Carinthia by the peasants is said to have directly
influenced the American statesman Thomas Jefferson and the creation of the American
Declaration of Independence, although there is no historical evidence of this. The ritual was
mentioned in 1580 by the French jurist Jean Bodin; in a translation of Bodin's book, owned by
Jefferson, this page was marked and it was sufficient for certain authors (Joseph Felicijan) to
believe that Jefferson saw in the enthronement a confirmation that hereditary monarchies
must have a contractual nature. This viewpoint had already been overthrown as exaggerated
in the seventies by Bogo Grafenauer, and it reached a mythical peak during the visit of Bill
Clinton in Slovenia in June 1999, when the alleged connection was mentioned as a fact in
toasts at Brdo by Milan Kučan and Clinton. Kučan with the statement that already the
President Thomas Jefferson »when forming the American Declaration of Independence had
strongly leaned on the famous ritual of our Slovene ancestors, with which a thousand years
 50

ago they had democratically enthroned their Carantanian princes at Gosposvetsko polje«,
and Clinton with a slightly ironic response that the friendship between Slovenia and the USA
goes back to a time before the creation of the USA, when Thomas Jefferson, the creator of the
Declaration of Independence, sought examples of democracy in the world, that is, of an
environment where the people rule, and that he (Jefferson) liked the fact that the Carinthian
dukes were slapped, which is said to have symbolized the right of the nation to overthrow its
rulers, and that would supposedly (in Clinton's opinion) be liked by all the future generations
of Americans as well.

Around the framework of a lost Slovene statehood, the suffering and a farmhand character, a
number of other mythical topics were weaved, some also as a sort of compensation for the
poor historical position of the Slovenes. In connection with the Turkish raids, when the
Slovenes were said to have (successfully) defended the foreign lords and Christianity from the
Turks and Islam, and, of course, the »national« territory as well, a special place is taken up by
the battle of Sisak in 1593. In it, a prominent (even leadership) role was given to Adam
Ravbar, a Carniolan captain of the provincial cavalry, who, according to legend, was also the
most responsible for the victory. The anniversary of the battles had always been festively
celebrated; during World War II the Slovene Home Guard identified with the Christian side,
and the partisans were given the role of the Turks. However, even in independent Slovenia
upon its 400th anniversary (in 1993) the battle was celebrated as »one of the victories leading
to an independent Slovene state.« (Simoniti: 1993). Also connected with the Turkish raids
(according to the same author) is the creation of Slovene mythical characters, such as Kralj
Matjaž, Peter Klepec and Martin Krpan. The medieval peasant uprisings were regarded by
some writers (including historians) as early forms of the class struggle and an attempt of
national emancipation, before caring for the social and national issue was taken over by the
working class with its »avant-garde«, that is, the Communist Party. A special myth is
connected with the strongest feudal family, the Counts of Celje (the three stars from their
coat-of-arms are included in the coat-of-arms of the Republic of Slovenia, and were already
used in the »combined« coat-of-arms of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The Counts of Celje are
said to have been of Slovene descent, the Principality of Celje a Slovene medieval state, while
Herman Celjski, by reigning over Bosnia and Slavonia (according to Janez Trdina), is said to
have »founded the mighty Yugoslav state.« If they had not been ruined, only Yugoslavs would
be living in the south of their property under their leadership (according to Karl Verstovšek);
Vlado Habjan saw in their extinction the loss of a social integrator and a possible realizer of a
 51

(Slovene) state that no one in that time, and for a long time after that, could replace. (Habjan:
1998).
The myth of a continuous national ascent is derived from a belief that the Slovenes had
always wanted a state of their own, which they had supposedly first written in the United
Slovenia program in 1848, and then tried to realize in various historical situations, which they
finally succeeded to do in 1991. In reality very few intellectuals supported this program,
which had not demanded an independent state but a unification of all Slovenes in a self-
governing unit with its own parliament. Likewise, the trialistic program from the turn of the
century had not demanded an independent Slovene state (as was, for instance, demanded by
the Czechs), but the division of the monarchy into three parts, with a southern Slavic part in
addition to the Hungarian and Austrian one. An expression of Slovene statehood (even with
elements of international recognition) is thought to be the transitional one-month State of
Slovenes, Croats and Serbs of 1918 with a seat in Zagreb, in which the Slovenes had their
own government but had not managed to establish a parliament. The State of SCS only began
to be mentioned as an expression of Slovene statehood in the 1970s, and it reached a peak
after the attaining of independence with a thesis on »Slovene attaining of independence in
1918« (Perovšek). Between the wars the political programs had not gone beyond demands of
autonomy, and during World War II United Slovenia (in the federal Yugoslavia) became a
programmatic guidance for both the partisan as well as the anti-partisan side, while only
effectively fought for by the partisan side (which achieved a change of the western border),
however, it is true that diplomatic attempts for its realization are also recorded in the case of
emigrant politicians. The question of how far the borders of United Slovenia should reach
remained open; it depended on several factors, mostly international ones (important was, for
instance, the decision of the Allies to renew Austria with the borders preceding the Anschluss
and the inclination towards Italy, and in the opinion of certain historians also the communist
tendency of the National Liberation Movement). Despite this, idealized programs were
formed in war conditions as well, which drew the borders of the United Slovenia at Visoke
Ture and Tilment and demanded that the demarcation takes into account the national
condition at the turn of the 20th century, namely, before the assimilation of Slovenes in
Austria and Italy. The National Liberation Movement also desires to change the nation of
farmhands (this image had been created through literary works of all the important writers
from Prešeren to Cankar) into a nation of heroes and transform the national character, which
was also an item in the program of the Liberation Front. The programs in socialist Yugoslavia
until the second half of the eighties also had not reached past a federal or confederal status,
 52

while Yugoslavia seemed like a safe haven from the worst national enemies – the Germans
and Italians.
The polemics regarding the national ascent otherwise reached a peak in expert circles right
after the attaining of independence in 1992, when the book Slovenski narodni vzpon [Slovene
National Ascent] by Janko Prunk was published, and was once again renewed after the
elections won by the centre-right coalition. Here a distinctive political connotation is, of
course, noticeable, since the »peak« of the national ascent and of history in general is to lie in
the attaining of independence, which still brings plenty of political points and is a sort of
morally political criterion of value for high political functions. In actuality very little of
today's political parties and politicians are tied to the attaining of independence, yet the ruling
bloc with its thesis on the so-called »Spring« parties, that is parties that are said to have been
in favor of the attaining of independence and democratization at the end of the eighties and
the beginning of the nineties – tries to draw some sort of political capital from such undefined
mythicizing of its (alleged) role.

A special type of a mythical relationship was formed towards every state formation that
included Slovenes. The once glorified Catholic Austria with its cult Emperor Franz Joseph in
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia became the »dungeon of nations«, even though, despite
everything, it had enabled Slovenes their existence, economic development (albeit a slow
one), the preservation of their national identity, and taught them modern political manners,
including parliamentarism. The same label was given to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after its
demise, while already in the time of its existence the idealized image of a joint symbiosis of
»three tribes of a single nation« was destroyed. In the Kingdom Slovenes were in fact given a
university, and the chance for economic development and an informal cultural autonomy, but
not a political one. If not a myth, then at least a stereotype that (according to Anton Korošec)
»Serbs rule, Croats discuss, and Slovenes pay«, was repeated in a slightly different disguise
with the socialist Yugoslavia, which the Slovenes abandoned because it had become a
hindrance to their development, and because the hundred-year-old fear of the German and
Italian enemies became numb after seventy years. The self-governing socialism as »the best
system in the world« became »totalitarianism«, the beloved comrade Tito a dictator, and the
myth of brotherhood and unity and socialist patriotism turned to dust. A new mythical and
uncritically idealized goal became the so-called »Europe.« (Repe: 2001 and 2003). A
similarly altered mythical image was experienced by personalities in individual periods as
well, especially literary ones, which had created the Slovene national community, while
 53

politicians were said to be (Grdina) merely »the nation's second league.« Consequently
contemporaries are trying to rectify this complex. Connected with personalities, especially in
school history, is the national claiming of people who were not Slovene by descent but had
been born here or lived here (e.g. musician Jakob Gallus or the chemist Fritz Pregl) or they
were Slovenes but had not felt any particular affinity to their nationality (Puch that had been
christened for Johannes, for such needs, e.g., became Janez Puh).
The myth of the Slovene/Christian is connected to the cultural struggle which began at the
turn of the century. It had been concisely expressed in the 1890s first by Anton Mahnič with
the viewpoint that a German and Slovene liberal are closer in spirit than a religious and a
liberal Slovene, followed by the words of Aleš Ušeničnik in 1912: «The Christian religion
held by Slovenes is Catholic, as for all nations, however, as a cultural heritage of a thousand
years it is so closely linked with all of our thoughts and lives that a Slovene/atheist is utterly
foreign to us and can in no way be trusted anymore.« (Similarly foreign was, naturally, also
the Slovene/Protestant). The turn of the century (according to Egon Pelikan) meant a shock
for the Slovene Catholic elite, for the growth of liberalism began to destroy its notion that
religion is the basic driving force of society and that the church elite has the right and the
power by the integralistic principle to judge all social happenings. This conviction, which had
been founded on the national awakening part of the clergy (at that time almost the only
Slovene intelligentsia) at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th, and on the fact that most
Slovenes were baptized in the Catholic tradition, clashed with the processes of modernization
that the Catholic top had tried to contain with the use of old patterns. The answer to the
dilemma what comes above what: nationality above religion or religion above nationality, was
clear: the subordination of religious truths to the idea of nationality (here the liberals were
more successful, as the Protestants had been more successful in the past and brought literacy
to the nation) must be – if this dilemma occurs – condemned; otherwise the fundamental
principle is that both are one and inseparable. (A similar problem was later met by the
communists as well). Despite such a radical thesis (again according to Pelikan), the Catholic
integralism before World War I had not won over the political pragmatism of Krekova
zadružna in prosvetna organizacija [Krek's Cooperative and Educational Organization],
however, that did occur – also in the context of international circumstances and the direction
of the Vatican – in the 1930s, which also divided the Catholic camp. The policy of the
Catholic Church in Slovenia (a great and still increasing economic power, connected with the
return of feudal and other estate; interfering with the school system and public media; ties
with the ruling right-wing coalition; the passing of moral judgment – at instances when it is
 54

not in conflict with its direct interests), gives the impression that the integralistic myth of the
Slovene/Catholic is being renewed. In opposition to this are the processes of modernization
that had happened in the meantime, and the constitutional separation of Church and State,
which is mainly interpreted according to the balance of political power, and in the past few
years that has been quite favorable for the Church.

Of the current myths (historical constructs) most are related to the issue of World War II and
socialism (communism) and have a strong topical political note. The fundamental observation
here is that in Slovenia a revision of history has occurred (which is, in fact, in many ways a
result of new research and objective scientific discoveries, but that is not the object of this
discussion). This revision quite often leads to mythicizing; the historians that contradict this
with scientific arguments are being labeled as »anational«, unpatriotic, etc., they are often
subjected to harsh political disqualifications. This is mostly a result of the changed ideological
and political image of Slovenia after the last elections (2004). While the mostly liberal
governments from the time of Slovenia's attaining of independence onwards had dealt with
history only marginally and left it to the discipline itself, the current right-wing coalition has
placed the attitude towards the past as one of its priorities, both in controlling science and in
school programs, as well as at celebrations and public manifestations. This new, supposedly
patriotic image of history is largely founded on the myths I have discussed and which are to
become an integral part of the historical consciousness of Slovenes. Explicitly assaulted here
is World War II and socialism (communism) with a selective time treatment (neglecting the
ideological conflicts before the war and the chronologically provable events: occupation -
collaboration - resistance - revolution), by reducing the historical treatment merely to the
issue of the revolution and by emphasizing that the Slovene rift and the civil war had begun
due to communist acts during the war. This is joined by a thesis that the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia was a democratic, parliamentary state; that the representatives of civic parties
were legally elected (and legitimate) representatives of the Slovene nation also during the
war, despite at least publicly renouncing their old country (it is well-known that politicians –
e.g. the Ban of the Drava Banovina – who had not long ago pledged their allegiance to the
Yugoslav Regent after the occupation – were in the mildest, unaltered version - »informed« of
the inclusion of a part of Slovene territory and paid tribute to Mussolini in Rome, while
mayors pledged their allegiance to the Italian king, etc.). The communist revolution during the
war and after it is said to have annihilated the economic standard and democracy that had
been achieved before the war, and to have led Slovenes in every way to the sidelines of
 55

development. Scientific historiography – despite acknowledging the merits that the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia had especially for Slovene culture and economy – does not support this claim
and sees in its social and international conflicts the reasons for events during World War II as
well. According to these theses, the communists, a small conspiratorial group, have a merely
revolutionary character and not a nationally liberational one. By denying the right to
resistance to the civic side (forgetting that the exclusion was mutual) it had thus prevented
(rendered impossible) its revolt, although it is well-known that there were numerous kinds of
active armed resistance in many countries (Poland, France, Italy, Greece) and that the
conditions for such were also present in Slovenia, and that had there been an active resistance
the situation of the civic camp would have been significantly altered also in the eyes of the
western allies. A »pure« national liberation, without a revolution (and consequently without a
civil war) would supposedly have been meaningless to the Communist Party, and patriotism
merely a means to achieve the class goal. This is, among other things, being proved with
adapted viewpoints that »the communists will march into an armed resistance against the
occupier only if they have a chance for a revolution«, or (in another version) that they will
enter an anti-Fascist battle in the event that it would benefit the Soviet Union. The
communists no doubt saw the war as an opportunity to carry out a revolution and in individual
periods (especially before the attack of Germany on the Soviet Union) placed it in the
foreground, however, regardless of the parallel revolutionary goals, this was above all a
resistance act. This evaluation is supplemented by the thesis that the communist nature of the
resistance movement and then of the post-war regime prevented the realization of the idea of a
United Slovenia, and that it had especially influenced the loss of Trieste. There have already
been a few historical discussions and polemics on this matter. To sum up the historical
discussion, this somehow extends to the possibility of obtaining Gorizia, is critical to
individual domestic and foreign political moves of the post-war authorities, which had
undoubtedly influenced the tensing of the situation with the western countries, and in the
event that there had not been a partisan resistance, hypothetically (the so-called »if history«),
allows for a partial correction of the borders by the so-called Wilson line from before World
War I (which still would not provide Slovenes an outlet to the sea). The political
interpretation (also in a speech by Prime Minister Janez Janša) upon the anniversary of the
accession of Primorska was that had there not been a communist regime ruling in Slovenia at
that time we would have also obtained Trieste and the entire Venetian Slovenia (which
Austria had lost back in 1866, and with Italy even carrying out an investigative plebiscite in
the controversial territory which showed that Slovenes – surely due to previous unfriendly
 56

Austrian politics – were also inclined towards an annexation to Italy). In connection with this
a predicament is also arising regarding the contribution of the National Liberation Movement
to Slovene statehood (the status of the republic in post-war Yugoslavia; the right to self-
determination, including the right to secessions, written down in all the post-war Yugoslav
constitutions; the parliament; the government; from the seventies onwards also the
presidency; the borders which Slovenia had attained within the socialist Yugoslavia and that
were internationally confirmed). Both in a local as well as an international context this
predicament was all the more obvious when it came to assuming an attitude towards AVNOJ
and its resolutions, which had been caused after the attaining of independence by demands
from Austria that Slovenia give up the AVNOJ resolutions and return the nationalized
property. Local criticism of the work of historians and politicians is directed towards the
»revolutionary character« of AVNOJ (despite international recognition), while, e.g., the
confirmation of the decisions regarding the annexation of Primorska naturally comes in
handy.

Among the constructs on socialism (communism) and its aftermath, the thesis on the
economic backwardness it had allegedly caused is also common. If we were to measure
economic processes in the long run, it would show that there had been early beginnings of
industrialization on Slovene territory soon after the most developed countries in the beginning
of the 19th century, but that afterwards there was hardly any progress for fifty years. The
southern railway had not brought a leap into a higher qualitative phase, but had destroyed the
old crafts. The countries that were industrialized before World War I are still in the
foreground today, while Slovene territory even lagged behind the slow Austria-Hungary by
approximately two decades. Only roughly a quarter of the industrial plants were created at the
time of Austria-Hungary; in the Kingdom – at that time one of the poorest European
countries! – that (alongside powerful protectionism, e.g., with up to 50% duties) was doubled;
the other half was contributed by socialism with an accelerated industrialization that reached a
peak in the 1970s. As early as 1918 Slovene politicians wished to establish a national
economy, which was then carried out by a socialist group with the concept of a state (social),
that is, nonentrepreneurial economy. Kavčič's concept of a transition into a postindustrial
society, set at the right time, at the end of the sixties, did not come true. The industrial boom
that had fed on its own accumulation was worn out and Yugoslavia replaced it with running
into debts, and from then on everything went downhill and points to a justified (also
economic) reason for leaving Yugoslavia. In the last 150 years Slovenia has kept pace with
 57

the Mediterranean countries (the exception is Italy that had caught the wave of modernization
in the beginning of the 20th century), it has overtaken the East European ones (compare e.g.
the position of the Czech Republic and Slovenia in Austria-Hungary!). Until the middle of the
1970s Slovenia had reduced the historical difference with Austria, and afterwards the
difference returned to where it had been in the second half of the 19th century. Today
Slovenia is said to be at around 60-70% of the Austrian GDP (Austria took remarkable
advantage of the transition in East European countries). From a national and economic view
the »original sin« therefore lies not (only) in socialism, which had carried out the necessary
industrial modernization in a specific way and then fell asleep, but is much older, with two or
three missed opportunities in different periods and systems.

The negative (»criminal«) image of Slovene communism is derived mostly from the post-war
killings of the members of the Home Guard and other political opponents, political trials and
various types of repression, and the introduction of a totalitarian system, following the Soviet
example. This is joined by the inter-war usurpation of the Liberation Movement, and the
proletarian internationalism, as well as a tie with the Soviet Union (until 1948). Knowledge of
this made its way into the public consciousness gradually, already in the last period of
socialism, from the first half of the eighties onwards. Connected with this are also the
evaluations of the legality and legitimacy of the system after 1945. In light of these events the
entire communist activity is being evaluated, their social role problematized (as a pre-war
illegal organization they were not to have had the right to an equal social role as other
political subjects, even though they had been placed outside the law by the undemocratic
Yugoslav regime and even though the legitimacy of the civic parties in the thirties is
questionable at the least, for it had not been measured at democratic elections, and the
Yugoslav parliament, after the Cvetković-Maček agreement, which had granted Croatia an
independent and united ban's domain with large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was not
even active; the regime founded concentration camps for adversaries; at a time when the
Home Secretary was Anton Korošec, LL.D., the state adopted anti-Jewish legislation, while
during the war the civic parties were not even capable of answering the historic challenge).
The organization of the resistance movement, the role in the resistance and the contribution to
determining the Slovene borders and statehood, the break with the Soviet Union and
Stalinism, the execution of the processes of modernization, which were carried out in their
own specific (also repressive) way with social engineering after the war, because the previous
political elite had not been capable of it or had not wanted it (a socially more righteous state,
 58

women's emancipation, separation of Church and State, industrialization of Slovene society,

the gradual strengthening of Slovene statehood in the national area) is overshadowed by the
negative side of their operation. Though the public opinion polls until the time of socialism
are mostly lenient, predominantly positive, the true evaluation (particularly with younger
generations) is hard to measure. It is interesting that the public opinion polls show an
increasingly positive attitude towards Josip Broz - Tito, who has gone from a 67% support
from less than ten years ago, to an 80% one. Even in the most right-wing Catholic party of
Nova Slovenija [New Slovenia] he was given 52% of positive votes in the poll, and in the
leading Slovenska demokratska stranka [Slovene Democratic Party] almost 60% (Tito is a
positive personality, Mladina No. 20, 19.5. 2007 p. 46; the poll was carried out by
Ninamedia). On a politological and sociological level the predicament regarding the
evaluation of communist ideology, the communist party and communists as people is trying to
be solved by differentiating between communists as people (with good intentions) and
communist politics and ideology as negative, originating in the logic of Bolshevism. Of
course this predicament does not appear only with the communists: »credits for the nation«,
which consciously or subconsciously try to be given mythic proportions by the current group
in authority, are often, naturally, not in harmony with democracy. Although I would risk
evaluating that the majority of contemporary Slovene historiography moves within a weighed
search for the good and bad sides, this is still wanting in the comprehensive evaluation of the
communist movement in Slovenia and the leading communists, which is, last but not least,
demonstrated by the fact that we still lack a monographic study on the history of the
communist movement and party in Slovenia, as well as biographies of the leading
communists. A part of the writers (also historians) proceeds from the evaluations of the
criminal nature of the communists during the war and after it, on the forty-five years of
totalitarianism, on the fact that Slovene communism (socialism) in essence never
differentiated itself from the Soviet one. It seems that it wishes to push the pendulum of a
more balanced historiography, which the discipline has in the past twenty years somehow
succeeded in »stopping« at the middle, to the other outer edge in any way possible. This does
not apply only to the attitude towards World War II and socialism (communism), but to the
attitude towards all the topics that are to increase Slovene confidence and patriotism through a
mythic view, even though Slovenia has its own state and there is no need for this.
Ernest Renan, a French philosopher from the 19th century, the founder of the (then) modern
type of nationalism, derived from the belief that when constructing a common (national)
identity people must establish the attitude towards the past in a selective manner: they must
 59

imprint into their consciousness certain things from the past, while utterly forgetting others.
With the use of orchestrated historiography, controlled media, a system of celebrations,
controlling celebrations, much can be achieved. In spite of this the patterns from the 19th
century cannot be fully transferred to the 21st century, particularly not if we are dealing with a
combination of nationalism and (one or the other) ideology. Different views and polemics are
completely normal for a democratic society. If only the temptation of using political power to
enforce one's own »truth« and one's own view of history does not prevail.
Among the last wave of the mythicizing of Slovene history belong the self-made images of
Slovenia's attaining of independence and its transition (e.g. of how the Slovene privatization
was more just and less »tycoonish« than the Croatian and Eastern European ones; or of the
exclusively democratic and non-nationalistic conduct of the Slovenes – which is negated, for
instance, by the example of »izbrisani« [The Erased], that is, of over 18,000 people of non-
Slovene descent who were deprived of the right to permanent residence, lost their existence
and were forced into extremely inhumane existential conditions (namely, without a permanent
residence you cannot arrange steady employment nor social or health insurance). By entering
the European Union this uncritical self-image, which partly truly is founded on the successes
of Slovenia (the adoption of the Euro, the future presidency of the EU, which Slovenia was
granted as the first country from the bloc of the newly accepted countries), is gradually
growing into a political myth, propagated by the ruling group and the pro-government media,
that Slovenes are doing better today than ever in all of history. At this moment we are torn
between an idealized self-image on the one hand and hundreds of years of frustration and
fears on the other, which a good decade of an independent state and the inclusion in the EU
had, in fact, suppressed to the subconscious, but could not simply wash away.

Myths are produced all the time and originate in the current historical situation. In the case of
the Slovenes they had helped create (and then abolish) the Central European Austro-
Hungarian identity as well as both Yugoslav ones, the royal and the socialist. In the belated
wave of the creation of new countries they had newly supported the creation of a Slovene
national state, which was self-sufficient for twelve years and then managed to be included in
the EU. The topical political myth is derived from the belief that the present generation of
Slovenes is experiencing its peak and its happiest moment; that it has, so to speak, reached
»the end of history«. Well, after the end of communism and bipolarity and the triumph of
 60

liberalism in the beginning of the 1990s, something of the sort was also claimed by Francis
Fukuyama, who had to correct himself after a few years.

Selected literature:
BOR, Matej, ŠAVLI, Joško, TOMAŽIČ Ivan, 1989: Veneti, naši davni predniki, Ljubljana,
Spodnje Škofije, Wien, Maribor: Večer
CVIRN, Janez 1997: Trdnjavski trikotnik: politična orientacija Nemcev na Spodnjem
Štajerskem (1861-1914). Maribor: Obzorja.
GRDINA, Igor, 1996: Karantanski mit v slovenski kulturi. In: Zgodovina za vse 3/2.
GRANDA, Stane, 1999: Prva odločitev Slovencev za Slovenijo: dokumenti z uvodno študijo
in osnovnimi pojasnili. Ljubljana: Nova revija.
HABJAN, Vlado, 1998: Za razveljavitev teze o naši nezgodovinskosti: obsimpozijsko
vprašanje. Delo. 40/115.21.V.1998.16.
PELIKAN, Egon, 2001: Slovenski politični katolicizem in katoliška
cerkev v letih 1918-1945. Primorska srečanja 244/245. 533-542.
PEROVŠEK, Jurij, 1998: Slovenska osamosvojitev v letu 1918 : študija
o slovenski državnosti v Državi Slovencev, Hrvatov in Srbov. Ljubljana: Modrijan.
PRUNK, Janko,1992: Slovenski narodni vzpon. Ljubljana: DZS.
REPE, Božo, 2001: Historical consequences of the disintegration of Yugoslavia for Slovene
Society. In: Österreichische. Ostheft. Wien, hf. ½. 5-26.
REPE, Božo, 1999: Slovenci, Balkan in Srednja Evropa. In: Anthropos 31.4/6. 301-312.
REPE, Božo. 2003: Zapozneli zamah zgodovine. In: Delo, April 26, 2003. 55/96.
REPE, Božo: Mit in resničnost komunizma. In: Mitja Ferenc, Branka Petkovšek (eds.):
Mitsko in stereotipno v slovenskem pogledu na zgodovino. Ljubljana: Zveza zgodovinskih
društev Slovenije. 285-302.
ROZMAN, Franc, MELIK Vasilij, REPE, Božo 1999: Zastave vihrajo. Spominski dnevi in
praznovanja na Slovenskem od sredine 19. stoletja do danes. Ljubljana: Modrijan.
SIMONITI, Vasko 1993: O pomenu Siska in bitke pri njem pred 400 leti. Mohorjev koledar.

ŠTIH, Peter, 2006: Miti in stereotipi v podobi starejše slovenske nacionalne zgodovine. In:
Mitja Ferenc, Branka Petkovšek (eds.): Mitsko in stereotipno v slovenskem pogledu na
zgodovino. Ljubljana:Zveza zgodovinskih društev Slovenije. 25-47.
TOMAŽIČ, Ivan (ed.), 1990: Z Veneti v novi čas: odgovori - odmevi -
obravnave : zbornik 1985-1990, Ljubljana, Wien
 61

TOMAŽIČ, Ivan, ŠAVLI, Joško, 1999: Slovenci: kdo smo? od kdaj in odkod izviramo?,
Wien

The Myth and Reality of Communism52

Introduction:

Revaluation (Revision) of the Past: Cause and Consequence

In order to define an attitude towards communism it is necessary to know the historical

context in which judgments have been uttered, and for the last period also to know the causes
for revaluating history. In a simplified version, these could be divided into several sets53:
1. New discoveries and realizations of Slovene and European historiography. Here a longer
process is involved, which had begun in Slovenia in the second half of the 1980s and brought
many new realizations, including the research of the darker sides of Slovene history, which
had until then been kept secret: the politically most far-reaching are the killing of members of
the Home Guard and the counting of the victims of World War II, where the final number will
be much higher than anticipated, about 90 000, and the problem of national reconciliation
connected with this.54 Of course there are many other discoveries from the economic, social,
political and cultural history, which are less appealing to the public and even less so to the
political accumulation of points, which is why they are only in the foreground of expert
debates, or not even that. In an approximately twenty-year-long process from the middle of
the eighties onwards, Slovene historiography has established a balance with the previously
insufficiently or one-sidedly researched topics, while in the case of individual historians, in
this process of new realizations, a tendency can be noticed for establishing an antipode to past
viewpoints, a radical turn, which exceeds the scientific realizations of the (majority?) part of

52
Published in Slovene in Mitsko in stereotipno v slovenskem pogledu na zgodovino, Zbornik 33. zborovanja
Zveze zgodovinskih društev Slovenije, Ljubljana 2006.
53
More on the subject: Božo Repe: zakaj revizionizem? O prevrednotenju zgodovine v Evropi in Sloveniji, Koroški
vestnik 1, Ljubljana 2006. See also: Božo Repe 60 let od konca druge svetovne vojne. O simbolih, praznikih in
prevrednotenju zgodovine, Borec. Revija za zgodovino, antropologijo in književnost 621-625, 2005, pp. 33- 44.
54
More on the topic : Žrtve vojne in revolucije, Državni zbor republike Slovenije, Ljubljana 2005. See also:
Janja Slabe: Narodna sprava v slovenskih časopisih. Borec, 2006, 58, No. 630-634, pp. 9-60, and Slovenska
narodna sprava v ogledalu časopisja (1984-1997). Prispev. za novejšo zgod., 2006, 46, No. 1, pp. 431-446.
 62

historiography and is with the theses and terminology in certain places returning to the anti-
communist propaganda between the wars and during World War II.55

55
Quoting - »ad rem«, and exclusively in order to illustrate the written viewpoint, the following examples:
a) »On the basic elements of its program the most important Slovene political formation, the Liberation Front,
had probably already agreed on at its founding meeting in April 1941. Ten years later at the 3rd Congress of the
Liberation Front the development of people's democracy and the developing of socialist relations was again
fatally discussed. The famous program of the League of Communists, which had at that time awakened and long
continued to awaken an intense interest of all the socialist and advanced world, and which with its broadness and
far-sightedness succeeded in providing a frame for an independent, extremely dynamic development of the
socialist socially political and cultural relations within the Yugoslav society, was accepted at the 7th Congress of
the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, in April 1958 in Ljubljana… With the "Čebine" program the CP of
Slovenia showed itself to be a new modern, popular front political force that respects and acknowledges
democracy and the different ideal and political convictions of its fellow countrymen. Such a popular front
program had great prospects to find fertile soil among the Slovene public masses for the KPS to fortify its
legitimate place within the Slovene nation. The development which followed the "Čebine" manifesto confirms
the evaluation that the Slovene nation would accept only such a broad democratic popular front program and that
only with it did the Party succeed to decisively break through into the Slovene democratic masses …« (Janko
Prunk. Ph.D.: Mesto ustanovnega manifesta KPS med slovenskimi narodnimi programi, Izročilo Čebin,
Komunist, Ljubljana 1987, pp. 196- 204).

»This program of the Anti-Imperialist Front (The mottos of our National Liberation War, TN) was a program of
the socialist-Bolshevist type and its concept grew into the Liberation Front… It was always and primarily
interested in a socialist revolution of a clearly defined Bolshevist type. If we fail to consider this, then we are
speaking in a completely amateur way, past the things that modern historical science is clear on.« (Janko Prunk,
Kratka zgodovina Slovenije, Ljubljana 2002, p. 143). See also the journal Žrtve vojne in revolucije, p. 127).
»That is why Boris Kidrič was an inexhaustible source of faith in the revolutionary goals and full of optimism in
overcoming difficulties. He was a practical revolutionary worker and organizer, and at the same time a thinker
and a Marxist theoretical creator, who made an important contribution to Slovene and Yugoslav socialist
thought. In his person he combined the best Slovene cultural tradition, the spirit of Prešeren, Levstik and Cankar,
and joined it with the spirit of the international Marxist revolutionariness, with which he tried to realize the great
dream of a national and social freedom. He is one of the most important men of Slovene and Yugoslav history.«
(Janko Prunk: Boris Kidrič, Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana, 1984, p. 1).

»The Liberation Front holds a special, glorious place in the history of the Slovene nation…Hence writing about a
phenomenon that has already been so intensively scientifically and documentarily, as well as publicistically,
treated, and of which such profiled evaluations are given, as had been given of the LF by its creator of genius
Boris Kidrič and by some of its other leaders, is in no way easy. The least that can happen to a writer of a new
discussion or historical essay is that his or her writing turns out to be poor and one-sided, and cannot reflect all
the broadness of the action and meaning of the Liberation Front that had encompassed, and, with a creativeness
unknown before that time, shaped all the spheres of life in the Slovene nation« (Janko Prunk, Ph.D.:
Zgodovinsko poslanstvo Osvobodilne fronte slovenskega naroda, Borec ¾, 1981, p. 149).
»A markedly Bolshevist view of the National Liberation Struggle and the future socialist society was shown by
the direct leader of Slovene communism in the LF Boris Kidrič at a communist conference at Cink in Kočevski
rog, from July 5-8, 1942, by stating that the Party still needs the Christian Socialists in this phase of the struggle,
however, that it will probably part with them in the next phase, that is, in the construction of socialism, since
socialism can only be constructed by Marxists, dialectic materialists. This is a distinctly narrow, sectarian
Leninist view, which had caused socialism around the world and in Slovenia an enormous amount of damage.
The leading Slovene communists held on to it tightly during the war and after it…«. (Janko Prunk, Ph.D.:
Pojmovanje revolucije v različnih segmentih OF in NOB, Žrtve vojne in revolucije, pp. 127-128).
On similar viewpoints by the same author towards Edvard Kardelj see Edvard Kardelj in naša revolucija, Teorija
in praksa, year 16, No. 7/9, Ljubljana 1979, p. 589-863: »As an independent and Marxist thinker, set in the
environment of the small Slovene nation, Edvard Kardelj was also aware from the beginning of his revolutionary
activity of the decisive importance of the national issue for the socialist transformation, for in the national issue
of the little man he also saw a social issue. Therefore to him the National Liberation Struggle was actually a
synthesis of the solving of the national issue and of the socialist revolution… With his great political talent,
Kardelj had surpassed the scope of his own nation and established himself as a recognized ideologist of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia or the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and also contributed greatly to the
treasury of international Marxist thought.«
 63

2. Changed Conditions in Europe and the World and Attempts at a Different Evaluation
of History and Historical Symbols Connected with This

The post-war European (and world) regime was formed by the winners and was based on anti-
Fascism. The European community began to be built on a political level when the French and
the German overcame their differences. A part of this was the de-Nazification in Germany
(but not in Italy, which was, nevertheless, under strict ally control). World War II is a too
complex phenomenon, while the alliance, and especially the position of the individual nations
and social groups – despite the mentioned recognizable and even today at least verbally valid
demarcation line, that is, anti-Fascism – is so diverse and with such different endings that it

On the changed view also see the article by Janko Prunk, Ph.D.: Čas bi bil, da bi politika zgodovino prepustila
zgodovinarjem (21. 2. 2004) and the replies (Janko Pleterski, Ph.D., Bogdan Osolnik, Branko Marušič, Marjan
Tepina), and the polemics NLS= revolutionary violence, between Prunk, Tamara Grieser Pečar, Ph.D., on the
one hand, and Ivan Kristan, Ph.D., on the other, in Sobotna priloga of the newspaper Delo in March and April of
2006. Regarding the findings of the »communist« and »modern« historiography it must be pointed out that
Kidrič's paper had been published back in 1964 in the documents of the People's Revolution, and similarly
published in different collections of sources in the sixties and seventies was also the majority of other documents
regarding the viewpoints of Kidrič and Kardelj, and of the leading communists during the war.

b) Jože Dežman is the author of several studies on Skoj [Alliance of the Communist Youth of Yugoslavia]: the
diploma paper Skoj na Gorenjskem [Skoj in Gorenjska], Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana;
Prispevek k zgodovini naprednega mladinskega gibanja na Gorenjskem 1920-1945 [Contribution to the History
of the Progressive Youth Movement in Gorenjska] (Skoj 1919-1945). Prispevki k posameznim obdobjem
[Contributions to Individual Periods], Komunist, Ljubljana 1980; O organizaciji in aktivistih v letih 1943-1945
[On the Organization and Activists in the Years 1943-1945] (Skoj na Gorenjskem 1920-1984, ed. Jože Dežman,
Gorenjski muzej 1984). In the works quoted he describes the work of the communist youth (and of the broader
communist movement) in an engaged and emotionally involved way. The limited scope of this contribution does
not allow for a broader analysis, therefore only a fragment from the work SKOJ 1919-1945 is quoted: »The
youth of Gorenjska, in addition to those fallen in battles, the national heroes that originated in the pre-war and
inter-war ranks of revolutionary youth, also lost activists in the field; they were crushed during tortures and burnt
in camps. Among the hostages in Gorenjska, over 280 of them were under 24; of these more than half had not
turned 20« (Quoted work, p. 269).

»The starting-points of the historians are: in our society we, the historians, have a place at the front of the
revolutionary forces. With our works we weave the historical consciousness of contemporaries. The revived
heritage, reforged into scientific truth, brings a valuable incentive into everyday life. In our research work we
derive from the mental and value definitions of the dialectic and historic materialism. Our attention is given
foremost to the studying of the circumstances and conditions, the appearance and development of the creative
revolutionary forces, their struggle for the authority of the workers, for a more humane world« (Jože Dežman:
Zgodovina mladih, zgodovina o mladih. Nekaj predlogov za razpravo o organizaciji in metodi zgodovinske
raziskave, summary of a paper (undated, probably the first half of the eighties, kept by the author).

»I began my path of research as a political activist – in Zveza socialistične mladine [Alliance of Socialist Youth]
and Zveza komunistov [League of Communists] I had worked precisely on a system of preserving and
developing revolutionary tradition. I gradually began to realize that it was a system of compulsory lies, built on
numerous ideological, factual and ritual falsifications. Thus I could gradually comprehend, as a man from the
Party world, that the fundamental interest of the Slovene Bolshevist elite was to conquer and maintain authority
with murder, robbery and lies, with the use of racist stigmatization of the majority of the population…« (Jože
Dežman, zgodovinar, direktor Muzeja novejše zgodovine Slovenije, Muzejske novice No. 1, year 2, 2006, p. 3).
For more on such interpretations of history and terminology see the quoted polemics.
 64

had already been impossible in the past to place it under a common denominator, and is all the
more difficult today. Thus the fundamental demarcation line was the victory over Fascism and
Nazism in 1945 and from here on everyone is, of course, entitled to their doubts. The
expansion of the European Union had not only brought exceptionally positive processes into
it, but also many traumas brought on by the new members that wish to expand their internal
problems in the evaluation of history to the entire EU and thus within their own countries as at
the level of the EU enforce their view of the past as the »official« or prevailing view. They
have motives and reasons for this. Among the countries that had triggered a debate in the EU
a while back on the banning of communist symbols, Lithuania was, e.g. before and after
World War II, under the Soviet Union, and during the war its SS units fought alongside
Germans on the Russian front. At home over 100 000 Jews were sent to their deaths. Until
1944 Hungary lay under the authority of the Arrow Cross Party; at the time of the German
occupation a majority of Jews was sent to German concentration camps (also those from
Prekmurje!); Hungary was afterwards freed or occupied (depending on one’s interpretation)
by the Soviet Union. This view ties well to the situation of certain other members, e.g. Austria
and Italy. The Italian interpretation of history – now also on a European level – begins with
the »wrongful« Paris Peace Treaty, foibe and the exodus of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia.
For the Fascist treatment of the Littoral Slovenes, a two and a half year cruel occupation of
the so-called Province of Ljubljana, which in the goals and the treatment since 1942 onwards
had not differed at all from the German one, or for the bombing and gassing of Ethiopian
tribes at the time of the Abyssinian War, there is no room in this interpretation. That Austria
as well has never completely dealt with its Nazism is most likely not necessary to prove
additionally, and today it tries to emphatically show itself in the role of a victim of Nazism,
despite the fact that this role had been given it at the Moscow Conference of 1943 with many
ifs and conditionals, and in the context of the indeterminate common intensions of the Allies
for the solving of the German issue.

In the past two decades, and particularly after the end of communism and the division of the
world in blocs, the attitude towards communism became clearly harsher. A number of studies
on the communist regimes, among them especially Fourét's Izgubljene Iluzije [Lost Illusions]
and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism, placed communism alongside Fascism and
Nazism, creating a predicament regarding the inter-war alliances and collaborations. In the
extreme interpretations, also in the Slovene area, the inter-war anti-communist
collaborationists are said to be the first, »far-sighted« fighters for the bringing down of
 65

communism and for a »new European regime« (at that time, of course, in Hitler's racist
version).

The discussions of the past, especially on anniversaries connected with World War II and
after that the fall of the Iron Curtain and of communism, are mixed with a sincere effort to
objectively treat the past, the wish to placate (reconcile), and the utterly concrete interests of
individual countries, nations and social groups (which also at times include a sometimes more
and a sometimes less clearly expressed desire for revisionism (revaluation, reinterpretation)).
Hence the symbolic acts, the uttered apologies, the »compromise« view of the past are often a
superficial ritual. The European Union is not a 450 million therapeutic group that (self-
)questions its past. It is primarily a set of economic, political, geostrategic interests of
individual countries, nations and interest groups. Some of these also use (abuse) history to
achieve their goals. Whoever is not capable of understanding this and naively believes merely
the written ideals or the passing words of the politicians; whoever sees in the created
circumstances a possibility for healing his or her own traumas or the enforcement
(revaluation) of his or her role and one's own ideological view of the past, will (seen from a
historical perspective) surely get the short end of the stick, both in the state and national
sense. In Slovenia that was indicated particularly in the attitude towards Italy upon the
screening of the film The Heart in the Pit and introducing a national holiday in memory of the
Italian exodus from Istria, which in Italy and especially in Trieste was celebrated by the
masses and used to create an anti-Slovene atmosphere. Quite a few of our public figures, also
a historian or two, at that time argued that the Italians should first cleanse themselves of their
post-war sins and then they too will, for instance, recognize that we are no longer
»Slavocommunists« but good, kind and democratic neighbors, and then they too will admit to
some of their sins.

3. The Changed Ideological and Political Image of Slovenia

While the mostly liberal governments in the time since Slovenia's attaining of independence
had dealt with history more marginally and left it to the discipline, the current right-wing
coalition has placed the attitude towards the past as one of its priorities, both in controlling
science and in school programs, as well as at celebrations and public manifestations. From
this engaged attitude is also derived the division of historians into those who are more
agreeable to the authority (and thus suitable for various public functions and jobs) and to
 66

those who are not. In the case of celebrations three new holidays have been accepted. The
anniversary of the annexation of a part of Primorska (the enforcement of a decision by the
Paris Peace Conference in 1947). The anniversary of Štajerska becoming a part of
Yugoslavia, due to the action of Rudolf Maister after World War I, was to be joined with the
annexation of Prekmurje, however – due to public pressure and a unified appearance by the
members from Prekmurje – that became a separate holiday. The former Independence Day in
memory of the plebiscite of 1990 simultaneously also became the Unity Day (at first it was
proposed that the Unity Day was to be connected with the annexation of Primorska). In
Slovenia celebrations had always stirred up conflict; politicians showed (and still show) their
disagreement with this or that holiday by not attending official celebrations, or by parties
organizing their own celebrations; there have also been several attempts to change the
celebrations. The currently ruling party of SDS in 1996 already suggested a holiday in
memory of the annexation of Primorska. With this proposal they had wished to dismiss the
Resistance Day as a holiday. That did not work, and the current expansion of the holidays can
therefore be seen as a sort of compromise solution. More than the new holidays, which had
generally been favorably accepted, the polemics was marked by individual anniversaries and
speeches at celebrations. This was begun by the decision of the government to not support the
celebration of the creation of the post-war government, which the Slovene National Liberation
Council had appointed on May 5, 1945 in Ajdovščina. The »pagan« (partisan) government is,
according to a negative interpretation within the leading part of politics, a communist
government and symbolizes the post-war takeover of authority, even though the partisan side
was part of an anti-Fascist coalition, while on the Yugoslav level the dualism of authority was
by that time long eliminated, with the members of the Home Guard and their leadership
considered as quisling units by the partisans.

The relativization of the partisan contribution to the attaining of independence is occurring on

several levels within the mentioned context. I quote a few chosen examples:
a) With the thesis on the alleged »collaboration« of the communists with the Germans (due to
the Hitler – Stalin pact), and later with the Soviet Union, which is supposedly why there was,
in addition to the occupation of the three attackers, also a »Bolshevist occupation« in
Slovenia. Much has been written on the political doubts of the KPS in the spring months of
1941 – at a time between the attack on Yugoslavia and the attack on the Soviet Union, some
of which also appears in the second part of my contribution, however, the demonstration of an
alleged co-operation, which was to have taken place especially in Gorenjska, is based solely
 67

on the individual testimonies from the opposite camp (e.g. Tine Debeljak, Ph.D.). As regards
Gorenjska, let me remind you that Vencelj Perko and 34 other communists were arrested
several weeks before the attack on the Soviet Union for gathering weapons and preparing a
resistance. They were sent to the prisons at Begunje; how the Germans treated alleged »allies«
there is historically well documented. The first meeting of the communists of Gorenjska
regarding the resistance took place on April 20, 1941 at Slamniki (a week before the
foundation of the Anti-Imperialist Front!); at that time they had a great deal of weapons
gathered and the principle orientation, according to oral sources, was a guerrilla resistance in
the proper time. The SU, after the defeat of France, became Great Britain's first ally, thus
enabling the creation of an Anti-Fascist Coalition; that it had (for tactical reasons) opposed
the »bolshevization« of Yugoslavia during the war is likewise proved convincingly enough in
historiography.
b) With the thesis on »banditry«, that (at least in the first period of the war, until 1943) the
partisans were not a legitimate movement and that, therefore, the occupiers had the right to do
away with the resistance movement in the name of »the preservation of order and peace«56,
c) With the thesis on the intentional provoking of reprisals and victims, and by minimizing
their contribution to the military resistance57. In the four years they had supposedly killed
»only« a few thousand enemy soldiers (the collaborationist units are in this context
automatically counted among the »victims of the revolution«), and claim to have directed the
majority of the engagement in the mutual settling of scores and the civil war. In all this we are
forgetting the mass nature of the LF and its nonmilitary activity, connected with numerous
organizations and humanitarianism; the deportation and compulsory mobilization, which
would have been even greater had there not been a resistance; the fact that despite grave
pressure and repression the Slovene partisan units never abandoned Slovene territory and that
– in accordance with the principle of the United Slovenia – they had spread the resistance to

56
The commissioned study of (the now deceased) German lawyer Dieter Blumenwitz Okupacija in revolucija v
Sloveniji (1941-1946), Mohorjeva založba, Celovec 2005, goes farthest in these claims. In it the author tries to
prove that the measures taken by the occupying forces in Yugoslavia (the reprisals, the taking and killing of
hostages and members of the resistance movement, the deportation, the confiscation of property, and other
measures) were in accordance with international law and in the function of preserving order and peace. The book
provoked reactions and a polemics between Jože Dežman and Tamara Grieser-Pečar on the one hand and certain
lawyers on the other. It was rejected from a legal point of view by Ljubo Bavcon, LL.D., and Dragan Petrovec
LL.D. In connection with World War II this polemics or several polemics gained broader dimensions and others
became involved with it: Janko Prunk, Ph.D., Ivan Kristan, Ph.D., Janez J. Švajncer… (see the polemics under
the titles Okupacija in revolucija, Revizija II. svetovne vojne, NOB= revolucionarno nasilje, all in Delo, January
- April 2006).
57
Among the historians, this thesis is, for example, advocated by Tamara Grieser Pečar, Ph.D., in the book
Razdvojeni narod. Slovenija 1941-1945 (Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana 2004: »Today's historical view of the
course of the war and the occupation shows that the actions of sabotage by the partisans in Slovenia had in no
way hindered the occupying forces nor contributed to the worsening of their situation« (p. 351).
 68

the entire Slovene national territory; the ratio between the trained and extremely well armed
occupying units and the – at least in the beginning phase – untrained partisans with out-of-
date and merely basic arms; the international obligations of the resistance movement, which
from the spring of 1943 onwards carried out operations (particularly attacks on infrastructural
objects) in coordination with the western Allies (there were even cartoons on this topic in
American magazines); the fact that overseas units were also created and that at the end of the
war the partisan army had between 35 000 and 40 000 male and female fighters and a broad
rear of the LF; as well as many other factors that show the branching out and the breadth of
the National Liberation Movement.58 In the function of minimizing the role of the LF is also
the emphasizing of the role of TIGR, which does, without a doubt, deserve a more prominent
role than it has had in the past, however, this cannot replace the fact that at the time of World
War II these are not two simultaneous and comparable organizations, but that the LF after the
occupation inherited the fight of the TIGR members (in an expanded version on the entire
Slovene territory).
d) With a selective time treatment (neglecting the ideological conflicts before the war and the
chronologically provable events: occupation - collaboration - resistance - revolution), by
minimizing the problem of the collaboration as merely opportunistic or »functional« actions,
by reducing the historical treatment merely to the issue of the revolution and by emphasizing
that the Slovene rift and the civil war had begun due to communist acts in the autumn of
1941).59 To this context also belongs the thesis that the Vatican had forbidden co-operation
with the communists, although the war and the western alliance with the Soviet Union have
altered the interpretation of the pre-war anti-communist encyclicals. And at the same time as
the thesis of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia being a democratic, parliamentary state; of the
representatives of civic parties being legally elected (and legitimate) representatives of the

58
That quoted above does not exclude the need for a critical (re)valuation, supported by arguments, of the armed
resistance and its flaws, however, bearing in mind the complex and complicated circumstances of that time in
individual regions and in individual periods, and not in a flat rate manner »in retrospect« or with merely the
argumentation of the opponents of the National Liberation Movement. In order to illustrate, I limit myself only
to one segment: In the criticism of the armed actions during the first year of the war, which is found in certain
otherwise good historiographical works, e.g. merely referring to the paper by Lojze Ude in front of the Christian
Socialists on January 8, 1942, is scientifically correct but inadequate. Ude, who later on joined the partisans
himself, admitted in his critique that things are easier said than done and that the »conduct of the occupiers,
particularly in that part of Slovenia that is occupied by Germany, places us almost every day in situations that
provoke rebellion«. (Moje mnenje o položaju, Ljubljana 1994, p. 8). His speech was also in the function of
improving the operation of the LF and of a harsh criticism of the collaboration.
59
Such an approach was objected to on several occasions by the academician Janko Pleterski, Ph.D.: »Naturally
the interest reduced merely to the issue of revolutionary change is also historically justified, unless it passes over
to unhistorical doings that research the historical events solely as a result of the conspiratorial plotting of selected
subjects« (Janko Pleterski: Senca ajdovskega gradca, Ljubljana 1993, p. 30).
 69

Slovene nation also during the war, despite at least publicly renouncing their old country (it is
well-known that politicians – e.g. the Ban of the Drava Banovina – who had before the war
pledged their allegiance to the Yugoslav Regent after the occupation – were in the mildest,
unaltered version - »informed« of the inclusion of a part of Slovene territory and paid tribute
to Mussolini in Rome, while mayors pledged their allegiance to the Italian king, etc.).60 The
communist revolution during the war and after it is said to have annihilated the economic
standard and democracy that had been achieved before the war, and to have led Slovenes in
every way to the sidelines of development. Scientific historiography – despite acknowledging
the merits that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had especially for Slovene culture and economy –
does not support this claim and sees in its social and international conflicts the reasons for
events during World War II as well.61

According to these theses, the communists, a small conspiratorial group, have a merely
revolutionary character and not a nationally liberational one. By allegedly denying the right to
resistance to the civic side (forgetting that after the attack by Draža Mihailović on the
partisans the exclusion was mutual) it had thus prevented (rendered impossible) its revolt,
although it is well-known that there were numerous kinds of active armed resistance in many
countries (Poland, France, Italy, Greece) and that the conditions for such were also present in
Slovenia, and that had there been an active resistance the situation of the civic camp would
have been significantly altered also in the eyes of the western allies. A »pure« national
liberation, without a revolution (and consequently without a civil war) would supposedly be

60
There are, in fact, certain contradictions in the evaluation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Thus, e.g., Tamara
Grieser Pečar in the quoted work does admit that the elections in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the thirties were
»public and oral« (p. 18), while in the polemics (Delo, Sobotna priloga April 8, 2006, p. 29) she wrote without a
shadow of a doubt that the LF had no legitimate right to refuse the right to resistance to the other parties (with
which we can agree, however, the same should apply also to the other, civic side). Later on she writes:
»Particularly not to those who were actual representatives of the will of the nation, as they had been elected at
the last legal pre-war elections«. It was no other than these »representatives of the will of the nation« that
participated in the expulsion of the CP from public life and in dealing with it, in spite of the fact that after World
War I it had been the third strongest party (in democratic Czechoslovakia communists sat in parliament and not
in prison). That the elections in the thirties had not represented the will of the people was already demonstrated
by the late academician Bogo Grafenauer. It is also illustrative that in Slovenska zaveza [Slovene Covenant] the
civic politicians divided the cities between themselves according to the results of the elections from 1927.
61
»It can be said for pre-war Yugoslavia that many things were crucial for it, which later on in a certain extent,
directly or indirectly, conditioned the development of events in its territory during the war or occupation«. The
author mentions the multinational structure, the social and political tensions, the authoritarian regime that had
additionally generated these tensions in the desire to control them, which in the war and occupying conditions
provoked the appearance of chauvinistic and anti-Fascist movements with the goal of breaking up Yugoslavia,
which coincided with the strategic goals of the occupiers. Boris Mlakar: Slovensko domobranstvo 1943-1945,
Slovenska matica, Ljubljana 2003, p. 13. In a similar way this state in described by other newer works as well,
e.g. Slovenska novejša zgodovina 1848-1992 (INZ, DZS, Ljubljana 2005).
 70

meaningless to the Communist Party, and patriotism merely a means to achieve the class goal.
This is, among other things, being proved with adapted viewpoints that »the communists will
march into an armed resistance against the occupier only if they have a chance for a
revolution«, or (in another version) that they will enter an anti-Fascist battle in the event that
it would benefit the Soviet Union. This could already be seen in a paper by Edvard Kardelj on
the 5th National Conference on October 19-23, 1940 in Zagreb, even though the content of
the conference is significantly different, directed towards the situation in Yugoslavia at the
time, and does not mention the armed resistance, while the Comintern was against the KPJ to
try and take over the authority in the critical Yugoslav conditions of the time.62 The
communists no doubt saw the war also as an opportunity to carry out a revolution and in
individual periods (especially before the attack of Germany on the Soviet Union) placed it in
the foreground, however, they were also among the April volunteers who were to defend
Slovenia (leaving aside their later activities) and »…surely in the case of the non-communists
and also in the majority of the communists in a subjective sense it was also or even mostly a
resistance act«.63
e) With the thesis that the communist nature of the resistance movement and later of the post-
war regime prevented the realization of the idea of the United Slovenia, and that it had
especially influenced the loss of Trieste. There have already been a few historical discussions
and polemics on this matter.64 To sum up the historians' discussion, this (alongside the fact
that the civic side in London had achieved practically nothing) somehow extends to the
possibility of obtaining Gorizia, is critical to individual domestic and foreign political moves
of the post-war authorities, which had undoubtedly influenced the tensing of the situation with
the western countries, and in the event that there had not been a partisan resistance,
hypothetically (so-called »if history«), allows for a partial correction of the borders by the so-
called Wilson line from before World War I (which still would not provide Slovenes an outlet
to the sea). The political interpretation upon the first anniversary of the accession of
Primorska as a holiday was that had there not been a communist regime ruling in Slovenia at

62
This thesis is advocated by Janko Prunk, Ph.D. and Tamara Grieser- Pečar, Ph.D.; in the quoted polemics in
Delo they were replied to by Bojan Godeša, Ph.D., by quoting a speech by Kardelj. See also the evaluation of the
book Slovenska novejša zgodovina by Tamara Grieser- Pečar, Ph.D. in the magazine Ampak, of February 2006
and the reply by Dr. Godeša in the April issue. See the comprehensive evaluation of the Fifth National
Conference of the KPJ in Zagreb in: Slovenska novejša zgodovina, volume 1, pp. 406-407.
63
Boris Mlakar, quoted work, p. 18. For more on the topic: Bojan Godeša Priprave na revolucijo ali NOB?.
Slovenski upor 1941: Osvobodilna fronta slovenskega naroda pred pol stoletja SAZU Ljubljana, 1991, pp. 69-
85.
64
For more on the topic see: Bojan Godeša: Možnosti za Zedinjeno Slovenijo med drugo svetovno vojno: Med
pričakovanji in stvarnostjo. Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 2006, No. 1, pp. 309-328.
 71

that time we would have obtained Trieste as well and the entire Venetian Slovenia (which
Austria, as we know, had lost back in 1866, and with Italy even carrying out an investigative
plebiscite in the controversial territory which showed that Slovenes – surely due to previous
unfriendly Austrian politics – were also inclined towards an annexation to Italy).65 In
connection with this a predicament is also arising regarding the contribution of the National
Liberation Movement to Slovene statehood (the status of the republic in post-war Yugoslavia;
the right to self-determination, including the right to secession, written down in all the post-
war Yugoslav constitutions; the parliament, the government, from the seventies onwards also
the presidency; the borders which Slovenia had attained within socialist Yugoslavia and that
were internationally confirmed). Both in a local as well as an international context this
predicament was all the more obvious when it came to assuming an attitude towards AVNOJ
and its resolutions, which had been caused after the attaining of independence by demands
from Austria that Slovenia give up the AVNOJ resolutions and return the nationalized
property.66 Local criticism of the work of historians and politicians is directed towards the
»revolutionary character« of AVNOJ (despite international recognition), while, e.g., the
confirmation of the decisions regarding the annexation of Primorska, at least silently,
naturally comes in handy.

Communism in the Eyes of the Slovenes

65
»With September 15 we also remember the partial international correction of the injustice that had been
brought on us in 1915 by the Treaty of London. If the then communist leadership of post-war Yugoslavia had
not gone over to the totalitarian side of the Iron Curtain, we could have also counted on Trieste, Gorizia and the
Veneto« (from a speech by Janez Janša, quoted after: Primorska si zasluži poseben dan, Dnevnik, 17.09.2005).
On the second anniversary the same speaker mentioned only Gorizia, and left out Venetian Slovenia: »The time
after World War II additionally aggravated the dying of Trieste, and we, Slovenes, greatly owing to the Belgrade
authorities, lost Gorizia as well (www.gov.si – the speech by the Prime Minister Janez Janša at the national
celebration upon the holiday of the return of Primorska to its motherland, Cerje na Krasu 15.9.2006). In addition,
see the commentary by Dr. Jože Pirjevec (Primorski dnevnik, September 21, 2006): »Whoever knows at least a
little of the course of the diplomatic bargaining set by the foreign ministers of the four greats in May and June of
1946 in Paris, knows that this claim is trumped up. The mentioned »comrades« in reality fought for Gorizia like
lions. If it is anyone's fault that we had not obtained it, it is the fault of our current allies within the NATO, the
Americans, the British and the French, but mostly the Soviets, whose Foreign Minister Molotov basically let us
down.« (Followed by a quote from Kardelj's Spomini [Memories] on his sharp talk with Molotov regarding
Gorizia).
66
It concerns two decrees by the AVNOJ Presidency on November 21, 1944 on the deprivation of the civil rights
of Yugoslav Germans and on the transition of enemy possessions into national property. For more on the topic
see »Nemci« na Slovenskem 1941- 1955, ZIF, Ljubljana 2002 and Slovensko-avstrijski odnosi v 20. stoletju,
Historia 8, FF, oddelek za zgodovino, Ljubljana 2004.
 72

In Slovenia communism (socialism)67 has, during all of its existence, received both euphoric
praise and euphoric criticism. It is probably questionable or at least exaggerated to speak of a
creation of myths or anti-myths in all of the examples, but we can definitely speak of a
syndrome, which, with a positive or negative sign, had strongly impressed itself on the
consciousness of the generations from the end of World War I to the 1990s. If – with a certain
reservation – the terms myth and anti-myth (in reality they are closer to historical constructs)
are still used, the attitude of the Slovenes towards socialism can be divided into a few
categories or time frames.

The original myth is derived from the belief that the social system, as created with the
October Revolution, is the most democratic and just system in the world, therefore a social
regime of the future, inclined particularly towards the lower classes and especially towards
the working class. This thesis began to be spread in the time between the two wars, and for a
short time after World War I; under the influence of revolutionary agitation, the belief was
also common that communism will spread and prevail in Europe and later in the world. As an
anti-myth to this thesis lay the conviction that the communist system is criminal, atheist, and
the worst adversary to the Slovenes and Catholicism, which is why it must be prevented by all
means necessary from becoming influential or even prevailing in Slovenia, and in this context
also to prevent the CP from becoming a recognized party within parliamentarism.

Both the myth and anti-myth existed also during World War II, only strengthened. On the
revolutionary side strengthened by the belief that only the SU is capable of withstanding Nazi
Germany and is consequently the strongest ally to the Slovenes, and on the
counterrevolutionary side by the view that the CP (LF) is using the war and the National
Liberation Struggle to achieve revolutionary goals, thus making the collaboration and the armed
co-operation with the occupiers against the resistance movement justified and legitimate, or a
smaller evil than communism.

67
Terminologically more correct is the use of the term communism as an idea for the period before 1945, and
afterwards the term socialism, since the system (and from 1963 onwards the state as well) named itself such
(before that time it was a system of people's democracy and a people's republic). The communist social regime is
said to have been only the end goal of socialism. After the introduction of a multi-party system, for the period
between 1945 and 1990 the term communism became increasingly used, instead of the term socialism (which is
otherwise the practice of many writers also outside of Slovenia, while in Slovenia this also implies the thesis that
there were no fundamental differences between self-governing socialism and real socialism, that consequently
totalitarianism lasted until 1990. In their meaning both notions in this essay overlap for the sake of
simplification.
 73

In the first years after World War II a thesis was politically enforced that the new Yugoslav
(Slovene) authority was building a new system following the model of the SU (a system of
people's democracy), which would ensure justice and a good life to all the working people,
and that there would be no more exploitation as had been experienced in the Yugoslavia of
that time. There would be no more exploitation. At the same time, particularly in the west, the
anti-thesis was present that Yugoslavia (Slovenia) had become a communist state and the
most loyal ally to the SU.

After a dispute with the Information Bureau in 1948 and the introduction of self-
management in companies, the view changed. The Soviet version of socialism had
become just as exploitative as capitalism, while the true decision-making by the people,
progress and a just society could only be guaranteed by self-management. The anti-thesis,
especially in the circles of political emigration, was that self-management had not changed the
essence of socialism in Yugoslavia and that it was still a Bolshevist model of society.

In the seventies, after dealing with »liberalism«, a new myth was created that the delegational
system, which is founded on the so-called pluralism of the self-managing socialist interests, is
the most democratic system in the world; more democratic than real socialism and classic
parliamentary systems, since it enables decision-making to the widest possible circle of
people, while at the same time guaranteeing a high personal and social standard. The opposite
thesis was that the system is merely covering up the fact that society is actually governed by a
communist union or a narrow leading class of »comrades«.

After the end of socialism (communism) an altered view began to appear, saying that
totalitarianism had ruled Slovenia for forty-five years and in all of its existence basically
remained unchanged. The objection against this was that socialism had indeed been
totalitarian in the first post-war years, but was later (particularly from the sixties onwards)
mainly a good system, with open borders, enabling high social protection of the people, equal
possibilities of schooling, full employment and a relatively good standard.

The Origin and Creation of Myths and Anti-Myths or Theses and Anti-Theses
With the creation of a communist party in Slovenia in April of 1920 and its inclusion in the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia in July of the same year, a party began functioning in
Slovenia with a clear revolutionary program, whose goal was the establishment of an
 74

authoritative monopoly of the working class (a dictatorship of the proletariat). Already in

December of 1920 the operation of the Communist Party was banned (the so-called
Obznana), and in August of 1921 communist activity was declared criminal by the
decree on the protection of the state.68 Before the ban, in the restless and revolutionary
post-war circumstances, it had achieved some success at the elections (at the elections to the
constituent assembly it received 12.36 percent of votes and was, judging by strength, the
third party in the country)69, however in the twenties it did not have a large influence on
politics. The CP operated illegally after the ban and the Catholic camp immediately branded it
as its worst adversary, under the influence of the revolutionary circumstances of the time and
the explicit opposition to communism, which was coming from the Vatican after the October
Revolution. »The sole serious adversary, with which we must concern ourselves, is, in my
point of view, only the Communist Party. The struggle of the future will only be a struggle
between Christian democracy and socialism«.70 In the twenties the opponents of communism
were politically and propagandistically significantly more successful; thus the anti-myth was
more successful than the myth. In the middle of the thirties the CP became stronger and at that
time the advocates of communism (socialism) and its opponents had the most powerful
confrontation. It was a direct political and propagandistic struggle between the left-wing and
the right-wing, which had reached one of its peaks at the time of the Spanish civil war. At that
time the combative anti-communism reached a stage when the right-wing newspapers called
for the establishing of a rural watch as defense from the communists,71 while the leading daily
newspaper of the Catholic camp wrote: »The only one that is fighting for the future, in
addition to Catholicism, is communism. During its operation, communism had been given so
many shapes that it is hard to recognize; the newest form is the People's Front, which has also
appeared among the Slovenes. Only two things are possible today: either the future is
Catholic, or it is communist.«72 Continuously between both wars, especially in the thirties, the
newspaper Slovenec, carefully and frequently reported on what was happening in the SU –
particularly on the position of the Church, the anti-religion policy, the rise of Stalin to power

68
Jurij Perovšek, Nastanek komunistične stranke na Slovenskem, in: Slovenska kronika XX. stoletja (1900-
1941), volume 1, Ljubljana 1995, p. 240, 241.
69
Zgodovina Zveze komunistov Jugoslavije, Ljubljana 1986, p. 77.
70
Govor dr. Antona Korošca, predsednika Slovenske ljudske stranke, na zboru strankarskih zaupnikov [Speech
by Dr. Anton Korošec, President of the Slovene People's Party, at a Convention of Party Confidants], Slovenec,
8. 4. 1920.
71
Kaj pa komunisti?, Domoljub, September 10, 1936, No. 50, p. 770.
72
Slovenec, 26. 7. 1936.
 75

and the purges, the collectivization, Stalinist processes, the reverberating reports by the
French intellectual Andre Gide (his famous book Return from the USSR was published in
Slovenec in thirteen installments). There was also plenty of disinformation or overstated news
(e.g. how at the meetings the leading politicians, including Stalin, shot at one another).73 The
tendency of trying to connect anti-communism with anti-Semitism is often obvious. There
were also plenty of ideologically neutral and even positive articles.74
The communist side did not have such a vast informative and propagandistic apparatus
available; in its newspapers, gazettes, and also oral propaganda it showed life in the SU in
exceptionally bright and idealized tones. The rare communists that had experienced life in the
SU, said nothing of the circumstances. In favor of the creation of a myth of the SU as an
economically and socially successful country of »workers and farmers« was the global
economic crisis that had not affected the SU, and the unsuccess of the parliamentary
democracies in facing the crisis and the growing Fascism. On the other hand, the ruthless and
selfish policy of the SU at the end of the thirties particularly repelled the critical intellectuals,
otherwise inclined towards the communists, who also provoked critical debates on the Soviet
system, which are clearly witnessed in the replies by Lojze Ude to Dušan Kermavner: »Each
such revolution also destroys so many goods that it then takes years and decades for these
goods to be recreated and that it is finally possible to move on. Merely look at the SU. Both
the industrial and the agricultural production dropped with the revolution, dropped hard and
only reached the starting condition in a decade, while in the meantime the working masses
had to contribute immense sacrifices of restriction, of satisfying the most basic needs and
even suffer want. One wonders whether Russia would have reached this state of agricultural
and industrial production and the improvement of the material situation of the working class
also in a bourgeois democracy by Kerensky. Was the dictatorship of the proletariat truly
necessary for this? /.../ The dictatorship of the proletariat is to you, as it seems, a value by
itself and it does not bother you that not even in the SU can we speak of a dictatorship of the
proletariat, but a dictatorship of the Communist Party as an organization, as you say, the most
advanced part of the proletariat /.../ Under democracy you imagine /.../ a dictatorship of the
proletariat, more precisely: a dictatorship of the Communist Party, while I imagine something
else under democracy; to me democracy without consistent humanity and freedom is an
empty word. Your democracy is directed towards destroying my democracy /.../«75

73
For more on the topic see Marko Jenšterle (ed.), Pogledi na Sovjetsko zvezo, Ljubljana 1986.
74
More on the topic: Simon Feštajn: V Sovjetskem raju, Borec, year 56, 2004, pp. 145-245.
75
Pisma Dušana Kermavnerja in Lojzeta Udeta, Nova revija, year V, No. 54, 55, 56, 1986, pp. 1752-1755.
 76

In the summer of 1940 the communists, with the help of influential individuals of
different political orientations (also Slavophiles, such as, for instance, Ljubljana’s Mayor
of many years, Ivan Hribar) and smaller groups organized a campaign for the foundation
of Društvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze [Society of the Friends of the Soviet Union]. The
Catholic press strongly opposed this action, which was also obstructed by the
gendarmerie, which accompanied the signatories. The initiators managed to collect 20
000 signatures for its foundation, which a special delegation carried over to the Soviet
Embassy in December of 1940 under the leadership of Josip Vidmar as a gift to Stalin
(the diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the SU had been established only a
few months prior to this, in June of 1940).76 Although the documentation on the
intentions of the society had not been preserved, it is well-known that one of the goals
was to bring the internal Soviet conditions closer to the Slovenes and to strengthen the
awareness of their alliance (at that time among the communists the thesis on two
imperialist camps – the Fascist and the West – was still valid). The second intention of
the society is said to have been a connection of actions, which was later labeled as the
starting-point for the creation of the LF, though the opinions on this matter were divided
amongst the then participants (particularly Boris Kraigher stands out, who had not
attributed the action with great significance). The future founding groups of the Anti-
Imperialist (Liberation) Front had in fact participated in the action for the foundation of
this society, nevertheless, it is difficult to confirm the sometimes popular thesis that the
society represented a link between the People's Front policy from the middle of the
thirties and the National Liberation Struggle (thus neglecting the sectarian policy of the
KPS after the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Soviet-Finnish war).

Therefore, before the beginning of World War II, how great was the influence of the
myth of the SU as an ideal state or of socialism as a system of the future that needs to be
imitated and that sooner or later Slovenes will have to accept as well? Among the non-
communist politicians it was certainly not great, likewise in the case of the critical
intellectuals, for, as Kocbek, who was far more inclined towards the communists than
Ude, had written: »the USSR cannot be deemed an absolutely positive progressive force,

76
For more on the foundation of the society see Božo Repe, Društvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze, Borec, year
XLI, No. 9, 1989, pp. 900—919. See also: Bojan Godeša: Priprave na revolucijo ali NOB? Slovenski upor 1941:
Osvobodilna fronta slovenskega naroda pred pol stoletja: zbornik referatov na znanstvenem posvetu v dneh 23.
in 24. maja 1991 v Ljubljani. SAZU, Ljubljana 1991 pp. 69-85.
 77

neither the West as an absolutely negative reign«, in which he proceeded from the view
»that social transformation must arise from the social and moral forces of the individual
nation and that revolution must never and nowhere become dependent on the interest
policy of the regime of a country, even if it is a socialist one and no matter how
responsible for progress«.77 In spite of this, the doubters on the left side of an
ideologically already divided Slovenia were, on the other hand, in the minority78, the
Catholic camp was split and in a severe internal crisis, while the influence of the SU,
particularly in the cultural field, was very powerful, not only in the imitation of Soviet
art, but also in the efforts to achieve institutional connections. As an example allow me
to list the music sphere, where this influence was shown in the numerous setting of
social texts to music, and the foundation of a large, 110-member choir at Rakek after the
Soviet model.79 The main follower of socialist art was at that time the most influential
Slovene composer Slavko Osterc, who was (according to the same source) convinced
»that music cannot be written by a reactionary«. Osterc also strove for the founding of a
Soviet section within the Yugoslav section of the International Society for Contemporary
Music (ISCM).80 Similar processes unfolded in other artistic fields as well, in the fine
arts, and particularly in social realism in literature.

If the devotedness, the opposition and doubt in the Soviet myth can somehow be
evaluated in the political and intellectual community, it is much harder to search for the
answer to the question of what the first country of socialism meant to ordinary people.
We could probably risk the assessment that before World War II the Soviet myth had
spread more among the intellectuals than among the lower classes.81

At the time of World War II both myths were propagandistically and also otherwise
maximally intensified, with several important internal shades noticeable. In the case of
the communists, the German attack on the SU at first aroused the belief that the war

77
Edvard Kocbek, Listina, quoted after Nova revija, year V, No. 48-49, 1986, p. 671.
78
Peter Vodopivec, O svetlobi in barvi tridesetih let, Naši razgledi, 20. 4. 1990.
79
Maks Pirnik, Vse je bilo ozvočeno, vse je pelo, Primorska srečanja, year XIII, No. 91-92, 1989, p. 123.
80
Dragotin Cvetko, Fragment glasbene moderne - iz pisem Slavku Ostercu, Viri za zgodovino Slovencev
11, Ljubljana 1988, p. 8.
81
In this evaluation I proceed from the fact that the influence of the communists, whose number had not greatly
exceeded a thousand, was limited among the people, and that they had encountered a number of problems and
persecution by the authorities. In the places where they had the most contact with the people, i.e. in the everyday
efforts for concrete (syndicalist) goals, the room for propagating the »abstract« goals of the revolution was quite
narrowed.
 78

simultaneously signifies the beginning of the revolution and consequently the realization
of the myth of socialism. In the mottos of the Liberation Struggle the revolutionary
elements were hence exceedingly emphasized (e.g. that the SU is the leading and chief
support in the liberation struggle of the Slovene nation and of all oppressed nations, a
model of the equal symbiosis between nations; that liberation is possible only on the
ruins of imperialism; that without a fight against its own treacherous capitalist upper
classes the oppressed nation cannot be liberated; that the brotherhood and peace between
nations must be a result of an anti-imperialist struggle which will tear down
imperialism). Later, in the basic points of the LF, the revolutionary goals were more
blurred, and the national liberation goals were placed in the foreground. The texts were
rather vague also in the predictions of a post-war regime – they mostly spoke of a
people's authority, and did not predict an introduction of socialism of the Soviet model,
and this despite everyday propaganda of a socially just society (which is also to have no
taxes, etc.) and the frequent quoting of Soviet examples. The revolutionary (partisan)
side saw the fact that the western countries had become allies with the SU as great relief.

The anti-communist camp built its anti-myth on the thesis that the National Liberation
Struggle was merely a cover for the execution of a revolution of the Soviet model and
that, should the LF win, the Slovenes will encounter revolutionary violence, confiscation
of property, collectivism, and joint cooperatives. The authenticity of such beliefs
(persuasions) was being eliminated by the collaboration.

With the victory of the partisan side began the building of socialism of the Soviet model,
at first in the form of a people's democracy. After the takeover of political authority and
the execution of revolutionary measures (agrarian reform, nationalization) the entire
social structure became equal to the Soviet one. This happened rather quickly, in the
span of a few years, since the Yugoslav party was the strongest of all East European
ones and »leaned the most towards a Soviet socially political pattern«.82 The Soviet
system was openly glorified, propagated and set as an example (the SU as the homeland
of socialism), the myth for a few years changed into reality, but that was far from the
expectations. After the initial enthusiasm, the belief in a better future, and great physical

82
Leonid Gibianskij, Sovjetska zveza in Jugoslavija leta 1945, in: Aleš Gabrič (ed.), Slovenija v letu 1945:
zbornik referatov, Ljubljana 1966, p. 54.
 79

strain (»heroes of the struggle should be followed by heroes of labor«), the people
became more and more disappointed.

Especially in the case of political emigration the anti-myth immediately began to arise,
and was based on the view that socialism (communism) in Yugoslavia and Slovenia was
merely a copy of the Soviet system and that the »Iron Curtain« reached all the way to
Trieste, as had been said in the speech by the then former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill in Fulton in March 1946. The emigrant politicians at that time began
to generate ideas of two Slovenias: the communist one within Yugoslavia and a
democratic one, which was to originate from the part of Slovene territory that belonged
under the ally military and Yugoslav military administration (for this purpose the
Rapallo border was to be preserved).83 Also within the leading class – particularly with
the former strongest allies of the communists, i.e. the Christian Socialists – doubts began
to appear, as well as harsh criticism of the new system. Doubts were openly expressed
mostly by Edvard Kocbek, who was still convinced in the first few months of the war
that European socialism will occur with a greater acknowledgement of the European
democratic tradition and with a more intense connection of theory and practice as the
Russian example, »with a new relation towards myth and criticism«.84 After the war he
completely changed his view. At a meeting of the CK of the KPS in October 1946,
which had been convened at his request, he said among other things: »The Communist
Party holds all state authority, both legislative and executive, has a decisive influence
over courts, and the army; it controls the secret political police; it runs the official
political organization; it appoints the secretaries of all the LF committees, who do all the
actual decision-making in all the towns, districts and counties. The Party controls all the
mass organizations, the LF, Women's Anti-Fascist Front and the Youth Alliance of
Slovenia. It controls all the press there exists. It regulates the unions, the physical
education. It focuses on the school system and education with a special zeal. The Party
members control all the key economic posts that were passed over to state property.
Outside of the Party there is not a single autonomous and from it independent
organization. The Party's authority is therefore total.«85 In the journal, Kocbek wrote that

83
More on the topic: Janko Pleterski: Predlog za ohranitev rapalske meje in delitev Slovenije, Acta Histirae VI,
Koper 1998).
84
Edvard Kocbek, Pred viharjem, Ljubljana 1980, p. 44.
85
Edvard Kocbek, speech at the CK of the KPS on October 4, 1946, published in the magazine 2000, no. 50-51,
1990, p. 215.
 80

»the Party has forgotten that we are in Europe; that we should respect the plurality of life
and spirit more than in Russia; that our revolution was something specific; that it is
behaving immorally; that it is forgetting the help received from the Allies; that it is
sinking in an ever greater brutality and vulgarity of the greatest boors; that it is creating a
feeling of demoralization and sterility among the educated persons; that it is causing the
growth of unbridled passions in the countryside (hatred, violence, lies, excesses)«.86

The conflict with the Information Bureau (1948) brought two new myths. The first was
derived from a thesis that the Yugoslav Communist Party had already begun to develop
self-management during the war (in the form of a people's authority) and that the conflict
with the Information Bureau was merely a logical consequence of the different views
between the Soviet and Yugoslav communist parties. Self-management was supposedly,
according to the theses of the time, »as old as the idea of humanism itself«,87 which was
also collaborated by historiography until the middle of the eighties.88 In historiography
there are known examples of misunderstandings that had occurred already during the
war and immediately after it between both parties (and later on also in the Soviet-
Yugoslav relations). These had occurred during the war because the SU subordinated its
conduct to the relations with the Allies and demanded the same from the liberation
movement in Yugoslavia. For that reason it rejected all »premature« revolutionary
measures and also measures directed towards the government in exile and King Peter
(this is referred to by e.g. the issue of the proletarian brigades or their designations – the
sickle and hammer; the issue of the execution of the so-called second phase of the
revolution; the issue of establishing AVNOJ at Bihač as a political and not an

86
Edvard Kocbek, Dnevnik 1946, Ljubljana 1991.
87
Edvard Kardelj, Sistem socialističkog samoupravljanja u Jugoslaviji, Privredni pregled, year XXVI, 1977, p.
9.
88
Such a view was advocated as late as 1969 e.g. by Vladimir Dedijer in the book Izgubljeni boj J. V. Stalina
[The Battle Stalin Lost]. Critical evaluation then gradually strengthened, with the period after Tito's death being
a more prominent turning point, even though in the first half of the eighties in Yugoslavia and Slovenia certain
historians still argued that self-management had not begun after the conflict with the Information Bureau and as
an alternative to the Soviet model, but (as had been claimed by Edvard Kardelj) already during the war (see e.g.
Jerca Vodušek - Starič, Začetki samoupravljanja v Sloveniji: 1949-53, Maribor 1983). Among the more
reverberating books that had (in addition to a number of articles in scientific newspapers) in the second half of
the eighties established a critical distance were Pirjevec's Tito, Stalin in zahod [Tito, Stalin and the West] (1985
Italian and 1987 Slovene edition), Bilandžič's Istorija SFRJ [History of the SFRY] (1985) and Bekič's
Jugoslavija u hladnom ratu [Yugoslavia in the Cold War] (1988). At the end of the eighties also the then most
prominent expert on contemporary Yugoslav history Branko Petranovič wrote that »even after 1948 Yugoslavia
remained a communist state« (Istorija Jugoslavije 1918-1988 [The History of Yugoslavia 1918-1988], Beograd
1989, p. 240) and that the Yugoslav theoretical thought (»until that time paralyzed by Stalinist ideological
totalitarianism«) had only after the conflict with the Information Bureau directed itself towards »the discovery of
new paths of the revolution« (ibidem, p. 288).
 81

authoritative body; likewise is applied also to the second session of AVNOJ, of which
the SU had only been informed just before its commencement). Yugoslav leadership also
silently resented the Soviet one that the Soviet aid during the war (until the fall of 1944,
when the SU equipped twelve infantry and two aircraft divisions of the Yugoslav army)
was inappropriately more modest than the western one and that until the spring of 1942
Moscow celebrated Mihailovič as the leader of the resistance in Yugoslavia.

After the war, Soviet protests were provoked by several things: Tito's speech in
Ljubljana in May 1945, in which he said that Yugoslavia will not function as small
change in the trade between the great powers, in connection with the agreement reached
between the Allies already during the war; the agreement that Austria will be renewed
within the borders before 1938, which affected the Yugoslav demands for the change of
the borders in Carinthia; the issue of Trieste , where the SU did not wish to risk a tensing
of relations (a potential new war), and an occasionally inconsistent support of the SU in
the case of the Yugoslav demands at the Paris Peace Conference (e.g. the issue of
Gorizia). Conflicts also arose due to the conduct of the Red Army during the military
operations on Yugoslav territory (rapes, thefts, violent behavior towards the inhabitants),
however, until the conflict with the Information Bureau, this was covered up. In the first
post-war years these conflicts were problematic particularly due to economic relations:
uneven trades, the establishing of mixed societies that were a greater benefit to the SU;
pressure to establish a Soviet-Yugoslav mixed bank, etc. Despite all this, viewed on the
whole, these conflicts had not affected the relations between both parties and countries;
the closest relations to the first country of socialism were thus never questioned, and
even in the West Yugoslavia was deemed a loyal member of the socialist camp and a
follower of the SU. After the conflict with the Information Bureau and then the calming
down of the circumstances in the middle of the fifties, the relations were never again as
close, and the periods of mutual distrust common (Hungarian revolution 1956, the
program of the KPJ 1958, the occupation of Czechoslovakia 1968).

The second myth was connected to the thesis that the workers' self-management is »the
most essential first condition for creating truly socialist social relations«.89 By
introducing self-management Yugoslavia was to have separated itself from the Soviet

89
Edvard Kardelj, Sistem socialističkog samoupravljanja u Jugoslaviji, Privredni pregled, year XXVI, 1977, p.
9.
 82

model of state ownership (the Soviet thesis was that the main condition for the transition
into communism was total state ownership, that, therefore, the state form of ownership
was the highest possible one), and naturally Yugoslavia was also to be differentiated
from the private-capitalist model. Such was to be the Yugoslav path into socialism »and
the only correct path when it comes to the withering away of state functions in the
economy«.90 On the other hand the introduction of self-management »represents the
strongest reply to the question, where true democracy is. In our case democracy is
founded on the material basis of the broadest masses of workers. It is felt by the masses,
and used for the realization of a better and happier future for all the workers of our
country. This is a reply to those in the West, who keep saying that we do not have a true
democracy, that ours is a police state etc., and who like to talk about our want, about
how we do not have this or that, etc. Yes, we do indeed have a want of many things,
because we are not capable of creating enough means, enough of various objects for use,
enough of what would improve people's lives, and raise their living standards. Yet we
are on the path right now to realize all this and realize it we shall for all, not only for a
minority of people as it is in the West.«91

After twenty-five years, when self-management had spread to other fields as well, and
was in the zenith of its domestic and international glory,92 and had in the meantime also
experienced a confrontation with the so-called party »liberalism«, the system received a
new theoretical definition as well. It was labeled as a system in which »the long-term
socially historical task of the working class can be most freely realized – the transition
from a class to a classless society«.93 The system was to have been »transitional« (from
capitalism through the beginning phase of socialism to communism) and thus still a
specific form of »the dictatorship of the proletariat«.94 The theoretical reestablishment of

90
Debate by Boris Kidrič at the 6th Congress of the KPJ, in: Boris Kidrič, Zbrano delo, volume 4, Ljubljana
1976, p. 495.
91
Iz govora druga Tita u Narodnoj skupštini FNRJ povodom predloga osnovnog zakona o upravljanju državnim
privrednim poduzećima i višim privrednim udruženjima od strane radnih kolektiva 26. juna 1950, Komunist,
year XXVI, No. 4-5, 1950 (translation B. R.).
92
At the end of the sixties and in the first half of the seventies, when classic parliamentarism was in a crisis
(student demonstrations, a strong breakthrough by the left-wing – Maoist, etc. - movements, terrorism), self-
managing socialism became, especially with left-wing intellectuals in the West, the object of intense study for a
few years, for in it was seen a possibility of an alternative or intermediate model between the so-called real
socialism and capitalism.
93
Iz platforme za pripremu stavova i odluka desetog kongresa SKJ, juna 1973 godine, Komunist, Beograd 1973,
p. 37-46.

94
Ibidem.
 83

an umbilical cord with the October Revolution was primarily the result of a
confrontation with the party »liberalism«, which was oriented technocratically and did
not pay much attention to »revolutionary traditions«, although even the liberally oriented
communists had not started giving up on socialism. Despite the recognition that it is
faulty, self-management was labeled in official documents and speeches by politicians as
the most advanced and the most democratic system in the world. This illusion began to
dissipate in the eighties, after Tito's death, when the credit bills began to arrive and
Yugoslavia fell into a severe economic crisis. The authorities still strove to maintain the
myth of self-management as the best system – mostly with the thesis that the system is
good in theory but that problems occur because it is not being carried out consistently in
practice – yet, nonetheless, the illusions began to disappear due to the drastic lowering of
the standard, the shortage of the necessities of life and the increase in inflation by leaps
and bounds (parallel, also the other, just as carefully maintained myth on nonalignment
as the ideal foreign policy – the so-called third path between both blocs).

Communists: »the Greatest Evil« of the Slovene Nation?

After the end of socialism (communism), the negative (»criminal«) image of Slovene
communism was derived mostly from the post-war killings of the members of the Home
Guard and other political opponents, political trials and various types of repression, and the
introduction of a totalitarian system, following the Soviet example. This is joined by the
reproached inter-war usurpation of the Liberation Movement and a tie with the Soviet Union
(until 1948). Criticism made its way into the public consciousness gradually, already in the
last period of socialism, from the first half of the eighties onwards. The evaluations of the
legality and legitimacy of the system after 1945 are connected with this.95 In light of these
events the entire communist activity is being evaluated, their social role problematized (as a
pre-war illegal organization they were not to have had the right to an equal social role as other
political subjects, even though they had been placed outside the law by the undemocratic
Yugoslav regime, and even though the legitimacy of the civic parties in the thirties is
questionable at the least, for it had not been measured at democratic elections, and the

95
The last expert discussion on the matter (if we ignore the often quoted newspaper polemics) was at the
conference Slovenci in leto 1941 [Slovenes and the year 1941] (in April 2001). See Prispevki za novejšo
zgodovino year XLI, No. 2. The journal – which is otherwise a rarity in Slovene historiography – also includes a
larger part of an otherwise polemic discussion.
 84

Yugoslav parliament, after the Cvetković-Maček agreement, was not even active; the regime
founded concentration camps for adversaries; at a time when the Home Secretary was Anton
Korošec, LL.D., the state adopted anti-Jewish legislation, while during the war the civic
parties were not even capable of answering the historic challenge). The organization of the
resistance movement, the role in the resistance and the contribution to determining Slovene
borders and statehood, the break with the Soviet Union and Stalinism, the execution of the
processes of modernization, which were carried out in their own specific (also repressive)
way with social engineering after the war, because the previous political elite had not been
capable of it or had not wanted it (a socially more righteous state, women's emancipation,
separation of Church and State, industrialization of Slovene society, the gradual strengthening
of Slovene statehood in the national area) is overshadowed by the negative side of their
operation. Though the public opinion polls until the time of socialism are mostly lenient,
predominantly positive96, the true evaluation (particularly with younger generations) is hard to
measure. On a politological and sociological level the predicament regarding the evaluation of
communist ideology, and the role of the communists, is trying to be solved by differentiating
between communists as people (with good intentions) and communist politics and ideology as

96
The public opinion polls (for more on this topic see SJM from 1990 onwards, particularly SJM 95 and SJM 98
and the article Božo Repe, Kaj Slovenci mislimo o svoji preteklosti, in: Anton Kramberger (ed.), Slovenska
država, družba in javnost, Ljubljana 1996, pp. 85-91) of the past decade and a half present socialism as a system
in which the majority (from the sixties onwards) lived well. The respondents do give a somewhat real evaluation
of the socialist past, yet the tendency to idealize the system is noticeable, which is surely a consequence of
liberal capitalism, which had put many on the verge of existence, harshly confronted them with the competition
and the struggle for survival, which they had not been accustomed to before and that caused great stratification.
In 1990 the circumstances of the post-war decades were characterized as »a time of fear and oppression« by 8
percent of people, and in 1998 by 3.9 percent. In 1990 72.5 percent of people opted for the designation »there
were many good things, and many bad things«, and 66.9 percent in 1998. In 1990 13.1 percent of people agreed
with the formulation »it was a time of progress and good living«, and 22.9 percent in 1998. The thesis that
despite communism people in Slovenia lived a relatively free life in the decades before the attaining of
independence was confirmed in 1995 by 45.8 percent of the respondents, and 45.2 percent in 1998. In 1995 12.8
percent of people agreed with the statement that after 1945 and until the attaining of independence dictatorship
reigned (in 1998 14.7 percent). In 1995 34 percent of the respondents had predominantly positive memories of
the SFRY (in 1998 36.9 percent), both positive and negative 50.4 percent (in 1998 47.8 percent), and
predominantly negative 6.8 percent (in 1998 5.4 percent). Around 80 percent of the respondents in both
measurements estimated their life in Yugoslavia as good; from the point of view of human rights a good 46
percent of people did not feel the least limited, 34 percent partially limited (in the poll of 1998 31.5 percent),
very limited 5.5 percent (in the poll of 1998 4.4 percent). In comparison with the Soviet Union between the
measurements in 1995 and 1998 there was an increase in the number of those who notice less differences,
although almost a half of the respondents still notices fundamental differences in the Yugoslav system from the
time of the first post-war period and the period from the sixties onwards. In a poll by SJM in 1995 18.3 percent
of the respondents felt that the system in the SFRY in the first post-war years had essentially differed from the
Soviet one (in 1998 there were 16.3 percent of such respondents), that it had differed partially was thought by
40.3 percent of the respondents (in 1998 32.9 percent), and that it had not differed essentially by 29.5 percent (in
1998 31.8 percent). For the period from the sixties onwards in 1995 54.6 percent felt that it had differed
essentially from the Soviet system (in 1998 45.8 percent believed so); that it had differed partially by 29.6
percent (in 1998 33 percent thought so), and that it had not differed essentially was estimated by 6.4 percent of
the respondents (in 1998 6.6 percent).96 Later measurements show smaller discrepancies from the evaluations
quoted, but not substantial ones.
 85

negative, originating in the logic of Bolshevism. Of course this predicament does not appear
only with the communists: »credits for the nation« are often, naturally, not in harmony with
democracy. As regards historiography I would risk the assessment that the majority of
contemporary Slovene historiography moves within a weighed search for the good and bad
sides, however, it is still trying to find itself in the comprehensive evaluation of the
communist movement in Slovenia and the leading communists, which is, last but not least,
demonstrated by the fact that we still lack a monographic study on the history of the
communist movement and party in Slovenia, as well as biographies of the leading
communists. A part of the writers (also historians) proceeds from the evaluations on the
criminal nature of the communists during the war and after it, on the forty-five years of
totalitarianism, on the fact that Slovene communism (socialism) in essence never
differentiated itself from the Soviet one. 97 It seems that it wishes to push the pendulum of a
more balanced historiography, which the discipline has in the past twenty years somehow
succeeded in »stopping« at the middle, to the other outer edge, in any way possible (»Home
Guard truth« instead of »partisan truth«). Museum presentations are to be adapted to such
views and the hitherto established periodization changed.98 Ernest Renan, a French

97
Debates on the forty-five years of totalitarianism were intense especially upon the exhibition and publication
of the book Temna plat meseca [The Dark Side of the Moon] (ed. Drago Jančar), Nova revija, Ljubljana 1998).
The thesis on the Yugoslav (Slovene) society as a totalitarian one, at least for the period from the sixties
onwards, follows the established sociological criteria of »totalitarianism« only with difficulty, although many
writers, particularly from the circle of Nova Revija, try to prove it. With this thesis Slovene circumstances were,
at least on a theoretical level, also to be equaled to the East European systems (also with others, for instance, the
Pol Pot system in Cambodia, and similar ones), despite the fact that also its advocates (including the most
influential politicians after the introduction of a multi-party system and the attaining of independence)
emphasized the difference between the Slovene and the East European type of socialism as regards its practical
use, especially in international relations. In a debate on the concrete matters (the openness of the borders, greater
possibilities for expressing a critical opinion, the position of the common people…) the advocates of the thesis
on the forty-five years of totalitarianism acknowledge the differences (here the views are brought closer), while
on the level of the definition of society they insist on the thesis on the totalitarianism until 1990.
98
Instead of the demarcation lines used so far in political history: 1945-1948 (the takeover of authority, the
Soviet type of socialism); 1948-1953 (conflict with the Information Bureau, the end of collectivization, the
introduction of self-managing socialism, the gradual opening of the borders) and then in the beginning of the
sixties the economic reform and the beginnings of the so-called party »liberalism«, for instance, the new
periodization would have only two periods, with a demarcation line in the sixties. The second period would
include the disintegration of Yugoslavia, while the first (after a new concept of an exhibition in the Museum of
Contemporary History) would look like this: »After its victory the Communist Party of Yugoslavia carries out a
Bolshevik revolution. In the 1945-1960 period the worst offensives in the party civil war against Slovenia and its
inhabitants unfold; this is a time of the enforcement of the Leninist-Stalinist revolutionary model with extreme
state and terrorist methods« (Jože Dežman: O prenovi stalne razstave Slovenci v XX. Stoletju, Dnevnik, 17.6.
2006). The essay is a response to the commentary by Tanja Lesničar Pučko: Temna stran temne strani [The Dark
Side of the Dark Side] (Dnevnik, 6.6. 2006), in which the author had commented on the public presentation of
the future permanent exhibition in the mentioned museum. Among other things she wrote that Jože Dežman
came to the position of the Director of the Museum as a retaliatory blow of the right, as punishment for his slip
up with the »bright side of the moon« (the criticized permanent exhibition, to which as a reaction, on the
incentive by Drago Jančar, the alternative exhibition and journal Temna stran meseca was created, TN), »…for
such retaliatory blows highly professional and currently politically uninvolved and mature people are never
 86

philosopher from the 19th century, the founder of the (then) modern type of nationalism,
derived from the belief that when constructing a common (national) identity people must
establish the attitude towards the past in a selective manner: they must imprint into their
consciousness certain things from the past, while utterly forgetting others. With the use of
orchestrated historiography, controlled media, a system of celebrations, controlling
celebrations, a selective approach can be enforced, while it is harder to build a new identity (a
historical consciousness) with the mechanical transferring of patterns from the 19th to the
20th century, particularly so if nationalism is combined only with the ideology of a single
political option. The communist movement had long since lost all political opponents,
however, there remained that many more political opponents »in retrospect«. The members of
the resistance movement are aged and on the defensive, while behind the »Home Guard truth«
stands a great deal of the political powers and the Catholic Church. Different views and
polemics are completely normal for a democratic society. If only the temptation of using
political power to enforce one's own »truth« does not prevail. We already have such a
historical experience. Since a great deal of criticism on behalf of the conduct of the
communists is directed towards their submission of others in the Liberation Front (and also
elsewhere), allow me to finish with a thought by Spomenka Hribar, who, a good deal before
the historians, opened up certain traumatic issues of the immediate past: »In this sense
perhaps the study (Dolomitska izjava [Dolomite Statement], TN) will prove to be instructive
sometime in the future, since the total control of society is in the interest of every party. And
if it makes use of the methods and logic of Dolomitska izjava, then history must »repeat
itself«. Of course it will never be repeated in the identical way, but definitely in the same way,
with the same logic. It would, namely, suit every party to be the first and the principal one
among others, which would be her »allies«, for it to »lead« … But the repetition of this
»story« can never again be »afforded««.99

How Much Comparativity can be Found in Slovene Historiography?100

Initially, special effort should be undertaken in order to clarify the issue on the relationship
between specific historical conduct of research and the theory of history. Therefore: we either

appointed, but always converts«. In the opinion of the author »Dežman's new history« offers: »Boy Scouts,
religious ceremonies and Hail Marys as the 'fundamental identity axis' of the Slovenes«.
99
Spomenka Hribar: Dolomitska izjava, Nova revija, Ljubljana 1991, p. 7.
100
Round table, Department of History at the Faculty of Arts, Thursday, May 25, 2006. Notes referring to the
English version were added in June 2009.
 87

have some kind of established theory (theories) on researching history, which we later follow
in specific conduct of research, or the thing that we characterize with the term called the
theory of history only represents some kind of aggregation covering different research
practices (at some »higher« level this would have been referred to as historical schools), for
which someone strives to be put to a common denominator and later applies different kinds of
criteria for determining common characteristics and discrepancies. In particular, the question
of methodology is placed in the forefront: a historian may either set a research objective in
such a manner as to define exactly what he will try to prove – similarly as is done in natural
sciences and mainly also in social sciences – or this represents a mistaken assumption because
the research objective is clearly revealed to him only after objective research. We estimated
that quite an important part of Slovene - especially political – historiography has lately been
subjected more to the first method: that it therefore tries to follow some previously
determined objective through historical evidence, which inevitably entails a selection of
historical resources; highlighting one part of resources and realization or ignoring the other
part of resources. More of this is somehow available in the margins of historiography with
silent support provided by some historians or at least with no objections. Some examples of
this have lately been appearing especially in newspaper polemics, to list only a few topics
(without participants in the aforementioned polemics):
- for example, comparing TIGR with the LF101
- comparing the alleged democratic nature of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the non-
democracy of the communist Yugoslavia; comparing the legality (also the legitimacy) of the
rest of the pre-war bourgeoisie parties during the war with the (il)legality and (il)legitimacy of

101
The national revolutionary organization (the abbreviation TIGR stands for Trieste, Istria, Gorizia and Rijeka),
which fought against Italian Fascism in the Primorska region (Venezia Giulia in the period between the two
world wars; some of its action was also carried out in Carinthia (then already in Nazi Germany). The
organization kept violently attacking Fascist institutions, and patrols, and carried out different sabotages. It also
received support and assistance from Yugoslavia. During the times of German, Italian and Hungarian aggression
against Yugoslavia in 1941 it practically no longer existed as an organization; namely, its leaders were captured,
tortured and convicted at two trials (the First Trieste Trial in September 1930 and the Second Trieste Trial in
December 1941; four of them, who were shot to death in the First Trieste Trial at Bazovica above Trieste are
considered Slovene heroes and especially heroes of the Primorska region). That is why TIGR as an organization
had not become a part of the Liberation Front; however, its members joined the Front as individuals. When
Benito Mussolini visited Kobarid (Caporeto) in 1938, some members planned to carry out an attempt on his life,
which later was not executed, allegedly because the number of victims was too high. A small group of TIGR
members, who have resorted to Yugoslavia prior the war, engaged the Italian patrol on Mala Gora above Ribnica
(Anton Majnik, Danilo Zelen, Ferdo Kravanja) (Italians obtained information regarding their place of hiding and
surprised them there). During the first decade after the war, TIGR members were not considered welcome,
resistance of the Liberation Front, which was organized by the Communist Party, was especially emphasized and
until the 1970s historiography paid little attention to TIGR. In the past years trials were under way for TIGR, as
a non-communist organization, to somehow »replace« the resistance role of the Liberation Front (see previous
chapters).
 88

the KPS and the LF, different criteria than that which should have been the so-called
functional collaboration, etc.
In this case it is soon proved that the comparative method is strongly subjected to the
predetermined objective.

An additional problem of comparativity in historiography is that unfortunately (or fortunately)

we do not have any alternative laboratory tests of concrete historical situations, which is why
we often operate with the so-called if history: meaning that a certain executed historical event
is compared to the non-executed one, which then represents the basis for drawing a
conclusion. A typical case is, for example, the question of the Slovene (Yugoslavian) border:
if the communists had not come to power, we would have obtained Trieste and (according to
the latest interpretations the entire Venetian Slovenia, even though it had already been lost by
Austria-Hungary in 1866). So comparatively: if Draže Mihailović's Chetniks had won and
Yugoslavia had been led by King Peter and the government in exile and not by Tito, then the
people of Slovenia would today have a more favorable border than the existing one.

That explained above indicates that in order to obtain a concrete discussion in any of the
discussions carried on nowadays we should determine the framework of comparativity:

1. It either concerns methodological comparativity: meaning that we confront our method of

research and interpretation with work that was carried out by someone else – this is
particularly possible if we are dealing with a treatment of the same problem. Such works are
very rare in Slovene historiography; however, there are a few: for example, we have two
surveys on the bishop, Dr. Gregorij Rožman (Grieser-Pečar, Dolinar102); two detailed surveys
on the development of Slovene parliamentarism (Alja Brglez with her co-workers, and now
Janko Prunk), and some other examples of this kind.

102
Tamara Griesser Pečar, France Martin Dolinar: Rožmanov proces, Družina, Ljubljana 1996. This study was
ordered because the then public prosecutor and (otherwise member of the Home Guard during World War II)
and the Catholic Church in Slovenia wanted to renew the process against the wartime bishop of the Ljubljana
Diocese, Gregorij Rožman, who was convicted of collaboration in the post-war period. According to Rožman's
estimations there are quite a few differences between both authors, especially regarding Rožman's oath of the
Home Guard members to the »Leader of the Great German Reich«, while in historiography he was thoroughly
assessed from two opposite poles. Annulment of the process (but not the renewal) was achieved under the
government of Janez Janša, which later, when all other legal possibilities were exhausted, amended the
legislation in such a way that the Ljubljana Diocese was allowed to act as a party in the court procedure.
 89

2. Either an individual historian, when creating his or her writing, compares his or her results
with results obtained by others, accepts them, objects to them or ignores them. It is estimated
that is mostly the latter; meaning that the Slovene method of quoting and considering the
results is very selective and based on personal sympathies, antipathies and ideological
determination. When my colleague Nećak and I were writing the book on World War I103 I
read or at least examined several hundreds of books and can easily use this recent example to
let you know who is liked and who is not liked in Slovene historiography. I shall list only one
example in relation to Janko Pleterski104 - i.e., in some authors you cannot possibly find it,
even though they wrote fundamental and today still unsurpassed works. In such examples the
»comparison« usually changes in some kind of silent adoption of the thesis (if the writer
agrees with it), »hides« in the writer's text or is interpreted as a generally accepted historical
aspect. In the event that it fails to fit into the writer's context then we simply adopt the
historical survey of the non-quoted author and add a different conclusion.
3. Comparativity with a retroactive effect. This comparativity has several dimensions.
Comparativity with research in time when a certain historical project is still underway, and
that when the process is already concluded. Example: Assessments relating to Austria-
Hungary or Yugoslavia are different in historiography and otherwise during the period of both
countries than later, when they both collapsed. In this case no comparativity in conclusions is
possible because it relates to two different observer's positions. However, the comparativity of
individual developments in a positivist sense is possible and necessary. There are also other
examples, where previous results of historiography are simply rejected as surviving in whole
either from ideological or other reasons, even though they can be completely relevant and also
unsurpassed in a certain segment.
The other kind of comparativity – which would preferably be referred to as historical amnesia
- can be found in historians who are more subjected to politics. A lot of these can also be
found in the current situation, for example, when we observe a diametrically opposed
assessment by the same people from the ones they had written twenty years ago or less, even
though there were no new significant historical documents or cognitions in between.
However, what had changed was the regime. This kind of comparativity can be very
unpleasant since it demonstrates an individual writer's incredibility. It is usually justified with

103
Dušan Nećak, Božo Repe: Prelom. Svet in Slovenci v prvi svetovni vojni, Sofija, Ljubljana 2003.
104
Academician Dr. Janko Pleterski, year 1923, one of the leading Slovene historians, the main topics of
research are the national question, minorities (especially in Austria), border question, international relationships
in Yugoslavia, questions relating to collaboration, the cultural struggle of Slovenes, mutual conflict of Slovenes
during World War II, revolutions.
 90

the need for a general and continuous revision, which is supposed to be a component part of
the historian's work in accordance with the known thesis that every single generation rewrites
history. In principle, this is true and nobody objects to that. Only some authors carry out the
revision several times in their life but more in accordance with the aspects of the currently
governing coalition than with the new historical results.
4. Comparativity of different (usually national) historiographies. The final objective here is a
political one, although within the scientific discourse. So: two different national
historiographies differently assess a certain historical problem - in most cases their relations
(either on the basis of different documents or on the basis of the same resources, which are
differently interpreted). Listed below are a few examples with different results: a consensus
on a joint text was achieved in the first case of Slovene-Italian commission.105 This one is
very compromised in many places on behalf of the common goal and basically conceals
differences using general formulations. In the case of the Slovene-Austrian commission the
work has so far been concluded only by the Slovene part and no real comparison and
confrontation with differences has occurred so far.106 If the Austrian part is issued one day
then we will be able to continue comparing the same (similar) aspects and differences on this
basis. Similarly, we could estimate the Macedonian-Slovene journal, which was initiated and
had no political background.107 Here, we each demonstrated our own view of Yugoslavia,
only with a partial confrontation of different views in discussions (for example, the question
of financing the undeveloped regions of the former country, to state only one aspect),
however, not in the published contributions. We are still waiting for the result from the
Slovene-Croatian commission.108 The final goal – as interpreted by politicians and some
colleagues from the commission – should be that during history there were no greater
conflicts and problems present between the Slovene and Croatian people, with smaller

105
The Italian- Slovene historical and cultural commission addressed the Slovene-Italian relationships between
the years 1880 and 1956. The commission worked for seven years, since 1993 and until 2000 and then issued a
joint report in the Italian, Slovene and English language (Slovensko-italijanski odnosi/rapporti Italo-Sloveni
[Slovene-Italian relations] 1880-1956, Koper (Capodistria), 2000). The Italian government has never officially
confirmed that report.
106
The Austrian-Slovene commission operated from 2001 until 2003. No joint text nor any deeper reconciliation
of content was agreed on. The Slovene side published its texts in the Slovene and German language in 2004,
while the Austrian side failed to do so until now (see Historiat komisije in slovenski prispevki [History of the
Commission and Slovene Contributions] in the book Slovensko-avstrijski odnosi v 20. stoletju. Slowenisch-
österreichische bezieungen im 20. Jahrhundert, Ljubljana 2004).
107
In Makedonci v Jugoslaviji. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za zgodovino; Skopje: Institut za
nacionalna istorija, 1999.
108
The Slovene-Croatian commission was established in June 2005, based on agreements made between the
Prime Ministers of both countries. The commission was to examine the relationships between Slovenia and
Croatia since the middle of the 19th century until the attainment of independence in 1991. Each side prepared a
report before 2007, which should have been published together; however, so far this has not happened.
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exceptions, therefore only alliances and harmony. And this brings us to the beginning of our
contribution: either a historian may set himself a research objective in such a manner as to
define exactly what he will try to prove or the research objective is revealed to him only after
objective research.

Chronological Survey of the Slovene History

550 ca. The first wave of northeastern Slavs settles in the territory of
today's Slovenia.

7th-11th c. The existence of the Princedom of Carantania that unites part of

Slovene ancestors. Its centre is at Krn Castle (today's Austrian Carinthia). It remains
independent until 745 AD when it comes under Bavarian rule and, indirectly, under the
empire of the Franks (to whom the Bavarians are subjugated). It remains autonomous for
another few decades, with the upper class electing local rulers. Between 820-828 AD, it is a
Frank margravate (border province). The installation of Carantanian Dukes at the Prince’s
Stone (remnants of a Roman column) and later at the stone-made Duke’s Throne at Zollfeld
near Krn Castle follow a special ceremony conducted in the Old Slovene language that
eventually attracted the attention of distinguished scholars such as the French jurist Jean
Bodin (16th c.). According to the mythologized version of Slovene history, Carantania was
the first Slovene state, while the inauguration of its Dukes was an expression of early
democracy, which reportedly influenced even Thomas Jefferson and modern American
democracy.

870-71 A Salzburg priest writes a text on the conversion of the

Bavarians and Carantanians to Christianity (Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum) in
which he describes the struggle between western and eastern Christianity (with the former
gaining prevalence in the territories inhabited by Slovene ancestors).

c. 1000 The composition of the Freising Manuscripts, one of the oldest

known Slavic documents, composed of two forms of confession and a short sermon on sin
and penance. They are written in a mixture of Slavonic and an emerging, distinctive Slovene
language.
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1282 Rudolf of Habsburg acquires the duchies of Austria and Styria,

and in the course of time other territories inhabited by Slovenes as well. In the mid 14th c., the
Counts of Celje (Lower Styria) are strong rivals to the Habsburgs, yet their line dies out and
in 1460 the Habsburgs acquire their estates. In 1500, they also inherit the County of Gorizia.

15th c. Turkish incursions into Slovene territory

15th-17th c. Peasant revolts

1550 The Protestant preacher and writer Primož Trubar, who was
forced to leave Slovene territory, publishes Catechismus and Abecedarium in Tübingen, the
first two books written in modern Slovene.

1584 Jurij Dalmatin publishes 1,500 copies of the Slovene translation

of the Bible.

1628 Following the orders of the provincial Archduke, the Ljubljana

bishop expels all Protestants who did not reconvert to Catholicism.

1768 The Augustinian monk Marko Pohlin publishes the Slovene

grammar book Kraynska grammatika in German.

1774 The Empress Maria Theresa introduces compulsory schooling.

Primary school classes are taught in Slovene.

1797 Valentin Vodnik begins publishing the first Slovene newspaper,

Lublanske novize (Ljubljana News). The newspaper is published until 1800 at 100 copies per
issue and has 33 subscribers.

1809 October 14 Treaty of Schönbrunn. Austria cedes part of Slovene territory,

Istria and portion of Croatia lying on the right bank of the Sava to Napoleon, who establishes
the Illyrian Provinces, stretching from Carinthia to Dubrovnik (Ragusa). Lasting until 1813,
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Napoleonic rule includes many reforms in the fields of administration and education, thus
winning approval of Slovene intellectuals. The peasants, however, are not in favor of it owing
to high taxation and the preservation of serfdom.

1843 July 5 Janez Bleiweis publishes the newspaper Kmetijske in

rokodelske novice (Agricultural and Artisan News) in which “Slovenia” is used for the first
time as the designation for the common national territory.

1848 March 13 Vienna sees the outbreak of the revolution that spreads
throughout the Austrian monarchy. Demonstrations are also organized in Ljubljana. Peasants
call for the abolition of serfdom.

1848 March 29 Kmetijske in rokodelske novice publishes the manifest of the

Carinthian priest Matija Majar Ziljski arguing that all Austrian peoples – including Slovenes –
should lead an autonomous life.

1848 April 20 The society called “Slovenia” (with philologist Fran Miklošič
elected president) is inaugurated in Vienna, issuing the call for a United Slovenia (i.e., the
first Slovene political program) and addresses it to the Emperor.

1861 First elections for the Austrian Parliament (Reichsrat): few

Slovenes have the right to vote.

1866 Austria defeats Italy at the Battles of Custoza (in Lombardy) and Lissa (Vis),
but is itself defeated by Italy’s Prussian allies. The Treaty of Vienna cedes Venetian Slovenia
to the former. Italians organize a plebiscite in the newly acquired region, conferring the right
to vote to only a quarter of the population (of Friulians and Slovenes). Having been relatively
autonomous under Venetian rule, people declare themselves in favor of the new kingdom,
only to be disappointed by the new authorities as the latter soon launch an assimilation
campaign.

1867 December 21 The Reichsrat in Vienna adopts the December Constitution that
lasts until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. The Constitution grants
equality before the law to all the nations and the right to use national languages in
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administration, schools and in public life. In practice, the equal status depends on interethnic
relations in the six crown lands where Slovenes live. Slovenes hold the majority of seats only
in the Carniola Diet.

1892 August Founding of political parties in Slovene territory (in 1895, the
Catholic Society established in January 1890 is renamed the Catholic National Party / later the
Slovene People’s Party). The establishment of the parties reflects the hegemonic tendencies of
the Roman Catholic Church and its demand that public life follow religious principles.

1894 November 29 Founding of the liberal National Party

1896 August 15-16 Founding of the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party

1907 Cisleithania (the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary) introduces

universal suffrage for men.

1908 October 6 Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina (which has

been under its administration since 1878). This increases the number of southern Slavs in the
monarchy and gives rise to the political demand for trialism - the division of the Monarchy
into three parts (Austrian/German, Hungarian and southern Slavic) - while the northern Slav
peoples (the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles) strive for the establishment of their own states.

1914 July 28 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

1915 April 26 Signature of the Treaty of London, a secret pact between Italy
and the Triple Entente, according to which Italy, until then an Austro-Hungarian ally, is
promised a large portion of western Slovene territory if it joins the side of Great Britain,
France and Russia in the war.

1915 April 30 Establishment of the Yugoslav Committee in London, a political

organization of Croatian, Serbian and Slovene political emigrants who strive for the formation
of the Yugoslav state.

1915 May 23 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary.

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1915 May 24 The onset of fighting along a new front stretching from the
Swiss border to the Adriatic. The most important (93-km-long) part from Mt Rombon to the
sea runs across Slovene territory. By 28 October 1917 when the Italians are decisively
defeated at the Battle of Kobarid (Caporetto/Karfreit), the area has witnessed 12 bloody
offensives.

1916 November 21 Franz Joseph I dies after a 68-year reign and is succeeded by his
great- nephew Karl.

1917 May 30 Anton Korošec, head of the Yugoslav Club in the Vienna Parliament,
reads the May Declaration. The petition demands that Austria-Hungary become a triple
monarchy (Slovenes have been in favour of “trialism” since the beginning of the century),
with Yugoslavia being the new united state.

1917 July, 20 The Serbian government and the Yugoslav Committee adopt the Corfu
Declaration envisioning the establishment of Yugoslavia under the Karañorñević dynasty.

1918 January 8 American President Woodrow Wilson issues Fourteen Points,

advocating self-determination and the formation of an association of nations that will ensure
peaceful development in the world.

1918 August 16-17 Ljubljana sees the establishment of the National Council for
Slovenia and Istria, a political organization in charge of the attainment of national self-
determination and co-operation within the formation of independent Yugoslavia (the council
operates until April 30, 1919).

1918 October 29 Mass rally in Ljubljana organized by the National Council for
Slovenia and Istria. The Council declares secession from the disintegrating Austria-Hungary
and inclusion in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs led by the Yugoslav National Council
in Zagreb (under the presidency of Anton Korošec).

1918 October 31 Establishment of the Slovene National Government comprised

of representatives of all Slovene political parties. Following the incorporation into the
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Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, it becomes a provincial government with limited
power and is abolished when the Yugoslav Constitution is adopted.

1918 November 1 Colonel Rudolf Maister organizes voluntary military forces and
seizes power in Maribor. The National Council for Styria appoints him general. Owing to his
activities, Slovenia (the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) manages to retain southern
Styria, populated mostly by Slovenes in the countryside and Germans in the towns.

1918 November 3 Truce between the Entente and Austria-Hungary. Italian forces
occupy Trieste, Primorska and Istria.

1918 December 1 In Belgrade, the declaration of the unification of the Kingdom of

Serbia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929).

1919 January 18 Beginning of the Paris Peace Conference

1920 June 4 Signature of the Treaty of Trianon by the Entente and Hungary.
Prekmurje is ceded to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, having been occupied by
the Yugoslav Army in summer 1919 following the Entente’s approval.

1920 July 13 Italian Fascists burn down the National House in Trieste, the
seat of Slovene organizations. Persecution of Slovenes follows. Mussolini’s rise to power
marks the beginning of forced assimilation.

1920 October 10 A plebiscite in southern Carinthia that was divided into two
zones following several battles and a successful offensive by the Yugoslav army in May and
June 1919. The majority (59%) votes for the inclusion of the Klagenfurt Basin into Austria.
The area is inhabited by a mixed population (69% Slovenes, 31% Germans), which means
that a large portion of the Slovenes (41% according to estimation) must have voted for
Austria.

1920 November 12 Signature of the Treaty of Rapallo by the Kingdom of Serbs,

Croats and Slovenes and Italy, resulting in Venezia Giulia, Istria, Kvarner Gulf, Zadar and its
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environs and a few islands being ceded to Italy. Entering into force in February 1921, the
Treaty guarantees no protection for the 500,000 Croats and Slovenes who are subjugated to
the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

1920 December 30 The Yugoslav government issues the so-called Obznana: the
decree prohibiting all communist activities and introducing police prosecution of the
Communist Party.

1921 June 28 Adoption of the first Yugoslav constitution, confirming

monarchic rule, centralism and unitarism.

1922 October 28 The ‘March on Rome’ installs Benito Mussolini in power.

1923 October 1 Having implemented reforms conceived by Giovanni Gentile,

Italy gradually (by 1927) abolishes all classes taught in Slovene and Croatian. It also
suppresses all cultural, political and economic organizations of the two national minorities.
Slovene is no longer allowed to be used in public.

1927 September Formation of TIGR (acronym from the following names: Trst,
Istra, Gorica, Reka), a secret national revolutionary organization of Slovenes and Croats
living in Italy that employs arms to fight against assimilation and the incorporation of Slovene
and Croatian territory into Yugoslavia.

1929 January 6 Following the assassination of the leading Croatian politician in

Yugoslav Parliament, Stjepan Radić, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia imposes dictatorship.

1930 September 1-5 First Trieste Trial. The Special Court for State Protection tries
18 members of TIGR. On September 6, four of them are shot near the village of Bazovica.

1934 October 9 Assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseilles.

Prince Paul of Yugoslavia becomes Regent for the minor King Peter II.

1937 April 18 The Communist Party of Slovenia (KPS) is established in the village of
Čebine.
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1938 March 12-13 German troops enter and annex Austria (the Anschluss).
Carinthian Slovenes subsequently suffer stronger assimilation pressure than they did in the
past.

1938 April 10 With more than 99% of voters in favour of uniting with
Germany, a plebiscite confirms the annexation of Austria.

1941 March 25 Hitler and Prince Paul of Yugoslavia meet in the Berghof and
reach an agreement on Yugoslavia joining the Axis.

1941 March 27 Serbian officers carry out a pro-English military coup in

Belgrade. Prince Paul emigrates. King Peter II, still a minor, accedes to the throne.

1941 April 6 German, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria invade and occupy
Yugoslavia. Slovenia is divided into German, Italian and Hungarian occupational zones.

1941 April 11 Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić, who organized the assassination of
King Alexander of Yugoslavia, declares the formation of the Independent State of Croatia
(NDH).

1941 April 27 (26), The Liberation Front (OF) is established in Ljubljana, uniting
more than 15 organizations under the leadership of the Communist Party of Slovenia.

1941 May 3 The Province of Ljubljana (Italian occupational zone) is created

by Italy.

1941 May 10 The OF publishes the first issue of its gazette, Slovenski
poročevalec (Slovene Reporter).

1941 July The OF begins armed resistance and forms its first partisan
units.
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1941 August The OF establishes the Security Intelligence Service (VOS) run
by the communists, giving rise to “the terror” against collaborators.

1941 November 26 The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), led by Secretary

General Josip Broz-Tito, organizes a military and political meeting in Stolice near Krupnje in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is also attended by the commander and political commissioner of
the main headquarters of the Slovene partisan army. The meeting adopts the decisions that the
old authorities in the liberated territories should be replaced by new ones. Slovenia is
criticized for its pluralism given the fact the OF concept of resistance differs from that of the
Communist Party, and for lacking large liberated territories (which, however, results from its
specific geographical features: small surface and well-developed network of
communications).

1941 October 18 Heinrich Himmler issues the decree on the expulsion of

Slovenes from the border regions along the Sava and Sotla rivers, which gives rise to mass
deportations to camps in Germany, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia.

1941 November 1 The OF Supreme Council adopts the seven fundamental points
of its program (another two are adopted in December 1941). They are published on 21
January 1942.

1941 November 17 The OF underground radio “Kričač” (The Screamer) broadcasts

its first program in Ljubljana.

1941 November 23 Modeling itself on the OF, the London Committee, a political
body of Slovene politicians in exile, issues the London Points, calling for the unification of
Slovenes in the federal Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

1941 December 2-14 Second Trieste Trial: the Fascist Special Court for State
Protection sentences 60 anti-Fascist members of the Primorska national and communist
movement.

1941 December 12 In Rovte under Mt Blegoš in Upper Carniola, the Cankar

Battalion attacks and defeats a German police patrol (killing 46 policemen). As a result, Hitler
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postpones the incorporation of Slovene regions into the Third Reich, scheduled for 1 January
1941 for six months (eventually, the spread of the resistance manages to prevent that
incorporation). Upper Carniola witnesses a general uprising that the Germans try to crush by
all means possible.

1941 December 16 The Hungarian Parliament adopts a law calling for the
annexation of occupied Prekmurje.

1942 January 9-11 During the general uprising in Upper Carniola, the
Cankar Battalion is engaged in several battles against German police and military forces. At
the end of December 1941, the battalion manages to reach the village of Dražgoše. A bloody
fight ensues January 9-11. When the battalion retreats, the Germans occupy and burn down
the village, shoot 42 locals and expel women and children. The territory controlled by the
Third Reich thus witnesses one of the first major anti-Nazi rebellions and subsequent Nazi
disproportionate revenge.

1942 April 6 The Slovene Pledge (Slovenska zaveza) is taken in Ljubljana by

a political alliance of bourgeois parties that are against the OF out of opposition to “godless
communism”.

1942 June 16 The Italians launch a major offensive against the liberation
movement that lasts until November 4. Its goal is to crush the Slovene resistance. During the
offensive, the Italian army kills civilians or deports them to concentration camps and
systematically burns down villages.

1942 November 26-27 The Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of
Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) is established in Bihać, a town in western Bosnia. With the war raging,
Slovene representatives cannot attend. Nevertheless, the OF supreme bodies approve its
decisions, thus confirming that the Slovene resistance is a constituent part of the Yugoslav
resistance led by Tito.

1943 January 8 German troops encircle and decimate the Pohorje Battalion at
Osankarica deep in the Pohorje forest (Styria).
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1943 March 1 The OF founding groups sign the Dolomite Memorandum,

acknowledging the leading role of the KPS and binding themselves to eventually dissolve
their individual associations.

1943 May 12 Partisan units (the Gregorčič Brigade) manage to arrive to the
eastern part of Venetian Slovenia; i.e., the edge of Slovene ethnic territory, and operate there
for some time.

1943 July 25 Following the landing of Anglo-American troops in Sicily,

Mussolini was deposed and arrested, king Victor Emmanuel III appoints Marshall Pietro
Badoglio head of the Italian government.

1943 September 8 Capitulation of Italy. On October 13, Italy joins the Allies.
Slovene partisans begin disarming the Italian army in the Province of Ljubljana and
Primorska.

1943 September Partisans defeat Slovene collaborators at Turjak Castle near

Ljubljana. The latter are represented by White Guard or Home Guard units that joined the
Voluntary Anti-Communist Militia (Milizia volontaria anticomunista), formed in spring 1942,
partly as a form of defence against partisan violence in liberated territories, and partly as a
result of the anti-communist and anti-resistance orientation of the leadership of bourgeois
parties and the Catholic Church in the Ljubljana Diocese. The Slovene Chetniks (their first
units were formed at the end of 1941, after the breach between Tito and Draža Mihailović in
Serbia) are defeated in the village of Grčarice in the Kočevsko district.

1943 October l-3 Kočevje hosts the Assembly of Deputies of the Slovene Nation
attended by 572 elected and 78 delegated representatives. They elect 120 members of the
Slovene National Liberation Committee that become the supreme body of the new people’s
authorities.

1943 November 9 The Bosnian town of Jajce hosts the second session of the
AVNOJ. Attended by the Slovene delegation, the session adopts its decision on the federal
character of Yugoslavia and elects new bodies (the Presidency acting as the supreme authority
between two AVNOJ sessions and the National Committee of the Liberation of Yugoslavia
 102

acting as government). AVNOJ becomes the supreme legislative and representative body of
the Yugoslavia.

1944 January 6 The 14th Division starts its march from Bela Krajina to Styria.

1944 February 19-20 Črnomelj hosts the first session of the OF Supreme
Council. Comprised of 120 representatives, the council is renamed the Slovene National
Liberation Council (partisan parliament).

1944 April 20 The members of Home Guards units swear allegiance to the
Führer and bind themselves to fight against the partisans (another Home Guards pledge takes
place on 30 January 1945).

1944 June 16 Tito and Prime Minister of the Yugoslav Government in exile
Ivan Šubašić meet on the island of Vis, reaching an agreement on the form of government
after the liberation. The issue of the monarchy is left unresolved.

1944 October 9 Churchill and Stalin meet in Moscow, reaching an agreement on

the division of the spheres of influence in Yugoslavia (50/50).

1944 November 21 The AVNOJ Presidency issues a decree on the confiscation of

property of the occupiers and their collaborators.

1944 December 20 In Ljubljana the National Committee for Slovenia is

established; mostly comprised of Slovene bourgeois politicians from the Slovene Liberal
Party, the committee tries to act as an alternative government to the partisan authorities and
proclaims the Home Guard units and the Chetniks the Slovene army.

1945 February 4-11 The Big Three Conference at Yalta: Roosevelt, Churchill and
Stalin reach an agreement on joint operations against Germany and Japan and on the issue of
a uniform Yugoslav government.

1945 March 1 The National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOV) is renamed the
Yugoslav Army.
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1945 March 7 The AVNOJ Presidency resigns in Belgrade. A new temporary

government of the Democratic Federative Yugoslavia (DFJ) is formed, including
representatives of the former Royal Government in Exile. Tito becomes Prime Minister and
Minister of National Defense, while Edvard Kardelj and Ivan Šubašić become deputy prime
ministers (the latter is also appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs). The issue of dual
government is finally resolved.

1945 April After severe fighting with the Wehrmacht, the Red Army and
the Prekmurje Partisan Squad enter Murska Sobota, the capital of north-eastern Slovenia.

1945 May 5 Slovene partisans and the Yugoslav Army liberate Trieste and
Gorizia and reach the Isonzo (Soča) river after a series of operations along the Adriatic coast
that included the participation of the Overseas Brigades (formed by Slovene and Croatian
prisoners of war who had been sent to northern Africa as Italian soldiers).

1945 May 3 Ljubljana hosts a session of the National Committee for

Slovenia (comprised of representatives of pre-war bourgeois parties). The committee declares
the existence of the Slovene state within federal Yugoslavia and adopts a decree on the
government and on the army comprised of Home Guard members. Yet the attempt to install
an alternative government fails. Together with the Wehrmacht and other quislings, both the
Home Guard and bourgeois politicians retreat to Austrian Carinthia.

1945 May 5 The Slovene National Liberation Council appoints the National
Government of Slovenia in Ajdovščina, with Boris Kidrič as its President.

1945 May 9 Ljubljana is liberated.

1945 May 15 The end of WWII in Slovene territory, with the last occupational
units having surrendered in Carinthia.

1945 May 26 The Commander of the British forces in Carinthia issues the
order to return to Yugoslavia to the first group of Slovene Home Guard soldiers. Upon return,
the majority (around 13,000) of them are executed without trial.
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1945 June 9 An agreement between the governments of the USA, Great

Britain and Yugoslavia that Tito shall withdraw his army in Venezia Giulia to behind the so-
called Morgan Line is signed in Belgrade. As a result, Primorska is divided into two zones:
Zone A of the Julian March comes under the Allied military administration and Zone B under
the administration of the Yugoslav army.

1945 August 23 Yugoslavia passes an agrarian reform act.

1946 January 3 Enactment of the Constitution of the Federal People’s Republic of

Yugoslavia (FLRJ): Slovenia becomes one of the six constitutive units with the right to self-
determination and secession.

1946 Nationalization of private property in Yugoslavia (completed in

1948).

1946-47 Paris Peace Conference. On 10 February 1947 Yugoslavia and

Italy sign a treaty regarding the new border. A large part of the former Julian March is ceded
to Yugoslavia, with the exception of Gorizia. The northern Adriatic coastal strip becomes the
Free Territory of Trieste (FTT), officially under jurisdiction of the United Nations. In fact it is
still divided into Zone A (Trieste and its environs) administered by the Allies and Zone B (the
districts of Koper and Buje) administered by Yugoslavia.

1947 September 15 The new border between Italy and the FLRJ is operative.

1948 June 28 Bucharest hosts the second session of the Information Bureau.
The international communist organization expels the CPJ, which gives rise to a serious
conflict between Stalin and Tito. With all relations broken off, Yugoslavia is under threat of
being invaded by the Soviet bloc. Help comes from the West, which is well-aware of the
strategic and ideological advantages of Tito’s “heresy”.
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1953 March 5 Death of Stalin; in September, Nikita Khrushchev is appointed

Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Relations with Yugoslavia gradually improve.

1954 August 9The Balkans Pact on Greek, Turkish and Yugoslav political, military
and economic co-operation is signed in Bled. Yugoslavia thus establishes indirect contacts
with NATO.

1954 October 5 Signature of the London Memorandum (also called

Memorandum of Understanding) on the FTT. Zone A, including Trieste, is ceded to Italy,
Zone B to Yugoslavia. With its border with Italy becoming relatively open, Slovenia attains a
special position in comparison to other Yugoslav republics.

1955 May 15 Signature of the Austrian State Treaty. Also signed by

Yugoslavia, the treaty re-establishes democratic, independent and neutral Austria. Article 7
stipulates the protection of the Slovene and Croatian minorities.

1955 June 2 The signature of the Belgrade Declaration on equal co-operation

between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia marks the beginning of the normalization of
relations between the two socialist countries.

1955 July 18-19 Tito, Nehru and Nasser meet at Brioni and establish the Non-
Aligned Movement.

1960 The first issue of the opposition magazine Perspektive

(Perspectives) that replaces Revija 57 (Magazine 57). The magazine suffers the same fate as
its predecessor: as of 28 April 1964 it is censored.

1961 September 1 Belgrade hosts the first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.

1963 April 9 Yugoslavia adopts a new constitution and is renamed the

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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1967 May 7 Stane Kavčič becomes Slovene “Prime Minister” (at that time called
President of the Executive Council). The liberal-oriented politician of the younger generation
wants Slovenia to develop towards a market-based country (though still retaining public
property), which often brings him into conflict with the central authorities. He is deposed in
1972.

1974 February 21 Yugoslavia adopts a new constitution that strengthens the

federal order and confirms the self-government of all working people as the essential
characteristic of its path to socialism. However, it introduces a complicated delegate system
and reinforces the domination of the Communist Party in all spheres of social life.

1975 November 10 Yugoslavia and Italy sign the Treaty of Osimo, finally settling
the issue of the border between Zones A and B of the former FTT.

1980 May 4 Josip Broz-Tito dies in Ljubljana, which leads to an economic,

political and interethnic crisis in Yugoslavia.

1981 March In Kosovo, demonstrators demand that the province be granted

the status of a seventh Yugoslav republic.

1983 The Belgrade authorities adopt a new educational program in an

attempt to standardize the curricula. This first move to increase centralization meets with
strong opposition in Slovenia.

1986 January Slobodan Milošević is appointed leader of Serbian communists.

1987 February 18 Slovene intellectuals publish their oppositional national program

in the 57th issue of Nova revija (New Magazine).

1988 May 13 Formation of the Slovene Farmers’ Union, the first opposition
party. Owing to the valid legislation, it is still member of the Socialist Alliance of Working
People (that succeeded the Liberation Front).
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1988 June 3 Janez Janša, at that time a journalist of the magazine Mladina
(The Youth), is arrested and charged with revealing a military secret (about the intention of
the Yugoslav People’s Army [JLA] to “calm down” Slovenia), which brings about the
establishment of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights.

1989 January 11 Foundation of other opposition parties: the Slovene Democratic

Union followed by the Social Democratic Union in February, as well as others.

1989 May 8 The Slovene opposition publishes the May Declaration, a

political program demanding a multi-party system and a sovereign Slovene state.

1989 September 27 The Slovene Republican Assembly (Parliament) adopts

constitutional amendments that reinforce the right to establish a sovereign state, and annul the
provision regarding the leading role of the League of Communists of Slovenia. Belgrade
responds with strong political pressure, sparking off mass demonstrations. The JLA leaders
plan to declare an emergency, but they change their minds, not wanting to violate the law at
such a sensitive time.

1989 December 1 Ljubljana should be host to a “Rally of Truth” modeled upon

Serbian mass rallies. Slovene authorities ban it.

1990 January 23 Slovene communists leave the 14th Congress of the League of
Communists of Yugoslavia, which brings about the disintegration of the party.

1990 April 8-22 Slovenia holds its first multi-party parliamentary elections, with
the opposition united in the Demos coalition emerging as the victor. The election for the
president of the collective Presidency of the Republic is won by Milan Kučan, the former
President of the Presidency of the Slovene League of Communists.

1990 July 8 Mass service and mourning commemoration dedicated to

executed members of Home Guard units in the Kočevski rog forest. The symbolic
reconciliation ceremony is performed by the Archbishop Alojzij Šuštar and by the President
of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kučan.
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1990 December 23 Slovenia holds a plebiscite for a sovereign and independent

state. The overwhelming majority (88.2%) votes for independence. The plebiscite is to enter
into force within six months after the adoption of the appropriate laws.

1991 June 26 Slovenia declares independence. On the next day, the Yugoslav
People’s Army attacks.

1991 July 7 Truce between the JLA and the Slovene army followed by
negotiations between federal Yugoslavia and Slovenia on Brioni under the auspices of the
European Community (EC)

1991 October 25 The last JLA soldier leaves Slovene territory.

1991 December 23 Slovenia adopts a new constitution.

1991 December 9-11 Maastricht hosts final negotiations between the members of the
European Community that reach political consensus leading to the creation of the European
Union.

1991 December 15 Meeting in Brussels, foreign ministers of the EC states define

criteria for the recognition of individual republics of disintegrated Yugoslavia.

1991 December 19 Germany recognizes Slovenia as of 15 January 1992.

1992 January 15 EC member states recognize Slovenia.

1992 May 22 Slovenia is admitted to the UN.

1993 May 25 Establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the

Former Yugoslavia. No Slovenes are prosecuted.

2004 March 29 Slovenia becomes a NATO member (following the preliminary

consultative referendum of 23 March 2003 attended by 60.2% of the electorate, with 66%
voting for membership).
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2004 May 1 Slovenia becomes an EU member (following the preliminary

consultative referendum of 23 March 2003 attended by 60.2% of the electorate, with 90%
voting for membership).

2007 January 1 Slovenia introduces the euro (replacing its former currency, the
tolar).

2008 January - June Slovenia took over the EU presidency.