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Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and

Ethnicity
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Slovenia in Europe
a b
France Bučar
a
Professor of Law , Ljubljana University
b
President of Slovene Parliament
Published online: 19 Oct 2007.

To cite this article: France Bučar (1993) Slovenia in Europe, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity,
21:1, 31-41, DOI: 10.1080/00905999308408253

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31
PART I
THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE
 Nationalities Papers, Volume XXI, Number 1, Spring 1993

SLOVENIA IN EUROPE

France Bučar

When we talk about Slovenia in Europe, we are talking about a two-way

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relationship: what does Slovenia mean for Europe? and, what is Slovenia's
place in Europe? The first question requires an answer to an additional
question: what is Europe, and where is its development leading? As part of
Europe, and as a part of its system, Slovenia must also be in hannony with it
or, rather, Slovenia's attributes must not be in conflict with those of Europe,
otherwise Slovenia would not integrate properly. Europe could not then
accept it as a composite part, for Slovenia's development would not align
with the direction in which Europe is moving.
Europe today is organized on the basis of uninational countries with
separate national ideologies—the main integrative force in constituting
Europe. A nation state signifies the peak of efforts at unification and
standardization in organizing society, as is demanded by the quantitative view
of the world. France was the leading exponent of this process which had
already begun in the early sixteenth century under the rule of Francis I, who,
perhaps, could be called the first European nationalist. During the Scientific
Revolution—a period of reducing the former feudal dispersion into common
denominators needed for the developing trade and a market economy—
existing narrow local divisions proved a barrier, and a national state for larger
political and ethnic regions became a necessary framework for development
At this time ideas which were previously unknown began to emerge: such as,
an individual citizen being a party to legal or administrative proceedings, etc,
in the formation of bureaucratic organization for the state. New nationalities
evolved, such as French, German, and Italian, where previously there had been
different or local groupings, such as, Bretons, Provencals, Bavarians,
Venetians, and so on.
However, nation states emerged into a world motivated by greed, where
quantity, as the predominant recognized value, is also seen as quality: more
is better than less, bigger not only overpowers but also has more value than
smaller. Development is directed towards quantity, towards constant growth,

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 Nationalities Papers

towards acquisition. Individual nation states attempted to increase their

power by expanding their territory, dominating others, and by conquering
new sources of raw materials. This led to continual conflicts, colonialism
and war, culminating in two world wars. Exceptional economic and
industrial growth and constant innovation resulted, allowing a previously
unattainable standard of living and enabling the continued survival of many
people threatened by earlier conditions, along with social oppression, the
subordination of entire nations, racial discrimination and national egotism.
This, too, is part of the picture of early Europe, in contrast with the majesty
of its industrial development and its culture based on prosperity. During this
period, notions of historical and non-historical nations appeared, where the
non-historical nations were merely fertile soil for the growth of large,
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historical nations; this was when the new term "national minorities" was
conceived.
The identity of the nation state was based on the widest common
denominator, the greater number of peoples of a common nationality. Where
the leading nationality was formally established, all others in the state had to
adapt to its characteristics. Then began a process of merciless suppression of
everything that did not conform to the prevailing characteristics of the
dominant nationality, all too often leading to violent, forced assimilation.
Whole nations disappeared, increasing the substance of the leading states.
Small nations could not survive—they became minorities condemned to
death in the larger, mother state.
The artificially created feeling of superiority of the leading nationality in
many countries awoke a struggle to survive in the resident minorities. They
escaped into their own nationalism, which could not be indulged by
dominating others (since they were unable), so they romanticized and
exalted their own characteristics and rituals, at the same time concealing and
suppressing hate and rage which lay waiting to erupt. And it usually did
erupt, sometimes after decades or even centuries of concealment.
This, too, is part of Europe, as well as the sublime nobility of Western
Europe, which sprang from its prosperity. Those who know only this latter
Western Europe, seeing it as the measure of all Europe, will make incorrect
assumptions and fail to understand Eastern Europe and, especially, the
Balkans. These countries have long suffered from oppression. The greater
the national oppression and humiliation, the stronger the impetus toward
nationalism in the oppressed. This, on its own, is not necessarily negative,
since it implies a pressure for self-respect, for the affirmation of suppressed
identities, as well as pressure for creative self-affirmation to prove that one is
no worse than others and not as "backward" as has been claimed. In
situations which obstruct such an affirmation, especially in cases of

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 Budar: Slovenia in Europe

economic deprivation, often the result of existing national and economic

oppression, this nationalism tends to be transformed into a negative, neurotic
reaction to all that is foreign. In the worst cases, this becomes xenophobia,
resulting in efforts to prove one's power by domination of a formerly equally
oppressed neighbor who is too weak, as yet, to resist
National oppression, which has its roots in Western Europe, contributed
greatly to the spread of communism. It is no coincidence that communism
established itself first in Eastern Europe (although the violent establishment of
communism would have come about anyway, brought to Eastern Europe on
Soviet bayonets), for the soil there was already prepared. For a large part of
Eastern Europe, communism was an escape for the humiliated and hurt into
apparent salvation because it offered not only a social solution, but also a
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national one. It was the nationalities of Eastern, and much of Central Europe,
that were under constant pressure from German nationalism. It is worth
mentioning what Hegel (and Marx after him) said about the Slav nationalities:
that they were just "a stepping-stone for the great German nation."
Communism was entirely wrong for the needs of these people. Perhaps
it was legitimate in a historical context, but it bore terrible consequences,
above all in the minds of the people it had enslaved. Its practice involves
negation of the individual personality. If it were to be a technology for
constructing a new society of "happy" people, communism first had to
remove the personality and free will of the people, who otherwise would
have proved unsuitable material for the new, artificial society. For this
reason, communism is anti-democratic and totalitarian, else it negates itself.
Liberation from communism, which is occurring in Eastern Europe, is a
process of reaffirming the suppressed personality. This begins with a change
of government, as a first condition, and continues for decades before all
wounds are healed, with nationality playing an extremely important role.
Nationality is part of the awareness of personality, especially in Eastern
Europe where the process of assimilation and national oppression took place
as a result of a feeling of superiority in a dominant nationality. The rise of
nationalism following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe entails this
positive charge for establishing the personal integrity of the individual
nation. This is being achieved at a very time when developmental trends,
especially in the west, are towards a new systematic integration based on
supra-national associations.
These trends are creating a new environment. For economic
development, the national space, even of larger national states, is too small.
Multinational companies do not recognize national space. Even defense, the
classic attribute of a nation state is turning to a supra-national level. With
the influence of ecology, communications, information flows, etc., discourse

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 Nationalities Papers

between nations is hardly necessary. The classical notion of state

sovereignty is becoming out-dated and unsuitable, for it acts against the
system. So Europe is watching with astonishment and non-comprehension
all that is happening in Eastern Europe as it shakes off communism. A new
kind of nationalism is emerging, about which Western Europe can do
nothing, and which opposes the direction of its own development. It is
interpreted as the midnight toll of ghosts, a world of unreality.
A social renaissance of these states, however, cannot be achieved
without democracy. At the same time, democracy requires independent
personalities with self-awareness and personal dignity. As a condition for
social renaissance, affirmation of national pride is exhibited in the form of a
driving nationalism, and Slovenia, as the geographical focus of the nation of
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Slovenes, is a typical example of this development.

While maintaining a visible identity, Slovenes have lived under the wing
of Central European culture and civilization, not only as a passive recipient,
but also as an active co-creator. Slovenia is thus a typical Central European
nation in all its characteristics. Historically, the Slovenes were first included
in the Frankish state as early as Charles the Great, and then in the Holy
Roman Empire, which brought them, after a series of political permutations,
into the Austrian Empire where they remained until 1918. Throughout
Slovenia's modem political history, the Slovenes have never had their own
state or political independence. After the feudal order, which dragged on in
Austria far into the contemporary era, their national territory was a kind of
"generic" state personally attached to the Habsburg monarchy, a Habsburg
feudal property.
The Austrian Empire lagged behind Western Europe in the process of
forming nation states, not beginning until the second half of the eighteenth
century and breaking out in force in the nineteenth, especially after the
spring of nations in 1848. At this time, the majority of the peoples in the
Empire already had a strongly developed national consciousness and a drive
for independence. However, the Austrian Empire was a multinational mass,
so the transformation of this mass into uninational states was also its death
sentence. It did not collapse until 1918, after the First World War, and only
after one hundred years of threatened disintegratioa Its transformation into
an independent uninational state of German nationality seemed impossible
because Germans were a minority in terms of the population. Soon after the
middle of the nineteenth century, the Hungarian Empire left the empire to
become an individual state, sharing only a common ruler in the Habsburgs.
Soon after this, the north Italian regions broke away to join a unified national
Italian state. In Austria, only Czechs and Slovenes remained suitable for

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 BuCar: Slovenia in Europe

potential assimilation into a common Germanity. Both were small nations in

population and both had been included in Gennan cultural spheres for
centuries; both had Gennan minorities, with most of the more important
posts held by Germans in Prague and in Ljubljana.
Merciless Germanization began, especially for the Slovenes. Slovenia,
with its geographically important position, presented a barrier to German
expansion to the Adriatic Sea and the Mediterranean. In the eyes of Pan-
Germanic imperialism, the Slovene national territory posed a challenge.
German nationalism dominated the European environment from the Baltic or
North'Sea almost to the Adriatic and, at the exit, Slovenia stood as a small
obstacle preventing the realization of the great Gennan project.
The political pressure of Germanization was followed by economic
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pressure. The Slovenes, as a politically subjugated people in the framework

of the feudal medieval system, could not develop their own bourgeoisie
without political emancipation, so they remained a nation of fanners. The
transition to a bourgeois society after 1848, when peasants/farmers (the same
word in Slovene) were formally freed, always had to pass the threshold of
Germanism. Participation in economic life first required education which
was almost exclusively German, as were business and other bourgeois social
circles. The most insidious and effective pressure that followed from these
conditions was the psychological. If one sought acceptance as a member of
a higher social class, one had to speak Gennan; to be an intellectual, one had
to join German cultural circles. In Central European vocabulary, the word
"farmer/peasant" became synonymous with backwardness and under-
development, even mental retardation. As Slovenes were predominantly a
nation of farmers, to be Slovene (in the atmosphere of such Germanization)
was the same as admitting to backwardness, under-development, and even
personal degradation. This attitude created very fertile psychological ground
for assimilation, together with the shifting southward of the Slovene national
border, which had remained unchanged since the thirteenth century, to a line
in Carinthia, where Slovenes today represent only a negligible minority.
Although nationalism as an ideology and practice was initiated by the
French, it was the Germans who took it to the extreme with their
characteristic consistency. While the Slovenes favored remaining in the
framework of the Austrian monarchy, their legitimate demands for their own
national and political identity were not satisfied until the end of the First
World War. But Austria did not destroy the Slavs with their national
demands; German nationalism did. Slovenes had no alternative but to find
another political haven, or be threatened with national and cultural
annihilation.

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 Nationalities Papers

They looked to the collective state of Southern Slavs, first under the
name of Yugoslavia, but this idea rapidly proved to be an illusion, a
deception. Austria had been lagging in its attempt to form a uninational
German state from a variety of nationalities and now Serbia was engaged in
the same attempt. The only difference was that the common denominator for
unification was Serbianism and the attempt was about two hundred years too
late in comparison to similar processes in Western Europe. The Slovenes, at
this time, were already a fully formed nation with their own identity and
national consciousness. The opportunity to mold a homogeneous Yugoslav
nation has been delayed by ethnic conflicts which have characterized the
history of Yugoslavia between the world wars and up to today. These
conflicts have their source in resistance to Serbian hegemony and efforts of
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national survival. As unification was being achieved through violence,

democracy was not possible for the state, so the struggle for democracy
appeared also as an attempt at national emancipation. Advocates for
democracy had to be against Serbian hegemony, attempting to restructure the
state or push for independence.
During the Second World War, the struggle against German occupation
forces relied on a deeply-rooted conviction among the majority of Slovenes
that their victory in the war would also bring them national and political
independence. But none of these expectations was realized. On the
contrary, unification on the basis of a collective Yugoslav nation was
replaced by unification on the basis of a collective unitary Yugoslav working
class, the foundation for communist domination. With its terrorism and
centralism, communism evoked more than ever a struggle for national
independence, and this ended finally for the Slovenes with the Constitutional
Declaration of Independence in June, 1991, and disassociation from
Yugoslavia.
For the moment, the West is unwilling and unable to accept this
separation. It is a process which runs contrary to the movement towards the
formation of modern states in Western Europe: the assimilation of minor
nations into an homogeneous national state. The recognition of Slovenia as an
independent state would mean agreeing to the reversion of that process. Even
in Western Europe, individual national minority identity has been kept alive, in
spite of everything, by many not recognized by the dominant nations in the
West. The recognition of Slovenia could mean the destruction of the status
quo. It could mean that there is a demand to rearrange Europe, not on the basis
of nineteenth century national ideology, a demand which should be addressed.
This is evident from comparison with Europe's easy agreement to the
political independence of the Baltic States. Some of these are even smaller

38
 BuCar: Slovenia in Europe

in population than Slovenia, and all of them have on their territory strong
Russian armed forces, large Russian minorities (which in some cases match
or even surpass the native population) and all of them are so closely tied to
the Russian economic system that real economic independence still lies far
in the future. However, they have a decisive advantage: they were once
already internationally recognized as independent states, so their recognition
is a recognition of the status quo. The element of size, and of questionable
independent survival, is almost always given as an argument against the
recognition of Slovenia as an independent state; however, this is not the true
deciding factor. It is to prevent the existing situation established in Europe
over centuries of development from being threatened. The case of Slovenia,
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although small in size, is a potential force in the destabilization of Europe.

Every effort is made by Western Europe, through a range of institutions
which have been established, to ensure stability. And stability is needed; not
only because of the general wish for peace, which is beyond any doubt, but
also because stability is an increasingly important factor in modern
development. The greater the complexity of a particular system, the more it
is threatened; since a failure to function for even the smallest part of a
complicated technical system can paralyze the whole system. The same
holds analogically for the complex social systems which support today's
developed world. Because of these, war, in whatever shape, is
extraordinarily dangerous and unacceptable: not just because of the greater
awareness of humanity, but mainly because the developed world simply
cannot again afford the destruction that war can cause.
The attitude of the West becomes even clearer when reviewing the
reaction to events in Yugoslavia after the separation of Slovenia and, in
particular, Croatia. The hitherto guardian of Yugoslav unity and
legitimacy—the Serbian-controlled army and federal administration—
responded with violence and attempted genocidal destruction of the Croatian
nation and its cultural heritage. Yet Serbian hegemony can appeal to
legitimacy and uphold the status quo. Thus the response of the West was:
"We are not against independence but it must occur on the basis of
agreement and in a legal manner." This otherwise acceptable formula has a
"catch-22" built into it, in that only Serbia is entitled to prescribe which
procedure is legal. In this position, it is paradoxical that the actual aggressor,
i.e., the Serbian state and army, has the role of the defender of legitimacy,
and, therefore, in principle, should have the sympathy of the West, despite
their condemnation of excessive violence. Serbian hegemony continues the
process from which contemporary Europe sprang, and thus Europe was, at
first, predisposed to be on the side of Serbia in its attempts to preserve a

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 Nationalities Papers

unified Yugoslavia. It is the defence of the present roots of Europe! Every

possible diplomatic means was used to ensure the unity of Yugoslavia.
However, it is clear that Yugoslavia can no longer exist in its previous
form. Serbia can only maintain unity by means of violence, which, while in
the tradition of the violence with which contemporary Europe was created
over several centuries, is an anachronistic method today. It acts directly
against the peace and stability that Europe needs more than a unified
Yugoslavia, and this is the source of the equivocation in which Europe has
found itself; there is no legitimacy and, hence, no solution in a stability
based on violence. The solution lies elsewhere: restraint from violence
means recognition of aspirations which are clearly manifest in the
independence of Slovenia (also now appearing over the entire expanse of the
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former Soviet Union). There must be recognition of the right to political and
state independence for all emancipated nations, despite being in violation of
the status quo; it means the cancellation of a policy which is still being
defended by the entire West.
It may seem like extraordinary arrogance that a small country like
Slovenia should now insist that Western Europe adopt a new course to
accommodate its situation. But this situation exists throughout Europe as a
whole and is spreading over the remaining world. The argument usually put
forward against the aspirations for political emancipation of small nations is
that the contemporary world is integrating more and more, "yet you want
separation!" From this standpoint, even Slovenia's decision for
independence would be condemned to failure in the long term, but these
claims are mere sophistry. This is not a bid for isolationism and separatism.
It is a demand for a restructuring of Europe into a more highly developed
system that requires a new type of systemic integration. The Europe of the
future is not only an extension of die present national state into a higher
supra-national level. It needs a complex rearrangement which does not
negate the national state but adds a series of new structural elements of
greater complexity, characterized by the spirit of these complex times.
Creativity has typified the period of the scientific revolution of recent
centuries, based on the initial reduction of things in nature to unified
elements which are then rearranged into new constructions (the
contemporary nation state is based on this same principle). Now, capability
is the new paradigm for creating higher forms of composition from the
existing variety of the world, directly and without previous reductions. Only
on this principle can an enlightened Europe be formed.

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 Nationalities Papers, Volume XXI, Number 1, Spring 1993

Slovenia has a place in such a Europe, where it would not first have to be
reduced to the simplification of great national states. The new Europe of the
future is not an extension of the present national state into a higher supra-
national level, but a reconstruction into a composition of a higher order,
capable of directly linking the entire range of variety which Europe has at its
disposal. Central Europe in particular, of which Slovenia is an integral part,
is a typical candidate for such a transformation.
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