The Slovene society and its history

Slovenia has been called "the forgotten survivor of the Yugoslav wars". However, it was Slovenia which started the dissolution process of Yugoslavia, not only by seceding on 25 July 1991, but also by succeeding in developing its economy and its civil society in the 1980's to the point where seceding may have been the only viable choice. (Independent Slovenia 1994, ix). Slovenia gained its independence peacefully compared with the other Yugoslavian states, and currently its GDP per capita is 11.166 $ (Business Central Europe, October 1997), which provides living standards well above those of the poorest European Union countries.(Independent Slovenia 1994, x). Slovenia has succeeded in building a democratic society and avoiding conflicts with its neighbourgs, which is the reason why it has been forgotten: the United States and the European Union need to be much more concerned about the situation in the other states of former Yugoslavia.

Karantania

Slovenes first settled in their present corner of Europe in the middle of the sixth century. Here, early in the next century, they established a political entity, Karantania, whose center was near present-day Klagenfurt, Austria. Historically, Karantania was the only state Slovenes can claim as their own. In A.D. 745 an era of sterner domination by Bavaria and the Franks began. This era ended in the twelfth century. By the ninth century the space Slovenes inhabited was more than double Slovenia's present size and included much of central Austria. War and migration of peoples gradually diminished its size. (Rogel 1997, 4)

Slovenes in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy

In the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries most Slovene lands became a part of the Habsburg feudal domain. Those days national, cultural and political distinctions were of slight importance: Slovenes belonged to a universal community - Western Christendom. Even though a modern national consciousness was still centuries into the future, developments toward establishing a Slovene identity came in the sixteenth century. Humanism and Protestant reformers, stressing man and his relationship to his Creator, promoted the spread of literacy. Until then, Slovene had not been a written language. (Rogel 1997, 4-5)

susanna taskinen: You talk about man and his relationship to his creator; what about women? What was their role? Were they also literate and allowed to go to school to learn to read and write?

The national awakening occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was part of the intellectual revolution known as the Enlightenment. According to it only free and literate peasantry could garantee prosperity and economic growth. The Habsburgs were not espousing Germanism but were being pragmatic: it made sense that people could use their own language in administration, schools etc. But obligating people to read and write also made them aware of their identity: it began national consciousness. (Rogel 1997, 5-6) However, Slovenes were never separatists: their aim was a United Slovenia within Austria, as an autonomous, self-governing unit (Vodopivec 1997, 27; Rogel 1997, 8). The idea of an independent Slovenia was regarded as unrealistic. At that time, it was not considered practical for a group of about one million to aspire to independence. Conventional realpolitik thinking of the pre-1914 era favoured the large, economically advanced, militarily powerful nations, like France and Germany. For the small so-called nations of central Europe, a multiethnic political entity such as the Habsburg empire was deemed appropriate (similar pragmatism in the twentieth century bound Slovenes to Yugoslavia).(Rogel 1997, 3)

susanna taskinen: Again: did women also participate in the national awakening? And if so how?

In the middle of the 19th century, as the result of several short wars, Austria had to concede territory to Italy, Prussia and Hungary and agree to create the Dual Monarchy with Hungary. The Slovenes were divided territorially: most remained in the Austrian half of the Habsburg state, but some found themselves in Italy or Hungary. Austrian Germans became more nationalistic and they conflicted more and more frequently with the non-Germans of the monarchy - mostly Slavs. Resistance against Germanism created the idea of Yugoslavism: Slovenes would not be able to achieve their political goals by themselves, thus they would have to seek allies among the other South Slavs of the monarchy, Croats and Serbs. From the beginning, a constant feature of Slovene national consciousness was a sense of the nation's smallness. Joining forces with Croats and possibly Serbs would enhance their position numerically. However, secession from Austria was not yet a working option in the minds of politicians: they expected the Yugoslav program to be realized within Austria. (Vodopivec 1997, 27; Rogel 1997, 8-14)

The First World War began when Austria retaliated against Serbia for the archduke's assassination. With Franz Ferdinand's death, the plan to achieve a South Slav state within Austria was essentially dead. Slovenes, together with the empire's Croats and Serbs, were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army to fight Serbia. Already at the beginning of the war, a considerable number of Slovenes volunteered to serve in the Serbian army. On October 29, 1918, the National Council, a body which spoke for the empire's Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, declared the establishment of a totally independent South Slav state. The new state, comprised of the empire's Yugoslavs, joined with Serbia and Montenegro, and in December the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was announced.(Rogel 1997,14-15)

susanna taskinen: What was women's role in the wars? (You tell something about this later, but maybe you could tell something about that already here.)

Slovenia in the First Yugoslavia

A united Slovenia had been the goal of Slovene politicians since 1848. It had not been attained within Austria, nor was it realized in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929). After the First World War nearly one-third of ethnic Slovenes came under Italian rule. The separation from these Western territories, especially Trieste, was regarded as a major economic setback. Trieste had the largest Slovene urban population, one actively engaged in industrial and commercial life. The Entente powers also enabled Austria to retain some ethnically Slovene lands.(Rogel 1997, 15-16)

The State of SCS was created before there was agreement about how it would be governed. The South Slavs of the Habsburg lands generally favoured a federalistic arrangement, with autonomy for each of the national components. However, Serbia as a "winner" state after World War I, was able to impose centralist rule and Serbian hegemony upon the new state. In the twenties Slovene political leaders found themselves struggling with Belgrade in ways they had struggled with Vienna. (Rogel 1997, 16) Being joined with Balkan lands in the south, many of which were backward territories of the former Ottoman Empire, was also an economic disadvantage for Slovenia (Rogel 1997, 4) It was paradoxical, that the economically least developed areas of the Habsburg monarcy, Croatia and Slovenia, suddenly became the most developed parts of the new Yugoslav state. (Vodopivec 1997, 31) .It was also a shock to Slovenes, with about 90 percent literacy, to come into a community where the average literacy was only approximately 40 percent (Dolenc 1997, 78) However, there were promising signs as well, such as the founding of a series of educational and cultural institutions, which the Slovenes had not had under the Austrian rule (Vodopivec 1997, 29).

susanna taskinen: How did the economic disadvantage affect women and their position in the society?

In 1929, after the introduction of the royal dictatorship, the centralist pressure began. Slovenes felt that their national existence was seriously threatened. They criticized centralism and demanded autonomy, but they did not advocate Slovene withdrawal from Yugoslavia: Slovene independence seemed still obviously and completely unrealistic. (Vodopivec 1997, 32)

When World War II began in Yugoslavia, virtually all the rest of continental Europe had already come under German or Italian domination. In April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded. Slovene lands were overrun and partitioned by the neighbours: Italy, Hungary and Germany. The royal government of Yugoslavia, unprepared for defence of the country, fled, leaving its subjects to defend themselves. The abandoned Yugoslavs organized their own opposition to the occupation. In Slovenia the resistance movement, Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, was led by the Communist Party of Slovenia, which coordinated its efforts with the communist party of Yugoslavia.However, the fact of Communist leadership was deliberately played down in order to allow broadest possible participation in the resistance, which was especially strong among Slovenes who had lived under repressive regimes in Austria and Italy in the interwar years.(Rogel 1997, 17-18)

susanna taskinen: What was women's role in the resistance movement?

The resistance in Slovenia was complicated by civil war. The conservative, church-supported White Guard opposed the resistance of the Liberation Front. The LF, however, had a wide support, and after 1943 it also received decisive backing and arms from the Allies, and the Communist-led partisan resistance came out the winner in the events.(Rogel 1997, 19)

susanna taskinen: Is there any information available which side women favored?

Slovenia in socialist Yugoslavia

After the war , the Slovene leaders held to the view that Yugoslavia would have to be restored and reconfigured. The winners of the civil war, the Yugoslav Communists faithfully copied the Soviet system and the Slovenian nation gained the status of a sovereign republic within the federal socialist state of Yugoslavia.(Vodopivec 1997, 35; Jogan 1994, 307). Soon Yugoslavia, however, conflicted with Stalin, and it had to look for its own way to open to the West but to remain Communist (Vodopivec 1997,35-36). In the 1950's and 1960's, the Yugoslav system was by far the most liberal in Eastern Europe (Vodopivec 1997, 25).

Political leaders maintained that the national question was solved once and for all through social revolution and through the restructuring of Yugoslavia into a federalist state. But already in the very beginning there was much criticism of the economic policy. The Communist policy insisted on active and generous support by the industrialized regions of those left behind in their social and economic development. In Slovenia this policy was always considered a "false solidarity" and became an important cause of political tensions and misunderstandings. Slovenia was supposed to have special obligations to the rest of Yugoslavia (Vodopivec 1997, 36) and a common stereotype in Slovenia (expressed already in 1920's) was:"In Yugoslavia it is thus: The Serbs rule, the Croats debate, and the Slovenes work". (Sundhausen 1982,67)

susanna taskinen: Did Slovene women work also?

It wasn't, however, until 1980 that Yugoslavia entered a severe political crisis, when Tito's death was followed by a gradual diminution of the authority of the central communist institutions. (Vodopivec 1997, 25-26) The Yugoslav Communist system showed itself to be utterly incapable of resolving the accumulated social, economic, political and national antagonisms (Vodopivec 1997, 40-41). According to Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenia's foreign minister at the moment of independence, Serbia used the National bank of Yugoslavia almost as a supermarket, "borrowing" more than $ 1 billion in December 1990 (Rupel 1997, 190). Slovenes contended that their hard-earned money was being used in the less-developed regions of Yugoslavia (Kraft, Vodopivec, Cvikl 1997, 201) But the federal economic policy was only one of the causes of Slovenia's critical attitude toward Yugoslavia. Slovenes were even more sensitive to the subordination of the republics to Belgrade in the cultural and linguistic spheres.(Vodopivec 1997, 40-41) Since Slovenes had been for more than a thousand years as a part of some larger state, the position of their own language and culture was always central to them and also the main source of national consciousness and Slovene identity. To compensate the lack of statehood, they had produced a formidable quantity of cultural institutions throughout the history, and they did not like the idea that these would be controlled by Belgrade.(Dolenc 1997; Rupel 1997,186)

susanna taskinen: In this chapter you write about e.g. social antagonisms, what type of antagonisms? Any antagonisms between sexes or gender roles?

susanna taskinen: What was the role of Slovene women in the culture? Are there any national stories in which women would have a role? And if so, what kind of role?

Slovenes were also willing to develope Yugoslavia to a more democratic direction, but it became more and more obvious that the processes of democratization and liberation from Communist ideological schemes were proceeding much faster in the western/northern part of Yugoslavia than in the east/south. (Vodopivec 1997, 40-41) The Yugoslavian authorities could not, of course, say a word against democracy itself, since the Yugoslav system had self-evidently accomplished democracy. Thus they had to explain the problems with Slovenes in national or ethnic terms: Slovenes were denounced as anti-army and anti-Yugoslav. (Mastnak 1997, 101-102) and because of that, in 1989, Serbia broke off economic relations with Slovenia. Therefore, Yugoslavia had disintegrated even before Slovenia formally declared its independence. (Vodopivec 1997, 42-43)

Independent Slovenia

When it became apparent that powerful forces in the rest of Yugoslavia opposed the goals of Western-style political democracy and market economy, Slovenes embraced the idea of independence (Kraft, Vodopivec, Cvikl 1997, 201). On the basis of the right of all nations to self-determination, the inhabitants of the Republic of Slovenia voted at a referendum held on 23 December 1990, with an absolute majority of votes, to form the sovreign and independent state of the Republic of Slovenia. In keeping the outcome of the referendum, the Slovenian Parliament, as the highest body of authority in Slovenia, passed an Act of Parliament on 25 June 1991 - the Basic Constitutional Charter of Independence and Sovereignity of the Republic of Slovenia. The Yugoslav Army, however, did not respect this Act of Parliament and the voice of the people of Slovenia and launched an armed attack on Slovenia on 27 June 1991. The aggression ended after ten days of war with a truce, followed by the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army from Slovenia in October 1991. Thus the Republic of Slovenia had complete and effective control over the whole of its territory by the second half of 1991. Since January 1992 the republic of Slovenia has also been an internationally recognized sovreign and independent state. (Preliminary Report from the Republic of Slovenia on Measures taken for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women 1993 1995, 50-51) After persistent lobbying, Slovenia managed to project the image of a peaceful and cooperative country, distinct from the rest of former Yugoslav republics, and it gained a position in the international community (Rupel 1997, 193).

At first glance, it might seem paradoxical that the first to leave Yugoslavia were the Slovenes. They had no tradition of an independent state. Never in modern history had they considered very vocally or decisively full independence as a national state. The great majority of Slovenes hoped that it would be possible to reform Yugoslavia, and Yugoslavia was a Slovene option right up to the end, but it would have had to be a Yugoslavia in the form of a confederation of independent states, which would freely follow their own ambitions.Even in the Slovene Declaration of Self-determination, formulated in 1990, the Slovenes still offered the possibility of Slovene participation in a loose "Confederation of Yugoslav Nations". But this idea was never even seriously discussed by the Yugoslav federal government and Serbian political elites.(Vodopivec 1997, 23-24, 42)

Slovenia calculated that it could declare independence from Yugoslavia and survive, indeed flourish. There are at least three contributing factors to this: ethnic homogeneity, economic development and strong civil society. (Independent Slovenia 1997, ix)

Perhaps the most decisive point was ethnic homogeneity. Slovenia's population is 93 percent ethnically Slovene (2.8 % Croats, 2.44 % Serbs, 1.37 % Muslims, 0.43 % Hungarians, 0.16 % Italians; in the ethnically mixed regions the two other official languages are Hungarian and Italian). (Preliminary Report from the Republic of Slovenia on Measures taken for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women 1993 1995, 49) However, in the 1980's, Slovenia had a hidden minority: Bosnian "guest workers" who came to Slovenia to earn higher wages. Many of these workers were men who left their families behind in "the south", and sent most of their earnings back home. The issue of Bosnians in Slovenia has only grown in significance with Slovene independence. The relative ease of independence and recovery has made Slovenia a landing point for those escaping the torments of war that followed in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. War refugees in Slovenia numbered 75.000 in March 1994. Since Slovenia accepted large numbers of refugees, one of the prospective problems for independent Slovenia will be its ability to absorb, integrate, and protect the human rights of refugees from the wars in former Yugoslavia. (Independent Slovenia 1997, ix-x)

Slovenia's other major advantage over other ex-Yugoslav republics lies in its economic strength. Even though Slovenes accounted for 8.2% of Yugoslavia's population in 1989, Slovenia accounted for 16.6% of Yugoslavia's gross domestic product and 22.5% of its exports. Already then Slovene companies succesfully sold their goods to Western Europe. (Independent Slovenia 1997, x)

During the years of the independence, Slovenia has succeeded in surprising both its own citizens as well as the Western market economies by its fast economical growth. Blessed with a mixed industrial base and good Western links, companies quickly found niches in EU markets and either adapted their products or started producing new ones to meet the requirements. It is also interesting that Slovenes are now selling relatively expensive stuff. In 1990 the average price of a Slovene product sold to the EU was 40% below the average Spanish export, now it is 20% above. (Business Central Europe October 1997)

The third factor for the ease of the independence of Slovenia is its vibrant civil society. By the mid-1980's, Slovenia was the site of the most developed civil society in the Yugoslav federation. New social movements flourished, taking action on behalf of peace, feminism, ecology, lesbians and gays, human rights, and against nuclear power. Slovene pluralism in the late 1980's found itself at what proved to be irreconcilable odds with other republics of Yugoslavia. (Independent Slovenia 1997, x-xi) The hegemony of new social movements in iniating and directing the democratic transformation was a unique Slovene phenomenon; it was only in Slovenia that the alternative to the existing system was explicitly articulated in terms of civil society. (Mastnak 1997, 97)

susanna taskinen: I think here it would have been interesting to hear more about the feminist movement. For instance in Great Britain women have been especially involved with the peace movement, what about in Slovenia?

Slovenia has directed its strategic orientation toward central Europe, but it is still very much interested in keeping good relations with the partners to the southeast. One of the reasons is peace: without peace in the neighbourhood, Slovenia is just the last station before wilderness. Then, there are economic interests. Slovenia knows the territories, the markets, the culture and the people. Slovenia is also able to provide dependable information to other countries on the Croatian and the Bosnian situation. (Rupel 1997, 194-196)

susanna taskinen: The history part is of course interesting, but it does not very well support the rest of the text if you want to keep gender roles as your topic. May you should already in this part tell us more about gender specific history.

Kirsikka Bonsdorff: I agree.