The Slovenes 2
[content removed by staff]
[content removed by staff]
The 1948 Tito–Stalin split and aftermath
In 1948, the Tito–Stalin split took place. In the first years following the split, the political repression worsened, as it extended to Communists accused of Stalinism. Hundreds of Slovenes were imprisoned in the concentration camp of Goli Otok, together with thousands of people of other nationalities. Among the show trials that took place in Slovenia between 1945 and 1950, the most important were the Nagode trial against democratic intellectuals and left liberal activists (1946) and the Dachau trials (1947–1949), where former inmates of Nazi concentration camps were accused of collaboration with the Nazis. Many members of the Roman Catholic clergy suffered persecution. The case of bishop of Ljubljana Anton Vovk, who was doused with gasoline and set on fire by Communist activists during a pastoral visit to Novo Mesto in January 1952, echoed in the western press.
Between 1949 and 1953, a forced collectivization was attempted. After its failure, a policy of gradual liberalization followed.
1950s: heavy industrialization
In the late 1950s, Slovenia was the first of the Yugoslav republics to begin a process of relative pluralization. A decade of industrialisation was accompanied also by a fervent cultural and literary production with many tensions between the government and the dissident intellectuals. From the late 1950s onward, dissident circles started to be formed, mostly around short-lived independent journals, such as Revija 57 (1957–1958), which was the first independent intellectual journal in Yugoslavia and one of the first of this kind in the Communist bloc, and Perspektive (1960–1964). Among the most important critical public intellectuals in this period were the sociologist Jože Pučnik, the poet Edvard Kocbek, and the literary historian Dušan Pirjevec.
1960s: self-management
By the late 1960s, the reformist faction gained control of the Slovenian Communist Party, launching a series of reforms, aiming at the modernization of Slovenian society and economy. A new economic policy, known as workers self-management started to be implemented under the advice and supervision of the main champion of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Slovene Edvard Kardelj.
1970s: years of Lead
In 1973, the reformist trend was stopped by the conservative faction of the Slovenian Communist Party, backed by the Yugoslav Federal government. A period known as the "Years of Lead" (Slovene: svinčena leta) followed.
1980s: towards independence
In the 1980s, Slovenia experienced a rise in cultural pluralism. Numerous grass-roots political, artistic and intellectual movements emerged, including the Neue Slowenische Kunst, the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, and the Nova revija intellectual circle. By the mid-1980s, a reformist fraction, led by Milan Kučan, took control of the Slovenian Communist Party, starting a gradual reform towards market socialism and controlled political pluralism.
Slovenes in independent Slovenia
The first clear demand for Slovene independence was made in 1987 by a group of intellectuals in the 57th edition of the magazine Nova revija. Demands for democratisation and increase of Slovenian independence were sparked off. A mass democratic movement, coordinated by the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, pushed the Communists in the direction of democratic reforms. In 1991, Slovenia became an independent nation state after a brief ten-day war. In December 1991, a new constitution was adopted, followed in 1992 by the laws on denationalisation and privatization. The members of the European Union recognised Slovenia as an independent state on 15 January 1992, and the United Nations accepted it as a member on 22 May 1992.
2010s: Slovenian disillusionment with socio-economic elites
The disillusionment with domestic socio-economic elites at municipal and the State's level was expressed at the 2012–2013 Slovenian protests on a wider scale than in the smaller 15 October 2011 protests – Slovenian disillusionment with the elites and financial institutions at the European and global level. In relation to the leading politicians' response to allegations made by official Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia, law experts expressed the need for changes in the system that would limit political arbitrariness.
Identity
[content removed by staff]
The first researchers of the origin of Slovenes believed, on the basis of the German name for Slovenes, Wenden or Winden, that Slovenes were descendants of the Germanic tribe of the Vandals. Even today, some German speakers refer to the Slovenian minority in Carinthian Austria as Windische, as if a separate ethnicity. This claim is rejected by linguists on the basis that their dialect is by all standards a variant of Slovene. The Germanic word Wenden generally refers to the Wends, a West Slavic tribe that settled along the now Eastern Germany, and who are more commonly known as Sorbs. The first to define Slovenes as a separate branch of the Slavic people was Anton Tomaž Linhart in his work An Essay on the History of Carniola and Other Lands of the Austrian South Slavs, published in 1791. In it, Linhart also established the linguistic unity of the Slovene ethnic territory and set the foundations of the Slovene ethnography.
After the disintegration of Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and the formation of independent Slovenia in the early 1990s motivated interest in a particularly Slovenian national identity. One reflection of this was an attempt at the rejection of a Slavic identity in favour of a "Venetic" one. The autochthonist "Venetic theory" was advanced in the mid 1980s, but it never gained wide currency. The identification with Slavic roots remains strong in Slovenia and in 2004 even led to the establishment of the Forum of Slavic Cultures in Ljubljana.
In the late 1980s, several symbols from the Middle Ages were revived as Slovenian national symbols. Among them, the most popular are the so-called Slovene Hat which featured in the coat of arms of the Slovene March, and the Black Panther, a reconstruction of the supposed coat of arms of the Carolingian duchy of Carantania. After being used in the Flag of Slovenia, the graphical representation of Triglav has become recognised as a national symbol. Per the Constitution of Slovenia and the Slovenian act on national symbols, the flag of the Slovene nation is a white-blue-red flag without the coat-of-arms. The ratio of the width to height of the flag is one to two.
Language
Freising manuscripts are the first written words in Slovene. Four parchment leaves and a further quarter of a page have been preserved. They consist of three texts in the oldest Slovenian dialect. Linguistic, stylistic and contextual analyses reveal that these are church texts of careful composition and literary form.
Primož Trubar (1508–1586) is the author of the first printed book in Slovene. He was Slovenian Protestant Reformer of the Lutheran tradition.
Religion
Most ethnic Slovenes are Roman Catholic by faith, with some historical Protestant minorities, especially Lutherans in Prekmurje. A sizable minority of Slovenes are non-religious or atheists, According to the published data from the 2002 Slovenian census, out of a total of 47,488 Muslims (who represent 2.4% of the total population), 2,804 Muslims (who in turn represent 5.9% of the total Muslims in Slovenia) declared themselves as Slovenian Muslims.
[content removed by staff]
[content removed by staff]
The 1948 Tito–Stalin split and aftermath
In 1948, the Tito–Stalin split took place. In the first years following the split, the political repression worsened, as it extended to Communists accused of Stalinism. Hundreds of Slovenes were imprisoned in the concentration camp of Goli Otok, together with thousands of people of other nationalities. Among the show trials that took place in Slovenia between 1945 and 1950, the most important were the Nagode trial against democratic intellectuals and left liberal activists (1946) and the Dachau trials (1947–1949), where former inmates of Nazi concentration camps were accused of collaboration with the Nazis. Many members of the Roman Catholic clergy suffered persecution. The case of bishop of Ljubljana Anton Vovk, who was doused with gasoline and set on fire by Communist activists during a pastoral visit to Novo Mesto in January 1952, echoed in the western press.
Between 1949 and 1953, a forced collectivization was attempted. After its failure, a policy of gradual liberalization followed.
1950s: heavy industrialization
In the late 1950s, Slovenia was the first of the Yugoslav republics to begin a process of relative pluralization. A decade of industrialisation was accompanied also by a fervent cultural and literary production with many tensions between the government and the dissident intellectuals. From the late 1950s onward, dissident circles started to be formed, mostly around short-lived independent journals, such as Revija 57 (1957–1958), which was the first independent intellectual journal in Yugoslavia and one of the first of this kind in the Communist bloc, and Perspektive (1960–1964). Among the most important critical public intellectuals in this period were the sociologist Jože Pučnik, the poet Edvard Kocbek, and the literary historian Dušan Pirjevec.
1960s: self-management
By the late 1960s, the reformist faction gained control of the Slovenian Communist Party, launching a series of reforms, aiming at the modernization of Slovenian society and economy. A new economic policy, known as workers self-management started to be implemented under the advice and supervision of the main champion of the Yugoslav Communist Party, Slovene Edvard Kardelj.
1970s: years of Lead
In 1973, the reformist trend was stopped by the conservative faction of the Slovenian Communist Party, backed by the Yugoslav Federal government. A period known as the "Years of Lead" (Slovene: svinčena leta) followed.
1980s: towards independence
In the 1980s, Slovenia experienced a rise in cultural pluralism. Numerous grass-roots political, artistic and intellectual movements emerged, including the Neue Slowenische Kunst, the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, and the Nova revija intellectual circle. By the mid-1980s, a reformist fraction, led by Milan Kučan, took control of the Slovenian Communist Party, starting a gradual reform towards market socialism and controlled political pluralism.
Slovenes in independent Slovenia
The first clear demand for Slovene independence was made in 1987 by a group of intellectuals in the 57th edition of the magazine Nova revija. Demands for democratisation and increase of Slovenian independence were sparked off. A mass democratic movement, coordinated by the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, pushed the Communists in the direction of democratic reforms. In 1991, Slovenia became an independent nation state after a brief ten-day war. In December 1991, a new constitution was adopted, followed in 1992 by the laws on denationalisation and privatization. The members of the European Union recognised Slovenia as an independent state on 15 January 1992, and the United Nations accepted it as a member on 22 May 1992.
2010s: Slovenian disillusionment with socio-economic elites
The disillusionment with domestic socio-economic elites at municipal and the State's level was expressed at the 2012–2013 Slovenian protests on a wider scale than in the smaller 15 October 2011 protests – Slovenian disillusionment with the elites and financial institutions at the European and global level. In relation to the leading politicians' response to allegations made by official Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia, law experts expressed the need for changes in the system that would limit political arbitrariness.
Identity
[content removed by staff]
The first researchers of the origin of Slovenes believed, on the basis of the German name for Slovenes, Wenden or Winden, that Slovenes were descendants of the Germanic tribe of the Vandals. Even today, some German speakers refer to the Slovenian minority in Carinthian Austria as Windische, as if a separate ethnicity. This claim is rejected by linguists on the basis that their dialect is by all standards a variant of Slovene. The Germanic word Wenden generally refers to the Wends, a West Slavic tribe that settled along the now Eastern Germany, and who are more commonly known as Sorbs. The first to define Slovenes as a separate branch of the Slavic people was Anton Tomaž Linhart in his work An Essay on the History of Carniola and Other Lands of the Austrian South Slavs, published in 1791. In it, Linhart also established the linguistic unity of the Slovene ethnic territory and set the foundations of the Slovene ethnography.
After the disintegration of Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and the formation of independent Slovenia in the early 1990s motivated interest in a particularly Slovenian national identity. One reflection of this was an attempt at the rejection of a Slavic identity in favour of a "Venetic" one. The autochthonist "Venetic theory" was advanced in the mid 1980s, but it never gained wide currency. The identification with Slavic roots remains strong in Slovenia and in 2004 even led to the establishment of the Forum of Slavic Cultures in Ljubljana.
In the late 1980s, several symbols from the Middle Ages were revived as Slovenian national symbols. Among them, the most popular are the so-called Slovene Hat which featured in the coat of arms of the Slovene March, and the Black Panther, a reconstruction of the supposed coat of arms of the Carolingian duchy of Carantania. After being used in the Flag of Slovenia, the graphical representation of Triglav has become recognised as a national symbol. Per the Constitution of Slovenia and the Slovenian act on national symbols, the flag of the Slovene nation is a white-blue-red flag without the coat-of-arms. The ratio of the width to height of the flag is one to two.
Language
Freising manuscripts are the first written words in Slovene. Four parchment leaves and a further quarter of a page have been preserved. They consist of three texts in the oldest Slovenian dialect. Linguistic, stylistic and contextual analyses reveal that these are church texts of careful composition and literary form.
Primož Trubar (1508–1586) is the author of the first printed book in Slovene. He was Slovenian Protestant Reformer of the Lutheran tradition.
Religion
Most ethnic Slovenes are Roman Catholic by faith, with some historical Protestant minorities, especially Lutherans in Prekmurje. A sizable minority of Slovenes are non-religious or atheists, According to the published data from the 2002 Slovenian census, out of a total of 47,488 Muslims (who represent 2.4% of the total population), 2,804 Muslims (who in turn represent 5.9% of the total Muslims in Slovenia) declared themselves as Slovenian Muslims.
[content removed by staff]
26-30, F