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Yugoslavia Slovenia
Throughout the postwar period, Slovenia was by far the
richest per capita, the most ethnically homogeneous, and the most
open to political experimentation of the Yugoslav republics. In
centuries of close contact with Austria, Italy, and France, it
had absorbed much from Western political and economic thought
(see The Slovenes
, ch. 1). Preservation of hard-won economic
advantages was a primary consideration in Slovenia's political
posture, especially after the 1974 Constitution prescribed new
federal budgeting procedures. Slovenes had always objected to
federal levies used to support underdeveloped economies in other
republics. By the mid-1980s, Slovenes were highly critical of
federal (Serbian-dominated) financial policy, especially when the
new procedures failed to reduce their payments for support of a
deteriorating economy in Kosovo, and when rising inflation hurt
their economy
(see Structure of the Economy
, ch. 3).
The combination of Western intellectual influence and
increasing pressure for independent solution of economic problems
led to formation of many official and unofficial noncommunist
political groups in Slovenia, which became the center of a major
political controversy in the late 1980s. Several politically
significant acts by official and unofficial Slovenian groups
posed a clear threat that the republic's substantial industrial,
financial, and agricultural resources might be withdrawn from the
federation. While loudly opposing the Serbian thrust for
centralization and dominance of Kosovo, the Slovenes liberalized
their own political system by adding multiple-candidate
elections, open media discussion of all issues, and noncommunist
political groups. In 1989 the Slovenian League of Communists
endorsed multiparty elections, and in 1990 it renamed itself the
Party of Democratic Renewal.
Although party president Milan Kucan had led a substantial
bloc of moderates as late as 1989, the momentum of new party
formation and the failure of compromise with Serbia brought
controversial change that threatened to carry the Slovenes
farther from the center of the federation. Among amendments added
to the Slovenian constitution in late 1989 were provisions
limiting the emergency intervention power of the Yugoslav
government in Slovenia, and affirming Slovenia's right to secede
from the federation if "national self-determination" were not
guaranteed in the next round of constitutional changes. Those
amendments were viewed as an alarming precedent by nearly all
non-Slovenian political groups, and they were declared at
variance with the national constitution by an advisory decision
of the Constitutional Court of Yugoslavia a few months after
passage.
As economic success and political reform progressed at home,
the Slovenes increasingly perceived Serbian nationalism as a
major danger. For Slovenes, Serbian nationalism threatened to
reinstate external control of economic resources and political
processes. At the time of the Fourteenth Party Congress in early
1990, the federal government and the LCY were split between proSerbian and pro-Slovenian factions. Slovenian party officials
condemned Serbian oppression in Kosovo and the Serbian demand for
a one man-one vote national decision--making system, which would
allow Serbia to dominate because of its large population. In 1989
the Front for Independent Slovenia appeared with demands for
total independence. Slovenia was the first Yugoslav republic ever
to hold multiparty elections, in early 1990. At the time of the
elections, the Slovenian Social Democratic Alliance was one of
only two Yugoslav noncommunist parties to have expanded past
republican borders. That group was part of a coalition called
Demos, which easily won the first (parliamentary) phase of
elections, defeating Kucan's former communists with a platform
that included secession from Yugoslavia. In the presidential
runoff, the popular reformist Kucan won, making him the first
freely elected communist head of government in Eastern Europe,
and creating a mixed republican government in Slovenia.
Data as of December 1990
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