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Yugoslavia The Slovenes
The Slovenes, a Slavic people, migrated southwestward across
present-day Romania in about the sixth century A.D., and settled
in the Julian Alps. They apparently enjoyed broad autonomy in the
seventh century, after escaping Avar domination. The Franks
overran the Slovenes in the late eighth century; during the rule
of the Frankish king Charlemagne, German nobles began enserfing
the Slovenes and German missionaries baptized them in the Latin
rite. Emperor Otto I incorporated most of the Slovenian lands
into the duchy of Carantania in 952; later rulers split the duchy
into Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria
(see
fig. 2). In 1278 the
Slovenian lands fell to the Austrian Habsburgs, who controlled
them until 1918.
Turkish marauders plagued Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Slovenes abandoned
lands vulnerable to attack and raised bulwarks around churches to
protect themselves. The Turkish conquest of the Balkans and
Hungary also disrupted the Slovenian economy; to compensate, the
nobles stiffened feudal obligations and crushed peasant revolts
between 1478 and 1573.
In the tumult of the sixteenth century, German nobles in the
three Slovenian provinces clamored for greater autonomy, embraced
the Protestant Reformation, and drew many Slovenes away from the
Catholic Church. The Reformation sparked the Slovenes' first
cultural awakening. In 1550 Primoz Trubar published the first
Slovenian-language book, a catechism. He later produced a
translation of the New Testament and printed other Slovenian
religious books in the Latin and
Cyrillic (see Glossary) scripts.
Ljubljana had a printing press by 1575, but the authorities
closed it when Jurij Dalmatin tried to publish a translation of
the Bible. Slovenian publishing activity then shifted to Germany,
where Dalmatin published his Bible with a glossary enabling
Croats to read it. The Counterreformation accelerated in Austria
in the early seventeenth century, and in 1628 the emperor forced
Protestants to choose between Catholicism and exile. Jesuit
counterreformers burned Slovenian Protestant literature and took
other measures that retarded diversification of Slovenian culture
but failed to stifle it completely. Some Jesuits preached and
composed hymns in Slovenian, opened schools, taught from an
expurgated edition of Dalmatin's Bible, and sent Slovenian
students to Austrian universities. Nonetheless Slovenian remained
a peasant idiom and the higher social classes spoke German or
Italian.
The Slovenian economic links with Germany and Italy
strengthened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
living conditions improved. The Vienna-Trieste trade route
crossed through the Slovenian cities of Maribor and Ljubljana.
Agricultural products and raw materials were exported over this
trade route, and exotic goods were imported from the East.
Despite his campaign to Germanize the Austrian Empire, Emperor
Joseph II (1780-90) encouraged translation of educational
materials into Slovenian. He also distributed monastic lands,
workshops, and fisheries to Slovenian entrepreneurs.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Slovenian prosperity
had yielded a self-reliant middle class that sent its sons to
study
in Vienna and Paris. They returned steeped in the views of the
Enlightenment and bent on rational examination of their own
culture. Slovenian intellectuals began writing in Slovenian
rather than German, and they introduced the idea of a Slovenian
nation. Between 1788 and 1791, Anton Linhart wrote an antifeudal,
anticlerical history of the Slovenes that depicted them for the
first time as a single people. In 1797 Father Valentin Vodnik
composed Slovenian poetry and founded the first Slovenian
newspaper.
After several victories over Austria, Napoleon incorporated
the Slovenian regions and other Austrian lands into the French
Empire as the Illyrian Provinces, with the capital at Ljubljana.
Despite unpopular new tax and conscription laws, Slovenian
intellectuals welcomed the French, who issued proclamations in
Slovenian as well as in German and French, built roads, reformed
the government, appointed Slovenes to official posts, and opened
Slovenian-language schools for both sexes. France strengthened
the national self-awareness of the Slovenes and other South Slavs
in the Illyrian Provinces by promoting the concept of Illyria as
a common link among Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. This concept
later evolved into the idea of uniting the South Slavs in an
independent state.
Austria reasserted its dominance of the Slovenes in 1813 and
rescinded the French reforms. Slovenian intellectuals, however,
continued refining the Slovenian language and national identity,
while Austria strove to confine their activities to the cultural
sphere. The pro-Austrian philologist and linguist Jernej Kopitar
pioneered comparative Slavic linguistics and created a Slovenian
literary language from numerous local dialects, hoping to
strengthen the monarchy and Catholicism. France Preseren, perhaps
the greatest Slovenian poet, worked to transform the Slovenian
peasant idiom into a language as refined as German. In the 1840s,
Slovenian audiences heard the first official public speech
delivered in Slovenian and the first Slovenian songs sung in a
theater. In 1843 Janez Blajvajs founded a practical journal for
peasants and craftsmen that carried the cultural movement beyond
the upper class to the masses.
Revolution convulsed Europe in 1848, and demonstrators in
cities throughout the Austrian Empire called for constitutional
monarchy. Crowds in Ljubljana cheered the apparent downfall of
the old order. Intellectual groups drafted the Slovenes' first
political platforms. Some programs called for an autonomous
"Unified Slovenia" within the empire; others supported
unification of the South Slavs into an Illyrian state linked with
Austria or Germany. The 1848 revolution swept away serfdom, but
the political movement of the Slovenes made little headway before
the Austrian government regained control and imposed absolutist
rule. In the 1850s and early 1860s, the campaigns of Slovenian
leaders were again restricted to the cultural sphere.
Military defeats in 1859 and 1866 exposed the internal
weakness of the Austrian Empire, and in 1867 Austria attempted to
revitalize itself by joining with Hungary to form the
Dual
Monarchy (see Glossary). In the late 1860s, Slovenian leaders,
convinced of the empire's imminent collapse, resurrected the
dream of a United Slovenia. They staged mass rallies, agitated
for use of the Slovenian language in schools and local
government, and sought support from the Croats and other South
Slavs. When the threat to the survival of Austria-Hungary waned
after 1871, the Slovenes withdrew their support for a South Slav
union and adapted themselves to political life within the Dual
Monarchy. The conservative coalition that ruled Austria from 1879
to 1893 made minor cultural concessions to the Slovenes,
including use of Slovenian in schools and local administration in
some areas. Slovenes controlled the local assembly of Carniola
after 1883, and Ljubljana had a Slovenian mayor after 1888.
In 1907 Austria instituted universal male suffrage, which
encouraged Slovenian politicians that the empire would eventually
fulfill the Slovenes' national aspirations. In October 1908,
Austria annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina. The annexation sharpened
the national self-awareness of the South Slavs and generated
rumors of impending war with Serbia. Troop mobilization began.
However, the main Slovenian parties welcomed the annexation as a
step toward a union of the empire's South Slavs. Tensions eased
after six months, but Austria-Hungary, fearing
Pan-Slavism (see Glossary), conducted witch hunts
for disloyal Slavs. In 1909
Slovenian party leaders criticized Vienna for mistreating the
Slavs, but the possibilities of a South Slav union within the
empire declined. Demands rose for creation of an independent
South Slav nation, and a socialist conference in Ljubljana even
called for the cultural unification of all South Slavs. Such
appeals began a heated debate on the implications of unification
for Slovenian culture.
Data as of December 1990
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