by Max Barry

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THE SLOVENE REPUBLIC

S l o v e n s k a r e p u b l i k a




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(OOC)

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Stretching from the Adriatic to the Alps, the Slovene Republic is the child of truly lucky historical happenstance. In the years leading up to the Second World War, the Slovene communist movement represented freedom from monarchist Yugoslavia. However, Yugoslav collaboration with the fascist powers of the war and various non-belligerents saw the swift decapitation of the communist cause in Slovenia and the deaths of Boris Kidrič and Edvard Kardelj. In the space it left, nationalist separatism heightened. Built on the ideas of the rich Slovene nationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—even that of socialists, such as Josip Vidmar—it rejected the opportunistic Yugoslavism of Oton Župančič. With Italianization pressing ever harder on Slovenes in Trieste and the future of ‘Slovenia’ in question, separatism thrived during the war, during which Yugoslavia was spared invasion.

As it became clearer that Yugoslavia was nonetheless collapsing under the strain of ethnic and political disunity, communism became a great specter over the Balkan peninsula. The Western Allies thus saw great potential in the Slovene nationalist movement, which it hoped to leverage into creating a democratic buffer between the East and West after the war. The pleas of Slovene jurist and Freemason Boris Furlan in London were at last heard after the American entry into the war, and the Declaration by United Nations on New Year’s Day 1942 included ‘Independent Slovenia’. Furlan, Miha Krek and other members of the Committee for an Independent Slovenia had lobbied for years in London for the acknowledgment of Slovenes as a distinct group deserving of its own country, exiled by the Karađorđević dynasty for their ‘subversive’ activities. Their passion—kindled by forced Italianization in the west and Yugoslavization in the east—was unshakeable.

As their ally Franc Snoj began work with British and American agents on the ground to undermine German supply lines through Yugoslavia, a chorus of Slovene academics began to slowly assemble in London as news of the Slovene resistance spread. The notion of Slovene nationhood grew stronger as the war went on, and with British-American support of it growing louder, debates quickly manifested over what it should look like. By the time the British Eighth Army arrived in Slovenia in April 1945 to secure the borders of the newborn nation, Furlan—together with constitutional law expert Gorazd Kušej and legal expert Leonid Pitamic—had fully drafted a democratic constitution for the country. With Miha Krek as its head and replete with massive, unhistorical concessions from neighboring states ŕ la postwar Poland, the provisional government for the new Slovene Republic was formed on the holiday of Jurjevo: the 23rd of April, 1945. The nation had been born.


BANNER ART GRACIOUSLY PROVIDED BY PARAMOUNTICA


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