Slovenians

From Open Encyclopedia

Slovenians/Slovenes
{{{image\|}}}
{{{caption\|}}}
Total population:	2.0 million (est.)
Significant populations in:	Slovenia: 1,631,363 (2002)[1] Italy: 50,000 Austria: 40,000 Hungary: 6,000 USA: 176,691 (2000)[2] Canada: 30,000 officially Croatia: 13,173 (2001) Germany: 21,759 (slovenian citizenship, 2003)[3] Australia: 20,000 (1999)[4] Sweden: 5,000 (est) Other: 50,000 (est)
Language:	Slovenian
Religion:	Predominantly Roman Catholic, but also protestant, Orthodox and Muslim minorities. Many people are atheists.
Related ethnic groups:	Indo-Europeans Slavs South Slavs

Slovenians or Slovenes (Slovenian Slovenci, singular Slovenec, feminine Slovenka) are a South Slavic people primarily associated with Slovenia and the Slovenian language.

Most Slovenians today live within the borders of the independent Slovenia (circa 1,600,000). There are autochthonous Slovenian minorities in northeastern parts of Italy (100,000), southern Austria (50,000), Croatia (13,200) and Hungary (6,000). The states of Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia officially recognize Slovenians as national minorities.

1 Early Slovenians
2 Slovenians during the Frankish Empire
3 Slovenians between the 18th century and the Second World War
4 Slovenians during and after the 2nd World War
5 See also
6 External links
- 6.1 History
- 6.2 The origin of Slovenians

[edit]

Early Slovenians

Around 570, the Slavic tribes started to settle in the region between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea.

From 623 to 658, the Slavic tribes between the upper Elbe River and the Karavanke mountain range were united in their first state under the leadership of king Samo (kralj Samo) in a so called King Samo's Empire. The tribal union collapsed after Samo's death, but a smaller Slavic state Caranthania (Slovenian Karantanija) (present-day Carinthia) persisted, with its center in the region of Carinthia (most of it lies in the present Austria).

[edit]

Slovenians during the Frankish Empire

Due to pressing danger of Avar tribes from the east, Karantanians accepted union with Bavarians in 745 and later recognized Frankish rule and accepted Christianity in the 8th century. The last Slavic state formation in the region, the principality of Prince Kocelj, lost its independence in 874. Slovenian ethnic territory subsequently shrunk due to pressing of Germans from the west and the arrival of Hungarians in the Pannonian plain, and stabilized in the present form in the 15th century.

The earliest documents written in a Slovenian dialect are the Freising manuscripts (Brižinski spomeniki, Freisinger Denkmäler), dated between 972 and 1022, found in 1803 in Freising, Germany. The first book printed in Slovenian is Cattechismus and Abecedarium, written by the Protestant reformer Primož Trubar in 1550 and printed in Tübingen, Germany. Jurij Dalmatin translated the Bible into Slovenian in 1584. In the half of the 16th century the Slovenian came known to other European languages with the multilingual dictionary, compiled by Hieronymus Megisar.

[edit]

Slovenians between the 18th century and the Second World War

Slovenian lands were part of the Illyrian provinces, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (in Cisleithania).

Many Slovenians emigrated to the USA at the turn of the 20th century, mostly due to economic reasons. Those that settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania came to be called Windish.

Following the 1st World War (1914-1918), they joined other South Slavs in the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, followed by Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and finally Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the new system of banovinas (since 1929), Slovenians formed a majority in the Drava Banovina.

In 1920 people in the bilingual regions of Carinthia decided in a referendum that most of Carinthia should accede to Austria. Between the two world wars the westernmost areas inhabited by Slovenians were occupied by Italy.

Slovenian volunteers also participated in the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.

[edit]

Slovenians during and after the 2nd World War

Slovenia was invaded by Axis forces on April 6, 1941 after a coup d'etat in the Yugoslav government ended Yugoslavia's participation in the Tripartite Pact and enraged Adolf Hitler. Territory in Yugoslavia was quickly divided between German, Italian, and Hungarian control, and the Nazis soon annexed Lower Styria (Untersteiermark) to the "Greater Reich". The Gottschee, a small group of ethnic Germans who had settled in the region in the 14th century, were living under Italian rule after Yugoslavia's surrender, which Hitler could not abide. Nazi racial policy dictated that these Germans had to be brought back into the Reich and the Slovenian "Untermenschen" had to be removed. The Nazis established a branch of the Resettlement Administration (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or "VoMi") at Maribor (German, Marburg) for this purpose.

While some of the Gottscheer community leaders had embraced Nazism and agitated for "assistance" and "repatriation" to the Reich before the German invasion in 1941, most Gotschee had no interest in reuniting with Greater Germany or joining the Nazis. They had been integrated into society with their Slovenian neighbors, often intermarrying among Slovenians and becoming bilingual while maintaining their Germanic language and customs since their arrival in the region in the late 1300s. However, propaganda and Nazi ideology prevailed, and The VoMi began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from the Italian occupation zone to the "Ranner Dreieck" or Rann Triangle, a region between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava Rivers.

To achieve that goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee "settlers" and some 46,000 Slovenians in the Rann Triangle region were forcibly deported to eastern Germany for potential Germanization or forced labor beginning in November 1941. Shortly before that time, a largely transparent propaganda effort was aimed toward both the Gottscheer and the Slovenians, promising the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria. The Gottscheer were given Reich passports and transportation to the Rann area just after the forced departure of the Slovenians. Most Gottschee left their homes because of coercion and threats since the VoMi had a deadline of December 31, 1941 for the mass movement of both groups . Though many Gotschee did receive farmland and households, these were of lesser quality as their own, and many were in disarray from the hasty forced expulsion of the Slovenians.

From the time of their arrival to the end of the war, Gottschee farmers were harassed and sometimes killed by Tito's partisans. The attempt to resettle the Gottscheer was a costly failure for the Nazi regime, since extra manpower was required to protect the farmers from the partisans. Most Gottschee were as much victims as the Slovenians deported to the Reich, though the former were not used for forced labor as the latter.

The deported Slovenians were taken to several camps in Saxony, where they were forced to work on German farms or in factories run by German industries from 1941-1945. The forced laborers were not always kept in formal concentration camps, but often just vacant buildings where they slept until the next day's labor took them outside these quarters. Toward the close of the war, these camps were liberated by American and Soviet Army troops, and later repatriated refugees returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes in shambles.

The fate of the resettled Gottschee was not much better, and in many cases much worse. At the end of the war the Nazi regime in the region evaporated as soldiers and administrators fled. Many Gottschee were killed by partisans in their attempts to escape northward. In one of the last tragedies of the war, a large group of these refugees who had crossed the border into Austria were forcibly returned to Yugoslavia by British occupation troops and later executed by Yugoslav partisans as traitors. Both the Slovenians in the Rann Triangle region and the Gottschee of Kocevje suffered greatly as a result of Nazi racial and "resettlement" policies.

Slovenians participated in the so-called National Liberation Fight ("NOB") while Yugoslavia was occupied by Axis powers during the Second World War (1941-1945).

The commander of the High command of the Slovenian partisan's army Franc Rozman Stane
The Pohorje battalion
The Battle of Osankarica
The National heroes

There were Slovenians also in the German army (latest estimations put that number close to 10,000). Significant numbers also fought in the Italian armed forces, having been drafted from the territories gained by Italy after the Great War.

In 1945, Yugoslavia liberated itself and shortly thereafter became a nominally federal Communist state, with Slovenia a socialist republic.

Most of Carinthia remained part of Austria and estimated 13,000 Slovenians in the Austrian state of Carinthia were recognized as a minority and have enjoyed special rights following the Austrian State Treaty (Staatsvertrag) of 1955. The Slovenians in the Austrian state of Styria (estimated 2,000) are not recognized as a minority and do not enjoy special rights, although the State Treaty of July 27, 1955 states otherwise.

Many of the rights required by the 1955 State Treaty are still to be fully implemented. There is also an undercurrent of thinking amongst parts of the population that the Slovenian involvement in the partisan war against the Nazi occupation force was a bad thing, and indeed "Tito partisan" is a not an infrequent insult hurled against members of the minority. Many Carinthians are (quite irrationally) afraid of Slovenian territorial claims, pointing to the fact that Yugoslav troops entered the state after each of the two World Wars. The current governor, Jörg Haider, regularly plays the Slovenian card when his popularity starts to dwindle, and indeed relies on the strong anti-Slovenian attitudes in many parts of the province for his power base. Another interesting phenomenon is for some German speakers to refuse to accept the minority as Slovenians at all, referring to them as so-called Windische, an ethnicity distinct from Slovenians (a claim which linguists reject on the basis that the dialect spoken is by all standards a variant of the Slovenian language).

Yugoslavia acquired some territory from Italy after WWII but some 100,000 Slovenians remained behind the Italian border, notably around Trieste and Gorizia.

In 1991, Slovenia became an independent nation state after a brief ten day war.

[edit]