Slovenes or
Slovenians (Slovene Slovenci, dual
Slovenca, singular Slovenec, feminine
Slovenke, dual Slovenki, singular
Slovenka) are a South Slavic
people primarily associated with Slovenia
and the
Slovene language.
Population
Most
Slovenes today live within the borders of the independent Slovenia (2,007,711
est. 2008).
There are autochthonous Slovene minorities in northeastern parts of Italy
(estimated
at 83,000 - 183,000) , southern Austria
(24,855),
Croatia
(13,200) and Hungary
(3,180). Slovenes are recognized as national minorities in
all four countries with which Slovenia shares a land border
(Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Italy).
In the Slovenian national census of 2002, 1,631,363 people
ethnically declared themselves as Slovenes , while 1,723,434 people
claimed Slovene as their mother tongue .
The total number of Slovenes in Austria is 24,855, of whom 17,953
are representatives of the Slovene national minority, while 6,902
are foreign nationals .
History
Early Alpine Slavs
In 6th
century, Slavic peoples settled the
region between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea
in two consecutive migration waves: the first wave
took place around 550 and came from the Moravian
lands, while the second wave, coming from the southeast, took
place after the retreat of Langobards to
Italy in 568 (see Slavic settlement of Eastern
Alps).
From 623
to 658, Slavic peoples between the upper Elbe
River and the Karavanke
mountain range were united under the leadership of
King Samo (Kralj Samo) in what was to
become known as Samo's Tribal Union. The tribal
union collapsed after Samo's death, but a smaller Slavic tribal
principality
Carantania (
Slovene:
Karantanija) remained,
with its centre in the present-day region of Carinthia.
Alpine Slavs during the Frankish Empire
Due to pressing danger of
Avar tribes
from the east,
Carantanians 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. Slovene ethnic territory subsequently shrank
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.
Slovenes between the 18th century and the Second World War
Slovene
lands were part of the Illyrian
provinces, the Austrian Empire
and Austria-Hungary
(in Cisleithania).
Many
Slovenes emigrated to the United States
at the turn of the 20th century, mostly due to
economic reasons. Those that settled in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania
came to be called Windish. The largest group of
Slovenes eventually ended up settling in Cleveland, Ohio
and the surrounding area. The second largest
group settled in Chicago principally on the Lower West
Side, Chicago
. The American Slovenian Catholic Union
(Ameriško slovenska katoliška enota) was founded as an organization
to protect Slovene-American rights in Joliet, Illinois
and Cleveland, OH. Today there are KSKJ
branches all over the country offering life-insurance and other
services to Slovene-Americans.
Freethinkers were centered around 18th and
Racine Ave. in Chicago where they founded the Slovene National Benefit
Society, other Slovene immigrants went to southwestern
Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio and the state of West Virginia
to work in the coal mines and lumber
industry. Some Slovenes also went to the Pittsburgh
or Youngstown, Ohio
areas to work in the steel mills.
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), Slovenes 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 remain in Austria
. Between the two world wars the westernmost
areas inhabited by Slovenes were occupied by Italy.
Slovene volunteers also participated in the
Spanish Civil War, and the
Second Italo-Abyssinian
War.
Slovenes during and after World War II
Yugoslavia was invaded by
Axis Powers on
April 6, 1941 after a
coup d'état
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 as
Untersteiermark to the "Greater Reich".
About
46,000 Slovenes in the Rann (Brežice
) Triangle region were forcibly deported to eastern
Germany for potential Germanization or forced labor beginning in
November 1941.
On 27. April 1941 in Ljubljana National Liberation Front was
organized with aim of liberation struggle, forming Slovene partisan
army, and structures of future state in liberated areas. More than
30.000 partisans died fighting Axis forces and their collaborators,
during the WWII approximately 8 percent of Slovenes perished
.
The deported Slovenes 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 labourers were not
always kept in formal concentration camps, but often just vacant
buildings where they slept until the next day's labour 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.
In 1945,
Yugoslavia liberated itself and shortly thereafter became a
nominally federal Communist
state
. Slovenia joined the federation as a
socialist republic; its own
Communist Party having been formed in 1937.
Most of
Carinthia
remained part of Austria and around
42,000 Slovenes (per 1951 population census ) were recognized as a
minority and have enjoyed special rights following the Austrian State Treaty (Staatsvertrag)
of 1955. The Slovenes in the Austrian state of
Styria
(4,250) 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 Slovene 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 by
members of the minority. Many Carinthians are (quite irrationally)
afraid of Slovene territorial claims, pointing to the fact that
Yugoslav troops entered the
state
after each of the two World Wars. The former
governor,
Jörg
Haider, regularly played the Slovene card when his popularity
started to dwindle, and indeed relied on the strong anti-Slovene
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 Slovenes at all, referring to them as
Windische, an ethnicity distinct from Slovenes (a claim
which linguists reject on the basis that the dialects spoken are by
all standards a variant of the Slovene language).
Yugoslavia acquired some territory from
Italy after WWII but some 100,000 Slovenes remained behind the
Italian border, notably around Trieste
and Gorizia
.
In 1991, Slovenia became an independent
nation state after a brief
ten day war.
Literature
The
earliest documents written in a Slovene dialect are the Freising manuscripts (Brižinski
spomeniki), dated between 972 and 1022, found in 1803 in
Freising
, Germany
. The first books printed in Slovene were
Catechismus and Abecedarium, written by the
Protestant reformer Primož Trubar in 1550 and printed in
Tübingen
, Germany. Jurij
Dalmatin translated the
Bible into Slovene
in 1584. In the second half of the 16th century Slovene became
known to other European languages with the multilingual dictionary,
compiled by Hieronymus Megiser.
Identity
The
disintegration of
Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and the formation of
independent Slovenia in the early 1990s has motivated a search for
a particularly Slovenian national identity. One reflection of this
is the rejection of a
Slavic identity
in favour of a "
Venetic" one in
Slovene nationalism. The
autochthonist
(
protochronist) "
Venetic theory" was advanced in the mid
1980s. The name Slovenian is derived from proto-Slavic form
slovo "word, talk" (both akin to
slišati "to
hear", which comes from the IE root *ḱlew-). Thus
Slovenci
(Slovenians) would mean "people who speak (the same language)",
i.e. people who understand each other.
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, the graphical representation of
Triglav
has become recognised as a national symbol.
Another symbol connected to Triglav comes from the tale of the
Zlatorog or Goldenhorn, a legendary
creature living on a mountain-top garden near Triglav.
References
External links
History
The origin of Slovenes
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