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■	TRSTENJAK Davorin 1859: O tiioin.sk i .sekiri inienovani Taran-halta sekira V: Sloven.ske novice.
■	TRSTENJAK Davorin I862: Mythologiene drbbtine. O Verbi V Sloven.sk i glasnik. Celovec.
UNBEGAUN, B, O. 1948: La religion dec and ens Slaves. Mana 2. V: Les religions tie I'Europe antienne 3, Parks. VANA, Zdenek 1990, 5 vet slovanskych hohu a demon ii. Era ha."
.SUMMARY
THE RESEARCHERS OF THE SLAVONIC RELIEF ABOUT THE OTHER WORLD
Mir jam Mencej
The text preset its the so far made researches iii the field of Slavonic mythology lhat concern the Slavonic conception ot I he land of I he dead. The researchers do noi see eye lo eye about the question whether the Slavonic conception p| the l:ind of the dead, which is separated from the ¡and of die living hy water, is autochthon or has been taken over from the Greeks (and the corresponding burial ceremony or cremation in the ships from the Scandinavians). The author speaks in favour with the opinion that it is all about a concept ¡tin lhat is common to many cultures, most probably; a conception that is even older than the format ion of the Indoeuropeans as a special language-community and that the Slavs must have known it as a part of "common heritage''.
Cathie Carmichael	(Izrirno /nanstveno dclo-sprujuto 11.2.1995)	M)K 323-1(497.12)
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CREATION OF A SLOVENIAN NATIONAL CULTURE1
Eastern Europe is an area of the world that has confused commentators and desisted the ef forts of theorists from both (he left and the right to come up with a convincing and comprehensive analysis of its distinctiveness. This theoretical 'gap , can in some sense explain the political confusion in the West about the Yugoslavian wars of dissolution.
Mark Thompson has aptly described the "sort of smugness in Britain (that) nourished the haughty attitude to nations lhat, as il were, suddenly had the gall or presumption lo individuate themselves in our sight'." 1 'nfbitunately there is still widespread confusion antl political inertia cc cerning lire rights' and wrongs' ol the new nations in Eastern Europe.
Recent debates about the validity of the Slovenian national project, 1 would argue, form part of a much more long term discourse amongst and about the peoples pF Central and Eastern pan of Europe, particularly with reference to the idea thai tlie Slovenes are "a people without history" 1 In this paper I Wll attempt to sketch how this ideological position was ar-
rived at by looking al lire growth ol Slovene national culture from the sixteenth century onwards The second part of the article will examine the creation of an independent Slovenia.
Economic and social differences between Central and Eastern Europe are certainly long term and complex. To some extern the hegemony of Austrian and Italian culture in the Slovene lands can be accounted for by peripheral nature ol the economy in this region. Nevertheless, a crude base-super-st rut lure model cannot alone explain the failure, for example of llie Slovenes to sustain a national culture after the fifteenth century. In the late middle ages the native nobility in the Slovene lands was largely replaced hy a German speaking I labsburg nobility aristocracy, so that we might conclude that the Slovenes did not attain statehood as a people until the twentieth century for reasons that are cultural as well as economic and political.
The Reformation in the provinces of ihe Holy Roman Empire where Slovene was spoken followed a similar pattern in linguistic terms lo other parts of Central Europe. In a Bible was printed based on a combination of the dialects of Dolenjska and Ljubljana which effectively created a literary language from largely unrecorded provincial dialects. In doing
Tlw author tr/io like to thank Boiidar fi-Ti'ittlL'. Znutf#> Smitck ilajko MurSic ctttd (h-oiy, HI tint as itvll as tin- participants in the Hthiuilogical Siii>i?nerScin>vl>in Pi ran in 1994Jhrthtiir coin nwtiis en id criticisms in discussions. Cathie Carmichcivl. hittiwitiw with Mark rUttmpson. In: South Star Journal. Vol. 14/1993, Nv. I. p. 72.
On this cunccpt of Gescliic/ils/usigkell set-: Roman Rosdolsky. Zitr Natlotitilen Fragtf Fried rich Bngrfs nnd das Pmhlum tier Gwcfiichtshxvn' Volker. Berlin 1979,
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so, the Protestant reformers created a demarcation line between those peasants who could understand the dialects of Camiola and those who could not and also gave the vernacular an importance that it had largely lost in high culture. Slavic dialects were spoken across the Eastern Alps and across the South East of Europe from the sixth century onwards. The recording of the dialect of Ljubljana and Dolenjska created a subgroup from amongst those Southern European Slavs and resulted [he die gradual implosion of a '.Slovenia' towards the centre of Ljubljana in the following centuries. The Slavic language has now waned both in Austrian Carinthia (which was once the centre of an early mediaeval Slovenia or Karantanija) and in the Slavic-Romance borderlands of Friuli Venezia-Gi-ulia.
Since the sixteenth century, Slovene national distinctiveness has been based entirely on language. It is the fluctuating status of the language and I he speakers of that language which has determined the subsequent fate of this nation. Nationalities can, of course be established on the basis of different criteria of' which language is only one. Max Weber stated that the Swiss nation was formed and consolidated on the basis of can to us having common political and economic interests. Weber also observed, and not without regrel, that the experience of the French Revolution had made German-speaking Alsatians into patriotic French citizens.1 Despite differing criteria for what constitutes a nation, by creating a distinct literary language from unrecorded dialects the Protestant reformers created a potential Slovene nation, albeit at the level of popular culture, that existed for over four hundred years before political independence. The question i.s not therefore whether a Slovene nation actually exists, it is what form do the political arid other expressions of this national culture take?
Texts in literary Slovene continued to appear but the banning of Protestantism in the Slovene speaking estates of the Habsburg Monarchy effectively ended this development. Between ;i| iroximately 1630 and 17H0, the Slovene language experienced what Carlo Gin/burg has described elsewhere as a "cultural assault' in the form of the Counter-Reformat ion and the Enlightenment."' Publication of texts in Slovene virtually ceased and the language was kept alive by a largely illiterate peasant population. This is also a period during which relentless Germanisation and Italianisation occured.
In the Habsburg lands this process of acculturation was
largely carried out by the minor nobility. Baron Valvasor's hook Die Ehre dess Herzogthums Cram published in 1689, is one of the most outstanding ethnographic and topographical surveys that exists for the early modern period,1 It, like the Encyclopaedic and so many dictionaries and reference hooks
7
published in the eighteenth century is a "huge ledger" ot Slovene peasant culture, which it appropriates and simplifies.
In the hundred and fifty years between 1630 and 1780 the status of the Slovene people of East-Central Europe changed from that of a provincial peasant estate within the Habsburg Monarchy to that of a subject people, defined by their relationship to the German or Italian speaking urhan centre, inhabitants of what David RIackboum has called Central Europe's "Celtic Fringe".^ It i.s these dual aspects of eLhnicity and language which explain the Slovenes demotion into the leagues of Eastern Europe's Untertanen.
After the sixteenth century, the peasants in both Western and Eastern Europe became internally colonised, their cultures codified, appropriated and then romanitised. In the case of the Austrian Slavs, the 'exclusion' from the mainstream of middle class European culture is marked even more strongly by linguistic barriers between classes within the Habsburg Monarchy before 1918. What we normally refer to as I ler-derian romantic nationalism i.s a product of this 'cultural assault'. The very discovery of a different kind of Volksgeist for Slavs by Herder effectively moved those central European Slavs that bit further 'east', radicalising them from their neighbours in their own autocthonous regions.^
Can we say that the relationship between Central and Eastern Europe was similar to the relationship between the West and the colonised world. Although the events and the chronology might differ somewhat, the relationship that Central European culture has had with Eastern European culture particularly in its Jewish and Slavic varieties certainly has many parallels with the relationship between Western Europeans and their colonial 'others'. The French implicitly recognise this parallel by using the phrase L'Autre Europe to mean Eastern Europe. Stuart Hall has also made this poinL, stating cautiously that "Eastern Europe doesn't (doesn't yet? never did?) belong properly to the West"."1 Whether or not they had a similar hegemony over Eastern Europe, Central Europeans certainly borrowed some of the rhetoric and vocabulary ot British and French Imperialism. For example, Chateaubriand placed the "Orient" east of Trieste "on this coast where bar-
4	II. 11. Garlli and C. Wright Mills, JFtvm Max Welter- Essays in Sociology. The Nation, p. 173.
5	Carlo Ginzburg, Chics: Routs of an Evidential. I'aradigm In: Myths, Emblems, Clues. 1990, p 11.5.
6	J. W. i.v! 1 Valrasor, Die Ehre dess Herzogtlmms Grain. Niirnlxirg/Ljuhtjayui 1689
7	Carlo Ginzburg, Cities: Routs of an Evidential Paradigm, p. 115.
8	This expression was used by Prof. Daniel Blackboum during a seminar at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 1986.
9	On Herder see, for example. Ems! Bilke, Herder und die Slauvn. In: Walter Hubatsch (ed). Schicksatswege Deutscher Vergangenheit. Beitrdge zur Gesehictimchen Deutung derletzlen FUnfzigJahm. Dusseldorf ¡950, pp. 81-102.
On Herder, I disagree with Isaiah Berlin who makes afundamental distinction between non-agressive nationalism exemplified in tlw uvrk of Vico and Herder and dgressive nationalism (see Nathan Gardels, Two concepts of Nationalism: An Interview with Isaiah Berlin. In: New York Review of Books, November 21st 1991, pp 19- 23.) In theory, as I argue in this paper, it is impossible to distinguish between such nationalisms. In practice, however, there is evety difference between those who are prepared to exert force and those who are not But is this difference a philosophical one?
10	Stuart Hall. The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In. Stuart Hall and Brant Gieben (ads.), Formations of Modernity Oxford 1992, pp. 275-332.
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By ihe Eighteenth century that Slavophone Istriaas were generally alienated from the mainstream of culture in Trieste. The sense of'distance between ¡lie civilised inhabitants of Western Europe, inheritors of classical values and arbiters of taste and morals and i hose Sla vie peasanisofihe other Knrope can be seen by examining a passage Written by C. J. La t robe. La t robe was a visitor to Trieste in 1830 and described how the Tries 11 lie bourgeoisie received their food from the surrounding countryside where Slovenes farmed the land.
'Hundreds ofthe.se white-headed people are seen entering the city early in the morning with bread lor city consumption, that being chiefly made in the farms. They have a singularly shaped head and a very peculiar cast of countenance and are evidently a distinct race from the inhabitants of the opposite shores. The population of the inland paits of Camiotil, Istria and Dalmatia is still in a half-savage state: and the roads of the country are reputed unsafe for the Solitary wanderer."1"
This passage is obviously influenced by contemporary phrenology and other nineteenth century radicalising sciences. Božidarjezernik lias made the links between representations of Croat women, particular in the work of the Venetian Abbe Albeno Foil is, and representations of so-called 'savages' in the late eighteenth cenlury such as Buffon's Samoekle women and I lottentots. ' It would of course be entirely possible to interpret the arrival of bread in Trieste every morning quite differently, for example as peasants selling their produce in an example of normal city-country relations, but the point here is that La Trobe emphasises the gap between Italian Frieste and the half-savage' countryside as if these Slavic peasants have no legitimate place in tile city.'1 Similar descriptions of' the Adriatic port and its hinterland are so commonplace in late eighteenth and nineteenth accounts thai they should be regarded as more significant than a sort of textual 'accident'.1""
1 his radicalisation between Trieste and its hinterland can in part be e ilained by the processes of state format ion arid I he growth of cultural nationalism since the late eighteenth century. The rise of tile nation stale is conventionally dated after the French revolution on continental Europe. Indeed the French concept of nationalism, initially liberating to subject peoples of South-Eastern Europe; with the short lived, bill not forgotten creation of the Ulyrian slates by Napoleon which elevated the cultural and bureaucratic status of local lan-
guages. The modern problems of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe begin in the context of territorial nation building. Central European nationalisms of the ninetenth century, particularly German hut also Italian, adapted French revolu-tionaiy nationalism, and ii is in this Central European context that the concept of historic and non-historic nations appears, and an inequality of rights to national self-determination also appears. This is because building a state based on language group rather than region ipso facto threatened the territorial tenure of less numerica lly or politically powerful groups.
11 has been argued tile Serbs of Lusatia are the most German of all the people of Central Europe, because they are the only ethnic group that lives exclusively in Germany. Much the same can be said for the Slovenes: more Austrian and more Kaiseilreu than any other linguistic group in the former Habsburg monarchy, because only a fraction of them lived outside the monarchy. ' Ivan Trinko the priest who collected the poetry of Bene.ska Slovenija even wrote under tile pseudonym Zamejski.
By the nineteenth century, tile Slovene lands are often represented as lacking in civilisation in texts written by foreigners. Murray's Handbook for Southern Germany from 1876 is typical;
"Carniola is generally speaking, not well adapted for pedestrian excusioris/.../ the habits and (Slavonic) language of the people ditllinui.sh ihe pleasure which its natural objects of interest might afford."
Tlve further stage of this 'cultural assault' can be characterised as the denial by writers from the dominant cultures that their subject have any history. This can particularly clearly seen in German language scholarship of ihe nineteenth cenlury, which presented the Slovenes as a 'people without Ins-lory' (geschichtslos). Perhaps the most well known example of this comes form the work of Fried rich Engels, writing in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1849,
".. .the Austrian Slavs have never had a history of their own /..,/ they are entirely dependent on the Germans and Magyars for lheir history, literature, politics, commerce arid indus-try..."1"
A, A. Paton writing in 1862 demoted the status of the Slovene's 'non-historic' language and mocked the efforts of Slovene writers to perpetuate their mother tongue;
" the Winds (Slovenes) have given the Germans very liltle trouble, and are not likely to do so, although they once
11 N.PwtviL Truvellers to Trieste. 1977, p. 79.
I	^ C.J Utlivln'. Tin- Pedestrian. A Summer Rinuhlc in the 1'yrol and some/Uljacent Provinces. DQtidon 1832. j/. /97.
13 Božidar fazen lik O metodi in /j redsodkih r delu A/bi-rta I'm lisa. Prisjwcck za zgodovina aitflvpologijc. in- Traditiones 17. Zlwiiill Inštituta za s/i tre i txka ttaivduopisje. Ljubljana I'XSIV. pp. 7J-N5
II	Some recent n-orhs an the ethnic' history of Trieste include Boris M GotnbaS, Tist/Tfieste. Pre Inwni. una identiteta: Sprehod čez historiugrajijou Tisi I) Trieste/Fist 199,i: and Gleiida Shejii. Trieste: Ethnicity and the Cold War. 19-15-54. hujournal of Contemporary History. Vol. 29/1991. pp. 285-30$
15	See. Jin- e.xainple: Karl Friedrich Schinkei, lieise lutch Italien 11 SOJ I Ratten und Lonlng. Berlin 1979
16	This paint is made, most famously, by fuseph Until in his nure! liadetzkvmarsclt. 7th edition Deutsche!" Tasthenhnch Vertau Milnchen
m&
17	y.denho Cepičet ni. Zgodovina Sh¡rencer. Cankarjem založba. Ljubljana 1979. p- 476.
18	Mt may g Handbook for Southern Germany iMdon 1870. p. 4 to
19	Friedrich Engels. Democratic Pan-Slavism. In Neue Rheintscha ZeUung 15-10. 2. ¡849. Reprinted in: David Fembach (Ed ), 'Hie Revolutions of 1848. Penguin, HarimmdsiiitUli 197.i. pp 2J0-2J7.
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formed a nation which covered the whole of the South-East
of Germany; and many names of places denote, such as Vin-
dobona (now Vienna) and Gradetz (now Gratz) etc, etc. Their
language still exists as a familiar but not literary dialect: at least
the movement of a tew young men inCarniola is a very feeble
one: for while the Croatian regards nil the Ragusan authors as
his national classics, the Carniolan lias no literature of any
value that he can call his own: and while Bohemian literature
and nationality fell from its high estate in the Thirty Years War,
that of the Winds never rose at ail, and is rather a matter of
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antiquarian speculation than pf urgent vitality."
Since about 1780, the Slovenes themselves have reacted against this 'assault' and attempted to create a nalive culture, or aL least a form of national' culture most valued by the section of the Slovene population that moved in to the towns from the mid eighteenth century and developed into a native middle class. The use of the Slovene language was revived by [he activities of intellectuals, often under the patronage of Baron Žiga Zois in the later eighteenth century. From 1809-13, the Slovene lands were incorporated into the Napoleonic Empire as tile 'lllyrian Provinces'. Although they were then regained by the Hahsburgs in 1815, the French occupation had a lasting impact on Slovene national consciousness, in tile period up to 18-'i8, Slovene intellectuals continued to forge a new national and cultural identity along Herdsrian lines. The poet France Prešeren produced some of the greatest work in the language, including the current National Anthem, Zdravljica.
In I.S48, the l labsburg dominions were shaken by revolutions in the provincial capitals and some Slovene intellectuals openly proclaimed a policy of Zedihjeria Slovenija. During the period 1850- 1914, the nationalities of the HabsburgMon archv became Slavist* of an Austroslav or 'Yugoslav* orientation, defining ethnicity or more precisely language as the basis for future political organisation.
Slovene national consciousness was raised to the level ot political expression by the experience of being incorporated into the two Yugoslavias (Inter-War Royalist Yugoslavia and Post-Wai socialist Yugoslavia); The first Yugoslavia created a proto-Slovenia in the form of the 'banovina' of Dravska'. The creation of a socialist Slovenian republic in ¡945 then created the precise territorial basis for a future independent state. It was during the period 1945-1990 that the Slovene language flourished for the first time as an 'uradni jezik' (executive language) allowing the Slovenes to operate their own mini-state
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in confederation with the rest of Yugoslavia. It was when the Slovenes linguistic (and thus both cultural and political) autonomy was threatened, particularly during legal clashes with the Yugoslav People's Army in the 19S0's that particular and exclusive Slovenian nationalism began to develop. The result of this move was the birth of the Republic of Slovenia.
In many respects the Slovene antithesis to German or Italian nationalism has been remarkably similar in form and function. The Slovene speaking Burghers of Ljubljana searched for their own national spirit, which was often a distilation of the most kitsch and derivative elements of older national symbols from Western Europe. British historians have noted that such items as the highland kilt or even the Guy Fawkes bonfire are invented traditions' of the nineteenth century,2' France Preseren would not have been remembered for his Gennan language poetry which was largely imitative of literary currents outside the Slovene lands. His real innovation was to rework this medium into something distinctively Slovene.
But poems operate largely on a symbolic or aesthetic level. There is, of course, a much more serious point to nationalism. That Ls the implicit claim within nationalist discourse to the political rights to a territory for one particular group. British nationalism, or more specifically what Linda Colley has called 'Biitishness' was created at a time when the English attempted to bring the whole of the British Isles under the political control of London,22 French nationalism consolidated the rick-ettv Bourbon state, German nationalism created a German speaking Central European state bringing in areas which were Slavic speaking or multilingual, so it follows that Slovene nationalism had as its long-term political programme the creation of a discrete national unit.
The important link in political terms here is the link between Land and Volk. The Slovenes laid a cultural claim to the land long before the creation of Slovenia, in the words of Peter Vodopivec, Herder preceded Hegel. I think an example of this is the 'slovenisation' of Triglav, the mountain that adorns stamps and banknotes. Triglav was first scaled by Alpinists in the nineteenth century, but it subsequently became a symbol of the link between Sloveneness and the very landscape. At the summit one is supposed to proclaim Zdaj sem pravi Slovenec."' National self-definition tends to exclude by its very nature the other group from rights to territory or at least to an important political stake in it. Ethnic Germans had lived around Triglav for many hundreds of years, but it ceased in
20	A. A. Patau, Researches an the Danube and the Adriatic. Vol. 1. London 1862, p. 437.
21	See, fo i * exa tuple: Hi tgh Ti evot -Roper, The Invention of Tradition: The High la i id Tradition of Scot hi nd.Iti: Erie Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), Vie Invention of Tradition. Catnbridffe Unitwrsily Ptvss, Canto editions. Cambridge 1992, pp. 15-41.
See also David Cressy, The Fifth qfNovetn f?er Rememlmvd.hu Roy Porter (ed), Myths of the English. Polity Press, Cambridge 1992, pp. 68-90.
22	Linda Colley, Britons: Fuming the Nation 170 7*383 7. Vale University Press 1992
23	Peter VodopitVC, The Slot.v ties and Yugoslavia, hi: lias! European Politics and Society, Vol 6, No. 3, Fall 1992, p. 241.
24	Mat!Has Kipar, Na svidenje, Triglav! In: Slovenija, Vol. 3, Sumtner 1989, p. 17-
To climb Triglav in the twentieth century is a symbol ofSloneneness, rather than of regional loyalties. By way of contrast, Janez Bile was told iti 1862: "Yon are an Inner Camiokm, but you haven't yet seen our Cerknica. Come with me tomorrow and you won't be sotry that you have done what I said". J. Bik. Tri dni v Cerknici, hi: Shvenski glasnik, No. 8/1862. p, 11. Reprinted in: Janez Šumrada, Slovenski opisi Cerkniškega jezera s konca 18. in iz 19- stoletja. Društvo notranjskih kulturnikov Krpan. Cerknica 1991, pp. 466-75.
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some sense to be their mountain once it became a Slovenian national symbol.
Asa parallel to the rediscovery ofSlovene enture by a native middle class since the late eighteenth century, there were also attempts to write a national history óf an imagined community of Alpine .Slavs from the earliest settlements In 1791 Anton Linhart, one of the first writers to define the Slovenes as a distinct national ethnic community, completed a history of Gimióla,^ Milko Kos felt th at ethnic group was a suitable subject for historical research per se and he strongly influenced subsequent historiography in practise this retrospective ordering of the Slovenes into a complete' I listonen I ethnic Community, has meant that Slovene scholars in the twentieth century have spent a great deal of lime and energy trying to locate their language on a historical sound map. Many histories have been written by Slovenes themselves (orlho.se sympathetic foreigners), which mimic the political histories ol Western Europe by placing ethnic Slovenes at the centre of 'events' and depicting Slovene history as a kind of Golden Thread from the dark ages to the present day. Perhaps the most notorious example of this was the attempt by Joseph Felicijan to infer a link between the inauguration (us-tolieevanje) of the Carinthian dtikes in the ninth century by Slovene peasants on the ducal stone (knežji kamen) and the ideas of the American revolutionists. Thomas Jefferson did annotate his copy of Jean Bodih's description of the Carinthian ceremony, but here the link probably ends.~ Useful though many alternative 'grand naratives' could be in political terms, in effect, by inserting Slovene peasants into the drama Of American independence, the scholar is denying that a 'cultural assault' ever took place and this in tum has led toa slag-gering historiograph ¡cal (at least, until recently) neglect of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Slovene Unte rta n thus began to perceive himself as the Ubennensch.
Nationalism in its exclusivisi political form came thus to dominate Slovene historiography or the ways in which Slo venes have chosen lo represent themselves in [lie past. Typically, Sit enkt is represented as a microcosm of a perfect proto-state, whose only problem was its comparative small ness, For example. Maja Žvanut, in an otherwise well (together book called Slovenci v šestnajste ni stoletju:
"Due to historical events, the Slovene people found them selves acting as a bulwark ofEuropean civilisation in the 16th century, AH social classes Look pari in the bitter struggle agaiast the Turks, which lasted more t liana century. They did
ilits in regular and irregular armies, as defenders of towns and peasant encampments and as victims and taxpayers. They were also in effect the defenders of Western civilisation. All this was quite a contribution to European affairs for such a small nation!"
in the long term an analysis of the Slovene condition and late evolution to statehood which is based on lack of numbers is totally insufficient. Undoubtedly size is important, but cannot be regarded as a general explanation. So how then could Slovenes become historic' and 'reclaim'their past without resort ling to mimicry of Western nationalist historiography and indulging in ethnocentric fantasies? One apparent answer to I lie problem of exclusivist nationalist discourse has been the adoption of an approach to the historiography pf East-Central Europe that is regionally based: a historiography that endows Slovene. Croat, German or Priulian popular culture with some virtue and acknowledges the intellectual depth and intricacy of these cultures.
Regionally based historiography in East-Central Europe could indeed be an antidote to a history that leaves the Slovenes out entirely and history that put them back in with all the glory. Indeed there have been developments of this nature already. This trend was clearly discemable in the work of Joze Pirjevec in the collection Slovenski glas, Pirjevec and other historians and writers put the case of the Slovenes of Trieste skillfully mixing political narrative, oral accounts and cultural reflections,Jv They are, of course, writing in a city where neo-Nazis have organised an anti-Slovene party, the Lista per Trieste, where the Slovene Library has been pelrol bombed and where right-wing students have demonstrated on l he street whenever bilingual roadsigns have been erected. Partly under the influence of Pirjevec, Claudio Ma gris and Angelo Ara have rewritten sections of the book Trieste: Un lden-tila di l-rontieia to include the hitherto hidden element of Slovene culture in Triestine history."10 The emergence of Trieste as an alternative to Ljubljana-centred world view tor Slovenes has undoubtedly been important in the politics of East-Central Europe.
Nevertheless, one of the effects of the work of apparent historiograph ical regionalisis has been the revival of tiie Slovenian national programme and a massive growth of Slovenian nationalism in the last decade. Regional historiography could almost be described as a 'strategic non-essentia 1-isation', which has slipped the Slovenian national programme in hy the back door. It represents the triumph of the Golden
Am,,,, Linluiit VersncM cttwr Gtxtiiiichle con Krai a mill Obrij&ii Sildliclten Slat-en Oslenvichs. J Vols. Ljubljana 1788-91.
26	exam¡ilc. set- Ablko Kos. Odudsl nted kokmizacijo in oblihoranjem narodnoslih VK'jei. hi: Zgodovimkl iasopls, No. 9/1955, pp. '40-5 On the subject ofKoshistoriographical injliience, fem/le Rogel has written that 'his study of the mediaeval period fvensses on the p)\,hleni <>f establishing en id metinteiiulnn i he territory of Sfawue ethnicfwntiers. Defying cbaiiglugpOlitical Ixiuitdt tries and foreign domination, the community remains a lii ing entity and can best he nntleishxxl by identifying economic, social and topojzmphical factors that continue to shape it. "Carole itogcl. Shcenia. In: Canadian Kectetc of Studies in Nationalism, Vol 9/19X2. p 10.1.
27	Joseph Felicjan, The Genesis of the Contractual Theory and the Installation of the Dukes of Carintbiei. Druzha sr. Mohorja. Kbtgenfin t/Celoci'c 1967. pp. ,> 5-5.1
Ai"j" ^''autit. Sloivnci r sestnajstem stoletju. Narodni Mitzej. Ljubljana 1986. p. 51 (my translation).
^ jote firjerec (ed.J. La Voi.x SUm-iw/Slotviixlil gUts/Ut Voce Slocena Trieste/list /%Y>.
0 Au^eb Ara and Claudia Mugris. Trieste: I hi Identita di Fmutiera. i-inaudi. Torino 1987.
The contacts Ik'ttiven Slorenes in Ljubljana and those in Klagenfurt anil more particularly in Trieste had almost no ecjuicalcnt amongst the other nationalities offormer Yugoslavia.
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threaders or mimic men. Some recent histories pi Slovenia almost emit the two Yugoslavia s, ironically the period that nursed Slovenian political independence. Slovenes and Croats have fallen over themselves to join 'Europe1 and to distance themselves from the Serbs, who were once hailed as anti-fascist heroes. As Dimitrij Rupel the former Foreign minister put it: "To be truly independent, the move from the Balkans to Central Europe must be irreversible"/2 Given that the Slovenes last experience of 'European independence' was partition between Mussolini's Italy and the Third Reich his remark must be viewed with some irony. Many articles written since the war of independence in 1991 could be described as a gluttony of nationalist sentiment and smug self -absorption. 'Europeaness' is frequently evoked by Slovene nationalists or Other simpatizzanti, as a way of legitimising Slovenia's break with Yugoslavia/'Joze Pirjevec who has written with such passion about the plight of Slovenes in Trieste wrote a article in tile American Journal Nationalités Papers describing the Communist bloc after 1945 as partof 'Asia'/4 using the same sort of intentionally negative vocabulary as Chateaubriand. Using a similar sort of pseudo-scientific geography, Ivan Gams makes the same sort of point:
"Yugoslavia has been the only European Country to join nations from the West on the one hand and from the border areas of Southeast and Eastern Europe on the other. The result is evident: ethnic turmoil and general discontent."3^
In tile last few years dissenting voices have been ignored or railed against. Perhaps the most famous ant ^nationalist is the Austrian playwright Peter Handke, himself half-Slovene^ who has criticised the recent cultural revolution in Ljubljana stating that "the Slovenes are totally absorbed by their own folklore and they have upheld it, in their usual manner, until their it has become rancid." l ie has also criticised their "longing for history".3
The tet.Jency of Slovenes to assert their superiority over other former Yugoslavs is a denial of so much about their past and a collective forgetting of their struggle for national rights in the Habsburg monarchy and the first half of the twentieth century because it is based on flawed assumptions about their historic role in Europe. Therefore to merely advocate the adoption of regional approaches to historiography would be
to forget the Hegelian dialectic and the lessons of recent history. If we are to interpret the ethnocentrism now apparent in Central and Eastern Europe as largely the product of the internal colonisation of Europe, we might conclude that those apparently postmodern phenomena - the decentering of centres and a distrust in Grand narratives hardly apply in Slovenia, let alone in Croatia, Serbia 01 even Poland. Ethnocentrism in Central and Eastern Europe, far from indicating the decline of the 'West' as some commentators would have it, rather suggests that the West is still in fine form,3
Having defined some forms of Slovenian nationalism as reactive and chauvinistic towards other Yugoslavs, is it now possible to go on to argue that the creation of a independent Slovenia was legitimate, necessary and even desirable? I have previously stated that nationalism threatens the territorial status of other linguistic or ethnic groups in Central and Eastern Europe, Nevertheless, Slovenian politicians handled their own struggle for independence by the book, preceding slowly by democratic means and by opening their doors to tlie rest of the world, hi a very real sense the overwhelming majority of Slovenians voted to be national citizens. Personal feel ings of d ¡state, for example, the ubiquity of kitsch national symbols and the shoddy treatment of 'southerners', should not be allowed to obscure a political point.
Pragma lists tend to argue that the problems started when the principle of a united Yugoslavia was challenged. Others, perhaps in the same vein, have moarned the passing of tile
J u
Habsburg Empire. In a sense this is logical, but static, even ahistoric. The deconstuctionists of the national idea have tended to stress its recent nature/y This is of couse true. It would be nonsense to describe sixteenth century scholars such as Servetus, Erasmus, or Copernicus primarily or exclusively as Spanish, Dutch, or Polish as they clearly belonged to a Europe-wide community of intellectuals. But to deconstruct the national idea now as if it is no longer useful, had its day, a historical anachronism, surely misses the political point. It assumes that there a point in time beyond which no new good nations can be made, to paraphrase Lee Bryant:() and that those that got left out for one reason or another in tlie nineteenth century or earlier cannot be regarded as politically or culturally on a par with the older historic nations.
32	Dimitrij Rupel. NedokoitCano osamosmjanjv Slovenije. in: Slwenci in prihodnost. Nova revija, July J993, p. 407- (English sum maty)
33	For a mora detailed analysis of this problem see, WendyBracewell, Bumpeanisation versus Orientalism, hi: Dennis De.le.tant ami James Cow (eds.), Semantics and Security. The Meaning of the Balkans, furthcoming.
34	foze. Pirjevec. Slovenes and Yugoslavia. I n: He my Hultetibach and Peter Vudopivec (eds.), Nationalities Papers Special Issue Voices firm the Slovene Nation. Spring 1993, Vol 21, No. i. p. 114.
35	Ivan Gams, The Republic of Slovenia - Geographical Constraints of the New Central European State, hi: Henry Huttenhach and Peter Vodoplvec (eds ). Nationalities Papers, p. 26.
36	Christian Ankowitsch, Interview with Peter Handke. hi 'Hie Guardian 15/11/91, p 19
37	For instance Robert Young writes: 'Today at the end ofthe twentieth century, as 'History 'gives ivay to the 'Postmodern', we are witnessing the dissolution of the West". See: Robert Young. White Mythologies: Writing, History and the West. London 1990, p. 20.
One cannot help but wonder if the Bosnians tvottld agree with this after severed years of war or can it be that the dissolution uf the West can only be observed fiviu a window in Wadluim college. Oxford'? 33 Set-. for e.xainpie. Cliris Criic. An Antidote to the /'resent. In The Spectator. 3rd Septetnber1994, pp. 16-17.
30 I am th inking here particularly of Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New left Buoks. London 1983, and Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 1992.
40 Lee Bryant in a personal communication.
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A secure nation state brings innumerable benefits to its citizens, a solid cultural identity and stable traditions in political culture which can surely only be mocked by writers with eithei a very stable sense of their own political identity or a very poor sense of the balance of power in continental Europe. In 1990, Ihe Slovenians voted to he a nation, to he-Come 'historic' with all its ethnocentric overtones, to have the sort of identity that people in the West take tor granted.11
This point was made by Milan Kundera in an interview in the early !9W)s: In it lie stated:
The Czech anthem begins with a simple question; 'Where is my homeland?' The homeland is understood as a question. As an eternal uncertainty. Think of the British national a nt hem Victorious, happy and glorious.,.'/,.,/ You see if you're ling-lisli you never question the immortality of your nation because you are English... You may question England's politics, but not its existence."
As Kundera says, like the English, the Slovenians have a desire to answer the question 'where is my homeland?' and Consequently to have some sort of say in the political competition of their state rather than being lumped Into a larger, mull ¡national state in order to make bigger, but workable polities that don't offend people by their small size. Smallness apparently does irritate and offend some. Eric 1 lobsbawm dismisses Kleinstaaterei and describes the existence of"small stales as "welcome to philatelists".1/1 demoting these political creations to the realms of an 'imagined community", as if they were not somehow really tangible or legitimate.
A tremendous problem still remains at a discursive level. We persist in emotionalising the division of Europe between East and West, between historic and aspiring non-historic by our commonplace use of radicalising vocabulary and by dwelling On notions of historic rights'. For example, it is often noted that.South-Eastern Europe is a 'Balkan Babel", a patchwork of different ethnic cultures and groups, On the other hand, we never refer to the Alpine Babel, in spile of the existence of a different dialect in every valley of this mountain range. This is because this an area of relative political stability. (I think that Jörg Haider could hardly be compared to Karadzic in his political impact, in spite of the provocative nature of Iiis views). The long term result of this discursive division is the failure on a practical level to distinguish between chauvanistic national! n, which is pompous and self-regarding' '1 and aggressive nationalism which threatens lives, attacks democratic .states and occupies regions on the most spurious ethnic claims dating back to 1389 or therabputs.
in essence, English, German, Slovene or even Serb nationalism are no more stupid or irrational than any other, although their political effects may he currently be preoccupying us. 1 hey .til have at their heart an ethnic chauvinism which both
embraces and excludes. But clearly there are peaceful and democratic ways of negocia ting around the apparently ancient and inscrutable ethnic divisions in Eastern Europe. The Slovenians have demonstrated thai non-violent resistance to military force can work and have demonstrated a greater faith in democracy than Western leaders. On the other hand, the Serbs have understood perfectly the scientifically illogical, but politically effective appeal to a Volksgeist. In spite of the apparent diplomatic recognition &f Croatia, the rest of the world was prepared to tolerate or al least not intervene in a Serb-Croat war in areas of Croatia which had Serbs living in it, as if ethnicity somehow gave a group a right to subvert the democratic process and declare war on its neighbours. The same principle of ethnicity over democracy was applied in Bosnia where a putative 30% of the population has been allowed to hold the rest captive.
Instead of taking an idealist stance, we need to view national ism a bit more pragmatically and with a sort of historical leniance. Nationalism does equal chauvinism in both theory and practice, but are Slovenes who talk negatively about Asia and respond negatively and legislatively to 'southerners mote guilty ofchauvanism than those who would deny the l ight of some nations to exist? Anthropologists tell us that polytaxis is as normal as monolingual ism. but it is the issue of statehood and citizenship which is the really important aspect of nationalist discourse, li is possible foran Istrian to he a loyal subject of Croatia or Slovenia, wit bout losing their Italian mother tongue or wanting to vote for a government in faraway Rome. The recent offer of dual na liona lily to these people by the Italian government is not a cultural gesture, but a deliberate attempt by the Italians to destablise their neighbours for their own political ends.
Al this moment in time national identity is something that most people wani, simply to be part of ibe 'United Nations'. Of cou.se nationality is a crude way to divide people, which clearly offends those who might prefer other 'we-group' definitions based on class, gender or sexuality. Entirely new formalions may superc ede the nation state in the next century, based on different sorts of political self-definitions. Who can say? But if we deconstruct nationalist discourse to the extent that we fail to see its function we are led into the realms of ineffectual metaphysics orto a political stance that effectively shores up the policies of reactionary or incompetent governments in the West Western Governments should not have clung on to their policy aim of keeping Yugoslavia together in 1991 because this meant that they had to flagrantly disregard the democratic movements in the republics and to contradict their own rhetoric. Besides. Western politicians can only dream of the sort of mandate for independence given to both Tudjman and Kucan at the end of 1990. In pragmatic terms and for the future peaceful resolution
41
42
43
44
A similar/>oii it about the light and /xiUtical invel to, apfmipriale the past in the context of Smith America is made by Bill Schwarz in
Latin America: exiled from historical linn" in■ History Workshop Journal. p. riii. He ivriley "Modernity still is p^anist'd by differing
histories and uneren det.vhpment. We need moiv than erer to think historically, and at the same time globally
Ian McBwati. Interview with Milan Knndera In: Cranta No. /1/1985, /> ¿6.
K' ic Hohxfxnvm. Nations and Nationalism since / 7.SYJ, />.. ,'2.
Cathie Cunnichael. Interview with Mark Thompson, p. 72.
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of conflicts, ii is vital that democracy ;ind openness is seen to prevail over physical violence.
The map of Europe can never be regarded as fixed for eternity. There should also be no dates in history to which we can appeal for arbitration, or we will find ourselves like ilie Croats and Serbs arguing about King Tomislav's claim to Krajina or the battle of Kosovo polje. But what use, then, is history? [s il possible to use an historical analysis of national problems in Europe without letting notions of 'historic rights' or traditions obliterate the l ights
of people now alive? Surely a point can be learnt from the creation of the Slovenian state. The Slovenians have successfully challenged the notion of 'history' and have perhaps done much more. As Edward Kovač has written:
"Through the establishment of thought, cultural and ethical models, Slovenia may affirm the ancient Greek principle which was also developed by Rousseau, that only small nations are capable of democracy."41
POVZETEK
NEKAJ MISLI O USTVARJANJU SLOVENSKI; NACIONALNE KULTURE Cathie Carmichael
Razprave o dogajanju v Vzhodni in Srednji Evropi po padcu komunizma so v marsičem sporne, še posebej tiste, ki poskušajo analizirati nastanek novih dr/a v in krepitve nacionalizmov. Razprave na [o temo so v marsičem ideološke, Zato avtorica poskusa prikazati ideološki pogled s strani zahoda o 'ljudstvih brez zgodovine'' in ga primerjati z razvojem slovenske nacionalne kulture od 16. stoletja dalje, V drugem delu besedila pretrese ustanovitev neodvisne Slovenije. Ob formiranju modemih zahodnih držav so vzhodni del Evrope obravnavali kol de) "drugega sveta" ali kot "barbarski Orient". ki se po Chaleaubriandu začne pri Trstu. Angleški popotniki so še v 19. stoletju slovenskim deželam odrekali status civiliziranega sveta. V istem obdobju se začne prebujati tudi slovenska nacionalna zavest Avtorica opozarja na pomembno povezavo - v političnem smislu - med pojmoma "dežela" in "ljudstvo" (narod). Tako kot drugod v Evropi je mogoče govoriti o prisvajanju obeh (na primer s slovenizacijo Triglava). Druga plat je rast srednjega razreda in pisanje nacionalne zgodovine ter odkrivanje ljudske kullure.
Razvoj dogodkov po prvi in drugi svetovni vojni je najbolj zahodni del Jugoslavije postavil v nov položaj, ki so ga Slovenci Eu in tam artikulirali z novim občutkom večvrednosti. Osamosvojitev je sklepni del daljšega procesa, vendar je bila izpeljana po demokralični poti brez pretiranega šovinizma. V sedanjem trenutku je nacionalna identiteta pač tisto, kar si večina ljudi 2eii,
45 Edmttl Kmač, Slptumija kot izziv Evropi, hi. Nova revija, July 1993, !'■ 409. (English summary.)
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