THE 1930s IN SLOVENIA: BETWEEN OPENING UP TO EUROPE, NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS AND IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE Bozo Repe

The 1930s was a time of great ideologies that proved fatal to the entire 20'h century, led to World War ll, the greatest watershed in the his­tory of mankind, and now seem to be making their mark yet again on our present day. Apart from liberalism, which was unable to meet the challenges of the crisis it helped create and thus lost its appeal, communism, too, became firmly established (at a price of several millions of vic­tims), albeit in one country only. Fascism be­came far more widespread, beginning in Italy in the early 1920s (with Slovenians falling victim to its brutality even before it had officially come to power) and developing its most totalitarian form in German Nazism in the 1930s.

Throughout the 1930s, but also earlier, totalitarian and autocratic political systems existed in numerous other countries as well. While there were differences among them aris­ing from nationalism and local specificities, they also had some common features based on extremely nationalist and chauvinist ideologies (demonstrating hostility towards other people and nations), and were characterized by a great deal of aggression and corporatist economic systems (denial of the class struggle, organiza­tion of a society by corporate groups controlled by the state). They were, furthermore, char­acterized by anti-communist and racist posi­tions. They opposed bourgeois liberalism and individual rights, and advocated collectivism instead.

For the most part, such systems are con­sidered "intermediate" and combine character­istics of the classical bourgeois order with ele­ments of totalitarianism and dictatorship. With the exception of Czechoslovakia until1938, the majority of Eastern and Central European as well as Balkan states, formed in the "Versailles Europe" in the wake of the disintegration of the great empires after the Great War, succumbed to this model. Most were largely agrarian, and had just begun to embrace modern capitalism, had no democratic political tradition to speak of, and the military played an important role (the top levels of the military formed the core of the ruling elite, along with the top levels of the Catholic Church in clero-fascist countries). In these states frustration was expressed over "unfair" borders, revanchism and negative atti­tude towards minorities prevailed, and, owing

60

to considerable nationalist sentiments, con­flicts with neighboring countries were a com­monplace occurrence. All in all, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was one such state.

The 1930s represent the other face of the period between the two world wars, in which the economic crisis of 1929 essentially marks the exact dividing point. The world of the in­terwar years was full of contradictions, torn between poverty and wealth, between new stu­pidities leading to new catastrophes and great achievements of human endeavor. It all began with counting the casualties of war: more than 10 million victims on the battlefield, 20 million wounded, and another 10 million deaths due to war, illness or famine . Material losses amount­ed to countless billions of dollars .

The Great War and its aftermath led to the dissolution of Europe's three great empires: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lost its ideal position in Central Europe; the Russian Empire, which eventually became the Federa­tion of Soviet Socialist Republics; and the Otto­man Empire, which comprised vast territories in Asia, North Africa and Europe. The rise of so-called global civilization began already dur­ing the war (with the USA entering the war, thereby lending an international dimension to what had been a largely European war), as did the ideological divide that reached its peak only after World War I I. Increasingly, countries from other continents began to play an impor­tant role. The Great War ended the supremacy of Europe that had been built patiently through the centuries of great explorations, colonial ex­pansion, missionary work, wars and trade.

Post-war peace conferences drew up new state boundaries that were found to be unfair once again. Old antagonisms remained, and new ones appeared. Out of frustration with the political, social and international order, ideas for a different framework of relations between nations and states (Wilson's Fourteen Points) and for a different, fairer political and social system came to be formed. The task of provid­ing such a framework fell to the League of Na­tions, an organization established in Geneva in April 1919. While the organization was able to solve a few minor international problems, it failed to form an efficient mechanism with which to act against the aggressive policies of states laying claims to colonies or neighboring territories.

For millions, revolution was a way to build a better social future for all. But even though the chaos that ensued after the Great War in­dicated that a pan-European or even a global revolution might take place, it only succeeded in a single country - Russia . There, it proved a big disappointment: grown out of the revolu­tion, the socialist system surpassed the tsarist regime in terms of violence against individu­als as well as against other nations. The Rus­sian revolution and its consequences were yet another development to leave its mark on the period between the two wars. The horrors of war left people with the deep desire to find some form of release, and the two short decades of peace were characterized by an appetite for everything possible and impossible: survival, fast money, recovery of lost property, knowl­edge, pleasure, but above all entertainment. For the majority of the population, however, the positive effects of economic recovery and the lifes tyle of the roaring twenties remained largely out of reach, and it took several years, an entire decade even, for most countries to return

to pre-war levels of development and standard ofliving before the new crisis began.

Global economic trends were uneven, and relationships between individual industries and international trade were particularly imbal­anced. The same held true for states and regions, with a notable consistent disparity between ris­ing production potentials and limited spending possibilities. Periods of intensive development and crises alternated with overproduction, in­flation and stagnation. During interwar years the world experienced three economic crises (1920- 1923, 1929-1933, and 1937-1938). Even more frequent were agrarian crises, which were never effectively resolved. One effect these cri­ses produced was a very fragile social context, in particular socio-political conditions, which consequently resulted in fierce competition for colonies, markets, resources and global com­munications. While some countries looked to retain their established positions, others want­ed to change the balance of power, among them most notably the fascist states and the USSR. In addition to the former liberal market economy, centralized planning and state control gained in importance, particularly during great crises, while socialist and fascist economic orders rose to a considerable level of development.

The peak of industrial development for most countries came in 1929, only to be fol ­lowed by a sharp decline. In that same year the USA, the country where it all began, found itself in a state of tension caused by record production and record investments (63 billion dollars) , as well as a record amount of unsold products that literally flooded and suffocated the market. This set off a chain reaction, with falling prices, declining production volumes, mass layoffs, and falling stock prices. The crisis spread all over the world and across all sectors, and continued to intensify over the better part of the next four years. It proved most detrimen­tal to laborers and farmers. The whole world was in a state of financial exhaustion and total disorganization.

Between 1934 and 1937, the economy ex­perienced a period of gradual recovery. Even though the cr isis reappeared for a brief period of time in the second half of the 1930s, fascist countries remained largely unaffected. Within a year, the economic growth rate took an up­ward turn again. Countries used different ap­proaches to address the economic crisis of the early 1930s, among them spontaneous eco­nomic measures, protective tariffs, production cuts, strict supply-side farming, social legisla­tion (based on higher taxes), cheap loans, and large numbers of public works to address unem­ployment. Government investments in the mil­itary and arms industry increased dramatically. The most important characteristic of economic life in the two years preceding World War li was the redirecting of the economy towards arms production.

Slovenians After World War 1: National Division, New State, New System, New Identity

To what extent did the Slovenian society of the 1930s take part in these European and global processes and how did it see them? With Vi­enna as the capital of Austria-Hungary and thus the political and cultural center, the more progressive Slovenians had followed modern trends and developments ever since the turn of

the 19'h century. The Slovenian conceptual and cultural identity evolved over decades along­side the German one, but also contrary to it. The second half of the 19'h century was charac­terized by mutual national struggles stretching from cultural institutions in towns and villages to huts high up in mountains. With the excep­tion of Kranjska (Carniola), historical Slove­nian lands were ethnically mixed. The political agenda advocated "Yugoslavness," first within Austria-Hungary, then for a short month as part of the transitional State of Slovenes, Cro­ats and Serbs, and finally within the new king­dom. The formation of this kingdom (first as the Kingdom ofSerbs, Croats and Slovenes, and then, after the proclamation of dictatorship, as the Kingdom ofYugoslavia) with its centralized political order and the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty on the throne both incited enthusiasm and raised doubts.

The unification of Yugoslavia took place on 1 December 1918, with the proclamation of a Serbian heir to the throne. "Our Austro­Hungarian reality rolled off drunkenly under the Karadjordjevic throne, like an empty beer bottle thrown into the trash," as Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza vividly described the unifica­tion.' Unfavorable international circumstances, impotent and clumsy Slovene politicians and the indifference of Serbian, or rather the new Yugoslav authorities, resulted in the fact that the Slovene territory remained dismembered. The Primorska region (Slovene Littoral) came under Italian rule, and the Koroska region (Carinthia) was lost in the plebiscite in which, under the influence of effective German propa­ganda, some 40% of Slovenes voted to remain in Austria, their economic interest and ties to the Austrian Carinthia region prevailing over their sense of national consciousness. The Slo­venes were thus faced with a new reality: they lived in four countries with different political systems that were, with regard to nationality, all essentially authoritarian and unfavorable for Slovenes. More than one-third of Slovenes remained outside their home country, while Slovenia was also left without Trieste, home to 57,000 Slovenes, and hence without its strong­est industrial and cultural center and access to the sea. During the interwar period, Slovenes of the Primorska region were subjected to or­ganized Italianization efforts, fascist terror and economic repression, as a result of which ap­proximately 100,000 of them migrated, mostly to Yugoslavia (around 70,000), South America and elsewhere.2

France Kralj, the key figure of Slovenian expressionism and New Objectivity in the 1920s, sculpting the figure of the soldier (2.4 m) for the Monument to the Fallen Soldiers 1914-7918 in Videm, Dobrepolje, where it still stands, before September 1930 or the inauguration of the monument (taken from the magazine 1/ustracija, n. 9, 1930). In his memoirs, Kralj wrote: "The horrors of the front on Fajt's Hill, those eternal glaciers, full of eerie Alpine natural beauty, inspired me for years to come." (Spomini slovenskega umetnika (Ljubljana: Nova revija, 1996))

The people of Primorska nevertheless managed to preserve - either publicly or cov­ertly - their cultural organizations, as well as their Slovene linguistic and national identity, and they were the first in Europe to physi­cally resist the spread of Fascism. In Austria, Slovenes were formally protected by minority protection clauses outlined in the Saint Ger­main Peace Treaty, although Austria only com­plied with them in part. The Anschluss (which

Slovenes supported in order to avoid appear­ing disloyal and the consequences this might bring) served to further escalate the Nazi pres­sure, the final goal being the total emigration and Germanization of Carinthian Slovenes, a process the Nazis began implementing dur­ing World War 11 but ultimately failed to carry through. One positive outcome in the national sense following the Great War was the annexa­tion ofPrekmurje, although the notion that the people of Prekmurje were also part of the Slo­vene nation was not particularly strong, and the adjustment process to living in a common state (in the interwar period and also later) was rife with prejudice and stereotyping. According to the Treaty of Trianon, the Slovene Raba Region went to Hungary, and Slovenes living there, in keeping with the theory that they were Wends, were subjected to Magyarization. In this poor and backward province, the Slovene language survived primarily with the help of the church.

For the core part of the nation, however, the newly-formed Yugoslav kingdom provided a framework for survival. The merging into a new state brought with it the dilemma of national identity- Slovene or Yugoslav? Initially, almost everyone declared themselves to be Yugoslav, some out of real conviction, others in order to renounce their former "avstrijakarstvo" (i. e. pro-Austrian sentiment); for the majority, how­ever, their reasons were of a more opportun­istic nature. As always, the swift replacement of "Austrianess" with "Yugoslavness" was most characteristic for politicians. Only the rare few (!van Sustersic, the former head of the Carni­olan regional government, for example) failed to do so in time, which cost them their politi­cal careers. The mindset at the time is best il­lustrated by the case of Field Marshal Svetozar Boroevic (Borojevic), who failed to adapt to the new situation quickly enough. While initially glorified, Boroevic was subsequently aban­doned. As a commander during the war, he was declared an honorary citizen of Ljubljana and many other towns in Slovenia and Croatia. In 1919, following a decision by the city council, the title was revoked by Ljubljana's mayor Dr. !van Tavcar, the same politician who had be­stowed the title on Boroevic during the war. Boroevic was also denied Yugoslav citizenship, and died poor and lonely soon after the war at Lake Worth in Austria, his funeral paid for by the last Austrian emperor, Charles.

In the post-war years, the majority of Slo­venes opted for the Slovene cause, which also received support from professionals in Slovene cultural circles and their autonomist declara­tion made after the establishment of the Yu­goslav state (the main authors were Dragotin Loncar, Albin Prepeluh and Fran Erjavec). Translated into the language of politics, this meant either advocating autonomy (with the Catholic camp as its main advocate), which Slo­venes, incidentally, never managed to achieve, or integral Yugoslavism with a single Yugoslav language (which was the main position of the liberal camp). While some Slovene intellectu­als (Bozidar Borko, for example) supported the middle path of a "softer Yugoslavism," or in other words the amalgamation of Slovenes and Croats, or of the "three tribes," in linguistic as well as national sense by way of a long-term process spanning over several generations, oth­ers, like Josip Vidmar, were strongly opposed to any attempts to "drown" the nation's individu­ality in Yugoslavism. The dilemma of"Slovenes or Yugoslavs" continued into the 1930s and

THE 1930s IN SLOVEN lA

was strongly linked to a particular worldview (liberal or Catholic). Among the attempts to cut through this issue was Josip Vidmar's 1932 booklet Kulturni problemi slovenstva (The Cul­tural Problems of Slovenianism). In reality, the dilemma was spontaneously resolved through the informal cultural autonomy that Yugosla­via afforded Slovenes, which also included the Slovene-language school system. Generally speaking, however, and irrespective of their different perspectives on the national identity, whether Slovene or Yugoslav, and regardless of their frustration with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Slovenes looked upon the new state as a necessary shield to protect them from Ger­manic and Roman influences.

King Alexander I Karadordevic and Queen Maria (wearing the Slovenian, or Carniolan, national costume) in front of the National Hall in Kranj during the inau­guration of the monument to King Alexander's father King Peter I in 1926.

At a little more than 8% of the total popu­lation, Slovenes constituted the third-largest nation in Yugoslavia, behind Serbs and Mon­tenegrins (39% in total) and Croats (24%), but ahead of "Muslim Serbo-Croats" (6%). In the political sense, they served as the tipping point in perpetual conflicts between Serbs and Croats. Democracy was in short supply in the kingdom: the parliamentary era ended in 1927, and the limited local autonomy afforded to the Ljubljana and Maribor regions in some of the more important financial, public health, economic and cultural issues was abolished with the proclamation of dictatorship in 1929. Slovene bourgeois parties failed to implement some of the fundamental civilizational shifts, such as women's suffrage which they otherwise declared their support for. The Slovene People's Party (SLS) opposed women's emancipation for purely ideological reasons, despite the fact that in a thoroughly Catholic society their votes would have represented a short-term advan­tage, while the liberals' reasons were more op­portunistic, as, by the same token, only a small part of the female electorate would have voted for them. The main political bloc remained Catholic throughout the period, with the SLS dominating as the leading party. With the ex­ception of the post-war revolutionary years (the 1920 elections to the constituent assem­bly) when it gained 36% of the vote, the SLS, as in the elections at the turn of the century, succeeded in securing around 60% vote in a number of successive elections (1923, 1925 and 1927). Elections under the dictatorship and in later years (1931, 1935 and 1938) did not reflect the actual will of the people, even though the SLS (as part of the state parties) remained the dominant party.

The Vidovdan Constitution of June 28, 1921 introduced the centralist regime (Vidov dan or St. Vitus' Day is one of the most impor­tant Serbian orthodox holidays, and draws its symbolism, in part, from the 1389 Battle ofKo­sovo; on that same day in 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austrian crown-prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo). Even though contradic­tory, the constitution was rather progressive

1 Miroslav Krleza, Deset krvavih let in drugi politicni eseji (Ljubljana: Drzavna zalozba Slovenije, 1962), 78. 2 Dusan Necak and Bozo Repe, Prelom: 1914-1918: svet in Slovenci v 1. svetovni vojni (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2005), 179.

61

BOZO REPE

in terms of freedoms and social protection; it was modeled on the so-called Weimar (Ger­man) constitution and guaranteed freedom of speech, press, association, religion, inviolabil­ity of the home, as well as freedom of the arts and sciences. Governance of the state was di­vided, at least in principle, into three separate powers: the legislature, the judiciary and the executive. In practice however, only a small part of these freedoms and principles were enacted in law, and even then phased in over several years, as parliament's workings were severely impaired as the result of national and political disagreements in the 1920s. Democratic rights, too, were implemented to a very limited ex­tent, and many constitutional rights were re­stricted by law. The courts were only partially independent, and justice was symbolically ad­ministered "in the name of the king," who had the power to appoint judges or (formally upon a proposal from the government) to replace them. The king also had the right to grant par­dons and the right to abolish. Suffrage was rec­ognized for men only, the position of religions depended on whether they were legally recog­nized and on their legal status, and a range of legal exemptions was applied to classic civil liberties (the first victim was the Communist Party, which was outlawed as early as in 1920 and its members lost their seats in the parlia­ment). On top of that a special position in the system was given to the king: he had the right to convene or dissolve the assembly, the right to executive power, which he exercised through his ministers who had to swear an oath of office to him, he was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he had the right to declare war, and to sign peace treaties and declarations of surrender. The most problematic part of the constitution addressed relations between indi­vidual nations. The constitution was based on centralism and unitarism, and a single Yugoslav nation (made up of three tribes). In order to en­sure such national unity, it was imperative that the entire system, including the educational system, was operative. As per the constitution, authority was administered in the same way throughout the state.

The centralistic nature of the Vidovdan Constitution and the relatively small percent­age of Slovene population in the common state, as well as disagreements, oppositions, confron­tations and mutual dislikes made it impossible for Slovenes to have any greater impact on state policy. The basic division into three camps, the Conservative-Christian, the Liberal and the Socialist, remained preserved; however, there were splits within the camps themselves, too, which ultimately led to the formation of new parties. But despite all of that, the political ori­entation of Slovenes (as indicated by election results) living within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, throughout the 1920s remained largely the same as it was in the last decade of Austria-Hungary. The only exception was the year 1920, which was largely attributable to the social and political turbulence that followed on the heels of the Great War, and partly also to the effects of the newly-shaped political arena, which served to reinforce the two leading pan­Yugoslav parties.

62

New Economic Area

With the change in the national framework, Slovenia found itself in a different economic sit­uation. Once a "dependent" part of the Austro­Hungarian monarchy, it suddenly became the most developed region in Yugoslavia (in 1910, Slovenia's per capita domestic product amount­ed to $220 US, while in Serbia and Montenegro the number was closer to $70 or $80; Slovenia exported about a third of its production), and managed to gradually develop some of the el­ements of a national economy through basic institutions (chamber of trade and commerce, stock exchange). The dowry it brought to the new state included the railway infrastructure (a mere 60 kilometers of additional new track had to be built in the interwar period), along which main industrial centers developed, a solid electrical grid (its capacity grew from 20 million kilowatt hours at the end of World War I to 300 million in the interwar period), a devel­oped financial network, and a highly educated population (90% literacy).

Slavko Smolej, Coating with Hay, 1934.

Although in fact predominantly agrarian at the time of accession to Yugoslavia, Slovene society, despite the economic crises of the in­terwar period, gradually became more industri­alized, so that by World War I! the share of the farming population dropped to roughly half the total population, and the number of factories doubled (from 275 at the creation of the state to 523 at the beginning of World War II), while production volumes increased by 250%. Char­acteristic for the Slovene economy were small manufacturing companies with up to 200 em­ployees and a polycentric development model, which enabled migrations from overpopulated rural areas into both smaller and larger indus­trial centers. At the same time, Ljubljana estab­lished itself as an economic (as well as cultural and political) center. Textiles, wood processing and metallurgy were the strongest sectors, fol­lowed by food processing, construction, paper, glass, and leather industries. One obstacle to polycentric development was the state's poor road infrastructure (the first concrete road, from Ljubljana to Jesenice, was not built until the late 1930s). This also had an impact on the development of tourism, which was further hampered by rigid legislation, a visa system and restrictions on the movement of people. Bicycle was the primary means of private transporta­tion for the majority ofSlovenes, the railway the primary means of public transportation, and horse-drawn carriages were significantly more common than cars.

Slavko Smolej, A View of the Ironworks, 1937.

Unemployment remained a major problem (during the crisis of the early 1930s it reached 27%). In the mid-1930s, industry employed around 130,000 people, of which women ac­counted for around 40%. Foreign capital had a strong influence on the economy, especially in the banking sector and leading industrial sectors, although Slovenia's capital increased as well (reaching a 1:2 ratio in its favor). Some 10 banks and 18 bank branches operated in the territory of Slovenia, the majority of them foreign-owned. All financial institutes were badly hit by the crisis, especially those linked to the Austrian Credit-Anstalt (which went bankrupt in 1931). Strong support, particularly

for farmers, was provided by farmers' credit cooperatives, of which the two strongest were under the political influence of the Catholic and Liberal camps. Agriculture was in a perpetual state of crisis throughout the interwar period, and exposed to fierce competition from other parts ofYugoslavia. With many farmers deep in debt, the state was forced to declare a morato­rium on farmers' debts, with half of them writ­ten off in late 1930s. The rural population lived in poverty and on the brink of survival; work­ers were in a similar position, despite the labor exchange and the chamber oflabor established with new labor legislation, as well as other protection mechanisms, among them also the eight-hour workday. The standard of living fell further during the crisis, and then, after a brief improvement, fell again in 1940 and 1941 when food rationing and coupons for bread and flour were introduced.'

Heavy stratification was present among the working class, too. The poorest workers lived in precarious hygiene conditions, in slums or outbuildings, the majority in rented accom­modations in suburbs, while the one-storey ter­raced house represented the highest of living standards among the working class. Free time was spent in taverns, on short leisure trips, and day festivals. Workers' societies were common. Food was modest, with meat, milk and milk products rare commodities. The middle class was made up of white-collar workers and simi­lar professionals. They led a better life, lived in well-appointed apartments in towns, and were able to afford vacations and a higher cultural standard. The upper, and the least numerous social class consisted of entrepreneurs, indus­trialists, bankers, politicians, and partly also of university professors, doctors, and publishers. Largely of rural background, they belonged to the first generation of the emerging bourgeoi­sie, who saw townhouses or town apartments, cars, radios, educating children abroad, and travel as symbols of their elevated status.4

Social life ranged from the traditional, characteristic of rural areas, villages and small­er towns in particular and manifested in old customs, religious holidays and Sunday festi­vals, to the modern, practiced in larger towns, particularly in Ljubljana, where cosmopolitan habits of socializing and leisure activities be­came increasingly popular. Societies played a significant role in the way people spent their free time (statistically there were at least four societies per 1000 inhabitants), as did ama­teur culture which, reportedly, counted for at least a quarter of Slovenia's total population. The theaters, with seven to eight productions, among them also plays by contemporary for­eign authors, were the most traditional form of culture, as were opera and ballet (established in 1918). An important form of socializing was patronizing cafes, which in the interwar period updated their interiors to achieve a more mod­ern style. Promenading and open-air concerts remained from the old, Austrian-Hungarian traditions, and survived well into the interwar period. New forms of leisure pursuits emerged, such as cinema, modern dance and music, as well as sports events and swimming in riv­ers and public swimming pools. Younger gen­erations increasingly took up various sports, among them gymnastics, cycling, mountain­eering, skiing, ice skating, swimming, football, and tennis. Primacy in this field, however, was still reserved for traditional physical exercise; the two most important gymnastics societies,

Sokol, which had a longer tradition and a na­tionalist, Yugoslav orientation, and the Catho­lic Ore!, had, apart from promoting sports, a far broader moral, educational, conceptual and political function. Gymnastics was the flagship of Slovene society, and competition winners were almost exclusively members of the Sokol society, and some were Olympic medalists, too. In the 1930s, the ski jumping hill at Planica be­came a source of national pride and the reason Slovenia occasionally made it into the head­lines of major European newspapers. Accord­ing to statistics, the Drava Banovina (province consisting of most of present -day Slovenia and named for the Drava River) had around 40 foot­ball fields, 12 athletic stadiums, two cycling tracks, 15 swimming pools, 23 ski jumping hills, lO tennis courts and 17 ski chalets.'

Dictatorship and Integral Yugoslavism

While the 1920s, despite constant debates over the legislative framework of the state and fruit­less discussions on ethnicity in the parliament, could be described as moderately democratic, this all ended in the 1930s. The already low­brow political culture, filled with mutual insults and name-calling even in the highest political bodies (parliament even had a special police force in charge of bringing members to order or removing them from sessions), reached its low point in 1928. So did Yugoslav parliamentarian­ism, which met its end in late June 1928, when Punisa Ra<"ic, a member of parliament for the Serbian National Radical Party, fired gunshots on the parliamentary floor, killing two Croatian Peasant Party representatives, Pavle RadiC and Djuro Basaricek, and wounding three others, !van Pernar, !van Granda and Stjepan Radic. Radic later died as a result of a gunshot wound, but not before he accused the prime minister, the cabinet, and Anton Korosec, the Minister of the Interior and the leading Slovene politician (to whom the assassin paid a visit the night be­fore the assassination), of conspiracy to murder.

Peter Loboda, Portrait of 5tjepan Radii:, 1929, plaster. Stjepan Radic was the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party. His assassination only deepened the political crisis in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (until1929).1n The Native's Return (1934), Louis Adamii' wrote of him: "His political program, while he walked around in flesh, had been, as I say, an inchoate, nega­tive business. His big achievement lay in the fact that he had stirred and inspired the neglected, backward peasant masses, made them politically conscious. Now, dead from the bullet of a servant of the people's enemies, he became a great hero-martyr, a William Tell, an Abraham Lincoln-a modern Kralyevitch Marko." Adamii' concludes Radic's story with the following words: "His death brought Zagreb and rural Croatia closer together. lt made Zagreb the center of Croat revolutionary resistance to the Belgrade rule."

The day before the event, Punisa Ra<"ic called for the kingdom to be renamed Great Serbia. A state of emergency was declared, Croatian representatives left the parliamen­tary floor, demands for free elections and a new constitution ensued, and the government resorted to state terrorism to stabilize the situ­ation. Korosec and the SLS sided with the court and the Serbian parties, and for a few months Korosec took over as the prime minister, which was the highest political function to be as­sumed by a Slovene up until then; Korosec was also the only non-Serbian prime minister (poli­ticians from regions located "across" the Dan­ube, Sava and Drina rivers, that is, regions that

were previously part of Austria-Hungary, only rarely secured positions in the highest political bodies). In December 1929, the government re­signed, but the SLS participated in the new gov­ernment until 1930. On January 6, 1929, King Alexander proclaimed a dictatorship based on integral national Yugoslavism. The king per­sonally assumed power, providing a cynical explanation that there should be no intermedi­aries between him and the nation, repealed the constitution, abolished the parliament and ap­pointed a government headed by General Petar Zivkovic. In this, he enjoyed the initial support of some domestic politicians and Western gov­ernments, who believed him capable of stabiliz­ing the situation, but then soon re-introduced a parliamentary system once again.

Nikolaj Pirnat, Portrait of King Alexander, mid-1930s (after 1934), marble. At the end of his journey across the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Louis Adamii' also met with King Alexander, who in AdamiC's The Native's Return, published in 1934, the year of the King's assassination in Marseilles, appeared until the end of the book as some sort of spectral presence in all of the country's troubles described by Adamii'. Adamii' finishes his description of the unpleasant audience with the King by surmising his end and a future war: "On my part, although, as I say, the audience was no pleasant experience, I was glad to have met him, too. Riding back to Belgrade in the royal limousine, I had a very strong feeling about him. He was a man of the times, in the same category of strong-arm rulers with Mu­ssolini, Hitler, Pilsudski, and the rest of the tyrants and dictators. He was a cog in the new political system of post-war Europe, helping to hold together a crumbling civilization with gangster methods. He was a figure in the dreadful European nightmare that seemed rapidly and inevitably approaching its climax-another great war, to be followed (as nearly everyone with whom I talked appeared to believe) by general upheavals of the masses. At the moment he had the whole country on the 'spot'; he might stay in power one, two, five or ten more years; but the future was clearly and defini­tely against him and his kind."

Based on the stricter State Protection Law, the regime started persecuting its adversaries, and many politicians emigrated. The state was divided into nine provinces called banovina, with Belgrade, Zemun and Pancevo as inde­pendent administrative units. The banovinas were named after rivers, except for the Littoral (Primorska) Banovina in Dalmatia, and due to their specific locations only the Drava and Vardar Banovinas covered ethnic territories, the Slovene and the Macedonian respectively. The banovinas were not autonomous units, and their leaders, or bans, were appointed by the king. The integral Yugoslavism found its prima­ry expression and outlet in the renaming of the state to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Centralism and unitarism were omnipresent. The general discontent among all layers of society (the dic­tatorship coincided with the world economic crisis) caused the situation in the country to de­teriorate. The dictatorship was unable to solve national disputes, and the regime, faced with opposition from the bourgeois parties and the communists alike (who initiated an unsuccess­ful uprising), as well as terrorist acts perpetrat­ed by the Ustashe, who wanted to gain an in­dependent Croatia, found itself increasingly at an impasse. During the years 1931-1933, bour­geois parties publicly declared their demands in the form of the so-called "punktacije" (a list of demands), and although they all condemned dictatorship, demanded parliamentarianism, and emphasized the principle of national sover­eignty, all had very different views with regard to the framework of state governance, as well as different proposals for the introduction of

THE 1930s IN SLOVEN lA

a federal state model. For the most part, these proposals took into account only Croats, Slo­venes, and Serbs, while additional demands for autonomy were made by parties from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina and Montenegro, too.6

Not surprisingly, demonstrations, gather­ings and constant student protests (often, uni­versities were closed down for several months), as well as armed conflicts were a frequent oc­currence during the dictatorship. Great Britain and France, Yugoslavia's two major supporters, grew increasingly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. The new, imposed constitution of Sep­tember 3, 1931, which granted the king even more power, and the assembly elections of No­vember 8, 1931, with public voting and the pan­Yugoslav government party prevailing, failed to provide the regime with a sense of real legiti­macy, even though the government did succeed in achieving a tiny majority.

Universal Newsreel: Alexander Murdered (The Assassi­nation of King Alexander in Marseilles), Universal City Studios, 1934.

On October 9, 1934, Kerin Velicko Geor­gijev (who also went by the name of Peter Kele­men), a member of the Macedonian nationalist organization VMRO (Macedonians were not recognized as a nation, and were considered "southern Serbs"), with the support of the Ustashe and the Italian and Hungarian secret police, assassinated King Alexander in Mar­seilles during his official visit to France. How­ever, this did not result in breaking up the state as had been expected. The three-member re­gency set up in the name of the underage King Peter and led by Alexander's cousin Prince Paul resisted any attempts to change the established policies. In response to the assassination and by way of addressing internal disturbances, po­lice violence became more widespread, and the government also set up an "isolation" camp (an official designation; in reality, it was a concen­tration camp) in Visegrad, where its opponents were detained, among them leftists, liberals and others, including many students.

Lojze Dolinar, Model for the monument to King Alexander I, 1938, bronze and plaster. Soon after the assassination of King Alexander I a debate started about a mo­nument to him as an expression of Slovenian gratitude to the King. After the polemic about the content and location of the monument, it became clear that the pu­blic was most in favor of the figure of the cavalryman. In 1935, the board for the construction of the mo­nument confirmed the cavalryman and the location of the monument in Zvezda Park in Ljubljana. Following the initiative of the president of the board I van Hribar, the architect Joze Plei'nik also presented his idea with a colonnade in 1937, yet the board declined it at the end of that same year. Consequently, I van Hribar stepped down as president of the board. Another open call was

3 Zarko Lazarevic, 5/ovensko gospodarstvo v prvi Jugoslaviji: korak k industrijski druzbi (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 1997). 4 Dusan Necak and Bozo Repe, Kriza: svet in 5/ovenci od konca prve svetovne vojne do sredine tridesetih let (Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni institut Filozofske fakultete, 2008). 5 More on the subject: Neven Borak et al., 5/ovenska novejsa zgodovina: od programa Zedinjena 5/ovenija do mednarodnega priznanja Republike 5/ovenije, 1848-1992 (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, lnstitut za novejso zgodovino, 2006). 6 Jure Gasparii', 5L5 pod kraljevo diktaturo: diktatura kralja Aleksandra in po/itika 5/ovenske ljudske stranke v /etih 1929-1935 (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2007). See also: Peter Vodopivec and Joza Mahnii', eds., 5/ovenska trideseta /eta: simpozij 1995 (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1997).

63

BOZO REPE

issued and a new location determined: the entrance into Tivoli Park in Ljubljana. The board chose Lojze Dolinar's model, then quickly transposed into a life-size one and placed in the new location, which turned out to be inappopropriate. On 6 September 1940, the mo­nument was inaugurated in the old location, in Zvezda Park, in the presence of the royal family. The plinth was the work of the architect Herman Hus with two reliefs by Lojze Dolinar representing War and Peace. On 11 April1941, the Italian army entered Ljubljana. Seven days later, lvan Hribar committed suicide in protest against the occupation. Three months later the Italian army, during the night of July 25, demolished the monument to the King.

Scenes from Marjan Foerster's documentary The lnauguratian of the Monument to King Alexander I in Ljubljana, 6 September 1940.

During the 1934-1941 regency, the ban on bourgeois parties was lifted, but only on pan-Yugoslav parties, which led to unusual alli­ances, such as between Serbian Orthodox Radi­cals, the Slovene Catholic People's Party and the pro-Yugoslav Muslim Organization from Bosnia. Ever since the introduction of dicta­torship, elections did not reflect the will of the people. In Slovenia, the SLS, as part of a pan­Yugoslav party, ruled with an absolute majority from the mid-1930s to the beginning of World War I I. Following the Austrian example during the time of Chancellor Dollfuss, it informally installed a kind of clero-fascism, which eventu­ally led to tensions, divisions and splits within the Catholic camp itself.

As a result of the defeatist policies ofWest­ern states in relation to the rise of both totali­tarian ideologies, democratic policies played an increasingly minor role in the kingdom. The Croatian-Serbian issue became acute once again, and the Cvetkovic-Macek Agreement of August 1939 was expected to resolve it. The leading Croatian Peasant's Party became a gov­ernment party, and a new Banovina Croatia was formed by combining the Sava and Littoral Banovinas, along with parts of Bosnia and Her­zegovina. It was given control over its economic and social affairs, healthcare, judicial system and internal affairs, and also had its own par­liament, the "sabor," which shared legislative authority with the king. The model was to be used for the Drava Banovina (Slovenia) as well, and all remaining provinces were to be joined in a great Serbian banovina. The agreement was, therefore, not the beginning of a federal state as some tried to demonstrate later, but in actual fact a power-sharing agreement.

Throughout the kingdom's lifetime, the political climate was generally a tense one, and differences of opinion were sharp or even bru­tal, with several internal crises threatening the existence of the state. The parliament, in the rare periods when the king permitted its func­tioning (often he arbitrarily closed it down for several months), failed to base its work on dem­ocratic principles. Changes in government were a frequent occurrence (nearly 40 in total), and in this power struggle the most daring combi­nations between political parties with entirely contrasting programs were not at all unusual. This internal state of affairs was further exac­erbated by external political circumstances, es­pecially the economic recession and endeavors by some countries, among them chiefly Italy, to break up the kingdom.

64

Between Tradition, Modernity, and Cultural Struggle

More than anywhere else, Yugoslavia's diversity was most evident in culture, education and sci­ence. A single educational system and the uni­fication of school types with a single language of instruction (with the exception of Slovene schools and schools of recognized Hungarian, Romanian and German minorities) were among the key mechanisms in the integral Yugoslav­ism policy. The illiteracy rate stood at 50%, with female illiteracy in the lead due to patriarchy and religion, and there was also a significant gap between social classes, and between urban and rural areas? Social standards were low. The school curriculum was based on the principle of a unitary state and drew on the glorification of the Karadjordjevic dynasty, on religious edu­cation, anti-liberalism and anti-leftism, with a strong focus on anti-Semitism as well. Religions played an important role, and were formally separate from the state; in reality, however, the three main religions, Orthodox, Catholic and Is­lamic, had absolute control over their particular cultural and national landscapes.

There was no single Yugoslav cultural landscape to speak of; rather, it was divided along national lines, and within this framework Slovenes jealously guarded their identity, both inwardly and outwardly.• The first and foremost characteristic of Slovene cultural, educational and scientific spheres in the interwar period is their linguistic shift, born of a thousand-year­old fear of German influence. The teaching of German was abandoned, particularly in favor of French. French influence (also because of the traditional alliance between Serbia, or Yugo­slavia, and France) generally became stronger in the culture at large. In the 1930s, this trend was intermingled with the German influence, which was stronger in the political arena and weaker in culture. Slavic influences were also strong, particularly Czech, as well as Russian (Soviet) in the 1930s. The second key charac­teristic of this period, and also reflected in cui­ture, was the feeling of being small, helpless, and plagued by national and social injustices. The feeling of territorial and other limitations, regret over the loss of Trieste and the Primor­ska region, as well as of Carinthia, dubbed "the cradle of Sloveneness," was reflected in numer­ous journalistic and other writings. The writer Fran Albreht expressed such sentiment in a sin­gle simple sentence, saying that on a clear day, looking out with only the naked eye from the Ljubljana Castle or the Roznik Hill, one could get a view over the entirety of Slovenia.

In the Yugoslav context, Slovenes man­aged to win a kind of informal cultural auton­omy, with a Slovene school system (there were around 860 primary and 85 general and voca­tional secondary schools), its own university (established in 1919) and a range of other edu­cational and cultural institutions: the National Gallery (1918), the Ljubljana Philharmonic, the music conservatory, a range of museums, the National and University Library (construction began in 1935, and opened in 1941), the Acad­emy of Arts and Sciences (1938), and a number of other cultural entities. A variety of very ac­tive cultural and other societies was a particu­Jar feature of Slovenia (there were more than 8200 societies at the end of the 1930s). Yugo­slav Slovenia (the Drava Banovina) had 54 cin­emas with 13,000 shows. The performing arts

were even stronger, with two professional and several amateur theatre groups. Reading cul­ture, too, was astonishingly developed. There were more than 2200 libraries in the Drava Banovina, and a number of publishing houses were established, publishing works by local authors and translations of foreign authors. A wide range of magazines and newspapers was published, too. Around 15,000 books were pub­lished in the interwar period, of which approxi­mately 2000 were works of fiction!

The most modern cultural development of the interwar period was Radio Ljubljana, which first broadcast on September 1, 1928, reporting from the opening of the Ljubljana Fair. On that same day, the otherwise scarce audience was addressed by Oton ZupanCic and Fran Saleski Finzgar, two of the most esteemed literary fig­ures of the time. From just a few hundred initial subscribers, that number rose to almost 20,000 listeners by the end of the 1930s (in Yugoslavia, the total stood at approximately 50,000). While radio in Slovenia up until the start of the war did not play such a political and propaganda role as it did in Germany, Great Britain, or the USA, it did start to play an increasingly important role in cultural and educational circles. Neverthe­less, it was subject to strict censorship, and its program had to be submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for advance approval. The first communication of elections results on radio in Slovenia took place in 1931.

The most visible mark on all spheres of Slovene society in the 1930s was that left by the cultural struggle. Begun already in the late 19'h century, when, as a result of the formation of political parties, the church sensed (albeit unrealistically at the time) that it was losing its position of absolute primacy, the process be­came more pronounced in the 1930s with the decline in Catholicism's influence in general. Although by the mid-1930s the Catholic camp still formally controlled some 65% of the Slo­vene political landscape, there were different processes underway below the surface, most visibly manifested in a final ideological split. The anticommunist-oriented radical part of the Catholic camp had set itself the objective to completely catholicize all walks of life. The weak, divided, and mainly Yugoslav-oriented liberal parties and groups were pushed to the margins of the political spectrum (even before that, the liberals were only able to reach some 20% of the electorate and consequently could only rule in Slovenia in coalition with Serbian parties). Traditional political alliances were falling apart.

In the 1930s, the cultural struggle shifted from Liberals to Communists, but also to the leftist wing of the Catholic camp. Prior to that, in 1927, Pope Pi us XI founded the Catholic Ac­tion movement (through the Urbi arcane Dei consiglio encyclical and a number of other let­ters and statements), with the primary objective to encourage Catholic influence over social and other areas of society by fighting against liber­alism, secularism, and socialism. In Slovenia, the Catholic Action was organized by bishops Anton Bonaventura Jeglic in the Ljubljana dio­cese (replaced by Gregorij Rozman in 1930) and Andrej Karlin in the Maribor diocese. Its roots lay in some earlier organizations that promoted Catholic renewal, and was initially non-politi­cal in nature. When Gregorij Rozman took over the office ofbishop (probably with the intent to unify the internal divisions and to shift them to the right), the Catholic Action became an

elite organization for the militant renewal of Catholicism, and its work was characterized by a relentless struggle against those otherwise­minded, even within the Catholic camp itself.

This transformation process culminated in 1936 with new rules of operation for the Catholic Action. Two primary elite groups op­erated within its framework: the Youth Union of Christ the King (Zveza mladcev Kristusa kralja), consisting of high school students and founded by Professor Ernest Tomec in 1931, and the Catholic Action at the University, like­wise founded in 1931 by Professor of Theology Dr. Lambert Ehrlich, and, using the name of the magazine it published, renamed The Watch in the Storm (Straza v viharju) in 1934 (renamed yet again to The Watch Academic Club (Aka­demski !dub Straza) in 1937). Both organiza­tions were rivals, with The Watch receiving active guidance from Korosec. Incidentally, the forecast for the year 1931, in which the new direction of the organization under Rozman's guidance took shape, had been indicated by the main Catholic newspaper Slovenec, proclaim­ing that "henceforth, we will consider it one of our main objectives to actively contribute to the victory of Christian principles in both private and public life ... "10

In May 1931, Pope Pius XI issued the Quadragesimo anno encyclical (or "In the 40'h Year," as it was being issued 40 years after Re­rum Novarum, the first social encyclical issued in 1891, in which Pope Leon XIII defined the relations between government, capital, work­ers, and the church, and recognized workers' rights to organize trade unions, but rejected socialism). The Quadragesimo anno served to correct the previous encyclical, but also to up­grade it; in fact, it spoke out against Liberalism (and the related class struggle), and was even more severely opposed to socialism (and now also communism). Instead, it favored corporat­ism, which led the Catholic Church to become sympathetic to Mussolini's Fascism. In 1933, Slovenec noted: "Fascism certainly has many likeable features that might appeal even to a Catholic. One only has to think of its endeav­ors to raise moral awareness, eliminate class struggle, and create a corporatist state. What is positive about Fascism has been taken from Christianity, and in this vein, Fascism must tru­ly become a part of the anti-Bolshevik front." 11

This type of journalism became a stand­ard in Slovene newspaper reporting, and was favored over the Fascist treatment of Littoral Slovenes. The encyclical served to aggravate di­visions within the Catholic camp even further. The division initially revolved around the op­posing views of the Usenicnik wing on the one hand, which encompassed the majority of the Catholic right and advocated the corporatist so­cial order, and Andrej Gosar's minority faction, which favored Christian Social activism. In turn, the division spread to Christian Socialist trade unions (the Yugoslav Professional Union), which with some 6000 members was one of the strongest trade unions. They openly declared their support for socialism and for the working class, assuming the leading role in it. 12 The right wing of the Catholic camp demanded that all Catholic organizations comply with the encyc­lical's message that socialism was contrary to Catholic doctrine. This prompted the Yugoslav Professional Union to separate from the Catho­lic camp in 1932. Five years later, the Catholic right launched a radical offensive against the intelligentsia led by Edvard Kocbek, which was

the first important sign that Slovenia's political and spiritual landscape had shifted to the left -to a socialist class position.13

At the same time, another political move­ment within the Catholic camp began to voice its criticism of the SLS and its politics: the Crusaders (so-named after the magazine The Cross on the Mountain, and later renamed The Cross). They, too, rejected Catholic radicalism and grew closer to the Christian Socialists, first to the trade union and then to Kocbek's group. They were very influential in the Ore! gymnas­tics society (this was also one of the reasons that Ore! was dissolved during the dictatorship, or rather, was forced to merge with the Sokol society; this was not a mere centralist move by the government in Belgrade, as the society was also seen as disturbing by the Catholic right). The Crusaders also had a strong influence on Catholic and other student societies (Zarja, Danica, and Borba). Much the same can be said of yet another Catholic society, the Krek Move­ment (initially their journal was called The Fire of Christian Socialist Youth, which then be­came the Young Flame), which adopted many of the radical leftist ideas and even maintained informal contact with communists.

Splits and divisions were characteristic of the liberal camp, too. In its intellectual wing, the debate surrounding Vidmar's pamphlet Kulturni problemi slovenstva (The Cultural Problems of Slovenianism) caused a group of prominent cultural professionals to split with the Liberal party. To a large extent, this left the party that prided itself on counting all of the progressive intellectuals among their members mentally crippled. A national-liberal group began to form within the Sokol gymnastics so­ciety, too, but their split from the society took place much later, in 1939. Some intellectuals, both on the right and the left, attempted to act independently, in smaller groups writing for various magazines, but in the light of their polarization this proved almost impossible. Among such attempts, the magazine Slovenija, founded in 1932 and edited by Lojze Ude, par­ticularly stood out.

For the generation of young Communists, the early 1930s were a time of rebuilding the shattered Communist Party and shifting their focus to national-front and national-defense policies. Consolidating its ranks through the Constituent Congress of the Communist Party of Slovenia, held in 1937 in Cebine, the party emerged with a far greater impact on the Slo­vene political landscape than the modest num­ber of its several hundred members would sug­gest. The communists accepted the position that the bourgeois parties had failed to do their duty and it was now their task, as the working­class avant-garde, to assume responsibility for the future of the Slovene nation. Playing into their hands was also the fear of fascism, which became particularly pronounced after the An­schluss (the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938) when the borders of the German Reich were moved closer to the Karawanken.

Declaring one's support for Fascism (Na­zism) on the one side or Communism on the other became the key point in the context of both public and underground ideological struggles. Initially, propaganda efforts fought fervently over the issue of the Soviet Union.14

The tipping point, however, was the Span­ish Civil War, which started on July 18, 1936, with the military coup against the victorious People's Front (elections in February 1936) and

THE 1930s IN SLOVEN lA

the Spanish Republic (established in 1931), and ended on April 1, 1939, with the occupation of Madrid and a ceasefire. The war split Europe and the world into Francoists and Republicans, the left and the right, with supporters oflaicism on one side and clericalism on the other. Divi­sions arose within the two camps, as well. Par­ticularly noteworthy on the right is the fact that its left wing, the Christian Socialist groups, turned away from the radical right wing. And the left, although not particularly uni­fied among its ranks, hoped that Spain would turn out to be "the grave of European Fascism." What actually happened, however, was exactly

7 Unlike undeveloped rural areas, major urban centers (Beograd, Zagreb, and Ljubljana) were a part of the European cultural landscape, or at least tried keep abreast in terms of modernization and culture. In a country with 12 million inhabitants, three radio stations had 140,000 subscribers at the end of the 1930s. Despite illiteracy and censorship, there were 976 newspapers published in 8 languages, or one newspaper per 14,275 inhabitants. Of 183 political and information newspapers, 39 were daily newspapers with a total print run of 250,000 copies (data for the year 1932). The Bel grade-based Politika had a distribution of 70,000-90,000 copies, Vreme 40,000, Pravda 20,000, the Zagreb-based Novosti 25,000-30,000 and Jutranji list 25,000-30,000 copies, while 5/ovenec was distributed in 20,000-35,000 copies. There were also around 700 assorted foreign newspapers in circulation, of which the majority were French, followed by German, Czech, English and Hungarian. See: Dusan Necak and Bozo Repe, Kriza: svet in 5/ovenci od konca prve svetovne vojne do sredine tridesetih let. 8 There was cooperation in some areas, such as among writers and authors gathered around the magazines Danas and Pecat and their editor, the Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza. Literary activities were centered mainly in large urban areas. Among numerous literary figures, Antun Gustav Matos, lvo AndriC, Milos Crnjanski, and Branislav Nusic also deserve mention. Nusic in particular was a figure who used his literary skills to expose, in a humorous way, Yugoslav (Serbian) political illiteracy, greed, nepotism and Balkan behavior patterns, such as are still embedded in today's post-Yugoslav reality in all of the newly-created states. Ero the Joker, an opera which remained popular after World War 11, was created by Jakov Gotovac in the 1930s. 9 Accession to the Yugoslav state and the founding of its own university meant that this was the first time one could speak of Slovene science as well -previously, scientific efforts consisted only of individuals active in various Austrian universities. This was of major importance for both natural and other sciences. Each discipline developed its own scientific language and published scientific papers and magazines, and many Slovene scientists met with international recognition. Among those notable is Friderik Pregl (also Fritz Pregl), whose father was Slovene, and who developed the method for quantitative organic microanalysis for which he was awarded the No bel Prize in Chemistry in 1923. At the time (and also later) Pregl was considered German, and probably also described himself as such. The most visionary scientist of the time was undoubtedly Herman Potocnik- Noordung (1892-1929), a pioneer of cosmonautics. 10 Metod Mikuz, Oris zgodovine 5/ovencev v stari Jugoslaviji 1917-1941 (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1965), p. 390. 11 "Fasizem proti boljsevizmu," 5/ovenec, LXI, n. 110a (May 14, 1933): p. 1. 12 Janez Cvirn et al., 1/ustrirana zgodovina 5/ovencev (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1999), 40-41, 320-324. 13 Janko Prunk, 5/ovenski narodni vzpon: narodna politika (1768-1992) (Ljubljana: Drzavna zalozba Slovenije, 1992), 257. 14 More about this in: Simon Festanj, "V sovjetskem raju: Podoba Sovjetske zveze v casnikih Slovenec in Jutro v tridesetih letih 20. stoletja," Borec, 56, n. 612-616 (2004): 145-245.

65

BOZO REPE

the opposite: it was the left and liberal Europe that found itself in the grave. Yugoslavia's posi­tion on the Spanish civil war was one of non­interference and neutrality, and any attempts at help were prohibited. In 1937, Anton Korosec, the Minister of the Interior, "translated" this position into a legal provision, declaring that anyone joining the Spanish Republican Armed Forces would be deprived of their citizenship. The government actively persecuted all sympa­thizers of the Republican side, prohibited pub­lic meetings and all other forms of expressing support, as well as fundraising activities. Visas for Spain were not granted, and a penalty of up to one year of imprisonment was imposed on any Spanish War volunteers apprehended. The policy was actively supported by Catholic par­ties, particularly the Croatian Peasant's Party and the SLS.

Dorde Andrejevic-Kun's For Freedom, print portfolio on the Spanish civil war (10 prints, woodcut), 1939. Cover: For Life, Against Death; Attack on Fascist Strongholds; Battle on the Barricades.

The right-wing press used the Spanish Civil War to intensify its otherwise permanent criticism of communism and express its sym­pathy for Franco and Fascism. For the right, the People's Front represented a case of Soviet and Jewish conspiracy. Communists were described as sadistic and full of anti-religious frenzy. Spain was the arena where the fate of Christen­dom would be decided, before it was destroyed by godless Communism in a complot with Ju­daism. Just as the Spanish Civil War served as preparation for World War I!, so did its percep­tion in Slovenia serve as both preparation and the ideological arena for the propaganda war and subsequent real war against the Liberation Front and Partisan (or Communist, according to the Slovene right) movement, whose organ­izers and leaders also came from the ranks of prominent fighters in the Spanish War. There were more than 530 "Spaniards" in total, and at the beginning of the armed resistance in 1941 they joined the newly-formed Partisan troops as their chief commanding officers.15

The right-wing press called for Catholics to stand guard against Communists, declaring that force could only be conquered with force, rather than with nice words and holy water, and Catholics should therefore make preparations for their own safety in good time, and not once it was too late and houses are already burning and the Communists start shooting. Catholics should therefore join together, arm themselves and organize village guards to defend villages and religious shrines against the influx of Co­mintern slaves. Such calls to arms became an integral part of the ideological vocabulary, and justified by reports of the Spanish Civil War, saying that "Not only do they show no mercy for spiritual and religious persons in Spain, but they also kill any man that carries a sign of Christianity: a prayer book, a rosary, a relic, or a holy image! ... Woe to you, faithful people of Slovenia, what fate awaits you if those bring­ers of happiness to mankind should win in our country, too. Guns, swords, gallows ... What say you to that, Christian people? Will you be con­tent? Will you truly stand idle and wait for our churches to be burned, and ourselves shot and slaughtered? ... "16

The political and propaganda war would often escalate into physical altercations among members of different organizations (particu-

66

lady university and high school student organi­zations). Calls to arms were a clear indication of the direction the conflict would take over the course of the war. The militant propaganda actions of the far right were critically assessed in the 1937 essay Thoughts on Spain by Edvard KocbekP Published in Dom in svet, a monthly Slovene literary magazine published from 1888 to 1941, the essay prompted the magazine's edi­torial board, including its editor-in-chiefFrance Koblar, to resign their positions, and sometime later, Kocbek and his like-minded supporters founded the magazine Dejanje. Kocbek referred to Fascism as a product of degenerate bourgeois society, while at the same time suggesting that Christian (Catholic) spirituality had been made equivalent to the spirituality of Fascism, there­by opening up the possibility for close coopera­tion between the Catholic Church and Fascism.

After several years of searching for an in­tellectual balance "between Marx and God," Kocbek made his essay on the Spanish Civil War the cornerstone of his future political credo. In February 1941, just a few weeks before the Fascist occupation, he called on intellectuals to break the bonds of their own conformism and, in the coming fateful times, decide between spiritual slavery and spiritual freedom. After the occupation ofSlovenia in 1941 and the divi­sion of its territory among the occupying forces, it was Kocbek who led a group of Christian So­cialist intellectuals to join the Liberation Front. (Incidentally, Christian Socialist trade unions led by Tone Fajfar were among the founding groups of the Liberation Front.).

Following the people's front period, the Communists abandoned their integration pol­icy as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Soviet-Finnish war. They returned once again to the ideals of class struggle, thereby losing allies among the left-wing and centrist politi­cal groups. They tried, however, through vari­ous sporadic efforts, to retain or regain some of them. Among the more prominent such efforts was the establishment ofThe Friends of the So­viet Union Society (Drustvo prijateljev Sovjet­ske zveze), prompted by the establishment of diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1940.18 Their crucial mo­ment came with the war, when they were able, without any reservations, to renew or reestab­lish old alliances with the liberal or national­ly-oriented left wing of the Sokol gymnastics society, the trade unions from the Christian So­cialist camp, the liberal intelligentsia gathered around Josip Vidmar, the Christian Socialist in­telligentsia of Edvard Kocbek, and other select smaller groups. Together, after the occupation and the division of Slovenia's territory among the four occupying forces (Germany, Italy, Hun­gary, and the Ustashe-led Independent State of Croatia), they founded the Liberation Front in April1941, and, after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, started the armed rebellion.

Contrary to the integration efforts of the left, the bourgeois camp found itself in a state of conflict and confusion at the start of the war; they were unprepared, lacked a clear vi­sion, and, after the death of Dr. Anton Korosec, strong leadership. While Anton Korosec was still alive (he died in December 1940, a few months before the attack on Yugoslavia), the leading SLS had abandoned Yugoslavism and, thinking Yugoslavia would not survive the war, secretly sought to make contact with the Nazis in order to ensure Slovenia's survival in

the form of a protectorate based on the Slovak model, either alone or together with Croatia. Hitler then granted the protectorate to Croa­tia, but attempted to destroy the Slovenes. The idea of a protectorate, and Nazi Germany leaving the Slovene Catholic Church alone in exchange for embracing the Nazi ideology and submitting to Nazi rule, had appealed already to Korosec. His successors followed up on this scheme, first in their relations with Fascist Italy, which was allocated a large portion of Slovenia after the occupation, and then, once Italy had surrendered, in relations with Nazi Germany, the reason behind the latter case be­ing the weakened German military. The prag­matic German occupying forces, which fostered collaboration through good relations with Dr. Gregorij Rozman, the Bishop of Ljubljana, and the clergy, remained confined to the so-called Province of Ljubljana while in the initial Ger­man Occupational Zone the attitude towards Slovenes and the Church remained unchanged.

The War

When World War I! broke out in Europe in Sep­tember 1939, Yugoslavia declared itself neutral, without having received any guarantees from major power states. Opposition to a potential alliance with Fascist states and falling wages led to a series of strikes in 1939 and 1940. The gov­ernment responded with a severe crackdown, prohibiting the activities of socialist trade un­ions and establishing a concentration camp in Bileca. On December 14, 1940, weapons were used against the protesters in Belgrade. The government also adopted decrees on rents, food reserves, and requisitions; food prices were in­creased to the maximum and in early 1941 flour and bread coupons were introduced.

Hinko Smrekar, Milan Stojadinovic, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from June 1935 to February 1939, n. d. (second half of the 1930s), India ink on paper.

In spring 1941, the ruling structures, which were actually already having difficulties under normal circumstances (if such ever exist­ed in the kingdom), were no longer able to cope with the situation. The accession to the Tripar­tite Pact, signed by Prince Paul under pressure from the Germans on March 25, 1941 in Vien­na, provoked massive demonstrations. The new government, installed after the military coup by a group of military officers led by military aviation generals Borivoj Miljkovic and Dusan Simovic and with the support of the British in­telligence service, declared King Peter of age and abolished regency, but ratified accession to the Tripartite Pact nevertheless. The new gov­ernment also included representatives of the Yugoslav Muslim Organization, the SLS and the Serbian Cultural Club, a political organization established in 1937 and advocating for Greater Serbia as an entity within a federal monarchy. Publicly, the government gave assurances that the Pact remained in force, but secretly it was holding negotiations with Great Britain.

Peter Loboda, Portrait of Peter 11 Karadordevic (at age six), 1929, marble.

This new government, in which half of the ministers were members of the previous, over­thrown government, was even more divided, confused and internally conflicted over domes­tic and foreign policy than its many predeces-

sors. In the context of the international situa­tion of the time, with most of Europe occupied by Germany, Great Britain struggling for its very existence, and the German-Soviet non­aggression pact already signed, there remained no room for maneuver. Fearful that Germany might retaliate, the government didn't even have the courage to announce a general mobi­lization. This unbearable political agony was brought to an end by the attack on Yugoslavia. The war had begun.

The establishment of the Liberation Front, the armed uprising, and the subsequent victory on the side of the anti-Fascist coalition after four years of struggle for survival led to the transformation of Slovene society in the post­war years. Slovenia became a republic within the Yugoslav federation and the borders were re-drawn in its favor, providing the new repub­lic with access to the sea. The new Yugoslavia was ruled first by the Soviet form of socialism and then by its own specific self-governing form of socialism with open borders. A specific, radically communist approach was also applied to modernization processes, including emanci­pation and separation of church and state. After gaining independence in 1991, Slovene society came once again to embrace the ideological di­visions and cultural struggle of the 1930s.

15 More about this in: Joze Hocevar, Slovenciv span ski drzav/janski vojni = Gli S/oveni ne/la guerra civile Spagnola = Eslavenos en la guerro civil Espagnola = Slovenes in the Spanish civil war: zbornik referatov znanstvenega simpozija v Kopru, 12. februarja 2070 (Koper: Zdruzenje protifasistov in borcev za vrednote NOB,2010). 16 J. K., "Kaj pa komunisti?," Domoljub, 49, n. 49 (December 2, 1936): 754. 17 Edvard Kocbek, "Premisljevanje o Spaniji," Dam in svet, 50, n. 1-2 (April22, 1937): 90-105. 18 More on this: Bozo Repe, "Drustvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze," Borec, 41, n. 9 (1989): 900-919.

Bibliografija I Bibliography

»Fasizem proti boljsevizmu«, Slovenec, LXI, n. llOa (14. 4. 1933)

Borak, Neven et al., Slovensko novejsa zgodovina: od programa Zedinjena Slovenija do mednarodnega priznanja Republike Slovenije, 1848-7992 (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, lnstitut za novejso zgodovino, 2006)

Cvirn, Janez et al., 1/ustrirana zgodovina Slovencev (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1999)

Festanj, Simon, »V sovjetskem raju: podoba Sovjetske zveze v casnikih Slovenec in Jutro v tridesetih letih 20. stoletja«, Borec, 56, n. 612-616 (2004)

Gasparic, Jure, SLS pod kraljevo diktaturo: diktatura kralja Aleksandra in politika Slovenske ljudske stranke v /etih 1929-1935 (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2007)

Hocevar, Joze, S/ovenci v spanski drzav/janski vojni = Gli Sloveni ne/la guerra civile Spagno/a = Eslovenos en la guerra civil Espagno/a = Slovenians in the Spanish civil war: zbornik referatov znanstvenega simpozija v Kopru, 12. 2. 2010 (Koper: Zdruzenje protifasistov in borcev za vrednote NOB, 2010)

K., J., »Kaj pa komunisti?«, Domoljub, 49, n. 49 (2. 12. 1936)

Kocbek, Edvard, >>Premisljevanje o Spaniji<<, Dam in svet, 50, n. 1-2 (22. 4. 1937)

Krleza, Miroslav, Des et krvavih let in drugi po/iticni eseji (Ljubljana: Drzavna zalozba Slovenije, 1962)

Lazarevic, Zarko, Slovensko gospodarstvo v prvi Jugos/aviji: korak k industrijski druzbi (Ljubljana: Modrijan, 1997)

Mikuz, Metod, Oris zgodovine Slovencev v stari Jugos/aviji 1917-1941 (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1965)

Necak, Dusan; Repe, Bozo, Kriza: svet in Slovenci od konca prve svetovne vojne do sredine tridesetih let (Ljubljana: Znanstvenoraziskovalni institut Filozofske fakultete, 2008)

Necak, Dusan; Repe, Bozo, Prelom: 1914-1918: svet in Slovenci v 1. svetovni vojni (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2005)

Pelikan, Egon, Tone Kralj in prostor meje (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba, 2016)

Prunk, Janko, Slovenski narodni vzpon: narodna politika (1768-1992) (Ljubljana: Drzavna zalozba Slovenije, 1992)

Repe, Bozo, >>Drustvo prijateljev Sovjetske zveze<<, Borec, 41, n. 9 (1989)

Vodopivec, Peter; Mahnic, Joza, eds., Slovenska trideseta /eta: simpozij 1995 (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1997)

THE 1930s IN SLOVENIA

67