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NECK-DEEP IN A HEAVING SEA OF ENEMIES: SLOVENIA’S DIPLOMATIC SITUATION AFTER SIX YEARS

^{THERE IS NO HELP BUT THAT WHICH WE GIVE OURSELVES
SLOVENIA—APRIL 1951}

Six years after Slovenia declared itself alive on Jurjevo—St. George’s Day—the optimism of the new Republic had been somewhat blunted on the stony walls of its neighbors. In truth, the only thing that political analysts felt had spared Slovenia of outright invasion were the three permanent American and British military installations in the country at Reka, Maribor and Gradec. Even these ‘permanent’ bases were fleeting, however: their leases were expected to expire in 1955 pending negotiations, leaving the Slovene Republic stranded between the indignant Kingdom of Italy and the bellicose socialist Yugoslav dictatorship. On every side, Slovenia was treacherously surrounded by nations from which it had demanded concessions after the Second World War. A nation of five million had been born from lands once belonging to Austria, Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia. The Slovene government found their indignance to this matter insulting, feeling that the concessions were well in line with those given after criminal wars. President Tomšič herself scornfully declared at a Jurjevo independence speech that “those who tried to wipe us and others from this earth can say nothing of our fates after their defeat”; “Italy,” she specified, “who violently failed to establish themselves as the dominant race in southern Europe, now presumes to tell us that we cannot live in our native cities—we in Slovenia find that to be a hypocrisy, crime and insult of the greatest order. They never met us in battle—only callously violating slaying civilians in Trst and elsewhere—but they who did, the Serb nationalists who cower under the name ‘Yugoslav’, deserve even less in defining what Slovenia is and should be. In truth, I have begun to see the correctness in Dr. Šanda’s claim: our lost Kajkavian brethren—Slovenes all—lie right across the border from us, crying for freedom.”

Relations with Yugoslavia (Ranponian) were indeed icy. The term ‘Kajkavian’—a linguistic marker for a group of northern Croats who speak a language entirely intelligible with Prekmurje Slovene—was introduced to the wider public by a recent inflammatory text by nationalist author Dragan Šanda which claimed that some one million people speaking this variety in Yugoslavia were, in truth, Slovenes that had been misnamed for political interests. His argument had great merit, admittedly; pioneering nineteenth-century philologists Franc Miklošič and Jernej Kopitar had felt identically when the ethnology of the Balkans was being first investigated under rigorous scholarship. One major Kajkavian city, Varaždin, had been incorporated into the new Republic in 1945 and had seen no unrest. People formerly called ‘Croats’ now lived as Slovenes, their language, custom and religion entirely unchanged—only reclassified to lie at the Prekmurje end of Slovene’s dialect spectrum. Misnamed Croats were now Slovenes. Though only popular among the ultraconservative community at first, Šanda’s arguments quickly spread as such policies as state atheism descended on the Kajkavians; by April, talk of the izgubljeni milijon (“lost million”) permeated Slovenian politics: a million ‘Croats’, truly Slovenians, awaited liberation in Yugoslavia. Zagreb was, in truth, a Slovene city. Increasingly, the ‘lost million’ infiltrated Slovenia’s national consciousness, becoming one of many quarrels with Yugoslavia aggravated by a growing arms race and endless ideological differences.

_{“In v resnici je poleg ljubezni, ki je nedvomno prva, plemeniti upor proti krivični stvarnosti največ, kar lahko prispevamo za rešitev človeškega dostojanstva.”
“And in fact, aside from love—which is undoubtedly the foremost—a noble rebellion against an unjust reality is the best that we can contribute to the salvation of human dignity.”
— Boris Pahor, Trst native and author on Italianization in a novel draft}

Relations with Italy (Arcanda) were only scarcely better. Their refusal to recognize Slovenian jurisdiction over Istria and other lost Italian lands was a bitter sticking point, easily lambasted as a ‘miserable artifact of fascism’ by virtually every aspect of the Slovene political spectrum. To the Slovenes, memories of graphic murders committed by Italian fascists against ethnic Slovenes, the burning of Slovene schools and the closure of Slovene societies were close at hand. To relinquish Trst (Italian Trieste), Videm (Italian Udine), Tržič (Italian Monfalcone) and elsewhere would be to voluntarily give in to a people who had seemingly taken joy in oppressing and recreationally killing persons of the Slovene minority in Italy for decades. Former President Boris Furlan, a native of Trst, made a habit of calling the Italian government a ‘den of sadists’ at every opportunity, and the unconditional liberation of Slovene-inhabited areas had been one of his terms in collaborating with the western Allies. Incumbent President Vida Tomšič was at least marginally kinder—at least occasionally expressing wishes to work as equals with Italy—but diplomacy between the two countries seemed to have altogether stalled pending Italian recognition of Slovene jurisdiction or the Slovene abandonment of its western and southern lands. Neither seemed immediately likely. The debacle was continually stalling Slovenia’s accession to NATO, which it refused to do until Italy recognized its authority.

In spite of the tense border relationships, progress had undoubtedly been made in Slovene diplomacy over the last few years. International warmth lay between Slovenia and several partnered allies, including Greece (Adriatican Islands), with whom military and financial partnerships have created a robust friendship; France (Metropolitan Francais), whose Vincent Auriol visited just over four years ago; Zaire (Paseo), a distant nation which unexpectedly showed compassion during the Slovene Rising and has displayed goodwill since; and Ethiopia (Alzarikstan), which has pursued several business deals with Slovenia, though its relationship may be quickly jeopardized by its dealings with the Eastern world. Though somewhat detached, the United States and United Kingdom have shown themselves to be proven benefactors, having been the first to secure Slovene independence and furnish the Republic with weapons. Regardless, the Slovene Foreign Ministry and its calculated Minister Leonid Pitamic saw opportunities everywhere; in West Germany (New Provenance) the Slovenes saw a European ally with great potential; in Azania (Nonador), they imagined a stalwart friend in Africa which was also endeavoring to throw off decades of cultural erasure; and in the rising Asian states of Burma (Ubertica), the Philippines (Provenancia) and Japan (Nippon-Nihon), all recovering from the wreckage of war and colonization, Pitamic viewed future industrial partners. There was much work to be done, indeed—but the Slovenes were willing to do it.