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while Yugoslavia seemed like a safe haven from the worst national enemies – the Germans
and Italians.
The polemics regarding the national ascent otherwise reached a peak in expert circles right
after the attaining of independence in 1992, when the book Slovenski narodni vzpon [Slovene
National Ascent] by Janko Prunk was published, and was once again renewed after the
elections won by the centre-right coalition. Here a distinctive political connotation is, of
course, noticeable, since the »peak« of the national ascent and of history in general is to lie in
the attaining of independence, which still brings plenty of political points and is a sort of
morally political criterion of value for high political functions. In actuality very little of
today's political parties and politicians are tied to the attaining of independence, yet the ruling
bloc with its thesis on the so-called »Spring« parties, that is parties that are said to have been
in favor of the attaining of independence and democratization at the end of the eighties and
the beginning of the nineties – tries to draw some sort of political capital from such undefined
mythicizing of its (alleged) role.
A special type of a mythical relationship was formed towards every state formation that
included Slovenes. The once glorified Catholic Austria with its cult Emperor Franz Joseph in
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia became the »dungeon of nations«, even though, despite
everything, it had enabled Slovenes their existence, economic development (albeit a slow
one), the preservation of their national identity, and taught them modern political manners,
including parliamentarism. The same label was given to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after its
demise, while already in the time of its existence the idealized image of a joint symbiosis of
»three tribes of a single nation« was destroyed. In the Kingdom Slovenes were in fact given a
university, and the chance for economic development and an informal cultural autonomy, but
not a political one. If not a myth, then at least a stereotype that (according to Anton Korošec)
»Serbs rule, Croats discuss, and Slovenes pay«, was repeated in a slightly different disguise
with the socialist Yugoslavia, which the Slovenes abandoned because it had become a
hindrance to their development, and because the hundred-year-old fear of the German and
Italian enemies became numb after seventy years. The self-governing socialism as »the best
system in the world« became »totalitarianism«, the beloved comrade Tito a dictator, and the
myth of brotherhood and unity and socialist patriotism turned to dust. A new mythical and
uncritically idealized goal became the so-called »Europe.« (Repe: 2001 and 2003). A
similarly altered mythical image was experienced by personalities in individual periods as
well, especially literary ones, which had created the Slovene national community, while
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politicians were said to be (Grdina) merely »the nation's second league.« Consequently
contemporaries are trying to rectify this complex. Connected with personalities, especially in
school history, is the national claiming of people who were not Slovene by descent but had
been born here or lived here (e.g. musician Jakob Gallus or the chemist Fritz Pregl) or they
were Slovenes but had not felt any particular affinity to their nationality (Puch that had been
christened for Johannes, for such needs, e.g., became Janez Puh).
The myth of the Slovene/Christian is connected to the cultural struggle which began at the
turn of the century. It had been concisely expressed in the 1890s first by Anton Mahnič with
the viewpoint that a German and Slovene liberal are closer in spirit than a religious and a
liberal Slovene, followed by the words of Aleš Ušeničnik in 1912: «The Christian religion
held by Slovenes is Catholic, as for all nations, however, as a cultural heritage of a thousand
years it is so closely linked with all of our thoughts and lives that a Slovene/atheist is utterly
foreign to us and can in no way be trusted anymore.« (Similarly foreign was, naturally, also
the Slovene/Protestant). The turn of the century (according to Egon Pelikan) meant a shock
for the Slovene Catholic elite, for the growth of liberalism began to destroy its notion that
religion is the basic driving force of society and that the church elite has the right and the
power by the integralistic principle to judge all social happenings. This conviction, which had
been founded on the national awakening part of the clergy (at that time almost the only
Slovene intelligentsia) at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th, and on the fact that most
Slovenes were baptized in the Catholic tradition, clashed with the processes of modernization
that the Catholic top had tried to contain with the use of old patterns. The answer to the
dilemma what comes above what: nationality above religion or religion above nationality, was
clear: the subordination of religious truths to the idea of nationality (here the liberals were
more successful, as the Protestants had been more successful in the past and brought literacy
to the nation) must be – if this dilemma occurs – condemned; otherwise the fundamental
principle is that both are one and inseparable. (A similar problem was later met by the
communists as well). Despite such a radical thesis (again according to Pelikan), the Catholic
integralism before World War I had not won over the political pragmatism of Krekova
zadružna in prosvetna organizacija [Krek's Cooperative and Educational Organization],
however, that did occur – also in the context of international circumstances and the direction
of the Vatican – in the 1930s, which also divided the Catholic camp. The policy of the
Catholic Church in Slovenia (a great and still increasing economic power, connected with the
return of feudal and other estate; interfering with the school system and public media; ties
with the ruling right-wing coalition; the passing of moral judgment – at instances when it is
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