58
women's emancipation, separation of Church and State, industrialization of Slovene society,
the gradual strengthening of Slovene statehood in the national area) is overshadowed by the
negative side of their operation. Though the public opinion polls until the time of socialism
are mostly lenient, predominantly positive, the true evaluation (particularly with younger
generations) is hard to measure. It is interesting that the public opinion polls show an
increasingly positive attitude towards Josip Broz - Tito, who has gone from a 67% support
from less than ten years ago, to an 80% one. Even in the most right-wing Catholic party of
Nova Slovenija [New Slovenia] he was given 52% of positive votes in the poll, and in the
leading Slovenska demokratska stranka [Slovene Democratic Party] almost 60% (Tito is a
positive personality, Mladina No. 20, 19.5. 2007 p. 46; the poll was carried out by
Ninamedia). On a politological and sociological level the predicament regarding the
evaluation of communist ideology, the communist party and communists as people is trying to
be solved by differentiating between communists as people (with good intentions) and
communist politics and ideology as negative, originating in the logic of Bolshevism. Of
course this predicament does not appear only with the communists: »credits for the nation«,
which consciously or subconsciously try to be given mythic proportions by the current group
in authority, are often, naturally, not in harmony with democracy. Although I would risk
evaluating that the majority of contemporary Slovene historiography moves within a weighed
search for the good and bad sides, this is still wanting in the comprehensive evaluation of the
communist movement in Slovenia and the leading communists, which is, last but not least,
demonstrated by the fact that we still lack a monographic study on the history of the
communist movement and party in Slovenia, as well as biographies of the leading
communists. A part of the writers (also historians) proceeds from the evaluations of the
criminal nature of the communists during the war and after it, on the forty-five years of
totalitarianism, on the fact that Slovene communism (socialism) in essence never
differentiated itself from the Soviet one. It seems that it wishes to push the pendulum of a
more balanced historiography, which the discipline has in the past twenty years somehow
succeeded in »stopping« at the middle, to the other outer edge in any way possible. This does
not apply only to the attitude towards World War II and socialism (communism), but to the
attitude towards all the topics that are to increase Slovene confidence and patriotism through a
mythic view, even though Slovenia has its own state and there is no need for this.
Ernest Renan, a French philosopher from the 19th century, the founder of the (then) modern
type of nationalism, derived from the belief that when constructing a common (national)
identity people must establish the attitude towards the past in a selective manner: they must
59
imprint into their consciousness certain things from the past, while utterly forgetting others.
With the use of orchestrated historiography, controlled media, a system of celebrations,
controlling celebrations, much can be achieved. In spite of this the patterns from the 19th
century cannot be fully transferred to the 21st century, particularly not if we are dealing with a
combination of nationalism and (one or the other) ideology. Different views and polemics are
completely normal for a democratic society. If only the temptation of using political power to
enforce one's own »truth« and one's own view of history does not prevail.
Among the last wave of the mythicizing of Slovene history belong the self-made images of
Slovenia's attaining of independence and its transition (e.g. of how the Slovene privatization
was more just and less »tycoonish« than the Croatian and Eastern European ones; or of the
exclusively democratic and non-nationalistic conduct of the Slovenes – which is negated, for
instance, by the example of »izbrisani« [The Erased], that is, of over 18,000 people of non-
Slovene descent who were deprived of the right to permanent residence, lost their existence
and were forced into extremely inhumane existential conditions (namely, without a permanent
residence you cannot arrange steady employment nor social or health insurance). By entering
the European Union this uncritical self-image, which partly truly is founded on the successes
of Slovenia (the adoption of the Euro, the future presidency of the EU, which Slovenia was
granted as the first country from the bloc of the newly accepted countries), is gradually
growing into a political myth, propagated by the ruling group and the pro-government media,
that Slovenes are doing better today than ever in all of history. At this moment we are torn
between an idealized self-image on the one hand and hundreds of years of frustration and
fears on the other, which a good decade of an independent state and the inclusion in the EU
had, in fact, suppressed to the subconscious, but could not simply wash away.
Myths are produced all the time and originate in the current historical situation. In the case of
the Slovenes they had helped create (and then abolish) the Central European Austro-
Hungarian identity as well as both Yugoslav ones, the royal and the socialist. In the belated
wave of the creation of new countries they had newly supported the creation of a Slovene
national state, which was self-sufficient for twelve years and then managed to be included in
the EU. The topical political myth is derived from the belief that the present generation of
Slovenes is experiencing its peak and its happiest moment; that it has, so to speak, reached
»the end of history«. Well, after the end of communism and bipolarity and the triumph of
Dostları ilə paylaş: |