Slovenian Identity: State-Building on the Balkan Border

Abstract

is one of the new countries that has appeared from the ashes of Yugoslavia. A driving force in bringing about the collapse of Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991, the former republic has, despite this role as the agent provocateur, been the one least affected by Yugoslavia's dissolution. When declared its independence in June 1991, it was attacked by or Yugoslavia was defended by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in the Ten Days' War, but the leadership in Belgrade and of the JNA decided quickly that they did not have enough strategic and symbolic interest in to warrant a prolonged fight. The EC mediated a three-month ceasefire between and the remains of Yugoslavia, and the warfare and the attention of the international media moved on to Croatia and, the year after, to Bosnia. A major task since June 1991 has been to establish as a state, that it was natural and logical that became independent, and that is an organic part of Europe, in contrast with the other former republics in Yugoslavia, who belong to the non-European Balkans. Factual presentations describe the country of two million inhabitants as a geographically central part of Europe (it borders Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia) and as more developed than any other East European country. It is said therefore to be more prepared to enter the common market of the European Union. It is also presented as being very ethnically homogeneous, with almost 90 percent Slovenes. The aim of this article is to investigate how Slovenian national identity has been constructed, reconstructed, and increasingly radicalized since the beginning of the 1980s. Slovenia is a story of