The Austro-Hungarian Agreement of 1867 and the Specifics of Slovenian Politics

Abstract

The specific attitude of Slovenian politicians to the introduction of Austro-Hungarian Dualism in 1867 was determined by their understanding of the ways in which the Austrian Monarchy could be transformed, as well as the main provisions of their national-political programme, which had been formulated during the Revolution of 1848–1849. In the mid-1860s, when political life in the empire revived, they sought to adapt their demands to the idea of an Austrian federation that had been put forward by Czech national figures, and they developed programs for the unification of the Slovenian lands based on not natural, but historical law, without redrawing the borders of the provinces. These were the programs of Inner Austria and the Kingdom of Illyria, which did not meet with the support of Slavic politicians. In 1866, shortly before signing of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, many Slovenian liberals returned to the demand for a United Slovenia. The introduction of dualism in the empire caused strong dissatisfaction among Slovenian politicians who sought to form an Austrian federation; their protest was expressed in the national press, in speeches by Slovenian deputies in the Reichsrat, and in the Tabor movement. New realities in the empire, as well as Bismarck's victories in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, pushed Slovenian and Croatian politicians to actively discuss various options for creating a political South-Slavic union. For example, at a meeting in Sisak even the idea of abandoning the Slovenian lands in Cisleithania and concluding a real union between Hungary and an autonomous Slovenia and Croatia was discussed. The rejection of Dualism as a form of political organisation of the empire and the desire to replace it with one or another version of the federation were characteristic of the ideology of most Slovenian politicians until the First World War.