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On the case of the literary tale of Fran Levstik, Martin Krpan (1858), the article illuminates Levstik’s political agenda and literary implementation of the outlaw hero, Martin Krpan, for the needs of Slovenia’s nation-building process, a phenomenon that was characteristic of almost all emerging European nations at the time. An analysis of Levstik’s Martin Krpan reveals a unique phenomenon that was tailored to a specific program: namely, the conscious desire to create a national literary character that would constitute a foundation for both further literary creation and the national political struggle. Levstik was the most prominent writer among the emerging Slovenian intellectual class in the second half of the 19th century. The value of his tale resides in its merging of mythical and literary narratives into a functionally connected organism, the simultaneity of “historical” and “non-historical” elements, and the interaction between symbolic and real ambiguities. Levstik’s structure for both his literary-political program and his tale about Martin Krpan originates in historical realities and cultural memory of the 15th and 16th centuries: economic (transportation), social (peasant revolts), and political (defense against the Ottoman Turks). Levstik combines these elements with the fundamentals of folkloric and ethno-symbolic cultural heritage of that period. In Martin Krpan, Levstik skillfully conceals “historical realities” behind metaphors and symbolism, which is typical of myths. In this way, he provides a path toward the realization of national political ambitions. But the “real” myth Levstik created was more than simply that of Martin Krpan and his adventures. It was more than an argument for the historical origin or vocation of a nation, the defense of the civilization, or the demand for political rights or mimetic narrative prose, i.e. the ability to create a virtual real world. The “real” myth of the literary tale was the elevation of the Slovenian language to the essential distinguishing and constitutive element of the Slovenian nation-building process in comparison with the “Other(s).” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their role in the establishment of standard Slovene, the Reformation in the Slovene lands and its most prominent actors (Primož Trubar, Jurij Dalmatin, Adam Bohorič, Sebastijan Krelj) both were and remain among the key elements of Slovene nation- and state-building. In their reception among an almost exclusively Catholic population, history textbooks played an important role, beginning in the nineteenth century, as tools of official knowledge that helped incorporate each new generation into the national or state community according to dominant interpretations of the past. This paper analyses the treatment of Slovene Protestant reformers and the Reformation in Slovene history textbooks prior to the Second World War, especially after 1881, in one of the key periods of the establishment of the Slovene nation and statehood. The analysis shows that the main goal of teaching history in Austrian-era primary and secondary schools was to strengthen the loyalty towards the monarchy and dynasty, hence themes from Slovene national(ised) history were very rare in textbooks. Yet, already since the early 1800s Slovene Protestant literature had been one of those themes, which reflected its early importance in Slovene cultural memory. Apart from stressing the importance of Protestant writers for the standardisation of the Slovene language and concurrent mentions of their 'false religion', until the First World War textbooks assessed the Reformation in the Slovene lands rather neutrally. This approach continued in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918-29). Only after 1929 was more space allocated to the Reformation in Slovene history textbooks, including for the first time the Reformation in Prekmurje, the region with by far the largest Slovene Protestant community, both then and now. It was also in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929-41) that history textbooks for the first time more critically assessed Slovene Protestant reformers and the local Reformation, either as a very positive event, e.g. for Yugoslav national unity, or more negatively, e.g. as a corruptive foreign idea, although all agreed on the importance of Protestant literature in the establishment of standard Slovene. Thus, the old polemic on the Reformation between Slovene liberals and conservatives, which started in the late 1800s, also continued in school textbooks until the Second W orld War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of Mladina – a Slovenian weekly that entered the collective memory of the nation as an important actor in the processes of democratization and achieving independence – in terms of its contribution to the rearticulation of the Slovenian integrative discourse in the interregnum of the 1980s. By employing the theory of the cultural memory (Aleida Assmann, Todor Kuljić) the author analyzes all editions of Mladina published in the 1980s to examine the role of Mladina in the processes of democratizing interpretations of the Yugoslavian (recent) history, but also taking into account – in relation to Slovenian ‘sites of memory’ (Philippe Nora) – Mladina’s reflections of the possibilities and pitfalls of the unification of Sloveneness on essentialist foundations. The paper is based on the thesis that Mladina in the 1980s had indeed taken maverick role in the processes of democratization of Slovene society, but it entered the collective memory also due to establishing itself as an open forum in which the Slovenian ‘sites of memory’ were being reflected and transformed. Therefore, the author first analyzes the various approaches with which Mladina’s writers acquainted their readers with inconvenient, even silenced topics from Yugoslavian recent history, then focuses on the process of transforming the identification points of Sloveneness, as reflected in Mladina’s articles, which is further elaborated by an analysis of the discourses of unity and disunity within then Slovenian and Yugoslavian political and publish sphere. Since the situation in the 1980s also required from a liberal weekly such as Mladina to reflect upon the contents of integrative discourse, the author spirally connects his findings with the theses of those social theorists, who claim that nowadays problems with ‘self-image’ and collective memory in most of the Eastern European and Western Balkans countries – often taking forms of unresolved trauma – stem from the antagonistic as well as insufficiently reflected understanding of the relationship between democracy and identities in the societies of the 1980s. On this basis, in the conclusion the author addresses the theoretically challenging and topical question of the ability and disability of liberalism as a political philosophy in the reflection of those aspects of community discourse that are grounded in pre- or post-Enlightenment doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the issue of memory and oblivion in socialist Yugoslavia after the Second World War, with a special focus on the case study of the Borovnica camp in Slovenia. The prisoners in the camp were arrested during the liberation of Trieste and the Julian March (they were the so-called deportees from the Julian March). After the camp was shut down it was gradually destroyed and a settlement was built on its foundations. Local people who lived in the immediate vicinity have memories of this time, but have never spoken publicly about what happened there. This paper analyses the memory and oblivion of the Borovnica camp over a long period of time, from the end of the war to the present day. The memory of the camp is placed into the broader, Yugoslav and European context of the culture of remembering and the “amnesia of national experiences”, as defined by Tony Judt. During our research, we found that already during the camp’s operation, a regime of fear was established over the locals, through which the guards tried to prevent any assistance to the prisoners, while at the same time silencing rumours. This fear persisted even after, since in the years and decades that followed, the camp and what took place there were not, or only rarely, spoken about. The silence was partly due to the general desire that prevailed throughout Europe to forget what had happened, but mainly due to political pressures and fear of the regime, as well as the fear of disrupting relations within the local community. As a result, despite the change of socio-political circumstances after 1991 that favoured narratives that contradicted the previous official narrative of pure partisan struggle, the camp remained largely unspoken about even then. The article thus shows that breaking collective amnesia is not a unilateral process. In addition to the favourable socio-political circumstances, the desire and need to break the silence must also arise within the community that has had oblivion imposed upon it. In 2021, the remaining foundations of one of the barracks were cleared and they are now evidence of a camp that now has a story and a history. Although some people are still reluctant to talk about this time, it can be said that the memory of the Borovnica camp has become an integral part of the local collective memory. The question remains how many similar situations and cases of post-war amnesia still exist in Slovenia and elsewhere in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For well over a century now, the enigmatic kosezi (in Slovene), or Edlinge (in German), continue to excite the imagination and create agitation in Slovene and Austrian national histories and cultural memories. While Austrian historiography largely advocates for a Germanic origin of this free medieval social stratum, in the Slovene they are established as an integral part of Carantanian society, said to have persevered until the sixteenth and, to a degree, even the nineteenth century. Hence, in the Slovene national imagination, the kosezi provide an important continuity with the ‘first Slovene state’, as Carantania is erroneously regarded in the cultural memory. This paper focuses on the (re)construction and reception of the word kosez (singular) and the social stratum it allegedly designated in Slovene science and cultural memory, while also surveying Austrian interpretations. The analysis shows that the kosezi entered the Slovene national imagination especially due to their key role in the enthronement of the dukes of Carinthia. The role of free Slovene peasants in the medieval enthronement ritual was discovered only two decades before the (re)construction of the word kosez in 1912/13 from fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century toponyms and surnames, as the supposed old Slovene or Carantanian original for the German word Edlinger (singular), attested in earlier sources. The word kosez was unknown in folk memory and its (re)construction was too late to be included in nineteenth-century nation-building, which was the most prolific time for the construction of national myths. Thus, it was only in the interwar period that Slovene historiography and philology made the kosezi, through their role in the enthronement ritual supposedly originating in Carantania, an integral part of one of the key elements of Slovene nation and state-building. After World War Two, the kosezi were further established in Slovene cultural memory, particularly through the reception of popular-scientific works and school textbooks, predicated mainly on the interpretations of the leading post-war Slovene medievalist Bogo Grafenauer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]