Slovenia was originally settled by Illyrian and Celtic peoples. It became part of the Roman Empire in the first century B.C. The Slovenes were a south Slavic group that settled in the region in the 6th century A.D. During the 7th century, the Slavs established the state of Samu, which owed its allegiance to the Avars, who dominated the Hungarian plain until Charlemagne defeated them in the late 8th century.
When the Hungarians were defeated by the Turks in 1526, Hungary accepted Austrian Hapsburg rule in order to escape Turkish domination; the Hapsburg monarchy was the first to include all of the Slovene regions. Thus, Slovenia and Croatia became part of the Austro-Hungarian kingdom when the dual monarchy was established in 1867.
Like Croatia and unlike the other Balkan states, it is primarily Roman Catholic. Following the defeat and collapse of Austria-Hungary in World War I, Slovenia declared its independence. It formally joined with Montenegro, Serbia, and Croatia on Dec. 4, 1918, to form the new nation called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The name was later changed to Yugoslavia in 1929.
Slovenia Unearthing Mass Graves
A new program of the Slovenian government has recently been illuminating the secret, literally buried legacy of mass slaughter in Slovenia after the end of World War II. In forests throughout Slovenia in areas like Lancovo, Celje and Tezno, mass graves are being registered and revealed to researchers in record number as Slovenians begin to come forward with information and acknowledge the shameful existence of these tragic sites. Quietly known for years - local farmers keeping their livestock from grazing in their vicinity, medical students occasionally visiting the sites when needing skulls or bones for their studies - the elderly have still been too fearful of reprisals to openly speak about their existence. Joze Dezman, a historian who heads the committee for registering hidden graves, says "People who come to me are still afraid someone will see them talking to me. They have fear in their bones."
There is no small amount of irony to this fear, considering the nature and circumstance of these massacres, which were reprisals themselves. Many of those killed were soldiers who fought in collaboration with Nazi Germany - victims of what is widely acknowledged as a vengeful killing spree by partisans of Tito's victorious communist party which came to power in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II. These crimes are unique in the history of the war. Not only were they carried out by the home resistance to Nazi Germany, but they occurred after the war's end: In the two months following the end of WWII, more people were slain in Slovenia than during the four years of the war.
"These killings took place in Slovenia because this is where the war was ending: this is where the Iron Curtain was anticipated, this is where refugees found themselves at the end of the war," Dezman says.
When World War II began, the Republic of Slovenia was partitioned between the Axis Powers, with different regions absorbed by Italy, Germany and Hungary and subsequently ethnically cleansed. Slovenia became part of the Axis Powers. By the war's end, Slovenia was essentially in a state of civil war with conflict between Nazis and partisans and in-fighting between communist and anti-communist parties. When British-led Allied troops turned Balkan soldiers back from Austria at the end of the war, they were turned over to the communist partisans who now controlled the volatile region. The soldiers were then summarily murdered in forests throughout Slovenia without trial. However these mass graves do not simply harbour the victims of revenge killings; many of the victims were members of opposition parties killed by the communists to lessen the threat of counter-revolution.
Despite the fact that Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and is now an EU member, the graves have remained a public secret for decades. Yugoslavia's communist authorities diligently refused to acknowledge the killings and refused to tell relatives where the bodies were buried. For 50 years the graves were forbidden to visitors. Many of them were even destroyed by deliberate explosions, covered by mountains of waste, or in the case of Celje (60km east of Ljubljana), parts of town were built over them. Although the graves were known to exist, their exact number was and is still, unknown.
During World War II, Germany occupied Yugoslavia, and Slovenia was divided among Germany, Italy, and Hungary. For the duration of the war many Slovenes fought a guerrilla war against the Nazis under the leadership of the Croatian-born Communist resistance leader, Marshal Tito. After the final defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, Slovenia was again made into a republic of the newly established Communist nation of Yugoslavia.
The Serbian-dominated Yugoslavian army tried to keep Slovenia in line and some brief fighting took place, but the army then withdrew its forces. Unlike Croatia and Bosnia, Slovenia was able to sever itself from Yugoslavia with relatively little violence. With recognition of its independence granted by the European Community in 1992, the country began realigning its economy and society toward Western Europe. Slovenia joined the EU and NATO in 2004.
