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PREKMURJE IS OUR HOME, BUT WE PEOPLE OF PREKMURJE ARE SPREAD THROUGHOUT SLOVENIA AND THE WORLD
Speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia at the celebratory academy marking the 80th anniversary of the incorporation of Prekmurje
Murska Sobota, 1 August 1999
“Through the resolutions of the Paris conference and the later Treaty of Trianon in what was in any case for the Slovene nation the fateful year of 1920, the Slovenes of Prekmurje began for the first time, and not simply in terms of government, but also linguistically and culturally, a life together with the other parts of the Slovene nation and became fused into a Slovene national whole.
Prekmurje is today no longer a “lost Slovene world”. In 1919 it was caught in the “crosswinds of history”, but today it is in the crosswinds of developmental opportunities and challenges. It lies at the heart of dynamic developmental currents in Europe, it is that part of Slovenia which is most deeply positioned in the region of Central Europe, and convincingly evinces the regeneration of the Central European spirit. It must and can be one of the guardians of its own and the common Slovene development, founded on the revived values of tolerance, understanding, openness and cooperation, of ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism, of multiculturalism and respect of differences. Prekmurje lies at the heart of an emerging European region of people and nations of four neighbouring and now friendly countries, where the open national borders are less and less a reason for thoughts about changing them and about correcting the mistakes and injustices of the past, as befits good neighbours who desire peace and prosperity for their people. We should therefore be concerned by, and indeed we should condemn, the intolerant hotheads who on Friday night in Lendava bore placards attempting for the first time in over fifty years to revive the spirit of the pre-Trianon Hungary,” stressed President Kucan in his address.
President Kucan also used the occasion to say a few words about the Balkans. “Less than ever can we now be indifferent to what is going on the world. And this includes the Balkans, too. The stabilisation of the Balkans is also our duty.”
Anniversaries return a person's memory to the past. In this they do not differ. They differ in what is served by their remembrance. For they may awaken the misguided spirits and terrors of the past, and a flirtation with unfulfilled and historically outmoded expectations. Yet they may also be a search for a moral strength that would allow us to face the future with greater maturity; and to reinforce our self-confidence when we need to take new steps into the future, steps that will benefit the individual and the nation. As Dr Tine Hribar says, “We need a proper view of the past, so that we might have a clear view of the present and in particular of the future”. This is indeed the way we should remember that extraordinarily revolutionary and ground-breaking time when the Slovenes between the Mura and Raba rivers sensed the historic need expressed in the words “We inhabitants of the Slovene region do solemnly declare that we have always been and wish to remain Slovenes. We wish to remain united with the Slovenes on the other side of the Mura in a United Slovenia”. These words were recorded in the Bogojina Resolution by the local mayor, Ivan Basa, exactly 80 years ago, in 1919.
As a native of Prekmurje, born on the very eastern boundary of Slovenia, I have always felt that the preservation of the Slovene national identity through the stormy centuries of Europe’s inclement history is in its own way a defiance of the logic dictated by the historical order of things. The preservation of the Slovenes in the area between the Mura and Raba, separated for centuries from the main body of the mother country, is itself a special kind of miracle within this defiance.
Under the crown of St Stephen, Prekmurje was exposed to the forcible appropriation of its national identity and to aggression, but the Slovene identity was always recognisable and revived here, and Slovene Prekmurje finally joined – or at least the southern part did – the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in full awareness of its act. The suffering that went with the deprivation of national identity for the people of Prekmurje and the Raba river region, as well as their struggle for self-preservation and the consciousness-raising contribution of Protestant and Catholic writers, have thus far been facts that are insufficiently known and respected in the historical memory and awareness of the Slovenes. Perhaps the expert symposium in the autumn will be a true opportunity for a more accurate identification of this part of Slovenia’s history, together with all the sidetracks, doubts, wavering and dilemmas that accompanied the life of the Slovene national awareness among the people north of the Mura, right up to their unification with Slovenia.
Those most nationally conscious, including Slovene Catholic priests, seized the right political moment at the end of the First World War, and led the Slovenes living here out of the embrace of the thousand-year “mother Hungary”, in which they were for the most part known as Wends, and never as Slovenes, into a new national and political community with the Slovenes on the right bank of the Mura, and in this way ensured their national survival. The tempestuous events that accompanied the outcome of the war and the demand for self-determination from numerous European peoples could not pass them by. Nor could the demand for a unification of the southern Slav peoples and the May Declaration, with its instigation of the manifesto for a United Slovenia. The arrogant Hungarian pressure, which at that momentous time could no longer wash its hands of all the historical fallout that went with the unresolved national problems, had an opposite effect. By denying even the “Wendish” origin of the Prekmurje people, which was in effect the official doctrine, through the intolerant speeches and the demand, at the gathering in Sobota of 20 October 1918, that those who did not like it in Hungarian Prekmurje should go to the province of Stajerska – and how similar this was to the demands of the rally in Belgrade’s Uıce 80 years later, that the Slovenes should go to Graz and Philadelphia – the Hungarian policy in fact accelerated the decision. The Sobota Hungarian demonstration was certainly the turning point in the political orientation of the Slovenes in Hungary. Their participation at the celebrations in Ljutomer on the declaration of the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes merely confirmed this. The wavering between autonomy and unification, and in this way the wavering between being Wendish and Slovene, was then over. The desire in the Slovene lands to unite with the brothers across the Mura into a national state was finally confirmed at the great people’s assembly in Beltinci in the middle of August 1919.
These years of change were of course among the most difficult in the history of the Prekmurje people. Enthusiasm soon gave way to a sense of reality. Disappointments even surfaced in the negotiations over the new borders, for the Slovene authorities in Ljubljana did not in fact secure anything of benefit to the Prekmurje people in these negotiations. They also learned soon enough that apart from the Ljutomer People’s Council and the clerk for Prekmurje at the İtajerska Peopole’s Council in Maribor, Dr Matija Slavic, no one knew exactly where this lost Slovene land in fact lay. This native of Prlekija (a participant of the Paris peace conference and later Rector of Ljubljana University) drafted a memorandum on Prekmurje. This served the Yugoslav delegation at the peace conference to make the first official demand for incorporation of the Slovene territory between the Mura and Raba into – as was recorded – “a democratic and equal Yugoslavia”. Later, invoking the “suffering and horrors endured by the Slovenes of Prekmurje under the Bolshevik government” of Bela Kun and in the Prekmurje Republic of Vilmos Tkalec, which was a kind of marginal response to the Soviet Republic of Hungary, on 1 August the delegation received permission for the Yugoslav army to march into Prekmurje.
Through the resolutions of the Paris conference and the later Treaty of Trianon in what was in any case for the Slovene nation the fateful year of 1920, the Slovenes of Prekmurje began for the first time, and not simply in terms of government, but also linguistically and culturally, a life together with the other parts of the Slovene nation and became fused into a Slovene national whole. For us people of Prekmurje the greatest value of the events of that time was the national unification with all the Slovenes and the start of political, cultural and economic life up to the beginnings of industrialisation, which along with agrarian reform, albeit implemented inconsistently, in many ways determined the new image of the region and the natives of Prekmurje, people who were still strong, perhaps stronger than Slovenes elsewhere, and bonded to their native land. “Only here, at home, can the native of Prekmurje sense that all the clamouring of the world is of little importance, that glory is nothing but hot air, and that what is real is the earth, whence comes their bread”, wrote their countryman, Evald Flisar, about this bond and feeling.
The time following the First World War, the time that includes these important international acts that were so important for the people of Prekmurje and for all Slovene people, was a time marked by the desire for a new delineation and division of the world and for the formation of national states for those European peoples who had lived within the great multinational empires. This was both the cause and the consequence of the First World War.
There were peoples who looked with political hope into the time following the First World War, and who trusted in the just principles of Woodrow Wilson, that it is possible only to rule those who agree to be ruled, and therefore in the principle of the self-determination of nations, and these peoples included the Slovenes. Nevertheless, it turned out that the interests of the great are more decisive than the justified demands of the small nations. As a rule, decisions are made without them.
After the war, Slovenia’s ethnic territory was divided between four countries. And in other countries there were several hundred thousand Slovenes. It was this very division between four different countries, and the loss of around a quarter of the ethnic territory, including Primorska (coastal region), Koroska (Carinthia) and the Slovene Raba region, that had a decisive influence on the Slovene political elite of that time, so that in the first few years after the war they did not strive for a more autonomous concept of the new state and for the autonomy of the Slovenes. This stance was superseded during the Second World War by the National Liberation Struggle, very much by the Constitution of the SFR Yugoslavia of 1974, and ultimately only through the exercising of the right of the Slovene nation to self-determination through the plebiscite of December 1990 and the independence of the Slovene state on the basis of this right.
On the path from our silenced and neglected ethnic, geographic and economic margins, we Slovenes from this side of the Mura have convincingly demonstrated that we are in no way an anonymous ‘half-way’ people. We have affirmed our ethnic identity and national affiliation, although through certain political and economic measures the new state has shown how little it truly knows the economic, social, cultural, spiritual, political and historical features of this region. So it remained a land that provided for itself throughout the period of the old and new Yugoslavia, and it still does in many respects today. How else can we interpret the announcement that to mark the 80th anniversary of incorporation, the Slovene government is giving as a gift to Prekmurje several kilometres of roads, which have been built with common finances, including that of Prekmurje, throughout Slovenia? This is not a gift to anyone, but a common interest and a common responsibility. The people of Prekmurje held out against the pressure of renewed forcible Hungarianisation during the Second World War. We lived through and survived the effects and consequences of the Cold War, the bloc division of Europe and hermetically sealed borders. We were like a blind alley in what were for all of Europe those inclement conditions, and were again contained in our differentness on the social, economic and cultural margins. With bitter and painful emotions, many again departed to seek a life free from economic hardship, and settled throughout the other parts of Slovenia. As we understood this quality that remained in our character, “Prekmurje is our home, but we people of Prekmurje are spread throughout Slovenia and the world”. However, the dignity and pride of the Prekmurje people held out against all the pressures throughout these trials. Indeed this strengthened the awareness that we must first of all be able to take care of ourselves, and that without this we could not expect or demand anything from anyone else. Yet at the same time nothing could ever shake the feeling of solidarity and readiness to preserve, develop and defend the common good, the Slovene identity and the joint, nationally important decisions.
Prekmurje is today no longer a “lost Slovene world”. In 1919 it was caught in the “crosswinds of history”, but today it is in the crosswinds of developmental opportunities and challenges. It lies at the heart of dynamic developmental currents in Europe, it is that part of Slovenia which is most deeply positioned in the region of Central Europe, and convincingly evinces the regeneration of the Central European spirit. It must and can be one of the guardians of its own and the common Slovene development, founded on the revived values of tolerance, understanding, openness and cooperation, of ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism, of multiculturalism and respect of differences. Prekmurje lies at the heart of an emerging European region of people and nations of four neighbouring and now friendly countries, where the open national borders are less and less a reason for thoughts about changing them and about correcting the mistakes and injustices of the past, as befits good neighbours who desire peace and prosperity for their people. We should therefore be concerned by, and indeed we should condemn, the intolerant hotheads who on Friday night in Lendava bore placards attempting for the first time in over fifty years to revive the spirit of the pre-Trianon Hungary.
The religious, spiritual, and indeed national pluralism of today’s Prekmurje make this region a special treasure within Slovenia, in which the civil society can perhaps sooner than anywhere else become a fully-fledged institution, incorporating a myriad of differences, respected by everyone and enjoying equality before the law.
All this should be a part of the national consensus µ the third such consensus after the plebiscite and the Constitution µ among the citizens of the Republic of Slovenia, on how we should live and what should be the substance of our life in the future. A consensus which on the basis of a proposal by the political parties would incorporate everyone without exception, with the ultimate goal of joining forces for the good of the Slovene cause, and for preserving and developing the Slovene identity. It appears that now, more than ever, it is essential to consider the consequences that today’s political decisions will have on the life of future generations. The egoism of the present can be extremely detrimental to the future. We have no right to be egoistic, neither in the name of party monopolisation of the state nor in the name of an ideology, religion, past divisions, or incompetence and lack of knowledge. Politics is not about what is the ultimate and supreme truth but, rather, it is about finding what is good for the people. It is this that should bind us together.
The process of globalisation that we are currently facing is both a challenge and an opportunity. This does not involve the fulfilment of the promise of a long-awaited and miraculously happy era. Rather, it merely brings about the recognition that in today’s world we are more than ever dependent on and linked to each other. Globalisation opens up new opportunities. If we are to take advantage of these opportunities, they must be actively shaped by politics. This applies to the social and environmental dimensions, economic development, as well as to technical and innovatory progress. It also applies to knowledge. It includes elements such as what should we teach our children for them to be able to participate in the building of tomorrow’s world and to be capable of functioning in it, and what kind of knowledge they need for this. Indeed, this is one of the most important dimensions of our much-needed consensus. For a country which has as few competitive advantages as Slovenia can be successful only if it invests in education, schooling and training of its people; in short, in their knowledge.
This can also be said to hold true for the value placed on work and faster economic development, which generates more work, which in turn creates more jobs. No discussion of the end of the era of the workers’ society and socially-owned property should or can ignore the fact that for most people there is no alternative to profit-motivated work. The purpose of work is sustenance. This provides work with a direct value. Work develops human abilities and values. The lack of meaningful work affirmed on the market diminishes human dignity. The drawing of attention to the value that work exercises on people’s self-confidence, as well as on the strength and social stability of a country, is far more than merely an academic or ideological question. Those who see in work merely and only costs are playing with a social explosion and undermining the foundations of Western civilisation, whether they are aware of it or not.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Eighty years ago the Paris peace conference failed to do away with the main reasons that triggered the 1914 war, and it did not succeed in bringing about a more just division of the world.
The Europe of Versailles did not become the fundamental guarantor of world peace; rather, it became a generator of new problems. For a myriad of reasons, and particularly because of new demarcations in Europe, the community of nations failed to live up completely to its role of a guardian of world peace and security.
The years after the First World War highlighted three important facts: the fact that the realisation of the independent state of Slovenia was possible only in conditions where European and world superpowers would give up the principle of division of interest spheres and absolute domination of the life of small nations; the fact that the political prudence of the Slovene people is at a very high level and aspirations for their own political identity are unstoppable; and the fact that for the purpose of realising its own state, the Slovene identity needs a deliberate policy committed to the Slovene cause, a policy which is able to rise above the mere representation of narrow political interests.
It is impossible to equate today’s conditions with those of the past. The differences and changes are clear. The fact remains, however, that the root cause of many problems which have today been more or less successfully addressed, lies with past events, and that the international community will still have to deal with these problems in the next century; it will have to deal with them along with the new challenges imposed by the Balkan wars on the world order, international law, the UN, and on all other international mechanisms for ensuring peace, security, cooperation and protection of human rights, minority rights and rights of peoples; in short, the international community is facing challenges which involve the settlement of fundamental issues of the future of Europe. We cannot afford to be indifferent to and unaffected by these issues. Today no country cannot embrace the belief that the mistakes made by either itself or other countries will not affect it just because it is far enough from them. Everything that others do or do not do affects us, too. Less than ever can we now be indifferent to what is going on the world. And this includes the Balkans, too. The stabilisation of the Balkans is also our duty. It is the duty and interest of everyone who spoke up in favour of peace and stability in the Balkans a few days ago in Sarajevo. This was not the diktat of the victors, as has been the rule in peace conferences to date. This was a support and call for the peoples of the Balkans to tread the path of peace, democracy, respect of human dignity and human rights, and of the market economy and social justice, which will lead to Europe of the 21st century. Europe awaits everyone with great hopes, including a democratic Serbia - whose national policies gave rise to all this accumulated terror and evil – as a desired partner, and is prepared to provide solidarity and assistance to Serbia in order to enter a united Europe. We may be proud that at the forefront of the countries who issued this call, is democratic Slovenia.
The future lies in a United Europe. We are justified in expecting that this Europe will emerge as a community of large and small European countries which will be equal and which will all have distinct national identities, a community of countries living in peace, and cooperating and competing between each other. And this will take place in an increasingly less demarcated environment in terms of administrative and political borders.
Three times in this century the fate of the Slovene people and Slovene state has been decided by peace conferences. Today we have our own state. It encapsulates all the fruits of past endeavours and conceals all the seeds of future hopes. These seeds will thrive on the hopes and aspirations of many generations and individuals who during the major European upheavals of this century have seen their vision in defending the Slovene nation, its preservation, and in the assertion of its legitimate interests and needs. We should not be afraid of this future. I am persuaded that we are capable of co-shaping it. I also firmly believe that the people of Prekmurje are an indispensable and active link in this joint Slovene and European project for the future.
The decisions which in the past affected and, indeed, painfully afflicted the Slovene nation were the result of the continual balancing between powers and interests within the international community. They could have been different, more favourable for us. However, the fact, albeit as a rule disregarded, that the Slovene nation throughout this unfortunate and outgoing century struggled to assert its right to self-determination, to preserve its identity and prospects for free development, could never be denied. For this was the will of the entire Slovene people and especially of those Slovenes who have done more than others for its recognition. Those for whom we, the people of Prekmurje, would say “Na veke zivej, ıteri za domovino merjej” (Long live those who would die for their homeland). It is apt, with these homely words, to remember all those who in the same cause struggled for Slovenia to have today its Prekmurje and for us, the people of Prekmurje, to have our Slovene homeland; from the Küzmici and Rajic, Ivanocy, Koıic, Trstenjak and Klekl, to Slavic, Maister, Stefan Kovac, and Misko Kranjec, and many others immortalised in the complex history of our home region along the Mura. All honour and thanks to them.
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