Original scientific paper
The Idea of Central Europe in Slovenian Political Thought
Andrej RAHTEN
; Sveučilište u Mariboru, R. Slovenija
Abstract
The idea of Central Europe has a long tradition in the political thought of
Slovenia. The first Central European concepts in Slovenia resulted from its
views on the role of the Habsburg Monarchy in European politics. From
the perspective of Slovenian politics, ever since the national awakening in
Central Europe in 1848, the Habsburg Monarchy represented the guarantee
of the preservation of the identities of small nations in the heart of Europe.
When the process of the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy began in
World War I, the Slovenian politicians endeavoured to act constructively by
formulating alternative concepts, according to which the nations of Central
Europe would, nevertheless, remain united within a Danube basin
(con)federation. After the constitution of Yugoslavia in 1918, the
aforementioned concepts lost on their topicality, so as to again enter the
minds of Slovenian intellectuals on the eve of World War II. The
penetration of Hitler’s Reich into the region of Central Europe, combined
with the threats of Stalin’s communist Empire, motivated a number of
Slovenian politicians even more to formulate schemes for a (con)federation
of small nations from the Baltic to the Adriatic. The idea was that only by
being united could they resist Great Germany and Great Russia. The
diplomatic agreements between the great political powers after the fall of
the Third Reich ceded the eastern parts of Central Europe to the Soviet
military power. It was only on the eve of the fall of the Iron Curtain at the
end of the 1980s that the idea of Central Europe became attractive anew to
the intellectuals of Slovenia. However, just as in the other newly democratised countries, these ideas were soon replaced by the ambitions of
political elites to join the European Union.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
67582
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2006.
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