CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2008
| Author | Lisjak Gabrijelcic, Luka |
|---|---|
| Title | The Dissolution of the Slavic Identity of the Slovenes in the 1980s. The Case of the Venetic Theory |
| Summary | The present thesis treats the issue of autochthonism which emerged in Slovenia in the 1980s, assessing its role in the shifts in Slovene historical identity that occurred during the transition from Communism to political pluralism. In 1985, a group of Slovene authors launched a theory according to which the Slovenes were not descended from Slavs that settled in the East Alpine region in the 6th Century, but from a proto-Slavic people they called Veneti who had supposedly colonized the Central European area in the 13th Century B.C.. The theory represented an ideological attempt to break away from the Yugoslav cultural and historical context. Although it was rejected by the scientific establishment, it won wide public support. It also launched a harsh controversy which dominated the Slovene public sphere for several years and remained present in the media for a whole decade. Its supporters gradually developed into a regular cultural movement which contributed significantly to the re-definition of the Slovene national imagery. Since the early articulations of Romantic nationalism in the first half of the 19th century, the Slovene historical identity was repeatedly inserted into the context of a wider Slavic identity understood in a demotic and ethnicist way. After WWII, this frame was challenged by new social experiences, including the immigration from other Yugoslav republics. The massive success of the Venetic Theory uncovered the crisis of the Slavic and demotic-ethnicist frame of Slovene identity and acted as a catalyst for its dissolution. Although the authors of the theory renewed the theses of 19th century Pan-Slavists, they inserted it in a completely different discourse. It was this discourse that gave an important contribution to the redefinition of Slovene identity in the period after the secession from Yugoslavia, marking the turning point between a modernist and postmodernist model of collective identity. |
| Supervisor | Trencsenyi, Balázs; Klaniczay, Gábor |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2008/lisjak-gabrijelcic_luka.pdf |
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