ABSTRACT
Although the interwar period was filled with controversy and unfulfilled potential, the new state of Yugoslavia (Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until 1929) brought some benefits to Slovenes. In this period, there were about one million Slovenes, comprising 8.5 percent of Yugoslavia’s ten million people. The country was 39 percent Serbs and Montenegrins and 24 percent Croats; Bosnian Muslims, Macedonians, Albanians, Hungarians, and other smaller nationalities received far fewer rights than the three biggest Slavic groups. A major issue for Slovenes right away was the disposition of their co-nationals in Italy and Austria. A plebiscite in the Austrian province of Carinthia in July 1920 determined that the border drawn at the Paris Peace Conference the year before would remain; in November 1920, the Treaty of Rapallo made permanent the Conference’s decision to assign the Julian March (Julijska krajina), including the major cities of Trieste and Gorica, the Istrian peninsula, and northern Dalmatia to Italy. After the governments of Mussolini and Hitler came to power in those countries, Slovenes in Yugoslavia were greatly concerned over their political victimization and cultural persecution. The predatory Italian policies created support among Slovenes both for the Yugoslav idea and for the Communist Party, which emerged in the 1930s as the staunchest defender of that idea.
