ABSTRACT
The contemporary state of Slovenia is an 8,000-square mile chunk of territory on the northeast tip of the Adriatic Sea, due east of Venice. By the 14th century, present-day Slovenia had been incorporated into the Habsburg Empire; in 1797, it became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The movement to establish an independent Slovenian state, which began in 1987, predates the breakup of the Soviet Union by several years. The Erased appear to be victims of bureaucratic bungling as much as outright malfeasance or bigotry, although there was plenty of the latter as well. Subsequent efforts to restore the rights of the Erased ran afoul of the right-wing government, who continued to portray the group as disloyal and, therefore, potentially dangerous to Slovenia. Nearly 200,000 people acquired Slovenian citizenship via this process, but as noted, many residents were not aware that their formal citizenship was in a different republic.
