16 In 1867, Slovenian representatives received a majority of votes in the provincial elections. In the same year, the Austrian Empire was transformed into the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Most of the territory of present-day Slovenia remained in the Austrian part of the monarchy, Pomurje was in the Hungarian part, whilst the Slovenes in Veneto had already decided in 1866 that they wished to join Italy. The idea of a unified Slovenia remained the central theme of the nationalpolitical efforts of the Slovenian nation within the Habsburg monarchy for the next 60 years. By the end of the 19th century, industry had developed considerably in Slovenia and the Slovenian people were similarly socially differentiated as in all the other developed European nations.
The state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs During the World War I, which brought heavy human casualties to Slovenia, and devastated its western regions along the
17 bloody SoÄ?a front, and with the imperialistic policies of the superpowers, which threatened to split Slovenian territory among a number of states (the London Pact of 1915), Slovenes tried to arrange a unified common state of Slovenes, Croats and those Serbs living within the Habsburg monarchy. This demand, known as the May Declaration, was made by the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian representatives in the Vienna parliament in the spring of 1917.
The memorial church of the Holy Spirit at Javorca above Tolmin, designed by the Viennese artist Remigius Geyling, was built in 1916 by Austro-Hungarian soldiers to commemorate the victims of the First World War battlefront on the River SoÄ?a. The church has been recently awarded with the European Heritage label.
The ruling circles of the Habsburg monarchy rejected this demand, even though it was supported by a strong Slovenian national pro-declaration movement. After Austro-Hungarian defeat, the Croatian assembly in Zagreb and a national gathering in Ljubljana on 29 October 1918 declared national freedom and the formation of an independent state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, with its capital in Zagreb. The danger from Italy, which had occupied Primorska and Istria as well as some parts of Dalmatia, and the pressures from the Serbs for unification into a common state, forced the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, on 1 December 1918, to unite with the Kingdom of Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was in 1929 renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Following a plebiscite in 1920, most of the Slovenian part of Carinthia was annexed to Austria. Thus, a unified Slovenia never became a reality. The majority of the Slovenian nation in Yugoslavia, which was completely centralised, had no constitutional or legal autonomy, but because of its ethnic compactness and because of the domination of the Slovenian People’s Party (SLS), which strove for autonomy, the nation actually lived a fairly autonomous existence, which even the centralised Belgrade legislation could not spoil. Slovenia managed to develop both economically and culturally. But on its domestic political stage there was an intense struggle between the conservative-Christian SLS and the Liberal Party.
The appearance of federal Yugoslavia During the Second World War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia disintegrated, and Slovenian territory was divided between Germany, Italy and Hungary. In 1941, the Liberation Front of the Slovenian Nation was founded in Ljubljana and Facts About Slovenia
History