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Jill Benderly and Evan Kraft (Eds.), Independent Slovenia: Origins, Movements, Prospects (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 262 + XVII ISBN 0 - 312 - 16447 - 5
Reviewed by Damir Mirkovic, Sociology, Brandon University, Canada.
Yugoslavia's disintegration and the civil wars accompanying it have attracted considerable attention in the West. This is attested by the sheer number of books published on the topic (at least 20) by journalists, social scientists and historians. While some are by insiders, most of them are written by western scholars or journalists.
Benderly and Kraft have compiled and edited this volume of 11 essays, most of which are written by Slovene scholars. Peter Vodopivec, a historian at the University of Ljubljana, has also contributed an article to this volume. The editors give a relatively short, eight - page introduction. The essays are grouped in three sections according to subtitles, and the book is equipped with four hand - drawn maps, an index, and notes on 14 contributors. Each article comes with endnotes and bibliography. This is a unique publication dealing specifically with a small society that recently seceded from the former Yugoslav federation. This volume was preceded by similar effort in 1993, when the Nationality Papers (New York), Vol. 21, No.1, published a special issue "Voices from the Slovene Nation: 1990 - 1992," edited by Henry R. Huttenbach and Peter Vodopivec. It also included papers by Slovene scholars -- 14 of them.
Slovenia and Croatia seceded unilaterally from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991; both were the two most western republics in the former Yugoslave federation of six member states. Before its secession, Slovenia, with a small population of about two million, was attacked by the Yugoslav army, that led to a 10 - day war; three months later Slovenia declared its independence. Before Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1990, it was the Slovenian delegation at the extraordinary...