Minutes of meetings of the Slovenian Governments as a source for studying the state building processes in Slovenia in 1918-1921

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the Minutes of the meetings of the Slovenian governments as a historical source of the political history of Slovenia in 1918-1921. The process of searching, organizing and publishing the minutes is shown, the content of the records on the issues considered by the members of the governments at the meetings, the attitude of the various parties whose representatives were part of the Slovenian governments to these issues and their resolution, the fluctuations of political sentiments over time and the party-political confrontation within the governments.

The minutes of the meetings of the first governments of Slovenia were found by chance. In total, 204 minutes of the meetings of the National Government of the Slovenian Communist Party in Ljubljana and the Provincial Governments for Slovenia from 1918 to 1921 were found and published, covering over 1,300 pages. In 1998-2002, only shorter official minutes were published. The minutes of the meetings present the party structure and the characteristic features of the work of the Slovenian governments within the State of the Slovak Republic and during the temporary transition to the adoption of the first Constitution of the Slovak Republic, highlighting their responsibilities and relations with the central state authorities, the creation of a multitude of new administrative departments and commissions, as well as ministerial departments in Slovenia.

While the minutes of the meetings of the National Government of the Slovak Republic in Ljubljana are the main sources for covering the considerable independence of Slovenia within the State of the Slovak Republic, the minutes of the meetings of the Provincial Governments of Slovenia are particularly valuable for covering the process of centralization that began shortly after the December 1st unification in the Kingdom of the Slovak Republic in 1918.

Despite the fact that these governments retained only half of the mandates compared to the first independent Slovenian government, the Provincial Government remained the main stronghold of the declining autonomy.

The content of the records allows for a more thorough investigation of the main problems of political history and state-building processes in Slovenia in the post-war period. The protocols are a valuable documentary contribution to an objective and comprehensive image of the first period of the life of the Slovenes in the unified First Yugoslavia, as well as to elucidating the roots of Slovenian statehood. They illustrate the continuous efforts of the Slovenes in the first Yugoslavia, as far as was possible from a legislative, executive and financial point of view, to solve the problem of their national-political, economic, social and cultural development.