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DEFENCE OF THE SLOVENE IDENTITY
CELEBRATORY ACADEMY ON SLOVENIA'S NATIONAL DAY
Address by the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kucan
Ljubljana, Cankarjev dom, 25 June 1998
Fear and uncertainty at European integrations, which could supposedly in principle threaten the existence and identity of the Slovenians, a trepidation - as if we had some bad conscience – over the talks about the Balkans, about our cooperation in seeking long-term solutions for bringing peace and European values to this area, an exaggerated clinging to the past and attempts to revise it – all this is tangible evidence.
This seventh year of the independent Slovenian state also marks 150 years of the political idea of a United Slovenia evolving into the contemporary political and cultural consciousness of the Slovenian people. Both the idea, or agenda, and its consummation in the Slovenian state, stand as a confirmation of great self-confidence. This was engendered by the capacity to understand accurately the prevailing situation and by the creative power of our own response to it. This is the expression of a self-confidence founded on the understanding of a realistic image of the world and our own place in it, and on the ability to formulate our own criteria to judge it. This self-confidence bore the courage needed for the birth of our state.
Today it might appear that this birth came about as something entirely self-evident. And yet this self-evidence conceals all the hopes, and even struggles, great suffering, countless lives and the unfulfilled futures of many Slovenian generations. It also conceals crimes of genocide against the Slovenian people, the resistance and struggle against fascism and Nazism on the part of the democratic allies in the Second World War, the post-war abuse of victory, the peaceful, creative dismantling of one-party rule and its gradual replacing with multi-party parliamentary deomcracy and the rule of human rights, right up to the consciously achieved consensus in opting for an independent country in that moment when the various historical forces came together so that this option became viable.
Yet ever since we have had our own state, it is as though the years have marked a diminishing self-confidence and self-awareness in Slovenian political life, a declining ability to formulate a realistic image of the world and judgement of it, along with less courage to assess things according to our own criteria and interests or to measure our own space in the world. Is this nothing more than a political stance which seeks to dispel its own doubts about the Slovenians being a nation, and by harking back to history – as if a nation were merely a collection of historical facts – wastes energy trying to prove before history what has already long been proved? Is this lack of self-confidence anything other than a wavering over values on which the state should be founded, or an admission of doubt about these values being antifascism and the entirety of values in the European democratic civilisational tradition, upon which the former world of real socialism is renewing itself as a part of the new Europe? Is this anything other than a political stance which creates the egoistic impression that we wish only to gain from Euro-Atlantic integrations, and that we are not prepared to shoulder any burden. A stance which threatens to set us in the eyes of the world as a small, untrustworthy country which does not hold its word, and observes neither principles nor its own obligations. Is the lack of self-confidence and self-respect anything other than the denigration of political adversaries and one's own country abroad, and the non-respect of its laws, symbols and values? These types of political behaviour are fruitless, and do not contribute to resolving the problems facing the modern Slovenian identity and Slovenian state.
It would be pointless in the existing world to belittle the need to defend one's identity, the interests and rights of the nation or to deny those objective tendencies which threaten the identity and independence of the nation. Yet the merely emotional, introspective and immutable defence of the Slovenian identity is fruitless. Such a defence equates our world of Slovenianism, delineated by the borders of Slovenia, with the horizons of the modern, globalised, competitive and interdependent world. With such a defence, the Slovenian identity cannot possess sufficient self-awareness and self-confidence to address creatively the entirety of needs, problems and tendencies of modern humankind. It accedes merely to its own, spatially and spiritually small world, to a thinking which, limited by the confines of this space, cannot foster any creative energy. As if in our fudamental tradition it was not written: Let all nations live; and as if moreover we had not chosen this very line for our national anthem. Fear and uncertainty at European integrations, which could supposedly in principle threaten the existence and identity of the Slovenians, a trepidation - as if we had some bad conscience – over the talks about the Balkans, about our cooperation in seeking long-term solutions for bringing peace and European values to this area, an exaggerated clinging to the past and attempts to revise it – all this is tangible evidence.
From our own history we would be advised to draw from the experience that the nation is refreshed and revitalised by those efforts - and it is given self-confidence and courage only by those acts - with which it addrsses and commits itself to the resolving of questions in the wider human world, and with this awareness it can then settle its own domestic situation. In the interdependent human world it is only in this way that a nation can define its own space. A life and future is provided to this nation only by considered and active endeavours forged in the furnaces of development processes and in this way pushes it and enables it to function through its own power and will. The most important confirmation of the nation is in the end the fact that it is living, that its ideas have an active presence in the world and that it is creatively responding to the times; that it is cooperating in the common effort of humankind to create the conditions and substance which are appropriate to these times, to their crossroads and demands. The nation is confirmed through its capacity for life; through its ability to think about the world for itself and also to consider it together with others for others, indeed for all. Thus it was at all times when the Slovenian nation was great, when it was not left behind by history. Thus it was, too, when it chose the moment and the path to exercise its right to self-determination, and when it achieved consensus about dismantling the non-democratic model of society.
What we should now reject once and for all is provincial thinking and the imposition of political sleight of hand or simply dilettantism. And this includes our thoughts about the young generations and the heritage which we are leaving to them. The creative action of the Slovenian spirit, which should secure for us a place under the sun of the future, will necessarily have to extend beyond the fences of our own confinement and reject those tendencies which want to be able to buy political life and thought here, which demand a settling of accounts from history, and which destroy each other. An awareness should prevail that only the kind of political thinking which will place deliberations over Slovenian identity at the centre of European and world events will strengthen the will of Slovenians to gain our own space in the world and our own justice, and in this way the will and right to a common life and existence.
The process of reconciliation, which to a great extent is translated into settling of accounts and mutual pay-offs, will need to be cleansed in order to be in truth reconciliation again. Only in this way can it be what it should be: one of the foundation stones of our future. We need peace and patience to live together more easily, we need a respectful attitude to death and towards mourning tragic fates born of mistakes and revenge, in order to come to terms with the past, and we need mutual respect in order to work for the future.
The world is full of crossroads, even bitter experiences, disappointments and lost hopes. The world is beset with doubt, the defeat of the noblest ideas, and anger at blindness and mindlessness as well as at the barbarity of humans. And yet the world is now optimistically and boldly building a solid foundation for a step towards the future of different relations between people, nations and countries. The existing world is a bridge to the future. This is a world which was able to end the political bloc divisions, the Cold War and historical enmity. It is also the only one which is able - and is therefore called upon – to seek the foundations for the spiritual and social future of humankind. And for the future of the Slovenians. For this reason we Slovenians must stand in the middle of this world, judge it by our own criteria and not withdraw from it. We can only withdraw into the past. We stand in the midst of life, said a poet. Only then can we see clearly our home environment, its possibilities, prospects and past. We gain a clear picture of everything we missed in the past, what we could and could not do, where we were not properly mature and not self-sufficient. It also becomes clear to us where are our possibilities and our future.
Even more so than our past, our present also awaits critical appraisal. The resounding words of grand showdowns and blanket condemnations, intended purely for mutual accusation and destruction, should give way to considered decisions which will be intended for the common good and for the Slovenian identity. Such a stance, which can rise above the level of provincial prejudice and can leave some fruitful seed in the spirit of the nation, is now expected by the Slovenian people. Our people are not small-minded, nor do they have any lack of self-confidence. And they also possess sufficient self-respect. But they are setting out their priorities dictated by life, and these are often at odds with the priorities of Slovenia's politicians and authorities.
We Slovenians are also a part of the new world order, which is emerging before our very eyes. Let us be sufficiently self-confident for it not to pass us by, and for us to make our mark on it, too. We will be capable of this if among ourselves, and also outside ourselves we can conceive of the agreeable future of humankind; if we can creatively cooperate with others seeking this future. We have sufficient knowledge and capable people. I believe that we also possess the will to harness all our creative intelligence and energy. In the embrace of general human values and ideas we can also do enough for ourselves. Through our actions, thoughts and through what affects us we can show in the best possible way our self-confidence and obtain a confirmation that as a nation the Slovenians exist and are alive, and that we can participate in creating the new, connected world.
On the birth of the state we thought of this. At that time we did not ask each other where anyone came from, but rather where they were going. And whether people were prepared to put themselves on the line for our common future in their own, our own, Slovenian state, which would be a part of the modern world. At that time we thought about our fortune as a part of the fortune of humankind, for we thought about it in the horizon of general human values and processes which are establishing anew the true European relations. The world stood behind us and we were great. The Charter of Good Intent and the Basic Constitutional Document stand witness to that stance of ours. They have bound us in perpetuity, before ourselves and the world. We sood at that time in the midst of life, and it was not necessary for us to prove to anyone who we were. We would be advised to stand with similar self-confidence in the midst of life and in such self-confidence we should exist as a nation. For today, tomorrow and for always.
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