44
historiography and those who claimed that Yugoslav historiography "cannot be a pure science
without political content."49
The meeting of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of
Yugoslavia was, in relation to texts and phenomena with controversial ideas, full of
compromise. The debaters were of the opinion that politics reacts too quickly to such
occurrences, while historiography reacts too slowly; that the League of Communists should
not merely be an observer in local historiography and journalism, however, that it would also
not be all right if it took over the role of the arbitrator on call.50
The conventions mentioned (including others on republican and local levels) had not
contributed much to calming down the circumstances of the "newly composed"
historiography (as the newspapers called it), and near the end of the eighties politics could no
longer summon the strength for potential new attempts at disciplining, not even on a symbolic
level. The Yugoslav "teacher of life", already in the middle of the eighties labeled as a "raped
lady", after turbulent years lived to see eternal rest without obituaries and a solemn funeral.
Mythic Notions of Slovenes
51
We, Slovenes, as regards myth, do not differ greatly from other similar nations. Of the
multitude of myths (sometimes these are more historical constructs than classical myths),
which are at times connected with each other or complement each other, and sometimes also
contradict each other, those in the foreground (among the older ones) are the myth of the
origin of the Slovenes, the myth of Slovenes as a farmhand and oppressed nation, the myth of
the »Slovene national ascent« and the myth of the fact that a »true« Slovene can only be a
Catholic one (and, additionally, that we are »Mary's nation «, namely, a nation of which Mary
is supposedly particularly fond, on which also Poles, Croatians and Hungarians pride
themselves). Among the younger myths, created by the disintegration of states and the
creation of new ones, are the myths of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as
»dungeons for nations« and the myth of how Slovenes are economically backward because of
socialism (communism) and that after World War II, because of the communist nature, the
49 Žarko Rajković: Naše zgodovinopisje ne more biti brez politične vsebine, Delo 5. 2. 1985.
50 Iz politike v zgodovinopisje, Delo 18.12. 1986.
51
Published in Slovene in Mitske predstave pri Slovencih. In: NOVAK-POPOV, Irena (ed.). Stereotipi v
slovenskem jeziku, literaturi in kulturi: zbornik predavanj. Ljubljana: Center za slovenščino kot drugi/tuji jezik
pri Oddelku za slovenistiko Filozofske fakultete, 2007.
45
authorities had failed to obtain the entire Slovene national territory in the West (particularly
the Trieste harbor).
The myth of the origin of Slovenes belongs to the so-called autochthonous theories. It is
derived from the belief that Slovenes are the original settlers of the area on which they live
today, and that the Slovene language (also literacy) originates from that time as well. Among
the different theses of Etruscan, Illyrian or Veneti origin, the public adopted the so-called
Veneti theory the most. The theory appeared in the middle of the 1980s; its main authors were
»venetologists« Matej Bor, Joško Šavli and Ivan Tomažič, who, in the book Veneti, naši
davni predniki [Veneti, our Ancient Ancestors], proclaimed Slovenes as the descendants of
the Veneti, while these are allegedly »the first nation created from an Indo-European people
in Central Europe«, and afterwards endured all later occupations, including the Roman one.
The authors try to prove their theory with language interpretation, especially with the
explanation of the origin of names, and with archaeological finds. The interpretation
(»translation«) of different place, lake and river names throughout Europe goes something
like this: Drava (Dravus) means to run, a river with a fast current. The word is derived from
Sanskrit, and Drava does not only appear in Slovenia, but also in Poland and Switzerland
(Derotchia), which testifies of the expansion of the Veneti, and at the same time of the direct
connection the Slovenes had to them. According to this logic (which, among other things,
does not consider the development of the language at all), the following are of Slovene origin:
Celeia (selo=hamlet), Logatec-Longaticus (log=grove; Locarno and Lugano are supposedly of
the same origin), Trst-Tergeste (trg=market), Oterg-Oderzo (otržje=place with a market), etc.
Such argumentation is very similar to the one by the Americanized father of Greek descent
Gus Portokalos in the comedy by Joel Zwick My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who was
convinced that he can etymologically prove that every word is of Greek origin. Thus he – in
addition to a number of other funny ideas – established that a kimono (»ki« means 'to wear' in
Japanese, and »mono« means 'object, thing') comes from the Greek »kimona« (»cheimonas«
is Greek for winter) and concluded: »What do you wear in the winter? A robe! So there you
go!«)
The archaeological proof of the Veneti theory is supposedly the so-called Lusatian culture
(after Lužice in Poland) of urn burial sites, which »venetologists« ascribe to the Veneti,
although both historiography and archaeology discovered some time ago that the material
culture of a place remains (can remain) unchanged, even if the population changes. Veneti
(Slovenes) are said to have spread some 1000 years before Christ from Poland over all of
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