The author concentrates on the period before the first Yugoslav state. The reason for that is obvious: The Slovenian and Croatian nationalisms were formed in this period, and the administrative borders on the ground were demarcated by the Habsburg administration in the 18th and 19th century. In the second part of the paper, the author tries to grasp the image of the border in Slovenian public sphere and the importance of the border in the last two decades for the Slovenian nationalism. The context of the EU was did not just help to solve the problem, it also complicated it.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 3258740One of the biggest mistakes that historians make is not giving wrong answers, far more problematic is posing the wrong questions – questions which can never be answered, because they imply wrong premises. For example, the question “where is the historically true Slovenian-Croatian border” undoubtedly belongs to this category. We cannot “prove” or “find” the true border between Slovenian and Croatia, but we could better understand the border if we research the nature of past borders. If we want to understand the complexity of border “making and breaking”, we need to take a step away from current affairs.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 3258484Marko Zajc, Nevenka Troha, Zdenko Čepič, Bojan Godeša, Damir Josipovič and Aleš Gabrič were 2010-2013 members of the Subgroup for History of the Advisory Group on the Arbitration Agreement on the Resolution of the Border Issue between the Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Croatia, established in 2010 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. After the Subgrub was dissolved, they continued to cooperate with the The Project Unit for the Preparation of Arguments in Front of the Arbitration Court at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. The work of this subcommission is described in the documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. The written elaborations are not publicly available.
F.34 Consultancy
The author analyzes three different cases from the SlovenianCroatian border in a comparative perspective: one at the far southwestern border sector near Dragonja River and the Piran bay renowned by Joško Joras's struggle; another from the far northeastern section around Mura River; and the third lying centrally in the 'gerrymandered' border knot of several kilometers of borderline entangling the local houses and premises below the Gorjanci/ Žumberak mountains.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 12317005The characteristics of the nationalist representation of the border history: a) Anachronisms. Putting elements of the present or later past “into” the certain period. b) False methodology. Instead of researching the phenomenon of the border in the past, the question is raised(where is the true border), then the answer is given that fits. c) Inconsistency; mixing the various levels. Legal and administrative elements are mixed with linguist and ethnographical arguments. If the arguments don’t fit, they are simply ignored. d) The focus on the "movements" of the individual parts of the border, which is related to the disregard for thewider historical context and qualitative changes. e) The Belief in the “naturalness” of the national identities presupposing that thedifferences between Croats and Slovenians are very old, "natural" and could be clearly divided.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 3119988