Slavs in Post-Nazi Austria

Carinthia is that region of the former Habsburg monarchy, students of the post-First World War settlements might recall, where results of a plebiscite held in October 1920 ostensibly went against the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. The local population, despite being majority Slovene (although not always Slovene-speaking), voted in favour of becoming a minority in the new Austrian republic rather than join its supposed nation-state, the recently formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the pre-1929 official name for Yugoslavia). The plebiscite result was a blow to Yugoslavia, but Austrian authorities could not, and did not, ignore a significant pro-Yugoslav/Slovene sentiment in the region: slightly over 40 per cent of Carinthians voted in favour of joining Yugoslavia and other Slovenes, including those living in a smaller part of historic Carinthia which the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain recognised as Yugoslav. The importance of the Slovenian question had been acknowledged in Belgrade by the establishment of a separate Slovene section within the Serb-Croat-Slovene delegation in Paris—which, incidentally, the Big Four treated as a delegation of Serbia until May–June 1919, due to Italy’s demands in the eastern Adriatic. The Carinthian plebiscite represented a setback for Slovene aspirations, especially as many Slovenes (as well as Croats) also found themselves a minority in Italy, after the Treaty of Rapallo settled the Italian-Yugoslav border in November 1920

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