Yugoslavia May End, but Better With a Vote Than a Sword : Slovenia: The republic’s declaration of independence comes from a need for freedom, not from ethnic hatred.

Human history is a recording of continuous change, of empires created and abandoned, unions forged and eliminated, nation-states established and borders perpetually redrawn. Yugoslavia is simply part of this continuum. There is nothing unprecedented or even surprising about the Slovenian legislature’s declaration of independence from the central Yugoslav government Tuesday, shortly after a similar declaration by Croatia.

In 1918, Yugoslavia emerged as a nation from the ashes of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. After 1945, it continued to exist as a nation-state because the victorious Communist Party, claiming to have killed the German fascist dragon, usurped absolute power and became a monster itself.

Slovenia’s declaration of sovereignty, while undramatic from a historical perspective, is eventful for the Slovenian people, marking as it does the end of a long and remarkable journey toward statehood. As British historian Bernard Newman wrote in 1960, “It is a miracle of survival, almost without parallel, that the Slovenians exist today, for they have never known national independence, except at the dawn of their history.”

Slovenes have inhabited their lands for more than 1,400 years. Early in that history, Slovenes were budding democrats. While the rest of the discovered world lived in feudalism, the Slovenes in the 9th Century had developed one of the earliest and most impressive forms of democracy. The rulers received their power directly from the people, in the form of a public ritual of installation (the investiture of the Dukes of Carinthia), in which the incoming duke had to promise before leading citizens that he would obey the law, defend the people, preserve peace and support the destitute. The father of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, is said to have been inspired by his readings about this early proto-democracy.

But for most of their history, from 1278 until 1918, Slovenes lived under Hapsburg rule. After the fall of the Austrian empire, they entered into a royal union with Croatia and Serbia, only to find that they had traded subjugation for economic exploitation. The Communist Party accentuated the disparity of treatment by letting the prosperous Slovenian north subsidize the impoverished south, but also tried to minimize it by attempting to equalize the language, culture and identity of very distinct and different nationalities.

After last year’s elections, this economic and social oppression became intolerable.

Exercising any nation’s inalienable right to leave a forged union unhindered and at will, Slovenia has now decided to depart from Yugoslavia. This act has nothing to do with ethnic strife, which may well be a symptom of the Yugoslav problem but certainly is not its cause.

At the root of the conflict is the fact that a long era of dictatorship was imposed on the entire nation (first by a kingdom, then by the communists) that benefited a few while causing harm to the rest of the population. If national resentments were really responsible for mutual dislike and hatred, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes would never have been founded in 1918 on the premise of cooperation among equal members, however faulty that premise finally turned out to be.

The real source of conflict is that two diametrically opposed systems of government, communism and democracy, are on a collision course in Yugoslavia. In this situation, self-determination must be given the absolute prerogative. The democratically established will of the people constitutes the law.

The United States was founded on the right of the people to choose their own form of constitution and government. It thus makes no sense for Washington not to foster genuine democracies.

We all know that freedom is not a gift to be handed out. It is a privilege taken. With the founding of Slovenia and Croatia as sovereign states, Yugoslavia has ceased to exist as a federal entity and we must all turn to the tasks of the future. How to make the previous republics of Yugoslavia into a viable cooperative trading unit? Politically balance the region? Expand democracy into areas where it has never been known before?

Ordinarily, new states are founded on the power of the sword. As in its distant beginning, Slovenia appears to be a remarkable exception: It is being founded in the spirit of mutual consent, without a trace of force.