Slovenes take over Carniola

At the turn of October and November 1918 the Slovenes took power in Ljubljana, capital of the Austrian Duchy of Carniola. A British chronology of the war records under 2 November that the Slovene national leaders had taken over the administration of Carniola from the Austro-Hungarian authorities. According to Slovene historians, drawing on minutes and participants’ memoirs, the matter was settled slightly earlier: on the evening of 31 October a National Government was formed, which that same evening informed the Austrian governor that his authority was at an end, and on 1 November it held its first meeting. News of this may have reached London a day later.

The old authority had been falling apart for several weeks. Since August the Slovene National Council, headed by Anton Korošec, had been operating in Ljubljana and gradually taking over the role previously played by the imperial offices. On 26 October its presidium decided that from the following day it would no longer recognise as provincial governor (Landeshauptmann) Ivan Šušteršič, the long-standing leader of the Slovene People’s Party, who had stood by the Habsburgs to the end. The provincial committee passed under the direction of the liberal Karl Triller. On 29 October, at a great rally in Ljubljana, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was proclaimed, on the same day on which the Croatian Sabor broke its ties with Austria and Hungary.

On 31 October representatives of the three main Slovene parties, the Catholic Slovene People’s Party, the liberal Yugoslav Democratic Party and the Social Democrats, agreed on the composition of the National Government (Narodna vlada). That same day it was approved by the National Council in Zagreb. Its president was Josip Pogačnik, a landowner and long-serving deputy for the Slovene People’s Party. Internal affairs were directed by Janko Brejc, food supply by the writer and liberal politician Ivan Tavčar, national defence by Lovro Pogačnik, and social affairs by the Social Democrat Anton Kristan. At seven in the evening Josip Pogačnik announced the formation of the government from the balcony of the provincial diet building, greeted by a crowd of townspeople. A three-man delegation, Pogačnik, Brejc and Triller, then went to the government palace to see the Austrian governor (provincial president), Count Heinrich Attems. It told him that his authority was over and that the National Government was taking over the administration of Carniola and of all Slovenia. Slovene historians call this seizure of power a bloodless revolution.

On 1 November the government held its first meeting, which lasted from morning till evening. It adopted the name National Government of SHS in Ljubljana and divided itself into twelve departments, called commissions. It decided to secure financial resources, banned the export of money abroad, and defined its relationship to the National Council in Zagreb and to the National Council in Ljubljana. The most important decision from a practical point of view was to introduce the Slovene language as the official language, for the first time in the history of these lands. Formally the government answered to Zagreb, but in practice it governed Slovenia almost independently. On 4 November the first issue of its official gazette appeared, and the provincial committee of Carniola was dissolved. On the same 1 November the National Council for Styria promoted Rudolf Maister to general and entrusted him with command in Slovene Styria. On 23 November his troops disarmed the German town guard in Maribor and kept the city in the Yugoslav state.

From its first days the new authority had above all to maintain order. Thousands of soldiers of the shattered Austro-Hungarian army, returning from the Piave front, were passing through Carniola, and Italian troops soon began arriving from the west. Under the armistice of Villa Giusti, signed on 3 November, they were occupying the lands promised to Italy in the Treaty of London, including the western fringes of Carniola and the Slovene-inhabited lands of the former Austrian Littoral. Pogačnik’s government survived the union with Serbia on 1 December 1918. In January 1919 it was replaced by a Provincial Government for Slovenia dependent on Belgrade, and Carniola ceased to exist as a separate land.