Slovenian Industry from Its Beginnings until Today

The monograph Slovenska industrija od nastanka do danes (Slovenian Industry from Its Beginnings until Today) represents a logical upgrade and synthesis of the research work completed to date by both authors, as well as an expansion of the time frame that they have focused on. The transformation of the Slovenian society from an agrarian into an industrial and post-industrial one was a long process. Companies would be established; their ownership would change; some of them grew; while others went under. The wish to prevent numerous companies and trademarks that we were once proud of from being forgotten was one of the reasons that motivated the creation of the present work. The first part of the monograph sheds light on the economic- historical overview. It reaches back to the 1830s, when industrial development finally began in the Slovenian provinces and then grew into a kind of a “mini” industrial revolution with the mass production of different goods at the end of the century, after the demise of the classic crafts. This is followed by the outline of the individual periods until the independent Slovenia, with an emphasis on the most important companies and entrepreneurs. The economic circumstances during World War I and World War II, as well as the situation on the other side of the Rapallo border in the Italian state in the interwar period, are presented, along with the description of the industrialisation period in the Habsburg Monarchy; the description of the economic expansion during the first Yugoslav state, when the Slovenian territory suddenly transformed from an economic periphery into the most developed part of the new Yugoslav state; and the analysis of the period after World War II. The analysis of the period following the attainment of Slovenian independence is especially detailed. The title of Zvezdan Martič’s documentary Kam so vse tovarne šle (Where have All the Factories Gone) gives a particularly meaningful description of the period after 1990, or the so-called transitional period. The list of factories that ended up in ruins at the end of the 1980s and after 1990 is very long. Prevent, Rog, TAM, Metalna, TVT Bo511 ris Kidrič, Mura, Tovarna sladkorja Ormož, Toper, Iskra Delta, Iskra, Tobačna Ljubljana and Industrija usnja Vrhnika (IUV) are just some of them. The reasons for such a destiny are numerous. The transition into a new socio-political and economic system was an extremely complex process, which is to be understood in a wider context of developments.