SOME ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF THE PRIMORJE IMMIGRANTS TO PREKMURJE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

Abstract

Prekmurje has been and to some extent is until the present day one of the most typical geographic regions of mass Slovene emigration. Less typical and considerably less numerous is especially in past historical periods the reverse process: the process of immigrating in Prekmurje. The first Slovenes that have in a larger number immigrated to Prekmurje were undoubtedly the refugees from Primorska who after 1918 fled mainly from the Italian denationalisation violence, particularly after its aggravation after the fascist takeover of power. The Isonzo front during World War I and even more the above mentioned, and the denationalisation measures of the Italian authorities, banished from their homes over 100.000 Slovenes from Primorje and Istrian Croats of whom the majority after 1918 resorted to the newly founded South Slav state, and the rest mainly to Western Europe and South America, particularly Argentina. In the first period, they as mainly liberally and Yugoslav centralistic oriented, were given work in not too popular state vocations (thus, in the police, the customs etc.); later, during the economic crisis, the local population considered them unwanted competition in the struggle for the scant everyday bread. The word “Primorec” meant in many an environment of the homeland a true verbal abuse.
To the Yugoslav state in 1919 annexed Prekmurje offered some possibilities for the survival of the above mentioned emigrants from Primorska, above all teachers who with their Yugoslav and liberal orientation resolutely and to a certain extent as a foreign body intervened in the there, with a specific historical development defined social, religious, economic and cultural environment. The state authorities settled near Dolnja Lendava in Petišovci, Benica and Pince several tens of emigrant peasant families from Primorje and Istria. All the mentioned aspects of the life of the Primorje immigrants and refugees are merely briefly presented in the treatise.